Prime Target

by Hugh Miller

  ‘I don’t know if you’ve been here before,’ he said, ‘but these guys will try to use any excuse at all to make you submit to a body-search. They’re apes, believe me. Just be careful how you answer their questions.’

  The immigration officers looked perfectly civilized to Sabrina. The only ape-like creature in sight was the one breathing on her, the whisky on his breath emphasized by the damp air. He had the bug-eyed, snaggle-toothed look, Sabrina thought, of the one and only child molester she had ever seen. On the other hand, the heat and the fact she had a slight headache could be tilting her judgement.

  ‘I’ll watch it,’ she told the man.

  ‘It’s not that they want to humiliate you,’ he went on, winking at her. ‘They don’t make much money, so they go after any bonuses they can pick up, like handling an American woman.’

  ‘I hear what you say.’

  ‘Here on business, are you?’ He was now standing beside her, even though the sign at the door emphasized they should stay in single file. ‘I don’t get the impression you’ve come here searching for fun.’

  ‘It’s business,’ Sabrina said, not looking at him.

  ‘Harvey Bristow’s my name.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘So who are you?’

  Sabrina saw a vacant desk and the officer behind it beckoning to her. She strode across the tiled floor and handed over her passport, aware that Bristow was plodding after her.

  ‘Remember what I told you,’ he muttered, too close to her ear.

  The immigration officer smiled at Sabrina. He was tall and dapper and cool in his light cotton uniform. He opened her passport, looked hard at her face, smiled again and stamped a blank page. He handed back the passport, still smiling.

  Sabrina thanked him and legged it across the concourse, looking for the baggage carousel. Two things happened almost at once. She heard the pest running to catch up, and a familiar Japanese voice rang out from a Hertz desk to her right.

  ‘Kogatasha o karitai no desu ga.’

  She turned and saw Nat Takahashi of the UN Economic and Social Council. He was a short, lean, very brisk man in his late thirties. In spite of the heat he was wearing a dark wool business suit and his customary white shirt and dark-blue tie. He looked pleased that the clerk at the desk understood Japanese.

  ‘Isshuukan karitai no desu ga…’

  Sabrina’s Japanese wasn’t strong, but she believed he was saying he wanted to hire a small car for a week.

  ‘The carousels are over there,’ Bristow said, panting with the effort to catch up to her. This time he put his hand on her shoulder. ‘Come on, I’ll give you a hand with your bags.’

  ‘Nat!’ Sabrina called out.

  Takahashi turned, frowning, looking for the source of the sound. He saw her and beamed.

  ‘Hey! Sabrina! You following me or what?’

  She made eye signals, telegraphing displeasure at the sweaty presence with his hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Stay right there.’ Nat had caught on. ‘I’ll just finish this item of business.’

  Bristow looked put out. ‘The guy is a friend of yours?’

  ‘He sure is.’

  Together they watched Nat take back his credit card, his hire documents and a set of car keys. He put everything carefully in his pockets, then he turned and walked to where Sabrina stood. He was not smiling now. His face was impassive, the eyes fixed on Bristow.

  ‘Is this gentleman bothering you?’

  ‘Hey now, hang on.’ Bristow let out a nervous chuckle. ‘I was just talking to the lady here…’

  ‘Take a hike.’

  Bristow looked stunned. He swallowed. ‘There’s no call to go taking that tone, now -’

  ‘You deaf, or what?’ Nat’s harsh New York delivery clashed with his oriental looks and conservative dress. Bristow could have been told that this was a Japanese gangster and he would have believed it. ‘This lady does not need your attentions, OK?’

  ‘Jesus, what did I do here?’

  ‘Just turn and go about your business,’ Nat told him. ‘Otherwise you could be going back to base with your windpipe in your pocket.’

  Bristow snatched up his hand baggage and stamped away, face redder than ever, his mouth churning. Sabrina looked at Nat wide-eyed.

  ‘I only wanted an excuse to shake him off.’

  ‘Well…’ Nat shrugged. ‘If you’re going to do a job, why not do it thoroughly?’

  He took her arm and led the way to the carousel.

  ‘I know there’s no sense asking you why you’re here, Sabrina, because you’ll only hand me a pack of lies, but you can tell me if this is your first time in Tangier.’

  ‘It is. But my destination’s Tetuán.’

  ‘Good. I’m heading for a town called Martil, which lies a few miles beyond the place you’re going. Let’s get our bags, then I can give you a lift to your hotel.’

  ‘That’s great.’

  ‘Don’t be too sure. I love showing off my local knowledge, and even if you yawn a lot it won’t stop me. By the time we get to Tetuán you might wish you’d stuck with the bleary guy.’

  In a little red Peugeot with the windows wound down, Nat Takahashi drove through Tangier with the kind of reckless unconcern Sabrina had seen only once before, in Saigon, where they drove with what seemed to be a total dependence on Providence. Every few yards Nat would bang on the horn, making people scatter.

  ‘To civilized people forced to spend time in this part of the world,’ he told Sabrina, ‘the horn is known as the Arab foot-brake. Once you get the hang of the technique, it has a certain charming logic.’

  So that Sabrina could see a few of the sights of Tangier, Nat drove out of the city by a meandering route, taking them across a network of streets lined with restaurants, bars and nightclubs.

  ‘This used to be a really international city,’ he said. ‘Exciting. Dangerous. You had smugglers, spies, all kinds of exiles. It was a heady kind of place.’

  ‘Were you here in those days?’

  ‘I wasn’t even born in those days. But I’ve heard the stories, talked to some of the veterans. If you want a taste of the exotic seediness they had in the thirties, try spending some time in the old town. It’s a maze of alleys and narrow little streets and shady doorways. I do it from time to time. It’s fascinating.’

  Sabrina tried to imagine the reactions of the Arabs in the old town to a smart-suited Japanese nosing round their territory.

  ‘What brings you here, Nat?’

  ‘The usual.’ He stopped talking to concentrate as he eased the car round a corner on to the long stretch of Rue de la Liberté from Place de France. ‘I have to make plans to initiate UN activities in Morocco, things related to development, trade, economic mobilization, economic use of resources - even population control. Anything, in fact, that fits with the policies we chase under the authority of the General Assembly.’

  ‘I’m impressed.’

  ‘I’ve been doing it so long it feels like I do nothing. I haven’t faced a real challenge in years. I should join UNACO and get my responses tightened up.’

  Like most UN officials and employees, Nat knew of UNACO’s existence and its aims, but he had no clear idea who were the agents and who were the administrative staff. He didn’t really know, either, what a UNACO agent might be called upon to do. Occasionally an agent would die in circumstances never specified, and the others at the UN would become aware, for a while, that there were people in their midst who did incredibly dangerous things in the line of duty.

  ‘You’d probably get bored anywhere you worked,’ Sabrina said, getting off the topic of UNACO. ‘Check out your ancestry and you’ll find you’re descended from warriors. Samurai. People like that never feel the challenges of modern life are worthwhile.’

  ‘I’m descended from accountants of one kind and another,’ Nat said. ‘No warriors anywhere in my history. Even during the war, my grandfather was an army pay clerk in Kobe.’ Nat leaned forward, his forehead near
ly touching the windshield. ‘There you are, Sabrina. Take a look at it. The Grand Socco - the great market.’

  Long rows and clusters of stalls were tended by women - Nat said they were farmers’ wives - in wide-brimmed pompom hats, selling fruit and vegetables of every kind.

  ‘Marvellous,’ Sabrina said, meaning it. ‘Simply marvellous.’

  The mingle of voices and rich aromas entering the car worked on her like a drug. One of her first priorities, anywhere she went, was to catch what she imagined to be the essence of a place, to savour it and take it into herself, until she felt she was involved and no longer a simple observer. It had been that way with her since childhood, and now, with a pang as strong as any she had ever felt, she knew that the spirit of Morocco was reaching her. She would never say anything so corny out loud, but she knew that it was true. She was suddenly aware that Nat was watching her, taking in her rapturous expression.

  ‘I like this place,’ she told him.

  ‘I hoped you would. Personally, I adore it.’

  He slowed the car, so she could see a gnarled old artisan beating a copper bowl into shape, using only a stone and a cloth-covered hammer to fashion the elegant curves of the vessel’s sides. At Nat’s window a child put in her head and smiled at him. He smiled back.

  ‘Enchanting,’ Sabrina said.

  ‘Right.’ Nat ruffled the child’s hair and eased the car forward. ‘But you should be careful not to get too hooked on all this. It gets into your blood.’ Nat looked at Sabrina and his face was serious. ‘I’ll tell you something. I couldn’t go on doing my Job if I didn’t get my regular fixes of Morocco.’ He laughed. ‘There. It’s out. My unspoken passion. Now you can blackmail the hell out of me.’

  They left Tangier on a wide dusty road, heading south-east to Tetuán, 57 kilometres away. Nat gunned the car forward, winding up his window against the dust.

  ‘I promise I won’t try to pry into your business,’ he said, ‘but tell me this, do you plan to have dealings with people in Tetuán who could loosely - or tightly - be classed as, um, not entirely law-abiding?’

  Sabrina nodded. ‘It’s very likely,’ she said.

  ‘Well, my second promise is I won’t underestimate your ability to look after yourself. But be careful. The old criminal element here was never restrained in the way it defended itself, but, even so, there were rules and barriers. But now things have changed.’

  ‘What, recently, you mean?’

  ‘In the past year or so.’

  ‘Care to tell me about it?’

  ‘It’s to do with a new kind of contamination,’ Nat said. ‘Extremism used to be breaking somebody’s arm to steal five dollars off him. Nowadays extremism is killing as many people as you can, not because you want anything from them, or because they’ve harmed you, but because killing them draws attention to your political posture.’

  ‘You said contamination.’

  ‘Right. Politics has contaminated the criminal impulse. And the results are catastrophic. Political causes, so-called, attract people with violent instincts. Cheap political messages give their brutality a focus. It becomes noble, too. Blowing up a main street full of innocent human beings is now termed an act of political extremism, when in fact we know it’s nothing more than the behaviour of moral midgets with psychopathic compulsions.’

  ‘How do you reckon this could touch me?’ Sabrina said, although she guessed she was slightly ahead of Nat.

  ‘Anything goes,’ he said. ‘Two years ago, you might have got a sock on the nose for snooping around the wrong places in Tetuán. Today they’d just as soon kill you. The restraints are gone. Blame political contamination.’

  ‘I’ll stay on my guard.’

  ‘Do more than that,’ Nat said. He took his eyes off the road for a second to stare at Sabrina. ‘Let no circumstance put you at a physical disadvantage, no matter how slight or unimportant it might seem. Watch your back. The rule with certain factions is, when in doubt, eliminate. Life is cheap and too many people know it.’

  When they arrived in Tetuán Nat drove straight to the district of Bab Ceuta. They got out of the car and looked out over a Muslim cemetery to the old Jewish quarter beyond.

  ‘It’s absolutely beautiful,’ Sabrina said.

  ‘Yes it is, and this is just the time of day to see this part of town. Look at it, soak up the beauty, and try to make yourself remember that, for the likes of us, it’s seething with danger. Never let the loveliness of the place lull you.’

  If Philpott ever resigned, Sabrina thought, they could do worse than move Nat Takahashi into the job. He had the technique for labouring a point, he could be something of an old woman, and he knew how to drill a warning into a person’s skull. Sabrina wondered if he really believed she could look after herself. Few men did, it seemed.

  ‘Where are you staying?’ Nat said.

  ‘A place called the National. It’s got one star. Do you know it?’

  ‘Sure. It’s over that way.’ He swung his arm to the left. ‘On the Rue Mohammed Ben Larbi Torres. It’s an old hotel, it’s quiet and it has a really peaceful internal courtyard.’

  ‘And is it a safe place?’

  ‘I’d say so. But try not to assume anywhere is safe.’ He touched her arm. ‘Come on, I’ll drive you to the hotel.’

  12

  ‘This news has made me sad, Viktor.’

  The big American underlined his sorrow by putting a hand to his fat chest, close to the region of his heart. With his other hand he pushed back his grey Stetson. He let out a long sigh.

  ‘Stefan Fliegel and Karl Sonnemann were good people. Their passing will leave a gap.’

  Viktor’s mouth tightened for a moment. ‘An adequate reprisal would go some way to repairing the damage.’

  ‘But you don’t know who did it, do you?’ ‘We will find out. In any case, we know the general source of the attacks, if not the attacker.’ The American was Harold Gibson of Waxahachie, Texas, newly arrived at Tegel airport, Berlin. His companion was Viktor Kretzer, a German architect, who was completely bald and wore a brown wig which emphasized the fact. Kretzer had come to the airport to greet Gibson and to bring him news of the two deaths. They sat together in the airport coffee lounge, sipping Kenyan blend, looking balefully at travellers heading for check-in.

  ‘It was JZ, of course?’ Gibson said.

  ‘It’s their avowed intention to eliminate us all, and that’s what they have begun to do. One thing we have learned about the Jews: they are as serious about their threats as they are about their money.’

  ‘Do the others know the position? Nobody’s in the dark and off guard?’

  ‘Everyone has been alerted and they are all taking precautions. But we need more than that.’ Kretzer touched his wig. ‘It is bad tactics to remain passive in the teeth of specific aggression. We must hit back.’

  ‘Well, we’ve taken steps already, as you know. They’ve been hit hard, right at their heart…’

  ‘That stopped nothing. It pales to no more than a gesture in the light of what has happened.’

  ‘Oh, come now, I’d say it was more than that.’

  ‘The death of the Selby woman was meant to stop an unwanted investigation, as well as being aimed at buckling the will of JZ in general. She died before either Stefan or Karl. In that regard it clearly failed. In fact, if what I hear is true, it stopped short of backfiring into disaster. No attempt was made on the second woman, who is by far the more serious irritant. Your man killed himself before reaching that part of his programme.’

  Kretzer had spoken impatiently and now appeared to realize that. ‘Forgive me, Harold. I have taken this badly.’

  ‘As well you might, old friend.’ Gibson fingered a silver ornament on the clasp of his briefcase. ‘Do you have plans for retaliation, or is it too soon to ask that?’

  ‘We need a target that occasionally stops moving.’

  ‘Well, any way we can be of help, just say the word. This has to be straightened out.’

/>   ‘I think the help you bring us today,’ Kretzer said, ‘will go some way to establishing a solution. The business of eliminating Red Sea pedestrians has always been costly. Your moral and financial support are twin buttresses. I never tire of saying so. Without them we would not have achieved as much as we have. But now we have to change our focus, we must redirect our resources and find a way to destroy JZ at its core.’

  ‘I never imagined,’ Gibson said, ‘when we arranged a certain boating accident, that knowledge of the Jugend would pass into the hands of the daughter, and the other…’

  ‘Small wonder that I get depressed,’ Kretzer said. ‘Think of the lives we lead, think of the endless furtiveness, never openly acknowledging each other, always communicating by routes that would make a juggler dizzy - it tells on the spirit. And now, at a time when we should be feeling some pleasure in our achievements, we are instead fearful for our lives, because we are being picked off one by one -’

  ‘Ssh…’

  ‘I’m sorry, my friend. I am despondent. In such a state I should keep my mouth shut.’

  ‘Just hold a few good thoughts,’ Gibson said. ‘In the fifty years of your existence, you’ve carried out the work the Führer passed on. Be proud. Leave despondency for the kind who deserve it.’

  ‘You’re right, of course,’ Kretzer said. ‘We should count our blessings.’

  ‘And try to remember that JZ is small and narrow. They’re fragile at bottom. They’ve just been lucky, that’s all.’ Gibson patted Kretzer’s hand. ‘Now I’ve got to go, I have to be at the bank at eleven sharp. Everything should be waiting ready for my signature. Where will we meet?’

  Kretzer smiled thinly. ‘Today, I thought we would meet at the International Congress Centre.’

  ‘I think I know the way.’

  ‘Between the Messedamm and the S-Bahn. You can get there on the Avus motorway, there is plenty of parking space.’

  ‘As I recall, it’s a big development, Viktor.’

  ‘Yes, so I have decided on a precise spot for us to meet. Shall we say twelve-thirty?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Outside the Jewish Community House. It’s a double irony, Harold. The place was designed by architects I particularly despise.’