Torch of Tangier

by Aileen G. Baron

  Goldilocks?

  “She’s my assistant,” Drury said.

  “I’ll bet she is.”

  “My name is Lily Sampson.” Goldilocks, indeed. “But you may call me Miss Sampson. I’m an archaeologist. I’ve worked on sites in the Middle East before.”

  “This isn’t an excavation, Miss Sampson. And we aren’t in the Middle East,” Boyle said. “The Middle East is the Levant, Palestine, Syria. This is the Near East.”

  Drury let out an impatient sigh. “I know the founder of the Republic of the Riff, Abd el-Krim.”

  Boyle drummed his fingers, his gaze fastened on Drury’s hands resting next to the tray of pens on Boyle’s desk. “I don’t know what you’re really after.” He watched as Drury rearranged the pens in the tray. “I know you’re up to some tricks, but I don’t know what they are. I only know that I have instructions from higher up to accommodate Donovan.” Boyle’s nostrils expanded with an irritated quiver and a pink flush of anger suffused his face. “And frankly, I resent it. I wouldn’t know what to do with you. You don’t know squat about consular work.”

  He looked pointedly at Drury’s hands, still fumbling with the pens on Boyle’s desk.

  “I apologize for whatever.” Drury dropped his hands to his lap and leaned back in the chair. “Didn’t mean to step on your toes, but I’m here to help. There’s a war on, you know.”

  With a contemplative nod, Boyle twirled his glasses by the earpiece, first clockwise, then counterclockwise. “We’re in a delicate situation here. Have to be careful. It’s touch and go whether Franco will join the Axis.”

  “I understand.” Drury bent toward Boyle again and lowered his voice. “That’s where the Riffians come in.” He spoke slowly now. “We can use them in a pinch, throw them against the Kraut. I’m sure of that.”

  Boyle took in his breath. He seemed to give the suggestion some thought, nodding his head, tapping his fingers, blowing out his cheeks. “At the least Spain may allow German troops free passage through the territory.”

  Boyle fiddled with the paper clips in the well of the pen tray. “Maybe there is something you can do. Let me talk to Armand Korian.” He folded his glasses, placed them on the desk, and strode to the door. He signaled the secretary. “Tell Korian to bring the news bulletins.”

  He returned to the desk, the door still open. “Korian edits the Legation Bulletin,” he told Drury. “We send out pamphlets in French, Spanish, Arabic.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t seem to do much good.”

  “Miss Sampson can be of some help,” Drury said. “She’s supposed to be working for the State Department, like me.”

  That’s the first I’ve heard of it, Lily thought.

  Boyle raised his eyebrows. “You work for State?”

  Drury nodded and leaned forward again. “You have an empty room here she can use? She can sit, read books. She won’t bother you. She’ll keep out of your way.”

  Out of his way? Nothing like feeling superfluous.

  Boyle shook his head. “We don’t have room here.” He looked Lily up and down with an appreciative smile. “Why don’t you spend your time at the beach, Miss…?”

  “Sampson.” My God, is he flirting? Should I bat my blue eyes? Fluff out my golden hair?

  “She needs a cover. For safety,” Drury said.

  “I’m busy serving the government here. Proud of it, I might add.” Boyle hesitated, then continued in a more conciliatory tone. “So are you, I suppose, in your way. And from what I can see of your friend, Miss…?” He paused.

  Lily sat straighter in the chair. “Sampson,” she repeated.

  “Miss Sampson.” Boyle looked her up and down again. “You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, either.” Boyle smiled at her. “Go to the beach.”

  Drury rose, blocking Boyle’s affable leer. “She’ll be too noticeable there.”

  Boyle tilted back his chair. “Indeed she will.”

  The secretary knocked on the open door. “Korian is here with the pamphlets.”

  Boyle brought his chair upright. “Go to the beach, Miss Sampson. Improve our relations with the Tanginos.”

  A man came into the office, clutching a pipe between his teeth. He carried a stack of leaflets and balanced them on the edge of Boyle’s desk.

  “Meet Armand Korian,” Boyle said. “He’s in charge of our news bulletin. Counteracts Spanish propaganda.”

  Korian had droopy eyes, a sharp nose, and hair glowing with too much brilliantine. He wore a shiny three-piece suit with baggy pockets and a blue spotted bow tie. He looked like an unsuccessful insurance salesman.

  The front of his shirt and his lapels were dappled with bits of tobacco and ash. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a pouch of pipe tobacco.

  “Professor Drury here is an expert on the region,” Boyle told Korian.

  Korian looked at Drury and waggled the pipe in his mouth.

  “He’s going to assist you with the bulletin.”

  Korian began to fill his pipe. “I don’t need any help.”

  Boyle handed a leaflet printed in Arabic to Drury. “Read this, tell us what you think of it.”

  Korian pulled a match from his pocket and lit it by scraping his thumbnail across the head while Drury stared at the leaflet in his hand. Korian began to draw on the pipe and Drury crossed to the window, held the paper to the light and squinted at it.

  Boyle waited. Korian puffed, billowing smoke out of the side of his mouth. The room filled with the sticky-sweet smell of his pipe tobacco.

  “Trouble reading it?” Korian took the pipe from his mouth and aimed the stem at Drury. “Need some help?”

  Drury brought the paper closer, then held it at arm’s length and stared at it.

  Boyle picked up a pencil and tapped it on the desk. “I thought you knew Arabic.”

  “Haven’t studied classical, printed Arabic in years. It’s worthless here, you know. The farther you get from Syria, the less it’s understood.”

  Korian took a draft of his pipe. “How do you manage, then?” He let out a smoke filled breath.

  “With locals, I speak Mogrebhi, the local Arabic. Stick to simple subjects.” Drury waved the smoke away and gave a measured cough. “Why aren’t you in the army?”

  “Punctured ear drum. And it’s none of your business,” Korian took a deep draw on the pipe and blew another cloud toward Drury. “The locals understand Arabic.”

  “Just Moroccan Arabic. Mogrebhi.” Drury pushed away the smoke like a swimmer stroking through surf. “Berbers speak a local language, Tamazight. Almost a third of the population here are Jews and they use a different dialect—mixture of medieval Spanish and Hebrew. They brought it from Spain during the Inquisition. Call it Ladino.”

  Korian looked sleepy, with bags under his eyes so heavy they looked like they could fall from their own weight. “I understand the people here,” he said through a haze of smoke.

  “You don’t know which side they butter their bread,” Drury told him.

  “My family is from Lebanon.” He shrugged and flicked a speck of tobacco from his lapel. “I’m an Arab, more or less.”

  “I’d say less. You don’t know the locals.” Drury looked Korian over, lingering on the stains on his lapel and his over-polished shoes. “You’re not an Arab, you’re Armenian, born and raised in California, in the Central Valley.”

  Drury began to pace the area in front of the desk, his hands clasped behind his back. He shook his finger at Korian as if to a naughty child. “And it’s time you had a short course on Moroccans and their languages.” He cleared his throat and folded his arms. “The Romans called them Mauri, derived from the Hebrew word for west, but the Berbers were the indigenous ‘Libyans’ of North Africa. They’ve been here since the dawn of history, known to the Egyptians as ’Lebu.”“ Striding up and down as if he were in a lecture hall, he droned, ”The Riffian dialect changes Arabic ‘L to ’R‘. “F’ and ‘B’ are interchangeable, hence Rifi from Libi.”

  Korian rolled his eyes
to the ceiling. “We have to listen to this?”

  Boyle grunted and Drury resumed pacing.

  “I’m giving you the benefit of fifteen years of education and research.”

  Once he gets started, there’s no stopping him, Lily thought. He’ll harangue us forever. She picked up a bulletin.

  “You read Arabic, Miss Sampson?” Boyle broke in.

  “I read it but don’t speak it. It says here that Doolittle led an air raid on Tokyo.”

  Korian gathered the pamphlets. “That’s what it says. Good for you.”

  He eyed Drury disdainfully and stalked out of the room, wafting tobacco smoke behind him.

  Boyle closed the door after him. “One thing I’d like you to tell me is how you know the background of Legation personnel.” He waited. “You won’t say, of course.”

  Boyle looked from Lily to Drury and back again. “You’re anthropologists, aren’t you?”

  Drury finally stopped pacing. “That’s what we are.”

  “You know how people in foreign cultures think?”

  “That’s what we do for a living.”

  Boyle folded his glasses and held them in his hand. “Wouldn’t hurt if you prepared a report on the Riff. Work up a pamphlet about propaganda in Morocco, what would work, what wouldn’t.”

  “Exactly what I had in mind.”

  Boyle tapped his glasses against his hand. “Can’t pay you, of course.”

  “Wouldn’t take the money if you could.” Drury sat in the chair facing Boyle’s desk and leaned back luxuriantly.

  “It’s settled then,” Boyle said. “Busy yourself with Arab affairs, find out what they’re thinking, how they can be influenced.”

  “We’ll both work on it.” Drury looked over at Lily. “As a team. Just want to do our bit for the war effort.”

  “And you’ll shut up and leave me alone.” Boyle opened the door for them. “God help us. With teams like this, we could lose the war.”

  Lily saved her comments until they were back on the Rue de Statut.

  “Boyle made me feel like a floozy.”

  “He meant it as a compliment. Forget it.”

  “Why’d you tell them we could do a pamphlet on propaganda?”

  “We can. We’ll do an etlinography, chapters on social organization, kinship terms, religion. Contrast tribal areas with cities.”

  “I don’t know enough about the Berbers.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Throw in some anthropological jargon. Makes a good impression. The more ponderous and mysterious, the greater they’ll think it is.”

  While he was talking, Drury stared across the street. Lily followed his gaze. Suzannah was seated at a sidewalk table in a cafe across from El Minzah. When they passed, Suzannah raised her eyebrows then looked away.

  “Besides,” Drury said, his voice hesitant, distracted. He was still looking in Suzannah’s direction. “They think I work for the COI, Coordinator of Information, doing research and propaganda.”

  “Don’t you? Who do you work for?”

  Drury peered at Lily and then glanced across the street. Suzannah picked up a glass and held it to her lips without drinking.

  Lily was certain Drury had given Suzannah a hidden signal, but what the signal was, or why he sent it to her, Lily couldn’t tell.

  “Who is she, really?” Lily asked.

  Drury was watching Suzannah. “Who?” He smiled and gave Suzannah an almost imperceptible nod.

  “Never mind,” Lily said. She had remembered where she had seen Suzannah before.

  Chapter Five

  The first time Lily saw Suzannah was on Cape Spartel, outside the Caves of Hercules. Suzannah was a passenger in one of the taxis that had come from town on a sightseeing excursion to the caves.

  It was a windy day, just after noon. Zaid had been sifting soil from the trench through a rocker screen on the apron of the cave, looking for small finds—teeth, bone fragments, pieces of debitage and small tools. That day he wore turquoise pantaloons and a red sash, his head wrapped with a bright yellow turban. A sudden gust came up from the Strait and blew a cloud of dust into Zaid’s face.

  He let out a howl and covered his eye.

  MacAlistair ran out of the cave. “Don’t rub it,” MacAlistair called and rushed to Zaid. Tariq was ahead of him, already looking into Zaid’s eye. Tariq rolled back the lid and licked the eyeball with his tongue.

  “Stop that,” MacAlistair shouted.

  Tears from Zaid’s reddened eye cut a track through the dust on his face as they streamed down his cheek. He clapped his handkerchief to his eye again.

  “You need a doctor,” MacAlistair said, and scanned the line of taxis parked on the path up to the caves. “Maybe one of the tourists can take you to town.”

  MacAlistair started down the path, wheezing slightly. Lily followed. Before he was halfway, he stopped, gasping, and leaned against the cliff face.

  “Your asthma again,” Zaid said. “Rest awhile.”

  Lily took MacAlistair’s arm. “Asthma” was one of the euphemisms they tacitly agreed on. Sometimes it was “bronchitis,” sometimes “your respiratory problem.”

  Zaid shook his head and grimaced. “We’re a walking hospital.”

  The cloth clasped to his eye, Zaid started down the path alone and approached a taxi about to pull away. He addressed the French passengers, speaking in his best French, with only a slight North African accent. The woman passenger backed away and started to roll up the window.

  Zaid told them he had suffered an accident, needed a ride back to town to see a doctor, and asked if he could share their taxi. He offered to pay.

  The woman screamed. The man shook his fist and shouted, “Get away from her, you filthy Arab. Va’t‘en! Come any closer and I’ll club you.”

  Zaid turned pale and clenched his fingers. Before he could answer, Suzannah stepped out of one of the parked taxis. A young Spaniard in the back seat tried to pull her back by her skirt.

  “You will come with us, Zaid.” Suzannah cooed at Zaid as if he were a bird. “We will carry you to a physician.” The Spaniard shook his head in dismay.

  Above them on the slope, the wind caught the pile of dust from the rocker screen and swirled it around. A paroxysm of coughing seized MacAlistair. His shoulders heaved.

  Suzannah watched as MacAlistair covered his mouth with a handkerchief, drew it away and stared into it, his body convulsing for breath.

  “I will carry you both to the physician,” she said.

  Zaid started back up the path. He reached for the trembling MacAlistair with his free hand, his other hand shielding his eye with the cloth.

  “Step carefully,” he said.

  With Lily on one side of MacAlistair and Zaid on the other, they stumbled from boulder to boulder.

  “Look at them,” Suzannah said to the young Spaniard. “It is the blind leading the halt.” The young man in the taxi gave a helpless shrug and sat back. “I must fetch my friends, querido,” Suzannah said to the Spaniard. “Espere aqui. Stay here.”

  Suzannah reached for Zaid’s arm. Two by two—Suzannah with Zaid and Lily with MacAlistair—the four of them made their way down the rocky path to the waiting taxi.

  “We will pay,” Lily had heard Zaid say before he climbed into the back seat.

  “Indeed you will,” Suzannah had answered.

  That evening, amid the arabesques and lilies in the courtyard of the villa, Zaid had hunkered in his chair, his eye covered by an enormous bandage, his head resting on his hand. He had muttered and growled, still rankling with the insult from the French in the taxi.

  “I should have killed them. Ignorant peasants. Who do they think they are?”

  He touched the bandage gingerly and winced. “I am nobler than all the pashas and governors. I descend from kings and princes, the old Moors of Granada who ruled before it was lost to the Nazarenes.”

  MacAlistair laid a sympathetic hand on his arm.

  “I am nobler than any Nazarene,” Zaid told
him. “Nobler than you, MacAlistair, with your British pretensions.”

  “Please, Zaid,” MacAlistair had said. “Don’t upset yourself. We all love you here.”

  “I’m only a bit of local color to you.”

  “That isn’t fair, Zaid.”

  “You love me like you love a performing poodle. I’m your pet, with a jeweled collar, and I dance at the end of a golden chain.”