said 'Don't make me approach the bloody UN High Commission on Roach Refugees. They'll up and form a bloody working subcommittee, see if they don't.'
'They might even issue a strongly worded press release,' Hallam added, joining us. 'A fact-finding tour sponsored by celebrity American roaches will be announced.'
'Richard Gere will appear on the Oscars asking us all for a moment of silence for the roaches all over the world… ' I said. 'Where's Nicole?'
'Taking another shower.' He shrugged. 'What's for dinner?'
'Depends on how many of the menu items are actually available,' Lawrence said.
'Cor, we're not in bloody Togo here,' Steve said. 'Morocco's nearly halfway civilized. I reckon the goods are pretty much as advertised.'
'Your optimism does you credit,' Lawrence said. 'Unfortunately your judgement does the reverse. Hey, that's not just you, that's Australia as a whole. I've got myself a defining proverb there.'
'Looks like eight different varieties of couscous,' Hallam said, putting down the menu. 'No camel though. Had rather a hankering for it.'
'We don't eat camels,' I said. 'Camels eat us. I think they're the dominant species.'
The waiter came by and we all ordered vegetable stew on couscous with bread and Cokes. Hallam ordered one for Nicole as well. None of us was vegetarian but we all shied away from meat when traveling in the Third World. Across the room a small group of fresh-faced young backpackers dined on lamb and goat, risking a tomorrow spent sweating and huddling within thirty feet of a toilet instead of trekking up the gorge. Ironically the five of us were probably more impervious to salmonella or whatever the meat might carry, as we were all heavily traveled, armed with cast-iron stomachs full of veteran kill-all-intruders bacteria recruited from at least five continents. But along with resistance to sickness came an increased reluctance to risk suffering it again.
We chatted and smoked for maybe twenty minutes. Nicole didn't arrive. She was still absent when the food came. 'I'll go get her,' Hallam said. 'Probably fell asleep in the tub or something.' But he didn't sound entirely convinced — that wasn't like her — and he left the room more quickly than was absolutely necessary. We began to eat.
Hallam came back about a minute later and after one look at his distraught face I forgot all about eating. He rushed up to us and dropped the scrap of paper held in his hand on to the table. He tried to say something but no words came out, just a yelp, like a dog that has been stepped on. I'd never seen him like this. Cool, competent, calm Hallam had been replaced by animal panic.
I looked at the paper even though I already knew in my gut what had happened. A familiar scrawl.
HALLAM OLD BOY YOUR WIFE LOOKS VERY PRETTY NAKED WANT TO SEE HER AGAIN? COME TO THAT PLACE IN THE GORGE YOU KNOW THE ONE YOU PICKED OUT FOR ME TODAY RIGHT NOW, NO WAITING BRING YOUR FRIENDS
TA
'He's here,' Hallam managed at last. 'He's got her. We have to go.'
'Oh, no,' Lawrence breathed, reading the note, and he stood up. As did Steve.
I remained in my chair. I needed to think. There was no time to think but I needed to. Sometimes don't think, do is exactly what the situation calls for. But this time, I could tell, it called for don't do, think.
'Paul, get up, he's only fifteen minutes ahead of us, we can catch him,' Steve urged.
'Not so fast,' I said, forcing my voice to remain calm, dispassionate.
'What the fuck? ' There was a dangerous note of hysteria in Hallam's voice.
'It's a trap,' I said, thinking as I spoke. 'Or a trick. One of the two.'
'Paul, he has Nicole,' Hallam said desperately, as if that justified walking into certain death. Of course for him it did. By taking Nicole, Morgan had effectively neutralized Hallam. Smart. Demonically smart.
'He's right,' Lawrence said. 'We have to think this through.'
'We haven't got time,' Steve said.
'It's a two-hour walk up the gorge,' I said sharply. 'Do you want to get there in two hours and be dead five minutes later, or do you want to get there in two hours five minutes ready for what's going to happen?'
'We can talk on the way,' Hallam urged.
'If we go there,' I said.
' If? '
'How do we know he's taken her there?'
'It's in the note!' Steve exclaimed, as if it were the Ten Commandments.
'Exactly,' I said. 'So all we know is that that's exactly what Morgan wants us to believe. Which is a long fucking way from making it the truth.'
There was a pause as Steve and Hallam absorbed this.
'So where do you think she is?' Steve asked.
'I think there's three possibilities,' I said. I'd thought this through now, to something that made a kind of sense. 'One. He told the total truth and he's taking her there right now because he's setting some kind of trap there and he's sure he'll be able to deal with us all. Two. It's a total lie and he's taking her the other way, towards the village, and trying to send us on a wild-goose chase.' I nearly continued so he has time to finish her off, but feared it might send Hallam over the edge of sanity. The thought shook me to the core — not Nicole, please, not her. 'Three. He's being really fucking fancy and he hasn't taken her anywhere. She's right here in his room in one of the hotels and he's counting on us running around like headless chickens and going everywhere else.'
'So which one? ' Hallam asked.
That was the proverbial sixty-four-megabyte question, wasn't it? What would Morgan do? What was he after? We didn't know anything.
No; scratch that. We knew he was here, and that he'd followed us up the gorge today. (Unless one of us was in cahoots with him and had told him everything?… no.) We knew he had taken Nicole not more than half an hour ago, when she had gone to take a shower. Not an easy thing to do, even if he was twice her size; Nicole was stubborn as hell and wouldn't stop fighting unless there was no alternative.
And we knew who he was. Morgan Jackson. We knew him well.
'I think he told us the truth,' I said. 'I'm pretty sure. But I can't be totally sure. I think we should split up. One group goes down the trail. The other group stays here, checks the hotels and checks the road towards the village. But I don't think they'll find anything. I think I've got a pretty good idea what he's up to.'
'What's that?' Lawrence asked.
'I think he's got a gun,' I said. That explained a lot. It explained how he had spirited Nicole away without a scream or a loud battle. I couldn't see him ambushing her, clubbing her over the head, and carrying her away from the hotel — then he would have a hundred pounds of deadweight to carry, and if he doesn't judge the blow just right he only stuns her or he hits her too hard and she's got blood streaming from her head, and we are in a fairly populated tourist zone, it's just too risky for him. And I couldn't see Nicole meekly giving in to him if he only had a knife, she would have screamed or kneed him in the balls or run for it or something, she knew we were only steps away. But a gun, that was different, that was a trump card. No sense screaming and getting us all killed right then and there.
'And he's just planning to lure us up there and shoot us all,' Lawrence said.
'The simplest plan is most likely to be correct,' I said. 'And it doesn't get any simpler than that. Which is another good reason to split up, so that he doesn't just off us all.'
'So he has a gun,' Steve said. He sat down. So did Lawrence, and then Hallam. Hallam looked a little better. I think now that we had defined the terms of the engagement, had reduced some of the uncertainty, it was easier for him. And if I was right, he still needed Nicole alive as bait, alive and ambulatory, and wouldn't have time to do anything awful to her. All good things.
'I think so,' I said.
'And Nicole,' Steve continued.
I nodded.
'And we don't.'
I nodded again.
'Bit of a bloody problem, isn't it?' Steve said, and scratched his head.
'I don't think there was any struggle,' Hallam said all of a sudden. 'The note was in our room. I expect he got
