Garment of Shadows (37 page)

“But I say to you, this is not treason.” His black eyes bore across the table at Holmes. “The men in Whitehall commit high treason daily—undermining the crown, furthering their own positions. By circumventing their schemes, Ali and I have been pursuing the greater loyalty.”

“You said you saw two possibilities, if the French annexed the north.”

“The other possibility would be that, as the Maréchal says, France would bow to international pressure and draw back south of the mountains. On the surface, this would appear a failure: The Revolt would be crushed, the Rif back under the boot-heel of Spain.”

He sat forward, and my hand tightened—but it was intensity that moved him, not threat.

“However, within this apparent failure lay the seeds of another possibility. A gamble.

“With the Revolt suppressed, and by a country with no long history against the Moors, we thought that the Rifi might at last achieve a voice in the court of public opinion. Particularly if Ali and I could convince either the Emir or his brother to leave the Protectorate before France returned it to Spain. You have seen the Emir’s charisma; believe me when I tell you the younger brother has it, too. What if—and this was at the base of my change of heart that afternoon—what if the Resident General of Morocco had already spoken face to face with the Emir of the Revolt? What if the two men had cause to share a degree of mutual respect? Maréchal Lyautey, sir, you have drunk tea with the Emir. Has that changed the way you think about the Rifi? Changed how you will speak of him to your superiors in Paris?”

Lyautey did not answer, but was no doubt in thoughtful consideration. As was I.

Asking France to crush your pet rebellion in order to clear the way for its distant victory was rather like setting alight the vegetation around a house when a wild-fire was approaching. A controlled burn was a huge risk, but sometimes it contained the only chance of salvaging the essentials.

I agreed that putting the Rif under a Lyautey Protectorate would be for the best. But it was common knowledge that Lyautey was on the edge of retirement. Plus, he had spent his entire career outside of Paris: His influence in the halls of power would be limited. Surely the Maréchal’s usefulness for the Rif cause was drawing to an end?

Which suggested that Mahmoud might be lying: that Lyautey’s actual death might have been of greater use than a staged threat.

Holmes made a sound of exhaling smoke that, even without seeing him, spoke eloquently of decision. “Russell, think back to Ali’s response at the
wadi
,” he said. “What would you call it?”

“Ali took care to credit Abd el-Krim with saying the would-be assassin was one of Raisuli’s, I remember that.”

“True, but after? When he saw the blood on the Maréchal’s horse?”

“He was confused. Angry.” The urgent way Ali’s eyes had searched us for wounds, his stormy reaction to the sight of the horse’s bloodstained neck.

“Frightened?”

“Why would he be frightened?” I asked. Holmes did not answer. I thought for a minute. “According to Mahmoud, Ali believed the ambush was to be a fake, nothing more than a means of laying an explosive charge between the Rif Revolt and the French Protectorate. When Mahmoud disappeared, Ali either had to cancel, or do his best to play out the act alone. You are saying that he chose the latter. That he did not expect the attempt to be a real one. That his anger was genuine, when he found how close the bullets came to the Maréchal—and to us.”

After a moment, I permitted the gun to sag, pointing slightly to the side of Mahmoud’s heart for the first time.

It would be a plan as tangled as the streets of the medina, a garment woven of lies and half-truths, of truths that look like lies, and lies that appear the truth. A garment suited to the half-light, its precise outlines impossible to discern.

Exactly what I would expect of one Mahmoud Hazr.

Or, indeed, of Mycroft Holmes.

The problem in turning independent thinkers loose on a matter is, they tend to go beyond the theoretical and seize the chance for independent action. Thus, two faithful servants of His Majesty who decide that the best way to serve their country is to betray it. Two faithful servants, or their employer back in London?

“An assassination that isn’t,” I murmured. “A defeat that conceals victory. High treason that embraces a greater loyalty. A spot-light on battle while the true struggle takes place in the shadows.”

I moved in my chair, reluctantly preparing to lay the revolver on the table, then stopped.

By describing all this, by revealing his laboriously-laid plans to foment war, Mahmoud was voiding any chance of its success.

Or was he?

Lyautey, hearing the machinations of this pair of British agents, would take care to avoid the stepping stones they had laid out for him. Or would he?

Would he, rather, take a hard look at their plot, and decide it dovetailed nicely with the interests of both France and Morocco?

Or—and this was the truly troubling bit—was that subtle chessplayer still at work in the background, hiding these apparent revelations behind yet another layer of shadow? Was there a further plan behind this one? One built around our capture of a French traitor? If that was the case, it would call into question the rôle of Mahmoud’s imprisonment in Habs Qara …

Shadow upon shadow, reflection upon reflection.

I studied Mahmoud, inscrutable as ever, sitting with one knee over the other, both hands gathered on his leg. The gold of the ring was the brightest thing about him.

I narrowed my eyes. The ring.

When had he started wearing it? Idir gave it to me in Erfoud, to prove the authorship of the note summoning me into the desert. When I then returned it to Mahmoud, he looped it through a thong and dropped it inside his shirt: I pictured it clearly. He had not worn the ring openly, there in the desert or later in Fez.

Yet it was on his finger when he came out of Habs Qara.

And something else.

“Mahmoud, tell me. Last week, before you were … taken, your speech was different from when I first met you. More like how you spoke in England, stripped of reference to the Qur’an or even Ibn Khaldun. Why?”

He stared at me, unblinking. “My brother Ali asked me that, too, some weeks past.”

“And how did you answer him?”

“I told him it was mere habit, and meant nothing. But I lied. He knew I lied. I could not speak those holy words because my mouth felt unclean.”

And now he could. He was finished with obedience to a government he mistrusted, finished with lies to his partner. Finished with shame.

I hesitated no longer, but laid the revolver on the table. Mahmoud sat, wearing his expression of hidden amusement. Which in itself was mildly alarming, but when it came to a choice between that face or the machinations of Whitehall, I had declared my loyalties.

My responsibilities in the world of international affairs were at an end.

Lyautey stood. “
Now
may we have coffee? And remove this … secretary from my sight?”

“Both excellent ideas,” Holmes said.

As I got to my feet, to let in the guards and to go free Youssef, the familiar sound of the muezzin swelled over the city. Dawn, already? I pushed open the decorative door into the courtyard, bright enough now that I could see the complex design of the
zellij
. Yes, the sun was coming up. Incredibly enough, a mere week after I had arrived. Thursday …

I paused. As I stood in the doorway, trying to recall the day’s date, a hollow metallic clatter began to bash against the muezzin’s song. It took my English ears a moment to identify the new racket as a church bell.

Darkness to light; sunrise in the depth of mid-winter; a year’s journey completing. Shadows giving way to clarity. I stepped back into the room, where three men had converged to bind the hands of the fourth. Holmes looked up, his eyes asking a question at my stillness. I smiled.

“ ‘Peace on him on the day he was born,’ ” I recited in Arabic, then switched to English. “Gentlemen, may I be the first to wish you a very happy Christmas, and a peaceful new year.”

A
UTHOR’S
A
FTERWORD

1925 was still young when Holmes and I rode out again from Fez. As we had the first time, we reined in to look across the beehive of tile roofs, the site of so much bustling intrigue.

We had waited to see François Dulac quietly dispatched to France, under guard, before leaving the city. Arrests had been made; more were pending.

“I feel as if I’ve helped remove a cancer,” I remarked.

“Thus permitting a war to live out its natural life,” replied the man at my side.

“Always cheerful, Holmes.”

Our other companion spoke up. “ ‘God will not change a people, until they change themselves,’ ” he quoted in Arabic, adding in English, “One man may not prevent a war, but he may shift its path. Or one woman.”

I would make Mahmoud a feminist yet. “And have we?” I asked. “Did we change anything here?”

“Hubert Lyautey and Mohammed ibn Abd el-Krim are not the men they were a month ago. Their gaze is wider, their sense of the other man keener. They may continue to play out their rôles, but they will also look past the immediate needs of war. Yes, we have turned the track, a little.”

“What shall I tell Mycroft?” Holmes asked him.

“By the time you see him, there will be little to tell.”

“He will not be happy.”

“My days of concerning myself with the happiness of London are over.” His voice, cold and hard, made me wonder—a touch uneasily—if perhaps the shared grievances of Mahmoud Hazr and Lieutenant Colonel T. E. Lawrence boded ill for the British Empire.

It would not altogether be a bad thing, for me personally, were that distraction to arise. Mycroft Holmes was sure to find some way to vent his wrath on me: This was the second time since summer that I had deliberately gone against him.

“You will remain with Abd el-Krim, until the end?” I asked.

“As long as he wants us,” said Mahmoud. “Which I think will not be long.”

“And what then?”

The black amused eyes slid sideways to look at me. “We shall think of something.”

The uneasiness stirred again. “I imagine you will. But, Mahmoud? I am glad I didn’t shoot you, the other day.”

“I would hate to have burdened you with that.”

My laughter attracted the attention of the lad on the pony, who, uninterested in the view, had ridden down the rough hillside to the remains of a fallen hut. At the sound, he yanked the beast’s head up and urged him back to the road, eager to ride on.

“Idir,” I said, “wait. I have a present for you.”

I pulled the paper-and-twine-wrapped parcel from my bag and handed it down to him. He undid the twine, folded it into a pocket, and opened the paper.

It was a belt strung with an ornate curved scabbard, its knife a miniature version of Ali’s. I’d had it made in the medina. The boy pulled out the weapon, his eyes brighter than its metal blade. “It’s sharp,” I told him. “Almost as sharp as Ali’s. Try not to cut off any pieces of yourself.”

Mahmoud helped the child buckle the belt over his
djellaba
. The little hand patted it in delight, but when he looked up at me, his face took on a worried expression. He thrust his hands into his pockets, digging around with increasing desperation.

“No, Idir, it’s a gift,” I reassured him. “You don’t need to give me anything in return.”

But he had come out with two handfuls of possessions, and was frowning at them. His right hand held three or four of Ali’s wooden carvings—giraffe, dog, aeroplane. His left hand held a wad of lint and leaves that he’d had to peel from the pocket.

He looked at the right hand, and at the left, and then with a look of proud sacrifice, he held out his left hand to me.

Gingerly, I accepted the oozing wad, my nose finally identifying it as one of the honeyed pastries he’d so enjoyed in the medina, days and days before.

“Oh, Idir, you shouldn’t have.”

“Time we were gone,” Mahmoud told us. Soon, the first troops would appear, bound for the coming Front, and we did not wish to be overcome by soldiers.

It was time for us to go our separate ways. Mahmoud edged his horse forward to clasp Holmes’ hand. “I thank you, my brother. You have done a good thing for Morocco.”

“Give my best to Ali,” Holmes replied.

Then the hand was held out to me, and although I was tempted to fill it with the honey sweet, instead I gave him my right hand. Our rings brushed together as our palms met. He held my hand, and my eyes, for a long moment.

“I hope our paths cross again, Miri,” he said.

“
Insh’Allah
, Mahmoud,” I replied. Then our hands parted, and he pulled his mount’s head around and started uphill at a trot. Idir paused long enough to return the knife to its belt, then kicked his pony into a gallop and flew past him.

At a more leisurely pace, Holmes and I rode, shoulder to shoulder, around the east-bound road that led out of Morocco.

The odour of honey remained with us for a long time.

—M
ARY
R
USSELL
H
OLMES

E
DITOR’S
N
OTE

The Rif Revolt was crushed in the spring of 1926, by combined French and Spanish forces that outnumbered the rebels approximately ten to one. The Abd el-Krim brothers surrendered—to the French. With their families, they were exiled to the island of Reunion—a French possession. In 1947, Mohammed Abd el-Krim, Emir of the short-lived Rif Republic, slipped away from a ship taking him to France itself and received asylum in Egypt, where he continued to work for Berber independence. He died in 1963, having lived to see the independence of Morocco and Algeria. In the brief existence of the Rif Republic, from September 1921 to May 1926, the Abd el-Krims forged the paradigm for colonial independence movements around the globe, while tens of thousands of Rifi civilians died by poison gas alone.