by Charles Owen
‘Of course. Thank you.’ With some difficulty, his fingers closed around the coin and he dropped it into a tin. ‘I promise.’ This brought on a violent fit of coughing and he waved us away.
‘I never told you about Steffen,’ said Arthur, ‘but I have a feeling that he won’t be there next Christmas and I would like to think that someone else remembers him when he is gone.’
‘Tell me,’ I said.
‘Steffen and I shared an office at Wexlers,’ Arthur began. ‘They were old-established bankers that had been owned and run by the Wexler family for many generations. I was lucky to get taken on. Times were hard. The partners had gone without pay for twelve months and the rest of us suffered big cuts in salary. We had recently had an addition to the family and we were digging into our savings.
‘I heard that Wexlers were replacing someone in their investment department and I applied for the job. I was interviewed by the boss, Horst Wexler himself. He was a tall, slim, sallow-faced man who rarely smiled. He was a legend in the City, a man who could break a company’s reputation with a shake of his head.
‘I was very nervous but he did his best to put me at my ease. What impressed me was how much he already knew about me. He even knew the name we had christened the new baby. He asked me what qualities I regarded as the most important in an employee. I stammered something about honesty and a capacity for hard work.
‘He took those for granted, he told me. Loyalty was the quality he prized the most. Remember that, he said. If you join Wexlers, he said, you will be part of a big family.
‘Well, to cut a long story short, I landed the job. I made friends and got to know a bit about the people who worked in the firm. The thing that struck me as remarkable was how much each of them owed to Horst Wexler.
‘Take Steffen, for instance. He had been brought up in Germany. His family had built up a prosperous business in Dortmund but they were ruined by the collapse of the currency. When Wexler found him he was almost destitute. He brought him to London and within ten years he was running a department at the bank.
‘Steffen owed that man everything. I could tell you a dozen similar stories of people who worked in that bank.’ We crossed the road and Arthur took my arm and we stopped on the edge of the pavement.
‘Horst had a son, his only child. He was called Klaus. He was at public school. A fine looking boy, clever and a good games player – in fact, he was everything that his parents could have wished for. It was no secret that one day he would step into his father’s shoes.
‘Then a tragedy occurred. Klaus caught poliomyelitis and died. Those were the days before the discovery of the vaccine. It happened just before Christmas. We were all prepared for the annual office party to be cancelled but Mr Wexler insisted that it went ahead as usual.
‘He was a man who never touched alcohol but in the course of a couple of hours he drank quite a lot. It was about seven o’clock in the evening, and dark and raining hard when the party ended. Mr Wexler left the building, placed his black Homburg on his head, hoisted an umbrella and started for home. Steffen and I were heading for the underground station and were a few paces behind him.
‘Mr Wexler had given his chauffeur the afternoon off and he hailed a cab. It stopped on the other side of the road and he signalled to it to stay there. The road was clear as he stepped off the pavement.’ Arthur pointed to his feet, ‘It happened just here.
‘A delivery van came around the corner. It was being driven much too fast. The driver slammed on the brakes and the van skidded in the wet without losing speed. Mr Wexler may have been unsighted by his umbrella or, perhaps, it was the effect of the drink but he didn’t move nearly quickly enough to save himself.
‘Steffen leaped into the road, grabbed Mr Wexler by the shoulders and pulled him out of the way of the van. They both fell in a heap in the gutter. Mr Wexler picked himself up and helped Steffen to his feet.
‘He was very shaken. So was I. Of course I make full allowance for the tragedy that he had suffered but, to us, Mr Wexler was a god-like figure, a man of enormous riches, a man who was always completely in command of himself, a man who did not, it seemed, need other people. Yet, in the space of an hour or two, I had seen him partly incapacitated by drink and escape death by inches thanks only to the presence of mind of one of his clerks.’
Arthur and I parted at the underground station. ‘Mr Wexler sacked us both the next day,’ he said, ‘and without a word of explanation.’
‘From Mount Olympus to the gutter,’ I murmured, ‘and all in the space of a few seconds.’
Arthur frowned. ‘That’s a bit high flown for me,’ he said. ‘Anyway, he gave us a month’s salary. I found another job but poor Steffen simply went to pieces. Eventually, he got a part-time job with the Evening Standard and he has been there ever since.’ He raised his bowler. ‘I hope we shall meet again next year.’
HIGH STAKES
For Captain Derek Headland, it had been a difficult evening. He had lost heavily at the tables and had been refused any more credit. To heap indignity upon indignity he, a British officer, had then been summoned by the manager.
The room was cramped and very warm. The fan in the ceiling turned slowly, hardly stirring the air. Bin Khouri, a large man in a white sharkskin suit, was sitting behind his desk. Derek was halfway into an armchair when Bin Khouri snapped his gold-ringed fingers and directed him to the hard chair in front of him, as if he was a clerk at a job interview.
The manager smiled, revealing several gold teeth. ‘I am desolated that we cannot accommodate you any further. I have to answer to the proprietors and although they are rich men, they have not got limitless funds.’
Derek sniffed. ‘I would have thought that five thousand pounds was a drop in the ocean to them.’
‘Perhaps, but you are not our only creditor.’ His fingers drummed on the top of the desk. ‘You will have to find the money, my friend, and find it soon.’
Derek’s shirt was clammy and sticking to his back. Small rivulets of sweat ran down the inside of his arms. He wanted to bawl at the man that he was a shyster who should be run out of town but he forced himself to keep his temper. ‘That will not be a problem.’ He pulled an engraved silver case from his pocket, tapped a cigarette into his hand and lit up.
‘It makes me very happy to hear you say so. May I ask how you will obtain the money?’
‘I have substantial funds in London. I will have the money wired to Cairo.’
‘And when may I expect to have it in my hand?’ The words slithered off Bin Khouri’s tongue like a snake moving through grass.
‘Soon. Very soon.’ Derek tugged at his tie. The heat in the room was intolerable.
‘How will that be, Captain Headland? Your leave finishes tonight. Tomorrow you must return to your regiment.’
Rage and frustration, fuelled by bad cards, cheap whisky and the man’s persistent needling, washed over Headland. ‘Don’t push me, Bin Khouri!’ he shouted. ‘I have only to pick up the telephone to have this rats’ nest closed down.’
‘But I do not think that you will do that, my good friend.’ Bin Khouri leaned over the desk, his smile broadening. ‘The Anubis Club is off limits to British Army personnel. A perverse and misguided regulation in my opinion but, for the moment, we are not our own masters. How would you explain your presence here tonight?’
Derek raised himself out of his chair. It would do no good to quarrel with the man. He had powerful friends and spies everywhere. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s the heat. I did not mean to be uncivil.’
Bin Khouri waved a hand. ‘No hard feelings, Captain. Perhaps you would like to refresh yourself before you leave. There is a hammam behind the club and if you require any further relaxation, we can offer … other distractions.’
‘I know about your other distractions,’ Derek forced a smile.
‘Ah,’ Bin Khouri rose to his feet. ‘I was forgetting the beautiful Leah. She will be sad not to see you tonight.’
‘Y
ou will have to remind her that there is a war on and some of us have to fight.’ He swayed and held on to the door for support.
‘Let me call a taxi. You should not drive yourself after such a tiring evening.’
‘My jeep is parked round the back. Don’t worry. I can look after myself.’
‘I am sure you can. We will go to the back door.’ Bin Khouri drew in a draught of the night air as he watched Derek clamber into the vehicle. ‘I look forward to settling everything on your next leave. You will be sure to visit me? I should be very disappointed not to see you.’
Derek grunted a reply and pressed the starting button. As he pulled away, he had the disquieting feeling that he had been observed. There had been another car parked some ten yards behind his jeep. Had it been empty, he would have been able to look straight through it to the blue glow cast by the neon lights. But there was something or someone in the way.
He drove slowly. He did not want to be stopped by the military police and asked a lot of awkward questions. The moonlight turned the walls of the houses a ghostly white and cast blue shadows across the alleys. He passed the myriad dwellings that made up the necropolis, the city of the dead. Their troubles were behind them. He felt a pang of envy. They did not have to worry about the Bin Khouris of this world.
How different things would have been if he had been the elder son. But for an accident of birth, he would stand to inherit a large estate when his father died – a big house, several thousand acres of farmland and some of the best shooting in the West Country.
What would his father leave him? Fifty thousand pounds, perhaps. By no means a negligible sum but a pittance compared with what Harry would get. An accident of birth.
His elder brother was in the same battalion and they were in the middle of a war. An accident could happen at any time. Harry was married but, mercifully, there were no children. No son and heir. Not yet. In his billet, lying under a single sheet, his thoughts took an ugly turn. He pushed them away but they came back and the sky was getting light before at last he slept.
Two days later, Derek had rejoined his unit in the desert some two hundred miles west of Cairo. He had written a letter to his father, Sir Thomas Headland, DSO. He hoped that he would never have to write another like it. He dared not risk it coming into the hands of his commanding officer who routinely censored the officers’ letters so he had sent it with a friend returning to England on leave with instructions to post it on arrival.
The following afternoon, Derek and Harry were each in command of a troop of armoured cars on a reconnaissance patrol. German tanks and aircraft had been reported in the area and Derek should have been giving his full concentration to the task of keeping a lookout.
But the words of that letter were still going around his head. He had told his father that he needed an advance on his inheritance. He must have five thousand pounds – and quickly. Then he had lied. It was a debt to a brother officer. A debt of honour. Of course he knew that gambling was forbidden in the regiment but, on a dinner night, after the port had circulated, things sometimes got out of hand.
In that letter, he swore a solemn oath never to gamble again. He hinted at the disgrace that reneging on the debt would bring. He said nothing about Bin Khouri or the Anubis Club. Naturally, his father would be very upset. ‘Colonel Tom’ had commanded the same mob in The Great War. It was like a second family to him. He might have to sell a farm but he would raise the money rather than see his son drummed out of his regiment.
Derek heard them before he saw them. That unmistakeable, ear-splitting scream. ‘Stukas!’ someone yelled, but it was already too late. The bombers caught them too closely grouped in a shallow bowl of sand hills.
Everyone dived out of the cars. Seconds later, smoke and flame, mangled metal and charred bodies lay strewn across the desert. Harry and Derek and Paddy, his troop sergeant, were the only survivors. The three of them were suffering from burns but Paddy had a serious shrapnel wound in the stomach and was losing blood fast. Petrol cans were exploding and they dragged the wounded man out of range.
Harry crouched down beside him and tried to stem the flow but with little success. The sergeant’s face was white with pain. ‘Leave me here, Sir,’ he pleaded, ‘and save yourselves. I’m finished.’
‘Nonsense, Paddy. Hang on. We will get you back to base and fix you up.’
Derek limped up to the top of the sand dunes and put his field glasses to his eyes. ‘Of all the infernal luck,’ he muttered. ‘There’s a German column,’ he shouted to his brother. ‘Now it has halted. They must have spotted all this smoke. A half-track is peeling off. It’s turning this way.’
‘How long until it gets here?’ Harry called back.
‘Fifteen minutes. Maybe less.’ Derek slid down the slope to rejoin his brother. Every nerve in his body was twitching, telling him to be gone. ‘You can’t do anything for Paddy. He’s had it.’
Harry glared at him. ‘I’m not leaving Paddy. Not like this. We have been together since Dunkirk.’
‘He will be dead within the hour.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘Then we take him with us.’ A germ of an idea was sprouting in Derek’s mind.
Harry scanned the crest of the dunes behind him. ‘We would have to carry him up that slope and be out of sight before Jerry spots us. There isn’t time. The only chance of saving his life is to give ourselves up. Throw down our arms in full view of the Germans.’
‘So, Paddy dies in a couple of hours and you and I spend the rest of the war in the bag.’
‘I hate the idea of surrendering but Paddy could be in a dressing station within the hour and a field hospital later tonight. He could pull through.’
‘Look at him, Harry. He’s lost too much blood. Think of it. Three years in some lousy camp. Perhaps four. When we should be fighting for our country.’
‘I’m the senior captain. Either he comes with us or we stay here and surrender. That’s an order.’
‘Alright. We will take him. The light is going. Ten minutes should see us over that ridge. In half an hour it will be dark.’ He patted his pocket. ‘As soon as Jerry has gone home, we will send up a flare.’
‘A flare! Good for you. That might just save our bacon.’
Derek took Paddy’s arms and Harry grabbed his legs. The two men staggered up the slope with their burden. The sun was sinking and their shadows stretched out in front of them.
‘Are you sure about that ten minutes?’ gasped Harry. ‘That half-track sounds bloody close.’
If Derek replied, Harry never heard the answer. They were a few yards from the top when the Germans opened fire. Harry was hit immediately and rolled down to the bottom. Paddy was already dead. Derek dropped him and scrambled over the crest and ran for his life.
The men in the half-track had plenty to occupy them and did not come after him. He spent the night in a dry river bed and, at first light, started walking back to the Allied lines. The flare was damaged and didn’t light but he did have a compass and early that afternoon he was seen by a patrol and driven back to his unit.
Derek received a cool welcome from his comrades. The Intelligence Officer had some information about Harry. He had been taken prisoner but he had been hit in the spine and would probably never walk again. Only Derek had returned. Derek almost felt that he should apologise for being alive.
A few days later he received a letter from his father. It was very cold. One of the farms would have to be sold to raise the sum required. That would take at least three months. The chap to whom he owed the money would have to be patient.
The only cheering news, his father added, was that Harry would qualify for exchange with a badly injured German POW and might be home soon. ‘I must warn you,’ the letter concluded, ‘that Harry will have to be nursed for the rest of his days. I had hoped to leave you some money when I die but your brother’s needs must take priority. I am altering my will to take account of the new situation.’
Derek ha
d been given leave to spend the weekend in Cairo. He sent a message to Bin Khouri assuring him that he would get his money but telling him that he would have to wait a few weeks for it.
On the Friday morning he was told to report to the office of his CO, Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Fortescue. He guessed that it was probably some news about Harry. He opened the door and saluted smartly. The Colonel was tall with sandy hair and a neat moustache. He had won two DSOs in the desert and was resisting transfer to the staff of divisional headquarters although it would bring immediate promotion.
He usually had a ready smile but he was looking very grim. Standing at his side, his face expressionless, was Captain Gerard Vaux, an officer in the Intelligence Corps.
‘I want to keep this meeting very short,’ said Fortescue. ‘I must inform you that the Anubis Club has been closed down. The tables were fixed. Gamblers who lost more than they could afford laid themselves open to blackmail and we have had reports that the manager was selling details of Allied troop movements to the Germans.’
Derek felt the blood drain from his face. ‘No doubt this action was not taken without careful consideration, Colonel.’ He cleared his throat, ‘But I am not sure what it has to do with me.’
‘It has this to do with you,’ said the Colonel. He pushed a piece of paper across the table. It was a statement signed by Bin Khouri listing the dates on which Derek had visited the club, setting out the total of his losses and demanding that his commanding officer put pressure on him to settle his debts.
‘Do you deny any of this?’ the Colonel inquired. ‘Before you answer, I should warn you that you were seen leaving the club by two officers in the Intelligence Corps.’
Derek lowered his eyes. Now this. Just when he thought things could not get any worse. ‘I cannot deny it. But Bin Khouri has sent this demand in retaliation for the closing of the club. He is furious and intends to cause us the maximum embarrassment.’
‘He has succeeded,’ the Colonel commented dryly.
‘He would have been paid in full within three months. My father –’