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log."
    "That's all right, Foster. I just want a feel of what goes on. Any Moroccans?"
    "Well, he gets deliveries. Ouazzani was in there last night."
    "Inspector Ouazzani?"
    "Yeah."
    "Did he buy anything?"
    "Not that I could see."
    "OK, Foster." Lake yawned. "Thanks very much. You can go back to whatever you were doing now."
    Knowles sat still. "You know, Dan, I've been thinking."
    "Yeah? What about?"
    "This whole business seems kind of crazy."
    "Forget about it then."
    "You mean forget the whole thing?"
    "Uh huh. I thought you'd like it—snooping around. I sort of thought of you as a good snoop-around type. But I guess I was wrong. Forget about it. I'll handle it myself."
    "Gee, Dan—"
    "I've got a lot of paperwork this morning, so if you'd just—"
    "Yeah. Right." Knowles nodded, unraveled himself, and started toward the door. Halfway there he paused and turned around. "There's one other thing, Dan, you ought to know. Might turn into a hassle later on. Couple of young Americans, hippies I guess, were camping out in the Rif. Seems they went hunting for psychedelic mushrooms and ate some poison ones by mistake. After a while they started feeling bad, so they hitched a ride to Tangier. They're at Al Kortobi Hospital now. According to the doctors they're really sick."
    "OK. Keep me informed."
    Knowles nodded and went out the door. When he was gone Lake made a fist and pounded it against the desk. Hassles! Psychedelic mushrooms! God, what an asshole, he thought.
    He paced around the office for a while, feeling caged, bad-tempered, worn. He hadn't slept properly in a week, and now his mind was clouded by all sorts of things he didn't understand or know how to control. The wind was still blowing, though the sealed windows of the Consulate cut the noise. Outside he could see the palms thrashing and a small surf lapping at the sides of the Consulate pool.
    He took hold of the binoculars again, trained them on the Mountain, found the Jew's River at its base and tried to move along it to La Colombe. Damn those palms! Just in the corner they blocked his view. He was about to call downstairs, order the gardener to cut them down, when he stopped himself and shook his head.
    Madness, he whispered. Mad! Mad!
    But a few seconds later he broke into a sweat. Ouazzani! There was some connection. He remembered it now. Through the winter Willard and Katie had talked of little else. Z's wife had left him for a policeman, Hamid Ouazzani, who headed the foreign section at the Sûreté. The Manchesters had been worried. Zvegintzov was despondent, and they were afraid he was going to close his shop. When he snapped out of it they'd been relieved. Now Foster said Ouazzani had visited Z. The whole setup began to stink.
    Could it be, he asked himself, that Z planted the girl with the Inspector in order to infiltrate the police? With a policeman in his pocket he would have information on all the foreigners in town. He could blackmail them, use them as couriers, employ them any way he liked. And he'd arranged his own protection too: with a link to the police his espionage operation could go on and on.
    Lake toyed with the idea for several minutes, then slumped back into his chair. He knew he was being ridiculous, that all his fantasies were absurd. Z was inactive, a man much like himself, broken, put out to pasture, mired in failure and despair. He felt a surge of sympathy for him then. He and Z were a pair of relics, aging cold warriors stagnating in Tangier.
    At lunch he was distracted, glum. He hardly listened as Janet rambled on about their social life, nodded absently when she asked him if he'd like her to get them tickets for the play. Joe said his French teacher was a queer. Steven said there was a kid at school with a mustache who threatened to take him into the bushes and "spread his ass." Janet was shocked and begged him to intervene. "You ought to call the headmaster, Dan. It's the very least that you should do."
    He nodded,