Traitor's Gate

by Charlie Newton

  Schroeder paid his operative twice what was expected. “I wish to buy your services and loyalty. If you sell both and betray me or the Fatherland, we will kill your family here and in Stuttgart, all of them.”

  “I am yours to command, Herr Oberstleutnant.”

  “Execute this coward. Cut off his hand, put it in the case, and deliver it to the embassy in Casablanca. Tell the ambassador that it is your belief the SS courier was taken for ransom by bandits on the ferry and was poorly protected by his SS companions.”

  “Jawohl, Herr Oberstleutnant.”

  “I will use your radio, bitte.”

  The operative turned to the SS courier on the bed, placed a pillow tight on the courier’s face, and suffocated him. Both feet kicked under the sheets. Schroeder’s operative used a saw to sever the courier’s dead hand, placed the hand in the briefcase, then drove Schroeder to the land-based radio. Schroeder contacted his Luftwaffe agents in Casablanca. “Eddie Owen was on that ferry. What have you found if not him?”

  “Nothing. A possible sighting, but likely a lie for money. The Gestapo aboard the ferry argue with the French to explain the whore’s screams. A Gestapo staff car waits. The driver thinks he drives to Rabat and possibly on to Fès.”

  “The whore. She must know.” Schroeder considered Himmler’s probable reaction to his vaunted SS losing the papers. Himmler would twist any testimony from the whore into fact and demand that Schroeder produce Eddie Owen. If Schroeder did not, Himmler would state that it had been Eddie Owen who had murdered the courier and stolen the papers. “Do you have good people in Rabat?”

  “Nein. People, yes, good, no.”

  “In Fès?”

  “Ja. Very good. From there we are strong across North Afrika—Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Egypt to the Suez—and become stronger each day. We will be ready when the war begins.”

  Schroeder hoped that was true. “I will fly the Safi seaplane to Rabat. Meet my seaplane and we drive to Fès. Can you arrange a ground plane in Fès?”

  “Unlikely that there will be planes whose privacy or safety you can trust. The Communists and the Islamic Nationalists pay close attention, but we will try. To where?”

  Schroeder said, “Oran.”

  “There is a train in Fès to Oran. Twelve hours.”

  “I know of this train. Offer a reward at the train station in Fès. Any amount. Tell the Arabs there that the American works for the French, that the woman is . . . an infidel, her tattoo a lie. She is a defiler of the mosques in Mecca who has stolen from the Great Mosque in Casablanca. Then reach to Oran; there your network must bribe the locals in the French police, anyone and everyone. Should our mice succeed in arriving in Oran, we must not allow them out.”

  “Jawohl, Herr Oberstleutnant.”

  Schroeder handed the radio mic to the operative. “The seaplane. Mach schnell.”

  The operative called for the seaplane that would cut Eddie Owen’s lead to zero if Rabat were his first destination. Schroeder stared out the operative’s small window to the ocean and Tenerife to the southwest. So it had been Doña Carmen who had saved the Raven. The patrona and her whores. And now Saba Hassouneh was one. Fitting.

  Schroeder balled one fist. Once he was past the customs dock in Rabat, he would dispatch the operative and the Safi plane to Tenerife with orders to bring the partisan Doña Carmen alive to Fès where she could be questioned. By a professional. Schroeder would use his fingers, possibly his teeth.

  CHAPTER 33

  April, 1939

  Schroeder feigned calm while the French customs/immigration agent at Rabat made a series of helpless hand gestures designed to elicit a contribution of some negotiable amount. Rather than shoot the French agent, Schroeder eyed the river cliff high to his left. Atop the cliff, the pirate stronghold of Salé threatened the river’s mouth. According to the two Luftwaffe men who had just met his seaplane from Essaouira, the Gestapo had already been here and gone. The Gestapo had searched for and found a Salé truck driver and his young son who had picked up two travelers on the road outside Casablanca. The truck driver and son did not survive their interrogation. The Gestapo car was now bound for Fès. The car had left one hour ago.

  Schroeder dispatched the Luftwaffe men to recheck the Salé story for any other details of any kind, then commandeered the Luftwaffe car. He fought trucks, wagons, and camels on the 180 kilometers of damaged road from Rabat to Fès. Ahead of his arrival, three Luftwaffe agents combed Fès with a reward backed by news of the tattooed infidel who had sacked the mosques and murdered a marabout holy man in Salé. Himmler’s Gestapo would be doing the same. Like everywhere, God was only slightly less powerful than money.

  Schroeder swore at the Arabs who crowded his road. The reward in Fès must be his money, not Himmler’s.

  Alone, Saba approached the Fès train station. She would wait in silence until others discussed the steam train to Oran. The train station had spies, as did all such places in the desert. They watched her and she watched them. Finally she heard the train would not be until tonight. She returned to where she had instructed Eddie to wait and shook her head once. “We must hide in the medina. Fès el Bali, the old city. Now.”

  The old city was a fourteenth-century maze, much more intricate and confusing than Rabat. Saba was cautious but comfortable, drifting them toward the Andalusian Quarter and the Bein El Moudoun Bridge. On the tannery and dyer’s side of the bridge would be much activity, few police, and no Europeans. Saba stopped just short of the bridge at a crumbling mosque, its cobbled courtyard dotted with elderly beggars sitting alone, praying worry beads with both hands and rocking. She pushed Eddie inside the courtyard and forced him to sit alone against a wall and abandoned him there.

  Outside the courtyard, a woman on the sidewalk passed Saba’s shoulder, walking with a foreigner’s precision. Saba crossed the narrow street and bought flatbread in an Algerian storefront with the last of her money. She watched.

  A European man strolled past, glancing in the storefront. Another European stopped uphill at the bridge and talked with two smaller Moroccans. The Arabs listened then hurried in opposite directions. Saba clenched her jaw. The truck driver and boy in Rabat had sold them; Eddie’s clothes would be known. He would not survive long in the daylight. Across the cobblestone street where Eddie sat, Saba checked for beggars who were not beggars, found no imposters, walked to Eddie, and pulled him to his feet. She whispered to his ear: “You must change clothes. Now. There are men on the streets.”

  Eddie was looking at the bridge. She tightened her grip on his robe, twisted, and yanked him forward.

  “Easy.” He knocked her hand away.

  Saba glared at his English, then hissed: “Go, then. Since you are long in the fight and know better.” She released his robe and hurried into the shadows of a crevice alleyway. Hurried footfalls followed her. Saba ducked and Eddie stumbled past, his arm extended to grab where her shoulder had been. Saba rose behind him, her pistol in hand as Eddie pivoted fast to face her.

  Saba glared behind the pistol. “You are good alone?”

  Eddie exhaled. “Guess not.”

  “You will not be a bull and live. They are many and we are few. Do as I say or die on your own.”

  “I wanna get us out of here, that’s all. We’re this close.”

  She stepped to his face. “To death you are that close.”

  Eddie looked like a proud, brave man who wanted to say or do something but didn’t. Saba relaxed behind her glare and thought they might live to see the train.

  Schroeder arrived Fès at noon, hungry and sick. Amphetamines masked his pallor and temperament after fighting 1,200 kilometers of bad water, air, and road. Two of the three Luftwaffe men met his car. One said the Gestapo and their agents were well represented at the train station and in the Fès medina. There had been whiffs of the fugitives but no contact.

  Schroeder pushed himself and his men through three more hours of bribes and threats. The effort produced nothing. At three o’clock p.m
., a hungry hand opened and led them to a beggar near the Karaouine Mosque. The beggar there knew nothing of value other than he wished to lie for money. Schroeder fumed. It has to be Oran. For centuries, the port city had been the smugglers’ gateway out of North Africa no matter which occupying power tried to stop them. It was clear; Saba was leading Eddie and the papers to Palestine. Palestine was where the papers would stay—whether Eddie agreed or not—until the Raven could ransom them for an arsenal of men and money that would underwrite her cause, a cause that would also include the death or destruction of Erich Schroeder if the opportunity arose.

  It has to be Oran. The Gestapo were at the train station. It had to be the steam train to Oran. Or did it? Saba would not have told the truck driver. The Gestapo were guessing, just as his Luftwaffe was. The train was slow. Saba was resourceful. Her pursuers would be frozen here in Fès all day waiting for the boarding . . . while she breaks for Oran on the highway.

  Schroeder bolted for the car. He left instructions with two of his three Luftwaffe agents: If Eddie and Saba did try to board the train, capture Eddie alive, shoot Saba, and shoot the Gestapo agents. If Eddie did not board the train, shoot the Gestapo agents and remain in Fès one day for the next train to Oran.

  Sunrise. Saba and Eddie had now lived a full day longer than her expectation. Rather than board the train in Fès, she had secured transportation east one hundred kilometers into the desert. There she and Eddie had joined the Al-Maghreb steam train when it stopped for water at Taza. The train was six cars, one for freight, all wooden and painted maroon and completely full. The train was battered and dirty, having arrived at Fès late after plowing through a monumental sandstorm in the great desert between Taza and Guercif.

  Saba and Eddie sat in two of the Al-Maghreb’s dusty first-class seats—the only passage available and bought by selling the gold ring Eddie had given her. The ring had also bought food and a black jellaba with matching keffiyeh for Eddie. His disguise was solid, but they stood out in this car, the only “natives” who were not jammed into the trailing fourth-class “steerage” coaches. By comparison, the dusty, frayed seats in the lead car were luxurious and comfortable. Saba fought the comfort and the sleep she desperately needed. She could not risk sleep surrounded by Europeans.

  The chase had been even harder on Eddie. Eddie was a civilian who knew none of the signs—friend or foe, fight or flee—for him every step of the last three days had been constant adrenaline. He had done well for a civilian, remarkably well, but the toll had finally drowned him in a fitful sleep. Saba dug a painful thumbnail into her finger. The heat and steel-on-steel clickity-clack that had lulled his eyes shut and his body limp would do the same to her if she were not vigilant . . .

  Saba startled awake, both hands on her weapons.

  Her eyes cut and scanned. The train was slowing. She pushed higher in her seat. Out the window across the aisle, a shack appeared in the rocky desert, then another, a sign read TAOURIRT. The train slowed to stop under an elevated water tank. Eddie startled awake. His hand went to his weapon. Saba touched his leg with her knee. Eddie cut to her calm in her seat . . . then . . . eased back into his, the muscles of his arm taut against hers.

  Saba watched the windows, her weapons ready. From the trailing cars, second- and fourth-class passengers unloaded onto the dusty station platform crowded with hard-looking Legionnaires and black men in uniform. A passenger seated in front of her told another, “Mercenaries. French Senegalese.” Doña Carmen had spoken of mines in Morocco’s barren hills and the Nationalists’ threats against them. Saba logged the Legionnaires’ weapons. The black mercenaries also carried the full complement. It was obvious the French meant to keep this country and whatever was in the mines.

  An hour out of Taourirt, Saba calmed and exhaustion again overtook her.

  She jolted awake from the black. Eddie had her hand; she snatched it back, gripped her weapon under her tunic, scanned the car, focused on an Englishman in the forward seats, and—No movement, no eyes, no threat. She cut just her eyes to Eddie.

  Eddie smiled, winked, and rubbed his face. The air in the car was thick with heat. Another hour passed. Eddie’s eyes closed and remained closed. Slowly his neck relaxed his head into the seat. One hand sought her leg. Saba allowed it, then allowed her hand to cover his. Her, seeking a man’s touch and so much less frightening when he slept. Her breast edged against his upper arm and her nipples stiffened. The instant arousal was dizzying. She admitted for the second time her desire to feel a man and flushed so completely she almost fainted. Eddie stirred and she jolted. He faced her, but thankfully still asleep. Bold was difficult with his eyes only a blink from hers. She imagined sex. Being a woman was—a smile inched on her lips—confusing.

  Four rows forward in the car, the Englishman sat with his seat flipped to face to the rear. His view would be the rugged terrain after it was overtaken and then all the train’s trailing cars as they snaked through the hills and mountains. He read a book with both hands that his bespectacled eyes never left. Saba stared at the rough hands and his mottled red complexion.

  Across the aisle from the Englishman, another set of seats was flipped to face the rear. Two Europeans in businessmen’s fedora hats shared a flask and an argument’s ever-louder tone with a German pair whose backs were to her. The Germans spoke English and lectured the drinkers. The morning sun quit suddenly as the train entered a narrow crease in the 10,000-foot Atlas Mountains. A slurry, aristocratic Italian accent answered a question Saba hadn’t heard. The Italian’s hands fluttered above his head as he and one of the Germans debated each other’s ability to rule foreigners. The German seemed unimpressed. The Italian shouted like a boy on a playground might and shook a fist.

  An insulting German laugh rustled Eddie awake. The German said something unintelligible and waved pages of his newspaper as proof of whatever he’d said. Saba read the headline in the gap between the seats. The news pressed her back; her exhale was audible. Eddie blinked at her. The Englishman raised his eyes from his book, listened but didn’t focus. The Italian shouted, “Palestine? She has no future, no oil.” He waved his flask at the newspaper headline. “Iraq prepares to attack Kuwait for her oil. Then Palestine will be but empty desert in bin Faisal’s ‘Pan-Arab Empire.’”

  Saba felt eyes. The Englishman was staring directly at Eddie in his black keffiyeh. She took a breath she needed, nudged Eddie’s hand toward his pistol, and reached nearer hers. The Englishman quickly returned to the book now resting on his knees, a heavy cloth valise tight between his feet. Saba noted his boots. Military or miner. Then his hands again, large and too rough for a businessman.

  She pushed deeper into her seat. Bin Faisal is openly threatening Kuwait. How had his Pan-Arab Army of God grown so bold? Even the newspapers knew. Now bin Faisal would be much harder to kidnap or kill . . . but infinitely more valuable. Saba’s spirits brightened in spite of the shock. Eddie’s papers would buy the bin Faisal betrayal and the arms for her partisans. Bin Faisal’s ransom or death would swell a partisan army and earn enough money, arms, and men for a serious challenge against the British. She and the partisans would overthrow one entire city, wipe out the garrisons, arm the population, and call for an Arab revolt as her father had called for revolt in 1929. This time the death struggle could end differently—Palestinians would have proved the British could be beaten.

  Eddie patted her hand. She clenched and checked the Englishman. His eyes weren’t focused on the book. Saba used her knee, then jutted her chin until Eddie glanced forward. Eddie ceased further demonstrations of his affection.

  Schroeder had been in the ancient coastal seaport of Oran for three and a half hours. Under its current rulers, Oran was a smoldering collision of European colonial power and Arab Nationalist illusions. The pirates and smugglers and religious fanatics had always been here.

  At great risk, Schroeder had involved the Abwehr and now made a final check for the confrontation to come. His car limped up Boulevard Marceau a third time,
the car beaten badly by a blinding sandstorm near Guercif and the almost useless frontier roads. The 450-kilometer trip had taken fifteen hours instead of five. If Eddie and Saba had attempted the frontier road, they were dead or dying buried in the frontier sand. But Saba Hassouneh was of the desert; she would have known not to drive. In his exhaustion and amphetamines, Schroeder had miscalculated. Saba and Eddie were on the steam train. His men had not seen her board in Fès, but somehow she had. That steam train would arrive here in Oran in four hours.

  One of the two telephone calls Schroeder had been able to complete had further reduced his options but strengthened his belief that Oran via Doña Carmen was Saba’s plan—the operative from Essaouira who Schroeder had sent to abduct Doña Carmen had been found dead with his Safi pilot. According to the Armada police on Tenerife, the victims had run afoul of “Canarian bandits” in the brothel district of Santa Cruz.

  Schroeder’s car clanked and banged the last of Boulevard Marceau toward Oran’s grand arabesque train station and the gravel car park on its west side. In his car sat one of the Luftwaffe men who had met his car in Fès and a Luftwaffe agent based in Oran who was new to the network but well versed in the city. Schroeder squinted toward the train station. Saba, Eddie, and the Mendelssohn papers would be on the Al-Maghreb steam train. They would be.

  Two Abwehr agents waited outside the Oran station. The Abwehr agents traded shade from the blinding sun for protection from the howling sirocco winds. When Schroeder had arrived he had invoked Reichsmarschall Göring’s name and added bribes of his own, convincing the two Abwehr agents to reblanket the Arab Quarter and the medina with the same infidel/reward offers Schroeder and the Gestapo had used in Rabat and Fès. Oran’s Muslim underground was strong—the Étoile Nord-Africain (the Star of North Africa)—but underfunded by its Communist benefactors. For a price, Oran’s Muslims would be pleased to produce an infidel spying for the French, a tattooed whore who had murdered holy men and desecrated mosques in Morocco.