"Fifty dollars," he said.
It was an incredible sum in a city where an entire family could work for a month and earn nowhere near that.
"Half now," said Hassan, "and half later." Pulling a small cigarillo from a leather case, he waited for Idries to produce a lighter. It was brass overlaid with chrome, the name of some Essaouria nightclub in enamel along one side. "We can meet at Café Lux afterwards."
"After what?" Malika demanded.
"After you deliver this." Hassan lifted a plastic bag onto the café table. "I'm glad you came," he added, sounding almost sincere. "I would have been very unhappy if you hadn't."
"Tough shit," said Malika, but she said this under her breath.
"What's in it?" That was Moz.
Idries snorted. "You don't want to know."
"We do," said Malika, "don't we?" She looked at Moz, who scowled, although it was at Hassan for raising his eyebrows.
"Anyway," Idries said. "Kif isn't drugs." He sounded amused at the idea. "And you don't have to go far."
"Where?" said Moz and Hassan named a café on Rue Arabe about fifteen minutes south of where they sat.
"Malika can be your sister," Idries suggested. His grin when he said this was less than kind.
"Not me," Malika said. "He wants to take it, he can take it..." There was a scrape as she pushed back her chair. "I'm going home."
"You can keep all the money," said Moz, her gaze stripping all the bravado from his offer. "Please," Moz added.
Malika sighed. "Who do we ask for?"
"You don't ask for anyone," said Hassan. "You leave this bag under a table at the back, near the left-hand corner." He held up his left hand, so they both understood which one he meant. "A friend will collect it after you're gone."
"And if someone's using the table?"
"The table will be free," Hassan said. He sounded very certain about this...
Malika carried the plastic bag in one hand, swinging it gently so it looked like shopping. And they talked as they walked, about the things Malika and Moz always talked about: the Mellah, Malika's mother, how weird it must be to have a normal family like Hassan's.
Somewhere after the Church of St. Anne and before the green wrought-iron railings and neat flowerbeds of the Jardin de Hartai they passed two police cars parked in a side street outside a half-built hotel, windows down, their occupants listening to what sounded like static on a radio.
Café Impérial was where Hassan said it would be, between two of the new hotels and backing onto a slightly tatty French-built office block, and the table was empty. "I'll do it," Malika said. "They'll notice you."
No one stopped her from entering and few noticed when she left. No one came to collect the bag. The next person to use the table kicked it under a bench. He was still sitting there when it exploded.
"I see," said Petra Mayer. In front of her, fanned out on Prisoner Zero's floor, were the contents of the Marrakchi police file. The worst of the Cimetière Européen crime-scene photographs showed an adolescent girl, the marks of a swollen ligature around her neck. Slash marks on the torso had been matched to a lock knife found at the scene. The fingerprints on the handle of the knife were those of the man in front of her.
Petra Mayer reread the arrest warrant, although she already knew it by heart. It charged Marzaq al-Turq with the rape and murder of Malika, daughter of Sidi ould Kasim.
"And the knife was the one you'd used to cut her ropes. That's why your fingerprints are on it."
"The Major's knife," Prisoner Zero said. "Not that it makes any difference. I still killed her."
Petra Mayer had to agree. "You know," she said, looking at the file. "I can think of several good reasons why it might be better for all of us if you remained Jake."
CHAPTER 54
Lampedusa, Wednesday 11 July [Now]
Stubbing out her cigarette, Petra Mayer looked round the room that now made do as Prisoner Zero's cell. She'd been talking since noon and getting nowhere.
"Look," she said, "let's go back to basics. There's been a forty-eight-hour stay of execution and the President agrees to meet. Okay?"
She put a neatly printed appeal for clemency in front of Prisoner Zero and offered him a pen. All the man had to do was sign the thing.
"Jake," Professor Mayer said crossly. "You've got what you wanted, all right? He's going to fly across to inspect the USS Harry S. Truman and while he's over here he'll come and talk to you, I promise."
That the President also wanted this meeting Petra Mayer left aside. Gene Newman had given her only two instructions: proceed on the basis that Prisoner Zero was Jake Razor and find out why the man needed to talk to him. The darkness thought it would be a good idea did not constitute a reason.
Petra Mayer knew exactly why the President intended to pardon Prisoner Zero. He needed Europe on his side in his refusal to sign a joint space accord with China until Beijing sorted out its human rights issues.
Sort out the human rights and he'd sign off billions of dollars for a joint mission into space. Refuse, and Beijing could go it alone. As if that was going to happen... It was a tricky position to take and "Killing Einstein," as the First Lady now billed the Prisoner Zero problem, was not going to help impress Europe.
"Did you hear what I said?"
Nodding, the prisoner leant forward to pick up Professor Mayer's pen, flipped over the appeal for clemency and began to sketch a squat tower on the back.
"Concentrate," Petra Mayer suggested.
Dark eyes looked up from the paper. "Believe me," said Prisoner Zero. "I'm trying to."
On her chair in the corner, Katie Petrov scrawled a note in her book, ripped out the page as quietly as possible and stood up to pass it to Professor Mayer. Reassurance?
"He's really coming," Petra Mayer promised. "And he really wants to talk to you, but first you have to sign the paper."
"And he'll listen?"
"Gene Newman always listens." Professor Mayer was telling the truth. It was one of the President's trademarks, like his arm around the shoulder of whichever dignitary was walking beside him and his oh-so-sincere double-fisted handshake. Whether he'd pay serious attention to what Prisoner Zero had to say was another matter although chances were he might. Gene Newman could be weird like that.
"This is what you want, right?" said Petra Mayer. "To meet the President?"
Prisoner Zero shook his head. "It's what the darkness wants."
Returning to his drawing, the prisoner quickly sketched a mulberry bush, shaded in some background and added an arch, then a man standing in it. After that, Prisoner Zero began filling in tiles on a temple roof.
"Tell me," he asked suddenly, "why now?"
They all knew the answer to that. With thirty-six hours to go the President had been the one to blink first. The stay of execution was proof of that.
"Because," said Petra Mayer, "now's the right time."
And Katie Petrov found herself wondering if her old tutor even half believed this. There was no correct time for the US President to shake hands with his would-be assassin. A substantial slice of home opinion was still holding firm on this.
"But if you don't sign, then we'll have to call the whole visit off."
Prisoner Zero shrugged.
Either the man was a brilliant actor, Katie Petrov decided, or his demand to see the President was as much a part of his dementia as the self-starvation, earlier filth and his utter refusal to contemplate that his precious darkness might not exist.
"Sign the appeal," Petra Mayer said.