Following close behind Roper's car, they entered a North American enclave of lawns, white churches, bowling centres and army brides in curlers pushing prams. They emerged on a seafront lined with pink 1920s villas with giant television aerials, razor-wire fences and high gates. The stranger in the front seat was looking for house numbers. They rounded a corner and kept looking. They were in a grassy park. Out to sea, container ships, cruise ships and tankers waited to take their turn on the Canal. The front car had pulled up before an old house set in trees. The driver was tapping the horn. The door of the house opened, a slender-shouldered man in a white jacket tripped down the path. Langbourne lowered his window and called to him to take the car behind. Frisky leaned forward and opened the passenger door. Jonathan glimpsed a studious Arab-looking young man in spectacles. He took his place without speaking.
"How's the runs?" said Frisky.
"Better," said Jonathan.
"Well, keep them that way," said Tabby.
They entered a stretch of straight road. Jonathan had been to an army school like this. A high stone wall festooned with cables ran along their right side. It was topped with a triple strand of barbed wire. He remembered Curaçao and the road to the dockyard. Billboards appeared to their left: Toshiba, Citizen and Toyland. So this is where the Roper buys his toys. thought Jonathan absurdly. But it wasn't. It was where he collected his reward for all the hard work and hard cash he had invested. The Arab student lit a cigarette. Frisky coughed ostentatiously. The front car swung through an archway and stopped. They stopped behind it. A policeman appeared at the driver's window.
"Passports," the driver said.
Frisky had Jonathan's and his own. The Arab student in the front raised his head far enough for the policeman to recognise him. The policeman waved them through. They had entered the Free Zone of Colón.
Sleek shopfronts for jewellery and furs recalled Herr Meister's lobby. The skyline was ablaze with trade names from across the world and the pure blue glass of banks. Shiny cars lined the streets. Lurid container lorries backed and shunted and belched exhaust fumes over the crowded sidewalks. Shops are forbidden to sell retail, but everyone was selling retail. Panamanians are forbidden to buy here, but the streets were thronged with them, in all their different races, and most had come by taxi because taxi drivers have the best arrangements at the gate.
Every day, Corkoran had told Jonathan, the official workers arrive in the zone bare-necked, bare-wristed and bare-fingered. But when evening comes they look as though they are going to a wedding, in their shining bracelets, necklaces and rings. From all over Central America, he said, shoppers fly in and out unmolested by immigration or customs, some spending a million dollars in a day and depositing millions more for next time round.
The front car entered a dark street of warehouses, and they followed it nose to tail. Spots of rain rolled like fat tears down the windscreen. The hatted stranger in the front car was studying names and numbers:
Khan's Comestibles, Macdonald's Automotor, the Hoi Tin food & Beverage Company, the Tel Aviv Goodwill Container Company, El Akhbar's Fantasias, Hellas Agricultural, Le Baron of Paris, Taste of Colombia Limitada, Coffee & Comestibles.
Then a hundred yards of black wall and one sign saying Eagle, which was where they got out.
"Are we going indoors? Maybe they've got one there," said Jonathan. "It's getting urgent again," he added, for Tabby's benefit.
* * *
Tension now, as they stand in the unlit side street. A fast tropical dusk is gathering. The sky is aglow with coloured neon, but in this canyon of walls and dingy alleys, the dark is already here. Everyone's eyes are on the hatted man. Frisky and Tabby stand either side of Jonathan, and Frisky's hand is on Jonathan's upper arm: not grasping it exactly, Tommy, just making sure nobody gets lost. The Arab student has gone ahead to join the forward group. Jonathan sees the man in the hat enter the blackness of a doorway. Langbourne, Roper and the student follow him.
"
"If you could just find me a loo," Jonathan says. Frisky's hand tightens on his arm.
Inside the doorway, reflected light glows at the end of a brick corridor lined with posters too dark to read. They reach a T junction, turn left. The light brightens, leading them to a glazed door with plywood tacked over the upper panes of glass to hide the writing underneath. A smell of chandlery pervades the still air: rope and flour and tar and coffee and linseed oil. The door stands open. They enter a luxurious anteroom: leather chairs, silk flowers, ashtrays like glass bricks. On a coffee table, glossy trade magazines about Colombia, Venezuela, and Brazil. And in a corner, a discreet green door with a bucolic lady and gentleman going for a walk on a ceramic tile.
