William Bayer - Tangier

"They never checked?"

He shook his head. "I guess it didn't matter so long as it sounded right. Anyway, I was busy. I was setting up this shop. You see-I'd saved a little, looked around, and decided a shop was needed here. I'd always wanted another shop, like the one my parents had. I'd inherited their place, spent wonderful years there with Marguerite. So I set up La Colombe, modeled exactly on the Hanoi store. And I was successful almost from the start."

Peter took great delight explaining how he'd expanded his business through the years, from merely selling merchandise to offering his customers grand service . Soon he became a clearinghouse for servants, a man who could be depended upon to find a good night watchman or fix a telephone. And all that time he'd worried about Kalinka-her letters were so infrequent, lonely, and strangely sad. He wanted her back, but knew he must be patient. He kept up his reporting on the ships until, one day, a man appeared.

He was an important man-Peter was sure of that. A man named Prozov, a man accustomed to command. He spoke in Russian and knew all about Peter's past: Indochina, his expulsion by the French, his hopes of being reunited with Kalinka too. He was prepared to arrange that, he said, if Peter would provide a little service first. A little job. A little mission. Nothing especially dangerous, though there was always a certain risk. And if Peter refused-well, Kalinka might have to stay in Poland for many years.

He took Peter's car, drove off, disappeared with it for several days. When he returned he told Peter to drive it to Algiers. Peter was scared then, really scared. There was something, he knew, hidden in his car. He didn't know what it was, and he didn't want to know. The French had a dossier on him-in Indochina they'd marked him as a Soviet spy. Now there were rumors they were using torture in Algeria. Remembering his experiences with the Japanese, he trembled at the thought of being interrogated once again.

But still he did it. It was his only chance to get Kalinka back. And his mind was sharp-he was canny when he had to be. It occurred to him, driving across northern Morocco toward the Algerian frontier, his hands shaking as he gripped the wheel, frightened to death with no idea of what might be welded to the bottom of his car, that if he did get across, did fulfill the mission, he had no guarantee the KGB would keep their word. They could doublecross him, refuse to keep the bargain-so long as they had Kalinka they could use him again and again. So driving along, checking to see he wasn't followed, glancing every few seconds at the rear-view mirror, he realized that the only way he'd ever get her back would be to end his usefulness to the Bureau by making them think the French knew who he was. If he could do that they'd have no further use for him, and therefore no reason to hold Kalinka anymore.

It was a fascinating notion, and he toyed with it the entire way, wondering how he could manage it, if in fact it was worth the risk. He was proud of the way he behaved at the frontier, like any ordinary European heading toward Algiers to have some fun. He stopped in Oran, bought the newspapers, and then got an idea of what might be in his car. The French were conducting a series of nuclear tests in the Sahara. Perhaps he was carrying equipment to monitor the blasts.

He thought about betrayal, could think of nothing else, as he entered Algiers through a driving, torrential rain. Then he got lost in a maze of traffic circles and one-way streets; finally found his meeting place by the Jardin Exotique . He waited there, shivering in his car, until his contact came. It was an Algerian this time, someone he'd never seen, who directed him up a hill to a region of villas with walled-in grounds. The Algerian pointed to a house, got out, swung open a set of gates. Peter drove straight through into a garage, took out his suitcase, and was driven back downtown in another car.

They'd booked him into a businessmen's hotel. He spent a night of torment there on a sagging mattress, slapping mosquitoes off his chest. All he had to do, he thought, was call the French police. If he turned informant, offered himself as a double agent, they'd make it look as though they'd been watching him for years. The Russians would see he had no further use, and then would let Kalinka go. It was a gamble, of course, the gamble of a lifetime, but one he was willing to take. He was about to call the French, had actually picked up the phone, when suddenly he remembered something which gave him second thoughts. Why had they let him see the garage where presumably they'd take apart his car? They didn't work like that, kept things compartmentalized-unless, of course, it was all a trap. Yes-then he was sure of it and knew he couldn't take the chance. If he called the French, told them about his car, and they went to the villa and found no trace, the Russians would know he was a double agent and he'd be dead within the hour. So he did nothing, sat in his hotel room, stared out mournfully at the rain. And on the morning of the third day Prozov finally called.

"We're pleased with what you did," he said. "Your work is finished now. You'll find your car parked in front of the hotel, and you can expect delivery of the Polish goods."

That was it-a miracle. They actually kept their word. He never heard from them again. Kalinka arrived two months later with a Polish passport bearing his own last name. He fixed up the back room of the shop so it would remind her of Hanoi.

"So you see, Hamid, you really have no good reason to throw me out. I never spied against Morocco-I never had the chance. Everything was for Kalinka, to get her here and keep her safe. I pretended we were married, and no one suspected we were not. She was only sixteen then, but her face was timeless like Marguerite's. Even the Vietnamese wouldn't take her away when they found out we were man and wife."

Had Peter really thought the Vietnamese would care enough to send someone to Tangier to snatch her back? It was ridiculous, absurd, yet Peter had rigorously carried this fiction out, even, years later, coming to Hamid's fiat to demand an explanation, because, as he'd put it at the time, "I'm the husband. I have certain rights."

Kalinka, Hamid thought, must have been extremely troubled to have submitted to such a situation for so long. But she was indifferent, as she still was to so many things, and if it had pleased Peter to introduce her as his wife, then she'd played out that role without complaint. Peter had fed her, protected her, made her the focus of his life. And all that time they'd slept in separate beds in the back room of his shop.

"I admire you, Peter," he said. "That was brilliant the way you calculated things. Not calling the French; seeing through the Russian trap. Yes, I admire you for that."

Peter beamed.

"You know," Hamid said, "I've known you for many years, but I've never been in your back room."

Peter laughed. "Nothing there," he said. "No secrets, Hamid. Just my papers and accounts. But come in, if you like."

They stood-up, and Hamid followed Peter to the door. It was a shabby room, and Peter looked shabby standing in the middle of it, talking, gesturing, scratching at his head.

"Here's the curtain, pulled back now, but in the old days we used it to separate the room at night. This was her bed, bigger than mine, you see-Marguerite and Kalinka shared a big bed like that. I've set things up pretty much the same in here. Their bed was always on the right, and mine was near the window, just as now-"

He mumbled on, lost in his memories, while Hamid stared at him and gaped. Suddenly he understood: it was nostalgia for the life Peter had led with Marguerite that had caused him to force Kalinka to take her mother's place. So pitiful, this fantasy, and so cruel the way he'd made her play it out. Just the thought of Kalinka sleeping here and wandering around Tangier so many years playing his preposterous game-Hamid shook his head in grief. The hashish probably saved her, he thought. Only in its fog could she escape Peter's twisted, terrifying love.