He nodded, stuffing the oilskin bag into his pocket. ‘I’ll wait for you downstairs.’
When I went down to join him, I heard his voice raised in altercation with the patrone. It was something to do with the passport and they were shouting at each other in French. ‘Then why did Monsieur Latham tell me to come down here to get it?’ Kavan demanded agitatedly. He caught sight of me then and said, ‘This idiot says he gave you my passport.’
The patrone nodded his head emphatically. ‘Si, si, senor. Did you not ask for both the passports — yours and that of senor here?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But you refused to give me his. You said he must collect it personally and fill in the form at the same time.’
‘No, no. It is true about the paper. But I give you the passport.’ He turned to the hotel boy standing by the desk. ‘Did I not give the senor both the passports?’
‘Si, si, si.’ The Arab nodded.
It was the same boy who had come up to my room the previous night to collect Kavan’s wet clothes. And suddenly I knew why the patrone had wanted these clothes. He had been told to check through the pockets. ‘Do you know a Greek called Kostos?’ I asked him.
The man’s eyes narrowed slightly. He didn’t say anything, but I knew I was right. Kostos was at the back of this passport nonsense, too. I sent the Arab boy for a taxi. ‘If you haven’t produced that passport by the time the taxi arrives,’ I told the patrone, ‘I’m going straight to the British Consul.’
He shrugged his shoulders, but there was a frightened look in his shifty eyes.
‘Now come on,’ I said. ‘Hand it over.’
But he shook his head obstinately and reiterated his statement that he’d already given it to me.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘We’ll see what the Consul and the police think of that story.’
Kavan plucked at my arm. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he whispered urgently. ‘I’ve still got my own papers.’ His face was white and the twitch at the corner of his mouth had started again.
‘That’s no good,’ I said. ‘They’re not stamped as having entered Tangier. You’d never get across the frontier.’
‘But — ‘ His mouth stayed open. He was trembling. I thought he was scared because he was a refugee and in a bureaucratic world; refugees have no existence unless their papers are in order. But it wasn’t that. ‘I’m not going to the Consulate,’ he hissed. ‘Whatever happens, I’m not going to the Consulate. We’ve got to get that passport.’
I glanced at the patrone. His greasy face was sullen and obstinate and frightened. ‘It’s no good,’ I said. ‘Kostos must have some kind of hold over him. We’re not going to get it.’
‘But we must. We must.’
‘If you hadn’t called yourself Wade and got mixed up with Kostos,’ I said angrily, ‘this would never have happened.’ ‘The taxi arrived then and I turned to the patrone, giving him one more chance to produce it. But he only shrugged his shoulders and called on the saints to witness the truth of what he was saying.
‘All right,’ I said, and I got Kavan out to the taxi and bundled him in. The Arab moved towards us from the opposite corner of the street. ‘Le Consulat Britannique,’ I ordered the driver. ‘Vite, vite!’
Kavan caught hold of my arm as the taxi drove off. ‘It’s no good,’ he cried. ‘I won’t go to the Consulate. I won’t go, I tell you.’ He was wrought up to a point of hysteria. ‘Tell him to stop.’ He leaned quickly forward to tap on the glass partition.
But I pulled him back, struggling with him. ‘Don’t be a fool!’ I shouted at him. ‘You wanted to call yourself Wade. Well, now you’ve got to be Wade until we’re out of Tangier. And you won’t get out till we’ve recovered that passport.’
‘There must be some other way. I could slip across the frontier….’ He reached forward to the partition again, but I flung him back into his seat. ‘What are you scared of?’ I demanded, shaking him. I was suddenly furiously angry, fed up with the whole wretched business. ‘Why are you frightened of the Consul? What is it you’ve done?’
‘Nothing. I told you before. I’ve done nothing. Absolutely nothing.’ His voice was trembling. He seemed on the verge of tears he was so wrought up. ‘I promise you. Please. Tell the driver to stop.’
‘No,’ I said, holding him down. ‘I’ve had enough of this.’ My voice sounded hard. ‘We’re going to see the Consul. Either that or you tell me why you’re scared to go there. Did you kill Wade?’
‘No.’ He stared at me, his body shocked rigid. ‘It happened just as I said.’
‘Then what the devil is it you’re scared of? Why did you insist on taking his name? Come on now,’ I added, gripping hold of his arm. ‘If you want any more help from me, you’d better give me the whole story.’
He stared at me, his white, frightened face outlined against the dark leather of the cab. ‘All right,’ he whispered, and his body relaxed under my hand as though a weight had been lifted from him. ‘All right, I’ll tell you.’ He leaned back in his seat as though exhausted. ‘I have told you I am a scientist.’ I nodded. ‘Have you lived here so long in North Africa that you don’t know what that means?’ He leaned quickly forward, his face becoming excited again. ‘It means you have something here — ‘ He tapped his forehead. ‘And because of that your life is not your own any more. It belongs to the State. I am a Czech. If you take me to the Consulate, then I shall be sent back to England, and sooner or later they will get me. Or else life will become so insupportable …’
‘Who will get you?’ I asked.
‘Who? The Communists, of course. The Czech Communists.’
‘But for heaven’s sake!’ I exclaimed. ‘You’re a refugee. You’ve been given political asylum. You were perfectly safe in England.’
‘Safe?’ He laughed. ‘You say that because you are English, because you have never been a refugee! Listen. When I fled to England in 1949, everything was all right. But then, after the Fuchs business, there was a new screening and it was discovered I had been a Communist.’
‘But if you were a Communist — ‘
‘I was not a Communist,’ he declared violently. ‘I have never been a Communist — not in the sense of the word as it is used now. But I joined the Party in 1938, after Munich. A great many of us joined then. It seemed our only hope. And afterwards, when the war was over, I forgot all about it. I didn’t think it mattered after I had fled from Czechoslovakia. I had left my wife to escape the Communists. I thought that was sufficient.’
‘I still don’t see what you’re frightened of,’ I said. ‘Are you trying to tell me that our.people were going to send you back to Czechoslovakia?’
‘No, no, of course not. Oh, God! I knew you wouldn’t understand. The British refused to let me leave the country. That’s why I had to come with Wade in a boat. It isn’t the British I am afraid of. But if I go back there … Listen, please. When I ignored the offers from Prague, they began sending me Party literature as though I were a member, they stopped me in the street, phoned me at the office, sent anonymous letters to the authorities denouncing me as a paid Communist agent. They even sent me letters in code from Prague. Finally they began to threaten. They were going to arrest Karen and my father. They would have been sent to the uranium mines or, worse still, into Russia, to Siberia.’
‘But your wife’s here now,’ I said.
‘I know, I know. But how do I know she is here of her own free will?’ He caught hold of my arm, shaking it excitedly. ‘Please, please, try to understand. If I am sent back to England, it will start all over again. I couldn’t stand it. No man’s nerves could stand it. But here … Wade will disappear and there is nothing, absolutely nothing, to connect an obscure doctor at a Mission in the Atlas Mountains with the scientist who is missing in England.’ He was sweating and his face was all puckered up with the urgency of what he was trying to convey. ‘Please. You must help me. There must be some way out of Tangier. There must be some way.’
The taxi was just turning into the rue d’Angleterre. I could see the arched entrance to the Consulate. ‘Maybe there is,’ I said and leaned forward and slid back the glass partition. ‘Drive down to the Zocco Grande,’ I told the driver. I couldn’t very well do anything else. Half of his fears were probably imaginary, but they were real enough to him. The taxi turned the corner by the entrance to the Consulate and drove on down the hill, and he was suddenly crying. Tears of relief were welling out of his eyes. ‘Thank you,’ he breathed. ‘Thank you.’