The little shop was jammed. Peter Zvegintzov was darting about, frantically trying to serve his customers. The Manchesters were browsing through horticultural magazines, and Skiddy de Bayonne was sniffing imported teas. Jean picked up his paper, then embraced Vanessa Bolton. David Hawkins, crop stuck into his boot, rushed over to give him a double kiss. Jean waved to David's sister, Tessa, who was deep in conversation with Herve Beaumont. Jean knew Tessa was sleeping with Herve 's sister Florence, but whether with her own brother too he wasn't sure. Still his suspicions made him feel sophisticated, a part of tout Tanger. Though he'd been living in the city less than a year, he'd already acquired a sense of its complexities and overlapping social circles.
Half an hour later, at home, reading on his bed, Jean felt his heart suddenly begin to pound. He read the offending lines again. There was no mistake. Robin Scott had found out about his affair with Claude and had printed it in his wretched column.
His abdomen grew weak. He felt as if he'd just been kicked. He had to tell Claude, tell her at once, but she was downstairs in the salon with her father sipping an aperitif. Had General Bresson seen it? Probably not. He was contemptuous of gossip and didn't read English very well. But Joop de Hoag could read English perfectly, and was due back in Tangier in two more days. Scott had mentioned the possibility of a crime passionnel. Was Monsieur de Hoag really capable of that?
Jean remained upstairs, waiting for the General to leave. But when it became apparent he was staying on for dinner, Jean dressed and descended to the salon. There he endured an hour of tedious small talk, gazing desperately at Claude all the while. But the more boldly he tried to attract her attention, the more coolly she pretended she didn't understand; finally, seeing she was annoyed, he submitted to an interminable wait.
At dinner the General reminisced about Algeria. "Morocco," he said, "was pleasant during the Protectorate, but in Algeria life was truly sweet. It was France, with all the virtues of the Republic and the additional luxury of slaves."
The man was insufferable, but Jean nodded all the same. No point in antagonizing him-Jean only wished he'd leave. Hours later Jean escorted him to his car, and after he'd driven off, he looked down upon Tangier. At night, from the Mountain, it was a distant field of flickering lamps, a thousand beacons beckoning lovers to romantic passageways and glowing minarets.
Jean sighed, walked back to the villa. Claude had already retired to her room. He helped himself to a cognac, waiting for the servants to finish clearing up. When they were done, he gulped the last of his drink and hurried up the stairs.
"Fool!" She nearly spat at him. "Do you want my father to find out?" Then, before he could answer, she smiled, threw her arms around him, and begged him to undress.
He pulled out Robin's column, passed it to her with a trembling hand.
"What's this? 'Burning white hot-an older woman-passionate lovers-crime passionnel.' " She threw it on the floor. "Trash!"
Jean flung himself on the bed, and after a while, after she'd paced the room, she sat beside him, lifted his head onto her lap, and ran her fingers through his hair.
"I could kill Robin for this! But don't worry-Joop won't see it. He doesn't read the Depeche. He'll be busy when he gets back."
"What if someone tells him?"
"No one will."
"Your father? Or one of the British? They love to write anonymous notes."
"In that case I'll deny it. I'll say it isn't true. I've tipped a fortune to the servants. He'll have to accept my word."
"What if he doesn't? He'll watch us. He'll be suspicious. Robin found out. Too many people know."
"Never mind," she said. "We'll be careful. Perhaps, at times, we have been indiscreet."
He looked up at her, thinking of all the times she'd flaunted their affection. She loved danger, courted it, used it to enhance her pleasure and provoke his fear.
"What would he do?" he asked.
"Joop? Oh-he'd kill us, I suppose. Or perhaps he'd just kill you." She laughed, a deep, throaty laugh. Then she pulled his ears.
He spent the night in her bed, but at dawn, before the servants were awake, he got up quietly and stole back to his room. He disliked leaving her, often dreamed of lazy early morning bouts of love, breakfast on her terrace facing the sea, the two of them, naked to the morning sun, sipping coffee as they caressed. But that was impossible. Their whole situation was impossible, though Claude seemed to thrive on its risk.
A year earlier, when Jean Tassigny was interviewed in Paris by Joop de Hoag, he wasn't at all certain exactly what he was being hired to do. The Dutchman was vague about the details, and Jean was too excited to inquire. The idea of living in Tangier was more important to him than the job, and besides Monsieur de Hoag had given him assurances that his training would be invaluable to a career in high finance.
A few weeks after the interview Jean received a formal letter. He'd receive fifteen hundred francs a month, and food and lodgings at the de Hoag house. He'd be treated, in Monsieur de Hoag's words, "as a member of my family," for which, in return, he'd act as Joop de Hoag's homme de confiance.
He arrived in Tangier on a windless autumn day when the light sparkled off white buildings, etching the town against sky and sea. He was dazzled by this effect, and also by the de Hoag house-a great, square, earth-colored mansion that looked as permanent and stately as a bank. Its gleaming double doors of brass swung slowly open like the entrance to a vault, and on the other side, from a terrace cut into rock, he looked upon the fabled city that guarded the Mediterranean Sea. It spread like gleaming mercury back from the bay, surrounded by forests of wild pine and the mountains of the Rif. But there was more than the wondrous clarity of light and the views that ravished him that day. There was a woman, the most beautiful he'd ever seen-Monsieur de Hoag's young wife, Claude.
Claude. Mysterious as the moonlit Casbah, he thought, guarded as the medina walls. He made up names for her-"Tangier Nightbird," "Aphrodite of the Mountain"-wrote them out on slips of paper, then burned the slips and scattered the ashes upon the sea. Why wasn't he a poet? Why couldn't he discover her in a name? It would take a Rimbaud to do that, he thought, but he became obsessed, and though untalented he tried.
Each morning he and Monsieur de Hoag left early for their office, a shabby building near the port. Here he pored over ledgers, studied reports of Brazilian diamond mines, enciphered de Hoag's orders to buy and sell, and telexed them abroad. He learned leverage and arbitrage, the mechanisms of Liechtenstein corporations and numbered Swiss accounts. De Hoag showed him how to move silver bullion through three markets in a week, take a position in Dutch giders while the Deutschemark fluctuated down, ride the Italian lira, liquidate cocoa futures at the proper time, then move the profits back into gold, the only commodity a man could trust.
There was an exhausting excitement about these forays in and out of gold, deep, intense pondering up to the moment of the move, terrifying tension during the wild speculative phase, and then relief, vast relief, when once again the money was safe. Five sets of midday tennis did not leave Jean so fatigued.
De Hoag taught much, but there were things he would not reveaclass="underline" the identities of his clients and his informants in Johannesburg and Geneva-matters too confidential, it seemed, even for an homme de confiance. Still Jean was patient, certain he'd learn them in time. And, meanwhile, he thought of Claude.
It was an ecstatic torment to face her over dinner, her dark gleaming lips, her wild turquoise eyes. They'd sit, the three of them, when the de Hoags were not invited out, at the end of a long refectory table laden with china, candelabra, flowers. He and Monsieur de Hoag wore smoking jackets; Claude, in the middle, wore a strapless gown and a diamond necklace that glittered upon her neck. They ate while silent liveried Moroccans served, and talked of Tangier, its society, its vagaries and strife. Often, too, Claude's father would come, and then Jean would be seated at the far end. The retired general and Monsieur de Hoag would speak of world events while he and Claude exchanged smiles through the candle flames.