The Casbah Killers

Chapter 7

I identified myself and got a hot shower and a suit of clothes as I waited for the call to Hawk to be put through. Things had happened as I’d surmised, I found out.

Marina had to talk fast to make her story believed, but the code signal I’d given her did the trick. On the phone, Hawk filled me in on the details.

“From the girl’s story,” his voice crackled over the phone, “I knew you were up the creek without a paddle. The Moroccan government had the proper forces to cope with the situation but not the transportation. We had the means of transportation but not the forces, so we put our heads together and you saw the results. I don’t mind telling you I had to talk fast to convince then I wasn’t on LSD and dreaming the whole thing up.”

“I wish you had,” I answered. “It was a puzzler with a very nasty kicker.”

“By the way, we retrieved Hugo and Wilhelmina from the Russians you scattered around Casablanca,” he said. “Take a day off, N3. Relax and enjoy the sun there.”

“Your generosity overwhelms me once again,” I said. “So much so that I’m going to take the whole damn week off.”

“Who is she?” Hawk asked. “The girl who contacted us?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve got to cancel an insurance policy.”

“Are you all right, N3?” Hawk said, sudden concern in his voice. “Did you say something about an insurance policy?”

“I’ll explain when I see you,” I grinned and hung up.

As I walked out of the Consulate I saw a tall, long-limbed figure move toward me, her hair now beautifully combed and in place, once again the same delicate yet sensual creature I’d first met that night at Karminian’s apartment. Her arm crept into mine and her lips brushed my cheek.

“Oh, Nick,” she said. “You don’t know what hell it was waiting and wondering if you’d come back alive.”

“I’ve got to thank you for that, or at least for part of it,” I said.

“I kept remembering what you’d said when I left,” she murmured. “About us being a team, a permanent team.”

I grimaced inwardly and looked at those deep, dark eyes.

Her dress, soft beige with a deep slit at the neck, outlined the round provocative beauty of her breasts.

“About what I said then, Marina,” I began. “I want to talk to you about that.”

“Not here, Nick,” she said, pressing her finger to my lips. “Let us go back to Casablanca, to my place. I would like it better there.”

I shrugged. Maybe it would be better that way. Maybe I could make up for what I was going to have to tell her. Nobody likes being a bastard, even when they know they’ve been one in a good cause.

We rode back to Casablanca in an army car the Moroccan government put at my disposal as a gesture of gratitude. When we reached her place she opened the door and spun into my arms, her eyes bright and glistening.

I wanted to make love to her, but that would only be compounding things, adding insult to injury. God, if only she weren’t so damned desirable.

We’d made small talk all the way back from Tangiers, as if both of us were avoiding the issue.

I knew I sure as hell was, but I also knew that I couldn’t put it off indefinitely.

“Marina,” I began. “About what I said in the mountains.”

I never got more than that out when the sharp sound of a door being kicked open made me spin around. I whirled to see Karminian coming out of the bedroom, disheveled, gaunt and red-eyed with a big .357 Magnum in his hand.

“I knew you’d come back sometime,” he said to Marina. “I didn’t expect you’d come back with him.”

“Anton,” she said, starting for him. “Oh, it’s good to see you. You’re alive, thank God.”

He laughed harshly. “Traitor... bitch,” he shot out at her. “Liar. Daughter of the devil. I live but no thanks to you.”

“Now, hold on, pal,” I said slowly, watching the gun in his hand stay trained on Marina’s abdomen. “She was trying to help you. In fact, I talked her into it.”

He swung the gun on me. “Then it is fitting you both die together,” he said. “I came here and waited to kill her. Now you can die with her.”

“Anton,” Marina said. “Please listen to me. I was only doing what was best for you. I wasn’t betraying you.”

He snarled at her again, an oath in Armenian, this time.

I sized it up quickly.

He’d flipped his wig. It probably hadn’t taken too much to do it. Based on what Marina had told me of their relationship, he had a weird approach to women anyway. It didn’t take much to convince him that she was a traitor, a creature of evil.

He was a strange one, as I’d told her once before, an introverted ascetic, and if I knew the type he was an egomaniac. They were always certain of their superiority because of their spiritual approach to life.

If I was going to stop that cannon in his hand from going off I’d have to reach him in that way.

“There’s no sense in trying to fool him, Marina,” I said. “He knows we lie. I think you’d better ask his forgiveness.”

Marina shot me a frowning glance but this time she caught my meaning and turned to Karminian.

“I’d get on my knees, Marina,” I said. “You need to beg for his forgiveness.”

Marina moved toward him and dropped to her knees, her head bowed contritely. “Can you forgive me, Anton?” she asked.

I watched him, waiting, as he looked down at her with the god-like severity of the just judging the unjust.

“I can forgive you, Marina,” he said. “But will the Lord?”

She raised her eyes and looked up at him. “Let me feel the touch of your hand on my head, Anton,” she said. She was doing a great job.

He half-smiled in merciful kindness. He shifted the Magnum to his left hand and reached out to touch her head. It was all the moment I needed.

I dived and grabbed his gun. The cannon went off in my ear, but I had him against the wall, pounding his head on the baseboard. I heard the clatter as the gun fell to the floor from his hand. I crossed a hard right, and he lay still.

Picking up the gun, I dialed the police, and we waited till they collected him. I told them to call the Army and turn him over to them. When they’d cleared out, Marina came over to me again, her arms encircling my neck.

After the way she’d handled Karminian, I felt even more indebted to her and more of a bastard. There would be no easy way but to plunge in.

“I’ve got to straighten something out with you,” I said. “About what I said about our being a permanent team.”

“I’ve not thought of anything else since you said it, Nick,” she smiled.

Dammit to hell, I groaned. Why do they always have to make it more difficult

“Look, honey,” I tried again. “It would be great, but it can’t work out. Not now, not for me. I said it to you then because I... well, I felt I had to. I didn’t mean it. I’m being honest about it, Marina. I didn’t mean it.”

She looked at me and pursed her lips. Suddenly she was laughing, a deep, throaty, rich laugh.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“You,” she said. “I know you didn’t mean it. I knew it then. It’s not in character with you, Nick. Maybe you might have fooled some girls but not me.”

I recalled how damned perceptive she’d been when I first met her. I felt myself getting a little annoyed at the way she laughed at me.

“You weren’t so damned smart when I told you to play cards right with El Ahmid,” I said. “You believed me then. You accused me of doing anything to save my own neck.”

“That’s right,” she said. “I believed you because that was in character. You would do anything to save your own neck if saving your neck meant completing your mission. You would bargain me, or anyone else away, if it had to be done for the sake of your objective. Of course I believed you then.”

I looked at her.

She was laughing at me again, her deep eyes dancing pools.

“Then why’d you come back here with me?” I asked.

“Because I wanted you to stay in character,” she said, her eyes twinkling.

She came over to me and slid her hand inside my shirt. Her fingers were soft messengers of desire and her mouth, open and eager, found mine. She had my shirt open and her hand worked at my belt buckle.

I lifted her up and carried her into the bedroom.

“I’ll stay in character,” I promised her, with a tinge of savagery creeping into my voice.

Marina had her dress off and her body pressed against mine. She was filled with desire, once again, but now the burst-dam pent-up desperation was gone. It had been replaced by a sensuous rapture all its own, a gliding, smooth, magnificent body that set its own rhythms and made its own time.

Marina held my head down to her breasts and cried out in ecstasy as my lips found their soft tips. She thrust upward until it seemed she wanted all of her firm, creamy breasts to be held in my mouth.

I caressed her with my hands, with my lips, with my tongue, and she was a woman transported to another world.

We made love slowly, gently, and then with feverish desire but never harshly, never crudely.

Marina hadn’t a crude bone in her body, but then, all of a sudden, she changed.

I’d been stroking her very being in increasing rhythm and she had lain moaning and gasping, and then suddenly she flung her body upward, seized my hand and held it to her and her lips turned back in a wild smile and I saw the wild gypsy creature I’d ridden beside through the Rif mountains.

“Come to me, Nick,” she half-screamed. “Come to me.”

I rolled my body on hers, and she seized my shoulder in her teeth. It was a pain of pleasure and her cries were protests of ecstasy.

The day turned into night, and our bodies finally lay side by side, spent, empty of physical strength but filled with the powers of the senses.

Marina’s breasts rested on my chest and she looked up at me.

“When it’s like this,” she said, “who cares if it’s permanent?”

It was a good question. I made a note to remember it for future use.