“And Grunier?”
“That’s where you and your vagrant friend Eric come in. While el Ferruch is taking care of the admiral, you and Fulmar will snatch Grunier.”
“Delightful.”
“I thought you’d be pleased.”
“What’s in it for Eric?”
“He can go home and he can keep his money,” Baker said, smiling. It was not a smile that made Canidy comfortable. “And there’s one more piece to this business that you should know about,” Baker went on. “Monsieur Grunier would much prefer to go home to his wife and kids than help us with the war effort. And he-rightlyfears that they are at risk if he does not play ball with the Germans. As a consequence, we are going to have to help him out with his family.”
“OK, so when do we start?”
“Tomorrow.”
LIThe blue 1941 Ford four-door Baker took from the consulate motor pool the next day carried two extra tires and wheels, four five-gallon cans of gasoline, a five-gallon can of water, and a crate of canned food.
“That survival equipment isn’t really necessary?” Canidy asked.
“It may be,” Baker said, with one of his rare smiles. “I’ve been here before. My experience is that when Michelin says ‘dirt, singlelane road’ it’s a euphemism for ‘rocky camel trail.’ I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we need the tires and wheels. I hope we don’t need the food and water.”
A few miles outside Martakech, the road narrowed, and a mile later the paving disappeared as they began to climb the Atlantic slope of the Atlas Mountains. The road was steep, twisting, and before long one lane; and there were long delays waiting for : six Marrakech-bound trucks, some battered buses, and a very few automobiles to pass.
It was half past four when they reached Tizi-n-Tichka pass. From there they went downhill in low. It was dark when they reached Ouarzazate, where they would turn off the “highway” onto the “unpaved dirt road” to Ksar es Souk.
They put up in the Hotel des Chasseurs, drank two bottles of surprisingly good Moroccan burgundy with a roast lamb dinner, and then went to their simply furnished but clean and comfortable rooms.
They left Ouarzazate early the next morning, and reached Ksar es Souk shortly after two in the afternoon. The palace was larger than Canidy thought it would be, an enormous structure of what looked like adobe. The whole thing, built of dried mud and narrow flat stones upon a rocky outcropping, looked medieval, a castle out of the Crusades.
As they drove near, masked horsemen appeared and rode with them as the Ford bucked and lurched over the rocks in the road.
“Berbers Baker said. “They 9re Caucasian-white. There’s a theory that they’re descended from the Crusaders. Notice anything unusual about them?”
“Those are Thompson machine guns and Browning automatic rifles. You’d expect swords and flintlocks.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Baker said. “What I mean is that we’re surrounded. We couldn’t turn back now if we wanted to.”
Canidy turned and looked. There were now more than thirty horsemen, all armed, all masked, all riding on fine-looking horses, and none more than twenty feet behind them.
When they reached the palace, they found a village built around the outer wall. Through a small gate and then a larger one, Canidy saw that there was another wall.
A few horsemen who had come out to meet them rode through the large gate, but the majority just milled around the Ford when they stopped. Baker made up his mind, put the car in gear again, and drove through the gate.
Once inside, Canidy saw that they were in a dry moat, and the wall he had seen was the wall of the palace, rising five or six stories above them.
One of the horsemen dismounted, walked to the car, and spoke to them in French.
Baker, offering his diplomatic passport, asked for an audience with the pasha of Ksar es Souk.
The Berber pretended utter incomprehension.
The standoff went on until a new group of eight horsemen walked their animals through the gate into the dry moat. Two of them wore golden cords on their burnooses, identifying them as noblemen. The noblemen carried shotguns, but the other six were armed with Thompson submachine guns and rifles.