City of Gold

by Len Deighton

  ‘The pyramids? Bullshit. They were tombs for kings, Moggy, you know that.’

  ‘This bloke reckoned they were enormous cubes of stone, buried deep in the ground. He said if anyone started digging down, they’d find that the pyramids were only little corners of them, sticking up out of the sand.’

  Powell stole a glance away from the road and tried to imagine how much stone that might mean concealed under the earth. ‘Bleeding Hell!’

  ‘And I’ll tell you something else, Sandy. In the time of Jesus Christ people were coming here to see those pyramids, because they were already two thousand five hundred years old.’

  ‘Where did you get to know all this stuff?’ said Powell. This hint of respect for learning spurred Mogg to provide more.

  ‘And that Sphinx – it’s got the head of a woman, the feet of a lion, and the wings of a bird. She asked riddles and bit off the head of all those who didn’t give her the right answer.’

  ‘Sounds just like my old woman,’ said Powell and laughed to show that he didn’t mean it.

  The sky was like a horrific wound. The sun turned blood red and dribbled away into lacerations slashed through the bruised clouds. Soon it was pitch dark. Only the tiny red and white convoy lights of the vehicles could be seen moving through the darkness. Driving in such conditions was stressful. Out of the night there suddenly came pedestrians and camels and horse-drawn carts. These scares grew more numerous as they neared the suburbs of Cairo. None of the local traffic carried any kind of light. From time to time Powell swerved and shouted abuse.

  Mogg said, ‘You knew there would be no mail, Sandy. You knew that right from the beginning. If you start kicking up a fuss, Wally will bloody castrate you. I mean it. Wally may have a posh voice but he can turn nasty. Very nasty. Last month I saw him floor Percy when he answered him back. Just one wallop,’ said Mogg in a voice that did not hide a large measure of admiration. ‘That bloody Percy took it right on the jaw. His eyes closed and down he went: boom. You should have seen it!’

  ‘Percy is a Hun,’ said Powell sullenly. He detested Percy.

  ‘Yeah, well, Percy speaks languages, don’t he? And he’s a cold-blooded bugger. I’ve seen him go crawling right over near the Hun when Wally has got his mind set on some really pricey piece of loot. If Wally ever has to choose between you and Percy, you’ve had it, chum. Don’t make no mistake about that.’

  ‘I hate bloody Huns. They started it all, didn’t they?’

  ‘In our little show we’re all equal, you know that.’

  ‘Except for Wally,’ said Powell.

  ‘Yes, of course, except for Wally. Wally is the boss, like you said.’

  They drove on for a long time. They were both tired and sick of the desert. ‘A cube has three sides,’ said Sandy Powell suddenly.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A cube has three sides, you simple-minded bugger.’

  ‘What’s your drift, Sandy?’

  ‘Those pyramids have four sides but the corner of a cube has only three…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That bloke in the depot you were on about. Pyramids from another planet: bullshit!’

  Mogg laughed. ‘You take everything literally, Sandy. That’s your trouble, my old mate. You’ve got no poetry in your soul.’

  Once they got to Doqqi they relaxed. This was Cairo, and for the time being, home. There was a cop directing traffic at the English Bridge. He held up the cars coming the other way and waved them on. ‘We’re right on time,’ said Powell. ‘Slowly now. Look for a flashlight signal.’

  ‘There’s Wally.’

  Wallingford was on the roadside at the side of the bridge where it joined Gezira Island. He was waving a small flashlight. Even in the darkness he was easy to spot in his starched white RN shirt.

  ‘Good evening, commander,’ said Powell.

  Wallingford swung up on the running board and leaned into the driver’s cab. ‘Did you get everything?’

  ‘It all went sweetly, sir.’

  ‘The machine guns?’

  ‘We paid him with booze and he was as happy as a sand-boy.’

  ‘And no trouble on the road?’

  ‘We gave your tame MP sergeant the money, and he did the rubber stamps and stuff. On the road there were a couple of spot checks, but the red caps seemed happy with the paperwork.’

  ‘Have you got your revolvers?’

  ‘You bet,’ said Mogg. Powell nodded.

  ‘Load them and strap them on. I’m going in there bareassed. I don’t think this one will turn nasty, but you can’t always tell.’

  ‘Righto.’

  ‘And keep an eye on that wog houseboy of his. He’s too bloody polite to be real.’ The two soldiers said nothing. Wallingford was often nervous like this when there was a tricky deal to do. They waited, and Wallingford smiled and said, ‘Okay. Keep going, Sandy. You know where the houseboats are. It becomes a track but the earth is firm; you’ll get through okay. I’ll walk ahead to show you where we’re going. Park her well up under the trees near the moorings. Then I’ll want you to bring the three Italian guns onto the boat. Have you got a tyre lever or a bayonet or something, to open the crates?’

  ‘Yep,’ said Powell.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Wallingford corrected him. ‘I want to put on a show for this blighter. If he buys those Eye-tie guns I’ll make sure you chaps get a little something extra.’

  ‘Right, sir. Thank you, sir,’ said both soldiers.

  ‘And pull yourself together. Button up and try and look like real soldiers. If he invites you on board, stay off the booze no matter what he offers you. You’ll need all your wits about you.’ He jumped down and strode off.

  ‘Who is this bugger he’s so nervous about?’ Mogg asked Powell once Wallingford was ahead of them and out of earshot.

  ‘A gun collector,’ said Powell. ‘A museum bloke, Wally says.’

  Mogg laughed scornfully. ‘Wally and his bloody yarns. What will he come up with next? On one of these bloody houseboats? Museum geezer? That’s the bloody limit.’ He laughed again without putting too much energy into it.

  ‘And what’s in the other crate?’ asked Solomon. He dropped down into the chintz-covered sofa with a happy sigh. He loved making deals and was never in a hurry to complete one. Lieutenant Wallingford, DSO, RNVR, relaxed and smiling, and sitting well back in the best armchair, was equally happy to take his time. Only the two soldiers on the upper deck were impatient for the evening’s business to conclude.

  The City of Gold’s drawing room was cheaply and elaborately furnished in a mix of styles that Wallingford described as like a chorus-girl’s country cottage. The curtains were closed and the light through the heavy lampshades was golden. Wallingford eyed Solomon with that dispassionate interest that a patient might show for someone with whom he was sharing a dentist’s waiting room. And just as two patients in a waiting room might share nothing but the prospect of pain, so did these two men show no hurry to get to the point. ‘The other crate?’ said Wallingford, wide-eyed and supercilious as if seeing it for the first time. ‘Oh that. They shouldn’t have brought that one in here,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t interest you. It’s something for me.’

  Solomon looked at him: this pale-faced English fellow with his long wavy hair. He looked like a girl, thought Masri. How he hated the English. He tried to decide whether this casual dismissal of the third crate was part of Wallingford’s artful sales talk. He decided to ignore it. ‘We haven’t talked about numbers,’ said Solomon. ‘How many of these pieces are there?’

  ‘There is a whole warehouse of this stuff. Captured last year in the big advance. The Germans didn’t bother saving any of the ordnance from Italian armouries.’ He stopped abruptly and sipped his drink. He’d almost added that the German lack of interest was due to the difference in the calibre of their standard small arms, but he didn’t want to get into all the complications and failings of Italian ammunition. ‘We are talking hundreds,’ added Wallingford.

>   ‘Very well,’ said Solomon, ‘then let’s go back to the Modello Thirty-seven.’ Two Breda machine guns had been set up on the floor of the houseboat’s drawing room. They seemed absurdly big, dwarfing the coffee table and the sofa. ‘Neither of them is new,’ said Solomon and he stroked the barrel of the Modello 37 which stood higher because of the massive tripod upon which the gun was mounted.

  ‘Straight from the factory,’ insisted Wallingford. They’d already been through this. ‘Every gun is tested by the army before being crated and shipped. Apart from the test firing, they are new: brand new. I have the dockets; every gun is numbered.’ Wallingford took another sip of whisky. ‘It’s a beautiful gun. That’s why the Italians have put them in their tanks and planes. Muzzle velocity: two thousand six hundred feet per second.’

  ‘Yes, better than that other piece of junk,’ said Solomon indicating the other machine gun: a Breda Modello 30.

  ‘It all depends on what you like,’ said Wallingford calmly. ‘The Modello Thirty fires five hundred rounds per minute, and it’s only half the weight.’

  ‘And only half the range, and only six point five millimetres,’ said Solomon. But he picked it up and considered it. ‘No stopping power, the six point five.’

  ‘A gunner can keep a very low profile behind it,’ said Wallingford. ‘That’s the advantage of the bipod: he lies flat. Also, it’s not too heavy: in Abyssinia the Italians were even firing them from the hip.’

  ‘And in Abyssinia the dust got into the oil and wore them out in no time,’ said Solomon. ‘And there were troubles with vibration and with scattering of the aimed shot.’

  Wallingford smiled.

  Solomon said, ‘I’ll show you a copy of the official Italian report that went to Rome in 1936. Can you read Italian?’

  What a serious fellow this one was, thought Wallingford. He wasn’t like an Arab, and he wasn’t like a European. These Palestinian Jews were sober people. ‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Wallingford, ‘I’ve got paperwork up to here.’ He touched his eyebrows with the edge of his flattened hand. ‘Just give me another slug of that rotgut. Is it local?’

  Despite himself Solomon grinned at Wallingford’s cool nerve. ‘It’s the best scotch in this town, and you know it.’ He got the bottle from the cupboard and put it on the side table where Wallingford was sitting. Then he sat down, but this time at the end of the sofa: closer to his guest. It was a gesture that revealed Solomon’s impatience, and its significance was not lost on Wallingford.

  Solomon wanted to be blasé. He’d been determined not to ask him to open the third crate. It was the oldest trick in the world to bring along something that you said you didn’t want to sell. And yet he had the feeling that Wallingford was as determined a bluffer as he was himself.

  ‘Neither gun is any good for what I want,’ said Solomon after a long silence.

  Wallingford shrugged. ‘I don’t know what you want them for.’ He poured himself a tall measure of whisky. ‘Got any ice?’

  Solomon yelled, ‘Yusef! Ice! And a cold beer.’

  The servant brought ice in a glass bucket and a light ale in a fine cut-glass tumbler. He remained impassive, and yet he was surprised that Solomon had succumbed. He seldom drank alcohol and had never before touched it during negotiations of any kind.

  ‘Very well. Let’s see the other one,’ said Solomon.

  ‘It’s not –’

  ‘Show me!’

  Wallingford heaved himself to his feet, went across the room, and stooped down to open the third crate. It was difficult not to admire the beautifully made boxes in which the Italians shipped their guns. He opened the lid and reached into the sawdust and proudly brought out a smaller machine gun with a polished wooden stock and air-cooling holes in the metal jacket of the barrel.

  ‘A Beretta Thirty-eight!’ said Solomon. ‘I knew it, you bastard.’ He chuckled with satisfaction rather than with merriment and couldn’t take his eyes from the machine gun. He held out both hands to take it.

  Wallingford didn’t pass him the gun. He looked down at it. Mogg and Powell had done it all exactly as he wanted. Good chaps. He’d specified that this gun should be slightly newer and cleaner than the other two. It shone like a jewel. It was a lovely gun. He handed it to Solomon. ‘Take a look.’

  The Beretta was quite different from the other two machine guns, which men fired while seated or flat on the ground. This Beretta was a submachine gun, the sort of weapon a man used on his feet. Solomon was a weaponry aficionado: he handled the gun as a mother might nurse a newborn baby. He no longer tried to hide his passion. ‘This is a Tullio Marengoni design,’ said Solomon.

  Wallingford nodded, although he had in fact never heard of Tullio Marengoni.

  ‘This is a handmade gun. Look at the machining. Look at the wooden stock. It’s beautiful. Beautiful.’

  ‘Nine millimetre,’ said Wallingford. ‘And I’ll deliver them anywhere you want them.’

  ‘Palestine?’

  ‘Anywhere you want them.’

  ‘Could you get me five hundred of them?’

  ‘But of course. More.’

  Solomon smiled. ‘Hallet el-baraka. Hallet el-baraka.’ Let blessings truly descend.

  Wallingford’s cosmopolitan activities left him well equipped to handle such Arabic pleasantries. ‘Mabrouk aleik.’ The blessing be on you! he said.

  9

  ‘I like them. I think those two are the nicest people staying in the Magnifico,’ said Alice Stanhope. ‘I hope they come soon.’ She looked at her watch. Then she looked at the man she knew as Bert Cutler and smiled. It was a glorious smile, the sort of shy dreamy smile that a woman in love saves for the man she adores. Was it possible that she could fall in love with a man she’d only just met? The answer was yes.

  The smile seemed to be lost on him as he used the strainer and carefully poured tea for both of them. Ross was still a corporal. He’d taken advantage of this spell of warm weather to go jacketless, using his own khaki shirt with its corporal’s stripes. They were sitting in the back garden of Ashraf’s Garden, a tearoom on Sharia Ibrahim Pasha, opposite the entrance to Ezbekiya Gardens. It was crowded; it always was at this time of day. The dozens of office buildings used by the British army were closed during the heat of the afternoon. Everyone found somewhere to doze until teatime, and then they sought cooler places like this to drink hot milky English tea with cakes. The people Alice said she liked so much were Sayed and Zeinab el-Shazli, the two young Egyptians.

  ‘No reason to be any other way,’ said Ross sardonically. ‘They’re rich and young and beautiful.’

  ‘I know you are my superior,’ said Alice diffidently. ‘But there is a lot you don’t understand about Egypt … about how things are in Egypt.’

  ‘So enlighten me.’ He poured milk into her tea before handing it to her. He hadn’t asked her if she wanted milk; that wasn’t his style.

  She would have preferred lemon in it, but she took the tea from him gratefully. ‘The Shazlis are caught in the middle. Most Egyptians are penniless fellahin, slaving in the fields on a starvation diet. A rich Egyptian might own a hundred or so feddans of fertile land –’

  ‘Feddan?’

  ‘Just over an acre. An Egyptian with one hundred feddans will have big cars, holidays on the French Riviera and dozens of servants. His children will be brought up by English nannies and French governesses so they speak French and English fluently and perfectly. Some families here own a thousand feddans of fertile land, which give them untold riches. But the Shazlis are not from such a family. He was just an army officer: socially that’s not much. They are probably the children of some middle class merchant who clawed his way out of the gutter. They are not peasants. To speak English and French shows how hard they have worked, not what kind of nannies they had. But people like the Shazlis would never be received in the houses of the rich Egyptians. Never!’

  ‘I see,’ he said. If only he could take her with him. She totally eclipsed every woman he’d eve
r met. She was beautiful, yet shy. She was eternally reticent, yet she knew so much. What a wicked twist of fate that he’d met her at a time like this.

  ‘Life is not easy for them,’ said Alice. ‘The war has isolated them.’

  ‘Isolated them?’

  ‘Before the war such Egyptians clung to the British coattails. Now they see that what is good for Britain is not necessarily good for Egypt. Rich Egyptians don’t have to worry: they can go abroad and do what they like. But people like the Shazlis are worried and bewildered.’

  ‘By what?’

  ‘By a war they do not understand. Worried by the wartime slogans and claims of the British, on the one hand, and of the ranting and raving of all the different Egyptian nationalists.’

  ‘You are seeing a lot of the Shazlis?’

  ‘I like to talk to them. I’m trying to brush up my Arabic and they are very patient.’

  ‘Well, top marks, Alice. Your guess about the Shazlis fits in with what Marker dug up from the files. The father is a well-known anti-British agitator.’

  ‘That’s difficult to believe. They are both so polite and gentle.’

  ‘Agitator perhaps isn’t the word. He writes Let’s-get-rid-of-the-British diatribes in the newspapers and journals.’

  Alice smiled at him. ‘Oh, they all do that, Bert. If I was Egyptian I’d probably be writing them too.’

  ‘I can believe it,’ he said feelingly. He’d encountered the firmness of her views. On some subjects, such as British monarchy, she was unyielding in her allegiance. For Egypt’s King Farouk she had only contempt. For the Egyptians she had a special sympathy and fondness. He didn’t find it difficult to imagine her born again as an Egyptian nationalist. ‘Are they practising Muslims?’

  ‘They’re certainly not Christians. But they compromise in the way that all Muslims of their age and class have to do.’

  ‘For instance?’