Moroccan Traffic: Send a Fax to the Kasbah Read online

  I wondered if I should speak. I wondered if I should suggest that it was an agent of Johnson’s who had caused the bomb threat in London, and achieved access to the safe and its figures. The bomb itself hadn’t been meant to go off. He had been angry.

  I didn’t say it. Instead, I said, ‘Sir Robert?’

  They both looked at me. I said, ‘My luggage was searched at the airport. Mr. Johnson could have been there.’ The royal motorcade had passed just after I did. He must have been in the Salon of Honour.

  I said, ‘I was carrying the company papers. The Customs took and returned them intact. But if they were read, then Johnson and Sullivan know all our figures.’

  ‘Well, Johnson at least,’ Sir Robert said. He rose, taking his glass to the bar, and after a moment, returned and collected Mr. Morgan’s and mine. He said, uncapping bottles, ‘One of the irritating things about this sad little business is that I may have to give up that portrait. I really can’t allow this two-faced blighter to walk all over our plans. Nor do I much like being made a fool of. Answer the door, will you, Wendy?’

  It was an afternoon of unwanted visitors. On a wave from Sir Robert, someone ushered in Sebastian Sullivan. He was dressed as in the café, with a fringed buckskin jacket flung over his upholstered shoulders. His hair, waving all down his neck, was nearly long enough to put in plaits like Mr. Morgan’s. He smiled a smile straight from the Desert Song.

  We knew, of course, now what he and his partner Johnson were worth. I wondered if he had heard what we were saying about them. I wondered if Johnson had sent him, and what he was going to say. I stepped back a number of paces and Morgan sat up like a whippet.

  ‘Ah, there you are, Seb,’ said Sir Robert. ‘The usual tipple?’ He turned to take a fresh glass. ‘I was just going to tell them about you.’

  Mr. Morgan caught on before I did. He said baldly, ‘Do I understand what I think I understand? Colonel Sullivan is working for Kingsley’s?’

  ‘I have been known to employ Black & Holroyd from time to time,’ said Sir Robert, handing out tumblers. ‘Not a matter that would appear on a Boardroom agenda, but specialist PR consultants can help a firm now and then. Indeed you can thank Wendy, in a way, that I was reminded of them.’ Seb Sullivan, grinning at me, had cast himself on the sofa.

  ‘I thought black PR was more their line,’ Mo Morgan said. ‘Ah! They dug up the stuff about Johnson. And the Colonel is presumably hunting for more? In the midst of a vintage car rally?’

  ‘Johnson and Rita,’ said Colonel Sullivan, waving his drink. ‘Now there’s a vintage vehicle with a well-hidden love life. And if he goes in for middle-aged redheads, who knows what else we’ll find on him, or the pair of them? There are make-up artists and make-up artists, me dears.’

  Mo Morgan said, ‘I can see why you don’t discuss this round the Board table. Does much of it generally go on?’

  ‘Do I detect a note of reproof?’ said Sir Robert in his pleasant voice. ‘The affairs of this company are above reproach, and are conducted, as you know, in the open. When, due to some sordid and criminal espionage the welfare of the firm appears threatened, I reserve the right to confront the criminals on their own ground. If you disagree, then you may take it up with me officially.’

  Morgan looked at him. I said, ‘But Colonel Sullivan was in the café?’

  ‘Sticking like a brother to our Mr. Johnson,’ said Sullivan. ‘Having spotted you, I tell you, he didn’t much relish my company. In the end he turned it into a game. Bet me he could get you to follow the old witch with the sugar.’

  I said, ‘What did he write on the paper?’

  ‘There might have been a few capital letters,’ said Seb Sullivan. ‘Maybe the film people’s logo? It puzzled me too, until I rang Sir Robert to find what had happened. She knew at least to go to the Place, the old soul, and then MCG could fake up a meeting. He left a lot to chance, that bright boy, but Reed must have been watching for one of you. I trust you both kept your corporate mouths shut.’

  ‘We used them for eating,’ said Morgan. ‘You didn’t think to come after and warn us?’

  ‘Would have given the game away, old dear,’ said Seb Sullivan. ‘Not so cut off from real life as he looks, our Mr. Johnson. I’ve been thinking. We’ve got two more free days. And except that he’d know it, I’d skip the sightseeing and have a dirty good look at that yacht of his.’

  ‘You could, tomorrow,’ said Sir Robert idly. ‘He’s painting the royals all day. Couldn’t give me a sitting.’

  ‘Where?’ said Colonel Sullivan. ‘In the Palace? Or here?’

  ‘He has a suite here,’ said Sir Robert. ‘I go there for my sittings. He does the rest in the Palace. How long would it take you to get to Essaouira? Two hours? Three?’

  ‘All the time in the world to look at that boat,’ said Colonel Sullivan. His eyes had stopped at my legs. He said, ‘I’d need a bit of company with me. Credibility, it’s all the rage in this business. What about it, Wendy, me darlin’? I’d like to know who’s on that yacht.’

  Mo Morgan said, ‘I doubt if Wendy does. I’ll go, if you want a companion.’

  I was surprised. I thought they had disliked each other on sight. Seb Sullivan said, ‘Not the right shape of legs, my dear fellow, and you’d blow me Kingsley cover, what’s more.’

  ‘I’m Kingsley’s,’ I said.

  ‘Who cares?’ said Seb Sullivan. ‘What you are is classified doll. So you come. Right, Sir Robert? You’d let her play hookey tomorrow?’

  ‘It depends what for,’ said Sir Robert. He took off his jacket and threw it over a chair. His hair stuck up.

  ‘Cross me heart, nothing chancy,’ said the Desert Song. ‘A spin in the buzzbox, a glance at the harbour, and straight back to the fort and the handcuffs.’

  I could see Morgan’s scowl, and I hesitated. Then Sir Robert said, ‘I see nothing against it. The paperwork can surely be finished this evening. And if the trip brings results, all the better. Mo, would you prefer to return home to London? There is no need for you to be involved any further.’

  ‘I thought maybe there was,’ said Mo Morgan. ‘No. I’ll stay. Thank you.’

  Sullivan left soon after that, and Sir Robert and I started to spread out the papers and work on them. Before we left London, we had made our contingency plans. The figures in my document case at the airport had catered for each likely level of discussion, although rounded, and subject to encoded updates from London. It meant that the form of our strategy might be known, but the detail, thank God, was less vulnerable.

  Morgan, to Sir Robert’s annoyance, stayed with us. He said very little, but the remarks he did make were quite shrewd, and caused Sir Robert to view him, I am sure, with some respect.

  Morgan left first. Sir Robert might have kept me even longer except that the inner door opened and Lady Kingsley came in. She said, ‘Goodness, are you still there? Your poor young lady, Bobs; she looks quite exhausted. Is she staying to dinner?’

  I rose, concealing alarm. I said, ‘It’s very kind of you, but my mother’s expecting me. And I’m not too tired. It’s been very interesting.’

  Sir Robert said, ‘Wendy’s been an absolute brick, as per usual, and she’s going to have time off at the seaside tomorrow. Have you had a decent day?’ He picked up and handed me papers and, taking the hint, I proceeded to pack up my briefcase.

  Lady Kingsley said, ‘You know the man who’s painting your portrait?’

  ‘You’ve met him, have you?’ said Sir Robert. He looked round and found some more folders.

  ‘I met him when he came, yes, but I didn’t know him. Now I do. I’ve just spent the afternoon in his rooms. What that fellow knows about colours. And brushes, pure sable, he gave me some. And he was extremely decent about my little picture. He doesn’t think it’s too brown.’

  ‘I didn’t say that it was,’ said Sir Robert. ‘So you had him next door?’

  Lady Kingsley gave a calm, wifely honk. ‘Wouldn’t have put it like that, but yes, he did
come out on the balcony. My God, you were all talking for ages.’

  ‘Glad you were pleasantly occupied, then,’ said Sir Robert. ‘Wendy? I’d better not see you out. Can you find your own way?’

  I thanked him and carried my case through the suite, looking to left and to right at the door. The way to the lift appeared clear. As I pressed the button and waited, I observed a small white block on the floor by my foot. I picked it up. It was a wrapped sugar lump. But although I unwrapped the paper, there was nothing written inside it.

  At sun-up next morning, a four-door three-litre ‘26 Sunbeam rolled up before the Hotel Golden Sahara, where a man was sweeping the steps with a palm branch. Its torpedo body was a pale powder-blue; the sidelights on its mudguards were silver, its wheels were meshed with glittering wire. The upholstery was deep buttoned leather, and the hood was let down.

  At the wheel was Seb Sullivan, his arm on the ledge and his Viking hair lit by the moon and the sunrise. With difficulty, I prevented my mother from trying to climb in beside him. ‘You had Mo Morgan,’ I said. ‘You can’t have them both. It’s anti-social.’

  ‘That’s the one I want, Wendy,’ she said. ‘Play you a tie-break.’

  For two days now, Best of the Desert Song had replaced her cassette on the Equity Carrot: I had spent the night trying to wrench her mind back to business. Finally, with a sigh, she had hauled off her earphones. ‘Why repeat it so often? I hear you. Kingsley’s aim for a friendly takeover. Target spits. Kingsley’s hire slag to bad-mouth the target, sweet-talk backers into taking fat offer. Meeting pending to clinch. You say this fine young man Sullivan is one of Kingsley’s?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But Johnson isn’t, and Ellwood Pymm isn’t.’

  ‘Ellwood Pymm?’ she said. ‘He lent you his phrasebook.’

  ‘Yes. Well, he’s a columnist. It would suit him quite well to pick up slime about Kingsley’s. And that could spoil the MCG deal.’

  ‘What could he pick up?’ my mother said.

  ‘Figures,’ I said. ‘That’s what everyone’s trying to work out. The as-is value. The actual figures.’

  ‘So they’re that bad?’ she said. ‘So Kingsley’s have to fix this MCG deal. For if they don’t persuade MCG to give in, an outside predator might just make a strong offer to Kingsley’s shareholders?’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Taking over the company debt and Mo Morgan. Assuming, of course, that Mo Morgan still intends to keep his money and stay.’

  ‘He’s uneasy,’ my mother said. ‘Does he like pressed ham all that much? Or coffee? He wants to know what’s in the cooking pot.’

  ‘They don’t see eye to eye, he and Sir Robert. He doesn’t like Seb or Johnson. He could make his whole team unhappy,’ I said. ‘I have to help Colonel Sullivan with this trip to Essaouira tomorrow. Why don’t you call on Mo Morgan and mother him? I have his address.’

  She took it thoughtfully in her paws. She said, ‘It’s illegal, boarding this painter’s yacht? Remember all that pain in the Customs shed, Wendy? You let this man Seb go to prison, not you.’

  ‘I’m just there as his cover,’ I said. ‘Remember, someone planted that bomb to harm Kingsley’s. They can’t complain if we look through their yachts.’

  ‘They can shoot bullets,’ my mother said. ‘I think I should go with you. If they want a good target, they’ll have it.’

  She was right about that. I said, ‘Anyway, you’d never fit into the Sunbeam.’

  I waved to her as we drove off. ‘A latch-key child at my age!’ she cried after me.

  Chapter 7

  ‘I thought she was supposed to be sick?’ yelled Colonel Sullivan above the uproar of the 1926 engine. We had overtaken, to their vociferous delight, some Moroccan joggers on the western suburbs of Marrakesh. It wasn’t yet eight, and hordes of bicycles packed the road coming inwards, while patient lines of caps and veils waited outside lanes of unopened block factories, and groups of men by the roadside drummed up tea on cloth covered boxes. Everyone looked at us. ‘Anyway,’ he added, ‘they let you come, and I wouldn’t have betted on it.’

  ‘I can get round her,’ I said, vibrating. I saw him, Full of Eastern Promise, through my mother’s glistening eyes. He had on an Afghan silver belt, and his tunic and slimline trousers were by Valentino, while his camera had a handmade leather satchel. It wasn’t a league I could enter, but I had done my best with a midriff top and thonged sandals, and my skirt was half the length of my office one. Or a quarter, maybe. The rest of the impact depended on pinned-up hair and a headscarf, and a pair of very French dark glasses. I’d paid my fees for the Image Enhancement Workshop.

  Colonel Sullivan said, ‘Anyone else, m’darlin’, would believe every word that you spoke. As I recollect, it wasn’t your mother who wanted to clamp you. Fancy him, do you?’

  I said, ‘I really don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘No more you don’t,’ he said, grinning, and changed gear with his powerful wrists. ‘But I don’t blame him: not with a female like Charity.’

  I said, ‘You sound like Ellwood Pymm. In a rut.’

  He grinned again. His hair undulated in the warm breeze as we came to open country. On either side of us were almond blossom and olive trees and vines covered with matting. Lorries passed, packed with bamboo bundles, or boulders, or women, their working-veils flapping together. Sullivan said, ‘If smart-ass Ellwood Pymm gets one heady whiff of what’s happening to Kingsley’s, Sir Robert can hang up his Guccis. You know Pymm’s a tipster? He’s sniffed news. He wasn’t on the original Canadian rota.’

  I didn’t need the warning, if it was a warning. ‘You were lunching with him,’ I said.

  ‘And you were lunching with Johnson,’ said the Colonel. ‘Field-trials: that’s the name of the game.’

  ‘You crossed to Sir Robert’s side after the lunch,’ I remarked.

  ‘Nothing personally against the worthy JJ,’ said Colonel Sullivan. ‘A very cool groover. But without the liquidity muscle, you might say, of Kingsley Conglomerates.’

  ‘You didn’t know Johnson was involved with MCG?’ I asked. We passed flocks of goats and some kids, and chunks of thick dirty sheep and peculiar Biblical landscapes where cattle, camels and donkeys grazed together. On either side, the country was flat, with small jagged hills to the right. In mid-air, to the left, was a dazzling cloudscape.

  ‘Not then, I didn’t,’ said Sullivan. ‘He’d covered his tracks like a vice-king. It made us look to see if he was a vice-king. And bingo, me darlin’, a harem.’

  Mentally I took back from Johnson the benefit of the doubt I had given him. I said, ‘A harem?’ politely.

  ‘Well, he’s a sailor, isn’t he?’ said Colonel Sullivan. It was a fair understatement. Johnson had been professional RN in the same way that Sullivan had been professional Army. I supposed that, with men, it was like belonging to different clubs. Sullivan said, ‘Anyway, isn’t that why you’re here? Sniff out the orgies. Help Sir Robert stitch his painter up good and proper.’

  The cloud-light was irritating, like the conversation. ‘Stitch him up?’ I repeated.

  ‘Come on!’ said Seb Sullivan. ‘What d’you think he has a yacht for? What do you think the MCG shareholders will make of that, and their redheaded nympho MD?’

  He was late with the idea. It was what I had suggested myself, when I thought Dolly was Johnson’s date in Morocco. Then, we were only twisting his arm over a portrait. ‘And Roland Reed?’ I said.

  ‘We’re working on him,’ said Colonel Sullivan ghoulishly. ‘Single, well-heeled, an accountant with an interest in films? If he isn’t AC or DC, we’ll surely catch him on insider trading.’

  He sounded happy and confident. He hadn’t a thought in his head but his job. I looked away. The haze of cloud in the sky had grown brighter. It spread into irrational patterns, and glistened. I realised that the icy glow wasn’t cloud, it was mountains. Suspended over the haze, a frightening range of fierce snowy mountains rolled towards the horizon. I said, ‘What�
�s that?’

  Sullivan glanced to his left. ‘The High Atlas,’ he said. ‘The way to Taroudant and the end of the rainbow. The day after tomorrow, me darlin’, and the Sunbeam’ll climb like an angel. You should have seen her cleaning the hills after Azrou. But today, it’s safe, sunny Essaouira.’

  I said, ‘There’s a mountain called Toubkal.’

  ‘A massif. You’re looking at it,’ Sullivan said. ‘Why? He glanced at me and back to the road. ‘Ah. Mo Morgan, the microchip genius. Well, well, well. You keep going, Wendy, and Kingsley’s will give you a bonus. Pile it high and sell it cheap, sweetheart.’

  I didn’t speak. I couldn’t make him out, and the sight of the mountains had shaken me. I let him talk on, about the Sunbeam and all the other cars he had owned. His first vintage had been made in Berlin. After a while, he behaved more as I expected him to, and got his hand into my lap a couple of times; a thing I have been taught how to deal with. While he got over that, I was able to look about and size up Morocco.

  There was no sand. There were no sheiks. There was nothing you could think of as a kasbah. The land was dirt brown or weedy or planted. Camels pulled wooden ploughs. Market-tents without buyers sat like capital letters in the dirt. There were windmills, and wells, and isolated red compounds full of flat roofs and narrow clay passages. There were peeling roadside arcades of village shops selling bicycle parts. There were children trudging to school, cases strapped to their backs. There were prickly pears and argan trees, with goats like cats crouched on their branches. And as we came down to the sea, there were cedars and orange orchards coming to blossom, and fields of daisies and pink and bright scarlet flowers, and the stifling smell of mimosa, and a carpet of marigolds, small and wild and raw as Rita Geddes.

  We ran from the country into the bright esplanade of Essaouira, with the blue sea rolling in, and boys in T-shirts with a ball on the sand, pretending they were the Lions of Cameroon. It wasn’t quite the Algarve, but it wasn’t The Desert Song either. Sullivan braked to a halt, and I saw ahead of me the walls of a harbour, with masts and a boat on the stocks showing above it. On the landward side were the high pink walls of the older town. Parked between us and the town was a bus, from which a mixed party with cameras was descending.