Rising Tides (20 page)

“No, you take her.”

Aurore scooped up her new grandchild and held her close. “What are you going to call her?”

“I wanted to name her after you, but Aurore’s an old-fashioned name. Too old-fashioned.”

Aurore didn’t know whether to be grateful or apologize. Instead, filled with the joy of grandparenthood, she laughed. “So what did you decide on instead?”

“Dawn. Aurore means dawn, doesn’t it? This way she’ll be named after you, but she’ll be an original, too.”

“Dawn. It’s lovely. It’s perfect. Thank you, dear. I couldn’t be more honored.”

“I’m going back to sleep now.” Cappy closed her eyes. “Dawn’s going to be queen of carnival someday.”

Aurore stood beside the bed and rocked the future queen of carnival until the nurse came and took her away.

N
icky had observed Muslim women in their veils and wondered how the world would look from such a narrow window. Now she knew firsthand. When there was less to see, everything was finely focused and enhanced.

She pulled her veil tighter and stopped to watch a blacksmith and his young apprentice at a makeshift forge beside a low wall. Boys surrounded them, some sporting one long lock on their shaven heads. The pig tail, the handle of the Prophet, was a means for Allah to haul them to heaven at the moment of their death. Phillip yearned for one.

Despite the good intentions of the French architects who had designed the new medina, the streets were still crowded and flies still unchallenged. There had been resistance to changing a life-style older than Casablanca itself. The French had installed running water in the first dwellings here, but there had been such a protest from the women whose trips to the community wells were social occasions that now there were wells on every block.

The blacksmith shouted threats, and the boys dispersed. Nicky clutched her basket tighter and started through the
crowds. As she walked, she watched for the street that would take her out of the medina to Hugh’s apartment.

Today she was a Muslim woman on her way home from the
souk.
Loaves of bread peeked through the basket’s bright cover. Earlier she had changed out of a suit and tucked it in the basket, too. The djellaba and veil belonged to Rashida, who lived nearby.

She rarely visited Hugh at home. They met in other places, at times when he was least likely to be followed. Sometimes they met at Palm Court, in full view of the world—because not to would be suspicious in itself. But from the moment she began to feed him information she overheard at the club or received from Hasim, Rashid a’s husband, they had balanced a growing need to be in each other’s presence with the fear of discovery.

Outside the medina, she passed two gesturing Ger mans she had often seen at Palm Court. Neither took notice of her. She was another Muslim woman, the inferior sex of an inferior race. She wished she could trail them and eavesdrop. As clever as the Nazis believed them selves to be, she had learned that when they spoke of their fatherland they were often emotional and unguarded. Patriotism loosened their tongues—she was glad their particular brand of it was good for something.

Hugh’s two-story building was modest, crowded into a small square with three more exactly like it. Boys in gaily knit caps played ball in the center courtyard, while inside, their sisters helped prepare the evening meal. Rashida insisted that, despite veils and heavy robes, the smallest child knew his own mother, even in a crowd, but Nicky wondered if any of these little boys thought that she belonged to them.

Inside, no one was in the hallway, but she lingered and watched a moment before she knocked on Hugh’s door. When it opened, she held up her basket. “I have bread to sell.”

Seconds passed; then he grinned and drew her for ward. The door shut behind her, but by then she had al ready removed her veil. “Do you know how hot this damned thing is?” She fanned herself with a hand. “I don’t know how Rashida stands it.”

“What are you doing here dressed like that?”

“Aren’t there better ways to greet me?”

He pulled her close and held her against him. She could feel his heart beating against her. “I was visiting Rashida. Hasim had some interesting news, and I wanted to tell you as soon as possible.”

“It’s dangerous for you to come here.”

“Dangerous?” She laughed. “Not in this getup. And besides, we both know what the Germans think of you OSS boys. Why would they spy on you here?”

He squeezed her hard before he let her go. “You can’t resist, can you?”

“Never.” She smiled up at him. She never missed the opportunity to bait Hugh and his comrades. They called them selves the Twelve Disciples, but the Germans called them idiots. Their positions as vice-consuls were a cover for their work with the Office of Strategic Services, a new intelligence agency headed by a close comrade of Roosevelt’s, Wild Bill Donovan. They had never hidden their secret well.

In their first year in Morocco, the Disciples had made some glorious mistakes. One had fallen in love with a Frenchwoman who had connections to the German and Italian armistice commissions. Another had gathered all his information from Casablanca’s elite society—which, despite its pretensions, was swollen with intelligence officers from both sides. They had antagonized local State Department officials, and several had nearly been fired.

But she could afford to tease, because along the way the men
had settled into their jobs. She knew the value of the information they had collected. Talk was spreading of an Allies’ invasion of North Africa—along with talk of an Axis one. If either occurred, every scrap of information, every map, every rumor, would strengthen the Allies’ chances of eventual victory.

Hugh pushed down her hood, and she shook back her hair in relief. The air was sweltering, and she could feel perspiration trickling down her spine. “I could really use a drink.”

His hand settled in her hair. It had grown longer over the past year, in wild curls that grabbed at his fingers. She saw he wasn’t going to let her go easily.

“It’s been two weeks since we’ve been alone,” he said. “Did you think of that when you heard Hasim’s in formation?”

“It crossed my mind.”

“I’ve missed you.”

“Phillip’s missed you.”

“And you?”

She moved away. “I’ve thought of you now and then, but I know you’ve been gone. I tried to get word to you last week that I had to see you. Arthur came instead.”

“He told me about the navigational charts Hasim gave you.”

“I didn’t know you boys shared information.”

“The charts are priceless. If they’re accurate.”

“You don’t trust anyone, do you?” Hugh’s apartment was almost sterile in its simplicity. Idly she lifted one of his few keepsakes, a wire sculpture of an argan tree that Phillip had crafted at school. Four goats stood on the thickest limbs, dining on tender branches and leaves. “Do you trust me?”

“I don’t even trust myself.”

She looked up. The expression in his eyes consumed her. She couldn’t look away.

“What did Hasim tell you today?” he asked.

“What good is his information if you don’t trust him? Is he just another lying Arab to you?”

“Don’t start a fight, Nicky. Even our best sources can get faulty information. The moment someone knows Hasim’s helping us, they’ll feed him lies. Who knows if it’s happened already?”

“You feed them lies. They feed you lies. We feed each other lies. If it stops someday, is any of us going to remember how to tell the truth?”

“What did Hasim tell you?”

“He has it on good authority that the Allies are going to land in northern France.”

“Does he? After the slaughter at Dieppe last month?” The surprise Allied attack on France’s Iron Coast had been an unqualified disaster, resulting in the loss of thousands of British and Canadian soldiers.

“His sources claim there’s been an increase in aerial reconnaissance missions,” Nicky said.

Hugh didn’t seem surprised. “Maybe we’re bigger fools than the Germans think.”

“Hasim says it’s all just a plot to confuse, but he wanted me to tell you that the rumor’s reached Casa.”

“Did he say why he thinks it’s a rumor?”

“Because he believes the Allies intend to land in North Africa.”

Hugh shrugged. “Some people believe it’s going to be Norway.” He moved toward her and took the sculpture from her hands. “But it would be great if the Ger mans believed it was Dakar.”

“And what evidence would there be?”

“Our government’s approached the government of Haiti for permission to hold amphibious training exercises on their
beaches. Some people would say that’s the place to train for an operation in the tropics.”

“And how would I know that?”

“A Haitian cousin?”

“How could I have forgotten?”

“There’ve been some interesting educational campaigns aimed at our troops. Talks on malaria-carrying mosquitoes, warnings against eating unwashed fruit…”

“Hap, these things rarely come up in conversation.”

“But from time to time they might.”

“I’ll go up to the first Nazi I see and tell him straight out that Hap Gerritsen, vice-consul and inept spy, wants him to think the Allies are heading for Dakar because they’re really heading somewhere else. Like Casa.”

He grinned. “Maybe we
are
going to Dakar. Maybe we want them to think the rumors are so obvious that it couldn’t be Dakar at all.”

“Then you picked me because I’m so obvious?”

“I picked you because I adore you.” He framed her face with his hands. Her eyelids drifted shut as he bent to kiss her. She relaxed against him, and her lips parted.

Over the past year, she had fallen slowly and reluctantly in love with Hugh Gerritsen. Neither of them had wanted a romance; life was already too uncertain. At first their relationship had been professional. With cautious enthusiasm she had relayed gossip she heard at Palm Court, reported who had asked about whom, even who did or didn’t show up on certain nights. Her enthusiasm had ripened after Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into the war. As the Americans became more restricted in their movements and the sympathetic French less candid about where their loyalties lay, she had been forced to work harder for information. But the potential rewards had been greater.
With Hugh’s permission, she had asked Hasim, a port official, for help. His in formation had been invaluable, and her efforts had brought her into closer contact with Hugh.

Hugh was a man like none she had ever met. He was younger than she, and his exposure to the world had been less brutal. But Hugh wasn’t young in the important ways. His superior intelligence was offset by a gentleness of character. His concern for the world was driven by his ability to put himself in the place of others. His sensitivity was neither so hidden nor so exposed that it became a weakness.

They had moved closer one inch at a time. Gulfs separated them—her race, his call to the priesthood, a map that would never look the same again. They had fought their attraction, and still they had been drawn together. The God Hugh was so fond of seemed to have time on his hands to torture them.

He held her now, limb to limb, hearts pounding against each others’ chests. She could feel his body’s response, and his denial of it. They had no future together; it was even possible that the world had no future. But they couldn’t seem to say goodbye.

“Hap…” She pulled away at last. It rarely went farther than this. He wanted her, but he had never acted on his desires. She would have given herself gladly, but she wouldn’t offer. He had the most to lose if the attraction that clawed at them was set free.

“I’m going to be away more and more,” he said.

“I know.”

“What do you know?”

“I know you’re busier. And I know if the Allies don’t win a battle soon, morale will be so terrible that we may never win. And I know that we still aren’t strong enough to win in Europe.”

“We’re going to fight in Dakar.”

“Sure we are. And that’s why you’re away so much of the time, and why moments like this…”

He put his hand under her chin. “Are what I live for.”

The expression in his eyes gave her courage. “What’s going to happen to us? Is that classified, too?”

“I’m trying to find out what I can offer you.”

“Find out or decide?”

“I love you, and we’re at war.”

The declaration was new, but the problems weren’t. She couldn’t even revel in knowing that he loved her, too. “And I’m colored, and you had planned to give your life to God.”

He shook his head. “Am I supposed to pretend this is easy? One man you loved has already abandoned you.”

“We don’t have a future, Hap. There’s nowhere in the United States where we can live without facing hatred every time we step outside our door. I can’t pretend I’m white, and even if I wanted to, I have a son who can’t.”

“But there are places we could live when the war’s over. Maybe even here in Morocco.”

“Can you pretend a country that still practices slavery, even discreetly, would be a good place to raise our children? And can you leave your family? Your plans for the priesthood?”

“I’ve already written my mother.”

“What exactly have you told her?”

“That I’ve fallen in love, and when the war’s over, I want to spend my life with you.”

“Didn’t you leave out a detail or two?”

“No. I didn’t leave out anything.”

Not a flicker of remorse crossed his face. She knew a little about his background, about the shipping company he had been bred to run, about the conflicts between his parents and the irrational hatreds of his father. Now he had told his mother,
a product of old New Or leans, that he was going to marry a Negro. “What will she say?” she asked.

“I don’t know. It’s what you say that matters, isn’t it?”

“You did this without talking to me?”

“Yes.”

“You did it without knowing whether I loved you, too?”

“No.”

She closed her eyes. “You were that sure of your self.”

“Nicky, I’m not sure of anything except that choosing between you and God, you and my family, was nothing next to losing you.”

And what could she say that compared? She let him kiss her again, but the weight of the things that separated them was as great as her joy at the commitment he had made.

A week later, Hugh watched Nicky sing her last set of the night. Earlier, a fight had broken out between a Polish Jew trying to flee to Lisbon and an Abwehr agent. Hugh hadn’t been able to do anything without drawing attention to himself. The Jew had been led away by a French police officer, and Hugh wondered where he would wake up tomorrow.

Even at the end of a long evening, Nicky still sounded fresh. Tonight she had rarely looked at him as she sang, certainly no more than she looked at anyone. She had stopped at his table once, just as she had stopped at everyone’s. But during that brief moment, he had let her know that he would visit her later in her rooms above the club.