Poor devil! I leaned back in my seat, thinking back over the events of the past twenty-four hours. If I hadn’t pulled him out of the sea … But I had and now he was my responsibility. Somehow I’d got to get him out of the International Zone and into Morocco. It was a problem — the sort of problem that required inside knowledge of the working of Tangier. There had been a time …
I glanced at my watch. It was ten past three. Unless they had altered the flight schedules, we could still be at the airport in time to meet the Paris-Casablanca plane. I hesitated, wondering whether Vareau was still a clerk at the airport. Once, a long time back, I had got a man out that way, and his papers had lacked the necessary entry stamp. It was worth trying. ‘We’ll get another taxi in the Zocco Grande,’ I said, more to myself than to him. ‘And we’ll have to hurry. We’ve got to buy you a new suit and be out at the airport before four.’
He gripped my hand. ‘I shall never be able to thank you,’ he said.
‘You haven’t thanked me yet for saving your life,’ I said harshly. ‘Better leave thanksgiving until we’re both of us safely out of Tangier.’
CHAPTER THREE
We left Tangier by the rue de Fez, along a dirt-edged road where strings of asses trotted through the dust kicked up by battered French trucks driven fast. Out on the outskirts of the Mountain it was all rickety, new-grown development — an ugly pattern of telegraph poles and tin shacks and brand-new concrete factories. And the old ran side-by-side with the new; the overburdened asses, the bare-legged, turbaned men driving wooden ploughs through hard, dry ground, and the women, shrouded and veiled so that they looked like perambulating bundles of old clothes.
Beyond the development area, a ridge of grey-brown hills covered with stones and scrub ran out to Cap Spartel and the Atlantic. We passed a gang of convicts picking desultorily at the road and there were herds of black goats and drifts of white that were flocks of the stork-like birds that the French call pique-boeuf. It was all just as I remembered it, even to the nervous void in my stomach and Kavan sitting tense and rigid beside me as that other man had done.
It was not quite four when we reached the airport. The field was empty. The Paris flight had not yet landed. I told Kavan to wait in the taxi and slipped over the white-painted fence and round to the back of the airport buildings where the buffet was. I was in luck. Vareau was there. ‘Monsieur Latham!’ He came waddling over to me, a fat, slightly shabby man with a face like a bloodhound. ”Comment ca va, eh, eh? You wish me to arrange a seat for you on the plane, yes?’
‘Not for me,’ I said. ‘For a friend.’ And I drew him aside and explained the situation to him. But he shook his head. ‘You know, mon ami, I would do anything to help you. But it is too dangerous. The regulations are most strict now. I must put his name on the Paris list and then what happens when the office in Casablanca see that, eh? Non, non, it is impossible.’
‘Nonsense,’ I said. ‘It’s not impossible. The Casablanca office wouldn’t even notice. And if they did, then you made a mistake, that’s all. You’ve got to help me, Vareau.’ There was no other way of getting Kavan out, not with his papers correct. And they had to be correct if he were to work with me at Enfida. I pleaded, threatened, cajoled, and in the end he agreed to do it for twice the sum I originally offered him. Even then he wouldn’t have done it but for one thing — for personal reasons the air hostesses were being changed at Tangier. It was this factor that made the thing possible.
We went through the details carefully and then I returned to Kavan. He was sitting exactly as I had left him, his body rigid, his face tense. He looked dazed and desperately tired, oddly unfamiliar in his new suit. ‘Is it all right?’ he asked urgently as I climbed in beside him. ‘Did you fix it?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I fixed it.’ But all the same I was wondering whether he could carry it through. His nerves were on edge and beneath the stubble of his beard I saw that the corner of his mouth was twitching.
‘What do I have to do?’ he asked. Tell me what I’m to do._’
I hesitated. I was wondering just how much I needed a doctor, for this business involved me deeper than I cared to go. But it was no good getting cold feet now. The man would just have to pull himself together. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Now listen. This is the drill. As soon as the Paris plane is sighted, Vareau, the French clerk, will come for you. He’ll take you to the lavatory and there you’ll shave off that beard, so that your appearance coincides with the photograph on your papers. By the way, I suppose your visa for entry into French Morocco is okay?’
‘Yes, yes.’ He nodded. ‘That was all arranged at the French Consulate in London.’
‘And you have a labour permit?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good/ You’ll stay in the lavatory until Vareau collects you. By then the passengers who are going through to Casablanca will be congregated in the buffet. You will join them. Have a drink or something to occupy yourself. Talk to nobody. If anybody speaks to you, reply in Czech. Vareau will bring you your ticket and anything else you need to get on to the plane. When the Paris passengers are instructed to return to the plane, you will go with them. There will be a different air hostess and your name will be on the list of passengers travelling direct from Paris to Casablanca. If the air hostess or the immigration official asks you anything, you don’t understand — you speak nothing but Czech. Is all that clear?’
He nodded and I had him repeat the instructions word for word.
‘When Vareau takes you to the lavatory, he will give you an immigration form to fill in. You will complete it in the lavatory and return it to him when he comes to collect you. Only one question on that form is not straightforward. Against Where have you come from? you will put Heathrow, London, via Paris. For destination and purpose of visit you state the exact truth — that you are going to work as a doctor in Morocco and that your address will be the English Mission at Enfida. Any questions about that?’
‘No. No, I don’t think so.’ He was frowning. ‘But I don’t understand how it helps. The authorities at Casablanca will want to know why my papers are not stamped as having come from Paris. When they find they are not stamped, they will know — ‘
‘There’s no difficulty there,’ I said, and I pulled out my own passport. ‘Look!’ I had come out to Morocco by air from England in July 1949, yet the only indication was the entry stamp of the immigration authorities at Casablanca. Though I had stopped off two days in Paris no entry had been made in my passport. ‘You see. All you have to say is that you’ve come from England. You left London by the night flight yesterday. All right?’ He nodded uneasily. ‘You’ve nothing to worry about once you’re on that plane,’ I assured him.
‘But you’re not coming with me?’
‘No. I shall go by train. We’ll meet in Casablanca.’
He gripped my arm. ‘Come with me on the plane. You could get a ticket here. There’s nothing to stop you. Why must you go by train?’ He was like a child afraid of being left.
‘Because I reserved two berths in the wagon-lit. It would look odd if neither of us turned up.’
He nodded unhappily and stared out across the airfield, his fingers drumming nervously on his knee. ‘Isn’t there some way we could both go together?’
‘No. This is the only way that gets you into Morocco with your papers in order. I should warn you there’s a French Civil Control office at Enfida.’
‘I don’t like it,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘It’s dangerous. And if I’m caught — ‘