Tangier: A Novel

by Stephen Holgate

  “As you say, fair enough.” Chaffee took up the piece of paper and looked at Erickson. “I’m . . . grateful.” Chaffee could not remember the last time he had said these words. It did not come easily. He looked down the hallway beyond the kitchen. “I’ve kept you long enough.”

  Erickson rose from his chair, a slow process at his age.

  “Good luck, Mr. Chaffee. I hope it’s worth it.”

  He called Julie again that evening. The connection seemed even more tenuous than before, as if the continents had drifted farther apart since they had spoken. The tenuous connection, however, could not mask the sleepiness of his wife’s voice.

  “What time is it there?” he asked.

  “Huh?” He pictured her looking for the clock by the side of their bed. “Nearly nine. In the morning.”

  “And I woke you up?”

  “I haven’t been sleeping well. When are you coming home?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You find out anything?”

  “It’s not clear. I’m not sure what I know and what I don’t.”

  “Anything I can tell your mother?”

  He hung his head and sighed, “No. Just say there’s . . . just say not yet.”

  “She calls every day wanting to know if you’ve found your father.” He heard her stretch and sigh, could see her lying on their bed, wished he was lying beside her. “It’s funny,” she said. “She seems much younger all of a sudden, like she and your father are both going to revert to the age they were when they last saw each other. What do you think, Chris? Maybe he’s really there, and you’ll just run onto him one day having a drink at Trader Vic’s or something.”

  She’d always known how to get a chuckle out of him, but he never allowed her more, never really laughed for her. It had always seemed like a matter of masculine principle. Now he felt a shadow of regret growing behind it. He wondered if he had ever truly opened himself to her. Maybe he’d been afraid of what she would see if he did.

  “If there’s a Trader Vic’s around here I haven’t found it. I did find out something—maybe. Don’t tell Mother yet,” he said and related his meeting with Sandoval and the ancient surveillance memo. “It’s probably nothing.”

  “Chris, you sound like you hope you don’t find him.”

  “I wouldn’t have gone through all this if I hadn’t wanted to find him,” he said even as a tickle of guilt made him wonder if she was right.

  “So, what do I tell your mother?”

  “I don’t know. Just tell her I called.”

  “Great. She’ll get mad at you and take it out on me,” his wife said. “Well, goodbye then.”

  “Wait, Julie.” He felt the grudging quality of his own words—noncommittal, distant—and didn’t want their talk to end that way.

  “Yes?”

  He could hear the guardedness in her voice.

  “I just . . . I miss you.”

  “What time is it there? Have you been drinking?”

  “What? No. What makes you think—”

  “Because you never get sentimental unless you’ve got a skinful.”

  “Dammit, I haven’t been drinking.”

  The hissing of the phone line filled his head. He asked, “Anything more on the. . . ?” He couldn’t utter the word.

  “No. Nothing. Deptford hasn’t called.”

  “No mention in the papers?”

  Her voice rose with sudden vehemence. “I can’t read the paper, Chris. I can’t watch T.V. I can’t see the neighbors. I just can’t do it.” As suddenly as the emotion had taken her, it ebbed. “I wish you where here.”

  “I do, too. I’m sorry I was cross.”

  “I miss you. I’ll try to think of why before you call again.”

  “Try hard.”

  THIRTEEN

  Chaffee looked at his watch, its hands barely visible in the dark. Already past eleven. His normally strong sense of direction had proven no match for the medina’s oddly angled streets and baffling turns. Lost, he walked like a man trapped in a maze in an increasingly disturbing dream, made more sinister by the narrow, crooked lanes, and the stark Cubist angles of the whitewashed walls.

  His pace quickened as the first stirrings of panic set his heart racing. He feared he would never find his way out of the medina, much less locate the address written on the slip of paper Erickson had given him. He hurried blindly down one ancient lane and then another. Panting, he put his hands over his face, forced himself to breathe normally. When he brought his hands down he found a sign in front of him telling him he was standing in the street he had been looking for. A moment later he was squinting at the address he sought, painted on dark blue tile set in a whitewashed wall.

  Chaffee tapped on the wooden door and waited. He was about to knock again when its hinges moaned and a thin shaft of light fell across his face. The silhouette of a woman in a head scarf peeked around the door frame, her features invisible in the darkness.

  “Nam?”

  “I am here to see Mr. Sands.”

  The woman continued to look at him until Chaffee wondered if she had understood him. Finally, she nodded and disappeared into the darkness behind her, leaving the door open. He ducked through its low arch and shut it behind him.

  Beyond the dark alcove, he found a pleasant tiled courtyard set with fuchsias, and, in its center, an orange tree, rich with white blossoms, their fragrance sweet on the night air. A wood-railed gallery ran the length of the building’s second story, overlooking the courtyard. Above that, the night sky, sugared with stars.

  On the far side of the courtyard, light spilled from the French doors of a handsome study. Through the glass, Chaffee could see the woman speaking to someone sitting in one of a pair of tall armchairs, its high back turned to Chaffee so that he could not see its occupant. The two exchanged a few words, then the woman—in the light of the room, he could see she was much younger than he had first thought—bowed her head, crossed to the door and nodded for Chaffee to enter.

  Still shaken, he took a deep, grateful breath of the room’s warmth. Tall bookshelves lined the high-ceilinged room, filled with hardbound books of varying sizes and shapes, arranged like the notes in a symphony of contemplation. The light from two shaded lamps seemed at first quite bright but softened to an agreeable amber as Chaffee became accustomed to them.

  On the opposite side of the room, a pair of picture windows opened onto the deep black of the Straits at night. A scattering of lights marked the port at the bottom of the bluff.

  In the reflection thrown onto the windows, Chaffee saw a small man seated in one of the two large armchairs.

  The man smiled into his reflection and waved. “Ah, Mr. Chaffee,” his piping voice called. “Please, come join me.”

  After Erickson’s description, Chaffee had expected to find a wizened old apple of a man—ninety-one, the museum director had told him—dressed in a bathrobe, clinging to the dissolving vestiges of ancient dignity.

  Instead, the man before him, though lined and warped by years, appeared surprisingly vital, with a full thatch of mousy brown hair. He was dressed in sharply-creased slacks and a tweed sport coat in the style of a generation of Northeastern brahmins who aspired to the appearance of English gentlemen.

  Chaffee received the old man’s firm handshake and took the leather armchair next to his host, both of them facing out toward the port and the night and the blackness of the sea. In the distance, a merchant ship, its light twinkling in the darkness, was making its way through the Straits toward the Mediterranean.

  “A magnificent sight at night, no?” Sands turned to Chaffee with a smile, as if he had arranged it especially for his guest. “A little brandy against the chill?”

  With a steady hand, he poured two snifters and gave one to Chaffee. “I apologize for the late hour, but I no longer sleep well. Doze during the day, stay up all night. The old man’s lament.” Sands turned to his guest and raised his eyebrows. “I suppose Erickson told you about my former occup
ation.”

  After days of guarded conversation with people he wished to keep at arm’s length, or who felt the same about him, Chaffee returned the old man’s smile. “He alluded to the OSS, I believe.”

  “I had a funny cover back then. The United States Government was sending large food shipments here. Humanitarian stuff. We weren’t in the war yet. I was supposed to be one of those certifying that it didn’t fall into the hands of the German Army. This allowed me to work in the legation and benefit from diplomatic protections. It also gave me a pretext for travelling around the country with Carleton Coon, Teddy Culbert, and some other chaps in our little club.” He leaned in toward Chaffee. “You know, we helped lay the groundwork for Torch—the Allied landings in North Africa. This was back in ’42. While we made our trips around the coastal cities, checking on the food shipments, we would stop along deserted stretches of beach, seeing if they were suitable for amphibious landings, assessing whether the roads behind them could support the weight of a column of tanks. That sort of thing. And we were talking to French officers, asking if the Vichy forces would fire on our men as they came ashore.”

  “Yes, Erickson told me a bit about this.”

  “Ah. But did he tell you about my greatest contribution to the war effort?”

  Chaffee began to understand that he would have to wade through his host’s war stories before he could get to the matter at hand. Then again, what was his search for his father but an old war story? “I don’t believe he mentioned anything in particular.”

  “No? I’m disappointed in him,” he said with a little smile and settled into his armchair a little more deeply, as if he needed a strong base from which to launch his story. “You see, we faced a bit of a conundrum before the landings. The army needed a land mine strong enough to blow the tread off an enemy tank, but not so sensitive as to go off when trod on by anything lighter, such as a man or a donkey, or when run over by a motorcar. And it had to be sown very quickly. Yet we couldn’t leave any trace of having dug up the road to bury it. Quite a puzzle.”

  Sands tapped his finger against his temple, the old actor playing a favorite role. Chaffee found himself enjoying the show and the brandy and the quietness of the late hour.

  “So, what did you do?” he asked, showing that the younger actor would not miss his cue.

  “Well, I realized that we needed something we could simply leave on the road without burying it. But how could we disguise it sufficiently to escape detection?” His eyes widened dramatically. “Then it came to me. What is the most common sight on a Moroccan country road, even to this day?”

  He squinted at Chaffee, who shook his head, at a loss for an answer.

  “Donkey turds!” Sands cried triumphantly. “Donkey turds! They were everywhere. Common as daisies, old man. So, I designed a plaster casing, easily fabricated, in which we could place our infernal machines. Yes, Sands’ Exploding Turds. We sowed them all up and down the coast. A triumph of American ingenuity. A landmark in the annals of special operations.” Having delivered his peroration, the old spy sat back in his chair. “And that, Mr. Chaffee, is how I won the war.” He tossed off the line with understated ease.

  Chaffee smiled with him, feeling privileged to share an evening with this most charming of old men.

  “And did they work? Did you actually stop any German tanks?”

  Sands vamped a you-would-ask-that frown. “This was never made entirely clear to me.”

  Both men chuckled, sipped at their brandies and gazed out the window. Out in the vast darkness, Chaffee thought he could see the last glow of British warships and German submarines, of great convoys and the wartime Rock.

  Relaxed and pleased, Sands turned in his chair. “Now, what can I do for you, Mr. Chaffee? Lars Erickson said you wanted to see me.”

  “Yes.”

  Sands gave him a look. “You know, I don’t believe he cares for you very much.” He laughed at his guest’s discomfort. “My apologies for being so blunt.”

  Chaffee swallowed his annoyance, wondered how much Erickson had told him. “Perhaps he is right to think so little of me.”

  “We’ll see.” Sands set his hands in his lap and regarded the other American. “You have the air of a man accustomed to authority—and grown a little too comfortable with it.”

  His mouth set grimly, Chaffee sat back in his chair. “Have I?”

  Sands gauged the effect of his words. “Don’t take that as a criticism, only a warning. In many cities—Washington, for example—people stand a little in awe of authority. Here they like to stick their finger in its eye.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “I’ve offended you. Pardon an old man. Saying what we please is one of the few indulgences left us.” He winked at Chaffee and added in a stage whisper, “No one dares take a swing at an old man.”

  Chaffee snorted in amusement.

  “Erickson says you’re looking for someone. Is that right? If you’ve come to see me, it must be someone from long ago. That’s all I’m really good for now.” No trace of self-pity touched his smile.

  “Yes. I’m . . . I’m looking for my father.”

  “I see.” The old man’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Please, Mr. Chaffee, tell me your tale.”

  For the next quarter of an hour Chaffee explained his quest, told of the appearance of his father’s decades-old letter, of his presence in Tangier in the summer of 1940, and of his mother’s conviction that her husband was still alive. He related his own visits to the consulates and the revelation that his father had apparently been followed by Spanish security agents until the Germans had called them off in the fall of 1940.

  When he finished, Sands set his elbows on the arms of his chair and steepled his fingers under his chin, an inward look in his half-closed eyes. He sat like this for some time before he nodded and made a small gesture, as if brushing away the cobwebs of time. When he spoke there was a new animation to his voice and Chaffee knew he was in the presence of the former intelligence agent. “A fascinating story, Mr. Chaffee, suggesting a number of possibilities. Now, explain why you are sharing it with me.”

  “I was wondering if, while you were in Tangier during the war, you might have come across my father.”

  “His name again?”

  “Rene Laurent.”

  Sands, who had been fiddling with the stem of his brandy snifter, stopped. “Laurent? I thought you said your name was—”

  “My mother re-married and I took my stepfather’s name. I never knew my father.”

  For a long time Sands looked at him. “A hard thing, doing without a father.” He tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling. “Laurent. Was that the name he used here?”

  “I have no reason to think otherwise.” Chaffee was again forced to consider the possibility that his father might have been in Tangier under a false name—and to consider its implication.

  Sands frowned, searching his memory like a man opening and shutting drawers in search of something he might have forgotten. “Laurent. Laurent. You say he wasn’t attached to the French legation.”

  “I don’t believe so. We have little idea how he got here. And no idea at all of how—or even if—he left.”

  “When did you say he was here?”

  “He came in the summer of 1940. And the Spanish security memo indicates that he was still here in October. As I say, he may have stayed on after that, or he may have left. I don’t know. But the Spanish have no record of him applying for an exit visa.”

  Sands wagged his head. “The absence of records may be no more than that—the absence of records. I think you have seen for yourself the chaos in the archive of the war. You receive a letter the French lost in some drawer for more than fifty years and later come on a fragment of a Spanish security memo that gives no indication of what came before it or after.” The old man chuckled. “Yet we have hundreds of scholars poring through these same files, trying to persuade us they can write history from them.” He smiled and looked
at Chaffee. “You say your father might have stayed on.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Stayed on.” Sands let the phrase hang in the air. “Tangier is a difficult place to leave. After my Sarah died, I came back. Many attractions. Sin, for one.” He made a moue face as if contemplating running out and committing one. “They still have a sense of it here. Back home, in the States, it’s all gone. When everything is permitted, it’s hard to insist anything is wrong. A shame, really. Vice loses half of its appeal. When you are no longer outraging the norms of decent people, well, what is the point? The Moroccans, on the other hand, have retained a strong moral sense. The more daring ones still enjoy the thrill of violating societal standards.” He blew out a breath, dismissing both sides of the debate. “Well, back to the matter at hand.” He looked blankly at Chaffee. “Which was . . . ”

  “My father.”

  “Ah, yes. Yes.” It took him a moment to get back on track. “So, you believe he was here for at least several months a half century ago. And you hope to find him still alive?”

  Chaffee heard the skepticism in his voice. “My mother tells me she senses he’s here.” He made a scoffing little chuckle. “Senses it.”

  Sands held up a finger. “That’s no small thing, Mr. Chaffee, a woman’s instinct.” Chastened by the old man, Chaffee nodded and looked away. “But, we were speaking of the summer and fall of 1940,” Sands said. He drained the last of his brandy. “Before my time here. I’m sorry.” He appeared relieved that this was no longer something he might simply have forgotten.

  Chaffee sighed, surprised at the weight of his disappointment. “Is there anyone still here who might have been in Tangier in those days?”

  “Any Moroccan past the age of sixty, I suppose. But that’s not what you mean, is it?” Sands set his empty snifter on the table between them and gazed out the window. For a little while his lips moved silently, his mind forming words he apparently did not wish to voice. When he saw Chaffee looking at him the old spy smiled apologetically and cocked his head, as if trying to see around the corner of what he was about to say. “In fact, there may be someone, though I am reluctant to . . .” A shadow passed over his face. For the first time, Chaffee wondered if he was seeing the old man’s mind slip. “There’s a man.” He tapped his finger absently on the arm of his chair, his face working. “A man named Drake.”