Lily followed, carrying the theodolite and the tripod and stadia rods under her arm, banging against the wall as she navigated the narrow stairs.
Adam called up to her, “What’s keeping you? The car’s loaded. Everything’s in the trunk.”
On the ground floor, Suzannah waited at the door. “It is possible I may ride with you? I must return to the mellah.”
Adam grunted and Suzannah followed them to the car. Lily stashed the theodolite, the tripod, and the stadia rods on the back seat and Suzannah wedged herself into the back of the car beside them.
Adam started the Hillman, waiting a moment for the motor to warm up. “What the hell do you have back there?” he asked Lily.
“Digging equipment. Things I need for the survey.”
“You’ve done surveys before?”
“When I first started graduate school. I got summer jobs on WPA projects in Texas and Kentucky.”
Her mind was spinning with what she would have to do, what else she would need.
“Camera!” She opened the car door. “I need a camera.”
“Later. We have to leave now.”
“I don’t want to come back when the police are here.” Lily got out and slammed the door.
“Don’t…” Adam said, but she had already started back to the house, running.
In MacAlistair’s room, Faridah stood before the wardrobe, looking though the shelves. A camera was on the chair near the door.
Faridah held a book in her hand. Rebecca.
Lily dashed across the room, stopping next to Faridah. “I see you found my book.”
She reached out and Faridah moved away. “Yours?” Faridah hugged the book to her chest. “Zaid say—”
“I looked everywhere. I forgot I lent it to MacAlistair.” Lily searched in her pocket, found two pesetas and held them out to Faridah. “I’m grateful to you for finding it.”
Faridah eyed the coins. Her grip on the book loosened. When Lily took it, Faridah shrugged, grabbed the coins, pocketed them and ran from the room.
Did Faridah know what it was? Lily weighed the book in her hands and fanned through the pages, dog-eared, with pencil notations in the margin. She closed the book, grabbed the camera, hurried to the car, and hurled herself into the passenger side of the front seat.
Adam was revving the motor, starting to back out of the drive, when a Volkswagen and a police car pulled up to the curb. “Damn! Now what.”
A gray-haired man with a black doctor’s bag got out of the Volkswagen and darted into the house as Periera emerged from the police car. With a ceremonious bow to Lily, he sauntered toward the Hillman. Lily stashed Rebecca behind her and leaned back in the seat.
Periera rested his arm on the open window on the driver’s side and eyed Lily. “You claim diplomatic immunity again, I assume.”
Lily felt the bulge of the book against her back. “Lieutenant Periera, how nice to see you.” She forced a smile. “We’re just arriving. Is something wrong?”
“Another murder. With you once more at the location of the crime.”
“A murder? In the villa? Someone inside has been killed?” Lily widened her eyes in astonishment. “Who was it? When did it happen?”
“You claim not to know?” Periera asked. “As innocent as a kitten.”
Adam released the brake. “I suppose we should leave. Won’t keep you from your investigation,” he said with a wave and put the Hillman in reverse.
Periera was forced to step back. He stopped, startled at the sight of Suzannah in the back seat. “You! Here?”
Adam rolled the car down the drive. Periera started after them as they gathered speed and the car hit the street. He followed them for a few steps, threw up his hands and set off for the house.
After they were on the road to town, Lily pulled out the book from behind her back.
“Rebecca?.” Adam asked. “Where’d you get it?”
“Faridah was taking it from MacAlistair’s room.”
“I’ll be damned. So tell me, who’s Faridah?”
“She used to work at the villa. MacAlistair fired her.”
“What was she doing there today?”
“Zaid called her to help out. But she was up to her old tricks, going through MacAlistair’s things. It’s a good thing I went back for the camera.”
Adam looked over at her. “How are you going to carry all that stuff you have in the back seat? How will you handle a theodolite all by yourself?”
“I’ll hire a Berber.”
“You don’t speak their language.”
“I’ll find one who speaks French.”
“More likely, you’ll find some drunken Frenchman who’ll slobber all over you and offer to stay in your hotel room to protect you. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.”
“I think your friend is jealous,” Suzannah said from the back seat.
“I was going to ask you,” Lily said, turning to face Suzannah, “how do you know Periera?”
“Ramon is a…” She hesitated. “A client.” Suzannah looked down at her hands. She clasped them, fingers entwined, in her lap.
“And Ferencz,” Lily said. “He’s also a client?”
“Today was lucky. Usually I meet him in the evening.”
“But today your appointment was for lunch.”
“I had no appointment today. From Ramon, I tried to get information about the Spanish plans in Tangier, find out if they were preparing to join the Axis, let the Germans move south through Spain. From Ferencz, I tried to find out if the Germans were ready to move west through Tripoli or east to Egypt. Sometimes I was luckier than others, and I would pass the information on to Drury.”
“To Drury?”
Suzannah nodded, still knitting her fingers. “I contacted clients that Drury was interested in. He told me what to ask, arranged somehow for me to meet them.”
“Now that Periera saw you here—”
“I must flee again.” She almost whispered, as if she were afraid of being overheard. “I can’t go back to Marseilles.”
“You’re not from Tangier?”
“From France.”
“Is that where you met Drury?” Lily asked.
“He knew my parents. They had a travel agency in Lyon. I was a secretary. When the Germans came, they took away my parents. I came home from work, everyone was gone, my daughter gone. The house ransacked. I ran away to Marseilles.”
“Your daughter?”
Suzannah looked down at her hands again, clasped and unclasped them, her knuckles taut with tension. “Drury had come to the house and took our daughter before the Germans arrived. Some nuns came for her, hid her in a convent, changed her name.”
“You said ‘our daughter.” Drury is her father?“
“I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again. Only Drury knows where she is, and now…”
“You had a daughter with Drury?”
“We were close. Lovers. We knew each other a long time.”
Suzannah rolled her bottom lip between her teeth again and again until it began to bleed. “Drury rescued me in Marseilles. I was arrested, some charge I didn’t understand. It was too late to save my parents.” She pushed back the hair that had fallen on her forehead. “He got me an American passport.”
“You worked for Drury here?” Lily asked.
“I questioned clients who might have information for him.”
“Didn’t he object to the way you got the information?”
“At first. You have to understand. I will do anything—anything—to stop the Nazis.” A tear started down her cheek and she wiped it away. “I ran from them once, and now I must run again.”
“Where will you go?” Lily asked. “You have relatives?”
“Where?” Suzannah’s voice trembled. “In France, all have been killed or taken by the Germans or fled, who knows where.”
She lowered her head. Teardrops spilled on her clutched fingers.
After a while she said, “I may have dis
tant cousins in Fez. I will go there.”
She fell silent, her teeth still playing against her bottom lip.
Adam reached into his pocket. “I have a letter for you from Drury.” He handed it back to her.
After a while, she said, “He tells me the name of the priest to contact after the war to find our child. God knows if the war will be over, if our daughter will survive, if the priest will still be alive. He says that he left us some money. There’s no way to get it now, no way to get my daughter.”
She didn’t speak again until Adam parked the Hillman on the Rue de Portugal across from the Jewish cemetery.
She climbed out of the back seat, her eyes red and swollen. “Drury left a message for you. For both of you. If anything happened to him, he told me to tell you that the recipe for the blueberry pies is in the Bureau of the Djinn.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Lily watched Suzannah disappear into the mellah.
“What the hell is the Bureau of the Djinn?” Adam asked.
“The back of the cave where we dug.”
“You know where it is?” Adam turned the key and started the motor, ready to go.
“Cape Spartel. The Caves of Hercules.”
He revved the motor. “Let’s go.”
“We can’t. The Spanish sealed off the area, put road blocks everywhere.”
“There’s no time to fiddle around. We have to get that code box.”
“We can’t get through. Maybe Tariq can do it,” Lily said. “He knows the Bureau of the Djinn. Can you contact him?”
“No time for that. The Torch is lit tomorrow at midnight. We have to risk it.”
“We’ll go there tonight after dark.”
He paused, sucking in his upper lip, working it with his teeth. “I have to be in Casa tonight.”
“I’ll go alone.”
The car began to roll downhill. He put it in gear and turned the wheel to the curb. “Too chancy. You say the area’s patrolled.”
“I’ll find someplace unguarded, maybe sneak through.”
He turned off the engine and set the brake. “That’s a big maybe.”
“I can only give it a try.”
He hesitated, his hand on the door handle. “Suppose you get caught. Then we’ve got nothing and Yuste will turn you over to the Nazis as a spy.”
He got out of the car and opened the trunk. “I’ll talk to Boyle, see if he can get you a diplomatic pass.” He reached for the cases. “Have to get these instruments up and working before I leave.”
He hoisted the small suitcase under his arm, picked up the boxes that held the transmitter and Teletype, and started toward the steps that led to the Legation. He paused at the arch. “You take care of the archaeological gear and lock the car. Bring the keys.”
They stashed the equipment in her office at the Legation and Adam went down the hall to speak to Boyle. He returned, looking glum.
“He can’t help. Says Yuste is inflexible. Boyle’s tried to get permission before with no luck. Now, with you under suspicion, it’s even harder.” He picked up two cases. “Only locals are allowed in the area. They do I.D. spot checks. Even if you get through, you need papers.”
He was already at the door, suitcases crammed under his arms. “I’m going up to the roof.” From the hall, he called back over his shoulder, “Boyle wants to see you. He says it’s about Meknes.”
Lily stored the theodolite and stadia rods in the little cupboard against the wall and started for Boyle’s office.
Boyle told her Periera had called, insisting that Lily must leave in seventy-two hours. “Today’s Friday. That means you must be ready to leave for the south by Monday.”
Lily watched the nick in his nose quiver with each syllable as he spoke, giving his words an air of urgency. “Drury left cash with me in case of emergency. I guess this counts as one.” He nodded his head as if going over it in his mind. “He left enough money for me to arrange transportation for you and room and board in Meknes. I’ll get on it.”
“I was thinking of staying in Moulay Idriss. It’s closer.”
“You can’t stay there. It’s a sacred site, the site of the tomb of the first sultan of Morocco and a close descendant of the Prophet. Only Moslems are allowed to spend the night. You’ll have to go to Meknes.”
He stood up and came around the desk. “You sure you’ll be all right?”
She turned to reassure him. “Of course I’ll be all right.”
She mounted the stairs to the roof and found Adam staring at a flagpole, the flag fluttering in the breeze off the sea.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Have to talk to Boyle. That flag means someone else has a key to this roof.”
Lily looked around the roof paved with mosaic tiles, a low lip around the perimeter, and four outdoor lamp stanchions, all painted white. Large clay pots planted with leggy geraniums and marguerites stood at intervals along the edge of the roof.
“They use the roof for receptions sometimes,” she said. “I was here last year for the one on the Fourth of July.” She pointed to a shed in the far corner next to the flagpole. “The shed over there opens into a sort of buffet, where they keep the steam tables and barbecue. Electrical outlets are in the shed.”
Adam fiddled with the keys in his hand, crossed to the shed and unlocked it. A radio-phonograph stood next to the bar on the left. Long folding tables and chairs stacked on their sides filled the right side. He opened one of the tables in the shelter of the shed, put the Teletype and radio on top and placed two of the chairs in front of the table. He plugged in the Teletype, motioned Lily to a chair, and pulled out a ladder from behind the stack of chairs.
Adam was on the ladder, attaching an aerial to the side of a storage shed when it began to rain again, at first just occasional drops. Sharp gusts slapped against the side of the shed. The flag snapped in the wind.
“Damn.” Adam swayed on the ladder. “Wouldn’t you know, the wind would come up when I’m in a hurry? Got to get this set up before dark.”
The western half of the sky was rosy with sunset but to the east a starless sky, pearly with clouds, was already darkening.
Footsteps, indistinct at first, then louder, clattered on the stairway to the roof. A Marine from the entrance booth opened the door and another followed.
“Who the hell is that?” Adam asked.
The first Marine saluted. “Private First Class Jessup, sir.” They moved toward the flagpole. “O’Hare and I came to take in the flag.”
Adam gave a perfunctory salute. “You have a key to the roof?”
“I get it from Mr. Boyle, sir. In the morning to raise the flag and when we take it down in the evening before sundown.”
They had already lowered the flag and begun to fold it when Adam came down from the ladder. “You finished, Jessup?”
“No sir.” He held the flag taut as he stepped toward the other marine, turning the folds into triangles in a choreographed ritual. “We’ll be gone in a minute, sir.”
When they finished, they saluted Adam and disappeared through the door, locking it behind them.
“This place is busier than Grand Central Station,” Adam said.
“For God’s sake, they’re on our side. It’s no busier here than the villa.”
“They don’t have security clearance. Everyone in the villa had clearance. MacAlistair and Zaid are SIS.”
“Which is?”
“Secret Intelligence Service.”
“How about Faridah?” Lily asked. “Did she have security clearance too?”
“Faridah?”
In the lowering twilight, wind whipped against the panels of the shed, banging them back and forth. Lily grabbed the handle of one and held onto it.
“Faridah. The Berber woman at the villa.”
“Never saw her before today. We won’t go back to the villa.” He climbed the ladder again. “I’ll have the equipment up and running in a minute.”
Lily stood in the she
lter of the shed, out of the wind. Adam clambered down and turned on the transmitter. He adjusted the knob, typed out “Hello,” tuned the receiver and loaded paper into the paten. After a few minutes, the Teletype clicked and printed “Hello back.”
Adam let out a breath. “At least something works.” He turned off the machine and looked up at the translucent, cloud-enshrouded sky. “They’ll never make it. They can’t land in this mess. Our first big offensive and the weather’s against us.”
Torch of Tangier Page 17