Moroccan Traffic: Send a Fax to the Kasbah

by Dorothy Dunnett

  ‘How do they know?’ Sir Robert had asked.

  ‘They made no secret of where they were going. They guessed, if he got the chance, that Oppenheim would point us towards them. Everyone who knows anything,’ Johnson said, ‘knows that we have a score to settle with Sullivan.’

  He spoke mildly. It made me wonder if he would relent, as he had done with Chahid. But if all the theories were right, Seb Sullivan had committed murder already, and was now keen to finish the job for his masters. And Sullivan was not a nameless assassin. He knew every one of us.

  The sinking sun struck red through the windscreen and, as was its habit, lit Johnson’s bifocal spectacles. All around us the hills, limp as blankets, glowed in soft reds, their milky hollows the colour of amethyst. The snow on Sirwa was tinged golden pink, and cast china blue shadows which were technically impermanent. A man walked by the road, a black goat like a scarf round his neck. Morgan said, ‘We don’t need to go all the way once it’s dark. There’s a hotel at Taliouine.’

  ‘There’s a kasbah at Taliouine,’ Johnson said.

  ‘So they’ll stop us between here and there?’

  ‘Within the next ten minutes, I’d guess. Unless the car that’s behind tries to rush us.’

  ‘Christ!’ said Morgan. I hadn’t seen any car, either. We both began to turn round. Then we both nearly crashed through the windscreen as Johnson jammed on the brakes, slammed into reverse, and shot the car sideways back and into the stump of a jeep road.

  Chapter 24

  We didn’t speak. We’d seen what he’d seen. The body of a man, flattened by wheels, lying across the road centre. And high above on the slopes, the splinter of light from a rifle.

  We all knew the name of the victim, from the blood-drenched pale suit, and the crewcut. ‘Pymm Number Zero,’ said Johnson. He reversed out of sight of the road and, turning off the ignition, put the keys in his pocket. He opened his door and jumped down. We had parked in the gut of a gully. Its scrub-covered slopes cut off the light on either side of the track.

  ‘Dead?’ said Morgan.

  ‘What do you think? He’d become a problem for everyone. Kingsley to stay and look after Wendy: take a rifle. Mo, there are only two men up there. Cover me.’

  ‘You’re going to kill them?’ said Morgan.

  ‘Possibly,’ Johnson said. ‘But not until I’ve got some answers from Sullivan. If you catch Gerry, do whatever your whimsy dictates.’

  ‘You want me to go all the way up that steep bit?’ said Morgan. ‘Carrying you?’ A rifle over his arm, he was pocketing cartridges.

  So was Johnson. He said, ‘What do you know about climbing? Stay and cover me.’

  ‘And you haven’t sent for any help, because you don’t want Sullivan killed. Why should I cover you?’ Morgan said. ‘All your bloody foals would be mental.’

  A moment after, they took the nearest embankment slope at a run, side by side, no longer talking in undertones. At the top for a second the mellow light caught them, then the skyline was empty. Beyond, where they had set their faces to climb was the flank of the mountain; the boulder slope rising to cliffs and ridges and rockbands interlaid with tongues of snow, and scree-fields, and stony pockets of pasture. And further up, behind escarpment and terrace, the burning forepeaks of the range.

  I had seen it all from the road. Somewhere there, already entrenched, already waiting, were Gerry and Sullivan, ex-SAS marksmen.

  I was staring stupidly up when Sir Robert spoke. ‘I’m going after them. They’re going to bungle it.’

  ‘They’re both climbers,’ I said. I was listening. I couldn’t hear anything; not even a car on the road.

  ‘I don’t back anyone against Army but Army,’ Sir Robert said. ‘Stay.’

  I wasn’t a dog. I was the person he’d lied to most often. When he left the Land Rover and began to forge up the side of the gully, I scrambled up after him. Then I knelt at the top and looked uphill.

  By then, he was the only man on the boulder slope, moving swiftly among the tangled bushes and random stone outcrops. The others were already high in the rock, and after a moment, I had picked out three of the four. The highest was Sebastian Sullivan, still climbing and tauntingly visible. He knew, I supposed, that Johnson would come after him whatever happened. Since that first glimpse from the road, he had worked his way much nearer the headwall, passing the first of the ridges and reaching a point just below the middle crest. In the low, ruddy light from the west his big-featured face and bright hair moved from place to place like a coin of light in a lens. Tinker Bell. Tinker Bell with cord trousers and boots and a check shirt with a brilliant yellow silk scarf at the neck which he hadn’t even removed: sucks to you, an undersized Arab and a reconstituted Academician with an undeserved reputation for girlfriends. If Gerry was there, I didn’t see him. But I saw Johnson, and Morgan.

  Widely separated, they were climbing in parallel, with the object of outflanking Sullivan. It was dangerous stuff, since he had the advantage of height and could, at the moment, pick them off whenever they showed themselves. Except, of course, that they mustn’t be found full of bullets. I wondered how Sullivan was going to get over that, and then realised it would be easy. It occurred to me that, if Sir Robert could get up that slope, then I could. I rose to a crouch, and followed him quickly.

  He stopped me where the first ridge began. I hadn’t seen him. He said, ‘Do you mind staying still? I should really like to move quietly. The fools seem to have lost sight of Owen.’ He sounded exasperated.

  I said, ‘I’ll stay here,’ and watched him noiselessly leave. He and Charity went hunting quite often: he won medals for shooting. He had intervened to save Rita. Johnson had trusted him in the Land Rover with the guns. He was going to help: I had to believe it. I stayed still by my outcrop and watched.

  Gerry Owen had not appeared. I could see, in the flaming light higher up the faint movement that told me where Johnson was, and his stupid bifocal spectacles. He wasn’t climbing especially wisely. Morgan had crossed a rib and seemed to be handing himself up a gully, his rifle slung on his back and his gaze divided between the two others. I saw him only when Johnson broke cover. Then Morgan swung into sight, striding over a gap; jumping for a new foothold. Morgan, decoy.

  Sullivan, climbing higher and higher, looked down and seemed to be smiling. Now I could guess his objective: a rockband that ran part-way round the mountain, split with gullies and cracks that led to the bulging escarpments above. Before one of the cracks, Berber shepherds had once built a stone windbreak the size of a rampart, and the niche was further protected by an approach now broken sheer on all sides but for a cracked slabby ramp patched with snow, and a steep rake of rubble and debris.

  Sullivan climbed it, not with Morgan’s grace and precision, but with the determination of a powerful man at the peak of his training. He reached it, turned, and gesticulated. And as if in response, a new sound came to us in the silence: the sound of a powerful car driving west.

  I saw the flash as Johnson’s head turned. Morgan had halted. Above them both, Sullivan’s smile became wider. The roar of the engine increased as it approached, and burst into full volume as it reached the unseen road directly beneath us. We heard the screech of its tyres as it braked at the sight of Pymm’s body. There was a pause, then we heard it stop and reverse. There came a distant banging of doors. From the sound, more than one man had got out. A group of innocent travellers, aghast at a hit-and-run killing? Or the bodyguard of the lords of the kasbah, come to support their master’s two agents?

  It emboldened Gerry Owen to move. Sir Robert had been right. From his cover high on the mountain, he had watched and waited. Now he attacked.

  It was Morgan he took, using Morgan’s hill expertise to deceive him. Stopped by the sound of the car, Morgan was already looking down when the great fall of rock occurred far below, and the thud of a body heavily falling. It was no more, as it turned out, than a padded sack and a rope. But unthinking, Morgan obeyed his instincts and
followed the sound, springing downhill, rifle slung, eyes intent. The blow when it came knocked him sideways. I saw him lose balance and stagger, and Gerry Owen seize him, one arm round his throat. With the other, he wrenched free his rifle and threw it out of reach down the slope. Then, before anyone could prevent him, he was secure behind Morgan’s body, and I heard him drawl into Morgan’s ear in a voice he didn’t trouble to lower. ‘Well, tiger; I guess no one ever knew you were such a bad climber. All those years scaling Toubkal, and here you are, discovered dead at the foot of a tiddler.’ And he lifted the gun in his hand like a club.

  I sprang to my feet. I couldn’t shoot, but I could show him he had a witness.

  Gerry didn’t even see me. He stopped. Above and to one side there came a rumble of stones, and the patter of many light feet, followed by the cries of high, swooping voices. A huddle of black and brown goats came weaving and springing down the hillside, followed by three trousered boys throwing stones. The biggest was no older than seven.

  They could have seen nothing precisely. They were, however, curious enough to slow and linger at the sight of two foreign men, one with his arm round the other. Gerry Owen took his threatening arm down, and changed his grip to a bone-bending lock that was invisible. He held his gun out of sight. The boys came nearer. He said, ‘Go away!’ The boys remained, their faces solemn, their eyes large and dark and inquisitive. ‘Go!’

  ‘You need to speak Berber,’ said Morgan, croaking.

  ‘Tell them to go,’ Owen said.

  ‘Why should I?’ said Morgan.

  ‘Because I’ll shoot them if you don’t. Then you and the painter. No hassle. The hills are full of tribes with old rifles.’

  Morgan looked at him. Then he turned and called to the boys. It was a mixture of Berber and Arabic and I understood one word in three. But he was saying something very particular.

  The children didn’t do much at first. They listened wide-eyed, and flinched when Gerry made a threatening gesture. It was the insult of the gesture that decided them. They backed downhill, inclined to hurry, still looking. Then the eldest nursed the rag round his waist, and dipping absently into it, suddenly withdrew a small object and threw.

  The child herdsmen of Morocco are the finest stone throwers in the world. Fast and hard-pitched and accurate, their little missiles can put out an eye, numb a muscle, or kill. The boy’s stone hit the back of Gerry’s head like the blow from a spade, and he staggered. By the time the second and third stones found their mark, Morgan had pulled himself sideways and free.

  Gerry turned, lurching. The boys, still throwing, raced down the hill and Sullivan’s partner stood rocking, blood from open cuts streaking his face, his eyes hardly open. He would have fallen anyway, but Morgan made sure of it by kicking his feet from under him. He tumbled over the edge, and cartwheeled down the hill and into the darkness, where the boys and the goats had already scattered.

  There was a single shot from above, aimed at Morgan. I heard it whine by. Then Johnson, from the rock he had chosen, fired shot after shot towards Sullivan: enough to keep him from aiming and let Morgan roll back under cover. I saw Morgan drag out his wallet and leaning over, toss it below. It bounded downhill, past the spread-eagled figure of Owen, and a small shadow, quick as a lizard, darted, snatched it and vanished.

  ‘Give up, Sullivan,’ Johnson said. Reasonable stuff: Sullivan was now alone. But down below were the men from the car, now alerted. Alerted to run away, or alerted to climb the hill and attack us.

  Sullivan answered him with a second bullet, accurately aimed at where he had been. Planned accidents were a thing of the past. ‘Why?’ said Sullivan’s voice. ‘Morgan’s weaponless, you’re pinned down and Kingsley – is that Kingsley? – is coming, I hope, to give me a hand. Isn’t that right, me old sport? Nothing for you in the land of your fathers except a club for old queens and the odd little handout from Charity. Why not join us for the hell of it?’

  ‘Join you?’ Johnson said. ‘Trust a party of arms dealers, terrorists, mercenaries?’ He was moving, testing one route or another. But Sullivan had been right. There was no way he could reach him, except by an impossible traverse up and across exposed ground. On the other side Morgan was climbing punctiliously. I couldn’t see where Kingsley was. He could be within reach of Johnson. He could, with ease, shoot him or Morgan.

  ‘Terrorists?’ Sullivan said. ‘Now, is that the image PR has spent so much cash to put over?’

  ‘You don’t leave Onyx,’ Johnson said, ‘once you’ve been in it.’

  I crouched again, listening. I had no part to play. I was only a witness. The sky to the west held the afterglow but the darkness was creeping up the flanks of the mountain, and a wind had risen to stir the puffs of thorns and rustle the grasses, so that I could no longer hear footfalls. When Sullivan spoke, it was in a voice of discovery. He said, ‘Kingsley’s had nothing to do with this. You were after me.’

  ‘Oh, Kingsley’s had quite a lot to do with it,’ Johnson said. ‘But latterly, yes. I’ve been after you.’

  ‘Because of Onyx? It’s ten years since we broke up.’

  ‘But some of you are still alive. You. Your chief? Perhaps others?’

  ‘Ten years ago,’ Sullivan said. ‘So who were you then? The last job was a man with a woman.’

  ‘That’s who I was then,’ Johnson said, and moved without warning out of cover, and up the exposed snowy slab towards the niche closest to Sullivan.

  I saw the spitting red flame as Sullivan fired, and then two answering shots that came from the right, and a little further uphill. They could have been aimed at either Johnson or Sullivan.

  Then Johnson said, ‘Kingsley? I don’t want Sullivan killed.’ His voice came from a different place. He had reached the slot in the rockhand he’d been aiming for. He sounded winded, but no more than I was. I let out my breath. Whatever else he had done, Sir Robert hadn’t joined Sullivan.

  Then Sullivan said, ‘You don’t want me killed? I have you in my sights now. Or I will have, when you can’t hold that groove any longer. Then a bullet for Morgan.’

  ‘So,’ said Johnson, ‘you may as well tell me. Who’s left?’

  ‘Me,’ said Sullivan. ‘And two hard men and himself, the CO. I’ll tell them you were asking. You’d wonder that it took ten years before you noticed they’d done you and the lady that little disservice. Well, it’s all over now. Have ye said your prayers, boyo? That’s the bell for the end of the round.’

  He was happily callous: a professional following his profession. And as he spoke, the waning light moved, and I saw the fissured rock against which Johnson was fitted, and further saw that he had a pressure-footing that could be measured in moments, and no possibility, with it, of using his rifle.

  I don’t know what he had planned when he made that heedless, unnecessary sprint. Perhaps to spring from his vantage point: but the gap between Sullivan and himself was too great. Morgan, his rifle gone, couldn’t help him and Kingsley, for all he knew then, might have been Sullivan’s man. Perhaps all he had wanted, more than anything, was to ask those odd questions of Sullivan.

  Perhaps, also, he understood Sullivan better than I did. Time, to Sullivan, was an enemy. He couldn’t be troubled to wait. I saw his head emerge, pale in the blackness; and saw his smile, and saw him take comfortable sight with his rifle. At the same moment Kingsley rose on the skyline. He called Sullivan’s name. Sullivan swung his own rifle up, firing quickly. The shot went astray. He steadied, and made to repeat it. But before that, Sir Robert squeezed the trigger.

  Springing out from the rocks, Morgan cannoned into him just as he did it. I heard Kingsley shout, and down below, Sullivan echoed it with a scream, his hand clapped to his shoulder, his rifle clattering out of his grasp. After the first second of shock, it was the loss of the rifle that revived him. He looked up once, before he turned to lurch downhill after it. His face, in the dim, opal light showed impatience, and pain, and a sort of preoccupied anger. I looked at the silent darkn
ess below and wondered what he would find if he ran. A carload of frightened tourists, perhaps. Or perhaps not. If the silent newcomers were from the kasbah, they hadn’t rushed to his rescue. If they were from the kasbah, they might even want rid of him, a liability like Sir Robert and Oppenheim. Then they would climb the hill and pick us all off. It wouldn’t be difficult. Sir Robert could shoot, but Morgan and I were unarmed. Johnson couldn’t do anything.

  I think I got to my feet. I know Kingsley threw Morgan off. And Morgan himself turned, prepared to crash his way down. Loud and distinct and authoritative, a man’s voice said ‘Stand clear.’

  It came from high ground, and quite a different quarter, and was without passion, or effort, or urgency. Then a revolver fired once, and Sebastian Sullivan threw his arms up and fell.

  Nobody spoke. The last of the light stole uphill, leaving us standing in darkness. For a moment Sirwa glowed still, and then was extinguished. I could hear men softly moving about me, but couldn’t distinguish their dress: cap or turban or robes. I started to shiver. A torch clicked, and the brilliant light rested on Sullivan’s lifeless body, and the waving gold hair, and the silk scarf that was yellow and red. Then it moved up and focused on Kingsley, the bantering lines turned into graffiti, and on Morgan, caught half-descended, with his narrow face gaunt, and finally on Johnson himself, still as a saltire, with his face like a teacher’s behind the two dazzling lenses.

  There were no ledges; only an unevenness in the stone. He had adhered to the crevice with nothing but pressure and willpower, but it was impossible that he could stay there much longer. Morgan, sliding and scrabbling, was coming as fast as he could.