Death or Glory II: The Flaming Sword: The Flaming Sword

by Michael Asher

  If it was true that Eisner was arriving that afternoon, things would be coming to a head. She had to be prepared. Had it been a mistake to goad Hekmeth by mentioning Eisner’s crime? No, it had been the right course: if she hadn’t she might never have discovered that Sandhog was compromised. As for Eisner, the bellydancer didn’t know about his dark side … no, that wasn’t right. She knew, had probably known for years, but had lied to herself about it because she cared for him. That was why she’d exploded: Nolan had touched a nerve as raw as a tooth abscess. Hekmeth and Eisner weren’t lovers: He never touched me, she’d said, He looked after me like a sister – not as a sister, but like a sister. They’d been close as kids, not related by blood, but possibly brought up in the same house.

  What about Beeston? She’d dropped his name in deliberately to push Hekmeth into a corner. She would no doubt be warning the major, even now, that Field Security was on his tail. Or would she? Beeston would wonder how she’d acquired the information, and the answer might compromise her. Even if Beeston had provided Nolan’s address, the bellydancer wouldn’t want to reveal details of the operation to her informant, especially as Hekmeth was probably aware, in her heart, that Eisner intended to kill her. From Stocker’s point of view, warning Beeston wouldn’t change anything: it would just give the traitor more rope to hang himself by.

  Hekmeth hadn’t argued when Nolan had made that remark about her not being German. Eisner was German or maybe half German, but Hekmeth was all Egyptian, so if she was helping the Nazis it wasn’t because she felt any loyalty to them but because it was convenient. Nolan would have bet that the bellydancer wouldn’t risk her life and liberty for what, in the end, amounted to just another bunch of European bosses.

  For all her bluster, too, Hekmeth had a conscience. She felt guilty over the shooting of Pat Rigby: Hayek’s attempt to rape Nolan had sent her berserk in a way that suggested she might once have been subjected to the same indignity herself. If so, then the knowledge that Eisner was both a rapist and a murderer of women would not sit well with her: Nolan thought the dancer’s explosive reaction bore that out. Setting aside the threat to Caine, which she couldn’t deal with at present, Nolan was satisfied that she’d thrown out all she could into the world. She could do nothing now but wait and see what came back.

  Nolan waited. The sun came up, pewter sunbeams speared galaxies of dust motes through the two tiny skylights high on the cellar wall. She dragged the bed nearer, placed the camp-chair on it and, balancing precariously, took a long shufti through each of the slits in turn. She had already examined them minutely on several previous occasions: there could be no escape through them, but they did have a view, a view that had told her almost all she knew about the place where she was being held. It was a Nileside villa, and a big one. The skylights revealed an extensive slice of well-tended garden sloping down to the river. Although she couldn’t see the water itself, the sails of feluccas drifted past above the hedgerows like the wings of giant cabbage whites. In the garden, she could see a mosaic footpath curving through beds of roses, a patio with a fountain and the edge of what might have been a swimming pool. Previously, she’d seen a man working in the garden – a tall Nubian in a gallabiya – though today there was no one in view. It had occurred to her that a riverside villa like this would probably have a jetty, and that Eisner might arrive by boat. She hoped that Stocker had considered this possibility, and that he also remembered Eisner was a master of disguise, capable of passing himself off as a tradesman or a simple fellah.

  She clambered down from her perch, restored the furniture to its rightful places. She had only just finished when the door went click. Her heart skipped a beat at the prospect of facing Hayek again, or even Eisner himself. It was Hekmeth, though, still dressed in black, carrying a tray with a cup of water, a bowl of lentils and some flat loaves of bread. The bellydancer shuffled into the room dejectedly without looking at Nolan, laid the tray down on the bedside table. ‘Eat,’ was all she said.

  She didn’t unlock the handcuffs this time – Nolan could feed herself quite adequately using her cuffed hands. The bellydancer watched her in brooding silence. When she’d finished, Hekmeth leaned forward: Nolan saw that her eyes were red from crying. ‘You said you saw Hussain … Johann … doing … what you claim he did … at Madame Badia’s,’ she began, her voice faltering. ‘I want to know … I mean, how could you be certain it was him? You’d never seen him before, had you? How do you know it wasn’t somebody else?’

  Nolan smothered a triumphant smile. Hekmeth had taken the bait, as Nolan had been almost certain she would. She was hooked, and now at least there was a chance. Nolan masked her momentary surge of elation, relaxing her facial muscles as she’d learned to do as an actress, making her features open and patently honest. After all, she had nothing to say that wasn’t the truth. ‘I didn’t know him at the time, of course,’ she said. ‘I saw him later, in the Detention Centre, before he escaped, and recognized him as the man who’d murdered and raped Lady Goddard. I’d have known him anywhere.’

  Hekmeth studied her with hooded, sad eyes. She said nothing.

  ‘I should tell you,’ Nolan went on in a subdued tone, almost a whisper, ‘that he raped and butchered two other girls that I’m aware of. One was a Field Security NCO, Susan Arquette, chosen because she looked like me. The other was a friend of mine, a cabaret girl at Madame Badia’s called Sim-Sim.’

  Hekmeth started. ‘Sim-Sim?’ she said. ‘I knew her. Her real name was Rachel – a lovely girl. Beautiful. Smart. A good dancer.’

  ‘Eisner raped her – sodomized her, actually, like all the others – and cut her throat after trying to force her to reveal my whereabouts. He tortured her: cut off part of her ear. She didn’t know anything, but still he violated her and slaughtered her like a pig.’

  Hekmeth remained rooted to the chair: Nolan guessed she was holding herself rigidly in check. Suddenly, silent tears began to flow down her cheeks. She sniffed, brushed the tears away with a heavily ornamented hand. She made a visible effort to compose herself, waited quietly for a few moments, then took a long breath. ‘My mother was a Ghawazi, you know,’ she began softly. ‘A professional dancer, singer and musician. I never knew my father. When I was little, my mother was taken on in the house of Hussain’s stepfather, Idriss. This house: Idriss spends some of the year at another place in Alexandria, and Hussain uses this when he’s not here. Hussain was a boy of about twelve when we first came – a few years older than me – and we were friends. He was the son of a German couple who’d owned a hotel at Giza: when his father died, his mother married Idriss, who brought him up as a Muslim with an Arab name. We didn’t know what kind of man Idriss was when we first came. My mother thought he was just a businessman: he was, but he was also a trafficker … in girls.’

  Nolan’s eyes widened. ‘You mean prostitutes?’

  Hekmeth shook her head. ‘Not exactly. Not the streetwalker kind, anyway. Idriss supplies …’ she looked sheepish, but forced herself to continue ‘ … supplies girls to the royal palace … the king mainly. It’s all organized by the royal secretary, Antonio Pulli Bey – an Italian. The king goes through a lot of girls – sometimes four or five a day. Anyway, I don’t know where the girls come from: some used to be kept here – in this very room. If they were young, Idriss liked to … he called it “breaking them in”. When Hussain was older, Idriss tried to force him to do it too, but Hussain didn’t want to. Idriss used to humiliate him in front of the girls, make them laugh at him. Once or twice it happened that girls … disappeared. It was all hushed up, but there were whispers among the servants that Hussain had punished girls who’d laughed at him. It was just a rumour, you understand. Nothing was ever proved.’

  ‘And you didn’t believe it?’

  ‘Why should I? Hussain was always good to me – treated me like a sister. When I was thirteen, Idriss called me into his room and raped me. He’s a pig. A real pig. When Hussain found out he was furious. He told his stepfather to leave
me alone. He said that I could become a famous bellydancer. That was the first and last time Idriss called me to his room.

  ‘I owed so much to Hussain that I refused to believe the stories about him. Then, Idriss packed him off to boarding school in Germany. When he came back he was different – still good to me, but he’d changed. He’d become a Nazi supporter, for a start – I think he’d already been recruited by the Abwehr. I was a well-known bellydancer by then, and of course, a lot of men wanted me. I thought he’d be protective of me like in the past, but he wasn’t. When the war started, he even encouraged me to have affairs – with British officers mostly – so that he could manipulate them, obtain information.

  ‘I started to see another side of him. He was still affectionate to me, but I sensed more and more that he was starting to see me as a tool for getting what he wanted. He behaved callously with other people, too. He would have secret affairs with older, married women – the wives of diplomats who might have access to their husband’s papers. Once he’d got what he wanted, he’d just drop them cruelly – even insult them. If they objected he’d laugh and threaten to tell their husbands.’

  Hekmeth paused, eyeing Nolan closely, as if wondering whether to continue. Nolan sensed that she was approaching some sort of climax, and nodded encouragingly. ‘Mary Goddard was raped and murdered at Madame Badia’s,’ Hekmeth said heavily. ‘You say you were there, and I have no reason to doubt you. After it happened, there were a lot of stories floating about hinting that Hussain was responsible. Of course, I didn’t believe them, but I did ask him once if he had anything to do with it. He told me that he didn’t even know Lady Goddard …’

  ‘But that was …’

  Hekmeth held up her henna-patterned hand to show that she hadn’t quite got there. ‘I knew it was a lie,’ she went on, ‘because I once saw him making love to Mary Goddard. Here, in this house.’

  ‘You saw them? How?’

  ‘There’s a bedroom here that has a hidden spyhole: Idriss uses it to watch guests – women, naturally. I knew Hussain had a woman in that room, and I was curious to know who it was. I used the spyhole and saw him in bed with Mary Goddard – I recognized her from newspaper photos: she was at least fifteen years older than Hussain. So when he told me he didn’t know her, I knew at once that it was a lie, although I couldn’t tell him so. Even then, I didn’t want to believe it: after all, the fact that he knew Mary didn’t prove he’d murdered her. I told myself that he’d denied knowing her in case people wrongly suspected him of the murder, but underneath, in my heart, I knew, I had known all the time what he was. I managed to keep on deluding myself, though. But this morning, when you confirmed that you’d actually seen him violating her, killing her, with your own eyes. I … I attacked you like that because I knew I couldn’t deny it to myself any more.’

  She took a shaky breath. ‘Hussain has betrayed me, betrayed my trust. I’d always thought of him as a protector of women, but he’s a destroyer of them. Whatever happens, I can’t let him do it again.’

  She locked Nolan’s eyes for a moment, and Nolan felt she was expecting her to make some comment.

  ‘Let me go,’ she said at last, her voice soft, reasonable. ‘You know what he’ll do to me: the same thing he did to them. At least unlock the cuffs – give me a chance.’

  Hekmeth got up suddenly and started pacing the room, hands clasped over her chest, as if trying to resolve some terrible internal conflict. ‘I know,’ she muttered. ‘Yes of course I know what he’ll do. If I let you go, though, he’ll be aware I’ve helped you, and God knows what will happen to me. Even if I take off the handcuffs, he will know. Yet I can’t let him murder and rape any more girls, not even you.’

  Abruptly, without explanation, Hekmeth entered the small bathroom and slammed the door. She was gone for about five minutes, then reappeared. She shook her head at Nolan. ‘When I’ve gone, look inside the drophole,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, but that’s the best I can do. I’m sorry about your man too. I can’t tell you anything more that might help him, but at least he’s a soldier, not a helpless girl.’

  She bowed as if on stage, then flung back her plume of wiry brown hair, swept from the room. Nolan heard her lock the door, hurried into the bathroom, groped in the drophole with cuffed hands. She’d been half expecting to find a key: instead, fixed to the ceramic head with sticking plaster, was a curved Arab knife in an ornate silver scabbard. She unstuck it, clasped it between her hands: she studied the knife, dismayed at what it promised but knowing that Hekmeth had given her a fighting chance.

  25

  It took forty minutes to set up Dumper at the gap in the rock wall: they arranged him like a crippled spider in the centre of a web of weapons and decoy kit, encircled him in a chain of concealed grenades, mines, mortar bombs. Pickney pumped him as full of morphia and Benzedrine as he dared, until the little Cockney felt he was drifting downstream on a tender pink aircushion, no longer assailed by the dreadful pain in his groin, the agony of his firemaimed feet. Caine checked that he had the loaded bazooka and his Garand in front of him, the Browning on his left and the spare Bren on his right, that he could reach the operating strings of the daisychain, pintail bombs, noisemakers, smoke generator, and that he had water, matches and cigarettes.

  The boys helped each other saddle up their enormous rucksacks: Caine crouched down by Dumper, put a cigarette into his mouth, lit it for him. The fitter puffed smoke with relish, groped in his breast pocket for the precious photo of his wife and daughters, laid it in front of him. Caine had been wondering what parting words he’d have for the brave corporal: how did you say goodbye to the man who’d saved the op? In the event, the only words that came were ‘Good luck, mate.’ He clapped Dumper’s shoulder and stood up, ashamed of his inadequacy, then noticed to his astonishment that Copeland had brought the whole section to unsteady attention, manpacks and all. ‘General salute,’ Cope barked. ‘Preseeeent arms.’ Caine brought his feet together and snapped up a salute in Dumper’s direction: Audley followed suit, and the rest of the troop presented weapons in three clipped drill movements: not precisely Guardee drillpig standard, but it was the gesture that counted, and Caine knew instinctively that it was right. This was the only way to bid a doomed warrior farewell.

  Dumper beamed and waved his maimed hand at them, speechless: even as he did so, he clocked blue ghostfigures popping up out of the trembling quicksilver gauze that cloaked the clints and folds of the desert, skirmishing towards the position in slow, tentative probes. He spat sideways into the sand. ‘They’re here,’ he grated. ‘Bugger off now, lads: let me do my stuff.’ Caine knew these words would be his epitaph: the last he would speak to anyone but himself.

  Wallace helped Caine shoulder his manpack, and without another word, the SAS crew faded away into the rippling desert heat-tremors like heavyweight jinns. A few minutes later Caine heard the whizzbang of musketry, the grinding ruckle of machine-gun fire, followed by the flat battercake whallop of the bazooka. He looked back and saw smoke spinnaker up from Dumper’s position, adding yet another to the set of dark question marks hanging in the air over their last location: the jeeps, the 3-tonner, the Jerry armoured car, and now Dumper’s smoke generator. He wondered grimly whether the Hun would bring the Stukas back if they found Dumper a tough nut to crack, and if not, how long the little corporal would last.

  The SAS section spread out in file, five yards apart, with Caine navigating at number-two position, Larousse tail-end Charlie, and Copeland scouting in the lead. Working his long legs like a pair of compasses, huffing from the weight of his manpack, Cope set up a cracking pace: they had to distance themselves from the enemy while they could, to get off the open plain and into the labyrinths of the foothills before airsupport was once more whipped up.

  They had been dreading the heat of midday, but they were saved by splines of murky cloud that slung themselves across the heavens in a ragged alphabet, throttling the sun, skimming off heat, permitting sunlight through only in shafts. As
the rattles and crumps of the firefight faded into the background, they panted on, humping their great burdens like a troop of tortoises, pumping amphetamine-fired limbs, hustling gratefully through the river of shadows towards the mountains’ beckoning haven.

  The weight on their backs was murderous: the creaking straps cut into flesh, and within an hour it felt as if they were carrying the whole world on their shoulders; they moved more slowly now, bent over, wheezing and sweating. Caine had them halt for a five-minute rest every half-hour, warning them to take only sparing gulps from their waterbottles. While they rested, Gibson and Rossi set up ingenious little boobytraps along their trail: packets of PE or armed grenades attached to detonators fired by pressure-release switches, buried under bits of kit; discarded webbing pouches or items of clothing trapped under medium-sized boulders. Any tracker who lifted the boulder to examine the kit would get his face blasted off. Caine hoped no inquisitive Senussi would happen along.

  By early afternoon they were climbing up through a sprawl of warped sandstone, along defiles where thin grey sand lay underfoot like a frayed carpet, where lizards drowsing on hot basalt boulders stared at them with unblinking golden eyes, where dead fingers of thornbush clawed out of crevices, where the bones of mules, goats and camels lay in the dust like polished teeth. They started to come across the half-buried remnants of saddles, fragments of rope, fractured hobbles, bits of tattered muslin, ancient waterskins twisted and hardened by the sun, cairns of boulders piled up on wadi sides, tiny stone corrals where newborn kids had been kept, beds of animal droppings like hard black pebbles.

  High on the shoulder of the drywash, they found ruins of a Senussi hamlet – mud huts with caved-in straw roofs, walls gouged with gaps like shellholes, doorways like bent and shapeless mouths. Caine told the patrol to rest in the wadi while he and Copeland climbed up the bank to investigate. There were three dead Senussi in the first hut, their bodies bags of bone and leather, half mummified in the heat. The man had been hanged – his body, clothed in tattered strips, was strung by rope from a rafter: his eyes were vacant sockets where carrion birds had pecked them out; the remnants of his parchment-yellow flesh were full of maggots and peppered with angry red gulfs and atolls where his cadaver had been gnawed. The two women lay face up on the floor below in worm-infested heaps, naked, eyeless, straddled in obscene postures, the ends of wooden clubs protruding from between their legs. Their throats had been cut, and their corpses lay on a wine-coloured carpet of blood long ago congealed, tracked through with the signs of rats, birds, insects, foxes and the other small scavengers that had feasted on them.