Deathwish World

by Mack Reynolds

  Frank said, “What?”

  “You look like a Yank, strewth, a Yank or maybe a Canuck, new in this barstid town. Don’t want to be cheeky, but you don’t look like you know your way around, what-o?”

  Frank said, “Oh. Thanks. Fact is, I just pulled in and don’t know the ropes. Is there some place, a neighborhood, where Americans hang out? Not just Americans, but anybody who speaks English.” He hesitated, then stuck out his hand and said, “Frank Pinell. And, yeah, American. You’re Australian?”

  “Too right. Nat Fraser. Bonzer to meet you, Frank.” His hand was huge, dry as the outback, and strong. “Not as many Yanks, Aussies, or even Limeys in town as you’d bloody well wish. You go crazy as a kookaburra for a fresh face or two.”

  “You’re permanent here?” Frank said, regaining his well-squeezed and -pumped hand.

  “Too true, oh my word. And don’t think I wouldn’t do a bunk if I could. Crikey, I haven’t had a contract for donkey’s years. Now, let’s see. A bar where the English speaking coves hang out. Well, mate, actually there’s three. There’s the Parade, where the toffs take on their plonk.” He took in Frank’s suit. “Probably too rich for your blood, what-o?”

  Frank said, after letting air out of his lungs ruefully, “Sounds like it. I’m on a limited budget and I need a job.”

  The Australian cocked his head at him. “Going to be in this googly town for a spell, eh?”

  Frank could think of no reason for disguising his status. “I’m a deportee,” he said, watching the other’s face to get his reaction.

  There wasn’t any. Nat Fraser was going on as though he hadn’t heard the confession. “Then there’s the Carousel, over on Rue Rubens. Not your cup of tea, cobber. What do you Yanks call them? Gays. I doubt you get your lollies that way.”

  “No,” Frank said. “What’s this third one?”

  “Paul Rund’s, down on the Grand Socco. That’s the biggest souk in town. And Paul sells the cheapest plonk in Tangier. Drink it and you wake up with the jumping Joe Blakes in the moring, fair dinkum. As a matter of fact, cobber, I was off in that direction meself when I bagged you looking lost.”

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll tag along,” Frank said.

  “Bloody well told. Let’s go.”

  They started up the boulevard.

  Frank looked up at his elongated companion and said, “Do you think I might make a contact at this Paul’s bar?”

  Nat Fraser considered it. “With the two thousand Swiss francs I suppose you’ve got in your kick from your flashing government, I’d think you could wait it out until you’re able to cobber up somebody who could give you a steer.”

  Frank inwardly winced but said nothing about the fact that his thousand pseudodollars had melted down to less than two hundred.

  At the end of Pasteur Boulevard they entered an attractive square, largely lined with sidewalk cafes.

  “Place de France,” the Aussie told Frank.

  The sidewalk tables were well patronized, largely by prosperous European types, most of whom were reading newspapers. Moroccan waiters, in red fezzes and baggy black pants like bloomers, scurried around taking and delivering orders. There was a superfluity of shoeshine boys.

  They turned right, down a winding street considerably narrower than Pasteur Boulevard had been. The composition of the pedestrians began to change radically. As they progressed, they saw fewer people in European clothing and more in the dress of Africa, the Near East, and the Orient.

  “The Rue de la Liberte,” Nat Fraser told him. “Where the bloody twain meets. You know, East is East and West is West.” He gave running comment on races and costume.

  There were growing numbers of Rifs, Arabs, Berbers—even an occasional Blue Man down from the mountains. The name of the latter, Nat explained, sprang from the indigo dye of their robes which, when they sweated, came off on their skins, giving them an eerie look. At least half of the women still wore the djellaba or haik with veil; half the men wore the brown camel’s-hair burnoose. Africa, evidently, changed slowly even in the 21st Century.

  “And this is the Grand Socco, mate. Cooee, a fair cow, eh? Ever see so many wogs in your life?”

  It was a large square, packed with humanity and with a hundred different varieties of stalls—flower booths, food stands, and herb stands, hashish being among the other so-called herbs. There were displays of vegetables, fruits, hand-woven textiles, yellow or white babouche slippers, and a multitude of other commodities, some seemingly desirable in the eyes of Moroccans and some aimed deliberately to attract tourists. There were still more of the Arabs and Rifs, plus sailors up from the port and European riffraff from a score of countries. Donkeys seemed to be the means of transport; no car could have gotten through the press of bodies. Odors of mint, saffron, and kif, the North African cannabis, mingled in the air.

  Rather than press into the souk, the teeming native market, they turned left and did their best to get through the crowded way, the Australian in front, running interference. It seemed one hell of a strange location for an English-speaking bar.

  Nat was explaining over his shoulder, “Paul’s been here for donkey’s years,” he said. “He’s so warm in half a dozen countries, he’ll never be able to leave. Owes something like a hundred and fifteen years in Italy alone for smuggling, and with his TB he wouldn’t last six months in one of those cold, damp, wop nicks. No extradition from Tangier. He’ll never leave, oh my word. Interpol would grab him in ten minutes if he put a toe down in Gibraltar.”

  They arrived at Paul’s Bar—there was a small faded sign hanging out in front.

  Inside, it was dark and cool but hardly prepossessing. There were six or seven stools at the bar, three tables with chairs. On the walls were pasted aged clippings about the proprietor’s exploits in the old days when he was allegedly a ranking lockpicker, screwsman, grifter, and smuggler. They were alternated with pinups from aged pornographic magazines. From the ceiling hung a fisherman’s net and a ship’s wheel which doubled as a chandelier, a vain attempt to give Paul’s Bar a nautical decor.

  There were only three people present—one slumped at a table, head on arms, one seated dejectedly on a stool at the bar with a bottle of beer before him, and the bartender himself. Automated bars seemed to be unknown in Tangier, at least in this part of town—the medina, as Nat had named it.

  The bartender had once been a larger man. Now he was emaciated. His sallow face had a sardonic quality and he wore a moth-eaten Vandyke beard tinged with gray. He looked up when the newcomers entered and wiped the well-worn bar with a dirty bar rag, uselessly.

  He said, “Cheers, Nat,” then looked at Frank. It seemed that in Paul’s Bar one was introduced before being served.

  Nat and Frank crawled onto stools and the Australian said, “Paul, meet Frank Pinell, a new cobber in town from the States. He’s looking for a contact.”

  Paul put a thin hand over the bar and shook hands. However, his eyes were narrow. “What kind of a contact?” he said.

  It was the tone that bothered Frank. He said, “Well, I don’t know. Just about anything, I guess.”

  “You warm?” Paul Rund said. Frank thought he understood what the other meant. “Only in the States,” he said. And then, not particularly liking this, added, “Why?”

  Paul leaned on the bar and said, “Because this is a poxy town, Frank. There’s no extradition laws, there’s practically no laws at all, but what there are get pretty well obeyed, get it? This is the end of the line for a lot of grifters. There’s no place else to go if they kick you out. So we’re poxy careful not to foul our own nest, get it? We lay doggo, that’s the word, lay doggo. We don’t take no scores here in Tangier. Absolutely. And the boys take a dim view if anybody tries it. We don’t want the present easygoing laws to be no way changed.”

  “That’s the dinkum oil,” Nat said, nodding. “But you’ve got it wrong, Paul. Gawd strewth. Pull your head in. Frank didn’t come here to do a romp. Deported from the States, he was. The poor
cove’s got to cobber up with somebody and get an angle.”

  Paul evidently took the tall Australian’s word for it. He said, “Good show. Just wanted to tell you the drill here, Frank. You look like the type of sod who’d pinch something here in Tangier and put all our bloody arses in a sling. What’ll it be, lads? First drink’s on the bloody house, Frank.”

  Nat said, “Make it a couple of Storks, Paul.” He looked at Frank as the bartender turned to serve them. “Not up to Aussie brew, strike me blind. But, from what I hear, better than you Yanks are turning out these days.”

  “It wouldn’t have to be very good,” Frank told him. “They make syntho-beer from sawdust or something.”

  The two took their bottles of beer and glasses and went to the remotest of the three tables and sat down. The beer glass wasn’t clean but Frank didn’t give a damn. He poured appreciatively. It was the first drink he’d had for several months and a lot of guff had been thrown at him in the past couple of days in particular.

  “Not bad suds considering it’s made by ragheads,” his companion said, downing his whole glass in one vast draught. “The cheeky barstids don’t suppose to ever enjoy a shivoo in their whole narky lives. Oh my word, no. Against Allah’s buggering rules.”

  Frank didn’t take much longer to finish his. The Aussie was right. It wasn’t bad beer at all. Probably still made from malt and hops, he assumed, instead of the crap being turned out at home these days for the prole palate.

  Nat said, “How about another, cobber?”

  He came to his feet. Frank said, “All right, but I ought to pay for this.”

  “Don’t be a zany. You can’t afford to play the toff until you get yourself settled in. Been down on the bone meself in me time. Settle down, cobber.” The Aussie went over to the bar and secured another couple of bottles from the thin-faced bartender. Frank looked after him thoughtfully.

  When he had returned and they had refilled their glasses, Frank held his up and said, “Thanks, Nat. Mud in your eye.”

  Nat said, holding up his glass in toast, “Fuck Ireland.”

  They both drank and then Frank said, “What did you say?”

  “Oh. Fuck Ireland.”

  Frank looked at him. “Why?”

  The Australian’s easygoing face took an expression of being put upon. “Cooee, cobber, I don’t know. That’s what we say in Melbourne, strewth.”

  Frank said, “Look here, Nat. Do you always talk this way? I miss about half of what you mean.”

  Nat Fraser grinned, a ruefulness there. “A bit thick, eh? Always sets you Yanks back. I wasn’t trying to cozen you.”

  Frank chuckled, the first occasion he could remember having done so for some time. He said, “All right, no harm done, but let’s keep it on a level where we communicate.”

  “Fair dinkum.”

  The American looked about the room, then brought his eyes back to his newfound friend. “Nat,” he said. “This doesn’t exactly look like an employment agency. In fact, it’s obviously a low-class bar where the town’s less prosperous, uh, grifters, I believe is the term Paul used, hang out.”

  Nat looked around too, taking in the other customers, both on the seedy side. “Too right,” he admitted. “Shall we do a bunk?”

  “You mean get out? No,” Frank told him. “Why’d you bring me here, Nat?”

  The over-lengthy Aussie let his sun-faded eyebrows go up. “What-o, cobber? You think I was trying to cozen you?”

  “Look,” Frank said patiently, “I’m game, but not everybody’s. I was walking along the street, minding my own business. Suddenly you’re there, winsome as a pimp, but you sure as hell don’t act like one. Fifteen minutes later, we’re in this dump. Why?”

  The Australian went over and got two more bottles of Stork beer and returned with them. He was grinning. “You said you were a deportee,” he told Frank as he put the bottles down.

  “So?”

  “I’m the local recruiting sergeant, cobber.”

  Frank stared at him, even while upending the bottle over his glass. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Had any military training at all?”

  “No.”

  Nat Fraser looked disappointed. “Don’t twig anything about a shooter, eh? What did they nail you for, cobber?”

  “I didn’t say that. My old man was a gun crank. Had quite a collection. I didn’t see much of him but he used to get a kick out of showing me the workings of everything from cap-and-ball revolvers to new Gyrojets. What was I nailed for? Homicide.”

  The easygoing Aussie took him in for a long moment. Frank said, “Recruiting sergeant for what?”

  “Mercenaries, Incorporated.”

  Frank scowled. “Never heard of it.”

  “The Grafs outfit.”

  “Never heard of him, either. You mean professional soldiers of fortune?”

  “That’s the dinkum oil. This is one of the big staging areas for many a contract. The Graf gets a contract and we put the operation together here in Tangier.”

  “I thought Paul said you pulled nothing off here. That Tangier was sort of neutral ground. The boys, as he called them, didn’t want to foul their own nest.”

  “Fair dinkum. We don’t do anything here in Tangier. Just recruit blokes who want to earn a little money, and put the operation together. The Graf’s sometimes got other operations going. We crew some of them, too. Aren’t as many bloody contracts these days as there used to be, but some. Bush wars down south between all the dictators, presidents for life, and that whole mucking lot. Some in the Far East, too. But we don’t handle those operations. They’re based in Singapore and Penang. The Graf’s got his representatives there as well.”

  Frank said, “Soldiers of fortune, eh? Hiring yourself out to kill for money.” There was disgust in his voice.

  The ordinarily amiable Aussie looked at him coldly. “What other reason is there to fight, cobber? A soldier’s job is to win wars. If you pick that pro-bloody-fession, you wind up killing people, usually other soldiers who’ve picked the same trade.”

  Some of his exaggerated Aussie slang seemed to have dropped away.

  Frank said, “The theory is that the usual soldier is fighting for his country. He’s doing his duty, defending it.”

  “Too right. That’s the theory, but it’s not the reality. I’m not talking about blokes drafted during wartime. They can’t get out of it, even if they want to. But your professional soldiers are a bunch of hypocrites. At least a mercenary can choose what side he fights on. But your career soldier fights whoever the politicians tell him to. Look at the Germans in the Nazi war. Were they fighting for their country? Fucking well not. They were fighting for that dingo barstid Hitler and his gang.”

  Frank was irritated by the other’s strong opinions. He said, “Even granting that doesn’t excuse a mercenary, fighting for whoever will pay him.”

  “Half a mo, cobber. I’ve never taken a contract for some fucking barstid like Hitler or any other politician I thought was buggering up his country. Sometimes I’ve been offered contracts where I wouldn’t fight on either side.”

  Frank stood and said, “I’ll get another, ah, buggering beer.”

  Nat said, reaching into a pocket, “You ought to let me shout the suds.”

  “Why?” Frank said. “I’m not a potential recruit. No reason I should be freeloading on you.”

  At the bar, while Paul Rund was getting the fresh bottles of Stork, the wizened bartender said, “Signing up with the Graf, Frank?”

  Frank eyed him. “I don’t think so. Do you know of any other jobs kicking around?”

  The other popped off the two beer caps, then ran his thin fingers through his bedraggled Vandyke. “You might get a berth on one of the boats. Not as many of them as there used to be, but I heard Sam McQueen needed a couple of men.”

  “What kind of boats?”

  Paul Rund looked at him as though he had hardly expected that question. “Smugglers.”

  Frank
said, “For Christ’s sake, I thought you said there was nothing illegal pulled off in Tangier!”

  The bartender said patiently, “Smuggling ain’t illegal. You buy a cargo of hashish or tobacco here, perfectly legit, and run it to one of the countries where it’s taboo, get it? And you sell it there, so you haven’t broken any law in Tangier. Smugglers are reputable citizens here, get it?”

  The American shook his head and took up the two beers. To his relief, they cost only two dirhams apiece in Paul’s. Back at the table, after they had both poured, Nat Fraser said, “So you’re not interested?”

  “I suppose not. Look, I’m not holier than thou. In fact, I suspect my father was some sort of mercenary; possibly in espionage, I don’t know. He and my mother were separated when I was a kid; I didn’t see him much. He was usually out of the country, I think. At any rate, he was finally shot on one of his trips. I haven’t any desire to end the same way.”

  The other shrugged broad shoulders. “The Graf’s got other operations, like I said. Maybe he could find a place in the organization for a nice presentable cove like yourself.”

  “From what you’ve said so far about his operations, I doubt it,” Frank said, finishing his beer. He stood. Somewhat to his surprise, he could feel the drink. Possibly, Stork was stronger than the gassy anemic American brew he was used to.

  He said, “Thanks anyway, Nat. I’ll see you around.”

  “Too right, cobber. If you change your mind, I’m usually here this time of night.”

  Frank sent his glance out of one of the dirty windows. It was dark out on the Grand Socco. He hadn’t realized they’d been talking for so long.

  He left after waving to Paul Rund and stood for a moment before the door. Not a fraction of the teeming Moroccans were still on the streets or in the souk. Evidently, everything folded in the medina with the coming of night. He made his way past shuttered stalls, past steel-barred store fronts, retracing his route as best he could.

  He shook his head over the experiences of the past few hours. No crime in Tangier, eh? Uh-huh. Aside from the IABI men ripping off eight hundred of his thousand pseudodollars, the customs officer had lifted his camera, his cab driver had stolen his luggage, he had been offered a job as a mercenary despite his lack of experience, and had been told he might land a berth on a boat smuggling narcotics.