The Book of the Seven Delights (18 page)

"Either that or we stole them," he said irritably, holding out the horse's reins to her. "This one is yours."

"A mare, I see." She posted herself by the horse's head, assessing it, and then looked askance at the mules flapping their long ears to ward off flies. "Mules?"

"Better for carrying supplies in the desert. They drink less than horses."

"If that's the criteria, why didn't we just get camels instead?"

He was about to say he'd considered them, but figured her brains were scrambled enough without being rattled to-hell-and-gone on a hump six feet off the ground, when she dusted her hands with a "she'll do"

and headed off.

"Where are you going?" He looked at her receding figure, trying not to absorb the swaying lower half of it. Was she wearing that damnable cincher?

"Tools," she called back, over her shoulder. "Haffe, you come with me."

The Berber gave him a shrug and the reins to the mules, and followed her.

Apollo stood for a moment, battling searing flashes of pink satin and the urge to—what? Shake her? Tie her up? Sell her into the first caravan he saw?

"Dammit. There's never a white slaver around when you need one."

He headed for the hotel stables, dragging the animals along. He didn't have time for this nonsense. He had a couple of important calls to make. After all, that was the real reason he'd come to Marrakech.

"Shovels, picks, rope, hand spades, brushes, lanterns and oil…" Abigail stood in the street at the edge of the great open-air market some time later, recounting the items in Haffe's arms and trying to recall if there was more on her list. Dismissing whatever might have been overlooked, she picked up two bulky parcels. "This will have to do. I can't spend any more money, if I expect to—"

Her gaze snagged on a patch of khaki on the far side of the souk.

Legionnaires. She raised a hand to shade her eyes for a better look and spotted a tall, stringy-looking fellow in the middle of the group.

"Crocker," she murmured, feeling like she could use a dose of the Brit's thick accent and irreverent humor. When he looked her way, she waved and started for them. Behind her, Haffe hesitated, she paused to wave him along with her, assuring him they were not to be feared.

She turned back and glimpsed the tall, rangy fellow's sunken cheeks and strange, bulging eyes… the opposite of Crocker's mischievous, boyish face. She searched out another face… a short, wiry fellow with a nose broken to a grotesque angle. She didn't recognize either of them.

Then a stocky figure at the front of the group, wearing several stripes on his sleeve, turned toward her and she stopped dead.

His face was broad and flat, covered with dark stubble, and he had a thick mouth that twisted into an unpleasant smirk at the sight of her. Him she recognized. The sergeant from the Marrat—the one looking for Smith.

The tall, bony soldier pointed at her and said something. The rest of the group turned, but she was already in motion.

"Run!" She pushed Haffe into a crowd of his countrymen milling about the market, praying he wouldn't be singled out, and headed for the nearest corner. As she ran, her head and heart raced to catch up with her limbs. Her best hope was to blend in, too—to look like anything but American or British—

Spotting a garment stall, she ducked inside and despite the uproar of the merchant and his assistants, managed to rip a robe from a peg, empty her arms, and shove them into he sleeves. She just had time toss some coins at the proprietor and get the hood up before the soldiers went rushing by the shop.

Seconds later, they reappeared and a harsh voice barked orders that sent them charging into all of the nearby stalls.

"I can't let them find me," she said, grabbing up her packages and scrambling over stacks of garments to get as far from the front as possible. "Is there a back way out? A door?"

Seeing the source of her fear and apparently sympathizing, one of the youths moved a screen used to display garments and waved her behind it. There was no time to question where it led; she lunged through the opening.

Shocked faces greeted her—men stitching garments in a workshop littered with fabric and yarns and a hanging forest of half-sewn garments. Spotting an open door at the rear, she headed for it and plunged into a maze of narrow, sun-starved paths that ran between shabby mud-brick walls.

The alley narrowed without warning; she scraped her shoulders and hands as she banged into the walls and kept going. No other doors opened onto the passage and she was bewildered by the frequent twists and turns that left her with no sense of direction. Unpleasant and probably unhealthy smells saturated the stale air; she held her breath as much as possible… taking every turn on faith and praying the maze would lead someplace recognizable.

In the darkness, her eyes adjusted. She could see better, but that meant she could also see small furtive shadows darting underfoot and sinuous shapes scurrying up the dank walls. Shortly, a human form materialized in the alley ahead. She choked on a scream as the turbaned figure bashed her against the wall and barreled past. She stayed against the wall where he had shoved her, feeling her heart battering her ribs and trying not to dwell on the thought that the man could have had a knife and she could be lying in a lifeless heap.

As she peeled herself from the wall and continued, her one thought was of Smith. If she could just get back to the hotel… back to him… she would be…

Then she turned a corner and spotted light—literally at the end of the tunnel—she couldn't believe it at first. It was only when she reached the end and stood staring into a broader, sunlit street filled with people, carts, and wagons, that she realized she had made it.

Sagging against the wall, she searched for landmarks. Across the broad thoroughfare was a massive mud-brick wall in ruined condition. The facing stone had been stolen and the stucco had weathered away. Craning her neck, she recognized a French cafe down the street and realized the ruin across from her was the Badi Palace.

Grounded now, she tried to recall the way they had come on the way to the great market yesterday.

Then she stepped out into the street, lowered her face, and headed for the stream of people moving east… forcing herself not to run.

It seemed to take forever to reach the quiet, palm-lined square in front of the Hotel Raissouli. That sunny, prosperous quarter presented a stark contrast to the dark bowel of the city she had just traversed.

She made herself walk calmly through the front arches and into the lobby and ask after Smith at the desk.

The clerk found his key on the peg, which indicated he was not in his room, and suggested she try the stables. She found Haffe pacing anxiously and talking to the horses and mules. When he recognized her in her oversized robe, he fell briefly to his knees with a prayer of gratitude.

The little Berber conveyed that he had managed to escape the Legionnaires, as she had hoped, and had taken a roundabout way back to the hotel, arriving not Jong before she did. He had no idea where Smith was, either. She fought down a surge of desperation.

"We can't wait—we have to start packing," she said, sagging against a nearby post. Packages fell from her cramped and burning fingers. "He saw me. Recognized me—"

"Who saw you?" Smith's voice from the stable door startled them. He quickly reached her side, pulled her upright, and looked her over with concern.

The sight of his sun-bronzed face and reassurance of his strong hands on her arms made her knees go weak. A flood of relief washed over her. He was here. He was holding her…

"The sergeant who broke into my room that night is in Marrakech. I saw him in the square with his men and I waved, thinking it was Crocker and the others."

"A sergeant?" He squeezed her arms. "Did you hear his name?"

"I don't know—it was all so—" She closed her eyes, trying to retrieve a memory she had worked adamantly to forget. "The manager of the Marrat knew him… called him Garvin—Gaspar—
Gaston
!"

"Gaston? You're sure?"

She nodded. "He's short and thick, with muscular arms… a flat sort of face… dull, hateful eyes."

"That's that one. You're sure he recognized you?"

"He chased me. He must have followed us here from Casablanca."

"Let's hope he didn't follow you to the hotel." He looked at the horses and then at Haffe, charting a new course. He pushed her toward the stable doors and prevented her from turning back to retrieve her packages. "Leave those for now. Go. Pack. We have to get out of here."

Undercover of darkness, three riders leading two pack mules exited the city to the south and east, through the Bab Hmar. All three wore
jellabas
and turbans and seemed like ordinary residents of Morocco and Marrakech, if one didn't look too closely. Unfortunately, someone was watching very closely.

Most of the evening traffic through the gate was entering the city; the fact that the three were leaving drew the attention of a tall Legionnaire with sallow skin and precious little flesh on his lanky frame. He focused on them, reading in the way they were bent to their horses and keeping their heads down, that they were trying to escape notice. He edged closer to the gate for a better look. The clinching detail was the European style boots on two of the riders.

It was them, all right. The Legionnaire licked his lips as he stepped out of the shadows of the stone pillars beside the gate and hurried off to make his report. This should be worth a drink or two.

Sergeant Gaston sat in a cramped and smoky cafe on the east side of the city, drinking whiskey and watching the halfhearted undulations of a hard-eyed dancer veiled in sweat-stained silk. When one of his men entered the cafe, he straightened and waved the man into the chair across the table.

"Bab Hmar," the Legionnaire panted, winded from running. "I saw them."

"When?"

"No more than a quarter hour ago. Headed east."

"They take the high road to Ouarzazate? Then they go toward the desert." Gaston's smile bared brown-edged teeth. "The woman escaped us earlier today, but—as I suspected—the sight of us has caused them to bolt."

His strategy of posting men at the gates to watch for them had paid off. Now all he had to do was take his men across the mountains to Ouarzazate and wait for Smith and the woman to locate that "treasure"

of hers.

Satisfied with the way his plan was unfolding, he spied hunger in Legionnaire's gaze on the bottle of whiskey and his mouth curled into a smirk.

"Thirsty, Schuller?" He poured a glass and with vengeful amusement drank it himself before the soldier's covetous gaze. "Go, collect the others from the gates and tell them to get some sleep. We march at first light."

Mountains. Abigail had studied both official and T. Thaddeus's hand-drawn maps for weeks and she had seen le snowcapped Atlas peaks nearly every day she had been in Morocco. But until now, it hadn't really registered that they were bound to cross a mountain range on the way to the desert. It was only in the depths of that seemingly endless night, as they followed the pale slash of the road across a rising landscape, that she realized they would be climbing steadily for the next two days.

T. Thaddeus had marked the next stop on their journey as "QKQ" on his map… which she had decoded into "TNT" using the professor's transposition scheme. When she asked what it was, Smith told her it was a mountain pass called the Tizi-n-Tichka. It was the only place of note on the map between Marrakech and the last outpost before the desert… which the professor had cleverly labeled as the indecipherable "Lrxowxwxqb" and which Abigail had just as cleverly deciphered as "Ouarzazate."

"What did you tell LaCroix about where you were headed?" Smith dropped back to talk to her. "Did he see any of the maps?"

"No," she said, thinking back to that night in the Marrat's dining room. "I told him my search would take me to Marrakech and south. That was all."

"South could mean Tiznit or Agadir or even Tata. With any luck they won't realize we're headed for Ouarzazate. Tizi-n-Tichka is the highest of two passes through the High Atlas range, from Marrakech east. It's controlled by Berber chieftains who are vassals of the Sultan of Marrakech. Haffe's Berber…

he should save us some grief dealing with them."

She made herself concentrate on his dissertation on the geography and convoluted politics of the pass ahead and on his hope that Gaston and the others would pursue them toward the less difficult mountain passes to the south.

"So what you're saying is: They'll think we have better sense than to take this route."

"Exactly." He produced an unrepentant smile.

When they stopped to water and rest the animals, she shivered and ran her hands over her arms.

"I'm freezing, my rear is numb, and I can't seem to get enough air," she complained, trying not to let her gaze stick to his moonlit features. She was afraid he would interpret it as relief or even pleasure that he was still with her. Because that was exactly what it was. "Are you sure there isn't a better way to get to Ouarzazate?"

"Don't blame me for the thin air and bad scenery. I'm just the hired help. Here…" He pulled out one of the burnouses he had purchased. "Put this on."

The garment was blessedly warm and she found herself joining Haffe in nodding off from time to time as they continued on through a silent patchwork of gray pastureland and cultivated fields that glowed strangely blue and purple in the moonlight.

By midmorning the next day, they had reached a wadi with a small farming village and traded for some bread, cucumbers, and goat cheese. After watering the horses, they left the road and climbed into the hills overlooking the narrow valley, where they made a day camp in the shadow of several large rocks.

They ate, curled up in the shade, and slept until dusk. It was a pattern they were to repeat as they traveled further up into the mountains; resting by day and traveling by moonlight.

It was the evening of the second day, just past the modest Tizi-n-Ait-Imger pass that Smith awakened Abigail with a hand over her mouth to keep her from crying out. Night was falling and in the cold, dry air near the pass sound carried long distances. He whispered that he had just spotted light and smoke from what looked suspiciously like a Legionnaire encampment below them. It could be Gaston, or it could be another patrol; they had no way of knowing. They had to move on.