Beyond the surf, there was only one danger: missing the boats three hundred meters offshore. If there were no boats, Fulmarjok d during dinner in Le Relaise de Pointe-Noire, some fisherman’s wife walking the beach the next morning would find a surprising gift from Allah.
Twenty minutes after entering the water, Fulmar and then el Ferruch heard the steady slapping of an oar against the water and swam toward the sound. Fulmar was first to find it. He was hauled aboard the black, low-slung, fifteen-foot fisherman’s dory and wrapped in blankets before el Fertuch’s hand appeared on the rail and he too was hauled in.
It took them almost ten minutes-longer than they expectedbefore they had stopped shivering and were prepared to reenter the water. Going back was easier, because the lights of Le Relaise de Pointe-Noire were a target, because they would now be carried in by the very strong tides.
An hour after they first entered the water, they were back on the rock, and the fisherman’s dory had almost made its rendezvous with its mother ship, a forty-foot single-sailed fishing dhow. The dhow would sail fifteen miles due west into the Atlantic and rendezvous with an Argentine steamer bound for Buenos Aires, The dhow would then cast its nets for the rest of the night and then return to Safi, where the crew would rejoin their friends, laugh and joke and relate the story of how Sheikh Sidi Hassan el Ferruch had swum through the surf at Pointe-Noire and again made fools of the French and the Germans.
When the two naked, shivering men climbed through the windows of the chambre s@parje, the enormous Senegalese immediately coiled the ropes, and the Moroccan women wrapped them inside blankets. Later the very exciting-looking blond one drank from a bottle of French cognac, then reclined on a chaise longue. One of the women rubbed his legs and back with towels, and then looked down at himself, his front. He stopped shivering, sat up, closed his eyes, and laughed. She laughed too, and gently-but very cautiously-let her finerience his luxurious mat of light golden hair. She was not gers exp used to hair so bright.
And be, when not long afterward he began to explore her body with his hands, found her hair to be fuller, richer, and darker than he was used to… except where she had carefully made herself babysmooth.
National Institute ot Health Building Washington, D.C.
November 30,1941 captain Peter Douglass gave Eldon C. Baker a cup of coffee, oured himself one, then carried it behind his desk.
6 61 9ve just been reading your files,” he said. “Again.”
“I’m a little surprised to hear that,” Baker confessed. He wondered how the Navy captain had managed to gain access to his personal records.
“The psychiatrist thinks you have a tendency to indulge your fantasies,” Douglass said. He flipped through papers on his desk. “Would you say that’s the case, Mr. Baker?”
Now Baker was even more surprised. It was absolutely against regulations for psychiatric evaluation records to be disseminated outside the intelligence division of the State Department, much less casually shipped to some public-relations outfit sharing quarters with the National Institute of Health.
“May I see that?” Baker asked.
“Help yourself,” Douglass said.
Baker got out of his chair and walked to Douglass’s desk.
“They were more than a little upset when I went over there for these,” Douglass said. “And were more than a little reluctant to ha d them over.” 11
“You’re not supposed to have access to these records,- Baker said.
“Nor these either, I daresay,” Douglass said. He pushed a stack of manila folders to Baker. They were all Stamped SECRET. What they were were his complete files–copies of everything he had transmitted to the State Department since entering his intelligence assignment in France.
“If it’s your intention, Captain, to surprise me, you have,” he said. “May I ask what’s going on around here?”
“What had you heard?” Douglass asked.
“That you were going to handle the national propaganda, should we get in a war,” Baker said.
“That, too,” Douglass said, “%at is it YOU want of me?” Baker said.
“Well,” Douglass said. “You have a nice speaking voice, and I understand you’re perfectly fluent in French and German, Perhaps we could put you to work doing foreign-language broadcasts.” You’re mocking me,” Baker said, without anger.” why?”