Stamping Butterflies

CHAPTER 56 Marrakech, Summer 1977 [Then]

Fifteen minutes after the girl in the oversized haik left Café Impérial and retraced her steps along the edge of Jardin de Hartai to where a boy waited, five sticks of industrial explosive detonated beneath a bench at the rear of the café. The wooden bench was against the left-hand wall and only one person was sitting there because the café was almost empty, which was all that could be said for what happened.

The primers had been manufactured for quarrying. Of low grade to begin with, age and careless storage had taken them to the edge of their useful life. In fact, the forensic expert borrowed from Paris regarded it as a wonder that they hadn't detonated of their own accord while being carried through the streets of Marrakech.

Sécurité regarded this as a poor miracle.

It mattered little that the bomb was of such low quality because someone had taped rusty nails around each stick. A report written a couple of weeks after the atrocity by a policeman called Major Abbas and circulated by the Ministry of the Interior to Paris and Washington noted the similarity between this attack and similar Algerian-inspired atrocities, concluding that the organizers were probably already across the border and thus could not be found.

His report contradicted a suggestion in Le Matin that the nails were chosen because they were rusty, pointing out that these were probably all that had been to hand.

Either way, the rust added complications to wounds that were already, if one were honest, beyond anything other than the most palliative treatment. Shrapnel from a bomb can spin up to and through the point of impact. Where and when it stops spinning depends on the rate of spin and the density of the tissue with which it comes into contact; bone is usually enough.

Of the few patrons in Café Impérial scarcely any survived. And of the three who did, all died from side effects or medical complications within a period of fifteen weeks. The last to die was Ishmael Bonaventure, who still controlled a number of brothels, clubs and cafés at the time of his death, including Samantha's, a discothèque on the edge of the Palmeraie visited by Brian Jones and Jimi Hendrix.

Among those who died instantly were the manager, his son, the man on the bench and a second cousin of Hassan's uncle, who'd come to meet Ishmael Bonaventure.

Monsieur Bonaventure had been as surprised to receive a telephone call from the cousin as that cousin was to be contacted by Caid Hammou. Having fallen out six months before over profits from a bar in Agadir, the bad blood between Hassan's uncle and the cousin was known to many.

Caid Hammou offered his cousin a simple choice: renewed friendship or a lifetime of enmity. That this life was likely to be short went unspoken.

The cousin had not been looking forward to visiting Café Impérial, centre of Bonaventure's operations in the New Town. As prices went, however, acting as go-between for Caid Hammou and Ishmael Bonaventure was far less than the cousin had been expecting to have to pay for what, in retrospect, was a very unfortunate error in accounting.

So he agreed, fixed the meeting and went with a list of suggestions from Caid Hammou on how operations in Marrakech might be more fairly divided.

Eminently reasonable suggestions, all things considered. And sitting across a table from the elderly freedom-fighter turned gangster, the cousin could see that Bonaventure felt this too.

"I will need to meet Caid Hammou." The old man's tone might have been peremptory but his acceptance of Hammou's right to the title "caid" said all that was needed about how content he was with the compromise on offer.

"Of course," Caid Hammou's cousin said. "Shall we arrange that now?"

The old man looked surprised, also gratified. He had assumed that Caid Hammou would make difficulties about the exact time and place of the meeting in an attempt to keep face. "He's happy with this?"

The man on the other side of the table nodded. "Let me make the call," he suggested, pointing one finger at a telephone on the wall. "May I use that?"

"Be my guest." Ishmael Bonaventure sat back to enjoy the moment. He was still savouring his success when a young Arab girl walked in, swathed in a black haik. Someone's servant, he imagined.

She drank mint tea, the cheapest thing on the board, and ate half a pastry, leaving her payment in a handful of small coins. Ishmael Bonaventure was willing to bet a few would be empire cheffian, old currency from the days before the French gave up their claim to his country.

Bonaventure watched her eat, drink her mint tea and pay in an old mirror which his father had imported from Paris. He didn't notice that she'd forgotten to take her shopping bag.

The old gangster and Caid Hammou's cousin were both still waiting, somewhat impatiently, for Caid Hammou to arrive when the bomb exploded at the table behind them and their impatience ceased to matter.

The café was destroyed, its back wall ripped open, its ceiling crumbling in like eggshell. It was mere bad luck that Café Impérial backed onto a notario's office sometimes used by French intelligence. And it was this, that an office on Boulevard Abdussallam had been destroyed and two European lawyers killed in the blast, which made the news.