securing ropes. In the fields a man in a burnous sat on a bony white donkey, which he tapped and poked with a stick. Occasionally a BMW flashed past, leaving a flicker of Arabic lettering on the retina. The smell was of the sea, woodsmoke, manured earth and pollution.
The outskirts of Rabat loomed. He took the ring road and came into the city from the east. He remembered the turning after the Societe Marocaine de Banques. The tarmac gave out immediately and he eased up the troughed and pitted track to the main gate of Yacoub Diouri's walled property. The gate-man recognized him. He swung up the driveway, lined with Washingtonian palms, and stopped outside the front door. Two servants came out in blue livery with red piping, each wearing a fez. The hire car was driven away. Falcon was taken inside to the living room, which overlooked the pool where Yacoub swam his morning lengths. He sat down on one of the cream leather sofas, in front of a low wooden table inlaid with mother-of-pearl. The servant left. Birds fluttered in the garden. A boy dragged a hose out and began spraying the hibiscus.
Yacoub Diouri arrived, wearing a blue jellabah and white barbouches. A servant set down a brass tray with a pot of mint tea and two small glasses on the table and left. Yacoub's hair, which he'd allowed to grow long, was wet and he now had a close-cropped beard. They embraced with an enthusiastic Arabic greeting and held on to each other by the shoulders looking into each other's eyes and smiling; Falcon saw warmth and wariness in Yacoub's. He had no idea what was readable in his own.
'Would you prefer coffee, Javier?' asked Yacoub, releasing him.
'Tea is fine,' said Falcon, sitting on the other side of the table.
Falcon's question was humped up in his mind. He felt an unaccustomed nervousness between them. He knew for certain now that Spanish directness was not going to work; a more spiralling, philosophical dynamic was called for.
'The world has gone crazy once again,' said Diouri wearily, pouring the mint tea from a great height.
'Not that it was ever sane,' said Falcon. 'We've got no patience for the dullness of sanity.'
'But, strangely, there's an unending appetite for the dullness of decadence,' said Diouri, handing him a glass of tea.
'Only because clever people in the fashion industry have persuaded us that the next handbag decision is crucial,' said Falcon.
'Touche,' said Diouri, smiling and taking a seat on the sofa opposite. 'You're sharp this morning, Javier.'
'There's nothing like a bit of fear for honing the mind,' said Falcon, smiling.
'You don't look frightened,' said Diouri.
'But I am. Being in Seville is different to watching it on television.'
'At least fear provokes creativity,' said Diouri, veering away from Falcon's intended line, 'whereas terror either crushes it or makes us run around like headless chickens. Do you think the fear people experienced under the regime of Saddam Hussein made them creative?'
'What about the fear that comes with freedom? All those choices and responsibilities?'
'Or the fear from lack of security,' said Diouri, sipping his tea, enjoying himself now that he knew Falcon was not going to be too European. 'Did we ever have that conversation about Iraq?'
'We've talked a lot about Iraq,' said Falcon. 'Moroccans love to talk to me about Iraq, while everybody north of Tangier hates to talk about it.'
'But we, you and I, have never had the original conversation about Iraq,' said Diouri. 'That question: Why did the Americans invade?'
Falcon sat back on the sofa with his tea. This was how it always was with Yacoub when he was in Morocco. It was how it was with Falcon's Moroccan family in Tangier; with all Moroccans, in fact. Tea and endless discussion. Falcon never talked like this in Europe. Any attempt would be greeted with derision. But this time it was going to provide the way in. They had to circle each other before the proposal could finally be made.
'Almost every Moroccan I've ever spoken to thinks that it was about oil.'
'You learn quickly,' said Diouri, acknowledging that Falcon had acquiesced to the Moroccan way. 'There must be more Moroccan in you than you think.'
'My Moroccan side is slowly filling up,' said Falcon, sipping the tea.
Diouri laughed, motioned to Javier for his glass, and poured two more measures of high-altitude tea.
'If the Americans wanted to get their hands on Iraqi oil, why spend $180 billion on an invasion when they could raise sanctions at the stroke of a pen?' said Diouri. 'No. That's the facile thinking of what the British like to call 'the Arab street'. The tea-house huffers and puffers think that people only do things for immediate gain, they forget the urgency of it all. The invention of the Weapons of Mass Destruction pretext. Haranguing the UN for more resolutions. Rushing the troops to the borders. The hastiness of the planned invasion, which made no provision for the aftermath. What was all that about? Where was Iraqi oil going to go? Down the plug hole?'
'Wasn't it more about the control of oil in general?' said Falcon. 'We know a bit more about the emerging economies of China and India now.'
'But the Chinese weren't making a move,' said Diouri. 'Their economy won't be larger than America's until 2050. No, that doesn't make sense either, but at least you didn't say that word that I have to listen to now when I go to dinners in Rabat and Casablanca and find myself sitting next to American diplomats and businessmen. They tell me that they went into Iraq to give them democracy.'
'Well, they did have elections. There is an Iraqi assembly and a constitution, as a result of ordinary Iraqi people taking considerable risks to vote.'
'The terrorists made a political mistake there,' said Diouri. 'They forgot to offer the people a choice that didn't include violence. Instead they said: 'Vote and we will kill you.' But they had already been killing them anyway, when they were walking down the street to get some bread with their children.'
'That's why you have to swallow the word democracy at your dinners,' said Falcon. 'It was a victory for the 'Occupation'.'
'When I hear them use that word, I ask them-very quietly, I should add-'When are you going to invade Morocco and get rid of our despotic king, and his corrupt government, and install democracy, freedom and equality in Morocco?''
'I bet you didn't.'
'You see. You're right. I didn't. Why not?'
'Because of the state security system of informers left over from the King Hassan II days?' said Falcon. 'What did you say to them?'
'I did what most Arabs do, and said those things behind their backs.'
'Nobody likes to be called a hypocrite, especially the leaders of the modern world.'
'What I said to their faces were the words of Palmerston, a nineteenth-century British prime minister,' said Diouri. 'In talking about the British Empire he said: 'We have no eternal allies and no perpetual enemies. What we have are eternal and perpetual interests.''
'How did the Americans react to that?'
'They thought it was Henry Kissinger who'd said it,' said Diouri.
'Didn't Julius Caesar say it before all of them?'
'We Arabs are often derided as impossible to deal with, probably because we have a powerful concept of honour. We cannot compromise when honour is at stake,' said Diouri. 'Westerners only have interests, and it's a lot easier to trade in those.'
'Maybe you need to develop some interests of your own.'
'Of course, some Arab countries have the most vital interest in the global economy-oil and gas,' said Diouri. 'Miraculously this does not translate into power for the Arab world. It's not only outsiders who find us impossible to deal with-we can't seem to deal with each other.'
'Which means you're always operating from a position of weakness.'
'Correct, Javier,' said Diouri. 'We behave no differently to anyone else in the world. We hold conflicting ideas in our heads, agreeing with all of them. We say one thing, think another and do something else. And in playing these games, which everybody else plays, we always forget the main point: to protect our interests. So a world power can condescend to us about 'democracy' when their own foreign policy has been responsible for the murder of the democratically elected Patrice Lumumba and the installation of the dictator Mobutu in Zaire, and the assassination of the democratically elected Salvador Allende to make way for the brutality of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, because they have no honour and only interests. They always operate from a position of strength. Now, do you see where
