Nile Shadows jq-3

by Edward Whittemore

  Piety and power, muttered the Colonel. Self-righteous murder and that repulsive flagellation that goes with it. All power to the nursery, in our age. All power to the gruesome little boy who dizzily sniffs his forefinger and giggles over his playthings.

  The Colonel's face grew even darker.

  And the other side's unspeakably worse. At least we don't honor these practices officially and make them into institutions by handing out habits as regular issue, the way the Nazis hand out black uniforms and black jackboots and death's-head insignias. Even Whatley can't begin to compare to that Nazi crowd with their insatiable need for blackness. They just keep lusting backward into the past until they've become so many packs of animals loping around in the primeval gloom. Smell blood and you snap at it.

  Massacre enough and the beast inside may be able to know peace for a moment or two, with the help of some Bach or Mozart of course. Slaughter enough and you have the illusion of immortality because everybody around you is dying.

  A civilized people, the Germans. Some of the finest music in the history of the species served up to soothe the beast in Western culture, a beast the Germans just happen to know a great deal about.

  Damn Germans, damn Whatley, damn. Nothing's as simple as it used to be, or maybe it's just the opposite. Maybe everything's as simple as it used to be, sadly for us. . . . But the damn problem is, Whatley's a good staff officer when he's not playing his games, which is why Bletchley probably couldn't get rid of him even if he wanted to. Whatley's very diligent and thorough and hardworking, not unlike the Germans. . . .

  The Colonel paused.

  I wonder why those traits always have to bring the Germans to mind today? Thorough . . . diligent . . .

  those traits seem to have become dangerous somehow in our century. As if there's no room anymore for the wobbly human factor. Automatons seem to be what society wants today. By the numbers, one two three. . . . Whatley will even tell you he's not a very aggressive man by nature. Just competitive. . . .

  The Colonel paused again

  It's true he used to be a good sportsman before he lost his right arm. . . .

  A sudden change came over the Colonel. His chest sank and he groaned, looking more naked than ever in his mended undershirt and his faded yachting cap. He reached down to move his false leg and a look of resignation settled over his face.

  Damn, he muttered, that's it for me. I've had my early morning fling at being defiant and ready for anything. From now on I take what comes and deal with it in whatever plodding way I can. Breakfast is over.

  The Colonel looked at his watch.

  Time to get cleaned up. I'll call Bletchley as soon as I get to the office. I can't imagine there'd be any difficulty about a meeting with Joe. Bletchley was a great fan of Colly's after all, and it must have been Bletchley who came across Joe's name in Stern's file in the first place and decided to get him over here from America. Nor can it be a coincidence that he assigned Colly's old cover to Joe, resurrecting this notion of a Purple Seven Armenian. Bletchley had to know what he was doing, and I can't imagine he'd want to give Joe serious trouble now. Maybe he has to straighten some things out with him, but surely it can't have anything to do with the way Whatley's been going about matters.

  The Colonel rummaged around cleaning out his pipe.

  Oh by the way, Harry. I assume you had your bad ear turned this way when I was going on about Whatley a moment ago. Fellow officer and so forth.

  Didn't hear a word, Colonel.

  Yes. Well then....

  The Major was ready to leave but he hesitated. He had the impression the Colonel wasn't quite finished.

  Was there anything else, sir?

  The Colonel fumbled with his pipe.

  No not really. I was just . . .

  The Colonel glanced at the pipe in his hands and put it down on the table, an emphatic motion. There was an odd mixture of regret and wistfulness in his face, something the Major wasn't used to. In his shapeless underwear and his old yachting cap, the Colonel suddenly looked forlorn.

  Silence, the Colonel muttered. . . . Why does there have to be so much silence in our lives?

  He looked up at the Major.

  Did I ever tell you I just missed being given command of the Monastery? It was the plum of course, but .

  . .

  The Major shook his head and waited. Something about the Stern case, he realized, had released a profound surge of emotion in the Colonel.

  But I didn't get it, muttered the Colonel. It happened a few years ago. I had the background for it, that wasn't in doubt, and I even had this new false leg as an added qualification. . . .

  The Colonel attempted a smile, a sad expression.

  But I didn't get it in the end. I wasn't considered determined enough, whatever that's supposed to mean.

  A polite way of saying ruthless, I suppose. So they decided to go with Bletchley even though this wasn't the area he knew, and they gave him Whatley as a deputy because Whatley's so thorough, and I was given the Waterboys instead. More your line, they said. Pretty much the traditional kind of operations and a much larger staff and all the ancillary services, which you can handle. . . . Not that Bletchley didn't deserve the job, he did. He's good and no one would deny he's conscientious, and they might have been right about me when it comes to the sort of work the Monastery does. But still. . . .

  The Colonel's voice trailed off. He gazed down at the table and shook his head.

  Anyway, Bletchley got the Monastery and he saw a lot more of Stern after that than I did. And he also saw a good deal more of Colly, whom he seemed to take a particular liking to, and so . . .

  The Colonel's hand slowly went out to the chunk of cheese on the table. He picked up a small piece, toying with it, the crumbs spilling through his fingers.

  Enigma, he thought all at once, the idea coming to him from nowhere. That's what's behind all of this.

  Somehow Stern found out about Enigma. . . . Of course, that was his Polish story. And Bletchley found out Stern knew and he dug Joe's name out of Stern's files, Colly's brother, of course, and he got Joe over here and gave him Colly's old identity and . . . But how did Bletchley find out about Stern? There's no one here who . . .

  Unless Stern had told someone, thought the Colonel . . . and that someone had spoken to Bletchley.

  The Colonel stared at the table. If that was what had happened and Joe knew the truth, there was simply no way Bletchley could let him go now. Joe could never leave Cairo, it was out of the question. Bletchley had no choice in the matter. He would agree to a meeting and then he would have to . . . Well maybe they were right to have given him the job, thought the Colonel. Maybe he is better fitted for it than I am, more determined or whatever. After all, Colly's brother. . . .

  The Major was still standing beside the kitchen table. The Colonel glanced up at him and smiled sadly.

  He shrugged.

  Just my mind wandering, he said, it has nothing to do with this. Anyway, I'll call Bletchley as soon as I get to the office and explain the situation. I'm sure he'll agree to a meeting.

  The Major nodded eagerly.

  Very good, sir.

  Yes, well. . . .

  The Colonel groaned and heaved himself up from the table. For a moment he stood there tottering on his false leg, getting his balance, gazing down at his books.

  Well that's it for now, Harry, it's time to get on with the day. And I hate to say it but I already feel as if I weighed a thousand pounds. Somehow the good things in life always seem to be over almost before we knew they were there. . . .

  ***

  The Major was at his desk when his private telephone rang exactly at noon. He picked it up and said hello.

  A wandering minstrel here, Major. Any news of a meeting with the local pharaoh before the sun sets?

  The Major gave Joe a time and a place.

  After the sun sets, you say? Well that's all right with me. Most of my business seems to have been conducted at night since I
've been in Cairo. Nature of the business maybe, wouldn't you say?

  The Major laughed, adding that he was sorry the location of the meeting wouldn't be as dramatic as the Sphinx had been the night before.

  No, well, we can't always have such sweeping views of the night-tide sky, now can we, Major? Life has to go on in its little ways and the Sphinx is just too big a concept for any of us to be visiting it every night.

  Too big and then some, too hard to understand too. An inscrutable notion after all, like life and a lot of things. Until the appointed time and place then. . . .

  The line went dead. The Major hung up the phone and looked across the room at the Colonel, who was sitting in the corner watching him. The Colonel nodded, rose.

  That's it, said the Colonel. We've done what we could and it's up to Bletchley now.

  The Colonel went limping back to his office.

  Shameless, he thought, Harry using a private code like that right in front of me. The Sphinx, indeed. It's easy enough to understand how he was taken with Joe, but all the same charm isn't really what's wanted in wartime. It turns heads. . . .

  And abruptly an image came to the Colonel from before the war, during the Arab revolt in Palestine. An image of Colly arriving at night at a Jewish outpost manned by settlers above Galilee, near the Lebanese border, Colly turning up in one of his disguises to train the settlers and to organize what would later become the Special Night Squads of the Palmach.

  A taxi with its headlights off, its taillights on the front of the car to confuse the enemy. And Colly's two young future deputies, Dayan and Allon, approaching the mysterious taxi and seeing a small lean figure come jumping out of the car with two rifles and a Bible and a drum, an English-Hebrew dictionary and five gallons of New England rum.

  Flair, thought the Colonel, there's no other word for it. Colly had flair. . . .

  He smiled at the memory, then thought of Joe and lost his smile, recalling a saying Stern had once been fond of repeating.

  The Panorama Has Moved.

  Finished, he thought. What a shame. It's all over for Joe and Liffy died for nothing, but of course there can't be any other resolution to the Stern case. With the secret of Enigma at the heart of it, there's no other way. None. Bletchley can only do what has to be done. End the case and close the file with those terrible words, No surviving witnesses. But still. . . .

  The Colonel closed his door and leaned against it, recalling the strange account of a voice that had come booming out of the Sphinx under a full moon.

  . . . Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?

  Well the Sphinx surely, thought the Colonel. The Sphinx finally, but which one out of all of them was really the Sphinx in the end? Or is everyone, finally. . . ?

  -22-

  Bernini's Bag

  They sat on the narrow shaded balcony that opened off Maud's living room, on the far side of the building away from the fierce sinking sun, a promise of twilight gathering in the corners of the alley below.

  . . . and when the Major let me know there was truly a meeting on with Bletchley, said Joe, I couldn't stop myself from doing a little dance in place for about five minutes. I tried to call you here but there was no answer, so I made my way back to the public garden where old Menelik's crypt lies buried, and I found a sheltered little spot to sit in the shade by the river, and that's what I did. Just sat and watched the currents and let my mind drift.

  Joe's hair was wet from the shower he had just taken. His left ear was newly bandaged.

  But it wasn't just anyplace by the Nile, he went on. It was the very same spot where Strongbow and old Menelik had once spent a silent afternoon together toward the end of their long lives, just before the First World War, the place where there had once been a cheap open-air restaurant with beautiful trellises and vines and hanging flowers, with a pool where ducks paddled and a cage where peacocks squawked, that very same rendezvous where Strongbow and old Menelik and Crazy Cohen had met for their dreaming and drinking bouts on Sunday afternoons so long ago, when they were three young men starting out. A place for forty-year conversations and then some, the same spot where a famous sign had stood years later in the midst of emptiness, all by itself in a vacant lot . . . THE PANORAMA HAS MOVED. And I guess I got to thinking about that sign and its worlds within worlds, and before I knew it I'd just dozed off to the murmuring spell of the river.

  There hasn't been much sleep for me lately, he added, despite my being officially dead. . . . A case of the restless dead, I guess you'd have to call it.

  Maud smiled.

  Was that really where the sign used to be?

  Oh that was the spot all right. Stern pointed it out to me when we were leaving the crypt that night. So I dozed off without meaning to, and by the time I woke up it was late afternoon, so I came straight here.

  The Colonel told me I might have a visitor waiting for me at home. Oh Joe, I was so excited. I was sure it meant things were going to turn out all right for you.

  And was that all he said?

  Yes, but it was enough. I knew what it meant.

  Well I'm glad you did, but it was still cryptic of him and that's the trouble with this business. Nobody says more than he has to and you miss a lot that way. Me, I just wanted to shout because I was alive again.

  Maud laughed.

  Can I get you something to eat? she asked. You must be starved.

  I must be, but I don't feel it. I think I might have a drink though.

  Have it then. Do you want me to get it?

  No, don't bother yourself, I can manage. Where do you keep it?

  In the kitchen. In the cabinet over the broom closet.

  Swept away, said Joe, and disappeared inside.

  Maud heard the cabinet door bang in the kitchen. It swelled and stuck sometimes in the heat, and then flew back against the wall unless you were expecting it. She heard Joe muttering to himself. Glass clinked and there was the sound of ice being broken out of an ice tray.

  I forgot to mention the cabinet door, she said when he came back.

  Joe smiled.

  It makes a racket all right when there's somebody as clumsy as me around. It just goes to show I'm not cut out for this kind of work. The moment I feel a little safe I go crashing around as if I didn't have a care in the world.

  He took a long drink from his glass and sat down on the low wall of the balcony. Maud was bent over her knitting. She spoke without looking up.

  You seem to drink a lot.

  I do, yes.

  Does it help?

  Yes, I'm afraid it does.

  Well that's good then, I guess.

  No it isn't, Maudie, it's a kind of weakness surely, but it eases things. So often the world seems such a dark and unyielding place that anything that stills the whispers inside seems to have its uses, even when you know it's a false quiet.

  Could you stop, do you think?

  If I had to. Human beings seem to be able to do about anything if they have to. Even those things they're doing right now out in the desert.

  Maud bent her head, a sudden uneasiness coming over her. She was trying not to let him see her concern, but he felt it anyway.

  Are you really sure Bletchley's going to let you leave?

  Not sure, no, but it seems likely. If it were going to be otherwise I don't think he'd be handling it like this, giving me the afternoon off and telling your Colonel to give you the afternoon off, too.

  But you said he's having you followed again.

  Just company, Maudie. I suppose Bletchley doesn't want anything to happen to me between now and tonight. Besides, I was the one who gave him the opportunity by going back near Menelik's crypt, which I knew he'd be having watched. I didn't have to do that.

  Why did you then?

  So he'd know where I was today and know there was nothing to worry about.

  But why didn't you just stay out of sight until tonight?

  Well for one thing, I wouldn't have been able to see you then. And
anyway, it seemed like the time had come to get some things out in the open. After the way the Major went on last night about Stern and Colly, Colly in particular, it just didn't seem that Bletchley would have gone to all the trouble it must have taken to get me over here, just to do me in in the end.

  But does the Major's opinion count? Does it really matter that he happens to have such a high regard for Colly's memory? Bletchley may feel very differently about it. About everything.

  He may, but I doubt it.

  But how can you be sure?

  I can't.

  Well I don't like it, Joe. It frightens me. Bletchley has a reputation for being very single-minded.

  As well he should be, in a job like that.

  But people say he'll stop at nothing to get what he wants.

  I know, he told me so himself once. He said he'd do anything to defeat the Germans. Anything, and he meant it.

  But couldn't that mean you're still in danger?

  I don't think so. Bletchley has always treated me in a certain way, which I can respect, and besides, there comes a time when you have to trust somebody. You play it alone as best you can for as long as you can, and then finally you have to come out and say, Look, this is all there is. This is all I am and I can't do anymore. Eventually that time comes, and I know it and Bletchley knows it and it's just that simple in the end.

  It doesn't sound simple, said Maud in a low voice. Nothing about it sounds simple to me.

  Joe watched her affectionately as she bent over her knitting needles. It was the second or third time she had brought it up. . . . Was it going to be all right? Was he going to be able to leave Cairo? Why would Bletchley let him go after all the things that had happened?

  And of course Joe understood her concern. He knew she couldn't share the relief he felt, because she hadn't been through what he had experienced since his arrival in Cairo. For him, something was coming to an end and there was a finality about it, and the inevitable calm that brought. But not so for Maud.

  Stern was dead and that was final, but the other parts of her life were still the same. It was all just as precarious for her as it had been a day or a month or a year ago, and their son Bernini was still in America and none of that had changed, and there was no finality, no ending. It looked now as if Joe would be able to escape and that was wonderful, a blessing, but everything else was still the same for her.