Hunt Through Napoleon's Web (15 page)

The woman led them into the farmhouse while her husband unloaded the goats and herded them into the corral. She showed them to a primitive but functional shower, with a pair of tin buckets suspended on a rod and a rope to tip the water out through holes punched in the buckets’ sides. Gabriel saw Lucy’s eyes light up and invited her to use it first. He walked off a bit to get the lay of the land and stretch his tight muscles. By the time he returned, she was bundled up in a coarse towel, her hair dripping and her clothes laid out to dry on a rock in the sun.

“All yours,” she said.

He began unbuttoning his shirt. As he pulled it off, he saw Lucy staring. He looked down. “What?”

She came forward, traced a finger along one of the scars on his arm. It had come from a sword; there was a matching scar on the opposite side where the tip of the blade had come out. “Got that one in Giza,” he said softly. “Inside the Great Sphinx.” She moved on to a puckered knot of flesh on his side, from a bullet wound that had never healed properly. “Botswana,” he said in answer to her unspoken question. She traced a thin line running crookedly from his navel to his hip. “Ninety-third Street,” he said, “and Central Park West.”

She patted him gently on his side. “Take your shower,” she said. “I’ll get us some food.”

They sat in the modest farmhouse at a table that appeared to be made from a single cross-section cut from a huge tree, sharing a platter of dense Moroccan bread and bowls of thick vegetable soup. Lucy scarfed down three bowls.

“They don’t have a telephone,” she said between spoonfuls. “But they can drive us to the airport.”

Gabriel dug into his pocket and took out the piece of paper onto which he’d copied the Arabic word he had seen underlined on the map in Amun’s office. “Can you ask them if they know what this means?”

Lucy passed it to the man and spoke to him. The man nodded, uttered a few words. “Darif says it’s Arabic. It means ‘the web.’ Why? Is it important?”

Gabriel took the slip of paper back. “I don’t know,” he said. “Just trying to figure out what we’re dealing with.”

The man—Darif—stood and gestured toward the door.

“He wants to know if you’re ready to go,” Lucy said.

Gabriel hauled himself to his feet, ignoring the dull pain in his legs, his side, his chest. “Always,” he said.

Reza Arif parked the BMW near the Djemaa el Fna and came around to Sammi’s side to open the door for her. It struck her as an exaggerated gesture, a caricature of Middle Eastern courtliness, but she let him indulge himelf. Anything that kept her on his good side.

Arif led her to the heart of the busy square, pointing out buildings and regaling her with their history as they went. She tried to keep her eyes out for Gabriel or for either of the men she’d seen hustling him into the black car back in Cairo, but the crowd was too dense, too constantly in motion—a sea of heads and bodies and outstretched arms, every third one attempting to press something into her hands: a brass cup, a folded shawl, a painted vase. She shook her head at each offer and kept moving.

“There, do you see?” Arif said, pointing. “In that very building the famous British film director Alfred Hitchcock stood while making—” He turned in place, noticing that Sammi was no longer beside him. An old man with a yellowish beard trailing down the front of his robe had seized her wrist and, with his other hand, had begun to inscribe the outlines of a henna tattoo on her forearm.

“I don’t want—” Sammi was saying, but the man was shaking his head and intently ignoring her.

“The lady said she does not want,” Arif said, his voice suddenly cold, and the old man, looking to the side, saw the narrow blade of a stiletto by his throat. He dropped Sammi’s wrist and backed off. The stiletto vanished again into Arif’s sleeve.

“Stay close,” he said. “Not every old man is harmless here.”

Nor every young man, Sammi wanted to say. But she held her tongue and stayed by Arif’s side.

They spent the next hour entering carpet shops, of which there were any number in and around the square. The eighth—or was it the ninth?—had a sign identifying the proprietor as Nizan. The couple entered and was greeted warmly by the owner himself, who took note of Reza Arif’s expensive suit and immediately turned on the hard-sell reserved for tourists he believed to be wealthy. Arif answered him in Arabic while Sammi wandered around the shop, looking for any sign that Gabriel might have been here. She saw nothing to indicate one way or the other. The other seven—or was it eight?—shops had been the same. Sammi was starting to wonder if she’d even recognize a sign if she saw one. But she’d have ample opportunity to find out—there were half a dozen more shops to go.

Unseen by her, a man with a badly bruised jaw peered through a partly closed curtain and watched as Sammi walked the aisles. He smiled to himself, but it was a bitter smile with nothing of pleasure to it.

It was her—the French woman, the one who had shot his brother in cold blood. His fist clenched around the fabric of the curtain. He would have his revenge. He turned to the man beside him and explained in a few words who he’d seen.

“But, Naeem,” the other man said, his voice low, “Amun clearly said we are not to kill this one if we should see her—”

“Kill her?” Naeem stroked the bruise along his jaw. “I said nothing about
killing
her.”

“Let’s go,” Sammi said, taking hold of Arif’s sleeve. Through the fabric she could feel the handle of the stiletto. “I don’t see anything I like here.”

Arif shrugged at Nizan, as if to apologize. “My brother’s wife,” he said. “She has very particular tastes.”

“Of course,” Nizan said, his face not betraying a hint of disappointment as he bowed them out.

“Nothing,” Sammi said, once they were out in the street once more.

“Are you certain?”

“Of course not. I don’t even know what I’m looking for. But whatever it is, I didn’t see it.”

Arif looked at his wristwatch, a Patek Philippe boasting separate dials for the times in various cities around the world. In Marrakesh, the afternoon was waning, something Sammi hardly needed an expensive watch to tell her. “Maybe we should split up,” Arif said. “It will be faster. You do three, I do three.”

“All right. Point me in the right direction.”

Arif pulled out a map and showed her three locations on it.

As he did so, Naeem and his cohort appeared behind them in the doorway of Nizan’s shop. Amun joined them a moment later. The three of them watched as Arif headed off to the east, Sammi to the northwest.

“Follow the woman,” Amun ordered. “She will lead us to Gabriel Hunt.”

Darif drove Gabriel and Lucy the thirty miles to Menara International. It was a long drive, made longer by an overturned truck that snarled traffic in both directions on the N8 highway—but at least this time they got to ride in the cab rather than in the trailer. Gabriel even managed a brief catnap on the way.

Lucy accepted Darif’s profuse farewells and followed Gabriel to the airport’s courtesy desk, where a young woman nodded sympathetically while Gabriel explained the situation. She turned the heavy black-painted telephone on the counter around to face him and he lost no time in putting a collect call through to New York.

“Let’s get you a ride back home,” he said to Lucy while he waited for Michael to answer.

“Do you really think it’s safe for me to go back to Nice?”

“No, of course not,” Gabriel said. “I mean
home
home. New York.”

“New York? Gabriel, I’m not—”

Michael picked up at that moment. “Michael,” Gabriel said. “Guess who I found.”

“I’m not going to New York!”

Michael’s voice sounded shallow and tinny through
the ancient phone equipment. “Gabriel?” he said. “Is that—”

But he got no further, since Lucy reached over and depressed the button in the handset cradle to disconnect the call.

“Now, is that any way to treat your brother?” Gabriel said. “Either of your brothers?”

“I am
not
going to New York,” she said.

“Well, you’re not staying here.”

“No, and I’m not going back to Nice,” Lucy said. “Aren’t we fortunate that there are more than three cities in the world?”

“What’s wrong with New York? You could stay at the Foundation. The security there is top-notch. Michael would love to take care of you, make sure nothing bad happens.”

“That,” Lucy said, “is what’s wrong with New York.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Gabriel. But I’m just not ready to see him again.”

“It’s been nine years,” Gabriel said. “When are you going to be ready?”

“Give me another nine,” Lucy said, “and we’ll talk.”

Gabriel threw his hands up. “So where do you want to go?”

“I’ll go to Paris. Or back to Arezzo. Or, hell, I can crash with Devrim in Istanbul—”

“I don’t know.”

“Look. Paris is a big place. They won’t find me there. I’ll disappear. I’ve done it before. I’ll send you e-mail and you can let me know when it’s safe to go back to Nice. Meanwhile maybe I can turn Sammi up, find out what’s happened to her.”

“In Paris?”

“It’s where she’d go if she couldn’t stay in Nice.”

Assuming she’s even alive, Gabriel thought.

“All right,” he said. “Paris—but you promise you’ll stay out of sight? You won’t contact anyone but me or Michael? Just till this thing is over.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Lucy said. “You just worry about yourself. You don’t need any more scars.”

“You’re telling me,” Gabriel said, and reached out a knuckle to brush her chin.

He picked up the phone again, waited for the operator to come on the line. “Collect call,” he said. “Same number as before.”

“I think we got disconnected,” Gabriel said. “The phones in this part of the world—”

“You knew,” Michael said. “That she was Cifer.”

Gabriel started to say something and then stopped, the words dying in his throat. Lucy was watching him. He wondered if she could hear what Michael was saying.

“Yes, I knew,” Gabriel said.

“Why did you lie to me? You told me Cifer was a six-foot-tall man with tattoos.”

“That was true, about the tattoos.”

“I suppose that’s something,” Michael said. He didn’t sound angry—just hurt.

“She didn’t want you to know, Michael. She was entitled to her privacy.”

“Why does she hate me?”

Gabriel saw Lucy wince. He covered the mouthpiece of the phone. “Why don’t you give us a moment,” he said. “Maybe get some food.”

“No money, remember?” But she headed off in the direction of the airport’s restaurant anyway. Before she
reached it she turned aside and pushed open the door of the bathroom.

Gabriel got back on the phone. “She doesn’t hate you, Michael. She just doesn’t want to see you.”

“Why?”

“Says she’s not ready yet,” Gabriel said.

“She was ready to see you, apparently,” Michael said.

“Three times in nine years,” Gabriel said. “For maybe an hour apiece.”

“That’s three hours more than she gave me.”

“I’m sorry, Michael. I know how you feel.”

“Do you?”

“I never heard from her at all until last year, in Istanbul. You at least got e-mails.”

“Under a fake name!”

“Yeah, well. I guess we’ve both got something to complain about. Right now, though, what matters is that she’s alive, and out of the hands of the Alliance. And if we want to keep her that way, we need to get her to Paris.”

“To Paris,” Michael said.

“That’s right. And me to Corsica.”

“Corsica!” Michael said.

“Yes, Corsica. And Paris.”

“She’s not willing to come to New York,” Michael said.

“You heard her,” Gabriel said.

“I certainly did,” Michael said. “Right before she hung up on me. She did hang up, right?” Gabriel said nothing. “Fine. I’ll book her on a commercial flight; you can take the jet to Corsica.”

“How long will it take Charlie to get to Marrakesh?” Gabriel said.

“Hardly any time at all, given that he’s already there.”

“He is?”

“Sure,” Michael said. “I got a call from your friend Samantha saying you were in trouble and she needed to follow you to Marrakesh. How do you think I found out about ‘Cifer’?”

A call from your friend Samantha
—

“She’s alive?”

“She was a few hours ago.”

“So where is she?”

“Looking for you. I put her in touch with Reza Arif.”

“Arif!” Gabriel said. “Why him?”

“She needed
someone
to help her,” Michael said. “I admit he may not be the most trustworthy person we’ve ever—”

“The
most
trustworthy? No, I wouldn’t say you could describe him as the most trustworthy. Just like you couldn’t describe Taft as the skinniest president.”

“I did warn her about him,” Michael said.

At the other end of the terminal, the bathroom door opened and Lucy stepped out. “Listen, I’ve got to go. Just get Lucy on the next flight to Paris. We’ll talk about the rest later.” He hung up on Michael’s protests and joggled the button in the cradle to bring the operator back on the line. He gave her Sammi’s cell phone number, waited while it rang twice.

Lucy, Gabriel saw, was slowly making her way back to the counter.

“
Allo
?”

“Sammi?” he said, keeping his voice low. “It’s Gabriel.”

“Gabriel! My god, where are you?”

“At the Marrakesh airport. Where are you?”

“In the city, at the Djemaa el Fna.”

“Is Reza with you?”

“No—we split up to cover more ground.”

“Good. How quickly can you meet me here?”

“Without him? I can’t. He’s got the car keys.”

“Keys?” Gabriel said. “I’ve seen the way you drive. Don’t tell me you don’t know how to hotwire a car.”

“Of course I know how to hotwire a car. But I shouldn’t just leave him—”

“Do it,” Gabriel said—and hung up just as Lucy reached the counter.

“Who was that,” she said, “that you were telling to hotwire a car?”

If she knew Sammi was here
. . .

If she knew, she’d never take the plane to Paris. She’d insist on staying, and she’d remain in danger.