By the end of the afternoon he'd cleared up all his papers. A few minutes before six he set off for the Prefecture. He waited in the Prefect's anteroom for ten minutes, until a young man in a sharply tailored European suit approached him with a nod. "Inspector Ouazzani, I'm the Prefect's new assistant. He's ready to see you now." Hamid followed the assistant, a type he didn't like-glossy, smooth, educated at a French lycee, a young man destined to grow rich on bribes.
The Prefect was another sort, fat and charming, dressed in a traditional Moroccan robe. Hamid knew he was corrupt, but with a moderation his assistant would never understand. The Prefect stole just enough to keep his family in a decent style. It would never occur to him to milk a fortune from his job, or to look away from an injustice which might do a poor man harm.
"Sit down, Hamid," he said, waving toward a leather couch. "I already have one complaint today. The British Consul called, said you refused to investigate some nonsense at the British church. Well, don't worry. You did exactly right. I defended you, as I always have."
"Thank you, Prefect," said Hamid. "Now listen to a complaint of mine. Over the weekend we arrested some British ballet dancers. When they asked to see their consul, his wife lied and said he was out of town."
The Prefect laughed. "I'll remember that. Really, Hamid, you have the most difficult job."
"It's going to become even more difficult. Among the diplomats now we have two philanderers-Mr. Fufu, the UN man from Uganda, and Baldeschi, the Italian Consul. Both of them are accumulating mistresses at a greater than normal rate. Of course I'm grateful they're heterosexual-such a rarity among the foreigners here. But eventually someone's husband's going to find out, and then we're going to have one of those 'diplomatic affairs.'"
The Prefect laughed again. "I know you can handle it, Hamid. But I didn't call you here to gossip. A serious matter's come up. The Ministry of Interior has received information from Egyptian intelligence through our Cairo Embassy. The Egyptians claim an Israeli assassin is coming to Tangier.”
Hamid was puzzled. It didn't make any sense. There were no important personalities in Tangier who could possibly interest an assassin, and as for the King, he espoused the Palestinian cause in a half-hearted way, but he was unpopular in the north and rarely used his palace in Tangier.
"Perhaps they've confused Tangier with Algiers. They've been that stupid before."
"Any ideas, Hamid?"
"The only thing I can think of is that there's an old Nazi here they want to get."
"Very good. Anyone in mind?"
"That's the trouble, Prefect. I don't think there're any left. But I'll look into it and let you know."
Driving home, he thought about the problem. A Nazi hunter made sense, but who could the target be? He thought and thought, sifting through hundreds of names. The implications were difficult to accept, for if he was right there was someone living in Tangier, someone quite poisonous, who lay dormant and had escaped his scrutiny for years.
That night when he made love with Kalinka all his tensions ebbed away. She was a mystery to him-she smoked hashish, her mind worked the opposite way from his. But none of that mattered when she touched him with her tiny hands, curled her long, thin legs around his thighs, tickled his genitals with her toes. Feeling himself grow hard within her, feeling her fragile, glistening body throb beneath him and hearing her gasps against his ear, he was inspired to a tenderness he had never felt with any other woman, a sense that she was exquisite and that it was his pleasure to make her body sing. In bed with other women he had cared only for himself, but Kalinka's moans and embraces made him as interested in giving as in taking, and so he let her guide him in his moves rather than thrusting to his own release. He treasured this new-found gentleness and loved her for provoking it. It was far better, he had learned, to make love to a woman than merely to use her to allay desire.
Yes, she had taught him about love, and now he could not imagine experiencing it any other way. She'd come into his life strangely, romantically, providing him with a refuge from the harshness of his work and from all the struggles that consumed Tangier.
A Night at the Theater
Laurence Luscombe stood on the empty stage facing the place where the curtains met. He liked to do this on an opening night, stand silent, listen to the house fill up. He looked at his watch. Twenty to eight. In a few minutes The Winslow Boy would go on, and then all the agony of rehearsal, the tantrums and the temperament, would fade before the magic of the play. He would marvel then, as he had so many times, at the power of performance-the way it could seize an audience, hold it in thrall.
But suppose, he thought, they all walk out?
He'd had that anxiety for over fifty years, ever since he'd first gone on the stage. He couldn't overcome it-at the age of seventy-five he still couldn't rid himself of the nightmare of an empty house. He didn't act anymore himself, but the fear had followed him to Tangier. Here he'd founded the Tangier Players, his gift to the city that had embraced him in old age.
Peter Barclay had put it another way. "Thank God for Larry Luscombe and TP. They're something to talk about at our barren dinner parties, fill out our wasted afternoons." Peter was being amusing, of course. He didn't think his dinner parties were barren, or that he wasted his afternoons. Still Laurence believed his remark had been well meant, and now Peter, "pasha" of the Mountain, was a patron of TP and the club's most loyal fan.
It hadn't always been like that. The struggle had been lonely and hard. Laurence thought back as he stood on the empty set. At sixty-five he'd retired to Tangier with the dream of founding a theater club. He'd begun slowly, organizing readings in people's houses while he gathered the corps of loyal amateurs who shared his love for the stage. People had scoffed at first, Peter Barclay among them, but slowly the group had prospered and grown. Someone went to London and brought back lights. Someone else donated canvas and lumber. Gradually the productions grew more lavish and the ragged ends were smoothed. TP became a success, a permanent part of European life in the town.
But now, after all the struggles, the arduous climb to success, the club was facing its greatest crisis, a threat to its integrity and to Laurence's capacity to carry on. Kelly-that American swine, Joe Kelly-was trying to organize a putsch. He didn't yet have the backing, but if tonight's production failed there were people in the group who would take his side. The Drears, the Packwoods, the Calloways, Jack Whyte-that hard core of amateurs Luscombe had made into minor celebrities in the town-they'd turn on him sure as death, and TP would melt to mud.
Laurence knew what was going on, and what he hadn't overheard people made certain he found out. They were saying he was too old, losing his grip, that he couldn't control rehearsals, and that his tantrums were throwing everybody off. There was trouble in TP-no secret about that. People who'd accepted parts were doing the unpardonable and walking out. Others complained that Laurence got too much credit, while they were slighted in reviews. He wasn't disturbed-there was always temperament around a theater. What upset him was disloyalty-the disloyalty of the people he'd picked up along the way, plucked out of their mediocrity, straight out of the gutter in the case of the Drears, then taught and trained and made into stars.
For too long, he knew, he'd ignored the signs, and now he could smell resentment all around. How had it happened? He'd written the bylaws, made TP democratic. Everyone had an equal vote, though he'd always directed by consent. For years there'd never been a challenge or the slightest murmur of rebellion in the ranks. But now Joe Kelly had come to town, and it seemed all that might change.