The Torch of Tangier Read online

  “Curing smallpox?”

  “Anthropology. You come highly recommended.”

  “By whom?” Lily asked. “Recommended for what?”

  “You do that very well.” They had reached the Ville Nouvelle. “You know what I want to talk about.”

  They approached the Place de France, just a few blocks past the El Minzah. “Here it is,” Lily said. “The Café de Paris.” They settled at an outside table with a view of the bay. “I had to show you this. I think you’ll be amused.”

  Most of the tables at the café were taken. Even the woman with the poodle was there. Germans, Italians, Frenchmen, leaning close, murmuring in low voices, eyes shifting from side to side, scanning the tables over their wineglasses, furtively eavesdropping like the cast of a comic opera.

  They twisted their way to an empty table near the door of the café.

  “What is this place?” Pardo asked as they sat down. “A union hall for spies? They’re all looking into the soup of the man at the next table.”

  “That’s about it, Major. They all come here to make deals, pick up the odd rumor, sell it to whoever pays best.”

  “Adam. My name is Adam.”

  She inclined her head. “Adam.”

  A waiter approached and handed them a flyspecked menu, one side in French, the other in Arabic. Lily scanned the street. Herr Balloon came toward the square, crossing from El Minzah. The left side of his face was swollen and bruised. She watched while he took a seat at a nearby table. He hadn’t noticed her yet.

  “There’s an epidemic of black eyes in Tangier,” Lily said. “We’d better leave before we catch it. Let’s get out of here.”

  “The idiot behind me is reading your menu.” Pardo, on the verge of laughter, leaned back in his chair, enjoying himself too much to leave. “Look over there.” He indicated a man hiding his mouth while he whispered, his face moving in time to sibilant noises coming from behind his hand. “Trying to act like he’s just picking his teeth.”

  Lily smiled as the man’s little finger scratched along the side of his lip. She noticed Herr Balloon watching her.

  She put down the menu. “Let’s go.” She stood up.

  Adam was still looking around, grinning. “What’s the hurry?”

  But she was already wedging her way through the tables.

  Adam hurried to catch up. “Something bothering you?” he asked. “That German with the bruised face at the table over there?”

  “You said you wanted to talk.”

  She started down the street toward the El Minzah. Adam followed. She glanced back at the Café de Paris to Herr Balloon and his cohort speaking to the waiter.

  Beyond them, Lily caught sight of Suzannah strolling with an officer of the Guardia Civil, smiling, her arm linked in his. Suzannah’s face seemed lit with adoration. She nodded as she spoke, her head inclined, her eyes intent on her companion, seeming to dote on every word the officer said.

  Lily stopped. “Suzannah!”

  “What about Suzannah?”

  “Over there, with a Spanish officer.”

  “Where?”

  But they had turned the corner by the time Adam looked back and Suzannah and her escort were already gone.

  Herr Balloon still sat hunched over a table, his arms crossed in front of him, frowning at a menu.

  “You know him?” Adam asked. “The German, I mean.”

  “Not to speak to. He’s been following me.”

  “Drury mentioned him. The one who planted the microphone. He follow you yesterday to Lalla Emily’s?”

  “He tried. He didn’t get far. That’s how he got the bruises.”

  “You knocked him down?”

  “He ran into a donkey.”

  “And you convinced the donkey to stand still so he could run into it,” Adam said.

  “Something like that.”

  “Drury told me you have hidden talents.”

  “I’m more concerned about Suzannah. What was she doing with the Spaniard?”

  “Just plying her trade.”

  Adam strode ahead of her, clearing a path around the snake charmers and kebob chefs in the Grand Socco, passing the old cannons in the gardens of the Mendoubia.

  “Doesn’t it bother you that she’s in contact with the Guardia Civil?” Lily asked when she caught up with him.

  “What’s to be bothered?”

  They had reached the Bab el Kasbah and crossed over toward the beach.

  “We can walk along the sand.” Adam scanned the street behind them. “No one’s followed us. We can talk there, no one will hear.”

  The bright autumn air was brisk and clear with the smell of the sea. A breeze came off the Mediterranean.

  “No one will hear what?”

  “I’m recruiting you.”

  “For what, exactly?”

  “You’ll be working with Drury, have to deal with local French authorities across the border, Free French, Colons, Arabs, Berbers.”

  A whiff of excitement, a flush of anticipation, stirred her.

  “Colons?” she asked.

  “French, Spanish, Italians, Colonials. Think you can do it?”

  I have no idea, Lily thought.

  “Of course I can,” she answered.

  Don’t botch it.

  “You’ll operate secret radio networks, smuggle arms, build reliable connections with the natives.”

  I could do that. I could do that, she thought. Why else am I an archaeologist? Some people grow up and learn to live in quiet houses. Not me, she thought, not me. I can travel to mysterious places, live in lost times, and come away unscathed.

  “This is the Near East,” she said. “Will they trust a woman?”

  “That’s the point. You have the best cover. You look as innocent as a toy poodle.”

  She tried to hide her escaping smile. “You want me to play Mata Hari?”

  “Not exactly.”

  He stopped, faced her, and watched as the wind whipped against her skirt and blew back her hair. “But I’ll bet you’d be good at it.”

  “I’ve smuggled arms before.”

  “Don’t tell me about it.”

  “Just accidental. I did field work in Palestine. I had a friend in the Hagannah. We came across an arms cache, and—”

  Adam glanced at her. “You think that’s news?”

  “What else do you know about me?” she asked.

  “As much as I need to.”

  “Don’t I have to be interviewed?”

  “You’ve already been interviewed.”

  “By Drury’s friend Donovan?”

  Adam nodded.

  “It wasn’t much of an interview.”

  “It was enough. He knows all about you.”

  “Drury told me that Donovan is very persuasive, that nobody can refuse him.”

  “That’s about right.”

  Lily shrugged and spread out her fingers. “Who am I to break with tradition?”

  ***

  Lily and Adam sauntered toward the water’s edge, each step heavy in the clean sand. Seagulls soared past them, folding and unfolding their wings.

  “I don’t want you to get hurt,” Adam said. “I want you to succeed, not to take unnecessary chances. Not go for glory. Not like Drury.” He paused and kicked at the sand. “This is a job that must be done. Drury is like a child. Somebody asks, ‘You want to get yourself killed?’ and he answers, ‘Of course, of course.’” He turned to face Lily. “What’s wrong with him? An unhappy marriage?”

  “Maybe. He married the department secretary. The rumor was that after the wedding, his wife spent more time in the psychiatric ward of Cook County than she did at home. You know how gossip flies around in academia.”

  “She was a volunteer?”

  “She was a patient.”

  “I heard the same, but I wasn’t sure. It’s hard to picture him as Brontë’s Rochester. Any children?”
/>   “That’s another rumor. They say he has a mistress in Paris and had a child with her. It’s possible. He went to Paris every year and stayed in France a while, no matter where he was doing field work.”

  “Maybe just to change planes.” He gave a quizzical shrug. “Or buy some Brie at the airport.”

  “Sure. He’d stay for a month, sometimes two. That’s a lot of Brie.”

  “You think he’s a little crazy?”

  “I don’t know. He told me once that he had always wanted to climb strange mountains, stir up tribes, work secretly to destroy an enemy,” Lily said.

  She could understand that, dreaming of adventure in exotic places, enmeshed in mysterious intrigue, flirting with imaginary danger, emerging unharmed and triumphant.

  “This is different. This is no swashbuckler’s fantasy,” Adam said. “This is real. And lives depend on it.”

  A small lizard, a sand racer, scudded past them, leaving its track along the damp sand.

  “Lizards are talismans against evil,” Lily said. “You think I should carry one with me? Pin it on my lapel, wear it on a chain?”

  “You don’t need talismans.” Adam searched her face. “We’ll make a good team.”

  A sudden gust came off the sea and billowed through Lily’s skirt. She bent over and clasped it with her fingers, holding it down against the wind. “I’m getting chilly. Come on. I know a great restaurant with a terrific view.”

  She led them back to the Bab el Kasbah, up the steps, under arches and up another flight of stairs. They climbed uphill through the medina, through white streets, past houses hidden behind high, blank walls.

  “Tell me,” Lily said, “what else do you know about Drury? He’s a bit of a racist, isn’t he?”

  Adam stopped and pursed his lips.

  “I mean,” Lily continued, “he has a theory that different races developed at different times, and some are more advanced than others. Cro-Magnons are the most highly evolved, according to him.”

  They had stopped walking now, and Adam shifted his foot. “What do you think of his theory?”

  “I once told him that if he mapped the distribution of classic Neanderthals and that of blue-eyed blondes, they would probably overlap. I told him that blue eyes and blond hair are Neanderthal vestiges, that he and I were probably their descendants.”

  “You told him that?”

  She nodded.

  “What did he say?”

  “He was upset. Told me I didn’t know what I was talking about.”

  “Like a true Neanderthal.” Adam flashed a smile at her and started up the hill. “Drury first came here by way of France in 1924, together with MacAlistair. He had romantic dreams of the Rif coast, the tall cliffs and hidden bays where smugglers and pirates of the Barbary Coast hole up. He was fascinated with stories he heard of the Rif—Nordic tribes in Africa, fighting for their independence.”

  “Is that how he met Abd el Krim?”

  “Not that time. He didn’t get to see the Rif. But he and MacAlistair formed a lasting friendship. Later, they came back to Morocco together, MacAlistair as a journalist, Drury as an anthropologist. Drury did his field work among the Rif.”

  They climbed past the goldsmith shops of the mellah, up and up toward the quiet of the Kasbah.

  “And MacAlistair?” Lily asked.

  “He’s SIS, Secret Intelligence Service, the British equivalent of OSS. When he came here in the Twenties, he was intrigued by the exotic paintings of J.F. Lewis and Delacroix. He wrote pieces for the London Times about the exotic mystery of the Near East, how Delacroix captured the sweep of the garments, the dignity and elegance of the men, the beauty of the women, the architecture, the intricate geometric designs of the fascias and plaster arches. Brits eat up that stuff.”

  “What about Zaid?”

  “Raised in Manchester, half-English, half-Moroccan. He had a rough time in England. At school, they treated him like an outsider. So he came back to Morocco. MacAlistair befriended him. And now, MacAlistair depends on him for everything. I don’t think he could survive without him.”

  Lily thought of the conversation at the dinner table the other night. “There’s a strong bond between MacAlistair and Zaid.”

  Adam glanced over at her and raised his eyebrows. “You don’t really want to know about that.”

  “The love that has no name?”

  “I believe the phrase is ‘the love that dare not say its name’.”

  “And now Zaid does the contacts with the Berbers?” Lily said.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Half a Rif is better than none.”

  “Half a Moroccan. We have other uses for Zaid.”

  “Such as?” But she already knew.

  “Each person only knows about his or her own job. It’s safer that way. One rank up knows the jobs of those under him and a little more. The only one who has the whole picture is Ike. Maybe Churchill and Roosevelt.”

  “So you’re telling me that a Moroccan in the villa is worth two in the Atlas Mountains.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Do you trust Zaid?”

  Adam paused, gave it some thought. “He worked for the SIS once, has full security clearance.”

  “He still has it?”

  “Sometimes he champs at the bit, wants to know more than is good for him. He’d rather give orders than take them.”

  They paused at a belvedere perched on a pinnacle of the Kasbah, above the sea wall. They took in the view of the port and the white curve of the beach as far as Malabath.

  “Over there, across the water,” Adam said, pointing, “that gray mass in the mist, that’s Gibraltar. You see that white speck against the haze? That’s the ferry that goes back and forth across the Strait.”

  Swallows swooped and chattered, struggling against the wind, making wide arcs around the sea wall.

  “Allied headquarters are there. The place is honeycombed with tunnels dug in the eighteenth century when the Brits were fighting off attacks from the French and Spanish to maintain control of Gib.”

  They began walking again, strolling leisurely across a white square behind the old fortress of the Kasbah.

  “And you?” Lily asked. “What about you?”

  “I did my field work in Canada, among the Ojibwa.”

  “I mean now. How long have you been stationed in Tangier?”

  “Just got here, the day I met you. Before that, I was in the Western Desert.”

  Lily tensed and stopped walking. Rafi. “With the British Eighth Army?”

  Adam nodded.

  She turned to face him. “Were you at Tobruk?”

  He shook his head. “Attached to them long after that. Wasn’t with them ’til the second Battle of El Alemein.”

  Still, he might know something about Rafi. “You hear anything….” She leaned forward intently, as if her urgency could compel Rafi to be safe. “Anything,” she repeated, “about who made it out, got away from the Germans?”

  “Only a handful made it.” Adam looked down at the pavement and shook his head. “Eighth Army was decimated when Tobruk fell. Rommel took three hundred thousand prisoners, all the supplies.”

  “Who was in the handful?”

  “Less than four hundred men. Some Coldstream Guards and South Africans managed to break out of the perimeter in lorries. Made it as far as the Egyptian frontier.” Adam thought a minute and smiled. “Some New Zealanders broke through to Rommel’s headquarters, set it afire. Gave Rommel a scare. Those Anzacs are something else. During Rommel’s attack on Alemein, they held the Quattara depression, turned him back.”

  Maybe Rafi went with the Anzacs, Lily thought. Maybe he went on to Cairo. Rafi can’t get in touch with me because he doesn’t know where I am. That’s why I don’t hear from him. I must find a way to let him know I’m in Tangier.

  Adam’s voice broke into her thoughts. “Nothing to worry about. Things are
better since Montgomery took over. We’ve provided Sherman tanks. And better anti-tank missiles—4.2 armor-piercing mortars with delayed fuses. We’ll do all right in Torch.” Adam sniffed the air. “Weather’s changing.”

  Lily started up a flight of stairs that led to a restaurant door.

  Adam paused at the landing. “Whatever you decide, I have to warn you. If there’s trouble, you’re on your own.” He pushed the door open and held it. “We’re going inside?”

  Lily hesitated a moment. She squared her shoulders, and with a nod, glided through the door.

  “You want the tajine?” she asked and smiled. “I recommend it.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Bits of paper and flotsam flew before the morning wind, whipping around stalls of the Grand Socco. Berber women hovered over baskets of vegetables like flapping birds and held onto broad brims of hats that curled in the blustery weather.

  “There’s a Levanter blowing,” Drury said. “Rainy season will start soon. It’s getting late.”

  “Late for what?” Lily asked.

  Drury hurried on ahead toward the Legation, while Lily scurried after him. “Late for what?” she asked again before she realized that he was worried about the weather for the landings of Torch.

  He bustled back and forth all morning, from Lily’s desk to his own, no time to talk, collating sections of the report, urging Lily to hurry the final corrections.

  He left the office and Lily concentrated on finishing the report, hunched over the desk. Tired, she paused and closed her eyes.

  Someone’s hands began to knead her stiff shoulders. Drury?

  It felt good. She rested and leaned back.

  The sweet odor of Korian’s pipe, mixed with overtones of garlic and sweat hit her nostrils. She jumped out of the chair.

  “You’re working too hard,” Korian said, smooth and oily. “That’s why you’re so edgy.”

  He leaned over her desk to read what she had written.

  She turned the paper over. “The report will be circulated to all personnel when it’s ready.”

  The swelling around his eyes had softened, leaving only a slight greenish discoloration. His lapel had a hole, charred around the edges.

  “You burned a hole in your suit.”

  “Must be from the pipe. I’ll get it rewoven.” He looked down and brushed at it with the side of his hand. “That’s not why I wanted to see you. I thought we could have dinner tonight.”