City of the Sun

by Juliana Maio

  “Did the killer try to force some information out of her?” she asked, biting her nail.

  Mickey hesitated before answering. “She was tortured, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Are you in danger yourself?” she asked, carefully looking at his reaction.

  He shrugged, then added, “Maybe. And it may not be safe for you to be near me.”

  A torrent of thoughts started swirling in her mind as she started to realize that Mickey was not the person he had said he was. Here he was, writing an article about the Jews, yet he hardly ever talked about it. He was much more interested in keeping up with the developments regarding the war. Surely the ambassador’s secretary was in contact with many people on a variety of matters. Were they all in danger? This did not completely add up. What kind of sensitive information could the woman have possessed about the Jews here? And how did a young reporter manage to get so chummy with ambassadors, generals, and royalty in just four months? It was clear Mickey was involved in something beyond the story he had given her. Was he mixed up in spying? At least one thing he’d said she believed to be true—being around him might not be safe and could endanger the people she cared about. She turned to face him.

  “Who are you, Mickey?” she demanded. “I think you’ve been lying to me all along.”

  “And what about you?” he shot back. “I should be the one asking who you are. You’re intimate with me, but won’t tell me where you live or let me call you. You’re a refugee, but you won’t consider accepting help even though you know I have valuable connections. You forbid me to talk to your uncle. What is it? Are you ashamed of me? Is there another man?”

  “You have to trust me,” she said softly.

  “And you have to trust me,” he replied, looking her straight in the eyes.

  She held his stare for a long while, reading darkness and fear as well as vulnerability and pain in his eyes, and she was sure that hers read the same way. She began to feel overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness as if she were a pawn in a game that was bigger than the two of them. This was crazy. She was caught in a crossfire of murders and state secrets. Any future with this man would be impossible. Her whole world was crumbling, and from a place deep inside of her, she felt tears surging. She immediately hid her face with her hands, ashamed to let him see them.

  “Maya,” he said softly. “You will write to me and I’ll come to you after the war, I promise.” He placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, but she pushed it away. “Please, Maya, don’t do that. This is killing me. Don’t you know I’m in love with you?”

  “Don’t say that!” she shot back, only to turn and see his face raw and naked with emotion, his eyes telling her he was speaking the truth here. She couldn’t veer away, nor could she mask her urge to throw herself in his arms and tell him she loved him too and didn’t want him to get hurt. For a moment they remained in anguish, lost in one another. She suddenly felt a surge of tears rising again, but soon her inner voice came loudly—she had to assert control and cut things off with Mickey at once. After all Erik and Vati had endured, she could not risk endangering them and those helping them by bringing a man into her life who told her lies. She dried her tears with the back of her hand and took a sip of her juice as she built up her protective wall.

  “Whatever you’re involved in, please be careful.” She took a deep breath and said, “We’ll be leaving for Khartoum in a few days. Our entry visas came yesterday and we’re expecting our exit papers any day now.”

  “The war won’t last forever. I’ll come to you wherever you are.”

  Summoning all her strength, she faced him. “I’m not going to write to you, Mickey. What happened on the boat Saturday night was beautiful, but it isn’t what you think. I’ve been going through a very difficult period. I was lonely. I needed a good ear,” she said, astonished that she could put on such a collected front.

  “What are you saying?” His eyes penetrated her like a bullet.

  “The setting was so extraordinarily romantic, and it was wonderful to be with you, but I think we just got carried away.”

  Mickey pulled away, incredulous. “What do you mean we just got carried away?”

  “Please don’t be angry with me. I—”

  “Save it,” he snapped. “You’re talking nonsense. I know what happened on that boat. And you do too. It was real.”

  He stared at her so intensely that she had to lower her eyes. “Maybe it was different for you, but whatever it was that I felt then, I don’t feel that way now. I’m sorry,” she said.

  He looked away, his jaw clenched. Though his face was unreadable, she knew that she had hurt him deeply, and she hated herself for it. She felt the old aching in her stomach, gnawing at her like a poisonous snake. Why didn’t he say anything? Why didn’t he get angry again? His silence was torture for her. She felt tears rising again, but she fought them back. Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare cry! she demanded of herself. She was desperate to leave.

  The sound of engines was heard and the cars in the street started to move.

  She stood up. “It’s better this way.”

  “One more lie gets added to the bucket,” he responded. “But, okay. I won’t hold you back. We’ll play it your way.”

  She strode off and crossed the street quickly, threading in between cars, trying mightily to keep her composure until she was out of his sight. She was starting to feel sick, and as soon as she reached an alley, she bent over and vomited.

  CHAPTER 32

  Mickey bristled with energy as he hopped out of his Jeep to meet with Kirk at the embassy. He’d just returned from early morning target practice in the desert, a routine he’d adhered to religiously since Dorothy’s death ten days earlier. Blasting away with the Walther PPK pistol the ambassador had given him was cathartic; it made him feel as if he were doing something in response to her murder. Unfortunately, there had been little progress in finding her killer. The best the local police had dug up was that on the day of the murder a smart-looking European man had come to the embassy to drop off a purse that Dorothy had supposedly left behind at Groppi’s, but when Dorothy saw it later, she’d said the purse wasn’t hers. Other than that, the police had come up empty, but that was to be expected since Kirk insisted on keeping the most important clue secret: the disappearance of Blumenthal’s picture.

  This did not prevent Mickey from doing some digging on his own, and he discovered that a smartly dressed Egyptian man in his late twenties, wearing a suit and tarbush, had visited the Fuad University library right after Dorothy, asking for the very same journal. The man had flown into a tirade when he’d discovered that the page with Blumenthal’s picture was missing and had pressed the librarian for information. The librarian indicated that a woman who worked for the American ambassador must have been the culprit.

  Were the man who’d come to the embassy and the one from the library connected? They were probably working for the German spy who was certainly on top of his game. He’d known exactly which scientific journal contained Blumenthal’s picture. Mickey found it too much of a coincidence that Dorothy and the mystery man from the library had been seeking the same journal at the same time, information that had been radioed from Donovan. The spy either had an informant at the embassy or had been listening in on the airwaves and had cracked the American code.

  “Coincidences are the stuff of everyday life! There is no spy working out of our embassy!” Kirk cried out, banging his fist on his desk.

  Mickey was disappointed that the ambassador so adamantly rejected his theory. They’d spoken on the phone, but this was the first time he had seen Kirk in person since Dorothy’s death, and he was uncharacteristically irritable and uncooperative.

  “Who decodes the embassy’s messages, sir?” Mickey asked calmly.

  “A fellow by the name of John Wayman. I’d stake my life on his loyalty,” Kirk insisted.

  “Then someone who has broken our radio code is listening,” Mickey said as he leaned back in his
chair across from Kirk’s desk and crossed his arms.

  “You understand the implications of what you’re saying?” Kirk asked.

  Mickey nodded—the ambassador had been sending daily reports about the war to Washington. “We can run a test. The stakes are too high not to.”

  His brow furrowed, Kirk thought for a while. “Very well. I’ll transmit some false information and see what happens.” He pushed his chair back and got up. His face was contorted. “Good God, I hope you’re wrong, Connolly! It would be an unmitigated disaster, and the Brits will never trust us again.”

  “But at least we’ll know it and prevent further damage,” Mickey said. “Now, on another front, did you ask your COI agent in Tel Aviv to poke around the Sieff Institute to see who’s responsible for bringing Blumenthal there?”

  Kirk slowly shook his head. “Let it be, Connolly. I’m sure Donovan has his own ideas about how to go about pursuing this. He’ll be in Cairo by the end of next week.”

  “It’s just that I got a request from General Catroux to interview a powerful lawyer who handles anti-Semitic cases this afternoon. I’m sure the general is more concerned about filing a grievance against the Vichy Embassy here than about fighting anti-Semitism, but I agreed to do it. Maybe I’ll learn something. You never know.”

  Kirk slumped back into his chair, looking drained. “I’m glad to see you still have it in you to fight, Connolly. I’ve been unable to function since we lost Dorothy. Every time I pass by her office, I …” He shook his head.

  “I know. I was dreading coming here myself,” Mickey said. In fact, he found the atmosphere of the entire embassy heavy with the weight of her death.

  “Here, I almost forgot to give you this.” He handed Mickey a large, shiny photograph along with its brown envelope.

  Mickey felt a sharp pang in his stomach. It was a photo of himself and Maya with their arms linked. It had been taken by the photographer on the king’s yacht.

  “Who is the belle on your arm?” Kirk asked. “Dorothy suspected you might be falling for someone.”

  “I wonder what made her say that,” Mickey said, slipping the photo back inside the envelope.

  “She just knew,” Kirk said.

  “Let me know what you decide to do about transmitting false intelligence,” Mickey said, avoiding the subject of Maya. He got up to leave.

  “Be careful Mickey,” Kirk said.

  Mickey opened his jacket and revealed the gun tucked in his belt.

  Sitting comfortably in one of the luxurious quilted chairs in the Moorish Hall at the Shepheard’s, Mickey looked longingly at the photo of him with Maya. He’d been drinking himself to sleep every night to forget about her, but it wasn’t working very well, because the girl was always on his mind when he woke up, despite the hangover. He suddenly turned over the picture and slammed it on the table. He was angry with her for not giving things a chance. He knew how she felt about him. He’d felt it on the boat, and he’d seen it again in her eyes, even at the very moment she’d denied it. Whatever was going on in her life, together they could work things out.

  He thought it was funny to be getting her picture now; he had decided just this morning to try to reach her. There was always a backlog for exit visas, and there was a chance she might still be here. He was not going to give up so easily. He slipped the photo back in its envelope and pulled out the card he’d just bought. He began to write.

  Dear Maya,

  I’m sorry I had to withhold some things from you, but I promise that at some point I will explain it all. I know this is a very stressful time for you and your family, and embarking on an affair of the heart right now might be frightening for you, but please don’t deny the truth of what happened between us. Do you want to be haunted for the rest of your life wondering about what we lost? I don’t, and I’m not going to give up on us. Please call me or write to me. We can, and we must, figure this out.

  Mickey

  He planned to give the note together with the perfume he’d bought to her uncle in the accounting department on the second floor of the hotel. He glanced around the lobby, wondering if he might have been followed here. He found the prospect of being tailed nerve-wracking. He ordered a beer and nonchalantly got up, leaving his newspaper on the table. “I’m just going to the john,” he said to the customer next to him, “if you don’t mind keeping my seat.”

  He headed to the back of the room and into the hallway where the bathrooms were located, then made a sharp right to a staircase that led to the mezzanine. He waited in a corridor for a moment to make sure that no one was following and from there took the elevator to the second floor.

  Upon entering the double doors of the accounting department, Mickey found himself face-to-face with Joseph Levi, who was just leaving, which made for an awkward moment, especially since the accountant did not seem happy to see him. They stood in the hallway.

  Mickey pulled out the letter and the gift-wrapped perfume. “Would you be kind enough to give—”

  “My niece is no longer in Cairo. She has left the country,” Mr. Levi said, jiggling the coins in his pocket.

  “I … see,” Mickey fumbled, feeling somewhat intimidated by the man although he towered over him by at least a foot. “If I could have her new address, I’d like to send this to her.”

  “I will forward it to her myself,” the man said. He took the letter and the package and inserted them in his attaché case. “If you don’t mind, I’m expected for lunch.” He tipped his hat and walked away, leaving Mickey feeling like a fool.

  Sitting on a leather banquette in the waiting room outside Léon Guibli’s office, Mickey waited for his interview with the lawyer. General Catroux wanted to file an action against the local Banque de France branch for shooting at Free French protesters, and he wanted Mickey to write about it. The protesters had come to demonstrate in support of the Jewish community against the unwarranted dismissal of one of the bank’s long-standing Jewish employees. Three of Catroux’s men had been seriously wounded, but the pro-Vichy Embassy here had taken no action against the bank. To Mickey it was just another spat between the French.

  He leaned forward, his hat in his hand. He was bitterly disappointed at having learned that Maya had left Cairo and doubted that Joseph Levi would ever forward his letter and package to her. He checked his watch. He’d been there for forty-five minutes. Maybe Guibli was a bigwig, but that was no excuse for keeping people waiting like this. He stood up and knocked on the office door of the secretary, who curtly explained that her boss was still on the same important call.

  Annoyed, Mickey paced the room and stopped in front of the lawyer’s expansive bookshelf. In addition to law books and reviews, it housed a sizeable collection of American authors, including Hemingway’s recent book about the Spanish Civil War, For Whom the Bell Tolls. A book with a bright yellow cover caught his eye. It was the same book he’d seen at Hans Nissel’s house, documenting the famous bridges of the world. He picked it up and opened the cover. Inside he found an inscription, To Léon, with much gratitude. Hans Nissel, Cairo, August 1941. Small world!

  “Maître Guibli is free to see you now,” the secretary, a slight woman with rosy cheeks, informed him.

  Mickey placed the book back on the shelf and followed her into Guibli’s office.

  “I’ve learned to avoid the press since I’ve never been quoted accurately, but General Catroux is a friend and he insisted I meet with you.” Guibli extended his hand. He was a lanky man in his late forties with an intense blue-eyed gaze. Though he wore neither tie nor jacket and worked with his shirtsleeves rolled up, his presence was commanding.

  Mickey shook his hand firmly. “I’ll do my best to be the first to quote you faithfully,” he said. The office, like the reception room, was lined with mahogany paneling and had rich wooden floors. A huge banner bearing a quote from Goethe dominated the wall behind his desk: “Anti-Semitism is a shame. It is condemned by all civilized nations.”

  After a brief discussion ab
out the impending transportation strike, which the lawyer was negotiating on behalf of the government, the focus returned to the purpose of the interview. Guibli explained his understanding of the circumstances surrounding the French bank’s firing of the Jewish employee and described his own efforts to call for a boycott of the bank, which, ironically, was located on the ground floor of that very building. He had received death threats because of his involvement in the matter.

  “But that never deters me,” the lawyer asserted. “I will speak up whenever I find anti-Semitism. And as you can see, there are no bodyguards in my office.”

  With such a commitment against anti-Semitism, Mickey wondered why Guibli had not belonged to LICA and put the question to him.

  “I very much sympathize with LICA’s mission, just like I sympathized with the concerns of our Zionist groups when they were operating here, but despite the best intentions, most organizations end up compromising their ideals and becoming corrupt,” Guibli declared. “The only organization I belong to is the Wafd. This is a legitimate political party one can vote for, and it stands for an independent Egypt.”

  Mickey was surprised that the lawyer had mentioned the taboo subject of Zionism, and he jumped at the opportunity to question him about it.

  “As a Jew living in the Middle East, you must have an opinion about Zionism,” he probed. “Do you believe that Zionist activities present a danger to Jews in the Arab world?”

  Guibli didn’t seem to mind the question, but he didn’t answer it directly. He commented instead on the sorry state of the movement, using it to support his point about ideals becoming compromised. “There are so many factions,” he lamented. “The Revisionists, the Bundists, the Socialists, the radical Zionists … Oh mon Dieu, so many! They have been so divided, my friend, arguing endlessly about what form the Jewish state should take, that they failed to mobilize European Jews quickly enough, and now …” he shook his head and continued, his face pained. “A colleague of mine in France is hearing about mass deportations of Jews out of Germany into concentration camps. They are said to have dumped fifty thousand of them into internment camps in the south of France. Who knows where the rest were sent? And where are the Zionists, I ask you?”