“What does that mean?” she asked genuinely.
I smiled.
“It means he was a sensual man, a lover of sexual pleasures, a big man with women,” I answered.
Marina was frowning and her low, soft voice was almost indignant as she replied. “Ridiculous,” she said. “He was an almost shy man, a man of the intellect not the body. That was the one...” She cut herself off and I grinned.
“Finish what you were going to say,” I said. Her eyes narrowed.
“It was nothing,” she answered.
“You were going to say it was the one missing thing in your relationship,” I grinned.
She looked at me, her face set and beautifully composed. Only the flare of dark fire in her eyes told me I’d hit home.
“I hope I never get that intellectual,” I grinned.
“You won’t,” she said with some asperity. “Anton could appreciate a woman’s mind and sensitivity.”
“So can I, honey,” I said. “But not at the expense of ignoring the rest of her, and what you have just shouldn’t be ignored.”
She looked at me for a long moment and then laughed, a deep-throated, musical laugh, muted bells. “I could like you,” she said. “You’re so different from Anton.”
I almost said that Anton was apparently pretty different all by himself, but she got up and started for the door.
She knew more than she’d revealed to me, I was certain, but that wasn’t the only reason I didn’t want her to go. Her eyes had held moments of hesitation, of holding back, and I wanted to know what she knew.
“Must you leave?” I said. “You’re a very beautiful woman. I really wish you’d stay.”
Her glance at me was veiled, but the veil didn’t completely hide the interest in her eyes.
“Perhaps we’ll be talking again,” she said.
“You can count on it,” I said. “And stop holding back. Help me find your friend Anton, and you’ll be doing him a great favor.”
She paused at the door and searched my eyes. “I am at 9 Avenue Hassan Souktany,” she said. “I will, as you Americans say, sleep on it.”
I watched her walk off, her rear sinuously moving, ungirdled, inviting. I wondered, fleetingly, if beautiful women realized how easily they inflamed and excited and I knew the answer almost as soon as I’d had the thought. Yes. They knew it. They damned well knew it.
I closed the door and smiled to myself. Karminian had more than conflicting personalities; his taste in women was equally far apart.
I wondered if he were one of those men who assumed a completely different personality with different women, a man in whom different women brought out different things. I’d known that to happen, though not to such extremes as with Karminian. I also wondered if I were being lied to and by whom.
Aggie Foster’s description of the man had been echoed by the rug dealer and by Fatasha with her nymphets. Marina and the barkeep at the Chez Caliph knew a very different Karminian.
The scream cut into my musings like a knife into soft butter. It was Marina’s voice, the velvet cover tom off by terror.
I flung open the door, paused to grab two tubes of paint from my paint box, and raced down the flight of steps. I was just in time to see two burley men throw her into the back of a long, black Mercedes 600 Pullman limousine.
One shot a glance at me and I saw his square, crew-cut, thick-necked head, small blue eyes in a beefy face that might as well have been stamped MADE IN RUSSIA.
I also caught the glint of lamplight on blue gun metal and I dove down and to the side. The slug tore past my head and into the wood of the doorway, sending big splinters flying. It must have been at least a .44 Magnum with a 240 grain slug.
I got up to see the big, black Mercedes 600 pull around the corner and I ran into the street and hailed a taxi.
“Follow him,” I yelled, pointing to the twin dots of red disappearing around the corner. The cab was an old London Austin taxi and the driver a reluctant dragon. The Mercedes was pulling away fast and my man was more interested in keeping his fez on than really hitting it up.
“Pull over!” I yelled as we rounded a corner. He stopped, I ran out and yanked him from the driver’s seat.
“Moukkadem,” I yelled at him which meant Government Agent, and I stepped on the throttle. “Allah will bless you,” I tossed back at his surprised form sitting on the street.
I gunned the cab, putting my foot almost through the floorboards. I took the next turn on two wheels, invoking Baraka, divine protection. The Casablanca streets were fairly deserted at that hour and under my leaden foot the old taxi stayed with the Mercedes, at least. I really didn’t want to gain anyway, preferring to stay back enough to just barely keep them in sight.
Finally, I saw the big, black car turn into a street and heard the sound of tires squealing to a halt. I pulled up alongside the curb and got out on the run. I stayed alongside a stone wall until I reached the corner and saw the Mercedes backing out. Only one man was inside it now, driving it away.
I let him pull off and then hurried to the entranceway of a typical, ornately decorated Moroccan house. I saw lights flicking on inside and looked around for a way in. It was easy enough. Low-hanging cross-bars formed part of the entranceway roof. I leaped up, caught an arm around one and pulled myself up onto a small rooftop.
A narrow ledge led to a large, arched window and I crawled along it, moving slowly on the precarious edge. The window opened easily at my touch and I crawled into the house, pausing inside to let my eyes grow accustomed to the darkness. The room was empty but through an open archway I saw lights and I heard voices from the floor below.
I moved on the balls of my feet, noiselessly, and was grateful for the tiled, Moroccan floor. I went through the archway into a corridor and now the voices were louder, angrier. I heard the sound of a slap followed by a short scream and then a long, pain-filled cry.
A flight of steps beckoned and I went down them, moving cautiously. Marina screamed again and I found myself on a narrow balcony that ran around the four sides of a room which looked down onto the room below it.
There, Marina was seated on a straight-backed chair, wearing only black panties and a loose black bra, surrounded by four Russians, one of them the crew-cut, beefy-faced man. Marina’s breasts, upturned, full, magnificent, pushed forward as her hands were bound behind the back of the chair.
One of the Russians had a cattle prod, I saw, and he handed it to the crew-cut one.
“Here, Estan, you take it,” he said.
Marina’s head was forward and the one called Estan pulled her back by the hair roughly.
I saw the glistening shine of tears on her face.
“Where is Karminian?” the one called Estan asked, his accent rough and Russian. The other three carbon copies stood by, drinking in the girl’s magnificence.
I felt my hands open and close, itching to get at their burly, stolid necks.
Marina, in bra and panties before these thugs, was like a precious painting before a herd of swine.
“Where is he?” the Russian shouted again. He pulled the girl’s head back hard and I saw her breasts now fill the loose bra as she arched backward and cried out in pain.
“I don’t know, I tell you,” she gasped.
“Keep lying and we’ll really start on you,” Estan said. “You haven’t seen anything yet.” He drew back his arm and slapped her across the face with a tremendous blow.
Marina and the chair toppled over sideways and I heard her broken cry of pain.
“Why were you visiting his friend in the apartment?” the Russian shouted as the others picked up the girl and the chair together and set them upright on the floor again.
“I thought Anton was there,” Marina gasped. “I thought he’d come back. I don’t know the man who was there.”