The Man Between. Чарльз Камминг

been active as a support agent for less than twenty-four hours and already felt lost in the wilderness of mirrors.

      He settled the bill and walked outside. There was a taxi idling in front of the hotel. Carradine climbed in and asked to be taken to the Corniche. He offered a cigarette to the driver who placed it, unlit, in a recess behind the gearstick. Sated by alcohol, Carradine sat in the back seat texting his father, trying to forget about his responsibilities to the Service and to set aside his doubts about Mantis and Ramón. He enjoyed the sepia light of the Moroccan evening and the movement of the taxi as it weaved from street to street. He wanted to convince himself that there was no deeper meaning to the information he had gleaned from the letter, no dark conspiracy playing out on the streets of Casablanca. But it was impossible. He knew, in the way that you know that a friendship is doomed or a love affair coming to an end, that something was not quite right. He was sure that he was being manipulated. He was certain that he had been sent to Morocco for a purpose that had not yet been made clear to him. The chances of finding Bartok were so remote that the words of warning contained in Mantis’s letter – ‘IT IS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE THEY FIND YOU’ – seemed to Carradine as vague and yet as terrifying as lines from a work of fiction. So why had he been handed such a task?

      The taxi stopped at a set of lights. An elderly beggar came to the window, pressing his face against the glass. The driver swore in Arabic as the beggar knocked on the window, imploring Carradine to give him money. He dug around in his trouser pocket for some loose change and was about to roll down the window and pass the money to the beggar when the taxi accelerated down the street.

      Carradine turned to see that the man had fallen over.

      ‘Stop!’ he shouted. ‘Problème! Arrêtez!’

      The driver ignored him, made a right-hand turn and headed north towards the sea. Through the back window, Carradine could see the beggar being helped to his feet.

      ‘He fell,’ he said in French, thinking of Redmond and his failure to act.

      ‘They all fall,’ the driver replied. Ils tombent tous.

      ‘Pull over!’

      Again Carradine’s request was ignored. ‘I want to go back,’ he said, lamenting the fact that his French was not good enough to make himself properly understood. ‘Take me back to the old man.’

      ‘Non,’ the driver replied. He wanted his fare, he wanted to take the tourist to the Corniche. ‘You don’t go back, mister,’ he said, now speaking in English. ‘You can never go back.’