Алистер Маклин - Prime Target

‘I’ll watch it,’ she told the man.

‘It’s not that they want to humiliate you,’ he went on, winking at her. ‘They don’t make much money, so they go after any bonuses they can pick up, like handling an American woman.’

‘I hear what you say.’

‘Here on business, are you?’ He was now standing beside her, even though the sign at the door emphasized they should stay in single file. ‘I don’t get the impression you’ve come here searching for fun.’

‘It’s business,’ Sabrina said, not looking at him.

‘Harvey Bristow’s my name.’

‘Fine.’

‘So who are you?’

Sabrina saw a vacant desk and the officer behind it beckoning to her. She strode across the tiled floor and handed over her passport, aware that Bristow was plodding after her.

‘Remember what I told you,’ he muttered, too close to her ear.

The immigration officer smiled at Sabrina. He was tall and dapper and cool in his light cotton uniform. He opened her passport, looked hard at her face, smiled again and stamped a blank page. He handed back the passport, still smiling.

Sabrina thanked him and legged it across the concourse, looking for the baggage carousel. Two things happened almost at once. She heard the pest running to catch up, and a familiar Japanese voice rang out from a Hertz desk to her right.

‘Kogatasha o karitai no desu ga.’

She turned and saw Nat Takahashi of the UN Economic and Social Council. He was a short, lean, very brisk man in his late thirties. In spite of the heat he was wearing a dark wool business suit and his customary white shirt and dark-blue tie. He looked pleased that the clerk at the desk understood Japanese.

‘Isshuukan karitai no desu ga…’

Sabrina’s Japanese wasn’t strong, but she believed he was saying he wanted to hire a small car for a week.

‘The carousels are over there,’ Bristow said, panting with the effort to catch up to her. This time he put his hand on her shoulder. ‘Come on, I’ll give you a hand with your bags.’

‘Nat!’ Sabrina called out.

Takahashi turned, frowning, looking for the source of the sound. He saw her and beamed.

‘Hey! Sabrina! You following me or what?’

She made eye signals, telegraphing displeasure at the sweaty presence with his hand on her shoulder.

‘Stay right there.’ Nat had caught on. ‘I’ll just finish this item of business.’

Bristow looked put out. ‘The guy is a friend of yours?’

‘He sure is.’

Together they watched Nat take back his credit card, his hire documents and a set of car keys. He put everything carefully in his pockets, then he turned and walked to where Sabrina stood. He was not smiling now. His face was impassive, the eyes fixed on Bristow.

‘Is this gentleman bothering you?’

‘Hey now, hang on.’ Bristow let out a nervous chuckle. ‘I was just talking to the lady here…’

‘Take a hike.’

Bristow looked stunned. He swallowed. ‘There’s no call to go taking that tone, now–’

‘You deaf, or what?’ Nat’s harsh New York delivery clashed with his oriental looks and conservative dress. Bristow could have been told that this was a Japanese gangster and he would have believed it. ‘This lady does not need your attentions, OK?’

‘Jesus, what did I do here?’

‘Just turn and go about your business,’ Nat told him. ‘Otherwise you could be going back to base with your windpipe in your pocket.’

Bristow snatched up his hand baggage and stamped away, face redder than ever, his mouth churning. Sabrina looked at Nat wide-eyed.

‘I only wanted an excuse to shake him off.’

‘Well…’ Nat shrugged. ‘If you’re going to do a job, why not do it thoroughly?’

He took her arm and led the way to the carousel.

‘I know there’s no sense asking you why you’re here, Sabrina, because you’ll only hand me a pack of lies, but you can tell me if this is your first time in Tangier.’

‘It is. But my destination’s Tetuán.’

‘Good. I’m heading for a town called Martil, which lies a few miles beyond the place you’re going. Let’s get our bags, then I can give you a lift to your hotel.’

‘That’s great.’

‘Don’t be too sure. I love showing off my local knowledge, and even if you yawn a lot it won’t stop me. By the time we get to Tetuán you might wish you’d stuck with the bleary guy.’

In a little red Peugeot with the windows wound down, Nat Takahashi drove through Tangier with the kind of reckless unconcern Sabrina had seen only once before, in Saigon, where they drove with what seemed to be a total dependence on Providence. Every few yards Nat would bang on the horn, making people scatter.

‘To civilized people forced to spend time in this part of the world,’ he told Sabrina, ‘the horn is known as the Arab foot-brake. Once you get the hang of the technique, it has a certain charming logic.’

So that Sabrina could see a few of the sights of Tangier, Nat drove out of the city by a meandering route, taking them across a network of streets lined with restaurants, bars and nightclubs.

‘This used to be a really international city,’ he said. ‘Exciting. Dangerous. You had smugglers, spies, all kinds of exiles. It was a heady kind of place.’

‘Were you here in those days?’

‘I wasn’t even born in those days. But I’ve heard the stories, talked to some of the veterans. If you want a taste of the exotic seediness they had in the thirties, try spending some time in the old town. It’s a maze of alleys and narrow little streets and shady doorways. I do it from time to time. It’s fascinating.’

Sabrina tried to imagine the reactions of the Arabs in the old town to a smart-suited Japanese nosing round their territory.

‘What brings you here, Nat?’

‘The usual.’ He stopped talking to concentrate as he eased the car round a corner on to the long stretch of Rue de la Liberté from Place de France. ‘I have to make plans to initiate UN activities in Morocco, things related to development, trade, economic mobilization, economic use of resources – even population control. Anything, in fact, that fits with the policies we chase under the authority of the General Assembly.’

‘I’m impressed.’

‘I’ve been doing it so long it feels like I do nothing. I haven’t faced a real challenge in years. I should join UNACO and get my responses tightened up.’

Like most UN officials and employees, Nat knew of UNACO’s existence and its aims, but he had no clear idea who were the agents and who were the administrative staff. He didn’t really know, either, what a UNACO agent might be called upon to do. Occasionally an agent would die in circumstances never specified, and the others at the UN would become aware, for a while, that there were people in their midst who did incredibly dangerous things in the line of duty.

‘You’d probably get bored anywhere you worked,’ Sabrina said, getting off the topic of UNACO. ‘Check out your ancestry and you’ll find you’re descended from warriors. Samurai. People like that never feel the challenges of modern life are worthwhile.’

‘I’m descended from accountants of one kind and another,’ Nat said. ‘No warriors anywhere in my history. Even during the war, my grandfather was an army pay clerk in Kobe.’ Nat leaned forward, his forehead nearly touching the windshield. ‘There you are, Sabrina. Take a look at it. The Grand Socco – the great market.’

Long rows and clusters of stalls were tended by women – Nat said they were farmers’ wives – in wide-brimmed pompom hats, selling fruit and vegetables of every kind.

‘Marvellous,’ Sabrina said, meaning it. ‘Simply marvellous.’