“If she was pregnant, she might have seen suicide as the only escape. On the other hand, if she chose to assert her rights and make a fuss …”
I admired the way this woman’s mind worked. “Then Hale might have decided to remove a problem. Either way, he was involved. As now he may be involved with the current situation. Last night, he spent some time in private conversation with La Rocha and Samuel, and afterwards was given leave to impart the message that the men would be permitted a degree more freedom tomorrow – today, rather – if they spent a quiet morning.”
“Internal tensions in the film world?”
“Of course, I’ve also had my suspicions of Will-the-Camera. And of you, for that matter.”
“An embarrassment of riches when it comes to shady types.”
“Speaking of shady types, what of our pirates? Holmes and I are operating under the assumption that we’re to be put up for ransom. You’ve been investigating La Rocha for months, do you have any idea what he’s up to?”
“Well, for one thing, I’m not altogether certain that La Rocha’s the centre of this.”
“Samuel?”
“As you know him, yes.”
“He’s both more intelligent and more cold-blooded than La Rocha, a dangerous combination.” I thought of the first time I’d seen Selim, standing behind La Rocha: the power behind the throne?
“And his sons?”
“Adam and Jack,” I replied: This was beginning to feel a bit like one of Holmes’ examinations.
“I don’t think that Adam altogether approves of his father’s … work.”
The wistfulness in her voice did not sound like the judgment of an experienced espionage agent. It sounded like the wistful desires of a besotted young woman.
I sighed. “You know, if we’d been working together on this from the beginning, we might be heading home by now. Mycroft’s mania for keeping his left and right hands from communicating leads to more confusion than one requires.”
“Would you have come if your brother-in-law asked?”
“No. But you don’t seem-”
“I’m glad you’re here,” she cut me off.
“Oh. Well.”
“How much do you know about La Rocha and Samuel?”
“Not a lot.”
“Well, I had some months to build a dossier. You’ve probably figured out that they’re brothers – or, rather, half-brothers? They believe themselves descended from Murad Reis. You know who that is?”
“Dutchman. Salé Rovers, English captives.”
“Converted to Islam in 1622, made Salé his centre, brought slaves from as far as Ireland and Iceland. When the Sultan tried to take the city and failed, he just made the Dutchman governor and married him to one of his daughters. Another sort of conversion, you might say.
“He had a number of children by his two Moorish wives, and there seems to have been some kind of a pirate in each generation. La Rocha’s grandfather was hanged for killing a man in 1860, when La Rocha was four. La Rocha started his own career before he was twenty, boarding merchant vessels and robbing them, then slipping away. He seems to have paid for his brother to go to university in France, while also buying up holdings that had belonged to earlier generations of the family and been seized as reparations after they were gaoled or hanged.
“It wasn’t until Selim – Samuel – graduated from university and came into the family business in 1895 that things began to get vicious. Victims would be thrown overboard and their ships stolen, other ships set alight with their dinghies stove in. Women passengers would disappear entirely. Over the next twenty years, the brothers created a network of informants and occasional partners to supplement their crew. During the War they went dormant, because of the number of warships in the Mediterranean, but they did manage to board a small ship that was removing gold from Turkey. A lot of gold. They lay low after that until the gunships retired, then after the War, started up again. In 1920, they made a raid on what looked like an easy target, and was not. Their ship went down, hands were lost, La Rocha and his brother were very nearly caught.
“After that, they seem to have taken a hard look at themselves, decided that they weren’t getting younger and the modern world was inhospitable to their profession, and more or less retired to Lisbon.
“At any rate, La Rocha did. In recent months, there have been signs that they may be rebuilding the old alliances. Several of the pirates Mr Fflytte hired, for example, are the sons or grandsons of the original crew.”
“Restoring old grandeur? But surely they can’t believe that they can rebuild their pirate kingdom here in Salé, under the noses of the French?” I asked.
“I imagine that Salé was a symbolic choice, just as the Harlequin was seized upon to evoke the heyday of piracy. Once they’ve finished with the ship and the city, they may slip away.”
“So you’d say that after selling us back to the British, they’ll take the ransom monies – where? Somewhere out in the Sahara?”
“A startling amount of this continent is beyond the reach of British guns. The Rif mountains have already declared independence – one can reach them in a day. And,” she added, changing her voice as if to mimic a textbook or lecture, “the giving of ransom is no guarantee of the getting of hostages.”
The candle suddenly danced; it was down to its final inch. “You’d say they’re not planning on freeing us, then?”
To my astonishment, she began quietly to sing, in a sweet contralto:
Here’s a first-rate opportunity,
To get married with impunity …
The smile on her shapely mouth contained no humour whatsoever. “After all, what is the Gilbert and Sullivan opera about, ultimately, if not the permanent abduction of young English women?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
GIRLS: We have missed our opportunity
Of escaping with impunity.
I GAPED AT Annie as if she’d begun to speak in Pashtu (while the ghost of Miss Sim whispered urgently in my ear: “Oh! burst the Haram – wrong not on your lives one female form”em›). I hastily pulled together my thoughts. “I refuse to believe that La Rocha’s pirates are in fact English aristocrats fallen on hard times who wish to marry English wives.”
“That’s rather too much to hope for. And I wouldn’t count on a declaration of loyalty to the Crown to soften their hearts, either – I think Adam and Jack have already picked out me and Edith for their respective harems. As for the others, no doubt a bouquet of young yellow-haired English roses would fetch a high price on the open market. Some of the mothers perhaps not so much.”
“You’ve seen The Sheik too many times. Read too much Ethel Dell.”
“Perhaps. But can you honestly tell me that such things do not happen?”
In all honesty, I could not.
“And … the men?” I asked.
“If they’re out to re-establish the Pirate Republic of Bou Regreg, slaves are a necessary detail. Although they may simply decide that females are so much easier to move and to hide than men are.”
I took a deep breath, then another. The candle guttered, nearly spent. “So we can’t get just the women away.”
“That would not be the ideal solution.”
“How long do you suppose we have?”
“A few days. No more than that. The message will have to be delivered, a response given. If the European officials who receive the demand have any wits at all, they’ll require some proof that we are both here and alive. Perhaps La Rocha will free someone, to carry the word.”