Tangier (48 page)

Suddenly one of the women shrieked. When he turned to her she pointed down to the left, at the little cluster of shops at the base of the Mountain and the mob massed on the bridge. There was pandemonium down there, shouts and cries, people running back and forth, waving torches, crazed. There were other fires too, and he could see figures in the night running up the Mountain, wielding torches and swinging chains. He heard sirens closer than before. Something was happening. He could feel the savage anger of the mob. It had been galvanized by the spectacle of the fire. It was as if all of Dradeb was tensed, coiled to attack.

He began to rush down toward them, tripping, stumbling, then picking himself up and charging on, over piles of rusty cans and broken glass, through mounds of trash so high he sank into them to his knees. The smell of the fire merged now with the foul aroma of outhouse filth. The clamor grew louder; the sirens wailed as he struggled on, picking his way, oblivious to the possibility that he might fall from the narrow ridge between the back walls of shanties and the deep Jew's River gorge.

'Ihe earth here was not firm. The cliffs were eroded. There were always mudslides when it rained. Several times he felt the land give way, but still he stumbled on, grasping the fence along the ridge built to keep rats from entering the slum. As he approached the bottom he was better able to decipher the cries, a chorus of angry male voices yelling "Burn!" and the mob, lashed to fury by this chant, roaring back its approval in savage animal response.

He was blocked forty feet above them by a cement barrier that diverted flash-flood water from the bridge. Below he saw them in extreme disorder, a vicious, thrashing mass. Someone was being trampled. Someone else was being kicked. Then he saw flames leap up from behind La Colombe as young men bailed gasoline against its walls. In seconds the fire grew—they were burning Peter out. The flames leaped, engulfed the shop; then, a moment later, he saw Peter in silhouette, clutching at the security grill, desperately trying to escape.

The mob was mad, deranged. Were they going to stand there while Peter burned alive? Already the young people who'd set the fire were streaming up the Mountain with their cans of gasoline. Hamid drew his gun, raised it, fired it into the air three times. People stopped, gazed up at him, a menacing figure on the ledge, as he motioned frantically and yelled to them to let the Russian out. But the wind and the shouts below drowned his words. In desperation he raised his revolver again, this time to shoot at them. He held the gun straight out, gripped in both his hands, prepared to fire, massacre, do anything he could to bring them to their senses and make them stop. But Peter fell back just then, disappeared into his flame-filled shop. There was silence as the crowd watched him burn, then turned back to Hamid with fearful eyes.

The cry of "Burn" began again. The chant grew thunderous, and the mob began to stir toward the Mountain Road. Hamid's gun was still raised. He hated the rioters, and wanted to kill them, but though his hands were steady his mind was not. He began to tremble, knowing that it was impossible, that he could never fire at unarmed people out of hate. As he lowered his revolver they turned away from him, and a huge pack of them ran up the road. He watched helpless, crying out to them against the wind as they stormed the Mountain, dispersed among the villas. Then he lost his footing, slipped, felt himself falling, tumbling amidst wastes of cans and glass, smelled the stink of sewage as he rolled over and over, felt his head bounce against a rock as he fell into the slime.

He lay there a long while, slipping in and out of consciousness, hearing an occasional shout and cry. Finally awakened by a siren whirring very close, he raised himself and stumbled along to the bridge. He found it occupied by militia and police. The fire trucks had gotten through; men were at work putting out the flames. Soldiers, armed with guns and staves, were restoring order to the Mountain and Dradeb.

T
here had been a rampage—that much was clear the following day. It had lasted several hours. Great damage had been done. Mobs of Moroccans had attacked the Mountain, then been violently repelled by troops. Now Tangier, filled with soldiers from barracks around the town, was under military command, while the police directed traffic and a team of inspectors from the Ministry of the Interior began an investigation of "the events."

Hamid, a bandage on his head, made an inventory of the damage with Aziz. They visited the smoldering ruins of the Freys', found that the electric driveway gates had been expertly cross-wired, and that all the Alsatian dogs had been shot. There was no trace of the inhabitants—Hamid assumed they'd been burned up inside. Out on the lawn he found an empty frame which, according to the servants, had contained the Freys' Renoir. The painting had not been burned but had been cut away. Hamid had no doubt it would reappear, exquisitely reframed, on the wall of some Israeli museum.

La Colombe had burned to the ground, and with it all of Peter's accounts and stock. Peter's body was badly burned. Hamid identified it for the record at the morgue.

Laurence Luscombe had died too, of a heart attack the medical examiner said. The only foreign resident of Dradeb, he'd been awakened by the noise. Emerging from his shanty, he'd been stricken on the street, then lying there, unnoticed, had been trampled by the mob.

Françoise de Lauzon's "Camelot" had been totally destroyed by fire, as had the cottage of Lester Brown. Both had escaped and hidden in shrubbery nearby to watch the violent wind fan the flames and burn down their houses before their eyes.

General Bresson's villa had been ransacked, his collection of Indochinese ceramics dashed to pieces against the floor. Percy Bainbridge had been a guest at Peter Barclay's house during the riot. In his absence the mob had broken into his cottage, looted all the models of his inventions, then moved along to the villa of Joop de Hoag, where they'd pushed Madame de Hoag's car into the sea.

For some reason the pillagers had ignored Inigo's house—the painter, miraculously, had slept through the melee. They'd tried unsuccessfully to penetrate the iron gates that protected the palace of Patrick Wax. The old man had fled in one of his gold-trimmed robes. With the help of his loyal "houseboy," Kalem, he'd scaled down the cliffs to spend a fearful night shivering on the beach.

The people at Barclay's dinner had been badly frightened, though they'd all escaped unharmed. The mob had struck there with their torches and their chains just as Barclay's guests were tasting cheese and port. Barclay, with an instinct for survival, had blown out the candles and turned off all his lights. Then he and his friends had huddled under his table, the big one that seated sixteen, watching the youths outside plunder the garden, their angry faces illuminated every now and then by flames.

"It was like being surrounded by a pack of redskins," Barclay said. "Wild men, all of them, screaming around, slashing at my climbers and shrubs. I suppose we're lucky we're still alive. They would have burned us out if they hadn't been attracted by the fire at Françoise's."

Hamid took note of all this, but still he was perplexed. Had it been the fire at the Freys' that had inspired the attack, or would the mobs have struck in any event, whipped to fury by the agitators on the bridge?

Early the next morning Aziz came by to fetch him at his flat. A boy wandering the marshes of the Jew's River had found two bloated bodies there. Hamid recognized them at once as Kurt and Inge Frey. They'd been strangled with piano wire—the strands were still around their necks.

Evidently, he decided, their bodies had been heaved into the ravine, then carried some distance by the river until they'd become stuck in the swamp. Hamid waited while they were carried out, then told Aziz to return to the Sûreté. There was something important he had to do, someone he had to see.

"A
h, Hamid," said Achar, shaking his hand in the clinic waiting room. "I've been expecting you. I'm really glad you came."

He gave instructions to one of his nurses, something about a prescription for a patient, then led Hamid down the corridor to his cluttered office in the back.

"Your head all right?" he asked. "The wound properly cleaned?"

"Just a bump," said Hamid. "The police doctor fixed me up."

"Good. I'm tired, though I'll look at it if you want."

 
Hamid shook his head.

"Not much sleep these last forty-eight hours. We've been very busy. Lots of broken bones to set." He paused, lit a cigarette. "The repression was violent, you know. Those wooden staves can cause a lot of damage, especially when swung by pitiless people who don't care whom they hit."

He smiled then, his ironic smile, which annoyed Hamid, though he wasn't sure exactly why.

"Tea!" Achar yelled to an orderly in the hall. He leaned back behind his desk, his face tired, his features set and grim. "I see that you're displeased, Hamid. Perhaps you hold me responsible for what the Rabat papers are calling 'certain bizarre events that have transpired in a residential quarter of Tangier.' Tell me—is this an official visit? Or have you come here as a friend?"

"Why do you use this tone with me, Mohammed? I've come in confidence, of course. I have nothing to do with the investigation. If I wanted to speak to you officially I'd summon you to the Sûreté."

"Yes, yes—forgive me, Hamid. I've had very little sleep."

The orderly brought in a pot of tea and two glasses on a tray.

"Close the door when you leave," said Achar. "Tell the staff I'm not to be disturbed."

He poured out half a glass, looked at it, then returned it to the pot. "About three more minutes, I think," he said. "I crave sugar all the time now, Hamid. Stress, perhaps, or some sort of psychological need." Their eyes met then, and Achar smiled. His steely gaze disappeared. "All right," he said. "Here we are. Ask me anything you want."

"I didn't come here for a political discussion. A number of things have happened that disturb me very much."

"Zvegintzov, for instance?"

"Yes. Zvegintzov first of all."

"That was regrettable, I agree, since he was of trifling consequence in the scheme of things. But these things happen when there's a mob. Of course Kalinka must be upset."

"Actually she's taken it pretty well, but I didn't come here to talk about her. What disturbs me is the vicious way that he was killed. I was there. I saw it. So don't talk to me about pitiless soldiers. I saw Moroccans behave like animals, stand there and watch him burn."

Achar fingered the teapot, then raised his eyes and sighed. "I know you were there, Hamid. Some friends of mine were on the bridge, inciting the people to use the torch. Well, there you are—I admit we're agitators, or perhaps just respected men who use our influence to channel rage."

"Damn it, that's what I don't understand! Why channel it against Zvegintzov and a few pathetic foreigners on the hill? If there're grievances, correct them. Attack your oppressors if you feel oppressed. But you have no right to send up bands against the Mountain, terrorizing people and taking lives."

"So, you're angry, Hamid. Well, well—it's not so simple as you think." He poured another half glass of tea, nodded, then filled the glass. He handed it to Hamid, then filled another for himself.

"Driss Bennani told me something he learned from Fischer, the old architect who was working here last year. When there were riots in the American slums a few years back, the black people there set fire to their homes. Well, I don't believe in that—turning one's rage against oneself. How much more logical and healthy that we should attack the world outside. I'm sorry about Zvegintzov—he meant nothing, was nothing but a stooge. The foreigners mean nothing—most of them are clowns. But they're symbols, Hamid, symbols of wealth and power, up there above us, in their big villas looking down, cultivating their gardens, relaxing in their pools, serviced by the Russian, furnishing themselves from his luxurious stock of goods. Should we have burned down this clinic? Ridiculous, of course! Attacked city hall so we could be shot like dogs? Well, that may happen one day too. The point, Hamid, is that the Mountain was not only the closest place at hand, it was the appropriate place. We really had no choice."

He had spoken forcefully, and Hamid knew he believed everything he'd said. But there was something cold about Achar, something ruthless in his reasoning that caused Hamid to look at him with fear.

"Don't be upset, Hamid. There's nothing new in any of this. There've been attacks before, in many parts of the world, enraged third-world hordes rising up against the smug, soft people of the West. It's a cliché by now, and the aftermath too, the repression, with the inevitable result that an even more powerful anger is instilled. Then more attacks, often in different forms. Not just boys with chains, ripping up gardens, putting a few villas to the torch, but armed guerrillas attacking barracks, assassinating officials, making war. It's an old story. Algeria. Cuba. Vietnam. We'll see it again in other places, and, I guarantee you, we'll see it here. Our regime, stupid as it is, will recognize the danger too. Watch out now for a combination of repression and superficial reform—increased food subsidies, phony land reforms, and, too, new detention laws, and American advisors to teach the tactics of counterinsurgency to you in the police. This little business in Dradeb will be forgotten very soon. We can look forward now to more outbreaks, a good deal more effective and severe. The children of the slums have seen and understood the efficacy of violence. But excuse me, Hamid. You didn't come here for a political discussion. Forgive me for rambling on. I get carried away these days."