Traitor's Gate

by Charlie Newton

  At the next street, Saba found food—lamb and peppers and flatbread, paid with the last of her ring money—then asked directions of her own. The directions led uphill through a drab, swelling population, then downhill through more of the same. Saba was never alone and could not be sure if she were being followed. Near a stone square, three Arab beggars fell in step with her, pleading for her food. One persisted, grabbing the sleeve of her free hand. She jerked away and sidestepped past him into the mouth of a long, narrow alley. At the alley’s opposite end, a European suit passed. Then another—Europeans here at night was wrong; it would be dangerous for them at night.

  Something bumped her from behind and splattered her food to the alley’s hard-pack. She wheeled and slashed—a beggar in a threadbare robe fell to the ground, his robe split across his stomach. Saba fast-glanced the alley for the Europeans, then the beggar on his back. She jabbed him to not move and gathered her food one-handed. He crabbed back, then raised his hands, trembling. He wheezed beggar words for food in Hebrew and French. Saba glared at the borrowed language of the conquerors and checked the alley again. He was not bleeding. She growled and gave him a third of her and Eddie’s food.

  The food stayed in his hands, not his mouth, his eyes on hers. She checked the alley’s far end again. In Arabic, she barked, “Eat if you are hungry. If not, return my food.”

  He shivered, eyes wide. Her knife was still between them. “You stare, beggar, but you do not know me.”

  His face was creased with terror. He swallowed, squinted at her, then elevated his eyes to the stars above her head. Saba’s attention snapped to the alley’s far end—two European suits and several Arab men craned in to look at her and the beggar. None moved toward her. Saba stepped to the beggar’s thigh. “If I am what you think, know I can come from the sky, take a man from the inside out just as they say.”

  The beggar shut his eyes, hands shaking harder, and pressed the food higher between them.

  “I grant you your life.” Saba tucked the knife. “For seven days you do not know me. On the eighth, you may say you saw her. Tell them in every house the Arab Revolt has risen from the fires of Tenerife.”

  The beggar began to sob.

  She helped him to his feet in order to sneak a glance at the alley’s far end. The Europeans hadn’t moved. Saba told the beggar, “Go. Now. Eat my food. The Arab dawn is at hand.” She shoved him until he stumbled away.

  Sharing their food was a mistake, leaving the beggar to talk was worse. The beggar either knew her by legend or, much more likely, by a European bounty that must be circulating. Saba hurried out of the alley, down a block, and deeper into the maze. Across another street and down the block from where Saba now stood, a sign read: OPÉRATEUR DE CIRCONCISION—a circumcision operator—the place of Doña Carmen’s contact. Saba leaned against the outside wall of a still-crowded café and watched the street. The street activity was high, much higher than proper. Arab men walked in small groups, staring at shadows they saw every night and at building doorways they saw every day. The Nazis were in the Village Nègre, she was sure of it, but not at the Opérateur de Circoncision, where they would have waited had Doña Carmen betrayed her and Eddie. Somehow Erich Schroeder knew it was Oran and guessed the Arab Quarter, but not where. Schroeder was a murderer of the first order but a worthy adversary. Saba listened to the many conversations in the crowded café and finally overheard how it had been accomplished.

  She eased into the dark and with great caution, back to the cemetery.

  Saba handed Eddie his half of their food and sat across from him to eat. Eddie said, “So?”

  “There are Nazis; a bounty is offered. The Arabs hunt on the Nazis’ behalf. They know you are tall and that you wear black . . . A Nazi on the train saw you jump.”

  “Doña Carmen told them?” Eddie stood fast, looking left and right. “Then she didn’t call Benny Binion and Floyd. My family—”

  “No. We are not betrayed. There were no Nazis at the Opérateur de Circoncision. The Nazis know we are here but not where.” Saba reached for Eddie’s hand and tugged at him to sit. “We must find new clothes for you, not black. Bundle your jellaba and keffiyeh. I will go to the medina and make a trade, one item at a time.”

  Eddie disrobed and handed her the garments. “Waiting here is making me nuts.”

  “But you must. The city will kill you. I want you alive, for me.”

  A small smile broke through the frustration and worry. “Could you say that again?”

  Saba felt the blush. “One time is enough, for now.” She stood, turned, and ran into the dark. Oran’s streets were almost empty, lit only with moonlight and what stars weren’t hidden by the westward clouds. A storm was coming out of the desert. There would be no rain, only hot winds and sand. Saba kept the bundle under her arm, her pistol in hand but hidden. She could smell Eddie in his bundled clothes. How endlessly odd it was to be a woman and a soldier—A figure startled her. Hooded and small, it moved like a woman. Saba aimed from behind the bundle and stepped back into the doorway. In Arabic, a woman’s voice asked for food or money. Saba shook her head. The woman asked again. Saba said to move on.

  The woman spoke French. “Étoile Nord-Africain.”

  Étoile Nord-Africain was Doña Carmen’s code to be used at the contact point. Doña Carmen’s father had been a founding member fighting against the French occupation.

  Saba fast-glanced past the woman’s shoulders.

  The woman returned to Arabic. “You look for something?”

  “No.”

  The old woman moved on, hesitated, and returned. “The jellaba is Moroccan. Black.” The woman glanced at Saba’s bundle, unable to tell anything about it other than it was black. “The man who wears the jellaba is an American.”

  Saba fast-scanned again.

  The old woman showed her hands empty. “There are enemies roaming these streets, and friends. The friends search to help.”

  Saba sifted shadows, finger tight on the trigger, and took a chance she would normally not take. “Carmen Bishara al-Janîn.”

  The woman grinned and bobbed her head, then glanced at the sky. “It is said the American travels with the Raven of Palestine.”

  “And if this is so?”

  “Étoile Nord-Africain will help her fly.”

  The doorway had shrunk to Saba’s shoulders. Dying in Algeria, marked by an old woman, was not how Saba had fantasized it. One finger removed oil from her cheek. The woman leaned into the bundle and Saba’s gun barrel behind.

  The old woman gasped, then steadied. “I . . . I am honored. Many French soldiers die at your hand. We embrace you.” And she did.

  Saba jerked the pistol into the open over the old woman’s shoulder and the hail of bullets that would kill them both. The woman told her shoulder, “Fear not. Étoile Nord-Africain will not betray you.” Saba fanned the pistol. No attack. No men. No bullets. Only the night air of North Africa and the frail Arab woman.

  Saba Hassouneh al-Saleh backed them deeper into the doorway, took a breath, and allowed herself pride in being an Arab.

  Erich Schroeder resisted the impulse to kill someone with his hands. Fate had beaten him at every turn of the wheel. It was as if he were the player and his prey the house. But his prey’s luck could not last; there were too many righteous men in Oran who wished to see an infidel and her consort captured or had good use for the French francs offered. And as his Luftwaffe man had stated, there was no good way out of Oran for foreign fugitives other than by train or ship.

  Oran’s train station now hosted as many informers as could fit in its baths and under its domed roof. Saba’s exit would be a ship, the whore’s route from the whore’s network. She would abandon any further attempt to make contact. She would break for the Palestinian coast. Three ships were in Oran’s harbor; each would eventually make port in either Haifa or Beirut. One was French-flagged, the other two English and Greek.

  The Greek ship Mustafa II was the most likely because once aboard
, Saba would not be wanted for murder or considered a brazen whore-infidel desecrator of religious shrines. The French ship was next likely and only because Oran was long steeped in the Byzantine politics of the French. If Saba had connections here, she would have connections in the port and by default on a French-flagged vessel. The English ship was highly unlikely, as it also carried a contingent of Royal Marines. Eddie and Saba were both wanted by the British.

  Schroeder doubled the bounty, then tripled it, offering any man who could produce the prey more money than could be spent in Oran in three years. He drank two cups of Moorish coffee, then went to see the harbormaster’s second-in-command, armed with a formal request from the German embassy in Algiers.

  CHAPTER 34

  April, 1939

  Eddie paced a slow circle through the cemetery’s almond trees and arid moonlight. Tom Mendelssohn’s papers itched against his skin. Below Eddie, two figures appeared at the wide cemetery gate, then hugged the nearest wall after they had passed through. Saba? But her clothes were different. The hooded figure was small but not definable by sex or nationality. The two figures followed the base of the hill until it hid them from the gate, then climbed higher to where Eddie waited in the trees.

  The taller figure signaled it was Saba. Eddie leveled the .45 and waved the figure to him. It was Saba. She offered Eddie a white robe and headdress. “We have a ship. French-flagged to Beirut.”

  “When?”

  “Six a.m. Three hours.” Saba touched the person on her right. “She will lead us through the harbor. There is a heavy-rail quay, Quai de Marseille. We board there in one hour, boxed with the last of the heavy-rail freight.”

  Eddie’s stomach churned. Either the lamb he’d eaten or Saba’s plan. Saba put her hand on his chest. “I have news from Doña Carmen.” Saba swallowed, then raised her chin. “In Oklahoma.” Saba put both hands on Eddie’s shoulders. “The news is bad. Your father is dead, killed by Erich Schroeder’s Nazis—”

  “What?” Eddie stumbled. “What?”

  “The remainder of your family is safe with”—she stuttered the name—“B-Ben E. Binion of Texas.”

  Eddie stumbled backward into an almond tree. “Newt’s dead?”

  Saba nodded, stepped to Eddie, and hugged him to her. Eddie fought the words until the shock registered as fact. “How?”

  Saba eased back, her tone military. “Your friends from Texas arrived soon after Erich Schroeder’s Nazis. The men from Texas prevailed in two locations. Your father died outside his iron lung saving your mother when she was put into a truck with him.”

  Eddie’s eyes squeezed shut. His father, weak but not beaten, dies saving . . . always saving. Eddie saw his father behind the plow, his pride, his hope, his smile, his hat . . . the hat Erich Schroeder had given Eddie in Tenerife. Eddie’s paycheck had saved the family only to kill them. His hands began to shake. He flexed to shove her off his chest.

  “No.” Saba leaned into him, against his chest. “Have I not suffered the same? Are my losses less?” Saba grabbed tighter. Her eyes bored into his. Eddie inhaled to yell. He choked. Tears welled. Saba pressed her cheek hard against his neck. “I cry, too. For your father and for mine. For our failures. For the many who hope. Now, you must keep the anger within yourself, as I do. We must go. Prevail in quiet for now and we may have our reckoning.”

  At dawn, Eddie and Saba’s crate was stacked on Oran’s heavy cartage pier. They were crunched inside the six-foot cube of black-dark, oily tannery hides. Outside, Oran Harbor was already loud. Soldiers’ boots tramped past the crate. Eddie was sick with the fumes and the confinement. If he and Saba made it off the Quai de Marseille and aboard the SS Caubarreaux, there would be no trace of them leaving Oran. The crate would be opened in the upper hold, then Eddie and Saba led above the propellers to a steerage cabin with toilet reserved for “Avatar el-Baidar.”

  Saba had said she did not relish the crate or the cabin name “Avatar el-Baidar” chosen by the Étoile Nord-Africain. But if she and Eddie could remain safe for the three-day voyage to Beirut, there was an excellent chance they could pass into Lebanon without arrest by the French. Saba repeated the warnings she had received—if there were difficulties aboard, make no attempt to hijack the ship. There were traps. All vessels on the contraband routes were well prepared for interference.

  Voices.

  Eddie blinked, inches away from the whites of Saba’s eyes, all he could see. She squeezed his hand. The crate moved a little, then a lot. Then up and juggled at an increasingly odd angle. More voices, louder, shouting. The crate righted and swung to Eddie’s left and out toward the water. They hung there. He whispered, “Hope they don’t drop—”

  They did. About ten feet. Eddie would have puked but it happened too fast, stopped, then continued lowering, orderly this time and without the yelling. In three minutes they were packed away, just the noise of little clawed feet scrabbling in the dark.

  Three French soldiers ringed Erich Schroeder at the gangway of the SS Caubarreaux. An hour ago Schroeder had stood in the assistant harbormaster’s office and told him to either take the money offered, or honor the German embassy’s formal request, or get his superior out of bed. The officious little man had called his superior. The superior declined to intercede, saying the decision was the assistant’s. The assistant had refused to speak German or English, and he’d refused Schroeder’s request. “The passenger manifest is confidential, as is the cargo manifest.”

  The three French soldiers who now ringed them near the gangway had appeared when Schroeder had followed the little man out of his office and began to shout. Schroeder calmed, adding unfelt sincerity. “My apologies for my manners. It is so . . . tragic, so important. Please, two of your passengers must be recalled. It is an emergency in their family; the ship will take too long; they must fly.”

  “You have checked the other ships, monsieur?”

  “Yes.” That was the truth, and the Greeks and English had been far more industrious and amenable.

  “If they must fly . . . there is a plane, monsieur?”

  Schroeder lied. “Yes. Waiting at the airport now. Please.”

  “What are their names?”

  Schroeder took the one chance this officious French ass was allowing. “Eddie Owen and Calah al-Habra.”

  The Frenchman scanned his papers. “Non. Not aboard.” He signaled the stevedores to cast off the ropes.

  Schroeder beseeched, then blocked the Frenchman’s exit. The ship’s horn boomed. Schroeder offered money again. “Please take this, for your children. Check again. Any passengers going to Beirut.”

  The Frenchman smiled at the money, then the three soldiers who politely looked away. The Frenchman accepted the bills, rolled them into his pocket as a professional would, and rechecked the list. “Non.” He sidestepped Schroeder and escaped behind the uniforms, his personal victory against the Nazis.

  Schroeder glared at the ship and the laughing soldiers. Cunning helped him reach for more money instead of his pistol. Behind the guile, he knew something those brass-buttoned uniforms did not—they would revisit this day on the battlefield, and it would be soon, and it would be in France. The French were just Jews in disguise and Jews did not fight. France’s prodigious array of tanks and artillery pieces required soldiers to feed the breaches, soldiers willing to die. And when the time came, the egalitarian French always had far fewer of those.

  More francs bought a cabin for Schroeder’s most trusted Luftwaffe man, the man who had ridden the red wooden train until he had proven Saba and Eddie Owen were not on it and jumped off. Eddie and Saba had to be on this ship . . . not on the train, not hiding in Oran. They were on a ship, this ship . . . probably.

  At eight a.m., Schroeder watched the SS Caubarreaux slide out from the pier. He and his local man would remain to squeeze the Village Nègre, then break into the harbormaster’s office and scan the manifest. His man on the Caubarreaux would hunt, cabin by cabin if necessary. Eddie and Saba would be found, here or there;
the luck that had propelled Eddie this far would eventually falter. And then . . . then Eddie and his whore would pay a price, a price that—no, Saba would pay the price, naked and begging and bleeding. Her plan to rob Eddie of the Mendelssohn papers would vanish with her clothes, then her life. Eddie would continue on to work, like all Germans would work, hard and for the Fatherland. And the Mendelssohn papers would work hard for Erich Schroeder and Reichsmarschall Göring.

  Schroeder wanted to smile but couldn’t. The farther Eddie got from the desert and the North African states, the more vulnerable Erich Schroeder became. Himmler’s Gestapo could not be certain that Eddie Owen was who they had chased to Fès, no matter what the whore on the Casablanca Ferry had told them. Himmler would make that assumption, but without proof, Himmler would have to worry that Eddie and the Mendelssohn papers were now with Erich Schroeder, en route to Berlin. And without proof, Himmler would not dare confront Göring. Himmler’s dead SS contingent in Fès had sealed Himmler from Oran, but not forever and not without speculation over who had killed them.

  The SS Caubarreaux sounded a horn. Himmler’s Gestapo was vastly stronger on the European continent and the SS Caubarreaux would make its first stop in Bari, Italy. If proof of this fiasco leaked, Himmler’s Gestapo would meet the ship. That would be the last of Eddie and the papers. And of Erich Schroeder.

  CHAPTER 35

  April, 1939

  For twenty-four hours, the SS Caubarreaux battled to hug Algeria’s coast, but the ship’s engines were no match for the sandstorm boiling out of the Sahara. The storm had pushed everything that floated deeper into the Mediterranean. Gritty crosswinds and battering southern seas kept the decks clear and the tiny cabins full. Luck and cover for some, twenty hours of illness and fatigue for others.

  The old ship shuddered. In their tiny cabin, Eddie wobbled to the porthole and Saba’s cheek. She said, “Sardinia,” to the glass and a distant island coastline lit by a late, hazy sunrise. Eddie had never seen Sardinia. The only islands he’d seen were Bahrain and the Canaries. He liked Saba’s cheek more than Sardinia, even though she still smelled like new leather and so did he. During the night they had awakened from the sleep of the dead comfortably in each other’s arms. Saba’s shock was total and she had jolted out of the bed—a fully dressed mountain lion, her chest heaving, hands up and ready to fight. Eddie converted his current leer to confusion. If he could only get her to put that energy into any attempt at sex . . . Maybe just part of her energy to start, until he got used to the beating.