That was when he glanced up and saw the Egyptian standing in the doorway. The fat bastard was staring at him, and that got Thomson angry. An Egyptian or even an Arab in a Western bar? They would never allow it at the Hilton, the Grand Nile, or the Semiramis. Saudi Princes aside, upper class British preferences were hard to break, and finer establishments like those were strictly reserved for men of a much whiter persuasion. You would certainly never see locals in a bar in Damascus, Riyadh, or even Baghdad, not with all the religious taboos against alcohol and their anti-western politics; but in a dump like this in Cairo — well, maybe. They rarely took anything seriously here.
So, why was this guy staring at him, Thomson wondered. He was about half-drunk now and ready to smack something. The Egyptian did look seedy — short, dark, and fat, with a sleepy mustache that drooped down over his upper lip and around the corners of his mouth. Normally, every Egyptian or Arab man kept his prized mustache perfectly trimmed even if all his fingers were broken. From the looks of this one, however, he had not seen a razor or clean clothes in days. He wore a cheap, ill-fitting suit that was all him: two sizes too small and popping its buttons. Still, Thomson should not judge the bastard too quickly. The Egyptian might look like a sweaty lump of lard, but he appeared alert with the quick, hard eyes of a carpet merchant in the Souk. His eyes darted nervously from table to table, checking them out, one at a time. Finally satisfied, the Egyptian turned toward the rear corner, where Thomson sat, and made his move. Unless he turned off or headed for the kitchen, he was coming straight toward him. Thomson did nothing, however. He ignored the fat man and looked through him as if he weren’t even there.
When the Egyptian reached the table, the fat bastard had the nerve to pull out a chair and sit down across from Thomson. He remained hunched over, careful to keep his back toward the front door, as if he were trying to hide from something or someone. Finally, he leaned across the table and smiled, showing a silly gold tooth, as he whispered conspiratorially, “You are Mister Thomson, yes?”
The American did not reply. He maintained his blank expression and stared at the Egyptian, watching him sweat. It was running down his face and soaking his already stained shirt. The night was hot and humid but not that bad, Thomson thought. Either Fats had been running, or something out there had just scared the hell out of him.
The Egyptian turned his head and threw a quick, nervous glance back at the door before he leaned even closer and forced a pleasant smile. “I am Mahmoud Yussuf,” he announced, as if that was supposed to mean something important. When it became apparent it did not, at least not to Thomson, the phony smile wilted and his face grew concerned. “Look, Mister Thomson, we…” he paused, struggling to keep his voice under control, “we must talk.”
Thomson’s expression remained blank. He picked up his glass and took a long drink, watching the Egyptian, his eyes boring straight through him.
Yussuf shifted uncomfortably. “I know who you are, Mr. Thomson. You are CIA, so you and I, we must talk. It is important and my time is short. I have the photographs,” he blurted out triumphantly, but still there was no response. “The photographs — the ones Landau took for your man Evans.”
“My man Evans?” he scoffed.
“Yes, yes, and — well, I have them now.”
“Good for you,” Thomson shrugged indifferently.
“Mr. Thomson, please!” Yussuf sounded desperate. “Do not pretend. I have not the time. These must go to your Evans and soon.”
“Then give them to him.”
“No, no, you do not understand.” Yussuf blinked. Whatever he expected, this was not it. “I cannot find him. Landau never told me how to make contact, but your picture was in the newspaper. You are CIA like Evans, and he is waiting for them this very minute. They are worth much, I assure you. So, you must help me. Tell Evans that Mahmoud Yussuf has Landau’s photographs. You must tell him that. He will know what to do.”
Thomson gave the Egyptian a long, amused look, then slowly set his glass down on the table and said, “Get out of here before I toss you out on your ass. You got that?” His voice sounded flat and bored, but his eyes were turning hard and angry. “I don’t know any Evans and I sure as hell don’t know you, so take your photographs and shove ’em.”
Yussuf’s mouth dropped open in shock. “Mr. Thomson,” he stuttered, “please, no jokes! You don’t understand, this is important,” he said as he glanced nervously back at the door again. “All right, then, all right,” he relented. “You have your rules, and I am not one of your agents, am I?” He giggled as he dragged the sleeve of his jacket across his brow. “You need proof. Is that it?” he asked as he thrust his hand inside his jacket.
When Yussuf’s hand moved, Thomson lunged across the table and grabbed the man’s throat with one hand and his wrist with the other. He wrenched the Egyptian’s hand out of his jacket, but he saw no gun, only a thick envelope dangling from Yussuf’s short, fat fingers.
“If you ever do that again,” Thomson said, as he shoved Yussuf back into the chair, “I’ll jam those pinkies so far down your throat you’ll touch your toes.”
The American’s loud voice made Yussuf cringe. The few people in the bar were all looking at them now, and he did not like it. “These are the photographs,” Yussuf whispered as he shrank down in his chair and tried to become invisible. “Here,” he said as he ripped the envelope open, pulled the bottom print from the stack, and dropped it onto the table. “Here’s a sample for you to take to Evans… for free. Now, please! They cost poor Landau his life, so you must take them to Evans!”
“Go peddle it to some tourist,” Thomson snapped back, surprised and angry that the man persisted with this idiotic story, “and tell them I’m not that stupid anymore. You got that? Once, maybe, but not anymore, so go tell them that.” However, Fats was not listening. He had turned his head back toward the door and sat frozen in the chair. Thomson’s eyes followed until he saw the silhouettes of two men standing in the front doorway, backlit by the neon lights outside. They were looking around the bar, waiting for their eyes to adjust just as Yussuf had done.
Before Thomson could ask, Yussuf slipped out of his chair and bent over the table. His face was only inches from the American’s and his mouth had twisted into an angry snarl. “Take it to Evans,” he growled. “Tell him Landau took it at the old RAF base at Heliopolis. If he wants to see the rest, my price is ten thousand dollars. One hour is all I give you. Be at the rear of your hotel, in the alley… either Evans or you, in one hour and not a minute longer, or I will sell them to the Russians. I know them well, and they are not half as stupid as you Americans.” Yussuf remained bent over as he slipped through the beaded curtains that hung across the door to the kitchen and was gone.
Thomson looked back at the two men in the front doorway. Even in this dim light, they were big, apparently somebody’s twin Goons. From the thick mustaches and cheap suits he could see they both were Egyptian and they were after Yussuf. One of them took a quick step to follow him through the bar, but the other grabbed his arm and stopped him. They would never catch him now, and he knew it. All they could do was glare at Thomson as they backed out the front door and ran away down the street. Lots of luck catching that over-stuffed weasel in the dark back streets of the crowded Arab Quarter, he thought.
Some joke, Thomson thought as he stared at the empty doorway. The months of lonely anger and frustration had slowly built up inside him and now brought him to the flash point. He slammed his fist on the table, making the glass jump and spilling the gin. He closed his eyes and shook his head, disgusted with everything. Had they not had enough fun with him in Damascus? Thomson knew he could cuss at the Syrians all he wanted, but they were neither the problem nor the ones to blame… Thomson was. He had screwed it up every way an intelligence agent could screw it up; and by doing so, he made himself a marked man. It was open season on Thomsons now. Why not? He fell for a doozie of a setup one time; so, it was worth their time to see if he would fall for an
other. After all, desperate men do desperate things. Maybe he would go stupid again and reach out for anything that might resurrect his career and his sorry ass. That was the only way he would ever get back in Langley’s good graces.
Well, they were right about one thing. He was desperate, all right; but they would never know the half of it. Even if he fell for it and ran out the door straight to the embassy with the photograph, no one in there would even listen to him — the CIA Station Chief, the Ambassador, or the rest of the embassy’s security and intelligence staff. No, none of them would listen to a damned thing Thomson had to say, not even the janitor. He was from another generation, an over-the-hill has-been, and once an agent got the stench of failure splashed on him, he became an old joke no one wanted to hear anymore. Damascus might be their current excuse, but the truth was that he was obsolete — a laced-up oxford shoe in their tasseled, penny-loafer world. When the Agency dropped him here in Cairo like yesterday’s newspaper, their fondest wish was that he would dry up, blow away in the hot desert wind, and never be heard from again.
Thomson was so lost in his own thoughts that he did not see Jeremy come over until the bartender set a fresh drink down on the table. The Brit was no dummy. When a customer had the leave-me-alones, that was exactly what he did.
Thomson forced a smile. “Sorry about the spill,” he mumbled.
Jeremy already had his towel out. “Look, if that Wog was bothering you, you should have given me the high sign. I’d have chucked him straight out the door.”
“No, he was no problem, really.”
“Used to be, you’d never see one set foot in a white man’s bar. They knew better, but that’s what you get, them runnin’ the country now and all. Place is going straight to hell in a handbasket. Mark my words; it won’t take much longer, either.”
“Who’s gonna be left then, Jeremy? You, me, and the ‘Wogs’?”
“Oh, not me,” he snorted. “I ain’t staying much longer. It may be just you.”
“Yeah, maybe just me,” Thomson reflected sadly, and then he smiled. “You figured out the coins yet?”
“Ah, the coins, yes… a couple more minutes, mate. I nearly got it.”
“Tell you what,” Thomson said as he smiled and waved it off. “Let’s forget that one, and you can keep the coins. I got a better one for you. Bring me three gin and tonics and three empty glasses.”
Jeremy looked around the room, then back at Thomson suspiciously. “Oh, all right. What the hell, why not one more,” he laughed and went back to the bar.
Thomson picked up the fresh drink and downed half of it in one gulp. The bite of raw gin was strong but not strong enough to cut the sour taste in his mouth. He glanced down and saw the photograph, still lying on the table where Yussuf had dropped it. He fought with himself, but finally gave in to the temptation and picked it up. He squinted, tipping the glossy side of the photo toward the dim light, but still could not make it out. Either the room was too dark, or his eyes were getting as bad as his other moving parts. He fished in his shirt pocket, pulled out a box of matches, and lit one.
The bright yellow flame hurt his eyes, but as he held the match closer to the photo, he saw a face staring back at him. It was a black-and-white shot of a man from the chest up. No, it was more like a photograph of a framed portrait that was taken while the picture was hanging on a wall somewhere. The man’s hair was slicked back; and he was posing with an awkward smile and thin, prissy little mustache as if this was his big day out. The original picture apparently was mounted on a mat and under glass, inside a narrow black frame. Thomson looked more closely at the face. The man looked middle-aged, pale as a mole, and half-bald. With his wire-rimmed glasses and a bland, humorless expression, he could pass for a high-school math teacher from Omaha or a small-town bookkeeper. The guy was staring straight into the camera lens, taking the whole thing ever so seriously. However, he was not a math teacher or an accountant. From the neck up, he could have been, but from the neck down he wore a Nazi SS uniform.
The flame touched Thomson’s finger. He cursed and dropped the match on the floor, then quickly lit another. It was the uniform that now attracted his attention. There was a time when he could name every ribbon and medal the bastards wore, but this proper little Kraut did not have very many. The SS? Maybe, but he was not of the fighting persuasion. All he wore were the routine party service ribbons you might find on a headquarters bureaucrat, like Adolf Eichmann, the SS Colonel the Israelis snatched in Argentina and had put on trial the previous year. What did they call them — the “golden peacocks”? Yeah, Thomson thought, the guy might be a party hack, a technician, or maybe one of Himmler’s exterminators, but not the Waffen SS, the real soldiers. That meant he could have been very dangerous, but only with a pen. A real soldier he was not.
Thomson took a last look at the face, and then lowered the match to the bottom corner of the photograph. The yellow flame warped and curled the photo paper until it caught fire. The flame quickly ate the man’s jacket, turned his shirt and tie black, and then charred his face before Thomson dropped it in the ashtray. The bright yellow flame did the rest, leaving behind only a stiff, black ash.
Thomson stared at it. He had been down before, but he had never sunk this low. What an insult. The Egyptians probably had a squad of security police waiting outside the bar right now, expecting him to walk into their little trap with the photograph of that old, pathetic Nazi and $10,000 in his pocket. How lame can you get? Yussuf? Surely, they could dig up a better Judas-goat than him. Evans, however, was the dumbest part of all. Why not pick someone Thomson knew or at least had heard of? How stupid did they think he was? Unfortunately, he knew the answer, but Jeremy was back before he could dwell on it and get even more depressed.
“Now look, Mr. Thomson, if this is the one where you belt the drinks down and say they’re on the house, I ain’t playin’,” the bartender announced firmly.
Thomson smiled and began arranging the six glasses in a line, with the three full ones on the left and the three empty ones on the right. “Okay, here’s the deal. You can only move one glass, then the six glasses have to be alternating — full, empty, full, empty, full, empty. You got that?”
Jeremy frowned. “Another of your Yank tricks?”
Thomson smiled. “No tricks, just a bit of creative problem–solving.” He sat back and laughed quietly to himself. Evans? What a crock.
CHAPTER FOUR
Thomson drank those three and that many more, as far as he could remember. When Jeremy flipped the last chair upside-down on his table and stood in front of him with his arms folded across his chest, Thomson knew it was time to go.
“Closing time, right?” he asked meekly. He might be a drunk, but he always tried to be a pleasant one, he thought, as he rose slowly to his feet, reached in his pocket, and dropped a generous amount of loose bills on the table.
“No, no, mate, you won, fair and square,” Jeremy waved him off.
Thomson shook his head and smiled, “You’re probably the last friend I have in this town, and I drank way too much to stiff you tonight.” As he turned and headed toward the door, he felt the gin hit him and he slowed his pace. Carefully, he placed one foot in front of the other and brushed the edge of each table he passed with the tips of his fingers, like a blind man navigating by Braille.
“How ’bout I call you a cab?” Jeremy asked. “It can get rough out there at night.”
“No, I’ll manage. Besides,” he laughed as he waved good-bye and went out the door, “tonight I’ll be the best-protected man in town.”
Outside, the night air wrapped itself around him like a warm, wet blanket. Cairo! By day, the wind rose and fell, hot and dry off the desert, hissing and filling the air with a shimmering veil of dust. However, as soon as the sun set, the wind faded to nothing. The air grew damp and thick, reeking with the smell of a million charcoal cooking pots, the exhaust from too many small Italian sedans, and the stench wafting up from the Nile. Thomson coughed. Apparently
, nothing was sacred anymore. They had even desecrated their sacred river. That magnificent highway of the pharaohs was now little more than a brown, open sewer. What was the line he read in the tourist brochure? “Ah, those Cairo nights, full of mystery and sin.” Bullshit, Thomson thought. The nights here were like a big vat of rancid sweet-and-sour sauce.
He stopped and looked up and down the street. Okay, where were they hiding, he wondered. By now, even they had to know he was not playing. The appointed time for him to meet Yussuf had long since passed; but still, he knew they would not stop watching him, not this soon. So where were they? Sitting nearby in an unmarked car; up in that dark, second-floor window across the street? Or were they pretending to be a couple of late-night shoppers loitering and browsing the shop windows? Thomson could not have cared less, but he was drunk enough and angry enough to insist they do it right. They could stomp the rest of him into a bloody pulp, but he still had his professional pride.
Finally, he gave in and began the long walk back to his hotel. At each corner he stopped to listen and look around. What was that sound? A car door closing? Footsteps? Did he see a shadow in that doorway? They had to be here somewhere, watching and waiting. He took a deep breath and felt the old adrenaline pumping again. No doubt, the anger helped bring out his caution, too, because he knew they were here. He stopped again and glanced around, thinking they had to be here somewhere. Deep inside, he heard a tiny voice praying they were, because that would mean he was still a player and that he was still in the game. In the game? Who was he kidding? He was finished the minute they yanked him out of Damascus. By now, even the stupid Egyptians ought to know it. That was the most irritating part of all. If they wanted to play games with someone, why not pick on one of Kilbride’s pets like Collins? He was such a perfect ass, and the Harvard ’58 needed some street seasoning in the worst way. Collins knew everything a man could learn from a book, and even the Egyptians would eat him for breakfast. Yes, someday soon, the bright glow of Camelot would fade along with the Hula-Hoop, bouffant hairdos, and Cadillacs with pointy fins, and Collins and his pals would fade right along with them. Thomson’s only real concern was how much damage those arrogant fools would do before they left.
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