The Private Sector (A Peter Marlow spy thriller)

by Joseph Hone

  “They all go there?”

  “Who?”

  “The Russians.”

  “Yes—why? The hospital’s full of them. Those that aren’t shipped back home at least.”

  “It’s an easy way out for them, I suppose—if they were ill. The engineers at Aswan and the military people, the Russian ‘advisers’ here. They wouldn’t go on a normal flight if they were invalided out through the hospital—would they?”

  As I talked I was learning—picturing a move, Henry’s move. It had never crossed my mind before. Henry the Russian defector, phoning a contact at the Kasr el Aini Hospital, Henry on his way over, without anyone knowing, not even Bridget.

  “What are you getting at?” Pearson asked, curious at the direction I was taking.

  “Background. Russian influence in Egypt. People want to know.”

  “Yes, the Russians come in and out of here as they want. At Cairo West, at Jiyankis and Al Mansura in the north among other places. What are you doing—a piece on how to get from London to Moscow—via Cairo?”

  I let that go. Pearson could think what he liked about my being in Cairo. He sipped the chalky mixture, the oiled Dixie Dean scalp and thin nose pecking in and out of the tumbler like a toy barometric duck. He looked up, smiled and spluttered, making an attempt at genuine good will.

  “But you’ve not had one yourself.”

  He called for Mohammed. The air conditioning plant drummed under our feet, stirring the whole floor beneath us in odd recurrent waves. It was like being on a ship in the Semiramis bar when the air conditioning worked.

  Pearson said, “Look, I don’t want you to get me wrong—about all this. Let me explain: for whatever reason—let’s leave that out—I have the impression you’re looking for Henry Edwards. And why not? He’s a friend of yours—he’s a friend of mine too. And he’s missing. He came through Cairo airport last Tuesday with Yunis and he hasn’t been seen since. And Yunis, we know, is under house arrest—at the very least. That all adds up. We should be worrying about him. But now listen to this”—Pearson looked at me with pretended innocence and concern—“Someone arrived from London late yesterday, our contact at the airport picked him up for us, British passport, a business man, name of Donald MacMillan. He’s staying at the Hilton. We check them all. Businessman—what business? I said to myself. So I made a few enquiries with the hotel. Scotch whisky he was in. They didn’t know anything else. Well, I thought that was interesting enough, something I’d missed, and there might be something to file, for the Scottish papers at least, and I called down at the Hilton this morning, gave my name and asked to see him. But he wouldn’t play, wouldn’t even see me. Well, I was curious because although there’s a big market here for Scotch it’s all controlled by a single government import firm. I checked with them and they knew nothing about any Scots chap coming out

  “So I waited around the Hilton and eventually, about nine, he came down to the grill restaurant for breakfast. I had eggs and coffee at a table nearby—that’s why I’m on the chalk. Well, of course, I knew at once who it was. It was that lawyer David Marcus, the one who used to be at the Scottish office and moved to the Highland Development Authority.”

  Pearson obviously felt he’d come to a dramatic pause in his tale. But I had to be sure.

  “So? He’s trying to do some new deal with the whisky people here. Sounds perfectly straightforward. Why tell me?”

  “Because Marcus left the Development Authority six months ago. Came to Whitehall. One of the P.M.’s special advisers on security. After Blake. Interrogator chap. That’s why I thought you’d like to know.”

  “If you break that sort of thing you’ll be in trouble straightaway. So I can’t see why you’re telling me about it. You’re just marking yourself and your agency before you’ve done anything. And what can you do? What’s the story?—no evidence. What have you got when you look at it? Some assorted people from British Intelligence in Cairo? All right, but that’s not going to make any headlines. You’ll just get a D notice slapped on you if the stuff gets back home. After all none of these people are smashing up lavatories or having drunken boating parties on the Nile. There’s absolutely nothing in the open on it.”

  “Not now, no. It’s what might happen that interests me. I’m prepared to play this perfectly straight. There’s something on and I can make a very good guess as to what it is. Something is going to break—at the Number One court at the Old Bailey, in an apartment in Moscow, or more likely just down some dirty back street in Cairo.”

  “And you’d like this lawyer to keep you in touch with developments, no doubt?”

  Pearson smiled, giving me the straight look. “It’s a good story, you know.”

  “I thought journalists had given up suggesting that sort of deal long ago.”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Marlow. Perhaps you freelance people are a little out of touch. There’s a lot of money in a story like this.”

  “Well then, you go and ask this man Marcus about it all yourself. Put your foot in the door. You professional pen men are supposed to be good at that sort of thing.”

  I lowered half the shandy he’d bought me and got up.

  “I will. I will ask him. Usher—you know Robin Usher, don’t you?—he’s having some people along this evening for drinks. He’s asked Marcus. No ambassador here now, so Usher acts as a kind of unofficial host when business people come out from London. Perhaps you’ll be there yourself?”

  “I’ve not been asked.”

  “You’re sure to get a message then.”

  “You told him I was in Cairo?”

  “Of course. The British are a pretty small community now. We don’t get many visitors from home. Everybody knows everyone else. There aren’t many secrets between us all out here, you’ll find.”

  *

  Pearson was a limpet, a little drummer who’d never let up. And why not? He had the makings of a story all right. As far as he was concerned British Intelligence was playing some sort of extraordinary leap-frog in Cairo. He must have known that Usher had some connection with the service, and Henry too with his frequent visits to the Middle East, and he’d guessed that I was in the same line of country. And now Marcus. He had more of a picture of what was going on than I had myself.

  But what sort of leap-frog? What was the large view? What had Marcus come for? Enough was happening in the area politically at the moment to justify a visit by one of our senior staff. But Marcus didn’t fit that bill—knowing little of Arab affairs, he’d come to our section with a security brief, primarily as an interrogator, a ferret to smell out the vermin, the double dealers and defectors. He was practised in that and it must have been his role now. Presumably he was after Henry—they’d had some definite news of him since I’d left. Or had he come after both of us now?—with the idea that I was on my way over to the other side as well? Marcus was the sort of person who, if he couldn’t find a plot, would invent one. And so, I thought, was Williams. In the business of espionage they were always seeing double.

  I called at reception for my key. There was another message for me—a phone call from Usher giving me his address up behind Abdin Palace beneath the Citadel and an invitation for that evening. My passport was there as well, back from its police check. I’d forgotten about it. The clerk handed it over with a little less than his usual obsequious bonhomie. He glanced over my shoulder and I knew at once what was up. Someone from the ‘authorities’ was standing behind me, waiting for me.

  In fact there were two of them, over by the huge copper globe labelled COMPLAINTS at the end of the reception desk, dressed in the usual shimmering Dacron suits and Italian winkle-pickers which Egyptian plainclothesmen had made their uniform. With their tooth-brush moustaches, well kept weasel faces and dark glasses they looked like night club owners nervously and unaccountably involved in some dangerous daytime venture. For Egyptians there was something unusually aggressive about them too, a threatening, hair-trigger efficiency.

  The taller one
approached while the other stood back blocking the corridor which led to the rear entrance of the hotel. I might just have made it down the regal brass-railed shallow steps which faced the corniche but I honestly didn’t feel like running.

  “Mr. Marcus?” it sounded like, but I must have misheard in the confusion.

  “Yes?”

  “You would come with us please. Thank you very much.”

  “Why—what’s up?”

  “Something is irregular in your passport. If you would not mind. For a few moments.”

  ‘What’s wrong with my passport? I had the visa through your London Embassy. The press section there …”

  I opened the passport—and closed it again quickly. The photograph on the first page was familiar enough, a fellow with a receding hairline, balding slightly, not unlike my own. But the chin definitely wasn’t me, jutting out aggressively like an icebreaker, or the narrow formless lips and bitten-in mouth: the general air of disquiet and deviousness belonged unmistakably to David Marcus.

  The tougher, taller man took the passport from me and his friend closed in on one side. I was certainly coming quietly. I’d got the wrong passport and they’d got the wrong man—a typical Egyptian police muddle—and I’d probably only got an hour or two before they found out their mistake: just time, if I was lucky, to find out what they were on to Marcus for.

  “Very well. May we go?”

  Pearson had come out of the bar to our left and I think he had it in mind to try and stop us as we moved across the lobby and out of the main entrance. But he thought better of it, his mouth twitching in agitation and surprise. Instead he followed us down the steps.

  “Where are you taking him?” he shouted in Arabic, flourishing his press card, as the two men opened the door of a small Mercedes at the kerb. ‘He’s a journalist. What have they got you for?’ He made an anguished appeal to me, a hair or two out of place in his immaculate black shine so that he looked almost unkempt. I shrugged and got into the back seat. I didn’t feel like helping him. His interest was so transparent. He wasn’t worried about me, whether I was thumbscrewed, beaten about the soles or had my balls plugged into the Direct Current; Pearson was worrying about his story: the plot was thickening about him while he watched, and he was losing his way. I couldn’t blame him. He was by temperament a journalist of the old blood-and-smut school—a fiver in a saloon bar in Earl’s Court, the dead call girl in the basement opposite—and these present developments were clearly putting a strain on his self-control.

  *

  We went across El Trahir, up to Ramses Square, past the station and then along beside the metro towards Heliopolis before pulling off through the main sand-bagged entrance to the military barracks there, the armour depot and G.H.Q. for the Cairo area forces. This was where Egyptian Military Intelligence operated from, I knew, and the man I met in the weather-blown Nissen hut, still doing duty from British days, was no passport control officer: a Major with an overkeen face and unusually slim-fitting uniform for a senior Egyptian Army man. When you got anywhere in his job it was back to the tailor’s every year to let the seams out. They gave him Marcus’s passport and he put it down on the desk in front of him, fiddling with it, but he didn’t open it. And I didn’t expect to learn much from him either, for the moment he did look at it—and me—carefully, it would all be over. But I was lucky. He started straight away, confident, going in at the deep end.

  ‘Why have you been bringing messages in your passport, Mr. Marcus?’

  ‘Messages?’ I put in quickly, covering the name.

  ‘Microfilm.’ He held up an envelope, opened it, and took out a card with a speck of dark negative attached to it I laughed. How far could I get with him? I wondered.

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘That is no matter.’ The Major looked puzzled.

  ‘I’ve not been bringing in any microfilm. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘It was under your—’ he took up the passport, opening it at the end, and read out from the back page ‘—your Foreign Exchange Allowance. Why do you deny it? This sheet here—I see you brought in £200 with you as well.’ He spelled the figures out slowly. He seemed to have all the time in the world, an extraordinary confidence in the circumstances.

  ‘You were thinking of staying here for some time? What have they sent you out here to do, Mr. Marcus? Who was this message for?’

  ‘I told you. I didn’t bring any message. And my name is not Marcus, by the way, it’s Marlow. I don’t know anyone called Marcus.’

  I’d like to have let him talk on. He was the cocky type and I’d probably have picked up a lot more. But I couldn’t afford to; if I learnt any more they couldn’t afford to let me go.

  ‘Are you sure you’ve got the right person? I didn’t have time to see that passport properly before your men took me away.’

  The Major opened the passport again, this time at the front. He looked at the photograph, then at me. I showed him my air ticket by way of additional confirmation.

  He was furious and apologetic by turns. He tried to order me some coffee and spent some time explaining how ‘these things happen’. But neither his English nor his temper was quite up to it and he was effusively relieved to drop the whole matter and see me back out into the Mercedes. The two men who had brought me were nowhere to be seen. They had disappeared—probably for a long time.

  *

  My own passport had been returned when I got back to the Semiramis. There was nothing I could do about Marcus, they’d have corrected their mistake over him during my drive back. I wondered how he’d make out with the Major. Probably not at all; effusive Security men are as dangerous as wounded animals.

  Someone had framed Marcus. I took my wringing wet linen suit off, rang for some ice and soda to go with my bottle of whisky, and went into the shower. Someone had put him into it up to his neck. Or had he just been careless?—had he a message for someone in Cairo and they’d found it? It seemed unlikely. The Egyptians would hardly have checked every passport on the off chance. They must have been warned that he was coming, been tipped off by someone in London. The Spycatcher caught: who could have wanted that? Someone he was on to. That made sense. But that ‘someone’ would have to have had the opportunity to plant the microfilm. Passports needing visas went through the Staff Organizer’s department, a Miss Charlbury ran it on the floor beneath Williams’s office, and from there out to Cook’s, as if from a private person. There was room for planting something in that chain. Or had it been someone in the Egyptian Consulate, when they stamped their visa?—some devious plot-counter-plot? A possibility. But I preferred the idea of someone within our section tampering with it—someone who had sent Marcus out to get Henry, or me, or Colonel Hamdy, but who had really wanted to be rid of Marcus. Marcus wasn’t a courier, that was certain. The microfilm, that dangerous form of communication, was, with equal certainty, a plant.

  I looked at the back of my own passport out of interest when I got out of the shower, pulling the gummed flap of the Exchange Allowance form away from the back page. It would have been quite simple, a matter of moments, to slip a piece of film under the gummed part and then stick it down again. Anything up to half a fingernail of negative would sit there very nicely and no one would ever spot it unless they’d been looking for it, unless they’d been told. I pushed the flap down again and started to close the passport.

  A little fingernail of negative slipped across the page and into my lap.

  Someone hammered on the door and I thought briskly of swallowing the thing until I remembered the ice and soda. The floor waiter came in.

  *

  Afterwards I stopped the automatic swivel on the fan, put it on top of the air-conditioning box pointing straight at the bed and lay down, stretched out in my pants and a snowstorm of talcum. It was getting far too hot. I drank a glass of soda and ice straight off before adding a finger of Scotch. “You should always start by drinking warm drinks when you first get to Egypt, tea an
d things.” I remembered Crowther’s advice in the Embassy the first time we met. The little foxy bastard, I thought. And all of them.

  It had been me or Marcus but they’d gone for him, as the more necessary man to be rid of. Marcus had been the more pressing concern for someone, but they would have dumped me just as well and that must have been their first intention. Why hadn’t they? There could only be one reason. The two micro messages, whatever they were, must have been identical and wouldn’t have been believed if they’d turned up on two different Mid-East section men. Whoever it was that had planted them hadn’t had the time to take mine out and could never have thought I’d find it

  And that was why I’d been sent to Cairo, not to chase Henry—that had been the excuse—but to be caught with the goods, to be sent down the hatch for some reason. But then Marcus had come into the firing line, had become the target—and then the carrier; the message had been duplicated in his passport and he’d been packed off. And the only man who’d been in a position to do all this posting, this cunning shuffling of the pack, was Williams. Of course. Thames Valley Williams with his violet shirts and polka-dot bow ties, bending down to his drinks cabinet, proffering me his thin pin-striped ass and a warm gin and tonic. “Drop into Groppi’s, I should. That’s where the gossip is …”

  Drop into Siwa Oasis for ten years on beans and water more likely—the prison where Marcus was probably headed after a suitable show trial.

  I looked at the colourless negative with the dark full stop in the centre. The print would probably be in white. I wasn’t very clear about microfilm but I thought I needed a projector.

  As I turned to get up, my heel bit into something hard and sharp on the end of the bed. A long sliver of glass from the top of a soda bottle was sticking out from the back of my foot like a spear. The bloody floor waiter. I wondered if I’d swallowed any.

  I pulled the glass out, a neat nasty hole, blood dripping in a trail all the way to the bathroom. I doused it under the bath tap. Every time the water cleared the blood away I could see a piece of glass still caught deep in the flesh. I needed a doctor too. Pearson’s Russian friend, Dr. Novak at the Kasr el Aini, might do very well. Two birds with one stone. Three perhaps—he might even have a projector I could borrow.