by Len Deighton
‘The master will not keep you waiting much longer,’ he said. He bowed again and departed without waiting for a reply. There was nothing to be said. Women – even educated European women like Peggy West, a highly respected nursing sister at the Base Hospital – could not expect to be treated like men. When Peggy West visited the boat she often had to wait here on the upper deck and drink coffee. It was arranged like this; important men made people wait.
She picked up the coffee cup. Even before she put it to her lips she could smell the heavy sugar syrup with which it had been made. She swore and resolved to complain about the wretched man. But she drank it anyway as he knew she would. As she sipped it she stared at the river. Coming to the island over the Khedive Ismail bridge, she’d noticed that the old Semiramis Hotel was fully lit. The once grand Semiramis was now taken over as the headquarters of ‘British Troops in Egypt’. The electric lights made the windows into yellow rectangles. Every room was lit; it was almost unprecedented for the British army to be working so late. Rommel was on the move again. The army that the British had chased to a standstill in the desert had suddenly revived itself and lunged forward. Cairo was in danger.
She buttoned her coat. There were rumbling sounds that might have been gunfire, and then a truck, with headlights on, went rattling over the nearby English Bridge and two more followed it as if trying to keep up. She recognised them as Morris Quads, curious-looking humpbacked vehicles used to tow 25-pounder field guns. The artillerymen were in a hurry, and they were heading for the Western Desert. Rommel’s soldiers were rushing to meet them. No one could guess where the big battle would take place.
It was easy to sit here and fancy she could hear the gunfire or smell the desolate space that started only a few miles down the road, but that was the sort of silly imagining that newcomers were prone to: the flashy English reporters and pink-faced officers straight out of school, who desperately wanted to become the heroes they’d so recently read about in their comic books.
Peggy always thought of her husband Karl, when she came out here to see this fellow Solomon and collect her money. It was natural that she should; Solomon was a close friend of her husband, or so he said. She sighed as she thought about it. You could not depend upon anyone here to tell the truth. The army, the Arabs, and even the BBC all smoothly lied like troopers when it suited their purposes.
She’d lived in this part of the world for a long time. She’d proved to her own satisfaction that a young Englishwoman with an ordinary suburban background could work and wander in the same casual carefree style that men so frequently did. She knew the southern Mediterranean coast all the way to Tunis, where she’d first arrived armed only with her nursing qualification and the promise of a job in a hospital supported by the funds of local European fruit farmers. Soon she discovered that an experienced nurse with European certificates could get a job almost anywhere along that coast.
Even after she fell in love and got married, her travelling did not end. Her husband liked to joke about his Italian mother and Canadian father; that’s how spaghetti and meat-balls was invented, he said. Karl was an engineer working for an oil company. In the autumn of 1937, Karl had taken her on a long-delayed honeymoon in Cyrenaica. He had close friends there, and he spoke wonderful Italian. Little Italy, they called it. They’d celebrated with sweet local champagne and paradiso cake – made from almonds – for their wedding feast. The scenery was breathtaking: so green and beautiful, the Mediterranean had never been such a radiant blue as it was that day from the balcony outside their bedroom window. Seven glorious days, and then they’d driven their beloved V8 Ford all the way back to Cairo. Or almost back to Cairo. The poor old car had served them faithfully, but without warning it expired. Its gear-box gave out, and with great sadness they abandoned it. They lugged their suitcases to the nearest village – little more than a railway station and a dozen primitive dwellings – and drank chilled beer and untold cups of coffee while they waited five hours for the Cairo train.
They’d been so in love that it had seemed like a heaven-sent opportunity to talk. They talked about everything in the world. She’d told Karl her whole life story: her loving and constantly worrying parents in England, her craving to travel. She remembered that stopover so vividly: the railway station at El Alamein, the flea-bitten spot where they’d spent half the night. That honeymoon was a long time ago: four, or was it five years? Now Karl was working out a five-year contract, assigned to one of the oil exploration teams that ranged through the deserts of Iraq. It was eighteen months since he’d last had leave. She wondered if Karl thought about her as much as she thought about him. He sent the money without fail; he must love her, surely? In some ways she had to be thankful. After marrying her, Karl had obtained a British passport. Had they stayed in England he might now be in one of those trucks going up to the battlefront. She would have been worried sick. So many of the men who went to the desert would never come back. Sometimes she had nightmares in which she watched Karl being sewn together on the operating table.
She shivered. January was always the coldest month in Cairo’s year. At night she had two blankets on her bed. She wondered why Solomon, the man she’d come to see, didn’t live somewhere more comfortable and permanent. He had prevaricated about that when once she asked him. Solomon liked to call himself Solomon al-Masri – Solomon the Cairene or Solomon the Egyptian; the language made no distinction. It sounded like an assumed name but so did many genuine ones. This man had an almost pathological obsession with secrecy. To arrange the first few visits to him she’d had to phone an Austrian dentist in Alexandria and say she needed treatment. She didn’t object. She knew that some men liked to cloak everything they did in mystery. Her husband Karl was like that. At first she’d thought he was keeping a mistress, but later she decided it was just the way he’d always behaved. Perhaps it was something to do with his upbringing; perhaps all men were like that when you wanted to know more about them.
She looked round her. Yellow lights from the boats moored along this stretch of riverbank made patterns on the water. One boat nearby had its windows open to let in the night air. Through them came loud voices, with posh English accents, and the sound of a scratchy record on a wind-up record player: Bing Crosby singing ‘Just a Gigolo’.
She consulted her watch; it was almost midnight. She wondered how long Solomon would keep her waiting. There was someone with him. She knew that from the silver tray with its half-eaten sandwiches, used plates and coffee cups that she’d spied in the galley on her way past. Judging by the remains it must have been a long session: negotiations of some sort. He’d told her that he liked making deals. I was born in a bazaar, he’d said. She didn’t know whether he meant it literally, for he’d once told her his father had been a wealthy resident of Cairo. Whatever the details of his birth, Solomon was a Jew, but of that he’d made no secret. Otherwise she knew little except what was obvious: that he was a highly intelligent, much-travelled businessman who spoke a dozen languages, including excellent Egyptian Arabic and English that was distinctly American in syntax and accent. She knew nothing else about him and she took care not to appear inquisitive. Solomon had offered to bring for her each month the money that her absent husband sent from faraway places. The wartime British restrictions on money transfers of any kind made her wonder how she would have managed without Solomon’s unofficial courier service. The money she earned working for the British army in the base hospital was not enough for even her modest lifestyle. Almost all the others were young inexperienced army nurses from England, living in quarters and glad of a chance to be in a city full of women-chasing men. They didn’t need any money. But Peggy lived in a hotel and so far resisted the temptations and propositions. Peggy needed Karl’s money, so it was necessary to put up with Solomon’s quirks and eccentricities.
Solomon had even renamed this boat Medina al Dahabiya: City of Gold. It was a pun. Dahabiya means shallow-draft Nile houseboat, as well as meaning gold. Before he took it over and refitt
ed it, it had been little more than a hulk owned by a drunken South African airline pilot, and appropriately named Flying Fish. Houseboats moored along the west side of Gezira Island had acquired a new chic reputation since the war started. The boats were of all shapes and sizes; some – like this one – were in good condition while others were leaking and derelict. Everyone had colourful stories about this weird fleet. Black marketeers, British army deserters, and even Italian prisoners of war were said to be here, throwing amazing parties with every variety of drink and drug freely available. But Cairo loved rumours, the more flamboyant the better.
‘Will you come this way, madam.’
‘Yes.’ She never called him Yusef. He was familiar enough already.
When she was finally invited down into the well-appointed drawing room on the deck below, Solomon greeted her warmly. The irritation that had built up while she was being kept waiting, disappeared. She came under his spell. If Solomon al-Masri was rich he was certainly not one of the well-bred, well-spoken, cultured figures so frequently found in Cairo’s best hotels, bars and nightclubs. Solomon was good-looking in that tough-guy way that Hollywood had recently discovered in Cagney and Bogart. He was short and muscular, with a tanned weathered face, black moustache and bushy eyebrows, and wavy black hair that resisted his efforts with comb and brush. His custom-made silk shirt and trousers fitted perfectly, unlike so much of the clothing produced by Cairo’s tailors. Anyone could see he was a man who demanded things done exactly the way he wanted them. In everything he did she recognised the single-minded drive she’d found in other self-made men, her father for one.
Now Solomon sat her down and fussed over her as if this was the moment he’d waited all day to enjoy. ‘You’ll have some whisky?’ He remembered exactly how she liked it – soda and whisky in equal amounts, no ice – and selected a heavy cut-glass tumbler for it. He brandished the Johnny Walker bottle as if to prove it was not one of the bogus local distillations that were now in such abundance.
He watched her, as she sat down and crossed her legs, and handed her the drink. ‘Are you cold, Peggy?’ She felt better now. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror: smooth skin, reddish hair and large green eyes. She was reassured. She still looked fresh and young; few of the younger nurses outshone her.
The room was warm and hazy with cigar smoke. ‘No, not now,’ she said. ‘But boats are never warm, are they? I don’t know how you bear it on the water in winter.’
‘You get used to it, Peggy. My father had a fine house here on the island. Each morning, having said his prayers, he looked at the water flowing past. The Nile is long, he used to tell me, as long as our people’s exile.’
‘And what did you say?’ She wondered how many of the Arabs with whom he had dealings recognised him as a Jew. Perhaps, if there were goods to be traded, and money to be made, they did not care. Money speaks all tongues; that was what they said in the Cairo souks.
‘I would tell my father to look north and remember that here in Cairo, we are almost at the end of the Nile,’ Solomon said. He smiled briefly as he suddenly recalled telling her this little parable before: he liked parables. She had dutifully provided him with his cue.
‘You are a Jew, Peggy.’ It wasn’t a question, it was a statement of fact, a reminder.
‘My father was…’
‘I don’t want to know about your father. I want to know about you.’ He said it firmly and sat down on the sofa and looked at her as if expecting a long answer.
She knew what he was expecting. He was very like Karl in some ways and Karl loved to discuss his ‘roots’ and the essence of race and religion; the Jewish homeland and the pioneers who struggled to create it.
‘I suppose I am,’ she said. She’d grown up in a family where religion was never mentioned. She had been about to say that her father was an atheist until Solomon interrupted her. She knew little or nothing about religion before meeting Karl. Her father had told her that Jewish descent goes through the female line, and anyway Peggy found it difficult to become a believer in any sort of God. Lately her work at the hospital watching so many young men bleed and die had made her less, rather than more, religious. But she didn’t want to argue. ‘Karl is a Jew. Once, long ago, I promised that if we ever had any children they would be brought up as Karl wished.’
‘Exactly. Karl told me the same thing. Karl said you would say that.’
‘When is Karl coming back?’
‘Not yet. He has a lot of work to do.’ Solomon got up and walked to the electric fan and moved it so that its airflow rippled the curtain. It was stuffy in the room and the smell of cigar smoke remained faintly in the air. He could have cleared the air by opening one of the windows, but she knew he didn’t want to risk being overheard. The noisy fan was no doubt part of his desire for privacy. He turned to her and said casually, ‘In fact, Karl has run afoul of the British authorities in Baghdad. Until we can sort it out for him, it is better if he is not anywhere where he’d be recognised.’
‘What do you mean?’ She could not keep the alarm from her voice. ‘What has he done?’
Solomon chuckled. There was a certain brutality in his laugh that did not encourage her to join in. He looked at his watch. ‘Why should you think he has done anything? Karl will be all right.’ He got up again and switched on the radio. He had judged it perfectly: he was a man of method. The time signal sounded and then came the BBC news. It was an hour earlier in London – eleven PM – she could never get over the fact that the man reading the news would afterwards go outside and be in Langham Place, sniff the London air, and be able to see the red double-decker buses going across Oxford Circus.
They listened to the news. The voice of the BBC announcer was dry and solemn. There was only a perfunctory reference to Rommel’s advance. Soon the newsreader was telling of the Red Army’s valiant counterattacks, but even on that subject his buoyant tones could not make up for the fact that the Germans were close to occupying both Moscow and Leningrad. The Japanese advances across the Pacific continued unabated. All the news was ominous. After the first few minutes Solomon switched it off and went to sit beside her. She could smell the cologne he’d used and see the talc on his chin. He was drinking some sort of fizzy water with a lemon slice in it. She’d never seen him drink alcohol.
‘I love the smell in the air. Can you smell it, Peggy?’
She had no idea what he might be talking about. She could see he was in an excited mood and guessed it was something to do with the work he did. ‘The desert?’
‘The desert, huh. You romantic. I’m talking about the stench of betrayal.’ He leaned back in his seat. ‘I sniffed that same stink in Madrid in ’thirty-seven. That hoodlum Franco was at the gates, as Rommel will soon be at the gates of Cairo. An anarchist patrol had murdered a Communist leader named Cortada. The Communists were giving the police their orders; the police were fabricating evidence to convict the Falangists. The Russian secret policemen were murdering the Trotskyite POUMists and the Radicalists and the other riffraff were fighting each other. It was easy; the Fascists didn’t have to fight. They had only to march in and win the war.’
She’d heard too much about the Spanish Civil War from her husband. For these men, who’d been on the losing side, it had become an obsession. ‘Yes, I know. We lost; Franco won.’
‘Don’t play the silly old woman with me, Peggy. We’ve known each other too long for that. You know what’s going on here.’
‘Young Egyptian hotheads want to overthrow the British. Is that what you mean?’ she asked. Her voice revealed that she was British enough to scorn their chances of succeeding.
He regretted having revealed his feelings. Now he answered her in a mocking drawl as if he were nothing but an impartial observer of local events. ‘That’s a part of it. Some young Egyptian officers are planning a palace coup. This wonderful town is full of people feathering their own nest while Rommel gets ready to send his tanks in to take it over.’
‘Rommel will never
get here. He’s a long way away.’
‘Yes. And if he does get here, Rommel is not going to hand over his prize to crazy young Egyptians. Exactly. The very fact that they expect him to shows how naïve they are. But my masters keep asking me what exactly is going on here.’
‘Your masters?’
‘And Karl’s masters. Yes.’ There was a serious note in his voice now.
She was going to ask him who his masters were, but instead she said discreetly, ‘How do I fit in?’
‘You live in the little hotel where that fascistic old bastard Prince Piotr holds court. Drink up.’
‘Yes?’
‘For God’s sake, Peggy, wake up! Are you going to tell me you don’t know Piotr?’ He poured more whisky into her glass.
‘Of course I know him … Thank you, that’s enough. Everyone in Cairo knows him. He’s a White Russian prince who just loves what Hitler’s armies are doing to Stalin. Here in Cairo he has good friends in the palace … Some say he plays cards with Farouk. What is it you want to know?’ She helped herself to more water.
‘I’m not stupid, Peggy. The messages I send to Tel Aviv don’t retail stories got from the gossipers in the souks. I want to know what our princely friend really thinks and does and meets and talks about. Does that make sense to you?’
‘No. It doesn’t make much sense to anyone who has ever met him. He’s ancient. He’s an egotistical, name-dropping old snob, full of boring stories of long ago. He’s not a high-level go-between for Hitler and Farouk, if that’s what you are suggesting.’
Solomon smiled grimly; he liked a little sparring. ‘I’m suggesting nothing. I’m simply asking you to take a closer look at him so we can be sure.’