The boy was resourceful, I had to agree. And persistent.
At the sound of the whistle, Holmes’ head lifted. “Idir,” he told us, and put his fingers to his mouth to echo the shrill sound. I went to remove the knife-chock from beneath the heavy door; the lad strode past, looking justifiably proud, as I risked a glance outside, into the blessed open air. No waiting assailants attacked, no bullets flew. But I wedged the door shut again, in case.
When the small figure drew near to the fire and spotted the men beside it, his cockerel strut turned into a sprint. He flung himself at Mahmoud, who grunted with the impact but returned the child’s embrace. For the first time, I heard the child make a sound, a sort of crooning noise as he patted the man’s bearded cheeks with both hands, tears in his eyes.
If Mahmoud had not been so dehydrated, I think his eyes might have gone misty as well.
“Oh, worthy child!” he said in Arabic. “How did you find us?”
The boy leapt to his feet to pantomime an answer. Pointing to Holmes, he threw up his hands: the man, gone! A churning of hands and legs showed him running, running—then he stopped in surprise, pointed off into the dungeon to represent a discovery, and grabbed the air with both hands, bending over with a lesser churning of extremities.
“You stole a bicycle?” Mahmoud asked. A cheeky grin was his answer. “Where on earth did you find one of those—and when did you learn to ride it?” There were few enough of them in the country, and I could well imagine that such fragile forms of transportation were even less common in the rough mountains of Abd el-Krim.
Idir did not attempt to answer the first question, but to the second, he drew back a sleeve to reveal a nasty sequence of scrapes and embedded gravel. He did the same with his left leg, which was raw from ankle to knee. The wounds were shallow and seemed the source more of pride than of pain, so we rewarded him further with loud admirations of the blood he had shed for the cause.
But the lad was not finished. Either he had decided that he would never catch the retreating motorcar, or (more likely) he had ruined his two-wheeled transport in the fall, because now he held up a finger and repeated the expression of surprise. Tip-toeing a few steps, he drew open a door and climbed inside. One hand mimicked the release of a brake handle, then joined the other in a grasp of a steering wheel. The slight forward to-and-fro was a driver urging a motorcar into motion on a hilltop. His forefingers began to circle around each other, slowly, then less slowly, and finally rapidly enough for the hands to return to the steering wheel stance.
As one, Holmes and I looked at Mahmoud. He shrugged. “Yes, he knows how to steal a motor, especially if it’s left on a hill. He’s a clever lad.”
The two fists moved, mimicking driving; the boy leant forward, peering—then one hand came up to shade his eyes for a moment before shooting out to point into the dungeon. When he turned to us, his eyes gleamed in triumph.
Could the lad have simply driven around Mequinez until he spotted the motorcar?
That was one of a load of unanswered questions—how he happened to find an unattended motorcar on the road, how on earth he hadn’t wrecked the thing or killed the engine, or himself—but without writing materials, his responses would take forever. In any event, it was time to move.
I gathered our arsenal and the lantern, while Holmes helped Mahmoud to his feet. He stood, swaying but resolute. Then he straightened, one hand on Holmes’ shoulder.
“Miri, you and the boy go ahead. We will join you in a few minutes.”
I started to ask why, then glanced at the darkness and closed my mouth. Handing the lad one of the rifles, I steered him across the cavern towards the doorway and out into the cold, star-spangled night, where I took care to push the door to behind me.
The boy did not need to hear whatever sounds came from within.
When we were well clear of the door, I laid the rifles on the ground, and held the lantern high.
Prominently parked, where head-lamps from the nearby road might rake it, was a large and shiny motorcar—rather, what had been a large and shiny motorcar. It was now somewhat … compressed.
Its back end bore the imprint of the rhinoceros-like nose of an Army transport lorry, massive and implacable. The motorcar’s head-lamps lay embedded in a dangerously bulging stone wall, while the lorry had drifted backwards a few feet after the impact, as if to admire its work. Its front end appeared unscathed.
The lorry’s sides were a different story. Half the canvas had been ripped free, the paint appeared to have been raked by huge claws, the tool-box beneath the bed lay dangling open and empty. The machine looked ravaged by dinosaurs. By some miracle, the visible tyres seemed to be intact, but the stink of a dangerously overheated engine block filled the air, and even a quarter hour after the boy had abandoned it, the click of cooling metal was rapid-fire.
I held out the lantern to my small companion. “Idir, I need you to hold this up so I can see where I’m going. If there’s a petrol leak, the flame would make it explode. Can you do that?”
The lamp went as high as his arm could stretch. Cautiously, I approached the wreckage.
The smell of petrol was unmistakable, but not powerful. Gingerly, I worked the motorcar’s back-door handle, and looked in. There was a figure behind the wheel, staring up at the roof, but the dark glisten of his clean-shaven face and the lack of breathing sounds told me that he was beyond worrying about the state of the Sultan’s motor. A bundle on the floor turned out to be Holmes’ robe, sitting atop his boots; a metallic reflection from the door-pocket proved to be a flask—left behind by one of the Americans? A dim shape on the opposite side tempted me across the seat, and rewarded me with a hand-torch.
I carried the clothing back to Idir, and went for a circuit of the lorry. The torch revealed that all the wheels were inflated, the tool compartment on the far side was intact, and the cab held the usual complement of steering wheels and gear levers. There was no wind-screen, but then, there never had been.
I wrestled open the tool compartment and found the starting handle. With mixed feelings, I pulled it out and walked around the back of the lorry.
To my surprise, I heard the scrape of the dungeon door. Idir turned, casting lamp-light onto the two men, Mahmoud’s arm over Holmes’ shoulders. His golden ring signet flashed in the darkness.
They’d been alone with the captives for less than five minutes.
A cry followed them out of the door, cut off when it shut.
“The threat of abandonment alone proved sufficient to stimulate his conversation,” Holmes remarked.
“He knew nothing,” Mahmoud growled.
“He knew little,” Holmes amended. “We were correct that they are followers of Raisuli, but they are by no means committed believers. Rather, they are hired ruffians whose professional and personal lives happen to coincide. The one we questioned is new to the task, brought in a year ago by the one you concussed with the padlock. He says that the gang has done occasional jobs for seven or eight years now, including one on Friday for which the concussed one and their driver—both of whom are fluent in French—were given the uniforms of French soldiers, ordered to shave and have their hair cut in the European style, and sent to arrest you at a house in the medina. Their employer is an anonymous person in Fez. They have a contact address in Fez el-Jdid, but from the sound of it, there are several layers of protection. It will take some time to peel them away. Oh, and speaking of which, Russell, here is your knife. The gentleman had no further need of it.”
I looked at his outstretched hand with distaste. I had used the weapon in the heat of combat, but prising it from a man’s living back had been more than I could bear. Holmes had cleaned it, but only of the blood itself. However, with both men watching, waiting for me to accept it, I had little choice. I slid the blade rapidly away into its boot-top sheath, then made haste to resume the previous subject.
“Their employer must be one of Lyautey’s close associates.”
“Agreed,” Mahmoud grunted.
“In Fez itself? Or down at the military camp?” Fez el-Jdid, being outside the medina, was easily accessible to both.
“Fez,” Holmes answered. “Either the Residency or Dar Mnehbi. I suggest we begin with the latter.”
“Holmes, do I take it that you propose a direct confrontation? Rather than laying the evidence before Lyautey and letting him carry out the investigation?”
“When the motor and the four hirelings fail to return, our quarry will flee.”
“Very well,” I said. “Your boots are in the pile.”
I traded shoulders with him, and helped Mahmoud towards the lorry. “Your young protegé seems to have paid more attention to the starter than the gear lever,” I remarked.
“So the smell would suggest,” Mahmoud admitted.
“That motorcar is going nowhere, but the lorry may be drivable,” I said. If the engine hadn’t fused entirely.
Idir and I between us got Mahmoud into the cab. Leaving the boy to puzzle over the canvas leg-covers, I went back to help retrieve the armaments.
Holmes rose from lacing his boots, and held something out to me. “My spectacles!”
“And your djellaba,” he said. “They were wrapped inside mine.”
He’d even managed to catch the glasses before they hit the ground, for which I was very grateful. I put them on, and the world came into focus. And became warmer, with the second layer of clothing.
“Everything in the lorry seems to be in place,” I told Holmes. “Shall we try it?”
By answer, he picked up the starter handle. “Can you manage the controls?”
“God knows.”
“Just be certain it’s in neutral,” he said, walking towards the front end.
“And you take care how you work that thing,” I retorted. “When it catches, this engine could rip your arm off.”
But it did not. And if twice I was not fast enough with the adjustments of the unfamiliar throttle and choke, on the third time the engine roared into life. Giving Holmes a moment to get clear, I located the switch for the big guide-lamp above the bonnet—fender-mounted head-lamps being too vulnerable for this lorry—and turned it on. The flattened back end of the motor jumped into view—along with a dangling registration plate: 100627. In reaction to the blow, of noise or light, the plate dropped to the ground; an instant later, the bulging wall collapsed—fortunately showing nothing but open space, rather than the interior of a house filled with shocked and bleeding inhabitants.
Holmes trotted towards the back of the lorry. I ground the shifting lever horribly before locating a reverse gear, and we lurched backwards twenty yards before Holmes’ palm hammered against the side, at which signal I clashed the gears some more. Holmes scrambled onboard. We lunged forward, a motion that to my astonishment neither killed the motor nor attracted a volley of gunshots.
“Does anyone know where we are going?” I shouted at the men squeezed onto the seat beside me.
“Fez,” Holmes replied helpfully.
“I was rather hoping one of you could suggest a direction.”
Mahmoud said something I didn’t hear, and a small hand stretched past my ear. For lack of a more certain authority, I followed the direction of the pointing finger. In five minutes, we were on a road. Perhaps not the road to Fez, but it was a road.
Holmes played the powerful beam back and forth along the approaching track for a half-mile or so before he sat back, satisfied that we were going in the right direction. He showed Idir how to move the lamp about, then took up the hand-torch again.
“Back in a moment,” he shouted, and before I could ask what he intended, he had swung out of the side, pulling himself through the flapping canvas into the lorry’s back. A minute later, pads and travelling rugs started landing on our heads. Idir grabbed the first few, swathing Mahmoud, me, and lastly himself. Holmes eventually reappeared with what looked like a tramp’s bundle—a linen table-cloth, out of which he drew a feast.
“There was a party of some kind, at the Roman ruins,” he bellowed, handing me a stale bread-roll into which he had shoved a wedge of soft cheese. “It seems that this lorry was being used to clear up afterwards. If you can think of any use for seven long tables, a hundred place-settings, and four acetylene lamps, we have those as well.”
There was even drink, a half-empty bottle of wine for us, some very fizzy lemonade for Mahmoud and the boy.
Warmth; food; transport. If the abused engine did not die completely and the lorry retained its wheels—insh’Allah!—we should cover the thirty miles or so to Fez in little more than an hour. I took a harder grip on the steering wheel (which vibration was adding loose shoulder sockets to my list of ailments) and stepped more firmly on the accelerator. The noise grew. I raised my voice. “Do you believe our man is at Dar Mnehbi?”
Holmes said something. I asked him to repeat it, then a third time. “Certainly, someone inside the staff is behind these attacks,” he bellowed in agreement.
I leant towards him. “How will we get in the gates?” I shouted. “You want to telephone to Lyautey?”
“Sorry?”
I took a deep breath and tried again. “Telephone? Lyautey?”
“No!”
“Wait until morning?”
“Exactly!” he said. “There must be another way.”
“What?”
“Another way … to warn him!”
“Warn him? I said morning!”
I felt a hand then upon my juddering arm. The other two passengers had been communicating, Mahmoud’s mouth to the boy’s ear, the replies visible by the light from the head-beam. I tipped my head to the side, and felt as much as heard Mahmoud’s words.
“Idir knows a way in.”
I glanced across the child at him. Mahmoud repeated the offer to Holmes, who looked at me for a long moment. We both shrugged. I gestured for Mahmoud to shift forward, then said into his ear, “Where?”
He and the boy consulted for a couple of miles, ending with a vigorous nod of the young head. Mahmoud spoke against my hair. “The north end of the town, near the tanneries.”
“Lord, I hope we don’t have to wade through them!” I exclaimed, recalling all too vividly the stink.
“What was that?”
But I shook my head, and drove.