Lee’s eyes nervously darted to the big man, then to the sub, then back again.
“If you don’t mind, sir,” Lee said, ?
?I’ll just check at the boat. It’ll take only a second.”
“Christ!” the big man fumed, then looked toward the Arab, who stood waiting almost at Lee’s car. The big man then put his hands up, chest high, palms out. “Okay, Lee. Do what you must.”
“Yes, sir,” Lee said, his voice relieved. “Thank you for understanding, sir.”
Ensign Lee marched purposefully toward the gangplank.
When Lee was more or less halfway there, he heard behind him the sound of a door shut. It sounded like the Plymouth’s.
He turned and saw that the big man had closed the left rear passenger door after the Arab had gotten in, and now was himself in the process of getting in behind the wheel.
In the time it took Ensign Lee to utter “What the hell?,” the big man had fired up the Plymouth’s engine and begun driving out of the busy dock area.
“Hey!” Lee shouted as he took off toward it at a trot.
The car disappeared into the web of city streets. Lee stopped in his tracks.
“Aw, dadgumit!” he said and looked around to see if anyone had seen what had just happened.
He sighed.
There can’t really be any Navy guys in the desert.
Can there…?
[TWO]
Canidy, his foot heavy on the accelerator pedal, briskly wound the Plymouth through Algiers, the car’s eighty-seven-horsepower six-cylinder straining on the inclines. He aggressively tapped the horn when the mass of pedestrians—and the occasional donkey-drawn carts—clogged the narrow cobblestone-paved streets, taking care to play the clutch just right because the low-geared, three-speed transmission had a nasty habit of bucking on the hills.
Canidy had instructed Professor Rossi to stay down on the backseat out of sight. And every now and then, particularly at the sudden moments requiring heavy braking and during the rounding of blind corners, Canidy could hear from the backseat Rossi’s groans or gasps or murmurings, these last sounds he decided being directed to a higher power.
Moving ever farther up the hillside of white buildings with red tile roofs, the view of the harbor and sea growing greater and wider below, Canidy sped along, scanning the city streets for familiar landmarks.
After a few more minutes, and more than a few turns, he said somewhat excitedly, “Aha, there’s the Hotel Saint George!” He then upshifted, accelerated past that grand old building that served as the base for the brass of AFHQ, slowed only slightly as he hung a left at the next intersection, then accelerated again up the hill.
“You’re one lucky man, Professor,” Canidy called back in a cheery tone as he made a right turn onto rue Michaud and backed off the gas. “You’re in the hands of a natural navigator, a human compass, a—oh, shit!”
Canidy braked heavily and quickly nosed the car to a stop at the curb. He tried unsuccessfully to hide behind the delivery truck that was parked across the street from a large villa painted a faint shade of pink.
When he had set the brake and killed the engine, he heard Rossi murmur a final prayer, then a sigh.
“Sit tight, Professor,” Canidy called back quietly. “We need to wait here a moment.”
“Buon,” Rossi whispered in reply, his tone suggesting that he was not at all disappointed.
Canidy stared across the street. Parked at the curb in front of a large villa was what had first caught his attention: a great big Army staff car.
Unlike the Plymouth, this 1942 Cadillac had been completely made over with military markings, including the painting of its body in olive drab and its bumpers and other chromed parts blacked out. At the front and back were places designed for the holding of small flags and of small signage—ones that Canidy knew very probably displayed the stars of a general officer of the United States Army. Specifically, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander Allied (Expeditionary) Forces.
There were four people on the sidewalk near the car. One was a mean-looking civilian male who was absently sweeping the walkway with a makeshift broom fashioned of palm fronds while keeping an eye on the other three. Canidy recognized him. He was the villa owner’s vassal, Monsieur Khatim, a tough, old Algerian who Canidy knew carried a curved khanjar dagger—its double edges razor-sharp—in a sculpted scabbard on his hip just inside the overfold of his off-white robe.
Two wore the uniforms of senior officers in the United States Army. One was a captain, whose face Canidy could see and whom Canidy knew well, the other a lieutenant colonel, whose back was to him. The third was a good-looking Irish woman in her midthirties who wore the uniform of the British Motor Transport Corps; she stood stiffly, holding open the right rear passenger door.
That’s Ike’s Caddy, all right, Canidy thought.