“BEAU GESTE, I PRESUME.” KING WAS SMILING AS HE MET ME IN the hallway of his villa. We shook hands.
“It’s only temporary.”
“Most things are. Colonel Eddy briefed me by radio on your meeting, so I’m at least that much up-to-date. Pleasant trip?”
“Better than expected.”
“Yes, it’s an interesting country. Very beautiful in spots. Wait here a minute. I’ll tell Moshe to find something to do with himself and come back when you need a ride to the hotel.”
“How will he know?”
“I don’t know. But he will. Actually, he’ll probably park the car across the street and spend the time thinking over his sins. Or wishing he had more sins to think about.”
When he came back we settled into the comfortable chairs of his living room, which seemed to house a collection of very fine things that did not fit together. As I soon began to understand, this was by design, and perfectly in tune with King’s tastes and attitudes. He agreed to take the job only after the State Department had agreed to ship his furniture, books, and artwork here. And he had rented this suburban villa not only for security reasons, but also because it was in the middle of the fashionable nightlife of the city. If that seemed to be a contradiction, he didn’t seem to care. He enjoyed the comforts and convenience.
There were the inevitable ornate tiles on the floor and tapestries on the wall and the Moorish arches leading to other rooms, but the furniture seemed like something out of a very rich college fraternity house—well-used leather couches and chairs and bookshelves, and on the walls, photographs of men in uniform or arranged in rows in front of a college building. Absurdly, there was a Harvard pennant tacked to the wall. The bookshelves were crammed with good volumes next to paperbacks—African history and mystery novels, hunting stories and rhapsodies about fly fishing. And there were a few mementos—a Webley .45 caliber revolver, a short scimitar, a boar’s tusk, a piece of marble from some ancient site or other. And on one of the white walls there was also a stunning photo of a nude woman’s torso, shot from mid-thigh to the neck.
“That’s an Alfred Stieglitz portrait of Georgia O’Keeffe,” said King. “You wouldn’t know it was Georgia, because he doesn’t show her head. But it is perhaps the most perfect woman’s body I’ve ever seen. I saw the picture in New York and had to have a copy. I hope to meet her one day. Stieglitz is old and she might be ready for a bit of variety. Have you ever seen a better body? I haven’t.”
“No. I agree with you.”
“I’ve never met her, but I’ve seen other pictures of her. She’s not conventionally pretty, but I believe you could get used to that. In fact, with a little imagination you could believe she was beautiful. After all, that’s one of the things the imagination is good for.”
There was also an eight-by-ten photo of King himself on one of the tables. He was wearing a fez and a loose, native-looking shirt with one of those curved Arab daggers stuck in a sash. He had an impressive mustache with pointed tips that made him look like some storybook Turkish pasha or something.
He noticed that I was looking at it.
“Quite the lad, there, eh? I keep it to remind me.”
“Of what?”
“Oh, things. You know—the days before we had to go around playing diplomat in white linen suits and stiff collars. Has to be done, of course, but you wish for the old days now and then.”
“Colonel Eddy mentioned that you were in the Foreign Legion.”
“Yes. Very exotic. I joined up in 1914 when it was clear we weren’t interested in getting into the war. When we finally did, I moved over to our army. Usually you have to sign up for five years with the Legion, but they were kind enough to let me shift over to our gang. A gesture to Franco-American solidarity, I suppose.”
Eddy had given me some background on King, who was another of those half-mad American adventurers who were every bit the equal of their British counterparts. He left Harvard to join the Foreign Legion and was sent to the trenches in France, where he was wounded twice and blown up by an artillery shell, buried alive in the collapsed trench. They dug him out at the last possible minute. He had a bad eye with a drooping lid that gave him a satirical expression which fit nicely with his sardonic attitude toward life in general, and the war in particular, although his contempt and hatred for the Germans was sincere enough. Well, that was understandable. They’d tried to kill him three different times. He was about fifty and seemed perfectly at ease, as if he had found the perfect job for his taste and time of life.
“You’ve lost the mustache,” I said.
“Didn’t lose it. That would have been careless. Do you know the line ‘To lose one parent is a tragedy. To lose both looks like—’”
“Carelessness.”
“Bravo. One of my favorites.”
“Mine, too. Is it safe to talk here? They said in Tangier that almost everything was bugged.”
“It’s all right here. The domestic staff are all navy guys. And we’re very sure there aren’t any microphones around. What’s on your mind?”
“We passed right through Port Lyautey,” I said. “It looks like it might be a challenge, if it comes to a fight.”
“Yes, the old boy knew what he was doing when the place was built. General Lyautey, I mean. In the Legion he’s still referred to as Tinkerbell, in some circles. But it’s said with good humor, because by French standards he was a pretty good soldier and administrator, despite being a pansy.”
“Really? In the French army?”
“Oh, it was an open secret. When he was sent to Morocco people said it was the right place for him, because the Arabs are pretty casual about that sort of thing. Many of them, anyway. He was famous for having a cluster of handsome young officers on his staff. His wife used to tease them that she’d cuckolded them, on the mornings after she’d serviced the old boy. He had catholic tastes but not Catholic scruples. Ha! A pun. On second thought, maybe he did.”
“Well, anyway, I was able to get a few glimpses of the Sebou. But I couldn’t tell a thing about how navigable it might be. There were no ships of any size in port and no channel markings.”
“I’m not surprised. It might take a few nighttime excursions and a little poking around to figure what the odds are of using it. We’ll get you fitted out in a burnoose and turban, and provide you with a camel and a native guide named Ahmed, and some hashish and money for bribes. Nothing to it. Actually, I have some more practical ideas about it. But let’s save the shop talk. What do you say we go out? You might like a bit of local color, and besides, my steward cannot for the life of him make a decent martini. He’s from Oklahoma, where they don’t know about such things.”
“Sounds good.” The way he talked about burnooses and camels made me think he was joking. I hoped so.
“I generally go out around this hour,” he said. “The Gestapo boys follow me everywhere, and they expect it. Being Krauts, they get nervous when things don’t go according to schedule. That’s why they’ll lose the war. Or win it. We’ll have to wait and see about that. There’s a good nightclub only a couple of blocks from here. It’s called Charlie’s Blue Water Café. Everybody who’s anybody goes there.”
“Really?”
“Well, maybe not everyone. No film stars or royalty, and not many millionaires. But all the best spies and their lackeys go there, along with some well-heeled refugees trying to buy their passage out of here or win enough at roulette to bribe the necessary officials for documents—all of which creates a certain atmosphere of intrigue and excitement. They should make a movie about it.”
“They are.”
“Really? Wonderful! And the women are worth seeing. That’s the real reason to go. Quite a stunning chanteuse, especially. Not much of a singer, but that’s not important. Eddy tells me you used to be a Hollywood private eye.”
“That’s true.”
“Do you have a gun?”
“Yes. A thirty-eight.”
“I thought I noticed the bulge in your cuff.”
“I picked up the habit from the cops in LA. An ankle holster’s more comfortable than carrying one in a belt or shoulder.”
“It’s good to have one. You never know in this town. Well, let’s go, shall we? You’ll like this place.”
We walked a couple of blocks. As soon as we left his front door two men in black fedoras and black leather trench coats started following us. King turned and grinned and waved at them.
“We’re off to Charlie’s, Fritz,” he yelled to them.
“They certainly aren’t trying to hide,” I said. “Those trench coats seem like something out of a B movie, speaking of movies.”
“Yes. You and I know that, but they think it makes them look sinister, instead of just ridiculous. They must sweat like pigs in this weather. But you know, the Gestapo really are just a collection of thugs without any imagination. Most of them were walking the beat and passing out parking tickets before the war. They would be heartbroken if Himmler took away their leather coats. Morale would plummet. It doesn’t matter to us. We assume we’re always being followed, so they could dress up as ballerinas and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.”
King had said I’d like this saloon. And I did.
The painted sign above the Moorish archway announced Charlie’s Blue Water Café. The doorman in the uniform of a Hungarian hussar greeted us with a salute, and we were ushered into the inner sanctum. The room was about as large as a public ballroom but partially broken up into alcoves and booths. The decor was a mixture of Arabian nights and a cheap Monte Carlo casino, with potted palms, more archways, and a high ceiling made of smoke-darkened exposed beams. There were craps and roulette tables, and in the rear, a few card tables with serious-looking fat men studying their cards and smoking cigars.
The lighting was dim, and the room was crowded with fashionable people and some local natives selling things out of trays—flowers for the ladies, tobacco, Moorish souvenirs. The noise was just a little short of deafening. The croupier was yelling Faites vos jeux! as he spun the wheel, and the dance band was playing “Begin the Beguine.” People were laughing or groaning when red turned up instead of black, and there were people at small tables in the corners and shadows with their heads together, plotting something, either romance or escape or payment of some amount for something illegal. And over the room was a haze of cigarette smoke that mingled with the heavy scent of perfume and, worse, men’s cologne. Waiters in tuxedos that were shiny at the elbows wandered through the crowd carrying trays of drinks or ice buckets for champagne. On the right of the main entrance was a long bar that was crowded with well-dressed men and stylish women standing or sitting and drinking cocktails.
“Josephine Baker sang here once or twice,” said King, as we waited for the maître d’ to come over and guide us to a table. “Poor woman. She caught a frightful bug of some kind and has been in the hospital here for months. People say she’s lost a lot of weight, which is a shame on several levels. She was actually useful to our side for a while after the Vichy deal. Smuggled a few documents between here and Lisbon in her underwear.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes. She wasn’t having any of the Vichy line. She was more Parisian than Parisians. Not like her old partner, Chevalier. He’d tap-dance naked for Hitler himself, if you promised him a good hotel room and room service.”
The maître d’, a smiling fat man who went by the name of Cuddles, came up to us and enthused, his jowls and wattles shimmying.
“Mr. King. It is good to see you. It has been a while.” Cuddles had a thick accent of some kind, something I couldn’t place.
“Yes, almost twenty-four hours. How about something fairly close to the band. I’ve told my friend about your chanteuse.”
“Yes, of course. Right this way.” He guided us to a small table to the right of the bandstand.
“Is Charlie in tonight?” asked King. Did I detect a note of sarcasm? It was hard to tell with King.
“Not tonight, sir,” said Cuddles. “He has gone off somewhere with one of the chorus girls from the Norwegian Parrot. Beautiful girl. I think he is besotted. Is that the correct word?”
“It is, if that’s what you mean to say. Too bad, though.”
When Cuddles had gone off, King said, “There really is no Charlie. He’s a fictional character. Cuddles is the actual owner, and he likes to promote Charlie as a shadowy figure of romance. It gives the place glamour and tone, he thinks. It only works with transients, but then, almost everyone in here is a transient. All the rest are spies or cops or government people. They all know the true story but don’t care.”
“What’s his accent?”
“God knows. Sometimes he claims to be a Lett. Who the hell knows what a Lett sounds like? Most people think ‘Lett’ only means ‘take the first serve over again.’ Other times he says he’s exiled royalty from Montenegro—and a distant cousin of Njegos. Heard of him?”
“No.”
“Some sort of Serbo-Croatian poet or something. Anyway, Cuddles should really consider moving to America, the land of self-invention.”
“Yes, Hollywood would be ideal. No one there has the name or history he was born with. And no one cares.”
“Even you?”
“I’m the exception.”
Just then the music stopped, the house lights dimmed, and the bandleader/emcee stepped to the microphone. A spotlight shone on him.
“Mesdames and messieurs, it is time for the featured part of our program. Please welcome the star attraction of Charlie’s Blue Water Café, Mademoiselle Yvonne Dubonnet!”
The audience applauded and there were a few whistles and knuckles wrapping on tables which indicated Germans giving approval. Into the spotlight stepped a tall woman in a shimmering silver dress. Her hair was cut short and was the color of her dress. She wore vivid red lipstick and dark glasses. She looked in the direction of our table and seemed to recognize King, who nodded and smiled sardonically at her.
The band struck up a familiar French song, “Mon Légionnaire.” Yvonne began to sing. Her voice was more like a throaty spoken monologue, but it didn’t matter. She was beautiful in a slightly dissipated or degenerate way, her voice saying unmistakably that she was tired from too many disappointments, too many failed love affairs, too many late-night absinthes and Gauloises cigarettes. As a chanteuse, therefore, she was perfect. And it was by careful design.
I do not know his name,
I do not know anything about him He loved me all night
my legionnaire
And leaving me to my destiny
He left in the morning
It sounds better in French.
Anyway, she finished the song and the audience raved and Yvonne smiled a sad smile of a woman grown used to lost love, and she nodded and stepped down from the stage and walked over to our table. King and I both stood up.
“Good evening, Monsieur King,” she said, pronouncing all three syllables of “evening.”
“Good evening, Yvonne,” King said. “Lovely song. Were you singing it for me, your legionnaire?”
“Who else?” She smiled at King, beautifully insincere, and kissed him on his cheeks, à la mode française.
“And may I present a friend of mine, Lieutenant Fitzhugh,” said King.
She turned to me and smiled again, thoroughly composed.
“Hello, Riley.”
“Hello, Amanda.”