Алистер Маклин - Prime Target

The mingle of voices and rich aromas entering the car worked on her like a drug. One of her first priorities, anywhere she went, was to catch what she imagined to be the essence of a place, to savour it and take it into herself, until she felt she was involved and no longer a simple observer. It had been that way with her since childhood, and now, with a pang as strong as any she had ever felt, she knew that the spirit of Morocco was reaching her. She would never say anything so corny out loud, but she knew that it was true. She was suddenly aware that Nat was watching her, taking in her rapturous expression.

‘I like this place,’ she told him.

‘I hoped you would. Personally, I adore it.’

He slowed the car, so she could see a gnarled old artisan beating a copper bowl into shape, using only a stone and a cloth-covered hammer to fashion the elegant curves of the vessel’s sides. At Nat’s window a child put in her head and smiled at him. He smiled back.

‘Enchanting,’ Sabrina said.

‘Right.’ Nat ruffled the child’s hair and eased the car forward. ‘But you should be careful not to get too hooked on all this. It gets into your blood.’ Nat looked at Sabrina and his face was serious. ‘I’ll tell you something. I couldn’t go on doing my Job if I didn’t get my regular fixes of Morocco.’ He laughed. ‘There. It’s out. My unspoken passion. Now you can blackmail the hell out of me.’

They left Tangier on a wide dusty road, heading south-east to Tetuán, 57 kilometres away. Nat gunned the car forward, winding up his window against the dust.

‘I promise I won’t try to pry into your business,’ he said, ‘but tell me this, do you plan to have dealings with people in Tetuán who could loosely – or tightly – be classed as, um, not entirely law-abiding?’

Sabrina nodded. ‘It’s very likely,’ she said.

‘Well, my second promise is I won’t underestimate your ability to look after yourself. But be careful. The old criminal element here was never restrained in the way it defended itself, but, even so, there were rules and barriers. But now things have changed.’

‘What, recently, you mean?’

‘In the past year or so.’

‘Care to tell me about it?’

‘It’s to do with a new kind of contamination,’ Nat said. ‘Extremism used to be breaking somebody’s arm to steal five dollars off him. Nowadays extremism is killing as many people as you can, not because you want anything from them, or because they’ve harmed you, but because killing them draws attention to your political posture.’

‘You said contamination.’

‘Right. Politics has contaminated the criminal impulse. And the results are catastrophic. Political causes, so-called, attract people with violent instincts. Cheap political messages give their brutality a focus. It becomes noble, too. Blowing up a main street full of innocent human beings is now termed an act of political extremism, when in fact we know it’s nothing more than the behaviour of moral midgets with psychopathic compulsions.’

‘How do you reckon this could touch me?’ Sabrina said, although she guessed she was slightly ahead of Nat.

‘Anything goes,’ he said. ‘Two years ago, you might have got a sock on the nose for snooping around the wrong places in Tetuán. Today they’d just as soon kill you. The restraints are gone. Blame political contamination.’

‘I’ll stay on my guard.’

‘Do more than that,’ Nat said. He took his eyes off the road for a second to stare at Sabrina. ‘Let no circumstance put you at a physical disadvantage, no matter how slight or unimportant it might seem. Watch your back. The rule with certain factions is, when in doubt, eliminate. Life is cheap and too many people know it.’

When they arrived in Tetuán Nat drove straight to the district of Bab Ceuta. They got out of the car and looked out over a Muslim cemetery to the old Jewish quarter beyond.

‘It’s absolutely beautiful,’ Sabrina said.

‘Yes it is, and this is just the time of day to see this part of town. Look at it, soak up the beauty, and try to make yourself remember that, for the likes of us, it’s seething with danger. Never let the loveliness of the place lull you.’

If Philpott ever resigned, Sabrina thought, they could do worse than move Nat Takahashi into the job. He had the technique for labouring a point, he could be something of an old woman, and he knew how to drill a warning into a person’s skull. Sabrina wondered if he really believed she could look after herself. Few men did, it seemed.

‘Where are you staying?’ Nat said.

‘A place called the National. It’s got one star. Do you know it?’

‘Sure. It’s over that way.’ He swung his arm to the left. ‘On the Rue Mohammed Ben Larbi Torres. It’s an old hotel, it’s quiet and it has a really peaceful internal courtyard.’

‘And is it a safe place?’

‘I’d say so. But try not to assume anywhere is safe.’ He touched her arm. ‘Come on, I’ll drive you to the hotel.’

‘This news has made me sad, Viktor.’

The big American underlined his sorrow by putting a hand to his fat chest, close to the region of his heart. With his other hand he pushed back his grey Stetson. He let out a long sigh.

‘Stefan Fliegel and Karl Sonnemann were good people. Their passing will leave a gap.’

Viktor’s mouth tightened for a moment. ‘An adequate reprisal would go some way to repairing the damage.’

‘But you don’t know who did it, do you?’

‘We will find out. In any case, we know the general source of the attacks, if not the attacker.’ The American was Harold Gibson of Waxahachie, Texas, newly arrived at Tegel airport, Berlin. His companion was Viktor Kretzer, a German architect, who was completely bald and wore a brown wig which emphasized the fact. Kretzer had come to the airport to greet Gibson and to bring him news of the two deaths. They sat together in the airport coffee lounge, sipping Kenyan blend, looking balefully at travellers heading for check-in.

‘It was JZ, of course?’ Gibson said.

‘It’s their avowed intention to eliminate us all, and that’s what they have begun to do. One thing we have learned about the Jews: they are as serious about their threats as they are about their money.’

‘Do the others know the position? Nobody’s in the dark and off guard?’

‘Everyone has been alerted and they are all taking precautions. But we need more than that.’ Kretzer touched his wig. ‘It is bad tactics to remain passive in the teeth of specific aggression. We must hit back.’

‘Well, we’ve taken steps already, as you know. They’ve been hit hard, right at their heart…’

‘That stopped nothing. It pales to no more than a gesture in the light of what has happened.’

‘Oh, come now, I’d say it was more than that.’

‘The death of the Selby woman was meant to stop an unwanted investigation, as well as being aimed at buckling the will of JZ in general. She died before either Stefan or Karl. In that regard it clearly failed. In fact, if what I hear is true, it stopped short of backfiring into disaster. No attempt was made on the second woman, who is by far the more serious irritant. Your man killed himself before reaching that part of his programme.’

Kretzer had spoken impatiently and now appeared to realize that. ‘Forgive me, Harold. I have taken this badly.’

‘As well you might, old friend.’ Gibson fingered a silver ornament on the clasp of his briefcase. ‘Do you have plans for retaliation, or is it too soon to ask that?’

‘We need a target that occasionally stops moving.’

‘Well, any way we can be of help, just say the word. This has to be straightened out.’