Benjamin and Latifa are installed in the lobby, where they can move quickly from the front of the building to the back if they need to. Although we all know they won’t need to. Not for a while, anyway.
The police have turned up. First in cars, then in jeeps, now by the truckload. They are scattered around outside in tight shirts, yelling and moving vehicles, and they haven’t yet decided whether to walk nonchalantly across the street, or scuttle across with their heads dipped low to avoid sniper fire. They can probably see Bernhard on the roof, but they don’t yet know who he is, or what he’s doing there.
Francisco and I are in the consul’s office.
We have a total of eight prisoners here - five men and three women, bound together with Bernhard’s job-lot of police handcuffs - and we have asked them if they wouldn’t mind sitting on the very impressive Kelim rug. If any of them moves off the rug, we have explained, they do it at the risk of being shot dead by Francisco or myself, with the help of a pair of Steyr AUG sub-machine guns that we cleverly remembered to bring with us.
The only exception we have made is for the consul himself, because we are not animals - we have an awareness of rank and protocol, and we don’t want to make an important man sit cross-legged on the floor - and anyway, he needs to be able to speak on the phone.
Benjamin has been playing with the telephone exchange, and has promised us that any call, to any number in the building, will come through to this office.
So Mr James Beamon, being the duly appointed representative of the United States government in Casablanca, second in command on Moroccan soil only to the ambassador in Rabat, is sitting at his desk now, staring at Francisco with a look of cool appraisal.
Beamon, as we know well from our researches, is a career diplomat. He is not the retired shoe-salesman you might expect to find in such a post - a man who has given fifty million dollars to the President’s election campaign fund, and been rewarded with a big desk and three hundred free lunches a year. Beamon is in his late-fifties, tall and heavily built, and he has a very quick brain. He will handle this situation well and wisely.
Which is exactly what we want.
‘What about the rest-room?’ Beamon says.
‘One person, every half an hour,’ says Francisco. ‘You decide the order among yourselves, you go with one of us, you do not lock the door.’ Francisco moves to the window and looks out into the street. He raises a pair of binoculars to his eyes.
I look at my watch.Ten forty-one.
They will come at dawn, I think to myself. The way attackers have done since attacking was first invented. Dawn. When we’re tired, hungry, bored, scared.
They will come at dawn, and they will come in from the east, with a low sun behind them.
Ateleven twenty, the consul had his first call.
WafiqHassan, Inspector of Police, introduced himself to Francisco, then said hello to Beamon. He had nothing specific to relate, except that he hoped everybody would act with good sense, and that this whole thing could be sorted out without any trouble. Francisco said afterwards that he spoke good English, and Beamon said he’d been to Hassan’s house for dinner two nights ago. The two of them had talked about how quietCasablanca was.
Ateleven forty, it was the press. Sorry to bother us, obviously, but did we have a statement to make? Francisco spelt his name, twice, and said we would be delivering a written statement to a representative of CNN, just as soon as they got here.
At five to twelve, the phone rang again. Beamon answered it and said he couldn’t talk just at the moment, would it be possible to call back tomorrow, or maybe the day after? Francisco took the receiver from him and listened for a moment, and then burst out laughing at the tourist fromNorth Carolina, who wanted to know whether the consulate could guarantee the drinking water in the Regency Hotel.
Even Beamon smiled at that.
Attwo fifteen, they sent us lunch. A stew of mutton and vegetables, with a vast pot of couscous. Benjamin collected it from the front steps, while Latifa nervously waved her Uzi back and forth in the doorway.
Cyrus found some paper plates somewhere, but no cutlery, so we sat and let the food cool, before scooping it up with our fingers.
It was very nice, considering.
Atten past three, we heard the trucks starting to move, and Francisco ran to the window.
The two of us watched as police drivers revved and ground gears, shunting backwards and forwards in ten-point turns. ‘Why are they moving?’ said Francisco, squinting through the binoculars.
I shrugged. ‘Traffic warden?’ He looked at me angrily.
‘Fuck, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It’s something to do. Maybe they want to make some noise while they dig a tunnel. Nothing we can do about it.’
Francisco chewed his lip for a second, and then moved to the desk. He picked up the phone and dialled the lobby. Latifa must have answered.
‘Lat, stay ready,’ said Francisco. ‘You hear anything, see anything, call me.’
He slammed the phone down, a little too hard.
You were never as cool as you pretended, I thought.
Byfour o’clock the phone had started to get very busy, with Moroccans and Americans ringing at five minute intervals, and always demanding to speak to someone other than the person who’d answered.
Francisco decided it was time to switch us round, so he called Cyrus and Benjamin up to the first floor, and I went down to join Latifa.
She was standing in the middle of the hall, peering through the windows and hopping from foot to foot, throwing the baby Uzi from hand to hand.
‘What’s the matter?’ I said. ‘You want to take a piss?’
She looked at me and nodded, and I told her to go and do it, and not worry so much.
‘Sun’s going down,’ said Latifa, half a packet of cigarettes later.
I looked at my watch, then out through the rear windows, and sure enough, there was that falling sun, that rising night. ‘Yeah,’ I said.
Latifastarted adjusting her hair, using the reflection from the glass window at the reception desk.
‘I’m going outside,’ I said. She looked round, startled. ‘What? You crazy?’
‘I just want to take a look, that’s all.’
‘Look at what?’ said Latifa, and I could see she was furious with me, as if I really was deserting her for good. ‘Bernhard’s on the roof, he can see better than anybody. What you want to go outside for?’
I sucked at my teeth for a moment, and checked my watch again.
‘That tree’s bothering me,’ I said.
‘You want to look at a fucking tree?’ said Latifa. ‘Branches go over the wall. I just want to take a look.’
She came to my shoulder and peered out through the window. The sprinkler was still going.
‘Which tree?’
‘That one there,’ I said. ‘The monkey-puzzle tree.’ Ten minutes past five.
The sun about half-way through its descent.
Latifawas sitting at the foot of the main staircase, scuffing the marble floor with her boot and toying with the Uzi.
I looked at her and thought, obviously, of the sex we’d had together - but also of the laughs, and the frustrations, and the spaghetti. Latifa could be maddening at times. She was definitely fucked up and hopeless in just about every conceivable way. But she was also great.
‘It’s going to be okay.’ I said.
She lifted her head and looked back at me.