Tangier: A Novel

by Stephen Holgate

  “A cognac?” Torrence asked, motioning toward a wooden cabinet behind him.

  Laurent shook his head.

  Torrence sat behind his desk. His voice took a gentler note, like that of a funeral director speaking with someone recently bereaved. “What will you do now?”

  Laurent shrugged. “I don’t know. Is there anyone I can talk to? Anyone left in Casablanca who. . . ?” He couldn’t finish his thought.

  “I don’t think so. They’ve been rounding up your friends all week.” Torrence swiveled in his chair, looked out the window. “How is it you’re not with them?”

  “And sparing you this visit?”

  Torrence swiveled back. “For godssake, Laurent—”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . I missed the boat. Literally.”

  “I think maybe it’s your friends who have missed the boat.” Torrence tried to get a smile out of Laurent, but Laurent didn’t have a smile left in him. “Did you honestly think Petain was going to help set up the opposition to his own government?” He offered Laurent a cigarette, got no response, lit one for himself and took a long drag, tilted his head back, and blew a stream of smoke toward the ceiling. “But you shouldn’t imagine we’re so isolated here. We weren’t unaware of what was going on. Honestly, if I’d thought there was a chance they’d succeed, I’d have gone down to Casablanca myself.”

  “Yes, you were prudent to keep your head down.” Torrence’s face went hard. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that as a criticism.” Laurent watched his countryman decide to believe him. “What happens to them now?”

  “Happens? I suppose they’ll be sent back to Vichy to face treason charges.”

  “Mendes-France, too?”

  “Mendes-France especially. He’s a Jew.”

  “They only now figured that out?”

  The phone rang and Torrence jumped. “Hello? Yes, tell him I’ll be there in a moment.”

  When he hung up, Laurent tried to walk the tension back. “Michel, I need your help. If I could get to Casablanca, or maybe Rabat, surely there would be someone—”

  “If you try to leave Tangier for Casa they’ll arrest you at the border—either the Spanish as you leave, or our side as you enter.”

  “Why would they be looking for me?”

  “Did anyone in your group have documents, a list of names, showing you were one of them?”

  “Possibly. Probably. Yes, almost certainly.” For the first time the dimensions of his dilemma hit Laurent. “Who’s the Consul-General here?”

  “Achille Lucas.”

  “Lucas.” Laurent shook his head. “I was hoping it would be someone I knew. Where does he stand on all this? Is there any chance I can ask to be posted here temporarily until I can figure out what to do?”

  “No. He’s a Petain man. We’re all Petain men now.”

  Laurent sagged in his chair. “A matter of dates.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Talleyrand. ‘Treason is a matter of dates.’ Two weeks ago what we were trying to do by going to Casablanca was the height of patriotism. Now it’s a capital offense.”

  Torrence rose from his desk. “Listen, the Consul-General is waiting for me. If he knew I was sitting here talking to you, I’d probably be on the next ship back to France myself.”

  The weight of anxiety and weariness Laurent had felt lifting from him the previous day came back, more suffocating than before. Torrence stood with his hand on the doorknob. “Rene, listen, you can’t go back to France. You can’t go on to Casablanca. And it’s dangerous to stay here.”

  “For me or for you?”

  To his surprise, Torrence smiled. He had scored all the points in this round, shown Laurent to be both foolish and helpless. He could adopt a victor’s magnanimity. “As you like.”

  “So, can I get a ship to Spain, maybe Portugal?”

  “The ferry still goes twice a day to Spain, at least for now. But with the Spanish in charge here now you’ll need an exit visa.”

  “Even with a diplomatic passport?”

  “Especially with a diplomatic passport. The Spanish figure the war’s over and the Germans have won. Franco will do what he can to keep himself on Hitler’s good side. If they know you were with the people in Casa, the best you can hope for is to wind up in a Vichy prison instead of a German one. I’m amazed they didn’t stop you before you boarded ship.”

  “The bribe I paid must have been all-inclusive.”

  The two men regarded each other in silence. Laurent understood it was time to leave.

  “Michel, I need two quick favors.”

  Torrence tapped at the doorknob. “If I can.”

  “I need to exchange some money. I found a hotel but they don’t accept francs.”

  “What? Everyone accepts francs.”

  “Explain that to them. In the meantime, I don’t want to change hotels just to find someone who thinks the franc is worth having. Can’t I exchange them down at the cashier’s desk?”

  “Rue es Siaghines.”

  “Sorry?”

  “That’s where you’ll find the money changers. One of the many drawbacks to being in a legation instead of an embassy. We can’t exchange money here.”

  “Rue es Siaghines?”

  “Yes. But keep a tight hand on everything, right down to your soul. If you’re selling, they’re buying. The second favor?”

  “I sent Marie-Therese to America weeks ago, back when I thought we’d stop the Germans and I’d be joining her soon.”

  His colleague’s manner changed abruptly. “Marie-Therese?”

  Laurent knew Torrence had been attracted to his wife. It had alternatively amused and irritated him in Brussels, but now he would use it to his advantage. “I want to write a note, let her know where I am. I need you to put it in the diplomatic pouch for me.”

  “The pouch? The Ministry is barely functioning. Who knows when it would get there? Besides—”

  “Just do this for me.” Laurent took a pen and paper from Torrence’s desk and began to write.

  “All right. But hurry,” Torrence whispered, as if someone might be listening at the door, then added, “Say hello to her for me.”

  “With pleasure,” Laurent said, as if stabbing Torrence in the heart with a broken pencil was the furthest thing from his mind.

  Signing the hastily written note, he put it in an envelope, addressed it to his wife in care of the embassy in Washington and handed it to Torrence. “Thanks.”

  Torrence couldn’t hide his relief as Laurent rose to go.

  “Rene, I’m sorry if I seemed . . . Your showing up here like this took me by surprise. Maybe we could meet somewhere later. How about the bar at the Minzah, say, tomorrow evening at ten?”

  “Where’s the Minzah?”

  “Everyone knows. Just ask.”

  “All right.” He stood in the corridor and looked back at Torrence. “Don’t worry. I’ll find my way out.”

  EIGHT

  After the relentless gloom of France, the streets of Tangier looked like a street carnival. The Mediterranean sun saturated every corner of the noisy, crowded markets and bustling streets—the reds and blues, greens and whites of the djellabas, the striped awnings of shaded doorways, the painted polyglot signs above the shops and restaurants. Even in the shadowed lanes of the medina, the sun suffused the soft greens and blues that trimmed the whitewashed walls.

  The kaleidoscope of the local palette forced Laurent to look again at his dark, pinstriped suit—slack and dingy from two weeks in flight—and for the first time, rather than seeing it as evidence of his privileged position, thought it made him look like a fool. And a highly conspicuous fool at that. Dubious characters of cheerful venality leaned out of the shadows to offer him drugs, guns, women, boys. He passed the Hotel Satan and the Pension Delirium, establishments, which, to believe the shills, offered every vice he had ever heard of, and several he had not.

  Grim-faced, he ignored their offers and made his way toward the money-changers.

/>   However many marble arches and wool-suited traders they might boast, no stock exchange in the world possessed a keener eye to every shifting nuance of world events than did the narrow and rundown rue es Siaghines. Along both sides of the lane, rows of small offices featured sandwich boards and wooden placards displaying the going prices of every currency in Europe, their values written in chalk to aid rapid adjustment. In their peculiar way, the signs served as a weather vane of the war, with currencies rising and falling on the changing currents of a world in turmoil. As Laurent passed their open doors, he saw men poring over newspapers or listening to radio reports with the same concentration stockbrokers dedicated to economic news or touts to the racing form.

  A quick survey of prices told him that the manager of his hotel must have missed the latest headlines. Rather than sinking into oblivion, the franc had risen against the peseta since he had seen it quoted in Madrid, perhaps on the prospect that the French surrender would lead to peace and some form of stability. By contrast, on the expectation that the Germans would now quickly invade Great Britain and knock it out of the war, the pound sterling had plummeted. Unlike the money-changers, however, Laurent had seen Churchill, heard the determination behind his execrable French, and knew the British would not fall so easily.

  With no reason to choose one shop over another, Laurent walked into a small office simply furnished with a wooden table and two chairs. The room was otherwise empty of anything but the aromas of the midday meal until a young girl peeked through the beaded curtain of a narrow doorway. When he smiled she ran away.

  After waiting several minutes Laurent was about to walk out when a tall, rotund man in a decade-old business suit walked through the beaded curtain, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Ahlen wa sahlen, bienvenue, willkommen, bienvenido, welcome,” the man muttered, like a priest mumbling the prayers of a ritual he had performed too many times.

  “I don’t mean to interrupt your lunch.”

  “It is not a problem,” the man said, dredging up a shopworn smile.

  “I need to change money.”

  “Why else would you be here?” The man shrugged amiably, settled into the chair with padded arms, and nodded Laurent into the other. “What have you got, and what do you want?”

  “I’ve got francs. I want sterling and a few pesetas.”

  The man’s ersatz smile broadened with genuine pleasure. “An astute wager.” A little cock of the head. “Perhaps.” he narrowed his eyes and leaned across the table. “You are French,” he announced like a carnival mind-reader.

  “Yes.” In no mood for small talk, Laurent laid most of his remaining francs on the table. “And you are Moroccan.”

  The man laughed as he counted Laurent’s bills. “I am Tangerois. An important distinction. We don’t answer to the sultan. We don’t answer to the Spanish or the Germans—or the French. We do what we please.”

  “You must be very proud,” Laurent replied with his best note of patrician condescension.

  The man behind the table only smiled more broadly as he thumbed through the currency before him. “This is it?” he asked, waving the small stack of bills. “If you were to change more, I might be able to offer you a small discount.” He squinted shrewdly at Laurent as if the two of them were playing a trick on some third party.

  “I am only staying a few days.”

  “Such a shame,” he said without conviction. The man turned and called over his shoulder. “Fatima!”

  The little girl reappeared through the beaded curtain. The man leaned back in his chair and spoke quietly to her in Arabic, gently tapping her arm for emphasis. She nodded and left the room. The man turned back to Laurent. “Yes. Everyone tells me they are leaving soon. Yet somehow, a month, two months later, they are still here, coming back every week, each time telling me they’re only staying a few more days.” He counted Laurent’s francs once more. “Tangier is a city much easier to get into than it is to leave.”

  While he spoke, the girl returned, handing the man several pound notes, a thin stack of pesetas and some coins, which he laid on the table.

  Now it was Laurent’s turn to ask, “This is it?”

  The man offered a gesture of regret. “It’s the best rate you will find on the street.”

  “Then there must be another street.”

  “Yes, you’re right.” The money-changer nodded toward the door. “Go over behind the Grand Socco market. There you will find much better rates.”

  “Then why am I talking to you?”

  “Because the francs around the Grand Socco are counterfeit—as are the pesetas and the sterling.” He waited silently until they both knew Laurent would not be taking his chances with the Grand Socco. “Here, fill out this form and hand me your passport.”

  The money-changer looked at Laurent’s passport and raised his eyebrows. “A diplomat. You are headed for Casablanca?” The man’s tone was so offhand it would have been easy to miss his interest in the answer.

  “I simply want my money.”

  The man gazed at him steadily. Then, with an ambivalent waggle of his head, he reassumed his previous bonhomie. “Sign here, Monsieur Laurent.” He looked at the completed form. “You are staying at the Moulay Idriss? I would have thought a man of your stature would be at the Minzah.”

  “Has this something to do with our transaction?”

  The money-changer held up his hands—the picture of a man who wished to give no offense. “Monsieur Laurent, I wish you all good fortune.” He tilted his head to one side as if an unexpected thought had come to him. “And if for any reason you find yourself compelled to extend your stay in Tangier, I consider you my friend and can recommend to you a better sort of lodging—somewhere you would be most welcome.”

  “Every shopkeeper and pimp in Tangier tells me I am his friend then offers me a price that is double what he would charge anyone else.”

  Laurent felt better about the man when he saw his eyes go hard with anger. He was not so craven that he couldn’t be insulted.

  The two men glared at each other until the money-changer recalled the business at hand. His expression slowly softened and he shook his head with feigned regret. “You are right. It is such opportunists who give hypocrisy a bad name. I will be frank with you. On the rare occasion when I can find someone who meets the rather exclusive standards set by the mistress of the house I mention, she gives me a small consideration.”

  “I have no intention of staying here that long.”

  The Moroccan smiled and spread his hands. “No one ever does.”

  NINE

  The two Frenchmen at the corner table blended easily into the Minzah’s evening crowd. The taller of them, with fine, sandy hair and a rumpled suit, appeared at ease, while the other nervously tapped his fingers on the table while his eyes darted around the dimly lighted room.

  Laurent raised his glass to his lips and spoke over its rim. “If you’re afraid someone might recognize you, you should have picked a different place to meet.”

  “Sorry.” Torrence smiled uneasily and stopped his tapping.

  “Are there always so many Germans here?”

  Sprinkled among the patrons were half a dozen Wehrmacht officers, all of them drinking heavily and laughing loudly, shouting at each other across the room, conquerors reveling in their triumph. A couple of Spanish officers, smaller, darker, ill at ease, sat with the Germans, show dogs lying down with wolves.

  “At night the Minzah belongs to them.” Torrence’s lips curled in distaste.

  “So, why did we come here?”

  “This used to be our place, we French. I don’t want to just hand it over to them without a struggle,” Torrence said.

  “If we can’t keep them out of Paris, perhaps we can hold the line at the Minzah,” Laurent suggested.

  Torrence made a wry face. “Something like that.”

  Laurent looked once more around the bar then turned to Torrence. “Michel, I need to get out of Tangier.”

  “I’
m sure. But where?”

  “Somewhere I can be of use. Perhaps with de Gaulle in Britain.”

  “Britain.” Torrence spat the word.

  “Yes. Why not?”

  “You really have no idea what’s going on, do you?” Torrence took his colleague’s silence as an admission of ignorance. “Your British friends attacked our fleet in Oran a few days ago, killed more than a thousand of our sailors, sank the Bretagne, damaged other ships.” He let the news sink in. “And you still want to go to Britain?”

  Stunned, Laurent asked, “But why?”

  “Because we wouldn’t hand our fleet over to them.”

  Trying to digest this shock, Laurent shook his head. “The British are the only ones keeping Hitler from winning the war. Their fight is our fight.”

  “Nobly put,” Torrence scoffed. “No doubt you feel that I’m not really serving our country.”

  Laurent did not want an argument with the one man in Tangier who might be willing to help him. “I only mean to say that the war isn’t over.”

  As if he had been waiting for someone to express a hope he could no longer muster on his own, Torrence nodded. “Let’s pray you’re right.”

  Laurent leaned over the table, speaking quietly. “All right. I need an exit visa from the Spanish.” Torrence made a helpless gesture. “I understand. The Consul General would find it impolitic to help me get one.”

  Torrence sighed with impatience. “He does what he thinks is right.”

  “Then perhaps there’s someone I can bribe. How much would it cost?”

  “To get an exit visa? More than you’ve got.”

  “I have an account with—”

  “French banks are still closed, everything frozen in place. In any case, the Spanish control the movement of all international bank transactions. They’d see the request, figure out who you were, and arrest you.”

  “There’s a Credit Lyonnais in Casablanca.”

  “And there are craters on the moon. You don’t seem to understand. You’d never get there.” Torrence sat back and twisted his head as if he had a crick in his neck. “Look, maybe you could slip some money to the skipper of a fishing boat and have him drop you on the Portuguese coast. The worst the Portuguese would do is intern you. You’d sit out the war playing bridge in a hotel in Lisbon.”