Traitor's Gate

by Charlie Newton

  Cold wind and sheeting rain whipped the decks of the Caubarreaux as it steamed north along a rocky coastline. What lights Saba could see in the storm were too far to judge distance. Saba was wedged into a bulkhead two levels above their steerage cabin on the Stateroom Deck, hoping for options she had not found. She and Eddie had searched the ship for ways to debark, found none other than life vests and life-preserver rings. Eddie was below in their cabin attempting to engineer them into a design that would keep them alive if they were forced to swim for shore.

  Passengers sickened by the rough seas emerged from their cabins on the Stateroom Deck—Arabs in cloth robes unaccustomed to the cold rain, Europeans in slickers. Eventually all began to retreat for their staterooms, furious and sodden and muttering. As the last of them left, Saba heard news of Ghazi bin Faisal in Iraq. The impossible stumbled her to her feet. A bow wave bucked her sideways. She righted, slipped on the wet deck under an isolated overhang, and squeezed in under its rigging.

  Movement on her gangway—it was Eddie, bent almost to half apologizing when he arrived but clear he wasn’t leaving. After a long silence, Eddie used one finger to gently turn Saba’s face to his. He studied her expression. “Are you okay?”

  Saba exhaled. “Ghazi bin Faisal has been assassinated. A ‘car accident’ two days ago saves Kuwait.”

  Eddie brightened. “The Iraqi Army of God guy?”

  Saba clenched her teeth. “Bin Faisal was my hope for Palestine.” She turned away. “I would kidnap him, raise an army with the ransom, capture a city, show the Arab states the Palestinian can outfight the British. Make amends for my participation in Janîn and Haifa.”

  Eddie touched her hand. “Sorry it messed up your plans.”

  Saba glared. “Understand this. My plans, if we survive this ship, are not to save Europe’s Jews, the English, or the French from the Nazis. The Nazis are Europe’s fight. I fight for Palestine. And now I must find another way.”

  “I’m sorry; don’t know what else to say . . .”

  “Your life preservers and lifejackets are our only option. Face what that means. The French crew is now armed and stationed at all control points. There will be no hijack. Stealing a lifeboat without being shot or captured will not be possible.”

  Eddie looked toward a shoreline neither of them could see. “You can’t swim. We’ve got war, weather, and money. We’ll find a sailor or two we can bribe, or trust.”

  Saba looked away, struggling with the finality of her aspirations. Now came the pragmatic betrayal for cause. She would sell him and the Mendelssohn papers to the Nazis for her freedom and arms to fight for Palestine. Or Eddie would strike first, betray her to the French in hopes of saving his family, the Jews of Europe, and himself. Such was the way grand dreams always ended. “What I can or cannot do does not alter our circumstance. See it for what it is.”

  Eddie stepped forward half a step and clutched her arm. “Are you trying to tell me something?”

  Saba was calm. The decision had been made long ago.

  Eddie ripped the Mendelssohn papers out of his shirt. “Here. However you want to use them, they’re yours.”

  Saba took the papers. She slid them under her shirt, her eyes tight on Eddie.

  Eddie’s face was red, his gaze resolute. “I’m not choosing you over my family, not if it kills them. Tell me you’ll save them from Schroeder. Promise me. On your goddamn stars. And I’ll go with Schroeder when we land.”

  “You would betray your country?”

  “One of us has to. Mine’s gonna put me in prison or execute me. I love my family.” Eddie swallowed. “And you. But you gotta promise.” Eddie jammed his hand at the storm. “On every fucking thing that matters to you.”

  Saba nodded. “I promise.”

  Eddie exhaled hard. “Then let’s get to it.” He stood.

  Saba grabbed his sleeve and pulled him back underneath the rigging. She had tears in her eyes. “If selling you were my decision, Eddie Owen would long ago be in Nazi hands.”

  Eddie blinked. “Meaning what?”

  “The Nazi cannot be trusted, by me, by you. There is no bargain with him.” She pointed at the waves they could not float, waiting for Eddie to understand. “The water will kill us both. Only you can be saved. The motives of the French who command this ship will allow it. Sell me to them; you and your papers are free.”

  Eddie leaned back, slowly shaking his head. His lips trembled, finally he said, “Never happen,” then reached to rest one wrist on her shoulder, his fingers light on the back of her neck. “I know where you’ve been, so I forgive you for thinking I’m like the other men you know. We go in the water together, you and me. We make it for us and everyone else or we don’t.”

  Saba remained in his grasp, a hand light on her neck, the other clutching her arm. To her complete and utter surprise, she nodded, in what must be love for the first time in her life. “Then together is what it will be.”

  “See?” Eddie beamed. “See. I knew it! Mrs. Eddie Owen. Forget princess, you’ll be the queen. Benny and Floyd will have you—”

  “Stop.” Saba stared until his grin faltered and the tears in her eyes ran down her cheeks. “There will be no Texas for us. Just here. And now. This is all we will have.”

  “But—”

  “Be a soldier; I have seen you do it. We are lovers, that is true.” Saba reddened again. “And . . . that must be behind us. Now we fight—the water first, and if we somehow survive what we cannot, then the colonial masters who will await us on the shore.”

  Eddie’s grip tightened on her neck and arm. “We’re not gonna die. I won’t let you drown and no colonial master is killing us. We’re gonna have children, five of ’em after we practice a lot. And if it isn’t in Texas then it’ll be in Palestine. But you and me . . . we ain’t over.”

  Saba smiled through the tears at a man who wanted her as she was, who knew her history, her shame, and saw no damage. A man she could marry under her stars. The impossibility shook her. A young girl’s imagined future, standing in front of her now. It was . . . was almost as good as having it to live. She nodded. “For us, then, Eddie Owen.” Her right hand unpinned the ten franc note from inside her pocket, pulled Eddie’s hand to hers, and pushed both at the sky. “And them, yours and mine.”

  Erich Schroeder squinted into Bari’s Gran Porto, searching for the running lights of the Caubarreaux. The ship was due but the shore, sea, and harbor were obliterated in rain, the pier itself only partially visible in the murk. Once the Caubarreaux appeared and was docked, the Italian stationmaster would counter the French captain’s threats by saying the Adriatic was not safe with war imminent. The Italian ministry would declare an impound—all passengers and crew would be confined to the ship until further notice. Possibly weeks, the Italian ministry would speculate.

  Two large maritime lamps ignited with a pop. Both lights rotated, glowing steam, splashing the pier with wide, milky beams. The moneyed Jews behind the fence on the pier’s south side remained huddled with their “holiday” luggage and hope for secret transit from Lebanon to Palestine. Proof, yet again, that the extermination camps should be in Palestine not Poland. The Eternal Jew paid to reach Palestine. It was . . . perfect. Lightning drilled into the harbor. The Italians next to Schroeder shrank. Thunder pounded the pier. Only the Aryans stood erect in the rain. One of the two maritime lamps exploded in white sparks. The other remained focused on the Jews being segregated five at a time for preboarding inspection.

  A phalanx of gray and black SS uniforms marched up the pier toward the smeary lights of the stationmaster house. The two E-6 Gestapo stood outside in their long leather coats. The SS phalanx marched past the Gestapo to the Jews’ fenced quarantine. At the quarantine’s double gate, an Italian soldier struggled with the lock. The gate swung open. The SS officer in command sent eight of his ten SS in to the Jews. The soldiers grabbed three and returned them to the lights of the stationmaster house. Two women ran to the fence, shouting their men’s innocence
.

  Schroeder laughed. Innocence? Have you not seen Europe? The Jews’ toilet?

  The three men were placed in front of the Gestapo. Questions were asked. The Jews answered their innocence. Facts were stated; accusations were made—capital crimes against the Reich, embezzlement, treason. The Jews protested. The Gestapo waved them silent and signaled for the SS to take the Jews off the pier. The smaller Jew drew a pistol and fired twice. The Gestapo landed flat, splattering the pier. The Jew ran through the surprised SS. A maritime light spun and splashed his path. Five SS soldiers opened fire; the Jew pancaked on his belly. Jews in the quarantine shouted and surged at their fence. A section wavered and collapsed. The SS soldiers pivoted and fired into the quarantine. The first row fell. The other Jews ducked or froze.

  The SS officer shouted, “Einstellen!”

  The SS ceased fire. The officer stepped forward, leveled his Luger at a standing Jew. The Jew did not retreat. The SS officer fired one round. The Jew’s head bucked on his neck, his knees crumbled, and he fell in a pile. The SS officer barked a command. His soldiers advanced in a tight battle line, rifles butted to their shoulders. The Jews ringed back. Dead and wounded littered the pier. Three children remained, each clinging to a different corpse.

  Cold-blooded, pitiless, efficient. Schroeder could not have been prouder. This was how the British had ruled when they had successfully subjugated the world. Will. Resources. Destiny. The Reich was ready. Schroeder smiled in the rain; the operatic irony had shifted in his favor. These Jews had killed a Gestapo. They would be the perfect diversion when it came time to extricate Eddie Owen from Himmler’s grasp.

  Flashes to Schroeder’s left. Out in the Adriatic, the darkness glowed red and white. Muffled concussions followed. More flashes. More concussions. Schroeder watched the staccato lights and spoke to the remaining Gestapo officer he would later murder to secure Eddie Owen. “Navy cannon. Italy invades Albania. The world finally has its war.”

  Eddie explained to Saba what he knew about oceans and current. The drop from near the stern of the ship would be thirty feet into fifteen-foot seas. If they could time the jump to the top of a wave, the fall would be half as far. But they had to jump away from the ship or they’d be sucked down and under into the propellers. Away was the most important. Eddie would carry all the weight—the pistols, the money belt, the papers wrapped in the ship’s galley bag and waterproof lifejacket fabric. He could swim; Saba couldn’t.

  Saba and Eddie steadied on the wrong side of the deck rail, lashed together at the wrist, pounded by wind and rain. Each wore two lifejackets wrapped around a halved life preserver on their backs. Two French sailors appeared on the aft deck. One shined a light. The other shouted, aimed a pistol, and shouted again.

  Eddie yelled, “Jump!” and jerked Saba off the rail. The gale wind hit them and blew both back into the ship’s side. As they were being sucked under to drown, a fifteen-foot wall of black scoured them off the steel and hurled them into the Adriatic.

  The Caubarreaux dwarfed Schroeder as it slid into its berth on the Bari pier. The portholes below deck poked lifeless ghost beams into the black. Dim yellow lights hollowed the decks empty of the armed French sailors who should have manned them. Schroeder shielded his eyes from the rain. There would be dead French sailors aboard. Two Italian maritime police boats bobbed in the harbor chop, guns and floodlights trained on the Caubarreaux’s aft deck and propellers. A group of Italian soldiers took their position at the ship’s stern. The Gestapo and the SS had control of the pier. The Italians would board. The Raven would kill them first. A search onboard had been agreed, the French captain influenced by the artillery shells raining down on the civilian population of Albania and the private notification that the Caubarreaux had “the Raven” aboard. Unspoken to the passengers was that no passenger would disembark without a gunpoint Gestapo/SS inspection. Schroeder stood with the ten Waffen-SS at the bottom of the gangway. If Saba was smart—and she was—she would use Eddie as a hostage shield, then bargain him away when the opportunity presented itself. If Eddie had the Mendelssohn papers, Schroeder would support and facilitate the exchange. How the remaining Gestapo officer would react was unknown.

  Schroeder was scanning the ship’s decks when he was informed that two passengers had jumped into the sea some thirty minutes ago.

  CHAPTER 37

  April, 1939

  Roiling surf spit Saba facedown onto a rocky coastline. She puked saltwater, clawed the rocks. Surf pounded her back. She clawed higher, spit blood, pushed with her feet and knees until her head and shoulders were out of the surf. Panting and puking, she gripped tight, waited for the next wave to hit. It did, receded, and she scrambled out of the froth.

  The wave that had slammed her and Eddie into the ship’s hull had ripped Eddie away, sucked her down the backside wave, and rolled her underwater. She’d thrashed above and below the surface, was pounded almost unconscious until . . . somehow she was here. Saba rolled to her back. Rain pounded her face. Part of a lifejacket was cinched to her chest. Eddie’s engineering had saved her. She yelled into the dark, “Eddie!” coughed saltwater, and yelled again, “Eddie!” The storm was too loud. She crabbed across the rocks, yelling at the surf. “Eddie!”

  A voice yelled back.

  “Eddie! Over here.” Saba stood. “On the rocks!” A light blinded her. Saba ducked, spun, her foot wedged a rock, the knee buckled, and she pitched forward into the surf.

  The voice was not Eddie’s.

  Saba knelt the wet stones of a natural boat ramp. Her wrists were handcuffed; her face bloody and swollen. Erich Schroeder and two Italian Carabinieri policemen stood over her, their silhouettes black shapes in the rain. A third Carabinieri lay dead beside her. Schroeder told the two Italians who had survived her capture to add the shackles he had brought. One Carabinieri sat his weight on her back. The other Carabinieri clamped the shackles to her ankles, then stood and demanded the reward that Schroeder had circulated to the police up and down the coast.

  Schroeder kicked Saba hard in the ribs. “Take her to the castle.”

  The Carabinieri barked: “The reward first.”

  Schroeder snarled. “She does not have the papers. I must talk with her. She will tell me. We will find the papers. You will be paid your reward.”

  “No. You will pay now. Or she goes to the stazione polizia—to the Gestapo.”

  Schroeder reached for his pistol and pointed it at Saba curled in the rain. “She is the murderer of hundreds at Haifa and hundreds at Janîn. She and her kind plan the same for Bari. Do you wish to answer for that if the Gestapo fails? They and the SS are busy with the Jew conspirators on the pier. I know this Arab. I know how to extract the answers we require. Castello Normanno has . . . privacy and proper equipment, yes?”

  The Carabinieri policeman hesitated, then nodded that this was so. It was the last place an enemy of Il Duce saw. The Carabinieri turned away as he said to his fellow officer, “Castello Normanno. Avanti. Rapidi!”

  Saba’s interrogation cell at Castello Normanno was five walls of cold, medieval stone and one of iron bars. The cell was narrow and deep with a drain at the center and smelled of strong cleansers. Iron eyehooks protruded from the ceiling. A hanging bulb dangled from a rusted chain strung just above her head. Muffled voices echoed somewhere in the prison and the storm howled beyond that.

  Saba blinked in the harsh light. Her lips were swollen; blood caked her cheeks. She sat a death chair, stripped to a soldier’s sleeveless T-shirt and her belted pants. Painful leather ligatures circled her neck, wrists, and ankles. At the cell’s bars, five men leered at her face and body, each taking her in as if the liberties were their due. Her legs were spread almost to their limits and invited more focused attention; the black keffiyeh was gone, her face uncovered. It was Jerusalem again. The first gate of hell.

  Her eyes jumped for information. Across from her, Erich Schroeder sat a bench in silence, staring between his boots. Schroeder had remained silent while the men of t
he prison had come to look at her and leer. Schroeder stood, gathered himself, and un-holstered his Luger. At her chair, he bent to a knee and placed his empty hand near her crotch, edging it slowly forward until it brushed the fabric of her pants.

  Saba held her breath.

  Schroeder began the corner of a smile. “I should continue?” His Luger rose to caress her breast and flatten a nipple. “This is good, yes? Or you would prefer the British way?”

  Saba said nothing, but reddened so much that Schroeder eased back and added to the smile.

  “I will allow the Italians to have you first.” He tapped at the wood in front of her crotch. “Two or three of the youngest while their fellows watch. Then one prisoner at a time—would five or six be sufficient to satisfy you? When they are finished, you will smell like them, like their saliva and excretions. Then we will talk, ja? And by then I will have your boyfriend, too.”

  Saba tried to spit in Schroeder’s face but choked. She hoped Eddie was alive. If she had survived the waves with his engineering, he could be safe somewhere.

  “Did he fuck you, too? Of course he did. Was it good . . . in the mouth? Yes, yes, you liked it didn’t you? Sadly, these gentlemen will likely be nervous about your teeth.” Schroeder patted near her teeth and ran a fingertip over the wings. “You will have to be satisfied with other pleasures.”

  Saba retreated deep into her family, to Khair-Saleh, to her partisans with whom she’d shared the fight. They were all now stars in the sky. She would will it and be there, too. The slap rocked the chair. She kept her eyes shut tight, her mind buried in the stars, in a soft, cool grave when this was over. Another slap rattled her teeth. She rushed deeper, saying good-bye to Palestine, saying she had helped Palestine by helping America, that Eddie Owen is a good man who won’t forget her, who will tell others what had happened. Two hands gripped her ears and slammed her head against the wood. Soon her people would defeat the colonial ruler, British, Nazi, Zionist. Soon. The stomach punch opened her eyes.