Gorgeous East (38 page)

3.

C
apitaine Pinard and Legionnaire P.C. Szbeszdogy, dressed for a business meeting in cheap, ill-fitting Legion-provided suits, briefcases in hand, climbed the wide, modern streets of the Oued Bou district, late for their nine fifteen meeting with the minister.

“What am I supposed to say?” Szbeszdogy complained, panting. Sweat made dark patches on the coarse fabric of his suit jacket. “I know nothing about business.”

“Neither do I,” Pinard said glumly.

“At least you’ve been briefed.”

“Oh, yes. A couple of hours’ worth. Now I’m a businessman.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” the Hungarian persisted.

“Say nothing,” Pinard snapped. “Just keep your mouth shut. Start now.”

They hurried on, racing against the heat and slowed by it. Below lay the new Moroccan hospital, the red-and-green standard of the Moroccan king flying from its squat tower. Farther off, the medina, the new soccer stadium, all white and pink, and the new highrise government offices under construction along the rue el-Jazouli.

Down there also, like a mud-colored stain on the white city, lay the Saharoui souk—a crammed medieval ghetto surrounded by barbed wire trenches and machine gun towers and watched over by surveillance cameras and at night by the high-intensity spotlights of the Moroccan army. During daylight hours, the two official gates into the souk—the Gate of Dawn and the Gate of Dusk—remained open, though closely guarded by Moroccan troops. These gates closed at sunset with the beginning of curfew, and entry into the souk, officially forbidden, became an adventure: Some said there were tunnels, others secret doors open only for those who knew the password and where to find them, like those magical portals in fairy tales leading to underground realms. True, many people came and went freely after dark, all with illicit business in hand, but this nocturnal access wasn’t without its perils. The undertaking, advertised by Laayoune’s criminal class as routine, nonetheless each year claimed the lives of a few unfortunates making the trip.

4.

T
he Minister of Tourism and Social Intercourse for the Southern Provinces of the Kingdom of Morocco—which is what the Moroccans called the Non-Self-Governing Territory in official press releases—sat in his new air-conditioned office in Laayoune’s tallest building, the twelve-story Bureau du Tourisme et du Commerce, listening with thinly veiled skepticism to Pinard’s fake business plan presentation. Pinard and Szbeszdogy and the quartet of assassins from the 4e RE that made up the covert personnel of Mission: SCORPIO were masquerading as an advance team sent out by the Club Med organization to assess the suitability of the string of dingy beaches beyond the dunes—the Playa Laayoune—as the site for a new addition to the franchise.

The air-conditioning in the minister’s office, set to deep freeze, blasted out of two ducts in the ceiling. The minister, a sleek, self-satisfied man with a nose like a hawk’s beak and a carefully combed beard, wore a black wool djellah, usually intended for winter wear, its sleeves and neck figured with gold embroidery. At one point during the presentation, he actually pulled the hood up to warm his ears.

Pinard, shivering, almost asked if the air-conditioning might be turned down, but didn’t. He put a fake flow chart on the portable easel he’d brought and rambled on. His brief briefing back in Aubagne had been delivered by two chipper Club Med reps—Club Med has always been friendly to Legion activities in the East, their fun-in-the-sun-in-exotic-places vacation packages being, in a way, the final incarnation of discredited French colonialist ideology. Pinard had come provided with all the essential facts and figures, with reams of promotional materials, with tapes of actual Club Med presentations, which he’d listened to over and over again in preparation for this meeting today. But the niceties of business-speak now escaped him. There was a reason he’d gone into the profession of arms and not into business; for the latter, despite his earlier career as a criminal entrepreneur, he felt only the most profound contempt. Also he wasn’t very good at number crunching.

“. . . to be considered while calculating construction budgets,” Pinard was droning now, “but not including marketing and advertising costs, which will be folded into the budgets of other divisions for accounting purposes—at least initially. We are now telling management in Paris—”

Suddenly, he drew a blank. An uncomfortable silence followed. The minister tapped his glossy fingernails on his glossy desk and waited. Szbeszdogy, sitting in a chair across the room directly beneath the air-conditioning duct, was frozen by more than a fear of public speaking.

“I’m sorry,
monsieur le ministre
,” Pinard said at last. “Where was I?”

“You were talking about profit margins,” the minister said dryly.

“Ah! Yes! Well, we’re talking about a profitability factor of, oh—17.5 percent.”

The minister raised an eyebrow. “A few minutes ago you mentioned a 12 percent rate.”

“Of course I did!” Pinard blustered. “But that’s not quite accurate. Allow me to recalculate—” He scratched some unintelligible figures on his pad, then scratched them off. “Let’s say 15 percent,” he said, wagging his head. “Yes, that’s fair. Just to be on the safe side.”

All this was nothing but the freshest
merde
, and the minister’s
merde
detector was switched to on. He pulled down his hood and swiveled his office chair toward Szbeszdogy, freezing on the other side of the room.

“Who are you again?” the minister said.

“I am Alphonse Pique,” Szbeszdogy said, thankfully remembering his covert identity. “A French businessman.”

The minister grunted at this. “You don’t look French.”

“And yet I am,” Szbeszdogy said.

“What is your role in this undertaking?”

“I am a marketing expert,” Szbeszdogy said, his tone flat, robotic. “I am also his assistant.”

“And what do you assist?”

“
Eh bien, tout!
” Everything.

The minister glanced at Pinard’s prospectus again, this time studying it with a careful eye. This particular document had been prepared by Club Med economists years ago for a never-built resort in Honduras, along the Mosquito Coast. Pertinent sections were written in Spanish, budgets given in pre-euro French francs and Honduran dollars.

“The document we have here does not seem to pertain at all,” the minister said, tossing it across his desk. “First, it’s written in Spanish.”

“That is intended as an example only,
monsieur le ministre
,” Pinard said desperately. “It is the
type
of document we will be preparing, that is after we have concluded our fact-finding mission in your beautiful country.”

The minister’s expression darkened. “Monsieur Deschafeaux, is there some other reason for your sojourn in Laayoune?”

Pinard looked at him blankly. “We are the representatives of Club Med France,” he said. “Would you care to examine our passports? Our documents?”

“Passports and documents can be forged.” The minister shrugged.

Pinard opened his mouth to protest, but the minister interrupted.

“Suppose I agree that you are who you say you are. Then I must say that your superiors are ridiculously guilty of bad business practice. In all honesty, now is not the time for Club Med or any other European touristic concern to build one of their outposts here. In ten years perhaps, when the Southern Provinces has been more firmly integrated into the kingdom of Morocco and infrastructures have been improved—but now, with these fanatical Marabouts gaining strength and Polisario issues still unresolved—” He made a gesture, easily translated, that meant something like you people are absolutely crazy.

An uncomfortable silence followed. The air conditioner whirred away. A telex machine clattered from the next room. The minister rose from his chair to indicate the conclusion of the interview.

Pinard gathered his materials; Szbeszdogy unfroze himself and pushed up, his bones creaking with the cold. The minister ushered them through the reception area, where young Moroccan men in shiny new suits performed the menial office support jobs usually allocated to women in more enlightened societies. They crossed to the elevators and stood there for a while, waiting.

“A question,” the minister said at last. “Have either of you gentlemen experienced lengthy periods of military service?”

“No,” Pinard said carefully. “That is, apart from a year in the Boy Scouts.”

“The military life doesn’t appeal to me,” Szbeszdogy said. This, at least, was the truth.

“Why do you ask?” Pinard said.

The minister scratched his beard. “There is a distinct military demeanor about the both of you—” he began, but was interrupted by the elevator, its interior all polished stainless steel. To Pinard’s surprise, the minister entered with them, pressing the button for the lobby. They rode down most of the way in silence, then Pinard said, “We’ll get some current numbers for you in a couple of weeks. Allow me to apologize for the disjointed manner of the presentation you just heard. Unfortunately I suffer from recurring bouts of malaria. . . .”

The minister did not respond to these lies. Then, the door opened on the glare of the lobby, all polished marble and tall, tinted plate-glass windows overlooking the blazing plaza beyond.

“Twelve floors!” the minister announced proudly. He didn’t exit the elevator. “It’s the tallest building in Laayoune. I like to ride up and down to remind myself of the Moroccan achievement in the Southern Provinces! When we came here twenty-five years ago, Laayoune was a miserable little town with dirt streets, nothing but a few Spanish army bunkers and that terrible souk! Yes, the souk is still here, but look at what we’ve done with the rest!”

Pinard and Szbeszdogy stepped into the lobby. The elevator door began to close, but the minister put out an arm to hold it open.

“Pursue your business ventures, gentlemen, whatever they may be,” he said in a low voice. “Though I doubt it has anything to do with Club Med. Frankly, I suspect illegal activity.”

“That is absolutely not—” Pinard began, but the minister silenced him again with a glance.

“Illegal activity, despite what my superiors might think, is also a part—indeed, a most important part—of the Moroccan economy. See to it, however, that I am personally allotted at least 22.5 percent of whatever undertaking you have in mind. If you do not remit to me this percentage and I find out about it, I will see to it that you are arrested and thrown into prison for a very long time. Good day.”

Smiling, he removed his arm and the elevator door closed with a pneumatic hush and the stainless-steel box lifted him unseen to his frozen lair on the twelfth floor.

5.

A
week passed.

Pinard didn’t see the woman again, though he went back to the Colline des Oiseaux several times and wandered the rustling alleys there, hoping and also dreading to catch a glimpse of her slim, enticing form. She was still under surveillance, a duty he had wisely delegated to Szbeszdogy. But if Pinard came to the Colline and the woman came to the Colline at more or less the same hour, and they should happen to meet. . . .

He found himself each time stopping to visit the mournful bird of paradise in its cage, which, seemingly immobile, hadn’t budged from the same spot on the topmost branch of the artificial tree.
You and me both, brother
, the bird whispered to Pinard’s inner ear,
you and me both!

6.

M
eanwhile, Laayoune lay stranded between Sahara and Atlantic on its miserable, waterless peninsula of sand. It’s a dull, dusty town, the kind of place that has been a special torment for the Legion for more than a century and a half. Clouds of fine, irritating sand blew through the streets when the simoom came from east to west, which it did at least twice a day. The soccer stadium was always empty, its green plastic Astroturf field nearly covered in sandy drifts. The sole movie theater, its faded marquee still advertising a notorious Saudi film involving rapacious demons in the guise of American troops, had been closed for years. Three or four overpriced hotels loomed along the avenue Ksar el-Kebir, two of them with bad expensive lobby bars, which were, in fact, the only bars in Laayoune; at one of these malingered a few local prostitutes, ugly and even more expensive than the watered-down booze. There was nothing to do in Laayoune worth doing, not for a Legionnaire.

A mysterious affliction called
le cafard
comes upon the Legion in such places, at remote outposts and mountain forts overlooking unending miles of sand and rock, in dull garrison towns. It resembles a disease of the brain and is sometimes accompanied by inexplicable fevers, but is not a physical ailment, not exactly. It is a spiritual malady, halfway between ennui and suicide, that has something to do with seeing the same old faces every day and drinking far too much of the same old bad wine and not being, in a general sense, fit company for oneself. It is a kind of madness that descends out of the hot, white African sky and has extracted its toll of Legionnaires over the years, with a mortality rate nearly twice that of syphilis or the battlefield.

In the days of the desert forts a century ago, Legionnaires with a bad case of
cafard
struck out alone into the wilderness following a glittering mirage of cool water and bathing beauties and never returned; or mutinied and attacked their CO with a Senegalese
coupe-coupe
, a deadly blade like a large butcher knife; or shot themselves in the head with their Lebel rifles, an unlucky weapon for the purposes of suicide: The Lebel must be placed on its butt, business end of the long barrel in the mouth, bare toe on the trigger, an awkward firing position, particularly for short men, and one that often caused not death, but horrible, disfiguring facial injuries. Or they simply lay down, muttering to themselves about how they’d been cheated in life and unfairly maligned at every turn, and cursing the miserable fate of being alive, turned their faces to the wall, and died.