Stern. A wizard of languages and Levantine ways. A brilliant agent who had used his vast knowledge of the Middle East to come and go unsuspected for years. A solitary man who had ingeniously used his role as a minor gunrunner to conceal his espionage activities, who had managed through this sordid cover to escape important notice throughout his life.
And lastly, the mysterious Purple Seven. An experienced agent from the outside, identity unknown, history and previous involvements unknown. Evidently a European but referred to by the Colonel as the Armenian, because the false papers of his Purple Seven cover carried an Armenian name and an Armenian background.
When the Major thought about it, it wasn’t difficult for him to understand why the Colonel’s questions took the form they did. The Colonel had spent most of his life in the Middle East and despite his ordinary army manner, he was a scholarly expert in the cultures of the region who couldn’t help but be intrigued by the contradictions of Stern’s obscure past.
Then too, in Stern’s case, it wasn’t just a matter of facts and straightforward information. From the way the Colonel and others spoke of Stern, it was apparent Stern had been the kind of man who had invariably had a powerful effect on anyone who knew him. Almost an hypnotic effect, it seemed, as if in the process of uncovering the truth about Stern it was possible to discover a much larger truth. Almost as if some secret meaning lay hidden in Stern’s lifelong journey in search of his arcane goals.
It was only a vague notion to the Major, but he knew that was because he had never met Stern and been exposed to his influence. From the way the Colonel spoke of Stern, even from certain references in the files, it was easy enough to imagine the aura that had surrounded Stern, the peculiar mixture of strangeness and recognition men had felt in his presence, a sense of wonder and familiarity and of profound fear as well.
An age-old tragedy, then, Stern’s life. A tale of idealism and disaster on the shores of the Aegean that would always be unresolvable in its depths of darkness and light, a fated play of mystery and suffering in the stony deserts where certain men had always wandered. In its yearnings and its abject failures, a tale on the nature of things, its rhythms spun from the soft roll of ancient seas and the hard tides of ancient deserts. And yet a tale so simple it was known to the poorest of beggars and had been for thousands of years … its stark cycle always secretly felt in the heart, always secretly passed from heart to heart through the millennia.
Although the Major could appreciate the profound fascination felt by the Colonel for Stern’s enigmatic life and death, his own imagination was more deeply provoked by the unidentified figure in the case. The man who had been brought in to uncover the truth about Stern, the elusive Purple Seven agent known as the Armenian.
Nor was it difficult for the Major to understand his own particular fascination with this other figure. For the man’s Purple Seven identity had been used only once before, and that was by the professional agent who had designed the identity for himself in the 1930s and used it so successfully in Palestine and Ethiopia, the same man who had been the hero of the Major’s youth during the First World War, Columbkille O’Sullivan or Our Colly of Champagne, the legendary little sergeant who had survived a bullet through the heart in 1914 and been awarded two Victoria Crosses, an impossible feat.
All his life the Major had wondered about Our Colly. What kind of man could he have been and how could anyone be expected to follow in his footsteps? Why would anyone, in fact, even dare to presume such a thing?
And yet Bletchley had done just that. Bletchley had gone out of his way to assign Our Colly’s Purple Seven identity to this unknown agent who had been tracking Stern for months or years and had even been with Stern, finally, at the moment of his death.
So the circle was complete and the Major was brought back to the puzzle of the unknown Armenian, sketchily described as a small dark man with a deeply lined face and watchful eyes, wearing a torn collarless shirt and an old dark suit that was too big for him, that looked as if it might be secondhand, not even his to begin with. An apparent dealer in Coptic artifacts. An unknown man in transit, as Our Colly once had been.
The Major kept a clean desk. When he returned from the Colonel’s office that evening the only thing on it was his pith helmet, which the Major raised to see if any messages had been left for him underneath it. There was one, a note saying some calls had come in on his private telephone while he was in back with the Colonel. Three rings each time, the note said, the calls repeated every fifteen minutes on the quarter-hour. Since it was his private telephone, no one had taken the calls.
The Major looked at his watch, feeling a sudden rush of excitement. He paced impatiently behind his desk, waiting, and the next call came exactly on time on the quarter-hour. The Major picked up the phone and said hello, and that was all he said. He listened to the voice speaking to him, then when the call ended he hurried back to the Colonel’s office, where the Colonel was locking up his files, preparing to leave for the night. The Colonel looked up, surprised.
Well well, what’s this? I thought you’d already left.
I just had a telephone call, the Major blurted out. A very curious piece of business.
Oh? What was it?
The Major explained the repeated calls on his private phone and the one he had just taken. The code words used by the caller belonged to Liffy, including the code word dove, which was Liffy’s mechanism for requesting an emergency meeting, something he had never done before.
But not at any of the places where we usually meet, added the Major. He wants the emergency meeting to be at the Sphinx.
The Colonel looked up again, smiling.
How’s that? Liffy at the Sphinx?
But I don’t think it was him, said the Major. I think it was somebody else.
Couldn’t you tell from his voice?
No, not really. Liffy always disguises his voice on the phone with me. It’s a game he plays.
Well whom did he sound like this time?
The voice had an Irish accent.
Child’s play for Liffy, said the Colonel.
But I’m quite sure it wasn’t him. There’s no conceivable reason why he should need an emergency meeting. He’s not in that end of things.
Then perhaps he’s just lonely and wants you to hold his hand, said the Colonel. It happens.
The Major frowned, an expression of disagreement he had picked up from the Colonel.
At two o’clock in the morning in front of the Sphinx? Tonight? And only calling now to set it up? Normally he couldn’t even expect to find me in the office this late in the evening. He knows that.
The Colonel continued to sort through his papers, putting them away in his file cabinet.
He’s been drinking a bit, do you suppose?
No, Liffy never gets out of hand that way.
Well who else knows his code words?
No one. Just the two of us.
Then he must have made an exception and gotten drunk, said the Colonel. Probably thinks he’s playing a practical joke, mentioning the Sphinx. If I were you I’d get ahold of him in the morning and let him have it. Inexcusable, really, at a time like this.
The Major said nothing, waiting. He understood the reasons for the Colonel’s reluctant reaction to the phone call, but he was still determined to get some resolution to the matter. The Colonel, meanwhile, put his last folder in the file cabinet and locked it. He checked the file drawers and walked stiffly on his false leg to the door. He reached for the door, hesitated, spoke in a casual tone of voice.
How are you and Liffy getting on these days?
We get along well, replied the Major. I think if he wanted to help someone, to give them a contact here, he’d think of me.
I see.
The hand-grenade explosion in the bar, Colonel. You said that if it was the work of the Monks, it was probably intended for the Armenian as well as for Stern.
Yes, I believe I did suggest that.
But the Armenian
got away, said the Major. He wasn’t killed, he escaped.
Yes, so it seems. But the Sphinx, you say? That certainly seems a bizarre place for a meeting with Liffy.
The Colonel smiled to himself.
Unless, he thought, Liffy has finally decided to go all the way and do that impersonation.
Yes, quite, he murmured. But if one were to go to such a meeting, how could any backup men be taken along without them being seen?
No backup, said the Major. The caller was specific about that.
Oh he was, was he? That sounds rather arrogant to me.
Or cautious perhaps, out of necessity. He implied it was the Monks he was concerned about.
The Colonel looked shocked.
You mean he mentioned Monks on the phone?
No, not directly. He made an allusion to St Anthony as the founder of monasticism, although he didn’t come out and say that directly either, and he said something about fifteen hundred years in the desert being a danger to a man’s health. Or to his spiritual balance, as he called it.
The Colonel smiled despite himself.
Erudite fellow, it seems, and rather accustomed to alluding to things. Colly was like that.
He also said he’d call back in fifteen minutes, added the Major, looking at his watch.
The Colonel’s smile faded.
What on earth for?
To find out whether I’m coming or not. He said that given the nature of competing bureaucracies, as he put it, not directly again, he imagined I’d have to check with you before I could agree to come.
That’s not just arrogance, muttered the Colonel, that’s a perverse sense of humor. How could he have known I’d be here?
He said he assumed it. He said that in perilous times, as he put it, the old man tends to work late.
Definitely a perverse sense of humor, muttered the Colonel. He seems to have said quite a lot in his indirect way.
He was speaking quickly.
Yes, I can see that. Tell me, do you ever take walks alone in the desert at night? To clear your head and get things in order a bit?
I have, replied the Major.
Ever go out to the pyramids just to take in the majesty of the place?
I have.
Well these days, said the Colonel, I’d go well-armed if I were you. And other than that all I can say is Bletchley’s business belongs to Bletchley, and if I were to interfere he’d have my head in twenty-four hours, and rightly so.
I understand, said the Major.
It was bad enough that I sent Jameson to check into a killing where a Purple Seven was involved. But to do anything more than that is out of the question. I couldn’t authorize it and I wouldn’t. Moreover, if I knew anything about it I’d have to put a stop to it immediately.
I understand, said the Major.
So I’m sorry I missed you tonight, the Colonel went on, after our discussion earlier on Jameson’s findings. I’m leaving to get some rest because I haven’t been sleeping well lately. I fall asleep but then some damn worry wakes me up at three in the morning and I can’t get back to sleep. I pass the time as best I can but it would certainly be much pleasanter to share a pot of tea with someone then, if someone had some late business and chanced to drop by after it was over.
The Colonel glanced around the office, his hand on the door.
I enjoyed reminiscing about Colly this evening, he added, but we do have to keep in mind that Purple Sevens aren’t everyday sorts…. Not at all. That’s why they have the designation.
And beyond the rumbling chaos of the city it was an eerie night of luminous stars and strange wan moonlight full upon the reaches of the Nile. In the rambling houseboat of the Sisters, in that pale airy sunroom that had once rung with gaiety and laughter and was now filled to overflowing with empty furniture, in that gently familiar place where faded voices and small unbroken melodies came to mingle in the delicate half-light, there in the stillness Big Belle and Little Alice sat gazing at the Nile, at their own restless currents of memory. The night was too bright for candles so they sat with only the moon and the stars as their guides, occasionally one of them stirring, speaking.
Little Alice touched her hair.
There’s no end to it, she murmured. They go right on doing the same things, claiming it serves some purpose. I remember Uncle George used to say when things went wrong that it didn’t matter, because summer was coming. He so loved summer. But then when he ended his life it wasn’t summer at all, it was the dead of winter.
And cold, said Alice. Such a cold New Year’s Day when they found him, all the people in the village gathered down at the pond. At least it seemed like a great crowd then, everybody standing around with somber faces, not even shuffling their feet the way they did in church. I remember that.
And they made a great show of standing in front of us and holding us back so we wouldn’t see. Poor dears, they were whispering, poor little dears. But I peeked while they were leading us away and I caught a glimpse of him, just the barest glimpse when they were laying him down on the ground, before they covered him up.
Oh I didn’t really know what it meant then. All those whispers and those arms around us gently pulling us away, and the solemn staring faces and Mother crying and crying and trying to be so brave, trying to hold back her tears as she squeezed us and pressed us to her.
It was all so confusing and I began crying too, not for Uncle George, because I didn’t understand that yet. But for Mother, because she seemed to be in so much pain, and because of the way everybody else was acting, whispering first their father and now this, and looking at us with such sad faces I wanted to cry for their sake.
No, I didn’t understand it at all, not even the funeral and the words they said under the heavy sky at the cemetery. I don’t think I even heard what they said, but I can still see that sky and the hill beyond the cemetery, against it, as if it were yesterday.
And then there’s something I remember that happened after that. It was warmer by then so it must have been late spring, not long before we left for good. I was playing out back and I went into the shed where Uncle George had lived, where Mother had forbidden us to go after he died, to protect us so we wouldn’t think of him.
I didn’t have anything in mind really. I just tried the door without thinking and it opened, so I walked in. And the sun was streaming in the window and the air was warm and dusty and close, and there were cobwebs everywhere, and the room looked so small and empty.
Most of his things had been taken away, but the little tarnished mirror still hung by the window and the pegs were still in the wall by the door where he used to hang his clothes, and his paddle was still up on the rafters where he’d always kept it, the one he’d used when he went fishing. So those things were still there, but they just seemed to make the room look smaller and emptier than ever…. So very empty, so terribly empty, I’ve never forgotten that. It made me sad because it looked as if no one had ever lived there.
Little Alice gazed down at the floor. She touched her hair.
Belle? Why do you think Uncle George did that? He had a place in the world and people liked him, and he had his job and things to do in his free time. Certainly Mother loved him and he always seemed to enjoy having us around. He was always joking with us and showing us how to do things, how to make little things.
I suppose you’d have to say it wasn’t a life with any particular surprises to it, for good or for bad, and there weren’t going to be any great accomplishments to come from it, I know that. But it was a decent life and he was a good man, and there didn’t seem to be any reason why he had to end it like that, all alone down at the pond on a cold night, drowning himself in the darkness.
I’ve just never understood that kind of thing. Summer would have come again, he was the one who always used to say that. And it’s not enough to call him weak because I’m weak, no one has ever been weaker than I am. And I’m foolish too, which Uncle George never was.
I just don’t understand
it, Belle, I’ve never understood it. Why did he do it?
Belle looked at her sister. She shook her head.
I don’t know, Alice, I truly don’t. But why do any of them do what they do? Why did Stern? Why did Joe? Why are there all those tens of thousands of men out in the desert right now doing what they’re doing? Doing the same things that were done in the same places a hundred years ago and a thousand years ago and five thousand years ago? How does it help? What does it change? What’s the point of it all? How can….
Belle stopped. She turned abruptly in her chair to stare at the shattered French doors, at the narrow veranda beside the water.
What is it, Belle? What did you hear?
Nothing. I was imagining it.
Alice’s voice had dropped to a whisper.
Please, Belle, you know I don’t hear well. What was it?
It sounded like something scraping. A piece of driftwood must have gotten caught.
Belle gripped the arms of her chair and began to pull herself forward, her mouth set.
Don’t you dare get up, whispered Alice. Don’t you dare go over to those doors. That’s where it happened.
I have to see what’s making that noise.
Don’t you dare, whispered Alice. I’ll go.
But she didn’t move. She sat on the edge of her chair, staring at the open shattered doors, her hands clasped tightly together. The sound was louder now and Alice could also hear it, wood bumping against wood.
Alice gasped. An apparition had appeared in the moonlight, a looming chalk-white shadow of a man rising up out of the river and crouching on the small veranda, the ghastly face masklike, the whole pale figure as insubstantial as a spirit risen from the grave. Alice put her hand to her mouth and silently shrieked. Belle stiffened, her gaze unwavering.
Stop, commanded Belle. Stop right there. I refuse to believe in ghosts.
A smile appeared on the white dusty face.
And so do I, said a soft Irish voice, and not for a moment and not a bit of it. Of course it’s also true that on nights such as this I’ve heard the odd pooka puttering around in the moonlight on occasion, muttering his jokes and his riddles and his scraps of rhymes the way their kind are wont to do. But that’s only natural and pookas aren’t ghosts anyway, they’re just like the rest of us only more so.
Nile Shadows (The Jerusalem Quartet Book 3) Page 44