City of Gold

by Len Deighton

  ‘Well, it sounded just like the photo plane,’ said Piggy. He sipped his drink, his hand trembling slightly as he held the mug to his mouth. Wallingford glanced back inside the tent; Andy was staring at him, as if blaming him for whatever misfortunes beset them.

  Wallingford went back and sat down to drink the rest of his whisky. ‘I needed that.’

  ‘The Indians must have caught that lot,’ said Piggy. ‘I suppose their camouflage wasn’t good enough.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Wallingford. He realised that Piggy needed a reason to hope he wouldn’t be bombed in the same fashion.

  Anderson said nothing; he just went on sipping his whisky as if he were all alone.

  Lunch with the other officers was a wake. They’d all been in the line too long. Their limited stamina had almost been used up. The loss of a popular commanding officer had dealt their morale a savage blow. It simply wasn’t fair, they seemed to be saying. They’d chased Rommel across Africa to El Agheila, and just when they were beginning to think the job was done, Rommel had given them a resounding counterblow and chased them back. Here they had stopped, but that was more because Rommel had paused than because they had halted him. Now Wallingford saw around him an unexpressed but all-pervading feeling that they would not be able to hold the Germans when the next big attack came, as assuredly it would as soon as Rommel had built up his strength once more.

  There was little conversation. Flies tortured them all through the meal. At this time of year it was impossible to get through a daytime meal without eating dozens of them. No matter how much one waved a hand over a morsel of food the flies would remain upon it. Most of the men smoked but the smoke did not deter the flies. One of the officers draped a piece of netting over his head and ate from his plate inside his little tent, but even he consumed his ration of flies.

  The afternoon went past slowly. The cars had been out on patrol four nights in a row, and there were few men who didn’t want to spend the afternoon sleeping and girding themselves for another night of activity. When dinnertime came, Wallingford ate with his own people. He was surprised to discover that he felt more comfortable with them.

  ‘I was glad to get out of there,’ said Wallingford to Percy that night as his two trucks, loaded with the men of the IDT, crawled westward along the desert track. ‘That crowd are battle-happy; they were beginning to give me the creeps.’

  It was dark. The corporal who’d helped them find the path through the minefield disappeared from sight as he went down the other side of a rocky mound to return home. They were free to speak. Wallingford climbed into the back of the truck and said, ‘From now on, we leave all the talking to Percy. If we are challenged no one else is to say a word. Understand?’

  ‘When we get through the German line –’ said one youngster.

  ‘Will you people listen to me,’ said Wallingford testily. ‘We are not going through the bloody German line. We are going to a little village just along this track. Chances are we won’t even get a sniff of the Germans. From what I saw on the map, there are miles and bloody miles of empty desert between the box we just left and the nearest German. Where we are going is only a mile or so from here, and Percy knows the route like the back of his hand. Don’t you, Percy?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I do.’

  ‘What are we after, sir?’

  Wallingford sighed. ‘Don’t you stupid bastards ever listen?’

  ‘I forgot.’

  ‘Optical goods. Percy’s store of optical goods: binoculars, cameras, range finders: the sort of stuff they fight to buy from us in Cairo. This is the big one. Got it?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Wallingford always said ‘This is the big one’, but when the accounting was done, the share-out was never the sort of big one for which they all kept on hoping.

  ‘There are some huts on the track … just ahead of us there, sir.’

  At the end of the nineteenth century, when this region was first surveyed by Europeans, there had been almost two hundred dwellings in the village now shown on the army’s maps as Bir el Trigh: the village on the track. Even in the nineteen twenties, it had been a watering place on the long east–west desert trail. But as the wells failed one by one, the population shrank. The little mud huts tumbled into dust. It became no more than a campsite for travelling caravans and then, when the fighting came, not even that.

  It was Percy who went forward on foot to take a look. The others got out of the trucks, crouched in the sand, and waited. Some of the houses were sound, and Percy approached the place with great care. It was the sort of place that both sides sometimes chose for observation, or for intermittently manned outposts.

  Only when Percy came back along the track and waved both arms in an agreed signal was there a concerted sigh of relief. The engines of the trucks started and they drove on into the open rectangle of flat hard earth that had once been the centre of a thriving village. Some of the mud buildings still bore traces of the old days. There were shop signs and enamel advertising plates still embedded into the walls of a house where goods had once been traded and money exchanged.

  By local standards it was a grand house, rising a few feet higher than its surroundings and with a low wall that had once protected a small date plantation.

  Percy knew the place. Before he had deserted, during his time as a lieutenant on Rommel’s staff, he’d come here as an aide to a colonel from the quartermaster’s department of the high command. He’d never forgotten that visit.

  ‘This way,’ said Percy authoritatively. He pushed against a sheet of corrugated iron and climbed on a low sill to gain entrance to one of the houses. ‘There’ll be no booby traps,’ said Percy. And to demonstrate his confidence he kicked at the empty boxes and old German-language newspapers that littered the earth floor. He led them to one of the back rooms, and cleared the rubbish away with the toe of his boot. Then he kicked the loose soil to reveal a straight line.

  ‘Here,’ said Percy. He reached down, found a metal ring and heaved at the floor until a square section of it came loose and a heavy wooden panel swivelled on a creaky hinge. A trapdoor. ‘Where is the flashlight?’

  A big lantern was held over the black void. Its beam moved over the sheer edges of the pit, but it revealed nothing at the bottom.

  ‘There’s nothing there,’ said Wallingford, voicing what Percy for a moment feared.

  ‘It is all right,’ said Percy. ‘I will show you. It is all hidden. There is no ladder. Hold the rope, so I can lower myself down.’

  The men watched while the invincible Percy abseiled down into the darkness. When his head was about fifteen feet below floor level his feet touched the uneven earth.

  ‘Now give me the light,’ said Percy.

  They tied it to the rope and let it down. He switched it on and Percy, with head bent low, moved out of sight along a crudely cut cellar, which sloped steeply downwards.

  ‘Is it there?’ called Wallingford anxiously. There was no answer. ‘Do you hear me, Percy?’

  From Percy there came a yelp of fear – ‘Scheisse!’ – and then some more colourful oaths in rapid German. Then Percy’s flashlight was extinguished and there came a sound that might have been Percy being knocked unconscious, except that Percy came back along the tunnel holding the broken light and asking for another.

  ‘What the Hell’s happening?’ said Wallingford.

  ‘A snake,’ said Percy. ‘Two or three snakes, in fact. They moved too fast. I smashed the light. I am sorry.’

  ‘What sort of snake?’

  ‘I did not ask it for its papers,’ said Percy irritably. ‘Come down here and see for yourself.’

  Wallingford had no great desire to go down into the cellar, but his authority was at stake. He held the rope and scrambled down in the same abseil style.

  He couldn’t see the light. ‘Where are you, Percy?’

  ‘It is all right,’ called Percy. ‘I have found the generator.’

  Wallingford very gingerly reached out with his hand
s into the darkness, touching the roof of the tunnel and testing its dimensions. Then, moving very cautiously, he went in the direction that Percy had taken.

  ‘Come. It is good,’ said Percy. His voice echoed softly. Encouraged by Percy’s words, Wallingford bowed his head and proceeded down the ever steepening slope, looking all the time for any uneven piece of earth that might conceal a snake.

  His eyes became accustomed to the gloom. There was a dull yellow light coming from the flashlight Percy was using at the far end of the low tunnel.

  Percy had put the light on the ground to produce a golden glow from the hard red earth that formed the tunnel walls. By the time Wallingford reached him he’d opened the door of a fuse panel fixed to the wall. He fiddled with the switches and fuses and then Percy went back to bend over a small portable generator. ‘Stand clear. This should do it,’ he said.

  He gave the starting handle a fierce tug but the engine didn’t catch. He tried again and again. On the fifth attempt the engine fired. There was a flurry of smoke and a clamour of sound in the confined space as the engine came to life.

  ‘You’ll suffocate us,’ said Wally.

  ‘Naw,’ said Percy and laughed. ‘You will see.’ He opened the door of the fuse panel again and pulled the main switch.

  A hundred or more little red worms, dangling from the roof, turned orange and yellow, and then the filaments glowed brightly so that the whole place was lit up. ‘Wow!’ said Wallingford. It was a surprising sight. The little entrance tunnel had brought them down to another larger one. Its rocky sides were worn shiny. It was well over twenty feet high and in places twice as wide as that. And it snaked out of sight to both the right and left of them.

  ‘This was the bed of the underground river that fed the wells,’ said Percy. ‘Now it is just a dried-out cave.’

  ‘You left optical gear down here?’

  By way of answer, Percy walked across and touched one of the packing cases. They were piled one upon the other. With German practicality they had all been stacked so the labels were visible and right way up.

  ‘I mean, will it still be in good condition?’

  ‘Perfect! The air down here is cool and dry. Our captain was an old man, a mining engineer in civil life; he made no mistakes about such things.’

  ‘Why hasn’t it been moved back behind the lines?’ said Wally, who wanted to hear the answer repeated.

  ‘I told you. They were Twenty-first Panzer Division. They all died at Sidi Rezegh, fighting the South African Brigade. That’s when I got the South African paybook and started walking east to make my separate peace. The colonel I’d been escorting went back to Berlin. Believe me, I am the only one left. The paperwork went: everything. There is not another living soul in Africa who knows all this stuff is here.’

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ said Wallingford. Using his flashlight, he went close to read the labels on the sides of the packing cases.

  Percy followed him. ‘I have committed most of the inventory to my memory.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ said Wallingford, and he stroked the packing cases lovingly.

  ‘We won’t be able to take all of it,’ said Percy. ‘You will have to decide what is the easiest to dispose of.’

  ‘Hamburg,’ said Wallingford reading from the labels. ‘Zeiss-Ikon, Dresden; Mauser-Werke. A-G Oberndorf; Schneider Optik, Kreuznach; Voigtlander, Leitz binoculars. A microscope. Look, a case of movie cameras!’ He was excited. These were magical names for him. These were the words that would work their spell on the customers who coveted these expensive toys. ‘Yes, the air is very dry, Percy. Very dry indeed.’ And Wallingford laughed shrilly, and with a note of hysteria, so that for a moment Percy was alarmed.

  ‘What a tragedy that men should be killing each other,’ said Wallingford, his mood suddenly changing to one of tense-voiced drama. ‘What madness! Man should be building the things the world needs – bridges, ships, roads and houses – not tearing them apart. That’s why I got out of it.’

  Percy was not listening. He’d heard Wallingford’s mawkish rationalisations for deserting, and taking up his criminal life, many times before. But Wallingford was not the sort of man who let his emotions take over for very long.

  ‘Damn, there is a fortune down here, Percy. An absolute bloody fortune. All we have to do is to get it to Cairo.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Percy soberly. ‘That is all we have to do.’

  The two men did not climb back up through the trapdoor. They followed the winding course of the underground riverbed until they found the place where this wonderland of optical stores had been delivered and unloaded by the Germans.

  At the side of the natural tunnel a big wooden door had been fitted. They opened the bolts and forced the lock. Then, with both men using all their strength and weight, they levered the door open. The sudden draft of night air, deflected by the walls of the wadi, was cool and refreshing. Here was where the underground river had once emerged. They clambered outside and up the side of the wadi. Even from this close, it was not so easy to see the doorway. Now Wallingford saw why Percy had wanted to enter through the house interior and the trapdoor. It would have been a demanding task to find the door at night. Great skill had been brought to camouflaging the entrance.

  ‘Clever bastards, those Krauts,’ said Wallingford.

  ‘Jawohl,’ said Percy.

  Wallingford needed a moment to take it in. He sat down and lit a cigarette, carefully shielding the flame in his hands. Once lit he puffed smoke and gave a sigh of appreciation. ‘Will Rommel get there?’ He picked up some small stones and threw them into the wadi, trying to hit a small rock.

  ‘To Cairo? Probably.’

  ‘You seem damned confident,’ said Wallingford.

  ‘I was on his staff.’ Percy had been the lowest of the low – a signals leutnant – but he was proud of that appointment.

  ‘Yes, you told me.’

  ‘He knows every move the British make. Your generals decide to send a tank brigade to somewhere, and Rommel knows the destination before the tank commanders are told they are moving. As a field commander, Rommel is nothing special – he’s not a Manstein, not a Guderian – but when you know what your enemy is doing, you are likely to win. Yes, Rommel will get to Cairo. And beyond.’

  ‘You know all about it,’ said Wallingford, without showing much interest. He kept throwing the small stones down into the wadi. At last one of them hit the rock and bounced. Wallingford waited for Percy to say something about his marksmanship, but Percy was lost in his thoughts. ‘Yes, I know all about it. One day I will write about it. I will tell your stupid British generals who was their “Rommel’s spy” in Cairo.’

  Watching the stone roll down the slope, Wallingford was struck by a sudden fear. ‘Can we get the trucks down into this wadi?’

  ‘We did it once,’ said Percy, but there was a touch of doubt in his voice. He never said anything without the tacit implication that German skills were exceptional. ‘We’ll have to walk back now, and find the place where the sides of the wadi give access.’

  Wallingford tossed away the rest of his stones and got to his feet. ‘Better put out the cigarette,’ said Percy.

  Wallingford ground it underfoot; Percy used the toe of his boot to bury it. Then they walked along the wadi edge. Only in such remote regions of the earth does the clear air provide such a display of stars. To the north there was an occasional flicker of light along the horizon: artillery fire, too far away to be audible. As they walked, Wallingford peered into the gloom ahead, nervous of snakes and booby traps. Suddenly he grabbed Percy’s arm and brought him to a halt. Percy looked at him quizzically. Wallingford nodded to where someone was stretched full length in the scrub that followed the wadi’s edge.

  ‘It is nothing,’ said Percy. ‘Just an old corpse.’

  He walked over to it and kicked it. It was little more than a bundle of bones. The dry heat had desiccated the flesh like a mummy from the tombs. The face was staring straight up to the sky: eyes
missing, skin darkened and stretched tight enough to open the mouth. The clothes were bleached and ragged. Only the high-laced army boots identified the man as a German.

  ‘A long time ago by the look of it,’ said Percy. He kicked the body again, staring down at it, as if half-expecting it to disprove his words and move.

  ‘You’re a callous bastard, Percy.’

  ‘Yes, I am. That is why you need me. The rest of them are uneducated, unmotivated and useless to you.’

  ‘We need each other,’ said Wallingford warmly. He was lucky to have found the German deserter and recruited him into his gang. The others didn’t approve, but it had been a wise decision.

  ‘I think not,’ said Percy. ‘I might leave you after this one.’

  A feeling of alarm came upon Wallingford. Percy was his right-hand man. Percy was the man who made ever thing go right when the others were trying to muddle-through. Wallingford remained outwardly calm. ‘What will you do?’

  ‘I will push on towards Palestine … perhaps India. I would like to get well away from the fighting. With a bit of money I could set myself up in business.’

  ‘What sort of business?’

  ‘Germany cannot win the war, not now that the USA is fighting us. Germany is finished, and I am too old to go home and watch an occupation army strutting about in my homeland.’

  ‘There’s a lot more money to come,’ said Wallingford, determined to hang on to Percy at all costs. ‘Another year and you can clear off with a fortune.’

  ‘It becomes more and more dangerous,’ said Percy. ‘The military police are bound to get us one day; these men of yours are stupid. They drink too much and talk too much.’

  ‘Bigger and bigger convoys from America will bring phenomenal loot to the Canal Zone, Percy. You’ve seen the American tanks and trucks; that’s just the start. Now that the Yanks are in the war they’ll be sending better and better equipment. I want to concentrate our efforts on the docks; that’s where the real money will be made next year. We’ll be able to cut out all this scavenging on the battlefield.’