Fifty-seven

Patricia Ross had spent the day petitioning Casablanca’s Governor to release Hicham Omary, but without any luck. Baying for blood, he was in no mood for clemency.

At six p.m. she drove back to the Globalcom headquarters, an attaché case under her arm. She was tired, frustrated and fearful. It felt as though the walls were closing in, as though the enemies were everywhere. As the CEO’s assistant, Ross knew it was only a matter of time before the authorities tried to implicate her as well.

On the ground floor, five uniformed police officers were standing guard in a line. Ross was no expert on Moroccan law enforcement, but they appeared to be better equipped than usual, armed with semi-automatic weapons.

Before she could get to the elevator, a plain-clothes officer stopped her.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Up to my office.’

‘At this late hour?’

Ross rolled her eyes.

‘We’re in the news business,’ she said. ‘The news doesn’t stop.’

‘What’s in your case?’

‘Papers, documents, that’s all.’

The officer waved her through. She took the elevator up to the fifteenth floor, placed the attaché case on her desk, and looked out at the lights of Casablanca below. In any other job she might have quit right then, but Hicham Omary had been a mentor to her, a boss with a vision.

She sat down, put her head in her hands, and tried to think straight.

How could she help him?

Without meaning to, she thought of the first time they’d met. It was in Paris at the Musée Jacquemart-André.

Omary had been alone, taking a quick tour through the picture gallery between meetings nearby. They had both been drawn to the same painting, a self-portrait of Nélie Jacquemart, her long graceful form in profile.

From the first moment she saw Omary, Patricia Ross had been struck by his gentleness, and by his love of fine things.

They had taken tea in the museum’s salon and, the next thing she knew, she was working for him in Casablanca.

A dozen memories flashed through, all of them featuring Omary, a man of astonishing courtesy and good taste. Ross had never met anyone quite like him, either in intellectual capacity, or in the way he always seemed to be three steps ahead of the game. The news business suited him more than anyone alive.

Ross glanced at her reflection in the window. She could feel the establishment closing ranks. It was just a matter of time before they took her in. But she knew how Omary had a sixth sense, a sense of how a situation would be played out, a sense learned on the way up from the streets.

Logging into her laptop, Patricia Ross squinted at her emails, and swore out loud. Her account had been hacked. Thousands of filed messages were missing. She was about to slam the laptop shut, when a random email caught her eye.

It was from Jacques Mart.

She clicked on the message. It was blank, except for a single character way down the page – a question mark, highlighted as a hyperlink. She clicked it, and a web site opened. It was password protected.

Without thinking, Ross typed in the name Jacquemart.

The screen went blank. Then, a moment later, it came alive with dozens of dossiers, titled with some of the most important names in the land.

‘My God, Hicham, you’re amazing!’ she exclaimed.

Opening one of the files at random, she found scans of secret bank statements, illicit video footage, and proof of bribe-taking on a grand scale.

At the bottom of the page was an instruction. It read:

MAKE PUBLIC AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.