Summary: Dietrich is as unlucky in love as he is warfare… when there’s a Troy involved.
Category: The Rat Patrol
Genre: Military Adventure
Rating: G
Word Count: 8182
Chapter 1
Dietrich watched the singer on the stage with something akin to idol worship. His heart raced, his hands felt clammy, and, ignoring the band in the background, he had eyes only for her.
Dark-haired and dark-eyed, she had a graceful use of her hands which added an allure to her song, itself a melancholy rendering of Body and Soul, a song that had been around for over a decade. She held the mic up to lips he could barely see in the smoky dark of the bar, but he imagined they were warm to touch.
He listened raptly to the chorus of her song:
My life a wreck you’re making
You know I’m yours for just the taking
I’d gladly surrender
Myself to you, body and soul
If only he could bring her to his table when she was through her set, this heavenly ‘chanteuse,’ and buy her a drink, or even dinner!
Afterward, they could walk in the souk together, admiring the stars above the awnings hung from side to side on the streets, which gave shade to the sellers and buyers during the day. He could hold one of her hands to his lips and tell her what his heart was saying, how it was hammering for a short ride with her in the desert.
All of this he’d love to do, but for one thing. Here in this neutral Arab city on the edge of the sea, its crystalline blue a fitting backdrop to romance, he was looking at the cousin—by some extraordinary coincidence—of Sgt. Sam Troy, his greatest foe in the war.
His spies had flushed out that fact. To say Dietrich was surprised that he could fall for Troy’s cousin was an understatement. He had enough reason to hate the man ‘til eternity, and no reason to think such starry-eyed thoughts of Lila Troy. No reason to hope for a deeper, more amorous relationship with her.
Indeed, he had reason to feel just the opposite. Instead of admiring the stars with her, it would be better for his side, the German side, if he kidnapped her and forced Troy out in the open to rescue her, where Dietrich could finish once and for all his and Troy’s rivalry. No more convoy explosions, no more dead soldiers to bury, no more infiltrations of his headquarters by Troy’s patrol if Troy himself was a prisoner of war.
But to frighten such a beauty, to see her recoil in fear of him, to feel her anger at sending Troy off to Bardia or some other camp, he didn’t see how he could. How had fate carved out this dilemma!
Downing the last of his whiskey, Hauptmann Hans Dietrich, commander of the Axis supply base at al-Qarah, rose from the table and left a tip for the waiter, then made his way up to the edge of the stage. For a few moments, he stood there, watching the American beauty finish her song.
She must have had an intimation he was there, for she turned to him. Seeing his uniform, a German captain’s, she looked away, just in time to see her cousin and his men entering the bar. They had agreed to take her home once their meeting was over with their Arab allies in town.
Dietrich, fearing a collision of hasty spirits, nodded at the singer and quietly and quickly left the bar by another exit, one he knew well. He intended to leave town—Biqrah—the next day and head back to his base, but something was going to prevent him.
After her ‘set,’ Lila Troy spoke with the bandmaster for a few moments, then rushed over to the group of men waiting at the door, collectively known as the Rat Patrol. She hugged Sam for a moment, then still holding his arms, leaned back and looked at the others in turn.
“My, none of you know how to use a razor?” she asked, having to raise her voice over the noise in the bar. Two belly dancers had now taken the stage and assorted catcalls rose and fell in volume as their hips rose and fell in tandem with the music.
Troy laughed his easygoing laugh. “We’ve been fighting Jerry, Li, while you’ve been singing to him in this bar.”
“To who?”
“Jerry.”
“Oh, you mean that tall, rather good-looking German who was just here, the one gawking at me when I was on stage?”
“That’s him.” Troy was sterner than he wanted to sound. “What’s he want?”
“How should I know, Sam? My autograph, maybe?”
“Tell him you’ll give it to him only if he surrenders,” said one of the two younger men in the group, Tully Pettigrew, Sgt. Jack Moffitt’s driver.
Hitch, Troy’s driver, laughed and added, “Tell him to bring his sword.”
“Yeah,” said the urbane Englishman, Moffitt, “and only if he falls on it.”
“I gather, from the way you guys are talking, he’s not one of your favorite people?”
Troy chuckled. “That’d be putting it mildly. You’re finished? Can we go now?”
The four men escorted Lila back to her shared apartment, her roommate like Lila a singer who had followed the Americans when they landed in North Africa back in late 1942. It was in a slightly seedy area on the outskirts of town. Troy didn’t like the look of the place. There was an aura about the area that didn’t set well with his brotherly feelings towards Lila.
“Claire, I suspect, is out,” she said, looking up at the dark apartment window. “She sings in a different cantina than I do.”
Claire’s father had some pull with the State Department, so the girls had been able to receive permission to enter a war zone, in exchange singing their hearts out for lonely soldiers. Biqrah was a town which had not declared itself for one side or another. Still, there was danger in just being in a time of turmoil in the country.
Troy had not been happy first to receive a telegram telling of their arrival and then the girls themselves on this side of the Atlantic. But he had never been able to tell his cousin, his Uncle Nick’s daughter, how to behave.
Lila had always been headstrong. She loved adventure. When only the stars provided light, she liked to ride out—alone—on the meadows on Nick’s Colorado ranch, about a stone’s throw from where Troy and his folks lived. Sometimes, if he was visiting, he joined her. If he didn’t break a leg, he was afraid his horse would.
Now, almost thirty and still unhitched, she had a charming voice, but over the years she had ‘charmed’ way too many men with it, and Troy feared that one of them—Dietrich—might use her to try to get at Troy himself.
He’d seen Dietrich’s interest in her that night, and he feared it was not all on the up-and-up. What better way to capture the leader of the Rat Patrol than to lure his cousin into his Kubelwagen for a night ride on the desert?
Troy had made a pledge to himself there and then. If he hurt her, even if it was to bring a tear to her eye, there wasn’t a cave he could hide in or a rock he could crawl under. Troy would find him and ‘deal’ with him as he saw fit.
On the walk home from the bar, Troy filled Lila in on her mysterious admirer, Hauptmann Hans Dietrich of the Afrika Korps. Even if, as honorable men, they shared a grudging admiration for one another, he and Troy had no love for one another. They were rivals, desert rivals, poised like archers to see who could shoot the farthest.
At her door, Lila bid the men of the Rat Patrol good night, with another hug for Sam. She lightly kissed him on the cheek. He wanted to come up, to see for himself that no one had broken into her apartment, but she insisted he go and get some rest for the night. He was done in, as he and his fellow Rats had driven over sixty desert miles that day to arrive at Biqrah for the meeting.
“We’ll wait here until you’re up safely,” he said, glancing up at the window. He’d been in her apartment once already, when he first arrived, but now it had a sinister feel to it.
“Oh, Sam, you’re treating me like a ten-year-old.”
Sam Troy laughed, saying, “Remember what you did when you were ten-years-old? That horse you tried to break?”
Lila rubbed her hip at the sudden recollection of the fall off Blazer’s back and nodded. “Alright, wait here then. I’ll turn the lights on and if they go off suddenly, you’ll know someone’s got me.”
“Lila,” Troy tried to sound stern, even though he knew she was teasing, “be careful.”
“You, too, Sam. Night, guys!” She waved at the other three and then climbed the outside steps to her second floor apartment, opening the door with a key. Before entering, she waved again. “Thanks!” she yelled down and then slipped inside.
The lights came on and they didn’t go off ‘suddenly,’ so no one had gotten her.
“Come on, we’ve got to get some shut-eye,” Troy said, gathering up his men—his flock—and turning back towards the main section of town where their own digs were.
“Admirable girl,” observed Moffitt, smiling up at the window. “I wouldn’t mind dating her myself.”
“You’ll have to fight Dietrich for her,” said Tully, ominously. Troy looked at him. Maybe he was right.
*****
The next day, Lila donned a head scarf—for respect’s sake—and journeyed down to the souk. The sea breeze mingled with the odors of spices, and the noise of the hawkers was at odds with the snorting of lonely goats.
She had a grim feeling of being watched as she moved through the booths, soaking up the atmosphere and buying tiny trinkets here and there for friends back home. Figuring it was Sam, or one of his men, she stopped to wait for the ‘lurker’ to come out of hiding.
When he did, who should she see but the tall drink of water that was the German who had stood at the stage last night, unabashedly admiring her? He stood in a sunny corner, and was by no means hard to spot.
It was time to move on, for she could see the Arab barker she had been told to meet. He was wearing a striped red turban and had a dark beard with streaks of gray in it. Lila stopped at his booth, then turned around to see if the German captain was still there. He didn’t appear to be.
“Thank you, Nazir,” she said, reaching out her beringed hand and taking the small envelope he had pulled out of his sash. “I will give this to Laurent.”
“Ma’a salama,” said the older man, who wished he had a daughter of such beauty as the girl before him. Lila knew enough Arabic to smile and repeat the phrase, meaning “Go in peace,” essentially goodbye.
Dietrich watched her as she briskly walked, without turning back, to the gates of the souk. She had what she came for, besides the gewgaws he had seen her buy, and now she was off to give the packet to … to who? Troy?
Was she working a side hustle helping the Rat Patrol? How unlike Troy though to use his cousin in that way. Whatever she was doing, or whoever she was working for, she was playing a dangerous game. These Arabs were men of the desert first, and of civilization second. In seconds, they could be quick, brutal, and decisive, after seeming to be a friend the moment before.
Dietrich knew them. What he didn’t know was what was in the envelope. It was flat, like a sheath of papers. A trinket it was not.
Maybe he was making too much of this. Perhaps the envelope had only contained directions to the house of a beautician or dressmaker. He decided to follow her to see if Lila would reveal how important the packet was. He leaned up from the warm, sunny wall and turned his long legs in her direction, the direction of the gate.
This time, however, he behaved a bit more surreptitiously, not wanting her to realize his presence. What she did next didn’t surprise him. She first of all went to her apartment, probably to unload her sundry purchases and to rest for a while in the heat of the day. He knew he had to wait for her to reappear again, if she did.
In two hours, well before the time she would have gone to the bar, she came out of the three-story rooming house and strode up the street. She had changed her dress to a pair of loose-legged pants and flowing top. The scarf was gone. She wasn’t heading to any place where Arabs would likely see her.
Staying as far back as he dared, he walked up the same streets, down the same alleyway, and to the sea where she entered a low dwelling close to the beach. He found a convenient set of crates to hide behind and leaned out to watch.
After about thirty minutes, Lila and a man who Dietrich didn’t recognize, a Frenchman by his dark Gallic looks, stepped out and embraced. It was not a casual embrace, or a brotherly one such as Troy had given her the night before. This embrace was all-business, and not of the money-changing kind, either.
“Who is he?” Dietrich thought to himself. “What does Sgt. Troy know about this? Dare I ask him?’ He was amused by the thought of going up to his enemy and saying something like, “Do you know the man your cousin is seeing, Troy?”
Just for sticking his nose in where it didn’t belong, he might get it shot off with Troy’s Colt .45. In any case, he didn’t think Troy would be best pleased to know that Hauptmann Dietrich was ‘tailing’ his cousin around Biqrah.
After disengaging from the man, who didn’t seem to want to let her go, but who looked longingly after her, Lila rushed back to the apartment and there Dietrich stopped following her. He had some research to do. From his own contacts he discovered that the dwelling she had entered on the beach was a hotbed of partisan activity.
The man she had met—and made love to—was a well-known ringleader of the partisans, currently hiding out here in neutral Biqrah until the ‘heat’ died down in German-held Benghazi. So she was passing intel to a Resistance leader? Would Troy condone that, even if it was done on the side of the Allies? Dietrich didn’t think so.
Would he like her deliberately exposing herself to the same fate as members of the Resistance themselves would meet if they were caught? Dietrich considered. Perhaps it was time to have a talk with the sergeant, if he could safely enter Troy’s orbit without getting his German head blown off.
He decided to stay in town one or two days longer, rather than go back to al-Qarah. al-Qarah was the oasis town where he trucked supplies in from the ships on the coast, and then sent them out again to the German fighting forces on the front lines.
*****
Chapter 2
The Rat Patrol had to keep a low profile in Biqrah, or risk expulsion. But that didn’t mean their hands were tied! By radio, they could send intel back to their base at Tal Yata, but they had to gather it first. On the day Lila went to the souk, the four men were out on a mission to recon German troop movements.
They couldn’t have known of her activities in the souk or at the beach house. Nor could they know that, while they were out counting German heads, Lila’s hanger-on had made himself a bit more conspicuous.
Dietrich, who admired Lila for her voice, beauty, and charm, and for her daring to be a singer in wartime, accompanied her that night to her apartment after her set. She was distant, and treated him as a kind of big brother. He didn’t see himself that way. He didn’t want their relationship to be a mirror of hers and Troy’s.
He plied her with compliments, and smiles, and even the offer of a good Arab wine he was carrying, if she would let him into her apartment.
“I’d like to get to know you better,” he said, one of the all-time classic lines.
She looked askance at him, as if saying, “Can’t you do better than that?”
Not afraid of him, still letting him into her apartment—that was a bridge too far. She knew what he meant to her cousin and his men, so instead of accepting his (tempting) offer, she politely extended her hand and Dietrich bent low over it, brushing it with his lips. He was quite the gentleman when he tried to be, she would have told Sam in his defense.
Dietrich watched her go up, tallying every move of those full hips, and after her door closed, he almost felt like whistling. Troy or no Troy, he was going to get a date with the heavenly Lila.
Just as he turned to go, however, a firm hand reached out and gripped his arm. At the same time, a pistol was shoved in his back. He guessed it was a semi-automatic. And he knew it was in very capable hands, Sgt. Sam Troy’s.
Troy had a hushed, ‘night-time’ voice. “What’re you doing here with my cousin?”
“Are we alone?” asked Dietrich, dodging Troy’s direct question and risking a .45 slug in the back.
“We aren’t, but my men are keeping a respectful distance. One wrong move though, Dietrich, and you’re toast.”
Dietrich got right down to it. “I believe your cousin is seeing a Resistance leader, even passing information to him, Sgt. Troy.”
“What proof do you have she’s involved in that?”
“May I turn around—slowly—sergeant?”
“If you try anything, I’ve given myself permission to shoot,” said Troy.
Dietrich turned as slowly as he could, like a wind-up toy on a pedestal. After he had fully turned and could look Troy in the eye, the gun resided in his abdomen, just above his belly button. An uncomfortable place for it to be.
“I followed her out of curiosity to the market this afternoon.” Troy’s gun hand stiffened, and Dietrich could feel the tension in the air turn to concrete.
“Yeah, go on.”
“She received a packet, an envelope, from one of the sellers, and then she met another man, a much younger one, at a dwelling on the beach. From what I’ve been able to gather about him, he’s a Resistance leader. His name’s Laurent, first or last, that’s all I know.”
Troy chewed on it. “Laurent,” he said, “I’ve heard of him. He’s not got the best rep, trading in antiquities on the black market. How much could you see of them?”
“They embraced, Troy, like they had been together before. Not at all in a brotherly way.”
Wanting to wrap up this ‘meeting,’ Troy said, “I’m debating on whether to shoot you here and now, or let you go.” He decided to let him go. If he shot Dietrich, he’d have to explain it to the provost of Biqrah. “You know what I mean when I say, if you hurt her, there won’t be a shovel small enough to pick up the pieces.”
“Aptly put, sergeant. The little I’ve seen of Lila, I believe she’s as true-hearted as they come. I wouldn’t risk hurting her, but if this Laurent is selling secrets—German secrets—to the partisans, he must be stopped.”
“That’s not how I see it, captain. In fact, he’s doing the Allies a favor.”
“But I’ve also heard, Troy—from my sources, mind—that he’s double-dealing even the Resistance, and selling intel on them as well… back to the Germans.”
Even in the scant light of stars, moon, and a glowing candle in a street lamp, Dietrich could see Troy’s eyes widen.
“We must stop him then,” Troy acknowledged. “Acting on his behalf, she’s just a pawn. But if I know my cousin, it won’t be easy to convince her he’s up to no good.”
“Let’s break up this coffee klatch for the night, Troy. You can take your pistol out of my middle. I assure you, neither of us wishes Lila any harm.”
Troy put his Colt .45 back in his belt holster. “What’s your angle in all of this, Dietrich? What do you get out of it?”
“If it was a trick to catch you and the rest of your patrol, Sgt. Troy, I wouldn’t have let you get this close. As it is, I’ve never met someone as bewitching as your cousin. I wouldn’t want the light of her eyes ever to dim.”
“Romantic, aren’t you, Herr Hauptmann?”
Dietrich gave a partial shrug. “Someone in this war has to be!”
Troy laughed slyly and slipped away as furtively as he had come. Assuming Dietrich went on his way too, he met up with his men and began to lay plans. One or another would always accompany Lila to her apartment, morning, noon, and night. Or to the bar. Unless they were ordered to return to base, the plan would work.
Over a couple of beers late into the morning in a dive far inferior to the plush bar where Lila sang, Tully asked, “What happens if we’re on a mission?”
“I know a few Arabs who are trustworthy,” said Moffitt. “They’d watch the apartment for a consideration.”
“Who’d watch Lila?” asked Hitch, the pragmatic one. “She might not give any one of us the slip, but an Arab, who barely knows her, she might.”
“I’m going to have a talk with her,” said Troy. He was as determined as Lila would be that she was no one’s prisoner.
Moffitt took a last swig of his third beer, warm as desert sand now. “What will you say, Troy?”
“I’ll tell her what I know about Laurent, that it’s rumored he’s feeding the Germans as well as the Resistance.”
Marveling at how war made for such unlikely characters, Mark ‘Hitch’ Hitchcock blurted out, “Wow, a triple agent!”
Troy downed the rest of his beer, too. “It’s too late to go up there tonight. Besides, I might run into the German Lothario again, and shoot ‘im this time. I’ve had enough beers to do it.”
Moffitt laughed. “I wonder what he’s doing here. It’s far from his base at al-Qarah.”
“Maybe he’s meeting some Arab contacts who’re watching us,” Tully said, and he wasn’t laughing. “There are Arabs who’d betray us, and those who’d fight for us.”
“Yeah, we can’t always tell who is who,” added Hitch.
The four men rose as one from the shoddy, rickety table, its boards stained with beer and something red in places. Since they had paid for the beers, they ambled out, one after the other, casually eyeing the other bar patrons, hoping none of them was a spy or an assassin or a bounty hunter. They had reason to fear all three.
On the following night, on stage in front of some off-duty Allied soldiers, Lila sang a couple of sets of melancholy songs from the radio. Her voice carried into the still night air and faded away to the shore, where it met the Mediterranean’s own melancholy wave-sounds.
Troy stood listening outside, smoking and regarding the stars, while thinking back to when he and Lila were just tadpoles in the same Christmas play at church. He was Joseph, and she was Mary. The baby Jesus, asleep in a cardboard box, was her rag doll. The wise men were Sam’s friends, and the corniest jokes flew back and forth between the boys.
One of these ‘wise men’ got out of line and punched Joseph on the arm. With a glare that could melt Artic ice, Joseph broke formation and the wise man’s arm found its way up his back, all in front of a congregation of thirty lost souls. When Joseph felt he had inflicted enough pain, he let the arm go and stepped back to Mary’s side and became a Biblical character once again.
Two other girls were playing angels. One tripped over her long robe and fell into the ‘manger’ carrying the rag doll Messiah and crushed it. That cardboard box wouldn’t have held a pair of shoes then, much less the Light of the World. The baby Jesus was put back on top of it, and the play started over.
He didn’t remember too much of it, except that he flubbed his three lines and kept wondering why his ‘wife’ was scratching. Ah, the poison ivy he had pointed out to her earlier that day. Lila, curious as ever, had just had to touch it. It was winter, when the leaves are dormant, but she must have come into contact with the still-active roots. So now Mary had it.
How had she met Laurent? No, don’t go there, he warned himself. How does an impressionable Western girl meet a handsome European man? Was it due to his influence that she started doing small jobs for the Resistance? And what did he plan to do to rescue her if the Germans caught up with her?
Troy went inside again and sat down at the rented table with his men, Moffitt utterly absorbed in the Arab music of a many-veiled belly dancer. Or was it the belly dancer herself that held his attention?
“Lila must be done,” Troy said, when he didn’t see her on stage. “We’ll take her home and I’ll have that long talk with her. She can only throw me out once, right?”
When Lila appeared in her street clothes and wrap, he pulled his Rats to their collective feet and led the way out.
“Sam, I see someone I know,” she remarked once they had hit the street, a halo of light encircling a tall man leaning on the lamp across the way. “I’ll catch up!”
She hurried off across the street, a light rain having fallen and the pavement shiny and wet. When she came into the man’s orbit, he leaned away from the lamp and embraced her. Troy and his men had the couth to look away.
“Is that Laurent?” asked Moffitt. “The Resistance leader?”
“And the German spy, if the reports about him are true,” replied Troy. He was about to take a step over to the pair under the street lamp. Just when he had stepped into the street, he saw another man striding Lila’s way, a tall man in a German uniform.
Since Troy and his fellow Rats were in their uniforms, he couldn’t fault Dietrich for being in his. Fascinated, he slipped back under the awning of the bar and watched. There was a scuffle and Lila was forced to back off a few steps. When she started to pull the captain off Laurent, Troy flew over and launched himself into the tall Frenchman.
A few punches later, the Frenchman had fled the scene, Dietrich was trying to console an angry Lila, and Troy picked himself up, with Moffitt’s help, wiping his bloody chin.
“I guess we taught him,” he said, watching the fleeing back.
“Sam Troy!” Lila had to keep her voice low, as this was a public thoroughfare, but he couldn’t help hearing her. “Do you realize what you and your trained German ape have just done? I won’t be able to go back to the…” Here, she cut herself off.
“The Resistance?” asked Dietrich, taking her by the arms and turning her to face him. “You’re playing a dangerous game, Lila. He’s also helping my side. The information train goes both ways.”
“He’s loyal to the Free French, Hauptmann Dietrich. I know about you from Sam. At least he’s on the right side.” She paused. “Why would you want to help me?”
“Lila, I’ve listened to your voice, and I’ve never heard anything sweeter. I don’t want to see you hurt, any more than Troy does.”
“He’s still at large, Troy,” said Moffitt, breaking up the ardent mood Dietrich had set up. “We’ve got to find him, before he tells the Germans about Lila.”
Dietrich straightened. “He probably already has, in case he needed her to take a fall for him. An American girl working for the Resistance could be quite a prize for the vaunted Third Reich.”
Troy caught Moffitt’s eye and then looked back at Dietrich. “You sound a bit cynical, captain,” he said. “Are you having second thoughts about your role in the war?”
“I’m fighting for Germany, my country, the same as you are fighting for each one of yours. I have loyalty only to her.”
“But we have something more, captain,” Troy countered. “We’re fighting as a unit, and that makes us stronger than you.” He turned to Lila. “Where do you think he’ll go?”
Lila hesitated, for she had been ready a few moments ago to run off with the Frenchman. Even now, though he had played her for a fool, she could not easily betray him. Dietrich spoke up for her. “He has a house by the beach. At least that’s where Lila went to meet him.”
“He wouldn’t go back there, would he, Sarge?” asked Hitch. “Not where we could find him.”
Troy took Lila’s arm. “Lila, think carefully. Did Laurent ever meet someone, but refuse to tell his name?”
Lila pondered a bit. She had been working for the partisans for two months, and had met many people, but there was an older man with a stiff bearing, like he was used to wearing a uniform. She shrugged. “I do recall an older man. Laurent would not introduce me, and when I stepped up to introduce myself, he pulled me back. Roughly, as I remember.”
“That must be him,” said Dietrich. “A German for sure. Do you remember what he looked like, Lila?”
“He wasn’t a tall man, rather thick around the middle, but not fat, you know what I mean? More of a henchman-type, a bully, I first thought.”
Troy pressed harder, his grip tightening. “Where did he come from?”
Lila winced. “He appeared in a car—a very nice Mercedes—and talked with Laurent. Then the two got into his car and drove off. I left soon after, wanting to take a nap before I went on stage.”
“That sounds like Major Henrik Kruger,” said Dietrich. “He’s been in town for a while. In fact, he’s been filling me in on the whereabouts of a certain unit of commandos. I had no idea he was working with a member of the Resistance, a double agent.”
“Triple,” said Moffitt. “Laurent’s betrayed the Allies, the Germans, and the Resistance.”
“Let’s find him,” said Troy. “Where’s this Kruger now?”
“He’s at the Hotel Éclat, where most Germans on leave stay,” said Dietrich. “That’s where I’ve been meeting him. I’ve never seen this Laurent there before, though.”
“Kruger was probably keeping you out of it, captain,” said Troy, “knowing you have a decent streak in you.”
*****
Chapter 3
The man had an adder’s smile, the smile of a venomous snake. He was a cunning man, and like the snake, he would attack without warning, especially if something stepped on his tail. As he moved through the souk towards the harbor, dressed in robes and keffiyeh, or Arab headdress, he nodded to himself and grinned that serpent’s grin.
The sun was bright on the goods and animals for sale, the street awnings flapped in a sand-teeming wind, and he seemed to be in a world of his own. He had been to see Major Kruger, and slept that night in a room at the same hotel.
“A German captain, sir, has betrayed you,” he had informed Kruger. “He’s treacherously helped Lila, a member of the Underground. He also seems to have a pact with the Rat Patrol, though he should be turning them in.”
Each man of the Patrol, Laurent knew, had a German bounty on his head—which Laurent, who was always ready to betray somebody, wouldn’t mind collecting.
Ruthless, cunning, duplicitous, these days he was active in trying to keep the bounty on his own head from being collected. A dabbler in the black market, he was unwelcome competition for the Arab merchants of Biqrah who were not above dealing in stolen antiquities themselves. They had placed it there.
Now, too, as soon as the story spread how he had betrayed the Resistance, they’d want him as well. While he sorted out the turmoil of his career, only the Germans would be steadfast to him.
“Lie low,” Major Kruger had warned him, “but not too low. Through you, we might still be able to catch the Rat Patrol, and the brash captain too if he’s with them.”
“Do you know who he is?” asked Laurent. His smooth, silky voice was both hypnotic and dangerous.
“I’m afraid I do.” His voice held an ounce of remorse. “Hauptmann Dietrich reminds me of myself when I was younger, though I always knew which side my bread was buttered on.”
Laurent had no time for reminiscence. “After this, Major Kruger, I’d like to secure passage to Sicily”—the German-held island—“so that I can start anew—someplace else.”
Kruger’s nod of assent had not been calculated as a yes or a no, but Laurent, feeling in a bit of a tumult right then, accepted it as a yes.
“I shall go make my travel arrangements with one of the Italian boats in the harbor.”
No doubt glad to be rid of him, Kruger handed a few francs over, removing them from the top drawer of his desk. It’s where he kept the money he used to pay his Arab snitches. He didn’t see much difference between them and Laurent.
Laurent pocketed the bills, nodded Kruger’s way—hoping to never see him again, which was mutual—and fled to his room upstairs in the hotel. Tomorrow, before the German major had time to change his mind and order him arrested and shot, he’d be transferring to sunny Sicily.
Lila was so tied up with those commandos, and now with that tall German, he would sadly have to forgo taking her along on whatever new adventure awaited.
With a small satchel this morning he headed for the shore. He was a marked man, but not as frightened as he had been. With Kruger’s assent in his plans, albeit a tenuous one, the chain around his heart had been loosened. At the harbor, he found a likely boat to take him, but as it was leaving on the evening tide, he found he had some time to kill.
He didn’t dare go to Lila’s apartment. Or return to his hideaway at the beach. So for a few hours, Laurent stayed aloof, dodging scampering children and dogs and goats while perusing goods in the souk with a desultory air.
He knew he was being watched. The provost of Biqrah was trying to move along a contingent of Kruger’s men. One never forced a German to move along, Laurent could have told the provost. Several Resistance members were in the market, too. He could see their knives gleaming from quite a distance away.
Possibly the Rat Patrol and the traitorous German, Lila’s late-night protectors, were also in the crowd today, watching him. He had no doubt they were.
Laurent’s guess was right. The Rats had followed him from the hotel.
Troy stationed his men around the market, blocking a few of Laurent’s escape routes, while Dietrich, temporarily at a hiatus with Troy and his men for the sake of Lila, moved through the souk in an offhanded way, stopping at various booths and fingering the merchandise as if looking for trinkets to buy.
On one side of his belt, he carried a sheathed knife, and on the other, his Walther P38 in its holster, a weapon no one could argue with.
Lila and her friend Claire had been left in the bar where Lila sang nights, both girls protesting. Troy had paid many francs to the bartender to keep them there—however he had to do it. If he needed more to keep two such wanton spirits in check, Troy would pay him more.
The bartender, also the owner of the bar, called in a burly cousin of his, the bar’s bouncer, to guard Lila’s dressing room where the girls were ensconced. Here among the silk hangings and plush pillows, she often rested in between song-sets, or sat at a mirror and powdered her nose.
Troy was leaving them in good hands. The oversized Arab seemed to warm to his job as Troy and the others left. One dark, the other blonde, both young and gorgeous, he would guard them well.
That afternoon, cooling their heels with a non-alcoholic, fruity drink apiece, Lila told Claire, “I have to see him one last time.” She swirled the orange concoction around in its glass and took a sip, finishing with, “I have to tell him how I feel about being used to betray him.”
Was their lovemaking all those nights for nothing? She had even joined the Resistance for him, more so than for the Resistance itself. She could hardly have loved him more.
As she watched the thoughts pass across Lila’s clouded face, Claire didn’t like the look in her eyes—Troy had that same dark wrath in his eyes when he and Lila fought about her staying behind in the bar.
Knowing she had to go see him, and that nothing could keep her from doing it, Claire helped Lila plan her escape. Lila moved off the divan and Claire lay down on it. When Claire began to wail and thrash about, Lila called in the guard. He lumbered in with suspicion and concern mingling in his eyes.
In a high-pitched voice, very unlike her own, Lila pointed to the girl on the bed. “She’s terribly upset. I can’t get her to stop crying.”
He stepped forward to see for himself, but what did this movie caveman know about the crying jags of jilted women, she might have asked. Claire had to pull her legs up to avoid his crushing weight as Lila gave him a shove across the bed. Slipping out of the room while he struggled to right himself, Lila fled out of the bar’s back door. It was usually left unlocked in the day for deliveries.
If Troy had been escaping, he could not have been faster. Not even a ghibli, a terrific desert wind, could have caught her. The bar owner, knowing Troy’s temperament, was beside himself when he discovered she was gone. It’d be a day of reckoning, for sure, when the irate commando found out.
Lila ran out of the fenced-in yard and into the bustling street. Shooting a glance up and down it, she was glad to see so many people. They’d shield her from discovery. Soon she found a convenient alley to slip down and made her way to the noisy souk. She often took walks throughout Biqrah before she was set to go on stage, so she was an old pro at finding her way.
At her apartment earlier, Lila had slipped her head scarf into her bodice. Troy, there to roust up the girls, had gazed out of the window. There were some places even cousins didn’t look! Maybe especially cousins. Now, with the scarf and her loose Arab dress and trousers, she’d fit right in with the Arabs in the market.
Once through the gate of the souk, Lila was astounded by what was transpiring there. A riproaring fight was in progress. Bullets were flying, ricocheting off ancient adobe walls, fists were smashing jaws, and the market’s denizens—the buyers and sellers—were running off in all directions, scooping up bags of money, children and chickens, and the leads of billy goats before hurrying away.
Standing just outside of the fray, Lila scanned the fast-shifting crowds for Troy, or even Dietrich, but all she could see was mayhem and muddle. Had Laurent somehow been behind this? Had he devised a way to bring all the parties together, into one big battle? She was almost certain he had.
The Resistance was fighting the Germans, the Germans were in turn fighting the provost and his men, all a swirl of bodies, rotating like dancers in a waltz, only bloodier. The provost, like the sheriff in a western, was trying to put an end to the chaos. He was a big man, with huge fists, and the gun he wielded was even bigger, like a small cannon.
She didn’t see Laurent, but she recognized Arnaud, one of the Resistance fighters. Maybe he would know where Laurent was. Trying to make her way to him, she was stopped short by a German in uniform falling before her. His dead hand raked the leg of her linen trousers, trailing a line of blood. He had been shot.
When she looked up again, Arnaud was gone. In the middle of the contentious crowd, she spotted Troy, wrangling with Laurent himself. Their arms locked, each man was trying to get the upper hand, like cyclones skirmishing. It was a fight to the death if ever there was one.
Just beyond them, she saw Moffitt and Dietrich also locked in a contest, fighting each other! She reeled back when Moffitt slugged the tall German on the chin and knocked him off his feet. He didn’t rise again. What could have been going on between them?
She whirled back to Troy and Laurent, just in time to see one man fell the other one. As Troy, who had been knocked flat by Laurent’s wide swing, struggled up to his feet again, Lila ran over that way, hoping to separate them—the two men she loved most in all of North Africa.
Her arrival distracted Troy. He and Laurent had hold of Troy’s pistol, but as Troy looked her way, Laurent pulled the gun down between them and it went off. Both men staggered into each other, but only one man was shot. He fell back and collapsed onto the broken pavement of the market, bleeding from a hole in the chest.
Lila gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. Laurent lay on the stones. Once again, Troy righted himself and stooped, picking up the gun and holstering it. Laurent lay on the stones. Scanning quickly for her, Troy made his way over. His head swam from Laurent’s punches, his eyes had glazed over, but he could see enough to grab her by the arms. He was raging mad.
“I thought I told you to stay in the bar, Lila!”
“I had to see him—Laurent—one last time, Sam, to ask if he ever loved me. And would he forgive me for betraying him?”
“Well, you picked a fine time to do it!” Troy ducked and pulled Lila down as bullets flew their way. The provost was still trading shots with the Germans, and the rebels themselves still had a hand in this fight.
He shepherded her over to the side of the square, where he saw Moffitt wrestling with one of the German gefreiters, or privates, a husky guy who was so blond his hair was almost white under his beige garrison cap. Neither Moffitt nor the German private was winning.
“Just deck ‘im, Moffitt!” Troy called before they reached the pair. Moffitt had been practicing this tactic with Tully. He reared back and let fly a ‘roundhouse’ punch, a full-arm thrust into the man’s jaw, similar to what he had earlier given Dietrich. Though it hurt, he was satisfied both times with the results.
The gefreiter fell and didn’t get up again. It was becoming a pattern. That’s when Troy noticed the other casualty of Moffitt’s intrepid fist, lying on the ground in an unconscious state of being. He looked up at his English friend in some concern. Weren’t they supposed to be helping one another?
“What d’you do to him?”
“I had to, Troy. He tried to get into the fight, but I knew it would only end badly for him.”
“How so?” asked Troy in a stunned voice.
“He might have ended up fighting the provost, the Germans, us, or even the Resistance. He’d be a marked man by us all.”
“So you hit him to save him from fighting?”
“From fighting the wrong people, Troy.”
“Wake him up, Moffitt.” Troy looked over and saw that the provost of Biqrah was beginning to round up the combatants in his ham-sized fists. A shiver ran up Troy’s spine. “We can’t stick around here, not with a price on our heads.”
Agreeing with Troy, Moffitt knelt and slapped Dietrich a couple of times—not that that didn’t feel good. The German leaned up with Moffitt’s help and shook out some of the cobwebs. He glimpsed Moffitt’s face and recognized him. “Wha’?” he asked in English. “Where?” He finished with, “Who?”
Troy, winded from his exertions that day, particularly the fight with Laurent, laughed. He turned and was about to scoop Lila up by the arm when he saw that she was still looking Laurent’s way. The dead man was just visible in the still-swirling muddle of combatants in the central square.
Looking up at Troy, her heart hammering like a bird trying to get out of a cage, she swallowed hard and said, “I loved him, but he betrayed me.”
Troy pushed back a strand of hair that had strayed loose around her eyes. “He betrayed us all, Lila, working with the Germans. Let’s take you home. No more playing spy, okay?”
She laughed shakily and brushed at her eyes. Favoring his face with a sad smile, she nodded. As Moffitt helped Dietrich to his feet, she turned back to look once more, but Laurent’s body had now been moved, perhaps kicked aside by trampling feet.
Dietrich shook off his English menace and walked up to her. With Troy on the other side, both men firmly took her arms. She was now that bird in a cage, it seemed.
Together, the trio sidestepped the bodies, living and dead, on the pavement and hurried out under the gates of the souk, while two sweaty privates, Tully and Hitch, who had reluctantly left the rousing fight, joined up, shadowing Moffitt.
Since they had a little ways to go to her apartment, Lila had time to think.
I loved him but he betrayed me.
As the words echoed through her mind, she snugged a bit closer to Troy. Seeing Laurent’s unmoving form and his twisted face, twisted in the throes of death, she reflected how he had brought her pain and sorrow. She had trusted him, but he had deceived her. Yet, a part of her wanted him back, to rise up and make love to her again.
At the stairs leading up to her apartment, Lila reached up and, even though it was broad daylight, gave each of her two protectors a ‘good night’ kiss. Dietrich bowed slightly and took his leave, glancing at Troy, but parting from him without shaking hands. Tomorrow, they’d be shooting at one another again.
Troy and his men lingered, escorting Lila up to her rooms, even staying for a hastily-made supper. Tully had the joyful job of fetching Claire from the bar, where she had spent a rather dull afternoon under the watch of the movie caveman. She was fit to be tied herself and gave the heroic Tully a hard time.
Sipping various concoctions, the party of four men and two young women sat on the floor cushions and talked about Lila’s plans for now.
“I’ve decided to stay, Sam,” she said, her voice firm, but her eyes soft on his rugged face in the shadows of the room. “Singing for the soldiers—of whatever nation—as I’ve been doing.”
Troy respected her decision, even as much as he rued it. “If I haven’t banged some sense into you by this time, Lila, I never will.”
It was late that night when they said their goodbyes. A new mission commenced tomorrow. Captain Boggs had given them some leave to see to Lila’s arrangements in Biqrah, but now their ‘vacation’ or ‘holiday’ was officially over.
As for the events in the souk, and the death of the duplicitous Laurent, Troy didn’t know what he’d write in his report, but he had a strong notion that Dietrich didn’t, either. He’d be just as tongue-tied about the whole affair as Troy was. That in itself gave Troy a mischievous sense of triumph.
***The End***
A/N: Thanks for reading!
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