Traitor's Gate

by Charlie Newton

  “No.”

  “The MS Saint Louis is a German ocean liner, a pleasure ship. At immense cost to the German citizen, the Nazi government granted one thousand Jews free transit to Cuba at their request and paid for their visas. When the Jews arrived, a Cuban official demanded a bribe of five hundred dollars per person. The Jews would not pay. The Nazi government sailed the Jews to Florida in America, but America would not accept them, citing racial balance and quotas. The Nazi government sailed the Jews to Canada and she also declined to grant them landfall.”

  Eddie’s jaw had dropped an inch.

  “Yes, Eddie, as I told you, we, the Nazis, only want them out. The world who complains so bitterly about our policy refuses to grant assistance when it is their sovereign soil that must support the International Jew. Tar my country with the same brush you tar yourselves or not at all. This is only fair and proper, yes?”

  Eddie believed what was good for the goose was good for the gander.

  “The German economic miracle is not an accident. We as a people dug ourselves out of the carnage of the Great War and, in the last five years alone, have built our nation into one of the few on the planet where the population does not suffer as they do in Oklahoma. Your people have suffered concurrent disasters, as have we. There are those who say America’s Dust Bowl is the result of failed government farming schemes and that the Great Depression is the fault of Wall Street and your bankers. In Germany, our leaders and our Jews also schemed. They plunged the world into war as a result. But Hitler and the Nazis do the opposite. We build; we do not destroy. We embrace who and what we are, and where we are. We covet nothing that isn’t our birthright. We do not seek empire as England and France do. And we mean no harm to anyone who allows us our prosperity within our borders.”

  Eddie said, “I’m beyond grateful for your help. My family is alive because of you . . . maybe because of the Nazis, but, for sure, because of you. And I know I’m in a pot full of trouble—here, England, and now back home—”

  “At home?”

  Eddie explained the FBI and the House Un-American Activities Committee.

  “Congressman Dies. Yes, I know him.”

  “You know him?”

  Schroeder nodded. “An honest man, denigrated by the Communists, but hoping to set the record straight by showing President Roosevelt the real enemy.”

  Eddie rubbed his face.

  Schroeder said, “You are not alone, Eddie. The world is confused to the point of war. Who is right? Who is wrong? Is there a right and wrong? Or just history’s . . . force of arms?”

  Eddie uncovered his eyes. “And?”

  Schroeder drank the port and poured another. “If I knew that answer with absolute certainty—”

  “How about ‘Do unto others . . .’?”

  Schroeder smiled and offered a toast. “When you complete your contract for this refinery, we will vacation together. It shall be the national motto on our flag.”

  Eddie finished a second glass of port, thanked Schroeder again, and said he’d have to pass on dinner. Eddie’s reason was, “I’m beat-to-death tired and can’t afford to lose any more sleep. The refinery’s on schedule but it’s taking damn near double shifts every day.”

  “I understand, Eddie. Other than a brief business trip, I’ll be on Tenerife every day until you’re done. You can focus on the refinery; I’ll do everything I can to keep the PJs away and anyone else who might wish you harm. I can do that as long as you make sure my men never lose sight of you. Okay?”

  “Sure. Thanks.” Eddie’s face was confused again. “Thanks.” And he left.

  There had been no further comment on Saba Hassouneh or an opportunity to question Eddie that wouldn’t overplay the questioner’s hand. Given what Schroeder already knew, further risk wasn’t worth it. Other than Eddie’s one visit to a whorehouse on Calle de Miraflores, a visit that the submariners had monitored as closely as possible without remaining in the room, Eddie had seen no one for two months other than people at the refinery. If Saba were alive and Eddie had seen her, it would have been at the refinery and that was impossible. Schroeder tried to imagine how a woman he had shot to death could crawl off a deserted road and recover inside the refinery. He could not.

  But Eddie’s face had been a lie. If not about Saba, then a lie about what?

  CHAPTER 29

  March, 1939

  Saint Patrick’s Day on Tenerife lacked the pageantry of its reputation. Eddie didn’t care and the Irish didn’t seem to, either. In fourteen days, Eddie’s AvGas modifications would be complete. The Irish would get their bonuses and move on and Eddie’s contract would end. Erich Schroeder had kept his promise to keep the PJs at bay and for the last six weeks the rabid bastards had hovered and glared and been everywhere Eddie had been, but hadn’t tried to lay a glove on him. The same couldn’t be said for Eddie’s loyal employer, Culpepper Oil Products Company.

  The telegram in Eddie’s hand was from Harold Culpepper. It said Culpepper Oil wanted to renew Eddie’s contract, but given the FBI intervention (Eddie’s fugitive warrant in Texas and a federal fugitive warrant), Eddie could not return to the USA and expect to stay un-arrested on any job until something had been worked out. Nor could Eddie be contracted to anyone outside the USA where Great Britain could reach until Great Britain dropped their extradition demands. Culpepper was looking into a solution and if Eddie would cease all the friction he was causing Foreman Paulsen and stop making demands for loans and threats to quit if he didn’t get them, maybe Culpepper could work something out.

  Eddie wadded the telegram. He’d only seen Three Card Monte once but he could recognize it in a telegram. Something was way off line here. How could he be “vital” and unemployable? It didn’t make sense, not for companies whose disregard for “the rules” seemed the norm. The Owen family was stable but by no means safe. One missed payment to the hospital and sanatorium and . . . Eddie had two weeks’ pay coming and two weeks more till he finished. Hard to believe, and all he’d tried to do was the right thing.

  Mount Teide harrumphed.

  The tremors were fairly regular now and sharper over the last several days. Eddie looked up from the canteen’s short stretch of beachside railing into what should have been Tenerife’s sunrise. Today the horizon was behind the bow of a huge Spanish troopship aiming for the Santa Cruz dock. Behind the troopship and to its starboard was an equally immense Standard Oil tanker. The troopship’s deck bristled with uniforms and weapons.

  Ryan Pearce took a spot next to Eddie and nodded toward more Fascist authority about to land.

  Eddie added reaction distance and wondered out loud, “Takes an entire army to guard a refinery?”

  Pearce said, “Been more’n a little problem with the other plants producing your fancy gas. I imagine the generalissimo sees it proper to keep this one.”

  Each day for the last week, more Spanish Army security had materialized. More Germans, too, not in uniform but well trained and dead serious, and respectful to everyone so far. Foreman Paulsen and the CEPSA managers seemed grateful to the Nazis for their attention.

  Pearce said, “The Brits’ Lord Chamberlain is bat-mad today. Hear the London radio this mornin’?”

  Eddie didn’t listen to the BBC if he could help it. And he wasn’t that interested in listening to Ryan Pearce, either.

  Pearce continued anyway. “Nazis invaded the remaining part of Czechoslovakia last night after promisin’ the peace in Munich less than six months back. Made a fool outta the British prime minister and German nationals outta the Czechs and Bohemians. The high-an’-mighty Brits got their faces in it now.”

  Eddie’s jaw dropped.

  Pearce nodded. “And Hitler’s wantin’ part of Poland, too, all the territory occupied by his poor ethnic Germans he says the Poles are terrorizin’. Hitler says he’ll war with Poland’s angels—England and France—if he has to. England and France can sign ‘mutual defense’ treaties with the whole bloody world, but Germany’s defendin’ her peo
ple.”

  “Jesus Christ, no wonder all these soldiers are pouring in here. Maybe Spain got dragged out of their civil war and into—”

  “Nah, lad, Spain’s still neutral, if ya call this neutral.” Pearce nodded at sixty German submariners who were now sharing the camp. “You can count on your gas going German if these brave Spaniards ever have to fight to keep it for Franco or he tries to sell it to England.”

  D.J. had predicted this would happen. How could D.J. have been so wrong about the Germans and so right about almost everything else? Eddie un-wadded Harold Culpepper’s telegram to make sure it said what it said. The telegram was clear; Eddie was unemployable. Impossible but true.

  Pearce said, “Lá ’le Pádraig Sona Duit,” some kind of reference to St. Patrick’s Day; spit over the rail; and walked away. Ryan Pearce remained a troubling puzzle but not a serious problem, since Erich Schroeder had involved himself in Eddie’s safety. Eddie remained vigilant because Pearce was a mercenary. Pearce clearly leaned toward Ireland and against England, but for the right amount of money, Eddie believed Ryan Pearce would shoot whoever was in front of his gun.

  Maybe there was a job where Erich Schroeder had people? Schroeder had left the island unexpectedly, but not before he’d come to the refinery to say not to worry and that he’d be back in a week. The Germans needed gas. The USA wasn’t at war with anyone. As long as the Germans used the gas for . . . For what? Like you’d have a say? Eddie exhaled. He didn’t have a say in the USA, either, and he damn sure wouldn’t in Great Britain. Eddie quit Schroeder and Culpepper and allowed himself to think about Saba instead, go far away to where the world wasn’t a fucking nightmare. His parents and little brother and sister would be fine there. The place would have palm trees and smiles in equal amounts; he was sure of it, saw some vision of it every night on his cot. Saw Saba’s chestnut hair, olive skin, and . . . killer instinct.

  Eddie spit where Pearce had. Yeah, we’ll all live happily ever after on D.J.’s ranch.

  Seven days till final.

  Every day would be double-shift, a textbook plan for miscalculation and mistakes. Add sleepless nights because you were a lovesick fucking Boy Scout and you could almost guarantee the cracking tower would incinerate the whole place and everyone in it. Eddie checked the armed submariners trailing him through the labyrinth of pipes and tanks shadowed in moonlight or floodlit with blazers. The first load of light crude had come in yesterday and was already in the oil depot’s tanks. In seven days Eddie as Dr. Frankenstein would transform the “Mexican” crude into 100-octane gold or death sentences to millions, all depended on whose story you believed. Eddie checked the docking schedule with his flashlight—seven more tankers en route, all Mexican flagged. According to Foreman Paulsen, the oil wasn’t Mexican; it was from a Texan, William R. Davis. D.J. had said the oil companies would become a nation unto themselves. It might be their oil, but Generalissimo Franco wasn’t taking chances with his refinery.

  In the last week, the guards and patrols outside the fences had tripled. All British and Moroccan nationals were being deported off Tenerife to Rabat and Tangiers in French Morocco. Nine “Communists” and four “foreign agents of destruction” had been shot or cage-drowned by the PJs. Eddie had been hauled out of his room at gunpoint by Red Beret and six PJs with machine guns—a first. Both Eddie’s submariners had radios in their left hands and Lugers in their right aimed chest-high at Red Beret. Red Beret had paid no attention to the Lugers, cocked the pistol in his right hand, leveled it at Eddie’s head, and demanded Eddie give up the Raven of Palestine’s location. The Raven had killed the foreman’s assistant as part of the Comité d’Action Marocaine’s plot to destroy the refinery. Eddie had helped her. When and where was the Comité’s attack? Eddie was still alive because nine submariners with submachine guns had answered their radios. The O.K. Corral ended without blood. Saba’s situation probably wouldn’t. Suddenly, Schroeder, the Brits, the entire goddamn population thought she was on the island.

  Eddie shook his flashlight and rechecked the docking schedule.

  For the three days since he’d been at the O.K. Corral, he’d wrestled with what to do. No way Saba would survive a house-to-house by the PJs . . . if Red Beret really believed she was here to blow the refinery. The other possibility, the one Eddie was wrestling with tonight, was that the PJs had been fishing when they’d pulled him out of his room, building their case to kill him the second the refinery was finished.

  Mount Teide rumbled. Eddie checked the moonlit volcano against the night sky. No glow, thank you Baby Jesus. If the volcano decided to “attack,” there wouldn’t be much Generalissimo Franco’s refinery and his PJs could do but die. Day and night for the last seven, Mount Teide had rumbled deeper and deeper, like distant thunder you could hear and feel on the ground. Eddie glanced at his watch, then out over the water. His eyes rose to Saba’s stars. He’d forgotten how to sleep more than a few hours at a time. How do you fall in love with a woman who killed your best friend?

  Saba did not kill D.J.

  How do you fall in love with a woman you don’t know? Eddie spit on the sand. Hell, guys fell in love with pictures. Saba was the most three-dimensional woman he’d ever seen. The Arabian nights . . . The attraction made him shiver, longing he couldn’t shake. He was in love and lust and . . . and adventure. She was the ten-pin for all of ’em. How does a guy go back to college girls or chorus girls or . . . after he’s seen a princess?

  But she killed your best friend.

  Bullshit. Maybe she killed D.J.—Eddie started to laugh and would’ve if it wasn’t so fucking sad. How many of his classmates would ever have this conversation about who to date or marry?

  Marry?

  Jesus, he had lost his mind. D.J. was right. Eddie checked Saba’s stars again. No way she killed D.J. She just wouldn’t. I can’t be in love with her if she shot D.J. Eddie tried to spit again and couldn’t. Pretty damn tough duty for a farmer’s son.

  So? So, Eddie replayed the seventy-eight rpm denial record in his head then responded to a combination of his anatomical parts and real fear for Saba’s safety if she were still here. Eddie told his two submariners, “I’m going into town to get laid, then to meet Herr Schroeder’s seaplane when he arrives at the dock.”

  One submariner who spoke reasonable English said, “There could be trouble.”

  Eddie said, “Yeah. But I don’t give a fuck,” and an hour later stood outside the front door of Les Demoiselles. The brothel had closed for the evening. Eddie knocked, then knocked again and again until the patrona herself appeared at the door. She opened it a crack, saw the submariners scanning the street from its opposite side, and stepped into her doorway. Doña Carmen grinned for the Germans but snarled: “No. Go away.”

  Eddie grimaced his apology and didn’t move. The patrona eased her weight into his ribs as if she would kiss him. A pistol barrel dug into Eddie’s gut.

  “We do not play a boy’s game. The PJs threaten a house-to-house. Go away.” Doña Carmen circled his back with her empty hand.

  “She’s still here, right? I gotta see her. Have to. Sorry.”

  The pistol dug deeper. “She is gone. Implicate me and I will kill you.”

  Eddie hesitated, no idea what to do or how to do it. “Tell her I was here. I’m coming back. I love her. I’ll be gone in seven days. Just wanna hear her say she didn’t do it before I go.”

  “Do what?”

  Eddie told the patrona’s ear, “She’ll know,” and turned toward the docks to meet Erich Schroeder’s seaplane due in at dawn. The submariners followed.

  The docks of Tenerife’s main harbor had just moored the Casablanca Ferry. The tall ferry blocked dawn’s first glare from Saba’s eyes. She sat at the far end of the dock across the wharf road and in disguise. The ferry’s gangway slid to the dock between two empty “man cages.” Spanish Army soldiers aimed rifles at the ferry from their shoulders. The passengers, all men, were waved to single-file off the ferry. Armada police confronted e
ach man at gangway’s end. Behind the Armada police were the plainclothes secret police, the Policía Judicial. Documents were checked and rechecked. All baggage was being searched. There were no shouts of anger from the passengers. When Saba had landed here nearly five months ago, Arab anger on the ferry had been nearly a riot.

  Saba’s disguise was a fisherman’s hat instead of a keffiyeh, fisherman’s rags instead of beggar’s rags. Her face was naked underneath the hat because it had to be, her first purposed foray without keffiyeh or veil in the ten years since the Raven had snatched her from the camps. This dawn she was not an Arab; she was a Canarian pescador, too old and too full with drink to work, but here on the docks cross-legged in the confusion of the wharf’s ropes and barrels just the same. This dawn was practice. Practice that would, if successful, kidnap Erich Schroeder, murderer of Haifa, within the week. Her presence here and later in the city was to prove or disprove that she could allow her face naked and not be questioned. No veil or keffiyeh could be worn at Schroeder’s hotel without drawing undue attention. The Grand Hotel Mencey had a proud, European tradition.

  “Drunk” in her grubby huddle, Saba worried the wine bottle in her lap and watched the Arab passengers at the opposite end of the long dock as they were bullied and browbeaten. The Spanish fear of attack here was substantial. Troopships in the bay, soldiers and submariners on the ground. Saba purposely quit her recon, allowing her focus to slip so as not to be too interested, deciding she would wonder about the passengers, not the men at arms, wondering where the passengers had been.

  Soldiers bumped her toes. Some bumped her knees. None commented, speaking Spanish to one another in the rough tones of soldier camps. Saba thought of the mountains in Lebanon and Syria and her years surrounded by men. How different the men were in the camps than when in Les Demoiselles. Women and sex changed everything—for a short moment—the men were easily controlled with nothing but promises. Threats and religion and nation were tools of another trade.