Tangier: A Novel

by Stephen Holgate

  “Drake?”

  The name spoken, Sands recovered himself. “Pickford Drake.” He dripped the name from his lips. “A Brit. Worked for their SIS. Secret Intelligence Service. Not unlike our outfit.”

  “Odd name, Pickford,” Chaffee said to bring him back. “An old family name?”

  Sands’ drooping head snapped up. “Oh, God no. Very sensitive about it, always insisted you simply call him Drake. Never used his Christian name. One night when he was in his cups, as he usually was, he confessed to me that his father—no doubt a drunkard like himself—had named him after the silent film star, Mary Pickford.” Outrage worked like smelling salts on the old man. “Mary Pickford, for godssake! I suppose living with that may have been what finally drove him mad.”

  “Mad?”

  “Homicidal maniac.” Sands said it as off-handedly as one might say “truck driver,” or “Episcopalian.”

  “I’d have thought this would be considered a virtue in wartime.”

  Sands emitted a low growl. “I don’t know how things are now. I don’t care to know. But in my day it was still a gentleman’s game. Those of us in intelligence work endeavored to avoid physical harm to our counterparts unless necessary. Military officers, high-ranking officials—fine, fair game.”

  “Men grown too comfortable with authority?”

  “Mmmm.” Sands paused, a glimmer in his eyes. “But we were loath to kill each other.” Sands raised his hands, palm out. “I’m not trying to say this came from some misplaced sense of chivalry, though we might have told ourselves it was. No, it was simply the only way to avoid a bloodbath. There would have been no end to it once we started. But that wasn’t good enough for Drake. He would invite some German or Italian operative over for a cup of tea—we all knew who the other side’s players were, and occasionally had legitimate reason to contact them—and then he’d poison them. Lay ’em out dead. Madness.” The old spy huffed with contempt for the Briton’s lack of professional discretion. “And worse than pointless. Every one of them would be replaced by someone it might take us months to identify. The whole thing simply begged for retaliation.” Sands glanced at Chaffee, his eyes hard. “Don’t misunderstand me. We were willing to risk our lives. But not over such pointless folly. However it may seem, war is not simply a matter of killing the people on the other side. So I did the only thing I could. Contacted Drake’s superiors in London. Apparently he was already under a cloud for some previous misdemeanor. His people made the easy decision and whisked him out within the week.”

  “What was it about, this previous misbehavior?” Chaffee masked.

  “They didn’t say. I didn’t ask. To me it was immaterial. I just wanted him gone. I don’t know how he spent the rest of the war. Probably locked in some cage in Whitehall. He never forgave me of course. He was all smiles and auld lang syne when he left here, but I could see the daggers in his eyes. He knew I was the one who’d turned him in.”

  “But you say he’s here in Tangier.”

  “Apparently, after his wife died—probably poisoned her too, just to stay in practice—Drake returned to Tangier in the last few months. Hence my caution regarding visitors.” A flick of the hand stood in for an apology. “I don’t know why he’s come back. I can’t imagine he has fond memories of his time here.” Sands fell silent. Having inhabited again the bolder world of his war years, he seemed reluctant to return to the faded present. His hands stirred, the slightest of gestures, but when he looked at Chaffee he was back. “Of course he was totally depraved. Tangier’s siren song is almost irresistible to that sort.”

  As the old man spoke, Chaffee’s eye was caught by a moving shadow reflected on the picture window, like a lost soul from the old war, walking across the sky.

  Sands saw his expression. “Not to worry, Chaffee. It’s just Malika. She stays up with me every night. Generally waits in some quiet corner, just out of sight, but I know she’s around somewhere close. Waiting. Reassuring somehow.” He chuckled at his good fortune. “I’ll wander around the house at night and find her sitting on a stool in the kitchen or a chair in the courtyard, or simply standing in a shadow, apparently quite content. It’s a gift, waiting. To be content doing nothing. She’s a wonderful woman.” Something in his voice betrayed him. He must have heard it, too, for he gave Chaffee a sidelong glance. “Yes, an old man’s last love. Of course I’m pretty harmless now.” He laughed at himself, but the smile on his lips faded slowly.

  Erickson had told him that Sands could get a little garrulous. “The old man’s vice,” he called it. Chaffee saw it differently. Sands, he thought, still had a great deal to say and a rapidly diminishing time in which to say it. And it was all connected in complex vortexes of meaning. If you wished to pull out one part, it came with whatever had accreted to it over time; if you wanted the scarab, you got the amber in which it was preserved.

  “About Drake . . . ” Chaffee coaxed.

  “Ah, yes.” He cocked his head at Chaffee. “You came here tonight wondering if I might somehow have known your father, and I have disappointed you.”

  “No, not at all.”

  “But that bit about the Germans calling off the Spanish surveillance on him is intriguing. Running that down might unlock a great deal.” After their wandering discourse, Chaffee was impressed with the old spy’s ability to put his finger on the crucial point. “I suppose it is just possible that I might have met him under a different name. I can remember any number of nighttime meetings in back rooms, all of us introducing ourselves by names we were not born with. Sometimes we didn’t give a name at all. Why bother?”

  “Do you know how I might reach him? Drake, I mean. Tell him I want to see him?”

  The old man’s mordant look told Chaffee all he needed to know.

  “Drake and I are not close.”

  “No, I don’t suppose. I didn’t mean to . . .”

  Sands’ gaze softened. “I have no idea where he might be, or even if he is still here. Perhaps I’ll set Malika on his trail. She’s very good at that sort of thing. I could have made excellent use of her during the war. I don’t suppose you noticed in the dark that she was holding a gun on you when you came to the door this evening.” Sands saw Chaffee’s reaction and laughed. “No, I didn’t think so. This concern about Drake has us all a bit on edge.”

  “But you’re suggesting I go see him.”

  Sands shrugged. “What are your choices? I’m thinking you’ll run the risk.”

  The cold-bloodedness in Sands’ cheery assessment jolted Chaffee. He supposed war did that to people.

  “But you know, Chaffee, if you find him, I’m not sure how much you’ll get out of him. I mean, I may be doddering, but I’m told Drake is quite gaga. As I say, he was always a madman. And cagey, the caginess of the true paranoiac. Now he’s added senility to his arsenal. A formidable combination. Still, I suppose he might remember something—or pretend he does. Or pretend he doesn’t. Good luck sorting it out—if you find him.”

  Chaffee glanced at his watch.

  “You’re thinking you must go?”

  “I . . . Yes.”

  Sands regarded the darkness out his window. “You know, another brandy or two, Chaffee, and we’ll begin to see the dawn. Quite a beautiful sight from here.”

  The prospect of staying attracted him. He enjoyed the old man’s company. It felt good to be free of the old need to impress or be impressed. Might powerlessness hold its pleasures? But he knew that by lingering he might spoil it.

  “I’m afraid I don’t have your stamina, Sands.”

  The former spy tipped his head back and laughed. “Ah, yes, you’re just a young man. You need your sleep.” He nodded out at the darkness as at an old friend, the sort of friend who didn’t leave when the hour grew late. “Malika!” he called.

  The young Moroccan woman appeared in the doorway.

  “Nam?”

  “Our visitor must depart, Malika,” Sands said in French. “Will you see him to the door?”

 
Chaffee looked for the gun in her hand and supposed she must have put it down.

  “It has been a pleasure, Chaffee. Thank you for coming by this evening. I’m sorry I wasn’t of more help to you.”

  “You’ve helped me a great deal. Sorry to leave so early.”

  The old man smiled. “Not to worry. I’ll likely be up for some time yet, until there’s a bit of light in the sky. Then I’ll go to bed.”

  As Chaffee started toward the door, Sands stopped him.

  “Oh, Chaffee.”

  “Yes?”

  “You are trying to get to the bottom of this, about your father. But this is not a country in which one ever gets to the bottom of anything. You can kill yourself trying.” He arched an ancient eyebrow. “Or someone might do the job for you.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  “Do. And one more thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “If you find Drake and he offers you a cup of tea, I shouldn’t drink it if I were you.”

  FOURTEEN

  Stirred by the possibilities raised by his conversation with Sands, Chaffee slept fitfully and woke too late for breakfast. Looking in the mirror as he tied his tie—he refused to give in to the anonymity of living in a foreign country and turn slovenly—he kicked himself for not picking up on Sands’ offer to send Malika in search of Drake. His mood foul, Chaffee stomped down the stairs to the lobby where he took one of the overstuffed chairs, picked up the hotel copy of Le Journal de Tanger and began to piece together its French, the task so absorbing that he jumped at the sound of the voice behind him.

  “Hi, Chris.”

  Chaffee looked over his shoulder and saw Draper coming in from the street. “Ah, Draper. You’re up early for a musician.”

  Of course the sarcasm escaped the gangly American, and he smiled. “I like to take a walk in the morning.” He nodded at the empty chair next to Chaffee. “You mind?”

  “Not at all,” Chaffee said, and found to his surprise that he didn’t.

  “What’s in the paper today?”

  Chaffee looked again at the front page. “Trouble everywhere. The world’s turning upside down.”

  “Governments,” Draper said with a dismissive snort.

  Chaffee sighed. “You said a mouthful.”

  Something in his tone made Draper cock his head to one side. “You work for the government?”

  “Used to. Not anymore.”

  Draper waited for more detail, but Chaffee could not bring himself to offer up the whole story, nor face the dishonesty of telling only half of it to a man who, in his previous life, he would not have judged worth lying to.

  “I guess I never asked you why you came to Tangier,” Draper said.

  “No, you haven’t.”

  The musician nodded into the silence where Chaffee’s explanation would have fit. “Okay.”

  Chaffee folded up the paper, tossed it onto the table and looked at Draper. “I’m sorry. I . . . I’m trying to find my father.” He made a quick there-you-have-it shrug.

  “When was he here?”

  “During the war.”

  “Whoa.”

  “Yes, a long time ago. And I can’t find anyone who knew him.”

  Draper appeared to understand that at least for now he could ask no more. “Good luck on that, Chris.”

  Chaffee nodded his thanks as if the gesture might break his neck, and cocked his head toward the unattended front desk. “Now it’s your turn to tell me something. I always see you and that clerk sitting over here talking. What is it you two find to talk about so intently?”

  “Miloud?” The other American thought it over, made a little shrug. “Whatever. A little of this, a little of that. Just talk.”

  Chaffee leaned back, mystified by the idea of small talk. As a man who had made his way in a world in which every exchange was a power transaction, a contest to be won or lost, the idea of innocent conversation struck him as naïve.

  “But there’s an intensity to it,” Chaffee protested. “You’re not just talking about the weather.”

  The musician squinted at Chaffee as if hearing a misplayed chord. He shook his head and then his face brightened. “You know, the owner of the place where I work, in Asilah, has been around forever. Seems to know everyone. I’m playing there tonight. Why don’t you come down with me, talk to her?”

  Chaffee shook his head, imagining the awkwardness of the ride together down the coast, grasping for things to talk about when they had nothing in common beyond the provenance of their passports.

  Draper read the thought on his face. “It’s nothing you have to do.”

  “Thanks, Draper. I’m afraid . . . ” He frowned, seized by an unaccustomed twinge of guilt at his half-formed evasion, and left his lie uncompleted.

  “Sure. Maybe another time.” Draper stood and slouched upstairs toward his room.

  Why should I have to answer to a guy like Draper, he asked himself. He shook his newspaper out and stared at it, but found he was suddenly unable to read a word. His patience exhausted with the effort—and with Draper, and with himself—Chaffee set it aside, and went outside to take a walk. Apparently tired of waiting for him, the would-be guides and touts had all disappeared.

  Chaffee looked up at the sky. Clouds had drifted in from the sea. He put his hands in his pockets, hunched his shoulders against the morning chill and made his way down the street, walking like an old man. Weariness dragged at him, making his legs feel like lead and his brain like a bagful of broken gears.

  Back in Washington, he had felt not so much young as ageless, outside of time and its effects, striding into his office each morning like a viceroy while aides and secretaries sprang to life, sunflowers opened by the rays of his presence. No one told him that the constraints of laws and regulations were meant for others—a matter for the clock-punchers, the mouth-breathers. Nor did he consciously think the rules didn’t apply to him. There was no need when, year by year, he saw himself in the distorted mirror of his underlings’ regard, becoming increasingly persuaded of his exceptionalism, his immunity from the petty constraints that plagued lesser creatures. He had accepted it all, the whole package. Not for a moment did any worm of suspicion twist in his gut, telling him he was being set up, playing a sucker’s game in which he was conspiring in his own downfall.

  It only made sense that it was the bean-counters who finally brought him low, he thought. A GSA audit, a discipline recommendation, headlines in the goddamn Post, snarky comments by toothy news anchors, who, if not for television, would have settled into their natural niche as Walmart greeters.

  Chaffee had groused about it to the men at his own level, the other members of the exclusive club. They had muttered sympathetically, but the look in their eyes as they turned away made it clear he had become an embarrassment.

  His resignation had ended it all—the news stories, the official rumbles of shock and dismay, the tepid expressions of support. His power, gone. His position, gone. His reputation, gone. The suddenness of his fall made him realize he had never flown as high as he’d thought. He lived like everyone else now, in guilt and fear, parting his hair to cover a thin spot, waking with an achy back, his guts a little iffy.

  Now he breathed the air and walked the paths of an alien land where neither his former prestige nor his current abasement meant anything. He had come to chase down his father while his own mortality chased him—that most fundamental of existential errands.

  After walking aimlessly through the city streets, Chaffee woke as if from a dream to find himself on the broad promenade that ran along the waterfront near the port. Leaning against the seawall, he stopped and tasted the briny air mixed with an undercurrent of decay, saw the dreamy pattern of oil on the sluggish tide. For some unmeasured time, he looked out at the gray expanse of the Straits, Spain barely visible through the haze. He stared until he suddenly sensed himself drawn toward the water, felt a strange vertigo, as if he were rushing toward the oblivion of its depths. A spasm of fear seized
him and he scuttled back from the edge.

  Panting with emotion, he tried to laugh at himself. What was he afraid of? He was still Christopher goddamn Chaffee, one of the toughest men in Washington, and he’d find his father, or he would find that the cold, perfect sonofabitch in the photo had been dead all these years. No bunch of foreign service thumbsuckers, nor the whole city of Tangier would keep him from the truth. His legs trembling, his head swirling with chaotic thoughts, Chaffee turned away from the water and started to cross the street. As he did, a blaring horn startled him into reality and he stumbled back toward the curb an instant before a passing truck would have killed him. His heart pounding, he reeled backwards, gasping for breath.

  He staggered against the seawall and looked once more into the water, into the abyss. A revelation seized his mind and pierced all the way down to his soul: All these years, while he thought he was clearing a bright path for himself through the jungle of the most powerful city in the world, he had been hacking his way toward the cliff from which he would fall. Only now, far from home, stripped of everything he had worked for, a nobody in an alien land, could he see clearly what he had been doing and who he had become.

  For a long time he stood like this, leaning against the seawall, looking out at the empty sea. Slowly, his breathing returned to normal, his heart to its accustomed rhythm. Then he turned and walked back to the hotel.

  He knocked on Draper’s door and waited. To his surprise, a thin sweat of nervousness formed on his palms

  “Just a sec!” Draper’s voice called. Chaffee could hear the musician fumbling into his pants. Still muttering, “Just a moment,” Draper opened the door and stopped short, caught off-guard by Chaffee’s presence. “My gosh, Chris.” Still buckling his belt, he tapped the top of his head and turned away, embarrassed. Without his toupee Draper looked like a cartoon buzzard.