“Why don’t you question him?”
“I’d like to, but unhappily that’s not : prudent. If I had him de tained, the S&urit6 or the Gestapo-which means both in the endwould hear about it. And this would, as a minimum, displease our American friends, who, I’m convinced, prefer to keep the man obscure. And a casual conversation with him would bring the same result, since he would run to the S6curit6 the instant the conversation was over.”
“Then leave him to the Americans.”
“Yes, honored Father, I think that’s best,” Sidi el Ferruch said. “Although,” he continued, “in light of my knowledge, we might be able to obtain more money for Grunier.”
“No,” Thami el Glaoui said. “The Americans will invade North Africa this year, I’m sure of it. We are the back door to Europe. When that happens, they will need you and me. But before that happens, I don’t want to be close to them-in their pocket, as they say. Deal with them now, but stay distant.”
“Yes, dear Father, I will.” The old man was quite right, Sidi knew. “So then we don’t need them waiting?”
“Move. We’ve held them off long enough.”
“Good.”
“And their submarine?”
“It will take two or three days for them to bring their submarine in.”
“Then send Mr. Baker his message.”
That evening, as Eldon Baker walked from his apartment to the caf6 where he usually took his supper, a Berber boy, backing out of a doorway with a huge basket of oranges in his arms, stumbled against him. They both collapsed onto the walk in a tangle of limbs and oranges. After they were up and straightened out, there was a piece of paper in Baker’s jacket pocket that had not been there before. On the paper one word was written in curling, Arabic script: Hejira.
Later, in the caf6, Baker walked into the toilet, set fire to the paper with his Ronson, and flushed the ashes away.
Rabat, Morocco March 13,1942 Diego Garcfa Alb6niz was a Catalan who had fought against Franco in the civil war and who had escaped to French Africa soon after the fall of Madrid. He was also a pretty good physician, who-understandably-knew more than a thing or two about battlefield wounds. This skill had made him useful now and again to both the current and the former pashas of Ksar es Souk. It was, however, not Sidi el Ferruch who needed Dr. Alb6niz today. It was Richard Canidy.
Since the doctor’s office was only half a mile from the American consulate in Rabat, and even though it was raining buckets in Rabat, Canidy decided to walk, his reason being that this was the only way he could be sure not to lose the S6curit6 agent who was this day’s tail. (“I thought they were supposed to use a team,” Canidy had said with deeply wounded vanity to Eldon Baker soon after the S6curit6 first started to keep an eye on them. “You’re not worth a team,” Baker had replied, rubbing it in.)
So, in raincoat, hat, scarf, and galoshes, Canidy trudged the half mile to Dr. Alb6niz, happy at least that the Frenchman following him was getting soaked too.
The doctor’s office was on the second floor, which was reached by a stairway up the outside of the building. At the top of the stairs, Canidy glanced around to make sure his tail was still around. He was. He’d found a modicum of protection in a doorway down the block.
Suffer! Canidy thought, then knocked.
Even though he had fought against the fascists, Dr. Alb6niz was an aristocrat. For a Spaniard he was tail, and his dark hair was combed straight back. With him was the American deputy consul, William Dale. Dale was there solely because he was roughly the same height and build as Canidy. And he had been waiting an hour for Canidy’s arrival with an impatience born of the diplomat’s distaste for doing the work of spies.
Dale acknowledged Canidy’s arrival by tearing away the brown paper wrapping from a bundle he had brought with him, as though silence made his own sin in consorting with Baker and his gang merely a venial one. He handed the bundle over to Canidy and took from him his soaked gear. The bundle contained clothing until recently wom by one of Ferruch’s Berbers. Canidy changed into it while Dale put on the raingear.
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