The Torch of Tangier Page 2

***

  By the time Lily arrived in Tangier, the three of them—Drury, MacAlistair, and Zaid—had been working in the caves for the better part of a week.

  The morning Lily joined them, MacAlistair and his friend Zaid were waiting for Lily and Drury in the patio of the El Minzah.

  Zaid wore his digging outfit, his version of the local Riffian costume—loose pants in bright yellow, an embroidered vest, and a turban wrapped around his head for protection in the caves.

  MacAlistair’s jacket was draped across his shoulders and he held his cigarette European-style between his thumb and index finger. Nobody called him Mac.

  He smoked Gauloise. The acrid whiff of the strong Turkish tobacco burned Lily’s eyes. MacAlistair greeted them and coughed softly. His friend Zaid placed a hand on his arm.

  “I shouldn’t dig in the caves,” MacAlistair said. “The dust is bad for my bronchitis.”

  He took another puff of the cigarette, coughed again until his eyes teared, while Zaid patted his back.

  “Let’s go,” Drury said. “Time’s a-wasting.”

  Zaid drove them out of Tangier in MacAlistair’s Hillman, up a winding road lined with prickly pears and fragrant with the scent of wild iris. They started up The Mountain, strewn with villas silent behind walls festooned with ivy-geraniums and gardens vivid with spring.

  Higher still along the ridge, the aroma of pine needles and the sea wafted toward them from round-headed umbrella pines along the coast. On their left, wild oleander bloomed bright pink among scattered cork oaks and in the crevasses of the scrub. Beyond, the Rif Mountains rose like ghosts out of a blue haze of rolling foothills.

  They passed the lighthouse, sited on the barren point of Cape Spartel. In the distance children ran toward a low-lying kiosk on the edge of the land, their mothers following in wind-swept dresses.

  Drury pointed to the flat, bald headlands of Cape Ashagar ahead of them on the coastal road. “There they are, on the Atlantic side of the cape.” He paused dramatically. “The Caves of Hercules.”

  Parked cars, carriages, and donkey carts clogged the road near the caves.

  “Who are all those people?” Lily asked.

  “Tourists. Visitors. In good weather they drive out from town for picnics and sightseeing. And locals have an industry hewing millstones out of the walls of the sandstone caves. The only thing that bothers us is the noise of quarrying.” Drury leaned forward and looked out the window toward the crowded road. “We work in the High Cave. It’s a bear to reach, so tourists leave us alone.”

  Zaid maneuvered the car onto a spur that led to an upper path, and parked next to the cliff face in the shelter of a small niche not visible from the road. They unwound themselves from the tiny Hillman and stood in the freshening breeze that funneled through the Straits of Gibraltar.

  The Pillars of Hercules!

  From here, Lily thought, I can see the end of the world. Below them, the Atlantic roiled, green and foaming. Far to the right, inside the Straits, a turquoise Mediterranean reflected the sharp cerulean sky.

  A blue-eyed Riffian with a blond beard and wearing a knitted cap, orange pantaloons, and a broad smile came toward them.

  “This is Tariq,” Drury said. “He’s from the village down in the valley. Medionna. He and his brother Hasan are our pickmen.”

  Tariq touched his forehead and waved his hand in her direction. “Welcome, lalla, welcome.”

  They scrambled down a steep path that jutted from the cliff face like a tiny shelf, just broad enough for a footing, to the mouth of the cave. Here and there, the jagged ledge was shattered. Below her, the furious sea broke against the jumble of rocks. Lily held her breath and clawed the sharp limestone of the wall.

  “Afraid of heights?” Zaid reached for her. “Take my hand.” He guided her across the gaps to the entrance platform of the cave.

  Inside, lit by a dim shaft of daylight from a hole in the roof, a series of strings one meter apart stretched across the floor. Lines weighted with plumb bobs hung from the ceiling like so many stalactites.

  “Watch your step,” Drury said, and handed her a miner’s helmet with a lamp attached to the crown.

  The others, their helmets already lit, moved cautiously among the strings, stooping under the low ceiling of the cave, casting long shadows across the cyclopean beams of the lamps. Only Lily could stand upright.

  Tariq worked his way steadily along a trench down the center of the floor that led from the threshold of the cave to the back wall. He dug with the sharp end of a khaddum, a double-headed pick, straddling the trench, chopping at a layer of gritty red soil. His brother Hasan carried away the loose soil in a two-handled basket to a tiny shelf outside the cave.

  “The boys sift the dirt through a screen with a quarter-inch mesh.” Drury’s voice echoed through the hollows of the cave, over the sound of the sea and the muted hammering of workmen in other caves quarrying mortars out of the rock. “We’ve picked up a few teeth, cut bone—some splintered for the marrow—from this level. Mainly gazelle, wild bovine.”

  Tariq, crouched over the trench, looked up at Lily and grinned. “My brother Hasan and I, we find.”

  “We dig in twenty centimeter increments,” Drury told Lily.

  He picked up a pebble and pitched it at the top layer of soil on the side of the trench. Lily swung her headlamp around to light it. Near the surface, the deposit was dark and oily from human habitation.

  “That top layer had some modern Islamic and Roman remains and Neolithic material. Last year we brought out polished stone axes, impressed pottery, sheep bones, tanged Capsian points.”

  Tariq was working in the packed red earth below it.

  “The red soil of the next level is from the last pluvial of the Pleistocene,” Drury said. “We’ve taken out Mousterian points, scrapers, a Neanderthal jaw.”

  Lily peered into the shadows and adjusted her headlamp. She could just make out a lens of charcoal and burnt earth.

  A Neanderthal hearth.

  Here, in these caves at the tip of the world, they had cooked their food, chided their children, buried their dead. Long before the Romans, before the Phoenicians, even before Hercules, voices echoed in hollows lit by dim fires and the caves held the smell of habitation.

  What were they like, these gruff creatures with their bulbous noses, heavy brows, receding chins? Was their hair matted? And did they smile, did they hold each other, did they croon soft songs to their babies?

  MacAlistair had begun to cough again, this time uncontrollably. He groped for the cave entrance. Outside, he leaned against the rock face, gasping.

  Zaid waggled his light dolefully from side to side. “He’s sick. Very sick.”

  Zaid had stepped outside to comfort MacAlistair and Drury had explained, “Can’t seem to shake the bronchitis.”

  ***

  Lily was still staring at the shuttered window of Drury’s room, the bright North African sun silhouetting his angular body, when his voice broke into her thoughts.

  “Where the hell is room service?”

  He began pacing the hotel room as if it were a cage. “Those goons must have cleared out of your room by now.” As he reached for the telephone, a knock sounded at the door.

  “At last.” Drury opened it. He turned away from the waiter and indicated the desk. “Put the tray down here.”

  He signed the check and stood in the middle of the room until the waiter’s footsteps faded, then went to the door, opened it a crack and scanned the hall.

  “All clear.”

  He picked up the tray and carried it into the hall, pausing in front of Lily’s room. “Not a word when we get inside,” he whispered and signaled for her to unlock her door.

  She opened it, hesitating in the hall a moment. Everything seemed to be in order, as if intruders had never been there. The Germans had vanished.

  Drury eased the tray onto the dresser in Lily’s room and held a finger to his lips. He ran
a hand under the table, got down on the floor and looked under the dresser, the bed, the chair, all the while motioning her to silence. He took the drawers out of the dresser, turned them upside down, dumping the contents on the bed, emptied the closet, and ran his hand along the closet walls.

  He went into the bathroom and peered in the medicine cabinet, under the sink, under the lid of the toilet tank. He climbed up on the toilet seat and loosened the screws holding the air grate.

  He focused on the inside of the shaft, nodded knowingly, and signaled to Lily to look up.

  There, inside the airshaft, dangling from a wire, was a microphone.

  Chapter Three

  Drury clambered down from the toilet, fetched the tray from the dresser, and brought it into the bathroom. He placed it on the sink, climbed back on the toilet seat, then slathered a coating of honey along the wire and the microphone. He motioned for Lily to hand him the mashed potatoes. He packed the soft mess around the microphone with his fingers, squeezing each clump to make it adhere.

  “That should do it,” he said out loud while he washed his hands. “The only thing they’ll get now is an earful of potatoes.”

  “Suppose they’re not hungry?” Lily said. “Besides, the food will attract every rat in the harbor.”

  “Not to worry.” He climbed back up and screwed the grill in place. “The grid keeps all the rats in the airshaft. Except for the ones in the room above.” He tapped on the ceiling with his middle finger.

  “Someone’s up there listening?”

  “Probably. Earphones glued to their heads, eager for every word.”

  Lily felt a spark of irritation. “Why? I have no secrets.”

  He climbed down and wiped his hands on a towel. “Not yet.”

  “But you have secrets, Dr. Drury?”

  He strode into the other room. “Let’s have the tea.”

  “You do, don’t you?”

  “Milk or sugar?”

  “It’s cold by now.”

  “Doesn’t matter. It’s good for you.”

  “Won’t they be suspicious when they don’t hear anything?” Lily asked.

  “Ignore them. They’re buffoons. Chocolate soldiers in a comic opera.”

  Buffoons or not, Lily felt her shoulders tense.

  He reached for the tea. “But don’t underestimate them.” He took a quick sip and put down the cup. “Drink up. We’ve an appointment at the villa.” He moved to the door and held it open for Lily. “Come on, we’re late.” He stopped, halfway into the corridor. “Don’t forget to lock up.”

  “The horse is already stolen.”

  “If you don’t lock the door, they’ll know we spotted them.”

  Outside the hotel, the woman who called herself Suzannah was canvassing stray tourists at her usual place, her shining black hair luminous in the morning sun. Drury had told Lily that Suzannah was a prostitute who lived in the mellah, the Jewish quarter of the medina.

  He nodded when they passed her. The costumed doorman in slippers, fez, and orange sash, his hand clasped firmly on Suzannah’s flank, shooed her away, telling her to go back to the mellah and stay there.

  Drury glanced at Suzannah with an almost imperceptible nod of his head and looked toward a café across the street from the hotel. Lily watched Suzannah swivel down the street in her high-heeled shoes, her dark satin hair flapping against her shoulders like the wings of an angel, and tried to remember where she had seen Suzannah before.

  ***

  They took a taxi up The Mountain to the villa. Lily waited at the gate while Drury paid the driver.

  “It’s open,” he said when he came around to the gateway and reached behind the lock to lift the latch.

  They skirted a black Packard parked in the circular drive in front of the villa and entered the tiled vestibule, made their way around a blocking wall and a corridor and into the villa, a quixotic blend of British and Moorish styles.

  Drury stalked across the chintz and mahogany sitting room, with its beaded lampshades and Kerman throw rugs. He strode into a courtyard garden where the soft aroma of orange blossoms and old French roses hovered, where bougainvillea spilled against a dazzle of brilliant tiles, each tile matched to its neighbor with mathematical precision, circles embedded in circles, blue and yellow and white in intricate harmony.

  MacAlistair and a stranger were seated next to the fountain in the shade of the eastern wall of the garden with glasses of mint tea on a table between them. They both rose when Drury and Lily entered.

  “Lily, this is my friend Wild Bill,” Drury said.

  “Hickok?”

  “Donovan.” Drury turned to his friend. “Lily Sampson. I told you about her.”

  Donovan was a small man in his late fifties with pale blue unblinking eyes. He wore a windbreaker, but his trousers looked like officer’s pinks.

  “Donovan has a job in Gibraltar,” Drury said. “Comes over here every once in a while for a decent meal.”

  “I understand you worked in Palestine,” Donovan said to Lily.

  “Tel el Kharub.”

  “The place where that archaeologist who was killed worked?”

  Lily nodded. “Geoffrey Eastbourne.”

  “You’re going back to finish the dig?”

  “We closed down the site after Eastbourne was killed.”

  “What happens now?”

  “His assistant, Kate Hale, is writing up the site report in London. I’m doing the section on the cemetery.”

  “You’re working on it now?”

  “I didn’t bring my notes. I thought we’d just be here for the 1941 season, then go back to Chicago.”

  Donovan glanced at Drury. “But you stayed,” he said to Lily. “Over a year longer. It’s 1942, almost November now.”

  “The war,” MacAlistair said. “How would she get home? She’d have to go south to the Cape, then over to South America.”

  “And Drury won’t pay for that, I suppose.” Donavan turned to Lily. “So what do you do with your time?”

  “Not much. Getting to know the city.”

  “Participant observation. Isn’t that what you anthropologists call it?”

  “I’m an archaeologist. I’m just observing, not participating.”

  Again Donovan glanced at Drury.

  “You speak Arabic, Miss Sampson? French or Spanish?”

  “I can speak a little of the local dialect they use in Palestine. It’s different from what they use here but I can understand most of what the Tanginos are saying. As for French, my pronunciation is awful and my vocabulary tends toward archaeological terms like tesson for potsherd, niveau for level. Just high school Spanish.”

  “But you can get along.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “With all that free time, you must be bored. Maybe you could help out at the Legation.”

  “I don’t…” Lily began.

  But before she was sure of her answer, Drury stepped in. “Great idea. We’ll both go down there, offer our services.”

  Donovan gave a grunt of approval. He moved toward the door. “I took the liberty of mentioning both of you to the chargé d’affaires at the Legation. Name is Quentin Boyle. He’s expecting you.”

  Drury seemed satisfied. “We’ll drop by this afternoon.”

  “I’ll call and tell him you’re coming.” Donovan started to leave. “Be careful,” he said to Drury and then turned to Lily. “Good to have met you Miss Sampson. Maybe we’ll meet again.” He sauntered toward the inside of the house and then stepped back into the garden.

  “While you’re there,” he said to Drury, “check out the personnel. I’d like to hear what they’re up to.”

  “Something wrong?”

  “Nothing I can put my finger on.”

  MacAlistair coughed gently, looking from Donovan to Drury and back to Donovan. “I’ll see you out,” he said and followed Donovan out of the garden.

  “Looks lik
e you’ll be working at the Legation,” Drury told Lily.

  “How do you know? We haven’t gone there yet, haven’t asked for the job.”

  “Wild Bill always gets his way. Nobody can turn him down.”

  MacAlistair returned, followed by Zaid.

  “Who was that?” Zaid asked.

  MacAlistair hesitated, looked over at Drury. “A friend of Drury’s.”

  “What was he doing here?”

  “Dropped by to say hello,” Drury said.

  Lily watched the water splay in the fountain while MacAlistair crossed to the chair he had been sitting in earlier, sat down with a sigh, and picked up the glass of tea.

  Zaid sat in the other chair and leaned forward. “The tea is cold. I’ll get you a fresh pot.”

  “We have to leave. Have an appointment at the Legation,” Drury told him.

  Zaid seemed annoyed, distracted. “Want me to drive you?” He stood up, searched in his pocket and pulled out the car keys.

  “Sure.” Drury strode out of the garden, through the sitting room, and was waiting at the Hillman before Zaid and Lily reached the drive outside the gate.

  Chapter Four

  At the Legation, the acrid smell of an old building—damp plaster and musty wood—hung in the air. A Marine corporal in dress uniform perched in a glass enclosure at the entrance nodded to Drury and gave Lily a quizzical look.

  “She’s with me,” Drury told him. “We have an appointment with Boyle.”

  The corporal waved them through.

  ***

  In the office of the chargé d’affaires, Quentin Boyle leaned back in his chair, both hands on his desk. “So you say you’re an expert on Arab affairs, know how they think.”

  Boyle had auburn hair and a pale redhead’s skin. He had a nick on the right side of his nose, and his nostril flared and fluttered when he spoke.

  Drury sat on the edge of his chair. “I know the Riffians,” he repeated, his tone growing more insistent with each sentence. He leaned his elbow on Boyle’s desk. “Came here in the Twenties during the Riff war when they fought for their independence against Spain. Fascinating people. Blue-eyed, blond Arabs.” He gave Boyle a knowing grin. “The Vikings were great explorers.”