Rising Tides (22 page)

One man disappeared back inside; the other stayed to light a cigarette. Hugh risked a better view. The man didn’t turn, but Hugh could see that he wore a white djellaba and fez. He was almost sure it was the man he had followed, but he still had no proof it was the man Nicky had seen talking to the Riffis.

The other man returned, and this time their conversation was louder. The man in the djellaba was expected somewhere, and the other man would lead him to his destination. No mention was made of a boy, no mention of where they were going and why. The other man lit a cigarette, too, and they smoked in silence. Then they disappeared back into the house. Hugh
thought he heard a door creaking. They were leaving, and he was torn. If he stayed, he would never find them again. If he left, and Phillip was here, Phillip might die—if he wasn’t dead already.

Hugh heard voices in the alley, growing dimmer as the men moved away. He worked his way out of his hiding place. He had made his decision. A quick search of the house, then he would follow and hope that he could find them again.

He crept across the courtyard to the stairs. Like everything else about the house, they were crumbling. He took them anyway, moving as silently as he could. The room at the top was bolted shut with modern hardware. He had become a proficient burglar in the past year, trained by another agent whose expertise extended to safes, as well. The lock provided little resistance when he jimmied it with his blade.

The room was dark, smaller than he’d expected, and, from every indication, empty. He stepped inside, but he couldn’t close the door, because he needed what little light filtered in from the street. Straw crunched under his feet as he moved slowly, examining everything. The only furniture was a low wooden table holding an empty oil lamp. The air was dank, as if the room had been closed up for decades. Yet there was a lock on the door that was newer than anything else associated with the house.

Something rustled behind him. He whirled, his knife still in his hand, to see a scrawny cat diving for mice in the straw by the door. He willed his heart to beat normally and started back outside. He saw no point in continuing to search the room, despite the lock. Phillip wasn’t here.

He was halfway down when he remembered the window that had caught his eye from the alley. He looked up, but it wasn’t visible from the steps. He knew there was a window,
yet the room had been dark. He turned to search the room again.

Inside, he sheathed his knife, then moved to the left and followed the walls with his hands. Far left of the door, the wall was stone, but slightly rougher than the stone of the wall beside it, as if it had come from a different quarry. He felt each stone, prying with his fingers. At the bottom of the wall, near the middle, one small stone gave under pressure. He worked it loose, then the one beside it. After three more, the resulting space was just large enough for a man to slither through.

He fell to the floor, peering through the hole into an other room that was nearly the size of his. Shadows obscured fully half of it; the other half appeared empty except for another table. He was preparing to propel himself through the hole when something rustled near his feet. He suspected the cat again, but he pushed him self upright in time to see a man springing at him. He rolled to one side, knocking his head on the edge of the stones, but the evasion was successful. The intruder crashed to the floor.

The man was on him before he could move away. Hugh grabbed an arm descending toward his chest and thrust it to the side, smashing his knee into the other man’s groin as he did. The maneuver gave him just enough of an advantage to use his own weight to force the man to his back.

His opponent was smaller, but powerful. Hugh tried to knee his groin again, but the man twisted to one side, and Hugh’s knee slammed against the floor. In the first moments of the struggle, he had glimpsed the flash of steel. If he couldn’t disarm his opponent, he was going to die. He smashed the man’s hand against the floor, but without the necessary force. He tried again, but this time the man was prepared. He was muscular,
and grimly determined. With another twist and a surge of strength, Hugh was lying beneath him.

Hugh could feel the stones at his head. He was pinned against the wall, and the best he could do was keep the knife from descending. He would die here, perhaps for nothing more than breaking into an empty room. The man slammed the edge of his free hand against Hugh’s throat, and for a moment Hugh’s grip weakened. The knife inched closer. The man lifted his empty hand to strike at Hugh’s throat once more. Hugh made a grab for his wrist, brushing one of the stones he had removed as he did. His fingers closed around it, and with one last, desperate surge of strength, he slammed it against the side of his attacker’s turbaned head.

The man stiffened, then fell limply against him. At first, Hugh thought it was a trick. He grasped the man’s arm harder and slammed the rock against his head again. The man remained still.

Hugh pushed him away and sought his throat to find a pulse. Something sticky oozed against his fingers, and he followed its trail to the man’s head. Blood poured from a large wound. With horror, he searched again for a pulse, but the man was dead.

He still couldn’t see his victim clearly. It seemed imperative, somehow. The light was barely strong enough for him to distinguish his adversary’s shape. With trembling hands, Hugh dragged him to the middle of the room and turned him over. Blue eyes were fixed on the face of Allah. Under the turban, the man’s hair was too closely cropped for its color to be determined, but his beard was red.

Hugh made it to the door before he vomited. Back inside the room, he skirted the body and found the hole in the wall. He lowered himself to his back, and this time he propelled himself
into the second room without incident. In the shadows of the farthest corner, he found Phillip bound and gagged. Piled high beside the boy were two dozen crates of explosives.

Nicky joined Hugh in her living room. He had gone home to change while she settled and soothed Phillip. Now his head rested against the back of her sofa, and his eyes were closed. “He’s asleep,” she said.

“Will he stay that way?”

“I think he’s talked it out, for now. And even if he has nightmares, I’m not sure they’ll wake him.”

“The first thing he said after I untied him was that he knew I’d find him.”

“And now you’re his hero.” She folded her arms. “Even though you’re the one who risked his life. A miracle kept him alive, not some pissant junior diplomat playing spy in a culture he doesn’t understand. But Phillip doesn’t know that.”

“It wasn’t a miracle. God wasn’t anywhere near that alley. It was luck. Dumb luck. I followed the right person. I could just as easily have followed the wrong one.”

“And my son would be dead.”

“I killed a man. A stone, a skull. Paradise. It was so easy, so natural.”

She could see that the horror of it still gripped him. “Better him than Phillip.”

“His blood ran over my fingers. At the time, I wasn’t even sure who he was. He could have been a man de fending his home.”

“He was the man who stole my child! I would have killed him if I could have, and gladly.”

“You’re stronger than I am.” He opened his eyes. The bleakness there cut a swath through her anger. “I’m a weak
man. I fight so many battles inside me. I killed a man who deserved to be killed, and all I can think about is how warm his blood was, and the way his eyes stayed open after he was dead. I love a woman, but I deny my self the pleasures of her body because I want to be above my need for her.”

“Hap.” She found herself moving closer; she forced herself to stop. “I don’t know why you came back. Go home. Get some sleep.”

“I was sure Phillip would be safe. Do you think I risked his life because I don’t care about him? I thought it through a hundred times before I asked you for his help. I never once considered that someone might have connected him with me.”

“You know that now?”

“I’m almost sure the man you saw with the other two works for German intelligence. The Riffis have been playing one side against the other, waiting to see who’ll help them achieve independence. They’ve joined a rebel operation here in the city, and they’ve been smuggling in arms and explosives across the mountains from Spain to assist whoever they decide to support. They were negotiating with the Germans tonight. They’ll negotiate with us next.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Some of it I knew. Some I’ve pieced together from things Phillip overheard.”

“And what are you going to do about it?”

“Nothing. I left everything where I found it. When the rebels discover that Phillip’s back home, they’ll know who rescued him and killed their man. But they’re not going to retaliate. Before long they’ll realize the Al lies are their best chance. Maybe we can’t make the kind of promises the Riffis want, but any promises the Nazis make are transparent lies.
They’ve already committed too many crimes against entire peoples like the Riffis. In the end, the explosives I discovered tonight will be used to support us.”

“Are you saying all this was for nothing?”

“All of it. I killed a man for nothing. I nearly destroyed you. Phillip will never view the world with the same innocence. All for nothing.”

His eyes were bleak. She had felt betrayed by Phillip’s kidnapping, as if in giving her heart to Hugh, she had opened herself up to destruction. Now she saw that his pain was as deep as her own, and that they shared this, too. The bonds between them would reach into forever.

“Go home. We’ll talk tomorrow.” She said the words, but despite the anger that had filled her, she didn’t want him to go. She wanted his arms around her. Hugh Gerritsen believed he was weak, but he was strong enough to fight battles other men couldn’t even comprehend.

“I don’t want to go home, Nicky.” He stood, but he didn’t touch her. “Let me stay.”

“Is this going to be one more thing pulling you apart?”

“Let me stay.” He held out his hand, and then, with a new expression of horror, let it drop back to his side.

She moved closer. She reached for his hand and raised it to her lips. She kissed every fingertip that the Riffi’s blood had covered. Then she led him to her bed room.

At dawn, just after the muezzin’s distant call to prayer, she lay in his arms and explained about the locket, which was the only thing she wore. “It’s my good-luck charm,” she said, smoothing her foot along the length of his leg. “It’s the only thing I have from my childhood in New Orleans.”

He lifted it from the valley between her breasts. “You don’t remember much about that time, do you?”

“Just snatches. A woman gave me this. I think she was a friend of my mother’s. She put her own photo graph inside. I thought about replacing the picture with one of Phillip, but it just never seemed right. She’s been with me a long time.”

She reached down and unfastened the catch, spreading the heart wide for him to see. He stared at the photograph for a long time. Then he removed the locket from her hand and closed it. It fell back into place between her breasts.

“It’s still early,” she said. “Phillip won’t be up for hours. Will you stay a little longer?”

He pulled her into his arms and held her against him. She fell asleep with her head on his chest.

T
he
Augusta,
an eleven-year-old heavy cruiser flying the two-starred flag of Rear Admiral Kent Hewitt left Hampton Roads, Virginia, on October 24. In the company of other naval vessels and escorted by two impressive silver blimps, she steered a route toward Great Britain. Two days later she was joined by the
Massachusetts,
a battleship just out of Casco Bay, Maine, and a flotilla of cruisers, destroyers and transports that had been headed southeast, as if bound for maneuvers in the Gulf of Leogane, Haiti. When Task Force 34 was finally assembled, she consisted of thirty-four transports and eighty-eight warships. Together the ships set sail for North Africa.

Ensign Ferris Gerritsen had a small but relatively comfortable cabin on board the
Augusta.
He had distinguished himself in officers’ training, and, better yet, he had made friends with the people who could help him determine his assignment. When rumors about Operation Torch began to circulate, Ferris had campaigned to be assigned to the
Augusta,
and his campaign—topped off with a case of Scotch—had been successful. There were other cruisers, but the
Augusta,
in addition to being the flagship, had a clear advantage. Along with Rear Admiral
Hewitt, General George Patton was going to be on board. The
Augusta
was slated to be the center of communications, and Ferris preferred to be at the center of everything. A ship loaded with top brass and screened by a fleet of destroyers was as safe as any war ship could be.

For the most part, naval life agreed with Ferris. He could stomach the food and the routine. Even following orders wasn’t too bad, since an ensign gave orders himself. He knew how to get along with the men above and below him, how to size up a situation and come out on top. He was nobody’s best pal and nobody’s enemy.

For the first few days out of port, he had been sea sick, but weeks spent on Gulf Coast ships had taught him that the nausea would pass, and it had. In his six teen days at sea he had performed a variety of duties a little faster, a little smoother, than those around him. He had decided when the extra mile would show, and on those occasions, he had gone it willingly. Just out of port he had caught the assessing eye of the
Augusta
’s captain, Gordon Hutchins. On the sixth day at sea the captain had made him his aide. Captain Hutchins had even admired the photograph of Dawn that Ferris displayed when a personal touch seemed useful.

Nicotine stained the edges of the photo, and a corner had long since disappeared. Ferris had seen his daughter a month after her birth, and he had found nothing remarkable about her. She was a wizened elf-baby who wailed more than she slept. Cappy had been despondent for his entire leave, alternately whining and sleeping, and he had trudged the hallways of his boyhood home with Dawn slung over one shoulder, counting the days until his leave was over. Now Cappy had moved back into her uncle and aunt’s home, where more servants were on staff to help with the baby. He wished his family well, but he was glad to be at sea.

The voyage had been uneventful. No one had expected the movement of so many ships to remain a secret, not through an ocean infested with German U-boats, but in all their days out of port, the task force had encountered only two merchant ships. Ferris, like nearly everyone else on board, knew more than a little about the
Augusta
’s destination and purpose.

The Allies needed a victory, and North Africa was going to be the site. Three cities had been chosen as tar gets: Algiers, Casablanca—with landings at three harbors flanking the city—and Oran. If successful, the Allies hoped to have complete control of Algeria, French Morocco and Tunisia, so that they could extend offensive operations against the Axis and annihilate the forces opposing the British in the Western Desert.

General Patton was in charge of the portion of the task force whose mission was to secure Casablanca. The fact that Hugh was living in the city Ferris was about to invade seemed like providence. Years had passed since he had seen his brother. Ferris didn’t know how he would manage it, but after Casablanca surrendered, he was going to find Hugh. Neither respect nor love took up much space in his life, but Ferris respected his brother, and if he loved anyone, that person was Hugh.

On November 7, after three days of fierce weather that made the prospect of landing troops a nightmare, the surf calmed. Since one of Ferris’s assignments during the invasion would be to take the high command ashore, he had nearly memorized contour maps of the Moroccan coast, which was hostile at best, deadly at all other times. Now it looked as if he would get to use his knowledge.

As the day progressed, the southern and northern at tack groups fanned away toward their individual destinations. Near midnight, Ferris looked over the dark water separating the
Augusta
from land. No lights signaled where Casablanca lay,
but the distinct smell of charcoal fires floated on the breeze. As the night wore on, other men had spoken of the thrills of the upcoming battle. He felt only a strange sense of déjà vu.

“Just shitting around again, Gerritsen? Don’t you have something you’re supposed to be doing?”

Ferris smiled at his fellow ensign, George Reavis. Reavis was a former Yale man who planned to make his way through the naval ranks on the strength of his Ivy League accent and his talent for cards.

“I’ve kissed enough ass in the last four hours to hold me for a while,” Ferris said.

“What do you see out there?”

“I don’t know. It reminds me of something.”

“What?”

“Just a night when I was a kid.”

“You were a kid?”

“Yeah. A long time ago. I was out on the beach with my brother. We’ve got a summer place on an island just off the coast of Louisiana. A storm was coming. We stood on the beach and watched it roll in over the Gulf.” Ferris remembered how still the air had been. The temperature had dropped as he and Hugh stood on the beach and waited. He had been afraid to breathe, afraid to move, because anything, anything at all, would bring the storm, and they would have to retreat.

But he had moved; he had only been a kid, after all. The skies had opened, and the rain had drenched them both. Hugh had half dragged, half carried him home.

“No storm expected tomorrow,” Reavis said. “Just thousands of GIs who don’t know a tinker’s damn about storming beaches, and a bunch of green navy recruits who don’t know how to help. It’s going to be a blood bath.”

Privately, Ferris thought Reavis was right. He was better
trained and prepared than the thousands of blue jackets, who had never been on a ship in their lives. But he was new at this, too. And tomorrow, Hugh wouldn’t be there to rescue him.

“Better get your ass in gear,” Reavis said with a wink. “You won’t make points with the captain standing here.”

Hugh and Arthur Flynn knew the streets of Casablanca as well as they knew the streets of their home towns. As for Hasim, Casa
was
his hometown, and he could find his way to any obscure corner. That knowledge was appreciated in the hours following midnight. On the outskirts of the city, the darkness was as thick as the smells, but Hasim hadn’t made any mistakes. The three men slipped quietly through the streets, accompanied by the yapping of a pack of starving mongrels.

“It’s not much farther,” Hasim said in his pleasantly accented English.

“I know where we are,” Arthur said. “God, this town stinks, doesn’t it?”

Hugh had warned Arthur to show whatever tact he could muster tonight. Hasim was under no obligation to guide them to their destination. He had risked his own security more than once for the Allied cause and, even now, was sheltering Nicky and Phillip with his wife and children in the village near Fez where Rashida’s family lived. But Hasim’s loyalty didn’t matter to Arthur any more than the fact that his education had rivaled Arthur’s own, or that his family was as distinguished. His skin was dark and his customs were different.

“I like the way Casa smells,” Hugh said. “It reminds me of home.”

“You’re a bit of a heathen, Gerritsen.”

“We’ll go down that street,” Hasim said, pointing to the end of the block. “Then a right and we’re there.”

“Do we need to go over what we’re planning to do?” Arthur asked Hugh.

“Not unless your memory’s failing.”

Hasim laughed. He was a small, slender man who nearly always chose Western garb. Tonight he was dressed, like Hugh and Arthur, in a dark shirt and pants. “And you still want me to stand guard?”

“If you’re sure you want to.”

“It may be your war, but it’s my city.”

“I’m very grateful.”

“So you’ve said.” Hasim’s teeth gleamed white in the darkness. “Now let’s be silent.”

Their destination was a two-story villa with parklike grounds. No lights shone from any of the windows. The three men stood in the midst of a circle of palms and gazed up at the roof.

“They’re clever bastards,” Arthur whispered. “You’ve got to give them credit. They don’t advertise.”

“No billboards or forty-foot antennas. But they’re transmitting, just the same.”

“I wouldn’t have minded a little more help,” Arthur said.

Hugh wouldn’t have minded more help, either. But personnel was stretched that night. This was the night they had all waited for, and they were just one operation of many. “Are you ready?”

“Charge,” Arthur said.

The three men moved quietly toward the house. Hasim slipped behind a thick wall of twisted crepe-myrtle trees just yards from the front windows. Arthur stood to one side of the door, while Hugh went for the lock. The knob turned in his hand. Frowning, he motioned to Arthur.

The door opened without a sound. Revolver in hand, Hugh slid inside a central hallway, positioning himself against the
closest wall. Arthur followed and backed against the wall on the other side of the doorway. The two men stared into the darkness.

A thump sounded above them. Arthur pointed to ward the stairs ten yards in front of them, and Hugh nodded. Hugh started forward, but a low hiss from Arthur’s direction made him turn.

Arthur pointed to one side of the stairs, then to him self before pointing at the other side. Hugh nodded. He wasn’t sure why Arthur wanted him to station himself beside the stairs, but he was willing to play along.

A crash sounded from the second story, followed by a loud torrent of German. Hugh doubted that Marta, his childhood nurse, had ever heard the words pouring down the stairwell. He stood absolutely still, aware now what Arthur had hoped for. Minutes passed, and the noise in creased. Then a door slammed, and two voices were distinguishable. Hugh silently translated the men’s words.

“You’re not taking your share of the weight.”

“I’ve got more than my share. Stop complaining and get moving.”

“We should have gotten some help. It’s too heavy.”

“Just shut up, will you? There’s nothing to be done about it now. We’ve got to get out of here.”

Hugh could hardly see his hand at his side, but he could still put faces to the voices. One of the men was lanky and dark-haired, with an overbite that would have made false teeth a blessing. His sidekick had short legs and a long torso, as if he had been cut off at the knees in his childhood. They were Abwehr agents, well-known to Hugh, and particularly deadly specimens despite their Mutt-and-Jeff appearance. Hugh and Arthur had
known that someone was sending clandestine radio signals from this house, but until now, they hadn’t known who.

The voices grew louder, and a thump followed on the stairs.

“You’re going to drop it, you swine.”

“Can I help it if my arms aren’t two miles long?”

“You don’t seem to be able to help much of any thing!”

“Just keep moving.”

Hugh had been anxious. He had worked toward the liberation of North Africa for months. Now that Operation Torch had come to pass, he had been afraid that he would fail his small part in the drama. But he wasn’t anxious now. He smiled as the voices and footsteps drew closer. One step, then another. A thump, a clatter, a curse. The men appeared, gripping a transmitter that was as large as a washing machine. One step, then an other.

Hugh stepped from his hiding place at the same moment as Arthur and pointed his revolver directly at Mutt’s kidneys. “Good evening,” Hugh said in Marta’s cultured German. “It’s considerate of you to tidy up for us, gentlemen, but I think you’ve forgotten. Our lease clearly states that the house comes with all its furnishings.”

By 0100 hours, naval transports began to load troops into landing craft for the four-mile stretch between Cape Fedala and Pont Blondin, but because much of the formation was off course, the front-line transports had to obtain boats from ships in the rear line. The embarking troops, loaded down with equipment, moved gingerly, and the landing was delayed even further. For Ferris and the other officers waiting on the
Augusta,
the hours crept by. Even though the
Augusta
was the home of Radio One, the nerve center for the entire assault,
information was slow coming in. Radio One was packed with inexperienced radiomen, and the messages that got through were confused at best.

It was close to dawn before the first waves of assault troops were sent in. Ferris and George Reavis squinted at the coastline from a side deck.

“Damn, that’s a lucky break!” Reavis said, pointing toward shore, where searchlights swung skyward. “The frogs aren’t going to resist after all!”

Ferris knew that General Eisenhower had broadcast a message asking the French to signal their cooperation by pointing their lights to the heavens, but the manner in which the lights were scanning the sky seemed ominous to him. “Either that or they’re looking for planes.” His words were prophetic. The lights swung down and straight over the water. The men in the assault craft were sitting ducks. The sharp clatter of machine guns floated over the water.

“Five’ll get you ten we lose half of them,” Reavis said.

By dawn, the scene on shore lined up with Reavis’s prediction. Over a hundred assault boats had left the transports, and more than half of them were splintered on beaches for miles up and down the rocky coastline.