Tangier

'Thank Allah, you bastard. Now start talking. I want it all.'

'Here? In public? Just being seen with you is bad enough.'

'Embarrassed? Good. I don't care-it serves you right.'

Robin ordered coffee and then began to talk, rubbing every so often at his crusted eyes and unshaven cheeks. 'Gottshalk owns the place. Not the building-les fonds de commerce. You know him-he wears dark specs and a ratty djellaba like a cape. He's an American, been here for years. He's got an 'arrangement' with the American Consulate. I thought you knew about that.'

'I try not to remember the details about every seedy foreigner in town. What 'arrangement'? Damn it, Robin, don't spin out a tale.'

'Well, Gottshalk's got this deal with the Consulate that when they have an American who's lost his passport or who's out of money and waiting for funds, they stash him temporarily in his hotel. Gottshalk lodges him, feeds him on credit, and doesn't bother to register him with the police. He gets reimbursed, of course, and a service fee besides. For this the Americans think he's great. He's very close over there to Lake and Knowles, which gives him status, because otherwise he's just a bum. Anyway, he's had hot and cold running boys for a while-'

'How long?'

'I don't know.'

'Years?'

'A season or two. It's known now in London and Amsterdam. When the queens come down here they know where they can go.'

'Disgusting! What's he like?'

'A bastard. Hard as nails. Charges too much and rakes it in from the boys. If they don't kick back seventy-five percent he's got a couple of goons who mess them up. But he guarantees them a place to sleep, and for a lot of boys that's good enough. It would be a pity if you closed him down, Hamid. Put a lot of kids out of work.'

'Do you really care?'

'Well, I'm human.'

'Yes, Robin, I suppose you are.' Hamid pushed back his chair. 'Not a word of this,' he said. 'I'm going to move on Gottshalk. I'll know who to blame if he's been warned.'

As he walked back to his car, he allowed his anger to seep away. Robin's just an informer, he thought. How much can I expect? But he knew perfectly well that Robin was more than that-that over the years he'd become a friend.

He found Aziz waiting in his office, a glass of tea in hand. Hamid looked over the reports that had piled up through the night, then announced that they were going to raid the Hotel Americain. Aziz was delighted, and seeing his pleasure Hamid explained what he had in mind. They'd mount the kind of operation he'd seen in European films- flawless, cool, sleek.

'Midnight,' he said, 'we'll move in. Empty the place, every room, every closet, every bed. Anyone who isn't registered we'll bring here and interrogate. Photograph them, fingerprint them, warn them, and let them go. Same with the Moroccan boys-no point in holding them. What I want is a case against Gottshalk, enough to kick him out. After we close down his bordello we'll start a cleanup along the beach.'

'Magnificent, Hamid. But why have we waited so long?'

'I don't know. Lethargy, I suppose. Now it pains me the way Tangier's turning into a dump. Every June the beach becomes a meat rack. We must change it back into a place to take a swim.'

He spent the morning with the state prosecutor discussing pending cases, plowing through dossiers. When, finally, he returned to his office, he found a message from Farid.

The bazaar was closed when he arrived, so he parked and walked up the Boulevard looking for his brother in each of the cafes. He found him at Claridge reading a newspaper, eating lunch.

'Ah, here you are.' He slid into a chair.

'I knew you'd find me, Hamid. How are you today?'

'Terrible. I've got too many cases. It's summer, and the town's gone mad.'

He ordered swordfish. After the waiter left Farid put his newspaper down.

'I found the book you wanted.'

'Good. Thanks.'

'At the French library. They have a shelf on Indochina there. This one, about colonial Hanoi, was covered by half an inch of dust.'

'Did you look at it?'

'Yes. After I cleaned it up. It's interesting, Hamid. I was quite surprised. Hanoi was something like Tangier.'

'That is interesting. Tell me more.'

'Well, it was an odd sort of place, like a provincial French town, but cosmopolitan too. Lots of nationalities like here-Indians, Chinese, Russians, French. And of course the natives, our equivalents-the Vietnamese, the Tonkinois.'

Hamid smiled.

'A foreign quarter. Big villas. French doctors, lawyers, churches, lycees. Even a tennis club in the middle of town, and then antique shops like mine, and little shops selling native wares. Buddhist temples too-the equivalent of our mosques, at least as far as the French could see. It's very interesting. I left it at the shop. I'll give it to you after lunch.' He paused. 'Tell me, Hamid, why are you interested in such a book?'

'Kalinka, of course.'

'I guessed that.'

'I want to know everything about her. And about all the places that she's lived.'

'She's telling you things now?'

Hamid nodded. 'Last night, however, we hit a snag. She went to see the Russian. He told her not to tell me any more. He's afraid I'm after him, building up a case to kick him out. She knows that isn't true, but now she's hesitant to go on.'

'Why's he afraid?'

'That's what I want to know. It's very curious, Farid-it seems our little Peter was once something of a spy.'

His swordfish came and as he ate it he began to describe to Farid the Russian community of Hanoi. And then the childhood of Peter Zvegintzov, the only son of a middle-class Russian couple, brought up in a little room behind their shop.

'There were all these children of different nationalities,' he said, 'so Peter learned lots of languages early on. There was also another Russian boy approximately the same age named Stephen Zhukovsky. He and Peter became best friends.

'As I reconstruct things, they grew up together in the 1920s and 1930s just about the time the first Communists began to surface in Hanoi. There were Russians, Soviet agents, sent down to set up networks in Indochina. Possibly it was one of these who recruited Peter and Stephen at the Hanoi lycee. Anyway, Kalinka says Peter always was a Communist, not, probably, out of deep conviction but to be different, to stand out. It's easy to imagine him thinking of his recruitment as a game. Secret meetings, a cell, fun with his best friend. But then, in 1940, with the fall of France, the Indochinese administration sided with Vichy, and the Japanese arrived.

'The Vietnamese Communists, directed from China by Ho Chi Minh, decided to side with the Allies. Peter and Stephen received their orders-to link up with the Viet Minh. Now here the politics become a little murky, but I don't think it's important to follow all the twists and turns. Just think of Peter, eighteen then, already stout, wearing spectacles, full of energy, eager, and alive, embarking with his friend Stephen Zhukovsky upon a dangerous double life.

'They were drafted, both of them, into the Vichy army, where they snooped around, collected information, then passed it along to the Viet Minh. It was dangerous work, of course, but to them still something of a game. It was a while before they realized how serious it was.'

Hamid finished eating, paid his and Farid's bills. Then they walked out onto the Boulevard to Farid's shop to retrieve the book. After that they turned down Rue Marco Polo, crossed the tracks that ran parallel to Avenue d'Espagne, and walked onto the beach. Hamid talked the whole way, stopping every so often to make a point. Farid listened, fascinated, head bowed, eyes always on the sand.