Traitor's Gate

by Charlie Newton

  “What are you gonna do?”

  Saba squinted her increasing displeasure. “I will kill two Nazis for your papers.”

  The words leaned Eddie backward. His keffiyeh slipped and he quickly reset it, his hand struggling with a simple movement.

  “If I lose this fight for your papers, you are on your own. The girl will be arrested. Do not seek her out; she does not know you.”

  “Wait a minute. I should go down there with you . . . to help. If you need it.”

  “You wish to kill a man? Two men?”

  Eddie grimaced. “No. But if it’s them or you, they’re dead.”

  “It is always that. European blood or ours.”

  Eddie leaned closer. “You forget to tell me you’re glad I made it aboard, alive?”

  Heat reddened Saba’s cheeks. “These men I will kill have families, children or lovers or parents who will never see them again. Do you wish to watch, see me end their lives?”

  Her words and tone straightened Eddie an inch. “Listen to me, okay? I’m not you, but this ain’t my first day off the farm. I don’t have to dwell on it or eat it all day. I see other stuff in you whether you like it or not. I can use a gun, and will, if that’s my part. But when it’s over we’ll take a bath—together—and forget all this shit.” Eddie looked past both her shoulders. “And if this boat wasn’t full of people trying to kill us, you’d be on your back right now.”

  Saba burned at him with her eyes. Her boy-man accomplice would not know whether it was love and lust or the Raven’s teeth coming out. She didn’t, either.

  Movement in the first-class section. The young girl led the SS officer through the aisle to the stairway door. Another man filled the officer’s seat next to the courier. Military bearing, strong hands, and hard eyes. Saba checked for others she’d missed and saw none.

  “There are three. We have a new plan.” Saba’s eyes lost their fire. “Now you will go to war.”

  The SS officer returned after forty-five minutes. The girl fifteen minutes later. A drink was shared and the girl now favored the courier with most of her attention. At eleven thirty p.m., the courier and the girl rose into the aisle, then moved toward the cabin door. The SS officer hand-directed the third man to follow.

  Saba said, “Now.”

  On the crew deck below, she stopped Eddie under the pipes just short of the portside gangway wet with the ocean’s spindrift and lit with silvery moonlight. “I will go alone. Draw your pistol. Shoot only if I am assured to die.”

  “Bullshit. It isn’t going that far—”

  Saba put a finger hard on his lips, then removed her keffiyeh and shook chestnut hair to her shoulders. She unbuttoned her tunic, displaying her breasts almost to the nipples. Eddie gawked. Saba turned the corner into the gangway, attempting a swish to her hips she had not mastered. The Nazi at the bow cabin door turned. He dropped a lifejacket he had been inspecting, leveled a Luger at her chest with his right hand, and barked: “Halt.”

  Saba stopped, both hands open and visible, the knife in her sleeve. The Nazi added words in a commanding tone and waved her back. She shrugged confusion and walked toward the gun. He leaned into a one-handed shooting stance and barked the command again. Saba stopped and feigned bewilderment, then pointed meekly at a cabin door past the one he guarded.

  The Nazi growled, “Lassen Sie!”

  Saba squinted and shrank into her shoulders. She pointed, moving only a fingertip. The Nazi threatened her with his body. She shrank under a raised arm. He swung to knock her sideways and overboard. Saba drove her knife under his arm and her head into his chin. His Luger clattered to the deck. Both hands ripped at her neck, their bodies wrenching into the rail. Saba’s knife came free but not her neck. She lunged with her hips, bent the Nazi backward over the rail, and her feet left the deck—Hands grabbed her shoulders and jerked her free. Saba pressed backward into the hands and kicked the Nazi in the chest. He went over the side into the dark. She spun to stab—The hands were Eddie’s. He stumbled backward into the cabins’ outer walls, grabbing her with him and back around the corner. Both were panting. Eddie started to speak. Saba drew her pistol, ran back onto the gangway, and burst through the bow cabin’s door.

  The courier and the girl were half naked on a bunk, heads twisted toward the door. The girl rolled to the floor. Saba stiff-armed her pistol at the courier’s head, stepped over the girl to the bunk, and slammed her fist into the courier’s nose. Blood splattered the pillow. The courier’s hand reached to his face. The death’s head ring of the SS glittered. Saba smashed his hand and head with her pistol butt. Blood splattered and the Nazi moaned. She mounted him and rammed the pistol into his forehead. “The key, Nazi, and I do not kill you.” Saba’s breasts heaved; the pistol was rock steady.

  The courier mumbled in German, his head shaking that he had no key. Saba slammed a fist into his solar plexus. Air and foam whooshed in her face. The courier swallowed his tongue and blacked out. Saba patted him for the briefcase key, found a key in his money belt. The key unlocked the wrist manacle, not the case. The courier was turning blue like his shirt. Saba flipped him onto his stomach. The flip forced a cough and the tongue out of his throat. She glanced at the girl on the floor then at Eddie, pistol out at the door. Doña Carmen’s girl was scared white. Saba rolled the Nazi to his back and pumped on his chest. He began to gasp. Saba pointed Eddie at the case. “Pry it open.” She produced a second knife.

  The courier tried to speak.

  Saba fixed the pistol barrel to his chest below his chin. “You are pigs. The English in different suits. What life you have is only if I give it.” The tone was cold and absolute, no mistaking the veracity. “His name? The SS officer above.”

  “Herr . . . Rainer.”

  “His contact in Casablanca?”

  Headshake.

  Behind her, Eddie said, “It’s here, all of it. Some other stuff, too.”

  “Take the papers, close the case if possible, and reattach it to this pig’s wrist.”

  Eddie did that.

  Saba turned to the girl. “Dress now. Remain here. I will bring new clothes. Do not return to the first-class section. Yes?”

  The girl nodded.

  Saba told the courier to stand. He did with difficulty, staggering. She said, “Are these papers true?”

  He shrugged. She hit him as hard as she could, surprised at her anger. He crumpled to the floor, bleeding from his eye socket and cheek. “Are they true?”

  He mumbled, “Nein.”

  “Nein? So the Jews of Europe are to be spared? Shipped to Palestine to steal my country?”

  The Nazi blinked through the blood in his eyes.

  “Answer me.”

  He rolled his neck, confusion and pain in his face. “Palestine . . . Juden . . .”

  “Up. Outside. A noise and I will kill you. Understand?” Saba checked Eddie, then pointed the girl out of the courier’s path to the door.

  The courier steadied. His case clanged against the other bunk.

  “Out.” Saba threw him past her to the door. The courier fumbled with the door latch, opened it, and stepped into the gangway’s moonlight. A wave caught the bow. He stumbled over the dead bodyguard’s bloody lifejacket, fell to his knees, rose, grabbed the lifejacket, and dived over the rail. Saba lurched after him, aimed, and—Only moonlight on the black. Saba spun. The girl was frozen. Saba steadied her. “Can you lure the SS officer here? The first man you had.”

  The girl tried to speak but couldn’t.

  “Can you?”

  The girl stuttered, terrified. Saba pushed her ahead. “Hide. Now. Find a man, a sailor with a different cabin. The SS officer must not see you. Yes? You understand? He will know and they will kill you.”

  The girl stumbled forward. Eddie pushed the papers under his robe. “And?”

  “Upstairs and stay away from the SS officer who remains.”

  “That’s the plan?”

  Saba grabbed and pulled at Eddie until he decided to fol
low her. They ran down a narrow passageway, some kind of storeroom tunnel, around an engine room thumping behind thin walls, and out onto a stern stairway. The stairs rose one deck and left them unnoticed in a crowd of Arabs either drunk or sleeping. Saba found them an unwanted corner with only enough room to sit against the humming bulkhead. Neither spoke while the adrenaline pumped. Both watched the dim lights of the first-class section.

  The boat hummed and rocked as if nothing had happened. Saba reset her weapons under her clothes. Eddie Owen had watched her fight and kill a man with a knife. Now Eddie knew her. His playful boyish overtures would cease. In truth, she would miss them. Eddie sat with his shoulder and arm against hers, his eyes wide for threat. Saba hashed at options. If the SS officer were allowed to raise the alarm, Doña Carmen’s girl would be found. The girl’s silence would not withstand torture. Saba and Eddie would die in the water with the papers. The SS officer must be lured, killed, and dumped in the sea.

  Sunrise.

  The opportunity to kill the SS officer had not materialized. The first heat of the sun crossed the deck and her boots. Saba and Eddie had not spoken or slept. Male passengers began moving about, doing what men did when they woke in the morning. A Spanish Army officer told his ten soldiers near the bow to organize their gear and clean their weapons. The ferry would not dock for thirteen hours.

  Soon the SS officer would sound his alarm. The Spanish soldiers would then search the entire boat. And every passenger aboard. Saba began to prepare for the outcome that Eddie would not yet understand was coming.

  Erich Schroeder checked the sunrise from his hotel balcony and removed his tuxedo jacket. The refinery’s christening had been a tiresome, sprawling affair that had gone well but had required countless skillful conversations with oilmen who mattered to Reichsmarschall Göring now and who would absolutely matter to the new king of the desert, Erich Schroeder, in the very near future. The post-christening celebrations with his new oilmen associates had continued at the Los Paraguitas brothel and just now ended. When Eddie Owen delivered Saba today, as promised, her threat to dominion in the desert would finally end as well. Schroeder blew air through his lips. Thoughts of Saba alive and what damage she would cause had been his constant companion for months. Now he would focus on Himmler. Eddie would live a grand life as an honored guest of Reichsmarschall Göring. He would produce AvGas for the Reich and armor for Erich Schroeder.

  The telephone interrupted kingly thoughts. An hour earlier, Schroeder had placed a call to Kansas City in the United States. This call back was the reconnection. Schroeder said hello, watching the sunrise illuminate the old colonial city of Santa Cruz, and listened.

  There had been a problem in Oklahoma, a delay only, and now the “Juden” kidnap team was en route. Barring further unavoidable difficulties, they would have the Owen family in twenty-four hours. Schroeder swore and demanded an explanation that was not forthcoming. He was reminded that this line had many ears. Schroeder threw the phone at the just-repaired wall of his suite. Thankfully, the men assigned to Eddie and his disappearance from the christening to retrieve the Raven were submariners, not the German-American Abwehr rejects he had been forced to retrain and deploy in America.

  At eleven a.m., a door knock startled Schroeder awake. He was still dressed; he had dozed in his chair. Schroeder opened the suite’s door to one of the two submariners assigned to Eddie Owen. The submariner was sweating. In German, Schroeder asked, “The American is . . . here? At the hotel? Where is the woman?”

  “Nein.”

  Schroeder stepped aside and beckoned the submariner to enter.

  “He, Eddie Owen . . . he is not in his room where last night’s detail assures us he is. We wait for him to go to Volcán de Güímar as you say he will, but he does not. He is not in his room now and nowhere we can find him.”

  Schroeder’s eyes widened. “What?”

  The submariner stiffened.

  Schroeder stepped into his face. Nose to nose, he said, “The PJs—”

  “Nein. He is not in custody. I prove they do not have him.”

  “If my American is injured, harmed in any way by these Canarian pirates, I will kill your family. Find him. Now.” Schroeder shoved the submariner into the door. “Use every man in your company. Go to the village below the Volcán de Güímar. Every house, door-to-door. Shoot as many as is required until you have my American safe in your hands.”

  Schroeder immediately engaged the smugglers and pirates he knew to canvass the island, then spent three frantic hours on the search himself, appearing first at the PJ commander’s office, demanding Eddie be released unharmed or the commander who Eddie had nicknamed “Red Beret” would pay a price he could not conceive. Schroeder made the same threats to the Armada, both to no avail. He spoke with the patrona of Les Demoiselles, Doña Carmen, who knew nothing beyond her doors. He spoke to the whore Eddie had used and the girl knew nothing. Schroeder checked back with the smugglers. Nothing. He returned to the refinery to retrace Eddie’s steps a third time. The refinery was awash in oil, some kind of catastrophic rupture.

  Foreman Paulsen did not have time to explain until Schroeder and three submariners cornered him at gunpoint in a utility building. Paulsen was chalk white and said that the Santa Cruz d’Tenerife refinery had begun to melt two hours ago. It appeared that the electrical circuits of the cracking tower had welded first, causing a low temperature fire in the tower. The refinery firemen put out the cracking tower fire, not realizing that the damage being done was unrelated to the fire. Within minutes, the backflow valves failed and the tank farm began to gush oil in a river of black. It was first thought to be the volcano. Eddie Owen could not be found. Foreman Paulsen said he suspected sabotage.

  The all-day hunt had failed. The sun began its fall behind the volcano. Eddie had not been seen for twenty-seven hours. Exhausted, Schroeder paced his suite. The submariner Schroeder had sent to the village below the Volcán de Güímar where Eddie had to be returned without him or Saba. Neither was there and there was no evidence they ever had been. Schroeder used his phone to inform the Armada police that the saboteurs of the refinery were likely on the ferry. If left unimpeded, they would be loose on the mainland in a matter of hours. Schroeder replaced the phone in its cradle, turned, and the hard heel of his hand slammed the submariner in the temple. The submariner staggered sideways and over a low table, crashing the lamp and ashtray. Schroeder followed him to the floor, flicked open a gravity knife, and stabbed once using both hands. The submariner rolled. The blade missed and pinned his coat. Schroeder screamed and stabbed again. Until his arms and shoulders quit on their own.

  CHAPTER 32

  April, 1939

  On the Casablanca Ferry, the Spanish captain and the SS officer stood on the bridge. Beneath them, Arabs crowded on the steerage deck. Saba and Eddie were backed into the bow rail facing the bridge from one hundred feet. Three Spanish soldiers moved into the crowd where the SS officer had just pointed. The soldiers forced three Arabs to remove their robes and keffiyehs. A fourth Arab refused, was shoved, then cut down by the butt stroke of a rifle. Arabs charged. Spanish gunfire forced the Arabs back and sorted the steerage deck into noncombatants and combatants.

  The captain demanded a young woman be brought forward, a whore who hid among the passengers. The captain apologized to the angry Arabs for their beaten countrymen, then asked over their taunts and insults for calm and assistance with the missing woman who had murdered two passengers. The Arabs jeered at the Nazi demand and the captain’s apology. The captain turned to a ships officer with a paper in his hand. The captain read the paper, spoke to the ten soldiers behind him, who quickly fixed bayonets to their rifles. The captain wadded the paper in his left hand and addressed the Arabs again, this time with a bullhorn.

  “The Santa Cruz refinery has been sabotaged. The saboteurs are among you. You will produce them. If you do not, all passengers will submit to search. Those who do not submit will be shot and thrown into the sea.”

&n
bsp; The steerage deck jeered at the insult.

  The captain switched to English. “The Palestinian terrorist known as ‘the Raven’ is among you. She is responsible. She travels with an American accomplice—”

  “Al Gorab!” cheered a pocket of young Arabs close to the bridge. “Al Gorab!” Twenty more leaped up and down and pumped their fists. “Al Gorab! Al Gorab!” Eight of the twenty rushed the stairs to the bridge. The Spanish soldiers leveled their rifles and shot them dead in one volley. Eddie jolted backward and almost fell over the railing. Saba grabbed him back.

  The captain shouted from behind the soldiers, “You will submit to a search and give up the saboteurs.”

  The Arabs shook their fists and yelled at the gun barrels and bayonets. Wind blew across the deck and flapped Eddie’s keffiyeh. Mendelssohn’s documents were hot against his stomach. The ferry had to be closing in on the Casablanca harbor. The harbor meant more authority. More authority meant more soldiers.

  Under her breath, Saba said, “There will be no search here. The harbor is soon. French rule in Casablanca. They will sift the passengers; they know the Raven’s wings.” Saba turned away from the bridge and continued close to Eddie’s ear. “The SS officer will demand action from the French until he has what he seeks. We will have a small chance when the fighting starts. These men”—she raised her chin at the Arabs—“have pride, if not arms. They will not be deported home and be humiliated in front of their families.”

  Eddie didn’t see the boldness Saba described. He did see the anger, but the anger was in everyday Arabs—men who worked, who had found a way to function under the continuing colonial occupation. The boldness was in the eight young Moroccans dead shoulder-to-shoulder on the deck. If this ferry docked and the remaining ordinary fellows didn’t rush down the gangway or riot, Saba, Eddie, and the Mendelssohn papers would end there.

  Saba brushed the pistol under Eddie’s robe. “Do not die a slave or servant. Farmers and shopkeepers in America defeated professional soldiers. I have done so since I was seventeen.”