Flashback

FIFTEEN

I’m with Patrick Haverman, on the other side of the mountains, in a casbah on the road to Ourzazate. Behind us is the moonscape of the Atlas, a jagged silhouette of treeless peaks. On one of the nearby parched foothills someone has written a message to God in white stones. Allahu akbar, it says, the letters several stories high, the script flowing across the rocky terrain as gracefully as if it had flowed from the tip of a giant ink pen.

There’s a dry wind blowing, a desert wind, clean as sand. It has a left a film of fine grit in my hair and on my skin. We’re on the roof, and above us is the most perfectly blue sky I’ve ever seen, a great placid lake of blue, stretching all the way to the northern tip of the Sahara. In my right hand I’m holding the Beretta.

It’s a familiar scene, this old and uncomfortable memory. Pat is hurt, bleeding badly.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “God, I’m sorry.”

He’s trying to tell me it’s okay, but I don’t believe him. This is my fault, I think. I’m the one who has done this.

“You have to go,” he says, and I know he’s right, but my legs won’t move. Now I’m down on my knees beside him.

“Go,” he tells me. “I’ll be all right. They’re coming.”

From far off down the valley comes the sound of beating wings, something powerful slicing through the air.

“I’m sorry,” I say for the last time. I lean down and kiss him, putting my hand against his chest.

“Stand up,” he demands, and I do. For the first time I notice a huge stork’s nest on one of the corner ramparts of the old Casbah, an engineering feat of sticks and mud large enough to cradle a grown man.

They’re coming, I think, there’s nowhere to go, and then I’m plunging down into the blackness of the Casbah, down into the earthy smell of it, the jumble of rooms and stairwells, this place that seems to have risen from the land itself.

I’m on a sailboat, on a lake somewhere, no, on an ocean. There’s a gray mist coming off the water, and my face is wet with it, wet with the spray our hull makes as it carves through the dark water. We are in a narrow passage, a channel closed on either side by two rocky islands. There’s an overwhelming sense of the primeval to this place, to the moss and ferns and rambling green brambles, and the little rain-wet beaches spilling down to the water, as if they are completely secret, untouched by humans. The water is so clear that I can see the giant rocks far below, the islands’ craggy foundations. The channel is dotted with rafts of kelp and white sea froth.

There are four of us on the boat, two women, a man, and me. We’ve brought a picnic: cold salmon, green beans, potato salad, strawberries, and chocolate cake. Everyone else is drinking champagne, but I am drinking sparkling grape juice. My mother poured it into a tall glass flute like the adults have, where it bubbles and fizzes just like the real thing.

“Look there,” my grandmother shouts, and we all follow her finger to the mouth of the channel.

Sliding toward us through the mist, its giant bow cleaving the water into two perfect white combs, is the largest boat I think I’ve ever seen.

“The ferry,” my grandfather says, leaning hard on the wheel, nudging us closer to land.

It’s too big, I think, it’s going to crush us, but I’m wrong. We skirt it easily, slipping along beside its rust-washed flanks.

“Come on,” my mother says, standing, waving her arms.

I struggle to my feet beside her.

“Wave,” she tells me, and I wave with her, to the several dozen brightly clothed passengers on the upper deck of the ferry, who are waving back.

Then the horn sounds, loud and low, sending a shiver down my spine, and the ferry turns, curving deftly around us, its prow just missing one of the green rock islands.

I’m in a stairwell, a narrow, garbage-strewn passageway that descends into near darkness. There’s a man with me, and we’re both running, careening downward, taking the steps two at a time. Below us, working their way up out of the gloom, are several dim figures, men in strange clothes, cotton shifts and loose pants. We emerge onto a landing, and my companion pulls me after him, off the stairs and into a large room, a vast, high-ceilinged industrial space bounded on one side by a long row of grime-streaked windows.

The warehouse, I think, and already I know what is to come. There is no way out, and we can hear the men, their feet pummeling the stairs. My friend looks at me, and his eyes are black with fear. He is sweating, his face glistening in the swampy light. It’s okay, I want to tell him, but I know it’s not. In an instant the men are upon us. The knife winks, flashing toward me like the ivory tooth of some giant predator. I feel it briefly on my neck, not pain, but something swifter and cleaner, and then I feel nothing at all.

It’s hard to say how long I was out, a few hours, possibly more. It was just before dawn when I woke, cotton-mouthed and nauseous, groping my way toward consciousness. Through the high window across from my bed I could see the first hint of the sun, the black sky draining to blue, the stars fading like spring snowflakes settling on a pond.

They’d given me vasopressin. I could taste its bitter reminder in the back of my throat. They’d given me something else, too, something that had knocked me out with the speed and precision of a heavyweight prizefighter. But whatever it was had quit working, and now, for the first time since I’d been stuffed into the black Mercedes, there was nothing to mask the throbbing in my shoulder. I rolled over, trying to sit up, and the pain caught me right in the pit of my stomach. I took a deep breath and lay back, running through the litany of my dreams, while the pain subsided to a dull ache.

To live with amnesia is to live with a suspect mind, a renegade piece of yourself that cannot be contained. Dreams may be memories, memories may be dreams, and neither one is to be trusted. I had seen my mother before, or at least her shadowy incarnation, and I had long since learned to discount her appearances as wishful specters of my own desires.

In the beginning I had been deceived by the vivid conjurings of my imagination. The places in my dreams had seemed impossibly real, home interiors furnished down to the last tiny detail, china figurines on the end tables, a cluttered pot rack in the kitchen. I had come to believe in these places the way the sisters believed in the kingdom of heaven. Here was Christmas morning, a flocked fir tree in the living room, a fire in the fireplace, a new red bicycle with a bow on it. And here I was in a pair of blue-and-white pajamas.

And then, one night at the abbey, I’d recognized that pajamaed little girl in one of Sister Claire’s videos. The house was a relic from another movie, a ghost story about a man who’d killed his mistress. How could I believe in anything after that?

And yet, try as I might, I couldn’t shake the vision of Patrick Haverman, the Beretta in my hand. He was dead. I knew it now. Hadn’t I dreamed this before? Hadn’t I shuddered at the person in my piracetam nightmares, the same person who’d gone to Joshi’s apartment that night, who’d left a gun in the safe of the El Minzah, who knew how to use it? There are some things we’re better off not knowing, I thought. Like whatever had happened in that warehouse.

Somewhere in the distance, the muezzin started his call to morning prayer, and a handful of other, fainter voices joined in. We were still in the city, then. I sat up again, slowly this time, and surveyed my surroundings. The single, open window let in just enough light for me to make out the room’s spare furnishings. Aside from my bed, there was a small dresser, a wardrobe, and a single chair.

The room had two doors, one on either side. I stood up, taking a moment to get my balance, and made my way toward the closest one. It was locked tight, dead-bolted from the outside, without an inner knob or latch to try. I swept my hand across the wall, feeling for a light switch, but found nothing.

The second door gave way easily at my touch, swinging inward. Finding a light switch on the inside wall, I flicked it on to reveal a small, utilitarian bathroom with a white porcelain toilet and sink. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirrored medicine cabinet and winced. My hair was matted from sleep, my right cheek red and abraded from the fall. My lip was fat on one side, my right eye showing a darkening half-moon bruise that promised to blossom into a nasty shiner.

Working through the pain, I lifted my arm and made a small circle, loosening my shoulder joint. No, I didn’t think it was broken, but the muscles would be sore and stiff for a while.

My arrival had evidently been expected. A shelf next to the sink held an array of basic toiletries, soap, toothpaste, hairbrush, a new toothbrush still in its wrapper, and a plastic drinking cup. There were clean white towels on the back of the door.

I took a drink first, letting the tap run till the water came out cold. Vasopressin always made my mouth dry, but this was worse than any hangover the medication had ever left me with. It took three good cupfuls of water for me to wash down the cotton taste. When I’d drunk my fill, I brushed my teeth, then turned the tap to hot and washed my face, carefully scrubbing the crusted blood from my right cheek.

Where was I? I wondered, stepping back into the main room, listening to the muezzin’s voice fade to silence. Out the open window I could hear a bird singing and the faint rumble of a car engine. In the city, yes, but somewhere quiet. At Bruns Werner’s villa, perhaps. Had Brian set me up? He must have known all along, from the moment he saw me on the ferry. No, he must have known before that. Someone at customs in Algeciras had known who I was. And Patrick Haverman? And Hannah Boyle? Had they been a lie as well? Some part of me deep down refused to believe it.

I crossed to the locked door and stretched myself out on the terra-cotta tiles, my eye to the inch-wide crack at the threshold. There was a light on in the corridor, but no sign of life. Standing, I crossed back to the bed, shoved the bedstead against the wall beneath the window, then positioned the chair on top of the mattress.

It was a precarious arrangement, but with careful climbing I managed to reach the window. Lifting myself on my tiptoes, I peered out. From where I stood I could see the walled gardens of several large properties, and not too far away, a slice of what looked like the Jardin Majorelle. Yes, I was definitely in Marrakech, at Werner’s house in the Ville Nouvelle.

I stretched, craning my neck over the edge of the sill, looking for some way out, but there was none. Below me, the pisé wall dropped three long stories straight to the ground. Above, more smooth plaster rose to the roof. No way down. No way up. Somehow, I’d have to make my own way.

I had taken the top sheet from the bed and was tearing it into long, thin strips when I heard them, two men coming down the corridor. Working quickly, I tucked my project under the bedspread, then flattened out the wrinkles with my palm. It was Salim who entered first, followed by a man I hadn’t seen before.

Salim leered at me, his eyes lingering on the scythe-shaped bruise that was his handiwork. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, and I could see the gash my corkscrew had made along his forearm. The wound was slightly infected, the skin around it flushed hot and tender.

“Good morning, Leila,” he sneered, in a tone that confirmed what I had already guessed, that we’d met long before that day on the train, and that our acquaintance had not been a pleasant one. “How are you feeling?”

“Fuck you,” I told him.

He nodded to his shadow, and the other man came over and grabbed my arm, yanking me up off the bed.

“Nice try,” Salim said, pulling the covers back to reveal the strips of sheet. He said something in Arabic to his partner, and they both had a good laugh, apparently at my expense.

“What happened to your boyfriend?” I asked, motioning to my eyes to indicate the sunglasses of the second man on the train.

Salim reached forward and hit me hard in the jaw. My head snapped to the side, and I felt the warmth of blood on my tongue. No, whatever past we shared was not a happy one. He barked something to his partner, and the man pulled a hood over my face and hustled me toward the door.

I tried to keep my bearings as we navigated the villa, but somewhere in the curve of the stairwell I lost all sense of direction. By the time we reached our final destination, all I could be certain of was that we were still in Werner’s house. A door was opened in front of me, and I was shoved forward; then I heard the lock click closed and Salim and the other man returning the way we’d come. Freed of my guides, I reached up and lifted the hood from my face.

The room I was in was dark and masculine, furnished in the same ubiquitous colonial fashion I’d seen at both the El Minzah and the Mamounia, the hallmark of expatriate good taste. Leather and dark wood predominated; there were hand-worked ottomans, overstuffed chairs, a red Persian rug, and a mammoth desk inlaid with ebony and cedar. Three of the room’s walls held a staggering collection of weapons, everything from samurai swords to eighteenth-century rifles to medieval maces. An intricately carved mashrabiyya, made to hide the faces of women from the street below, covered the only window, though I couldn’t see what purpose the screen served here, in such an obviously Western place. Outside, heavy iron barred the glass.

On the wall behind the desk was a conglomeration of photographs, mostly black-and-white, mostly taken sometime earlier. Many of them were hunting scenes, shot all over the world. Some had obviously been taken in Africa, the images studded with white canvas tents, Land Rovers, and native guides, the trophies savanna animals. Others showed glimpses of the American West or Canada, a mountain goat, a grizzly bear with monstrous claws. Still others were unmistakably Asian, their backdrops rife with grass huts, the prey here more exotic: a tiger with a single dark hole in its temple, a half dozen wild boars, their stomachs slit to reveal a bloody tangle of viscera.

The non-hunting photographs had been taken in equally exotic locations. In one, a small figure stood next to a giant statue of Buddha. Another showed a man shaking hands with a camouflaged soldier, while behind them, the downdraft from a helicopter’s propellers bent a giant cowlick in waist-high jungle grass.

Though the cast of supporting characters changed, there was one consistent face in almost all of the photographs. He had aged greatly during the years they chronicled, but the essence of his face, the gray eyes and square jaw, had not changed. He was the same man I’d seen in the car that day. Bruns Werner.

There was one photograph, more than any of the others, that caught my eye. It had been taken in black-and-white, in the full-sun blaze of afternoon, and showed three young people at an outdoor café. The setting was Asian. A rickshaw driver sat idle at the edge of the picture. Opposite him, a woman in a plain white cotton shift carried a basket of fruit. A French movie poster behind her showed a young Peter Fonda in Easy Rider. Over the heads of the three friends, a sign told the name of the establishment. Les Trois Singes. The three monkeys.

The figure on the far left was Werner. He held a glass in his hand, lifting it toward the camera as if to toast. On the far right was another man, more handsome than Werner, dark-haired and trim, with the well-muscled physique of a swimmer. The sleeves of his white cotton shirt were rolled up, and he was sitting slightly back in his chair, at perfect ease with the world around him. Between the two men was a woman. She was dressed plainly, in a dark T-shirt, khakis, a canvas jacket, and leather boots. Her head was in motion, her face blurred beyond recognition. Both men were turned toward the woman, as if waiting for something from her, as if enthralled by some electric presence, something I couldn’t see.

There was movement in the corridor, and I turned in time to see the door swing open. Bruns Werner came forward into the room, the soles of his perfectly shined shoes tapping the inlaid floor. He stopped at the edge of the red wool carpet, his hands in the pockets of his suit coat, as if seeing me for the first time. My host regarded me for a moment, his gray eyes revealing nothing.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked, finally.

“Werner,” I answered.

He nodded, then came forward and took a seat behind the desk. “Sit down.”

I did as I was told, taking the chair Werner indicated.

“You must be hungry,” he remarked.

“Yes,” I agreed, my hunger winning out over my pride.

My host punched an intercom on his desk and rattled off a command in Arabic, then turned back to me. “Your breakfast will be here shortly,” he said, sitting back in his chair, regarding my face. “I’m sorry about Salim,” he apologized. “I understand there’s some bad blood between you. Old times.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“No. I guess you wouldn’t.”

Werner lifted the lid of a small wooden case and took out a cigar. I could smell the tobacco from where I sat, the odor so rich it was almost unpleasant.

“Have we met before?” I asked.

“It must be difficult,” he said, ignoring my question. “A tricky situation, really, not knowing one’s past.”

I shrugged. “What do you want from me?”

Werner produced a tiny hooked knife from the top drawer of the desk and snipped off the end of the cigar. “You really don’t remember?” he asked, incredulous.

There was a knock on the door, and Werner called for the person to come in.

“Your breakfast,” Werner observed. “I took the liberty of ordering coffee. You do drink coffee, don’t you?”

An attractive Moroccan woman in a cream-colored suit and matching high heels came forward and set a tray on the table next to me.

“Will that be sufficient?” my host asked.

I looked at the offering. There was a bowl of yogurt, a plate of fresh green figs, a pain au chocolat, a glass of grapefruit juice, and a small pot of coffee. I nodded and gulped down the juice, then took one of the figs. Something told me to eat while I could, that this might be the last food I would see for some time.

Werner slid the little knife back into the drawer, pulled out a gold lighter, and carefully lit the cigar.

“I’d like to arrange a trade,” he said, watching me take a bite of the pain au chocolat and a sip of coffee. “I can help you remember. But there’s certain information I’ll need in return.”

I looked past him to the menagerie of dead animals, the wild boars with their stomachs so cleanly slit. The pictures made me think of the sisters, and what Heloise had said. I thought they were singing. The pastry suddenly tasted rancid in my mouth, the coffee bitter.

Werner exhaled a thick cloud of cigar smoke. “Of course you don’t recall, but you’ve taken something of mine, something I would very much like to recover.”

“Go to hell,” I told him.

He looked at me with curiosity. “You think I killed your friends, don’t you?”

I didn’t answer.

“I’ll take your silence as a yes,” he said, “but I’m afraid you’re wrong.”

“Who, then?”

Werner shook his head. “That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it, Miss Brightman? Or should I call you Eve?”

I shrugged.

“I will tell you what I know,” Werner said. “But you’ll have to help me first.”

“And this thing you claim I took. It would help if I knew just what it was you wanted me to remember.”

He leaned back in his chair and savored the cigar. “That’s the problem, my dear. You see, it’s information you stole, something that can take many forms. I’m afraid you’ll have to remember just which form you’ve given it.”

“It’s not that easy,” I told him.

“Don’t worry,” Werner said. “I’ve arranged for you to have some help.”

He took a long toke on the cigar and rang his intercom again, this time summoning Salim.