The Man Between

by Charles Cumming

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you want to warn him after what he did to you?’

  Carradine found that his bitterness towards Mantis had abated. He was not one to hold a grudge. He understood why ‘Stephen Graham’ had pretended to be a British spy in order to recruit him. Sending him to Morocco to look for ‘Maria’ had been an act of love.

  ‘What will happen to Mantis if they find out?’

  Bartok bowed her head.

  ‘He will certainly lose his job,’ she said. She looked up and met Carradine’s eyes. ‘Worse, perhaps.’

  He took out the list of telephone numbers. As well as the contact details for his father, he had written down numbers for his editor, his literary agent and two of his oldest friends from school days. The last number on the piece of paper had ‘RM’ scrawled beside it.

  ‘That’s him?’ Bartok asked.

  ‘That’s him.’

  Then she did something completely unexpected. Taking the piece of paper, she tore off the bottom section on which Carradine had written Mantis’s number, screwed it up into a ball, opened the window and let it fly out of the car.

  ‘There you go,’ she said. ‘Now you don’t have to feel responsible for him any more.’

  30

  Less than an hour later they had reached the outskirts of Rabat.

  ‘We’re going to need somewhere to stay,’ said Carradine.

  He had blithely assumed that Bartok and Rafiq had already made arrangements. This was not the case.

  ‘Any ideas?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know anybody in Rabat,’ he replied. ‘Do you want to pop into the British Embassy?’

  ‘Very funny,’ she said.

  Though he had intended the remark as a joke, the idea took on a certain logic. If Carradine could make contact with the local Service Station Chief and tell them about the threat against Bartok, the Embassy might offer them sanctuary.

  ‘Wait,’ he said. He wondered how to pitch it. He did not want to seem rash. ‘What if the Service has no idea what the Russians and Americans are up to?’

  ‘Do you think this is likely?’

  There was an edge of facetiousness to Bartok’s voice which he had not heard before. The patriot in Carradine, that part of him which had believed in his country sufficiently to want to work for Mantis, could not countenance the idea that his own nation’s intelligence officers were involved in the murky business of murder. It may have been because of his father’s brief career in the Service, but he had always believed that the British adhered to moral values loftier than those in Washington and Moscow.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said.

  She laughed derisively. ‘And perhaps they know everything and have chosen to turn a blind eye to targeted killings of innocent civilians. Perhaps they are themselves involved. We cannot know.’

  Carradine was again struck by the suspicion that Bartok was holding something back.

  ‘What are you not telling me?’ he asked.

  She looked at him quickly, as if he had intuited a hidden truth.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s like you know something. You know the real reason why we can’t go to the Embassy.’

  ‘The real reason?’ He saw that she was tired and about to lose her temper. ‘The real reason is because I was involved in the kidnapping of Otis Euclidis. The real reason is because I assisted in Resurrection operations in the United States and Europe. The real reason is because I was the girlfriend of Ivan Simakov.’ Carradine was stunned that she had been involved in the Euclidis disappearance. He could see from her face that she had done things she regretted, things of which she was now ashamed. ‘I have no friends. I have only enemies, Kit. If you are with me you must know this. If we are caught, you will be accused of helping a fugitive to escape justice.’

  ‘I’ll take that chance.’ Carradine had come too far to respond in any other way. ‘I don’t think the Service would want you dead,’ he said. ‘I don’t think they’d be happy to know that their closest political ally has struck a deal with Moscow.’

  Bartok hesitated. Carradine had again glimpsed the secret which she would not divulge. She turned to face him.

  ‘Then go ahead and think that!’ Her temper had snapped. All of the anxiety and suffering of her life on the run was suddenly visible to him: a world in which she was never safe, never certain, could trust nobody. ‘It does not matter to me what you think. You could be right, you could be wrong. Perhaps the British Secret Service is prepared to sacrifice its good relations with America just to do the decent thing by me. But I doubt it. Let’s face it. You write about this world, C.K. Carradine, but you know very little about how it really thinks or how it works.’ Carradine’s ego took a punch as pure and as effective as the uppercut with which he had floored the Russian. ‘I have to trust my own judgment, my own experience. I have to be able to survive. You are helping me to do that and – believe me, please – I am profoundly grateful to you. If you want to leave me now, here in Rabat, I would not blame you. Go back to Marrakech. Go back to your phone with its numbers, to your laptop with its words. Take your suitcase and fly home. If I were you and I were able to do these things, believe me, I would do them. I would not stay here. I would not run that risk. I would make the choice to live my life in London.’

  ‘I’m going to get you to Gibraltar,’ Carradine replied, taking her hand and squeezing it at the wrist. He was not at all certain that it was the correct decision, taken as it was in the face of Bartok’s seeming indifference to his plight, but he did not want to walk away or to let her down. ‘We’re going to get on the boat and we’re going to get you out of Morocco. Then I’ll leave. When you’re safely in Gibraltar, I’ll go back to my life in London.’

  31

  Then they came to the roadblock.

  The first Carradine knew of it was Rafiq swearing under his breath and slowing to a crawl. There was a tailback of about forty cars in two lanes along the main road leading into Rabat. Carradine could see several police cars at the top of the queue, sirens flashing, uniformed officials standing at different points on the road.

  ‘Fuck,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Bartok told him. ‘Might not be for us. Arabs love a roadblock.’

  They inched forward. It was hot outside. Carradine began to sweat. He closed the window and asked Rafiq to switch on the air conditioner. It was quickly as cold as a fridge inside the car.

  ‘Tell me about Patrick and Eleanor,’ she said.

  Carradine assumed that Bartok was trying to take his mind off what was happening. Rafiq shunted forward the length of two vehicles and applied the brakes.

  ‘They’re a retired couple. Eleanor used to be a lawyer. I’d say Patrick is about fifteen years older than her, looks a bit like Cary Grant. Very easy-going, very charming. Possible retired ladies’ man. Liked the look of your photograph when I showed it to him.’

  Bartok smiled. ‘Go on.’

  Rafiq moved forward another ten feet.

  ‘They live in Kent, eastern part of England …’

  ‘I know where Kent is.’

  ‘They have a beautiful yacht. Atalanta. Custom made. Showed me some photographs of it at the Mansour. I think you’ll be comfortable.’

  ‘How did you meet them?’

  Carradine remembered his first evening in Marrakech, trawling the souk for LASZLO. It seemed a lifetime ago.

  ‘I was eating dinner in the Kasbah. Place des Ferblantiers. They were sitting at the next table.’

  Bartok turned to face him. A siren squawked in the distance.

  ‘Sitting there when you arrived?’

  Carradine realised why she was looking so apprehensive. She thought that he had been tricked.

  ‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘They came in after me.’

  She looked out at the queue of traffic, visibly annoyed.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Kit.’

  He leaned towards her. Rafiq briefly turned to look at him.

  ‘I kn
ow what you’re thinking,’ he said, trying to make his case. ‘They’re Service re-treads, Moscow illegals, Agency personnel keeping an eye on me. That’s not the case, I promise you.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘Instinct. Common sense.’

  ‘Brilliant!’ she exclaimed, with heavy sarcasm. ‘So we are OK then. Your instinct as – what? – a novelist tells you that Patrick-who-looks-like-Cary-Grant and Eleanor-who-used-to-be-a-lawyer are normal everyday people. Are those the same instincts that told you to trust Robert Mantis?’

  Carradine lost his temper.

  ‘Do you want me to get out? Shall I just leave you here? Is that better? Is that what you want?’

  Bartok tried to respond but he talked over her. Rafiq asked them to keep their voices down as he shunted the car forward.

  ‘Pas maintenant,’ Carradine snapped and turned back to Bartok. ‘I’m trying to help you. I’m trying to do you a favour. What do you think are the chances of Patrick and Eleanor masquerading as a millionaire couple with an Oyster 575 on the minuscule, one-in-six-million probability that a British thriller writer might ask if he can sail up the coast of Morocco with them accompanied by his phantom girlfriend?’

  ‘That’s what you told them?’ Bartok replied. Her anxiety had vanished as quickly as it had surfaced, to the point where she now seemed almost amused.

  ‘Of course that’s what I told them!’ he said. ‘That’s what we agreed.’

  ‘Phantom girlfriend?’

  Carradine ignored her attempt to lighten the mood. He was still furious.

  ‘Furthermore,’ he said, ‘how many intelligence services do you know that have a thousand dollars a night to spend on the Royal Mansour? If Patrick’s a spook, if Eleanor is Kent’s answer to Mata Hari, why don’t they stay at the Radisson and save Her Majesty’s government a fortune?’

  Rafiq was almost at the top of the traffic queue. Carradine realised that Bartok was no longer listening to him. This infuriated him even more. She spoke to Rafiq rapidly in French, so fast that Carradine struggled to understand what she was saying. He asked her to repeat it.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I repeat.’ It was clear that she had already set aside their quarrel and was focused solely on negotiating their passage through the roadblock. ‘Here is the situation if they ask any questions.’ She nodded in the direction of the guards. ‘We are a couple. Not a phantom couple.’ To Carradine: a quick, let’s-kiss-and-make-up smile. ‘We were staying in an Airbnb in Marrakech, OK? Rafiq is driving us to Rabat. We’ve never met him before. We’re flying home to London tomorrow.’

  Carradine leaned back in his seat, resigned to letting Bartok take control. He committed her simple lies to memory, rehearsing them in his mind as a policeman in a blue uniform walked up to Rafiq’s door. He indicated that Rafiq should wind down the window. Bartok took a good long look at the policeman and smiled the kind of smile that had been working on men since she was about fourteen. Rafiq lowered the window.

  ‘As-Salaam Alaikum.’

  ‘Wa-Alaikum Salaam.’

  The policeman continued to speak to Rafiq in Arabic. He looked into the car and nodded at Bartok. Bartok smiled back. He stepped to his right and looked at Carradine. Carradine tried to smile from the back seat but he was still angry.

  ‘Where are you from, please?’ the policeman asked through the window.

  ‘We are from London,’ Bartok replied confidently. They were speaking in English.

  ‘Where have you come from today?’

  ‘From Marrakech,’ they both said in unison.

  The policeman looked at the bag at Bartok’s feet. Carradine dreaded the moment at which they would be asked to show their passports. Rafiq posed what sounded like a question, indicating something further along the road. The policeman did not react. Instead, he tapped on Carradine’s window and indicated that he should lower it. Carradine did so, his finger shaking as he reached for the switch.

  ‘What is your name please?’

  Oh Christ.

  ‘Christopher,’ Carradine replied.

  ‘Mr Christopher?’

  Should he lie? If asked to show his passport, there was enough ambiguity in the presentation of Carradine’s forenames that the cop could not accuse him of deliberately misleading the police.

  ‘That’s right. Christopher Alfred.’ He did not want to say the surname ‘Carradine’.

  ‘Christopher Alfred?’

  ‘Yes.’ Bartok was becoming uneasy. Perhaps he shouldn’t have evaded the question. Perhaps he should have said ‘Christopher Carradine’ and taken his chances.

  ‘What is your business in Rabat, please, Mr Christopher Alfred?’

  ‘Tourism,’ Carradine replied.

  ‘You arrange tourism?’

  ‘No, no.’ Carradine had been momentarily baffled by the question. ‘We’re tourists. I’m visiting Morocco with my girlfriend.’

  ‘Phantom girlfriend,’ Bartok muttered.

  The policeman looked up and stared along the line of cars. Carradine’s heart was racing so fast he was concerned that it was affecting his appearance. He could feel his chest surging.

  ‘OK, enjoy,’ the policeman replied. Without so much as a backwards glance, he moved on to the next car in line. An official in front of Rafiq waved the car forwards with a red baton.

  Nobody uttered a sound as Rafiq engaged first gear and drove away from the roadblock. Carradine felt as if he had survived an examination by master interrogators. Bartok looked as calm and unruffled as a model having her picture taken in a photographer’s studio. Only when they were at a safe distance, with the windows closed, did she whisper: ‘Thank God’ and slap Rafiq on the thigh.

  ‘You were brilliant,’ she said in French, turning to Carradine. ‘Christopher Alfred! Tourism! A fantastic answer.’

  ‘The training kicked in,’ Carradine replied, slightly bemused that his response had generated such enthusiasm. ‘I’m very experienced in these life-or-death situations.’

  ‘I knew the argument would work,’ she said.

  Carradine was confused. ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘Something I was taught.’ He realised that she was referring to their squabble in the car. ‘We were going into a situation in which we were both tense, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What does a guilty person look like? He looks calm, he tries to seem like he doesn’t have a care in the world. But this calmness betrays him.’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand,’ Carradine replied. They had turned off the road and were heading into central Rabat.

  ‘Who would get into an argument with his girlfriend while waiting in the queue for a police check?’

  ‘An innocent person,’ Carradine replied.

  ‘Exactly. My window was down. Maybe this policeman heard you shouting at me. Maybe he sees that you look distracted and annoyed with your girlfriend in the front. And your girlfriend in the front seat has a scowl on her face? Throws a flirtatious smile at the handsome young man in the nice police uniform …?’

  ‘Who trained you to think like that?’ Carradine asked. He had never heard of such a technique, but marvelled at its simplicity.

  ‘I read it in a book,’ Bartok replied and asked if she could smoke one of his cigarettes.

  32

  Shortly after eight o’clock, Rafiq dropped them at Gare de Rabat Ville, the main railway station in the centre of the city. Bartok paid and thanked him for all that he and his family had done for her; Carradine saw that there were tears in her eyes as they embraced inside the car. They took their bags from the boot and banged on the roof as Rafiq pulled away.

  ‘Let’s get inside,’ he said.

  They walked into the station and had only been inside for a few minutes when a young, bearded man in a white jilaba came up to them holding a homemade brochure displaying photocopied colour photographs of a two-bedroom apartment on the seafront.

  ‘Is very clean, very tidy, very cheap,’ he said. ‘How long you want
stay?’

  Carradine told him that they would only need the apartment for one night. Bartok tried to establish if he was the landlord but the young man – whose name was Abdul – was evasive on the subject. In the car they had discussed the importance of finding somewhere to stay that did not use a computerised booking system. They would almost certainly have to show Bartok’s Hungarian passport to their host, perhaps Carradine’s as well. They hoped that whoever registered their details would log them, passing them to the authorities only after Atalanta had departed.

  Abdul led them out of the station. He said that he had a car parked nearby and that they would drive to the apartment together. Carradine was uneasy but knew that they had little choice: doubtless there would be third parties involved in the transaction at every stage. He and Bartok could be shunted from place to place, from person to person, until they eventually arrived at the apartment. Anything was possible in Morocco. The important thing was not to show their faces for too long on the streets. Bartok was paranoid about satellite surveillance, all the more so now that the Agency also had Carradine in their sights. There was always the possibility that they might be spotted by a passer-by.

  Abdul led them across a busy street towards a large open square surrounded by trees and dotted with park benches. A distant trumpeter was busking the melody from ‘Michelle’. Songbirds tweeted in the trees as they passed beneath them. Everything to Carradine seemed cleaner, sharper, more functional than Marrakech; he had the impression of a European city that was more affluent than anywhere else he had visited in Morocco. Rabat was the nation’s capital, the residence of the king, filled with cops and diplomats, ministers and spies. As a consequence, Carradine felt exposed; it was as though a friend from London might appear around the corner at any moment.

  ‘I don’t like this city,’ Bartok whispered as Abdul led them towards a patisserie on the far side of the square. ‘Sooner we get to the apartment, the better.’

  ‘Me neither.’