Hob Broun - Odditorium

He taxied to the American Express office where he converted traveler’s checks into Moroccan francs. In the men’s room of a nearby hotel, he packed everything into a money belt, a thick and cumbersome going-away gift from Pierce that reminded him of the protective crotch gear boxers wore. Bomblets of speed lunacy went off in his head as he prowled the lobby full of international citizens with their guidebooks and cameras, their contented-cow stolidity he now envied. His mouth felt full of sand. It was all coming up too fast, too suddenly. The scam was too big for him. In hurried misjudgement, he was going to give himself the hustler’s bends.

Okay, okay. Just a little stage fright. Deal with it. He sat on the edge of a Naugahyde chair and lectured himself. Now was the time to flush out his system; there’d be no place for this kind of thing later on. Any sign of it and they’d shred him like a classified document. Keep moving, just keep moving. Let yourself go. Half the pressure, twice the quickness. And finally, because there was no other way out, he pulled himself as tight as the money belt and went on to his next appointment.

The purchase of the Land Rover had been prearranged with transatlantic phone calls and a money order. The salesman wanted very much to take him out for a test run, but Christo dissuaded him. He said he had to be immediately on his way to a meeting with government agronomists in Tetuán, and the lie had a tonic effect. Falling back into the old skills centered him. That’s it, just keep moving. He pulled out his Arno Bester driver’s license, signed half a dozen forms, and the salesman handed over the keys along with a complimentary map of the city.

The noon heat was insidious despite the ocean breeze, and Christo shrugged out of his jacket, removed the clip-on tie. Following the written instructions, he went down to the abrupt end of a palm-lined avenue and jogged right. Slow-moving chaos closed in, jumbled buildings and people layered like compost along the brown walls. He gripped the wheel hard. Nasty birdcage voices poured with sticky air through the Rover’s windows. The breeze was cut off here, the salt fragrance replaced by something heavy and unplaceable, though spoiled melon came close. Someone on a motorbike made a sudden U turn in front of him, and Christo trod on the brake, banged his knee on the edge of the metal dash. He considered the grisly upshot of a pedestrian under his wheels: pulled from the driver’s seat and devoured by a raging native mob.

The fright was on him again. He watched bunched faces passing, brown complexions like camouflage, eyes angling toward him. Enough turbulence out there beneath the steady, sullen surface to drown in. He’d been against a foreign venue all along, but Pierce had insisted. Fine for him, Pierce was the strategic whiz who never left headquarters. Christo was smack-dab and defenseless in this human overflow, his only weapon — language — useless here. Hold on and move through it. Keep moving.

Then in a blink, the way was empty, like an eerie curfew zone. These walls were whitewashed and topped with broken glass; doors were armored with black wrought iron. It seemed that the air had thinned, the heat lessened, but Christo did not know whether to trust even his own senses. He was so intent on monitoring himself that he nearly missed his turn.

The street had narrowed, gone rough under him, by the time he located the shop. Tomas stood in the doorway sucking on a pipe and looking like a retired fisherman surveying the sea.

Christo parked in the entryway and hopped down. “Hey, partner, J. D. Christo from the New York office.”

Teeth clenched around the pipestem in what might have been a smile, Tomas sidled over and patted Christo’s back, sides, hips — an overt frisk. “Just a reflex,” he said apologetically. His English was without accent. “New York is full of statues.”

“But there are never enough heroes to go around,” Christo replied, fulfilling the witless password requirement.

“Come on, then.” Tomas emptied his pipe on the street and, as Christo steered the Rover inside, pulled a corrugated steel door down behind them.

Not much action under the low concrete ceiling. Two wiry men in newspaper hats squatted on either side of an upended crate playing dominoes. A pie-faced boy in sandals and a canvas jumper drowsily taped over a car’s windows prior to spray painting. An equally drowsy blues sax came out of a stripped-down speaker cone balanced on the disfigured rear end of a Peugeot, accentuating the junk-sick bunker atmosphere.

Tomas bobbed his big blond head, shuffled to the beat. “Your only decent export, jazz. The mighty tree that grew from the death culture. You dig Horace Silver?”

“The most.”

Christo was thrown hopelessly off stride, having expected a razor-sharp pro, finding instead this solemn boho who poked him now, called his attention to the piano passage coming up.

“You hear the genius? It makes me think of a rain forest.”

Solid, Pops. Just as Christo focused his concentration on the skittering chords, Tomas broke away, all business.

“She is brand new, eh? With all the papers?” Without awaiting an answer, Tomas spoke to the pie-face in mongrel Berber French. Stroking the Rover’s flanks, rapping on it here and there, the boy grunted something back. “Abdel is my best man,” Tomas said paternally. “A born engineer.”

“That’s good to know.” Christo could feel himself twitching.

“You’re in some kind of hurry?” Tomas made a treadmill motion with his hands.

“Well, I didn’t come to see the sights.”

“All right. Commerce on an empty stomach, then.” Tomas pulled him around to the rear of the car.” We will cut down through here, you see? By my estimation we will need eight cubic feet of space. If necessary, we can squeeze more up here behind the firewall. Also, a few modifications so that the final weight will tally with what is on your manifest. Abdel will take care. And once the load is in, he will seal up, putty, sand, repaint and you will be ready to go.”

Christo looked suspiciously at the vapid pie face.

“Don’t worry,” Tomas said. “He is paid from my share.”

Feeling tentative, Christo examined oil stains on the floor, listened to the men slapping down their dominoes. “So when do we go to meet the man?”

Tomas had cupped one ear, absorbed in the sound track again. Christo repeated himself, an obstreperous buzz in his voice that hung in the dead air that followed.

Tomas winced. Then, shaking his head as the band picked up its chorus, he growled, “Right away then. But I suggest you calm down on the way. I don’t like strain.”

Calm down, quiet. It was good advice, except the speed had Christo ready to run through walls, his ganglia red-hot and smoking. Get any more alert and he’d crack like a candy egg. But still he needed the friction, knew he operated best that way.

By the time they reached the village, there were indentations in Christo’s thumb from the nails at the end of the rabbit’s foot he’d been squeezing reflexively. He was sweating under a heavy woolen djellabah. The long, tentlike garment made him claustrophobic, but Tomas had insisted.

“No use looking any more conspicuous than you have to. And keep the hood up, it will hide your face.”

Now, as they crossed the dirt road with sun angling over tile roofs and into their faces, he cautioned, “Keep watch on yourself and show respect for these people. Remember, we’re infidels.”

The Swede was calling all the shots; Christo accepted his own docility. He simply wasn’t prepared. It was like an inescapable dream where everything took him by surprise. He felt as helpless as a cork on rough water and more than willing to be led.