Torch of Tangier

by Aileen G. Baron

  He wrote some numbers on the pad next to the Teletype. “This is the frequency for Gib, this one’s for Casa.” He handed it to Lily. “Let’s go downstairs. Figure out what to do.”

  He locked the shed and crossed to the door of the roof. “I’ll send your replacement from Casa.”

  They stood on the steps below the closed door while he jiggled the keys.

  He handed the key ring to Lily. “The round one’s for the roof, the hexagonal one for the shed. Remember, round equals roof; hexagonal for six equals shed.”

  Downstairs, Zaid sat in Lily’s office, waiting behind Drury’s desk, his chair canted back against the wall, his eyes closed, his feet up.

  “How’d you get in here?” Adam asked.

  “The door was open.” Zaid righted the chair and put his feet under the desk.

  “How did it go with Periera?”

  “Fine. He’s out looking for the two thugs who broke into the house and stole the Georgian tea service and the Delacroix and killed MacAlistair.”

  “MacAlistair didn’t have a Georgian tea service, or a Delacroix,” Lily said.

  “Periera doesn’t know that.”

  “Did they go up to the roof?” Adam asked.

  “No. Too busy looking for what else might have been taken.”

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Adam said.

  “I came to pick up the Hillman. I need to go to Medionna tonight.”

  “You can’t get through,” Lily said. “All the roads are closed. The area’s heavily patrolled.”

  “I get through all the time. I know places the Guardia Civil never heard of.”

  “You’re going to see Tariq?” Lily asked.

  He shook his head and stood up. “No. The Mekraj. He’s waiting for me in the village. I have a last message for him from MacAlistair.”

  “Could you make a stop on the way?” Adam asked. “At the Caves of Hercules?”

  “Too much risk. There are gun emplacements on the headlands above the caves. The area’s fortified. They shoot to kill.”

  “It’s essential.”

  Lily interrupted. “I don’t think he—”

  “He’ll make it. He can take you there.” Adam turned back to Zaid. “Drury left something in the caves for her.”

  Zaid frowned. “What’s so important about a piece of archaeological equipment?”

  “That’s not what she’s after,” Adam said.

  “It’s personal,” Lily said. “There are things you didn’t know about—about Drury and me.”

  Zaid raised his eyebrows. “Is it worth your life?”

  Lily looked from Zaid to Adam, her head swirling with misgiving.

  “Is it?” Adam asked her.

  What was it Adam had said? With the landing, American forces were committed to their first big offensive. Rafi had walked across a minefield to stop the Germans in North Africa. She could do this.

  “Yes.” A sense of purpose tinged with apprehension eddied through her. “It’s worth it.”

  “Then it’s not archaeological equipment.” Zaid ran his fingers across the top of his lip. “Or is it?” He paused, his forehead crumpled in thought. “I have to fix up papers, manufacture an I.D. for you.” He narrowed his eyes. “Meet me after dark.”

  “At the villa?”

  “No. The side street where I always park. Be there at eleven.” After Zaid was gone, Adam turned to Lily. “You know what you’re getting yourself into? You’re on your own.”

  “The code book is the key to the invasion. I can handle it.”

  “You’ll have to. There’s no turning back.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Zaid waited in the Hillman, the motor running. Lily found a djelaba on the seat next to him. He was dressed as a Riffian in pantaloons and a vest, a white knitted cap on his head.

  He picked up the garment from the seat and held it out to her. “Put this on and pull up the hood. If anyone stops us, I’ll do the talking.”

  They took a southern route out of town, driving through areas unfamiliar to Lily, into the countryside, past hillocks and dark farmhouses. He turned onto an unpaved track with a drainage ditch running alongside.

  A few feet past the turn, he stopped on the verge, next to the ditch. He reached under the seat for two license plates and took a screwdriver from the glove compartment.

  “What are you doing?” Lily asked.

  “We’re in a different district. If we’re spotted, they’ll know we’re from Tangier. Have to change the plates.”

  Lily waited in the car, looking around at the stillness, at the silhouette of a tree in the shadows, at hills in the distance, some with little specks of light. She listened to night creatures rustling through the leaves in the ditch and heard the soft hoots of owls, signaling location of prey.

  She had never seen a night this dark.

  Zaid got back into the car, tossed the screwdriver back into the glove box, and continued driving slowly along the rutted track.

  “About Medionna,” Lily said. “It’s Friday. The Mekraj will be in Tangier for the Friday mosque.”

  “Oh?” Zaid glanced at her with a studied look. “It slipped my mind.”

  They drove in darkness, lights dimmed, the motor softly whining in low gear. Barely able to see ten feet in front of them, she watched the road, mesmerized by rocks along the side that cast long shadows, by small animals scuttling across their path, their eyes glinting in the murky gloom before they vanished into the fields beyond. Here and there, a light from one of the houses flickered in the darkness and disappeared.

  “What was Faridah doing at the villa?” Lily asked.

  “When?”

  “Today.”

  “Helping. She can be trusted.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “She’s my wife.” Zaid hesitated. “In name only—a marriage of convenience.” He had the flicker of a smile. “It gives me the right to beat her if she doesn’t obey.”

  “Are you the one who forced her to work and didn’t let her keep the money?”

  “You remember that? This time she gets to keep whatever she wants.” The smile became a satisfied smirk. “MacAlistair left everything to me.”

  “Is that why she was going through all his things?”

  “My things.”

  Lily held her breath. “You killed MacAlistair.”

  “I promised him a long time ago. When things got bad with him, when he had nothing left but pain.” Zaid hesitated. “I promised him, you know.”

  Lily sat rigid in her seat as they rode through the inky night in silence, wondering if she could trust Zaid, aware that it was too late, that she had no choice.

  I must get the code book, relay the messages for the landings. At any cost.

  Zaid turned the car into an open field and turned off the low beams. He leaned forward and squinted into the night, driving slowly across the field, the car pitching and straining as the wheels bit into the soft earth.

  She saw only the sky, heavy with stars, through the mud-splattered windshield. After a while she could make out vague shapes in the darkness, a tree looming here, a boulder there. Wisps of fog moved past them as they approached the sea and soon they drove through a blanket of haze that wrapped them in a silent veil.

  The air changed. Lily could smell the salt of the tide. Still surrounded by the cocoon of fog, the wheels of the car crunched over gravel, the sound almost drowned out by the crash and cadence of a furious surf.

  Zaid turned the car beyond the gravel and parked so that it was pointed downhill. He turned off the motor, set the brake. “We’re at the path below the caves.”

  He reached into the back seat for a pair of the headlamps they had used during the excavation and handed one to Lily. “Don’t turn it on until we’re inside.”

  They got out of the car, gently closed the doors and started up the path. They inched their way along the ledge toward the caves, clinging to the cliff face, hearing the angry sea pounding against the ro
cks below.

  They moved carefully along the narrow shelf on stones slippery with night mist. Once, Lily lost her footing. Zaid reached out with his arm across her waist, holding her back until she steadied herself.

  Her djelaba caught on a bush, the hood dropped down across her back. Zaid pulled it loose, tearing the cloth. He whispered a comment that was lost in the roar of the surf.

  Finally, they reached the mouth of the Upper Cave.

  Inside, Lily turned on the lamp and started toward the back of the cave, skirting the funnel that dropped into the lower cave.

  She moved the headlamp up and down along the back wall, seeing nothing but the circular pockmarks that stonecutters had left behind when they pecked millstones and mortars out of the living rock. Instinctively, she reached for the hamsa hanging from the chain around her neck.

  “Bismillah,” she whispered into the hollow of the back of the cave and crawled closer to where the ceiling sloped down against the wall. Then she saw it—the glint of the metal latch of the code box wedged in a crevice where the ceiling met the back wall.

  She tried to force it out, moving the box back and forth, her body taut with effort. Finally, she pried it loose, releasing the box with a shower of small pebbles and rocks. She toppled backward.

  Before she regained her balance, she heard Zaid directly behind her.

  “So that’s what you’re looking for. The code box.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Lily steadied herself and turned around.

  Zaid loomed inches away from her. “I’ve been looking for the code box. Drury said he hid it when I asked him where it was.”

  “He didn’t tell you?”

  “He said I didn’t need to know. That was before—”

  “Before he was killed?”

  Zaid held out his hands in explanation. “He wouldn’t tell me. What else could I do?”

  Her spine prickled. The light from Lily’s headlamp fell on his pantaloons. Bright orange. A shudder of fear ripped through her, remembering the flash of orange she had seen disappear down the corridor before she discovered Drury’s body.

  “You were in the hall that day. Running away.”

  “What hall?” His eyes narrowed, his jaw worked. “What day?”

  “At the El Minzah. The day Drury was killed.”

  “Oh, yes. Had a feeling something was wrong.” He came closer, leaning into her. “That’s why I came to help you. I only had your safety in mind.” He stopped, licked his lips, narrowed his eyes and looked off into the corner. “I wasn’t there that afternoon. Must have been some other time.” He reached out his hand. “The box is too heavy for you. Let me carry it.”

  She ducked and her lamp shone on the plaster stuck on his cheek.

  “Cut myself shaving, ”Zaid had told her.

  “Skin and blood under Drury’s fingernails, ” Periera had said.

  Zaid backed away, his face disappearing into the shadow. The light on his helmet trembled, swept the cave, focused on Lily.

  “Hand over the box,” he said.

  She gripped it in her right hand. She could feel the book inside shift as she moved her left arm forward, hesitated, then swiftly pulled the plaster from his cheek and sprang back.

  “What’s the matter with you?” His fingers went to his cheek, hiding the cut.

  But she had already seen the two deep scratches, like claw marks from a cornered animal.

  “Cut yourself shaving?”

  “Give me the book.”

  “Drury scratched you. Before you killed him.”

  “I told you. He wouldn’t give me the book.” He stood in front of her, his hand reaching out. “Neither would MacAlistair. Now you. You know what happened to them.”

  “You killed MacAlistair for the code book? He trusted you.”

  “Trusted me? He tolerated me. I was just part of his collection of exotica, a native, a colonial, to be condescended to, treated like a child. Drury too. All you Europeans are alike. You take up the white man’s burden, tell us we don’t know how to govern, set up protectorates for our own good, then rob us.”

  “We’re Americans, not Europeans. We’ll free Morocco.”

  “No you won’t. You’ll tell us we can’t govern ourselves, like all the others. You don’t understand. My ancestors ruled the civilized world while yours were still swinging from the trees.”

  He moved closer and she backed away.

  “I spent part of my childhood in England, where they sent colonials like me to special schools where they taught us nothing and then said we couldn’t learn. We had primitive minds, they said.”

  She tried to step around him but he blocked the way.

  “Think, think,” he said. “Where would your mathematics be, and your fine equations in physics if you had to calculate using Roman numerals, if you had no zero? Where did European science come from, with words like alcohol and chemistry and algebra? Before we taught you how to think like scientists, even your kings lived in unwashed ignorance and darkness.”

  He reached out and stroked her chin. “Be a good girl. I need the book.”

  She backed away. “It won’t do you any good. You don’t know the code.”

  He held out both hands now. “I already know it, pieced it together from decrypts scattered on the floor.”

  He’s lying. Drury always cleared up, left nothing behind.

  “Nothing to be afraid of.” His breath came in short gasps, straining with controlled anger. “If you give me the book, I won’t hurt you.”

  Lily stood perfectly still. The only other sound was the vibrating pulse of the rising tide slapping against rocks in the lower cave.

  He came closer. “Give it to me.”

  She slid to the side when he grabbed for her arm.

  The noise of the surf echoed through the chamber.

  “Give me the book. Save yourself trouble.”

  He ran his finger down her throat. “How could I hurt you?” His finger traced her neck, gently circling the small depression where the hamsa rested, then up her throat again to her chin.

  “The Hand of Fatimah.” His fingers clasped the hamsa and pulled. “Supposed to keep away the evil eye. You believe it?”

  Lily felt the chain tug against the back of her neck. “It was a gift-”

  “You’re trembling.”

  She felt the pressure of his fingers on her neck, felt his breath against her cheek, the warmth of his lamp on her forehead.

  A chill crept along her spine. The pressure increased.

  Below them, the roiling sea was as loud as a train rushing through a tunnel.

  She threw the box behind her on the floor of the cave. He dropped his hand and moved to pick it up. She kicked it away.

  She drove her knee into his groin. He doubled over. She kicked at him, heard the thump as her foot connected with his shin.

  He stepped backward to steady himself, his foot at the edge of the funnel. The ground collapsed beneath him. She watched him sink, stunned, into the hole toward the lower cave.

  He gripped the side of the funnel. The soil crumbled under his fingers. He shouted.

  “Get me out of here!”

  She began to reach for him, sensed the ground soften beneath her feet, and jumped back.

  “Help me.” Zaid’s voice was almost a whimper. “I can’t swim.”

  She picked up the code box, giving the funnel a wide berth as she ran toward the entrance to the cave. Behind her, she heard Zaid’s cry as he plummeted to the rocks below.

  She closed her eyes and caught her breath. Don’t look down, she told herself. But still, she imagined him splayed on the jagged rocks, his head split open, the pink froth of the surf foaming around him, the rising tide billowing against his legs.

  From below, someone barked orders in Spanish. She turned off the light on the helmet and started down toward the Hillman.

  Through the fog, she made out two soldiers from the Guardia Civil at the car. One had opened the door to loo
k inside. The other inspected the license plate.

  Flattening herself against the rock face, Lily moved down the slope. The shoulder of her djelaba caught on the roots of a tree growing out the of cliff face. She shrugged out of it and kept moving.