Free Cloak of Darkness by Helen MacInnes Page A

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