Torch of Tangier

by Aileen G. Baron

  The boy was round-cheeked and barely past acne. He transferred the cap to his left side before he turned and held out his hand.

  “Pleased to meet you.” He stood at attention, his hair falling over his forehead.

  “Relax, won’t you.” Adam canted back the dolly with his foot. “Be right back. Have to get the rest of Drury’s things from Boyle’s office.”

  The boy watched him leave and fingered the cap under his arm.

  “The Major tells me that you’re at the University of Chicago,” he said to Lily.

  “I have an ABD. I haven’t finished my dissertation yet. It’s in archaeology. It’ll be a while before I can work on it. I’m here for the duration.”

  “I mean_____ ” He shuffled, moved forward and halted halfway to her desk. “You know what I mean.”

  “I was at the Oriental Institute. But I’ve been working in Morocco for the past year.”

  He waited an awkward moment for her to say more.

  “I came here with Drury to work in the caves outside of town. But now—.” She shrugged.

  She didn’t want to remember, to explain it all over again.

  “I just graduated from the U of C,” he said.

  “What field?”

  “Linguistics. Actually, a double major, linguistics and math. Makes me an expert in crypto-analysis. That’s why I’m assigned to the CIC.”

  “You work on codes?”

  “Yes. Well, not really. Just send messages. But I’d like to work at Bletchley Park.”

  “Benchly Park?”

  “Bletchley, outside of London. Hush-hush operation. Scuttlebutt is that they worked out a German code called Enigma that encrypts signals automatically using a series of revolving drums. Cracked the ciphers. Now they can intercept messages from the German High Command, even from Hitler.” He hesitated. “That’s the rumor, anyway.”

  “And you’d like to know what Hitler’s thinking?”

  “It’s not that. It’s the way the thing works, using symbolic logic, Boolean algebra, decision theory. Meta-mathematics they call it. It’s not just Alice in Wonderland anymore.”

  “Alice in Wonderland?”

  “Charles Dodgson was a mathematician, did some early work in symbolic logic. But he’s more famous for the books he wrote as Lewis Carroll. They say that when he was presented to Queen Victoria, she asked for a copy of his next book, so he sent her a treatise on higher mathematics.”

  Blufield’s eyes fixed on an unseen horizon, the brightness in his face focused on some distant dream. “What they’re doing at Bletchley is a new way of thinking. Going to change the world.”

  “Wars do that,” Lily said.

  “Mister Blufield!” Adam’s voice was stern. He stood at the door balancing a dolly stacked with boxes.

  “I’d like to be in on that,” Blufield said. “Work on that sort. of thing after the war.”

  “Mister Blufield.” Adam’s tone was colder, more threatening. “You’ve heard the saying A slip of the lip can sink a ship‘?”

  “I was only repeating scuttlebutt.” He ducked his head and gave Adam a tentative smile. “Besides, she has security clearance. She’s one of us. Anyway, I was thinking about the future, when the war is over.” He threw up his hands in a gesture of apology. His cap fell to the floor. “It won’t happen again.” He bent over to pick up the cap.

  “Damn right it won’t.”

  Blufield kept his eyes down, looked at his shoes, ran the toe of his right shoe along the back of his pant leg.

  “I’d better get going to Casa,” he said, his face flushed.

  “Damn right you’d better.”

  Blufield stood at attention, saluted, and left the room. Adam maneuvered the dolly into the office and rested it against the wall.

  “Weren’t you a little harsh?” Lily asked. “He’s just a kid, fresh out of school. He said he won’t do it again.”

  “That’s the point. They’re all fresh out of school. And if there’s a mistake on the beach at Casablanca, they won’t have a second chance. They won’t do anything again.”

  He hoisted one of the boxes onto Lily’s desk. “Let’s get to work.”

  Lily told Adam about Yuste’s order while they sifted through Drury’s papers.

  She held a pad covered with Drury’s familiar scribble. “I miss him. Even the gruff sound of his voice, making demands, barking orders.”

  “He had panache, mostly flamboyant.” Adam opened another box and stacked the contents on Drury’s desk. “In his own way, he was brave, and brilliant, a little quixotic.” He looked over at Lily. “Where will you go?”

  “Back to the States, maybe.”

  “You can’t cross the North Atlantic. It’s swarming with U-boats.”

  “Other people are crossing. A whole invasion force.”

  “That’s different. They’re soldiers.”

  “Soldiers. Expendable, isn’t that what they call it?”

  Expendable—like Rafi. She thought of him crossing the minefield, caught in the crossfire.

  That last second, did he know?

  “They’re soldiers,” Adam repeated.

  “And I’m not? It’s a case of women and children first? How chivalrous!”

  “You could look at it that way. I like to think of it as an adaptive strategy necessary for the survival of the species.”

  “Always the anthropologist.”

  He flipped through the last folder on the desk. “Can’t help it. I’m just a poor university professor.” He put the stack back into the box and reached for another.

  “Not anymore. You’re an army officer.”

  “An army officer.” He sat in Drury’s chair, his arms limp at his sides. “On the eve of ordering a thousand young men to their death. Just kids.” Adam’s voice rang hollow from the depths of the chair. “They could be my students. And I’m about to send the message that could blast them all to hell.”

  He stood up and dumped the contents of a box onto Drury’s desk. “Only two more boxes and we’re done. Doesn’t look like the code’s here.” He wiped his forehead and raised his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “You’ll be leaving. Where do you intend to go?”

  “Boyle suggested French Morocco.”

  “Straight into a war zone? Giraud intends to make a show of resistance. God knows how severe the fighting will be.”

  “I’ll go south, stay away from the coast. I might do an archaeological survey.” Lily rifled through the papers on the desk and returned them to the box. “There’s a Roman site, Volubilis.”

  “Where would you stay?”

  “Moulay Idriss. It’s a little town near Volubilis named after the first sultan of Morocco. His tomb is there.”

  “I need you here.” Adam slammed down the Manila envelope he held and leaned over Lily’s desk. “I’ll talk to Boyle, see if he can get Yuste to change his mind.”

  “Not likely. Boyle’s already tried. You’ll have to find a replacement for me.”

  She sorted through another stack of notes.

  “I can’t find a replacement that easily.”

  “No one’s indispensable.”

  Adam put both hands on Lily’s desk. “That’s not it.” A pink flush suffused his face and he lowered his head. “I could assign Blufield to take over some of your duties here. But I don’t want you wandering through a war. I want to keep an eye on you. Two eyes, preferably.”

  Lily looked away. “I’ll be all right. There’s nothing to worry about. Nothing else I can do.”

  He went back to Drury’s desk and began sorting through the rest of the papers. “I’ll miss you.” He opened a drawer and closed it again. “You’ll need transportation. I’ll talk to Boyle.” He lifted a folder from the pile, thumbed through it, tossed it aside. “I may be able to arrange a jeep.”

  “I don’t need—”

  “Stay in the south til the beachheads are secured. Then you can come up to HQ in Casablanca. But not until the fighting is over.” Adam s
tacked the folder he held on top of the others. “You can have my jeep. I’ll requisition a command car to go to Casa.”

  He returned the stack of folders to the carton and held up an envelope. “There’s a letter here. It’s addressed to Suzannah. ”In case of my death,“ it says. He was expecting something like this.”

  “Why Suzannah?”

  “He trusted her more than you do.” He put the letter in his pocket.

  He reached the bottom of the carton and sank into Drury’s chair. “That’s the last of them. The code box isn’t here.”

  “Maybe it’s in the villa,” Lily said. “If I’m going to do a survey, I’ll need a theodolite. There’s one at the villa, on the roof behind the radio, under the table where the boxes are.”

  “Theodolite?”

  “It’s like a transit, used in surveying. Measures horizontal and vertical angles, distances. I need it to map Volubilis.”

  “The code book could be in one of those boxes. We didn’t look there yet.”

  “You think the code box is at the villa? Let’s go up the Mountain and see.”

  They left the Legation and started toward the taxi stand in the street across from the steps. When they passed the steps, Lily stopped. The German was gone. The hat was gone, the coat, the umbrella.

  Lily stared down at the cobbles where the German had fallen. “He didn’t kill Drury.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “If I could fight him off, so could Drury. Drury had special training for that.” Adam looked over at her. “It was someone he knew. Someone he trusted.”

  “Someone who knew about the microphone,” Lily said, and thought about Ferencz.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The villa churned with chaos. Overturned chairs spilled into the courtyard; tables lay on their backs, legs extended into the air; silk cushions, shredded and tossed, toppled across the floor. The garden tumbled with loose paper that swarmed before the wind.

  The thuza wood vitrine was splintered, its glass doors shattered. Smashed artifacts and figurines lay scattered on the tiles and the head of the Berber from Volubilis was broken off the plinth.

  Lily tripped over a broken jar that crunched beneath her shoe. “What’s going on?”

  Suzannah stood in the courtyard, her hand over her mouth. “MacAlistair is dead.” Her hand dropped to her side. “I found him this morning.”

  “MacAlistair?”

  Zaid scurried from room to room, gathering and redepositing bits of wreckage, cradling stacks of papers and old magazines to his chest.

  “What happened?” Lily asked him. He gazed at Lily, swaying, his cheek covered with a plaster bandage. His eyes glinted with tears.

  He dropped the papers that he held onto the floor and stepped over them. “He just floated off into the night.”

  “I summoned the doctor,” Suzannah said in a dull voice.

  Zaid picked up another chair and upended it. Had he gone mad? Creating the disorder, not clearing it up.

  Lily stared at him, uncomprehending. “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to make it look like forced entry into the house,” Suzannah said in the same flat monotone. “A robbery, maybe.”

  “Why?”

  “The doctor called police. He said MacAlistair was suffocated.” She made a helpless gesture with her hands. “He said MacAlistair struggled. The pillow on his bed is streaked with the blood he coughed out.”

  “MacAlistair murdered? Why?” A flush of shock and vertigo roiled through Lily and she turned to Suzannah. “How do you know he struggled?”

  “The doctor said.”

  “You called the police?” Adam asked.

  “The doctor called.” Suzannah indicated Zaid with a tilt of her head. “He’s been acting like this ever since.”

  “The roof,” Zaid said.

  “The police? The Guardia Civil?” Adam started for the stairs. “Have to get the transmitter out of here before they arrive.”

  Zaid lifted a watercolor of a bucolic English scene from the Lake Country off the wall. “I’ll keep them off the roof.”

  “Don’t be too sure. Give me the keys to the Hillman.”

  “MacAlistair’s favorite picture. He was brought up in a house near there, you know.” Zaid dropped the watercolor onto the tile floor. “Have to make it look like someone broke in.” The glass in the frame shattered and flew across his shoe.

  “The keys,” Adam repeated.

  Zaid stirred at the broken glass with the toe of his shoe.

  “Are you listening to me?” Adam advanced toward him. “Lives depend on it. We don’t have much time.” He held out his hand and cupped his fingers. “The keys!”

  “On the hook by the front door.”

  Adam disappeared in the direction of the door and returned, keys in hand.

  “Help me get the stuff together,” he called to Lily. “Quick, before the police get here.”

  He vaulted up the stairs, two at a time.

  Zaid began to sift the glass splinters through his fingers like a child playing in sand. “Nothings right today.” He fingered the plaster on his face and left a streak of blood from his fingers. “I cut myself shaving.” He looked down at a bandage on his hand. “Broke the glass in the bathroom.” He buried his head in his hands.

  Adam’s voice called from me stairwell. “Lily, are you coming?”

  She found Adam in the far corner of the roof. He had already unplugged the equipment.

  “The code box isn’t here.”

  He pulled a travel case from under the table and opened it. “Without the code, the whole operation is in the toilet.” He lowered the transmitter into the case and pulled out a smaller one to hold the Teletype. “We have to broadcast unencrypted.” He looked at Lily. “You know what that means?”

  “Maybe the Germans won’t pick up the signal,” Lily said. “You said that they use AM and we use FM.”

  “You think they don’t know that?”

  “Maybe they won’t be able to respond in time.”

  “Maybe pigs can fly.” Adam picked up a pad of paper and threw it down again.

  Lily maneuvered out a wooden cube-shaped box with a handle that had been stashed behind the two cases. Beside it were a tripod and two stadia rods bundled together.

  “Looks like the theodolite.”

  “See if the code book is in there.”

  Inside the box, she found only the surveying instrument, with its short telescope folded down. Extension wires, pencils, and pads of paper still lay on the table.

  Adam began to wind one of the extension cords around his forearm. “I need another case.”

  “Maybe in MacAlistair’s room,” Lily said.

  Adam tied the plug through the looped cord and picked up the next one.

  Downstairs, Lily paused at the door of MacAlistair’s bedroom, reluctant to enter, and drew in her breath.

  I can’t go in there.

  Before she turned away, she saw a shadow float across the room. Lily moved inside silently, catching a glimpse of MacAlistair as she passed, his outline looming under a fresh sheet pulled over his face. Only the balding top of his head protruded, his scalp a purplish blue.

  At the far end of the room, Faridah was opening drawers, pawing through the contents. Crumpled sheets lay in a bundle on the floor.

  “What are you doing here?” Lily asked.

  Faridah recoiled, her face colored. She lowered her eyes. “Zaid call me to help.”

  “I think he wants you to get the sheets out of here, take them downstairs and wash them.”

  “To wash the sheets?” She bent down to pick up the bundle and started out of the room while Lily rummaged through the floor of the wardrobe to find an overnight bag.

  By the time she got back to the roof, Adam had already packed the transmitter and the Teletype. The only things left on the table were the rolled up extension cords and two pads of paper.

  Adam jammed them in the overnight case.


  “Faridah is here,” Lily said.

  “Who’s Faridah? Tell me about it in the car. We have to get this stuff to the Legation.”

  He picked up both large cases by their handles and wedged the overnight bag under his arm and started down the stairs.