Traitor's Gate

by Charlie Newton

  Eddie had seen her gut a professional killer before the Nazi knew what hit him. That same ferocity would roar when she was finally cornered. Saba had been distant since the killing, as if she expected him to loathe her. His response was the opposite. Her bravery and the honest commitment to her cause at all costs made her the Palestinian Joan of Arc. Eddie glanced down his shoulder. Lotta woman; better find us a country where everything she does isn’t life and death. Eddie almost laughed, and would’ve if it wasn’t so fucking tragic. War seemed to have a lot of life and death, just as D.J. had promised. He patted her hand next to his and she pulled it away.

  Erich Schroeder was seated in his blood-splattered hotel suite but not because he wanted to be. He growled under his breath, his professional calm the sole reason he did not strike the third Armada inspector to interrogate him this hour. A terrified maid had reported the fight and the submariner hacked to death on Schroeder’s carpet. The Policía Judicial were also in the room. Their commander, “Red Beret,” was not interested in the murdered submariner. Red Beret was interested in the Nazi whose substantial influence had kept the Policía Judicial away from an American who no one could find on the day his third refinery disintegrated.

  Red Beret listened with his arms folded across his chest while Schroeder petitioned the Armada police to take action. “Comisario, I strongly suspect that the murderer of my friend, slaughtered here on my floor, is the Palestinian terrorist known as ‘the Raven.’ We believe her to be the bomber of Haifa and Bahrain, and quite possibly the saboteur of all our work here at your refinery. I do not believe the refinery’s destruction is the fault of the volcano, as your more naive associates continue to suspect.”

  The comisario frowned. “Again, Herr Schroeder, the Armada’s interest is the dead man at our feet and his blood on your clothes, not—”

  “And that terrorist is likely on the Casablanca Ferry.” Schroeder jammed his arm toward his open terrace doors. “She escapes as we talk here. Radio the ferry. We must board it.”

  The Armada comisario considered the demand and, when he had saved the proper amount of face, said, “This was done moments ago.”

  “What was done? How will you board it?”

  “The ferry will be thoroughly searched when it docks in Casablanca.”

  Schroeder stood. “Casablanca is controlled by the French and rife with Comité terrorists who have no love for General Franco. Have CEPSA demand the ferry be diverted to a Spanish-controlled port where a proper search can take place.”

  The Armada comisario considered Schroeder’s assessment and agreed, but ordered the demand be made in the name of the Armada police, not CEPSA, then told Schroeder to sit in his chair.

  “Nein. I must go—”

  “I will arrest you for murder the next time you speak.” The Armada comisario waited until Schroeder spoke or sat.

  Schroeder sat. In Spanish, the Armada comisario spoke to Red Beret. They walked out of Schroeder’s hearing and continued to talk. Schroeder used the time to construct a plan. Take the seaplane. If the plane had not been repaired, take a seventy-kph smuggler’s boat. A fast boat from Cabo de los Pescadores could have him on the mainland in . . . fourteen hours. His Luftwaffe agents were already inbound to Casablanca—that call had been made before the submariner’s blood was dry. But to join the Luftwaffe agents, he had to go now. Schroeder glanced his watch. Eddie Owen was on the ferry. He was there to steal Mendelssohn’s papers. That meant Saba Hassouneh was with him. The SS courier would be no match for her; the bodyguard would be, but he would not see her coming. No, Eddie and the Raven would have the papers when they disembarked the ferry.

  Schroeder’s jaw muscles rolled. He asked the second Armada inspector who had interrogated him, “Has there been trouble aboard the ferry?”

  The officer considered the question. “Yes.”

  Schroeder shot to his feet. Red Beret drew his pistol. “Stop!”

  Schroeder froze. Behind Red Beret, the Armada comisario opened the door, listened to a report, shut the door, and said, “The ferry captain has radioed back—he is already in French waters and lacks sufficient fuel to divert to the nearest Spanish-controlled port. The ferry will be searched in Casablanca.”

  Schroeder said, “The seaplane. We will use it—”

  Red Beret barked: “The seaplanes are beyond repair. And the brave Luftwaffe Messerschmitt that graced our christening flew to Berlin ten hours ago.”

  Schroeder lied calm into his face. “My apologies. Much work has gone into this refinery, and this man is”—he glanced at the corpse—“was my friend. We have worked together since boyhood in the Ruhr Valley.”

  Red Beret did not lower the pistol. “Sit in your chair.”

  “Call your superiors. They understand my mission here. It is as an investment ambassador to your country. I have been betrayed, as have you. My friend is dead, my work ruined. All by the Palestinian and she gets away as we speak. Please, I must assist in her capture.”

  “And how will you do that in a foreign nation?”

  “I have resources in Morocco. German resources in the French-occupied cities, Casablanca, Rabat, and Tangier. If the Palestinian succeeds in disembarking the ferry, it is possible I can facilitate her capture before the French hide her for their own purposes.”

  “First, you will sit; I will not warn you again. You will explain the American Eddie Owen’s whereabouts. When I have him in custody, then I will make your call.” Red Beret smiled. “If my superiors do not agree on your immense value—in light of all your promises that now smolder in ruin—then Herr Schroeder, you will go in the cage with Mr. Owen.”

  An hour later, Schroeder roared toward Casablanca, the sole passenger in a smuggler’s V-hull for what would be a long, brutal fourteen hours. He pictured “the cage” he had avoided but didn’t smile. There were many cages waiting in many countries, all with their doors open to him if he failed. The Casablanca Ferry would dock in one hour. Luftwaffe agents he had telephoned would be there. His instructions were ironclad: If Eddie Owen were identified or captured at the ferry dock by anyone but the Luftwaffe—and that included the Gestapo or the SS—the Luftwaffe were to gain the papers and Eddie Owen by whatever means necessary. The level of anger in Berlin and Karinhall at the refinery’s sabotage had been blinding, most of it directed at Franco’s refinery security and the PJs. But that would change if it ever became known or suspected that Eddie Owen, Erich Schroeder’s charge, was responsible. Then there would be no way to escape a Himmler death sentence.

  For that reason and endless others, the Gestapo could not have Eddie. Schroeder clenched his jaw tight at the pounding waves and glared at the black surrounding him. Eddie had been his, signed and sealed, and somehow Saba had turned him. But that would end when Eddie awoke to his family kidnapped. Eddie Owen would wear Nazi red and black and sing Munich Hofbräuhaus Bier Hall songs while he fed the crematoria. Eddie Owen would do whatever he was told or his family would die, slowly while he watched, one after the other.

  The eight dead Moroccans on the ferry deck had begun to stink. Eddie glanced at Saba. Casablanca Harbor was dead ahead. The ferry passed the outer beacon of the harbor’s 10,000-foot jetty and began a turn to port. Armed French Legionnaires were posted every one hundred feet along the jetty. The clay-brick buildings of Casablanca silhouetted in the mainland lights. The ferry reversed its engines to slow its approach. Bright deck lights popped on. Eddie ducked, shielded his eyes, and steadied against the deck rail. The wharf shadows became figures. More French Legionnaires, these with fixed bayonets. Eddie counted thirty. Saba nudged him with her elbow. A Spanish soldier craned his neck, staring at them over his shouldered rifle. The soldier bumped the soldier to his left and nodded in Eddie’s direction. The ferry’s foghorn boomed. The echo died, absorbed by the clay walls of a 1,300-year-old city. Behind the French Legionnaires, eight European men stepped out of the shadows—two groups of four. Saba told Eddie’s ear, “From the Nazi embassy near the Cathédrale. When the s
earch begins, we will have the one chance only.”

  A Moroccan on the ferry deck near the gangway gate threw his shoe at the soldiers. Four rifles fired. Everyone ducked. The captain yelled Arabic from his bridge: “Order! Or you will be shot. Two single-file lines at the gangway. Those who hide the Raven and the American will be hanged. Those with papers in order will be allowed to enter the kingdom of Morocco.” The SS officer stood next to the captain and scanned the crowd. The deck passengers unbent with caution, then stood and began to shout and shake their fists again. The soldiers fired again over their heads. Saba pulled Eddie to midpack. The gangway dropped. They surged left, packed in with thirty men funneling to descend the gangway. Eddie eyed for the soldier who had eyed him. The pack inched onto the gangway. Eddie glanced at the dock. Both gangway lines ended at a French immigration officer backed by four French Legionnaires. Each passenger who attempted entry was separated from the front of his line and told to step forward, alone. Six additional French Legionnaires used bayonets to block the others in line.

  The SS officer appeared near the ferry’s deck rail, shouldering through the crowd toward the gangway. A Spanish soldier blocked his exit. They argued until the ferry captain shouted and pointed for the SS officer to be allowed passage. The SS officer descended through jeers and elbows and, at the bottom of the gangway, took up a position between the two descending lines to stare up at each passenger as he was confronted.

  A French immigration officer ordered the SS man back. He refused to move. The immigration officer ordered two Legionnaires to shove the SS man out of the lines. Four Nazis from the embassy rushed to the SS man’s aid. The Legionnaires and the Nazis went chest-to-chest. Shouts erupted on the gangway. An Arab in the left line refused to be searched. Jeers and support rained from the ferry’s rail. Two Legionnaires charged up the gangway at the Arab. An Arab in the right line demanded the Spanish soldiers on the ferry be arrested for eight murders. The ferry rail yelled agreement and pumped their fists. A third Legionnaire butt stroked the Arab to the head and he tumbled off the gangway.

  The crowd on the ferry deck roared and surged toward the rail. The ferry began to tip. Eddie grabbed Saba’s shoulder. Two men on their left sprang at a Spanish soldier. He fired, then fought to keep his rifle. The hundred passengers still on deck flinched at the shot, then surged toward the gangway. The crush jammed Eddie and Saba into the gangway mouth. More shots behind them. Forty Arabs charged down at the French position already being overrun. The French and Nazis fired pistols.

  At the top of the gangway, a Spanish soldier went airborne over the ferry rail. Rifles and pistols cracked. Fists and feet pounded in the bedlam. More gunfire—from the wharf and the ferry above. Saba shoved Eddie left and ran head down into a Legionnaire. Eddie knocked the staggered Legionnaire off his feet and was punched sideways by an Arab at his shoulder. Two Nazis with the Arab pulled the Arab and the SS officer out of the riot. The Arab shouted: “There! There!” Eddie sprinted a waterfront street behind Saba. Gunfire echoed off the old medina wall. Saba bolted through an opening in the medina wall. Eddie fell making the turn, rolled, made his feet, and bounded up wet steps. Saba waved from the top, then ran again. Eddie found her outside a keyhole doorway on Place de l’Amiral. Saba pulled him in, then two-handed a pistol at the opening, waited a five count, wheeled, and ran the steps behind them. They ran past the Hôtel Central, then past the Rue Central, until semi-interested Moroccans stopped looking. At a horse-stable bolt-hole they crawled in.

  Eddie sucked enough air to pant, “Thanks.”

  Saba nodded. Eddie breathed all the air he could until he could swallow, then scooted to the bolt-hole’s edge and peeked back at the street they’d run. No Legionnaires or Nazis. Eddie fell back next to Saba and panted, “Clear. We did it.”

  Saba showed no particular pride in their survival.

  “C’mon, we did it—hundred to one—Pretty goddamn amazing.”

  “You have the papers.”

  “Yeah.” Eddie tapped his chest. “Safe and sound. Now what?”

  “I do not know.”

  Eddie glanced at their bolt-hole. “Damn, hadn’t thought of that. Be daylight in eight or nine hours. Can’t stay here.”

  Saba nodded. “Doña Carmen provides us a chance in Oran. She is known there, her father, after they fled Palestine. From Oran there are ships.”

  “How do we get to Oran?”

  “A steam train from Fès. Twelve hours from station to station. I am told there is no other way. We take the train and our chances.”

  “Wait. Who all knows we’ll be trying for that train? If we can get to Fès.”

  Saba smiled for the first time since she had killed the Nazi bodyguard. “My American boy grows to manhood.” She paused. “If we are betrayed—”

  Eddie reached around Saba’s waist and pulled her to him in the straw. “I can show you manhood.”

  Her breasts were mashed against his chest. She didn’t fight, wasn’t fighting; her chin was high, neck exposed. “You think me yours now? To do as you wish?”

  “You’re the one who wishes.”

  Heat radiated through her shirt. Eddie couldn’t tell if the heat was sex or violence, but it was hot.

  “You burn from death avoided—”

  Eddie kissed her hard on the mouth.

  Saba kissed back, sort of, but didn’t press into him. Her breath shortened but she didn’t pull away. Lips brushing his, she said, “You would have your woman in a stable?”

  Her breasts were lush against his chest. Eddie kissed her again. “Say yes.”

  Saba didn’t. She said, “We must go. To Rabat while we have the night, then Fès, then the train to Oran.”

  Eddie said, “Say yes.”

  “Survive the night . . . and we shall see about your woman.”

  Doña Carmen’s girl was seated on a bunk in the ferry’s bow cabin. She had explained all she knew to the three Nazis and now explained it again, this time to a pale-white Gestapo officer dressed as a German embassy official.

  “I meet Gerhard, the courier, at Les Demoiselles. Gerhard invites me to travel with him to Morocco. I am paid in full for the ferry trip and one night in Casablanca.” She glanced at the SS officer she had also serviced. “But aboard the ferry, this man here, he takes me first. Gerhard was angry but did not show it until we became alone in the cabin. We were only out of our clothes when an Arab man and woman attacked from the door.” She pointed. “They fought and Gerhard jumped overboard.”

  The Gestapo officer’s arms remained folded across his chest. He glanced at the SS man, then back to the girl. “And what of Gerhard’s briefcase?”

  The girl repeated what she said the first time. “The case was attached to him.”

  “Did they open it?”

  “No.”

  “The Arabs, what did they say? Everything.”

  She shrugged. “Nothing.”

  The Gestapo officer leaned closer. “Nothing?”

  The girl leaned back.

  “You will tell me what they said or we will take you to sea, tie you to a board, and drag you as bait.” He wagged his finger. “The sharks. Very bad.”

  The girl shivered and looked to the others for help. The SS officer said, “Leave her with me. She will tell me.”

  The Gestapo officer lowered his arms, a straight razor in his left hand. “Your part in this, Herr Oberst, will be discussed at the embassy. Reichsführer Himmler awaits your call. You will please remove yourself from the cabin and allow the Gestapo our work.”

  The other Gestapo man unbuttoned his coat.

  Schroeder’s first five hours of open ocean in the smugglers’ boat had been brutal. His radio headphones shut out the engine roar, but the sharp mainland static sung at his ears like bees. His Luftwaffe agents on the Casablanca dock reported the ferry riot and that no Eddie Owen had been identified or arrested. The Gestapo were aboard the ferry with a Canarian female believed to be somehow involved.

  “Eddie Owen was on that
ferry. He cannot be far. Find him.”

  At four a.m., Schroeder cupped his headphones and shouted into a radio call to the mainland. “REPEAT. Say again, REPEAT.” Schroeder listened, then grabbed the boat captain’s shoulder and shouted over the engine to veer due east for the fortified port city of Essaouira.

  On Schroeder’s radio was a smuggler and coastal operative in Schroeder’s Luftwaffe network. The smuggler explained to Schroeder that an SS courier had been found naked but alive by a coastal fishing boat two hundred and fifty kilometers south of Casablanca near Essaouira. He had a case manacled to his wrist. Before falling unconscious, the courier had rambled in German but the Portuguese fishermen could not understand. The smuggler told Schroeder, “I am the only German speaker the police know in Essaouira. I go to the doctor’s office, see the courier’s death’s head tattoo and the outline of a missing ring on his right hand. I search the briefcase. The only item I find is your card with the number at the Hotel Mencey.”

  In German, Schroeder yelled over the engine roar and wind. “Is he alive?”

  “Ja.”

  “You will be well paid. Does Essaouira have a seaplane?”

  “Nein, but there is a smuggler’s plane at Safi.”

  “Reserve this plane. Steal it, commandeer it, and fly to Essaouira. I will dock at Essaouira in two hours.”

  It took only ninety minutes. Inside the doctor’s clinic in Essaouira, Schroeder spoke comforting German to the near-drowned courier, promising him a European doctor was en route from the German embassy in Casablanca. The SS courier coughed and shivered and rattled and said he was attacked by an American man dressed as an Arab and a woman dressed as a man. The courier’s eyes rolled back and he coughed blood. Schroeder wiped the blood away and reassured the courier he would survive.

  The courier spit and gasped and said the whore had betrayed him. It was the whore and . . . and . . . and she wanted to see Oran. Would he take her there? Doña Carmen had mentioned Oran to her often. Other girls from Les Demoiselles had been to Oran. Oran, the great gateway. From Oran she could go anywhere in the world.