Free An Accidental American: A Novel by Alex Carr

black cat who has adopted us. Leila, Rahim calls her, the Arabic word for “night.” Out the open window, rain drums on the rooftops of the Bairro Alto, on the foot-worn cobbles and glistening streets tumbling down toward the black Tagus.
    Driss has been gone for three months now, but in the living room, the radio he left hums low, the almost inaudible drone of a woman’s voice, a proper British accent punctuated by the hush of static. The BBC. It’s late and the others have gone, but Rahim is still listening. In the news today, an ultimatum, a UN resolution for force. The beginning of something we have been expecting and other things we can’t yet imagine.
    In the dark bedroom, on the old green chair, a chocolate-brown sweater and black jeans, underwear trimmed in lace. To be in love, I think, to want nothing more than this. The radio clicks off, and I hear Rahim moving down the hallway. He climbs into bed, and I put my mouth on the crest of his shoulder. He is as comfortable in his own skin as a wild animal.
    Nothing more, I tell myself again. And yet when Rahim turns toward me and slips his hand across my stomach, I can feel a knot there, like a secret waiting to happen. The thing that will divide us, though I don’t yet want to know it. At the moment there is only a feeling of apprehension, a vertiginous sense of choice. And in the darkness, the rain’s thrum, the sound of Leila in the kitchen, the clink of the bones against the porcelain bowl.

    It was well past dark when I finally made my way back to the Pensão Rosa. There was a light rain falling, a fine Atlantic drizzle gently settling on the city’s red roofs and stained cobbles. In the Bairro Alto, the old gas lanterns were lit, their sooty flames shadow-dancing off the cracked plaster facades of the old town houses. Along the rua da Rosa, the first stirrings of nightlife could be heard. The click of glass-ware and billiard balls, a snippet of fado.
Quanto sou desgraçada
Quanto finjo alegria
Quanto choro a cantar…
    Up the hill, the Rosa’s front door opened and a couple stepped out into the street, walking arm in arm. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a figure move in the doorway opposite, shoulders and head ducking out and back again, eyes and teeth winking in the darkness. A man, his movements familiar, I thought, even in the guttering flame of the old lanterns.
    I stopped, then stepped toward the dark doorway. “Rahim?” I called quietly.
    Something rustled in response. Fabric moving against fabric, what could have been shoes on wet stone. Then, except for the nighttime respiration of the Bairro Alto and the chatter of rain, all was quiet.
    “Rahim?” I called again. But there was no one in the doorway’s dark rectangle, just a narrow passageway burrowing backward. At the end of the passage was a dimly lit courtyard and a bare and crooked olive tree.
     
     

T HIRTY-FIVE NOW, THIRTY-SIX, RAHIM THOUGHT , ducking farther into the shadows.
    He did a quick backward calculation in his mind, remembering just how young Nicole had been before, how young they’d both been.
    Her hair was still the same dark brown, though shorter than he remembered, cut back to show the slope of her powerful shoulders. Her face was just a shade narrower, a trick of memory or age or both, and her dark eyes were set back into the pale oval. But there was something about the way she carried herself that was fundamentally changed.
    What prison will do to a person, he heard his brother say. Six years in the Maison des Baumettes. Six years that had hardened her, and that was saying a lot. She’d always been tough as nails, with the guarded independence of a stray cat, even in bed. It was a kind of aloofness that offended him in other women, this eternal holding back. But there was a depth to Nicole’s reserve that had made him want her more.
    She’d always been good at her craft, and Rahim had been surprised when he’d first heard about the mess in Marseille, surprised to