City of the Sun

by Juliana Maio

  “I’m sure the Sudan will just be a temporary solution until things calm down,” he said. “When are you planning to leave?”

  “My parents don’t tell me much, only that it will be soon.”

  “It might not be all that soon. There may be a transportation strike. First it was the bus and tram unions, now the railway workers are threatening to strike, too.”

  She shrugged and sat up. “We’ll get there by car if we have to.”

  “I have an idea,” he said dreamily. “I’m going to show you around the city and make you fall in love with it so that you won’t go to the Sudan. You have the right to make your own choices, you know,” he argued. “My father thought I was a complete loony for coming here, but I came!”

  She looked away. He did not understand. How could he?

  He must have picked up on her change of mood because he pulled her back down toward him and said softly, “Maya, I don’t want you out of my sight. I’m just plain selfish, forgive me. Let’s not talk about this anymore. Tonight is our night, right?”

  She thought for a moment and smiled. “Yes, it is. Tonight is our night.” As she said the words, she could feel a lightness replacing the wave of anxiety that had passed through her a moment earlier. She inched closer, basking in the intimacy. He kissed the tip of her nose, and then their lips met for another long, slow kiss. When they stopped, he brushed a lock of hair from her eyes and caressed her face.

  “You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,” he murmured.

  “Liar!”

  “Nope. It’s true,” he asserted. “And you know you’re beautiful.”

  She accepted the compliment with a little smile. She thought of herself as pretty, not beautiful, and vividly remembered the day she’d studied her face in a mirror for a very long time, and, deep in her eyes, she’d seen her soul reflected in them. She’d only been thirteen at the time, but she’d known then there was beauty in her. She put her head on his chest and listened to the sound of his heartbeat. What a luxury it was to kiss and talk with this man all night. “You’re a good kisser, you know?” she said.

  “Is this coming from an expert?”

  “Maybe,” she teased.

  “Better than Jean-Jacques?” He pronounced the name with mock disdain again.

  “Maybe.” She raised her head and traced his lips with a finger. “Tell me about your ex-girlfriend. Did you love her?”

  He straightened up and looked at the sky as he pondered the question. “I don’t know … I thought I loved her, but I think I talked myself into it. We had been going steady for two and a half years and she wanted to get married. I thought it was the right thing to do,” he said, shaking his head. “All I can tell you is that a month before the wedding we had dinner with her parents to go over the plans—you know, she came from a wealthy family from the South, so she wanted a big wedding—and there was another couple dining next to us. The girl was very sweet, and I remember thinking the other guy lucky. That night my own fiancée ran off with her college sweetheart. I must have been blind!”

  “Ouch! I guess they had unfinished business, huh?”

  “I guess so. And he was from a purer bloodline. A true Southern aristocrat! Didn’t really have to work. Not exactly the kind of guy I admire,” he said. “At the time it was rough on me, very humiliating, but looking back, it was only my pride that got hurt.” He turned toward her. “Truth is, I ought to thank her for saving me from what undoubtedly would have been a miserable marriage.”

  She cozied up close to him again. “So where are you taking me on Wednesday?”

  “I’m planning a nice surprise and I really don’t want to go on that double date!” he said, almost panicked. “I want to be alone with you.”

  “Ay, ay, ay! I promised my cousin’s parents I would chaperone,” she said.

  “How important is this guy to her?”

  “Serious enough,” she answered, sitting up. “She’s ready to ask him about his intentions.”

  “Then we have to give them some time alone,” he said, sitting up and settling in behind her. He encircled her with his arms. “I’m only thinking of them, no selfish motives here, really!”

  “I’ll work on it,” she said, knowing it wouldn’t be easy. Joe was reluctant to allow Lili to even take the metro into the city alone.

  He placed a gentle kiss on her shoulder.

  The boat had turned around and was now lazily heading back toward the city.

  Cairo stretched before them like a beaded quilt of lights against the black desert.

  “Am I dreaming?” she asked. “Is there really a war going on?”

  “Yes, and yes.”

  “Nothing seems real tonight. Not even me. I don’t recognize myself.”

  “You’re real,” he said. “I see you.”

  She let his words percolate and smiled—she did feel that he saw inside of her. She snuggled a little closer. “Do you think the Germans would dare bomb the pyramids?”

  “If it helped win the war, I don’t think Hitler would think twice about a pile of old stones.” Suddenly he raised his index finger. “Listen …” He strained to hear.

  The voice of a singer floated up from the ballroom.

  “Parlez moi d’amour, redites-moi des choses tendres. La la la la la,” he started to sing along. “This was my mom’s favorite song.” He was silent for a moment. “She was very special. I think you would have liked her—and she you.”

  She could feel the warmth of his breath tickling her neck, and she shivered. She was so completely happy. “Who do you look like more? Your mother or your father?”

  “My mother, for sure. I have her long limbs. My father is stocky and … ignorant about a lot of things, I’m afraid.”

  “He’s your father nevertheless.”

  He hugged her tighter. “I like this city,” he declared dreamily. “Where else in the world today can you dine and dance under a beautiful moon with a small gathering of a couple of hundred close friends?”

  “I didn’t know we were dancing!”

  She smiled, wishing time would slow to a crawl this evening. She grabbed his wrist and read his watch. “We’ve been here for two hours! We’re going to be docking any minute.” She stood up and straightened her dress. Her hair was a mess, and she pulled it back with her pin. He stood up, too, and slipped into his jacket.

  “You didn’t even shake it,” she reprimanded and started brushing it off with her hands. Then she adjusted his bow tie. “That’s better.”

  He wrapped his arms around her and pressed his forehead against hers. “I don’t think I can last until Wednesday,” he said.

  “You’ll have to,” she whispered.

  “We’re only just beginning, Maya,” he said, stroking the back of her hair.

  “The timing couldn’t be worse, Mickey,” she said, although she was melting from his touch.

  He raised her chin so she’d look at him. “It’s too late to worry about that,” he said. “The cat is out of the bag.”

  “Say sex,” the photographer cried out when they entered the dining room, using the more risqué French equivalent of America’s “cheese,” before blinding them with the flash of his camera.

  “Monsieur Connolly! They’ve been calling your name,” a man shouted, a few yards away by the bar.

  “It’s General Catroux,” Mickey explained to Maya as he waved to a gaunt man standing next to Ambassador Lampson. “He’s De Gaulle’s right-hand man. I want to introduce you. He’s been spending a lot of time in Damascus trying to persuade the army there to join the Free French. He could be of help to your family.”

  She flinched, alarmed now that Mickey was going to poke into her affairs. “That won’t be necessary. I told you we’ll be fine,” she said.

  A woman’s voice came over the loudspeaker calling Mickey’s name to the dance floor where a voluptuous woman in an elaborate gold dress was shaking a piece of paper that she’d drawn from a hat.

  “Vous êtes ch
anceux ce soir (You are lucky tonight),” the French general shouted to Mickey. “You’ve won the dance with Madame Samina.”

  “I have to go. The boat has docked,” Maya said, moving away.

  A man next to Mickey pushed him toward the dance floor. “Go on!”

  “Don’t leave yet,” Mickey cried after Maya.

  The lights dimmed and the orchestra started playing a slow tune. Maya turned and watched the woman in the gold dress swishing her long black ponytail left and right as she snaked toward Mickey and pulled him to the center of the floor. He resisted but she insisted, and wrapped her arms around his neck, demanding his full attention. They started a slow dance. Maya felt a pang of jealousy as she joined the stream of guests who were leaving, finding it unsettling that her magical evening was ending on this note.

  CHAPTER 28

  “All I can tell you is that your fellow did not attend the last four embassy press briefings,” Abdoul stated as he leaned forward to give a picture to Kesner. “His accreditation with the Detroit Free Press has been suspended.” Abdoul reclined in the chair behind Dr. Massoud’s desk, as if he enjoyed the position of authority.

  “Suspended?” Kesner said, annoyed with Abdoul’s posturing and taking a quick look at the picture of the American reporter.

  “That’s what the record shows. The last story he filed was seven weeks ago,” Abdoul said as he puffed on his cigar.

  Kesner rose and paced the doctor’s office, where they had gone because the mafraj was occupied. “He told Samina he was writing a story about the Jews of Egypt, but that’s nonsense. It’s a cover, and a pretty good one. The American Embassy is behind this,” he asserted. “Out of the four Americans on the invitation list you obtained for us, Samina picked him out to be the spy. He’s the only fresh face among the four. The others have been around forever. While they danced, she pressed him about the story he was writing. He fumbled and then tried very hard to sound enthusiastic. No one can read men like she does, and she says he’s a liar. It all adds up. He must be the one looking for Blumenthal.”

  “Whether he’s writing about the Jews or looking for Blumenthal, he was in the right place with the right people at the ball, and he’s making some very good connections,” Abdoul said. “He was seen talking with Sir Miles Lampson, Ambassador Kirk, and General Catroux. And at dinner he sat next to Madame Cattaoui, which was no small honor. He seems to be mixing well with the Jewish crowd.”

  “I see that,” Kesner agreed, his mind racing as it dawned on him that the American, by enlisting the cooperation of the Jews and the British, was in a far better position to find the scientist than he was. “What else do you know?”

  “The waiter overheard him engaged in a lively discussion about British policy in Palestine.”

  Kesner rubbed his hands. Palestine. That was just where Hassan al-Banna had suspected that the scientist would be going. The sheik and his men were on the trail of a group of lawyers who had gotten two Belgian Jewish physicians into Palestine with false papers. It all made sense. If Connolly were any good, he would look into this too. He turned to Abdoul, his mind made up. He would not kill Connolly just yet. The American would prove more useful alive for now. “I need to have the American followed day and night,” he said. “I can assure you the Reich will be most generous in its appreciation for what you are doing.”

  “It is my honor to serve,” Abdoul responded. Then, playing another one of his aces, he announced, “You’ll be interested to hear that yesterday Ambassador Lampson requested an immediate audience with King Farouk. On a Sunday! When the king did not respond, the ambassador marched right in, uninvited.”

  “Who does he think he is?” Kesner said.

  Abdoul went on to recount the British ambassador’s bold visit, where he’d presented the king with a list of demands, including the return of Hitler’s red Mercedes, the severing of relations with Vichy France and the closing of their embassy here, and the expulsion of the king’s Italian friends. Finally, in an egregious breach of protocol, he’d demanded that the king force an emergency decree through Parliament to prevent any potential transportation strike.

  “What nerve!” Kesner said. “What did the king say to all of that?”

  “The king was trembling like a girl,” Abdoul said. “But I reminded the ambassador that ‘the king is the king.’”

  “Well said, my friend.”

  “To which Lampson insolently responded that the king is the king because they made his father king, and that just as they could make kings, they could unmake kings.”

  Kesner shook his head. Lampson was dangerous. Kesner had to renew his efforts to spread the message that the transportation unions had to strike. And the Brotherhood had to step up publishing its anti-British propaganda pamphlets. He returned to his seat and looked at Abdoul gravely. “Thanks be to God, the king has you by his side. But I must warn you, if the king intervenes with the strike, he will be seen as blatantly pro-Ally, and there will be a risk that your beautiful city here will be flattened by the Luftwaffe. I’ll have no control over that.”

  Abdoul extinguished his cigar and shifted in his seat.

  “Do you want to be remembered as the man who destroyed the pyramids, because everybody knows you are the power behind the king?”

  “They would never destroy the pyramids. Would they?”

  Kesner just shrugged.

  Abdoul looked away. After an uneasy moment, he declared, “The king will not interfere with the strike. I’ll make sure of that.”

  “I know we can count on you, my friend. Did you know that the First Panzer Army took Rostov yesterday?” Kesner said proudly. “The road to Moscow is wide open now and the city is less than 250 miles away. The Soviets will capitulate quickly. We only need to kick in the door and their whole rotten structure will come crashing down.”

  “Very good,” Abdoul said.

  Kesner thought of mentioning his displeasure about the king’s mistress Riri Charbit’s involvement in Saturday night’s Jewish event on the royal yacht, but decided to wait. Abdoul had all he could handle. He might have to take care of Miss Charbit himself. “Well …” he said as he started to get up.

  Picking up on the cue, Abdoul also rose. “I’ll put some men on this American reporter’s trail immediately.”

  “Excellent.”

  CHAPTER 29

  On Monday morning, Mickey bounded up the stairs to the embassy gate, whistling and feeling light as a feather. He was still basking in the afterglow of that most beautiful night. Now, however, he needed to push aside his ever-present daydreams about Maya and ready himself for that “little chat” Dorothy had wanted to have. It was too bad she’d missed the spectacular evening on the yacht. When he’d rung her office at nine, she hadn’t arrived yet. Was she ill? This was not like her, dedicated bird that she was.

  He decided to swing by the mail room on his way to her office. It would only take a second. The clerk had rung him this morning; there was a postcard with a view of Lake Saint Claire waiting for him. Must be from his father, who loved going there to fish. Dad wouldn’t be too pleased to learn that he’d found a Jewish girlfriend. “They think they’re too good for the rest of us,” his old man would say, and not only when he was drunk. Mickey could never get him to understand the inconsistency of his thinking. On the one hand he accused the Jews of being Communists, on the other, he vilified them as money lovers. Which is it, Dad?

  Mickey was ashamed of his father’s bigotry, which included not only Jews but also every segment of the population that differed from him—basically the entire world. But Maya was right: Bigot or not, his father was his father. He softened for a moment, reminding himself that deep down his father was a decent human being, just a fearful and ignorant one, and Mickey promised himself to be more patient with him.

  As he looked at the picture of the lake on the postcard, a man raced into the mail room, shouting, “Dorothy Calley has been murdered!”

  As Mickey’s taxi raced toward Dorothy’s
bungalow in Zamalek, he wondered why anyone would want to kill her. He took in deep gulps of air, his chest heaving. He was flattened by this news. When he arrived, an ambulance and police van were pulling away from the house, leaving only one Egyptian police car, a Jeep with an American flag on its fender, and Kirk’s black embassy Packard.

  Kirk’s chauffeur recognized him as he got out of the taxi. “The ambassador is inside,” he said in a solemn voice.

  The front door was wide open and Mickey raced in.

  Egyptian police were swarming around Kirk, who sat on the sofa, his face in his hands. Two US marines also stood near Kirk and hurried to block Mickey’s rushed approach.

  “Ambassador!” Mickey cried out, pushing away the marines, who stepped aside when Kirk rose and opened his arms to Mickey.

  “God bless you, you’re here, Mickey,” Kirk cried. His pale eyes were bloodshot and swollen, and his face looked like a rag that had been washed too many times.

  “I’m so sorry,” Mickey said. “I know how close you were.”

  Kirk quivered. “They broke her neck.” He started to cry, but quickly got ahold of himself. “I apologize. I’m still very shaken. She was my anchor. I don’t know what I’ll do without her.”

  “What happened?” Mickey asked.

  Kirk shook his head, unable to speak. “No robbery. No sexual assault,” he finally said. “Her purse had been emptied, but her wallet had plenty of cash.” He pointed to a spot on the floor where the bag’s contents had been dumped. “Her jewelry was still in a silk pouch in her bedroom, behind her dozens of nail polish bottles. You know how important her nails were to her …”

  “Then why?” Mickey asked.

  “I don’t know,” Kirk answered plaintively. “I’ve gone through this with the police. She didn’t have any enemies or jealous lovers that I’m aware of. We never talked much about personal things, you know, but I think she would have told me if she had a fellow. She seemed pretty content with her cat. When I came by this morning, I knew right away something was very wrong when I found the cat howling outside the door. The neighbor said he’s had to feed her for the last two days.”