The Last Heroes (Men at War 1)

El Ferruch and the American, after an aperitif downstairs, came jauntily up the wide stairs, teasing and joking with one another. They were preceded by the maìtre d’hôtel, who bowed them into the private dining room. Two of el Ferruch’s Berber guards stationed themselves on either side of the door.

The waiters and wine stewards began serving the dinner. Toward the end, two Moroccan women appeared, robed, their faces masked, and entered the chambre séparée. The Sûreté man wondered if they were as beautiful as they were said to be, and as skilled in mysterious erotic techniques as legend had it. He knew for a fact that they shaved their crotches. Moroccan men were repelled by pubic hair.

Inside the room, Sidi el Ferruch and the blond American were nearly naked. Meanwhile el Ferruch’s huge Senegalese took the women to one side, holding their arms so firmly in his massive hands that they carried dark bruises for weeks. If either of them ever said a word about what they saw in the chambre séparée, he warned them, he would slice off their breasts and send them to their families.

Ropes were produced, attached to radiators, and then released out the open windows. There was a rope apiece for each of the men, and one for the small, heavy oilskin package of currency. Once they were in the water, the American would tow the money while the jewels were strapped to the lithe, muscular, practically hairless body of Sidi Hassan el Ferruch. Neither wore any swimming costume.

Fulmar was a better swimmer then el Ferruch, and perfectly capable of handling both the currency and the jewels, but Sidi Hassan el Ferruch insisted on joining him. There was not only greater safety that way, but the boatmen they were meeting would also afterward return to Safi (the village where they made their home) and report that Sheikh Sidi Hassan el Ferruch had swum through the surf at Pointe-Noire. There would be a very nice increase in Sheikh Sidi Hassan el Ferruch’s reputation as a result. And in due course other heroic tales and legends. The reward Sidi expected to find as a consequence of tonight’s escapades, in other words, had little to do with any increases these would add to his wealth.

Unlike his friend, however, Eric wanted money—and lots of it. But he, too, was grinning like Errol Flynn as the two of them swung down their ropes. Getting the money was necessary, but the adventure of getting it was supreme delight.

But the trick was getting into the water. Dropping into the surf, you ran the risk of being captured by a wave and smashed against the rock. The trick, which they had practiced down the coast, was to lower oneself onto the rock as a wave receded, then immediately dive into the next wave. If that was done properly, there was sufficient force in the dive to carry the diver far enough away from the rock not to be smashed against it.

Coming in was less risky. You just waited until a wave receded, then swam quickly to the rock before another crashed, and scampered up the rope out of the way of the next one.

Beyond the surf, there was only one danger: missing the boats three hundred meters offshore. If there were no boats, Fulmar joked 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 Ferruch’s hand appeared on the rail and he too was hauled in.

It took them almost ten minutes—longer than they expected—before 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 séparée, 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 his front. He stopped shivering, sat up, looked down at himself, closed his eyes, and laughed.

She laughed too, and gently—but very cautiously—let her fingers experience his luxurious mat of light golden hair. She was not used to hair so bright.

And he, 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 baby-smooth.

National Institute of Health Building Washington, D.C. November 30, 1941

Captain Peter Douglass gave Eldon C. Baker a cup of coffee, poured himself one, then carried it behind his desk.

‘‘I’ve 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 hand them over.’’

‘‘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.