William Bayer - Tangier

Peter stared at him quizzically. Lake toughened up his eyes.

" Defection , Peter. That's what I'm talking about. Defection. Giving yourself a second chance."

Z was staring very curiously now. Lake congratulated himself-he had the Russian hooked.

"Of course, the question in such a case would be-well, there'd be many questions in a man's mind. Such as how he'd be received by the other side, and how well he'd be protected from the people he'd worked for before. How much would he be expected to betray? How many of the old beans would he be expected to spill? And then there'd be the question of confidence, the person he'd defect to, the guy into whose hands he'd, quite literally, be placing his life."

He looked at Z again, highly attentive now. Is there a Russian agent anywhere , he wondered, whose mouth isn't full of rotten teeth?

"And motivations! Let's not forget about them! A man who'd defect-he'd have to have a motive for doing that. It might be a matter of high moral principle. Maybe it would have to do with his political beliefs. Or it could just be that he wanted to change the nature of his life. An escape maybe from something in the past. A complicated personal situation, say, involving his wife, or someone else. Comfort. Money. Change. It could be a combination of any of these things. Or all of them. Or even something else. You see, Peter, the possibilities are infinite, but the end is pretty much the same. I wonder how many men wouldn't jump at a chance to start everything over, with a clean slate, without the stigma of a past-"

He felt himself becoming increasingly excited, more and more manic as he talked on. He was pleased by his eloquence and stunned by his daring. His voice, he noted, was steady as a rock. For a moment it occurred to him to pause, give Peter a chance to reply. But having achieved a certain momentum he had no choice, he felt, but to gush on.

"Now speaking theoretically, Peter-and, of course, theoretical is what this conversation is-let's assume for a moment that there were two men who were quite good friends, and let's assume further, simply for the sake of this discussion, that one of these men wanted to defect to the other's side. Now the first one, the spy, say, the guy who wanted to make the change, he'd have certain apprehensions, as we can both well imagine, about the credibility of any offer from his friend. I mean-that would be perfectly natural. Spies are human beings, after all. He'd have made his decision, you see, completely on his own, but still, being human, he'd be stupid not to have some doubts. The change would be voluntary, a product of his will. But he'd have to be certain he could really trust the other guy. He'd have to have great confidence and not think he was being used. Confidence. Mutual confidence. That's basic to what I'm trying to convey."

He sat back then and smiled. "You understand me, don't you? Yes-I think you do."

"Well," said Peter after a while, "I think I understand you. More or less."

"Good. Good. That's very important. It's vitally important that we understand each other today. Frankly, I wasn't sure we'd reach an understanding so very fast. Sometimes I've felt, well, there's been this-a certain strain."

Zvegintzov cleared his throat. "You haven't always been so candid with me."

"But you find me candid today?"

"Oh, yes. Today I do."

"And?"

"Well-"

"Yes?"

Zvegintzov shrugged. "Let's just say-I think I understand."

"Good!" Lake jumped to his feet. He had Peter now, balls to the wall, but still there was something missing, a commitment, an act of faith. Confidence -that was it. If he wanted Z to have confidence, he would have to show that he had confidence in him.

A sign . He needed a sign. Something that would cinch it, sew the defection up. Suffused by a sense of well-being, convinced that success was within his grasp, he began to search for a solution, while his heart beat thunderously inside his chest.

Of course! He had it now .

"Come, Peter," he commanded softly, startled by the brilliance of his idea. "Come. I want to show you something. A special section of the Consulate. A section no foreigner's ever seen."

He moved decisively toward the rear door of his suite, into the secure area, the little corridor through which only he and Foster were allowed to pass. He paused at the vault, knelt to turn the knobs. When finally he heard the click, he stood up, motioned Peter back, then swung open the steel door.

He was breaking security, he knew, breaking every rule in the book. But if his plan worked, none of that would matter. It was impossible to live without taking risks.

"Look, Peter. Look!" The two of them peered inside. Lake gestured toward the bank of green steel filing cabinets that lined the inner wall. "Our files, all our secrets, everything we've done in Tangier since 1935. It's all here-even our extensive dossier on you. See that computer thing over there? That's the gadget we use to crack messages and put them into code."

They stared, both of them, at the gleaming cryptographic device.

"What do you think? Come on, Peter! Tell me what you feel?"

"I–I'm flabbergasted," Peter said.

"Of course. Of course you are! A man like you, a man with a well-trained eye. Just to have a look at a machine like that-Christ! Your people would give a fortune to be here now. You can't put a price on a moment like this, but here I am showing it to you. I trust you, Peter-I want you to understand. Now I ask you to put your trust in me."

A pause then as they stood side by side staring at the code machine. Lake could hear Z exhaling in heavy gasps. Suddenly he felt weak, overwhelmed by what he'd done.

Throughout the summer, but particularly in August, certain undesirable elements began to appear in Tangier. Hamid noticed them-pickpockets of uncanny skill and verve, and gangs of dark-browed adolescent thugs. The latter seemed to specialize in harassment, insults and jostles on the Boulevard and, sometimes, outright attacks on foreign residents of the town.

Among the first of their victims was the accident-prone writer David Klein, discovered nude and beaten bloody on a lonely stretch of beach beneath the Amar woods. He'd been sunning himself, he told Hamid, immersed in a biography of Oscar Wilde, when he was suddenly surrounded by a gang of grinning toughs. They closed in, then took turns kicking him, aroused by his squeals and pleas. Shortly after Dr. Radcliffe patched him up, Klein left Tangier for good.

Next was Philippa Whittle, wife of Clive Whittle, the British Consul General, an imperious lady much admired for her charitable good works. She was walking in broad daylight on Avenue Christophe Colombe, when a gang swarmed upon her, punched her to the ground, stole her purse, and robbed her shoes. Whittle made stern representations to the Prefect, and then, when Hamid failed to find his wife's attackers, he filed a diplomatic protest in Rabat. But as hard as Hamid tried, he could find no witnesses to the event. Either the woman was an hysteric or people in the neighborhood were covering up out of sympathy for the attacking gang.

It was Sven Lundgren, the little dentist, who suffered the worst abuse. He was standing one evening by the rail tracks, recruiting for Pierre St. Carlton, when suddenly he was jumped by a youth who lashed his face with a steel chain. For a while it looked as though Sven might lose an eye, but St. Carlton flew him up to Paris, where a doctor saved his sight.

There was no pattern to these assaults. They seemed to occur without provocation or plan, savage outbursts from unidentified persons who had somehow infiltrated Tangier. The European community was, naturally, upset, but, according to Robin Scott's column, equally determined that no herd of youths was going to ruin its summer fun. At night, safe in their villas, lulled by the gentle bleating of Arab flutes, the Europeans told each other that after Ramadan the city would resume its former calm.