The Garibaldi was hidden behind a mass of cypresses. Schramm’s papers took them past the sentries at a checkpoint, and he drove up a white gravel drive that crunched like icing on a wedding cake. He stopped by an entrance of fake Moorish arches. The blackout was total. A soldier came from nowhere, opened the car doors, helped the lady out.
“What am I going to say?” Schramm muttered.
“Schaefer doesn’t scare me,” she said, quite loudly. “I’ve seen his X-rays. I wouldn’t take those kidneys as a gift.”
Inside, the lighting was soft and sympathetic, very old light that knew its manners and didn’t stare at the guests. A tall, thin man dressed like an ambassador to the Court of St. James came forward and received them. Maria said something that made him smile, and for a few moments they swapped silver trills of Italian like two songbirds after a fine breakfast. Then he escorted them into a dining room that was far too good for General Schaefer and his unhappy kidneys.
Wine appeared. Antipasto appeared. Olives, smoked ham carved so thin it dissolved in the mouth, cherry tomatoes, breadsticks, little pats of butter stamped to resemble Deutschmarks as a gesture from the hotel to its guests, of whom there were many. Schramm and Dr. Grandinetti had been given the last table.
“Explain,” he demanded.
“Not in that tone of voice.” She took a spoon and cracked him on the knuckles.
“You sadistic bitch.” He saw that she approved of this response. Now he was thoroughly confused. “Do that again and I’ll strangle you with that horrible red scarf,” he told her gloomily. He sucked his knuckles.
“Signs of improvement,” she said, and lifted the spoon. He grabbed her throat with the undamaged hand, but at the first touch his fingers lost their strength. She made no move, simply sat and looked him full in the face, while his fingers slid down her smooth, strong neck and came to rest above her collarbone. His fingertips discovered a steady throb. “Pulse normal,” he said. “What’s wrong with you?” She tilted her head back to stretch the skin beneath his touch. “You’re enjoying it, damn your eyes,” he said.
“I enjoy everything. I enjoy life. That’s what it’s for.”
“Pain? Blood? Death? Those too?”
“Yes, those too. They are all part of life.”
“Gibberish.” He took his hand away. “Death is shit. Nobody can enjoy death.” But he had to look away from her.
A waiter came, topped up their glasses, and went.
“Absent friends,” he said, and drank. “Where is the host?”
“General Schaefer is in Rome with his staff for a conference. After Rome, Tripoli. He will not need the Garibaldi for a week.”
Baby veal cutlets in cream sauce arrived.
“So who’s in charge? That smooth individual in the cutaway coat?”
“His name is Pietro. It’s Pietro’s hotel. When Schaefer commandeered it, he kept Pietro as manager. When Schaefer departs, Pietro returns to business. Pointless to waste a good hotel, after all.”
“I don’t suppose Pietro has any trouble getting anything he wants, not with Schaefer’s weight behind him.”
She shrugged one shoulder. “He’s a manager. He manages.”
“How did you get us in here? Blackmail?”
“Gratitude. Pietro had a hernia and I operated. Have you ever had a hernia? No? I’m not surprised, your lower torso is in very good condition, I especially enjoyed examining the abdominal muscles, flat as a washboard, a delight to the touch.”
“I’ve been saving them for the right woman.”
“Yes? Don’t waste any more time. There are silver threads in your pubic hair.”
Schramm had been about to eat his spaghetti. He put the fork down.
“I apologize,” she said. “That was not an appropriate thing to say.”
After that they spoke little. The meal was excellent. Pietro drifted by to ask if all was well, and Maria complimented him on the fish.
“Ah, the sole. You should thank the English air force for the sole.”
“Really? Why is that?”
“Each time they raid the port, a few bombs land in the sea. Next morning your dinner is on the surface, waiting to be collected.”
Schramm said, “You take war in your stride, Signor Pietro.”
“War takes me in its stride, major. Six months ago an Australian colonel was sitting in your seat.”
Schramm was amused. “And a year ago?”
“One of Rommel’s staff, probably.”
“And six months before that?”
“An Englishman, or perhaps a New Zealander. I should have to look it up. Two years ago? An Italian officer of some kind, or the archbishop of Benghazi, or the chief of the carabinieri: that sort of person. You are about to ask which nationality I prefer. I am about to ask which liqueur you would like with your coffee.”
As they drove back to her flat, Schramm said: “Do you think General Schaefer is taking a cut of the profits?”
“Of course.”
He turned a corner, and said: “I can’t imagine General Auchinleck or General Montgomery going into the restaurant business while they were fighting a war.”
“You’re such a Puritan.” She thumped him on the knee and the car accelerated briefly. “What harm does it do?”
“It’s crooked.”
“So are you! Learn to enjoy your crooked life, Paul.”
He parked the car and they went inside. She gave him a Greek brandy. “I am not going to make love with you,” he said firmly.
“I should hope not,” she said. “You might have some fun, and then you’d never forgive yourself.”
His desert sores, healing fast now, began to itch. He longed to fling his clothes off and rub soothing ointment on them. “You’re such a hypocrite,” he said. “You pretend to be a doctor, full of care and compassion, but it’s all just a joke, isn’t it? That’s why you made fun of that poor wreck of a kid this afternoon, Kurt . . . Kurt whatever-his-name was.”
“You started it,” she said. She was perfectly calm.
“No I didn’t.” But that was a lie.
“You said—”
“Never mind what I said.” He slammed his glass down and spilled some brandy.
“You see? You can’t even enjoy being in the wrong.”
“Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy! What d’you think this war is, a carnival?” She nodded and smiled. He glowered. “Then you shouldn’t be here.” He got up from one chair and dropped heavily into another. “You have no right to get involved in a war unless you’re prepared to take it seriously.” He recognized that voice: it was his father’s. For a couple of seconds he clenched his teeth. “Why didn’t you stay in Italy and take out tonsils?” He made the word tonsils fly like a knife. He really enjoyed it.
“I didn’t stay in Italy because . . .” She paused, and wrinkled her nose, and said. “No. I’m bored with telling that story. Ask Max.”
“Max the MO at Barce?”
“Ask Max. He knows.”
They sat and looked at each other. A portable gramophone was on a cane table next to her chair. Without looking, she stretched an arm and turned the record with her fingers, making the needle produce music at a lazy half-speed. She stopped and turned the record in reverse, so that the music sounded Chinese. Still they looked at each other.
“What makes you so angry?” she asked. “Is it that I made you pay for my dinner?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake . . .” He waved the suggestion away. “Anyway, I’m not angry.”
“You’re furious.”
“Rubbish.”
“Yes you are. You are full of rage.”
“I am not angry!” he shouted. “And for the love of God leave that stupid record alone!”
She took her fingers off the record. “If you were to be angry,” she said, “what would you be angry about?”
“Intelligence,” he said before he could think what he was saying. “It’s a lie. I’m supposed to be an intelligence officer. Right? Intellig
ence. Fighting the war with brains. God in heaven, if men had any brains they wouldn’t go to war in the first place. War doesn’t use brains. War replaces brains. There’s no such thing as intelligent violence. Violence kills intelligence. That’s what’s truly disgusting about war.” His shoulders were hunched, his face was twisted, his fists kept squeezing something that wasn’t there. “The only thing that violence creates is more violence. Me, I’m superfluous, the generals keep men like me around so they can delude themselves that war is a science. Do you want to know what war is? War is getting behind some poor bastard and smashing his skull so hard his brains leak out. Those are the only brains I’ve ever used in this stinking war—that poor bastard’s brains, and I can’t think of a bigger waste of intelligence, his and mine, and it makes me so angry I want to vomit.”
She let the echoes die. “Well, I believe you’re angry now,” she said. “But I don’t think you were angry then, when you hit him. It was a great thrill, wasn’t it? Very, very gratifying. You were amazed to discover how much you enjoyed it.”
Schramm was leaning forward, elbows on knees, hands covering his mouth.
“How do you know?” he said. He was suddenly enormously weary.
“It’s easy. Your words said horror, but your voice said delight. The way you described it, you obviously enjoyed yourself. But you couldn’t admit that to yourself, because it wouldn’t be nice, and you still think you are a nice man.”
He rubbed his nose as if remodeling it. “What do you think?” he asked.
“I think you want to do some more killing.”
“That’s not possible,” he whispered. “I’m a forty-four-year-old intelligence officer with a limp, and you tell me that what I want to do is to kill?”
“Why not?” she said. “They shot you in the foot. You’ve had twenty years to think it over. Now you’re ready to get your own back.”
“It’s unbelievable.” His hands were over his eyes. “How can I live with a monomaniac killer?”
“I keep telling you,” she said. “Enjoy it. I do.”
* * *
From Cairo to Kufra Oasis was the best (or worst) part of a thousand kilometers. The SAS liked the route because, once they went past the Pyramids and turned southwest, they were out of sight. For three, perhaps four days they would be driving through desert that was virtually empty of people. On Day One they might see an occasional Arab in the quivering distance, and there might be a couple of them at the spring of Ain Dalla where the patrol stopped to top up their jerricans with its pure, delicious water. But Ain Dalla was on the eastern edge of the Great Sand Sea, five hundred miles of soaring corrugations. Its breakers topped three or four hundred feet; at their highest, five hundred. Far to the south, long fingers of the Great Sand Sea reached down to the Gilf Kebir. This was a plateau whose cliffs fell a vertical fifteen hundred feet and ran for ninety miles. Together, the Great Sand Sea and the Gilf Kebir formed a pair of obstacles that had kept Kufra secret from the rest of the world for centuries.
It was possible to avoid the dunes and the cliffs, but this meant making a huge dog’s-leg of a detour to the south; and the going below the Gilf Kebir was not good. The SAS usually took the more direct route to Kufra, across the Great Sand Sea. In 1940, the Long Range Desert Group had searched out a stretch that was passable and had marked the route with stones and empty petrol tins. It covered over a hundred miles and the driving could be desperately difficult. When the sun was overhead every trough became an oven and the roasting glare destroyed all sense of shape until, as one LRDG man put it, only the pit of your stomach told you whether you were going up or down. There was always the risk of sticking in soft patches of sand. At best that meant the slow, sweating toil of digging out the wheels, of easing steel sand-channels under them, of coaxing the sodding truck yard by yard to firm ground. At worst it meant unloading the bastard first.
The end of this crossing of the Great Sand Sea was marked by a triangulation point called Big Cairn. It stood five feet high and it deserved its name because there was absolutely no competition as far as the eye could see, not a rock, not a stone, not a bush, not a dead tuft of grass. After the Great Sand Sea the Sahara went to the other extreme and became a flat negation, a nothingness, a stale horizon. A wasteland of thin gravel spread westward for fifty miles until it got swamped by the next Sand Sea, which was the Calanscio. The SAS turned south by west at Big Cairn and crossed the invisible boundary between Egypt and Libya. From then on it was simply a matter of barreling across the overheated desolation, maybe mending an occasional puncture, and counting the hundred and fifty interchangeable miles to Kufra and its amazing, miraculous fund of sweet water that almost made the long journey worthwhile.
Lampard’s patrol made steady progress. He was in no hurry; he enjoyed this stage of the operation: it gave him the pleasure of knowing that a raid lay ahead without the burden of knowing when and where. His orders were to be opened after he had left Kufra.
The best time of all was at night. The chores had been done, the meal had been eaten, the men could sit around the fire and talk. If they didn’t want to talk, they could always look at the stars. The desert sky had stars the way Wordsworth had daffodils.
* * *
Major Jakowski awoke an hour before dawn, confident and at ease. He lay in his blankets and looked at the stars. They too were in the right place at the right time and following the correct sequence of events, as prescribed by Providence. This inevitability was something he found reassuring. He knew that he drove himself and his men hard, perhaps too hard. Well, this was the reward for effort. He had searched his mind for hidden risks, and found none.
He ate breakfast with Rinkart and Schneeberger, and gave them his tactical appreciation of the situation.
“My intention is to continue driving eastward until we intercept the British raiding patrol,” he said. “It is evidently traveling along a dune valley, going from south to north.”
“Might it not be going from north to south, sir?” Rinkart suggested. “Benghazi’s second signal wasn’t much help to us.”
“North to south makes no sense. There has been no recent enemy activity to the north of here. It is far more likely that this patrol is heading north, to start raiding.”
“Why are they going up through the Calanscio?” Schneeberger asked. “Why make life so difficult for themselves?”
“Perhaps because the open desert has become too dangerous for them. Maybe they heard about us. I don’t know, and I don’t care. All that matters is that they are going north while we are going east. Eventually we must cross their tracks. Then it will be a simple matter of pursuit and, in due course, battle. The dunes that now shield the British will soon trap them. There will be no escape. You look unconvinced, Rinkart.”
“Sir: suppose the enemy isn’t exactly where we think he is. Suppose we go charging over a dune and find him waiting for us on the other side.”
“I’ve considered that possibility. According to our information, this British patrol is at least thirty kilometers from here, so we can afford to advance with all possible speed for the first hour. After that, I shall send a single vehicle ahead to scout.”
The valley was still in deep shadow when the drivers began starting their engines. Jakowski enjoyed the din; it made a rough, soldierly answer to the brooding silence of the Sand Sea.
“If we can average fifteen kilometers an hour,” he said to Rinkart, “we ought to be on the enemy’s tail by midday.”
“If Benghazi is right,” Rinkart said, “and if Schneeberger is right, and if the stars are right, then possibly yes.”
“You should have been a tram driver.” Jakowski poked him in the chest. “You want to know exactly where you’ll finish before you start. War’s not like that.”
“Trams have their advantages, sir. They go backward as easily as they go forward.”
Jakowski turned away and stared up at the crest line. It was edged a crisp black by the new day beyond. “You’re concerned
about getting out of here,” he said.
“We might get into a fight and lose all our transport.”
“In that case we shall have failed, and we shall deserve all the consequences. However, I don’t intend to fail . . . Now what’s happened?”
It was Sergeant Nocken, running toward them and shouting something about a puncture. “I hear you,” Jakowski shouted back. “Now for the love of Christ run away and mend it!” Nocken was already on his way back.
While the wheel was off, three other trucks went sick: an electrical fault, a clogged carburettor and a cracked fuel line. “Just as well they happened before we set off, sir,” Sergeant Nocken remarked. Major Jakowski looked at him as if he were the village idiot.
Fifty yards away, Bruno felt the first dribble of sweat wander down his ribs. “There’s this waterfall near where I come from,” he said. “Big waterfall.”
“Yeah, you told me.” Oskar said. “Don’t tell me again.”
“You can sit under it. Sit and soak.”
“Don’t tell me.”
“Water never stops falling. Wouldn’t think it possible, would you?”
Rinkart went looking for Schneeberger and found him inside a truck, grimly penciling lines on a crumpled map. “Made any progress?” Rinkart asked.
“Lots.” Schneeberger showed him a tangle of lines. “Take your pick. Any one of those could be yesterday’s course, depending on which compass you prefer. Watch this.” He picked a compass out of a box containing a dozen and waited for the needle to settle. “Magnetic north,” he said. “Or is it?” He got out of the truck and walked ten yards. Rinkart walked with him. Now the needle had swung fifteen degrees to the east. “Maybe this is magnetic north.”
Rinkart took the compass from him, breathed on it and polished it with his shirt. “For all we know, both those readings are wrong,” he said. “Real north may be southwest on this piece of junk.”
“It’s neither here nor there,” Schneeberger said, “as we master navigators like to say.” He took the compass from Rinkart and hurled it as far as he could up the side of the nearest dune.
“Are all the rest like that one?”
A Good Clean Fight Page 29