Cloak of Darkness (8 page)

But any day now, his two agents should be arriving from Aden. Husayn would sail in, land his cargo of salt and lamp oil and canned tuna at one of the pint-sized harbours some distance from the port. Shaaban would seek another anchorage, equally insignificant, for his cargo of cotton, wheat, and sesame. They would come separately, and Claudel would keep them well apart. Husayn was an Afar; Shaaban an Issa. The nomad Afars wandered in and out of Ethiopia; the Issas in and out of Somalia. That difference was, in these days of war and hate, a possible troublemaker.

Waiting and more waiting, thought Claudel as he finished breakfast. But while he did that, he could turn his attention to some legitimate business as the travelling representative of Merriman & Co., Consultant Engineers. He would visit once more the projected site for a possible hotel—if its backers received any encouragement from Merriman’s—to be built on an empty stretch of coastline about two miles from the port and a mile from town. A desolate place, with a grey-sand beach, flat land broken by huge shallow pools where white herons—the only touch of beauty—stood ankle deep and picked fastidiously at the sedge-covered water. He would put in a negative report: drainage problems enormous, costs astronomical, sea view dull, background dismal with grey desert and shrubs, possible objections from the port authorities, although their personnel might like a nearby luxury hotel for their families’ visits, definite objections from all the sailors and seamen as well as the people in town who couldn’t afford the prices charged. Also, Muslims did not drink. Also, swimming near the Red Sea was not comfortable: sharks. Also, fresh-water supply would entail a search for underground streams such as Djibouti and the port were built over. Also, the white herons would leave as the dredging operations began.

His report, of course, would be written as soon as his other business was completed. It made an adequate explanation for his appearance in Djibouti, though. Neither the Police Inspector nor his assistant, both French, had questioned it— not openly, at least, even when he had mentioned the possible need for some of their well-trained native policemen to arrest a murderer and terrorist. Erik... always back to Erik, although Claudel had also taken the opportunity to talk to Georges Duhamel about any freighter unloading crates from Exports Consolidated or a firm called Klingfeld & Sons—both names to be treated as highly sensitive, not to be bruited around the port. Duhamel, good security officer that he was, had promised a few tactful questions. A wild shot, Claudel thought, but every small chance was well worth taking.

“You are thoughtful this morning, my friend.” Aristophanes Vasilikis, making his morning tour of the premises, stopped by Claudel’s table. He was a blond Greek, now greying, with snub features and blue eyes. Of medium height and girth, he had his clothes carefully fashioned to fit by an Italian tailor: lightweight gabardine trousers that hung without a wrinkle; a cream silk shirt opened at the neck, its sleeves turned back at their broad cuffs. With a reproving frown at the wooden ceiling above him, where a fan had started a slowdown and was threatening a work stoppage, he chose the cane chair opposite Claudel’s, sat down as he took out an Egyptian cigarette and fitted it into an ivory holder. He came right to the point, speaking in his fractured French, saying with an increasing frown, “Surely you do not consider giving a favourable report to those idiots who waste good money on building hotels where they are useless.”

“They have built many hotels in unlikely places.”

“Where?”

“Sardinia, Kota Kinabalu—”

“Oh?” Aristophanes had never heard of it, but that wasn’t to be admitted.

“It’s in Borneo—the Land below the Winds.”

“Headhunters!”

“They’ve stopped the habit, I hear. In any case, Ari, don’t lose sleep over any big hotel being built here. Your place won’t suffer at all.”

Aristophanes had had a moment of hope, dashed down by Claudel’s last sentence. His restaurant was small, white wine for the French and Italians, fruit juices for the wealthier Arabs who liked to adopt European dress. The bar was enormous, with beer and spirits flowing freely for off-duty sailors, seamen from the freighters, the traders who were Christians, the lesser shopkeepers who had forgotten their religion. Both establishments made money, more than his trading post in the Sudan, much more than his hard beginnings in the Plaka of Athens. “They are planning a discothèque, I hear.”

“You have better ears than I. And guesses are wild. Rumours rise like dust storms in this part of the world.”

Aristophanes shook his handsome head over his friend’s amusement. “Dangerous things, these discothèques. Men and women, half-naked women, dancing together. Have your rich clients forgotten this is Muslim territory? Tell them, Pierre, what happened last year—just after your last visit. Or didn’t you hear?”

Claudel shook his head.

“Tourists came off a cruise ship—they come for three hours and then they leave, and tell that to your rich clients, too— and there were some young women, stupid women. They wore short shorts and low-necked blouses and brought cameras to photograph the marketplace.” Aristophanes dropped his voice. “They were stoned. They had to run for the taxis that brought them here from their ship. A crowd ran after them, jeering all the way. If the police had not arrived, there would have been a riot.” Another rumour? Claudel wondered, but Aristophanes was deadly serious. “Tempers are short. Anger is quick. This place changes like the rest of the world. Ten years ago, when I came here, it was different. Now, politics—” He spat out a vivid oath. To hear a Greek curse politics was quite something, Claudel thought, but he kept silent. “All under the surface,” Aristophanes went on when he had recovered. “So far, under the surface.” He fell silent.

“What news do you hear from the outside world?” Claudel asked to shift Ari’s dark mood away from Djibouti. Ari had, in his very private room on the top floor of his hotel, an excellent shortwave radio, high-powered, which could transmit as well as receive. Provided, no doubt, by Greek Intelligence in Athens; one of Claudel’s educated guesses, bolstered by the fact that Interinteli and Greek Intelligence had co-operated in defeating a terrorist plan to seize the airport near Athens. Friendly relations had been established, which possibly accounted for Ari’s warm welcome on Claudel’s visit last year. It was, of course, a guess: Ari, who had a mania for gadgets, might very well have invested some money in a radio that would keep him in touch with Europe. He was an émigré who had become thoroughly attached to East Africa but dreamed back to the West. Neither Ari nor Claudel ever mentioned the word “intelligence”. Their conversations were entirely focused on Djibouti or international troubles. But the fact that Ari had shown Claudel his radio was a definite hint: Claudel was welcome to make use of it should there be any urgent need.

Ari’s dark mood refused to be shifted. He glared up at the large overhead fan, now motionless, and rose. “So I find a workman who will come, not at once but this evening. He will drive away my customers, fix the fan, and it will break down next week.” Then he remembered his manners as host. “Do you need Alexandre and his taxi to drive you out to that godforsaken place?”

“Yes.” Claudel glanced at his watch, saw it was ten minutes to nine. The day was half over for most people. By eleven, the streets were emptying; by noon, people were behind closed shutters or lying in the shade of a wall. In the early evening, after the long hot afternoon, life came back to the town. “Ask Alexandre to be here around ten o’clock.” Claudel was on his feet. “I’ll take my usual stroll to the market, stretch my legs, and buy a newspaper.” It was his daily routine, like Alexandre’s taxi, and it aroused no comment.

***

The Café-Restaurant de l’Univers stood at the corner of a broad street, once intended as a boulevard with two rows of trees down its middle. From here branched off some lesser streets, crossing other narrow streets at right angles, all part of neat French planning. After that, things went slightly haywire, but to reach the open marketplace was easy. One walked down a straight street, fairly straight at least, between two continuous rows of houses, mostly white, a few walls painted blue, all a little faded or discoloured. Some had brief colonnades, little stretches of curved arches; most were plain-faced, unadorned, rising three stories above the street level, where a few shops had intruded; high-ceilinged stories, to judge by the tail windows, seemingly without glass, whose massive shutters were opened for the morning air.

The road was unpaved but many people walked there, for traffic was light—some neat cars, three small green taxis—and the sidewalks were uneven and raised by knee-high curbs. As if, thought Claudel, the planners of this street had feared torrential monsoon floods. Or, more likely, they had raised the sidewalks high to let people step out of their carriages without a jolt or a jump. What, he wondered, had this quarter been like fifty, thirty, even twenty years ago? Blue and white walls would have looked freshly painted, the shutters would have hung straight—not half off their hinges, comically tilted. Few chips and gashes on the arches, less peeling plaster, no large puddles at the side of the earth-packed road left from this morning’s hosing of broken sidewalks. Bless the underground stream that gave the town its water, and pray that it flows forever and ever. Or did Nature’s bounty change as men’s did? Grow old and weary and tired of giving?

It was a sad thought out of keeping with the people he passed. Intent on their own lives, on the immediate present, such as the morning’s marketing, the cost of buying, the price of selling, the earnest gossip with friends, they brought colour and movement to the street. The variety of faces, of languages, of dress, always fascinated Claudel; and, above all, the women. They were young—and where were the older ones? So few to be seen—young and beautiful, very tall, very thin, their faces unveiled but their bodies enveloped by layers of floating muslin in bright flower patterns. Wide skirts fluttered to the ground and hid their ankles. Knee-length tunics, loose and thin, moved with each step. Vivid scarves covered their heads and then wound loosely around necks and shoulders in billowing folds. Their faces were extraordinary: smooth skin, deeply black, tightly drawn over fine-boned faces; profiles that were sculptured to perfection. But the eyes, briefly looking at him, then ignoring, were the hardest eyes he had ever seen, carved out of obsidian. Don’t even glance at me, my proud beauties: you’d scare the hell out of me.

Strangely, the tall, thin, black-skinned men, with the same fine features as their women (but they never walked together; it was men with men, women either alone or with another woman), had eyes that seemed more human: clever-quick, deep-set, not friendly, but not inimical, either. Some of the younger ones were dressed like Claudel, in trousers and short-sleeved shirts; the rest wore striped ankle-length gowns, drab in colour.

He passed the floating dresses that billowed with the slightest touch of warm breeze, made way for a blind old man being led by a young boy, and came to the end of the shops and houses. Ahead of him, on open ground, with flowered muslin and striped nightshirts in mad confusion, was the encircling wall of the uncovered market. Outside the wall were two tethered camels and a few goats under the watchful eyes of eight-year-olds. The main entrance was a jostle of people moving in and out. Claudel took note of the time—five past nine—and removed his watch to the safekeeping of his hand. There was nothing of value in his pockets. The nimblest-fingered thieves were now around. Two pairs of black policemen in starched khaki uniforms were there to discourage the pickpockets if possible, arrest them if necessary. It was all part of the daily scene.

Claudel strolled into the market, rubbing shoulders, ignoring and being ignored. Casually, he looked around for the Old Arab’s granddaughter. (But her skin was light brown and less smooth in texture, and her features were neither fine-hewn nor sculpted. Her eyes, however, could dance with delight, and her lips smiled.) If she were here at nine fifteen, that would be the signal. His agents, one or other of them, had sailed into the bay west of Djibouti. The Old Arab ought to know; he owned both dhows, rented them to Husayn and Shaaban. A man of age, wisdom, and wealth, the Old Arab (his name had three hyphens and was a mouthful in any language) was respected by most, trusted by some, and feared by all. In his house tonight there would be a room set aside for Claudel’s meeting.

Claudel’s eyes kept searching. Bright dresses floated everywhere, their wearers bargaining shrewdly for the vegetables and fruit lying on the bare earth in the shade of the wall. Following its curve, pressed on all sides by black, brown, and vaguely white faces, he made his determined way. As usual, it was the strange smell that repelled him—a sweet sickly smell that he couldn’t identify. A concentration of sesame oil or hashish? Or of aromatic resins from the gum trees in Djibouti, such as frankincense or myrrh? No one around him noticed it, except four seamen with red faces and Hawaiian shirts from some freighter docked over at the port. Their comments, in Dutch and German, were fortunately not understood.

The curving wall brought him to the meat market, a long covered platform with a table matching its length. Behind this counter, strong-armed men hacked away at hunks of goat, while a three-deep crush of women in three-tiered dresses argued and elbowed and pointed as they selected today’s dinner. And no sign of the Old Arab’s granddaughter. Emilie, she was called— an unlikely name but her own, given her by her half-French Somali father. Her mother was of mixed origin, too: half-Arab, half-Sudanese. There were always complications in having four wives, as the Old Arab had found out, especially when he had spent earlier years in travelling southward from his native Lebanon, adding to his wives and his wealth.

No Emilie today. No signal. No meeting at ten o’clock tonight. Tomorrow, he would have to visit the market again.

Behind him, an American said, “Jean! Just look at these black legs of lamb hung up behind the butchers. Coal black! Are they smoked or what? Look!”