The Casbah Killers

Chapter 2

I slept well after shoving a heavy table against the door as a precaution. In the morning I began to go over the apartment and Karminian’s things with a fine-tooth comb, starting at one end of the place and painstakingly examining every inch.

My first surprise was his collection of records stacked alongside a small, portable record player, an American machine. From what Aggie Foster had told me about the man I expected a collection of good jazz, Muggsy Spanier, Pee Wee Russell, Buck Clayton, Goodman, Armstrong, Eddie Condon, the greats, at least.

Instead, the records were Bach, Mozart, Palestrina, Scarlatti and some Gregorian chants. Many of the record albums bore handwriting in a lovely, feminine script, small, brief messages: “Anton, just saw this and had to pick it up for you.” Or, “Hope you like this.” All were signed “Marina.”

What the hell was a jazz buff, an avid fan of le jazz hot doing with a collection of classical records only, and the baroque classicists, at that? Naturally, I wondered who “Marina” was too. I also found a collection of pipes. Karminian was apparently a pipe-smoker and, like so many pipe-smokers, a mild collector of pipes. He also had a good stock of liquor in a cabinet and I fixed myself a good, cold martini for lunch.

The rest of the apartment turned up nothing I could determine as of importance. I decided to follow up some of the leads Aggie had given me, starting with Yussif ben Kashan, the rug dealer.

The medina or Arab quarter of Casablanca was a teeming, jostling, overcrowded, colorful place. It also smelled of too many people crowded into too little space, of a variety of foods being sold at hundreds of little stands. In the medina it seemed that every day was souk day, the market a continuous, bustling affair.

I threaded my way past robed women and tourists, djellaba-clothed men and those in western business suits. I passed a woman selling harira, hot soup being boiled in huge iron kettles and others cooking mechoui, a kind of Moroccan cookout of mutton grilled over hot embers.

Rugs, copper, brass, leather and glassware were hawked from hundreds of brightly colored little booths and tents. I was jostled, pushed and squeezed out of shape by the crowds at some spots and over everything was the din of voices raised in bargaining and arguing, the only accepted manner of doing business in Morocco.

I managed to ask around and learned that Yussif ben Kashan was not one of the itinerant merchants who came to the medina. He had a store, an establishment of permanence which I finally located. It was a wooden hole in the wall hung with colorful Moroccan carpets.

I saw those from the mountains of the Middle Atlas woven in hues of beige, russet and brown. Those from the Chicaqua of the High Atlas range were of flaming scarlet and ochre and the Saharan rugs were muted reds, whites and blues. The linear designs and motifs were reminiscent of those of the South American Indians.

Yussif ben Kashan, I quickly learned, was not only a rug dealer but a human guidebook to the pleasures of the medina. He bowed as I entered, his tarboosh, the traditional red fez, dipping almost to the ground. He wore a serwal with babouches on his feet, the soft, ornately embroidered Moroccan slipper.

“Salaam,” he said, his face soft and round and cherub-like. He sported a little pot belly to match. “You have come to gaze upon my beautiful rugs?”

“Salaam,” I answered. “The rugs are indeed magnificent, but I come to Yussif ben Kashan for other reasons.”

His small eyes narrowed for an instant and his round little face broke into a smile.

“Ah! You seek the pleasures of the medina,” he oozed.

“Girls, of course. One? Or two? Or perhaps many? Perhaps eunuchs as soft and sweet as girls?”

I held up my hand to turn him off. “No, no,” I interjected, finding a space in his rush of words. “I am looking for someone and I was told you might know of his whereabouts. I seek the man named Karminian.”

“Karminian?” Yussif ben Kashan’s eyes widened. “Oh, indeed I know him. He came to Yussif ben Kashan for many pleasures. He was a man of many sensual tastes, one of the greatest. He sometimes came with pretty women, sometimes alone but always to have me find the most unusual the quarter has to offer in the way of erotic delights.”

And that, I said to myself, would be pretty damned unusual I’d wager. “Do you know where Karminian might be staying?” I asked, trying to sound more concerned than determined.

The rug dealer shrugged. “At the end of this street there is a right turn that ends at a small house in the center of a small djenina,” he said. “Go there and speak to Fatasha the Berber woman. Karminian often spent days there.”

The rug dealer paused and smiled, more to himself than to me. “With Fatasha, it is a place to spend days.”

“Soukran,” I said, thanking him. “I am indebted to your graciousness. I am staying at Karminian’s apartment. If you hear anything more about him, please call me there. I will be happy to pay for good information.”

I wrote the phone number on a scrap of paper which he carefully tucked into a trouser side pocket. In case I didn’t uncover Karminian at this Berber woman’s house, the bait of information money would attract ben Kashan, I was sure.

“May your search be successful,” he said, bowing low as I went out the door.

“Inch’Allah,” I answered, going out into the broiling sun again.

I followed the narrow street, pushing my way through hordes of people, turned right at the end and came to the small house set back in a small garden. The doorway was open and I stepped inside. It was cool and darkened with drawn blinds shutting out the sun. I stood still for a moment and was about to call out when from inside a draped archway, a woman stepped forth.

She was tall, wearing a jeweled bra and ballooned turkish trousers with ornate babouches. Loose, hanging black hair gave her high cheek-boned face a somewhat wild appearance. She had a prominent nose and wide mouth. Huge, bronzed earrings and a jewel in the center of her forehead added to her bizarre appearance. The jeweled bra strained to keep in huge, pendulous breasts.

Bizarre and wild as she appeared, there was an air of unvarnished, animal sensuality to the woman as she regarded me, hands on hips, with the quizzical stare of a woman for whom there are no more surprises.

“Salaam,” I said. “Yussif ben Kashan sent me to see you.”

A brilliant grin suddenly erupted and she showed a set of flashing, white teeth. Nodding for me to follow, she slipped through the curtained archway. I went on in and found myself surrounded instantly by a bevy of excited, chattering little girls.

I guessed they ranged from 11 to 14 years of age and they were completely naked, clustering around me, pushing and thrusting their nubile bodies forward. Their bodies were slender, light to dark brown and really very beautiful in their fresh, flowering loveliness, and I was reminded that the ancient Greeks thought a woman was at her most beautiful when she was 12 to 14, boyish and yet feminine, not immature and not mature.

I felt their hands on my body, running up and down my arms and legs, feeling the hardness of my muscled frame, and their chattering grew louder and more appreciative. Their pubescent, nymph-like beauty was enhanced by the unmistakable sensuality of their motions. One leaned back against a small table and spread her legs to apparently show me how close to virginal she was.

Fatasha was an erotic mother hen, grinning proudly.

“You like, aye?” she said. “They all yours. You have good time here at Fatasha’s. You find these girls make you go very high.”

“Hold it, hold it,” I said. “I only came to ask you some questions.”

“You ask questions?” She frowned, a dark cloud seemingly enveloping her face.

I thrust a dollar bill at her.

“Here, for your time,” I said. “I look for the man Karminian. I was told he might be here at your house.”

The money helped to assuage her hurt feelings at my turning down her choice offerings.

“Karminian is not here,” she said a little gruffly.

“When did you last see him?”

“A week, maybe few days more,” she answered. That helped to nail it down a little. He was around and alive as recently as a week ago.

I pressed again. “Did he tell you where he might be going?” I asked. “Did he tell any of your girls he was going away?”

Fatasha spoke sharply to the girls and they shook their heads. Once they realized I wasn’t a customer they had sat down on a large bed and were busy talking, playing cards, and one even had a doll for which she was fashioning clothes, just as young girls anywhere would be doing. Only they were stark naked and serenely unconscious of it.

“Karminian not here,” Fatasha said again, dismissing me with the phrase.

I nodded to her, slipped through the draped archway and went back into the heat of the streets. My next stop was the Chez Caliph and outside the medina, though the streets of Casablanca were busy with late afternoon traffic, they seemed almost empty to me.

I found the place on the Boulevard Zerktouni, just as Aggie had said, and the bartender was not at all reluctant to talk about Karminian. What he said, though, made my eyebrows go up, discreetly, of course.

“Sure, he came in all the time around five o’clock for a glass of sherry,” the man said. He was a European who spoke English well. “Karminian was a loner, very quiet. He’d sit in a corner and just watch people. I only saw him with a woman once or twice, a gorgeous, black-haired dame, tall, real class.”

That sure as hell wasn’t Aggie Foster, I thought to myself. And Karminian a “loner?” That didn’t fit either.

It was getting late and evening was already closing in. Without a good description of what the man looked like it was useless for me to try touring the jazz spots. I decided to go back to his apartment and wait there until it was time for Aggie to be finished, then visit her for a better description of the man.

I stopped in at a restaurant, the Rissani, and had a delicious meal of chicken cooked in olives and lemons and stuffed with almonds, raisins, semolina, honey and rice.

Back at Karminian’s place, I was washing it all down with a nice long bourbon and water and thinking of how a man could be a gregarious, heavy-drinking patron of erotic pursuits and a sherry-sipping loner at the same time, a jazz buff with a record collection of Mozart and Scarlatti. Karminian was turning out to be a man of many parts.

I heard the sound of footsteps outside, clattering up the staircase, before I heard a woman’s voice. The door suddenly resounded to short, hard knocking-

“Anton,” the voice said, a low, mellifluous voice. “Let me in. I know you’re there. I saw the light as I passed downstairs.”

There was a pause and then some more knocking. “Anton,” she said. “Please open up? What is it? What’s the matter? Why did you come back without letting me know?”

I crossed to the door in two, fast strides and yanked it open.

The woman almost fell into the room and I caught her with my hand. Her eyes widened in astonishment and I took in gorgeous black hair, softly curled behind her ears, thin, black eyebrows over deep eyes of brown, delicately pronounced cheekbones and a rather long, aquiline nose. It was a face to remember, at once beautiful and proud, delicate and sensuous.

The body matched the face, full, thrusting breasts inside an off-white dress that clung like a petal to a flower. Her thighs curved in a long, slender line and somehow, I knew at once, who she was.

“You’re not Anton,” she gasped, finding her voice.

“No, but you’re Marina,” I said simply. “Come in, please.”

She frowned and looked at me warily but entered the room. As I closed the door I saw that her breasts moved gently, provocatively as she walked, obviously held by a very loose brassiere.

“Who are you?” she asked directly, fastening me with the deep, brown orbs that seemed to say more than her words.

“I’m Glen Travis,” I said, smiling at her. “I’m looking for Anton Karminian and, since he’s not here, I’m staying here. He owes me money for paintings of mine that he bought.”

“How did you know my name?” she asked, her voice a low, sultry thing, velvet over fire.

“A guess,” I said. “I saw the name on some of the record albums and you look as though your name would be Marina. It’s a lovely name, an unusual name. It should go with a beautiful woman only.”

“You know the right things to say,” she smiled, and her lovely, proud face lighted with its own special glow.

“Most artists do,” I said. “I want to find Karminian. From what you said, you may know where he is.”

She sat down and a sadness crept into her eyes. “I wish I did,” she said. “All I know is that Anton called me one afternoon and said he had to go away unexpectedly. He didn’t even have time to see me to say goodbye.”

“You were his girl friend?” I asked. She looked at me coolly.

“I was his friend,” she said. “Anton and I had a very unusual relationship.”

“I can believe that,” I said. “You look the type who could have an unusual relationship. But you don’t know where he went?”

She shook her head.

“You know,” I went on, “it’s very important that I find him. I can’t go into all the details, but if you help me you’d be doing him a big favor too.”

“I cannot help you,” she said, sitting down and crossing her legs. She wore only leg make-up, and the long line of her thigh was a thing of beauty.

I wished for a moment I really were artist enough to paint her.

“Marina,” I said, turning the word over in my mouth. “An unusual name and an unusual girl, I would guess. Will you join me in a bourbon?”

“Scotch, please,” she said. “On the rocks.”

She settled back in the chair and studied me as I fixed the drink and handed it to her. Her breasts seemed to curve upward in a beautiful, graceful line as she sat relaxed in the chair.

“Having seen you,” I said, “I think perhaps I don’t want to find Karminian.”

Marina smiled, a mischievous, slow smile that played around the edges of her finely molded lips. “But you do,” she answered. “You want to find him very much.”

“That’s right,” I said. “He owes me a lot of money.”

“No,” she said. “I think it is something more.”

She was a smart dish, and I grinned at her. “Your special intuition,” I said. “Some powers you have?”

“No, but there is something about you that makes me feel an urgency, perhaps even a sense of danger,” she answered. “And yet, somehow, you make me feel as though I should help you, though I don’t really believe your story about Anton owing you money for your paintings.”

“Don’t tell me you’re an Egyptian fortuneteller,” I laughed. She was too damned perceptive.

“I am part Spanish and part Moroccan,” she said. “Maybe that does give me strange powers.”

“Then you’d better believe me that your friend Anton might be in trouble if I don’t find him,” I answered. “I’m told he’s a big drinker, and that can be dangerous.”

“Anton? A big drinker?” she queried, frowning. “Absolutely not. Only wines, with perhaps a small brandy after dinner.”

That fitted what the barkeep at the Chez Caliph had said. But nothing else fitted so far. “Tell me more about him?” I pressed.

“Anton and I, as I said, had an unusual relationship,” Marina said, settling back deeper in the chair, her deep eyes growing distant and veiled. “He was very intellectual, very introverted. He never liked crowds or people in general. He preferred to stay here or at my place, just the two of us, quietly listening to records. He liked Bach, of course, and Mozart, but he had a special feeling for Palestrina.”

“He smoked?” I asked, making my questions sound casual.

“Only his pipes,” she answered.

“I was told he came on strong,” I said and she frowned.

“What does that mean?” she asked genuinely.

I smiled.

“It means he was a sensual man, a lover of sexual pleasures, a big man with women,” I answered.

Marina was frowning and her low, soft voice was almost indignant as she replied. “Ridiculous,” she said. “He was an almost shy man, a man of the intellect not the body. That was the one...” She cut herself off and I grinned.

“Finish what you were going to say,” I said. Her eyes narrowed.

“It was nothing,” she answered.

“You were going to say it was the one missing thing in your relationship,” I grinned.

She looked at me, her face set and beautifully composed. Only the flare of dark fire in her eyes told me I’d hit home.

“I hope I never get that intellectual,” I grinned.

“You won’t,” she said with some asperity. “Anton could appreciate a woman’s mind and sensitivity.”

“So can I, honey,” I said. “But not at the expense of ignoring the rest of her, and what you have just shouldn’t be ignored.”

She looked at me for a long moment and then laughed, a deep-throated, musical laugh, muted bells. “I could like you,” she said. “You’re so different from Anton.”

I almost said that Anton was apparently pretty different all by himself, but she got up and started for the door.

She knew more than she’d revealed to me, I was certain, but that wasn’t the only reason I didn’t want her to go. Her eyes had held moments of hesitation, of holding back, and I wanted to know what she knew.

“Must you leave?” I said. “You’re a very beautiful woman. I really wish you’d stay.”

Her glance at me was veiled, but the veil didn’t completely hide the interest in her eyes.

“Perhaps we’ll be talking again,” she said.

“You can count on it,” I said. “And stop holding back. Help me find your friend Anton, and you’ll be doing him a great favor.”

She paused at the door and searched my eyes. “I am at 9 Avenue Hassan Souktany,” she said. “I will, as you Americans say, sleep on it.”

I watched her walk off, her rear sinuously moving, ungirdled, inviting. I wondered, fleetingly, if beautiful women realized how easily they inflamed and excited and I knew the answer almost as soon as I’d had the thought. Yes. They knew it. They damned well knew it.

I closed the door and smiled to myself. Karminian had more than conflicting personalities; his taste in women was equally far apart.

I wondered if he were one of those men who assumed a completely different personality with different women, a man in whom different women brought out different things. I’d known that to happen, though not to such extremes as with Karminian. I also wondered if I were being lied to and by whom.

Aggie Foster’s description of the man had been echoed by the rug dealer and by Fatasha with her nymphets. Marina and the barkeep at the Chez Caliph knew a very different Karminian.

The scream cut into my musings like a knife into soft butter. It was Marina’s voice, the velvet cover tom off by terror.

I flung open the door, paused to grab two tubes of paint from my paint box, and raced down the flight of steps. I was just in time to see two burley men throw her into the back of a long, black Mercedes 600 Pullman limousine.

One shot a glance at me and I saw his square, crew-cut, thick-necked head, small blue eyes in a beefy face that might as well have been stamped MADE IN RUSSIA.

I also caught the glint of lamplight on blue gun metal and I dove down and to the side. The slug tore past my head and into the wood of the doorway, sending big splinters flying. It must have been at least a .44 Magnum with a 240 grain slug.

I got up to see the big, black Mercedes 600 pull around the corner and I ran into the street and hailed a taxi.

“Follow him,” I yelled, pointing to the twin dots of red disappearing around the corner. The cab was an old London Austin taxi and the driver a reluctant dragon. The Mercedes was pulling away fast and my man was more interested in keeping his fez on than really hitting it up.

“Pull over!” I yelled as we rounded a corner. He stopped, I ran out and yanked him from the driver’s seat.

“Moukkadem,” I yelled at him which meant Government Agent, and I stepped on the throttle. “Allah will bless you,” I tossed back at his surprised form sitting on the street.

I gunned the cab, putting my foot almost through the floorboards. I took the next turn on two wheels, invoking Baraka, divine protection. The Casablanca streets were fairly deserted at that hour and under my leaden foot the old taxi stayed with the Mercedes, at least. I really didn’t want to gain anyway, preferring to stay back enough to just barely keep them in sight.

Finally, I saw the big, black car turn into a street and heard the sound of tires squealing to a halt. I pulled up alongside the curb and got out on the run. I stayed alongside a stone wall until I reached the corner and saw the Mercedes backing out. Only one man was inside it now, driving it away.

I let him pull off and then hurried to the entranceway of a typical, ornately decorated Moroccan house. I saw lights flicking on inside and looked around for a way in. It was easy enough. Low-hanging cross-bars formed part of the entranceway roof. I leaped up, caught an arm around one and pulled myself up onto a small rooftop.

A narrow ledge led to a large, arched window and I crawled along it, moving slowly on the precarious edge. The window opened easily at my touch and I crawled into the house, pausing inside to let my eyes grow accustomed to the darkness. The room was empty but through an open archway I saw lights and I heard voices from the floor below.

I moved on the balls of my feet, noiselessly, and was grateful for the tiled, Moroccan floor. I went through the archway into a corridor and now the voices were louder, angrier. I heard the sound of a slap followed by a short scream and then a long, pain-filled cry.

A flight of steps beckoned and I went down them, moving cautiously. Marina screamed again and I found myself on a narrow balcony that ran around the four sides of a room which looked down onto the room below it.

There, Marina was seated on a straight-backed chair, wearing only black panties and a loose black bra, surrounded by four Russians, one of them the crew-cut, beefy-faced man. Marina’s breasts, upturned, full, magnificent, pushed forward as her hands were bound behind the back of the chair.

One of the Russians had a cattle prod, I saw, and he handed it to the crew-cut one.

“Here, Estan, you take it,” he said.

Marina’s head was forward and the one called Estan pulled her back by the hair roughly.

I saw the glistening shine of tears on her face.

“Where is Karminian?” the one called Estan asked, his accent rough and Russian. The other three carbon copies stood by, drinking in the girl’s magnificence.

I felt my hands open and close, itching to get at their burly, stolid necks.

Marina, in bra and panties before these thugs, was like a precious painting before a herd of swine.

“Where is he?” the Russian shouted again. He pulled the girl’s head back hard and I saw her breasts now fill the loose bra as she arched backward and cried out in pain.

“I don’t know, I tell you,” she gasped.

“Keep lying and we’ll really start on you,” Estan said. “You haven’t seen anything yet.” He drew back his arm and slapped her across the face with a tremendous blow.

Marina and the chair toppled over sideways and I heard her broken cry of pain.

“Why were you visiting his friend in the apartment?” the Russian shouted as the others picked up the girl and the chair together and set them upright on the floor again.

“I thought Anton was there,” Marina gasped. “I thought he’d come back. I don’t know the man who was there.”

The Russian hit her again, not as hard this time but on her already bruised and reddened face it landed with even greater pain and the girl screamed again.

“You lie,” the Russian said. “We have been watching the apartment. We saw the newcomer arrive and stay there. We’ll get to him soon enough. It seems he also seeks Karminian and calls himself an artist.”

The information one can pick up at keyholes, figuratively speaking, I said to myself. It was more than a little interesting to find out that the Russians were as anxious to get hold of Karminian as we were.

That meant one thing, anyway. If he were dead, they hadn’t been the ones to put him out of business. And if he were only in hiding, was he hiding from the Russians or someone else? Karminian was taking on more intriguing aspects with every passing moment.

Marina’s scream, ear-splitting and curdled with pain, stopped my musings and I looked down to see the Russian had thrust the cattle prod into her navel. He was getting more sadistic in his efforts to get information which Marina didn’t have to give.

We artists hate to see beauty desecrated, I reminded myself, taking one of the two tubes of paint out of my pants pocket.

The balcony led to a narrow flight of stone steps at the far corner of the four-sided overhanging ledge. I unscrewed the cap of the tube and began to squeeze the paint, cerulean blue, along the balcony floor, next to the low side wall.

I worked my way back to the narrow stone steps until I had a long, thin trail of blue paint along one wall of the balcony. The paint was legitimate, acrylic-based colors that any artist could paint with, but Special Effects had also invested them with a secret ingredient.

I moved down onto the first few steps, took out my lighter and ignited one end of the long trail of paint. It began to sputter. It would flare for an instant and then explode. Because of the length of the trail, the explosion wouldn’t be concentrated but still would be strong enough to do what I wanted, which was mainly to create an uproar.

I was at the bottom of the steps, diving into the corner of an L-shaped hallway, out of sight just beyond the door leading to the room where they were with Marina.

The paint exploded and I heard the crash of tile and stones as it did a good enough job apparently of jarring one side of the balcony loose.

The Russians came charging out of the room, shouting instructions at each other. Two of them went dashing into the house, a third started up the stairway. The fourth, the crew-cut one, halted and glanced around suspiciously. A pall of smoke and dust was beginning to roll down from the stairway to the balcony.

I came out of my corner full speed, Hugo in my hand.

The Russian saw me, saw the stiletto in my hand and kicked out with a speed and accuracy that caught me by surprise. His shoe hit my forearm, sending numbing waves of pain up to my shoulder.

I felt Hugo drop from my fingers.

The Russian made his mistake then. He dived for the stiletto. My own foot caught him at the side of the neck. I saw him grab at his neck, fall forward and grow red as he gasped for breath. I could have given him another that would have killed him but every second counted. He’d be more than minutes just trying to find enough breath for action.

I scooped up Hugo, my arm still numb, and ran into the room. Using the blade with my left hand, I shredded the wrist ropes and saw the utter astonishment in Marina’s eyes.

“Grab your dress,” I said.

She reached down and picked it up from the floor. Holding her hand, I headed for the doorway. I heard shouts. The others would be coming down from the balcony in moments. A window had shattered and using my foot to open up a larger hole, we leaped through it and out into the street.

Marina was struggling into her dress on the run. She had just got it on when I yanked her down. “Stay low,” I hissed. We crawled forward along a low stone parapet behind a wall until we reached the corner.

I heard the shouts from the building, heard the sounds of running footsteps. By now they had discovered Marina was gone and were out beating the bushes.

I dropped from the parapet at the corner and reached up to help Marina down when the spotlight turned on, sweeping quickly over the street. It would be on us in minutes and I saw it was a hand-operated job, held by someone standing atop the same parapet we had crawled along.

I couldn’t see the figure behind the glare of the battery powered light but I drew a bead on the spot and fired. It went dark in a clinking of shattered glass.

The old taxi was still there, and we ran for it.

“Get inside,” I told Marina. “I’m chauffeur.” I backed the cab around and sped off. I knew the big, black Mercedes would be coming out searching in minutes, but we’d be safely away by then.

“Where to, lady?” I said cheerily.

“I... I don’t know,” she said. “I’m still shaking.”

“I’d go back to your friend Karminian’s place but I’m almost certain they’ll come looking for us there. Do you think they know where you live?”

“No,” she answered. “They were watching Karminian’s apartment, not mine.”

“Then it’s 9 Avenue Hassan Souktany,” I said.

We were there in no time and I parked the taxi a few blocks from her building. It, too, was a walk-up, but more graceful and larger than Karminian’s and a palace compared to where Aggie Foster lived.

Marina opened the door, and I walked into a living room richly draped in gold and black. A long curved sofa curled around one end of the room, and its black fabric contrasted with the plethora of brightly colored pillows of all sizes and shapes. I looked down to see Marina beside me, gazing up at me.

“Thank you for what you did,” she said. “Excuse me for a moment, and then we can talk about it. I feel dirty and unclean. Make yourself comfortable. In the cabinet there is liquor. Please help yourself.”

She disappeared into an adjoining room, and in moments I heard the sounds of running water.

I fixed a bourbon on the rocks for myself and a Scotch for her and sat down amongst the luxurious, bright pillows. I was sipping my drink when I looked up to see her standing in the doorway, a deep gold robe of silk reaching in a straight line to the floor, dropping from the high points of her breasts. Her hair hung loose below her shoulders and as she walked toward me, I saw her full, upturned breasts move easily and freely beneath the silk robe.

Marina turned down the large overhead light and the softer glow enveloped her delicate, high cheekbones in deepened shadows, heightening the regal, aristocratic bearing of her face. She picked up her Scotch, took a deep pull of it as she stood before me, and then folded herself alongside me, sinking into a pile of cushions.

Somehow, the silk robe never came open, never shifted to show an inch of her body. Only the loose movement of her breasts revealed that she wore nothing beneath the silk.

“Who were those men?” she asked quietly. “They were Russian, I know. Why did they want Anton?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Maybe he owes them money too.”

She smiled.

“Glen,” she said, “that is your story, but I do not believe it. Now I know something else is involved. I wish I knew more. Perhaps then I could help you. And Anton.”

“And Anton,” I said. “Let’s not forget Anton. You just tell me where you think I might find him and you’ll be helping us both.”

She said nothing but her dark, deep orbs studied me. She watched as my gaze traveled around the opulence, the soft sensuality of the room and then paused to linger on her.

“So this is where you had intellectual evenings with Anton?” I mused aloud. I caught the slow smile that played about her lips.

“A waste, to your way of thinking, right?” she smiled. “Why? Lovely surroundings are just as important in the enjoyment of intellectual pursuits.”

“Never said they weren’t,” I answered. “But I don’t separate the mind and the body. I’ve never been an ‘either/or’ man. I can enjoy your mind as well as your body and vice versa. I don’t believe in taking one or the other. I want ’em both.”

“You’re greedy.” she laughed and leaned back.

For the first time the robe came open to reveal the soft swell of her breast, a tantalizing mound for exploring.

I felt my hand move forward involuntarily.

Marina’s eyes were deep, almost black, glistening orbs.

“Maybe I am,” I agreed. “Don’t tell me he never was greedy.”

“Never,” she said. “I told you, we had a very unusual relationship. I often wondered how I could remain so cool and platonic with Anton. I know now that it was he who kept it that way. He made love to me in his own way, with his mind, with music and poetry, with the soft touch of his hand on mine. He never went further than that.”

I kept thinking of Karminian the big drinker, the patron of Fatasha, the devotee of strange and weird sexual pleasures in the medina. This was one hell of a strange cookie, this Karminian.

“You say, you know now that it was Anton who kept it on this level,” I questioned. “Why do you know that now?”

“Because just sitting here I can see it would be impossible with you,” she answered, her eyes twin black coals, glowing with a dark fire.

“You are damned right,” I said.

I leaned forward, took the silk robe at the collar and pulled her to me. I saw her lips part as my mouth moved onto hers, and then I was tasting the sweet honey of her tongue.

She let it play with mine, then withdraw and then come forth again, inviting, tantalizing. Her breath had increased, and now her arms were sliding around my neck.

I felt my hand move onto the soft, smooth skin of her shoulders, my thumb gently pressing in, kneading the skin just beneath her shoulder bones. She tore her lips away and her cheek was against mine.

“No... no,” she gasped. “I... I had forgotten how much I longed for this. But I cannot... no, please.”

I moved my hands down an inch closer to her breasts and heard her draw her breath in sharply. “Why not?” I asked. “Being faithful?”

“Maybe,” she whispered and looked up at me, her eyes asking for understanding.

But, a long time ago, I had learned that understanding is not always compassionate.

“Maybe that’s it,” she said. “Being faithful.”

“To what?” I asked brutally.

I saw the shocked pain flare in her eyes and I reached into the silk robe and seized both lovely, full, pear-shaped breasts.

Marina cried out in anguished ecstasy and threw her head back, eyes closed, still trailing the remnants of her cry into the silent room.

“To what?” I repeated again and rubbed my thumbs over the soft, hardly protruding nipples.

Marina cried out again in half-anguish, half-rapture. It was her last such cry. She reached up and seized my neck, pulling my face down to bury it in her breasts.

I took her breast in my mouth and gently caressed its softness, moving it back and forth under my tongue until Marina was clutching at my back, my shoulders, my neck in a frenzy of desire.

I gently pulled away from her breasts as she gasped in delicious rapture. I took my clothes off slowly, watching her as I did, knowing she gazed at me through half-slit eyes and then, suddenly, she leaped forward to clasp my naked body to her, pressing her face against my abdomen, kissing me with feverish anxiety.

Here was a creature of passion who, in some strange, inverted way, had been able to hold off the roaring volcano that was within her. I was happy to be around for the eruption.

Marina’s long-legged body slid beneath mine, one of the brightly colored pillows supporting the small of her back. She clasped her smooth thighs around my waist and welcomed me with a biting cry of pleasure, a gasp of unsuppressed joy, a cry of desire set free at last.

She moved beneath me, setting her own frenzied rhythm, and I felt the tips of her breasts enlarge and rise up in hunger.

My lips eagerly sought their softness, my tongue tracing gentle paths of pleasure around each eager circle as Marina moaned and murmured and whispered wild words of desire into the night.

Suddenly, I moved from her and for a split second she lay still, her gorgeous body held in suspended animation, and then she exploded against me in a frenzy of hungry passion.

“Oh, no, no,” she gasped. “Oh, God, you can’t stop... oh, no.”

She grabbed at me, pulling me over her, writhing her hips feverishly, and now she was crying little sobs.

When I returned to her she screamed in a glorious mixture of relief and desire, and her hunger was insatiable.

Her mouth found my lips, my chest, as she arched her back, thrusting upward in her feverish desire to enjoy every possible part of me.

I stayed with her this time, moving faster and faster until there were only mountain peaks, each one a little higher than the preceding one, and Marina gasped and cried out in overwhelming pleasure.

I felt her suddenly stiffen, her body grow tight around me and though her lips opened wide there was no sound from her and her deep eyes were in some other world all her own.

Only the quivering stiffness of her body told me what was happening and then, finally, she sighed, a long drawn sigh from the very depths of her innermost being, and she lay there, a limp, spent rag doll, a beautiful rag doll.

I moved beside her, laid my lips against one lovely, upturned breast, and she cradled my head against her.

“It’s been too long,” she whispered, hardly breathing. “And you knew. Somehow, you knew.”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t know the answer, not for certain. Had I known, had I sensed her desires, her needs, in some subconscious way? Or had it been the reverse? Had she sensed, in me, someone with whom all that had been held back could be released?

It had then, for her, been both a surrender and a victory. It was that victory she spoke of later, when she held me close.

“We know so little about each other,” she said. “But this had to be. I knew that from the moment we met.”

Her victory, for her, had been complete but her surrender was equally so, and I knew it in the deep softness of her eyes.

I moved quickly, almost brutally so, knowing that she could no longer hold back.

“Where is Karminian?” I asked softly.

She just shook her head helplessly.

“All right,” I pressed. “Who might know where he is?”

She spoke with her eyes closed, held tightly shut, as though she didn’t want to hear her own words. “There is a man,” she said, “called Rashid the Rif. He lives in the Arab quarter. Anton spoke of having important dealings with him.”

I pressed my lips against one soft, pear-shaped breast.

“It is good you have told me, Marina,” I said, breathing softly against the pink tip. “Believe me.”

She stirred and lifted my head with her hands, gazing deeply into my eyes. “Who are you?” she asked, almost pleadingly.

“A friend,” I answered.

It was true, as far as it went. I would be a friend, and a good friend, so long as it did not conflict with my mission. Friendship, in this business, like love, had its clearly defined limits.