Horse Under Water

25 Yes

26 Ball

27 All

28 Tip

29 Pray

30 Entreaty

31 Aid

32 Old

33 Nods

34 Rude

35 Guard

36 Black

37 Reread

38 Gas

39 D.D.

40 A.I.T.C.

41 Film

42 Reason

43 Sex

44 UNO

45 Deep

46 Life

47 Forgo

48 Sings

49 Echo

50 File

51 Shoes

52 Set

53 Baix

54 Yo

55 Jam

56 Beep

57 Ail

58 Tack

Horse Under Water (#ud4d5103b-538c-5db3-b705-e1238fa9c861)

1 Sweet talk (#ulink_4bfdb7e1-9fa7-52d4-8676-d799c4a79f31)

Marrakech: Tuesday

Marrakech is just what the guide-books say it is. Marrakech is an ancient walled city surrounded with olive groves and palm trees. Behind it rise the mountains of the high Atlas and in the city the market place at Djemaa-el-Fna is alive with jugglers, dancers, magicians, story-tellers, snake-charmers and music. Marrakech is a fairy-tale city, but on this trip I didn’t get to see much more of it than a fly-blown hotel room and the immobile faces of three Portuguese politicians.

My hotel was in the old city; the Medina. The rooms were finished in brown and cream paint and the wall decorations were notices telling me not to do various things in French. From the next room came the sound of water dripping into the stained bath tub and the call of an indefatigable cricket, while through the broken fly-screens in the window came the musical sound of an Arab city selling its wares.

I removed my tie and put it over the back of my chair. My shirt hung suddenly cold against the small of my back and I felt a dribble of sweat run gently down the side of my nose, hesitate and drop on to ‘Sheet 128: Transfer of sterling assets of Government of Portugal held in United Kingdom, Mandates or Dependencies to successor Government’.

We sipped oversweet mint tea, munched almond, honeysticky cakes, and I took comfort in the idea of being back in London inside twenty-four hours. This may be a millionaire’s playground, but no self-respecting millionaire would be seen dead here in the summer. It was ten past four in the afternoon. The whole town was buzzing with flies and conversation; cafés, restaurants and brothels had standing room only; the pickpockets were working to rota.

‘Very well,’ I said, ‘availability of thirty per cent of your sterling assets as soon as the British Ambassador in Lisbon is satisfied that you have a working control within the capital.’ They agreed to that. They weren’t delirious with joy but they agreed to that. They were hard bargainers, these revolutionaries.

2 Old solution (#ulink_daef5999-4b50-546f-9111-354752778800)

London: Thursday

The W.O.O.C.(P) owned a small piece of grimy real estate on the unwashed side of Charlotte Street. My office had an outlook like a Cruikshank illustration to David Copperfield, and subsidence provided an isosceles triangle under the door that made internal telephones unnecessary.

Dawlish was my chief. When I gave him the report on my negotiations in Marrakech he laid it on his desk like the foundation stone of the National Theatre and said, ‘Foreign Office are going to introduce a couple of new ideas for tackling the talks with the Portuguese revolutionary party.’

‘For us to tackle them,’ I corrected.

‘Top marks, my boy,’ said Dawlish, ‘you cottoned on to that aspect of their little scheme.’

‘I’m covered in the scar tissue of O’Brien’s good ideas.’

‘Well, this one is better than most,’ said Dawlish.