Moroccan Traffic: Send a Fax to the Kasbah

by Dorothy Dunnett

  The hands fell away. I turned. Over Johnson’s nice lock-knit jersey he now wore a rather natty djellabah, clean but creased from my mother’s knitting bag. We were in a space between empty stalls, and I could hear Pymm’s voice raised in protest. Johnson said, ‘I’ve got some gear for you, too, but do you mind if we see what is happening?’ He spoke as if it were a video show. Holding me, he moved cautiously forwards.

  They had got Pymm by then: the barber and at least one other helper. The towel had been twisted tight round his neck, and above it his half-lathered face had become scarlet. He was calling ‘Morgan, Morgan! You know me! Any size cheque that you like! Help me, Morgan!’

  Talisman in the microchip world, the name Morgan was unknown to Pymm’s captors. It merely indicated that Pymm had a friend and an ally: someone who equally, therefore, merited lifting. The large man, with no trouble whatever, restrained Ellwood Pymm. It took three others to get hold of Morgan, and all the time he was looking for me. Then, satisfied that I had gone, he abruptly stopped struggling.

  ‘It is good,’ said the man who had first spoken. ‘And now, we shall go to the kasbah.’

  I turned. Inside Johnson’s hood, I caught a single black gleam. Then he said, ‘No, I’m not going to help him. Neither are you. So, are you on? I’m after Chahid, and it might be tricky. You can come, or go back to Hassan.’

  I said, ‘Only Chahid? Not Sir Robert and Oppenheim?’

  ‘Oh, they’re in the kasbah,’ said Johnson. ‘But I don’t need to see them. Morgan will.’

  That was why he hadn’t stopped Mo being captured. Johnson wanted him captured, so that he could learn for himself what Oppenheim and Sir Robert were up to. I thought he was mental. I said, ‘According to Hassan, the kasbah’s owned by an Arab. A pan-Arab. Not a Moroccan.’

  ‘Surprising, isn’t it?’ Johnson remarked. We were retreating silently between empty stalls. ‘You could imagine Ellwood Pymm pimping for anybody, but I didn’t connect Daniel with Arabs. I should have. He’s subtle, although he can’t fathom a mystical idiot like Morgan. And of course, these are not your usual investors. They’ve no links with the al-Baraka or the al-Rajh or the IDB: we checked these all out at the start. Daniel’s Arabs are very quiet fellows, pissing-rich and broad thinkers. The kind who want bangs for their bucks.’

  Two babes in the world of finance, my mother had said. Now I knew she was joking. I said, ‘You’ve got your chief browned off with you, anyway. You didn’t tell him the MCG were being hunted by Kingsley’s.’

  I had followed a train of thought of my own. He must have followed it too, for after slowing, he began walking again. He said, ‘You met Sir Bernard, all right. I sometimes do a thing for a friend, and he flips. If I’d let Rita go down, he’d have killed me. Here’s the mule. So, Wendy, what about it?’

  There were a lot of mules. He laid an arm on one of them, and it tried to bite him. I said, ‘Of course, I ought to be on my way to Ouarzazate.’

  ‘That was the plan,’ Johnson said. ‘But if you want to see goalmouth action, I’m easy. Or you can say No without feeling guilty. I know you can. I saw the cassette.’

  He really did seem unconcerned which I chose. I chose to go, which of course he had counted on. At the time, I just got dressed in the loose robes and veils he had brought me, and he gave me my orders. They were lucid and pleasant. He was in so many ways like Sir Robert. Then I splashed up the steep snowy road to the kasbah beside Johnson’s mule, which Johnson was riding in an indolent and leisurely manner. Its panniers were filled with goat cheeses.

  Only once, as we went, did we hear wheels behind us and found ourselves sprayed by a battered Land Rover full of men, its back tarpaulin-laced for privacy. It vanished ahead between gushes of brown snow.

  ‘Pymm and Morgan,’ Johnson said. ‘On-Time Delivery. I should think Pymm’s in over-drive now, trying to fathom whom he’s got to face, and whether he can claim he’s here to write up kasbahs for Canada. That dirty trick with the Lancia will take some explaining. And if he gets connected with Chahid, he’s had it.’

  ‘Where will the Arabs put them?’ I asked. I was dripping. Whatever happened, I kept getting annoyed with him.

  He knew it, of course. I could tell from the way he sat and considered, while his shoe absently tapped the mule’s shoulder. ‘Depends on the kasbah,’ he said. ‘The Caids used to chain their prisoners together and drop them into some hole dug for storage. Sometimes they ran to your genuine dungeons. Latterly it got pretty civilised. Choice of poisoned tea or a cage on a camel. The Glaoui, who held the Tizi n’ Telouet pass until practically yesterday—’

  I said, ‘Will they hurt them?’

  ‘—had a marvellous kasbah: Saadian plasterwork, Lyons brocades, tiles and carpets and painted yew ceilings. Girls. And boys. And crimson silk palanquins. They won’t hurt Mo,’ Johnson said. ‘And they can’t really prick Pymm. He’ll just become a crewcut balloon with a piece of string round his minuscule hooter.’ He wasn’t really listening to what he was saying, but he wasn’t speaking French either. I thought he was thinking.

  We reached the kasbah quite soon. Its red sundried bricks were of the stuff of the hillside and hardly seen at a distance. Close to, the knifed patterns showed in blocks and bands of geometrical ornament. Once, like all of them, it had probably been a small town within fortified walls, with its citadel. Now only the fortress remained, with a high wall and a pair of solid gates giving on to its courtyard. To one side were gardens and orchards, watered by the stream which ran on down through the village; full of snow-water now, but in summer probably shrunk to a trickle. As in the village, it fed an arm into the house through a grille. Behind the fort was a double-leafed service door. There Johnson dismounted. Then the mule with its panniers was led off, and I was told to tie it up in the trees and stay with it.

  I wish now that I had. I knew Johnson was following Chahid: that Pymm had remained waiting below while the other man came to spy on the kasbah. Chahid could have found no way into the fortress. But he could have watched by the gates and, if Johnson’s guess was correct, he could have seen Sir Robert and then Oppenheim enter. Perhaps he had even witnessed the lord of the kasbah arriving. The wheel-marks of more than one set of broad and powerful tyres had preceded us up the hill, and disappeared through the gates of the building.

  But if Chahid had done all that, he had not returned to Pymm with his tale. So Johnson was stalking him; moving unremarkably uphill in his gown, his gaze vaguely bent to the ground. It came to me that Chahid was wearing city clothes, city shoes, and was now on foot. Once past the churned mud at the gates, his footprints must have been quite distinctive. It was hard to imagine what he could be doing, high on the hill behind the kasbah.

  He was coming down when Johnson saw him. I saw Johnson stop, and then slip into the trees to one side. I was hidden already.

  Not in waiter’s clothes, not in the robes of Essaouira, the man was still recognisable from his carriage, his Westernised stride. As he walked, he swung a carrier bag in one hand, and had a camera hung on his shoulder. He could have been a Canadian tourist.

  Johnson called him, in a whisper. ‘Chahid!’

  The man stopped and looked. He was frowning.

  ‘Chahid!’

  He thought it was Pymm. He glanced round once, then moved swiftly and quietly to the trees. Then I heard him give a gasp.

  I suppose he found himself facing a revolver. I heard Johnson speak, but not quite all he said. He spoke in French, to be best understood, and I heard the name Essaouira, and my mother’s name, and then the name of Oliver. I think he asked him to confirm that he was paid by Pymm, but I didn’t hear the reply. There was one cry, abruptly ended, and then a thud. Then Johnson said, ‘If you have finished lurking, you might as well come out and help me.’

  His voice was colder than it was breathless. I walked reluctantly up, and found him with twine in his hands. The man Chahid lay on his face on the ground. After a moment, I saw he was breathing. Johnson said, ‘Si
nce we can’t invoke police help at the moment, I am proposing to tie him to the grille over there. I can drag him, if you think it’s too much for you.’

  I didn’t know why he felt contempt for me. I helped him carry the man, and we gagged his mouth, and tied his feet and his arms, and secured the rope to the grille. He lay quite safely to one side of the water. Then Johnson said, ‘Thank you. Now the rest of the programme, if you’re still willing.’ He was drawing long breaths, from the thin air and the effort. So was I, from thin air and sick terror.

  I had never broken into private premises before, but Johnson had. We returned down the hill. Johnson untied the mule, rang the service-door bell of the fort, and was admitted to the back yard, while I followed him. Then he produced the goat cheeses.

  All the talk was in French. Hassan had told him what to say and whom to expect: there was a pretty girl, and a cook and a man who might have been a hired butler. Johnson disappeared into the kitchens with his cheeses and took his time coming out. There was a lot of laughter. By then I was hidden, and they had forgotten me. Johnson led out his mule, jingling dirhams, and the double gates were shut and locked fast behind him. Everyone re-entered the house.

  I thought he would come back immediately, but I was shivering with cold before I heard his low whistle. He slipped through the gate when I unlocked it, and had already gone by the time I had locked it again. I found him levering open a window. He did it like a practised criminal, his hood thrown back, his glasses again on his nose. I said, ‘The alarm?’

  ‘Switched it off from inside. Hassan knew where it was. Are you ready? Could you do with a hoist?’

  I shook my head. He had said nothing of burns, ever. I let him get himself through the window, and then followed.

  I had been five days in Morocco. I hadn’t met a sheik or a film star. But I had found my way into a kasbah, along with a guerrilla in bifocal spectacles.

  Chapter 21

  We were in the laundry. The weekly wash, it was apparent, was not being pummelled by stones in a river. I could see boxer shorts going round in the tumbler in a room lined with pulsating machinery. There were beds of small cashmere socks, and corridors of ironed shirts airing on hangers. All the pockets were embroidered with B. Johnson crossed the room, listened, and opened a door, and I crept out behind him. A savoury smell filled the passage outside, and I could hear distant loud voices arguing in French and Arabic, and the clatter of dishes. It was two o’clock, and everyone was eating but us. We began to explore.

  The kasbah was, in itself, the Arabian palace everyone dreams of. It possessed secretive courtyards with fountains, and irregular passages, and stairs which abruptly led up or down to sequences of uneven rooms with cedarwood doors and mille-fiori doorknobs. We found a drawing-room sixty feet long, and a lot of scented bedrooms and dressing-rooms, all of them empty, and a wing we didn’t go into, because we could hear women’s voices.

  I was glad my mother wasn’t there because in other respects, she might have felt disillusioned. This kasbah was furnished from Turin and Milan in steel and lacquer and glass and contained a quantity of fitted carpets, some of them with mould peeping out of the corners. It was not without ethnic concessions: tiled floors, some wall hangings and a number of brass and wrought-iron lanterns. But the pictures had been bought by an agent, and the ornaments by an interior decorator: probably the same who had created all the crowned and plumed and canopied beds. They were a bit the way I imagined them, and one of them had black satin sheets. It also had mirrors and other things. Johnson said, ‘You’re too young for all that. Seen enough?’

  We hadn’t found Morgan or Pymm. They weren’t in the dungeons, because these were full of wine racks. We didn’t spend much time looking anyway, for what Johnson wanted was the business room of the lord of the kasbah.

  ‘Mr. B.,’ I proposed.

  I was feeling high. There were really very few people about. We had had two narrow escapes, after which Johnson had rammed my bright clothes in a corner, saying I was less of a liability in my own jeans and a shirt, which would only get me sexually assaulted, and he would see what he could do about it later. He didn’t mean it, but I was getting to understand him. I wondered what it would be like to work for Johnson.

  We had come to a broad, well-lit passage with the floor done in marble, and concealed spotlights on tables with flowers. There were several large double doors. Johnson said, ‘What about this?’ and carefully opened the first. Then he shut it quickly and quietly and hauled me fast round a corner.

  I had seen what he had seen: a commodious thick-walled room which, from its equipment, might have belonged to the Chairman of Kingsley Conglomerates. In the central position stood a single magnificent desk and great chair, backed by a pristine lacquer screen. Before it, and near to one wall a walnut conference table was furnished with blotters, paper, ashtrays and tumblers for six, its chairs neatly drawn up around it. A young man in Western clothes had just placed a crocodile case on the desk and was moving towards a far door. He disappeared through it. Something about him made me think of Val Dresden. After a moment, he emerged into our passage by a second door further along and, turning away, made his way down some steps and up others. He tapped on a door.

  We were near enough then to hear the murmur of polite conversation inside, and the resonance, equally civilised, that comes with the use of bone china and crystal and silver. The young man announced something deferentially, listened, nodded and, retreating, shut the door and, walking even further away, disappeared. I didn’t know the voice that had answered him, but I recognised two of the others.

  So had Johnson. ‘Sir Robert and Oppenheim,’ he said. ‘Lunching in private with the lord of the kasbah, and thereby settling the main point at issue. I wonder. What do you think? Fruit, cheese, coffee, ablutions. . . We’ve got a clear half an hour till the meeting. Come on. Let’s see what else we can turn up.’ And drawing me with him, he opened the door that the secretary had come from.

  The room inside was empty of people. There were two big modern desks and a VDU secretarial work-unit of the kind Trish had at Kingsley Conglomerates. There were telephones with three lines on each, and one answerphone. There was a photocopier and a stationery cabinet and a transit box. The PA’s desk was like mine, only more expensive, with a pile of messages held down by a clip and the files and papers he’d been working on. The door to his chief’s room was beside it. The third table was leather-topped and immaculate, and all its drawers had locks. Along the walls were handsome filing cabinets, and each of the two principal desks had a dealing screen. Both were active. One showed market prices. The other was running a message in Arabic.

  ‘A man of heavy interests, Mr. B.,’ Johnson said. ‘A desk for his PA: a working spot for his travelling executive. Not a place where he’ll keep permanent records, but while he’s here, it should tell us quite a lot about him. First the case in his room. Then the drawers. And what do I hear?’

  What he heard was the chirp of a Fax machine, intimating it was sending a message. Presently it came groaning out, a curling scroll covered with figures. We went and looked at it.

  ‘There is a God,’ Johnson said with real reverence. ‘Oh, Hallelujah.’ And sitting down at a desk, he began to scribble a message.

  Johnson picked all the locks and restored them. I spent most of the time at the door, listening for the footfall that the noise of the Fax might conceal from us. In the end, it was a telephone call that alarmed us. Instead of being received by the answerphone, it rang live to one of the handsets with the insistent toots that meant internal paging. Someone wanted the PA, and pronto.

  If the PA had been less sharp-eared, less scared of his boss, we’d have made it. As it was, I heard his running feet bounding down the steps at the end of the passage. I shut the door and said, ‘He’s coming back.’

  Johnson was near the inner door. I couldn’t leave without being seen, but he could. I felt the draught of his robe as he made for it, whirling briefly to check out t
he room. It looked undisturbed. He was a demon for detail. Then he said, ‘See you later,’ and left.

  The door nearest to me was flung open. Coming in with a bound, the young man who looked like Val Dresden snatched up the phone and spoke into it. For a moment, I thought I might manage to dodge him. But as he talked, he looked up and caught sight of me.

  He said, ‘Alors. . . Alors. . .’ and dropped the phone. I was making a dash for the door when he tripped me and carrying me to the ground, fell on top of me. I thought he was more alarmed than vindictive. He said ‘What are you doing?’ and put his knee on my stomach. Before I could answer, he reached up and pressed on a buzzer, and two men with eighteen-inch biceps came in and took me away. I had seen them in the market when they got hold of Pymm. In fact they took me to Pymm. He was with Morgan, locked in a lavatory.

  If you convert a kasbah, I suppose bathrooms are the only places left with small windows and locks. This was a very palatial one, with everything done in gold down to the toilet hinges. It had high and low paper, and all the towels and the bathrobes had B on them. Ellwood Pymm sat on the toilet, and Mo Morgan sat on the bidet. It was a really bad moment, until I saw they were both fully dressed and there was nowhere else for them to sit, except the Jacuzzi. Then I was battered aside by Ellwood Pymm making his way to the door and yelling at the two men who were closing it. ‘Let us out! This gentleman is Mohammed Mirghani! Tell your employer! Your employer will give you big money!’

  The man said, ‘Sivahell! Imshi!’ and shut the door in his face. You could tell that Pymm understood, even without his American phrasebook.