"Wait..." The woman was standing in front of a stall.
"We haven't got time!" Jake's voice was impatient.
"Yes, we have," Celia said. "Besides, I want to look at this." In her hand was a belt made from discs of leather laced in a row. Circles cut from hubcaps and beaten into a traditional Berber pattern had been stitched to each disc, their centres augmented with a five-peseta coin from the Spanish territories, each coin hammered flat and welded in place.
"They're amazing. Ask him how much... Go on." The woman was talking to him, Moz realized.
"Ssalamu 'lekum."
"Ssalamu 'lekum."
Civilities done, Moz pointed to the belt Celia held. "Bshhal?"
"Khamsa ú 'ashren."
The boy almost choked. "Twenty-five dirham," he told the woman, who reached into her leather satchel for a purse. "It's way too much," Moz said hastily. "Offer five."
"Five?"
"Khamsa," Moz said, turning back to the stallholder.
"Ashrin."
"He says twenty."
"Okay."
"La." Moz shook his head. "Ghali bezzaf. Akhir Taman shhal?"
The man scowled at the boy and told him to tell the foreigner how good the work was, how fine the leather, the quality of the silver used to make the circles and the fact that they were real Spanish five-peseta pieces. "Akhir ttaman dyali huwa hada." A shrug closed the conversation. A shrug and a quick spread of the hands, universal gesture for what more can I say?
"He says twenty is his best price."
"That's fine," Celia said.
"No, it's not," Moz said. "Walk away... that way," he added, "towards the other side of the square."
"But I want--"
"Do it," Jake said. He might have been talking to Celia but he was looking at Moz and for the first time there was a smile on his face, albeit sour. "Go on," he told Celia. "Walk away. Isn't that what you do best?"
The stallholder sent a boy after them with the belt. Although he waited until they had actually entered a side alley.
"Fifteen," he told Moz.
"Nine."
"Fifteen."
The boy and Moz looked at each other. The kid was about eleven, Arab rather than Berber, small for his age and worried. Any smiles from his father were reserved for the customers, Moz could see that in the boy's eyes.
"Twelve," Moz suggested. It was an outrageous price for a belt, at least it seemed so to him. Very reluctantly, the boy nodded.
"Sixteen," Moz told the woman. He took the money from a purse she handed him, one note and six coins, counting the dirham carefully into his own palm. While Celia was busy putting the purse back into her satchel, Moz turned to the boy and put the ten and two coins into his hand.
"That's for the belt," he said. Equally quickly, he pocketed two coins for himself and gave the final two to the boy. "Yours," he said. "The price we agreed for the belt was twelve. Those are for you to keep."
"Thank you," said the boy, hand over his own heart.
"Bessalama."
"M'a ssalama." Returning the peace, the boy trotted back to his stall, a hand-me-down jellaba dragging behind him in the dirt.
"What was all that about?" Jake asked.
"All what?"
"The talking."
"We were saying goodbye."
"What?" Jake snorted. "You telling me everyone in Morocco is that polite?"
"I don't know everyone in Morocco," Moz said, reasonably. "But most people in Marrakech have manners."
Celia smiled at the boy still laden with Jake's rucksack. She found it hard to guess his age because everybody in the city seemed so small, but she imagined it was around fourteen, maybe a little older. She had a brother that age, away at school.
"You've insulted him," she said, transferring her gaze to Jake.
"Insulted him?"
"Yeah." Celia nodded. "You know. What you do best. You need to apologize."
For a moment it seemed like Jake might refuse, then he nodded grudgingly. "I can be a prick sometimes," he said.
Celia nodded.
"You know..." Jake Razor looked at the boy, face thoughtful. "Maybe you can help me."
"If I can," said Moz.
"You know where I can get some dope?"
"Kif?"
"Yeah." Jake laughed. "That's the man. You can get me dope?"
The answer was no but Moz nodded. "Of course," he said, making his voice slur like Jake's own. "Give me an hour."
CHAPTER 24
Lampedusa, Tuesday 3 July [Now]
The fact the Colonel could even name Pierre de Fermat surprised Dr. Petrov, that he could recognize proof of the mathematician's last theorem she found so staggering that she banished the thought from her mind. Something to be processed later, along with an unguarded comment he'd made while he was briefing her on their way to the weights room.
"You know why I got this gig?"
He didn't seem like a man who'd use "gig" in that context. But then he didn't seem like someone who'd ask that kind of question.
"Because of your record?" Katie had Googled him before leaving New York. Those ribbons on his dress uniform meant something. Mostly that he'd taken casualties and held his ground in some of the world's worst shitholes while other units were going to pieces.
"I'm black."
She looked at him then. A bull-necked man with cropped hair turning grey at the edges, flat eyes and a hard smile. He scared her and looking at him Katie wondered if he ever scared himself.
"I don't get it," Katie said.
"What's to get?" said the Colonel. "I'm black and so's he."
Katie glanced at Prisoner Zero and then raised her eyebrows. Sure, the prisoner had olive skin but half the men on the island were darker than this.
"He's not--" she began to say.
Colonel Borgenicht held up one hand, cutting dead her protests. "He is to the Pentagon and the Secretary of State."
The only equation Katie had been able to recognize smeared into the shit of Prisoner Zero's cage was E=MC². And if she was honest, Katie only recognized this because a boyfriend had bought her the T-shirt in her first year at Columbia.
"You want to tell me why you're doing this?"
The naked man didn't even bother to shake his head, just glared through the mesh with flat, light-swallowing eyes. Stubble now grew across his jaw and scalp, making him look like an off-colour recruit for the Aryan Brotherhood, all sneer and crudely cut tattoos.
Katie felt like calling for a marine doctor and demanding that Prisoner Zero's blood be tested. Only this would simultaneously compromise her integrity and independence. The first, by relying on a medical opinion she knew to be partisan. The second... Well, the second was obvious. Katie could imagine Colonel Borgenicht's response on being told that Katie Petrov believed the prisoner was being kept drugged.
That she might care what the Colonel thought was an interesting notion.
"Get me a local doctor." Katie tossed the order over her shoulder, then turned back to Prisoner Zero as if it never occurred to her a suit from the Pentagon might not do as he was told.
"We've got a doctor."
"I want a second opinion."
"On what?"
Katie did her own version of flat-eye. "His physical state," she said.