Gorgeous East (39 page)

The only known cures for
cafard
are battle, death, or an immediate transfer to Paris (the latter, it is generally agreed, can cure anything), whichever comes first.

Now, over the course of the hot idle days, with excruciating slowness, like a chicken roasting in its own juices, the officer and men of Mission: SCORPIO began to fester, to grow irritable or grow melancholy or both, increasingly unsure of their purpose. They disobeyed orders, they drank much more than they were supposed to, they masturbated, shamefully, in secret. This was the beginning of
le cafard
, which, however it ended, always first manifested itself as a violent breakdown of the famously hard-earned discipline of the Legion.

7.

S
un blasted down on the courtyard of the Hotel Agadir like a death ray from outer space. It was almost noon. The hyperchlorinated pool steamed in the heat, faintly poisonous. Anyone with any sense took refuge during these miserable hours in the dim covered alleys of the souk or in air-conditioned Western-style rooms. Hooded brown bundles that were the indigenous male population of the city napped in their djellahs beneath the cool arcades of the Djoune el Fina and in other shadowy corners. The many cement monuments to Moroccan casualties of the Polisario war gleamed glaringly white out in the empty plazas—like a detail from one of de Chirico’s mysterious urban landscapes.

The four death squad commandos of the 4e RE lay drunk off sixty bottles of Kronenbourg in European-cut Speedos on canvas beach chairs in direct sunlight on the pebbly concrete, poolside at the Agadir. They’d been drinking steadily since 8:00 A.M., despite direct orders from Capitaine Pinard not to touch alcohol until after sundown and then only in the strictest moderation. Their muscled, tattooed torsos gleamed with cheap tanning lotions; the coconut stink of this stuff, mixed with the alcoholic fumes of Kronenbourg, the sickly-sweet musty smell of Basta, and rancid body sweat, hung in a cloud more poisonous than the evaporating chlorine in the stifling air.

The waiter, a sweaty, diminutive Saharoui named Nur’din, hopped back and forth from the Agadir’s wine cellar, laden with large brass trays full of more bottles of Kro. When the supplies ran dry, management sent Nur’din next door to the Hotel Plaza d’Afrique for two more cases, which he brought back on his narrow shoulders, cursing and struggling. He had made a paper sun hat out of the front pages of
Le Soir du Maroc
, the French-language newspaper from Marrakesh, and it flopped comically on his head as he raced around the pool distributing the beers. The 4e RE assassins found the hat very funny and held chugging contests with one another just to see the waiter run around in the heat, hat flopping, popping open the warmish bottles as fast as they could drink them.

“
Eh, la, l’admiral! Une autre Kro! Suis soif ici!
” More beer, Admiral. One more Kro! Hop to it!

“This fucking beer tastes like hot piss!”

“Hey, you evil dwarf—get me another one!”

“Come on, Admiral! Move your nigger ass!”

This out of the mouth of the blackest of the bunch, so black he was almost purple: Legionnaire Amédée Dessalines, a Haitian from the Cité Soleil slum of Port-au-Prince. Dessalines, once a foot soldier in a pro-Aristide militia group, had fled that miserable island as a result of his role in an atrocity so horrible it succeeded in revolting even the atrocity-jaded natives of Haiti. Dessalines bore a jagged white scar around his neck, the mark of a barbed-wire harness his executioners had trussed him with in preparation for the voodoo sacrifice he’d somehow escaped. After such an escape, cursed by the voodoo gods, reviled by all Haiti, his only refuge was the Legion.

The other 4e RE assassins were easily as tough and murderous as Dessalines: Legionnaire Hector Babenco, a former Basque terrorist, had bombed a bus full of schoolchildren and nuns on the Malaga road. Legionnaire Vladimir Vladimirovitch, a thick-skulled blunt instrument the size of a tank, was a Russian army veteran of the bloody fighting in Chechnya. But none of them could match Caporal-chef Gil Solas, in terms of sheer lethality. Solas was a slight, soft-spoken, tawny-skinned Brazilian, his demeanor almost feminine, with a fine aquiline nose and soft green eyes that glowed at night like the eyes of a cat. He played bossa nova on the guitar and never went without a girlfriend, but this smooth café Brasiliano facade concealed an unrepentant monster: In his youth, Solas had been the chief executioner for one of Rio’s most notorious favela gangs. He had killed men, women, children, cats and dogs. He had killed with his bare hands, with bottle caps flattened and sharpened like razor blades, with broken car antennas, rocks, tire irons, and once with a sealed birthday gourd full of hard red candies.

Being called a nigger by Dessalines was enough to make the long-suffering Nur’din lose his temper at last.

“My nigger ass!” the waiter shouted, enraged, stamping his small feet. “Black fiend! You cannot treat a proud Saharoui with such disrespect! You are nothing but a slave! A nigger-black African! I beat you with my shoe!”

“You are mistaken,” Dessalines hissed, uncoiling menacingly from his beach chair. “Now you will eat those words.”

“Nigger cur from hell!” Nur’din shouted. And he tossed his tray full of Kronenbourgs into the cactus bed beside the pool—a few of them broke open and began to spew foam into the sand—seized the paper hat from his head and lunged for the white scar around Dessalines’s throat. Powerful as he was, the Haitian had a difficult time peeling the little waiter’s hands away. They performed a violent dance, Nur’din swearing and spitting and grappling, Dessalines laughing, making sarcastic comments—“
Regardez les mecs!
Look at the admiral! He’s a real battleship!” But his demeanor, now without a trace of humor, gave off a lethal seriousness.

The other 4e RE assassins watched from their beach chairs, the whites of their eyes red-rimmed and yellow with alcohol-induced jaundice. It occurred to none of them to break up this mismatched fight; it did occur to them that Dessalines would probably kill the waiter and that this result might make an interesting spectacle, a break from monotonous routine. Now, Dessalines caught Nur’din across the face with a backhanded blow so hard it knocked the little man out of his shoes and sprawling into the cactus bed. Then he grabbed up Nur’din by his stockinged feet and turned him upside down and shook and shook until the contents of the waiter’s pockets fell to the ground: a pen knife, some keys attached to a small compass embedded in a toy rubber tire, silver coins, and a few hundred Moroccan dirhams, large colorful bills worth no more than a couple of euros. Finally, an embroidered Muslim cap worn during evening prayers.

Vladimirovitch picked up the prayer cap, put it on his head, and began goose-stepping around like a Red Army trooper in a May Day parade. Babenco knelt and scooped up the dirhams and stuffed them into the waistband of his Speedo. Dessalines kicked the pen knife and keys into the steaming pool. Solas watched, his green eyes narrowing with pleasure. Now they were going to have some fun! Nur’din, temporarily unconscious, came back to himself upside down.

“Put me down, dirty nigger African!” he managed. “Let me go! Dog! Slave!”

“The man’s clearly a racist,” Babenco called. “Smash his head against the wall!”

The Russian said nothing.

“What should I do with him,
chef
?” Dessalines said to Solas.

Solas smiled lazily. “Let’s see how long he can hold his breath underwater.”

Dessalines stepped over to side of the pool, lowered the Moroccan head-first, and held him down there for a long minute before pulling him back up. Nur’din choked out much water, gasping for air.

“
T’as attrape un poisson assez laid!
” Vladimirovitch said, laughing.

“Put me down! Police!” Nur’din shouted. “Help!”

“Man wants the police,” Dessalines drawled.

“This time try two minutes,” Solas said quietly. “See if that doesn’t shut him up. Here, I’ll time it.” And he made a point of setting the second hand on his watch.

Nur’din wouldn’t survive another prolonged dunking. Already the blotches of pink in front of his eyes and the prickly shapes of upside-down cacti were mutating into green waves of oxygen deprivation. In the moment before they lowered him into the hot, ultrachlorinated water for a second time, he began to scream.

8.

P
inard and Szbeszdogy, coming up the Agadir’s front steps, heard the terrified screaming from the pool beyond the lobby.

“
Putain!
” Szbeszdogy swore. “It’s those assassins!”

They broke into a run. When they reached the courtyard, Nur’din the waiter had been under water upside down for thirty-five more seconds, his lungs about to burst.

“Pull him out—!” Pinard almost said Legionnaire, but caught himself since these oiled monsters were supposed to be the marketing team from Club Med Western Sahara and not a squad of covert Foreign Legion assassins. But while it is perhaps possible to turn a marketing executive into an assassin, the reverse is another matter.

“
Tiens, voilà nos petits musicians
,” Solas said, a casual contempt in his voice. The order was not obeyed.

Pinard felt a stirring in the air, sensed the subtle workings of
le cafard
and knew enough of this affliction to know the situation required careful maneuvering or mutiny would ensue and one or more of them would die. Szbeszdogy held back, a thumb on the safety catch of the .22 caliber Walther he kept hidden in the waistband of his pants. Behind him, in the air-conditioned lobby, the hotel staff slept oblivious; the desk clerk, taking his siesta, snored on a gorgeous Mediouna carpet on the floor behind the front desk.

“I gave you a direct order,” Pinard said, approaching Solas and keeping his voice low. “Do you take it upon yourselves to disobey your superior officer?”

“This little
conasse
called me a nigger,” Dessalines said. “I’m expected to forget about that? My feelings are hurt!”

“Release him!” Pinard said, but directly to Solas, the instigator, he knew, of this unfortunate incident.

Dessalines glanced from Pinard to Solas and down to the Moroccan waiter drowning in the pool, the last bubbles of the man’s breath breaking across the surface. Pinard kept his eyes locked on Solas. Relentless malice lingered there in the green Brazilian depths.

“You will confine yourself and your team to quarters at once, Caporal-chef,” Pinard said. “Drinking at this hour of the day is absolutely forbidden. Especially”—he jerked his chin at the dozens of beer bottles strewn about—“in these outrageous quantities!”

Solas yawned and said nothing. Another five seconds passed. They might have been standing on a street corner in Rio, waiting for an electric bus. Pinard pushed his face closer; his nose now just a few centimeters from the Brazilian’s.

“You’re drunk,” he hissed. “You’re endangering this mission. That’s enough to send you to the Juras for fifteen years.”

“
Va te faire mettre
, Pinard,” the Brazilian said quietly. Pinard made a quick sign to Szbeszdogy and the Hungarian drew out the Walther and tossed it over. Pinard snatched the pistol out of the air with a nifty backhand grab and in the same motion clicked off the safety and brought its stubby barrel to bear against Solas’s forehead.

“My dedication to this mission is total and if I’ve got to kill you to preserve it, I will. You have three seconds to pull that man out of the pool before I blow your brains out,” he said through his teeth. “
Un . . . deux . . .
”

Before three Solas nodded and Dessalines lifted Nur’din from the pool and dropped him face-first to the concrete. The waiter wasn’t breathing. Pinard threw himself down and began to administer CPR. He pumped the man’s arms, ballooned his cheeks with breath. Soon great gushes of pool water emanated from the man’s mouth, along with that morning’s breakfast of couscous and chickpeas. The battered and half-drowned Nur’din revived, sputtering and coughing, at last, and rolled over and vomited more pool water and chickpeas onto the pebbly concrete. After a long minute, panting for breath, he rose unsteadily to his feet and limped off, dripping, into the lobby.

“Arab pig!” Dessalines called after him. “Next time you will have more respect for the black man!” And the other assassins laughed.

Suddenly, Pinard balled up his fist and drove it hard into Solas’s nose and felt the bone crack beneath his knuckles. The Brazilian stumbled and cried out; his nose bent unnaturally to one side, spurting blood. He fumbled for the stiletto he always carried in his pocket, but he was wearing his Speedo now, a tight garment without pockets of any kind. Again Pinard shoved the Walther against Solas’s forehead, this time driving him back into the pool. The Brazilian toppled over and hit with a splash, blood from his nose billowing red in the chlorine-blue water. Then Pinard swung around and brought the Walther to bear on Solas’s comrades, who had sprung up, ready to defend their chief.

“I was willing to shoot Solas and I’m willing to shoot all of you,” he said through his teeth. “I’ll say in my report that you were killed by Marabout spies, that we came back to the hotel and found you all massacred. Szbeszdogy will back me on it, won’t you, Szbeszdogy?”

“Oh, yes,” Szbeszdogy said. “Absolutely.”

“Now, you,
le Russe
”—he pushed the Walther roughly against Vladimirovitch’s solar plexus—“repeat article six of the Code of Conduct.”

Vladimirovitch balked but Pinard only pushed harder.

“ ‘A Legion mission is sacred,’ ” the Russian said reluctantly. “ ‘A mission is worth more than the lives of individual Legionnaires. Once begun, it will be concluded. Once begun, it will be pursued without passion and without hate, until the end, at all costs.’ ”

“Thank you, Legionnaire,” Pinard said, and he lowered the Walther. The 4e RE assassins seemed chastened by these words. They stood, eyes downcast, hands at their side, awaiting orders, soldiers again. Solas pulled himself out of the pool, dripping water and blood.