The guard looked at Eshref Nafiz with the most puzzled expression. His face, half shaded by the oversized brim of his Brody helmet, betrayed the youthful inexperience behind his poor attempt at being stoic. His uniform was clearly too big for him, and the khaki was far too clean for any possible field use. He leaned down closer to Nafiz, unaware that his loosely slung Lee-Enfield rifle could easily be grabbed, and compared the oriental man's face to that of the passport photo. Clearly, he had not seen a visitor of this particular extraction, as most were either Spanish or from other parts of the British empire.
"Going to the gala, Mr. Safir?" The young guard's voice was a mix of suspicion and curiosity, all of them spoken with a hint of incomplete puberty. "You are from, uh, Arabia?"
"My cousin's out there, in the mid east, fighting the, um, auto men?" A small chuckle came as the passport was handed back to Eshref. "Guess what I got? Guard duty!"
When the same guard began inspecting Evelyn's papers, he was focused on complaining (and bragging) instead of actually doing his job. "They say I'm too young to fight, but I'm already past my seventeenth birthday last week!" He scanned Evelyn's passport and a spark lit up in his eyes. "I can haul thirty pounds of cargo all by myself! Do you see these muscle, m'lady?"
Already skittish, Stephan really couldn't stand this naive boy any longer. His own passport was approved without hassle (the only thing said to him was something about the flu and sanitation, as if he never washed his hands before), but the guard seemed to have some sort of fascination with Eshref (someone that could have possibly killed his cousin). The border crossing was an uncomfortable place of dust kicked up by horses, exhaust emitted by motor vehicles, and busy noises generated by both. Sandbag and barbed wire reinforced guard houses flanked both sides of the road into Gibraltar, with one of them sporting a water-cooled machine gun. Some travelers were let through easily, while a select few had to be thoroughly searched. Plus, a gruff looking sergeant was headed their way impatiently and had his hands gripped too tightly around his shotgun.
"Happy birthday!" Stephan blurted out. His fellow agents have made their own attempts to get them away, but Stephan had to try a different approach. "They are wrong, and if you let us through now, we'll put in a good word for you at the recruitment office."
"Really?" For the first time, the guard perked up with excitement. He straightened up his helmet and scrambled out of the car's way. "Enjoy your stay; just remember, no lollygagging!" He waved them by and made a crisp salute.
As they pulled away, Stephan let out a long and relieved breath, one that he held too long for his own good. In the distance, he could hear the sergeant berating the young soldier.
"You bloody idiot! You're supposed to search them for weapons! What if they are fecking spies!? This happens again and you're scrubbing toilets for the rest of the year."
Oh well, that kid should have known what he signed up for. But then again, Stephan didn't quite know what he signed up for either. Despite his worry, Stephan smiled faintly to himself, and silently prayed that this encounter won't come to bite them in the back.
Finding where the "Almond Dealer" lived was easy enough, but finding the man himself, was not so much so. Arriving in front of a dull brown and the most average looking apartment, in the south-western town area, only an hour and a few detours got in the agents' way. There was a surprising amount of motor traffic in Gibraltar, with a large portion being military trucks, and some private cars going in between. Horse-drawn carriages and cable cars further crowded the streets. Even though navigating through the city did not prove a significant hurdle to Evelyn's driving ability (and Stephan's map reading), it was nevertheless a claustrophobic experience on the peninsular city, where someone was always watching from the sidewalks or out of the tightly packed buildings.
Now securely parked, Stephan had just realized that they had no idea which suite their field contact resided in. For a minute, Stephan just stood, letting the cool sea breeze wash over him and listening to chirps that sounded more like small mammals instead of birds. There were five floors in the apartment, and each floor had ten suites.
"Well, should we just knock one by one?" Stephan asked, and was quickly shut down as expected. However, Stephan found a better idea in the form of an old woman walking out of the front entrance.
"Excuse me, ma'am." Stephan approached the granny without hesitation, figuring that she was the last person to do anything bad to him. "Do you know if there's anyone selling almonds around here?"
The old woman stared at him confusingly. She smoothed a wrinkle on her fluffy dress, as if an annoying bug had just landed there. "No." She said simply, and began to walk away.
"Wait!" Stephan jogged after her; somehow, this senior individual moved rather fast. "Why? My friends told me that there's a whole market for almond out here."
"How silly of them." The old lady scolded Stephan. She pointed to a nearby tree, where some animal jumped between the branches. It was where the chirps came from. "You must be from Britain, young man. Let me tell you, we don't leave nuts outside; the macaques would pick them off in a heartbeat."
Any attempt from Evelyn and Eshref to coerce information out of her was rebuffed by "get lost" and "sod off". "I don't have time for you tourists; I have to help my darlings at the Bristol Hotel get ready for their gala." With that, she sauntered away rather proudly.
"Ragged old hag." Stephan cursed when they were alone again, showing off some English swears he learned in England. Maybe they'll have to knock on every single door after all, suspicions be damned. The gala's happening in less than six hours, and there's no time to telegraph Schwarz for clarification. Eshref and Evelyn proposed some ideas, but none really stood out. Alternatively...
"Monkey see, monkey do." Stephan grinned. He noticed the very same Barbary macaque (or whatever Schwarz's travel brochure called them) the old woman mentioned leaping from overhanging tree branches to a third floor balcony. It was then followed by a second emerging from a well hidden bush, and a third. "They're after the almonds; the Almond dealer must be there! Second suite from the east, third floor. Let's go!"
Stephan ran up the stairs excited, thinking that he had just performed some expert detective work. He brushed pass a descending couple in the stairway, forgetting all about being discreet in the process. When he approached suite 302, Stephan reached out to knock, despite caution from his fellow agents. Nothing responded to the first knock, and silence continued on to the second, the third and the fourth. Checking his watch impatiently, Stephan realized that they had almost wasted twenty minutes since they arrived at the apartment. He placed his hand on the doorknob and gave it a twist just for the sake of trying. To Stephan's surprise, it actually unlocked.
"Strange, what can this mean?" He asked his companions; it was asked in a whisper and a few steps away from the door, so that whomever inside couldn't overhear.
"We have to get inside, no matter what." Stephan concluded from the others' responses.
Stephan spared fast glances down the hallway, and seeing no one else but the three of them, went to open the door. At the last second, a hasty warning from one of his partners reminded him to extract his pistol from its hidden holster. Nodding to thank them for the precaution, Stephan flicked off the pistol's safety, turned the knob, and entered suite 302 with gun muzzle sweeping over the immediate vicinity. What greeted Stephan was not the firefight he expected, but instead, a perfectly normal living room. An empty dinner table, orderly pillows arranged on an plain leather sofa and a cabinet full of neatly placed cups. The suite branched off to two sides, the kitchen and bedroom/bathroom. Stephan moved towards the kitchen, he also signaled for one person to search the bedroom, while the other would be securing the door behind them.
Taking the most quiet steps possible on the creaky wooden floorboard, Stephan's hold on his pistol was nervous and shaking. When he finally crested the threshold, he almost shot the first moving shape in front of his eyes. It was the monkeys, three of them rummaging through the kitchen drawers. There was no almond, but other food, such as canned ham and crackers, were being examined by the escaping monkeys. One of the fidgety bastards also held a kitchen knife.
"Faff off, little wankers." Stephan shooed the monkeys out of the window. They chirped in protest, but otherwise left with a handful of crackers. Out of the open window, the macaques bounded from balcony railing and onto the tree branches hanging above. As Stephan was busy looking outside, he failed to notice something on the ground, until he stepped on it.
"
Kacke!" In his surprise, Stephan shrieked in German. There was a medium stature, Caucasian man (dressed in a nondescript gray suit) lying on the kitchen floor. A quick check found no pulse, and flipping him over revealed no wounds beside thick rope burns around the dead man's neck. The skin was cold, but the body did not smell decomposed; not yet. This man was dead for more than a few hours, though not many days.
"
Ja, okay, what the fuck?" Stephan shook his head. His first reaction was to close the window and the blinds; the last thing he needed was some nosy local finding this death scene. Next, he called out to the others. Turns out there was nothing in the bedroom or bathroom either, though whoever searched there found scattered papers and clothing, signs of hasty packing. No suitcases, bags, money, weapon or other travel essentials were found in the bedroom. However, a few pages of notes were left there. Meanwhile, a nosy neighbor decided to knock, and had to be told off by the agent responsible for the door. When the suite was secured, Stephan told his partners to close off every window and curtain, and only had they done so did he finally reengaged the safety on his pistol.
"So, the monkeys are gone; no almond. But, um..." They gathered back in the living room; Stephan sat down on the sofa, wiping off a sheen of cold sweat that had covered his forehead. The air inside the apartment felt stale with the windows shut. "There's a corpse in kitchen." He whispered the last part.
"I found nothing on him besides his clothing. Nothing in his pockets, not even a wallet or a pocket watch." Stephan described, after the other two had a good look at the corpse. "Look, what if this is not our field contact? Schwarz didn't tell us what the 'almond dealer' looks like, but he is supposed to be someone smart. So, he's got to be smarter than getting killed in his own home, right?"
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