City of Gold

by Len Deighton

  ‘Peggy, darling, don’t tell me this is our new neighbour. I heard there was a quite ravishing young lady living here.’ The prince spoke in the astringent and exaggerated accent of long-ago Oxford.

  Alice smiled shyly.

  ‘How do you do, my dear. How wonderful that you were able to attend my little gathering.’ He took Alice’s hand and bent over to kiss it.

  Peggy had always seen him as a huge and cuddly Saint Bernard, but tonight, as he spoke in that amazing English voice, he reminded her more of an Afghan hound.

  ‘Alice Stanhope,’ Peggy told him. ‘I found a job for her at the hospital.’

  The prince nodded. ‘That’s what I heard.’ He was a trifle peeved. He called Peggy his ‘liaison officer’ with the day-to-day proceedings of the hotel. She should have told him straightaway. The prince was no longer on good terms with the owner, Lucia Magnifico. She had been up here, making a fuss this afternoon, and left only just before the guests were due. Despite his apparent composure, Peggy knew he was frightened of Lucia and what she might do to get his rooms. He was especially scared when she arrived accompanied by her diminutive Armenian lawyer, poised at her heel like a beady-eyed Chihuahua.

  Lucia Magnifico wanted the prince out. She’d already had an architect prepare drawings to convert the top floor into seven separate rooms. Cairo was teeming with staff officers and civilian advisers, American businessmen and Australian purchasing officials: all of them loaded with their government’s money. They all wanted a place to stay. She was a woman of the world. Lucia knew that such men didn’t want big hotels or official accommodations, with a guard in the lobby to watch their comings and goings. They wanted a small discreet hideout, in a fashionable area near the river, a friendly, anonymous, comfortable pied-à-terre like this hotel. Lucia could no longer afford to let the ‘Russian poseur’ occupy the whole top floor, no matter what her foolish father may have promised back in peacetime.

  ‘Life must go on,’ Lucia had told him with simple directness. ‘I have to pay my bills.’ She was a slim woman who delighted in good jewellery and Paris dresses. She exemplified the fact that the Italians living in Cairo were the best-dressed and most sophisticated of the foreign contingents. It was in recognition of this that the Egyptian king surrounded himself with Italian courtiers. Everyone knew that the British were ugly, coarse and ill-dressed. Their soldiers – in huge baggy shorts, threadbare woollen sweaters and slouch hats – looked like circus clowns. Worst of all, as she’d told the prince that afternoon, they were always pleading poverty.

  Having said it, Lucia had looked down at her black silk dress and plucked a hair from it. She frowned. She should never have sat down on his sofa. She’d had enough of his horrid Abyssinian cats, and of his using precious hot water in the middle of the night, and trying to tune to Radio Moscow on his antiquated wireless set, and blowing fuses to black out all the lights in the building.

  The prince closed his eyes to repress the memory of this afternoon. He smiled at Peggy and at Alice. He liked having attractive women to his parties, although they held no attraction for him personally. And Peggy was an old friend. The rapport between them was based on the fact that they had both been living in Cairo before the war started. Robin Darymple was treated in the same way because he held a peacetime commission. They were real residents – permitted to call the prince Piotr – the others were just wartime visitors.

  Alice was swept away by a young staff officer who claimed to have met her in Alexandria. As the prince watched her go he turned to Peggy and in a more serious voice said, ‘Tell me how you met the alluring Alice Stanhope, darling.’ He offered her a brass bowl of pistachio nuts but didn’t bring it very near, knowing she would decline.

  ‘Her father is some kind of political adviser in the Gulf,’ said Peggy who had found out very little in the brief and hectic rides on a crowded bus to the Midan Ismail and then an even more crowded streetcar to the hospital. ‘Her mother got some wretched bug and had to come to Egypt. Mummy lives in Alex.’ The final part was in a passable imitation of Alice Stanhope’s proper English accent.

  Piotr gave a tiny smile to acknowledge the joke. ‘Yes, the mother is a well-known society hostess. The Stanhopes know everyone worth knowing.’ There was a note of envy in his voice. ‘Does Alice play bridge?’

  ‘I’ll ask her.’

  ‘We so need someone,’ he said plaintively.

  ‘You ask her, then.’

  ‘No, you. Don’t say for money,’ he said. ‘Just for the sheer pleasure of the game.’

  It was his conceit that he played bridge well. In fact he usually lost. Luckily he paid up with good grace. Had he not done so, Robin Darymple would have stopped coming. Darymple was a demon gambler and kept accounts in a small black notebook, worrying about whether he was making a profit.

  ‘I think it will all depend upon her boyfriend,’ said Peggy watching Alice as a group of young men gathered round her. ‘They see a lot of each other.’

  ‘Does he play bridge?’ said the prince.

  ‘Are we talking about the corporal?’ said Robin Darymple, who had learned in the mess how to listen to two or three conversations at once. He came closer. ‘A gormless fellow with baggy trousers? I saw him … It would make things damned awkward, spending an evening playing cards with an OR.’ Darymple made sure he didn’t share any social activities with ‘other ranks’, even female ones.

  ‘Why would it?’ said Peggy. ‘I thought the war was being fought to do away with class distinction and all that rubbish.’

  ‘Do you have soldiers and officers in the same wards at the hospital?’ said Piotr, who always liked to stir a dispute.

  ‘Corporals are worst of all,’ said Darymple, smiling provocatively. ‘They can’t hold their drink as well as the sergeants, and they lack the fawning subservience of the privates. I would never sit down for a game of bridge with a corporal.’

  ‘I hope he plays and beats you hollow,’ said Peggy.

  Darymple chortled.

  ‘What’s this I hear about you leaving us, Robin?’ the prince asked him.

  ‘Ah, that’s all very hush-hush, Piotr,’ said Darymple and lowered his voice. ‘I met an old chum in Shepheard’s bar last week. Toby Wallingford, RNVR, a very good pal. I thrashed him countless times at school; he says he still has the scars. Now the lucky brute has got himself lined up with some gangster outfit that chases the Hun way out in the blue. They raise a little hell and come back to town to raise hell again.’

  ‘It sounds very dangerous, Robin,’ said Peggy. She knew it was what any woman was expected to say when men were bragging. They were all like that: concerned with their little bits of coloured ribbon and their absurd egos. They had to tell you how brave they were, and it had to be done by means of infantile jokes. War seemed to bring out a man’s most tiresome side.

  The prince said, ‘We have their measure now, I think. We’ll stop them before they get very far. Benghazi is my bet.’

  ‘Yes, and I’m just shuffling bits of paper all day. It makes me livid to miss it all. And look at what those Eye-tie frogmen did last month; it’s all coming out now. Got right into Alex and blew the bottoms out of HMS Valiant and Queen Elizabeth too.’

  ‘Were they badly damaged?’

  ‘Damned right they were. The dark blue jobs are going through the motions of pretending the ships are in one piece – saluting the quarterdeck, raising the flags, and holding church services every Sunday – but the fact is that both those battleships are resting their hulls on the bottom of the harbour.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I’d heard,’ said the prince.

  ‘I’ve got to get into the fight soon,’ said Darymple reaching over to the bowl of nuts and sifting them to find good ones. ‘A chap has to have a decent gong if he wants a career in the postwar army. Wally’s outfit is my big chance.’ He put a nut into his mouth and crunched on it.

  ‘Congratulations, old boy,’ said the prince.

  ‘And I’d go up a rank immed
iately, that’s the drill for anyone accepted by one of those mobs; major.’

  ‘Splendid. I wish I was young enough –.’

  ‘Combined services: soldiers, sailors, and bloody airmen too, they tell me. My pal Wally is a sailor. But that’s the way the war is going. We’ve got to give them a taste of their own blitzkrieg games. That’s the way I see it.’

  ‘What will you do with your room?’ asked the ever-practical Peggy.

  ‘Steady on, old girl. Don’t pick over my carcass yet.’

  ‘I’ve put the new girl – Alice, I mean – into that room Lieutenant Anderson said he wanted kept for him. I’m frightened he’ll suddenly appear.’

  ‘Andy was in the Tobruk show,’ said the prince.

  ‘Tobruk?’ said Darymple. ‘That was a sticky do.’ Darymple did not admire one-time Sergeant Anderson and the way in which he’d earned a Military Medal, a commission and then the Military Cross in the course of twelve months’ fighting. More than once he’d found reason to give Anderson a blistering rocket. One lunchtime, here in the hotel dining room, he’d admonished the lieutenant for his appalling table manners. And the night before Andy went into the blue, Darymple had summoned the military police here to quell his noisy drunken bottle party. All kinds of riffraff had gone wandering through the Magnifico that night: singing lewdly on the stairs, vomiting in one of the amphorae and breaking the chain in the downstairs toilet. Darymple had brought that celebration to a sudden conclusion and bawled Anderson out in front of his pals.

  ‘Yes,’ said the prince. ‘He’s with armoured cars, and they are always at the very front. He was supporting the New Zealanders. They took Ed Duda and linked up with the garrison. Andy did one of his lunatic acts and took his cars forward without waiting for orders. He was one of the first ones to break through the perimeter.’ Blank-faced, the prince looked at Peggy and looked at Darymple again. Everyone knew how jealous he was of Anderson.

  ‘How do you know that?’ said Darymple petulantly. ‘None of the official communiqués said who broke through.’ He reached for a handful of black olives.

  ‘Andy owed me a fiver,’ explained the prince. ‘One of his chaps – a delicious young lieutenant – had to bring captured enemy documents back to GHQ Cairo. Andy told him to pop in to see me. He brought me a crate of Italian brandy and a whole Parmesan cheese captured from an Italian headquarters. Lovely cheese; it’s on these biscuits you’ve been eating. And the brandy is not too bad. They live well, even in the desert. The Italians keep a sense of proportion: I’ve always said so.’

  This aside was calculated to prove that the prince had not suffered at the hands of Lucia.

  ‘And there was a scribbled note from Andy to say we were quits. It took me about an hour to decipher his writing, but that’s what I made it. He’s a good fellow, Andy. But I don’t think he’ll be back in the Magnifico for a bit. He’s probably capturing Rommel single-handed by now. His confrere said Andy had been made up to captain – acting, temporary and unpaid – and his divisional commander has put him in for a DSO.’

  Darymple had been chewing his way through the olives. Now he straightened up to stifle a sigh of exasperation. The prince gave Peggy a little wink. Peggy smiled. Piotr was an unsurpassed troublemaker.

  ‘The flowers on your balcony are lovely, Piotr,’ Peggy said, to change the subject. ‘The little orange bush is doing well: the blossom gives off such a perfume. Cairo is so glorious at this time of year.’

  ‘Give me an English winter,’ said Darymple. ‘This weather is awful: neither one thing nor the other. I looked out of the window this morning and wondered why I wasn’t back home hunting.’

  ‘Cairo is Cairo,’ said the prince in that overstressed English voice. ‘Listen to its Babel. Breathe in and smell the hot wind off the desert. Where is your soul, Darymple? It’s not supposed to be a cut-price version of the English shires.’

  Peggy looked at him, never sure how much of what he said was a joke. ‘You said you wanted to talk about something special,’ she reminded him.

  ‘I don’t want everyone to know,’ said the prince, ‘just old pals.’ He looked around and decided that the threesome were not overheard. ‘My birthday. Wouldn’t it be splendid to dress up, go somewhere smart, and have a proper birthday celebration. Just a few old friends?’

  ‘When?’ said Peggy.

  ‘You’d give us a Russian meal?’ asked Darymple. Before committing himself one way or the other, he wanted to be quite sure that the prince was going to pay.

  ‘Perhaps a Russian dish or two,’ said the prince, who knew exactly how Darymple’s mind worked.

  ‘It’s a gorgeous idea,’ said Peggy. ‘I’ll make a list and we’ll all contribute equally to the cost.’

  The prince smiled at her, and they both watched Darymple frown. ‘That’s it then,’ said the prince. He liked Peggy; she was always quick to understand him. He touched her elbow gently to guide her away. ‘Perhaps I can ask you to come look at something in the kitchen?’ he said. ‘You’re always so clever about parties.’ He grabbed a bottle from a side table, filled her glass and then took her away from Darymple and towards his minuscule kitchen.

  Once inside, the prince closed the kitchen door and said, ‘Peggy, darling. I simply must talk to you.’

  ‘Whatever is it, Piotr?’ Piotr always contrived to look youthful, with his wavy hair and clear skin, but now the last rays of the sun flooded through the kitchen window to strike the side of his face. The pitiless light revealed his age. There were rings under his eyes and loose wrinkly flesh at his collar. His skin was pale, almost white, as if powdered. A lock of his wavy hair had fallen forward over his brow and his carefully plucked eyebrows lowered as he leaned forward to her. She wondered whether he was on drugs. Cairo was awash with drugs at present, and more and more Europeans were experimenting with them. She saw the results at the hospital.

  ‘Who was that officer, grilling you in the lobby the other night? I must know.’

  ‘Officer?’ She knew what he was talking about but she wanted a minute to think. ‘In the lobby? Here?’ She moved a tray of crackers – each decoratively topped with a sliver of cheese and a piece of anchovy – and made a space to put her glass down.

  ‘Yes. Officer in the lobby,’ he repeated. ‘You were showing him your passport.’

  ‘Oh, that was nothing. That was an old friend of mine. He wanted my passport number to put me on the embassy list.’

  ‘Embassy list? List for what?’

  She improvised. ‘He said he’d get me invited to the embassy parties.’

  ‘Are you telling me the truth, Peggy dear?’

  ‘Captain Marker – Billy Marker,’ she added inventing for him a first name. ‘I’ve known him for ages.’

  ‘He had Special Investigation Branch written all over him.’ And as another thought struck him, he said, ‘Why would an army captain be putting your name down for the embassy?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask him yourself,’ said Peggy. She hadn’t wanted to lie about her encounter with Captain Marker, but one thing would lead to another and she didn’t want to start explaining to Piotr about Solomon and the houseboat and Karl’s money. It was all private, and she wanted to keep it like that. At least for the time being.

  ‘Captain William Marker,’ said Prince Piotr, as if committing the name to memory. ‘I’ll make enquiries about him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They are trying to kill me, Peggy,’ he said in a desperate whisper. He leaned over the sink to look out of the window, as if there might be someone hanging on to it, eavesdropping. Anywhere but Cairo that might have been funny. But in Cairo the chances of someone hanging precariously from the sill of a top-storey window to eavesdrop was not to be lightly dismissed.

  ‘Kill you? Piotr, really!’ she said reproachfully.

  He reached up to get a decorated tin from the shelf. She could see now that he wore a tight corset. She’d suspected it in the past but as he stood on tiptoe it became obvious. He emptie
d the tin on to the draining board. It was mostly ancient breadcrumbs and some flour but there were tiny chips of wood and a broken piece of glass, rounded to suggest it was a sliver from a broken bottle. He sifted through the crumbs and flour with his fingertips until he found some other bits of rubbish: a coarse strand of jute, unidentifiable beadlike blobs, and fragments of cardboard. ‘These things have come out of the bread,’ said the prince. ‘Now that I know what’s going on, I’ve told my man to slice up every loaf carefully, and put everything he finds into this tin. I’m keeping it as evidence.’

  ‘From your bread?’

  ‘Suppose I’d swallowed that,’ he said using his fingertips with obvious distaste to separate the splinter of glass from the heap.

  ‘Everyone finds things in the bread from time to time, Piotr. Egypt is like that. No one is trying to kill you.’

  ‘I thought you’d be more perceptive than that, Peggy. You being a nurse.’ He was sulky, like a small child.

  ‘Who would want to kill you, Piotr? And why?’

  ‘All kinds of people,’ he said vaguely as if regretting confiding in her. He pushed the ‘evidence’ back into its tin and replaced it on the shelf. Then he opened the door and without another word went back to his guests.

  He was angry, and she wondered if he’d now added her to his list of suspects. She waited a moment to catch her breath then she sipped her drink and spent a moment looking at the flowers and plants on the patio. On the other side of the door she could hear the frantic conversation and laughter and the music from the record player. Was she going mad, or were the people around her going mad? Everyone seemed to be obsessed with spies. She didn’t arrive at any satisfactory answer. When her drink was finished she too went back to the party and soon drifted to the door.