by Wilbur Smith
Little Jamie had been put to bed, but he was still awake. He heard his parents’ screams and remembered his mummy going to his bedroom cupboard one evening, just before she turned the lights out, and saying, ‘If the bad men come, run and hide in here.’
But the cupboard was a dark, scary place, particularly at night, and Jamie was too frightened to go there. So whenever he played hide-and-seek with his parents, or the servants, there was another place in his bedroom where he always went.
Clinging to his teddy bear, Jamie climbed out of bed, then stuffed his pillow under his blankets, making sure that none of it showed. Billy, his best friend at the local primary school, had told him this was a really good trick for making it look as though you were still in bed, when you weren’t. Then he crawled beneath the bedsprings and huddled against the wall, as far away from the edge of the bed as he could get.
The next screams Jamie heard were those of the family’s cook, who had gone to his employers’ aid and met the same fate as them. His eyes stung with hot tears, but he stifled his sobs, knowing that his life depended on his silence.
There were loud shouts, the smashing of glass and crockery, the bangs and crashes of furniture being kicked over and hacked with knives. Through the hubbub he heard a single voice. It was unlike the wild shouts of the other men. The voice was commanding, decisive. Jamie had spent his whole life around Kikuyu people. He understood their language. He was able to understand Kungu Kabaya when he gave his men a single, simple order: ‘Find the boy.’
With shock, surprise and bafflement he recognised Matu’s voice when he replied, with great eagerness, ‘I know where he is, sir. I will find him and bring him to you.’
Jamie heard the footsteps coming down the corridor. They didn’t sound as though they belonged to Matu. The stable lad was light on his feet and the only shoes he ever wore were a battered old pair of plimsolls. But the heavy clattering against the floor, coming closer all the time, was the noise of a giant, coming to gobble him up.
The little boy squeezed himself harder against the wall. He clutched his teddy to his chest, listening so hard to what was going on outside his room that he barely even noticed that he had wet himself in terror.
The door opened and the bedroom lights were turned on.
Jamie saw a pair of black legs, in heavy army boots, pass in front of the bed. Then he heard a familiar voice, hissing, ‘Jamie, Jamie, where are you? Quick, it’s me, Matu!’
Jamie didn’t know what to do. He loved Matu. But he didn’t dare leave his hiding place. But then Matu got down on his knees and peered under the bed. He saw Jamie, held out his hand and said, ‘Quick, now, or you will die!’
Jamie took Matu’s hand and was pulled out from under the bed. In the corridor he heard a voice snap, ‘He is taking too long! Go after him!’
Another voice answered, ‘Yes, sir!’
Matu looked around, saw the chair that Mrs Ruddock sat on when she read Jamie his bedtime story and jammed it against the door. Then he ripped the bedclothes off Jamie’s bed and grabbed the bottom sheet.
As Jamie got to his feet, he heard the rattle of the door handle, then saw the door shudder as someone shoved against it, making the chair legs scrape against the bedroom floor. There was a muttered curse and then the words, ‘Open up!’
Matu had opened the bedroom window and thrown one end of the sheet out. He was holding on to the other end. He jerked his head towards the open window.
‘Climb out!’ he shouted.
Jamie went to the window and looked outside. He was only just big enough to see over the window ledge; the ground seemed far below him.
He hesitated.
‘Go!’ Matu screamed. ‘Go!’
Then there was another, much louder crash against the door. The chair gave way and then went flying across the room, kicked by the boot of the man, bigger than anyone Jamie had ever seen. He had the face of a monster and in his hand he carried a long knife, whose blade glinted in the light of the moon, shining through the open window.
Matu had dropped his end of the sheet. He was standing, stock-still, too petrified to move a muscle as the monster’s arm swung and the blade flashed. It sliced through the stable lad’s throat, sending a great spew of blood, black in the semi-darkness, spattering across the room.
Jamie reached up, grabbed the window frame and tried to haul himself up and out of the window. As his feet scrabbled for purchase, a deep laugh rumbled from the monster’s belly.
A massive hand reached down and grabbed Jamie by the ankle.
He screamed and tried to kick, but he was powerless as Wilson Gitiri stood up straight, lifted him up, swung him through the air and smashed him head first against the bedroom wall, again and again.
Gitiri threw Jamie Ruddock’s pulped and battered corpse onto the floor, beside Matu. Then four of his comrades, savaging the little body like hyenas ripping at carrion, chopped it to pieces with their pangas.
Saffron sent her telegram to Kenya and received a reply the following morning from her father, assuring her that her children were safe and their estate was still untroubled.
CAN’T SAY SAME FOR REST OF COUNTRY,
Leon had added.
PAPERS FULL OF PICS OF DEAD RUDDOCK BOY. GOVT. HOUSE PROPOSING EXTREME MEASURES EG PRISON CAMPS FOR REBELS W/O TRIAL. ARMY AND RAF CALLED IN. KENYA GOING TO HELL IN A BUCKET. THANK GOD WE HAVE LUSIMA.
Saffron and Gerhard checked out of their hotel and boarded a British Overseas Airways Corporation flight to Cairo, travelling on the Comet, the new jet airliner that was the pride of British aviation. On arrival, Gerhard hired a car at the airport.
‘There’s no point us taking taxis,’ Saffron said. ‘I spent two years here as a military driver. I know every short-cut in the city.’
The Egyptian capital was sweltering in the blast furnace heat of the midsummer sun. But the streets of the Garden City, where the smartest members of the city’s British community had long lived, were lined with trees that cast a dappled shade. Behind high walls, further sheltered by more greenery, lay the mansion that Saffron’s grandfather, Ryder Courtney, had bought with the money he’d made as a riverboat trader on the Nile. The lush, immaculately tended gardens surrounding the house ran down to the mighty river.
‘We must go to the riverbank at sunset. It’s a beautiful sight, very romantic,’ Saffron said as she and Gerhard got out of the car.
He smiled and took her arm as they walked towards the house. Saffron’s grandmother, after whom she had been named, was waiting for them beneath the portico that sheltered the front door. A gifted artist, whose works had been exhibited all over the world, Grandma Saffron had long ago developed her own personal style based on the practical requirements of living in a desert climate and had kept to it ever since.
She was slim, and closely monitored her weight on the basis that, as she put it, ‘A layer of fat is like an overcoat you can’t take off.’ On the same principle of heat reduction, her silver hair was cut in a short, neat bob. When in Cairo, she invariably wore long, floaty kaftans of linen or fine cotton over harem pants in the same fabrics, enlivened by a selection of her myriad pieces of bold, colourful jewellery.
‘Grandma, you don’t look a day older than you did the first time I saw you,’ Saffron said, after they had kissed hello.
‘You’re very sweet to say so, though I’m quite sure it’s not true.’
Gerhard, whose manners retained the formality and restraint of a well brought-up German, shook her hand and said, ‘It is a great pleasure to meet you, Mrs Courtney. Saffron has told me so much about you. All of it complimentary, I must say.’
‘Thank you, Gerhard. I think you’d better call me Grandma too. I hope you don’t mind, but Mrs Courtney sounds far too formal, and if you call us both Saffron that will drive us all quite mad with confusion.’
‘Of course, Grandma, that makes perfect sense.’
‘Good. Now, please, do come in. You must be baking after the taxi ride.’
; They stepped into the hall, with its cool marble floor, white walls and a high ceiling from which a line of fans was suspended. Gerhard paused for a moment to cast an appreciative eye at the design and decoration. There was greenery everywhere, growing from large copper pots, blurring the distinction between the hall and the garden outside. Every piece of furniture, every picture or mirror on the walls, every one of the objects displayed on tabletops or shelves, reflected the history and culture of Egypt and the Courtneys’ place in it. A small, three-thousand-year-old marble bust of Nefertiti sat beneath a vivid watercolour of a modern Cairo street scene with the signature ‘S. Courtney’, written in pencil, modestly tucked away in one corner.
A console table on one side of the hall bore a pair of photographs of Saffron’s grandparents in silver frames, on either side of a telephone. A folded piece of paper had been placed beneath the telephone to keep it from blowing away. Grandma caught sight of the paper and exclaimed ‘Aha!’ with the relief of someone who has just been reminded of something they might otherwise have forgotten.
‘I took a message for you two about an hour ago, from a gentleman who said he was staying at Shepheard’s Hotel. I confess it made little sense to me, but he assured me you would understand.’
Saffron took the note, which read, ‘I’m in town on business. Papa said I should get in touch with you. He wants me to find some merchandise that you are looking for. Yours, Jonas Stemp.’
She passed it to Gerhard, who remarked, ‘So Joshua has finally appeared.’ He understood the code name.
Grandma frowned, feeling certain that the name she had written down was not Joshua, but saw that it made sense to her guests.
‘Well, I’ll leave you two to it,’ she said. ‘I’ve put you in Saffy’s old room. The boys will have your cases waiting for you. Why don’t we all have tea together in the drawing room, once you’ve got yourselves settled?’
‘Thank you, Grandma, that would be lovely,’ Saffron said.
She called the hotel and asked for Mr Stemp. She spoke to him in German and, since Joshua had felt it necessary to be discreet, went along with the narrative he had constructed.
‘I’m very grateful to you for getting in touch. As your father may have mentioned, my husband and I lost a number of valuable packages in transit from Germany. Perhaps we could meet to discuss the matter.’
‘That would be very agreeable. I am free this evening, if that is convenient for you.’
‘That would be fine. My husband will send a driver to pick you up. Shall we say, seven this evening?’
‘By all means.’
At seven, Saffron called Joshua’s room again. She did not give her name to the telephonist.
‘Leave the hotel, turn right, walk about two hundred metres,’ she said. ‘You will see a café called the Maxim Palace. I am waiting outside. The white Austin saloon.’
Joshua made sure he was not being tailed. He spotted the car and got straight in. Saffron drove away, checking the mirror as she went. Joshua looked out of the rear window.
‘We’re not being followed,’ he said.
‘I know. I wasn’t followed on the way here, either. But one can never be too careful.’
If that remark were not enough to tell Joshua Solomons that he was dealing with a professional, Saffron’s driving confirmed it. She sped through the crowded streets with precision, deftness and an insider’s knowledge. There was an assurance in the way she cut down narrow side streets, some barely more than alleys, knowing exactly where they would take her.
‘It’s quicker this way,’ she said, as they plunged into yet another cramped, filth-strewn passageway, lined with empty street-traders’ carts.
And impossible for anyone to keep up with, Joshua thought.
To his surprise, the next turn took them from the gloomy back alley onto a broad thoroughfare that led to the Garden City. Barely two minutes later they were rolling through a gateway, manned by a servant who saluted as they passed, and up a crunching gravel driveway to Grandma’s house.
Joshua gave a soft whistle as he got out of the car. The Garden City was aptly named, for the noise and the pungent smells generated by the cars, the people and the animals – horses, donkeys and camels – that thronged the rest of Cairo, and the baking heat trapped by the closely packed buildings and tarmac roads, were now forgotten as if they had never been. Here there were lush lawns; beds packed with lovingly tended flowers and shrubs chosen with an artist’s eye for colour and form; palm trees whose leaves were rustling in the gentle breeze; and all of this was arranged to lead the eye to the end of the garden where the slow brown waters of the Nile made their stately way to the sea.
‘Ay-yay-yay,’ Joshua sighed. ‘Papa said you Courtneys were rich, but this . . .’
Saffron laughed. ‘Believe me, we’re the poor relations of the family! You should meet my South African cousins. Now, let’s go in. Gerhard is looking forward very much to meeting you again. I thought we could talk over supper.’
This was an occasion that required privacy, not luxury. A small, round dining table had been set up in the drawing room. Grandma’s cooks had prepared a buffet, so that the diners could select their food and drink without the need for servants.
While Gerhard and Joshua reminisced about the old days – before the Nazis took power, when Isidore Solomons and his family were prosperous, respected members of Munich society – Saffron took the measure of the man that she and Gerhard were counting on to help track down Konrad. Joshua, she reckoned, must be in his mid to late twenties. Old enough to have had youthful idealism and innocence tempered by hard experience, but still at the height of his physical powers. She could see Claudia’s influence in the line of her son’s mouth and his clear blue eyes. But his physical build and sharp, forensic intelligence came, like his vocal mannerisms, straight from his father Isidore.
Yet while Joshua’s parents were true Europeans, steeped in centuries of Germanic culture, he had acquired a toughness that came from living in a small country surrounded by much larger enemies. Saffron knew she could trust him. She also felt sure that he would be less troubled by intellectual niceties and sophisticated scruples than his elders. Other women might have been concerned by this. Saffron was not.
Joshua is Israeli, just as I am African. We’ll understand one another just fine.
She tuned back into the conversation. Joshua had spent the first few years of his life in the Solomons’ fine house on Königin Strasse, across from the English Garden. Then the Nazis began their assault on the rights of Germany’s Jews. By the time Gerhard had managed to find the money to help the Solomons escape the country, they were living in a tiny apartment in one of the roughest areas of the city, close to the railway marshalling yards.
‘My family did that to you,’ Gerhard said. ‘It was unforgivable.’
‘You don’t need to apologise,’ Joshua assured him. ‘I am honoured to meet you. To this day, my father always says a prayer for you at Passover.’
‘Really?’
‘Absolutely. At Passover we Jews celebrate our people’s escape from slavery under the Pharaoh. In our family we also celebrate our escape from the Nazis, and we thank the man who made it possible.’
‘Thank you, but I don’t deserve your prayers. I have seen terrible things, and done nothing to stop them. In Russia, I was present when the SS used a gas van. It was a demonstration for the high-ups . . . Men, women, old folk and children, more and more people were shoved into the back of a van like the ones delivery men use until the bodies were packed so tight they could not move. The SS set up a tube from the exhaust pipe into the back of the van. Then they turned the engine on so that the exhaust fumes went into the truck. They kept going until the fumes – the carbon monoxide in the fumes, to be exact – killed all the people inside.’
‘Oy vey ist mir,’ Joshua murmured, horrified by the picture Gerhard’s words painted.
‘I stood and watched it and I swore to myself that one day I would bear witn
ess. But I did nothing to prevent it happening. And the truth is, there was nothing I could have done. Those people were going to die, if not then, on that day, then soon afterwards, somewhere else. But that’s not the point, is it? I should have tried.’
‘The whole world should have tried, Herr Meerbach,’ said Joshua. ‘You did what you could. You risked your neck to save my family. You went to a concentration camp, rather than pledge allegiance to Hitler. How much more can we ask of any man? You know, we have a phrase in Israel: “Righteous among the nations.” It refers to Gentiles who had the humanity and bravery to help their Jewish friends and neighbours, or even complete strangers, in our time of trouble. You are one of the righteous and you deserve justice, too.’
‘Thank you,’ Gerhard said. ‘So, can you help? Your father wasn’t sure how far advanced your plans were for dealing with Nazi war criminals.’
Joshua shrugged. ‘Well, we’ve not yet mounted a major operation beyond our borders.’ He grinned. ‘After all, we only just got borders to go beyond. But we have to start somewhere, and you are giving us an important target. I think I can persuade my bosses to take an interest.’
‘And you’ll have the assistance of someone with several years’ experience of planning, managing and conducting undercover operations in enemy territory,’ Saffron observed, matter-of-factly.
Joshua looked at her, grinned and said, ‘How can I complain? So . . . let’s start by establishing where we are now. My father has given me an account of your investigation. I’ve done some preliminary follow-ups of my own. But I’d like to hear the story from you, too.’