The Strange Land

CHAPTER THREE

We left Tangier by the rue de Fez, along a dirt-edged road where strings of asses trotted through the dust kicked up by battered French trucks driven fast. Out on the outskirts of the Mountain it was all rickety, new-grown development — an ugly pattern of telegraph poles and tin shacks and brand-new concrete factories. And the old ran side-by-side with the new; the overburdened asses, the bare-legged, turbaned men driving wooden ploughs through hard, dry ground, and the women, shrouded and veiled so that they looked like perambulating bundles of old clothes.

Beyond the development area, a ridge of grey-brown hills covered with stones and scrub ran out to Cap Spartel and the Atlantic. We passed a gang of convicts picking desultorily at the road and there were herds of black goats and drifts of white that were flocks of the stork-like birds that the French call pique-boeuf. It was all just as I remembered it, even to the nervous void in my stomach and Kavan sitting tense and rigid beside me as that other man had done.

It was not quite four when we reached the airport. The field was empty. The Paris flight had not yet landed. I told Kavan to wait in the taxi and slipped over the white-painted fence and round to the back of the airport buildings where the buffet was. I was in luck. Vareau was there. ‘Monsieur Latham!’ He came waddling over to me, a fat, slightly shabby man with a face like a bloodhound. ”Comment ca va, eh, eh? You wish me to arrange a seat for you on the plane, yes?’

‘Not for me,’ I said. ‘For a friend.’ And I drew him aside and explained the situation to him. But he shook his head. ‘You know, mon ami, I would do anything to help you. But it is too dangerous. The regulations are most strict now. I must put his name on the Paris list and then what happens when the office in Casablanca see that, eh? Non, non, it is impossible.’

‘Nonsense,’ I said. ‘It’s not impossible. The Casablanca office wouldn’t even notice. And if they did, then you made a mistake, that’s all. You’ve got to help me, Vareau.’ There was no other way of getting Kavan out, not with his papers correct. And they had to be correct if he were to work with me at Enfida. I pleaded, threatened, cajoled, and in the end he agreed to do it for twice the sum I originally offered him. Even then he wouldn’t have done it but for one thing — for personal reasons the air hostesses were being changed at Tangier. It was this factor that made the thing possible.

We went through the details carefully and then I returned to Kavan. He was sitting exactly as I had left him, his body rigid, his face tense. He looked dazed and desperately tired, oddly unfamiliar in his new suit. ‘Is it all right?’ he asked urgently as I climbed in beside him. ‘Did you fix it?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I fixed it.’ But all the same I was wondering whether he could carry it through. His nerves were on edge and beneath the stubble of his beard I saw that the corner of his mouth was twitching.

‘What do I have to do?’ he asked. Tell me what I’m to do._’

I hesitated. I was wondering just how much I needed a doctor, for this business involved me deeper than I cared to go. But it was no good getting cold feet now. The man would just have to pull himself together. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Now listen. This is the drill. As soon as the Paris plane is sighted, Vareau, the French clerk, will come for you. He’ll take you to the lavatory and there you’ll shave off that beard, so that your appearance coincides with the photograph on your papers. By the way, I suppose your visa for entry into French Morocco is okay?’

‘Yes, yes.’ He nodded. ‘That was all arranged at the French Consulate in London.’

‘And you have a labour permit?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good/ You’ll stay in the lavatory until Vareau collects you. By then the passengers who are going through to Casablanca will be congregated in the buffet. You will join them. Have a drink or something to occupy yourself. Talk to nobody. If anybody speaks to you, reply in Czech. Vareau will bring you your ticket and anything else you need to get on to the plane. When the Paris passengers are instructed to return to the plane, you will go with them. There will be a different air hostess and your name will be on the list of passengers travelling direct from Paris to Casablanca. If the air hostess or the immigration official asks you anything, you don’t understand — you speak nothing but Czech. Is all that clear?’

He nodded and I had him repeat the instructions word for word.

‘When Vareau takes you to the lavatory, he will give you an immigration form to fill in. You will complete it in the lavatory and return it to him when he comes to collect you. Only one question on that form is not straightforward. Against Where have you come from? you will put Heathrow, London, via Paris. For destination and purpose of visit you state the exact truth — that you are going to work as a doctor in Morocco and that your address will be the English Mission at Enfida. Any questions about that?’

‘No. No, I don’t think so.’ He was frowning. ‘But I don’t understand how it helps. The authorities at Casablanca will want to know why my papers are not stamped as having come from Paris. When they find they are not stamped, they will know — ‘

‘There’s no difficulty there,’ I said, and I pulled out my own passport. ‘Look!’ I had come out to Morocco by air from England in July 1949, yet the only indication was the entry stamp of the immigration authorities at Casablanca. Though I had stopped off two days in Paris no entry had been made in my passport. ‘You see. All you have to say is that you’ve come from England. You left London by the night flight yesterday. All right?’ He nodded uneasily. ‘You’ve nothing to worry about once you’re on that plane,’ I assured him.

‘But you’re not coming with me?’

‘No. I shall go by train. We’ll meet in Casablanca.’

He gripped my arm. ‘Come with me on the plane. You could get a ticket here. There’s nothing to stop you. Why must you go by train?’ He was like a child afraid of being left.

‘Because I reserved two berths in the wagon-lit. It would look odd if neither of us turned up.’

He nodded unhappily and stared out across the airfield, his fingers drumming nervously on his knee. ‘Isn’t there some way we could both go together?’

‘No. This is the only way that gets you into Morocco with your papers in order. I should warn you there’s a French Civil Control office at Enfida.’

‘I don’t like it,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘It’s dangerous. And if I’m caught — ‘

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ I said, and took hold of him and swung him round so that he faced me. ‘Now just listen. I’m in this as deep as you are. If you’re caught, then I’ll be in trouble, too. If you don’t like this arrangement, then I’m through with you. Understand?’

‘Yes. Yes, of course. I’m sorry.’ He half shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, if it’s the only way…’ He nodded slowly. ‘Very well. I’ll do what you say.’

‘Fine. You’ve nothing to worry about. Just convince yourself that you really have come direct from England.’

‘I’ll try.’ He nodded and then asked me where he should meet me in Casablanca.

‘At the railway station,’ I said. ‘The train for Marrakech leaves at 8.45 a.m. tomorrow.’

‘And your train arrives when?’

‘At seven twenty.’

‘I shall be at the station in time to meet your train then.’

‘All right. But if we do happen to miss each other, we’ll rendezvous in the foyer of the Hotel Metropole.’

‘If I’m not there to meet your train,’ he said, ‘you’d better look for me in the prison.’ He said it unsmilingly.

The taxi driver, who had been standing talking to one of the baggage checkers, called out to us and pointed. The silver glint of wings showed above the hills behind us. I pulled open my case and handed Kavan my shaving things. As we got out of the taxi, Vareau appeared round the corner of the airport building and signalled to us. I gripped Kavan’s hand. ‘Good luck!’ I said. ‘You’re clear on what you have to do?’

‘Quite clear.’ He nodded and then said urgently, ‘You’ll contact Karen, won’t you? You’ll let her know where I am?’

‘I’ll get in touch with her somehow,’ I assured him.

‘Promise you won’t leave Tangier without — ‘

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Now hurry. Vareau’s waiting.’

I watched him climb the fence and disappear round the front of the building with the clerk and then I got back into the taxi and sat there, watching the airfield, whilst the Constellation landed and taxied over. It was about ten minutes before the passengers emerged from the plane and came across the brown, burnt-up grass to the airport building.

I was nervous and the minutes dragged by. Cars came and went and my eyes remained on the corner of the building, my mind trying to visualise the scene inside. It was a modern brick building and on the side facing the airfield was a buffet with tall windows looking out to the runway. The baggage counter was between the buffet and the entrance hall, enclosed by doors. The officials would be fully occupied with the papers and baggage of the passengers stopping at Tangier. Kavan should have finished shaving by now. He should be sitting in the buffet with the rest of the passengers bound for Casablanca. The air hostess had gone into the building with the air crew several minutes ago. Vareau should have added Kavan’s name to the list by now. He should have got Kavan’s immigration form, too.

I got out of the taxi and began pacing up and down. If I could only have been in the buffet to keep an eye on things, to keep Kavan’s mind occupied … I was afraid his nervousness would give him away, sitting there alone. I tried not to think what would happen if they started questioning him.

I kept glancing at my watch, but it seemed ages before the hands pointed to four forty-five. The air crew strolled out to the plane, their flat hats and dark blue uniforms looking oddly naval. A mechanic was clambering along one wing. Then he jumped down and the air crew disappeared inside the fuselage. It was ten to five. What were they waiting for? Had something happened? Were they interrogating Kavan now? I went to the rail, craning my head forward to see farther round the corner of the building.

And then the air hostess came out, the board with her list of passengers swinging in her hand. The passengers followed in a long, straggling line. I didn’t recognise Kavan at first. He was near the end of the line, walking close to a French family. He looked quite different without his beard. He was walking jerkily, a little nervously, his head thrust forward, his eyes on the ground. Once he half-turned and glanced in my direction. His face looked stronger, more positive without the beard. He had a strong jaw and somehow the sight of him looking like that made me feel it would be all right.

The passengers were bunching up now, queueing at the foot of the steps into the fuselage. Gradually the little crowd thinned. I could see the immigration official. He was talking to the hostess, only half his attention on the passengers. And then he was looking at Kavan and my muscles tensed and my mouth felt dry. The air hostess glanced down at her list and I breathed a sigh of relief. Kavan was climbing the steps. I watched him disappear into the fuselage and then I turned and walked rather shakily back to the taxi.

Five minutes later the plane taxied out to the end of the runway. It stood there for a moment, revving its engines, and then it took off, the undercarriage retracting and the starboard wing dipping as it swung south and disappeared in the direction of Morocco.

I told the driver to take me back to Tangier and I lay back in my seat and closed my eyes. In little more than an hour Kavan would be through the airfield immigration check and on his way into Casablanca in the Air France bus — so long as nothing went wrong. But I couldn’t do anything about it now. I would mail Vareau his money from Marrakech and that, I hoped, would be the end of the whole business.

For the first time since I had pulled Kavan out of the sea I felt relaxed. Lying back, watching the dusty road stream by, my mind turned to Enfida. Now at last I was able to think and plan again for the future.

The next thing I knew we were back in Tangier and a horn was blaring at us. We had stopped at some traffic lights and somebody was gesticulating and shouting to me from a car drawn up alongside. It was Kostos, and he leaned across the Arab he had with him and wound down the window. ‘Lat’am!’ he called across to me. ‘I like to talk to you. Tell your driver to stop opposite the British Post Office, eh?’

‘And I’d like a word with you,’ I shouted at him. The sight of him had suddenly made me angry. If it hadn’t been for that nonsense about the passport, I shouldn’t have had to run the risk of getting Kavan out of the Zone illegally. He could have travelled with me on the train. I leaned forward and told the driver to stop opposite the BPO. The lights changed and we moved forward. Through the rear window I saw Kostos nose his car in behind us. I sat back again, thinking how dangerous it could be to take another man’s name when you knew nothing about him — especially when the destination was Tangier. I was consumed with sudden curiosity to discover what it was all about. What were these documents that Kostos was so anxious to get hold of? And this place Kasbah Foum — it had an oddly sinister sound.

The taxi stopped and I paid the driver off. Kostos and the Arab were waiting for me on the curb. ‘Where have you been?’ Kostos demanded. ‘You don’t go to the British Consulate. I check that. An’ you don’t go to the Pension de la Montagne. I just come from there. Where do you go?’

‘That’s none of your business,’ I said. ‘There are one or two questions I want to ask you. First, I want that passport. What have you done with it?’

‘The passport?’ He smiled at me. ‘You heard what Lopez say. He give it to you.’ He leaned closer to me, still smiling. ‘You tell me where Wade is, Lat’am, an’ I make it worth your while, eh?’

‘He’s left Tangier,’ I told him.

‘Left the Zone? Oh no.’ He shook his head, looking down at the suitcase I was carrying. ‘He don’t leave the Zone with you — not now. So you better cancel that other berth in the wagon-lit. He don’t leave till I get what I want.’

‘And that is the deeds of Kasbah Foum?’

He nodded, watching me closely. ‘Strictly between you an’ me, Lat’am, I trade the papers for his passport. You tell him.’

‘And if he hasn’t got them?’

‘Oh, he has them.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I know because …’ He stopped there and took hold of my arm. ‘Come. We cannot talk ‘ere. You come to the Cafe Normandie and have a drink with me, eh?’

‘All right,’ I said.

He nodded towards the Arab, who was about thirty, tall and well-built, but carrying a little too much flesh under his djellaba. ‘This is Si Ali bel-Caid El Hassan d’Es-Skhira.’ His use of the man’s full title rather than the way he said it conveyed his contempt of everything indigene. ‘Maybe he persuade you, eh?’ He smiled slyly, convinced that only money or power would persuade anybody.

I glanced at his companion with renewed interest. So this was the man who had employed Wade to get the deeds. At the mention of his name he had turned towards me and now that I could see his face I realised that he was Berber, not Arab. His features were long and pale, like a European’s, with prominent cheek bones and a high-bridged, aquiline nose. It would have been a fine face but for the cruelty of the mouth and a slight craftiness of the eyes. ‘Are you from the Atlas?’ I asked him in French.

‘From the Anti-Atlas. My father is Caid of Kasbah Foum-Skhira.’

‘Poor fellow, he is an exile, you see.’ Kostos tightened his grip on my arm with unpleasant familiarity. ‘Come, Lat’am. We go where we can talk.’ And he led me to one of the pavement tables of the Cafe Normandie, where he ordered two cognacs and a coffee for Ali, and then sat watching me uncertainly. The Berber stared out across the Place de France, his face impassive, his eyes remote. I was thinking they were typical of the cosmopolitan world of Tangier — the crook lured there by easy money and the Berber nationalist deported from his own country because he had been too actively anti-French. The roar of the traffic lapped round us, mingling with the shrill cries of the Arab news-vendors and the sound of Spanish music from the cafe radio.

The drinks came and Kostos raised his glass. ‘Salud!’ He was looking at me with a sly grin. Then he set his glass down and leaned towards me across the table. ‘Lat’am. You do something for me, will you — for the sake of old times. You tell me where Wade is.’

‘I don’t know,’ I replied, amused that it was the exact truth.

‘Now don’t be silly, please.’ The smile had gone from his mouth. The lips were compressed into a hard line. His small, dark eyes had hardened, too. ‘I am going to have those papers. He is somewhere here in the Zone. If I do not get them, he never get out. Why do you smile? Do you think I don’t tell you the truth? Maybe you think to help him slip across the frontier with some Berber caravan. Well, you try. That’s all. You try an’ get him out like that. You see’ — he jabbed a tobacco-stained forefinger at me — ‘it is not only me he have to reckon with. It is Ali, also. The word has gone out to the souks.’ He tapped the side of his nose and smiled. ‘He don’t get out of Tangier till Ali has those papers.’

I was almost tempted to tell him how the man he thought was Wade had got out of the Zone. I would like to have seen his face. But it was too dangerous. Instead, I said, ‘He hasn’t got the papers you want.’

‘Then what is your interest in him?’ He said it with something near to a sneer. ‘Now come, Lat’am. Let us not waste time. I know he has the papers.’

‘How do you know?’ I asked again.

‘How? Because he come alone.’ He leaned forward across the table. ‘Down on the beach las’ night you are asking about this man Kavan. Well, Kavan is not on the boat. He do not come. Wade is alone an’ he has the papers. He must have.’

‘Why? What’s Kavan got to do with it?’

He stared at me and then shrugged his shoulders. ‘Come, my friend. We are getting nowhere.’ His voice hardened. ‘We talk business now, eh? ‘Ow much you want?’

I suppose I should have told him then and there what Kavan had told me — that Wade never had the papers. I should have tried to convince him. But I couldn’t tell him that Wade was dead, lost overboard during the voyage, and I hesitated. The trouble was that I was consumed with curiosity about this place Kasbah Foum. Curiosity is something you suck up out of the atmosphere of Tangier. ‘It might help,’ I said, ‘if I knew something about Kasbah Foum.’

‘Ah, I understand. You wish to know what these papers are worth to us, eh?’ Kostos chuckled. ‘All right, Lat’am. I tell you. To me they are worth nothing. Nothing at all. It is to Ali only that they are important.’ He turned to the Berber and spoke quickly in French, explaining what had been said.

Ali nodded. ‘Kasbah Foum is part of the land that will come to me when my father, Allah preserve him, is dead,’ he said, speaking directly to me. ‘It is our own land, you understand, not collective land belonging to the tribe. But when the French come into the south of Morocco, what they call the Pacification’ — there was the suggestion of a sneer in the way he said it — ‘my father is forced to surrender Kasbah Foum to them. A Capitaine Marcel Duprez demand it of him as a personal gift. Now Duprez is dead and my people need that land because the trees are dying of some pest in the palmerie of Foum-Skhira. The date crop has failed and there is little food. But at Kasbah Foum there is water. New trees could be planted and the land tilled.’

‘The place is of no real value,’ Kostos cut in quickly.

‘C’est ca.’ Ali nodded. ‘It is about a thousand hectares of land, mostly mountain, and there is a kasbah, an old mud fort, at the entrance to a gorge. It is of no value, except to my father’s people.’

I looked across at Kostos. I didn’t believe him. Why should he trouble himself about this if there was nothing more to it than a matter of planting a few date palms? ‘Suppose you tell me the truth,’ I said, reverting to English.

‘You think we lie to you?’ His eyes had narrowed.

I didn’t say anything for a moment. I was thinking I ought to convince him I knew nothing about the papers and leave it at that. But I was back in the mood of Tangier and I was thinking of that entry at the end of Wade’s log. ‘Does the name Ed White mean anything to you?’ I asked him.

The Greek’s eyes were suddenly hard and angry. ‘So you know all about it, eh? You sit there laughing at us — ‘ His hand gripped my arm across the table. ‘All right, Lat’am. We talk business now. ‘Ow much?’

I pulled my arm away. To gain time I turned to Ali and complimented him on his French. The Berber smiled so that his teeth showed through his rather thick lips. ‘I was educated in Paris.’ He said it with pride.

‘And now you are a nationalist.’

His eyes lit up. ‘I have dedicated myself before Allah to the task of driving the French out of my country.’ He started on a tirade against the Protecting Power, but Kostos cut him short.

‘This doesn’t get us nowhere.’ He leaned towards me across the table. ‘Listen, Lat’am. You an’ I, we understand each other, eh? You get Wade to hand over those papers an’ there is a hundred thousand francs for you. Understand? A hundred pounds sterling, if you like. That’s what I bring you ‘ere to tell you.’

‘It’s no good,’ I said. ‘He’s out of the Zone now.’

‘That is a lie. He cannot be out of the Zone.’ He finished his drink and nodded to Ali. The two of them got to their feet and Kostos came round to my side of the table, leaning over me, his hand resting on my shoulders. ‘Tell him I expect him at my office by midday tomorrow. If he comes before midday, I see you get the money. Okay? And don’t get some foolish ideas, Lat’am. He is in a fix, and there is nobody will lift a little finger to help him get out of ‘ere — not Arab, Berber or Jew. You tell him that.’ He tapped the side of his nose and smiled. It wasn’t a friendly smile.

They left then and I watched them drive past. Kostos was staring at me, hard-faced and angry. Then they were gone, swallowed up in the whirl of traffic in the Place de France, and I sat there, smoking a cigarette, whilst dust descended on Tangier and the lights came on in the shops. Finally I picked up my suitcase and went across to the British Post Office and phoned the one man I could trust to do something for me and not talk about it, a retired Indian Civil Servant who had been a friend of my father’s. But he was out and his servant didn’t expect him back till late. It didn’t really matter. I could write to him about Karen Kavan from Enfida.

I went to a French restaurant and had some food and after that I walked down to the station and joined the queue waiting in the booking hall to go through the passport check. I wondered whether Kostos would have somebody follow me on the train and I looked about for the Arab who had kept watch outside the hotel. But I couldn’t see him. I wasn’t really surprised, for Kostos was essentially a Tangerois.

The minutes ticked slowly by on the station clock and the queue moved forward only a pace at a time. As always, it was a strangely mixed crowd — tourists and Spaniards and native tribesmen all jam-packed together. There were several Americans in gaily-coloured shirts and lumber-jackets — construction men from the big new Moroccan air bases. There were two Jews with grey beards and little black skull caps on their heads. And close beside me was a Berber chieftain with fierce, swarthy features and a black beard. The curved sheath of his knife was beautifully worked in silver.

The queue shuffled forward and one of the Americans said, ‘Jesus, these Goddamned Spaniards! The way they behave, you’d think we were on Ellis Island.’ He had a hard, braying laugh. Beyond his wide-brimmed hat, I could see the face of one of the passport officials framed in the oval of the hatch. And then a hand plucked at my arm and I turned, startled, thinking it was Kostos or perhaps the police to say that Kavan had been stopped at Casa.

Instead, I found Karen Kavan’s grey eyes looking up at me. ‘I’m so glad I found you.’ Her voice was breathless with relief. ‘I was afraid I might miss you in all this crowd, or else that you would have arrived early and be on the train.’ She was nervous and her face was as pale and strained as it had been the previous night.

‘How did you know where to find me?’ I asked.

‘I telephoned to your hotel. Then I try Cook’s, just in case. I wanted to know — ‘ She stopped there, uncertain how to go on.

‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I know who he is. And you needn’t worry. Your husband left for Casablanca by plane this afternoon.’

‘Oh.’ She closed her eyes momentarily. ‘Oh, thank God. I was so afraid. You see, when I telephoned to the hotel, they said he had gone to the Pension de la Montagne. It’s not far from where I work, so I walked there. But no guests had arrived there this afternoon and I was if raid the police …’ The rush of words stopped abruptly and her eyes stared at me uncertainly. ‘Where has he gone please? Last night, you said something about him working for you, but I don’t remember — I am too distrait.’

I gave her my address and explained that her would be working as a doctor at the Mission. ‘You’ll always be welcome there,’ I added. ‘When you’re ready to come to him, you’ve only to write and let me know.’

‘Thank you. You’re very kind.’ She breathed a little sigh. ‘I was so afraid I shouldn’t find you, that I shouldn’t know where he had gone. I felt so alone.’

I glanced quickly at my watch. It was already nine thirty,

‘How long have you been in Tangier?’ I asked her.

‘Just two weeks now. I am working as governess for an American family — Mr and Mrs Schulborg.’

Just two weeks! It was an odd coincidence. ‘Straight from Czechoslovakia?’

“No. From the American Zone of Austria.’ And then her eyes widened as she understood the drift of my questions. ‘Surely Jan doesn’t think I am here because they — ‘ She stopped there and then added quickly, “Please. You must explain to him that I received his message and that is why I am here.’ Her voice was desperately urgent. ‘His message arrived the 15th November. A week later, on the night of the 23rd, I escape across the border into Upper Austria on skis. That is in the American Zone. It was the Americans who find me this job here in Tangier. Please explain to him.’

‘Of course I will,’ I said. And then I added, ‘You must love your husband very much.’

‘Yes. Yes, I do.’ The shadow of a smile suddenly touched her lips. ‘But I hardly know him any more, you know.’

‘Well, that’s something that can be altered now. But it was a brave thing to do.’

She shook her head. ‘No, not brave. It was dangerous, yes, but… You see, I was desperate. They had already arrested Pan Rudolph Kavan — that is his father. Fortunately I am away from Prague, staying with friends. When I returned, I was warned that our house was being watched and that I should be arrested also. That is what made me try to cross the border. I had no alternative. Explain to him, will you, please?’

I nodded. I was thinking of what Jan Kavan had told me in the taxi going up to the British Consulate. So it was all true. ‘I’ll tell him,’ I said. ‘Come to Enfida and join him as soon as you can.’ And I added, ‘You’d better write to me, not to him — just in case.’

She nodded. ‘Yes, I will write to you.’

‘And your address?’

‘The Villa da Vinci on La Montagne.’

‘Senor! Deprisa, deprisa, senor!’ It was the passport officer telling me to hurry. I handed him my passport and went through the barrier to the next hatch where I got the necessary forms. I turned to speak to Karen again. A whistle shrilled. A voice called, ‘En voiture! En voiture!’ There was the sound of running feet. ‘Give Jan my love,’ she called to me.

‘I will. He will be expecting you. Come when you…’ A blast of steam cut short my words and I saw the train begin to move. I waved to her and dashed on to the platform and scrambled on board.

My last memory of Tangier was Karen’s small, pale face staring after me, her hand fluttering as she waved farewell to the only link she had with her husband. I round my sleeper and slumped into my seat, thinking about how she must feel, having come so far, still to be separated from him by two frontiers.

At El Ksar el Kebir there is a long wait. It’s the frontier station between Spanish and French Morocco. I hung about in the cool night air until the frontier police returned my passport and then I went to bed. I was tired and I remember little except the usual vague noises of night travel by train — the rattle of the wheels on the rail is and the sudden, deathly silence of the stations where isolated noises become magnified.

When I woke it was daylight. The country was flat and there were glimpses of the sea through the ragged ribbon of factory buildings that lined the coast. We were approaching Casablanca. The buildings became taller, springing up all round the tracks — white concrete gleaming in the sunshine — and then the train was slowing down and we were running in to the station.

I rubbed the condensation from the window and peered at the people standing on the half-deserted platform, suddenly fearful that Kavan might not be there. But as the train jerked to a halt, I saw him a little farther down, standing alone beside some crates of oranges. He was smoking a cigarette and his face looked hard and set as he scanned the length of the train, watching the doors open and the passengers begin to alight.

He saw me as soon as I got off the train, and he rushed over to me and seized hold of my hand, pumping it up and down.

‘You got through the immigration officials all right then?’ I said.

‘Of course, of course. There was no difficulty at all. They asked me whether I’d come straight from England and I nodded and talked to them in Czech and they stamped my papers and that was that. They’re like little lambs.’ He grinned and put his hand on my shoulder, patting me as though I were a dog. ‘First you save my life. Then you get me out of Tangier. You are a wonderful man! Wonderful!’ He was bubbling over with excitement. ‘And now, here I am in Morocco. My new country! My new life!’ His hand gripped my shoulder. ‘I shall always be grateful. Always.’

‘Wait till you’ve walked twenty miles in the mountains,’ I said, ‘and attended dozens of children half blind with trachoma.’

‘You think I can’t start my life again? I tell you I can. I’m tough. I have a stake in this country now. I shall learn Arabic and soon I shall be more Moroccan than the Moors.’ He laughed and then stopped abruptly and said, ‘Did you see Karen?’

‘Yes.’ And I told him how she had met me at Tangier station. He had me repeat everything she had said, and when I had finished, he stood there with bowed head. ‘So my father has been arrested.’ He blinked his eyes. ‘He is an old man, so maybe they will…‘But then he gave a little shrug. ‘He was a fine man.’ He used the past tense. ‘He did much good in Prague. I’m sorry.’ He straightened up and looked at me. ‘Thank God Karen got out in time. I was afraid that perhaps … But never mind that now. Give Jan my love!’ He murmured the words to himself and then gave a little awkward laugh that was so near to a sob. ‘And she really said that? You heard her?’ And when I nodded, he smiled a little sadly and said, ‘You know, it is hard to believe that you have actually heard her voice. You’re the first person to give me actual words she has spoken in all these four years. There have been messages, of course — through the underground. But you are telling me her actual words.’ He cleared his throat briefly. ‘Come on. Let’s get some breakfast. Now you are here, I find I’m hungry.’

The difference in the man was extraordinary. He’d waited for my train in an all-night cafe near the station, but, though he was hollow-eyed, he didn’t seem tired. And without the beard he looked somehow younger. But it Wasn’t just his appearance. His whole attitude to life had changed. His mind looked forward now, not backwards, and he was no longer frightened. It was as though the ordeal of passing through the immigration check at Casablanca had destroyed all the nerves in his system. He had arrived in Morocco. His papers were in order. All the past seemed to have been swept out of his mind, except for one thing.

We had barely settled down to our breakfast in a nearby cafe when he began talking of Kasbah Foum. ‘I must go down there and see the place,’ he said, and he pulled a map from his pocket. It was Michelin Map No. 171, covering the area of Marrakech and south to the Sahara. ‘I got it last night,’ he said. ‘But it doesn’t mark Kasbah Foum.’

‘I think you’d better forget all about Kasbah Foum.’ He reacted at once to the sharpness of my tone.

‘Why? Did something happen after I left? Was it Kostos?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I had a meeting with him and Ali d’Es-Skhira.’

‘You mean you actually met Ali d’Es-Skhira?’ He was suddenly excited. ‘What was he like? What happened? What did they say?’ I started to tell him, but he interrupted me. ‘First, is Caid Hassan of Foum-Skhira still alive?’

It irritated me to have him thinking of nothing but this confounded Wade business. He had come out to be a doctor at Enfida. He should have been thinking about that. ‘How the devil do you know the Caid’s name? I thought you said Wade didn’t talk about his affairs?’

‘Wade?’ He sounded surprised. ‘Oh, I see. No, he didn’t talk about his affairs, but…’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ He hesitated and then, as though he couldn’t leave the subject alone, he said, ‘Well, is he alive?’

‘As far as I know. Why?’

‘Nothing, nothing. But go on. Tell me what they said.’

To satisfy him I gave a brief summary of that meeting in the Boulevard Pasteur. When I had finished he said, ‘So Kostos thinks I won’t be able to get out of the Zone, eh?’ He was smiling to himself. And then he looked at me, still smiling, and said, ‘What do you think he’ll do when he finds I’ve disappeared?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said shortly. ‘Nothing, probably.’

‘Yes, he must do something. Ali, anyway. I think they’ll go straight to Foum-Skhira.’ He nodded his head thoughtfully, peering down at the map. ‘Yes, that’s what I think they’ll do. Look. Here is Foum Skhira.’ He twisted the map round for me to see, pointing to a spot about 150 miles south-west of Marrakech. ‘Kasbah Foum will be quite near it, I imagine.’

‘Now just listen to me,’ I said, pushing the map aside angrily. ‘I don’t know what Wade told you. Something obviously. But whatever it was that’s got you so interested in the place, forget about it. You’re not Wade any longer. You’re Jan Kavan again. You ceased to have any connection with Wade the moment you stepped on that plane. From what you’ve told me, you’ve got quite enough worries without getting involved in another man’s affairs.’

‘But if Kostos follows me — ‘

‘Why should he? He’s not interested in you. He’s only interested in Wade. Now just try and understand who you are. You’re coming with me to Enfida to act as Mission doctor. That should be enough to occupy your mind. And your wife’s going to join you there later. Now just shut up about Kasbah Foum. Okay?’

He nodded slowly. ‘Yes, of course. I understand.’ He folded the map up, but his eyes kept straying towards it as we ate our food in silence, and when we were on the train and steaming out of Casablanca he opened it up again and sat with it spread out on his knees, staring out of the window at the brown, rolling country where. camels and mules, harnessed together, pulled primitive ploughs across the arid landscape.

‘It’s like the Old Testament come to life,’ he said, and then added, ‘And I suppose it gets even more Biblical as you go south towards the desert.’

‘You’ll find all you want of the Old Testament in the souks of Marrakech,’ I told him.

We didn’t talk much after that and I drowsed off. When I woke we were running out of the Djebilet hills, down into the flat plain of Marrakech, and there, ahead of us, were the Atlas Mountains. An hour later we were sitting at a table, drinking coffee and looking out at the teeming mass of humanity that packed the Djemaa el Fna. The mountains and the plain had gone. We were swallowed up in the dusty hubbub of the great, red-walled Berber city. We went to the bank and then found a cheap little French hotel in the rue Bab Aguenaou.

In the late afternoon I took Jan to the roof-top of the Cafe de France. The place was full of tourists, rich people from all over the world who had come to drink mint tea on that roof and watch the sky flare to Technicolor and to look down on the seething acres of tribesmen packed into the great square of the Djemaa el Fna. The tide of humanity ebbed and flowed out of the narrow, covered alleys of the souks and the noise of it came up to us in a steady roar of sound. It was evening now and the flat, white roof tops and the red walls and the graceful tower of the Katoubia were flushed with the pink of the sunset and all the sky was an incredible spectrum of pastel shades. Away to the south the Atlas Mountains glistened like sugar icing, a towering rampart of fairy beauty.

‘And that’s where we’re going?’ Jan asked. He was staring towards the mountains.

I nodded.

‘It’s unbelievable,’ he murmured. ‘Marcel described all this to me so often. And now I am really here — ‘

‘Marcel?’

He glanced at me quickly. ‘A man I met during the war.’ He turned back towards the mountains and added, ‘It was when I was working with Krupps. I was on secret work and I was getting information out to the British. I used the French forced labour battalions and Marcel was my chief contact. He’d lived out here and he talked of nothing but this country and the people. He was a fine man. He believed in victory always, right from the beginning.’ He.paused and then added, ‘He died of pneumonia in a cellar in Essen. I was sorry when he went.’ His tone was sad as though he were speaking of somebody who had died only yesterday. ‘And now I am here and it’s all just as he described it to me. It doesn’t seem possible.’ His voice was almost awed. He hunched his shoulders and leaned forward, staring down into the huge square.

I was used to it now, but I could remember how I had felt when I first saw it. There were thousands of people down there; people from all over South Morocco — from the desert and the palmeries and from the most inaccessible villages of the Atlas. They crowded in circles round story-tellers and the snake charmers and the troops of dancers, or wandered hand-in-hand among the booths of doctors and barbers and letter-writers. Among them moved the water-boys, festooned with brass cups, their bells ringing an insistent water-note of sound. It was a shifting pattern of colour that sent up a continuous, inhuman roar. And over all the hubbub of the crowds there rose the ceaseless beat of the tam-tams — rhythmic and urgent; the sound that beats like the pulsing of the blood through the high mountains and along all the valley arteries of the south.

‘It’s wonderful,’ Jan breathed. ‘Wonderful. Karen will love it.’

I laughed. ‘The glamour of it doesn’t last,’ I said. ‘Not when you discover the poverty and disease and inert stupidity that lies behind it all. This is the thousand and one nights, the city of delight, the sweets of a year’s labour in a hard, naked land. And the place is rotten with venereal disease, with tuberculosis, dysentery and conjunctivitis, with every running sore that Job was plagued with.’

‘You want I show you souks?’ A young Arab boy was standing at our table, his dark eager eyes watching us hopefully. ‘You come. Jus’ look. No buy. Jus’ look.’

I glanced at Jan. ‘Would you like to see the markets?’

His eyes went momentarily to the tinted crystal of the mountains and then he nodded and got to his feet. A gleam of triumph showed in the little Arab’s eyes as he turned away towards the stairs. ‘Do we need him to guide us round?’ Jan asked.

‘Not necessarily,’ I said. ‘But these boys are good value. It’s getting late, too, and you can easily get lost.’ We went down the concrete steps and out into the roar of the Djemaa el Fna, skirting the crowds.

‘Philip!’

Jan had stopped, his head turned, staring towards the CTM bus terminal building. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Look!’ He pointed. ‘Do you see? That man.’ His tone was urgent.

I followed the line of his outstretched hand, but all I could see was the shifting pattern of the human tide. ‘What man?’

‘He’s gone now.’ He lowered his arm slowly.

‘Who was it?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Maybe it was the light. I thought for a moment it was Kostos.’

I laughed. ‘Nonsense,’ I said. ‘Kostos is a Tangerois. There’s nothing for him in Marrakech.’

The boy tugged at my sleeve. ‘Quick, m’soor. Is late. You come quick.’

‘Come on,’ I said to Jan. ‘It’ll be dark soon. If you want to see the souks…’

He nodded and we plunged into the maelstrom that swirled around the dark mouth of the covered way that led down into the first of the souks. Here were dates and dried fruit and herbs and spices piled in little pyramids on open counters and Arab merchants squatting behind mountains of nuts in the gloom of their stalls. We went through the meat market and then we were in a long, narrow street thatched with palm fronds. The crowds were moving homewards from the souks now and we were fighting our way through a packed mass of people that flowed steadily towards the Djemaa el Fna. ‘What you want, eh?’ our guide asked, grinning up at us, eyes sparkling and his teeth showing white against the shadowed darkness of his small face. ‘You like Berber silver? I show you bracelets. All good work. Very cheap.’

‘You speak Arab, don’t you?’ Jan said. ‘Tell him we just want to have a quick look round.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘You tell him in English. I’m just going to be a tourist for once. Besides it’s not many boys of his age speak English.’

‘Ess, spik good English.’ The boy grinned at us. ‘I show you fine silver. Is not dear, m’soor. I fix.’

‘We don’t want to buy,’ I said. ‘We just want to look around.’

His mouth puckered sulkily and he shrugged his shoulders. ‘Okay. You look. I take you good leather shop. No cheat.’ We forged ahead slowly against the mass of people. There were only a few Europeans. Night was closing in and already the lights were on in the bigger shops, the shops that were marble-floored and had their walls covered with Moroccan rugs or finely stamped leather pouffes. ‘You like carpet? Real Persian. I fix good price for you.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Take us to the street of the silversmiths.’

‘You want silver, eh? Okay.’ His eyes brightened.

The crowds were thinning now. A bicycle flashed past us, its bell ringing furiously as the Berber boy with a woolly cap on his head weaved dexterously in and out amongst the people. We turned into the little street where men sat cross-legged in workshops no bigger than cubby-holes stamping out the intricate designs of the bracelets, pouring the inlay from little iron pots of molten metal. There were still a few plump Arab women there, well dressed in grey or brown gabardine djellabas with silk veils over nose and mouth and naughty little gold-embroidered slippers peeping from beneath their voluminous skirts. Some of them already wore an armload of gold and silver bracelets, but they still stood and stared with longing.

As we left the street of the silversmiths, we met five blind beggars weaving their way home through the crowds, loosely linked like a sightless chain gang. They had the tortured, cadaverous features of the crucified and they were singing tonelessly, bobbing along with their shaven heads drawn back as though they’d all been hanged by ropes battened under the chin. They were led by a man with a wooden bowl who had the pitiless eyes of the professional beggar. His five freaks, strung out behind him, were all of them mutilated by disease besides having the blank, staring eyes of the blind. I stopped to put money in the bowl. As I did so there was a cry of warning, the crowd opened out and a small donkey piled high with Moroccan rugs went trotting past. The crowd closed up and surged forward. I was pushed to the wall and when at last I could make headway, I couldn’t see Jan or our guide.

I hurried then, fighting my way through the crush and craning my neck to see ahead. But there wasn’t a sign of him. I couldn’t see a single European.

I began to get worried. He didn’t know the language and I wasn’t sure about the boy. It’s easy to get lost in the souks. The place is an absolute rabbit warren. I fought my way through the silk market to the point where the souks divided. A narrow alley forked right. It was the street of the shoe makers, a dark tunnel crammed with people. I turned back then. The boy must have led him off into one of the side markets. I cut through a wide souk where silks were displayed in the few shops that weren’t already shuttered and came out into the parallel street, where the makers of brass had their stalls. But it was impossible to find anybody in the brush of people going home.

For a while I rushed madly up every side alley, searching for him in the intermittent patches of lighting. But in the end I gave it up and made my way slowly back towards the centre of the city, moving with the steadily-flowing tide of humanity, the murmur of the great square acting as a guide. He couldn’t really get lost. He’d only to follow the crowd. It was annoying, that was all.

It was quite dark when I reached the Djemaa el Fna and the booths were lit by the smoking jets of a hundred acetylene flares. The whole place, with its milling thousands of tribesmen and its tented booths, had the appearance of an army encamped for the night. The hotel was opposite the Tazi cinema where harsh Arab music blared at the packed crowd waiting to see an American Western.

As I approached the alleyway leading to the hotel, the little Arab boy who had been our guide came out of it. He stopped at the sight of me and his eyes widened. He looked scared and I caught hold of his arm before he could run away. ‘Why didn’t you wait for me?’ I asked angrily, speaking to him in Arabic.

He stared at me with hurt brown eyes, shocked into immobility by the realisation that I spoke his language.

‘Allah ishet elik!’ I cried, shaking him. ‘Speak, boy. Why didn’t you wait for me?’

‘You no come, m’soor,’ he said, sticking obstinately to his English. ‘We look all souks, but no see. Is late, very late for souks.’ His voice sounded scared and his eyes searched the street as though looking for somebody to help him. ‘Is no good staying in souk.’ He suddenly jerked away from me, wriggling out of my grasp, and with one frightened look at my face, disappeared into the crowd across the road, a small, scampering figure in a brown djellaba and heel-less slippers.

I went straight up to the room we were sharing and found Jan sitting on the bed staring down at the suitcase full of clothes that he’d bought that afternoon. He looked up quickly at my entrance. ‘Oh, here you are. Thank God!’ His voice sounded nervous. ‘I was getting worried about you. Do you think that boy did it on purpose?’

‘How do you mean?’ I asked, too surprised at his question to express the annoyance I had felt at finding him back here in the hotel ahead of me when I’d been getting worried and searching all through the souks.

‘When we got separated by those beggars, he wouldn’t go back for you,’ he said. ‘He insisted you’d cut down one of the side alleys. We went through it and came out into the brass market. But you weren’t there and he got very excited, jabbering away at me in Arab, and led me into a maze of streets so that I didn’t know where I was. All I knew was that he was leading me deeper and deeper into the souks.’

‘Well, at least he brought you back,’ I said, sinking into a chair.

‘He certainly didn’t. I had to find my own way back.’

I stared at him. ‘Do you mean to say the boy just left you?’

‘Well, not quite. It was really the other way round. I left him.’

‘Where?’

‘It was in an alley full of those gold-embroidered slippers. He kept on trying to drag me along the whole length of it. But by then I knew the only sensible thing was to come back to the hotel. I told him that and he tried to convince me the best way back was straight down that alley. I knew it wasn’t. That way we should have been going against the crowd and I was certain they were making for the Djemaa el Fna.’

‘And the boy left you to make your own way?’

‘He came a little way with me. Then he gave it up.’

‘But I’ve just seen him outside the hotel.’

Jan shrugged his shoulders. ‘Then he must have followed me, that’s all.’

‘You’re certain he was trying to lead you the wrong way?’

‘Yes, I’m pretty certain. I always have a shrewd idea where I am in a strange city.’ He hesitated and then said, ‘There’s another thing, too. The room has been searched whilst we’ve been out.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ I said. I felt tired. ‘How do you know?’

‘The hasps of my case were undone. I didn’t leave them like that. And when I got here, the Arab porter couldn’t find the key. He was gone about five minutes before he produced it.’ He was wrought up about it, his nerves on edge.

I pulled myself to my feet and examined my case. As far as I could tell everything was just as I’d left it. ‘Let’s go down and have some food,’ I said.

He stared at me angrily for a moment and then he turned away. ‘Perhaps you’re right.’ But he said it without conviction.

However, he seemed to relax in the warmth of the restaurant, and next day, after a long night’s sleep, he was quite a different person. In fact, he was almost exuberant when we were finally seated in the Enfida bus, packed in like sardines amongst a crowd of Berber men returning from a night out in the great city. He talked excitedly, asking questions, and when we drove out past the traceried gateway of the Bab Aguenaou on to the road that runs out into the flat plain, he sat quite still without talking, staring at the mountains. Behind us Marrakech, with its nine kilometres of red mud walls and its flat-roofed houses dotted with storks’ nests, lay sprawled out in the clear morning sunlight, a sleepy pattern of red and brown and white.

I didn’t talk to him on that two-hour journey out to Enfida.

I thought if I didn’t talk, maybe he’d find it easier to adjust himself to his new surroundings. Also, I had my own problems. I hadn’t given much thought to the Mission whilst I had been in Tangier. Now I needed to plan. There was the surgery to organise and people I wanted to see — people who had been sick or had suffered some misfortune like Yakoub at the olive factory who had lost his little son. And Jan would have to be introduced to Frehel, the Civil Controller, and to the Caid, and then I’d have to take him on a tour of the villages. I had hardly got all these matters sorted out in my mind before the bus was climbing up out of the plain to the fringe of the foothills and we had come to the first of the olive plantations.

Everything looked very wet. There were pools of water steaming in the sunshine and the roadway itself was creamed with mud. ‘There’s been a lot of rain up here,’ Jan said.

I nodded, remembering the paper I had picked up in Jose’s bar. It seemed ages ago. I wondered whether it could have snowed here.

‘Have you had somebody looking after the Mission whilst you’ve been away?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Two English people — a painter named George Corrigan and his sister, Julie. I think you’ll like them. They run an old single-decker bus which they converted into a caravan. They’ve been touring Morocco in it.’

‘Do they know the south at all?’

‘Still thinking about Kasbah Foum?’ I said. And then, because my tone had sounded angry, I added, ‘If anybody knows it, they will. They’ve been all over the country. For all I know, George may have done a painting of it. One room of the Mission is stacked with his paintings. There are a lot of kasbahs amongst them.’

We had turned up into Enfida now and a moment later we drew up at the bus stop behind a truck piled high with a load of black olives going down to the press. There was a little crowd standing in the mud waiting for the bus and the rushing sound of the river flooding under the bridge filled the town.

Yakoub, the man who had lost his little son, was standing talking to the driver of the olive truck, his woolly cap and ragged djellaba black and stiff with the rancid oil of the press.

‘Salaam ealykum!’ I called to him, but he didn’t answer. And when I went up to him, he seemed ill-at-ease and refused to look me in the face. ‘What’s the trouble?’ I asked him.

He moved his shoulders awkwardly and mumbled something about the wrath of Allah being terrible.

‘What is it?’ I said. ‘What’s happened?’

‘It is the mountain, sidi,’ he murmured. ‘It has fallen into the valley. It has fallen upon the Dar el Mish’n.’

‘What’s he saying?’ Jan asked me.

‘Something about the Mission.’ Yakoub had turned away now. The people by the bus were all standing watching me. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘We’d better get up there right away.’ And we began walking up towards the open space by the Auberge de la Ravine, where the track into the mountains started. There was something about the atmosphere of the place and the way the people stood silently watching us that scared me. The air was heavy with the humid heat of mud steaming in the sunshine and the river roared in a brown flood under the bridge. And in the place of olives outside the auberge, the drivers of the asses and the men who bent over the scales stopped and stared, and when I spoke to them they were silent as though they had been struck dumb. A feeling of disaster hung over the place.