This Mediterranean destination in North Africa was once an international zone, a haven for secret agents, and home to a mysterious man named Dean.
The train to Casablanca was leaving soon, but there was still one final place I wanted to see in Tangier.
Stepping out the door of the El Minzah Hotel, I turned to the northwest, following the Rue Amerique du Sud for a short distance. The French-named road terminated at another, the Rue d’Angleterre. Here I veered to the right, walking a few paces to my destination.
It was early in the morning, and St. Andrew’s Church was yet to open for the day. The Anglican worship center, painted white and constructed in the Moorish style, is the epitome of what makes Tangier such a unique place: Built on land granted by a Moroccan sultan in one of the world’s foremost Muslim regions, the Christian Lord’s Prayer is written in Arabic over the altar.
While the religious and cultural significance of the church was certainly not lost on me, I was more interested in the adjoining graveyard.
Under the protection of a tree canopy and within only minutes of the Mediterranean Sea, headstones are organized neatly in the confined cemetery. Several of the tombstones mark off the resting places of fallen World War II Allied combatants. A portion of these stones are fused together, signifying the loss of entire aircrews. Walter Harris, the British author, socialite, and journalist who reported on Morocco in the early 20th century for London’s The Times, is also buried at the church.
There’s yet another gravestone of note at St. Andrew’s, one that’s steeped in legend. Cracked across the middle and set level with the earth, it simply reads “Dean, Missed by All and Sundry, Died February 1963.”
The tales surrounding this shadowy figure are at the center of espionage lore in Tangier, a former international zone that was once a haven for secret agents.
Raiders, Pirates, and Warlords
Morocco is no stranger to intriguing characters.
The Bedouin nomads, drifting over from the Syrian Steppe, have wandered its land for centuries. Although mostly peaceful camel herders, Bedouin raiders were historically notorious for their attacks on caravans and villages. They were also known to demand payment from communities for their protection, a strong-arm tactic reminiscent of modern criminal organizations like the Sicilian Mafia.
More relevant to Moroccan coastal cities like Tangier, Barbary pirates of North Africa preyed upon Mediterranean shipping lanes, predominately between the 16th and 19th centuries. These Muslim corsairs were as skilled at the mast as they were fierce: As a case in point, the Algerian band of Barbary pirates once held 30,000 prisoners in their capital city of Algiers.
Perhaps it was the renegade tradition of the region that compelled Moroccan Sultan Muhammed ben Abdullah in 1777 to become the first monarch in the world to extend aid to a certain group of British colonial revolutionaries in North America. At the time, the newly proclaimed United States of America was nothing more than a fanciful dream, facing almost certain defeat against the superior British Empire.
To add to their troubles, American ships in the Mediterranean region were being mercilessly harassed by Barbary pirates. The sultan called off the marauders’ attacks, allowing safe passage along critical trading routes.
The rest, as they say, is history.
The U.S. won their independence, and Morocco has remained America’s most loyal ally. The Treaty of Peace and Friendship, signed in 1787 and renegotiated in 1836, remains the longest unbroken agreement between the U.S. and a foreign nation. The Tangier American Legation building, a diplomatic property established in 1821 inside the city’s ancient medina, is also the only U.S. National Historic Landmark abroad.
While Morocco and the U.S. have remained friendly through the years, the former’s proclivity for homegrown banditry almost brought the two countries to blows just after the turn of the 20th century. The “Perdicaris Affair” may now be a forgotten footnote in American history, but it likely swung the 1904 election in favor of Teddy Roosevelt.
During the spring leading up to the election, American expat Ion Perdicaris and his stepson were kidnapped from their villa just outside Tangier by warlord Mulai Ahmed el-Raisuli and his henchmen. Roosevelt, a man obsessed with maintaining a powerful image, moved gunboats off the coast of Morocco and demanded the nation’s government resolve the dilemma immediately.
His terms, as dictated in an ultimatum to the Moroccan sultan by Secretary of State John Hays, were straight to the point: “Perdicaris alive or Rasuli dead.” Perdicaris was released by the bandits, and Roosevelt’s decisive display of strength helped earn him a second presidential term.
Meanwhile during the same year, France and Spain carved out zones of influence throughout Morocco. Tangier was of particular interest to both nations which, along with England, prized its strategic position at the southern edge of the Strait of Gibraltar. Two decades later following the conclusion of World War I, the three countries hammered out an agreement that was mutually beneficial to all parties.
The Tangier Protocol gave the French, Spanish, and British joint governance over the northern tip of Morocco, establishing a tax haven at one of the world’s most crucial commercial and geopolitical locations. The city was now an international zone, which – for all intents and purposes – meant it was no man’s land.
Welcome to the “Interzone”
William Burroughs, the famed, heroin-addicted American writer, spent time in Tangier during the 1950s. He gave this summary of living in the city during the (slang term coined by Burroughs himself) “interzone” period: “Tangier is one of the few places left in the world where, so long as you don’t proceed to robbery, violence, or some form of crude, antisocial behavior, you can do exactly what you want.”
Waves from the Atlantic Ocean roll into the ‘Map of Africa’ sea opening at the Caves of Hercules in Morocco. The caves are named after the Greco-Roman demigod. Click the icon in the lower righthand corner of the player to expand the video.
Burroughs, who wrote most of Naked Lunch in Tangier, and other post-war Beat Generation writers like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg were the most notable group among the throng of artists that filled Tangier during this most libertarian era. While the rest of the civilized world was dealing with the succession of the Great Depression, World War II, and the beginning of the Cold War, the city’s mixture of outcasts, bohemians, and desperadoes existed largely within their own boozy, debauched, and oft-drug altered environ.
Blending in wasn’t hard, and with no one earnestly watching the border, it was all too easy for anyone – including secret agents working in clandestine liaison with state sources – to come and go.
Specific accounts of spying are hard to come by, but reputable publications like The New York Times and Smithsonian agree that espionage was alive and well in the background of international zone Tangier. My own research turned up several unverifiable stories, like the city’s purported connection to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 12 Apostles intelligence network that laid the groundwork for the Allied invasion of North Africa during World War II’s Operation TORCH.
Although many of the narratives I read were either vague or dubious (and sometimes both), there was a general commonality: Most found their way back to St. Andrew’s and the man known as Dean.
Secret Agent Man
The overarching tale of the enigmatic Dean shares characteristics with the collective accounts of its international zone backdrop; it’s at times ambiguous, partly embellished, and generally unofficial. The following statement of facts, however, is consensus per my studies: Dean’s real name was Don Kimfull, a former London underworld figure who ran the legendary Dean’s Bar under an alias while hiding out in Tangier.
The rest is shrouded in translucent murk.
Local Moroccan accounts regarding Kimfull’s origin (obviously hearsay considering he was from England) gathered by Richard Hamilton in his book Tangier: From the Romans to the Rolling Stones say he was multiracial, born to either an English or French mother. Who his father was is perhaps even more in question, with suspects ranging from a Caribbean wanderer to an Egyptian tour guide.
Either way, young Kimfull eventually fell into a life of crime in London. Marek Kohn’s book Dope Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground puts Kimfull as a gigolo and occasional jewel thief in 1913. Five years afterward, he was rumored to be the man who supplied renowned actress Billie Carleton with the cocaine on which she overdosed. Kimfull disappeared from London just as the scandal rocked the British capital. Actor Raoul Reginald “Reggie” de Veulle was eventually convicted of giving Carleton the drugs, spending a short time in prison.
Over a decade later, a man named Joseph Dean arrived out of the blue in Tangier and became the head bartender at Caid’s in the El Minzah Hotel. This is where the aliased Dean, who was later identified by previous underworld associates passing through Tangier as Kimfull, apparently entered into espionage. As Kohn writes, Dean would spend his time “eavesdropping in the cockpit of spies that his bar became, and passing on information that might lead to, say, a ship blowing up in the harbor.”
Whose side he was really on is open to anyone’s speculation. Hamilton’s sources say at one time or another he spied for the British, Spanish, and French, and “he would tell one story about himself to one customer and a different tale to the next.” While his allegiance to country is forever a mystery, one of his former partners in the London underworld minced no words when describing Dean as an individual.
“Dean, of Dean’s Bar, without a doubt (is the wickedest man I have ever met),” his former criminal associate Gerald Hamilton is quoted as saying in Kohn’s book. “His real name isn’t Dean anyhow. It’s Donald Kimfull.” He continued in British vernacular, “He’s a naughty baggage, and he always was.”
Despite all the apparent transgressions in his checkered past, the man who now went by Dean managed to wipe his slate clean in short order after entering the international zone. In 1937, he opened Dean’s Bar, an establishment that served regular guests like celebrities Errol Flynn and Ava Gardner. Underworld types like drug smugglers and fugitives also frequently passed through his door, as did, just like at Caid’s, secret agents.
Another of his regulars was Ian Fleming, a former British Navy intelligence officer turned novelist. Even if you don’t recognize the name, you are assuredly familiar with his work.
The Hollywood Connection
Well before Tangier lost its status as an international zone in 1956, the Western public had become enamored with its intriguing nature. The 1942 Hollywood classic Casablanca may have been set in the Moroccan city to the south, but the film might have been inspired by life in Tangier. Rick’s Café, the primary location of the picture and one of the most iconic sets in cinema history, could have easily been fashioned after either Caid’s, Dean’s Bar, or a mixture of both.
Analyzing the character construction of Humphery Bogart’s Rick Blaine, one of the chief protagonists of Casablanca along with Ingrid Bergman’s Ilsa Lund, it’s not a stretch to see him as an on-screen representation of Dean. Blaine moved to Tangier and opened Rick’s Café after spending stints as a gunrunner during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and a mercenary in the Spanish Civil War. His café also serves as a gambling den that attracts unscrupulous types bearing resemblance to the underworld vultures said to have routinely roosted at Dean’s Bar.
While the mysterious Dean and his bar likely inspired one of the greatest films in history, Fleming wrote a franchise of spy novels that continues to captivate movie-goers to this day. The books’ central character goes by the name of Bond, James Bond.
Fleming spent a month at the El Minzah each year and wrote the majority of Diamonds Are Forever in Caid’s. The former Navy man was described in Hamilton’s book as an antisocial drinker when he visited Dean’s Bar, ordering a triple vodka and tonic and steering clear of the rest of the “pansies” in the room. Bond first hit the theater in 1962 with the Sean Connery-headlined Dr. No. In 1985, Roger Moore’s 007 became the first Bond actor to film in Tangier in A View to a Kill.
In the past few decades, the city has been shown multiple times in secret agent-themed blockbusters. Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne is seen racing through the ancient medina in 2007, frantically trying to run down the assassin Desh in The Bourne Ultimatum. Daniel Craig’s Bond shows up at the fictional Hotel L’American in Tangier in 2015’s Spectre, working to unravel the mystery behind the death of Madelaine Swann’s father. And just last year, Marvel Studios’ Black Widow features a rooftop action sequence that gives a glimpse of the city’s new port in the distance.
Each of these recent movie scenes attempts to capture the essence of Tangier’s “interzone” era, a time when the city belonged to no one nation and before colorful characters like Dean had faded into folklore.
“It Was and It Was Not So”
On the train ride to Casablanca, I reviewed my time touring Tangier.
I had stayed at the El Minzah and saw Caid’s; I had just left St. Andrew’s, walking along the street where Dean’s Bar once served customers. The day prior, I had also wound our way through the maze of the medina and even taken a cab ride past where Perdicaris and his stepson had been kidnapped by Rasuli.
With these images fresh on my mind, I attempted to overlay everything I knew about the international zone and its ever-present cast of secret agents. In some ways it was easy. Places like the medina, El Minzah, and Caid’s have changed little in the decades since the 1950s. A part of me, though, yearned for greater detail.
I wanted to know more about the other men and women like Dean. It’s without question they were in Tangier, but what were their stories? Were they inside the same figurative picture frame as Dean and Fleming or were they elsewhere in the chaotic background of the international zone?
Were some of these anonymous agents perhaps even more fascinating than the underworld-figure-turned-spy whose second life is surely the greatest legend to emerge from the most peculiar era of Tangier?
The answer to the final question is likely affirmative, for espionage is a singularly unique trade that attracts singularly unique individuals. Despite my curiosity, another part of me knows that the enduring magic of historical periods like the international zone of Tangier lies in the unknown.
The Arabs are at peace with this truth, as many of their stories begin with the paradoxical, “It was and it was not so.”* The line correctly characterizes the blurred memory of Dean and others like him in Tangier, which was once a city of spies.
* I found this tidbit of Arabic storytelling tradition in Hamilton’s book.
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– Click to read my short story “Bargain in the Kasbah” about my encounter with a clever Berber shopkeeper in Tangier’s ancient medina.
– Click to view my high-resolution photo collection from the Moroccan cities of Tangier and Casablanca.
– Click to read my feature article “Alabama: The Mystery of the Welsh Caves” to learn about how a little-known cave system built by man links a medieval legend, a colonial expedition, and the greatest cataclysm in human history.