Moroccan Traffic: Send a Fax to the Kasbah

by Dorothy Dunnett

  ‘We?’ my mother said, smoking and eating.

  ‘Extended Editorial,’ said Johnson shortly. She rose comfortably and refilled his glass.

  ‘Extended New Flipping Testament,’ said Morgan. ‘Father, Son and Microchip of the Old Rolling Stone if I read the signs correctly. Doris is right. Once you get back into your skull, you’re not going to leave Emerson. And you’re going to make bloody sure that I don’t.’

  ‘Mo?’ said my mother.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You are stating the obvious. So what about the late Daniel Oppenheim?’ It was funny: that was what I had wanted to ask. And what about Muriel Oppenheim, I wanted to add, who had married her boss and ran the private side of his life to such perfection?

  ‘Muriel needn’t know,’ Johnson said. ‘Only that he died in the landslide.’ He paused. He said, ‘If he’d lived, they’d have put him away on a drugs charge.’ It was probably true. It exonerated Emerson, at least, from that murder.

  Morgan said, ‘You partnered Oppenheim, but you didn’t spot anything?’

  Johnson gazed at his empty glass, and then at my mother, who was rolling a fag. ‘Not at first. As it happens, I didn’t much like him. It shouldn’t matter, but sometimes it does. You lean over backwards.’

  He didn’t mention Muriel. I thought I understood. Whatever he’d been, he hadn’t been jealous.

  He said, ‘Oppenheim was the best man for the job; I’d no right to blame Emerson. You know what happened. The MOD had come to its senses and noticed that you were pure bloody dynamite. I was to become your best buddy, while Daniel found out how to unbundle you. We needed real figures, and the bomb scare was to get us those, among other things. Of course, he had them already from Kingsley. He was silly to set off the bomb, and Sullivan was crazy to kill the safe-breaker, but it took me a while to cotton on.’

  ‘You do this all the time?’ Morgan said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Johnson. ‘I get some real bastards for buddies. And of course, to forestall your next question, the figures were a great personal help in the MCG battle. Or would have been, if correct.’

  My mother had begun to cut up tart like an astrologer. Then she refilled Johnson’s glass, much more slowly. When you want her, she behaves like a waitress. I said, ‘Then why filch the figures I had at the airport? A counter-check against Mr. Oppenheim?’

  ‘And against you and me,’ said my mother. ‘That’s what they do in the movies.’ Morgan rose pointedly and fetched his own bottle.

  ‘The cinema,’ Johnson said, ‘has a lot to answer for.’ He said it quite well, but I had a feeling he would be talking French soon, and that my mother would be the last to be astonished.

  Morgan’s eyes narrowed. He said, ‘You freaking? I’ve got a question to ask before this meeting closes, and so has Wendy, and we both want an answer. Remember the special figures we got out for Emerson? The genuine, abysmal Kingsley position?’ He waited. ‘Johnson!’

  ‘This is a recording. Speak,’ Johnson said, ‘après le beep sonore.’ He wasn’t all that drunk.

  I said, ‘Mr. Morgan wants to know about that Fax that came to the kasbah. It had the same figures in it.’

  ‘And it nearly did for us,’ Morgan said.

  ‘But it didn’t,’ said Johnson. ‘Le Jamesbonderie.’

  Morgan began to articulate faster, if not necessarily more clearly. He said, ‘Will you damned well own up? No one could have sent that Fax unless you told them where and how and what names to use. Where did it come from?’

  I knew. Morgan had never seen the satellite direct-dial telephone on Dolly. I sat back and let Johnson admit it all. Then Morgan exploded.

  ‘You’ve got a Fax on that bloody gent’s water-toy? You faxed the kasbah number to Lenny, and he faxed back that Goddamned death notice? And the lie at the end about the Government taking me over?’

  ‘I should think that was Emerson,’ Johnson said. ‘Lenny liked you.’

  ‘It made me expendable!’ Morgan exclaimed.

  ‘Also Sir Robert,’ said my mother, stacking priceless dishes prior, I suppose, to taking them somewhere and washing them. ‘To place you in such danger, what was Sir Emerson’s object?’

  ‘Buggering up my personal relationships,’ Johnson said. He got up as well, a shade uncertainly, and walked to the windows for the purpose of delivering a statement to the scenery.

  ‘We’ve all been working to make sure of one thing, that Mo’s brain cells don’t end up with the bully boys. So long as his work wasn’t classified, the Arab group hoped to buy him with Kingsley’s. Remove that hope, and they’d make sure no one else got to use him. The Fax was sent to tell them he’d been security parcelled. In theory I then put my cloak on and rescued him. If in further theory I botched it, poor Mo, the Arabs would strike, and the Grim Reaper would get the Jacuzzis.’

  ‘And Sir Robert?’ said Morgan. ‘He was there. The figures made him a liar.’ He was sitting opposite me. I could see the legend on his T-shirt rising and falling.

  Johnson turned. ‘By then, Kingsley was a simple no-hoper. No one cared whether he got out or not. I do like a good sporting game. What do you like?’

  Morgan looked more solemn than angry. His eyes had narrowed on Johnson. ‘You invited that Fax. Dammit, did they think that I’d work for the Arabs?’

  ‘They didn’t know whether you knew that you wouldn’t,’ said Johnson, listening to himself. He looked gratified. He said, ‘I knew you wouldn’t. They’d hate your habits. They’d take you seriously. You might end up having to worry.’

  Morgan gazed at him. I knew he had made up his mind finally about Johnson. I knew he was thinking, as I was, of the kasbah, and the bomb, and those moments when Johnson did take control, whatever anyone said, and brought us out despite Oppenheim and the Arabs. Brought out Pymm, even. Johnson was good, but in his way he was as ruthless as Sullivan.

  My mother stacked the last of the dishes and stood with her arms at her sides, which in body language meant she was leaving. She also had her eyes on me, which meant she thought I was leaving as well.

  I knew she was right. The questions had all surely been asked, but for the personal one I didn’t know how to put to Johnson. Except that maybe it was easier to put it now, when he and Morgan might not remember it. I got up and said, ‘Mr. Johnson. The day the bomb went off in London, you’d already meant to make use of me? You took me to Sullivan’s club and made sure I’d hear about Essaouira. You knew I’d. . . You knew Sir Robert would hear. You did use me.’

  My mother shifted. I remembered Rita and Lenny, watching Johnson. I knew I shouldn’t have asked, and I shouldn’t expect him to answer.

  He did, however. He even reverted to very clear English. He said, ‘I needed your help very much at that stage, but we didn’t know one another, and there was nothing I could actually tell you. I’d seen you were quick and observant, and whoever you reported to, you’d do whatever seemed good for your company. From that, of course, everything followed. If you’re sorry, then of course I am as well. But I can’t regret that very nice luncheon. I should have wanted to take you there anyway.’

  He knew what I was asking, and had answered it. Whether he was speaking the truth, I had no way of telling. Far more people had known than I’d bargained for. I said, ‘I don’t blame anyone now.’

  He studied my face, then he gave a slow, gentle nod and turned away from me. He meant, I think, to sit down, but Morgan prevented it. He was on his feet, his epaulettes set for a beam swell. Morgan said, ‘Wendy ought to be told who was used.’

  ‘Mo?’ said my mother. ‘Anything Wendy needs to know, her mother will tell her. Have you had all the wine you need?’ She had a point. All the bottles were empty.

  ‘He’s had all the wine I need,’ said Johnson obscurely. ‘Goodbye, Doris.’

  My mother had walked to the door. I joined her. Morgan stood in front of Johnson and, using his hand like a bat, hit up first one of Johnson’s palms, then the other. As they fell, he stared glaring a
fter them. Then he looked up. ‘Sailing, is it?’ he said. ‘Well, Jesus Christ, aren’t you tough! I thought they’d be meat.’

  ‘Did you,’ said Johnson. He spoke a shade drily. I’d forgotten.

  His hands were his cornerstone business. I remembered something else, that once had seemed so important. I stopped, bumping into my mother.

  I said abruptly, ‘Sir Robert’s portrait. It never got finished.’

  I saw my mother’s face alter, and Morgan’s. I saw the acrimony in Johnson’s face lessen and melt into untrustworthy blandness. ‘Well, not this version,’ said Johnson. ‘The one I did in London’s all right. All expensively framed for the Academy.’

  My mother bared her complete dentures. Wreathed in smoke, they perform like a pop group. Morgan said slowly, ‘How?’

  ‘I did two,’ Johnson said. ‘Stopped the London sittings, of course, with my tantrum, but the main portrait was kept in my studio. Finished it before going to Marrakesh. I didn’t leave London till Wendy did.’ He smiled at me. It was so rare that I stared at him. He said, ‘Might do Sir Robert a bit of personal good. Too late, I’m afraid, for the Company.’

  It was too late in more than one way. My training overcame my natural feelings. I said, ‘The cheque! Mr. Johnson, the cheque. Will they honour it?’

  ‘No,’ Johnson said. ‘I tore the cheque up. Ethically, I took him as a subject, not a commission. And a good one: I was lucky to get him. The portrait I thought Charity might like as a gift. It’s her money he’s going to live on, unless he flutters off to the States with his title. I rather hope not.’

  Charity. The name illumined, suddenly, something that Morgan had started to complain about. I said, ‘Charity. She was the one Mr. Johnson used most. He really exploited her goodwill. But she didn’t mind, Mr. Morgan. She did the right thing. In a real way, she was loyal to Sir Robert.’

  Morgan sat, his eyes fixed on Johnson like press-studs. He didn’t comment, and neither did Johnson. My mother answered, as usual. She took her fag out of her mouth and coughed as if she enjoyed it. ‘That’s right, Wendy; speak up for Charity. You too, Mo. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’

  She took a puff and viewed her blank, knackered audience. Then she exhaled the smoke like an offering. She said, ‘Them Outward-Bound Weekends, would they be something like this, Mr. Johnson?’

  ‘Not so quiet,’ Johnson said.

  That afternoon, Johnson left for Agadir and his yacht, having written to Muriel Oppenheim. Neither she nor Mr. James Auld would attend the Final of the Africa Cup sous le Haut Patronage de SM and SAR who, with various men from la Wilaya, were about to be charmed by the news that their portraits were going to be finished. As a victim of ammonia, Johnson himself looked quite authentic: as if he had been hit on the head and had not yet got himself fully together.

  The Canadian journalists turned up in the Gazelle that evening and occupied the elegant bar of beaten copper and brass, hovered over by ONMT and RAM and the barman. They were shocked by Sullivan’s death, but rather relieved by Pymm’s absence on business. They were going home soon, and Canadian tourists would come in return to all the same places.

  I hoped it would help the real bits of Morocco, all the endeavour of Le Maroc en Fête. The tennis, the skiing, the polo, the folk dancing and the Fantasia and all the events attended by Doris my mother in the company of the late Ellwood Pymm. I wondered what my mother really made of it all, a woman into her fifties, dreaming of Omar Sharif and Beau Geste and the Desert Song. I had to be pleased with the way she had managed.

  I thought I should tell her quite soon that I had changed my career expectations. She had always done her best to help me up the managerial ladder: to learn to Plan, Organise, Direct, Staff, Coordinate, Report and Budget, or podscorb, as the proper term has it. To learn to run a sound business, that would never let anyone down. Also to make up to me, of course, for her own lack of trained business acumen. The skills denied to my mother, she had expected these courses to give me. In many ways, I still think them invaluable, although I notice she no longer samples them.

  I had thought my judgement was good, but this week had shown me reason to doubt it. So perhaps Muriel Oppenheim doubted hers. Charity, from the same world as Sir Robert, had understood her partner better than either of us.

  This week I had had the business opening I longed for: now I had lost my road to advancement. Another chance, as had been hinted, might come; but the road itself was no longer inviting. This week I had done all that was asked of me. But all the acts of initiative, it seemed, had sprung from people whose lives were not structured at all, who didn’t conform: who couldn’t spell properly, some of them.

  Not without pain, I reasoned out what this week had manifested. I couldn’t be them, but they needed someone like me. I would make an excellent executive assistant to Mohammed Morgan’s extradited division, and to its possible MCG cousin, with its brotherhood of unorthodox bosses. I was prepared to apply my problem-solving techniques to keeping their overheads down, and their offices properly run, and stepping in when they slagged one another. I wasn’t going to miss Trish or Val. Or Sir Robert.

  The night before we went back to London, I explained my decision to Doris and she listened, coughing and picking up stitches. At the end, she resumed knitting rapidly. ‘I began to twig you was deviating, the day you accepted Mo’s offer. Soft on this chip fellow, are you?’

  ‘Mo Morgan!’ I said.

  ‘That’s good,’ said my mother. ‘Swims a lot, doesn’t he? Got his eye somewhere else, by my reckoning. If you ain’t fussed about that, you could do a lot worse for a boss. Unless you thought of anyone else?’

  ‘No,’ I said. I said it after a pause.

  ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘By the way, I got that girl business wrong. She didn’t stay above two days in Madeira. And she didn’t hop across to Agadir, neither.’

  ‘What girl?’ I said. After a bit I said, ‘There was some girl he knew in the Balkans.’

  ‘That’s the one. Dubrovnik,’ my mother said. ‘Nothing to it, of course. Never could be, with the hole he’s dug himself into. Did you ever get that photograph of yourself on the back of the Harley? We could make a Christmas card of it.’

  I wish I were like Rita.

  I wish I were like my stupid father.

  Some day, I shall say that to her. To my mother. To Doris.

  Some day, but not damned well yet.

  Synopses of ‘Johnson Johnson’ Titles

  Published by House of Stratus

  Ibiza Surprise

  Life in Ibiza can be glorious and fast, especially for those who have money. Sarah Cassells is an intelligent girl and has many admirers. Having completed her training as a chef, she hears of her father’s violent death on the island, and refuses to believe it when told it was suicide. She becomes involved with a series of people who might be able to shed some light on events, including her brother who is an engineer for a Dutch firm from whom a secret piece of machinery has been stolen. As Ibiza prepares to celebrate an annual religious festival events become more convoluted and macabre. Sarah has choices to make; none are simple, but fortunately Johnson Johnson, the enigmatic portrait painter and master of mystery sails in on his yacht ‘Dolly’. Together they may get at the truth, but with murder, espionage and theft all entwined within the tale, there are constant surprises for the reader - and for Sarah!

  Moroccan Traffic

  The Chairman of Kingsley Conglomerates is conducting negotiations, which are both difficult and somewhat dubious, in Morocco. He is accompanied by executive secretary Wendy Helmann. However, there are soon distractions when unorthodox Rita Geddes appears on the scene. Wendy discovers that there is much more at stake than the supposed negotiations, and finds herself at the centre of kidnappings, murder, and industrial espionage. Explosions, a car chase across the High Atlas out of Marrakesh and much more follows. Of course, the prior arrival of portrait painter Johnson Johnson is in many ways fortuitous, but he has some ghosts of his o
wn to lay.

  Operation Nassau

  Dr. B. McRannoch is in the Bahamas with her father who has moved there from Scotland because of asthma. She is a savvy and tough young lady who shows much independence of mind and spirit. However, when Sir Bart Edgecombe, a British agent who has been poisoned with arsenic falls ill on his way back from New York, she becomes involved in a series of events beyond her wildest imagination. Drawn into an espionage plot where there are multiple suspects and characters, it is only the inevitable presence of Johnson Johnson that saves the day. As with all of the Johnson series, nothing is quite as straightforward as it at first seems, and there are many complicating factors to grip the reader as well as the added bonus of another exotic location.

  Roman Nights

  Ruth Russell, an astronomer working at the Maurice Frazer Observatory, is enjoying herself in Rome – that is, until her lover, Charles Digham, a fashion photographer and writer of obituary verses, has his camera stolen. The thief ends up as a headless corpse in the zoo park tolleta. Johnson Johnson, enigmatic portrait painter, spy and sleuth, is in Rome to paint a portrait of the Pope and is therefore on hand to investigate in one of Dunnett’s usual thrilling and convoluted plots that grips the reader from cover to cover. There is something far more deadly at stake than just the secrets of a couture house …

  Rum Affair

  This mystery is told from the point of view of the ‘Bird’; Tina Rossi, a famous coloratura soprano who arrives to sing at the Edinburgh Festival, only to find a murder victim in a cupboard, whilst at the same time her lover, top scientist Kenneth Homes, has gone missing. Saved from the long arm of the law by Johnson Johnson, a world renowned portrait painter and enigmatic solver of mysteries, Tina joins him on a yacht race to the Hebrides - there are connections anyway as Homes was conducting top secret research in the area. Here, though, there is yet more trouble and the mystery deepens as Johnson’s yacht ‘Dolly’ nears the island of Rum, where it turns into a race for life rather than prize money. This is the first title in the Johnson Johnson series and in common with the remainder involves an intricate plot and solution which is far from immediately obvious.