Traitor's Gate

by Charlie Newton

  At eight a.m., Erich Schroeder stood alone at the top of Italy’s Adriatic boot heel. His trek to the port of Bari had required twenty-three hours. He was here but his situation was perilous; his Luftwaffe network compromised by Himmler . . . or possibly Reichsmarschall Göring himself reaching down, sensing threat from Schroeder’s maneuvers and artifices. A storm front’s chill blew in over the dirty harbor. No merchant ships were docked in Bari’s Gran Porto, only Mussolini’s Italian navy. Beyond the harbor’s outer breakwater, the Adriatic Sea was rough with whitecaps and thick with packed Italian troopships wallowing low in the rough water. If Mussolini’s threatened attack on Albania two hundred kilometers directly across the water was a bluff, it was well supported.

  Schroeder walked out on the rail pier to the one empty berth that awaited the SS Caubarreaux. Behind him, a ceremonial cannon fired. Schroeder turned, following the cannon smoke to the high ground and Castello Normanno-Svevo, the walled fortress/prison facing the port. Santa Claus was buried here somewhere, maybe in the prison, his bones stolen from the Arabs. How fitting. Now Bari was a transit point for rich Jew refugees hoping for Palestine instead of Himmler’s death camps in Poland. Possibly Santa Claus would help them.

  Behind the fortress, the ancient city climbed a steep limestone outcrop—another walled labyrinth of alleys and streets built and rebuilt by each new conqueror. Schroeder wondered how Hitler would use it when he tired of Il Duce’s vain stupidity. Schroeder glanced south across the width of the pier. Two German embassy officials approached, passing a brick stationmaster house that sat at the center. Jew refugees were crowded behind the building, standing and sitting in nervous bunches. Both embassy men would be Gestapo or privately in their pay. As a forced amendment to his plan, Schroeder had requested the German embassy’s assistance when the SS Caubarreaux docked. He had done so in Reichsmarschall Göring’s name.

  “Herr Schroeder.” The official gave a curt, officious nod.

  Schroeder offered his hand.

  The embassy official did not take the hand. “The Gestapo will be responsible for the American.”

  Schroeder’s neck flexed, jutting his chin. “The American belongs to Reichsmarschall Göring. The Gestapo has no interests on this pier today.”

  The embassy official exhaled a tired frown at his associate and sprinkled the dock with cigarette ash. The wind blew ash across Schroeder’s jacket. No apology accompanied the ashes.

  Schroeder resisted striking him. “Your failure to secure the American for Reichsmarschall Göring will not be tolerated. Nor will interference of any kind after the American is found. Do you understand, Herr . . .”

  “Doebler.” Herr Doebler sprinkled the dock with ashes again. “I answer to the ambassador, not Reichsmarschall Göring’s Luftwaffe.”

  Schroeder crowded Herr Doebler, chin to chin. “You fear Himmler’s cutthroats. But Himmler is in Berlin and I am here. Should my American ‘disappear’ from this ship, the Gestapo will reward your treachery, then feed you to the wolves—know that, Herr Doebler. And here in Italy, where you stand in your Italian shoes, the Luftwaffe are the wolves. Il Duce’s wolves.”

  Herr Doebler was a sufficiently seasoned embassy official to know that a Reich power struggle at the top was not survivable at his level of influence. And like bureaucrats of all systems, he would fear the devil in front of him—one that cheerfully bombed Il Duce’s enemies—more than the devil in the shadows, no matter how nightmarish.

  The cigarette again. “The American’s name is available? His description so the Italians might detain him?”

  “Might?” Schroeder wanted to gut the presumptuous bitch puffmutter. “The Luftwaffe was able to detain his family a continent away.” A lie that now made Schroeder want to vomit. “I will have the American here and now, if your embassy men know their business. And for the sake of your family, they had better.”

  Herr Doebler coughed. “The Italian authorities have instructed their stationmaster to impound the ship when it arrives. Those ‘citizens’”—he nodded toward the Jews on the pier—“wishing to board for passage to Beirut will be processed by Italian immigration but held in quay until the ship is searched for ‘contraband and stowaways.’”

  “You will lead the search?”

  Herr Doebler shook his head. “The French captain will not allow Nazis to search. Only the Italians may board, and then only with the French captain’s permission.”

  Schroeder snarled. The Italians were inept bunglers further distracted by their impending conquest of Albania. Italy was quite the ally, wasn’t she? A grand partner for the Führer, capable of almost striking fear into Ethiopia and Albania. How horribly operatic that after all the effort, Erich Schroeder, a Krupp, now risked his demise and that of his far-reaching plans on this miserable pier hoping for the performance of mindless bureaucrats and gutless Italians. They would be no match for the Raven. She would utilize the contacts who had secreted her aboard in Oran to hide herself and Eddie somewhere on the ship. And when the Caubarreaux docked in Beirut, she would be ten-fold stronger, capable of marshaling partisans and guerrilla fighters to the dock who would never allow her capture.

  The confrontation had to be here.

  Schroeder swallowed bile. His only remaining option was obvious. Conscript his competitor. He would add a twist to the lie he had told Göring and involve Himmler’s E-6 Gestapo. The E-6 were the ruthless police Himmler placed in foreign countries. With the E-6 would also come battle-armed Waffen-SS. The E-6 could scheme on Saba’s scale and the Waffen-SS could outgun and outfight her.

  Schroeder spit the bile burning his throat. And then he would face down the Gestapo for his prize. He would find a way. Corrupt them or kill them. He was Erich Schroeder, a Krupp—not a bastard Krupp—a Krupp. Eddie Owen and the Mendelssohn papers were his.

  Lying in the bunk, Saba faced Eddie, fully clothed, feverish at his proximity.

  “Sure hope you’re not pregnant.”

  She gasped and curled her back to him, arms hugging her chest. The things he said! There had been no sex, but she had slept with him and felt naked the entire night. No shame, only pleasure. She was lost in a dream and had allowed it, listening to him sleep, feeling his hands and arms caress her. She would try again—if there was an again—and hope she could accept his affection. The thought made her shiver. She felt Eddie rise to an elbow behind her. Saba focused on the porthole. “We sail a new course, more north than east,” then cut to the barricaded door. She stood and belted her pistol from the nightstand. Eddie’s attention seemed divided between her belt and the pistol.

  “I think you’d feel better lying down.”

  “North could be the stop—”

  “Lying down means happily ever after.” Eddie reached but his hand only brushed her thigh.

  She wanted to devour him, to swim in his taste, his skin, his . . . He was smiling at her as if he’d read her mind. She covered her head with the keffiyeh. “I go to see why we change course. Lock the door behind me.”

  “Wait—”

  Outside their cabin, the passageway was empty, as were the stairs up to the deck. The wind there was strong and off the bow. That would be out of the north. Saba stood portside looking left at a gap between two rocky landmasses.

  A voice above and to her left said, “Reggio di Calabria. The toe of Il Duce’s boot.”

  She ducked back and almost fanned the pistol. Eddie had her thinking about things other than survival. The voice again, in French-accented Arabic, identifying the speaker as a European she had met yesterday when scouring for food. He had given her the wine, thinking she was the son of a Bedouin trader gone to learn the ways of the West. Westerners liked to believe such things. Saba stepped out and the European waved. The Englishman from the train was next to him. The Englishman wasn’t waving. The European pointed off the bow. “U-boats.”

  Saba squinted until she saw two submarines.

  The Englishman said, “Med’s thick with ’em.”

  Saba shrugg
ed as if she didn’t understand. The Englishman repeated his comment, his eyes on her, not the U-boats. The European translated badly. She nodded and turned back to the sea, glancing at both ends of the deck. If they were near the toe of Italy and changing course to the north, the stop could be anywhere—Italy, the Balkan coast of the Adriatic, even Greece. She knew nothing of these places other than her schoolbooks in another life, wanted to ask, absolutely had to know, but could not maintain a man’s tenor in her voice if she yelled. Her back was exposed, a position only amateurs held. She had grown soft with Eddie and his dreams—her dreams—

  A sailor approached from a distance, carrying a box. He nodded as he passed but his eyes were wrong, searching. She guessed the box was empty but carried as if it were not. He disappeared into her passageway door.

  Were the two men above her with the sailor?

  Saba imagined the ploy—the sailor causes the ten cabins on her passageway to empty to the deck via a fire threat or a ship’s drill. The occupants parade for the men above. She glanced forward again and saw three sailors, then aft and saw three more. Mercenaries for the men above? If Eddie left the cabin or answered the door, he would be captured.

  Eddie tried to pace Cabin No. 9 but it hadn’t gotten any larger. “Hide and watch” made sense—what D.J. would’ve done in these circumstances—but it was murder on the muscles that wanted to beat the problem. Eddie rubbed his face, the .45 in his hand. “Hide and watch” was an old insult in Texas and Oklahoma, saved most often for partners who thought caution had more merit than action.

  The door rattled. A knock?

  Another rattle, this time with French commands attached. Eddie reached for the knob but stopped short. Saba knew he didn’t speak French. More knocking and the knob turning. Eddie aimed the pistol. Voices in the passageway, either angry or confused. Answers in French. He had locked the door, thank you God. Maybe the ship was sinking. Sounded like they were rounding up anyone still sleeping. The French weren’t Nazis, so how bad could it be? Eddie reached. Real bad, idiot. French words didn’t mean French men. Get some blood above your waist if you wanna live another hour. Eddie aimed head high and waited. Lots of footsteps. One more series of knocks and a rattle of the knob.

  Hide and watch . . .

  Saba watched the passengers climb out of Eddie’s stairway and onto the deck. More than half were Arabs and none was Eddie. She glanced higher without raising her neck. Both the Europeans were intent on the crowd of fifteen. The sailor, sans box, approached her and in French asked if she were in Cabin No. 9. She shrugged confusion, her pistol ready. The sailor drew a “nine” in the air and pointed below.

  Saba nodded.

  He moved away, looking higher to the two Europeans as he did. The Englishman had no expression; the man next to him stared right at her—possibly a German and not the Frenchman he sounded now that she felt the trap. Saba moved only her head, reasonably sure that she was suspected. Two passengers arrived at her shoulder. In Arabic one told the other, “Bari, Italy, at one a.m. tonight. It is a military port on the Adriatic.”

  Saba checked the rail above; both men were gone.

  Then she saw him, the German, approaching from the stern, slowly and with both hands visible. He moved with precision, like Erich Schroeder moved. She glanced past her shoulder without letting him see. Clear. The other passengers had dispersed in several directions.

  The German stood the rail but stayed ten feet away, seemed to brace, then told the ocean, “The Reich has no quarrel with the Arab, just a mission I must complete to benefit us all.” His glance at her was furtive. Both hands stayed on the rail but his knees were bent. “I can pay handsomely for the American, wages that would please a sharif or raise a small army.”

  Saba noticed the Englishman approaching from the far end of the deck.

  The Nazi followed her eyes and said, “A bounty hunter. We play cat and mouse. He follows me and hunts the American for his crimes against England. The Englishman is a danger to us both.”

  The Nazi hid his mouth. “Stateroom Twenty-six after the noon meal. I will wait.” And walked toward the English bounty hunter, both men feigning friendship. The two men met middeck, the Englishman looking over the Nazi’s shoulder, the Englishman’s interest in her distant but there.

  Shoot them.

  Her hand hesitated. The men disappeared.

  Six months ago, both would already be dead. Saba frowned. Six months ago, she protected no fairy-tale future. She had become weak. Stateroom 26 would be close quarters and likely a trap—a bold one, but a trap. Trap or not, her confrontation with the Nazi was inevitable, in his stateroom or elsewhere on the ship, and Eddie would not survive without her. Saba projected a series of future moves. If she prevailed, the Nazi’s money might be the difference. The Nazis would hold sway in Bari, Italy. This Nazi knew her clothes and her cabin. Money or not, when they docked in Bari, there would be no escape.

  She would kill the Nazi and, if possible, also the Englishman who hunted Eddie, then devise a plan to hijack the ship or steal a lifeboat. The antihijack traps her Algerian benefactors had warned about were not apparent, but the French captain would not want to die to maintain his course. If a hijack were not possible, they would wait until they neared land and jump. Once in the water, she would learn to swim, or drown.

  The ship’s noon meal ended early. By two p.m., the SS Caubarreaux had cleared the sole of Italy’s boot and the Golfo di Taranto—the boot’s high, blue-water arch. The temperature dropped as the ship approached the boot’s narrow heel—this would be the last landmass before the turbulent entry to the Adriatic Sea. The far northeastern horizon of the Adriatic was graying to black, announcing a storm ahead that would already be hammering Albania and the Baltics some hundred kilometers north. A shear wind rocked the Caubarreaux, weather the passengers said had littered the coast with wrecks for centuries. Very, very bad if she and Eddie were forced overboard into the sea. Saba checked her weapons, then the sky where her stars would be tonight, and went to Stateroom 26.

  Panting from the fight, Saba used the back of her hand to wipe the blood off her face. Stateroom 26 was smashed. Blood dotted the walls and carpet. The Englishman lay dead on the cabin’s floor. Saba wanted to kill him again, could still feel where his strong hands had choked her, still see the surprise on his face when he realized the Arab boy he’d seen on the rail was a woman. A woman with black wings under her eye and a knife he felt but never saw. The Englishman died with her knife in his heart, blood in his mouth, and “Janîn” in his ears.

  The Nazi was also on the floor. He had been tortured, then shot twice by the Englishman just as Saba had arrived. The Nazi was not quite dead. Saba straddled him on her knees, then ripped at his clothes. The Nazi was slack-eyed, in deep shock from the Englishman’s torture. Saba finished her search. His money belt had packets of German marks, French francs, and British pounds, and identification that included the word “Luftwaffe.”

  One of Erich Schroeder’s killers.

  He tried to speak but couldn’t. Saba dismounted and he curled fetal to die. She riffled the Englishman’s pockets. He had money that she took but no record of whatever he had learned from torturing the Nazi. Their weapons she would leave for the French sailors to find, hoping the murders would be viewed as an argument or robbery. The ship’s foghorn sounded. Saba ducked, then checked the porthole. The ship was turning more north into high waves and a blackening sky. The foghorn boomed again and a bristling warship slid alongside, gray on gray, deck guns high, and a red Nazi flag at its stern. The Nazi warship continued past but on a matching course. She began searching the Nazi’s cabin for any clue to Schroeder’s plans—Whatever Schroeder’s plans were, she and Eddie could not be aboard when this ship docked. They had to get off.

  CHAPTER 36

  April, 1939

  Erich Schroeder smiled into the storm. The Balkan storm had churned into a gale and now howled west across the Adriatic toward Italy—God’s windy present to the Italian navy wallow
ing off the coast as the brave Italians prepared to sack Albania. Schroeder steadied against the gusts buffeting the rail pier and dipped his hat against the rain. The SS Caubarreaux was due into the pier’s only berth in two hours. Apathetic Italian soldiers from the 47th Bari Division crowded the pier, their necks bent against the rain, their presence more threat than capability. Schroeder glanced at the pier’s brick stationhouse, the windows full at eleven p.m. with nervous Italian bureaucrats and his two German embassy officials. They were safe from the storm but not the possibility of catastrophe.

  The Caubarreaux’s landing would be a major confrontation of three nations about to go to war in central Europe—France, Italy, and Germany. A mistake here by a petty official could fire the first shot. It had happened that way the last time. The ship-to-shore radio argument with the Caubarreaux’s French captain was into its fifth hour. The captain was adamant that German Gestapo or SS would not board his ship when it docked. It would not happen. The Caubarreaux would load its Bari passengers under maritime law and sail for Beirut unmolested by Italians or Nazis. The French embassy in Rome had been alerted—the captain’s sailors would be armed with orders to shoot all boarders. The SS Caubarreaux would not be another Rhineland surrender.

  Across from Schroeder on the wide pier’s south side, two hundred moneyed Jews in their fine coats and family huddles remained quarantined behind a fence, pretending with their travel cases to be holidaymakers. Some stood under sheet-metal roofs. Others had shied back to the rear fences, exposed in the thunder, rain, and wind. Schroeder smiled at the Eternal Jew’s reaction. Hours of weather were the lesser threat. Between the Jews and safe passage to Lebanon aboard the Caubarreaux stood two men under a rain-dimmed lamp. Both wore the black leather overcoats and black fedoras of Himmler’s utterly ruthless E-6 Gestapo. To the Gestapo’s right, a uniformed SS officer stood erect and ready with twenty Waffen-SS in formation. The jagged lightning bolts on their collars shone sharp and crisp in the Italian murk.