Moz was preparing himself to be furious when he noticed that de Greuze and Major Abbas were more furious still. It was like a card game in which everyone but him knew the rules.
"Give me your bank details," said the Major to Jake. "I'll have the money sent on." They were still discussing the finer points of the deal.
"No." Celia shook her head. "Arrange a dollar bank draft and have it sent to these people." The card she pulled from her leather satchel gave the address of a New York attorney who specialized in handling the more difficult kind of celebrity client. "I'll tell them to expect the money."
Jake only made the grade with that firm because of his family, his musical career to date not being enough to rate him client status. A fact both the attorney and Celia had been careful never to point out.
When Major Abbas made the mistake of looking doubtful Celia told him in painstaking and patronising detail which Marrakchi bank could act as go-between, what kind of commission they would expect and how long it would take to organize. "I'm sure the agent you have in mind can handle it."
If Jake were going to lose the riad and be banished from Marrakech, which effectively was what had just happened, then Celia wasn't about to retire without leaving a few scars.
"So we just leave?" Jake said. He didn't seem to be asking the question of anyone in particular. "And take Moz with us."
"That wasn't what I said," the Major replied, dipping his hand into a pocket and removing a packet of small cigars. Smoke spiralled towards the sky as he looked from Jake to Moz, noticing the similarity of their haircuts, jeans and general slouch. He should have seen it before.
"This boy is under-age," Major Abbas told Jake. "He also lacks a passport. Anyone attempting to take him out of Morocco would be breaking the law. You understand me?"
Jake nodded.
"Good. Were such a thing to happen... It would be very inadvisable for that person to come back to Marrakech again."
Jake assumed that the land agent was in the Major's pay and would organize matters so that Riad al-Razor was sold cheaply to a member of the Major's immediate family. This assumption was untrue. Being unmarried and an only son, the Major had no family.
The agent Major Abbas had in mind was actually a brother of his deputy who would probably sell the house to a cousin of his own. The money would then be split into three sums, with the first and largest going to the American bank mentioned by Celia, a second and smaller amount going into the agent's own account and a third and equivalent sum going to the Major.
Had Celia been Moroccan or even au fait with the etiquette of buying houses in North Africa, there would have been a fourth sum, made by splitting the largest sum two thirds -- one third. The second of those sums would have been declared to the authorities as the price of the riad, becoming liable to any taxes that might be appropriate, and the first would have gone straight into Jake's pocket.
Nobody shook hands when the Major and de Greuze left. Instead Jake stood under the arch of the front door and watched the petite taxi pull away from where it had been parked against the wall of a mosque.
"I reckon we've got till the end of the week," he told Celia. "I'll go buy a VW. You find the kid some new clothes..." And that was when Moz finally realized a deal had been struck and that, at no point, had anyone let him have the slightest say in the matter.
He would be leaving Marrakech with the others. Jake and Celia had known from the beginning that Malika was beyond saving.
"No," said Moz, tears in his eyes. "I won't."
"Won't what?" Celia sounded puzzled.
"I'm not leaving," Moz said. "You can't make me. And it was a lie. I wasn't here. I was with--"
Malika's name was lost in the sound of Jake backhanding the boy across his face, swearing loudly and stamping inside, slamming the front door behind him.
"Fuckwit," said Moz.
Celia sighed. "That wasn't clever," she said. Moz thought she was talking about Jake but he might have been wrong. She might well have been talking about him.
CHAPTER 45
CIA HQ Langley, Monday 9 July [Now]
Paula Zarte shut her office door and then changed her mind. She'd made a point of operating an open-door policy and saw no reason to signal that this might be about to change. In practice, the only people who asked to see her were those she'd have seen anyway.
The difference was previous heads of the CIA had operated a section-heads-only policy and this was obvious and known. Paula had made it clear that anyone in the Agency who felt the need could ask to see her. The end result was the same but she'd acquired a reputation for openness that had reached the Washington Post and done much to cement the belief that things within the Agency had changed.
"Sit," she said, indicating a chair better suited to One Washington Circle or the Mercer in SoHo. Agent Wharton glanced doubtfully at the white leather but did what he was told. He sat on the very edge of the chair and leant forward, with a file of notes on his knee.
"You took Bill Hagsteen to see the President?"
Agent Wharton nodded.
"How did it go?" Paula Zarte watched the young man turn the question round in his head, examining it from every angle.
When he was certain it was safe, Agent Wharton said, "It went well."
"Good." Paula Zarte smiled. "What did they talk about?"
This elicited a much longer silence. "Warren Zevon mostly," Michael Wharton said finally. "About the round-up of musicians playing on his last album. A bit about John Hyatt..."
Paula Zarte's office looked out onto a lawn set with sprinklers and a high-tech security system that relied on everything from pressure pads across paths to infrared sensors and directional mikes. A very beautiful and meticulously tended lawn, it had to be mown twice a week with a hand mower because anything more sophisticated might upset the security system.
Standing up from her desk, Paula Zarte went across to the window and looked down at two men walking across the grass. They were both nu-school CIA, thin and fit, probably teetotal and dressed like fashion plates in something understated but expensive.
They made her feel antique.
Her life had improved in the last few weeks. Mike had stopped coming home at midnight and was muttering about maybe taking the kids to Orlando for Christmas. He'd hate the place and so, she imagined, would the kids, being precisely the wrong age. She was pleased all the same.
They weren't back to sex yet, although Paula could see that happening. Maybe they should be the ones to go to Orlando and leave the kids with her mother. The kids would probably prefer that anyway.
Paula's Puerto Rican bodyguard was gone, fast-tracked to the next level and reassigned to San Francisco. Doubt and the faintest trace of bitterness had filled Felicia's eyes when Paula described this as a well-deserved promotion, but the new job was a good one and what else could Paula do?
Felicia had traced Mike to a hotel in Baltimore and found out far more than Paula now wanted her to know. Of course, Paula had been the one who'd asked Felicia to do it. And it had been the President's offer of an ambassadorship in Central America that brought Mike to heel. He wasn't stupid, he knew exactly what that meant.
"They talked about Warren Zevon?" Paula said over her shoulder, watching the two young agents close an outside door behind them. She was due to address their section head shortly. As yet she had no idea what to tell him.
"Mostly... The President also wanted to know about something called the Stiff Tour."
"The Stiff what?"