Gibraltar Passage (18 page)

“Again!”

Jake shouted his frustration and did as he was told.

“Good! Now
pull!
”

Jake rammed the car forward, and the entire section of the wall came away with him.

A second smaller tug signaled that the chain was free from the wall. Jake slowed, turned in the seat, and drove forward while watching back as Pierre fell to his knees by the gaping hole and began guiding the third rope up and out. A shout and Jake stopped and flung open his door. He skidded to a stop at the sight of a herdsman staring wide-eyed at them from the doorway of his stable-yard hovel. Jake opened his jacket to reveal the pistol stuck into his belt, then motioned with his head. The man understood perfectly and vanished back into his hut.

Jake raced back and found Pierre struggling to help a scarecrow of a man clamber up and over the ledge. He was little more than skin and bones and matted beard, clothed in stinking rags. Pierre was almost weeping with rage. “Look at what they have done to my brother.”

“He's alive,” Jake said tersely. “You want to keep it that way, get him in the car.”

Together they bundled Patrique into the back compartment and hid him on the floorboards under a heap of blankets. Jake used his knife to slice the ropes free from the bumper, then returned to where Pierre was tucking blankets around his brother and demanded, “Do you speak English?”

The man was trembling too hard to reply with more than a nod.

“There's a sack of food and water there by your head,” Jake went on. “Hold off until we're outside the gates.”

Pierre hissed as he shifted the chain still bound to Patrique's leg and revealed great weeping sores circling the ankle.

Jake had opened his mouth to urge Pierre into the front seat when a cry rose from deep in the palace's bowels. They jerked up as further shouts rose from the dungeon, then slammed the passenger door and scrambled into the car. Stiff with alarm, Jake found first gear and slammed the accelerator home.

The Rolls scattered a vast assortment of squawking birds and raced into the narrow passage. Sparks flew from each side in turn as they ricocheted from one stone wall to the other. They exited the passage, roared through the first stable yard, slid into second gear, and passed through the portals of the inner keep at almost thirty miles an hour.

An invading army could scarcely have caused more alarm than the Rolls. Early morning traders, owlish with sleep, cleared their stalls in single bounding leaps at the sight of the great silver eyes roaring down on them. The central passage descended in a series of long sloping steps. Jake managed to clear all four tires a dozen times or more before the great outer doors careened into view. The guards had clearly
been forewarned about their intended test drive, for as the car hurtled over the final square and through the portico, they lifted weapons high and shouted their approval. Jake slammed the car into third, took the curve by the river in a dusty four-wheel spin, and roared away.

The road leading east was rough and cobblestoned and blindingly bright from the sun's rising glare. Jake was literally on top of the first goat before he saw the herd, and carried two of the animals a good thirty yards before he managed to shake them loose. He then remembered that the car probably had a horn, and hit every surface on the dash before discovering the switch by his right hand. He then drove by horn and feel, his eyes squinted up against the blazing orb. The horn was a splendid three-tone affair, blaring out its royal aaah-oooh-gah in time to their jouncing progress.

To Jake's relief, the road took a gentle turning, and a high central peak blocked the sun. Jake managed a swift glance at his companion. Pierre sat wide-eyed and rigid as the car frame. Jake shouted, “You all right?”

“How fast are we going?”

Jake checked the controls, replied, “A little over seventy.”

“You will never speak to me about my driving again,” Pierre shouted back. “Is that clear?”

Jake grinned and swerved to avoid a shepherd glued to the center of the road with terror. His sheep had shown more sense and were scattered to the wind. The mountains were drawing closer, shielding them from the dawn's glare. They passed through two villages in turn, the villagers frozen to the ground. Jake had sufficiently recovered by then to bestow a few regal waves as they breezed bumpily through.

They were almost upon the mountains before Pierre pointed and shouted, “The cliff at eleven o'clock!”

Jake craned and spotted the blue-robed Arab waving and pointing them toward a crevice opening at his feet. Without slowing, Jake wheeled the big car off the rapidly deteriorating road. The engine roared in mighty fury as the tires
spun through softer sand before catching hold and hurtling forward. Careening wildly from side to side, Jake scrambled through the yielding drift, willing the car onward. The steep rock side rose up around them, and they hit harder ground. Jake eased up on the accelerator as they hurtled ever deeper into the rock-walled crevass.

They continued on this winding course for almost ten miles before the walls closed in so tightly they threatened to jam the car to a halt. Another sharp turning, and suddenly the walls opened to reveal a great open space where tall date palms sheltered an open well. At the car's unexpected appearance, camels reared, sheep scattered, goats bleated, and Arabs came streaming toward them.

Jake was too caught up in the adrenaline rush to just sit there. He slammed back the roof, stepped up on the seat, raised two fists high over his head, and shouted up at the heavens above,
“Yee-ha!”

“My cousin says your greeting is worthy of a great warrior,” Jasmyn said, hastening forward, her eyes fastened upon Pierre. At her side strode a tall Arab of proud bearing and evident strength. “My cousin, Omar Al-Masoud, leader of the Al-Masoud tribe, bids you welcome.”

Jake grinned down at the pair. “Tell your cousin we're mighty grateful for his hospitality, and ask him if he's in the market for a slightly used Rolls Royce. We'd like him to accept it as a little token of appreciation and all that.”

Dark eyes gleamed brightly at the translation. He stared up at Jake for a long moment, then nodded once. Jake felt a thrill of having gotten something very important very right. “My cousin asks if this is the sultan's car.”

“It was.”

“Then he accepts your gift and asks if you can drive it into the cave there behind you.”

“No problem.” Jake watched Pierre step from the car and walk stiffly over to Jasmyn. She stared up at him, searching his face for a long time. The Arab observed the scene with
an unreadable gaze. Pierre nodded once, then said quietly, “At times I wondered if perhaps my memories had painted you to be more beautiful than you were. No one could be so lovely, I told myself. But I see that I was wrong to wonder.”

Jasmyn lifted one hand to touch his face, then stopped herself. Her voice was shaky as she said, “I have told my people that you are my fiance. It does the tribe honor to have me return with you before, before . . .”

“Before our marriage,” Pierre said quietly.

She gasped a single quick sob, but with great determination drew herself up. “They will help us go where we wish.”

“A doctor,” Jake said, motioning to the back compartment. “Patrique is in pretty bad shape.”

Jasmyn turned and spoke to her cousin, who called over a pair of women. Pierre tore himself away from Jasmyn to help them bring Patrique out. “There is a healer two villages away,” Jasmyn translated. “We will go there.”

“Jasmyn,” Patrique murmured. “Is it truly you?”

She walked over and touched the gaunt man's trembling hand. “You are safe now, my friend.”

“Again you have saved me,” he said hoarsely. “How can I ever repay you?”

Pierre started. “Again?”

“There is no debt, and thus nothing to repay,” Jasmyn replied.

“Because of her I escaped from Marseille just ahead of the Nazi raid,” Patrique said. “How can you not know of this?”

“Because I am a fool,” Pierre replied, gazing at her.

A call hallooed from above and beyond the rocky confines. A guard above their heads called back and away from them. A distant call drifted back upon the wind. The entire camp seemed to hold its breath and listen. “Horses,” Jasmyn said. “Many horses. Coming this way.”

Omar shouted instructions. Jake saw a group gather up branches and began brushing away the car's tracks. “Please,
Jake,” Jasmyn urged, “you are to drive the car into the cave now. We must hurry. The sultan's men are after us.”

Chapter Eighteen

It was three days before Omar felt safe enough to bring them into a village. They walked twenty miles or more each day, passing through narrow defiles which opened suddenly into boulder-strewn pastures. Always their destination at day's end was pasture and water. Seldom was there warning before the rocky gorges spilled them into the great open spaces. Their path wound through chasms and passes and bone-dry valleys, jinking back and forth so repeatedly that Jake could never have found his way out alone. Somewhere up ahead, Omar told him through Jasmyn, the jagged Atlas foothills joined the Sahara. There in the first desert reaches waited the remainder of his tribe. That was their destination. For now, they took a course uncharted by any save those trained by their fathers, and they by their fathers before them. Such, proclaimed Omar, was the desert way.

They met other people only once in that three-day stretch, another desert tribe sending wool and hand-woven carpets toward Telouet. Jake crouched in the shadows of the great central tent, dressed in the same desert robes as all the other men, and watched as solemn greetings were exchanged.

Patrique rode hunched on a camel, recovering slowly, sleeping much and eating with the hunger of one who could never be sated. Pierre and Jasmyn tended to him constantly, but in truth Jake felt they saw little save each other. He did not mind. A whole new world opened up before him, one of silence and heat and sun and wind. Omar saw that Jake's fascination was genuine and accepted him into the fold. Their lack of a common tongue was no great barrier. Speech was not so important here in the reaches where silence reigned.

On the third day, Omar entered the quiet stucco village with Jake and Jasmyn. Pierre had elected to remain behind with Patrique. Jake wore the royal blue of the desert tribes, belted
and robed and turbaned. The clothes still carried a hint of alienness with them, but they no longer hung as strangely as they had the first day. Jake was swiftly learning to appreciate them and the life they stood for.

The village was composed of two dozen meager huts, more camels than people, and more goats than both. A single wire strung limply from pole to pole connected the village with the outside world.

They followed the wire to the village's main store, a fly-infested pair of rooms stocking everything from saddles to salt. Barefoot children in filthy miniature robes scampered in the dust outside the doorway. Jake walked in after Omar, waited while the formal greetings were exchanged, and watched the storekeeper enter into a paroxysm of refusal when Omar made his request. Not content to simply shake his head, the storekeeper rose to his feet and twisted his entire body back and forth. Although Jake could not understand a word, the message was clear. Under no circumstances would he allow a stranger to send a telegraph on his set. No matter that the storekeeper could only send and receive in Arabic. The message must be translated and sent by him, the one and only official telegraph operator in the valley.

Jake then reached into his belt pouch and displayed his dwindling wad of dollars. The storekeeper deflated like a punctured balloon. His entire demeanor changed. He pushed open the stall door, shoved papers and forms and sheets off the cluttered desk and onto the floor, dusted off his chair, and held it as Jake sat down.

Through Jasmyn Jake made his request. No, the storekeeper replied, there was no problem in making a connection to Gibraltar. Of course, he had never done it, but yes, it was possible through the operator in Tangiers. They had communicated several times, and he knew the operator to be a good man. Yes, of course, for the desert sahib he could make the connection. It would be an honor. One moment, please.

They waited out the interim in the shadowed coolness of
the village's only teahouse, which in truth was simply the front room of the shopkeeper's own three-room shanty. As they sat and sipped the sugary tea, Jasmyn said, “We have been ignoring you these past few days.”

“You have every reason to,” Jake replied. “I'm not much competition for true love.”

Dark green eyes raised to gaze at him. “I am in your debt,” she said gravely. “You have restored to me my reason for living.”

“Not me,” Jake countered. “It was all God's work.”

“Yes, I have heard the same from Pierre,” she said, “and this is as great a miracle as the fact that he is here with me.” She watched Jake for a long moment, then asked, “Could you perhaps teach me how to find God so that I may thank Him?”

“There is nothing on earth,” Jake replied sincerely, “that would give me greater joy.”

The moment became almost an hour before the storekeeper, now swelled with importance, announced that his Tangiers connection, whose name by the way was Mohammed, had succeeded in making the link to the central Gibraltar operator, who happened to be at the naval base. Oh, that was exactly the person with whom the sahib wished to speak? Then indeed Allah must be smiling on their proceedings. Please, please, the sahib must now sit and communicate with the Gibraltar operator.

Jake approached the telegraph key with trepidation. He had no hope of arriving back on time, and his commanding officer was a firebrand for discipline. Jake knew there was a very good chance that General Clark would tear his story apart, especially with him not there to defend it. But he had too much respect for the general to offer anything but the truth. He hoped fervently that Bingham would weigh in on his behalf and confirm at least the beginning of their journey.