Seven Lies South

19

Sergeant O’Doul and the redhead were waiting for them in the cool dawn at the Café Rouge et Noir. Both were obviously impressed by Ilse’s shyness and when the car swept away from Agadir, with the soldiers in front and Beecher and Ilse in back, Sergeant O’Doul struck the informed and protective tone of an announcer on a sight-seeing bus.

“Don’t waste your time on this real estate,” he said, catching Ilse’s eye in the rear-vision mirror. “It could be under water for all the good it is. But wait till you see the souk in Marrakech. There’s something for you.”

The redhead was quivering with a miserable hang-over, the peak of his cap pulled down against the sun, and his dark bushy mustaches hanging limply about his pale lips. But the sergeant, true to the canons of his rank, was charged with energy, eyes bright and alert, cheeks shaved and ruddy, and a cigarette piping a constant flow of nicotine into his tough and compact body.

He handled the car with arrogant competence, fingertips resting lightly on the wheel, the speedometer needle brushing seventy.

They rushed through a ripe red countryside so rich with color that it seemed to be blazing back at the sun. The road curbed smoothly between flat fields of wheat, orange groves, and hill farms with terraced slopes swirling away from them in hypnotic symmetry. Berber women worked the fields, unveiled, weathered and strong, faces tattooed in tribal markings, symbolic arrangements of blue dots marking their chins or foreheads. The Berber villages were clusters of mud-walled huts, fenced by stands of dusty paddle cactus. In the pastures small children tended herds of goats and cows. The girls wore their hair clubbed with bright ribbons, and their faces were dark and hard as gypsies. A constant parade of camels lurched on the horizon, tottering yearlings and old males with hides mangy and worn as shabby carpeting; some were teamed with donkeys, others walked dusty paths around ancient water wheels. And everywhere the sun fell and burned on the stark, blood-red earth.

“Nothingville,” Sergeant O’Doul said. “Give these gooks an American john and they’d probably wash potatoes in it.”

The redhead pressed his temples gingerly. “But they got a nice peaceful slant on life. What are we rushing for, tell me that?”

“You dope, we’re going to Casablanca.”

Marrakech rose against the sky, an expanse of palm trees circled by the snow-tipped peaks of the Atlas mountains. As they approached they saw the red-clay buildings climbing with jasmine and bougainvillaea, and the clean wide boulevards lined with orange trees and date palms. At the circular intersection, fountains shot sprays of crystal water into the dry, transparent air.

Sergeant O’Doul insisted they stop to see the markets, and Beecher tried to accept the delay philosophically. They left the car and started on foot for the souk, pushing their way through beggars whining at their knees and peddlers hawking camel bells, brass jugs, hashish pipes, and bolts of brilliantly dyed fabric.

Beecher felt conspicuous and uneasy; O’Doul’s braying and critical opinion of everything in sight resounded hideously in the narrow streets. For the most part they were ignored by the Arabs, but occasionally Beecher saw an eye flash at them over a veil, or a shopkeeper looking up to regard them with a speculative frown.

In the souk it was better. The sergeant’s flamboyance was muted, if not overcome, by the noise and color of the market stalls, the breathless crush of the crowds. Beecher wished that his nerves would relax, and that he could enjoy this shrieking wonderland. The streets were cleanly swept, and the air was fresh with the smell of leather and sandalwood, sweet with the tang of mint tea. Ilse’s reserve had diminished; she was staring with excitement at the spice stalls with their sacks of paprika and cumin, and the colors spilling from open drawers of saffron and coffee beans, dried peppers and powdered rose leaves. In tiny open cubicles sewing machines droned like bees, and tailors manipulated basting threads with hands and feet, using their bare toes as cunningly as fingers. The sunlight gleamed on polished brass, and lay in melting tones on pale yellow leather.

Beecher had only one scare, but it set his heart pounding; a policeman in a black uniform and white helmet trailed them for several blocks, occasionally tugging at his little beard and glancing at a notebook in his hand. He was a young man, with a look of industry and perseverance in his eager eyes and straight back, but he seemed puzzled by the American soldiers, or wary of them; Beecher hoped fervently that their uniforms represented the terrors of officialdom to him and raised pictures in his mind of deep pitfalls in tangled jungles of red tape — those traps for the overzealous which had been created by the sticky presence of sanctioned foreign troops on Moroccan soil.

But he could think of nothing to disarm his obvious suspicion, or increase his equally obvious timidity, until finally, acting on nervous inspiration, he asked O’Doul to let him try on his garrison cap. He proposed sentiment as an excuse. “I haven’t put one on since I left the Air Force. I’d like to see how it feels.”

O’Doul was enthusiastic. “We’ll have you re-enlisting, you keep up this Auld Lang Syne bit.” He clapped the peaked cap on Beecher’s head, adjusted it to a smart angle, then clicked his heels and winged a salute at him. “Gook squad, ready for inspection, sir!”

Beecher risked a quick look from the corner of his eye. The policeman had stopped at an intersection a dozen yards away and was watching him with a solemn frown. He shrugged and scratched his chin when Beecher returned the sergeant’s salute, then sighed and strolled away, with only the faintest of frowns lingering on his dark, serious features.

They returned to the car through the streets of the dyers, where long wet skeins of wool in red and green and blue and yellow dripped from overhead poles like fantastic Spanish moss. They drank mint tea and ate pinchitas in a dark restaurant, and it was the middle of the afternoon when they rolled out of Marrakech.

It was dark when they got to Casablanca, and O’Doul parked near the center of the city, a block from the Hotel Mansour. He cursed the crowds, the traffic, and policemen swinging their white batons.

“One dumb flatfoot from New York could make this city run like a clock,” he said. “I tell you, these gooks can’t handle anything but camels. But goddammit, how come they drift along like they got a bundle of dough and a three-day pass in their pockets. You know what I mean?”

Beecher smiled; by now he understood the sergeant’s violent attacks on anything he couldn’t compare unflatteringly to America; it was a defensive and puzzled reflex, he guessed, the sore trial of a man who had been taught to equate love of his own country with suspicion and contempt for all others. The sergeant appreciated the splendors of the market at Marrakech well enough to want to show it off to them; but his appreciation made him feel guilty.

“Maybe they’ve got their points,” Beecher said.

“Yeah, right on the tops of their heads,” the sergeant said, and scratched his jaw.

They exchanged hasty good-bys. The soldiers still had a twenty-mile drive ahead of them to their base at Nouasseur. O’Doul made a face when Beecher tried to thank him. “Forget it, Mac.”

For tonight, Beecher decided the Mansour would do as well as any place else. Perhaps even better. It was formidably busy and elegant; hardly the sort of hotel the police would expect a wanted murderer to choose for a hide-out. He was mildly surprised at the devious twist of his thoughts.

A misting rain had begun to fall, and the sidewalks gleamed with yellow light falling in cones from the street lamps.

“Let’s go,” Beecher said, and took Ilse’s arm. “Now listen.”

It wasn’t necessary to repeat the maneuver they had used in Agadir. Ilse joined a line at the reservations desk, and Beecher walked casually to the elevators. When she appeared a few moments later, with a bellboy carrying her suitcase, Beecher drifted close to her. Without looking at him, she whispered her room number, then moved with the crowd into the elevator. Beecher lit a cigarette and threw the match into a sand-filled urn. He waited a few minutes, then took an elevator to the fifth floor.

The room was quietly luxurious, with gold-and-ivory furniture gleaming in the light from slim white lamps. Everything seemed to shimmer in a gentle radiance; the beige carpeting, the creamy white panels of chests and closets, the rose and lavender drapes which hung from ceiling to floor in narrow fluted folds.

Ilse was showering. They had spoken very little during the day, and he knew that she was tense and irritable. She felt sorry for herself and expected him to feel sorry for her too; without his sympathy, she was turning to her memories for comfort. And they wouldn’t help much, he guessed. They would only add to her gloom.

Beecher had thought of one possible way to get from Tangier to Spain — to cross the Mediterranean without going through Customs. But he wondered if getting to Spain would do any good? Their stories were preposterous. And they had nothing to back them up with. The whole scheme, for that matter, had been preposterous from start to finish. How in God’s name could Don Willie have hoped it would work? Was he that big a fool? No, Beecher thought, he was foolish, but he was no fool. Start with that. He was vain, sensitive, comically emotional, but he was no fool. Start there.

Beecher sat up and rubbed his temples wearily. Thinking was almost too great an effort, but he made himself concentrate on all the bits and pieces of Don Willie’s plans. First of all, Don Willie had decided to steal an airplane. That meant he needed a pilot. Enter the Frenchman. And a navigator. Enter Lynch. So far so good. Now cross out the flyer. Exit the Frenchman. That left a blank in the production. And he’d been chosen to fill it. To entice him, they needed bait. Enter Laura.

But why, he wondered now, had Don Willie taken such a devious and slippery detour? Why hadn’t Don Willie gone straight to him in the first place? In some ways, this would have been the consistent thing for him to do. For it had always pleased him to pretend that bluntness was a virtue, when directness or rudeness suited his needs. Beecher could imagine Don Willie joining him at a table in the Bar Central, or driving up to his villa, and then puffing out his pink cheeks and saying: “Mike, we don’t get along sometimes in the past, no? But now this is business, and we forget those little things. I have a job for you in Rabat.” And so forth, and so on. Instead he had sent Lynch to invite him to a fiesta at the Black Dove. This seemed to Beecher, thinking about it now, a clumsy maneuver. And Lynch’s failure to produce him shouldn’t have surprised Don Willie. But he had plodded on to phase two: Laura. She had been forty miles away, sunning herself in Estepona. Why? Why wasn’t she in Mirimar with Lynch? Had they known the Frenchman was going to turn up drunk?

Beecher shook his head in confusion. He seemed to be getting nowhere at all. The most comfortable solution, after all, was to conclude that Don Willie had been a fool.

At any rate, they had sent for Laura. And she had arrived with honeyed flypaper to catch, not a fly, but a flyer. Well, it made sense in some ways, he thought. But it didn’t in others. And Laura and Lynch had planned to disappear into Africa when the job was done, to swank it up with the blacks. Had Don Willie thought that one out very carefully? Could he be sure they wouldn’t get tired of it? And want to get out? Or be seen and recognized some day as the “lost” passengers from the missing C-47?

He was relieved when Ilse came out of the bathroom. His head was aching. Don Willie was a fool, and that was that; in panic, he had mislaid his brains. This was typical, too, of course. Don Willie’s sort always won battles, never wars. Beecher remembered captured German pilots he had talked with in England. They were courteous and intelligent, and had beautiful military manners. But something was wrong with them. It was as if they were looking at everything except Germany through the wrong end of a telescope. People became tiny in their eyes. And a thousand Flying Fortresses passing over to bomb their fatherland were no bigger than a flock of starlings.

Ilse sat on the edge of the bed. Beecher said, “I want you to get the hotel operator and ask her for a line to Spain. To Mirimar. I want to talk to Donald O’Brien at the Irishman’s Pub.”

Ilse stood and picked up the telephone. After repeating Beecher’s instructions, she listened a moment, then glanced at him. “It will be half an hour, at least,” she said.

“That’s all right.” Beecher picked up his cigarettes, but found that the pack was empty. He poked a finger around inside it, idly and pointlessly, then crumpled the pack and tossed it into the wastebasket.

Ilse sat on the edge of the bed again, but stood almost immediately and began pacing restlessly, looking about the room as if she were seeing it for the first time. “It is very nice, isn’t it?” She frowned faintly. “It is like the Frankfurter Hof. So rich and elegant. It’s in Frankfurt, the Frankfurter Hof.”

“I wish you’d let me guess.” He smiled quickly.

“Much of it was bombed down in the war, Don Willie told me. It was smashed to pieces. But in three or four years they put it up as good as new. Finer, even. Then, so soon after the bombings, you could get eggs and milk and fresh beef there, while everywhere else people were going hungry. Even in England, Don Willie said, there wasn’t enough food. But in the Frankfurter Hof the waiters were wearing full-dress suits.” She smiled. “It was just like before the war, he said, with the orchestra and great tables heaped with cold meats and fruits and wine.”

“When were you there?” Beecher asked her.

“Oh, much after that. When the trouble in Germany was finished. Then everything was all right. The shops and restaurants were crowded. No one even remembered the bombings, it seemed. The Germans had worked hard to make everything nice again. They can work very hard, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” Beecher said. He wanted a cigarette badly. “Don Willie traveled a lot, didn’t he?”

“He had much business everywhere. Even in France. But he didn’t like France. He said the waiters were rude, and people stared at him because his accent in French was bad.” She was pacing as she talked, following a path like an animal in a cage. “But I loved it in Paris. The city is so beautiful it made my heart ache. You can truly see the air. That’s what Cezanne painted, isn’t it? It’s the air he saw that makes his pictures so light. Not just the colors.” Beecher looked at his watch. Ilse continued pacing, with her hands locked around her elbows, and an intense little frown gathering between her eyes. The soles of her pumps made a whispering sound on the thick carpeting, and the muscles in her smooth bare calves flexed to the rhythm of her restless footsteps.

“Look, how about going down and getting me some cigarettes,” Beecher said. In the heavy silence, with the telephone black and mute and indifferent, the twist of her slippers on the carpet had become a monotonous, maddening sound; it was like a creak of ropes stretching his nerves to the breaking point.

“Yes, of course,” she said quickly, and he realized that she was glad to go, was relieved to be getting away from him. Her nerves were no better than his.

When the door closed after her, Beecher shaved and took a quick shower. He was putting on his shirt when the phone began to ring. The operator told him that his call to Spain was ready.

There was an interval of crackling noises, and distant Spanish voices. He heard querulous identifications from Málaga, Seville, Ronda. In the background then, faintly and despairingly, the Irishman’s voice sounded like the cry of a lost spirit, a weird Celtic note in the fugue of Spanish confusion. Beecher wondered if the communications system of Spain would choose this moment to function efficiently or hysterically. It was always a toss-up; once he had called Málaga from ten miles away, and a bit later had found himself talking to a clear but puzzled voice in San Sebastian, a long, two-day drive to the north.

Then, clear as a bell on a frosty morning, the Irishman came through. “Yes, hello. Hello?”

Beecher raised his voice and said: “How’s your stock of Bushmills these days?”

“What’s this? Hello, hello.”

Beecher couldn’t risk using his name. Sometimes long-distance calls to and from Spain were censored; sometimes they weren’t. But it would be pressing his luck to assume he was talking on a private line.

“I wish I’d taken that job you offered me,” he said. There was an instant of dead silence, and then he heard the Irishman gasp sharply. “Good God, Mi—”

“Hold it,” Beecher said. “Please.”

“Yes, of course. Stupid.”

“I’ve got to get to Spain.”

“I see.” There was a thread of caution in the Irishman’s tone. “But I wonder if you’ve given a thought to the weather here. It’s terribly hot just now. Very bad, actually. You might be uncomfortable.”

“This isn’t a pleasure trip. It’s business.”

“Ah, I see. Business, hey? That’s a life or death matter, isn’t it?”

“Very much so.”

“When do you plan to arrive?”

“It depends. My pretty green book won’t be much help.”

The Irishman was silent. The line hummed distantly in Beecher’s ear. “I see,” the Irishman said at last. “It’s more of a hindrance than a help, I should say.”

Beecher drew a deep relieved breath; the Irishman had understood the reference to his passport.

“Yes, that’s the situation,” he said.

“Well, well. Are you coming up to Tangier?”

“Tomorrow, if possible.”

“Let me see.” There was a long silence. Then the Irishman said crisply: “At the Velasquez Hotel you’ll find an Arab guide who calls himself Pinky. Ask him to take you to see Rosy. I’ll do what I can on this end.”

“Rosy” was the Rosaleen, the Irishman’s ship. “Thanks,” Beecher said. He wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. “Don’t let me down, for God’s sake.”

“Unless you have an extremely strong line of goods, I’d suggest you forget coming over,” the Irishman said. “No one’s in a mood to buy anything from you — they won’t even listen to a good story, I’m afraid.”

“I’ve got to try.”

“Then God help you, my lad,” the Irishman said. “And good luck.” The connection broke with a dry click of finality.

Beecher sat on the edge of the bed and moistened his dry lips. He realized that Ilse had been gone more than half an hour. What the hell was keeping her? he wondered, and got up to search pointlessly through his pockets for a cigarette. It hadn’t been wise to send her out. They had a chance now, but they still wanted miracles of luck to make it pay off. Her nerves wouldn’t stand much more strain. She needed kindness and strength, he knew. But so do I, he thought wearily. And there weren’t any around. He’d have to settle for a drink, a bed with covers to pull over his head, and a night’s sleep he could only hope would be as black and dreamless as death. He was too tired to examine his resentment of Ilse. It was just there, tied up in some way with his other anxieties and fears.

There was a soft knock a few minutes later. Beecher opened the door, and Ilse slipped past him into the room.

“Here,” she said, and gave him two packages of Camels. “I didn’t know what kind you smoked. Are these all right?”

“What kept you?”

“I couldn’t buy them in the lobby. I had to go to the bar.” There were points of color high in her cheeks. “A man talked to me there. A nasty little American. He knew I was frightened, I think. I don’t know how. He was like one of those small animals, I forget what you call them, they have tiny bright eyes and a twitching nose. They hunt in the ground for rats. Ferrets, I think.” She was pacing the floor as she talked, eyes cold with anger. “He wanted to buy me a drink. He asked me to sit with him at his table. I said no at first, but he could tell that I was afraid. That something was wrong.”

“Why didn’t you simply walk out?”

“Oh, that is easy to say sitting up here in a nice warm room. But it was different with his little eyes watching me. It was like he was peering through the windows of a bedroom late at night. To make him think nothing was wrong, I let him buy me a drink. He wanted to know where I was going, what I was doing, everything.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That I was going to Tangier. I didn’t know what to say. So I told the truth. And he offered to drive me. He is leaving early tomorrow morning. At five o’clock.” She rubbed her mouth with the back of her hand, as if the words were dirt that had soiled her lips. “He would be nice to me on the way. He made that very clear. He even offered to buy me stockings.” She smiled bitterly. “That is a usual American approach, isn’t it?”

“How did he know you needed them?”

“Because he felt my leg under the table.”

“Was he serious about the ride?”

“Of course he was serious. He made it plain how we would amuse ourselves on the way.”

Beecher lit a cigarette. “Did you tell him you were alone?”

“I let him think so. I tried to pretend I didn’t understand him very well. I was the friendly stupid little fraulein — letting him ask me questions and rub my leg. That way he wasn’t suspicious any more. Because he’s an American, and he knows all about the women of other countries. They just want free drinks and to have their legs rubbed under the table. When he proved he was right about me, he was so happy and pleased with himself. He said he would expect me to join him in the morning.”

Beecher put out his cigarette. “Ilse, I’m sorry you had an unpleasant time. I think you might have slapped his face and walked out. But that’s not important now. The important thing is we’ve got our ride to Tangier. That’s all that counts.”

“That’s all?” she said bitterly. “Don Willie would have broken the back of this man. But it’s not important to you, of course. It’s just luck the little American pig liked my legs and will give us a ride.” She was beginning to cry, and the tears filled the cups of her eyelids and gleamed like silver crescents in the soft lamplight. “I’m something you can use for a free ride, that’s all. Like a bus ticket. You don’t care what I feel. Last night I was sick with fear, and it meant nothing to you. You fell asleep like a dog in front of a fire. I’m alone and helpless and frightened, but you don’t care anything about that.”

“Don Willie cared, didn’t he?” Beecher said.

“Yes, yes. He always thought of me. I don’t care what you say, or what anybody says, he was good and kind to me.”

“It always takes two people to make the slave-master relationship work,” Beecher said coldly. “Why don’t you face that fact? You told me you couldn’t get away from him. But the truth is you clung to him like a barnacle on a ship. You’ve made a career out of weakness. And it wasn’t such a bad deal at that, was it?” Beecher was suddenly angry, his blood surging with the hard stroke of his heart. “The nice warm hotel in Frankfurt with the waiters in evening clothes and all the food you could stuff into yourself. Not bad, was it? And the nice clean air of Paris. Where the waiters were rude to Don Willie, for no reason at all except that he might have arranged to have some of their family and friends shot as hostages during the war. But everything was so nice. Your clothes were nice, and your villa was nice, and Don Willie was nice, and the whole damn thing just stank for being so nice, didn’t it?”

“No, please,” she whispered and closed her eyes. There was no expression in her white face. She stood rigid and fearful, as if she were awaiting the lash of a whip across her bare shoulders.

“So now he’s gone,” Beecher said brutally. “The Golden Goose is dead. And you want him back. Or anybody who’ll move your arms and legs and lips like a ventriloquist’s dummy. You don’t want to get out of your cage. All you want is someone to scratch your head and put food through the bars.”

She tried once to speak, but couldn’t; the words were choked in her throat by sobs. She sat on the bed and pressed her fists against her temples. “Why?” she said, in a weak, frantic voice. “Why did you do this?”

Beecher could find no answer to her question. He sat down and lit a cigarette, feeling as drained and spent as if he’d been running for miles. The smoke curled in slow, deliberate patterns toward the ceiling, twisting languorously in the warm air. He stretched out his legs and put his head back, as a bone-deep weariness seeped through his body.

Ilse had turned away from him and was lying face down on the bed, a fist pressed against her mouth. The light touched the tears on her cheeks and fell smoothly on the backs of her bare legs. She was crying silently.

Why had he done it? She had needed to know the truth, but he hadn’t helped to drive it home with a sledge hammer. Beecher put out his cigarette and sat beside her on the bed. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter. Why do you care?”

Beecher took her shoulders and turned her over gently. He looked into her eyes. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said again. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s what is horrible. That you didn’t mean to.” She shook her head quickly, as if she were in pain, and the tears trembled on her eyelids. “You didn’t mean to. I’m not important enough for you to hurt. It was just an accident, like you would step on the tail of a dog walking across a room.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Why? Does it matter that I can be hurt? That you can make me cry?”

“Yes, it matters,” he said. He touched her wet cheeks with his fingers. “I don’t want to make you unhappy.”

She caught his fingers in her hand. “Don’t leave me. Please.”

“All right.”

She turned her head slowly and looked up at him. Her eyes were wide and dark in her pale face, but the tears made them shine like diamonds. She held his fingers tightly against her mouth. They didn’t speak for a long moment. “Please,” she whispered, and her breath was soft and warm on his hand. “Please, Mike.”

Beecher turned out the lights, and she put her arms about his neck and pulled him down beside her on the bed. Beecher kissed her cheeks and eyes, tenderly but sadly. She thought this would solve everything. When he put his hand on the small of her back a convulsive shudder went down her body.

“Wait, please,” she said, in a voice that was thick and low and sweet. “I want to undress. Help me, Mike. Help me. I don’t know anything.”

Beecher put a finger across her lips.

She kicked her pumps off and one of them fell from the bed. Beecher heard it drop lightly on the soft thick carpet. The other one fell off sometime later. But he didn’t hear that one land...

There was a moon in the dark sky, and its light came into the room and lay as softly and delicately as rose petals on the gold-and-ivory furniture. The creamy panels of the closet door were white as chalk. From somewhere they could hear radio music. They knew it came from a radio for when it stopped they heard the voice of an announcer speaking in smooth, liquid French.

She lay still and warm and smooth in his arms.

“Say it again,” she said in a soft happy voice. “That it doesn’t matter. That you weren’t surprised.”

“I wasn’t surprised,” Beecher said. “And it doesn’t matter one way or the other.” She hadn’t been sleeping with Don Willie. She hadn’t slept with anyone before tonight. And he had been surprised as hell by this. But it hadn’t mattered. That much wasn’t a lie.

She sighed and rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. “He always said it wouldn’t be right for me. Because of the war, and the fears I had. I was like his daughter, and I would never need any other men. He had women in Málaga, and he talked about them without any embarrassment. It was like a meal or going fishing — something to do at regular times.”

Beecher patted her bare shoulder. “You go to sleep now.”

“You go to sleep,” she said, raising herself on her elbow. She shook her head so that her long black hair fell across his face. “I will stay awake and protect you.”

“We’ve got an early start tomorrow.”

“With my nasty little American, I know. I’m sorry I talked that way. All Americans aren’t nasty. Even though they like my legs. I like that, too. It’s nice.”

Everything was solved now, Beecher thought. He closed his eyes and turned his cheek against her warm shoulder. Everything was solved for a while.