Without a Trace (11 page)

“About my money, anyway.”

“Oh, are you rich?”

“Loaded.”

She looked over her shoulder as she stepped into a cab. “Then why don’t I have any jewelry?”

A smart aleck, he thought, and wished he didn’t like her better for it. He put his hand firmly on her bottom. “You haven’t earned it yet, sweetheart.”

The makeup couldn’t disguise the fire and challenge that leaped into her eyes. Because he’d gotten the last word, he felt a great deal better as he settled into the cab beside her. He gave the driver an address, then turned to her. “Speak any French?”

“Only enough to know whether I’m ordering calf’s brains or chicken in a restaurant.”

“Just as well. Keep your mouth shut and let me do the talking. You’re not supposed to be too bright, in any case.”

He was telling her to keep her mouth shut too often for her taste. “I’ve already deduced that your taste in women runs to the type in men’s magazines. Glossy and two-dimensional.”

“As long as they don’t talk back. If you have to say anything, ditch the Irish. You’ve lived in New York long enough to have picked up the tone.”

They were driving out of the section of the city marked by hotels and large, modern shops. Inland from the port and harbor was the old medina, the original Arab town, enclosed by walls and with a maze of narrow streets. At any other time, it would have fascinated her. She would have wanted to get out and look, smell, touch. Now it was only a place where a clue might be found.

Trace—or Cabot, as Gillian was training herself to think of him—paid off the cab. She stepped out to look at the hodgepodge of little shops and the mix of tourists they catered to.

The charm was there, the age, the Arab flavor. Exotic colors, open bazaars, men in robes. The avenue was shaded, the shop windows were crammed with souvenirs and silks and local crafts. The women she saw were for the most part European, unveiled and trousered. The wind was mild and carried the scents of the water, of spice and of garbage left too long.

“It’s so different.” With her arm tucked through Trace’s again, she began to walk. “You read about such places, but it’s nothing like seeing them. It’s so … exotic.”

He thought of the bidonville he’d visited that afternoon, the squatters’ shacks, the squalor hardly a stone’s throw away from charming streets and neat shops. A slum was a slum, whatever the language or culture.

“We’re going in here.” Trace stopped in front of a jeweler’s with gold and silver and brightly polished gems in the window. “Smile and look stupid.”

Gillian lifted a brow. “I’m not sure I’m that talented, but I’ll do my best.”

The bells on the door of the shop jingled when it opened. Behind the counter was a man with a face like a burnt almond and hair growing white in patches. He glanced up and recognition came quickly into his eyes before he went back to the customers bargaining over a bracelet. Trace simply linked his hands behind his back and studied the wares in a display case.

The shop was hardly more than ten feet by twelve, with a backroom closed off by a beaded curtain. There was music playing, something with pipes and flutes that made Gillian think of a tune shepherds might play to
their flocks. The scent in here was all spice—cloves and ginger—and a paddle fan lazily twirled the air around and around.

The floor was wooden and scarred. Though the jewelry gleamed, most of the glass was dull and finger marked. Remembering her role, Gillian toyed with necklaces of blue and red beads. She sighed, thinking how delighted little Caitlin would be with a few strands.

“Bonsoir.”
His transaction completed, the shopkeeper cupped one hand in the other. “It’s been a long time, old friend,” he continued in French. “I did not expect to see you in my shop again.”

“I could hardly come back to Casablanca without dropping in on an old and valued friend, al-Aziz.”

The shopkeeper inclined his head, already wondering if a profit could be made. “You have come on business?”

“A little business …” Then he indicated Gillian by turning his palm upward. “A little pleasure.”

“Your taste is excellent, as always.”

“She’s pretty,” Trace said carelessly. “And not smart enough to ask too many questions.”

“You would purchase her a bauble?”

“Perhaps. I also have a commodity to sell.”

Annoyed with being shut out of the conversation, Gillian moved to Trace. She twined an arm around his neck, hoping the pose was sexy enough. She tried for the clipped New York accent of her assistant at the institute. “I might as well have stayed back at the hotel if you’re going to speak in French all night.”

“A thousand pardons,
mademoiselle
,” al-Aziz said in precise English.

“No need to apologize,” Trace told him after giving Gillian’s cheek a light, intimate pat. The trace of Ireland was still there, but he doubted anyone who wasn’t listening for it would have noticed. “There now,
chérie,
pick yourself out something pretty.”

She wanted, quite badly, to spit in his eye, but she fluttered hers instead. “Oh, André, anything?”

“But of course, whatever you like.”

She’d make it good, Gillian decided as she bent over the display counter like a child in an ice cream parlor.
Good and expensive.

“We can speak freely,
mon ami
,” Trace went on. He too rested against the counter, but he moved his hands quickly, competently, then folded them together on the glass top. “My companion understands no French. I assume you’re still … well connected.”

“I am a fortunate man.”

“You’ll remember a few years ago we made a deal that was mutually profitable. I’m here to propose another.”

“I am always happy to discuss business.”

“I have a similar shipment. Something that was liberated from our capitalist friends. I find the shipment, shall we say, too volatile to store for any length of time. My sources indicate that a certain organization has relocated in Morocco. This organization might be interested in the supplies I can offer—at the going market rate, of course.”

“Of course. You are aware that the organization you speak of is as volatile as the supplies you wish to sell?”

“It matters little to me, if the profit margin is agreeable. Are you interested in setting up the negotiations?”

“For the standard ten percent commission?”

“Naturally.”

“It’s possible I can help you. Two days. Where can I reach you?”

“I’ll reach you, al-Aziz.” He smiled and ran a fingertip along the side of his jaw. It was a trait peculiar to Cabot. “There is a rumor I find interesting. A certain scientist is, let us say, employed by this organization. If I had more information about him, the profit could very well increase, by perhaps twenty percent.”

Al-Aziz’s face was as bland as his voice. “Rumors are unreliable.”

“But simple enough to substantiate.” Trace drew out a money clip and extracted some bills. They disappeared like magic into the folds of al-Aziz’s cloak.

“Such things are rarely impossible.”

“Oh, darling, can I have these?” Gillian grabbed Trace’s arm and drew him over to a pair of long gold
earrings crusted with red stones. “Rubies,” she said with a long, liquid sigh, knowing perfectly well they were colored glass. “Everyone at home will simply die of envy. Please, darling, can I have them?”

“Eighteen hundred dirham,” the shopkeeper said with a complacent smile “For you and the lady, sixteen hundred.”

“Please, sweetheart. I just adore them.”

Trapped in his own game, Trace nodded to al-Aziz. But he also managed to pinch Gillian hard as the shopkeeper drew the earrings out of their case.

“Oh, I’ll wear them now.” Gillian began to fasten them on as Trace took more bills from his clip.

“Two days,” Trace added in French. “I’ll be back.”

“Bring your lady.” The shopkeeper’s face creased with a smile. “I can use the business.”

Trace steered her out to the street. “You could have picked out some glass beads.”

Gillian touched a fingertip to one earring and sent it spinning. “A woman like me would never be satisfied with glass beads but would probably be foolish enough to believe paste was rubies. I wanted to do a good job.”

“Yeah.” The earrings glittered with a lot more style on her than they had in the case. “You did okay.”

With a hand on his arm, Gillian pulled up short. “Wait a minute. I’m nearly breathless after that compliment.”

“Keep it up.”

“There, that’s better. Now are you going to tell me what that was all about?”

“Let’s take a walk.”

At least she wasn’t cooped up in a hotel room. Gillian tried to comfort herself with that as she sat in a noisy club that was fogged with smoke and vibrating with recorded music. Nursing a glass of wine, she sat observing the life around her. The clientele was young, and again mostly European. Though her traveling had been limited by her work, Gillian thought you could have found an almost identical place in London or Paris.

It occurred to her that she’d seen more of the world in the past two weeks than she had in all her life. Under other circumstances she might have enjoyed the noise and confusion, the edgy party atmosphere. Instead, she leaned closer to Trace.

“You have to tell me what was said, what’s being done.”

He’d chosen the club because it was loud and the clientele was self-absorbed. Whatever they said wouldn’t carry beyond the table at which they sat. He’d chosen it for those reasons, and because he was postponing going back to the hotel, where he would be alone with her.

“Al-Aziz is a businessman. So is Cabot.” Trace nibbled on a stale breadstick. “I made him a business proposition.”

“What does that have to do with Flynn?”

“I get al-Aziz interested. With any luck he gets Hammer interested. We set up a meeting, and I find out a hell of a lot more than we know now.”

“You’re going to meet with those people?” For some reason, her blood froze at the thought. For him, she realized. She was afraid for him. “But they know who you are.”

Trace took a sip of his whiskey and wondered how long it would be before he was back in a country that served a proper drink. “Abdul knows who I am. Goons like him aren’t generally in on arms transactions.”

“Yes, but— Arms?” Her voice dropped to a passionate whisper. “You’re going to sell them guns?”

“They damn well better think so.”

“That’s crazy. Setting up business transactions, pretending you’ll be selling arms to terrorists. Certainly there has to be a better way.”

“Sure. I could have walked into al-Aziz’s and told him you were Dr. Gillian Fitzpatrick, whose brother had been kidnapped by Hammer. I could have appealed to his humanitarian instincts. Before the sun came up in the morning, you’d be in the same position your brother’s in now. And I’d be dead.”

Gillian frowned into her wine. “It certainly seems a roundabout way of accomplishing something.”

“You stick to your equations, Doc, I’ll stick to mine. In a few days I should be talking with the general himself. I have a feeling that wherever he is, your brother’s close by.”

“You really think Flynn’s near here?” As she leaned closer, her fingers gripped his. “I wish I could be sure. I wish I could feel something.”

“The computer said Morocco. Rory confirmed that the plane was logged for Casablanca. Wherever he is now, he was here. So we start here.”

He seemed so confident, so sure of the plan of attack. There was nothing she wanted, needed, more than to believe in him. “You’d met al-Aziz before, hadn’t you? He seemed to know you.”

Trace felt an itch between his shoulder blades. He’d have preferred sitting with his back to the wall. “We’ve dealt before.”

“You’ve used him to sell guns before.”

“The ISS used him,” Trace said. He broke another breadstick in half. “A few years back there were plans for a coup the ISS wanted to endorse. Anonymously. Cabot made a nice profit, al-Aziz made his commission, and democracy took a giant step forward.”

She knew such things happened. She’d grown up in a country divided by war. She lived in a country whose faith had been strained by secret deals and political machinations. But that didn’t make it right.

“It’s wrong.”

“This is the real world,” he countered. “And most of it’s wrong.”

“Is that why you do it?” She’d drawn away from him, but she couldn’t ignore the impulse to move closer. “To make things right?”

There’d been a time—it seemed a lifetime ago—when he had been idealistic enough to believe that things could be made right. When he’d lost that, where he’d lost that, he couldn’t have said. And he’d stopped looking.

“I just do my job, Gillian. Don’t try to make a hero out of me.”

“It didn’t occur to me.” She said it dryly enough to make his lips curve. “I just think it would make it easier if I understood you.”

“Just understand that I’m going to get your brother and his kid out.”

“And then?” She made a conscious effort to relax. There was nothing she could do now but wait. Wait, and try to probe beneath the surface of the man who held her life in his hands. “Will you retire?”

“That’s the idea, sweetheart.” The smoke around him was expensive—French, Turkish. The music was loud, the liquor just tolerable. He wondered when it had hit him that he’d spent too much time in places like this. He nearly laughed out loud. For all intents and purposes, he’d been born in a place like this. Sometime over the past year he’d realized he wanted out as badly as he’d wanted out a dozen years before. Only he was long past the point where he could just stick out his thumb.

“Trace?”

“What?”

She wasn’t sure where he’d gone, but she knew it wasn’t the time to ask. “What will you do … when you retire?”

“There’s a place in the Canary Islands where a man can pick fruit right off the tree and sleep in a hammock with a warm woman. The water’s clear as glass, and the fish jump right in your lap.” He took another long sip. “A hundred thousand dollars in a place like that, I could be king.”

“If you didn’t die of boredom first.”

“I’ve had enough excitement to last me the next thirty or forty years. Honey-skinned women and a salt-free
diet.” He clicked his glass against hers. “I’m going to enjoy myself.”