Beneath the dun-colored djellaba that covered him from the top of his dark head to the sandals was the package of material that Henry had procured days before.
The shop Carter sought was on an old street in the new part of the city. It was one that was going through the transition from cheap and run-down to quaint and prosperous.
The street held a few teenage boys on the prowl and a few prostitutes trying to get the boys interested. The traffic was disturbed by a sudden light rain that had just begun to fall from a heavily overcast sky.
Carter moved to within two doors of the shop, and had stepped back into the shadow of a doorway to light a cigarette, when he spotted a patrol car approaching. He pulled the hood of his djellaba up against the rain and slid to a sitting position as the car came abreast.
The eyes of the two policemen combed the street from side to side through the rain-streaked windows. A spotlight flicked on, and Carter tightened himself into a ball and lowered his chin into the robe.
The spotlight swept by, paused, then returned. Carter felt a cold, hard knot forming in his stomach as the glaring light bathed him, shining through his closed eyelids. His breath came in quick gasps. It was common knowledge that the police would stop and sometimes search loiterers in the area for drugs.
With what Carter had concealed under his clothes, there was no way he could stand a search. If the car stopped and they got out, he had already decided that he would have to make a run for it and come back later.
The car's engine muttered throatily as it idled, then the spotlight winked off and the car moved forward again. The cops were evidently reluctant to get out in the rain for what appeared to be a beggar sleeping in a doorway.
Carter uncurled from his crouch and crossed the street to another doorway opposite the building housing the shop. Through the rain he spotted the tiny, darkened mouth of an alley on the far side of the shop. He waited for two cars and a pedestrian to pass, then he moved across the street and into the alley.
All of the first-floor windows were protected by heavy steel bars, and the windows adjacent to the fire escape on the rear of the building had shutters of heavy wire mesh that were locked on the inside.
He climbed up the fire escape to the roof, then scaled over the parapet and walked slowly across the roof, peering around in the dim light. There was a shedlike structure in the middle of the roof, with a door in one side. It was evidently the access to the stairway leading downward, but the door was of heavy metal construction and locked from the inside.
Kneeling in front of the door, Carter opened his djellaba and men his shirt. From around his middle, beneath the shirt, he unwrapped a wormlike rope of magnesium plastic. Dividing it into two equal lengths, he wrapped the protruding door hinges with the plastic and sheltered a match in his hands to light it. It sputtered, caught, then began burning with a glaring white light, illuminating the building with a blinding, flickering glow.
Carter shielded his eyes from the light, looking worriedly around at the adjoining buildings in case someone could spot the intense illumination. No lights showed at any windows, and suddenly the magnesium flickered out.
The door sagged toward him as he edged his fingers into the crack at the top and tugged. He gently slipped it out of the frame and braced himself against the heavy weight. When it was safely lying on the roof, he went down the steps. At the bottom, there was a landing and another door. He froze in his tracks when he saw light coming from around the cracks in the door.
Was the light coming from around the door just a night light?
Carter knelt and put his ear to the door, listening intently. Moments passed, and the only sound was the drumming of his own heart. He turned the knob and pushed. The door opened, and he rolled into the room, doing a 360° turn before coming back to his feet.
The room was empty. A small lamp burned brightly beside a cluttered desk.
Quickly, Carter produced a canvas bag and went through the office. Other than simple personal articles of some value and some cash, very little else went into the bag.
The second floor was more productive. He went through the showcases, taking only the articles of value that would interest a professional thief. Everything on the second floor was factory-made, such as standard rings, necklaces, brooches, and watches.
The first floor was another showroom of locked cases, and a comfortable lounge where clients could enjoy a drink or a buffet while selecting their purchases or ordering a specific item.
Through curtains in the rear he found another, smaller room that appeared to be no more than storage space.
Carter guessed there was more.
Behind a ceiling-high set of crates, he found a trapdoor. From here on he would be flying blind. It only stood to reason that the real goodies were somewhere in the basement. Everything of value in Marrakesh was stored somewhere below street level.
The basement seemed to consist of only a storage room. Then, in the light of his flashlight, Carter noticed a thick bundle of wires in the comer of the stairwell ceiling. Carefully, he traced them. They disappeared through the wall in a corner behind a pile of Bedouin antiques, adjacent to a strong, heavy door not unlike the one he had blown on the roof.
Another rope of magnesium plastic was pressed into service, and two minutes later he was in the goodie vault.
Raw gold, gems, and two trays of antique coins and assorted jewelry went into the bag. Then he pulled a stethoscope from under the djellaba and went to work on the real object of his search: an eighteen-inch Bennington minivault built into the four-by-four concrete section of the wall.
Carter had guessed as much. If the vault-within-a-vault hadn't been a Bennington, he was sure it would be a one-unit, self-contained safe of similar indestructible construction.
It was only the German firm of Bennington that did a large security business in Morocco.
To crack this one would take more magnesium and other chemical explosives than Carter could have carried. And then there would be a good chance that the room would be in shambles, the concrete would be rubble, and the hingeless, seamless tank of the small vault itself would be lying on the floor, completely intact.
Besides, Carter thought as he went to work with the stethoscope and his talented fingers, his aim wasn't to burglarize the safe for the purpose of theft.
It took nearly four hours before he heard the twelfth and final tumbler roll into place with a barely perceptible click. By the time he tugged the door open, his fingers were numb, his senses were raw, and his whole body was bathed in sweat.
Only one sweep across the shiny steel interior and he found what he was looking for amid velvet cases of priceless gems.
The box was made of steel, with a double combination lock. Compared to the safe lock he had just conquered, these two were child's play.
He lifted the lid with bated breath, then sighed in relief.
They were all there, carefully filed and indexed by a master sheet. He didn't know a few of the Russian designations, but most he did.
Carefully, he rigged a light with a special high-intensity bulb above one of the gem trays, and then he began to spread the documents.
He photographed a set at a time and very carefully replaced them in the folder.
The photography took another hour, but the time was worth it.
When he was through, he made sure that he had left no trace that he had been inside the vault proper. When this was done, he relocked the door, reset the timer, and returned to the first floor.
At the rear of the building there was a heavy steel door that gave access to and from the alley. He felt above the door with his fingers until he found the wire connecting the trip to the burglar alarm. With two wire-connected alligator clips, he bypassed the breaker and then attached one end of a large spool of twine to the wire.