Tangier (9 page)

The Prefect was another sort, fat and charming, dressed in a traditional Moroccan robe. Hamid knew he was corrupt, but with a moderation his assistant would never understand. The Prefect stole just enough to keep his family in a decent style. It would never occur to him to milk a fortune from his job, or to look away from an injustice which might do a poor man harm.

"Sit down, Hamid," he said, waving toward a leather couch. "I already have one complaint today. The British Consul called, said you refused to investigate some nonsense at the British church. Well, don't worry. You did exactly right. I defended you, as I always have."

"Thank you, Prefect," said Hamid. "Now listen to a complaint of mine. Over the weekend we arrested some British ballet dancers. When they asked to see their consul, his wife lied and said he was out of town."

The Prefect laughed. "I'll remember that. Really, Hamid, you have the most difficult job."

"It's going to become even more difficult. Among the diplomats now we have two philanderers—Mr. Fufu, the UN man from Uganda, and Baldeschi, the Italian Consul. Both of them are accumulating mistresses at a greater than normal rate. Of course I'm grateful they're heterosexual—such a rarity among the foreigners here. But eventually someone's husband's going to find out, and then we're going to have one of those 'diplomatic affairs.'"

The Prefect laughed again. "I know you can handle it, Hamid. But I didn't call you here to gossip. A serious matter's come up. The Ministry of Interior has received information from Egyptian intelligence through our Cairo Embassy. The Egyptians claim an Israeli assassin is coming to Tangier.”

Hamid was puzzled. It didn't make any sense. There were no important personalities in Tangier who could possibly interest an assassin, and as for the King, he espoused the Palestinian cause in a half-hearted way, but he was unpopular in the north and rarely used his palace in Tangier.

"Perhaps they've confused Tangier with Algiers. They've been that stupid before."

"Any ideas, Hamid?"

"The only thing I can think of is that there's an old Nazi here they want to get."

"Very good. Anyone in mind?"

"That's the trouble, Prefect. I don't think there're any left. But I'll look into it and let you know."

Driving home, he thought about the problem. A Nazi hunter made sense, but who could the target be? He thought and thought, sifting through hundreds of names. The implications were difficult to accept, for if he was right there was someone living in Tangier, someone quite poisonous, who lay dormant and had escaped his scrutiny for years.

That night when he made love with Kalinka all his tensions ebbed away. She was a mystery to him—she smoked hashish, her mind worked the opposite way from his. But none of that mattered when she touched him with her tiny hands, curled her long, thin legs around his thighs, tickled his genitals with her toes. Feeling himself grow hard within her, feeling her fragile, glistening body throb beneath him and hearing her gasps against his ear, he was inspired to a tenderness he had never felt with any other woman, a sense that she was exquisite and that it was his pleasure to make her body sing. In bed with other women he had cared only for himself, but Kalinka's moans and embraces made him as interested in giving as in taking, and so he let her guide him in his moves rather than thrusting to his own release. He treasured this new-found gentleness and loved her for provoking it. It was far better, he had learned, to make love to a woman than merely to use her to allay desire.

Yes, she had taught him about love, and now he could not imagine experiencing it any other way. She'd come into his life strangely, romantically, providing him with a refuge from the harshness of his work and from all the struggles that consumed Tangier.

L
aurence Luscombe stood on the empty stage facing the place where the curtains met. He liked to do this on an opening night, stand silent, listen to the house fill up. He looked at his watch. Twenty to eight. In a few minutes The Winslow Boy would go on, and then all the agony of rehearsal, the tantrums and the temperament, would fade before the magic of the play. He would marvel then, as he had so many times, at the power of performance—the way it could seize an audience, hold it in thrall.

But suppose
, he thought,
they all walk out?

He'd had that anxiety for over fifty years, ever since he'd first gone on the stage. He couldn't overcome it—at the age of seventy-five he still couldn't rid himself of the nightmare of an empty house. He didn't act anymore himself, but the fear had followed him to Tangier. Here he'd founded the Tangier Players, his gift to the city that had embraced him in old age.

Peter Barclay had put it another way. "Thank God for Larry Luscombe and TP. They're something to talk about at our barren dinner parties, fill out our wasted afternoons." Peter was being amusing, of course. He didn't think
his
dinner parties were barren, or that he wasted
his
afternoons. Still Laurence believed his remark had been well meant, and now Peter, "pasha" of the Mountain, was a patron of TP and the club's most loyal fan.

It hadn't always been like that. The struggle had been lonely and hard. Laurence thought back as he stood on the empty set. At sixty-five he'd retired to Tangier with the dream of founding a theater club. He'd begun slowly, organizing readings in people's houses while he gathered the corps of loyal amateurs who shared his love for the stage. People had scoffed at first, Peter Barclay among them, but slowly the group had prospered and grown. Someone went to London and brought back lights. Someone else donated canvas and lumber. Gradually the productions grew more lavish and the ragged ends were smoothed. TP became a success, a permanent part of European life in the town.

But now, after all the struggles, the arduous climb to success, the club was facing its greatest crisis, a threat to its integrity and to Laurence's capacity to carry on. Kelly—that American swine, Joe Kelly—was trying to organize a putsch. He didn't yet have the backing, but if tonight's production failed there were people in the group who would take his side. The Drears, the Packwoods, the Calloways, Jack Whyte—that hard core of amateurs Luscombe had made into minor celebrities in the town—they'd turn on him sure as death, and TP would melt to mud.

Laurence knew what was going on, and what he hadn't overheard people made certain he found out. They were saying he was too old, losing his grip, that he couldn't control rehearsals, and that his tantrums were throwing everybody off. There was trouble in TP—no secret about that. People who'd accepted parts were doing the unpardonable and walking out. Others complained that Laurence got too much credit, while they were slighted in reviews. He wasn't disturbed—there was always temperament around a theater. What upset him was disloyalty—the disloyalty of the people he'd picked up along the way, plucked out of their mediocrity, straight out of the gutter in the case of the Drears, then taught and trained and made into stars.

For too long, he knew, he'd ignored the signs, and now he could smell resentment all around. How had it happened? He'd written the bylaws, made TP democratic. Everyone had an equal vote, though he'd always directed by consent. For years there'd never been a challenge or the slightest murmur of rebellion in the ranks. But now Joe Kelly had come to town, and it seemed all that might change.

Kelly!
The man was a hack. He'd done years of radio soap opera in New York, played every kind of third-rate circuit in the States. Then he'd had an automobile accident and won himself a settlement in court, enough to come to Tangier, buy himself a little house, sniff around, and start giving little dinners at which he'd been clawing his way to popularity and trying to alienate Laurence's support. He even tried to ingratiate himself with the Mountain set. No chance of success, of course—he was far too grotty in his ways. But his mincing little efforts had caused confusion and, to Laurence, pain.

No sense brooding
, he thought.
Too much work to be done
. He stroked the dusty curtains, then left the stage to check on things in back. Most of the cast was waiting in the wings. He went on to the dressing rooms to hurry the stragglers. In the men's section he found Jessamyn Drear watching Kelly apply powder to his ravaged face. They stopped whispering the moment he walked in. Jessamyn looked at him shyly. Kelly gave him a thumbs-up.

"Brings it all back, Luscombe," he said. "Smell of the greasepaint and all that. Never thought I'd troop the boards again, especially not in old Tangier. Not after the accident. Never thought I would." He raised his hands to his face. "Oh, the scars, Luscombe—the scars. I was a beautiful kid once. Can you believe it? But the years took their toll. Then the crackup in Connecticut, a year in traction, every damn thing broken and torn. They wrote me right out of
Suburban Wife
. I was in the hospital, listening to the radio one day, when one of the characters announced my demise. There were a few tears, and that was the end of that. No hope of work then. When you're sick they forget you soon enough. No pity. Not in show biz. Play's the thing. Course you know all that yourself."

Laurence was thinking of some way to respond when Jill Packwood stormed in, out of breath.

"Place is filling up, Larry. Looks like a full house. Derik says we can start on time."

He was about to answer her when Kelly interrupted. "Jill, sweetie, your dress is crooked. Better find a safety pin and hitch it up."

"Oh! Thanks, Joe. Wish me luck."

"Yeah," said Kelly, blowing her a kiss. "Break a leg, sweetheart. Break a leg."

When she was gone he put his arm around Jessamyn Drear, then leaned toward Laurence and stuck out his chin. "Jill's got nice little tits," he said. "Course I don't want 'em. Ha! Ha! Ha!"

Jessamyn giggled, but Laurence turned away, offended by Kelly's humor and the scent of liquor on his breath.

He'd been impossible at rehearsals, always interrupting, trying to give his own directions to the cast. The man was unprofessional, the way he kept cutting Laurence off. But he was clever too, knew how to handle amateurs, call them "sweetheart" and "darling" and blame everything on Laurence when he turned his back. Kelly told long anecdotes that wasted time, boring stories about his experiences on the road—that charade game, for instance, the one he'd played in Kansas City, where he'd acted out "He who steals my merkin steals trash."

No one, including Laurence, knew what a "merkin" was until Kelly smirked and then explained. "It's a female pubic hair wig," he said, then the vulgar, billowing laughter, the final "Ha! Ha! Ha!" Laurence couldn't stand it, wanted to fire him right out of the cast. But Kelly was good, a professional among amateurs. When he felt like it he had no difficulty standing out. Of course, he wasn't really top class, the way Laurence had been in his prime. Kelly could never have made it on the West End, where Laurence had worked for years. He'd been an actor's actor, not a star but a master craftsman admired in the ranks. His enemies called him "grand," but he'd never stooped to soap opera at least.

Between the wars, when he'd had a little fling with society, he'd been invited to Lady Astor's, where he'd met T. E. Lawrence and Bernard Shaw. And he'd dined one summer at Villa Mauresque, with Noel Coward and Somerset Maugham. Willy Maugham had told a wonderful story that afternoon about the American writer Edna Millay. She'd come in uninvited, in the middle of a stag lunch, looked around at the house, the garden, and all the guests. "This is fairyland, Mr. Maugham," she'd said. He and Noel had chuckled through dessert.

Now
that
was funny. Real wit. Not like those vulgar nonsense things that Kelly came out with all the time. What had he said last night at dress rehearsal? Something obscene to Jessamyn Drear. Oh, yes, he remembered now—one of his vulgar "knock knock" routines.

"Knock knock."

"Who's there?"

"Fornication."

"Fornication who?"

"Fornication like this you ought to wear black tie. Ha! Ha! Ha!"

Jessamyn had doubled up with laughter. It was ghastly the way Kelly was winning them all. They were so weak in their characters, so flabby in their souls, that they couldn't see through his simpering guile. One day he'd have it out with Kelly, force a showdown, expose him raw. But for the moment he mustn't think of that. The important thing was that
The
Winslow Boy
go on.

He left the dressing room, walked back around the stage to a door where he could watch the audience unseen. Many of the seats were taken, but the ones reserved for Peter Barclay and his group were still empty in the front. The Lakes, the Manchesters, and the Whittles were seated in the Consul General's row. Behind them sat Joop and Claude de Hoag, along with Claude's father, General Gilbert Bresson, and de Hoag's assistant, Jean Tassigny. Behind them he saw the Swedish dentist Sven Lundgren and Robin Scott, who would write the review.

The writer Darryl Kranker came down the aisle with a beautiful Arab boy, and behind him Vicar Wick followed by Countess de Lauzon, blue eye circles matching her hair, and Patrick Wax, in a gold-trimmed cape, holding a thin little pony whip in his hand. Fufu, the Ugandan, was with his wife and an assortment of distinguished-looking blacks. With them was Omar Salah, chief of customs in the port.

The Ashton Codds came next, along with Foster and Jackie Knowles. Laurence, noticing Inspector Ouazzani and his Asian girlfriend, peered around to find Peter Zvegintzov slung low in a seat on the other side.