One hundred and twenty

‘Can you hear that?’ said Blaine, as they walked double speed through the tunnel.

‘What?’

‘Listen.’

‘It sounds like a vibration... like music,’ said Ghita.

‘The Argentine pianist,’ replied Blaine. ‘She must be up there playing in the club.’

‘That means we’re getting close.’

‘We have to climb up to that level. We are far below them,’ said Saed.

He took out the map, squinted at the converging zigzags in the torchlight.

‘Can you see a ladder?’

‘Where?’

‘Over there. It should be on the right.’

The American skimmed the beam over the wall, sending the cockroaches into frenzy.

‘There!’

‘Thank God for that.’

They hurried over.

The torch in his right hand, Blaine climbed as fast as he could. He slammed his fist up on the hatch, once, twice.

‘It’s no use,’ he called down. ‘It won’t budge!’

Saed looked at the map.

‘If we go on, and then double back, it will take far too long,’ he said.

Blaine slapped his hands together heatedly.

‘If only we had something to work on the rust,’ he said. ‘It hasn’t been opened in years.’

‘I could go back and get a knife,’ Saed said.

‘We don’t have time for that, either. Let’s try to make use of anything we’ve got. Empty your pockets.’

The shoeshine boy rooted about and, a moment later, pulled out a golf ball, a rusty nail, three inches of metal twine, and a glass eye.

‘All I’ve got is some money and this,’ said Ghita, fishing a small bottle of clear liquid from her purse.

‘What is it?’

‘Hand sanitizer.’

The American climbed down, took the container, and clambered up again.

With care, he squeezed the gel into the groove. Then, with all his strength, he pounded at the hatch.

It moved a fraction.

Blaine squeezed more gel, and thumped again. Suddenly, the hatch popped open.

‘Alhamdillillah!’ Ghita exclaimed.

They climbed up, and closed the hatch behind them.

On the upper level they found themselves at the spot where several tunnels converged. Saed led the way down the widest one, map in hand. Much drier than the lower level, it hardly stank at all.

After a relatively straight stretch, it curved around sharply to the left, before arcing back to the right.

They took another left, then a right and, gradually, the passageway tapered until it became so narrow that they were forced to advance sideways.

All of a sudden it ended.

‘This is where our luck runs out,’ Blaine said.

He shone the light on the walls, examining every inch of the brickwork.

‘We’ll have to go back,’ said Ghita. She turned and, as she did so, Blaine reached out and grabbed her arm.

‘What is it?’

‘Wait.’

The American put his hand on the facing wall and ran it down the bricks slowly, in concentration. Then taking a step back, he lunged at the wall with his shoulder.

A door swung open.

‘Casablanca Magic!’ he whispered.

They stepped through, and found themselves in a bright modern-looking corridor. It was damp-sealed, and was illuminated by hundred-watt bulbs. There were voices in the distance, and the churning sound of counting machines.

Allowing his breathing to shallow, Blaine led the way.

Behind him was Ghita. She was so close that he could feel her warmth. Saed was just behind her.

They tiptoed down the corridor and arrived at a steel door. Mounted at its centre was a wheel, the kind they use on submarines.

In the distance was the sound of a large vehicle reversing.

Blaine put his ear to the steel. He closed his eyes, counted to three, and rotated the wheel to open the door.

The counting room.

From the limited vantage point, Blaine could make out bales of banknotes, dozens of them, all piled up squarely on one another. His eyes widened, as the adrenalin hit again.

‘Jesus Christ, d’you see all that?’

‘And there’s the same amount again over there,’ said Ghita.

‘Sounds like they’re counting the money.’

‘Must mean they are getting it ready to move.’

‘Follow me,’ said Blaine, creeping down an alley between the bales. They towered from floor to ceiling like the walls of a fortress. He motioned to the far end of the warehouse. ‘We’ve got to get over there if we have a chance at getting the red book.’

Just then, a second armoured door swung open without the faintest hint of sound. It led through to the club.

A suited man with thin grey hair entered the warehouse. He was smoking a cigar, his face taut with anger.

‘The transfer vehicles are here!’ he hollered. ‘Get this paper out of here immediately!’

Larbi looked at the wall clock.

‘Yes, sir!’

Crouched down in the passage between the bales, Ghita couldn’t believe her ears.

‘It’s him!’ she whispered. ‘I know it’s him!’

‘Who?’

‘The Falcon.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I know him!’

‘Huh?’

Ghita craned her neck around the end of the passage. An oversized counting machine was obstructing much of the view. But she could see the floor. The foreman was wearing a pair of sneakers, and the other man was in handmade shoes, crafted from indigo leather.

‘I can’t believe it,’ said Ghita, almost collapsing. ‘Harass is the Falcon... the man who runs Casablanca’s underworld?’

Blaine didn’t understand.

‘Who? What?’

‘I’d know those awful shoes anywhere!’

Blaine frowned.

‘Shoes?’

‘He’s my father’s best friend. He was my father’s best friend. The man whose son I was about to marry, the guy who now chairs the board of Globalcom!’

The Vertu phone cradled in the Falcon’s fingers buzzed. He looked at the number, cursed loudly, then took the call.

‘Bonsoir chérie, no I can’t talk now. I’m very busy. Yes, later... maybe later. I’ll try to do my best.’

There was a sound from the other side of the steel door.

‘I am going through,’ he said. ‘Make sure all of this is ready to leave in fifteen minutes. Is that understood?’

Larbi looked back at the team running bills through the counting machines.

‘Fifteen minutes!’ he snapped.

The Falcon stepped through the armoured door, down a short passage, and into the Club Souterrain.

It was in full swing.

There must have been three hundred people in there – gamblers, drinkers, carousers of every sort. In the middle of the salon, Rosario was crooning at the piano, a half-empty glass of vodka martini on a coaster beside the music stand. Her hands were playing Blue Moon again, but her mind was far away.

She was thinking about the night she had undergone the knife in Dr. Burou’s clinic, about going to sleep a boy and waking up a girl.

The click click click of the roulette ball broke through for a moment, and was followed by a wave of cheering and laughter, by expletives, and by the sound of the croupier raking in the chips.

At the bar, a huddle of waitresses were attending to their orders. Their low décolletage might have been scandalous elsewhere in Casablanca, but at Club Souterrain, scandal was unknown. The house had one rule and one rule alone: any behaviour however depraved – if made in the name of decadence – stayed within the club.

Gentlemen clients had been known to strip naked and parade about wearing nothing more than a feather boa, or to down an entire bottle of bourbon, before spewing their guts out over the red velvet furniture.

And no one ever said a word.

Although, of course, this didn’t stop the club from filming the illicit activities through secret cameras. There were sixty of them, positioned so discreetly that none of the staff was even aware of their existence.

Weaving his way through the room, the Falcon greeted the regulars, before checking the running totals in the betting pits. The kind of man who was incapable of trust, he was all the more mistrustful on a night when the funds were moved.

The Falcon perused the figures on the clipboards one by one. He showed no emotion. He never did. As far as he was concerned, emotion and gambling were quite incompatible, two elements to be kept absolutely apart.

He checked his watch.

Three minutes to go.

He signalled to the barman to send a round of free drinks to the Russians.

‘Make sure they leave with enough cash that they return tomorrow night,’ he told the duty manager in a stony voice. ‘And tomorrow suck them dry.’

He turned, and slipped back through the rear entrance.

As he did so, Ghita made her move. She had spotted the red bound register lying on a desk to the right of the telephones. Nimbly, she scurried out, snatched it, and retreated into the passageway, between the two lofty walls of paper money.

‘I got it!’ she whispered.

Blaine hugged her, and the three of them beat a hasty retreat.

They were about to step through into the tunnel, when Ghita tripped. She flew forward, landing on her side, blood streaming from her knee.

Larbi heard the commotion.

In an instant, he had roused the guards.

A moment after that, Ghita, Blaine and Saed were lined up against the back wall. A guard in black uniform was bearing over them, a semi-automatic rifle in his hands.

‘What’s going on?’ the Falcon shouted as he entered.

‘I caught these three in here. They were trying to take the register.’

Hamza Harass strode purposefully through the warehouse.

‘My, oh my!’ he exclaimed. ‘Now this is a surprise!’ He paused, put a hand to his mouth in thought. ‘Or perhaps it isn’t a surprise at all. Tell me, my dear, who are your friends?’

Ghita didn’t reply. She was too angry to speak.

‘Leave her alone!’ said Blaine.

The Falcon grinned.

‘Oh, that’s the last thing I’m going to do,’ he said. ‘Believe me, I’m not going to leave any of you alone.’

Larbi was given orders what to do.

The intruders were to be taken under armed guard to an anteroom. It had rubberized walls, no windows, and another one of the submarine-style hatches for a door. Half the space was packed with files and junk.

One by one they were thrust inside.

The Falcon stood at the hatch, staring at Ghita’s face. He appeared genuinely pleased.

‘Dear Hicham would be proud of you,’ he said. ‘And I dare say he’ll weep a tear once he learns of your death. But that will be some time... for I doubt news reaches the mountains as quickly as it ought.’

He nodded to the guard, stepped back, and the heavy steel hatch was slammed shut. A second later a pressure valve was closed, locking the door securely from the other side.

Ghita threw her arms around the American’s neck.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, ‘and you, Saed, will you forgive me?’

‘There’s enough air in here to survive for a while,’ said Blaine.

Just then, there was a piercing sound.

‘Oh no!’ bellowed Saed.

‘Water!’

‘They’re flooding the chamber!’

Blaine got down on his hands and knees and struggled to cease the flow streaming out from a duct. He was immediately knocked backwards by the force.

‘I can’t do it,’ he yelled. ‘Quickly, look through all this stuff and think!’

They rooted through all the junk – old shelving, bicycle frames and canned food, miles of nylon rope, coloured hose pipes, bottles of bleach, pots, pans, and what looked like an extremely old engine block from a Renault truck.

Melodramatically, Ghita collapsed in the water and started to weep.

‘I should have guessed it – that Harass was the Falcon!’ she howled. ‘I always detested him. To think of it – he was almost my father-in-law!’

The water inched up over the engine block. As it did so, Saed coaxed the others to move to higher ground.

‘If we climb up we may live,’ he said.

‘For how long? Until someone comes and lets us out?’ said Ghita.

The shoeshine boy’s face dropped.

‘I hope so,’ he answered.

Blaine, who had been standing in knee-deep water, glanced down at the water, then up at the ceiling. Slapping his palms together, he plunged his hands below the waterline.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Ghita incredulously, the water now up to her waist.

‘I have an idea,’ he said. ‘But we have to work fast.’

Blaine pointed to a cast iron ring in the middle of the ceiling. It must have been fifteen feet high above the floor.

‘Saed, can you get up there, and thread this through?’

The shoeshine boy grabbed the end of the nylon rope and scampered up onto the pile of junk. Within a minute he had threaded it through the ring and lowered the end down.

Quickly, Blaine tied it around the engine block, fastening it in a half hitch. Then, mustering all his strength, he heaved the engine block an inch at a time, up through the water until it was level with the middle of the hatch.

‘What are you doing?’ Ghita asked.

‘Making a battering ram,’ Blaine said, straining to keep hold. ‘The only question is how much force we can get behind it.’

Tying the cord, he stepped back into the corner, and thrust the engine block at the door. It slammed home with an almighty crash!

‘Again!’ Saed yelled. ‘Do it again!’

Blaine did.

And then again, and again.

Each time the engine block slammed against the steel, it stressed the hinges a little more. He continued, again and again, until his hands were bruised, and until the water was up to his chest. Raising the battering ram a little higher, to be clear of the waterline, he thrust it with all his strength.

Suddenly, the hatch bowed outwards and the water began to drop. Ten more thrusts and the hatch was breached.

One at a time they crept out into the corridor.

Saed tiptoed through to the warehouse.

But he was soon back.

‘They have all gone,’ he said. ‘And they have taken all the money with them.’

‘The music’s still playing in the club,’ said Ghita.

In the warehouse, Blaine double-checked for the red book.

‘It’s definitely not here,’ he sighed.

Then, lifting his gaze from the desk, he scrutinized the walls.

‘What are you thinking?’ Ghita asked, taking a step closer.

‘Listen, you go back to the apartment with Saed,’ he said, ‘and I’ll follow in a bit.’

‘I’m staying with you.’

‘No, you’re not. Not this time.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because...’

‘Because it’s no place for a woman?’

Ghita glared at the American.

‘Because you need to make contact with the news team at Globalcom. Is there anyone left you can trust?’

‘Miss Ross,’ Ghita said. ‘I can trust Patricia Ross.’