Nile Shadows jq-3

by Edward Whittemore

  A beggar . . . a beggar. . .

  Joe standing in the corner in the smoke, in the haze, staring at the spot where Stern had been, Stern gone now in the roar of shattering glass and blinding light and the echo of disappearing footsteps. Joe smiling and whispering to himself.

  He knew in the end. It was in his eyes.

  The cry outside already so distant it seemed but an echo. And dust and chaos and Joe struggling to breathe, a sudden stillness to the world as the roar in his ears crowded out all else. Joe smiling, the thin cry far away now in the darkness dying, its moment over in the night.

  A beggar . . . a beggar. . . .

  PART FOUR

  -19-

  A Golden Bell and a Pomegranate

  Tobruk had fallen. The panzers of Rommel's Afrika Korps were little more than fifty miles from Alexandria. The routed British army was digging in to try to hold the line at El Alamein, but if that last resistance failed the Germans would overrun Egypt and seize the Suez Canal, and perhaps the entire Middle East.

  Nearly all the British troops had left Alexandria. The streets of Cairo were jammed with vehicles pouring in from the desert. Civilians with money and documents were leaving for Khartoum and Kenya, South Africa and Palestine. Long columns of trucks retreated in the direction of Palestine.

  The British fleet had sailed for the safety of Haifa. Military and civilian staffs were being evacuated. Huge crowds of European refugees stood in lines seeking transit papers and an escape to Palestine.

  ***

  Belle and Alice weren't surprised to see Joe, but they were surprised to see him turn up so soon again at the houseboat. Joe was moving and speaking quickly, his words confused as he stumbled around the sunroom of the houseboat bumping into wicker furniture. Even his voice seemed not quite his own.

  It was Belle who would recall that later. It was almost as if he had been possessed, she said later.

  Both Belle and Alice tried to question him but his answers made little sense, and in any case it was impossible to hold his attention. Joe kept turning away and shaking his head, his voice sinking to a whisper. Occasionally one of the women caught a few words.

  Danger. . . escape. . . .

  They were shocked by the changes that had come over him in such a short time. Shuffling and disheveled, gaunt from lack of sleep, he looked as if he might collapse at any moment. His thin shoulders drooped, his shapeless clothes hung on him. His hands kept opening and closing as he picked up things and put them down again somewhere else, touching objects, touching everything, pointing at nothing and groaning, muttering to himself.

  Escape . . . the exodus. . . .

  It was as if events had finally overpowered him and he had shrunk into himself, retreating to some private world. For the first time both sisters realized how small he was.

  But Joe, what happened to Stern? asked Belle. What happened to Stern?

  Gone . . . everyone's leaving. . . .

  He moved quickly away to the corner and stood there staring down at the harpsichord and the tiny bassoon resting on the polished wood. A bewildered expression crossed his face and he backed away, abruptly fixing his gaze on the portrait of Cleopatra. He went up to it and pushed his face close, examining the portrait.

  The panorama's moved. . . .

  What did you say? asked Alice.

  But Joe was moving again, hurrying away, retreating to the other side of the room. He bumped into furniture and knocked over a porcelain figure, shattering it, coming to a sudden halt in front of the portrait of Catherine the Great. He shook his head, his mouth working all the while, biting and chewing, his tongue licking his lips.

  But what happened to Stern? repeated Belle.

  Gone and gone, even him . . . and by day a pillar of smoke, by night a pillar of fire.

  Joe swung around, his face harried and pale, puzzled. A spasm twitched in the taut muscles of his neck.

  His hand went to his throat and he gasped, fought for breath.

  Joe?

  He reached out desperately for support, caught himself, lurched into the back of a chair. He whirled and knocked another porcelain to the floor, shattering it.

  Joe, Belle called out. Stop, for the love of heaven. Sit down, rest for a moment.

  But he couldn't stop, he couldn't rest. He groped through the air in a frenzy and stared wildly around the room, recognizing none of it, muttering to himself.

  A ransom of souls . . . a crypt and a mirror. I and Thou. . . .

  His mouth fell open, his head slipped to the side. He gaped as images tumbled through his tortured mind, obscuring the room. . . . Wounded animals in the desert and flames shooting high in the sky, trails of wreckage and twisted bodies, ripped tanks and abandoned cannons, sirens and echoes and screaming men lying blind on the sands. . . . And elsewhere to the east, endless columns of trucks winding away into the Sinai, fleeing headlong into the wilderness on the ancient paths that had always led to Palestine and the promised land of Canaan.

  Joe raised his hand, as if preaching to some invisible congregation. He whispered.

  Their lives have been bitter with hard bondage. . . .

  Whose lives? asked Belle.

  Joe staggered, fell to one knee, pulled himself to his feet again with an enormous effort.

  They're leaving. . . .

  Who's leaving? asked Alice. Where are they going?

  To the land of their pilgrimage . . . a good land and large, flowing with milk and honey. . . .

  He uttered a cry and spun around, stumbling toward the tall French doors that opened onto the small veranda beside the river. Alice rose to her feet in alarm but Belle shook her head, stopping her. Joe stood in the open doors gazing down at the Nile.

  And all the waters that were in the river were turned to blood . . . and there was blood throughout all the land of Egypt. . . .

  Alice tried to plead with him.

  Joe? Rest for a moment. Sit down and rest, please?

  But he was moving again away from the veranda. He stopped in the middle of the room and raised his hand once more as if addressing an invisible congregation, his obsessed eyes staring into the distance, glittering and fixed.

  Don't you see them? Can't you see them? . . . They're beautiful jewels, they're precious stones. . . .

  Belle watched Joe's eyes, her face filled with sorrow.

  What jewels, Joe? What do you mean?

  Look at his eyes, whispered Alice, terrified.

  What jewels? repeated Belle, loudly.

  Joe murmured, his hand raised, his voice gathering strength.

  Precious stones, settings of stones. . . . A sardius and a topaz and a carbuncle, an emerald and a sapphire and a diamond, a ligure and an agate and an amethyst, a beryl and an onyx and a jasper. . . . These precious stones, beautiful and ancient. And the stones shall be with the names of the children of Israel, twelve, according to their names. Every one with his name shall they be, according to the twelve tribes. . . .

  Joe dropped his hand and turned away, his eyes shining. In despair, Belle shook her head. Alice was ready to break into tears. Belle made a gesture and immediately Alice rose and fled to her sister, holding her tightly.

  I'm frightened, whispered Alice. He looks ghastly and it frightens me the way he moves his hands, the way his mouth keeps working. What's the matter with him?

  He's ill, whispered Belle. He's not himself.

  But his eyes, Belle, the way they shine and the way they stare, it frightens me. What does he see? What does he think he sees? Why are his eyes so strange? Whom is he speaking to?

  He may have a concussion, whispered Belle. He may have been struck on the head or been near some kind of explosion.

  Shouldn't we call a doctor, Belle?

  In a moment. We can't leave him alone now.

  Belle tried to comfort her sister, but she was just as disturbed by Joe's strange appearance and his even stranger behavior. Much more than mere physical exhaustion had to be involved, she knew that. It was his j
erky movements that disturbed her, the spasms that seemed to seize him every few moments and spin him around, sending his disconnected thoughts careening off in some new direction. And above all there were his eyes, as Alice had said. There was a wholly unnatural luster to Joe's eyes, a feverish glow that was much too bright and seemed to devour everything his gaze fell upon.

  Suddenly Belle raised her head. What's that? she whispered.

  It was the sound of an automobile stopping nearby. In front of the houseboat perhaps. On the road beside the river.

  Belle stiffened.

  It's no use. There's no time to try to hide him and he wouldn't go with us anyway.

  Joe wandered among the pale white wicker shapes, the ghostly furniture that crowded the room with wispy shadows of other lives and other eras. Again he raised his hand, whispering.

  For I know their sorrows, and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land. . . .

  A car door closed, another. Whoever was out on the road in front of the houseboat seemed to be making as much noise as possible, although Joe's wounded mind was too far away to hear it. He stopped again, turned again, moving more slowly now. He looked out at the river, taking a step toward it.

  Behold, I send an angel before thee to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. . . .

  The front door to the houseboat banged open. Another door banged and a sharp voice barked an indistinct order. Footfalls could be heard in the corridor, hurried footsteps growing louder. Alice buried her head in Belle's shoulder. Belle stared straight ahead at Joe.

  He was smiling now, smiling for the first time, wandering among the ghostly wicker shapes and talking to himself. And the jerky movements seemed to have passed for the moment, the spasms to have subsided.

  Once more he was moving toward the open French doors but calmly now, gracefully now, the Joe they remembered, calmly drawn to the edge of the water.

  He smiled as he gazed out over the river, his voice strong, the words spoken as if to someone he loved.

  A golden bell and a pomegranate, upon the hem of the robe round about. . . .

  He uttered a cry of joy, his hand raised to the river . . . then everything happened very quickly. The door to the room burst open and men were shouting and rushing forward. Joe turned in the open doors to the veranda and looked back, smiling, a mysterious joy lighting his face.

  The first shots ripped into his side and fluttered his jacket, spinning him around so that he was facing the room when the next bullets hit him, before a submachine gun roared and exploded into the middle of him, ending it all and nearly cutting him in half, collapsing his small thin body and sending it flying back through the doors to the edge of the river . . . a twisted heap of old clothes on the wooden slats of the little veranda, one hand trailing in the water.

  The men went quickly about their business. They gathered up the body in a canvas sack and in another moment there was no one in the airy sunroom but the two tiny ancient women, alone once more with the haunting wicker shapes of memory.

  Little Alice quietly sobbing in the stillness. . . . Big Belle gazing steadfastly at the shattered glass doors and the silent river, at the huge empty vista where Joe had been . . . desolate now and passing.

  -20-

  A Gift of Faces, a Gift of Tongues

  Early evening, the day after Stern had been killed.

  The Major stood behind his desk in the Third Circle of the Irrigation Works, the headquarters of the intelligence unit referred to as the Waterboys. He had just returned from a meeting in the Colonel's office, where the two of them had discussed the information acquired that afternoon in a Cairo slum by one of their better local agents, code name Jameson, an Egyptian blackmarketeer with yellowish teeth and a bad liver.

  From conversations with the Arab owner of the bar where Stern had been killed, Jameson had been able to elicit a surprising amount of information on the behavior of Stern and his unidentified companion, prior to the explosion of the hand grenade at midnight. This information, in turn, had led the Colonel to make a number of intriguing suppositions about the case. And since the Colonel had known Stern personally and had worked with him in the past, it was only to be expected that his questions would follow certain lines.

  Why had the Monastery been running an operation against Stern?

  What had been the nature of the operation?

  Bletchley had given the agent working against Stern a Purple Seven designation, the most sensitive of all the categories. Why the need for this extraordinary secrecy? What made the case so important it had required a Purple Seven agent?

  Further, the agent in question had been brought in by Bletchley from the outside, although a Purple Seven designation was so sensitive it was almost never assigned to someone from the outside. Why had it been done in this case? How had Bletchley been able to convince London that it was necessary?

  Was it true, as the Colonel suspected, that this Purple Seven agent had to be someone who had known Stern well in the past? Again, that he must be someone who had also once been closely involved with an employee of the Waterboys who had been a longtime friend of Stern, the American woman Maud?

  And finally and most intriguing of all to the Colonel, what events from the past lay behind the unlikely connections that had existed among these three people?

  For the connections did seem unlikely.

  Maud. An American who had lived in Greece and Turkey before the war. A likable hardworking woman, trusted and thoroughly commonplace to all appearances, a translator in the Third Circle of the Irrigation Works.

  Stern. A wizard of languages and Levantine ways. A brilliant agent who had used his vast knowledge of the Middle East to come and go unsuspected for years. A solitary man who had ingeniously used his role as a minor gunrunner to conceal his espionage activities, who had managed through this sordid cover to escape important notice throughout his life.

  And lastly, the mysterious Purple Seven. An experienced agent from the outside, identity unknown, history and previous involvements unknown. Evidently a European but referred to by the Colonel as the Armenian, because the false papers of his Purple Seven cover carried an Armenian name and an Armenian background.

  When the Major thought about it, it wasn't difficult for him to understand why the Colonel's questions took the form they did. The Colonel had spent most of his life in the Middle East and despite his ordinary army manner, he was a scholarly expert in the cultures of the region who couldn't help but be intrigued by the contradictions of Stern's obscure past.

  Then too, in Stern's case, it wasn't just a matter of facts and straightforward information. From the way the Colonel and others spoke of Stern, it was apparent Stern had been the kind of man who had invariably had a powerful effect on anyone who knew him. Almost an hypnotic effect, it seemed, as if in the process of uncovering the truth about Stern it was possible to discover a much larger truth. Almost as if some secret meaning lay hidden in Stern's lifelong journey in search of his arcane goals.

  It was only a vague notion to the Major, but he knew that was because he had never met Stern and been exposed to his influence. From the way the Colonel spoke of Stern, even from certain references in the files, it was easy enough to imagine the aura that had surrounded Stern, the peculiar mixture of strangeness and recognition men had felt in his presence, a sense of wonder and familiarity and of profound fear as well.

  An age-old tragedy, then, Stern's life. A tale of idealism and disaster on the shores of the Aegean that would always be unresolvable in its depths of darkness and light, a fated play of mystery and suffering in the stony deserts where certain men had always wandered. In its yearnings and its abject failures, a tale on the nature of things, its rhythms spun from the soft roll of ancient seas and the hard tides of ancient deserts. And yet a tale so simple it was known to the poorest of beggars and had been for thousands of years . . . its stark cycle always secretly felt in the
heart, always secretly passed from heart to heart through the millennia.

  ***

  Although the Major could appreciate the profound fascination felt by the Colonel for Stern's enigmatic life and death, his own imagination was more deeply provoked by the unidentified figure in the case. The man who had been brought in to uncover the truth about Stern, the elusive Purple Seven agent known as the Armenian.

  Nor was it difficult for the Major to understand his own particular fascination with this other figure. For the man's Purple Seven identity had been used only once before, and that was by the professional agent who had designed the identity for himself in the 1930s and used it so successfully in Palestine and Ethiopia, the same man who had been the hero of the Major's youth during the First World War, Columbkille O'Sullivan or Our Colly of Champagne, the legendary little sergeant who had survived a bullet through the heart in 1914 and been awarded two Victoria Crosses, an impossible feat.

  All his life the Major had wondered about Our Colly. What kind of man could he have been and how could anyone be expected to follow in his footsteps? Why would anyone, in fact, even dare to presume such a thing?

  And yet Bletchley had done just that. Bletchley had gone out of his way to assign Our Colly's Purple Seven identity to this unknown agent who had been tracking Stern for months or years and had even been with Stern, finally, at the moment of his death.

  So the circle was complete and the Major was brought back to the puzzle of the unknown Armenian, sketchily described as a small dark man with a deeply lined face and watchful eyes, wearing a torn collarless shirt and an old dark suit that was too big for him, that looked as if it might be secondhand, not even his to begin with. An apparent dealer in Coptic artifacts. An unknown man in transit, as Our Colly once had been.

  ***

  The Major kept a clean desk. When he returned from the Colonel's office that evening the only thing on it was his pith helmet, which the Major raised to see if any messages had been left for him underneath it.