Robert Wilson: The Ignoranceof Blood

Forty minutes later Consuelo returned. He locked the door behind her and went back to pacing the room.

'You saw the house?' he asked.

'It's not far,' she said. 'You're tense, Javier. You're still thinking about Abdullah. We've got to clear your mind. Tell me everything that worries you about him.'

'Was the transformation too quick? Was it too complete? Did it feel rehearsed? Was there something playing behind his eyes when he said the words: "You can count on me"? Why did he offer his services when his father had just sacrificed his life for him? Did he pledge his loyalty a little too quickly and too hard? Is he acting?'

'You're too wired for this.'

'It's just the paranoia talking. I'll be all right once I'm moving.'

'Your shirt is soaked through. Take it off. Put this on.'

He looked at his watch for the hundredth time. Not quite 20.05. He peeled off the shirt. She rubbed him down with a towel. He put on a T-shirt, got back into the burnous. He checked the gun, slipped it into the burnous and down the waistband of his trousers. He walked around. Comfortable.

'It's time,' he said.

She gripped his shoulders, slipped her arms around his neck, kissed his face. He held her, almost delicately, feeling the individual ribs with the tips of his fingers.

'This isn't it, Javier. This isn't the end, I know it. This is the new beginning. Believe me,' she said, and squeezed him hard. 'Do you believe me?'

'I do,' he said, but his eyes said something different over her shoulder.

They parted. He held her hands, looked into her eyes.

'When you came to see me that night, before the negotiations with the Russians, you could have lied to me. You could have easily drawn me into their corruption. That you didn't, that you were so furious at what they were trying to do, even at the risk of your own child, was magnificent, and I fell for you all over again,' he said, and let her hands fall from his. 'Whatever happens, I want you to know that I do not regret any of this.'

'It's taken me all my life to find you, Javier,' she said. 'And I know you'll be coming back.'

Falcon pulled the burnous hood with its elfin point over his head. The door closed after him and she immediately wanted him back, didn't believe her own words now that he was gone. She wondered what she would do with herself if this was to be the last time she saw him. She went to the window. He came out of the building beneath her, walked towards the royal palace, turned at the end of the street, raised his hand and was gone. Falcon walked swiftly. Now that he was on the move his mind was clear. He felt a tremendous solidity in his torso, as if he was wearing an armour of clean and shining steel as light as his own skin. He called Abdullah on his mobile and told him he was on his way. He passed through various gates, the Bab Semarine, up Grand Rue des Merenids to the Bab Dakakan. It was only a matter of taking a right at the Bab Es Seba and a long walk by the Boujeloud Gardens and he was in Fes El Bali. He was in his stride now, walking towards the Bab Boujeloud. More activity here, more tourists. Full of hustlers. The burnous did its job. Nobody came near him. He went through the gate into the medina.

The tourist traffic became more intense. The shops were heaving with people. Brass trays glowed in the yellow light, next to mother-of-pearl inlaid furniture, camel-bone framed mirrors, silver jewellery, colourful scarves. His hood trapped the cinnamon smell from the pastilla food stalls. He dodged some mule droppings. The streets were clogging up with slow-moving gaggles of tourists. He tried not to look at his watch. Not a Moroccan thing, to be too concerned about time. He would get there. The timing would be perfect. Wood smoke shunted out the food smells. The stink of curing leather. Old men sitting out drinking tea, fingering their worry beads. A boy crouched, sweating as he fanned the flames of the fires beneath the massive blackened boilers of the hammam. The hiss of steam. The ponderous clopping of a donkey's hooves on cobbles. He turned left at the Cherabliyin mosque. The streets were darker and emptier here. He joined up with another main thoroughfare. The carpet shops. He saw his destination. His hand gripped the butt of the gun.

He stopped, took a deep breath, glanced at his watch for the first time: 20.29. Do not think. Do not engage. Two shots would be enough. He crossed the street, heading for the door to the shop, pulled the gun out of his waistband, thumbed off the safety catch under his burnous. Just as he reached the doorway a figure in a pale blue jellabah flitted in front of him, slipped over the threshold, so that they were in the shop together. What the fuck? Too late, he was committed now. The Spanish tourist was coming up off his cushion. Mustafa Barakat was standing and spreading his arms wide. He was smiling even as Falcon pulled out the gun. He was going to embrace the figure in the pale blue jellabah. Then he was not. His eyes widened over the pale blue cotton shoulders of the man, whose right arm punched in, once, twice, three times. Barakat fell back on a pile of carpets. The word on his lips never made it into the air. The killer put his foot on to the pile of carpets next to Barakat's face and drew the knife across the dying man's throat. He said something in Arabic and stood back. Barakat's white jellabah was already blossoming with a vast, shining bloom of blood. His throat gaped and gargled, blood leaked on to the carpets, the arterial pressure already gone from the ferocious stabs to the heart. Abdullah turned to Falcon, held out the knife in his bloody hand. Despite his closeness to Barakat in his death throes, his pale blue jellabah had only a small smear of blood across the arm. The CNI agent playing the tourist was in a state of shock at this development. Falcon spoke to him quickly in Spanish as he knelt down and dipped a DNA swab into Barakat's blood.

'Take the knife. Carry on as planned. Any water?'

The agent took the knife, handed over a bottle of water he'd been carrying. Falcon put the gun back in his waistband, washed Abdullah's hand. Threw the bottle to the agent and left the shop. The metal blind rolled down behind them. Abdullah led the way off the street and down into the alleyways of the medina. He was crying. His shoulders were shaking, abdomen trembling.

'Why did you do that?' asked Falcon.

Abdullah stopped, threw his back against a whitewashed wall. Tears streaked his face.

'I've loved that man all my life,' he said. 'Since I can remember, Mustafa has been a part of our family. I used to fall asleep on his chest in the back of the car. He rescued me when I nearly drowned in the sea at Asilah. He took me to Marrakech for my sixteenth birthday. He is my uncle.'

'But you knew I would kill him. You didn't have to do that.'

'He has betrayed us all. I can hardly bear to speak his name. He has disgraced us. I don't care if I go to jail for the rest of my life,' said Abdullah. 'At least I have restored some of our family honour.'

Falcon grabbed him by the arm, told him they had to keep moving, the news of Barakat's death might leak out. They jogged through the empty streets. It was no more than a few hundred metres to the house. The door was open a crack. Abdullah went in. Consuelo appeared out of the darkness wearing a headscarf, startled him.

'Is it done?' she asked.

Falcon nodded.

They left Consuelo by the main door. Abdullah led Falcon across the first patio of the house. Women's voices came from one of the upstairs rooms. In the second patio Abdullah ducked into a doorway and went down a long unlit passage to a stone spiral staircase at the end. It was only just big enough for a single person to pass.

'There's no electricity in this part of the house,' said Abdullah. 'When we get to the door at the top I will go through and leave the door ajar. You must stay behind. Nobody comes to this part of the house without being invited first.'