The Deadly Orbit Mission. Van Wyck Mason

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СКАЧАТЬ driver insisted, however, on extracting an English lesson from his passenger. “You ’ave been to Tanzheer before?”

      North allowed as he had, but that had been long ago, during the days of the International Zone when Tangier, feeding on the disarray of a war-torn world, was the bountiful haven of nylon, tobacco and assorted smugglers of everything imaginable, including espionage agents, money changers and people with bank accounts they didn’t want folks at home to learn about.

      Hugh was aware that all this skullduggery supposedly had come to a gradual halt since Tangier had become an integral part of the Kingdom of Morocco. He also remained aware that, nevertheless, Tangier remained one of the easiest-going ports in the world. Its residents still paid no income tax, no sales tax, no gift tax and no inheritance tax.

      Rich Britons and others whose personal fortunes would have been all but wiped out by home-country income taxes were able to keep their estates fairly intact by establishing residence in this buzzing eternally picaresque North African city.

      Any person possessing a valid passport—or perhaps an almost valid one—could become a legal resident simply by setting up housekeeping on this point overlooking the Strait of Gibraltar. He could also organize a corporation and not be bothered by regulations designed to protect stockholders. Therefore, for anyone inclined to dodge taxes, hoard gold or engage in other dubious ventures the City still presented opportunities unmatched elsewhere.

      “Tanzheer is the same, still not the same,” the driver offered, as if reading his passenger’s thoughts. “Is different, but us Moroccans not so dumb. We have laws prohibiting smuggling and making funny beezness weeth money exchanges.” He leered over a patched shoulder. “Hélas, no more circuses or strange shows weeth acrobat sex ladies; but still we know when to look zee other way. Comprenez-vous?”

      “Plus ça change—” the Colonel ventured.

      “Plus c’est la meme chose. Zee touristes want strange excitements, bon. Zee government want les touristes.”

      North remembered well the unique appearance of Tangier, that the centuries-old port tucked away on a bay hemmed in by rocky hills which then had been ruled, uniquely among the world’s cities, by a special Legislative Body of twenty-seven members comprised of six Moroccan Moslems, three Moroccan Jews with the rest of the seats distributed among Britain, Spain, France, Italy, Belgium, Holland and Portugal.

      Neither French nor Spanish territory and only technically belonging to Morocco, it had had its affairs directed by a Committee of Control, established forty years earlier by a Convention of the Algeciras Conference. In actual charge during that period had been eight Consuls whose governments maintained missions in this supremely strategic city.

      There had also been a Legislative Assembly whose members were appointed by the eight Consulates which prepared laws, but the Committee only accepted laws approved by it while blandly vetoing the rest. High-handed, perhaps, but few Tangerines seemed to mind; they enjoyed the efficiency with which their affairs had been conducted.

      A truly international form of management also had been in effect; the Directeur de Police invariably was Belgian; the Directeur-Adjoint a Frenchman; the Commissaire de la Sûreté was English and the Chief Medical Officer was Spanish.

      The system had worked. It discreetly administered a city that had become famous as an international headquarters for bartering—if one didn’t straightaway find what he wanted in Tangier all one had to do was ask for it—and pay.

      All that had changed a decade ago when Tangier had passed directly under the control of the Kingdom of Morocco but, as the taxi driver agreed, the more things changed, the more they remained the same—more or less.

      As the cab left the scrubby valley country in the brightening dawn and rattled between rows of gaunt and scabrous eucalyptus trees the big driver flicked his eyes from the rearview mirror to pick up North’s face. “You ’ad no deefeecultee with authorities at airport, Monsieur?”

      “Of course not. Why?”

      The driver shrugged, “Bien. Car behind been following us ever since we leave airport, is all.”

      The Colonel assumed an air of indifference. “Guess he’s headed for Tangier, too. What’s so special about that?”

      “Rien du tout. But never before ’ave a policier car follow me all zee way from Boukhalef to Tanzheer, is all.” He grinned into the mirror. “Is nothing, bien sûr.”

      By the time the taxi had entered the city proper and made its way to the Socco Grande the driver had asked three times whether Hugh wanted him to shake the policier car. The G-2 man scoffed at the suggestion each time noticing that the driver was a little too eager to make a dash himself. Probably a well-earned case of guilty conscience over some misdemeanor of his own North ruminated.

      Nevertheless, he felt a twinge of disquiet over this tailing, which by now was obvious. He did not often ask for active police cooperation on his assignments but he did appreciate freedom from interference from the same source.

      Never one to fret unnecessarily he dropped the subject from his mind momentarily and enjoyed the familiar sights of the Socco Grande, or Great Souk, while his nostrils took in familiar if pungent aromas. Little had changed in the great Arab market place; its streets remained just as narrow, dirty and twisting as he remembered them, and a sea of white-robed humanity parted slowly and seemingly with indifference to let the taxi pass.

      He recognized coal-black Moors, hawk-faced Berbers down from the mountains with their firewood or cactus-laden donkeys, their goatskins and baskets of produce. These mountaineers squatted in circles listening to storytellers and flute players and watching magicians perform age-old artful deceptions. The minty scent of Arab tea mingled with the vivid odors of spices, camels, manure, and the fumes of rank tobacco. Donkeys brayed and their heehaws clashed with the voices of barter in a mighty cacophony.

      North took advantage of a lurching turn to glance swiftly back and at once spotted the police car behind. That peek was all he needed to be transported back a dozen years for beside the driver of an antique Mercedes sat an unmistakably familiar shape—that of Inspecteur Ibrahim René Potin, of le Bureau de la Sûreté . The glance also told Hugh that the wiry little man, caught in a burst of sunlight, was wearing his inevitable chéchia or dull-red fez, as usual tilted forward onto his forehead in the manner of a sodden sailor.

      But there never had been anything dull or sodden about Ibrahim René Potin, as North recalled grimly. The Inspector had, in fact, given North a hard time during the man from G-2’s last visit to Tangier when he’d been preceded to Tangier by a slickly convincing double who’d been accepted as the Colonel himself.

      No sooner had the real North set foot in Tangier than he’d been clapped into the calabozo at Maltabata Prison as an imposter. True, Inspector Potin finally had become convinced that he was being duped and had cooperated gamely in helping to bring the case to a satisfactory conclusion. Nevertheless Potin could prove troublesome if he chose to go by the book.

      As the taxi suddenly reached an opening and spurted away from the Socco Grande into the Rue de la Liberté and the sharply contrasting modern city, North quickly made a résumé of the crisis that first had led him into this exotic corner of Africa. Here, in this blend of the Old World and the New, so many thousands of miles from the Pentagon and its National Military Command Center it was difficult to credit that he’d been conferring only a few hours earlier on a subject of stark, space-age immediacy. He would have to remain in the dark about the progress of events at home—and in outer space, for that matter—unless he received a message canceling his mission before СКАЧАТЬ