Moroccan Traffic: Send a Fax to the Kasbah Page 27

  ‘In which case why choose the Tichka?’ Johnson said. Except when he forgot, he had returned to his more pleasant voice.

  ‘Because he hasn’t mentioned a meeting to anybody except Lady Kingsley,’ Oliver said. ‘He has to take the Tichka if he’s sticking to Sullivan. It makes it look like an excursion with friends. He maybe wants Sullivan’s protection against Pymm. Or maybe he’s picking up Oppenheim. The col is open: the film Range Rovers should make it all right. Rolly has started: he’s already radioed back. The Rally sets off in an hour. I’ve sent someone to find out how Sir Robert is travelling.’

  He had spread the map on the bed and Johnson had avoided bending by kneeling to study it. I wondered how he was going to manage the Harley. I turned, and came face to face with my mother equipped with her tray on a halter. She wasn’t wearing bunny ears or a puff. Her hair was wrapped in strong patterned cloths that shadowed the great black and blue bump on her brow. Smoke from her cigarette erupted over an assortment of breakfast dishes, shaving equipment, medical equipment, and a bowl full of greasy pink fluid.

  ‘Paint stripper,’ said my mother, indicating it. ‘Mixed by Mo. Dab with cotton wool. Do not pour over your ricicles, I am to tell you, or you will regret it. Are you still in paid employment?’

  ‘So far as I know,’ Johnson said, getting up. Oliver took the tray.

  ‘Mo thought so,’ said my mother. ‘But who knows? Like any other, spying must be a business. Downsizings, give-ups and rollbacks of senior pay scales and privileges. Sir Robert Kingsley is in the sitting-room. Does anyone wish to give him a golden hello?’

  She is a devil. Oliver’s nostrils flew open but Johnson produced a rare smile in green. He said, ‘Come to woo Morgan?’

  ‘Morgan is with him, that is true. They are agreed it is a pity you blew up, and without a chance to finish the picture. I came away because I seemed to embarrass him. Wendy? You could go down and embarrass him more?’

  ‘I think you are both doing very well where you are,’ Johnson said. ‘Let’s leave Morgan to play out his hand. Did you hear what line he was taking?’

  ‘The one you wanted,’ said my mother. ‘Sir Robert hopes Morgan will devote all his great talents to Kingsley’s, and Mo has said that he will. I think he probably means it, but never mind. There is news. Oppenheim flies to Agadir for a check-up, though his hurt is not serious. The papers report that his wife, reassured, has flown with her father to Casablanca for the final games in the Cup. Sir Robert leaves this house to go straight to the Rally. He will travel by the pass Tizi n’ Tichka, in an extra maintenance vehicle. In the Sunbeam, he would hold back Tom and Jerry.’

  ‘Gerry and Sullivan,’ Johnson said. ‘Doris? Did you like Rita?’

  I thought I had misheard. It was nothing to do with what we were saying. My mother took it quite seriously. She said, ‘As a daughter. You deserve none of these friends. Now Wendy and I are going to Pymm with the tape. Morgan is driving us.’

  ‘Is it still a good idea?’ Johnson said. ‘I was fairly tight when I suggested it.’

  ‘Why not?’ my mother said. ‘I have dealt with many Pymms. My kill ratio for Pymms is quite exceptional.’

  ‘Yes. Well. It should be all right. He doesn’t know we connect him with the waiter and the rest of what happened last night. The tape will reassure him that no one has separated Morgan from Kingsley’s as yet. He can’t lay traps for Wendy if he thinks she’s off to London. And he ought with any luck to settle down now, and concentrate on leading us to his rivals. So I’ll see you in Ouarzazate.’

  She agreed, smiling. I think at the time she actually meant to fly safely to Ouarzazate, but I could never be sure. I was sure that Morgan had told her everything that had happened last night. I found Rita had left me some clothes, and some make-up, and presently we heard Sir Robert drive away and Morgan came through to collect us and talk briefly to Johnson, who had dissolved himself back to an off shade of beige. I was glad not to have to see Sir Robert. I didn’t know if I could have defended him as Charity had. But then, she was his wife.

  Morgan drove us first to his hotel, where he picked up sacks of climbing equipment and his cameras, and then to the Hotel Golden Sahara, where my mother packed, and I got into my own jeans and shirt and paid for all the room service and breakfasts that Sir Robert would no longer take care of. I had no trouble. Mr. Morgan had stood me the money.

  I had trouble looking after my mother, who was roving round the marble floors and the brass tables and the potted exotica looking for Ellwood Pymm. I had him paged. For a terrible fifteen minutes, we thought we had missed him; then the lift doors opened and he limped across the expanse of the foyer to where we sat with our cases. He wore a safari suit with long socks and deck shoes, and his general manner was cautious. I went forward and said, ‘Mr. Pymm? I’m sorry. I was hasty. Wasn’t it terrible? Mr. Johnson? Mr. Oppenheim? My poor mother?’

  He was so surprised and relieved he went scarlet. He grasped me and walked me across to my mother. ‘You’re all right? My God, when I heard. . . Where were you staying last night?’

  ‘We sat with Miss Geddes,’ I said. ‘It was terrible. We’re catching the plane back to London right away. My mother wanted to speak to you first.’

  Behind me, I could hear her breathing. She thinks she is the only one who can fib. I stepped aside.

  Ellwood’s eyes went from me to my mother. A lot of his skin had come off, and what was left behind was shiny and red and frayed round the edges. His crewcut had risen nearly to midshipman level. He said, ‘Doris?’

  My mother sat, her knees apart, her fag in her mouth. She said, ‘You got one of my tapes.’

  Mr. Pymm sat down beside her. ‘You gave me a business tape,’ he said. His voice was tentative.

  ‘Well, I need it,’ said my mother. ‘That’s the next bit of the course we was doing. I must have handed it out by mistake.’

  Pymm waited. Then he said, ‘I’ll go and get it. Did you. . . Have you still got the other one, then?’

  ‘Mr. Oppenheim’s recording? You still want it?’ said my mother, surprised. She forked her cigarette out of her mouth and wheezing, bent to rummage in one of her baskets. She came up with a cassette.

  Mr. Pymm made a grab, but she held on to it. She said, ‘That’s a real nice one: How Expectations Go Up and Down in the Other Man’s Head. You want to try it?’

  ‘Not just now, Doris,’ he said. ‘You haven’t got. . . ?’

  ‘Emotions in the Workplace?’ she said. ‘Sex: The Key to Success and the Trapdoor to Failure? They’ve got that on video. Now see, this is yours. Them villains that kidnapped you wanted it. You know they’re in Marrakesh?’

  ‘I heard,’ said Mr. Pymm. He looked awed.

  ‘Well, you be glad I made a mistake and gave you the wrong one. They were nasty men, those. They’d have killed you.’

  He took it carefully from her. He said, ‘Doris, if you’d come to harm through that tape, I’d have killed myself. You’ve done the right thing. You’ve done a real American thing, protecting the little investors. Now I’ll go right up for your tape, and you’ll have it. When’s your plane?’

  ‘We’ll be all right,’ said my mother. ‘You go on up. We’ll pass the time somehow.’

  He bought us two Cockburns Aged Tawnies and we drank them while he went off to his room with the tape. When he came back, bringing ours, he kissed us both and offered to buy us two more, but my mother said we had to get to the airport. He hugged us both again, and said to be sure to look out for poor Oppenheim, who was catching a flight to Agadir. A helluva end, he said, to a really nice party.

  He watched the taxi out of sight, and we wasted a lot of time taking a sweep back to the Ritas’ because the last person we wanted to meet at the airport was Daniel Oppenheim. The problem being that we were supposed to be flying to London, and were actually travelling a hundred and thirty miles in the opposite direction.

  When we got back to Johnson and Oliver, we received a mixed welcome. Oliver sa
id, ‘You might have gone to the airport and made some enquiries. We had a man waiting for you.’

  ‘To stop us from flying?’ said Morgan. His temper at the moment was short.

  ‘To keep you out of Oppenheim’s way, at the very least. As it happened, Oppenheim wasn’t going where he said he was going in any case.’

  ‘Where was he going?’ enquired my mother.

  ‘Supposedly to Agadir, but actually to Ouarzazate. You would have been on the same plane. That’s why our man—’

  ‘So it’s just as well we came back. We need wheels,’ Morgan said. Crossing the courtyard, we had seen Oliver’s saddlebags already strapped on the Harley, presumably full of loan items for Johnson. Being dead, he had nothing. He couldn’t even draw money. There had also been a Land Rover, loaded with film kit.

  Johnson said, ‘Take the next plane.’ As well as beige, he had returned to middle-management brevity.

  ‘There isn’t one to Ouarzazate for three days. We need wheels.’

  Much later, I was to realise that Johnson had known that. Much later, I was to realise what the duty of the man at the airport had actually been, and that if we had gone, we should have found ourselves sooner or later back in London. As it was, Oliver glanced at Johnson and then said, ‘All right. I’ll see to it.’ He went to the door. ‘Tell him all that happened with Pymm.’

  Johnson listened, but not very closely. He had expected my mother to deal with the tape business, and she had. He wandered to the window and stood, looking out, as she talked to him. Then he suddenly swore, and turning, bounded over the room. Morgan sprang up and followed him.

  By then we, too, had heard the roar of the Harley-Davidson, silently wheeled out of the gate and now roused to life outside the patio by a helmeted and familiar figure. We saw it, both of us, from the window. Without waiting for Johnson, Oliver was taking the rally trail over the Tichka.

  The door opened and Morgan came in, breathing quickly. For inspiration and help, my mother often looks to the apt phrase from business. ‘Vertical disaggregation ,’ she suggested. ‘A rising chasm of inequality between insiders and outsiders. Are all these fellows fighting with or against each other?’

  Morgan walked to the window without speaking. Oliver had gone. Outside, Johnson was chucking stuff out of the Land Rover and a driver was trying to stop him. Morgan said, ‘Want my guess? They’re a team, but no one can direct that particular bastard but Emerson. And not even Emerson, sometimes. All right. Do you want to get left behind, or are you going to help me load our stuff into the Land Rover before Johnson drives off without us?’

  Chapter 19

  With Mo Morgan at the wheel, we set off to cross the High Atlas and save the world for mankind in an acid silence, broken by the clack of my mother’s spare knitting needles initiating a toe. Because the front of a Land Rover accommodates three, we had heaved her in beside Morgan. Johnson and I bounced about in the back wearing anoraks. Mine was my own; Johnson had peeled the other off the stranded film driver and sat warmly recessed in its hood, his dark glasses perceptibly misting. He looked like Paddington Bear. Every now and then Mo inspected him through the mirror and grinned spitefully. Outside it was pelting.

  By that time, the polite shouting match was over. Johnson being no longer in mint condition and moreover dead, my mother thought it perfectly sensible that Oliver should have sprinted off to track Sir Robert’s moves unescorted. Morgan agreed, adding that the Helmann girls (as he put it) had run enough risks, and it was no more than reasonable that he should take them to Ouarzazate, witnessing on the way anything that Johnson thought should impress him. And since Johnson was dead, Morgan volunteered to do the driving.

  Johnson’s intention to drive off on his own was accordingly dissected, demonstrated to be unsound, and dropped by majority vote. That is, once my mother was inside the vehicle, there was absolutely no way he could fork her out again single-handed.

  In fact, he emerged from his sulks fairly quickly, if he was ever in them: he presumably had a lot to think about. It was my employer Mo Morgan who kept up the needling, for reasons my mother claimed to understand and even tolerate. He was feeling defensive and guilty. His eccentricities had been exploited; his pride was touched; his feelings ruffled; his relationships all ungummed without previous notice. He said, ‘So it’s real High Noon time, bud? Ain’t that just kicky? All them mountains jus’ crawlin’ with Redskins.’

  ‘Redskins? In High Noon?’ said my mother with interest. Without the benefit of her tray, her ball of wool ran about her feet like a puppy, frequently jumping between the clutch and Morgan’s lap. We had, by then, emerged from Marrakesh into the rolling plain full of palm groves that lies to the south, punctuated by olive groves and almond and apricot orchards, drenched with rain and floating in mist that sometimes lifted to show distant layers of amorphous grey mountains.

  Morgan said, ‘Well, Pymm’s got a red skin, but he can’t be ahead of us, can he? But the Sunbeam is, with Gerry and Sullivan. And the rest of the rally, with Kingsley. And Oliver on his bike.’

  Johnson said, ‘He’s a cowboy.’

  Morgan flashed a look in the driving mirror. ‘You don’t say? And we’re cowboys as well? What about Rita and Rolly?’

  ‘They’ve orders to get to Ouarzazate,’ Johnson said. He had returned to sounding placid. ‘There should be a transmitter van on this side of the col, and another in place very soon just beyond it. Oliver will check both, find Sir Robert’s car and the Sunbeam, and tell us all where they are going. There are very few hostelries where Oppenheim and Sir Robert could meet.’

  ‘If they meet,’ Morgan said. ‘You have to prove it. You have to prove whom they’re meeting. How do you propose to do that?’

  ‘Whoopee cushions,’ Johnson said. ‘And Mr. Pymm and his friends. Pymm’s been interested in Oppenheim for a while: that’s why he wanted a bug in his study. If we know Oppenheim switched to fly to Ouarzazate, then you may be sure it’s no secret from Pymm. It’s the shortest of hops: twenty minutes. He daren’t get on the same flight, but he’s sent someone Oppenheim wouldn’t recognise.’

  ‘Who? How do you know?’ Morgan said. We were still in the plain, but the rain had stopped. You could see the hills better now, and they were a pale grimy red, the colour of the earth round about us. Behind them, I thought I could see floating shapes, covered with snow.

  ‘It wasn’t terribly difficult,’ Johnson said. ‘Oppenheim booked for the flight, and so did Pymm’s clever thug who speaks – did you spot? – Canadian French. The carpet-bugger at Essaouira who interrogated us about Kingsley’s. Our much-loved friend the café waiter at Marrakesh.’

  ‘His name is Chahid,’ said my mother. ‘There is a very old car.’

  I wondered how she knew that the name of the third man was Chahid, and then was ashamed to have forgotten the sidecar ride to the souks, and the bruise. Morgan had remembered. His face was grim, but he didn’t say anything. He was peering where my mother’s needle was pointing.

  My mother was right. Between the road and a wide pebbly river bed pouring with thick ochre water stood a scarlet Lancia I remembered from Asni, its bonnet up and two anxious figures leaning under it, wearing impeccable boiler suits over their cashmeres.

  Morgan instinctively slowed. ‘Keep going,’ Johnson said briskly. And in the same tone of voice, ‘Oliver? Let us keep this conversation polite. I’m in the Land Rover behind you. Tell someone the Lancia’s stuck at the river by the Ait-Ourir bridge. Where is everybody?’

  I recognised the walkie-talkie in his fist from the chase through the souks. There was a crackle. Then Oliver’s voice said, ‘Who’s driving?’ It sounded aggressive.

  ‘Morgan,’ Johnson said. ‘The two Helmann ladies are here. Let’s get on with it.’ We waited. My mother drew up yarn from her ball and it hopped up and tight-skated ostentatiously round the gear lever. Morgan swore.

  ‘Right,’ said the voice of Oliver. From aggressive, it had become merely grim. ‘The good news is that Opp
enheim has landed at Ouarzazate, was met by a car, and is travelling north. Pymm’s chap also landed, hired a car and is following. They’ve passed the hotel at Tifoultout. So either they take the route to Taroudant when they come to it, or the rendezvous is on the road we are on. The junction’s only 16 miles out, and Rita’s left someone to watch it. Your drawings, I’m told, were spot on, and the Fax chap at Ouarzazate thinks you should take up portrait painting.’

  ‘And the bad news?’ Johnson said. The road had become distinctly steeper and instead of a plain, the horizon was bounded by caked red ridges sliced and moulded by wet, and patched with emerald barley. The lower slopes were candy coloured with flowers. Moisture hung in the air.

  Oliver said, ‘The col is open, but the road is horrendous. Rita got over the pass fifteen minutes ago, but it needed chains. The radio vans are in position, and so are the check points for the rally, but none of the vintages is within two hours of the crest. Jay, the snows are coming down with the rain. They’ve had a collapse in one village already, and the road is smothered in water and mud. I don’t know if the old cars will get over, or you. I think you should leave it to me.’

  Johnson said, ‘Where is the Sunbeam? And Kingsley?’

  There was a torrid pause. Then Oliver said, ‘The Sunbeam is into the hairpins after Touama, going well, and high on brotherly love: he’s stopped three times to give help to buddies. So he’s slow but not all that slow: he’s made no effort to hang back and wait for Sir Robert. Kingsley is in a support jeep at the tail end of the rally, and being equally helpful and considerate. He’s passed the hotel at Ait-Ourir, and the Ourika and Imguer turn-offs, so the rendezvous isn’t there. His car has a dun hood, and painted with secours in yellow. If it’s stopped, you may have to pass it.’

  ‘OK. Warn me if you can. What’s it like south of the col?’

  ‘Better,’ said Oliver. ‘Oppenheim will be making reasonable time. If he’s turning off west to Taroudant, he’s nothing to worry about.’