Three Passports to Trouble

by Sean McLachlan

  “I’ll keep hammering away at it,” I told him.

  “Good. But do hurry. Felipe Vilaró’s trial starts in two day’s time.”

  “What!”

  “I told you the International Council wants a rush job on this. Since Felipe is refusing legal representation, there’s little preparatory work to be done.”

  I rubbed my temple. “That makes my job a whole lot more difficult.”

  Especially since the Iron Column wanted to move their man out before then. I had to squeeze a trip to the border in with my investigation.

  “It makes mine considerably more difficult as well,” Gerald said. “You’re not alone in this, Shorty. I’ve got quite a few men on this. We’ll dig out the truth.”

  I drained the last of my Scotch and said goodbye, wishing I shared his optimism.

  Chason’s secretary headed me off before I could leave the building.

  “The deputy inspector wishes to see you,” the man said. It did not sound like a request. Things never were with that joker.

  Chason’s office was actually larger than Gerald’s, a bright, airy room facing the Place de France. I suspected it was the former police chief’s office before he moved to the back of the building. Too bad nobody ever took potshots at Chason.

  As I came in, Chason was chewing out some cringing underling. Chason signed a document with a flourish, tossed it into the Moor’s hands, and dismissed him with a click of the tongue. Clicking a tongue at someone is even ruder in Moorish culture than it is in Europe and Chason probably knew that.

  As the underling scampered out of the room, no doubt fantasizing about Morocco’s independence, I took a seat without being invited. I resisted the temptation to put my feet on his desk.

  “Don’t offer me a drink, Chason, I already had a Scotch with your boss.”

  His lips pursed for a moment, then he asked, “So what have you found out?”

  “I told Gerald everything. I’m sure he’ll relay it to you.”

  “We must find the real murderer, and quickly. I’ve stopped three more fights between Spanish factions this morning. One man even had to go to the hospital.”

  Fighting in the daylight hours and causing serious injury? Things were escalating. Chason went on.

  “This factional fighting has got to stop. We don’t want mismanagement of this case to turn the International Zone into another Algeria,” Chason said.

  “Spaniards aren’t fighting each other in Algeria. It’s the Algerians fighting you.”

  And winning. Slowly.

  Chason scoffed. “The decline of the great colonial empires is due to native levies witnessing Europeans destroy each other. It started in the Great War and continued in the Second World War. They sensed our weakness. And now all over the world the natives are demanding and getting independence. The more weakness we show, the more they hunger to have us gone and take all we have built. Tangier is a hotbed of independence activists. They are not as loud as in Marrakech or Fez, but they are here. If they see the international community fighting against itself, they will see it as the time to strike.”

  Damn, the jerk was right. Not that I had any problem with the Moors creating their own country.

  “You hear anything about them making a play?” I asked.

  “No intelligence I can divulge to a civilian.”

  “Is the military prepared?”

  “Why do you keep asking me sensitive information?” he demanded, his voice taking on a note of suspicion.

  “I’m on this case.”

  He made a dismissive wave with his hand. “This isn’t related to the case.”

  “You just convinced me that it is.”

  “Enough! I am busy.”

  “All right, Chason, but tell me one thing. If the Moors do make a play, what are you going to do about it?”

  “Follow the orders of the International Council, of course. I hope they order swift and decisive punishment.”

  “Like the French colonists in Algeria?”

  Chason straitened.

  “The colons are the shining example of patriotism in Algeria.”

  I guess when Chason said “patriotism”, it meant burning Arab villages and gunning them down in the street.

  Of course the Algerians were doing that to the colonists too. I couldn’t see a good side in that war, not the way they were fighting it.

  “So what have you found out about this case?” I asked.

  He gave me the answer I thought I’d get.

  “I am working on different cases. Most importantly I’m following up on a tip that some Spanish Communist agents are in the International Zone, planning to cause trouble. But you already knew this. I don’t have the men to pursue the Juan Cardona murder. If I did, I would look into the relationship between the victim and Octavio Prieta.”

  I cocked my head. “What relationship?”

  “They were seen drinking at Dean’s Bar on a couple of occasions in the past month. They looked like an item, as you Americans say.”

  My jaw dropped. “An item?”

  Did I mention Chason is actually good at his job? It’s one of his more annoying traits.

  Another is that he hadn’t shared this tidbit with his boss. He wanted to show off to me personally.

  “It appears that they are,” Chason said. “How a member of the Falange and an anarchist ended up in a perverted relationship that ended in murder is something you should look into.”

  Yes. Yes it was.

  He gave me a smug smile.

  “If you want to play detective, Mr. MacAllister, you need to make sure you do not miss the important details. Now run along and see if you can follow up on the information I’ve given you.”

  What a jerk. I left his office fuming.

  I’d get my revenge, though. I’d smuggle those operatives into the Spanish Zone right under his nose.

  Late that afternoon I went back to the print shop. It was closing and Einhardt Ritter’s employees were headed home. Their boss happily led me to his office.

  “I have done some fine work, if I do say so myself,” he announced, pulling out a bottle of schnapps. “This time I will not take no for an answer. You will drink with me and we will talk about tanks.”

  I sat, saying nothing. If this was the price I had to pay to get those passports, then the Party better feel grateful for my sacrifice. The Iron Column better feel grateful too. I hoped they realized they owed me.

  “So,” he said, handing me a glass. “What shall we drink to?”

  “The international working class?”

  “Ha! Why not? Who else is responsible for the great technological strides of this greatest of centuries? Of course the engineers and scientists deserve a share of the glory, but we are more practical men of action, so yes, to the international working class!”

  I drank. What was this guy’s angle?

  “So tell me, Mr. MacAllister. How did you end up driving tanks?”

  “I drove trucks and tractors when I was a teenager in Pennsylvania. They were recruiting tankers from the International Brigade, and when they heard my experience, and saw my height, they assigned me to a T-26.”

  “Not a bad tank for an interwar model, from what I’ve heard.”

  “The best either side had in that war,” I replied, feeling a flush of pride. “Sure, it was nothing compared with what we deployed in the Big One, but against what Franco’s people had, it ruled the battlefield. Mussolini had sent over these little tankettes with twin machine guns and open tops. A smart infantry squad with a bit of guts could take one of those out. As for your Panzer Is, well those were a bit better but still all they had were twin machine guns and paper-thin armor. The 45 mm cannon on a T-26 could blast a Panzer I to pieces. You guys never sent any Panzer IIs to Spain, but they wouldn’t have lasted either. The armor was still too thin, and that little popgun you mounted on the turret wouldn’t have pierced our armor.”

  Einhardt nodded eagerly. “Spain was our testing ground, and we
learned that our tanks were not up to the task. That’s when we upped production of the Panzer III and IV, but of course we started the war too hastily, before we had enough of either model. I have only heard secondhand from fellows who went to the Eastern Front, but I’d like to hear from you, how do you think a T-26 would stand up to the later Panzers?”

  “Oh, it would be no match for the Panzer IV, and I don’t think it would have done well against even a Panzer III. Certainly not in a one-on-one fight. That model had a bigger gun, better engineering, and thicker armor. No, the T-26 was out of date by Operation Barbarossa. The Russians gave you trouble by swarming you. For every Panzer you had, they had four T-26s.”

  “Or more. Ah, the Panzer IV was a fine machine! Such smooth handling, and an adaptable chassis that could be updated to face whatever the Allies threw at us.”

  “You guys had the best engineers, that’s for sure. But the Russian engineers were clever too. Experts at mass production and reducing unit costs.”

  He touched the bottle, I held out my empty glass…

  …and it was then that I realized I’d been roped into a conversation with this guy.

  And I’d been enjoying it.

  “So how did the passports turn out?” I asked.

  Einhardt’s smile faltered for a second, then he reached into a desk and pulled out the two passports. I studied them. The Spanish Errol Flynn had taught me a few things to look for. These passed muster.

  “You do a fine job, I’ll give you that.”

  He raised the bottle to offer me another shot.

  “More of that German efficiency you were praising earlier,” he said with pride.

  “Yeah. Well, gotta go.”

  I stood. His face fell.

  “So soon?”

  I almost told the Kraut what I thought of him, but I bit my tongue. I might need this joker in the future. Good fake passports were hard to come by now that we had broken with Moscow.

  “I need to deliver these.”

  “Naturally.” He stood and extended his hand. Reluctantly I took it. “Always good to speak to another tanker. Feel free to visit any time.”

  I muttered something halfway polite and got the hell out of there. Then I realized I had made a slip up telling him that I was heading over to the operatives. If he wanted to betray me, this would be the perfect time.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I made myself difficult to follow. First I went down to the Petit Socco and nursed a beer while watching the world go by. After an hour of that, and spotting my tail sitting in the Cafe Central sipping a mint tea, I decided to make a move.

  I had been right. After Officer Ramhani’s cover had been blown, Chason had switched out officers and had someone else follow me around. I couldn’t be sure when I had picked this guy up today. It was after meeting with the Kraut, I was sure of that.

  But now here he was and I needed to do something about it if I wanted to see the operatives and get the show on the road.

  I started the shake casually, by strolling up Silversmith’s Street through the early evening crowd, the exact opposite direction from the way I needed to go. The tail followed, although I didn’t try to spot him. In fact, I didn’t look back at all. I took some time looking at the shop windows and even saw a necklace Melanie might like. I figured I could always buy it later.

  Once I got to the Grand Socco, I grabbed a cab to Marshan, where I went to Cafe Hafa. As I got out, I saw another taxi about to pull up. That would be my tail.

  Cafe Hafa is more for the Moors than the foreigners, but that was all right because my tail would assume that I wasn’t trying to shake him if I was going there. It stood right on the steep slope overlooking the Strait of Gibraltar, with a series of terraces where where you could sit at small tables. The waiters huffed up and down steep steps to deliver glasses of piping hot tea. It had a grand view and I was surprised more foreigners didn’t go there. Maybe they felt uncomfortable being surrounded by Moors. Fancy that, Moors in Morocco!

  I picked Cafe Hafa because my tail would ease back a bit, thinking he had me cornered. He wouldn’t want to be spotted, so he would probably pause at the entrance for a bit, taking one of the tables on the top terrace so he could see when I left.

  What he probably didn’t know was that beyond the bottom terrace, which from the rest of the cafe looks like it’s hanging on the edge of the cliff, there is a narrow path that heads into a Moorish neighborhood. The path hugs the cliff top all the way to the Casbah. From there I could disappear into the alleys descending into the medina and get to my operatives.

  I went down the steps that connect the terraces, moving quickly but not too quickly. Once I got to the bottom terrace, I turned right, glancing up to the top of the cafe. I did not see my tail. As I predicted, he had stayed near the entrance, thinking I had no other way out.

  I went to the far end of the lowest terrace. Several Moors, their faces half hidden in the hoods of their cloaks, watched me. They sipped their tea and smoked their pipes of kif as if nothing was happening, even when I stepped over the lip of the terrace onto the path.

  It was hard to know what the Moors were thinking. As Chason said, they were organizing an independence movement. It was especially strong in the Spanish and French zones, and it flared up into protests here at times too. But for the most part they said nothing to us about it. We, the foreigners in their land, ran our businesses and played our political games and threw our parties and the Moors watched it all, protected by their barrier of silence.

  The Party was helping with their independence movement, but even then it was difficult to know how much of an effect we were having. We’d smuggled in large amounts of Communist literature, donated to the outlawed Moroccan Communist Party, and even smuggled a few of their leaders into Europe and out of danger. And yet the communication from them was always guarded. A polite thank you and a list of what else they needed. Besides their long-term goal of independence, we knew little of their plans. Their minds and hearts were closed to us.

  Paul Bowles, an American writer who had lived in Tangier for years, once told me that no matter how long he lived here or how well he spoke Arabic (he was fluent), he would always be an outsider because he was not Muslim. I’d felt the same thing when talking to some Moroccan comrades. They might proclaim Marxist doctrine, but I got the feeling that in their heart of hearts they would never do away with the opiate of the people. If Communism ever took hold in the Muslim world, it would be a Muslim Communism, and I had no idea what that would look like.

  I knew what I looked like to those Moors who watched me step over the terrace wall and disappear into the darkness. They thought I looked like a guy on the run from the law.

  Would they tell my tail, a fellow Moor, where I had gone? Or would they stay silent because he was the law and it was always a bad idea in Africa to get tangled up with the law?

  Like with so much when it came to the Moors, I had no way of knowing. I hurried along the narrow path, a cliff crowding close to my right, an almost sheer drop opening up on my left. The surf crashed far below, and out to sea I could see the lights of fishing boats and freighters, and beyond them the twinkling distant line that was Tarifa in Spain.

  The path ran along the cliff, underneath Moorish homes, the lights in their windows allowing me to see my way but not inside. Windows were always set high up, so no one could see in. In the medina, where houses crowded right up against one another, the builders would ingeniously place the windows so that you could never look out of one and see into the window of another house. The Moors were a gregarious lot with their cafes and their religious meetings, but the home was sacrosanct and kept hidden even from each other. I had been in Tangier for years and I had never been inside a Moorish home, and I doubted I ever would.

  I took the path all the way to the Casbah, the old fortified palace of the Sultan, now divided up into homes for wealthy Moroccans and a few rich foreigners. Ducking through a gate in the wall, I passed through the Place de Casbah
, where a line of Moors sat with their backs to the wall smoking their kif pipes and ignoring me, and into the tangle of alleys leading downhill.

  I took a meandering course, so even if my tail had gotten wise to my move and had hurried to follow me, he’d have too many choices of what path to take and he would never catch up.

  Within fifteen minutes I knocked on my operatives’ door.

  “Bring another bottle?” Neat Freak asked. He wasn’t shining his shoes this time. Instead he was polishing his buttons.

  “No, sorry,” I replied, then turned to the other one, who lay on his bed reading. “Still not done with Trotsky?”

  He grinned at me over the top of the book. “It’s my second time through. We haven’t been out all day.”

  “Good job. The plan has changed and I got you some new passports. Give me the old ones. They might come in handy one day.”

  We made the exchange. They studied their new names, repeating them to themselves and each other.

  I let them do that for a couple of minutes, and then I explained the situation to them. They did not look happy to have a member of the Iron Column as their travel companion.

  “So what’s this anarchist want in the Spanish Zone?” the Reader asked.

  “I don’t know that any more than I know the details of your mission. What I do know is that this will make it a lot safer to cross. These are established names. You own a clothing shop that’s been doing well for a few years. You’re going to the Spanish Zone to look into setting up a branch of their business there.”

  “If it’s such a thriving business, won’t the real proprietors be recognized?” Neat Freak asked.

  “From what I’ve been told, there’s a third man, the front man, who did most of the business dealings with the public. He’s the one coming with you. You two are tailors and work in the back room most of the time. You should be fine. I don’t think some guards on the frontier will know you’re not who you claim to be. The important thing is that you have an established residency and aren’t on any lists.”

  “These passports are very well made,” the Reader said, studying them. “But should we trust the anarchists?”