The Key to Rebecca

by Ken Follett

  He walked slowly, cigarette in hand, enjoying the cool night air, looking into the tiny open-fronted shops, refusing to buy a cotton shirt made-to-measure-while-you-wait, a leather handbag for the lady or a secondhand copy of a magazine called Saucy Snips. He was amused by a street vendor who had filthy pictures in the left-hand side of his jacket and crucifixes in the right. He saw a bunch of soldiers collapse with laughter at the sight of two Egyptian policemen patrolling the street hand in hand.

  He went into a bar. Outside of the British clubs it was wise to avoid the gin, so he ordered zibib, the aniseed drink which turned cloudy with water. At ten o'clock the bar closed, by mutual consent of the Muslim Wafd government and the kill-joy provost marshal. Vandam's vision was a little blurred when he left.

  He headed for the Old City. Passing a sign saying, OUT OF BOUNDS TO TROOPS, he entered the Birka. In the narrow streets and alleys the women sat on steps and leaned from windows, smoking and waiting for customers, chatting to the military police. Some of them spoke to Vandam, offering their bodies in English, French and Italian. He turned into a little lane, crossed a deserted courtyard and entered an unmarked open doorway.

  He climbed the staircase and knocked at a door on the first floor. A middle-aged Egyptian woman opened it. He paid her five pounds and went in.

  In a large, dimly lit inner room furnished with faded luxury, he sat on a cushion and unbuttoned his shirt collar. A young woman in baggy trousers passed him the nargileh. He took several deep lungfuls of hashish smoke. Soon a pleasant feeling of lethargy came over him. He leaned back on his elbows and looked around. In the shadows of the room there were four other men. Two were pashas--wealthy Arab landowners--sitting together on a divan and talking in low, desultory tones. A third, who seemed almost to have been sent to sleep by the hashish, looked English and was probably an officer like Vandam. The fourth sat in the comer talking to one of the girls. Vandam heard snatches of conversation and gathered that the man wanted to take the girl home, and they were discussing a price. The man was vaguely familiar, but Vandam, drunk and now doped too, could not get his memory in gear to recall who he was.

  One of the girls came over and took Vandam's hand. She led him into an alcove and drew the curtain. She took off her halter. She had small brown breasts. Vandam stroked her cheek. In the candlelight her face changed constantly, seeming old, then very young, then predatory, then loving. At one point she looked like Joan Abuthnot. But finally, as he entered her, she looked like Elene.

  5

  ALEX WOLFF WORE A GALABIYA AND A FEZ AND STOOD THIRTY YARDS FROM THE gate of GHQ-British headquarters--selling paper fans which broke after two minutes of use.

  The hue and cry had died down. He had not seen the British conducting a spot check on identity papers for a week. This Vandam character could not keep up the pressure indefinitely.

  Wolff had gone to GHQ as soon as he felt reasonably safe. Getting into Cairo had been a triumph; but it was useless unless he could exploit the position to get the information Rommel wanted--and quickly. He recalled his brief interview with Rommel in Gialo. The Desert Fox did not look foxy at all. He was a small, tireless man with the face of an aggressive peasant: a big nose, a downturned mouth, a cleft chin, a jagged scar on his left cheek, his hair cut so short that none showed beneath the rim of his cap. He had said: "Numbers of troops, names of divisions, in the field and in reserve, state of training. Numbers of tanks, in the field and in reserve, state of repair. Supplies of ammunition, food and gasoline. Personalities and attitudes of commanding officers. Strategic and tactical intentions. They say you're good, Wolff. They had better be right."

  It was easier said than done.

  There was a certain amount of information Wolff could get just by walking around the city. He could observe the uniforms of the soldiers on leave and listen to their talk, and that told him which troops had been where and when they were going back. Sometimes a sergeant would mention statistics of dead and wounded, or the devastating effect of the 88-millimeter guns--designed as antiaircraft weapons--which the Germans had fitted to their tanks. He had heard an army mechanic complain that thirty-nine of the fifty new tanks which arrived yesterday needed major repairs before going into service. All this was useful information which could be sent to Berlin, where. Intelligence analysts would put it together with other snippets in order to form a big picture. But it was not what Rommel wanted.

  Somewhere inside GHQ there were pieces of paper which said things like: "After resting and refitting, Division A, with 100 tanks and full supplies, will leave Cairo tomorrow and join forces with Division B at the C Oasis in preparation for the counterattack west of D next Saturday at dawn."

  It was those pieces of paper Wolff wanted.

  That was why he was selling fans outside GHQ.

  For their headquarters the British had taken over a number of the large houses--most of them owned by pashas--in the Garden City suburb. (Wolff was grateful that the Villa les Oliviers had escaped the net.) The commandeered homes were surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. People in uniform were passed quickly through the gate, but civilians were stopped and questioned at length while the sentries made phone calls to verify credentials.

  There were other headquarters in other buildings around the city--the Semiramis Hotel housed something called British Troops in Egypt, for example--but this was GHQ Middle East, the power-house. Wolff had spent a lot of time, back in the Abwehr spy school, learning to recognize uniforms, regimental identification marks and the faces of literally hundreds of senior British officers. Here, several mornings running, he had observed the large staff cars arriving and had peeked through the windows to see colonels, generals, admirals, squadron leaders and the commander in chief, Sir Claude Auchinleck, himself. They all looked a little odd, and he was puzzled until he realized that the pictures of them which he had burned into his brain were in black and white, and now he was seeing them for the first time in color.

  The General Staff traveled by car, but their aides walked. Each morning the captains and majors arrived on foot, carrying their little briefcases. Toward noon--after the regular morning conference, Wolff presumed--some of them left, still carrying their briefcases.

  Each day Wolff followed one of the aides.

  Most of the aides worked at GHQ, and their secret papers would be locked up in the office at the end of the day. But these few were men who had to be at GHQ for the morning conference, but had their own offices in other parts of the city; and they had to carry their briefing papers with them in between one office and another. One of them went to the Semiramis. Two went to the barracks in the Nasr el-Nil. A fourth went to an unmarked building in the Shari Suleiman Pasha.

  Wolff wanted to get into those briefcases.

  Today he would do a dry run.

  Waiting under the blazing sun for the aides to come out, he thought about the night before, and a smile curled the comers of his mouth below the newly grown mustache. He had promised Sonja that he would find her another Fawzi. Last night he had gone to the Birka and picked out a girl at Madame Fahmy's establishment. She was not a Fawzi--that girl had been a real enthusiast--but she was a good temporary substitute. They had enjoyed her in turn, then together; then they had played Sonja's weird, exciting games ... It had been a long night.

  When the aides came out, Wolff followed the pair that went to the barracks.

  A minute later Abdullah emerged from a cafe and fell into step beside him.

  "Those two?" Abdullah said. "Those two."

  Abdullah was a fat man with a steel tooth. He was one of the richest men in Cairo, but unlike most rich Arabs he did not ape the Europeans. He wore sandals, a dirty robe and a fez. His greasy hair curled around his ears and his fingernails were black. His wealth came not from land, like the pashas', nor from trade, like the Greeks'. It came from crime.

  Abdullah was a thief.

  Wolff liked him. He was sly, deceitful, cruel, generous, and always laughing: for Wolff he embodied the age-old vi
ces and virtues of the Middle East. His army of children, grandchildren, nephews, nieces and second cousins had been burgling houses and picking pockets in Cairo for thirty years. He had tentacles everywhere: he was a hashish wholesaler, he had influence with politicians, and he owned half the houses in the Birka, including Madame Fahmy's. He lived in a large crumbling house in the Old City with his four wives.

  They followed the two officers into the modem city center. Abdullah said: "Do you want one briefcase, or both?"

  Wolff considered. One was a casual theft; two looked organized. "One," he said.

  "Which?"

  "It doesn't matter."

  Wolff had considered going to Abdullah for help after the discovery that the Villa les Oliviers was no longer safe. He had decided not to. Abdullah could certainly have hidden Wolff away somewhere--probably in a brothel--more or less indefinitely. But as soon as he had Wolff concealed, he would have opened negotiations to sell him to the British. Abdullah divided the world in two: his family and the rest. He was utterly loyal to his family and trusted them completely; he would cheat everyone else and expected them to try to cheat him. All business was done on the basis of mutual suspicion. Wolff found this worked surprisingly well.

  They came to a busy comer. The two officers crossed the road, dodging the traffic. Wolff was about to follow when Abdullah put a hand on his arm to stop him.

  "We'll do it here," Abdullah said.

  Wolff looked around, observing the buildings, the pavement, the road junction and the street vendors. He smiled slowly, and nodded. "It's perfect," he said.

  They did it the next day.

  Abdullah had indeed chosen the perfect spot for the snatch. It was where a busy side street joined a main road. On the comer was a cafe with tables outside, reducing the pavement to half its width. Outside the cafe, on the side of the main road, was a bus stop. The idea of queuing for the bus had never really caught on in Cairo despite sixty years of British domination, so those waiting simply milled about on the already crowded pavement. On the side street it was a little clearer, for although the cafe had tables out here too, there was no bus stop. Abdullah had observed this little shortcoming, and had put it right by detailing two acrobats to perform on the street there.

  Wolff sat at the corner table, from where he could see along both the main road and the side street, and worried about the things that might go wrong.

  The officers might not go back to the barracks today.

  They might go a different way.

  They might not be carrying their briefcases.

  The police might arrive too early and arrest everyone on the scene.

  The boy might be grabbed by the officers and questioned.

  Wolff might be grabbed by the officers and questioned.

  Abdullah might decide he could earn his money with less trouble simply by contacting Major Vandam and telling him he could arrest Alex Wolff at the Cafe Nasif at twelve noon today.

  Wolff was afraid of going to prison. He was more than afraid, he was terrified. The thought of it brought him out in a cold sweat under the noonday sun. He could live without good food and wine and girls, if he had the vast wild emptiness of the desert to console him: and he could forego the freedom of the desert to live in a crowded city if he had the urban luxuries to console him: but he could not lose both. He had never told anyone of this: it was his secret nightmare. The idea of living in a tiny, colorless cell, among the scum of the earth (and all of them men), eating bad food, never seeing the blue sky or the endless Nile or the open plains ... panic touched him glancingly even while he contemplated it. He pushed it out of his mind. It was not going to happen.

  At eleven forty-five the large, grubby form of Abdullah waddled past the cafe. His expression was vacant but his small black eyes looked around sharply, checking his arrangements. He crossed the road and disappeared from view.

  At five past twelve Wolff spotted two military caps among the massed heads in the distance.

  He sat on the edge of his chair.

  The officers came nearer. They were carrying their briefcases.

  Across the street a parked car revved its idling engine.

  A bus drew up to the stop, and Wolff thought: Abdullah can't possibly have arranged that: it's a piece of luck, a bonus.

  The officers were five yards from Wolff.

  The car across the street pulled out suddenly. It was a big black Packard with a powerful engine and soft American springing. It came across the road like a charging elephant, motor screaming in low gear, regardless of the main road traffic, heading for the side street, its horn blowing continuously. On the corner, a few feet from where Wolff sat, it plowed into the front of an old Fiat taxi.

  The two officers stood beside Wolff's table and stared at the crash.

  The taxi driver, a young Arab in a Western shirt and a fez, leaped out of his car.

  A young Greek in a mohair suit jumped out of the Packard.

  The Arab said the Greek was the son of a pig.

  The Greek said the Arab was the back end of a diseased camel.

  The Arab slapped the Greek's face and the Greek punched the Arab on the nose.

  The people getting off the bus, and those who had been intending to get on it, came closer.

  Around the corner, the acrobat who was standing on his colleague's head turned to look at the fight, seemed to lose his balance, and fell into his audience.

  A small boy darted past Wolff's table. Wolff stood up, pointed at the boy and shouted at the top of his voice: "Stop, thief!"

  The boy dashed off. Wolff went after him, and four people sitting near Wolff jumped up and tried to grab the boy. The child ran between the two officers, who were staring at the fight in the road. Wolff and the people who had jumped up to help him cannoned into the officers, knocking both of them to the ground. Several people began to shout "Stop, thief!" although most of them had no idea who the alleged thief was. Some of the newcomers thought it must be one of the fighting drivers. The crowd from the bus stop, the acrobats' audience, and most of the people in the cafe surged forward and began to attack one or other of the drivers--Arabs assuming the Greek was the culprit and everyone else assuming it was the Arab. Several men with sticks--most people carried sticks--began to push into the crowd, beating on heads at random in an attempt to break up the fighting which was entirely counterproductive. Someone picked up a chair from the cafe and hurled it into the crowd. Fortunately it overshot and went through the windshield of the Packard. However the waiters, the kitchen staff and the proprietor of the cafe now rushed out and began to attack everyone who swayed, stumbled or sat on their furniture. Everyone yelled at everyone else in five languages. Passing cars halted to watch the melee, the traffic backed up in three directions, and every stopped car sounded its horn. A dog struggled free of its leash and started biting people's legs in a frenzy of excitement. Everyone got off the bus. The brawling crowd became bigger by the second. Drivers who had stopped to watch the fun regretted it, for when the fight engulfed their cars they were unable to move away (because everyone else had stopped too) and they had to lock their doors and roll up their windows while men, women and children, Arabs and Greeks and Syrians and Jews and Australians and Scotsmen, jumped on their roofs and fought on their hoods and fell on their running boards and bled all over their paintwork. Somebody fell through the window of the tailor's shop next to the cafe, and a frightened goat ran into the souvenir shop which flanked the cafe on the other side and began to knock down all the tables laden with china and pottery and glass. A baboon came from somewhere--it had probably been riding the goat, in a common form of street entertainment--and ran across the heads in the crowd, nimble-footed, to disappear in the direction of Alexandria. A horse broke free of its harness and bolted along the street between the lines of cars. From a window above the cafe a woman emptied a bucket of dirty water into the melee. Nobody noticed.

  At last the police arrived.

  When people heard the whistles, sudd
enly the shoves and pushes and insults which had started their own individual fights seemed a lot less important. There was a scramble to get away before the arrests began. The crowd diminished rapidly. Wolff, who had fallen over early in the proceedings, picked himself up and strolled across the road to watch the denouement. By the time six people had been handcuffed it was all over, and there was no one left fighting except for an old woman in black and a one-legged beggar feebly shoving each other in the gutter. The cafe proprietor, the tailor and the owner of the souvenir shop were wringing their hands and berating the police for not coming sooner while they mentally doubled and trebled the damage for insurance purposes.

  The bus driver had broken his arm, but all the other injuries were cuts and bruises.

  There was only one death; the goat had been bitten by the dog and consequently had to be destroyed.

  When the police tried to move the two crashed cars, they discovered that during the fight the street urchins had jacked up the rear ends of both vehicles and stolen the tires.

  Every single lightbulb in the bus had also disappeared.

  And so had one British Army briefcase.

  Alex Wolff was feeling pleased with himself as he walked briskly through the alleys of Old Cairo. A week ago the task of prizing secrets out of GHQ had seemed close to impossible. Now it looked as if he had pulled it off. The idea of getting Abdullah to orchestrate a street fight had been brilliant.

  He wondered what would be in the briefcase.

  Abdullah's house looked like all the other huddled slums. Its cracked and peeling facade was irregularly dotted with small misshapen windows. The entrance was a low doorless arch with a dark passage beyond. Wolff ducked under the arch, went along the passage and climbed a stone spiral staircase. At the top he pushed through a curtain and entered Abdullah's living room.

  The room was like its owner--dirty, comfortable and rich. Three small children and a puppy chased each other around the expensive sofas and inlaid tables. In an alcove by a window an old woman worked on a tapestry. Another woman was drifting out of the room as Wolff walked in: there was no strict Muslim separation of the sexes here, as there had been in Wolff's boyhood home. In the middle of the floor Abdullah sat cross-legged on an embroidered cushion with a baby in his lap. He looked up at Wolff and smiled broadly. "My friend, what a success we have had!"