them talking in some language he had never heard before.
He asked Roskin about it. 'What do they speak in Tangier?'
'Just about everything,' the other had told him, begrudging the information. 'Mostly a Rifian version of Arabic. But any native you're apt to have anything to do with usually speaks either French or Spanish.' He snorted with contempt at his prisoner. 'Do you speak either?'
'I took some French,' Frank said. He didn't add that it hadn't been much. To hell with these guys.
Roskin removed the handcuffs at the foot of the aircraft's ladder and the three waited for a few minutes until the plane's crew had brought their luggage.
Only one customs examiner stood in the administration building. Frank put his bags on the long, low table and, at the other's gesture, opened them. The Moroccan official was two days unshaven, had a stub of a cigarette in his mouth, and though he wore a uniform, it looked as though it had never been laundered since leaving the factory. His shirt was unbuttoned two buttons.
He dug roughly into Frank Pinell's things with dirty hands, making no attempt at neatness. He came upon a sub-miniature Leica-Polaroid camera which had once belonged to Frank's father and pocketed it.
'Hey, for Christ's sake,' Frank exclaimed.
'Take it easy,' Roskin told him. 'And just hope he doesn't see anything else he thinks is worth flogging.'
Seething inwardly, Frank held his peace. His cursory ex-animations completed, the customs officer took up a piece of blue chalk and marked each bag with an Arabic scribble, then made a contemptuous gesture of dismissal. He looked at the overnight bags that Roskin and MacDonald were carrying, but the latter said something in French which Frank didn't get, and the Moroccan shrugged and moved off.
'This way,' MacDonald said, gesturing with his head toward an office door.
There was no identity screen on the office door. The IABI men didn't bother to knock, but simply pushed the door open and ushered their prisoner in. The office beyond was as filthy as the large hall outside and the fat official behind the sole desk was almost as disreputable in appearance as the customs man. He had a warm bottle of some orange-colored drink sitting to his left and from time to time took a swallow of it. The day wasn't particularly hot, but his round, lardy face was oozing oily sweat.
The three came up to the desk and MacDonald spoke in French, then brought forth several papers and put them before the other. The Mokkadem took them up and looked expressionlessly at Frank Pinell for a long moment, then down at the papers. MacDonald took from his pocket a small gold coin and put it on the desk. The Moroccan swept it with a fat hand into his top desk drawer and grunted.
'That came from you,' the IABI man told his charge. 'We'll settle later.'
Frank sucked in breath but said nothing. It was their top, all he could do was let them keep spinning it.
The Moroccan official took up a rubber stamp and banged it on several of the papers, handed two of them to Frank, and put the rest in his desk. He looked up at MacDonald, then over to Frank, then returned to scanning the tattered pornographic magazine he had been perusing when they entered.
Frank said, 'You mean that's all? That's all that's involved in my entering this country for good?'
They turned and left. As they went, Roskin said to him, 'Not quite. Tomorrow morning you go to police headquarters on the Place de Mohammed Fifth and register. They'll want to see your papers, photograph and fingerprint you, find out where you're staying. Every time you move, you have to report your new address.'
'That brings us to my money,' Frank said.
MacDonald brought forth a booklet, opened it, and took a stylo from the pocket of his shirt. 'Sign this receipt,' he said.
Frank scanned it quickly. One thousand pseudo-dollars in gold Swiss francs.
As he signed, he said, 'What do they use as a means of exchange in Tangier?'
'They use currency,' Roskin said. 'In Morocco, it's the dirham. Five dirham are approximately one pseudo- dollar.'
MacDonald returned his receipt booklet to his pocket, brought forth some small gold coins, and counted them out into Frank's outstretched hand. 'There's your severance pay,' he said.
Frank said, 'I owe you one for that bribe you gave the official.'
'Never mind,' the IABI man said, amused. 'Let's say it's on me.'
That set Frank back. He looked down at the small number of Swiss coins in his hand and looked at one to check its denomination.
'How many francs to the pseudo-dollar?' he said, scowling.
'Two,' Roskin told him.
Frank calculated quickly and looked up. 'This comes to only two hundred pseudo-dollars.''
MacDonald said to his fellow agent, 'He's not only an intellectual but a mathematician.'
'I'm supposed to get a thousand,' Frank said, his voice tight.
MacDonald scoffed at him. 'What'd you do with a thousand pseudo-dollars? Probably waste it. Go through it in a week. As it is, Roskin and I will lay over in Madrid on our way home, and we'll hoist a couple of drinks to you in Chicote's.'
Frank stared from one of them to the other. 'You miserable bastards,' he said, his lips going white. He took a step forward.
The other two stepped back warily, and Roskin's hand slipped inside his jacket.
MacDonald said, his voice low, 'You know what the Moroccan police would do if we shot you, here and now?
Exactly nothing; they couldn't care less. Your type is a dime a dozen in Tangier.'
As Frank glared, Roskin smiled. 'Over there's the exit to the taxi stand. The fare into town is five dirhams. Don't pay more. You can't trust these gooks.'
The two IABI men turned and left him standing there. Frank Pinell glared after them for a long moment. There was nothing he could do. Sure, once he got organized, he could write a letter of protest to Judge John Worthington. And a fat pile of crap that'd get him. He'd been silly enough to sign the receipt for one thousand pseudo-dollars, hadn't he? Signed it before getting the funds in his hands.
He picked up his bags, made his way to the
From the money exchange booth he went on through the door to the taxi stand. The driver was a small, evil- looking type with a dirty rag of an orange turban wrapped carelessly around his head. The garment he wore looked like a seamless bathrobe made of brown homespun and there were yellow, backless leather slippers on his feet.
Frank looked in the window of the ancient cab, even as he sharply slapped the hand of an urchin who was trying to pick his pocket. He said, 'Do you speak English?'
The cabby's shifty eyes took him in, evidently deciding his potential fare was American, rather than British. He said, 'I talk everything, Jack.'
Frank put his bags in the back of the small cab and sat up front next to the driver. The cabby evidently wasn't accustomed to bathing. Frank rolled down the window and said, 'Take me to the cheapest hotel in Tangier.'
The other grinned at him, displaying teeth like a broken-down picket fence. 'The cheapest European type hotel, eh, Jack?'
'The cheapest hotel, period,' Frank said definitely.
'You ever slept in a caravansary, Jack? Very cheap. One dirham a night. You sleep on a pile of straw, eh? Twenty other people in the same room, eh? Donkeys and goats, sometimes maybe even a camel. Other people are Rifs, down from the mountains to bring their things to the
Frank sighed. 'All right, take me to the cheapest European hotel,' he said in surrender.
The cabby dropped the lift lever of the prehistoric cab and, when they were aircushion borne, tromped on the accelerator, at first without result. He kicked it viciously and they started up. The American realized that the vehicle must be battery powered, rather than using power packs or picking up juice from the highway. Obviously, the gravel road wasn't automated. However, from what he had read, Morocco wasn't energy-poor. At least a third of the southern stretches of the country were in the Sahara and, in common with neighboring Algeria, the Sherifian Empire of Morocco had been among the first to use major solar power stations with Reunited Nations assistance. Endless
