IX
One advantage enjoyed by embassies located in the Mediterranean Basin is that they need not raise eyebrows and insult the host government in order to make themselves secure. The cab pulled to the side in the middle of a curve and stopped abruptly. Kelly was staring at a whitewashed wall ten feet high. It was too close to permit his door to open. The driver reached back and unlatched the back door on his side, ignoring the scream of brakes as a passing Fiat missed them by inches.
“American Embassy, you wanted,” the driver said. His passenger paid, then slipped out and around the taxi in a quick motion, hoping the next vehicle would not sheer him off at the knees. The taxi spurted away, leaving Kelly on a street filled with traffic and traffic noise which rebounded between the high walls on either side.
A patrolman in a blue uniform, not the black leather of the National Police, eyed Kelly from a hundred feet away. Presumably the man was an official recognition of the embassy. Kelly walked to the nearest gate. It was steel plating on a grill-work of the same metal, probably the only change in external appearance since the place had been built a century or more ago. When he knocked on the steel, a man-sized door opened in the larger panel and an Algerian in some sort of khaki uniform waved Kelly in.
“American Embassy?” the agent asked doubtfully in French.
“Ah, yes,” asserted the guard. Kelly stepped through into the beautifully landscaped grounds. The building itself, set back a hundred feet from the wall, was white with the varied profusion of design which “Moorish” shares with other popular architectures. There were up to three stories—four, perhaps, because a domed turret or two were visible. Windows, even on the upper floors, were closed by gratings no less functional for being of attractively wrought iron. Glazed tiles set off the border of each flat roof. Against the wall to the right of the gate was a guest house. An archway over the curving drive was covered with wisteria. The vines were as thick at the base as a man’s thigh. A red Mustang was parked beyond the arch, and past it along the drive approached a white Chrysler sedan. There was a passenger in the back of the Chrysler, dimly visible through the tinted glass.
The guard was already swinging the squealing gate open. Kelly moved aside, but the car stopped abreast of him anyway. The back window whined down. The passenger was a slender man of fifty or so with perfect features and a look of distaste as he viewed Kelly. He was tall enough to hunch a little in his seat to look comfortably at the agent. “Yes?” he asked without warmth.
“Ah, Angelo Ceriani, sir,” Kelly responded. He held a sheaf of Xerox brochures in his right hand. “About the copy machine.”
The passenger sneered with the disdain of a man who felt insulted at the suggestion a copy machine might interest him. He turned to the guard and snapped in excellent French, “Badis, you’ve been told to send tradesmen to the Chancery at once instead of admitting them here. Do so now!” The power window was already rising, clipping the last syllable as the limousine slid out into traffic. The guard looked apologetic. “The next building,” he said, pointing down the street toward the relaxed policeman.
“Guess I’ve met the Ambassador, hey?” said Kelly. He stepped onto the street again. “This is the Residence?”
The guard’s head was nodding, perhaps in agreement, when the gate clanged shut behind Kelly.