Twelve Desperate Miles (15 page)

But hadn’t the OSS guy in Tangier, William Eddy, just informed the command that the river pilot at Port Lyautey was in league with the Allies? Wasn’t he supposed to know every rock, buoy, and shoal on the River Sebou? Would it be possible to get him out of Morocco to London to help with the planning of the invasion?

T
he idea of extricating René Malevergne from Morocco to England had first been proposed by William Eddy to Torch commanders back in late August. Enough interest in the possibility was exhibited in Washington for Eddy to mention the operation to Dave King in Casablanca, probably via radio upon his return to Tangier.

Meanwhile, the plans for sub–task force Goalpost were being formulated and rushed to completion in London and Washington through the early weeks of September. Between Truscott’s team and George Patton in the Munitions buildings in Washington,
the idea of using a commando team against the airport grew sounder. The necessity of getting the help of the river pilot in the operation also ripened. But it appears that it was on King’s and Eddy’s own initiative that the plan moved forward.

The prompt came in mid-September, when Gordon Browne and Franklin Holcomb, a Marine Corps captain and assistant to Eddy in Tangier, arrived by chance in Casablanca. Holcomb had accompanied Browne on a trip to Fez, Taza, and Marrakech, where Browne had been taking photographs of the Taza corridor, a historically important pass that had presented an avenue over the Rif Mountains between east and northwest Africa. Holcomb held a diplomatic pass through his work at the American consulate in Tangier, which allowed him the freedom to drive between Spanish and French Morocco. When he and Browne turned up in Casablanca with a Chevy, an attached trailer, and a valid passport, it looked to King like an opportunity.

Ever since Eddy had alerted him to the possibility that Malevergne might be needed for the invasion, King had been contemplating how he might get the river pilot out of Morocco. By September the port of Casablanca had become impossible as a means of escape. The idea of
transporting Malevergne in the Chevy with Browne and Holcomb as the
purveyors of his escape seemed natural to King. He quickly wired Eddy to get permission for the action and soon had his response:
go ahead, Eddy told him, but make sure Malevergne was placed in the baggage compartment. Sometime soon after, Dave King sent Lucien Garbieze to Malevergne’s office at the fish cannery with a simple request:
The Colonel would like to see you, he said
.

That evening, another friend of the Free French, Monsieur Rey, picked up Malevergne at his hotel and drove to a little square not far away. They waited there briefly, smoking cigarettes as the evening sun drifted out over the ocean. An automobile with diplomatic plates from the U.S. consulate soon arrived, and Malevergne and Rey were whisked out of Casablanca to the south, in the direction of the suburb of Anfa. There they found themselves pulling into the driveway of an expansive villa. Moments later, the two were escorted to a nicely appointed waiting room, where they were joined by a man whose name Malevergne knew quite well by now: Colonel David King of the OSS.

King was a tall, lean man with a wiry frame and tense disposition that suggested to Malevergne that the American was somehow ill-suited for the sumptuous comforts of the villa. He was an outdoorsman, whose “
face was weathered as if he had spent years exposed to the desert winds,” Malevergne later told his diary. He also had a facial tic—that old war wound near his eye had obviously damaged nerve and muscle.

Sitting in the waiting room together, eyeing one another through the experiences of two wars, the aging patriots from far-flung corners of the globe must have wondered at the curious ways of a world that had brought them together to plot an escape from Morocco; but that’s how things worked, and
King was the sort of man who got quickly to the point: “We need you, Monsieur Malevergne,” he told the Frenchman. “Have you decided to leave?”

“
I ask only for that,” Malevergne said. King told him that he would be contacted in the near future, and Malevergne told the American that he wanted to get the permission of Garbieze and his fellow resisters before he left; he had grown deeply loyal to them over the past few months.
King agreed but emphasized the critical nature of what was to come. “This is more important,” he said bluntly.

The deal was sealed with a glass of whiskey. It was Malevergne’s first in a very long time, and he savored it.

King himself drove the Frenchman back to town and dropped him and Rey off in a safe spot, not far from where the journey to the American villa had begun.

“
Old friend, this time I think it is on,” said Rey to Malevergne, as they watched King drive away.

There were things to do before he left. On Sunday, at the request of his old friend Paolantonacci, Malevergne traveled to the civil prison in Casablanca, where Pao’s twenty-year-old daughter was detained. Her name was Anna, and she had been condemned to ten years of forced labor for her work with the underground. She seemed to Malevergne to be holding up well, though it might have been simply a brave face because she also told him that a brutish guard had been assaulting her.

“
Count two months after my departure,” he told her by way of encouragement. Meaning the invasion was coming. Help was on the way. “I don’t think she gave my prophesy due credit,” Malevergne subsequently told his diary.

The following week he visited Germaine and the boys in Mehdia. He warned his wife that he was going away, that this would be the last visit for quite some time; he took a little coffee, and then he left at three the next morning, with the children still sleeping. He refused to say good-bye to them—a little superstition that he felt would ensure that he would see them again.

As he cycled back through the forest toward Rabat and Casablanca, Malevergne heard horses and, for a moment, thought of fleeing. Then he reconsidered, climbed calmly off his scooter, and soon found himself facing four native Moroccan policemen. Trying to look convincingly lost, he asked in Arabic for directions to Sidi Taibi and thanked them profusely when they pointed out the route.

Back in Casablanca, he found out that the Resistance was not quite
ready to let him go. He was sent on a final mission to a village northeast of Port Lyautey, which he duly visited by means of the train and his bicycle.

Chenay, his old friend and boss at the cannery, also had a job for him: he asked Malevergne to accompany a fishing boat to Agadir, to the south of Casablanca, which he did, returning to Casablanca by way of Marrakech.

All the while, he anxiously waited for word of his departure from the Americans.

Given the heartache he had felt upon saying good-bye to Germaine and the boys on his last visit to Mehdia, it felt a little wrong to go see them again, but he couldn’t resist, and he made yet another trip home. Once again, Malevergne took his leave of the family as the children slept.

Finally, the moment came. He was wanted at the villa. Malevergne visited the office of Chenay. Of course, he couldn’t tell him the truth. Malevergne said simply that he was tired of sardines. He was going to look for work elsewhere in Morocco.

Chenay gave him his final wages and thanked him for his work. Wished him well in his new pursuits. His secrets were safe. With his last check, he paid off Mina, the landlady, and bade her adieu. They had grown fond of each other over his eight months in the hotel. To her, he said he was off to Marrakech.

“It isn’t your birthday today, is it Monsieur Malevergne?” she asked him.

An odd question. “No, why?” he responded.

“Because I should like to embrace you,” she said.

They hugged. He took his suitcase and headed toward an uncertain future.

T
o Gordon Browne, the argument over whether to hide the Frenchman in the trailer or the trunk of the car was growing old fast. Here were the four of them—Browne, Dave King, Franklin Holcomb, and René Malevergne, the French river pilot who was the reason they were all gathered here—standing by the garage of King’s lush villa on the outskirts of Casablanca, waiting to embark on a cross-country trip that would lead to Tangier if they were lucky, the Moroccan prison in Rabat if they weren’t, and time was fast ticking away. They wanted to hit the border between French and Spanish Morocco just after sunset so as to obscure, as best they could, any search of the Chevy and its attached trailer; yet they couldn’t decide whether or not the trailer was the equivalent of a car’s trunk.

Holcomb, Browne’s traveling companion, was young and accustomed to following orders to the letter. He was not simply a captain in the Marine Corps and assistant to Colonel Eddy, but also the son of the nation’s top marine, Corps Commander Thomas Holcomb. Holcomb’s contention was that because Eddy had ordered Malevergne to be placed in the “baggage compartment” of the Chevy, the trailer was off limits. The patently obvious fact that Malevergne, standing in their midst with a slightly baffled look on his face, was a bit too rotund to fit in the Chevy’s trunk didn’t seem to matter to the marine.

Dave King was plainly losing patience with this reasoning. As head of OSS operations in Morocco, it was he who had located Malevergne, he who had planned for and arranged this means of escape from Morocco for the Frenchman. A World War I hero whose combat experiences included being buried alive in a trench, King had a reputation for getting things done with alacrity. He made his argument through
clenched teeth to Holcomb:
If a trailer is not a baggage compartment, then what is?

Despite the fact that he was the junior officer here and out-experienced, Holcomb remained adamant. He’d already achieved something of a legendary status within the world of American espionage in North Africa for his hardheaded toughness. Soon after he had arrived in Tangier to assume his post as assistant to Eddy, a group of Italian thugs had accosted him in the street. In the ensuing brawl, Holcomb had “upheld the highest traditions of the Corps,” according to one observer, meaning he roundly thumped his attackers. In those early days of the war, when any sort of incident that exhibited American pluck was worthy of attention, President Roosevelt himself got wind of the story and suggested that Holcomb be immediately promoted from lieutenant to captain.

Of course, the booya spirit required to pummel a fistful of Italian Fascists did not necessarily convert to diplomacy, which is why Gordon Browne chose this moment to enter the fray.

“How badly do they want this man?” he said, indicating Malevergne.

“Badly,” said King.

“
Then what’s the argument?” Browne asked.

Quickly, they made a nest for Malevergne in the two-wheeled trailer attached to the Chevy. About the size of a chariot, it was hardly bigger than the trunk. And with two empty fifty-liter gas drums occupying the great majority of space in the trailer, it looked like it would take a pair of crowbars to squeeze “the Shark” inside; but somehow he managed to fit into a space between the cans of fuel. They’d laid a heavy Moroccan rug on the floor to give him a modicum of comfort. Browne, King, and Holcomb tossed a couple of gunnysacks over his body. Then they took a tarpaulin and covered the entire trailer, gas, and hidden Shark. It was nearly four o’clock in the afternoon when Browne and Holcomb headed out of the garage and into the city of Casablanca with a last reminder from King:
Make sure he gets some fresh air once in a while
. An asphyxiated river pilot would not do anyone much good.

While it was unlikely they would be stopped, the sight of two Americans in a Chevy hauling a trailer through the streets of Casablanca was still unusual enough to draw attention. Both Browne and Holcomb assumed casual poses in the front seat of the car—windows down, arms resting nonchalantly on the doors—as they navigated their way from the south side of the city to the north and out into the countryside. Malevergne, in the trailer—
“this minuscule box” is how he remembered it—was crammed in with his knees up under his chin, fearful that if he moved even a little bit, he would knock against the trailer gate, send it flying open, and fall to the pavement.

Anfa, where King’s villa was located, was built in the hills south of Casablanca. The city itself occupied a flat plain through which the trio traveled to reach the northern suburbs. French Morocco was about the size of California and populated by around eight million people, primarily Muslims of Berber descent.
The road between Casablanca and Tangier ran near the coast and, until reaching the mountains in Spanish Morocco, was sixteen feet wide and laid with macadam—a fact that helped cushion Malevergne in the trailer and eased his worry about bouncing out.

He owed this relatively smooth travel at the start of the trip to the man who gave his name to the port of which Malevergne was the pilot. Marshal Hubert Lyautey had arrived in Morocco in 1907 to quell rioting that had broken out among the native populations. Moroccans had attacked a group of French laborers who were building a new railway through an ancient cemetery in Casablanca.