Hunt Through Napoleon's Web

Chapter 10

The Hawker 400 landed at another private airstrip near the foothills of Morocco’s Atlas Mountains. The sun cast an orange glow over a landscape that was already reddish to begin with; it wasn’t for nothing that Marrakesh was known as the Red City.

Back in his misspent youth, Marrakesh had been one of Gabriel’s favorite places in Africa. It was too bad that his first time back in years had to be under such undesirable circumstances.

As he was escorted down the steps to the tarmac, Gabriel felt the knife still pressing against his calf. It had been a gamble, not attempting to use it in the limo—a gamble that they’d be taking him to a private runway rather than a commercial airport with metal detectors. But he figured they had weapons of their own they wouldn’t want detected; if nothing else, Kemnebi was still carrying Gabriel’s Colt. And the prospect of a fight in the back of a moving car against two men bigger than he was had not greatly appealed. Besides, if Lucy was in Marrakesh, Marrakesh was where he needed to be.

Another limousine, this one blindingly white, waited at the foot of the steps. Gabriel was ushered inside. He saw two men already there, seated on the long padded bench behind the driver’s seat.

One of them, a thin man sporting a tidy pencil mustache, extended a hand. Gabriel ignored it. “Have you been to Marrakesh before, Mister Hunt?”

“Once or twice,” he said drily.

The limo pulled out of the airfield and onto a highway.

“It is a beautiful city,” the man said. “Not like Cairo, of course. But it has many pleasures.”

Gabriel merely stared, and the man, having run out of small talk for the moment, fell silent.

After half an hour they came to the famed Djemaa el Fna, the central square in the medina. It was the largest of its type in Africa. Gabriel saw the traditional water sellers, the snake charmers, the acrobats and jugglers performing for the hordes of tourists who were gathered about, snapping pictures. He saw a group of Chleuh dancing boys and beside them an old man leading a troupe of trained Barbary apes through a comic routine. And then there were the peddlers, of course, vendors of everything from souvenirs to dubious medicines, and the food stalls offering every sort of edible. The smells drifted into the limousine through the air vents, as did the muffled sounds of traditional Berber music and the clamor of the crowd.

The driver circled the square and went down a relatively empty side street. They stopped a block away and parked near what appeared to be an abandoned building made of sandstone and stucco. It was four stories tall, and the windows and front door were boarded up. Signs in Arabic looked to Gabriel like warnings to trespassers to keep out.

Gabriel got out of the car with the other men. Amun pointed back toward the Djemaa el Fna. “This way.”

“We’re going to buy souvenirs?” Gabriel asked. “I could use a pit viper or two.”

They walked the block back, entered the square, and moved to the right along the perimeter. Gabriel knew that if he was going to make a break for it, now was the time to do it. He could easily lose himself in the crowd, or at least cause enough of a diversion to get away. But that wouldn’t help Lucy. In fact, it might put her in greater danger. So he kept walking.

Kemnebi led the way around a wooden cabin with a striped fabric roof; under the fabric a fat man worked the lever of an ancient orange reamer, spilling an endless stream of juice into cups, which a boy who looked like his son sold to a line of thirsty tourists. Next to the cabin, a water seller insistently argued for the superiority of his beverage, shouting in thickly accented English, “Juice make you more thirsty! Clean water!” Looking at the man’s swollen leather pouch and the clattering tin cups he made his customers use, Gabriel questioned the truth of his claims. Even if the water was clean when it went into the cup . . .

Amun took Gabriel’s arm and steered him toward a carpet shop. It looked more or less identical to Jumoke’s, except that the sign over the entryway here said NIZAN.

Kemnebi strode up to a closed wooden door in the side of the building and rapped on it. After a moment, a man opened it and greeted first Kemnebi and then Amun in Arabic. This was Nizan, presumably; he might have been Jumoke’s brother.

Amun and Kemnebi followed Nizan into the shop through the side door, Gabriel trailing behind them, and the two other men from the limousine coming after him. Nizan lifted a curtain and led them all into a back room. He then squatted, lifted the corner of a carpet on the floor, and revealed a hinged trap door with a metal ring in the center. The ring was secured with a hasp and a heavy padlock. Nizan fished a key out of his vest pocket and used it to remove the lock. He put both hands inside the ring and grunted as he lifted it. The door creaked open, revealing a staircase leading down.

Kemnebi was the first to descend, then Amun prodded Gabriel to follow. The underground passageway he found himself in at the foot of the stairs was long and curving, but well lit by bulbs dangling overhead. Gabriel thought the tunnel itself looked old, despite the presence of electric lights; it might have been carved centuries ago, the markings on the stone suggesting blows from hand tools rather than any sort of heavy machinery. He wondered what its original purpose had been. Something unsavory, he was sure.

They walked for what felt like about a city block before coming to another staircase leading back up. Kemnebi pressed a button on an intercom box mounted on the wall. They heard a scuffling of feet above, then another trap door opened and the group ascended, single file.

They emerged into a small room lined with shelves of food supplies—it looked like the pantry of a modern home, Gabriel thought. Two men stood waiting for them, guns in hand. They greeted Amun and Kemnebi warmly but regarded Gabriel with suspicion.

The trap door was lowered and a carpet replaced over it. The men walked them into a living room furnished with a combination of modern and traditional Arabic fittings. In one corner, a large whiteboard stood, covered with scrawled diagrams and words Gabriel couldn’t read. There were curtains drawn over all the windows. Through the curtains Gabriel could see that the windows were boarded up from the outside.

“We’re back where we started,” Gabriel said. “We just made a big circle.”

“That is correct, Mister Hunt,” Amun said.

“Why?”

“I am sure you can appreciate that we prefer to keep our activities out of view of prying eyes,” Amun said. “The way we came is the only way in.”

“I guess I’m supposed to feel fortunate that you’re letting me see the place,” Gabriel said.

“You should, Mister Hunt. You are the first non-Egyptian who has.”

“What about my sister?”

Amun smiled thinly. “She was blindfolded, of course.”

“And why do I get this special treatment?”

“Because you work for us now,” Amun said. “We must begin trusting each other sometime.”

“Can I ask you something? If your raison d’être—pardon my French—is resurrecting the glory of Egypt, why didn’t you set up this secret clubhouse there?”

“We have found,” Amun said, “that it is best to operate outside of Egypt. There are certain groups within our country—the government, for one—that support what we do in theory but cannot publicly condone some of the more . . . decisive acts the Alliance has carried out.”

“You mean like torture, kidnapping, and theft?”

“Yes,” Amun said. “Those would be examples. Of course what we do is simply retribution for crimes committed against Egypt, and many in the government have told us privately that they wholeheartedly support our actions. But to say so publicly would be impossible.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Gabriel said.

“Your media would leap upon it instantly,” Amun said, “the international media would follow, and any politician who expressed solidarity with us would be hounded from office by the chorus of outraged voices. The media, after all, are in the control of the Jews, who would like nothing more than to see—”

“Yes, yes, the Jews,” Gabriel said. “Eat your soup.”

Amun fell silent, but the look in his eyes was vicious. Finally he spoke. “We need not like one another, Mister Hunt. But we do have to work together. I suggest you show me a bit more respect.”

“Actually, Amun, I think you have it backward. I think you need me. And I think you know you need me. You’ve been looking for your Second Stone for thirty years and you haven’t found it yet. You think I can get it for you. Fine—maybe I can. But if you want me to cooperate, you’re going to have to show me and my sister a bit more respect.”

“We have shown your sister enormous respect,” Amun said. “We have not killed her.”

“Well, that’s a start,” Gabriel said. “But we’re going to need more than that.”

“For instance?”

“You can let me see her. I’d also like my gun back.”

“You will see your sister in an hour. Your gun is another story. You will get it back when I am certain you will not use it to harm me or anyone else here.” Amun gestured to the men who had let them in, who were now standing on either side of Gabriel. They took hold of his arms. “Now. I respectfully ask that you join me in my study so that you might learn about the work you have ahead of you.”

The two men forcefully propelled Gabriel forward, practically lifting him by the elbows. Together, they climbed the stairs to the second floor. The men shoved him into a dark room lined with bookshelves and took up positions on either side of the doorway. Amun seated himself on the edge of a desk made of some highly polished dark wood, almost black. A map on the wall behind him showed the geography of Corsica in enormous detail. There were pushpins stuck into it in various locations.

Amun spoke curtly in Arabic to one of the men by the door, then turned to Gabriel. “Would you like something to eat or drink? You have a lot of reading ahead of you.”

“I could use a bourbon and ice.”

Amun shot him a look. “No alcohol in a Muslim house, Mister Hunt.”

“Water, then,” Gabriel said. “Just not from that guy out in the square, please.”

Amun communicated the request to the guard and the man ran off.

“Why don’t we start with this map, Mister Hunt.”

Gabriel came closer and studied it. Most of the pins were clustered in the lower half of the island, close to the capital city of Ajaccio and a little farther south, near the towns of Filitosa, Propriano, and Sartene.

“I’ve been there,” Gabriel said. “That region’s where all the prehistoric sites were discovered.”

“Correct. Fascinating places, old as Stonehenge. Full of caves and houses made of rocks and strange menhirs arranged in circles.”

“You think the Second Stone is hidden somewhere around there?”

“We know it is. In one of these prehistoric forests close to Ajaccio.” Amun pointed to a bulging leather folder on the desk. “Inside here you will find copies of all the documents I mentioned earlier. Some in Italian, some in French; one or two in very bad English. I can translate the ones—”

“Not necessary,” Gabriel said. “I should be fine.”

“There is also a good deal of material about Napoleon in the folder.” Amun opened it and thumbed through a stack of stapled documents, some yellow with age, some gray and faded almost to illegibility. The stack was as thick as the manuscript of a book, and not a skinny paperback, either. Gabriel estimated there were five or six hundred pages.

The guard returned carrying a cup of coffee, a bottle of water and a glass. Amun took the coffee; Gabriel took the rest.

“I’m going to leave you alone for a while, Mister Hunt,” Amun said. He looked over at an ornate, golden clock on one of the shelves. “Maybe a bit more than an hour. Please look over all the materials, and feel free to take down any of the books you’re curious about. Do not try to escape. Odji and Ubaid will stay here with you, and Kemnebi is right outside the door. He’ll come and fetch you when your sister is ready to receive you.”

“What do you mean, ready? Why wouldn’t she be ready now?”

“She’s not awake yet,” Amun said. “It takes some time for the drug to exit her system.”

Amun left the room and shut the door. Gabriel heard the click of the lock. It hardly mattered; maybe Sammi could have found a way out of this place, but he didn’t see one. There were no windows in the room, only shelves of books, and the two guards inside could see his every move. Plus there was the giant of a man outside the door, and the three other men in the building, all of them hostile. And no way in or out of the building other than a narrow tunnel . . .

He sighed and settled into the chair behind the desk. The document on the top of the stack showed a sketch of the Second Stone, supposedly drawn by the private secretary who’d dug it up at Louis’s direction; the drawing showed the stone still half buried in the desert sand, a skeletal arm and skull beside it, a retinue of soldiers on horses milling about in the background in native garb. Gabriel turned the page. The next document was a map of Corsica, similar to the one on the wall, with markings where the pushpins were. A single word of Arabic had been written on the map next to a cluster of markings and underlined heavily. Gabriel copied it onto a scrap of paper and stuck it in his pocket.

Then on to the first long text document, an account from the nineteenth century describing how the Second Stone had been transported from France to Corsica. The language of the document was dense and old-fashioned, and Gabriel felt a headache coming on before he’d made it through the first page. But he had an hour to kill—maybe more—and he might as well use it productively. He rested his chin on his hand and kept reading.

Ninety minutes later, the lock clicked again, the door swung open, and Kemnebi stepped inside. He said just one word—the first, Gabriel realized, he’d ever heard the big man speak.

“Come.”

Gabriel stood, allowed himself to be steered out into the hallway and up another flight of stairs. They approached a closed door with a guard stationed in front of it, a man with a sullen look, several gold teeth glinting dully in his mouth, and four raw scratches raking diagonally across his left cheek. The guard stepped aside and Kemnebi knocked.

A tired-sounding voice answered from inside: “Yes? What do you want?”

It was Lucy’s voice. Gabriel felt his heart race. He hadn’t seen her since the night she’d shown up in the townhouse on Sutton Place, begging him to help get a friend of hers out of jail. He’d done what Lucy had asked, but it hadn’t quite turned out the way either of them had intended, and he hadn’t heard from her in the six months since.

Kemnebi held out his hand. The guard passed him a set of keys. Kemnebi picked one out and unlocked the door.

“Fifteen minutes,” he said to Gabriel in the low rumble he had for a voice, and then he pushed the door open.