The Casbah Killers

The sky was beginning to lighten ever so slightly and with paint box in hand, I walked up a sandy ridge to turn and look back at the darkness of the sea and the fading night stars. I guess Glen Travis, the artist, had taken over a little too much because all I heard, at the last moment, was the faint, whistling sound.

I whirled and got the rock smack against the temple. I glimpsed the end of a string and then all went into blazing yellows and purples. I remember thinking that this was impossible, that no one could have known of my coming.

The second blow did away with what little consciousness I had left. I went down into the sand and lay there. It was daylight when I woke, and my head hurt with a throbbing pain. I forced my eyes open, and even that slight effort hurt.

My mouth was gritty and tasted of sand, and I used my tongue to wipe some of it from my lips and gums. I spit it out and shook my head to clear it. Slowly, a room came into focus, if you could call it a room. I was alone and my wrists hurt, and I realized they were tied behind my back. A door, half off its hinges and open, was directly across from where I sat on the floor. Through it, I could glimpse the sea beyond. Obviously, I wasn’t far from where I’d arrived. I let my eyes roam around the room.

A broken-down table, two equally broken-down chairs and some worn, sheepskin hassocks accounted for most of the furnishings. Another, smaller room led from the one where I was and I saw what seemed to be rolled-up bedding on the floor.

I tried to remember what had happened but all I could recollect was a glimpse of the rock and a dim realization that it was at the end of a length of string. It was a primitive but highly effective weapon, and I suddenly saw Hawk’s face across the desk from me in his office at AXE Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

“It’s a funny place, Morocco,” he had said. “I was stationed there for a while, during the last war. I was in Casablanca when Roosevelt and Churchill met there and tried to get de Gaulle and Giraud to work together. It’s a real crossroads of the world, Morocco, where the past lives in the present and the present never forgets the past.

There are some places, some ports, that through geography or local characteristics, seem to attract everything and everyone. They’re real wastebaskets of the world’s scroungy characters. Hong Kong is one, Marseille is another, New Orleans used to be one and Casablanca is certainly one. It’s very tourist-conscious in some spots and very ninth-century in others.”

“Obviously you expect trouble,” I had said. “This cover you’ve dreamed up and Special Effects.”

“We don’t know what you might run into. All we know is that Karminian has been a top contact, always with good stuff, always reliable. Like the others of his kind, we had to pay for what he brought to us, but he was damned helpful.”

I was recalling how Hawk’s steel-blue eyes had clouded and the small furrow traced its way across the weathered, New England farmer’s countenance. “Watch yourself,” he had said. “It’s a funny place full of unexpected things.”

I winced and his face swam away and I was gazing out the empty doorway again. I yanked at the ropes holding my hands behind my back. They gave, slightly, and at once I knew that I could be free in seconds if I could get them against something halfway sharp. The rusted, broken hinge on the door would do it.

I was about to get on my feet when I saw the two figures appear in the doorway, the first one carrying in a goatskin water bag. He was dressed in the traditional serwal, the loose, baggy trousers that tapered to hug the calves and a cotton shirt.

His companion wore the loose and more common one piece coverall garment called the djellaba. Each wore a tattered fez. They were a scroungy, seedy pair and the first one had only one eye, the other eye being a shriveled and closed hole in his head.

“Ah, our pigeon has awakened,” he said with relish as he put down the goatskin bag. The second one, taller and thinner, munched on a handful of grapes and spit the seeds out through clenched teeth. He was carrying my paint box, and he dropped it on the floor with the obvious distaste of a thief who’d found something utterly useless to him.

The one-eyed one came to stand in front of me, his face a leathery, wizened piece of parchment.

“You have little money,” he said. “That we have discovered already.” He spoke in poor French but good enough to understand. As my French was a lot better than my Arabic, I went along with him.

“Why do you want to rob a poor painter?” I asked. “An artist on his way to Casablanca to find work.”

He smiled, a ragged, evil smile. His one good eye held more than enough craftiness for two.

“You are not a poor artist,” he said. “Someone will pay a lot of money for you. You will tell us who and we shall sell you to them.”