“More missionaries are missing. Seems that a group of French Catholic missionaries, fifteen or so, are gone from a place outside the coastal imperial city in Morocco. Rabat, it’s called. Disappeared without a trace a few weeks ago. The group was partially funded by an American Catholic charity and evidently some of the women were American, which is why we are involved. Various Congressmen—who fund the navy, by the way—passed along constituent complaints to the secretary of state, who passed them along to the secretary of the navy, who passed them along to me. Now you have it. Understood so far?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very good. You will go there and investigate this, sending word back to me what the situation is and your recommendation to solve it. Our ambassador there will give you more details. The locals are searching and French diplomatic people are involved, but no joy yet. Also no ransom yet, which is odd.”
Case looked up from the desk. “I imagine there’s nothing we can do, but we have to appear like we care and will offer help—which is you. I want the French and the locals and Congress to get the impression the United States Navy takes this sort of thing seriously.” Case wagged a finger. “But not too seriously, of course. We don’t have anything to really threaten with, so I do not want a recommendation for us to use force, Lieutenant. We don’t have any to spare and posturing without credibility is worse than admitting weakness up front.
“No, I want you to be creative, Mr. Wake. Without embarrassing us. And remember, this is about our navy’s image in Congress as much as anything else.”
Wake wasn’t clear on exactly what he could or would do, but he said the only thing expected. “Aye, aye, sir.”
“You won’t get there on one of our ships, so commercial transport is authorized. You can take one man. I know you’ll ask for him but no, you can’t have Fyock—he’ll be needed with Alaska at Turkey. Do you want that bosun that went ashore with you at Chetaibi?”
“Yes, sir. And I’ll need somebody who speaks Magreb, sir.”
“What the hell is that?”
“The Arabic of northwestern Africa, sir. Fyock’s the only American I know who speaks it.”
“Fyock is out. Forget him. Hire an interpreter when you get there. You’ll get some funding for that. Here is a copy of the message from the ambassador—that’s all I know at this point. Now go ahead and cut the appropriate orders and get them here for me to sign. I want you under way at dawn. Dismissed.”
Case waved a hand. “Stop standing there and go! And tell Captain Staunton and Paymaster Howell to get in here. I want to go over these damned squadron bills with them. Something is sure-fire cooked up someplace in these things . . .”
***
“We’re headin’ where exactly, sir?” asked Rork when Wake explained the mission to him.
“Place called Rabat. On the Atlantic coast. It’s where the foreigners have their embassies. We find the U.S. ambassador and start there.”
“How do we get from here to there, sir?”
“Not easily, I fear. After the bad delay in us getting to the last missionary complaint, the admiral wants us on this one fast. And the fastest way is an Italian steamer that gets under way from here tomorrow bound for the Spanish enclave at Melilla on the Barbary coast—that’s the Mediterranean coast. Then we hop a French sailing vessel, go through the Straits of Gibraltar and around to Rabat. Probably take a couple of weeks.”
“Sounds like a bit o’ exotic adventure an’ fun, sir. Just the thing for the likes o’ us!”
Wake laughed at Rork’s irrepressible Irish humor that celebrated adversity. The man never seemed to flinch from the idea of a dicey scene ahead.
“I’ll remind you of that when we get there, Sean Rork—just in case you forget in the heat of the moment.”
“Aye, an’ I’ll wager a bishop’s crown that we’ll be havin’ plenty o’ that heat, sir. That’s certain as rain in Derry, o’ I’m not a son o’ the sea.”
***
The steamer was a haphazard affair that made six knots with the wind astern and every stitch of canvas showing. Wake and Rork, wearing plainclothes for the journey, bunked together in a cabin jammed with a half dozen men of various tongues, none of whom gave the appearance of gentility. After meeting their neighbors, one of the two Americans always stayed with their sea bags, knife ready in a pocket.
Melilla was one of the traditional haunts of the Barbary corsairs, who had plundered the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts of Europe and Africa since the fifteenth century, when a Greek named Red Beard led them. Now it was officially Spanish territory, but in actuality a no-man’s land of renegades, predators, ne’er-do-wells, and slaves. They landed at the wharf after dark and cautiously shuffled along the streets, sounding out their locale and not liking what they saw and heard.
Wake found them a room for the night at a barnlike bordello, where they anxiously stayed up listening to the sounds of creaking beds on the floor above them and the screams of a riot in the street below, which subsided after two hours and several mortalities. The next morning the bodies were still there, stripped of valuables and even clothing.
The French packet vessel was a figment of someone’s imagination in Genoa. There were no French vessels in port and no one knew when there would be. The Italian steamer had departed, no other foreign ship was among the clusters of Arab dhows, and Wake admitted to Rork that it was beginning to look like they were temporarily stranded. There were no Europeans in sight, a local pointing to a small fortified building a half-mile away when Wake asked for the Spanish authorities.
When they arrived there they found a native militia company, with no one that spoke English. The officer in charge spoke a type of guttural Spanish unlike
