Death in Tangier - Thriller

1

The first time Elsa met Robert Jensen at the Tangier post office.

All in all, it was only a very brief encounter. Robert had almost run over her and seemed to be in a great hurry.

"Pardon!", it hissed through his thin lips.

"Never mind," Elsa replied. She said this instinctively and without thinking much in German, although she could not really assume that the person she was talking to understood her.

Then they took a quick look at each other. Elsa looked into light blue eyes.

The man was blonde, and his hair was already thinning in some places. Still, his age was hard to estimate. Between 25 and 40 everything seemed possible.

But there were these eyes that just seemed better suited to an older man.

When he crashed, his passport fell off. He bent down to take back the document, but Elsa still managed to take a look at it. It was a Danish passport, she could see that much.

He took the document and immediately put it in the inside pocket of his light brown summer jacket. Then he passed Elsa. She watched him, but he did not turn to her, but turned straight to one of the switches.

There she heard him speaking in - as far as she could judge - quite fluent French. She didn't understand much about it. Just single words that didn't make sense. The next time she met him was the following evening.

The muezzin had already called his evening prayer over the city via loudspeaker and it was dark. Fog rose from the sea. It got damp and also quite cold.

She tightened her thin jacket around her shoulders and raised her collar a little, but this damp coolness went through everything. There seemed to be no cure for it.

She knew that it would hardly be warmer if she rolled herself into the ceiling in her hotel. The heating was out of order. There was still an electric radiator - but the weak power grid in the house already had trouble coping with a hairdryer.

Elsa let herself drift in the Tangier in the evening and watched the people crowding the streets.

When you came here by ship, the city looked almost like an anthill from afar. An anthill stuck to a slope.

And she was right in the middle of it. In the meantime she knew that she was not allowed to pay attention to the aggressive street vendors and alleged tourist guides.

"Voulez-vous visiter ma shop?"

She shook them off like annoying flies. She didn't want to buy anything. Neither a leather jacket, nor a carpet or an 'original Moroccan handmade'.

Maybe even 'Made in Taiwan', she thought.

But whatever it was, she didn't have the money for it. She strolled along the seafront. For a while her eyes got caught on a man driving a donkey cart.

The sea was calm. Wafts of mist hung low over the sheer endless water surface.

A film set, she suddenly thought. It's like a movie.

She decided to go to the beach for a while. She took off her shoes and let the cold salt water play around her feet. She walked across the wet sand and dreamt to herself. The sea was roaring. The road a bit further up, too, but down here on the beach the sea was louder. She looked around.

No one was here at this hour. All she saw was darkness and fog and the sea... And a little further away, than the black, dark shadows, the stalls and beach restaurants, which were all still closed at this time of year. Even during the day. There just weren't enough tourists to make it worth opening.

The moonlight now came pale through the fog and bathed everything in a strange light. Suddenly the sound of the sea mixed with voices that soon approached. At first Elsa was frightened, then she listened. They were Arab voices. Male voices.

She stood there as if frozen as the figures stepped out of the darkness into the pale moonlight. She heard them talking, but of course she couldn't understand a word.

She had no idea what to do.

There were three young men. Maybe 20, maybe 25 years old. They seemed to have little regard for traditional Moroccan clothing. They wore jeans and dark leather jackets. And if it hadn't been for the dark complexion on her skin, she couldn't have been distinguished from her peers anywhere in Western Europe.

Elsa remembered the mule skinner she had seen shortly before. All this in the same country at the same time...

The men looked at her in a way she didn't like.

She looked around. But there didn't seem to be a soul anywhere. Nobody but these three guys.

The men laughed.

Elsa had an instinct that her conversation was about her. It may be that her feelings were sometimes mistaken, here she was quite sure.

She was leaving.

Just gone.

She did not feel comfortable in this situation, turned around and walked a few steps. Then what she had feared all along happened. You spoke to her. First in French, then shortly afterwards in English. Finally, in German.

"Where are you from?" one of them asked.

She stopped and turned to them. The three came closer.

"Germany? Germany? Holland? Where from?"

"Germany," she said. And her own voice sounded strange to her.

"Germany - good. My brother lives there. In Düsseldorf. Do you know Düsseldorf?"

"Yes."

"I've been to Germany. In Hamburg. And in Stuttgart. My father was in the circus."

She turned to leave again. But she didn't get far. Just a few steps.

"Hey, stay here!"

She looked into a somewhat angry face.

"I know some German. I just want to talk," he explained. The other two watched eagerly. One grinned pretty cheekily.

"Just a little entertainment," he said. "Don't sell anything!"

"That's what everyone says!", she was kidnapped - a little less friendly than she had planned. But now it was out.

"Germany is good," he said unimpressed. "Good at football and good cars." He seemed to want to make good weather. Then his face changed a little. "Are you here alone?"

She hesitated to answer.

She opened her mouth, but nothing came through her lips. She didn't want to make a mistake. There's no way.

"There's no one here," he said. "Do you have a husband?"

So that's why the wind blew. He wanted to clarify her ownership and whether he could end up with her - without interfering with someone else's rights.

"No," she said. "I mean, so..." She stammered something together and knew immediately that her answer had been a mistake. She just said it without thinking about it.

He smiled, but she didn't return his smile.

The young man came one step closer.

"Not married?" he asked.

It seemed very important to him, otherwise he wouldn't have made sure again.

He took another step towards her, and before she could retreat, he had grabbed her by the arm.

"There's nothing to be afraid of," he said. But she was afraid. She even trembled. She released her arm and took another few steps back. The three followed her.

"Just a little talk..."

"Leave me alone!"

"We are a hospitable country! And we are kind to everyone who is kind to us..."

That was kind of a threat.

"Leave me alone!"

She started to walk. Panting, she rushed forward as the three followed her.

You played with her. With her and her fear. She dropped the shoes she had held in her hand and set off on a spurt. She ran as fast as her legs could carry her.

The men laughed and came after her.

Elsa barely knew where she was going. She just ran into the darkness, away from the sea, away from the beach, to where there were people.

As many people as possible. She might be safe in that mass.

She tripped over something in the soft sand. Driftwood, maybe, that washed up the tide and didn't take the tide back. There was some of it here on the beach. She fell to the ground.

She felt the sand drifting into her clothes.

Behind her were the three pursuers. They wore sneakers and came up fast. Desperately she tried to get back on her feet.

They think of me as fair game!, it shot through her head.

Those guys seemed perfectly safe. Here on the beach, where it was dark and where no one waited...

The sound of the sea and the noise of the road that led along the sea stunned their ears together. No one on the seafront would hear anything if the three of them attacked them now.

Then Elsa saw a figure emerge from the darkness. She came from exactly the direction she wanted to go. She came from the street, where life was and people...

At first she was frightened, but then the moonlight fell so that she could see a face. It was the Dane who almost knocked her over at the post office.

He stood there and seemed to grasp the situation immediately. His trains were calm and serene. They were even cold. Completely cold.

She looked up at him, then back to the water, where the three men were.

Then she got up. She stood there as if rooted - and so did the three who had run after her.

They looked frowning at the man who had stepped out of the darkness and whose intention seemed quite obvious to block their way.

Elsa carefully put one foot in front of the other until she stood behind the Dane. She took a deep breath.

The three tried it with the Dane in English, after all it was obvious that he was European. But the man answered in Arabic.

Elsa didn't understand a word. But it didn't seem like a friendly thing to say to them. In the eyes of the three Moroccans, it flashed poisonously.

The Dane stayed as cold as in the beginning. But he was alert. No detail in the movements of his opponents seemed to escape him. He literally pierced her with his gaze.

The exchange...