The Private Sector (A Peter Marlow spy thriller)

by Joseph Hone

  “What will you do, Herbert, when—things come to an end here? Go back to Greystones?”

  I was wondering how Cherry might do in Information and Library: a quiet job on £2,380 plus the London weighting. Ten to five, leaving just enough time for an easy stroll down to the wine bar in the Strand before it opened. They were going to need one or two replacements in Holborn.

  “Why? Why should things be coming to an end?”

  “They are, I’m pretty sure. Though there’s no point in giving you details. But if I told you to get out—now, this moment, go and buy tickets tomorrow—would you do it? Would you believe me?”

  “She can’t move.”

  “Yes. I see that.” Of course, it was hopeless.

  “That’s all there is then, isn’t it? No point in telling me anything. Talk to Usher. Perhaps he’ll have some ideas. He’s been getting out of things successfully all his life.”

  I’d never seen Usher’s genuine Mameluke house beneath the Citadel. I’d not fancied his collection of desert bric-à-brac, or the boys of the same sort that I’d been told went with it. And I’d thought of Usher himself as a punishing old rogue the few times I’d met him: an agreeable monster by the Embassy pool dabbling in champagne and running a circle with almost criminal insouciance. Now I could almost look on him with affection.

  By comparison with Williams, Henry, Colonel Hamdy and perhaps Bridget, Usher had the outlines of a straightforward man—of someone whose intense sexual preoccupations over the years, his indulgence and irresponsibility suggested a kind of loyalty: he was true to his proclivities, and indeed, from what one knew, to his country. He was a patriot—but a scoundrel in the last resort. That was his honesty. And at that moment I was prepared to admire something certain and unchanging in a man, even if they were characteristics based on the slimmest sort of belief, sustained by the grossest appetites.

  9

  The house lay in a narrow, steeply sloping alleyway right under the wall of the Citadel—between the fortress and the towering wall of the El Rifai mosque which was perched further down the hill on a large plaza where half a dozen other streets merged into it. Few people lived up here, in this high corner of the mediaeval city. The streets were deserted and lit only by one huge art nouveau lamp-standard with a clover of frosted globes on top. Herbert knew the way, otherwise one would never have found the place in the confusing shadows and different levels of the terrain: an arched doorway in almost total blackness except for the flicker of firelight coming from somewhere behind it.

  Inside was a rough ante-chamber like a cow byre, with soil underfoot and smoky beams high overhead. A woman was squatting over a fire of tinder and desert brush, Gagool-like, in rags, warming herself in the acrid smelling mist. She seemed to have sunk to her knees a long time ago and never bothered to get up; deformed by her own ill will rather than by any natural or unnatural process. She held out her hand. I had stepped past, thinking we had not yet come to the proper entrance to the house, but Herbert gave her some coins.

  “She looks after the place. Storyteller, sorcerer, witch, fortune teller, jester—the whole pack rolled into one; you mustn’t pass without some financial attention. Otherwise the place falls down. Or you do. She has friends in all the shadows.”

  I gave her a coin myself.

  We stumbled up some steps and along a passageway towards a jaundiced light. At the end was a stained-glass door, in brown and yellow, like the window in a Victorian lavatory. From beyond came a smell of sizzling onions and mince, and from somewhere else, it seemed in the far distance, the subdued roar of party chatter.

  “We’re on the high level here, next to the kitchens and the old harem. Usher had it converted. Normally one would have come into the building from the other side, where it faces the mosque. But he’s turned the proper hall on that side into a garage. You’ll see, we’ll look down on the multitude, like the girls did.”

  Cherry opened the glass door and we stepped on to one side of a gallery which ran right round the building, with shadowed haphazard passages leading off it, and a marvel-lousy delicate wooden filigree harem screen built up from the outside ledge. Twenty feet below us was the reception room, the formal Mameluke Salamlek, the size of half a tennis court, paved in blue mosaic, a fountain in the middle, and set about with a quantity of divans, silk bolsters, cushions and half a dozen small pearl-inlaid coffee tables, each with its elaborate silver hookah beside it Everything was as it might have been in Saladin’s Cairo seven hundred years before—except for the people, who, from their uncomfortable dress and apologetic demeanor, were clearly the remains of another and different dynasty, the descended remnants of those northern Caliphs, the last of their kind, who had once usurped and ruled the city.

  Usher I could see at one end, dressed in fine cottons and a scarlet cummerbund, draped over the only proper seat in the room, a high-backed mock-Jacobean affair in velvet with tasselled heads, one of his billowy sleeves extending far out over the arm, balancing a crystal goblet between the clutch of fingers. Scattered about him—and having to stand so that they inevitably seemed to be paying court to him—were his friends. In deference, no doubt, to the semi-official nature of the occasion few of these appeared blatantly to suffer, or enjoy, any sexual inversion. Apart from several young suffragis in richly embroidered galibeahs and dazzling emerald cummerbunds serving drinks, there couldn’t have been more than half a dozen Egyptians present—among them Leila and Morsy Tewfik. The other guests were clearly English: just as their faces exhibited a distinct lack of thought, so one could identify their provenance without thinking: several military men, thin and old, with tobacco-stained faces, arrayed in wide pin-stripe suits, double-breasted in the pre-war fashion; several substantial ladies in polka-dot navy blue dresses and cumbersome, sensible shoes; and several thin ladies, dressed like black pencils, in Empire-line silk and gilded slippers; a clergyman in a smart grey lightweight worsted, and a red-haired priest in a soutane who moved one hand about constantly beneath its drapes, as though tightening, or loosening, something of vital importance beneath; some serious, awkward, hunted-looking men and their wives, obviously the skeleton staff from the Consulate; two long-locked youths and a scrubbed girl in a pony tail, a trio probably doing a little volutary work overseas, made up the more noticeable guests. Mr. Pearson was there too, but David Marcus had obviously been delayed.

  We came down the narrow winding stairway on the far side of the harem and I made my way over towards Usher. But Pearson was right in with his feet before I got half-way across the crowded mosaic, gibbering in a state of some energy and excitement.

  “Well, my God, man, what happened?” He was obviously holding the front page.

  “Nothing. A police muddle. The usual thing. I was given someone else’s passport. They hadn’t got a proper visa.”

  “And Marcus?—our friend Marcus?” Pearson fidgeted nearer, taking a pushy stance. “Where’s he got to?”

  “Your friend, Mr. Pearson. And where should he have got to? Here, I thought you said. Isn’t he?” I looked around.

  “He was picked up at the Hilton about an hour after you were.”

  “Probably had business with his whisky people then.”

  “Like hell. These were jokers from the same pack as you had.”

  “How unfortunate. I expect he’ll be along any minute. Probably had something wrong with his passport too. They’re very careful about that sort of thing out here now, aren’t they?” I moved on.

  “Mr. Marlow! How long it’s been. What a very long time.” Usher actually stood up. His voice was full of mild generosity. “I was so hoping you could come. Feel responsible for you in a way,” he went on in a lower voice, leading me by the arm up some steps behind his throne and into a minute whitewashed cell-like ante-room.

  “Have a drink. Some champagne, I remember it was, last time. How have you been? No hard feelings, I hope; that business over your wife. I hear it ended badly. She was due along here tonight but I couldn’t get any a
nswer from her number. Probably just as well. Let old acquaintance be forgot, in the circumstances, I imagine.”

  There was a huge double bed, with a Moroccan weave counterpane, filling half the space; a camel-saddle stool and a lot of champagne on ice in several buckets: an austere room, but not entirely unrelieved.

  “Quieter here. And we should talk. Henry Edwards?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mr. David Marcus, late of the Scottish Office?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mr. Pearson, the news hound?”

  I nodded. “You know all about it then.”

  “I thought so. An awkward business, especially with Monty here. Truth to tell there’d have been a hell of a row by now, but for that. They’re playing it down. Don’t want to spoil their military reunion. Monty’s showing them how to drive a tank. Otherwise we’d all be in Heliopolis barracks by now.”

  “I expect so.”

  Usher smacked his lips and, bending down, he nursed a bottle out of the ice and cracked it with a resounding pop. He relished the proprieties, holding the foaming mouth high in the air for a second before quickly dousing it in two gold-stemmed Arab goblets. The crystal winked in the soft light and the bubbles sparkled and I thought, “He has the conviction of his clichés; you live for ever like that. You become myth.”

  How old was he, in fact?—ten years on from whatever he’d been when I last saw him—had he been sixty-odd then? At least. But he didn’t look seventy now. He had lost weight since, the eyes were more a pearly watery blue than ever, islands of mischief and abandon in the parchment map of his face. The skin here was tired and blotchy if one looked closely, but the lips were as full and purple as ever, the hair as white and blossomy. He had obviously put up so little resistance to the attack of age, cared so little how time might damage him, that he had escaped into the last lap of life practically untouched. Contrary to expectation, and all the other grim cold Saxon warnings long ago, fidelity to pleasure had preserved him, even made him younger—that fidelity which, in betraying it, other people grow genuinely old. Usher was a living affront to all his dead nurses and mentors.

  He held up his glass, spun the stem a fraction in his fingers, his eyes clear blue orbs surveying the sparkle. There was nothing of the antiquary in the gesture, or the wine snob; it was an expression of genuine, deeply-felt greed.

  “Pearson particularly,” I said. “He’s been on at me about Edwards and Marcus ever since I got here. I suppose he can’t be prevented from filing something now that they’ve taken Marcus. He’s probably been on the blower already.”

  “No, he hasn’t. I said I had something for him on all that—later this evening. And I have. It would be quite the wrong moment for anything to appear on Marcus in the U.K. While Monty’s here. And more importantly, while we’re here. The Egyptians will keep the whole thing under a lid—as long as we do. If we break anything, they’ll be bound to as well. And rope us all in. Our friend Williams has made a cock-up: first Edwards comes out here running, then you, then Marcus. And you’re the only one left. Williams has effectively smashed the entire circle. Any idea what’s behind it?”

  “No. I was sent out simply to look for Edwards.”

  “A likely tale. And Marcus to check out a Soviet defector, a Russian doctor at the Kasr el Aini. And the result: at least two of our men in jug—and probably your wife as well. And the rest of us hanging on by the skin of. The whole circle smashed—don’t know why they haven’t picked you up before now; don’t follow it at all. But the message I get from the Egyptian side is clear enough: as long as we make arrangements to break up and clear ourselves out of here in the next few days, or at least before Monty leaves, we won’t get the hammer. The others will, no doubt: a trial and what have you—and a spell in Siwa. But there’s nothing to be done. Mr. Williams has a lot to answer for. I had three of my Saudis off today to Bahrein; nice boys. I’ve got an English teacher from some mission school downstairs running round in circles, a ticket man and an airport officer wondering about their pensions, plus Cherry and myself—all to be sent packing in the next forty-eight hours. What sort of arrangements have you made?”

  “I have a return ticket.” It was like saying I had wings.

  “Well, keep out of the way after this and get straight to the airport tomorrow. You seem to be in the clear, probably the only one of us. And remember, if we don’t get back—remember what I’ve said: find out what the hell Williams has been up to; take it to the highest level if necessary.”

  “What happens if they decide to hold you people?”

  “I should have a warning, if they’re coming for us. I still have contacts.”

  “But if you do have to go under—how would you get out of the country? What arrangements are there?”

  “You mean you weren’t told?” Usher looked at me in some astonishment. “Williams must really have it in for you. There isn’t a ‘way out’—for us, not since Suez. No escape plans, couriers, code messages or false moustaches. If you go under here—you stay under as far as Holborn is concerned. Now, you go out and circulate a bit and I’ll deal with Mr. Pearson. We shall be all right for an orderly retreat unless he breaks some coat-trailing story about ‘missing diplomats’ in Cairo.”

  Usher was approaching this climacteric in his life with too great a show of efficiency and unconcern, I thought. I wondered if he really intended moving out from fifty years in Egypt with just a toothbrush, taking a taxi to the airport. But perhaps the flabby lips deceived the eye; he had been with Lawrence in the Hejaz after all, survived the self-destructive ambitions so favoured by that tortured martinet; there must have been a fiery streak in him somewhere, which this lifetime’s interlude of pleasure had damped but not extinguished. I thought how quickly he would age in St. John’s Wood.

  I found myself talking to the smart-suited clergyman when I came out again into the Salamlek. He was among a group of people, which included the red-headed American priest, being lectured to by Herbert in his best hectoring, low-church manner: he had chosen the Problems and Principles of Ecumenicism as his theme. His argument seemed to be that his church, the Church of Ireland, that is—and I remembered the arrogant granite parish building in Greystones—should be the ideal to aim for in the present attempts at a united Christian congregation, that its lack of mystery, its plain speaking, its dowdiness even, represented the proper Christian ambition in these confused times. Cherry had his tongue in his cheek, but they weren’t the sort of people to notice that. Just the opposite: the two divines were part of an ecumenical study group visiting Egypt and the Middle East, set up by some excessively wealthy American foundation to consider just such fool-headed opinions as Herbert’s. Thus they paid him careful and completely unmerited attention.

  “I wasn’t aware there were so many differences between the Anglican and Irish communions,” Mr. Rostock said to me, smiling. He was the incumbent of a new town near Aylesbury.

  “I think you’d be surprised. We manage to make our version of the faith very dull in Ireland—practically invisible. You’re not hoping to rope the prophet Mohammed into your united congregation, are you?”

  “No, indeed. Not in any strict sense of a shared communion. Though we naturally hope for greater bonds between all faiths—as a result of our deliberations. Our visit here is part of a general look at the Anglican communion in the Middle East. The diocese here, of course, is administered by the Archbishop in Jerusalem.”

  “Of course, though you’ve not actually come from there, have you?”

  “Well, no, as a matter of fact. There are one or two temporary difficulties in the way of direct travel about the diocese at the moment. We came via Cyprus actually. I’m staying with the Provost’s deputy at All Saints’ here. Mr. Hawthorn. Do you happen to know him?”

  “Not the present occupant, I think. I knew his predecessor. He gave the prizes away one year at a school I was at in Cairo. He had a loud voice—most of them do, I suppose?”

  “You ought to look him
up then, the Cathedral on the corniche. He’d be pleased to see you. They’re doing a lot of interesting work; here in the UAR, in Libya and the Sudan. In fact Hawthorn’s making a trip this week to Alexandria and then on to the sub-diocese in Benghazi and the one in Tobruk. They’re extending the parsonage there. A tour of the parish, you might say. It could make quite a nice story for your paper.”

  “How does Mr. Hawthorn travel on these pastoral missions?’

  “Oh, my goodness me, I know all about that. I’ve been hearing about it non-stop for days: the immense efforts over the past five years with the parishioners here. Raffles, bingo, jumble sales, amateur dramatics—even the lenten collections: they’ve got themselves a long wheel-based Land Rover. Can you imagine? Punitive import taxes, but they managed it in the end. A real go-getter, that’s all I can say, Mr. Hawthorn. A very smart affair. He’s anxious for a long spin in it.”

  “Well, I must look him up, if I have the time. He certainly sounds a forward looking man.”

  “‘Six forward and two reverse’—as he says of his progress in the parish here. Talking about the gears of course.”

  The Rev. Mr. Rostock chuckled, but not convincingly, vaguely aware of the banality of the joke. He was young really, hardly out of his thirties. Only a comprehensive and premature baldness gave him an irredeemably older, careworn look, as if his hair alone had succumbed to the unhopeful routines of a home counties presbytery—visiting the antiseptic, Scandinavian bungalows on the new estates and counting ten times the plate money at Christmas and Easter—while the rest of his body yearned for gospel safaris in the Libyan desert.

  The idea struck me then and there, of course. There was a British air base at Tobruk, a direct RAF Transport Command flight back to Brize Norton. But Usher had said to keep my ticket and go to the airport. That would be tomorrow.