W E B Griffin - Men at War 1 - The Last Heroes

by The Last Heroes(Lit)

  Later, in the caf6, Baker walked into the toilet, set fire to the paper with his Ronson, and flushed the ashes away.

  Rabat, Morocco March 13,1942 Diego Garcfa Alb6niz was a Catalan who had fought against Franco in the civil war and who had escaped to French Africa soon after the fall of Madrid. He was also a pretty good physician, who-understandably-knew more than a thing or two about battlefield wounds. This skill had made him useful now and again to both the current and the former pashas of Ksar es Souk. It was, however, not Sidi el Ferruch who needed Dr. Alb6niz today. It was Richard Canidy.

  Since the doctor's office was only half a mile from the American consulate in Rabat, and even though it was raining buckets in Rabat, Canidy decided to walk, his reason being that this was the only way he could be sure not to lose the S6curit6 agent who was this day's tail. ("I thought they were supposed to use a team," Canidy had said with deeply wounded vanity to Eldon Baker soon after the S6curit6 first started to keep an eye on them. "You're not worth a team," Baker had replied, rubbing it in.)

  So, in raincoat, hat, scarf, and galoshes, Canidy trudged the half mile to Dr. Alb6niz, happy at least that the Frenchman following him was getting soaked too.

  The doctor's office was on the second floor, which was reached by a stairway up the outside of the building. At the top of the stairs, Canidy glanced around to make sure his tail was still around. He was. He'd found a modicum of protection in a doorway down the block.

  Suffer! Canidy thought, then knocked.

  Even though he had fought against the fascists, Dr. Alb6niz was an aristocrat. For a Spaniard he was tail, and his dark hair was combed straight back. With him was the American deputy consul, William Dale. Dale was there solely because he was roughly the same height and build as Canidy. And he had been waiting an hour for Canidy's arrival with an impatience born of the diplomat's distaste for doing the work of spies.

  Dale acknowledged Canidy's arrival by tearing away the brown paper wrapping from a bundle he had brought with him, as though silence made his own sin in consorting with Baker and his gang merely a venial one. He handed the bundle over to Canidy and took from him his soaked gear. The bundle contained clothing until recently wom by one of Ferruch's Berbers. Canidy changed into it while Dale put on the raingear.

  "I'll be going now," he said to the doctor, pointedly ignoring Canidy.

  "I'd wait, sir, if I were you, for at least another fifteen minutes. The theory is that I'm seeing the doctor professionally."

  "As indeed you are," said Dr. Alb6niz, with a little smile.

  Dale shrugged in defeat and took a seat, while the doctor went to a cabinet and took from it a syringe and needle. He screwed the needle into its socket, then pointed out to Canidy the markings on the side of the syringe.

  "I'm going to give you a sedative which will keep someone blissfully unconscious for perhaps three or four hours ' " Dr. Alb6niz said in very good but heavily accented English. "Fill the syringe to about three hundred cc's"-he pointed-"here." 460K."

  "You know to squirt a little out before you inject?"

  Canidy nodded.

  "Good." Alb6niz walked over to a cabinet, unlocked it, and removed a small box. "Yes, good," he said, examining it. He then found a case for the syringe and the sedative in his doctor's bag. He placed all this equipment inside the case and handed it over to Canidy.

  "Can I expect these back?" Dr. Alb6niz asked.

  "I hope so ' " Canidy said.

  "Please try," the doctor said. "Medical shipments have been haphazard."

  "I'll do my best," Canidy said. Personally, he was doubtful that he'd be able to return the doctor's gear to him.

  "Thank you. Please follow me, then." The doctor led Canidy down an inside stairway and out a door that issued into a back alley. In the alley stood a tiny deux chevaux Citroi5n van, its engine putputting. The doctor opened the rear door, and Canidy crawled in-side.

  "Hi, Dick said Eric Fulmar. "How the fuck are you?"

  Oued-Zem, Morocco March 13,1942

  It was close to ten in the evening by the time that Louis Albert Grunier reached his cottage in the mining compound near Ouedzem. Grunier had gotten into the habit of spending his evenings at a caf6 in town, where two or three unexpectedly sweet girls worked. For a couple of francs the girls would dance, and for a few more they'd take a customer upstairs. Grunier neither danced nor went upstairs, but he paid the girls for their time just the same, and he also sweetened their time with vennouth or Pernod.

  When Grunier switched on the light inside his cottage, he saw that the inside was a shambles. And there was-mon Dieu!-a dead man on the floor. Two Berbers-no, two Europeans in Berber dress, he corrected himself-had been waiting in the dark for him, drink-ing his best brandy.

  Grunier didn't speak when he saw them, nor did he do what he really wanted to do, which was to go back outside as fast as he could. One of the men held a very large and nasty-looking Thompson submachine gun aimed more or less at him.

  "Bon soir, Monsieur Grunier," said the one with the Thompson. "We've been waiting several hours for you."

  "This is an outrage Grunier managed.

  "You'll be astonished to hear this," Eric Fulmar said, "but we've come to save you,"

  "Who is this man?" said Grunier, ignoring that and pointing to the apparent corpse on the floor. "And why have you killed him9"

  "He's not dead... yet," said Eric. "But he will be shortly; and I imagine that event will please you, because the Sfiret6 and the Germans will believe the dead man is you, which is going to keep your wife and kids safe. Because you see, Monsieur Grunier, we are going to take you to America in a submarine."

  For a few seconds Grunier seemed unable to breathe. Then he sat down and waved his hand around as though making conversational gestures. But no words came out of his mouth.

  Finally he spoke. "You are mad," he said.

  "Probably," said Eric Fulmar. "Meanwhile, we need to take you to the submarine. And, I'm sorry to say, we need you unconscious for that."

  "This is outrageous!" Grunier said.

  "Absolutely," said Eric Fulmar, "but please cooperate"-he waved the gun menacingly----@"and take your pants down."

  The other man, who was in fact Richard Canidy, removed the synnge and the anesthetic from their box, plunged the needle into the rubber top, and drew a full five hundred cc's from the bottle. "The doc said three hundred cc's," he said in English, "but I think we can do better than that."

  "Just don't kill him Fulmar said, hoping that Grunier didn't know English. He didn't. He just stared blankly ahead and dropped his trousers so that Canidy could plunge the needle into the fleshiest part of his thigh.

  In seconds, Louis Albert Grunier was unconscious.

  Next, Canidy flipped the light off, then on, then off; and he and Fulmar carried the unconscious Frenchman out to the van.

  The driver passed them on their way out. He was headed inside, and he was carrying a ten-liter can of gasoline.

  Safi, Morocco March 14,1942

  Fulmar, Canidy, and Grunier spent the next day in the hold of a Moroccan fishing boat anchored in the harbor at Safi waiting for the arrival of Admiral de Verbey. It took a little time, unhappily, for them to become as malodorous as their surroundings. A bottle of Black and White which Eric had thought to bring along made the two of them a bit more comfortable. Nothing mattered to the Frenchman.

  Toward evening, Canidy and Fulmar heard a commotion and decided to poke their heads up to take a look. Two large trucks had just pulled up on the quay, one a flatbed evidently loaded with sacks of cement. The truck behind it was a cement mixer.

  One of the drivers climbed up onto the rear of the cement mixer and did something to the funnel at the back that caused it to swing away from the hole at the top of the tank. The tank now looked like a reclining volcano-from which a moment later erupted a little old man.

  "The admiral, I guess," said Canidy.

  "Probably," Eric agreed.

  The old man was helpe
d into a rowboat in which four Moroccan fishermen were already waiting. The trucks rumbled away, and the fishermen rowed out to the boat where Eric and Dick were hiding. Moments later Vice Admiral d'escadre Jean-Phillipe de Verbey was seated in the hold next to Lieutenant Richard Canidy sharing the now much-diminished bottle of Black & White. His rescuers had taken him through two roadblocks (word was out that he was escaping, but who'd think to look in the tank of a cement mixer truck?); and he was now very excited and voluble-too excited to pay much attention to his unconscious countryman.

  Soon after the admiral's arrival, the crew hoisted the fishing boat's sail, and twenty minutes after that the boat's rolling motion told those in the hold that they were beyond the harbor. De Verbey talked nonstop the whole time, telling again and again the story of his escape-at least as far as Canidy could make out. Fulmar wasn't bothering to translate, and it didn't seem to matter to the admiral that no one was listening to him.

  Later, one of the fishermen swung down into the hold and motioned for them to come out on deck. Out in the distance was a dark shape on the water. Then, without warning, there was a brilliant flash of light.

  "Jesus!" Canidy said.

  A voice hailed them across the water. "Stand by to take aboard a rubber-boat party." The voice was American.

  A couple of fishermen went down into the hold and hauled Grunier out. He was now semiconscious, but not yet up to walking.

  The sail rattled down its single mast; and a moment later there was the sound of oars splashing. Another flash of light came, and then the sound of an oar banging against the hull of the fishing boat.

  "Ahoy, on board," a voice called. "Lieutenant Edward Pringer, USN."

  "Lieutenant Richard Canidy," Canidy called back, "USNR."

  A moment later a man with a blackened face, wearing a dark sweater and trousers, hauled himself over the side.

  "Right on the god damned button," he said, giving Canidy his hand. "Position and time."

  "I'm damned glad to see you, Lieutenant," Canidy said.

  "Those our passengers?"

  "Yeah," Canidy said.

  "OK. We can put a line on each of them and lower them over the side."

  That took several minutes.

  "So long," Lieutenant Pringer said after the two were safely aboard. "And good luck!"

  "What the hell do you mean by that?" Canidy said. "We're going with you."

  "I'm afraid not," Pringer said.

  "Listen to me," Canidy said. "Didn't you hear what I said? I'm Lieutenant Richard Canidy."

  "Then you'll understand about orders," Lieutenant Pringer said. "I have mine. And mine were rather specific."

  "What orders?"

  "My orders say that personnel accompanying passengers are not to be taken aboard the sub."

  "I don't believe that!" Canidy said.

  "The use of force is authorized," Lieutenant Pringer said. "I hope you won't make that necessary, Lieutenant."

  "We're armed," Fulmar flared. "We ought to blow your fucking little boat out of the water!"

  "That wouldn't get you onto the submarine," Lieutenant Pringer said.

  "I'm going to kill that sonofabitch," Canidy said.

  "I'm really sorry," Lieutenant Pringer said. "And now I'm going to get in the boat."

  "That miserable, treacherous sonofabitch!" Canidy fumed.

  "I'll say it again," Pringer said. "Good luck!"

  Fulmar chuckled, "How do you know I won't shoot you anyway?"he asked.

  "I don't," Pringer said. "I hope you won't."

  He went over the side and was gone.

  "I didn't trust that sonofabitch Baker the first time I saw him," Fulmar said. "In Paris, I didn't trust him. But I'm surprised he fucked you, too, Dick."

  "What happens now?" Canidy said.

  "Well, I think I can get you to Rabat," Fulmar said, his anger quickly dying. "Baker may hope you get caught by the Germans, but I don't, and I don't want to give him the satisfaction."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Back to Ksar es Souk, where I will hope this doesn't make Thami el Glaoui turn me over to the Germans."

  "You seem pretty god damned calm about this," Canidy said.

  "I'm half German, half American, and half Moroccan, Dick. Cross out the German half. And all this proves I can forget the American half, too. So I've now become a full-blooded Moroccan."

  Rabat, Morocco March 15, 1942

  Just before eleven the next day, a truck backed up to the kitchen door of the United States consulate general in Rabat. The canvas flap opened wide enough for Canidy to jump down from the bed, and then the truck drove quickly off.

  Canidy stormed past a surprised cook into the dining room, then into the consulate proper. He headed for the office of the consul general. Robert Murphy did not seem to be surprised to see him.

  "I'm very sorry about this, Canidy' " Murphy said.

  "What the hell is going on?" Canidy demanded furiously.

  "It was necessary for you to stay here ' " Murphy said, "because it was even more necessary that Fulmar do the same."

  "And why was that another of those little things that unimportant people like me can't be told about?" Canidy fumed.

  "Why is because we're going to invade North Africa," Murphy said matter-offactly. "And soon. And we need Fulmar and el Ferruch to help us in that. We hope that we can enlist Thami el Glaoui's Berbers on our side. And your friend is going to be just as useful to Sidi el Ferruch as he is to us-as a kind of go-between. Sidi wanted him to stay and he wanted to stay. So he stayed. If you had been told this was planned, things would have gotten terribly messed up."

  "We promised him... I promised him... we'd get him out of Morocco ' " Canidy said. "Right now, he thinks we're lying sonsofbitches. What makes you think he'd help us again?"

  Murphy shrugged. "That's one of those bridges to be crossed when we get to it. Grunier and the admiral had the highest priority.

  Once we got them to the sub, the priority shifted to the invasion. As I said, you weren't told beforehand because it was better that you didn't know."

  A marine appeared with doughnuts and coffee.

  "I thought you could use a little something to eat," Murphy said.

  "May I ask you a question?" Canidy asked.

  "What happens now?"

  "No," Canidy said. "How come you told me about the invasion? Isn't that secret?"

  "Top secret, actually," Murphy said. "Around here I decide who has the need to know. I decided that it was in the best interests of the U.S. government that you should know. Eldon Baker is too valuable to us for you to break his neck."

  Canidy chuckled. "That thought did cross my mind," he said.

  "That would have been inefficient," Murphy said. "One very good intelligence officer dead and another one in jail for murder. We don't have that many good intelligence officers."

  "That sounds like soft soap," Canidy said.

  "You did very well," Murphy said. "Better than some thought you would. Thus, I agree with Eldon. You seem to have a talent for the clandestine, Canidy."

  I'll be god damned. I am flattered. I am as pleased as a little boy with a gold star to take home to Mommy, "What does happen to me now.

  Murphy reached for a Teletype message.

  "Before I give you this, listen carefully" he said. "It's not true. It's designed for the French and Germans to read."

  STATEWASH 26 FEB 42

  FOR CONSULGEN RIABATMOROCCO PASS TO RICHARD CANIDY AT EARLIEST OPPORTUNITY QUOTE REV DR GEORGE CRATER CANIDY IN STABLE BUT SERIOUS CONDITION CEDAR RAPIDS IOWA GENERAL HOSPITAL FOLLOWING HEART ATTACK END QUOTE STOP CABLE CONSTITUTES AUTHORITY CONSULGEN RABAT TO PLACE FSO CANIDY ON EMERGENCY LEAVE IF DUTY LOAD PERMITS AND TO ARRANGE TRANSPORTATION TO US STOP JOHN G GLOVER DEPUTY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE FOR PERSONNEL END Canidy wondered if this was yet another weird idea of Eldon C. Baker's.

  "You'll leave by air tomorrow," Murphy said.

  "OK, I guess," Canidy said. "If you're goi
ng to be fucked, you might as well enjoy it."

  Caft des Deux Sabots Rabat, Morocco March 17, 1942

  Jean-Frangois, Max von Heurten-Mitnitz's regular waiter, hovered expectantly over his table. "Your orders, messieurs?" he asked.

  "Please, use your imagination, Jean-Frangois," said von Heurten-Mitnitz. "Anything but lamb."