by Ken Follett
A waiter brought Elene a drink. It was seven forty-five. She looked in Vandam's direction and gave a small, dainty shrug of her slight shoulders.
The door of the restaurant opened. Vandam froze with a cigarette halfway to his lips, then relaxed again, disappointed: it was only a small boy. The boy handed a piece of paper to a waiter then went out again.
Vandam decided to order another drink.
He saw the waiter go to Elene's table and hand her the piece of paper.
Vandam frowned. What was this? An apology from Wolff, saying he could not keep the date? Elene's face took on an expression of faint puzzlement. She looked at Vandam and gave that little shrug again.
Vandam considered whether to go over and ask her what was going on--but that would have spoiled the ambush, for what if Wolff should walk in while Elene was talking to Vandam? Wolff could turn around at the door and run, and he would have only the MPs to get past, two people instead of six.
Vandam murmured to Jakes: "Wait."
Elene picked up her clutch bag from the chair beside her and stood up. She looked at Vandam again, then turned around. Vandam thought she was going to the ladies' room. Instead she went to the door and opened it.
Vandam and Jakes got to their feet together. One of the sergeants half rose, looking at Vandam, and Vandam waved him down: no point in arresting Elene. Vandam and Jakes hurried across the restaurant to the door.
As they passed the sergeants Vandam said: "Follow me."
They went through the door into the street. Vandam looked around. There was a blind beggar sitting against the wall, holding out a cracked dish with a few piasters in it. Three soldiers in uniform staggered along the pavement, already drunk, arms around each other's shoulders, singing a vulgar song. A group of Egyptians had met just outside the restaurant and were vigorously shaking hands. A street vendor offered Vandam cheap razor blades. A few yards away Elene was getting into a taxi.
Vandam broke into a run.
The door of the taxi slammed and it pulled away.
Across the street, the MPs' car roared, shot forward and collided with a bus.
Vandam caught up with the taxi and leaped onto the running board. The car swerved suddenly. Vandam lost his grip, hit the road running and fell down.
He got to his feet. His face blazed with pain: his wound was bleeding again, and he could feel the sticky warmth under the dressing. Jakes and the two sergeants gathered around him. Across the road the MPs were arguing with the bus driver.
The taxi had disappeared.
15
ELENE WAS TERRIFIED. IT HAD ALL GONE WRONG. WOLFF WAS SUPPOSED TO have been arrested in the restaurant, and now he was here, in a taxi with her, smiling a feral smile. She sat still, her mind a blank.
"Who was he?" Wolff said, still smiling.
Elene could not think. She looked at Wolff, looked away again, and said: "What?"
"That man who ran after us. He jumped on the running board. I couldn't see him properly, but I thought he was a European. Who was he?"
Elene fought down her fear. He's William Vandam, and he was supposed to arrest you. She had to make up a story. Why would someone follow her out of a restaurant and try to get into her taxi? "He ... I don't know him. He was in the restaurant." Suddenly she was inspired. "He was bothering me. I was alone. It's your fault--you were late."
"I'm so sorry," he said quickly.
Elene had an access of confidence after he swallowed her story so readily. "And why are we in a taxi?" she demanded. "What's it all about? Why aren't we having dinner?" She heard a whining note in her voice, and hated it.
"I had a wonderful idea." He smiled again, and Elene suppressed a shudder. "We're going to have a picnic. There's a basket in the trunk."
She did not know whether to believe him. Why had he pulled that stunt at the restaurant, sending a boy in with the message "Come outside.--A.W." unless he suspected a trap? What would he do now, take her into the desert and knife her? She had a sudden urge to leap out of the speeding car. She closed her eyes and forced herself to think calmly. If he suspected a trap, why did he come at all? No, it had to be more complex than that. He seemed to have believed her about the man on the running board--but she could not be sure what was going on behind his smile.
She said: "Where are we going?"
"A few miles out of town, to a little spot on the riverbank where we can watch the sun go down. It's going to be a lovely evening."
"I don't want to go."
"What's the matter?"
"I hardly know you."
"Don't be silly. The driver will be with us all the time--and I'm a gentleman."
"I should get out of the car."
"Please don't." He touched her arm lightly. "I have some smoked salmon, and a cold chicken, and a bottle of champagne. I get so bored with restaurants."
Elene considered. She could leave him now, and she would be safe--she would never see him again. That was what she wanted, to get away from the man forever. She thought: But I'm Vandam's only hope. What do I care for Vandam? I'd be happy never to see him again, and go back to the old peaceful life--
The old life.
She did care for Vandam, she realized; at least enough for her to hate the thought of letting him down. She had to stay with Wolff, cultivate him, angle for another date, try to find out where he lived.
Impulsively she said: "Let's go to your place."
He raised his eyebrows. "That's a sudden change of heart."
She realized she had made a mistake. "I'm confused," she said. "You sprung a surprise on me. Why didn't you ask me first?"
"I only thought of the idea an hour ago. It didn't occur to me that it might scare you."
Elene realized that she was, unintentionally, fulfilling her role as a dizzy girl. She decided not to overplay her hand. "All right," she said. She tried to relax.
Wolff was studying her. He said: "You're not quite as vulnerable as you seem, are you?"
"I don't know."
"I remember what you said to Aristopoulos, that first day I saw you in the shop."
Elene remembered: she had threatened to cut off Mikis' cock if he touched her again. She should have blushed, but she could not do so voluntarily. "I was so angry," she said.
Wolff chuckled. "You sounded it," he said. "Try to bear in mind that I am not Aristopoulos."
She gave him a weak smile. "Okay."
He turned his attention to the driver. They were out of the city, and Wolff began to give directions. Elene wondered where he had found this taxi: by Egyptian standards it was luxurious. It was some kind of American car, with big soft seats and lots of room, and it seemed only a few years old.
They passed through a series of villages, then turned onto an unmade road. The car followed the winding track up a small hill and emerged on a little plateau atop a bluff. The river was immediately below them, and on its far side Elene could see the neat patchwork of cultivated fields stretching into the distance until they met the sharp tan-colored line of the edge of the desert.
Wolff said: "Isn't this a lovely spot?"
Elene had to agree. A flight of swifts rising from the far bank of the river drew her eye upward, and she saw that the evening clouds were already edged in pink. A young girl was walking away from the river with a huge water jug on her head. A lone felucca sailed upstream, propelled by a light breeze.
The driver got out of the car and walked fifty yards away. He sat down, pointedly turning his back on them, lit a cigarette and unfolded a newspaper.
Wolff got a picnic hamper out of the trunk and set it on the floor of the car between them. As he began to unpack the food, Elene asked him: "How did you discover this place?"
"My mother brought me here when I was a boy." He handed her a glass of wine. "After my father died, my mother married an Egyptian. From time to time she would find the Muslim household oppressive, so she would bring me here in a gharry and tell me about ... Europe, and so on."
"Did you enjoy it?"
He hesitated. "My mother had a way of spoiling things like that. She was always interrupting the fun. She used to say: 'You're so selfish, just like your father.' At that age I preferred my Arab family. My stepbrothers were wicked, and nobody tried to control them. We used to steal oranges from other people's gardens, throw stones at horses to make them bolt, puncture bicycle tires ... Only my mother minded, and all she could do was warn us that we'd get punished eventually. She was always saying that--'They'll catch you one day, Alex!' "
The mother was right, Elene thought: they would catch Alex one day.
She was relaxing. She wondered whether Wolff was carrying the knife he had used in Assyut, and that made her tense again. The situation was so normal--a charming man taking a girl on a picnic beside the river--that for a moment she had forgotten she wanted something from him.
She said: "Where do you live now?"
"My house has been ... commandeered by the British. I'm living with friends." He handed her a slice of smoked salmon on a china plate, then sliced a lemon in half with a kitchen knife. Elene watched - his deft hands. She wondered what he wanted from her, that he should work so hard to please her.
Vandam felt very low. His face hurt, and so did his pride. The great arrest had been a fiasco. He had failed professionally, he had been outwitted by Alex Wolff and he had sent Elene into danger.
He sat at home, his cheek newly bandaged, drinking gin to ease the pain. Wolff had evaded him so damn easily. Vandam was sure the spy had not really known about the ambush--otherwise he would not have turned up at all. No, he had just been taking precautions; and the precautions had worked beautifully.
They had a good description of the taxi. It had been a distinctive car, quite new, and Jakes had read the number plate. Every policeman and MP in the city was looking out for it, and had orders to stop it on sight and arrest all the occupants. They would find it, sooner or later, and Vandam felt sure it would be too late. Nevertheless he was sitting by the phone.
What was Elene doing now? Perhaps she was in a candlelit restaurant, drinking wine and laughing at Wolff's jokes. Vandam pictured her, in the cream-colored dress, holding a glass, smiling her special, impish smile, the one that promised you anything you wanted. Vandam checked his watch. Perhaps they had finished dinner by now. What would they do then? It was traditional to go and look at the pyramids by moonlight: the black sky, the stars, the endless flat desert and the clean triangular planes of the pharaohs' tombs. The area would be deserted, except perhaps for another pair of lovers. They might climb a few levels, he springing up ahead and then reaching down to lift her; but soon she would be exhausted, her hair and her dress a little awry, and she would say that these shoes were not designed for mountaineering; so they would sit on the great stones, still warm from the sun, and breathe the mild night air while they watched the stars. Walking back to the taxi, she would shiver in her sleeveless evening gown, and he might put an arm around her shoulders to keep her warm. Would he kiss her in the taxi? No, he was too old for that. When he made his pass, it would be in some sophisticated manner. Would he suggest going back to his place, or hers? Vandam did not know which to hope for. If they went to his place, Elene would report in the morning, and Vandam would be able to arrest Wolff at home, with his radio, his code book and perhaps even his back traffic. Professionally, that would be better--but it would also mean that Elene would spend a night with Wolff, and that thought made Vandam more angry than it should have done. Alternatively, if they went to her place, where Jakes was waiting with ten men and three cars, Wolff would be grabbed before he got a chance to--
Vandam got up and paced the room. Idly, he picked up the book Rebecca, the one he thought Wolff was using as the basis of his code. He read the first line: "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." He put the book down, then opened it again and read on. The story of the vulnerable, bullied girl was a welcome distraction from his own worries. When he realized that the girl would marry the glamorous, older widower, and that the marriage would be blighted by the ghostly presence of the man's first wife, he closed the book and put it down again. What was the age difference between himself and Elene? How long would he be haunted by Angela? She, too, had been coldly perfect; Elene, too, was young, impulsive and in need of rescue from the life she was living. These thoughts irritated him, for he was not going to marry Elene. He lit a cigarette. Why did the time pass so slowly? Why did the phone not ring? How could he have let Wolff slip through his fingers twice in two days? Where was Elene?
Where was Elene?
He had sent a woman into danger once before. It had happened after his other great fiasco, when Rashid Ali had slipped out of Turkey under Vandam's nose. Vandam had sent a woman agent to pick up the German agent, the man who had changed clothes with Ali and enabled him to escape. He had hoped to salvage something from the shambles by finding out all about the man. But the next day the woman had been found dead in a hotel bed. It was a chilling parallel.
There was no point in staying in the house. He could not possibly sleep, and there was nothing else he could do there. He would go and join Jakes and the others, despite Dr. Abuthnot's orders. He put on a coat and his uniform cap, went outside, and wheeled his motorcycle out of the garage.
Elene and Wolff stood together, close to the edge of the bluff, looking at the distant lights of Cairo and the nearer, flickering glimmers of peasant fires in dark villages. Elene was thinking of an imaginary peasant--hardworking, poverty-stricken, superstitious--laying a straw mattress on the earth floor, pulling a rough blanket around him, and finding consolation in the arms of his wife. Elene had left poverty behind, she hoped forever, but sometimes it seemed to her that she had left something else behind with it, something she could not do without. In Alexandria when she was a child people would put blue palm prints on the red mud walls, hand shapes to ward off evil. Elene did not believe in the efficacy of the palm prints; but despite the rats, despite the nightly screams as the moneylender beat both of his wives, despite the ticks that infested everyone, despite the early death of many babies, she believed there had been something there that warded off evil. She had been looking for that something when she took men home, took them into her bed, accepted their gifts and their caresses and their money; but she had never found it.
She did not want to do that anymore. She had spent too much of her life looking for love in the wrong places. In particular, she did not want to do it with Alex Wolff. Several times she had said to herself: "Why not do it just once more?" That was Vandam's coldly reasonable point of view. But, each time she contemplated making love with Wolff, she saw again the daydream that had plagued her for the last few weeks, the daydream of seducing William Vandam. She knew just how Vandam would be: he would look at her with innocent wonder, and touch her with wide-eyed delight; thinking of it, she felt momentarily helpless with desire. She knew how Wolff would be, too. He would be knowing, selfish, skillful and unshockable.
Without speaking she turned from the view and walked back toward the car. It was time for him to make his pass. They had finished the meal, emptied the champagne bottle and the flask of coffee, picked clean the chicken and the bunch of grapes. Now he would expect his just reward. From the backseat of the car she watched him. He stayed a moment longer on the edge of the bluff, then walked toward her, calling to the driver. He had the confident grace that height often seemed to give to men. He was an attractive man, much more glamorous than any of Elene's lovers had been, but she was afraid of him, and her fear came not just from what she knew about him, his history and his secrets and his knife, but from an intuitive understanding of his nature: somehow she knew that his charm was not spontaneous but manipulative, and that if he was kind it was because he wanted to use her.
She had been used enough.
Wolff got Wolff got in beside her. "Did you enjoy the picnic?"
She made an effort to be bright. "Yes, it was lovely. Thank you."
The car pulled away. Either he would invi
te her to his place or he would take her to her flat and ask for a nightcap. She would have to find an encouraging way to refuse him. This struck her as ridiculous: she was behaving like a frightened virgin. She thought: What am I doing--saving myself for Mr. Right?
She had been silent for too long. She was supposed to be witty and engaging. She should talk to him. "Have you heard the war news?" she asked, and realized at once it was not the most lighthearted of topics.
"The Germans are still winning," he said. "Of course."
"Why 'of course'?"
He smiled condescendingly at her. "The world is divided into masters and slaves, Elene." He spoke as if he were explaining simple facts to a schoolgirl. "The British have been masters too long. They've gone soft, and now it will be someone else's turn."
"And the Egyptians--are they masters, or slaves?" She knew she should shut up, she was walking on thin ice, but his complacency infuriated her.
"The Bedouin are masters," he said. "But the average Egyptian is a born slave."
She thought: He means every word of it. She shuddered.
They reached the outskirts of the city. It was after midnight, and the suburbs were quiet, although downtown would still be buzzing. Wolff said: "Where do you live?"
She told him. So it was to be her place.
Wolff said: "We must do this again."
"I'd like that."
They reached the Sharia Abbas, and he told the driver to stop. Elene wondered what was going to happen now. Wolff turned to her and said: "Thank you for a lovely evening. I'll see you soon." He got out of the car.
She stared in astonishment. He bent down by the driver's window, gave the man some money and told him Elene's address. The driver nodded. Wolff banged on the roof of the car, and the driver pulled away. Elene looked back and saw Wolff waving. As the car began to turn a comer, Wolff started walking toward the river.
She thought: What do you make of that?
No pass, no invitation to his place, no nightcap, not even a good-night kiss--what game was he playing, hard-to-get?
She puzzled over the whole thing as the taxi took her home. Perhaps it was Wolff's technique to try to intrigue a woman. Perhaps he was just eccentric. Whatever the reason, she was very grateful. She sat back and relaxed. She was not obliged to choose between fighting him off and going to bed with him. Thank God.