Traitor's Gate

by Charlie Newton

  Schroeder glanced at her seated alone at the adjacent table on his left. In her defense, the Army of God’s attempt to sacrifice her to the English had not been agreed upon, either. As a result of these Arab-driven fiascoes, all borders with Palestine were now closed. All mail was inspected; all telephone and wireless-telegraph contact with neighboring states had been outlawed to all but the British military. The Haifa refinery, and Schroeder’s plans for it, was now beyond the reach of Arab or German saboteurs. In order to retard the refinery’s progress and defend Reichsmarschall Göring’s long-range plans for the air war, the only option had been to remove Eddie Owen from Haifa. But it had to be unharmed and unaware. If Eddie could be kept safe but secure, he could still be the trump card that would deliver 100-octane gas to Reichsmarschall Göring and the desert kingdom to Erich Schroeder. Risky but possible. And now in progress.

  Schroeder fingered the sealed Luftwaffe pouch that had brought Reichsmarschall Göring’s titanic displeasure over Janîn, debating whether to show the document to Saba. He would not show her the document that stated Reichsmarschall Göring was to be given full charge of the “Jewish problem.” Göring’s orders assured Schroeder his place in the Reich’s solution to the Jewish problem would be an important one, but not until Oberstleutnant Schroeder crippled the Haifa refinery and then only if Schroeder could regain control of his operatives in the desert. No matter what others in the Reich argued, the desert and her Arabs was the proper killing ground for Europe’s Jews. Schroeder must regain control!

  Control. Of Arabs . . . Schroeder sipped the coffee, wishing to butcher, not control them.

  Thankfully, the British army had done significant butchering for him. With the British incineration of Janîn, the British had resuscitated their long-established colonial identity. Bravo—this was the Great Britain Schroeder knew and Britain’s adversaries feared. Orde Wingate’s Special Night Squads had begun dragging men and boys from their beds and shooting them in the streets. The price on the heads of the partisans and rebels in the hills had been doubled again and a promise made: For every partisan brought to the Crown, a family could buy their deportation documents back and be removed from the list. The price on Saba Hassouneh, his Arab, was the highest.

  Schroeder admired the return of England’s will. He did not admire Saba Hassouneh’s temper, nor her mulish stupidity over the aftermath of Janîn. She sat coiled in her chair, her eyes on the sea and not him. Her keffiyeh was tight across her face, the breeze rustling it on her shoulder. Two Arab men stood across the street, their backs to Beirut’s harbor and ninety feet apart. They were hers, although she had not said as much.

  “Make me believe,” she said, “the men of the Nazi Reich would run from your homeland if the English murdered your women and children.”

  Schroeder affected his well-crafted civility, the veneer of his humanity stretched tight across his skull. “You will die if you return to Janîn and it will accomplish little. The bounty on your head is too high, the sentiment too strong. A number of Palestinians blame you for the reprisals. You, not the Iraqis and their mullahs—you, the Raven.”

  Her eyes turned to his and her tone hardened. “I have no fight in the Canary Islands. No interest. Give me the funds for Janîn and I will kill them all, the British first, then the Iraqi fools you arm”—she spit on the ground—“bin Faisal and his mullahs.”

  Schroeder bit his tongue. Arabs were the bastard children of conquerors and camels. To keep bin Faisal and his mullahs in line, he, Erich Schroeder, must remove Saba and her myth from Palestine. Use her for a last mission to kill D.J. Bennett and drive Eddie Owen into complete helplessness, then kill her in a place where her death could be assured. Tenerife in the Canary Islands was such a place—a volcanic island of pirates and smugglers blood-drenched in the intrigues of Moroccan Nationalists and Spain’s civil war. Killing Saba there served his grander purpose of dominion in the desert, but given her skill as a warrior and the loyalty of her partisans, it was an unfortunate expense. Such were the ever-changing bedfellows of war.

  Schroeder said, “The Canary Islands first. A man will soon be there, on Tenerife, a dangerous sympathizer to the Communists who maintains far too much influence over our American engineer. It is important this man be taken, kidnapped by Arabs, Arabs demonstrating a long reach.” Schroeder added fuel to the lie. “This man has information we must have; he plans operations against our American friends and the Tenerife refinery.”

  Saba barked: “One man on an island makes no difference. The English are in Palestine; they kill us in Palestine. The Iraqi king whores for your money; I do not. Find another spy.”

  Schroeder noticed two coltish girls near the water, adolescents carrying their shoes. The morning sun sparkled in their hair. One glanced at him. He tried to imagine her as Saba, a ploy to invest a pleasantness in this negotiation that would help him keep his hands off Saba’s neck. Schroeder patted Saba’s hand. She jerked. Schroeder parried to defend. Her men charged. A man five tables away short-armed a Luger at her back. Saba snarled, then waved off her men. They halted midstreet, pistols extended at Schroeder. Saba glared from behind the keffiyeh, half the knife visible in her hand.

  “Do not touch me. Ever.”

  Schroeder eased away, lowering his hands, adding apologetic emphasis. Pulse pounded equal parts anger at her threat and anger at the mistake, the murder in this woman very close to the surface.

  “My apologies, I meant to offer comfort to my message.”

  Saba did not sheath the knife. Schroeder considered how much additional weight to add to his mission. “The Canary Islands first, then the Haifa refinery. Haifa’s special gasoline must be taken from the English and given to the Arab. Do you understand the importance? That you are one of the few who could accomplish this?” Schroeder added what he hoped was a lie. “Without action, the English refinery at Haifa will be completed earlier than anticipated, earlier than we can reasonably remove its control from the English.”

  Saba shifted in the chair. Slight, but her movements were few and always meant something. Schroeder kept his eyes cold, marshaling restraint. An unusual woman, this Arab, fraught with sexual disconnects, Teutonic in her anger and buried rage. A woman who would die badly and in a cause that would betray her. She should see one German opera before this happened, hear the music climb the walls and explode out over the audience. Her death would be like that. The thought calmed him.

  Her eyes went to the street and the harbor beyond. “What is this man’s name on Tenerife?”

  “D.J. Bennett. An American. You saw him in Dhahran.”

  “I have no quarrel with the Americans.”

  “Nor do I. Soon the Americans will be our friends against the Communists—after we have crushed the English empire in your desert.” In that moment Schroeder decided to tell Saba pieces of the problem and the plan. He began with, “Our engineer, Eddie Owen, is bound for Tenerife. You must see him there, further his interest in you as a woman. Your ability to help dissuade his interest in the Zionist cause—”

  “What interest?” Saba’s eyes flashed.

  Schroeder hesitated, processing her reaction. “Eddie Owen is currently under arrest in Haifa . . . as a suspected . . .” Schroeder chose his words carefully. “Spy. Eddie Owen was injured leaving a synagogue run by the American Zionist Thomas Mendelssohn.”

  Saba’s eyes chilled but hid whatever her thoughts were.

  Schroeder continued, “We suspect D.J. Bennett was using the Zionists to disseminate false documents, papers that would recruit Eddie Owen against us—the Arabs and the Germans—and induce Eddie Owen’s support of the Communists. It is vitally important to all of us in the desert that this very special engineer knows the true motives of those around him.”

  At eight p.m. Lieutenant Hornsby stood with Eddie in front of the execution post and unlocked Eddie’s handcuffs. The shadows at the far corner produced D.J. Bennett. Hornsby faded; D.J. pulled Eddie close. “Walk natural, next to me, like you’re free t
o leave.”

  Eddie slapped his fedora against his thigh to knock the scorch and dust off, then pulled the fedora on. He squared shoulders that hurt, set his jaw, and began walking. Hornsby was already at the outer gate and pointed two armed Marines to open it. They did; neither made eye contact or spoke.

  Outside the compound, D.J. steered them downhill toward the Arab market and the refinery beyond. “The longer we stay in Palestine, the less likely you’ll leave. Hornsby was a whole lot harder than I expected. Don’t pack. Take what you can wear and what fits in your briefcase. We’re gone in an hour.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “North to Beirut. It’s French. Got them a brand-new airport. Once you’re out of the Brits’ jurisdiction we’ll figure what to do next. If we decide it’s Tenerife, we’ll catch a plane or a ship across the Mediterranean to Morocco. French control it, too, most of it.”

  Eddie glanced toward the neighborhood where the synagogue had been leveled. “What about Mendelssohn’s . . .”

  “Brits didn’t take the papers off you. Hornsby didn’t ask me about them and had he seen those papers, Hornsby would’ve put you on that post till you blabbed everything you knew.”

  “So it was someone from the neighborhood, had to be. We could go back there, the synagogue. Mendelssohn’s people might be—”

  “No. If Wingate and his squads find you back there, don’t know that you’d survive the encounter.”

  A block downhill from Eddie and D.J., four uniformed Palestinian police came together in the narrow intersection, looked uphill, and marched toward them. D.J. shouldered Eddie and himself into an alley and pointed Eddie back uphill from the alley’s other end. “Go. Could be the police have had a change of heart. Take the long way; meet me at Hassim’s room in an hour.” D.J. hugged the alley’s corner, shielded from the police by the building. “Move.”

  Eddie bolted uphill, turned at the first corner, dumped D.J.’s warning, and made for the synagogue. Six men and women picked through the stones and timber shards. Behind them the building was a jagged heap. One of the men looked up as Eddie approached from the shadows. Eddie spoke English. The man pointed to another man. Eddie stepped over the smaller chunks of stone and wood. The next man wore a dusty Orthodox Jew’s hat and waited for Eddie to speak.

  “My name is Eddie Owen. I—”

  “We know.”

  “Do you know Tom Mendelssohn?”

  “Yes.” The Jew looked into the heap. “Thomas Mendelssohn is here.”

  Eddie said, “Tell me something about him. Prove it.”

  Dark brown eyes studied Eddie. The Jew touched his hat and said, “Tenerife.”

  Eddie nodded, surprised. “Right. Tom Mendelssohn gave me an envelope and instructions. Somebody took the envelope off me after the explosion. I need it back—if you want me to do Tom’s business—I need the envelope tonight. Now. I leave in an hour.”

  The man looked past Eddie to the left and right, then pointed Eddie into the dark. “Wait there.”

  Eddie climbed over and through mammoth chunks of wall and roof and into almost complete dark. He squatted, leaning against scorched tile and concrete that might have been uprooted floor. Ten minutes passed. Figures appeared at the downhill corner of the small square. Eddie squinted through the debris. Policemen. They watched the Jews comb through the black char and gray everything else. The policemen left.

  Stones toppled behind Eddie. He turned. A voice in the dark said, “Here.” Something touched Eddie’s arm before he could see it. The scorched ten-by-ten envelope slid into his hands. Eddie put it inside his shirt without looking inside. The stones behind him tumbled again, then silence. Eddie stood, exhaled slowly, climbed down to solid ground, and walked into the shadows. Time to be Nick Charles. Make a brisk walk through town to the refinery, meet D.J., and disappear.

  A uniformed policeman reappeared one hundred feet downhill. Eddie pivoted to backtrack uphill. Fifty feet uphill, a second policeman blocked Eddie’s path. Both British. The downhill Brit already had his revolver out. He stepped toward Eddie and said, “As I live and breathe. On the wall, Yank.” Eddie waited until the Brit was within reach, stepped into the gun, and threw a left hook over the top. The Brit’s head snapped back. His revolver fired. Eddie spun. The uphill Brit’s revolver was cocked and about to shoot Eddie in the stomach. D.J. Bennett hit him from behind. The revolver fired as the Brit crashed to the pavement. D.J. stomped the Brit on the head and kicked his revolver into the cobblestone street.

  Eddie said, “Oh, shit,” and dropped to his knees.

  The first Brit gushed blood, shot in the chest. Eddie covered the hole and pumped the Brit’s lungs. D.J. yanked Eddie to his feet. “He’s dead. Wash up at a mule trough. Tell Hassim I said get you to Beirut. I’ll catch up.” D.J. shoved Eddie hard. “Move, goddammit! You may be too fucking stupid to save.”

  CHAPTER 17

  October, 1938

  Yesterday, the day before Saba had met with Erich Schroeder in Beirut, she had agreed to meet Hassim Dajani there as well. Via intermediaries in Haifa, Hassim’s request was to be valuable to Saba inside the Haifa refinery, as he had been inside Sitra in Bahrain. Saba believed Hassim could be valuable. Or Hassim Dajani could be arranging her murder for bin Faisal and the Pan-Arab Army of God. Today, Hassim would arrive the southern outskirts of Beirut. Jameel would meet Hassim at the construction zone of the new Bir Hassan Airfield. In an old truck, they would drive a circuitous route above the city to Beit Mery, an old Roman stronghold of Christians and Druze, very difficult to penetrate for the Muslim jihadists if that was who Hassim Dajani had joined.

  She would trust her instincts, as she had with the German Erich Schroeder yesterday. The German was as angry over Janîn as she was sickened by its aftermath. To his credit, Erich Schroeder understood the root cause had been Ghazi bin Faisal and his Pan-Arab Army of God. To Erich Schroeder’s discredit, he would lie and attempt to keep his Iraqi pig-king as an ally in the desert. Saba clenched her jaw. Until she and the partisans could kill the pig-king with his own sword.

  Kohl and marl paste hid the wings under Saba’s eye. She wore a western man’s pants covered to the knee by a robe. A red checked keffiyeh covered her head and face. Hassim’s words shocked her, but she hid it. “Eddie Owen is here, in Lebanon? With you?”

  Hassim answered, marshaling respect reserved for an emir’s tent. “No, he is not with me, but yes, he is here in Beirut, down below at the Hotel Royal.”

  “And he is here alone?”

  “I bring him, yes. The British consider his exit a Crown deportation . . .”

  If this were so, Eddie Owen was lucky to be alive. Saba weighed for treachery. “The British grant his freedom. And he asks for me?”

  “Eddie Owen tries for conversations in the market, too many. For six months he searches for a teacher, a Bedouin who teaches the emir’s daughters. He met her on the plane that crash-landed in Iran. I know this plane, this teacher.”

  “How is it he asks you, Hassim Dajani?”

  Hassim checked his shoulder and whispered, “The day I arrive in Haifa, D.J. Bennett—a dangerous man even as a friend—tells me Eddie Owen is in Haifa. Hours ago Eddie Owen tells me he must leave, that a British policeman has been shot. Eddie Owen must come here to Beirut; I must take him. I drive him here; he tells me of the Bedouin teacher, that she is possibly marked under the eye, although he has said this to no one else and does not know its significance.” Hassim swallowed. “He thinks this mark may be religion or Palestine freedom.”

  “And you know of his friendship with the Zionist militia?”

  Hassim jolted. “I know of no such friendship. Never does he speak such words to me. And I know him two years in Bahrain.”

  Saba nodded small. “Go down the mountain. Give your American to Jameel and remain at the house where Jameel and the others will take you. I will see Eddie Owen. You and I will speak after.”

  Hassim bowed. “The people of Palestine forgive you for Janîn. It
is the British we hate, the Zionists and their murder militia. For us, you are the victories that will turn our tide.”

  Saba belted the revolver Hassim had not seen, shamed by his faith and her weakness, then motioned two weathered Arabs closer. To the older, she said, “Take our friend Hassim to eat and rest. Keep him safe until I return.” The Arab left with Hassim. To Jameel, she said, “You remember the American?”

  Jameel nodded. “In Iran. He risked the British guns.”

  “Bring him to the rock beach at Byblos, the north point. Sit him alone with food and wine. I will watch, and you will watch me.”

  Alone, Saba looked beyond the city’s rooftops to the Mediterranean Sea. Was her American a convert of the Zionists? Is that why Eddie Owen asked for her every week in the Arab market at Haifa? If so, the Irgun or Haganah would be with him. They would kill her. Or try, as they had many times before. Or was he bait for the British night squads, trading his freedom from their jail for her life? The American Eddie Owen did not know her ability to smell a trap, and his puppet masters would not warn him. Saba rubbed her upper arms. And what of her heart? Her shoulders tightened. She felt lightheaded from wine un-drunk. Would she touch her American’s hands on purpose; would she . . . kiss her first man? The thought made her shiver in a way she liked and hated. The flash of hate brought her back. Eddie Owen sought to betray her. For that, she would kill him.