“Then you’ll understand about orders,” Lieutenant Pringer said. “I have mine. And mine were rather specific.”
“What orders?”
“My orders say that personnel accompanying passengers are not to be taken aboard the sub.”
“I don’t believe that!” Canidy said.
“The use of force is authorized,” Lieutenant Pringer said. “I hope you won’t make that necessary, Lieutenant.”
“We’re armed,” Fulmar flared. “We ought to blow your fucking little boat out of the water!”
“That wouldn’t get you onto the submarine,” Lieutenant Pringer said.
“I’m going to kill that sonofabitch,” Canidy said.
“I’m really sorry,” Lieutenant Pringer said. “And now I’m going to get in the boat.”
“That miserable, treacherous sonofabitch!” Canidy fumed.
“I’ll say it again,” Pringer said. “Good luck!”
Fulmar chuckled, “How do you know I won’t shoot you anyway?”he asked.
“I don’t,” Pringer said. “I hope you won’t.”
He went over the side and was gone.
“I didn’t trust that sonofabitch Baker the first time I saw him,” Fulmar said. “In Paris, I didn’t trust him. But I’m surprised he fucked you, too, Dick.”
“What happens now?” Canidy said.
“Well, I think I can get you to Rabat,” Fulmar said, his anger quickly dying. “Baker may hope you get caught by the Germans, but I don’t, and I don’t want to give him the satisfaction.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Back to Ksar es Souk, where I will hope this doesn’t make Thami el Glaoui turn me over to the Germans.”
“You seem pretty god damned calm about this,” Canidy said.
“I’m half German, half American, and half Moroccan, Dick. Cross out the German half. And all this proves I can forget the American half, too. So I’ve now become a full-blooded Moroccan.”
Rabat, Morocco March 15, 1942
Just before eleven the next day, a truck backed up to the kitchen door of the United States consulate general in Rabat. The canvas flap opened wide enough for Canidy to jump down from the bed, and then the truck drove quickly off.
Canidy stormed past a surprised cook into the dining room, then into the consulate proper. He headed for the office of the consul general. Robert Murphy did not seem to be surprised to see him.
“I’m very sorry about this, Canidy’ ” Murphy said.
“What the hell is going on?” Canidy demanded furiously.
“It was necessary for you to stay here ‘ ” Murphy said, “because it was even more necessary that Fulmar do the same.”
“And why was that another of those little things that unimportant people like me can’t be told about?” Canidy fumed.
“Why is because we’re going to invade North Africa,” Murphy said matter-offactly. “And soon. And we need Fulmar and el Ferruch to help us in that. We hope that we can enlist Thami el Glaoui’s Berbers on our side. And your friend is going to be just as useful to Sidi el Ferruch as he is to us-as a kind of go-between. Sidi wanted him to stay and he wanted to stay. So he stayed. If you had been told this was planned, things would have gotten terribly messed up.”
“We promised him… I promised him… we’d get him out of Morocco ‘ ” Canidy said. “Right now, he thinks we’re lying sonsofbitches. What makes you think he’d help us again?”
Murphy shrugged. “That’s one of those bridges to be crossed when we get to it. Grunier and the admiral had the highest priority.
Once we got them to the sub, the priority shifted to the invasion. As I said, you weren’t told beforehand because it was better that you didn’t know.”
A marine appeared with doughnuts and coffee.
“I thought you could use a little something to eat,” Murphy said.
“May I ask you a question?” Canidy asked.
“What happens now?”
“No,” Canidy said. “How come you told me about the invasion? Isn’t that secret?”
“Top secret, actually,” Murphy said. “Around here I decide who has the need to know. I decided that it was in the best interests of the U.S. government that you should know. Eldon Baker is too valuable to us for you to break his neck.”
Canidy chuckled. “That thought did cross my mind,” he said.
“That would have been inefficient,” Murphy said. “One very good intelligence officer dead and another one in jail for murder. We don’t have that many good intelligence officers.”