Torch of Tangier

by Aileen G. Baron

  MacAlistair opened the door. He led her into a side room with a black and white tiled floor, a desk, and a mirror from Marrakech with an elaborate lacquered frame canted on the wall.

  Zaid followed. “I could take care of it, you know,” he said. “No need to send someone else.”

  “I need you here,” MacAlistair answered. He turned to Lily. “You’re to drive to Asilah. There’s a lorry just outside in the driveway. The material you are to transport is in the bed of the lorry covered by a load of oranges.” He spread a map on the desk. “You know where Asilah is? It’s a little fishing village down the coast.”

  “I went once with Drury. We were on the way to Lixus.”

  “The Roman site?”

  Lily nodded. “Roman, Phoenician. Where Hercules went for the golden apples.”

  “If you get to Lixus, you’ve gone too far.”

  Zaid stood watching them, his arms crossed across his chest, his face a mask of impatience. Lily tried smiling at him, tried making a joke about the golden apples being a load of oranges. Zaid remained stony-faced.

  MacAlistair coughed lightly and picked up a pen. “Let’s stay on topic.” He traced a route from Tangier to Asilah with the pen. “The coastal road is off limits. You have to go inland.” He began to cough again and paused for breath. “Keep a log of how long it takes to get to each point, any strange activities or installations along the way.”

  Zaid was watching Lily with half-closed eyes. “Too complicated for her.”

  “All I have to do is follow the route, keep a log. How complicated is that?”

  “You have to keep a log of the road, note to the tenth of a mile on the speedometer all cuts, banks, overhangs, culverts, bridges. Also the position of Spanish defenses.”

  “Drive with one hand and write it all down with the other?”

  MacAlistair looked at Lily over the rim of his glasses. “You’ll manage. Take it slowly.” He folded the map and handed it to Lily. “You’ll find a restaurant, the Casa Pepe, in Asilah.”

  “I know the place.”

  “Fishermen moor their boats at the foot of that street. Park the lorry there, next to the sea wall. Leave the keys under the seat and meet Adam at the restaurant at noon.”

  Zaid shifted from one foot to another. “You sure you can do this?”

  “Certainly.”

  He turned to MacAlistair. “Suppose someone from the Guardia Civil stops her? What will she do?”

  “She’ll think of something.”

  “In this part of the world, women don’t drive lorries,” Zaid said.

  MacAlistair contemplated Lily, went to a cupboard on the far wall and took out a dark djelaba. “Wear this. It’s for a man.” He turned it over and pointed to a tassel sewn at the tip of the pointed hood. “See this? Men wear them with tassels, women don’t. Tie your hair back and pull up the hood. When you’re finished, leave it on the passenger seat.”

  He started toward the door. “I’ll get the keys to the lorry.”

  Zaid examined her again, sighed, and followed MacAlistair out.

  Zaid’s voice still rung through the house as she pulled the djelaba over her clothes, found a rubber band on the desk and tied back her hair. She raised the hood and looked into the mirror.

  Only the dark pointed hood of the djelaba was visible.

  Faceless, eyes hidden in the deep shadows of the hood, someone nameless stood before her, remote and menacing.

  “My God! I look like the Angel of Death,” Lily said from the hollow of the garment.

  Over her shoulder, she saw MacAlistair, pale, mouth agape, studying her.

  MacAlistair cleared his throat. “You only are who you think you are.” He held out the keys.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The inland route MacAlistair had marked was less a road than a dirt track that ran from village to village, first veering to the southeast, then to the west. Lily would watch the route, glance at her watch, and scribble notes on the pad that she had placed on the seat next to her.

  She stalled behind donkey carts that clogged the way as they carried produce to a Tuesday market. Off to the side the market spread across an open field pocked with scattered sheep, tethered cows, two horses, and farmers selling from their carts.

  Just past the town, a policeman from the Guardia Civil blocked the road. Lily pushed the map and notepad behind her and sank deeper into the hood of the djelaba, trying to conceal her face in its shadow. She slowed when the policeman flagged her down.

  He barked something at her in the rapid, guttural lisp of Madrid. She barely understood every third word.

  “Bismillah,” she muttered in a deep voice from depths of the hood.

  He paused, took a breath, and spoke again in Spanish, slower and louder with elaborate gestures, as if she were deaf. He seemed to be saying that the road ahead was closed because of an airfield.

  Lily nodded. “Gracias, shukran,” she said and pulled away in the direction he was pointing. She glanced in the rearview mirror to see him look after her and turn away with a disgusted shrug.

  She bumped eastward along the side of the rutted track, passing carts going in the other direction toward the market. When she was well beyond detection by the policeman, she retrieved the notepad and turned southwest again toward Asilah.

  By noon she knew from the salt smell of the air and the freshening breeze that she neared the sea. Ahead she could just make out the Portuguese ramparts encircling Asilah’s medina. The trip, no more than thirty miles, had taken a little more than two hours.

  Casa Pepe was across from a grove of twisted oaks outside the walls of the medina. She drove past the restaurant, parking near the little harbor at the foot of the street. She hid the keys and map under the seat and climbed out of the cab of the pickup.

  The djelaba swirled in the cold November wind. Lily kept it on, shivering and wrapped it around her as the hood loosened and fell across her shoulders. With the hood down and her hair untied, she hoped no one would notice the tassel at the point of the hood.

  Gloomy clouds hovered over the fishing boats anchored in the gray, choppy sea. Empty boats, their sails furled, bobbled in scruffy water that smelled of dead fish. Farther down along the harbor, a Riffian sat huddled in a donkey cart laden with fish.

  Adam waited just inside the door of the restaurant, out of the wind. “Any trouble finding the place?”

  “Not really. I was here before with Drury.”

  They sat at an inside table facing the street, their fingers wound around warming bowls of thick soup, and ordered civelles—baby elvers, no bigger than matchsticks—sauteed in butter and garlic.

  “When you came here with Drury…” Adam’s voice trailed off as he watched the street through the restaurant window.

  “We came for the antiquities. A friend of Drury’s dug a burial mound with standing stones near here about seven years ago. Not much left. Just a few holes in the ground.”

  Adam nodded. He tilted toward the window, his eyes straining in the direction of the harbor.

  “We went to Lixus, too,” she went on, filling the silence. “Carthaginians had a thriving fish-salting industry there. You can still see the storage vats and cisterns.”

  Lily heard the door of the pickup slam, saw it drive away. The donkey cart was gone now.

  “Asilah was once the ancient Phoenician city of Silis,” she went on. “In Roman times, it was famous for garum, shipped all over the empire from here.”

  “Garum?”

  “A fish sauce made of anchovies, with a notorious smell. Romans considered it a delicacy.”

  “Like Worcestershire sauce?”

  “Stronger. And smellier.”

  Adam shrugged and took another forkful of the eels. “Different countries, different customs.” He glanced at the street again.

  Lily waited for him to say more. He didn’t. “Romans influenced everything in Morocco.” She watched him scan the harbor and kept talking. “Not just the ruins at Volubilis. Morocc
an houses have rooms with divans running along three walls and open to a courtyard. That’s taken from the Roman house plan.” I’m babbling nonsense. “And the dining rooms—triclinia—had divans along the walls like Moroccan houses.” She didn’t know if he was listening. “Romans ate reclining on the divans.”

  “Dipping their fish in smelly garum?”

  He did hear her.

  “Exactly.”

  The waiter brought a dish of tangerines. Adam reached for one and continued to gaze out the window.

  “Are we waiting for something?”

  “It’ll be a while,” he said.

  “We could go for a walk.”

  “I suppose.” He asked for the bill, counted out some pesetas, and rose, pushing back the chair. “Shall we?”

  They sauntered through quiet streets in the whitewashed medina and out toward the sea through the Sea Gate, the Bab el Bahar, along a path lined with black anchors that followed the shore.

  They strolled along a beach that seemed to stretch for miles. It was low tide. At the edge of the water, dead starfish curled on the damp sand.

  Passing a mass of jagged rocks where an unforgiving sea foamed and crashed, Lily gestured toward a tower that hovered over them.

  “That’s the palace of Raisuli the Brigand, the infamous pasha. He once held an American citizen captive for ransom. Teddy Roosevelt sent gunboats to the rescue.” She pointed to a high window above. “Raisuli forced his enemies to jump from that window onto the rocks.”

  I’m chattering again. What’s wrong with me?

  Adam looked up. “Pretty steep fall.”

  “They say one of his victims cried out as he died that the rocks were more merciful than Raisuli.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Raisuli? He released the so-called American, who turned out to be Greek. Roosevelt won the election, and according to Drury, Raisuli was finally captured by Abd el Krim.”

  Beyond the rocks, a dark sea roiled and surged like an angry serpent. Wincing from the cold blasts that thrashed over the water, Lily huddled deeper into the warmth of the djelaba.

  “We’d better get back,” Adam said.

  They sat at one of the outside tables at Casa Pepe. Adam ordered hot tea and cornes de gazelle—tiny crescents stuffed with almonds and honey and rolled in sugar and chopped nuts.

  Lily wrapped her hands around the tea glass to warm them, while Adam watched the street.

  A radio played inside the restaurant and the sound filtered out to them, the melancholy whine of ancient instruments: the hoarse tones of the kamanche, its curved horsehair bow scraping across the strings, the sensuous cadence of the long-necked oud, the seductive, shrill measures of the flute. She felt the music, the wild excitement of the tambour drums, fingers singing, beating, pulsing, eddying into her soul.

  Across from her, Adam’s hands danced on the edge of the table. Their eyes held. They swayed, bent, clapped, swirled together in time to the music.

  The music stopped and they both laughed.

  After an awkward pause, Adam took a small jewelry box from his tunic. “I bought you something.”

  Flushing, Lily put down the tea and opened the box to find a silver filigree pendant shaped like a hand and set with a garnet.

  “It keeps away the evil eye,” Adam said. “It’s a charm to ward off danger, a hamsa, the Hand of Fatima.”

  Lily held up the hamsa by the chain, then put it in her palm and fingered the silver filigree. She turned it to the light, admiring the rich, deep red of the garnet. “I don’t think I should accept this. I’m involved with someone, you know.”

  “A prior commitment?”

  Lily nodded. “You could say that.”

  “Your friend in the Hagannah? Someone with the British Eighth Army?”

  “How did you know?”

  “You asked me a lot of questions about the Eighth Army. British? Palestinian?”

  Lily shook her head. “American.”

  “You haven’t heard from him?”

  “Rafi doesn’t know where I am.”

  “Rafi?” Adam looked away. “There was an American attached to the British Eighth Army, Ralph Landon. We called him Rafi.” He swallowed. He seemed about to say something more, but stopped.

  “You know him?” Lily asked.

  Inside, the radio was still playing, voices now, garbled and indistinct. It switched off and silence lay between them.

  “I met him in Tobruk,” Adam said.

  “Where is he? I have to write him. Rafi doesn’t know I’m in North Africa, probably thinks I’m still in Chicago.” She stopped.

  A dark wind swirled across her shoulder and ran down her spine like a winding sheet. “He’s in Tobruk?”

  Clouds glowered in the murky sky. Adam hesitated, scanning Lily’s face, and reached for her hand.

  “I’m sorry,” Adam said.

  Lily felt a dizzying chill, the blood drain from her face. She turned away, watching the leaves eddy in peevish gusts as they scudded along the road.

  “Sorry? About what?”

  Adam took a deep breath. “On the eve of Rommel’s attack in the second battle of El Alemein,” he began, “Rafi made a phony map with details of a counterfeit minefield and desert hazards, then drove out to the desert in an armored car. He faked a breakdown near the German lines and abandoned the car and map.”

  “That’s like him, you know.”

  Adam nodded and patted Lily’s hand. “The ruse worked. Rommel took the route we wanted him to, drove his tanks through a real minefield. We were able to pin down the Twelfth and Fifteenth Panzer divisions.”

  The wind off the harbor carried a stench of the rotted debris of low tide. Lily couldn’t look at Adam. She didn’t want to hear the rest. She traced the pattern on the oilcloth with her fingers as one fat raindrop splattered on the table, then another.

  “And Rafi?”

  “He-” Adam cleared his throat. “Rafi was caught in the crossfire in the German minefield.”

  “He’s wounded?” Her eyes stung, her vision warped with brimming tears. “In a hospital? Where?”

  “He…” Adam shook his head. “He didn’t make it.”

  The hamsa fell from Lily’s hand. Adam reached into his pocket and handed Lily a handkerchief.

  He picked up the charm and held it by the chain, his eyes still on Lily. “He did what he had to do. Rafi’s sacrifice turned the tide against Rommel.”

  The damp air held the smell of rain. Heavy clouds lumbered across the sky. A few drops spotted the table.

  Adam pushed back his chair and stood up, the hamsa dangling from his hand as he came around behind Lily and patted her shoulder. “Rafi would want you to have this.” He clasped the chain around her neck. “A charm to keep you safe,” he said. “Think of it as a gift from Rafi.”

  Lily stared at the darkened sky. Across the way, palm trees worried in the wind. At the foot of the street, fishing boats tossed in the angry water of the harbor, their masts rocking and angling. Raindrops puddled on the oilcloth of the table.

  Tariq passed. Without stopping, he dropped the keys of the truck next to Adam’s plate.

  Rain fell in earnest now, washing away motes of dust, streaming over the backs of chairs. She sat in the downpour.

  Adam pulled her to her feet. “Let’s get out of here.” He threw some money on the table. “It’s coming down in buckets.”

  He held her by the elbow as they ran to the pickup parked at the foot of the street, through furious spates of rain sweeping over them like a curtain, through water splashing over the tips of their shoes.

  Her skirt smelled of wet wool and was heavy with rain. It flapped against her legs as she climbed into the cab of the pickup.

  Adam wiped condensation from the windshield with the edge of his sleeve. “This better clear up. God knows what they’ll do if the storm continues. They can’t hang off the coast forever.” Adam narrowed his eyes, peering at the water-veiled window. “They’re green troo
ps. Came directly across the Atlantic from the States.” He fished for the keys. “Some of them straight out of school.”

  Lily turned to him. He had started the truck and was backing up, looking over his shoulder. “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “Operation Torch.”

  “Oh.” Operation Torch. Of course.

  They drove into heavy rain sheeting against the glass. Her feet were cold and wet. “About Torch. They can’t go through Gibraltar, you know.” She was shivering. “U-boats are lying off Cape Spartel.”