“Great. Does it rain in the desert? I have visions of sand dunes.”
“This is just and soil. No sand dunes. They’re farther south. And, yes, every once in a while it rains in this desert.”
“Where is this Frenchman we’re looking for?” Canidy asked, looking up from the map.
Baker hesitated just a moment before replying.
“Here,” he said. “Between Benahmed and Oued-Zem. He works in the phosphate mines. His name is Grunier. Louis Albert Grunier.”
Baker went in the drawer again and came out with half a dozen snapshots. They showed a not very good-looking man in round spectacles. Though only about thirty, he was already balding.
“These were taken a little over two years ago,” Baker said, “in the Belgian Congo. By now, he’s lost some more hair, and he’s a little thinner.”
“What was he doing in the Belgian Congo?”
“He’s a mining engineer,” Baker said.
“And we want to know what he’s doing, is that it?”
“You don’t need to know why we want him.”
“OK.” Canidy shrugged theatrically. “I’m not at all curious.”
“That’s the right attitude, Dick,” Baker said, with the barest hint of a smile.
“So what am I supposed to do besides be agreeable and smile at my long-lost friend?”
Baker caught Canidy’s eyes. “Rather a lot more than t lat. Canidy raised his brow. “There are a few more pieces to what we’re up to in Morocco than you’ve learned yet. First, you already know that we have to act with a bit more subtlety here than Americans are used to. We’re not-shall we say?-totally welcome. On top of that you know that it is crucial for us to conceal from the French and the Gerinans our connection with the sudden disappearance of Monsieur Grunier. Which is why we need to approach Sidi el Ferruch. He has the facilities to do for us what we can’t do for ourselves. On top of that, I don’t want to need to trust him with the knowledge of the value Grunier has to us. That knowledge is a tempting and quite salable morsel. Next, we have another piece of knowledge which, on the surface, is even more tempting and salable. This morsel we intend to entrust to el Ferruch.”
“What is that?”
“The commander of the French naval base at Casablanca is an ancient, salty, irascible vice admiral d’escadre, whose name is Jeanphillip de Verbey. Some people say he’s daffy. De Verbey has sent delicate feelers to us hinting that he would be willing ‘temporarily’ to leave his command in order to join the Free French in their battle against les Boches. These feelers reached Robert Murphy and then me. Neither of us failed to notice that de Verbey outranks Brigadier General de Gaulle and that thus he and not de Gaulle would by rights-according to protocol-assume command of Free French forces. De Gaulle is not popular in London and Washington… Is this making sense?”
“A little. What you’re saying, I gather, is that in Morocco and France de Verbey is a big fish and Grunier is a little fish. But that as far as you’re concerned, you need Grunier more. Still, de Verbey is a lever against de Gaulle.”
“Right.”
“So, in other words, de Verbey can be used as a smoke screen.”
V “Doubly right. You’re catching on. We’ll take de Verbey aboard the submarine with the maximum publicity that secrecy allows, and we’ll also find room in the sub for poor Monsieur Grunier, who is an agent of ours who has had the bad luck to be compromised. Luckily for him, we have gone to the trouble of providing the sub for the admiral.”
“Fucking devious. Why?”
“Well, to keep the devious and very bright pasha of Ksar es Souk off the scent. And also, to do the same for the French and the Germans, should they get wind of what we’re doing. And so we’ll approach el Ferruch with a request that we’d love for him to transport the admiral in great secrecy to our submarine, which will be waiting a few miles west of Safi. We’ll haggle about how much his cooperation is worth. And we’ll agree to a figure in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand dollars.”