Tapas on the Ramblas (16 page)

"Any colour," assured another.

Phhhwwwooop. Phhhwwwooop. Phhhwwwooop. Phhhwwwooop. Four more. These carpet merchants had certainly adapted well to modern American sales culture, responding to a video generation that demands countless images per second. Just keep it coming until they see something they like. But as beautiful as the carpets were, I had a job to do and this experience was getting me nowhere. My search for Charity Wiser had somehow turned into
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
and I was desperate for a magic carpet on which to make a getaway.

"You buy? Good prices."

I stood up shaking my head and smiling back at the rug salesmen. "No, no thank you very much." But if you've got some swampland in Florida, I thought to myself, unimpressed with my own gullibility, I'm you're man.

Phhhwwwooop. Phhhwwwooop. Phhhwwwooop.

Phhhwwwooop.

I moved slowly towards the exit. "No, no thanks."

"Different colour? Different size?" they offered, lastly going for "Different price?"

Phhhwwwooop. Phhhwwwooop. Phhhwwwooop. Phhhwwwooop.

"I'm looking for a hat. But thank you." And with the sound of more phhhwwwoooping following me all the way, I dashed through the curtained doorway, down the stairs and out of the store.

"You look for Chechia?" It was the female salesperson, who probably knew more English than any of the men, but only dared to speak it out of their presence.

"Yes," I said, coming to a screeching halt and turning to face her, desperate for any help I could get.

Time was running short.

"I show you."

She led me at a brisk pace through the still soaking passages of the medina. I wondered if I was once more being taken for a naive fool. Not that I could blame her. For all I knew, the woman was taking me to another souk where she hoped I'd buy whatever it was her father or sister or cousin had to sell that day.

Still I had little choice but to trust her. If it turned out badly, oh well.

The woman stopped abruptly after rounding a corner into yet another of the seemingly endless, countless, identical streets. But this wasn't just any street. It was chechia central, a street just for peddlers whose sole product was the round, tasselled hat, mostly made of red silk or velvet, but in many other colours and fabrics too. I turned to thank the woman but she was gone. I looked up and although the worst of the rainstorm had passed, it was still coming down quite hard, turning the street into a flowing gutter of water dirty with refuse, drowned insects and abandoned pieces of food setting sail. There was no need to shelter myself. I was as wet as I could get. I looked at my watch.
4:25.
Oh God. The Dorothy was set to leave in one hour.

Where was Charity Wiser? I began to shiver and a fever of apprehension settled over me. I feared this was not going to turn out well.

But I couldn't give up. I wouldn't. I started with the first Chechia shop to my right. I stood in its entrance, ignored the squawking invitations of the owners and searched the interior for a tall, distinguished, Canadian woman who was likely beaking off at a clerk for one reason or another.

I continued this way down one side of the Chechia street and up the other.

I found nothing. She wasn't there.

Fifteen minutes later I stumbled out of the last Chechias-R-Us and, dispirited, allowed myself to be jostled and pushed and manipulated down the street. As I moved along, like a piece of flotsam on a sea of bodies, I felt a glare, like a magnet's pull. I stopped short and found the source like a homing device. I stared, almost not believing what I was seeing. My eyes met his for only the briefest second, but it was enough. I shoved and bullied my way through a gaggle of youngsters blocking my way and rushed to where I'd seen the familiar face. But he was gone.

"Jackson!" I called out just once, knowing it was a useless attempt in the pandemonium of the medina, my voice no better than a whisper in a choir.

In response, several nearby shopkeepers called back, "USA!"

What was he doing there? He and Patrick opted out of the tour and had stayed on the ship. But there was no doubt in my mind; Jackson Delmonico had been in the medina, watching me.

And then, as unlikely as the Red Sea, the crowd parted, only for a moment, but long enough for me to spot my quarry. Charity Wiser was standing under the ragged overhang of an abandoned shop at the far end of the street. Her man's white shirt, knotted at her thin waist, and black narrow trousers worn with a pair of canvas, lace-up flats, looked a little worse for the wear, damp and bedraggled. Her hair did too, strands of it having escaped the haphazard pile on top of her head. But thank God, she was safe.

As I struggled through the bodies filling the street, I saw the look on her face. A look I was certain few have ever seen: uncertainty, anxiety, maybe fear. Even so, she held her angular body in an aggressive stance, chin up, chest out, to ward off anyone foolish enough to take her for a weak woman who could be taken advantage of.

I was halfway to her when the attack began. It was quick, without warning and with wicked intent. I was too far away to hear the sound of alarm that no doubt escaped Charity's open mouth as she fell back against the bowing wall of the shop when the two men rushed into her. They were attempting to subdue her and pull her into a nearby narrow passageway. Was this it? The attempt on her life? What a perfect place to do it, I grudgingly admitted to myself, in the middle of a crowded, foreign marketplace. How hard would it be to do her in then stash the body under a pile of Persian carpets? She wouldn't be discovered for weeks in this disorganized mess of alleyways and avenues. As I pushed and prodded and hopped over people to get to Charity's aid I got a better look at her assailants. My best guess was that they were local thugs, hired to do the dirty deed. When I finally reached the scene, Charity was giving as good as she got.

The men had foolishly underestimated the fighting power of
this
eighty-year-old woman.

I had the advantage of a surprise attack from behind on my side. I decided on the classic head bonk routine that works so well in all those Three Stooges movies and surprisingly well in real life. I reached out and got a good grasp on each man's collar, yanked back with as much force as I could manage and smashed their two heads together like I was playing the cymbals in a New Orleans Mardi Gras marching band. The sound, however, was not nearly as pleasant. The men staggered away from each other and looked at one another as if it were the other's fault. Then, with unexpected solidarity, they each thrust their palms into my chest, causing me to let them go, and scurried away into the thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle that was the medina, never to be seen again. I hoped.

Charity's gaze fell upon me as I stepped up next to her. "Russell," she said in a voice that was calm but in which I detected a slight quiver, "I'm rather pleased to see you."

"Are you all right?" I asked.

She nodded. "Shall we make for the ship?" she queried as if our meeting this way had been prearranged.

"Charity, are you all right?" I repeated.

"No damage. Thank you." She sounded like Seven of Nine from
Star Trek: Voyager.

I looked at my watch. 4:45.

"Can you run?"

"Of course. Don't be silly."

I grabbed her hand and began jogging. I didn't know where or in which direction to go, so I just ran and began calling out, "The square? Where is the square?"

Of course, no one could understand a word of what I was shouting. In the end, we found it ourselves. In the same way we first entered the chaotic, exotic world of the medina, with the ease of Alice going through the looking-glass, we stumbled upon the square through an unmarked, arched doorway, as if through a time portal. Somehow, by what good fortune I do not know, we had taken the right turn. That was the good news.

The bad news: our bus was gone.

"You come! You come!" a voice rang out. It belonged to a scrawny man in a rumpled shirt and dark pants running towards us with flailing arms.

Oh man! These salespeople are relentless!

"You come, Canada!" he spit into our doubting faces. With that
he thrust a note into my hands.
 

Russell-The bus had to leave-I paid Azib's friend to wait for two white Canadians and bring them to
the ship-we hope he ends up with you! –Errall
 

I love her. I love Errall.
 

I hate her. I hate Errall. The door was locked from inside. I was cold, damp, miserable: my clothes were a mess, stained with I didn't want to know what. Charity and I, ably ferried by Azib's friend, had pulled up shipside just as dockworkers were pulling away the gangplank. The FOD security people reluctantly agreed to allow us on the boat and, when we were, proceeded to give us a stern lecture. All I wanted to do was have a hot shower and lie down.

But the frigging door was locked from the inside.

I banged and called her name. I tried some other names. Finally Errall opened the door and had the good sense to look about as bad as I felt.

"Russell," she mumbled, obviously still half-asleep.

I marched into the room and began a little tirade. "How could you fall asleep when you had no idea where I was or if I'd make it back before the ship left port?" I was furious and a little bit grumpy. "And then you lock me out of my own room! Maybe you were hoping I wouldn't make it back?" And unreasonable. "Then you'd have the cabin all to yourself!"

She directed her bleary gaze out of the window. The Dorothy was gently moving away from land. "I guess it turned out okay, huh?" she croaked. "Settle down, would ya?"

I fumed, enough steam coming out of my ears to fuel The Dorothy's departure.

"I'm not feeling all that good, Russell. Might have been something I ate. I must have locked the door out of habit. I lay down and I guess I fell asleep."

"You're sorry?" I suggested.

She smirked. "Yeah, that too. I'm glad you're back. Really."

I calmed down a bit and went to the bar to fix myself a stiff rye and Coke. "I guess I should thank you for hiring that guy to bring us back."

"You owe me fifty bucks. American. What happened? Did you find her?"

Now that I was done expressing my displeasure and had a couple ounces of liquor in me, I took better notice of my roomie. "Are you okay?" She did look a little off. I plopped down on my bed, a collection of unopened white-enveloped invitations crunching beneath my weight.

She waved it off. "I'll be fine. The nap helped. So tell me. What happened with Charity?"

I gave Errall the rundown of my adventure, starting with spotting Jackson Delmonico and ending with the attack on Charity.

"Do you think Jackson was behind it?" she asked. It was a question that had been ringing through my head ever since I returned to The Dorothy.

"It seems like too much of a coincidence for him not be involved some way, especially since he wasn't supposed to be in Tunis at all. And I did find all that cash in his room. It might have been to pay for this hit."

"Or, it could have been a couple of those pickpockets or thieves Judy Smythwicke warned us about."

I nodded but had a hard time believing it. "I suppose."

"Why was Charity all by herself anyway? Why wasn't she trying to find the rest of the group?"

"She says she got lost. That's it. Nothing more sinister than that."

"Do you believe her?"

I gave Errall a perplexed look. "Why wouldn't I? Why would she lie about something like that?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. I don't trust her, that's all."

I nodded but kept my mouth shut. It was a disturbing thought.

Dinner was a quiet affair. Errall, still not completely well, went back to sleep. I ordered in and ate on our deck. I was slowly coming to befriend the dark, sometimes brooding waters, achieving a certain level of comfort with the immensity of our solitude. We were a speck of humanity on a vast sea and we simply had to trust that she would carry us through. I couldn't explain it then or since, but the entire concept was frightening to me and yet exhilarating at the same time.

Once fed and watered and refuelled with energy, I dashed about the ship checking on the whereabouts of the Wisers, hoping to take advantage of some time alone for another round of sneak and peek. The Moshiers were having a late family dinner together, giving me time to pop into Marsha and Ted's room, Nigel and Nathan's and, with Harry visiting the library with her grandfather, I even made it into the room she shared with Kayla. Unfortunately, none of the visits turned up useful clues or handwriting specimens matching the note Charity received. Why oh why are things not as easy as they are on TV?

Returning to the room at 10 p.m. I found Errall still out, but breathing (I checked) and snoring (the things that happen without a tape recorder). After the goings-on in Tunis I was worried about my client and decided, de
spite the hour, to call on her.

"Russell, come in. Dottie is asleep but we can talk on the deck. Drink?" Charity welcomed me into her suite, resplendent in a pitch black silk kimono which somehow looked just right for the night.

Once we were seated on the deck, martinis in hand, I broached the subject that was no doubt foremost in both our minds. "Can you tell me anything more about what happened today in Tunis? Did you see anyone or hear anything that might give us some clues as to who was behind this?" I didn't want to put any words in her mouth but I was wondering if she'd caught sight of Jackson as well.

"Before we speak of that, Russell, let me express to you my deepest gratitude for what you did this afternoon. You are my brave warrior. I know you had concerns about being cast in the role of my bodyguard and, I must admit, Russell, that was not far from my mind. And, damn it all, I sit here tonight with you, safe, beverage in hand, and I am glad of it. Glad, I tell you. Without you, who knows where I might be right this minute. Perhaps I'd even be dead, the scent of my blood, pouring from my slitted throat, mixing with the exotic smells of that darkest of port cities..."

Oh dear. "Charity I..."

"No wait," she whispered, perhaps knowing she'd gone too far. She laid a gentle hand on mine. "Really, Russell, thank you," she said solemnly and, I think, sincerely.

"You're welcome."

She sipped her drink, her eyes never leaving mine. "Who was it?"

"The attackers were obviously local."

"Hired by one of my own family."

"Maybe."

"Maybe?" Her ire was rising. "What on earth can you mean by that?"

"There's a possibility that it was a random act of violence. Petty thieves looking for whatever was in your pockets or purse."

"Preposterous. Do you really believe that, Russell?"

I looked at her with a steady gaze and admitted, "No."

"Then who, for God's sake, who?"

"I saw Jackson, in the medina, immediately before the attack."