Moroccan Traffic: Send a Fax to the Kasbah

by Dorothy Dunnett

  I said, ‘You’re not being asked to go home.’

  ‘No,’ said Morgan. ‘Hard luck, Wendy. The premise is that I’d dash straight into Harrods, turn east and bump my head on the carpets. I like Morocco. I shall simply hang about here and there while you watch me.’

  ‘Me?’ I said. I found I had fallen back on non-verbal signals.

  ‘Who else? Company watch-bitch,’ he said. ‘Sullivan’s in clink on a heroin charge and when he gets out, if ever, is going to spend all his time getting even with Johnson. Or do you think Charity could be coaxed to keep an eye on me? I bet Bobs has tried to persuade her already.’

  ‘You don’t ride horses,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘But Bobs sure got her eventing with Johnson.’

  If Sir Robert had planned that, he must be regretting it. Johnson had ended up within earshot of Sullivan. But still, Sir Robert hadn’t tried to ban Johnson from Charity’s balcony. Maybe he recognised that he couldn’t. I said, ‘Did Sir Robert mention the dope in the Sunbeam?’

  Morgan grinned. ‘He doesn’t think it was as funny as we might. He’s trying, of course, to spring the Colonel from jail, eager to dig up more dirt on MCG. He also says Johnson wasn’t telling the truth. The heroin was not planted on Dolly by Sullivan, so it must be Johnson’s personal cargo. Sullivan believes so as well. I don’t think,’ Morgan said, ‘that I’d like to be present at Mr. Johnson’s next painting session, if there is one. I think Mr. Johnson should take the money and run at any speed in excess of that of a Sunbeam.’

  I thought some more. While in Morocco, Kingsley’s had to keep the lowest of profiles. As Sir Robert had himself said, they couldn’t confront Johnson with anything formally. I wondered if Johnson did use his yacht to shift heroin. Last night, he’d been high as a kite on something powerful. I wondered what else Morgan knew. I said, ‘I’m told he has quite a harem – Mr. Johnson.’

  Mo Morgan got to his feet. ‘It doesn’t include me, if you’re asking. But I still shouldn’t advise you to try for it. Our friend’s more than a match for Bobs Kingsley. Come on. The terrace. You collect Reed; I bags Rita.’

  He was sore. I suppose it was natural. I followed him out to the terrace and stopped, because things had changed under the willow tree.

  Leaning over the Ritas was Gerry Owen, and he was addressing himself to Miss Geddes. His remarks were so soft I couldn’t hear them, and none of the ralliers had bothered to watch him. Rita Geddes stared at him through her spectacles, but her beringed fingers were scaling the table. Her tall accountant rose to his feet, his face flinty. He was well enough built, but older than Gerry. Rally-driving develops the shoulders. Above and below Gerry’s swim shorts, muscles rolled and dimpled.

  Beside me, Mo Morgan gave an enquiring cough and walked nearer. Gerry Owen paid no attention. Staring smiling into their faces, he lifted first Mr. Reed’s drink and then his companion’s and poured them carefully over the ground. Then stretching forward, he lifted the amazing water-carrier’s hat and clapped it on his own head. With its steeple crown and its cords and its fringe, it looked as mad as it had done on Miss Geddes. Without it, her orange hair climbed slowly erect like a parrot’s.

  For a moment, her hand stayed round the jar it had closed on. Then she pushed it away, and pulled off the pink glasses. Her unmasked eyes regarded him coldly, while her mouth made a small printed line. She said, ‘Piss off. You’re disturbing the monkeys.’

  ‘My God, it’s Scotch,’ Gerry said. The voice was officer class, like Seb Sullivan’s. He lifted the hat from his head and turning the rim in his fingers, began systematically to rip off the chenille tasselled fringe, grinning at her. When Reed snatched, he swayed back on his toes, out of reach. He said, ‘All in fun. Don’t get excited. I just want to ask one or two questions. Such as, where’s the other high-rolling chum, the ship’s painter? I want a word with him about Colonel Sullivan. You’re not surprised, I suppose, about that? You know, I’m sure, what’s happened to Colonel Sullivan?’

  Mo Morgan moved up to the table. He said, ‘Mate, he was a big man the last time I saw him. You the pal he sends to fight his corner with women?’

  ‘I’m the pal who acts for him when he’s in jail,’ said Gerry Owen. ‘Did I leave you out of the discussion? I do apologise. I thought you were one of the gollies. I see you have the ship’s hooker with you. Maybe she knows where friend Johnson is.’

  He took a languid step, and with a cruel movement, rammed the wrecked hat on my head. His fingers, clawing down, broke away my good necklace and tore my midriff top nearly in two. I could feel the heat from his suntan.

  Mo Morgan pulled me sharply away and stepped between us, his hands hanging loose, Western style. Everyone had seen too many films, including Gerry Owen. He smiled. ‘Don’t get excited,’ he said. He strolled back to the table and turned, forcing beads off my necklace. He wasn’t praying. I took off the hat with one hand. It was ruined.

  Roland Reed was still standing. He said, ‘That’s enough. Wendy, call for the manager.’

  ‘Yes, do,’ said Gerry Owen. ‘Do call for the manager. I’m rather drunk. I’ll be sent to sleep it off with my friends. But won’t everyone be so interested to know why you’re here? And exactly why Seb was shopped, to cover your rich yachting pal and his habit? It would fascinate so many people back home. So where is your dear old friend Johnson?’

  I should have realised. He knew he couldn’t be touched. He knew neither company could afford the publicity. Mo Morgan moved. He moved quite quickly, and I saw Owen’s fierce muscles harden. But all Morgan did was pick the peanut butter jar from the table and hold it out helpfully. ‘Don’t stop,’ he said. ‘Bend the forks. Smash the dishes. That should lose Black & Holroyd the whole Kingsley contract.’

  ‘Contract?’ said Owen in affected amazement. He had turned his gaze back to Miss Geddes.

  ‘Your big PR deal with Sir Robert, you stupid wee nyaff,’ said that lady. ‘Did you think we didn’t know? Did you think we couldn’t connect you with Kingsley’s? You should have called Sullivan, son, before you began roughing up his boss’s new cash cow. Mind, if that’s roughing-up, I’ve seen worse in a back green in Helensburgh.’

  If she had been a man, he would have hit her. What she actually said passed in steam over his head. Gerry Owen whispered, ‘Well, now: do let’s improve on it, darling!’ He shot out both arms and, taking grip, gave a sudden, hard twist to the table. The heavy board tilted, sending plates, glasses, cutlery crashing and threatening them with its weight. Roland Reed seized his wrists, braking the movement. Rita’s eyes flicked towards Morgan. And Morgan, with a flamboyant gesture raised the jar in his hand and, from quite an adequate height, upended it over Gerry’s head like a baptism. Gerry gasped. He wrenched his arms free, but too late. Peanut butter, adroitly assisted, descended his trunk in seductive, dense dollops. Miss Geddes watched. Then she leaned back in her seat and knocked open the latch of the monkey cage.

  I remember screaming. By then, all the nearer diners had turned. I saw waiters’ faces made blank. A dog began barking and birds pecking for crumbs suddenly flew up the tiled walls of the hotel and soared over its roofs. Morgan fell back, pulling me with him. Colonel Sullivan’s co-driver, half-blinded, swung vicious punches with one hand while he wiped the mess on his face with a forearm. His swearing was basic. Then the monkeys streamed from the cage.

  They swirled around us, because we were nearest. They jumped on the table, upending everything that hadn’t fallen, and demolished the biscuits. Then they noticed the other food-laden tables. People leaped from their seats and backed shouting. Wine toppled; crockery smashed to the ground. Lithe as dancers, the monkeys swung on the tablecloths. They chased among plants and picked up the red pots and threw them. They gambolled along the low walls, and ran up palm trees and sat on the roof quarrelling over handfuls of food. But most of them stayed with Gerry Owen.

  The firstcomers went for his hair, licking, munching and scouring through it with vigorous fingers. T
hen they clawed the stuff from his shoulders and cheeks, poking into his ears and trying for more up his nostrils. He staggered about with monkeys clinging to his waistband and slobbering into his chest, and when he tried to fling them off, they bit him. He had red marks all over him. And all around, their immediate fright over, his companions were shrieking with laughter.

  I think even Mo Morgan was sorry for him by then. He said, ‘Rita. . . ?’

  And Rita Geddes, sitting at her wrecked table with a monkey eating a peach on one shoulder said, ‘Well? What’s holding him? Can he not take a jump in the pool?’ And then, softening, ‘Oh well. Come on,’ said Miss Geddes. ‘Let’s round them up, the chummy wee bastards.’

  Maybe Gerry heard her dismiss him so lightly. Maybe he wanted to pay everyone out. Maybe he just lost his head. But he turned as she spoke and made for our table, or so it seemed. Except that he passed it. He blundered instead to the cages, and shaking off the last of the monkeys, opened the latch of a different cage.

  The beast inside was not a monkey. For a moment it stood watching the door, its red eyes puzzled, its muzzle dripping under the tusks. Then it snorted, and shouldered open the bars, and hurled itself out like a thick, stinking cannonball.

  Owen had let free the boar.

  The laughter stopped. Gerry stood, between contempt and defiance, and let it pass him. Roland Reed, moving incredibly fast, seized and swung up a table and ran forward, carrying it like a shield. Morgan did the same with one hand and snatched a chair with the other, waving it as he ran forward.

  The boar pounded forward and halted. Its saliva hung under its snout.

  Behind, in a confusion of screaming and shouting, the waiters were rushing the ralliers indoors. The last to go were the two women drivers and the Americans, who had to be persuaded to leave. I didn’t follow them. I felt what was happening was Kingsley’s and my responsibility. Morgan said over his shoulder, ‘Get back, Wendy.’

  I didn’t. I picked up a chair, as Rita was doing. Men were running forward with jackets and sticks. Rita said, ‘Anyone know if pigs swim?’

  I saw why Morgan liked her. I remembered something my mother once told me. I said, ‘Not very far; they’re too fat. They end up cutting their throats with their trotters.’

  Facts of life can sometimes strike you as funny. With the boar glaring before us, Morgan snorted and Reed squeaked and Rita’s face split into a grin. Then she said, ‘Oh, sod it. The silly brute’s going for Tonto.’

  She meant Gerry. And it was true. Having passed its liberator in the rush, the boar had been cast into doubt by the chairs we were brandishing. It jerked up its head, breathed threateningly. It turned as if to go back.

  The only person between it and freedom was Gerry, who didn’t have a chair or a table, but had only wanted Johnson’s present address and revenge. Roland Reed and Morgan flung their chairs at the same moment, and Gerry caught one. The other landed in front of the boar, which turned, noisily. Then Rita raised her voice in friendly encouragement. Rita shouted, ‘Come on!’ to Mr. Owen. She added, ‘Come on, are ye deaf or just daft? Chase the stupid beast into the water!’

  Gerry glared at her. The boar turned from side to side. And losing patience at last, the Chairman and Chief Executive of the MCG company slammed down her chair, jumped in front of the boar and said, ‘All right, buster. Here I am. Get me!’

  Beside me, Roland Reed screamed ‘Rita!’ with real fear in his voice. He began running, with Morgan beside him. They had no hope of catching up. A simple make-up mutt with no brain, Sir Robert had thought her. And a non-swimmer, of course, I assumed. We should have taken more note of her friends. Her legs carried her over the terrace like pistons, and down the steps, and across the path to the pool, the boar wheezing hot at her heels.

  She paused, once, at the edge, to drag her poncho over her bra and discard it. Then she dived like a small, compact swallow, and the boar followed her into the water.

  Perhaps prime fattened pigs cut their throats when they swim, but feral boars don’t. She knew it, of course. She struck across the water like a bluebottle fazed by a fly-spray, and the boar wallowed after her. We saw them as we rushed to the edge. Morgan, seizing anything he could lay hands on, began wildly pelting the beast. Reed, flinging himself to the end of the pool, plunged in, arms driving, and made for the resolute streak that was Rita. For a moment, it seemed as if Rita, Rolly and boar would all meet in the middle. And then something flashed in the air, and the boar squealed, and a fountain of blood rose and sank, staining the water like claret. Rita and Rolly looked up. We all, in our various ways, stared and turned.

  Sir Robert Kingsley stood on the balcony immediately above us, his hands gripping the rail, his face scarlet. ‘Get out!’ he said. ‘You silly fools, they don’t die as quickly as that. Get out while you can!’

  And Rita and Reed, splashing, hauled themselves out, just as the boar began to froth and thresh, with Sir Robert’s boar-spear in its body.

  Chapter 12

  The critical meeting between Kingsley Conglomerates and MCG plc took place, a little late, in the small dining room immediately afterwards.

  By then Gerry Owen, uneasily disdainful, had been hauled off by the management for what promised to be a long, cold interview in the office, followed by a heated exchange with his fellow ralliers which ended with his sullen retreat to his room.

  A similar fate was expertly avoided by Miss Rita Geddes who, bundled into a robe, announced herself a certified idiot, and disarmingly offered to pay compensation up to any sum the hotel cared to calculate for having let out their poor bloody monkeys. The hotel, already brainwashed by Morgan, accepted a very large cheque and forgave her.

  Through it all, I sat in a corner and trembled. I didn’t expect to be noticed, but Sir Robert himself found me and sat down. He said, ‘Wendy? That silly young man, on top of yesterday. Are you all right? Would you like to go back to Marrakesh?’

  Of course, he knew I wouldn’t leave, but it was nice that he cared. Until he put his hand lightly on mine, and then felt for and held out his handkerchief, I hadn’t known I’d been crying. I hadn’t known he knew about pig-sticking, and he laughed off insistent efforts to thank him. He’d pulled the spear from the wall of the restaurant. He said it reeked of couscous.

  The hotel had left a buffet lunch in the room set aside for our meeting. We helped ourselves and sat down with our briefcases. Sir Robert, still in his immaculate cashmere, was flanked by me in my ruined resort wear, and Mr. Morgan in the wreck of his laundry. The monkeys had burst his rubber band and picked out his pigtail, and he hadn’t had time to replait it.

  Opposite, in pink towelling robes and bare feet sat the Accountant of the MCG Company and his Chairman, their hair like shredded wheat. On either side of Rita Geddes’s positive nose, the spectacles glittered like melamine saucers. Walking into the room, a Career Clothing Consultant would have despaired.

  ‘So,’ said Sir Robert. ‘Let us put the last hour aside, and talk about something of mutual benefit to our companies.’

  What followed, naturally, was double-talk.

  MCG batted first, with the intermediate-level figures we’d agreed on. My notebook out, I scribbled as Reed first read them out, and then passed round some supplementary papers. Placing them on the table, MCG didn’t run very much risk. They were international, certainly, but small compared with Kingsley Conglomerates.

  Of course, they kept something back. We didn’t get anything like the facts we’d expect at the next stage. We didn’t get the past trading performance, or the debt situation, or the discounted cash flow to an optimum ten-year horizon. And, of course, they’d have done a lot more homework than that. Their managers, like ours, would have sweated over their SWOT analysis: strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats. They would have examined the size of their market, and totted up their debts and their assets.

  The time would come for all that. All they were doing at present was indicating their own view of their value. They
gave us as much as they had promised, and I knew it bore out what Sir Robert expected.

  The tricky point was how far Kingsley’s could go along the same road, and the answer was, not very far. To begin with, our figures were much more complex, dealing with different divisions with different expectations. But the other factor was secrecy. If the deal should break down, MCG could freely take what they knew to a firm whose goodwill they wanted, and that firm might quite easily transfer its predatory attention to us. The figures Pettigrew had sent were therefore guarded and weighted. Yet they had to conform, at least broadly, with the figures Johnson had seen at the airport. A lot of hard work had, indeed, gone into making them roughly compatible. MCG consequently should have been satisfied. But clearly, they weren’t.

  Roland Reed queried almost every figure Sir Robert produced.

  Increasing in number, his civil interventions began to take on the style of an inquisition. We hadn’t expected it. At the same time, we had no right to resent it. We, after all, were the suitors. The top management of MCG had once already indicated their lack of interest in our offer. If they were here at all, it was either because they were playing for time, or because they wished to be convinced that Kingsley’s were equipped for secure and successful future trading.

  Sir Robert, attempting to move away from raw figures, was gently compliant when checked but you could see, if you knew him, the slightest trace of heat in his broad cheeks. He was concerned to explain the international importance of Kingsley’s, the excellence of its products and management and the benefits it had to confer on all associated with it. He then set out to show the potential areas of synergy.