Woodgerd grunted. “I’ll believe that when I see ’em.”
***
The palace of Sidi Ahmed ben Musa, vizier to the pasha of Marrakech, was a grand mansion of three floors that overlooked lush gardens fed by underground water channels from artesian wells. It was entered through a nondescript door in a mud wall outside the central Kasbah fortress. Once inside, visitors were greeted in a garden of orange trees. Beyond lay the ornate main house, with dozens of rooms for the vizier’s four wives, twenty-four concubines, and dozens of children. Sohkoor and his foreigners went through the door into the garden, the troops staying outside the wall with the horses.
After preliminaries, they were ushered through three different archways, one squared, one curved, and one latticed, and into the main hall. Led across a central plaza with fountain spraying, they entered the debating room, with walls of incredibly delicate latticework, ceiling paintings, and alabaster carvings.
Wake said that the entire place reminded him of the Alcázar, which Sohkoor said was an illusion, since Musa’s palace was only a few years old but made to look ancient. The Vizier of Marrakech was very wealthy and had arranged for the finest artisans in the kingdom to recreate the grandeur of the imperial city’s past. He pointed out the calligraphy on one wall, above an archway with a Star of David etched into it. The inscription, Sohkoor said, was the epic tale of Shaherazade.
As two old men played lutes quietly in a dim corner, servants brought them tea and little cakes, fawning especially over Sohkoor, who stood silently, waiting, while the others sat back on giant stuffed couches upholstered in yellow silk. With the sound of a gong, the scholar was shown into another room, leaving the others behind.
Faber, shifting from side to side, sat next to Wake and Rork. “I feel we are close to Catherine. I am so very nervous, Peter. This incessant searching and talking and waiting is making me go mad. She is close by—I know it.”
“Henri, keep calm,” said Wake. “We’ll only make it worse if we do anything without Sohkoor’s guidance.”
“Yeah, Faber,” rumbled Woodgerd. “I’ve got enough friggin’ problems without you going off half-cocked on us. We have to be smart about this.”
Rork nudged Wake and whispered, “Some o’ these lads ain’t servants, sir. Those in that dark hallway o’er there got hard eyes. I know that look. Soldiers.”
Wake glanced at the hallway where two tall square-shouldered black men stood, each pulling out a large scimitar cutlass and laying it across his chest. Both were intently watching the foreigners.
“Senegalese,” said Woodgerd. “Good warriors. Extremely strong. Fearless. Not related to anyone in the kingdom, and therefore completely reliable as personal bodyguards. Sultan Hassan keeps them at each of his palaces. They’re his inner guard and sworn to him entirely. I suppose this Musa fella must’ve bought some of his own.”
Rork wasn’t impressed. “The way they’re eyein’ us, I’m a wonderin’ if they’re part o’ the bandits.”
“No, the bandits are renegade Tuareg. Different color and culture. Those Senegalese are devout Muslims. The bandits are anything but Muslim.”
Suddenly footsteps echoed fast along the tiled floor and Sohkoor appeared, his expression drawn. He didn’t break stride. “We go. Now.”
In the garden he turned to Woodgerd and Wake as they reached the doorway in the perimeter wall. “The bandits tried to sell the hostages today at a caravanserai near the Mella for a thousand Spanish dollars. They were refused and left. The vizier thinks they are somewhere in the area north of Djemma el-Fna, the great market square of Marakech, but no one knows exactly where. They will be trying to get out of the city in the dark, I believe.”
“How does he know all that?” asked Woodgerd.
“Because he buys and sells slaves—on the side, as you Americans say—and he is the one who refused the offer,” answered Sohkoor. “He said the price was too high for such dangerous items.”
Wake was stunned. He thought the vizier, as a government authority, was above trading in slaves. “Damn. I didn’t think they still did that, officially.”
“Officially they don’t, squid,” growled Woodgerd. “But in this part of the world rules are made by the guys with the most muscle and broken by the guys with the most money.”
The colonel asked Sohkoor, “What does he know about us?”
“Everything. And it was not I that told him.”
Sohkoor pulled and pushed the door, but it wouldn’t open. Woodgerd swore an oath and tried, but it was stuck closed. Wake tried kicking it outward, but the solid oak door didn’t budge.
Then Rork put a hand on Wake’s shoulder. “Ah, gentlemen. Look behind us.”
They turned around, looking back across the garden.
Faber was the only one to speak. “Oh, mon Dieu.”
In the flickering torch light of the garden Wake saw twenty giant Senegalese standing in a line across the patio, massive arms holding huge scimitars that mirrored the golden torchlight. Half a dozen smaller blue-robed Arabs stood to one side, rifles aimed at the center mass of each of the five men at the door.
39
Dance of Death
They stood there stunned until a previously unseen man in saffron jellaba robes approached from the side of the garden and told Sokhoor in Arabic, and the others in German-accented English, to put their hands up. He carried himself with confidence, snapping his fingers for the Senegalese to come forward, search, and tie them up. Their hands intruded roughly everywhere, yanking out knives and pistols, money and watches, dumping them in a pile on the ground.
There was a gasp from the tall black men when they saw the naval uniforms under the Americans’ robes, but the Arab leader in yellow just smiled knowingly. “Ah, yes, the Americans, who want Morocco to be protected from the greedy Europeans. We knew you were here with Sokhoor. You are so stupid. Why are you even here? To assist the French? They despise you. To assist Sultan Hassan? He
