Tangier (40 page)

"Thanks, Dan." Peter peered around. "You Americans know how to live."

"Yes," said Lake. "No little grubby cubbyholes for us. And the whole building's regularly debugged. We don't want anyone listening in, you know, listening in to all our secrets from some back room behind some shop."

He grinned. Zvegintzov tightened up.

"Come on, Peter. I'm only kidding around. Let's face it, it's terrific the two of us are friends. Here we are, citizens of opposing powers, yet we really like each other, so to hell with the struggle out there." He motioned with his arm toward the Straits of Gibraltar, indicating Europe and the world beyond. He was pleased by this extravagance of gesture, and the perplexed expression on Peter's face.

"There is something between us, isn't there, Peter?" he asked, narrowing his eyes. "This little wedge of suspicion, this little game we've been playing since we've met."

Z smiled weakly, then he shrugged. Lake sat up straight. Suddenly he slapped the desk.

"Oh, hell, Peter—drop your guard for once. Let's forget all this cat-and-mouse stuff. Christ—don't you see? We're buddies now. We're pals."

Z nodded cautiously and stared down at the rug.

Work the old seesaw. Keep him on edge, Lake thought. Change the mood. Don't let him settle down.

"You know, Peter," he said, trying to work some sympathy into his voice, "when you think about it there's a limit to the things a man can be expected to endure. There's only so long a man can go on living with deceit. Know what I mean? Ever think of crossing over? What a terrific feeling that would be?"

Peter stared at him quizzically. Lake toughened up his eyes.

"
Defection
, Peter. That's what I'm talking about. Defection. Giving yourself a second chance."

Z was staring very curiously now. Lake congratulated himself—he had the Russian hooked.

"Of course, the question in such a case would be—well, there'd be many questions in a man's mind. Such as how he'd be received by the other side, and how well he'd be protected from the people he'd worked for before. How much would he be expected to betray? How many of the old beans would he be expected to spill? And then there'd be the question of confidence, the person he'd defect to, the guy into whose hands he'd, quite literally, be placing his life."

He looked at Z again, highly attentive now.
Is there a Russian agent anywhere
, he wondered,
whose mouth isn't full of rotten teeth?

"And motivations! Let's not forget about them! A man who'd defect—he'd have to have a motive for doing that. It might be a matter of high moral principle. Maybe it would have to do with his political beliefs. Or it could just be that he wanted to change the nature of his life. An escape maybe from something in the past. A complicated personal situation, say, involving his wife, or someone else. Comfort. Money. Change. It could be a combination of any of these things. Or all of them. Or even something else. You see, Peter, the possibilities are infinite, but the end is pretty much the same. I wonder how many men wouldn't jump at a chance to start everything over, with a clean slate, without the stigma of a past—"

He felt himself becoming increasingly excited, more and more manic as he talked on. He was pleased by his eloquence and stunned by his daring. His voice, he noted, was steady as a rock. For a moment it occurred to him to pause, give Peter a chance to reply. But having achieved a certain momentum he had no choice, he felt, but to gush on.

"Now speaking theoretically, Peter—and, of course, theoretical is what this conversation is—let's assume for a moment that there were two men who were quite good friends, and let's assume further, simply for the sake of this discussion, that one of these men wanted to defect to the other's side. Now the first one, the spy, say, the guy who wanted to make the change, he'd have certain apprehensions, as we can both well imagine, about the credibility of any offer from his friend. I mean—that would be perfectly natural. Spies are human beings, after all. He'd have made his decision, you see, completely on his own, but still, being human, he'd be stupid not to have some doubts. The change would be voluntary, a product of his will. But he'd have to be certain he could really trust the other guy. He'd have to have great confidence and not think he was being used. Confidence. Mutual confidence. That's basic to what I'm trying to convey."

He sat back then and smiled. "You understand me, don't you? Yes—I think you do."

"Well," said Peter after a while, "I think I understand you. More or less."

"Good. Good. That's very important. It's vitally important that we understand each other today. Frankly, I wasn't sure we'd reach an understanding so very fast. Sometimes I've felt, well, there's been this—a certain strain."

Zvegintzov cleared his throat. "You haven't always been so candid with me."

"But you find me candid today?"

"Oh, yes. Today I do."

"And?"

"Well—"

"Yes?"

Zvegintzov shrugged. "Let's just say—I think I understand."

"Good!" Lake jumped to his feet. He had Peter now, balls to the wall, but still there was something missing, a commitment, an act of faith.
Confidence
—that was it. If he wanted Z to have confidence, he would have to show that he had confidence in him.

A sign
. He needed a sign. Something that would cinch it, sew the defection up. Suffused by a sense of well-being, convinced that success was within his grasp, he began to search for a solution, while his heart beat thunderously inside his chest.

Of course! He had it now
.

"Come, Peter," he commanded softly, startled by the brilliance of his idea. "Come. I want to show you something. A special section of the Consulate. A section no foreigner's ever seen."

He moved decisively toward the rear door of his suite, into the secure area, the little corridor through which only he and Foster were allowed to pass. He paused at the vault, knelt to turn the knobs. When finally he heard the click, he stood up, motioned Peter back, then swung open the steel door.

He was breaking security, he knew, breaking every rule in the book. But if his plan worked, none of that would matter. It was impossible to live without taking risks.

"Look, Peter. Look!" The two of them peered inside. Lake gestured toward the bank of green steel filing cabinets that lined the inner wall. "Our files, all our secrets, everything we've done in Tangier since 1935. It's all here—even our extensive dossier on you. See that computer thing over there? That's the gadget we use to crack messages and put them into code."

They stared, both of them, at the gleaming cryptographic device.

"What do you think? Come on, Peter! Tell me what you feel?"

"I—I'm flabbergasted," Peter said.

"Of course. Of course you are! A man like you, a man with a well-trained eye. Just to have a look at a machine like that—Christ! Your people would give a fortune to be here now. You can't put a price on a moment like this, but here I am showing it to you. I
trust
you, Peter—I want you to understand. Now I ask you to put your trust in me."

A pause then as they stood side by side staring at the code machine. Lake could hear Z exhaling in heavy gasps. Suddenly he felt weak, overwhelmed by what he'd done.

T
hroughout the summer, but particularly in August, certain undesirable elements began to appear in Tangier. Hamid noticed them—pickpockets of uncanny skill and verve, and gangs of dark-browed adolescent thugs. The latter seemed to specialize in harassment, insults and jostles on the Boulevard and, sometimes, outright attacks on foreign residents of the town.

Among the first of their victims was the accident-prone writer David Klein, discovered nude and beaten bloody on a lonely stretch of beach beneath the Amar woods. He'd been sunning himself, he told Hamid, immersed in a biography of Oscar Wilde, when he was suddenly surrounded by a gang of grinning toughs. They closed in, then took turns kicking him, aroused by his squeals and pleas. Shortly after Dr. Radcliffe patched him up, Klein left Tangier for good.

Next was Philippa Whittle, wife of Clive Whittle, the British Consul General, an imperious lady much admired for her charitable good works. She was walking in broad daylight on Avenue Christophe Colombe, when a gang swarmed upon her, punched her to the ground, stole her purse, and robbed her shoes. Whittle made stern representations to the Prefect, and then, when Hamid failed to find his wife's attackers, he filed a diplomatic protest in Rabat. But as hard as Hamid tried, he could find no witnesses to the event. Either the woman was an hysteric or people in the neighborhood were covering up out of sympathy for the attacking gang.

It was Sven Lundgren, the little dentist, who suffered the worst abuse. He was standing one evening by the rail tracks, recruiting for Pierre St. Carlton, when suddenly he was jumped by a youth who lashed his face with a steel chain. For a while it looked as though Sven might lose an eye, but St. Carlton flew him up to Paris, where a doctor saved his sight.

There was no pattern to these assaults. They seemed to occur without provocation or plan, savage outbursts from unidentified persons who had somehow infiltrated Tangier. The European community was, naturally, upset, but, according to Robin Scott's column, equally determined that no herd of youths was going to ruin its summer fun. At night, safe in their villas, lulled by the gentle bleating of Arab flutes, the Europeans told each other that after Ramadan the city would resume its former calm.

Hamid was not so sure. These assaults on foreigners distressed him greatly, and he felt there was more to them than the stresses of the fast. Something was changing in the city—there was tension and anger now. For some time he'd sensed this change; now he tried to understand its cause.

The draft was one thing—it was so stupid, he felt, to draft people during the holy month, but the provincial administrators didn't seem to care. The recruiters, minor despots, were pitiless in their pursuit, rounding up young men, shipping them off to army camps, oblivious to the anger they aroused.

As the draft began to gain momentum and the water crisis worsened, Hamid observed flocks of petitioners mobbed outside City Hall. One time, when he was driving by, he saw some women fling themselves before a limousine. When the chauffeur stopped and the women pressed themselves against the car, Hamid had a glimpse of the tense and frightened Governor of Tangier nodding gravely at grievances being shouted at him through the glass. A few seconds later, after the limousine had pulled away, he overheard the women muttering among themselves. "Walu," they said, "we'll get nothing out of him."

It had been years since he'd heard such bitter words—not since his boyhood, the time of struggle against the Spanish and the French. And he heard other things too that gave him pause, mumblings from policemen, reported to him by Aziz, about Mohammed Achar and his protégé Driss Bennani, things they were alleged to be saying to the people of Dradeb. There was no proof as yet, no evidence against them, but Aziz told him that certain officers were trying hard to build a case. Achar and Bennani were careful, avoided direct attacks upon the King, but according to Aziz they left little doubt that they were complaining of his regime.

Aziz hesitated after he told him this, as if he wanted to add something more.

Hamid met his eyes. "I understand," he said. "I'll speak to her tonight."

He tried. He put it to Kalinka as calmly as he could. "I'd appreciate it," he said, "if you'd stay away from the clinic for a while. I know you like your work there, but there's some trouble now. Achar and Bennani are stirring things up, and it would be better for me if you stayed away."

She surprised him then—she argued back. "It's my work," she said. "I can't do it if I stay away."

"Of course, Kalinka—I know that. But please don't go down there anymore."

"Why? Tell me why, Hamid."

"Well—" How could he explain? "I have some enemies in the police, and these men are watching Achar. By connecting Achar with you they could make it look as though I'm involved."

"But you're not, Hamid—"

"Of course I'm not. But you live with me, and you're working there." He looked at her.

She frowned. "I'm sorry," she said. "This is what I want to do."

Suddenly he was furious. Didn't she care about his career? He stood up, started to leave the room.

"I just can't give it up," she cried. He stopped, turned to look at her. Her hands were set upon her cheeks. "There's such excitement down there, people doing things, trying to set things right. There's so much more to Tangier than I ever thought, Hamid. So much more than the people who go to Peter's store."

"Are you saying I waste my time?"

"No, not that—"

"You're beginning to sound like Achar."

"Well, he has been an influence, I admit—"

"Oh, yes. An influence! And you've certainly caught his mood. You have, Kalinka. Yes, you have. I know him. He's persuasive. And very attractive too."

She stared at him. "What are you trying to say?"

"That I'm sick of hearing about how noble he is. 'Achar says this.' 'Bennani's doing that.' You're more interested in them than in your life with me."