As Time Goes By [epub]

Chapter 1: Goodbye Casablanca
The smoke from the gun had cleared, but the fog had not. The noise of the police cars disappeared, and
the silence between the two men was interrupted only by the sound of the wind.
On that last December night in 1941, Casablanca airport was dark and full of recent memories.
Although Louis was in his usual unsure state of mind, the tall, thin, hard-faced American felt a new and
strange sense of calm and certainty about what he had just done and what he was going to do. Rick had
shot the German officer, Major Strasser, to make sure that Victor and Ilsa boarded the airplane to Portugal.
Now he was going to follow them to join the European resistance against the Germans.
Captain Louis Renault, short, sharp as always in his black French Chief of Police uniform, was
walking softly; he always preferred, if possible, to leave no mark on his surroundings. He turned to Rick.
“Well, my friend,Victor Laszlo and Ilsa Lund are on their way to Lisbon. I cannot imagine why you
decided to help them. Miss Lund is an unusually beautiful woman!”
Rick had loved just two women in his life and Ilsa was one of them. Louis loved all women, and, of
course, money.
Rick looked down at the little man. “Yes, but why didn't you have me arrested? I shot a Gestapo 1
officer.”
“I don't know. Maybe it's because I like you. Maybe it's because I didn't like Strasser.” Louis looked at
him. “You're still in love with her, aren't you?”
“That's not your business.”
Their path was taking them deeper into the darkness, and Louis wondered what Rick was planning to
do next. But suddenly there it was: the shape of a large car parked at the far end of the airport. As they got
closer to it, they could see Sam at the wheel.
“Everything OK, Boss?” Sam asked anxiously from the driver's seat.
“Yes, just fine. Now hurry. We have to be at Port Lyautey before morning light.”
The small airfield at Port Lyautey, north of Rabat, was about two hundred kilometers away ... two
hundred kilometers of very bad road. But Rick's car, Louis noted, was like a beautiful woman, with the
right lines, the curves, and the power.
1
Gestapo: the secret police of the Nazis, when Hitler was in power in Germany in the 1930s and early 1940s.