House of Spies (Gabriel Allon #17)(93)

“Recognize him?”

“Maybe.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I might have seen him before.”

“Where?”

“At the meeting in the Rif last December. After the attack on Washington.”

“Who was he with? Bakkar?”

“No,” said Martel. “He was with Khalil.”

It was approaching six when they reached the Ville Nouvelle of Fez, the modern section of the city where most residents preferred to live. Their next hotel, the Palais Faraj, was at the edge of the ancient medina. It was a labyrinth of colorful tile floors and cool dark passageways. The owner had automatically upgraded Martel and Olivia to the Royal Suite. Keller was staying in a smaller room next door, and Mikhail and Natalie were down the hall. They took Olivia for a walk through the souks of the medina while Martel and Keller sat on the Royal Suite’s private terrace and waited for the phone to ring. The air was hot and still. It smelled of wood smoke and faintly of piss from the nearby tanneries.

“How long is he going to make us wait?” asked Keller.

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“His mood, I suppose. Sometimes he calls right away. And sometimes . . .”

“What?”

“He changes his mind.”

“Does he know we’re here?”

“Mohammad Bakkar,” said Martel, “knows everything.”

When another twenty minutes passed with no call or text, Martel stood abruptly. “I need a drink.”

“Order something from room service.”

“There’s a bar upstairs,” said Martel, and before Keller could object, he was headed toward the door. Outside in the foyer he pressed the call button for the elevator, and when it didn’t appear instantly he mounted the stairs instead. The bar was on the top floor, small and dark, with a view across the rooftops of the medina. Martel ordered the most expensive bottle of Chablis on the wine list. Keller asked for a café noir.

“You sure you won’t have some?” asked Martel, holding a glass of the wine approvingly up to the light.

Keller indicated he was fine with just coffee.

“No drinking on duty?”

“Something like that.”

“I don’t know how you do it. You haven’t slept for days. I suppose you get used to it in your line of work,” added Martel thoughtfully. “Spying, that is.”

Keller glanced at the barman. The room was otherwise empty.

“Have you always been a spy?” asked Martel.

“Have you always been a drug dealer?”

“I was never a drug dealer.”

“Ah, yes,” said Keller. “Oranges.”

Martel studied him carefully over the rim of his wineglass. “It looks to me as though you spent some time in the military.”

“I’m not the soldiering type. Never been one to follow orders. Don’t play nicely with others.”

“So maybe you were a special kind of soldier. SAS, for example. Or should I call it the Regiment? Isn’t that how you and your comrades refer to it?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Bullshit,” said Martel evenly.

Smiling for the benefit of the Moroccan barman, Keller looked out the window. Darkness was settling on the ancient medina, but there was still a bit of pink sunlight on the highest peaks of the mountains.

“You should watch your language, Jean-Luc. The lad behind the bar might take offense.”

“I know Moroccans better than you do. And I know a former SAS man when I see one. Every night in my hotels and restaurants, some rich Brit arrives with a private security detail. And they’re always ex-SAS. I suppose it’s better to be a spy than an errand boy for some British bond trader who wants to look important.”

Just then, Yossi Gavish and Rimona Stern entered the bar and sat down at a table on the other side of the room.

“Your friends from Saint-Tropez,” said Martel. “Shall we invite them to join us?”

“Let’s take the bottle downstairs.”

“Not yet,” said Martel. “I’ve always liked the view from here at sunset. It’s a World Heritage Site—did you know that? And yet most of the people who live down there would gladly unload their crumbling old riad or dar to some Westerner so they can get a nice clean apartment in the Ville Nouvelle. It’s a shame, really. They don’t know how good they’ve got it. Sometimes the old ways are better than the new.”

“Spare me the café philosophizing,” said Keller wearily.

Rimona was laughing at something Yossi had said. Keller checked Martel’s incoming texts and e-mails while Martel contemplated the darkening medina.

“You speak French very well,” he said after a moment.

“I can’t tell you how much that means to me, Jean-Luc.”

“Where did you learn it?”

“My mother was French. I spent a lot of time there when I was young.”

“Where?”

“Normandy, mainly, but Paris and the south, too.”

“Everywhere but Corsica.”

There was a silence. It was Martel who broke it.

“Many years ago, while I was still in Marseilles, there was a rumor going around about an Englishman who was working as a contract killer for the Orsati clan. He was ex-SAS, or so they said. Apparently, he was a deserter.” Martel paused, then added, “A coward.”