WHEN I WOKE UP, I didn’t have a clue where I was. My head ached and nothing felt right. I deduced from my extreme discomfort, and that fact that I was sleeping on a cold, smelly, damp stone floor, that something was wrong. Then, I remembered that floor was in the basement of the Gardes Mobiles headquarters in Algiers, I was a prisoner, and Diana was, too, if she was still alive.
I lay there thinking how nice those few seconds are after you wake up, before reality sets in. Opening one eye, I saw early morning sunlight filtering through the high, narrow, barred window above the cell. Another day in sunny North Africa. I closed that eye and wished I could fall asleep again, buying back those few precious moments of ignorant bliss. I kept my eyes shut and tried to sleep. I couldn’t. I kept seeing Diana in the courtyard, blood on her face, but no fear in her blue eyes. She was brave, all right. You didn’t volunteer for the SOE and go behind enemy lines if you weren’t brave. And foolish, too. I tried to remember the last time we had been together in England. She must’ve known she was headed for North Africa. I knew I was. Neither of us had said anything. No loose lips between us. I had come to see her father, Sir Richard, concerned about how he was doing after losing Daphne, her sister. Diana showed up with three days leave, and visited me in my room each night, just as she had the first time. That first time I had only held her as she cried, and fallen in love with her. This last visit, there were no tears.We made love as if there were no tomorrow, which we both knew might be true but neither of us could admit. I smiled now as I remembered her, face shining in the moonlight, beautiful, whispering my name.
I heard a crash, and tried to rouse myself from my daydream. A loud thud followed by a rattle of automatic fire got me up fast. I rolled over with a groan and saw Harding standing by the door, trying to see down the hallway. There were shouts from outside, single shots that sounded like pistol fire, then running feet above us. More cries, some in French, more in English. The yelling grew louder and the sounds echoed down the stairway, into the cellblock, now closer to us. A single gunshot rang out, incredibly loud in the narrow stone passageway, and the French yelling suddenly stopped, replaced by the heavy sound of a body rolling down the steps and hitting the bottom with a thump. Harding and I leaned against the bars, trying to see what was happening. The smell of cordite was thick, smoke and dust drifting in the air. Through the haze a slight figure in British battle dress that looked like it was tailored just for him, which it probably had been, strolled nonchalantly. He held a Webley revolver, smoke curling out of the muzzle, in one hand and in the other, a ring of jailer’s keys. The grin on his face was split by a scar that ran from the corner of one eye down to his chin, a souvenir of the explosion that had killed Daphne, ended their love affair, and broken his heart.
“Gentleman, in a few minutes the St. George Hotel will be serving breakfast.Would you care to join me?”
Lieutenant Piotr Augustus Kazimierz was the unlikeliest soldier I had ever seen. He was small, thin, pale, wore glasses, and had studied foreign languages at Oxford University before the war. Before the Germans invaded his native Poland and killed all of his family, which made him a very angry small, pale, thin guy who wore glasses. He had a heart condition that had kept him out of the army until he kicked up such a stink that the Polish Government in Exile commissioned him a lieutenant and sent him to work for General Eisenhower as a translator. That’s were he’d met Daphne Seaton. And me. I was still alive, Daphne was dead, and now Kaz didn’t care if he lived a minute longer.
He’d gotten involved in the Norway job with me, and did pretty well as my Junior G-man, so Uncle Ike posted him as my assistant to his secret Office of Special Investigations. He wasn’t supposed to be in combat because of his medical condition, but working at HQ meant you could bend the rules a bit. That gave him the chance to get into the fight, which is what everybody else seemed to want to do over here. Between his bad ticker and the loss of everyone he loved, I understood that he didn’t particularly care about planning for the future.
Kaz was supposed to be an egghead, a back room, quiet, paper-pushing staff officer. Instead, here he was leading a raid to spring us from a Vichy slammer, holding a smoking revolver in one hand and our ticket out of here in the other.
“Kaz!” was all I could manage.
“Yes, Billy, it is Baron Kazimierz to the rescue!” he said, as he tried to find the key for our cell among the dozens dangling from the chain. He winced as he struggled with the heavy ring of keys. I saw blood dripping from his sleeve. More boots thundered down the stairs as a team of Royal Commandos came into view.
“Baron, you promised to stay behind us!” shouted a very exasperated Commando officer as he signaled his men to check the other cells.
“Aha!” shouted Kaz as he found the right key and unlocked the door. “Yes, well, I saw that guard heading down here and thought he might be thinking of harming Billy and Major Harding.”
“You mean that big fellow at the bottom of the stairs with a bullet in his chest?” asked Harding as he stepped out of the cell.
“The one and the same, late but not lamented, Vichy jailer. He smelled quite bad. I trust you were not mistreated, Major?” Kaz asked.
“No, we’re fine. Are you hit?”
“Yes, I think I have been shot. In the arm. Quite amazing, it does not hurt at all,” Kaz said, and smiled weakly.
“It will, Baron,” said a Royal Commando medic who began to strip off Kaz’s sleeve, applying sulfa and a bandage. “The bullet went clean through. Nothing to worry about.”
“What about the other prisoners?” Harding looked to the Commando officer.
“Place is cleared out, sir. You’re the only guests.We got word that a couple of American officers were being held here, and figured it must be you, since you didn’t contact headquarters this morning.”
“All right. What’s the situation?” Harding asked Kaz as he led us out of the basement, stepping over the body of the guard lying in a darkening pool of his own blood.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “What do you mean cleared out? They were holding dozens of civilian prisoners yesterday. Aren’t any of them still here?”
“No, and no one seems to know where they were taken,” Kaz answered. “Perhaps they were transferred to another prison, since their jailers knew Algiers would soon be entered by the Allies.”
“Kaz,” I said through gritted teeth, “They’ve got Diana. I saw her yesterday.”
Kaz looked stunned. His eyes opened wide and his mouth sort of hung open. He turned to Harding.
“Is this true, Major?”
“Yes, we both saw her in the courtyard with a group of rebels the Gardes Mobiles had rounded up.”
Kaz’s face went dark. I knew this wasn’t easy for him. Diana made him think about Daphne, and Diana in danger would only make him think about Daphne, dead in a rigged car explosion. I still thought about Daphne all the time. She had been my first real friend in England, even though at first she’d thought I was kind of a jerk. I’d had a crush on her, but that was just loneliness. When I met her sister Diana it was like a thunderbolt. There actually had been lightning and thunder, which seemed only normal. Daphne was the older sister, dark haired, beautiful, very sophisticated and elegant whether she was in her blue uniform or in an evening gown. Diana was different. Tall, with long blonde hair, she was more at home on a horse than dressed for a night on the town. She was really good-looking, although not movie-star beautiful, like Daphne had been. She had a strength in her, something steely in her eyes, a hardness in her grip, that dared the world to deny her anything. Daphne had been at peace with her place in the world. Diana wasn’t, but at least she was alive. I hoped.
“We have some of the Gardes Mobiles in custody,” Kaz said as we left the cell. “We can question them.” He reloaded his revolver as he talked. I thought about the French jailer tumbling down the stairs. I thought about the cold look in Kaz’s eyes, which he kept focused on his pistol.
“Kaz, had you killed anyone before?”
“Yes, Billy. Two of them, outside,” he answered, knowing I had meant before today.
When I first met Kaz, he seemed like the sort of fellow who would’ve collected butterflies except that he couldn’t stand to hurt them. A nice guy, but a bookworm. Now he had three notches on his gun—that I knew about—and was ready for more. I kind of liked the old Kaz, and was beginning to worry about the new one.
“Tell me what’s going on, Lieutenant,” Harding said. Kaz looked at him blankly, still trying to take in what had happened to Diana.
“With the invasion,” Harding said sarcastically. “You remember, all those ships and men with rifles?”
“Yes sir,” Kaz said, pulling himself together. “All the landings went well. General Giraud has arrived, but very few Vichy officers regard him as having any authority. Admiral Darlan was here when he landed—”
“We know,” snapped Harding.
“General Juin has declared an armistice in and around the city of Algiers, at the orders of Admiral Darlan,” Kaz said. “It covers only this immediate area, and talks are now underway between General Mark Clark and Darlan. General Eisenhower is expected as soon as the area is secure.”
“All right, let’s find out what we can here and then get to headquarters,” Harding said.
“Captain,” Kaz called out to the Commando officer, “are your men searching the premises?”
“Standard procedure, Baron.What are you looking for?”
“Prisoner lists. Show us to the administrative section.”
We trotted up the stairs to the third floor, where the main offices were located. A cooling breeze came through the open windows along the hallway, above the dusty courtyard. I searched for the spot where I had seen Diana just a day ago.Worry made my gut ache. I turned away and followed Kaz into what looked like the main office. He was already at work, going through file folders. Except for being in French, it looked pretty much like any police paperwork. Lots of forms and carbon paper. Typewriters on four desks pushed together, file cabinets around the room, a row of tall windows, and a big desk for the guy in charge at the other end of the room. A ceiling fan moved lazily above it all. The smell of sweat and stale cigarette butts was pushed around with the heat but never made it out the windows.
“Kaz,” I said as I looked through piles of paperwork on the desk, “why all this ‘Baron’ stuff anyway? I never heard you use your title except to get reservations back in London.”
“That Commando captain is actually Lord Waverly. He didn’t care to have me along, so I played the fellow aristocrat. It turns out we had several friends in common at Oxford, and this warmed him up to me. A Polish baron is a rarity, and he may think of me as a mascot.”
“Pretty deadly bite for a mascot,” I said. Kaz ignored me and went on hunting through the files. His family was descended from one of the ancient clans in Poland, and now this Baron Kazimierz was at the end of his line. Very far from home and alone in the world.
An hour later there was a mound of paper on the floor and three sheets on a desk. Harding and Kaz leaned over them. I leaned against the wall.
“This is all we can find, Major,” Kaz reported.
“My French isn’t as good as yours, Lieutenant,” Harding said, “but I can tell these are travel orders of some sort.”
“Yes, and requisitions for food, quarters, and most importantly, petrol. For twenty-five prisoners and ten guards, no names listed.” Kaz stabbed his finger at one of the sheets. “At the French Army fuel depot at Bône.”
“That’s not much to go on,” said Harding. He turned to a map on the wall. “Bône is here, on the coast about 125 miles due east. Way beyond our advance units. If they’re refueling there, it stands to reason they’re headed even further out.”
“Here, Major,” Kaz said, favoring his bad arm as he read through one of the sheets. “This says the final destination will be confirmed when the convoy arrives in Bône.”
“Confirmed by whom?” Harding asked.
“By the deputy administrative officer of XIX Corps, a Captain Henri Bessette, according to this. It says final instructions will be radioed to the commander of the supply depot, who is to turn them over when he is given the authorized password.”
“What’s the password?” I asked.
“It does not say here.”
“Why all this secrecy about a bunch of rebels, anyway? Why didn’t they keep them here, or shoot them and get it over with? It doesn’t make sense,” I said.
“XIX Corps covers the area from Algiers to the Tunisian border,” Harding said, half to himself as he studied the map.
“But why would a staff officer at an Army Corps headquarters issue orders and supplies to a police force?” I asked.
“Remember that the Service d’Order Legionnaire militia works hand in glove with the Gardes Mobiles police force,” Harding said, “and SOL draws its supplies from the army. Whatever is intended for these prisoners is connected with people in high places.”
“Like General Juin?” Kaz asked.
“Maybe,” Harding shrugged. “But with Darlan in town, who knows?”
“Let’s get to Darlan then,” I said.
Harding reached into his jacket and pulled out a pack of Luckies. He lit one and sat on the desk, staring at the wall map of the North African coast.
“Listen to me, both of you. I want to get Miss Seaton back as much as you do. I understand what she means to each of you.” He stopped and looked at us, then back at the map, blowing a stream of blue smoke toward it.
“But, we have a job to do here. That job doesn’t include running off to find one missing SOE agent, no matter who she is. The best thing we can do is sort things out with the French so she can be released. If I let you go after her, you could as easily screw things up and get her killed. Let Ike and General Clark negotiate with Darlan. They should have things wrapped up in a few days.”
“You mean in a couple of days we’ll be pals with Villard, and he’ll simply hand her over?”
“It’s common to add ‘sir’ when addressing a senior officer, Boyle,” Harding said. “Now let’s get out of here and get some chow.” He stood, ground out his cigarette, and walked out the door.