The two Rifs returned and tossed something on the concrete in front of the tall one.
I looked at the bloody, grisly object for a moment before realizing it was Rashid’s tongue.
I looked up at Marina, saw her eyes roll upward as she fell into a dead faint. I caught her before she hit the ground.
“We will take these two back to El Ahmid,” the tall one said. “He will find ways to make them tell us where Karminian hides.”
“We don’t know anything about that,” I said. “Neither I nor the girl know.”
The Rif smiled, a slow, nasty smile. “That is why she came here with the money,” he said, sarcasm dripping from his tone. “That is why you interfered and let him escape us.”
“I had my own reasons for that,” I answered, gently slapping Marina’s cheeks. “How did you know we were meeting him here?” I questioned further.
Their sudden appearance still bugged me. I’d seen no signs of them or of being tailed by anyone.
The tall Rif smiled.
“We merely applied the techniques of our mountains to the city,” he said. “We put a man atop the minaret on the top of the Great Mosque. He saw the streets of the city as we see the mountain passes from our lookout points high in the mountains. We saw you escape from the Russians in their big, black car. It was easy to follow your path in the car. When we saw you come to the stadium, park the car and proceed on foot, we converged here.”
I smiled grimly. I’d gotten an object lesson in why they’d successively given the French, British and Spanish a hard time. Not only were their techniques good, but they knew how to adapt them to fit changing conditions, the first rule of military tactics.
“You are an American agent, of course,” the Rif said. “And the girl is your accomplice. Karminian had been working for you.”
“I am an artist,” I said. “The girl knows nothing. She was an old girl friend of Karminian’s.”
I saw the Rif flick his eyes at one of the others who had moved behind me.
Holding Marina in my arms, I tried to turn but the sharp pain exploded in my head, bright lights flashing briefly and then a curtain of blackness.
Chapter 5
I thought they’d turned me into a mummy. I was still alive and they’d mummified me; my thoughts leaped in alarm as consciousness slowly returned. Conscious of being shrouded in yards of fabric, I began to focus my blurred vision and slowly realized that I could see out through a small opening in the material. I tried to move my arms and felt the restricting pressure of wrist bonds.
I was in semi-darkness on the flat of my back, bouncing and jouncing in what was obviously a wagon. I managed to turn my head and saw another shape alongside me, wrapped in a kind of shroud, and I presumed I was similarly encased.
Glancing upward, I saw the wagon was entirely enclosed, and it dawned on me that they were transporting us in a funeral wagon, a wagon used to haul bodies shrouded for transport to burial pyres.
I couldn’t tell if Marina was conscious or not, and I was thinking of perhaps kicking out at her to see when the bouncing suddenly came to a stop. The wagon had halted, and in a few moments I heard the sound of hinges creaking, and the bright glare of sunlight illuminated the interior of the wagon. I felt hands pulling me out of the rear of the wagon, and I murmured to let them know I was awake.
They stood me up and the shroud was ripped from me.
I saw the tall Rif, malevolently watching me, and I looked down at my bound wrists.
“Cut him loose,” he ordered, and one of the others freed me with one deft slice of his curved dagger.
I saw Marina, awake and free of her shroud, also being cut loose.
We were out of Casablanca, halted at the side of a road. It was a hot, dry place, and I saw the horses tied up to the back of the funeral wagon. They had simply used the funeral wagon to get us quietly out of Casablanca. Now, I saw, they were going to transfer us to horseback.
“Suppose I can’t ride,” I said to the tall Rif suddenly.
“Then this will be your first, and last lesson,” he growled.
I got the message.
I glanced at the horses and had to smile. They didn’t miss a bet in their own, subtle ways.
There were four of the powerful, fleet Arabian stallions, one for each of the Rifs, and two short-legged, sturdy but slow mounts. To try escaping on them would be like trying to run from a Maserati with a Volkswagen. They wouldn’t even have to watch us closely.
Sure of themselves, they mounted their Arabians at a short command from the tall Rif and waited as Marina and I climbed onto our horses.
“Don’t look so dejected,” I said to her as we started off after the Rifs. “You’re still alive. We’ll pull out of this.”
It was a piece of reassurance I wished had more substance behind it. I spurred my horse on to gallop up to the tall Rif. He turned at my approach, unperturbed, staring confidently at me.
“Where are you taking us?” I asked. “The Casbah at Tangiers?”
“No,” he said. “That is our official base only. We take you to our operational base, the Casbah built by El Ahmid atop Mount Dersa. He awaits us there.”
I dropped back to ride beside Marina.
Mount Dersa, in the heart of the Rif mountains, where, during the Rif war, Abd-el-Krim commanded his forces that held the city of Tetuan at bay for months.
I was beginning to wonder if this El Ahmid fancied himself another Abd-el-Krim, a leader of another Rif rebellion. I was to find out he fancied himself a lot more than that.
The Rifs set a fast pace though I knew their Arabians were capable of much greater speeds for sustained periods.
I was perspiring heavily under the broiling sun, and I glanced at Marina to see her dress so wet it looked almost as though she’d fallen into a lake with it on.
It clung to her with revealing tightness, outlining every curve of her large breasts, the small pointed tips. It clung provocatively to the long line of her I highs and dipped in a deep V at the abdomen. Her cascade of black hair streamed out behind her and she had assumed a different kind of beauty, a wildness, an untamed abandon.
Marina was part Spanish and part Moroccan she’d told me, and the Spanish blood in her had surfaced so that she seemed to be a wild gypsy from the hills of Andalusia.
I had the flaring desire to pull her from the saddle and make love to her in her wildness, and I knew that if I felt that way, the Rifs must surely have the same thoughts.
But, I had already seen, they were not a band of surly cutthroats but a highly disciplined group. They might think it but they wouldn’t do it.
Marina, her face wet and shiny, rode with a determined, almost angry abandon, and I knew she was trying to force anger to override fear. Until we halted at a zitoun, an olive grove, to water the horses, I thought she might have succeeded. I knew better when she stood beside me and watched the Rifs water their magnificent stallions.
“What’s going to happen to us, Nick?” she said. “Why don’t they just kill us and get it over with if that’s what they intend doing?”
I could have told her that would be too easy. I didn’t though.
She’d have time enough to learn what they had in store. I didn’t know myself, but I had a pretty fair idea it wasn’t a friendly fireside chat.
“They want to ask us some questions, I think,” I told her. I didn’t elaborate on their methods of asking.
The Rifs had finished watering the horses and gestured for us to mount up. The sun was lower in the sky and the rays less burning as we set off again.
I’d checked to make certain the two tubes of paint were still in my back pocket.
The Rifs had searched me, of course, when I was unconscious and decided the paint was harmless enough. They were my sole weapons at the moment, and they had limited uses.