The Moroccan Girl Read online

  “That’s it?” Carradine asked. The job sounded farcical.

  “That’s it,” Mantis replied.

  “You want me just to wander around Marrakech on the off chance I run into her?”

  “No, no.” An apologetic smile. “She’s a big reader. Fan of books and literature. There’s a strong possibility that she might show her face at your festival. We just want you to keep your eyes peeled.”

  Carradine struggled to think of something constructive to say.

  “If she’s in trouble, why doesn’t she come in? What’s to stop her making contact with you? Why doesn’t she go to her nearest embassy?”

  “I’m afraid it’s a good deal more complicated than that.”

  Carradine sensed that he was being lied to. The Service was asking him to look for a woman who was doing everything she could to avoid being found.

  “Is she Spanish?” he asked.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Mexico. Argentina. Cuba. They’re all Spanish-speaking countries. Tangier is a one-hour flight from Madrid, a short hop on the boat from Tarifa.”

  Mantis smiled. “I can see that you’re going to be good at this.”

  Carradine ignored the compliment.

  “What does she look like?” he asked.

  “I have a number of photographs that I can show you, but I’m afraid you’ll have to commit them to memory. I can give you a small passport-sized photograph to keep in your wallet as an aide-mémoire, but you won’t be able to keep anything digital on your phone or laptop. We can’t risk these images falling into the wrong hands. If your phone was lost or stolen, for example, or you were asked to account for how you knew the woman…”

  The task was sounding increasingly strange.

  “Who would be asking those kinds of questions?”

  Mantis indicated with an airy wave of the hand that Carradine should not be concerned.

  “If you carry on behaving exactly as you have always behaved whenever you’ve been on a research trip to a foreign city, it’s very unlikely that you would ever be arrested, far less asked anything by anybody about the nature of your work for us. We take every precaution to ensure that our agents—by that I mean you, Kit—have no discernible relationship with British intelligence. Nevertheless, it goes without saying that you must never, under any circumstances, reveal anything under questioning about the arrangement we have made here today.”

  “Of course. Without saying.”

  “You and I will continue to communicate with one another en clair on WhatsApp using the number I provided to you. I will be your only point of contact with the Service. You will never come to Vauxhall, you will rarely meet any of my colleagues. As far as Morocco is concerned, you won’t tell anybody about our arrangement or—heaven forbid—start showing off about it on the phone or by email. Did you put my name into a search engine at all?”

  Carradine assumed that Mantis already knew the answer to his own question, but replied truthfully.

  “No. I assumed it would be flagged up.”

  “You were right.” He looked relieved. “By the same token, you mustn’t Google the names of anybody you come into contact with as a result of your work for us, nor carry with you anything that might be at all incriminating. We don’t do exploding pens and invisible ink. Does that sound like something you might be able to manage?”

  Carradine felt that he had no choice other than to say: “Sure, no problem.” He was perfectly capable of keeping a secret. He understood the mechanics of deceit. He was keen to do a patriotic job for his country, not least because his own professional life was so low on excitement. The only thing that concerned him was the possibility of being arrested and thrown into a Moroccan jail. But to say that to Mantis, to indicate that he was worried about saving his own skin, might have seemed spineless.

  “Mind if I use the loo?” he asked.

  “Be my guest.”

  Carradine crossed the hall and went into the bathroom. There were no towels on the rail or mats on the floor, no toothbrush or razor in the plastic mug on the basin. A stained shower curtain hung loose over the bath on white plastic hooks, many of which were bent out of shape. He locked the door and ran the tap, staring at his reflection in the mirror. It occurred to him that he was still recovering from the shock of the Redmond kidnapping and had not been thinking clearly about what Mantis was asking him to do. The job certainly promised intrigue and drama. It was a chance to perform a useful service for his country. Carradine would learn from the experience and obtain priceless first-hand research for his books. There was every possibility that he might be asked to work for the Service for a considerable period of time. In short, the situation was profoundly seductive to him.

  “Everything OK?” Mantis asked as he came back into the living room.

  “Everything’s great.”

  “Come and have a look at these.”

  He was holding an iPad. Carradine sat next to him on the sofa and looked at the screen. Mantis began flicking through a series of photographs, presumably of the woman Carradine would be asked to look for in Marrakech.

  It was strange. In the same way that he had recognized Lisa Redmond as she was dragged from the car, without at first being able to put a name to her face, Carradine was sure that he had seen pictures of the woman before. She wasn’t a journalist or celebrity. She wasn’t a likely target for Resurrection. But she was some kind of public figure. Perhaps an actress he had seen onstage in London or somebody associated with a news story or political scandal. He could not work it out. It might equally have been the case that Carradine had met her at a party or that the woman had some connection to the film or publishing worlds. She was certainly not a stranger to him.

  “You look as though you recognize her.”

  Carradine decided against telling Mantis that he had seen the woman’s face before. His explanation would have sounded confused.

  “No. I’m just trying to take a photograph with my eyes. Commit her face to memory.”

  “It’s a beautiful face.”

  Carradine was taken aback by the wistfulness of the remark. “It is,” he said as they shuttled back through the album. The woman had long, dark hair, light brown eyes and slightly crooked teeth. He assumed that most of the photographs had been culled from social media; they had a casual, snapped quality and appeared to cover a period of several years. In two of the pictures the woman was seated at a table in a restaurant, surrounded by people of her own age; in another, she was wearing a powder blue bikini on a sunny beach, her arm encircling the waist of a handsome, bearded man holding a surfboard. Carradine assumed that he was a boyfriend, past or present.

  “He looks Spanish,” he said, pointing at the man. “Was this taken in Spain?”

  “Portugal. Atlantic coast.” Mantis reached across Carradine and quickly flicked the photo stream to the next image. “You were right. She has a Spanish mother. Speaks the language fluently.”

  “And her father? Where was he from?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t say.”

  There was a fixed, unapologetic look on Mantis’s face.

  “And you can’t tell me her name either?”

  “I’m afraid not. It’s better that you know nothing about her, Kit. If you were to start asking the wrong questions, if you were tempted to Google her, for example, it’s not easy to say what might happen to you.”

  “That sounds like a threat.”

  “It wasn’t meant to.”

  Mantis directed Carradine’s attention back to the screen. He had a good memory for faces and was confident that he would be able to recognize the woman if he came across her in Morocco.

  “How tall is she?” he asked.

  “Couple of inches shorter than you.”

  “Hairstyle?”

  “She might have changed it. Might have dyed it. Might have shaved it all off. Anything is possible.”

  “Accent?”

  “Think Ingrid Bergman speaking English.”r />
  Carradine smiled. He could hear the voice in his head.

  “Any other, uh…” He reached for the euphemism. “Distinguishing characteristics?”

  Mantis stood up, taking the iPad with him.

  “Of course! I almost forgot.” He extended his left arm so that it was almost touching Carradine’s forehead. “The woman has a tattoo,” he said, tapping the wrist. “Three tiny black swallows just about here.”

  Carradine stared at the frayed cuffs of Mantis’s shirt. Veins bulged on his forearm beneath a scattering of black hairs.

  “If it’s a tattoo,” he said, “and she’s trying not to get recognized, don’t you think she might have had it removed?”

  Mantis moved his hand onto Carradine’s shoulder. Carradine hoped that he wouldn’t leave it there for long.

  “You don’t miss a trick, do you?” he said. “We’ve obviously picked the right man, Kit. You’re a natural.”

  5

  Mantis said nothing more about the tattoo. Carradine was told that if he spotted the woman, he was to approach her discreetly, ensure that their conversation was neither overheard nor overseen, and then to explain that he had been sent by British intelligence. He was also to pass her a sealed package. This would be delivered by the Service before he left for Morocco.

  “I’m assuming I can’t open this package when I receive it?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Can I ask what will be inside it?”

  “A passport, a credit card and a message to the agent. That is all.”

  “That’s all? Nothing else?”

  “Nothing else.”

  “So why seal it?”

  “I’m not sure I understand your question.”

  Carradine was trying to tread the fine line between protecting himself against risk and not appearing to be apprehensive.

  “It’s just that if my bags are searched and they find the package, if they ask me to open it, how do I explain why I’m carrying somebody else’s passport?”

  “Simple,” Mantis replied. “You say that it’s for a friend who left it in London. The same friend whose photo you’re carrying in your wallet.”

  “So how did she get to Morocco without a passport?”

  Mantis took a deep breath, as if to suggest that Carradine was starting to ask too many questions. “She has two. One Spanish, the other British. OK?”

  “What’s my friend’s name?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I need to know her name. If it’s on the passport, if I’m carrying her picture around, they’ll expect me to know who she is.”

  “Ah.” Mantis seemed pleased that Carradine had thought of this. “The surname on the passport is ‘Rodriguez.’ Christian name ‘Maria.’ Easy enough to remember.”

  “And mundane enough not to draw attention to itself.”

  “It does have that added dimension, yes.”

  They remained at the Lisson Grove flat for another half hour, going over further practical details of Carradine’s trip, including protocols for contacting Vauxhall Cross in the event of an emergency. Mantis insisted that they meet at the flat when Carradine returned from Marrakech, at which point he would be debriefed and given payment, in cash, for any expenses he had run up in Morocco.

  “Feel free to stay somewhere decent in Casablanca,” he said. “We’ll cover your costs, the extra flight as well. Just keep accurate receipts for the bean counters. They’re notoriously stingy when it comes to shelling out for taxis and train tickets.”

  As Carradine was leaving, Mantis handed him two envelopes, each containing €1,500. There was no limit to the amount of foreign currency he was permitted to bring into Morocco and Mantis did not think that €3,000 would be considered suspicious. He told Carradine that the sealed package containing the passport and credit card would be delivered to his flat in Lancaster Gate the following day, as well as the novel which was to be used as a book cipher. Mantis reiterated the importance of leaving the sealed package intact, unless Carradine was instructed to open it by law enforcement officials in the UK or Morocco. He did not give an explanation for this request and Carradine did not ask for one. Carradine assumed that the package would contain sensitive documents.

  “Good luck,” Mantis said, shaking his hand as he left. “And thanks for helping out.”

  “No problem.”

  Carradine walked out onto Lisson Grove in a state of confusion. He was bewildered by the speed with which Mantis had acted and strung out by the painstaking assimilation of so much information. It seemed bizarre that he should have been asked to undertake work on behalf of the secret state—particularly after such a cursory meeting—and wondered if the entire episode was part of an elaborate setup. Clearly the content of his novels, the depictions of tradecraft, his observations about the burdens of secrecy and so forth, had convinced the Service that C. K. Carradine was possessed of the ideal temperament to work as a support agent. But how had they known that he would agree so readily to their offer? While working for the BBC in his twenties, Carradine had spoken to three veteran foreign correspondents—two British, one Canadian—each of whom had been tapped up by their respective intelligence services overseas. They had turned down the opportunity on the basis that it would interfere with the objectivity of their work, undermine the relationships they had built up with local sources and potentially bring them into conflict with their host governments. Carradine wished that he had shown a little more of their steadfastness when presented with the dangled carrot of clandestine work. Instead, perhaps because of what had happened to his father, he had demonstrated a rather old-fashioned desire to serve Queen and country, a facet of his character which suddenly seemed antiquated, even naïve. He was committed to doing what Mantis had asked him to do, but felt that he had not given himself adequate protection in the event that things went wrong.

  Still in a state of apprehension, Carradine took a detour on the way home, purchased a roll of masking tape and found an internet café in Paddington. He wanted to be certain that Mantis was a bona fide Service employee, not a Walter Mitty figure taking advantage of him either for his own amusement or for some darker purpose which had not yet been made clear.

  The café was half-full. Carradine stood over a vacant computer, tore off a small strip of the masking tape and placed it over the lens at the top of the screen. The computer was already loaded with a VPN. In his most recent novel, Carradine had written a chapter in which the principal character was required to comb the dark net in order to create a false identity. He had spoken to a hacker a few weeks before and still remembered most of what she had told him during their cloak-and-dagger meeting at a coffee shop in Balham. The trick—apart from disabling the camera—was to use the VPN both to create a false IP address and to encrypt his internet usage. That way, his activities would be concealed from any prying eyes in Cheltenham and Carradine could investigate the mysterious Mr. Mantis without fear of being identified.

  As he expected, none of the “Robert Mantis” listings on Facebook could plausibly have been the man he had met in Lisson Grove. There was no Twitter account associated with the name, nor anything on Instagram. Carradine ran Mantis through LinkedIn and Whitepages but found only an out-of-work chef in Tampa and a “lifestyle” photographer in Little Rock. Remembering a tip he had been given by the hacker, he looked on Nominet to see if any variant of “robertmantis” was listed as a website domain. It was not. Whoever he had met that afternoon was using a pseudonym which had been cleaned up for the obvious purpose of protecting his true identity. Mantis was not listed as a director at Companies House nor as a shared freeholder on any UK properties. A credit check on Experian also drew a blank.

  Satisfied that he was a genuine Service employee, Carradine put the computer to sleep, removed the strip of masking tape from the lens and walked home.

  6

  The following morning, Carradine was woken early by the sound of the doorbell ringing. He stumbled out of bed, pulled on a pair of
boxer shorts and struck his foot on the skirting board as he picked up the intercom.

  “Delivery for Mr. Carradine.”

  He knew immediately what it was. He reached down, grabbed his toe and told the deliveryman to leave it in his postbox.

  “Needs to be signed for.”

  The accent was Jamaican. Carradine buzzed the man into the building. He waited by the door, rubbing his foot. A moth flew up toward the ceiling. Carradine clapped it dead between his hands. He could hear the lift outside grinding toward the landing as he wiped the smashed body on his shorts.

  The deliveryman was a middle-aged, dreadlocked Rasta wearing a high-vis waistcoat. A Post Office satchel was slung over his shoulder. It was possible that he was a convincingly disguised errand boy for the Service, but Carradine assumed that Mantis had simply sent the items by Special Delivery. He signed an illegible version of his name on an electronic pad using a small plastic tool that slipped on the glass, thanked him and took the package inside.

  On any other morning, Carradine might have gone back to bed for another hour’s sleep. But the contents of the package were too intriguing. He walked into the kitchen, set a percolator of coffee on the stove and sliced the envelope open with a knife.