Nile Shadows jq-3

by Edward Whittemore

Joe sagged as if from a blow. He sank to his knees and raised his hands, pleading.

  And what else did he say? What else, for the love of God?

  He said their lives had been bitter with bondage and he knew their sorrows. And he spoke of a ransom of souls and he said an angel had been sent before thee to keep thee in the way, and to bring them into a good land and large, flowing with milk and honey. . . . And lastly he spoke of a golden bell and a pomegranate. Upon the hem of the robe, he said, a golden bell and a pomegranate round about. . . .

  Belle stared down at her lap. Alice half rose in her chair, tears streaming down her face.

  I should have recognized the words, whispered Belle, but it all happened so quickly and it was so strange the way he acted, we didn't understand. He seemed a man possessed but he was speaking from the Book of Exodus, wasn't he?

  Oh God, shrieked Joe, why did he do it? Oh God. . . .

  Joe buried his head in his hands. Alice was kneeling beside him now, her arms around him. Belle raised her eyes.

  But who was he? We were so sure he was you. Who was he?

  A friend, whispered Joe, choking out the words. A man speaking to his people . . . a dream, a beautiful dream, a golden bell. A man with the gift of faces and the gift of tongues who came and went as anyone .

  . . the wandering Jew in all of us. Liffy was his name. . . .

  But why did he come here like that, Joe? Why did he do it? To save you?

  Oh no, not me, much more than that. So much more. . . .

  Joe broke down completely then, sobbing on the floor as Alice held him in her arms, rocking with him and stroking the dusty scars in his face that ran with tears.

  ***

  After a time, when Joe had managed to recover a little, the three of them sat talking amidst the pale wicker shapes of that dilapidated mansion moored on the nighttide of the great river, speaking in low voices in the shadowy moonlight.

  As best he could, Joe recounting what had happened. Being in the poor Arab bar when the hand grenade had come sailing in through the shabby curtain at midnight, instantly killing Stern. Joe stunned by the explosion and wandering in a daze through the sordid alleys, stopping to telephone Maud and eventually finding himself back beside the Nile, in the dingy public garden where old Menelik's secret crypt lay buried.

  Descending the stairs once more and letting himself into the crypt and lying down on one of those hard park benches from another era. Feeling dizzy and exhausted and slipping into a deep sleep that stretched on through an invisible dawn and the invisible day that followed Stern's death, a fugitive from the light fitfully sleeping into the evening of the second night.

  Waking up at last on the park bench with his body cramped and aching, the distant roar of Stern's death and a dim cry from the darkness still echoing in his mind . . . a beggar . . . a beggar. . . . Joe appalled by the murkiness of his suddenly strange surroundings and not even sure for one brief moment that he was still alive, above all wanting to escape from the gloomy crypt.

  Noticing then that Liffy's small battered volume of Buber was lying open on one of the park benches, which wasn't the way he remembered it having been when he and Stern had left the crypt. Noticing also a small pile of clothes neatly folded near the door, beside them an old makeup kit that Liffy had often carried with him.

  Joe realizing then that Liffy must have come to the public garden on the previous night and followed him and Stern to the poor Arab bar, where he had witnessed the explosion at midnight and subsequently followed Joe back to the crypt once more, letting himself in while Joe slept and keeping watch through the dangerous night, until daylight had come aboveground and it was time for Liffy to change into the final costume of his final role, while still Joe had gone on sleeping.

  And what had that final costume of Liffy's been? What transformation had Liffy chosen for himself in the end?

  A mystery to Joe when he had awoken in the crypt, hours after Liffy had left. Joe wanting only to escape, for safety using the emergency exit Stern had showed him, a low narrow tunnel thick with the dust of the past. Joe emerging chalk-white from the secret passageway and discovering that it was night again, fleeing wildly through the park in the exhilaration of his escape from death, a ghostly figure floating beside the river on the mild breezes of that clear Cairo night.

  And furtive telephone calls made to the Major, a man Liffy had known, and stealing a dinghy and paddling downstream to the houseboat, where he had come rising up out of the currents only to find that Liffy had been there before him, disguising himself as Joe so the anonymous Monks from the desert would think their work was done and Joe would have another chance to escape, another chance to survive..

  Liffy.

  Joe still couldn't mention his name without breaking down. It was different somehow with Stern, because everything having to do with Stern had always been expected in a way. Stern himself had always seemed to know what his destiny would be, and it had been impossible to be around him without sensing that sooner or later. Joe had felt it long ago when he had first met Stern in Jerusalem, as had others before and since then.

  But Liffy? . . Liffy?

  Joe turned away, too wrenched with pain to dwell on that vast multitude of faces and voices once conjured up in Liffy's sorrowing magic, and laughter, lost now to the world. It was too much for Joe so they talked for awhile of other things, and then Joe rose.

  ***

  Well I'll be leaving now, he said. There are things I must try to do, and whatever way it turns out, I'm afraid we won't be meeting again.

  Little Alice looked at him tenderly, and Big Belle's sad eyes were as strong upon him as ever. They watched as he went to stand on the small veranda one last time, gazing out over the river. Then he came back into the room to face them.

  And where will you go from here? asked Belle.

  Joe tried to smile.

  To meet a man at the Sphinx, he said. I have no answers for him, but I might know the questions to ask at least.

  And this time he did smile. Thinly, but he managed it.

  I have to tell you I've never been able to handle good-byes, he said. I've just never gotten used to leaving people, even though I've done little else in my life. People have a way of slipping into our hearts and staying there, and we treasure them and don't want to let them go, and more than that, we never can let them go.

  Once long ago I tried to live differently, but it never really worked. I used to pretend something could be over and done with, a place or a person, and I could move on and nothing was the worse for it. But I learned soon enough that was only a turn of words on the surface of things, mere childish pretending, and it was pain that taught me that, I'm sorry to say. Of course we do move on all right, but we don't forget nor should we, and nothing important is ever left behind, and no one we've loved ever goes out of our lives. They live on in other ways, that's all, in our words and our gestures, changing us and changing with us and even speaking to us in the quiet moments. Sometimes recognized, mostly not, but always a part of us, woven into the stuff of our lives.

  And as for what's out there where I'm going now, well, when you look at it one way it's surely not much of a world, is it? We lose and we lose and that's all we ever do from the time we're born. Lose those who brought us into the world and lose the place where that was, the only safe place we ever know, and then we go right on losing other places and other people and the hopes and dreams that go with them, losing those we love and finding others if we're lucky, only to know we'll lose them too with time. Lose is all.

  And that's one way to look at it surely, and all of it true and undeniably the way it is. But then there's also that other side to life, those moments that have a kind of grandeur to them, that speak of love so beautiful it takes your breath away. Rare moments that shine in the darkness, rare precious gems in the night, jewels of the soul beautiful and ancient. . . .

  Joe nodded, smiling. He leaned down and embraced Belle and then Alice, kissing each of them. At the
door he paused.

  I've known those moments here with the two of you. I've known them and I'll always know them, and I'll always remember this room one way. The way it was the other night when I came here, one timeless night like all others on the Nile, and I sat in the candlelight looking at the river and listening to your beautiful music. A night unlike any other for me, on the Nile in the shadows at the end of the darkness, listening to your beautiful music. Yours, and now mine. . . .

  Then all at once he was gone and the two tiny women were alone in the moonlight of their airy sunroom, alone again with their memories. . . . Big Belle sitting stiffly erect, staring straight ahead at the river. Little Alice touching her hair and softly humming a tune against the night.

  -21-

  Purple Seven Moonglow

  Midnight past in the serenity of the still desert.

  The pyramids stately before the stars.

  And far away in the moonlight a wisp of sand swirling lightly over the crest of a dune, billowing softly in the wake of a distant horseman who had suddenly come racing into view from out of the pale stony reaches of the night, pounding swiftly down through the wastes in a headlong charge aimed at that huge crouching figure on guard among the pyramids, the calm and graceful Sphinx.

  . . . this mysterious solitary charge in the moonlight carefully observed all the while from an unsuspected lookout. From a black hole in the right eye of the Sphinx. . . .

  The horse and rider dropped from sight and came flying over a final ridge to gallop wildly down the last hard stretch of desert, the hoofbeats of the animal drumming more loudly as the charge narrowed, the dashing figure on horseback now clearly visible.

  The pale rider wore a pith helmet, a safari jacket and jodhpurs. His face was masked by a gleaming white silk scarf tied around his head and flowing on the wind. His eyes were masked by racing goggles that caught the drift of the moon and blankly reflected it back in opaque white discs. The horse reared in front of the Sphinx as the rider broke his gallop, then went charging off to one side and quickly circled the enormous stone figure so tranquilly in repose in the moonlight.

  Nothing. The Major had found no one lurking along the sides of the great stone beast. No one crouching in the crevices of antiquity's hindquarters. The Major was quite sure he was alone.

  He drew up again in front of the Sphinx and dismounted, removing his carbine from its case on the side of the saddle. He also checked his long-range sniper's rifle nestling on his back, the large automatic pistols strapped to each of his hips, the small automatic in one pocket of his jodhpurs and the even smaller automatic in the other pocket, and the minuscule ivory-handled derringer under his jacket to the side.

  Lastly he felt for the hunting knife at his waist, the two smaller slashing knives taped to his back, and the four throwing daggers strapped to his shins. Jingling around on the Major's web belt was a mass of extra ammunition clips, a half-dozen for each of his automatic pistols and a full dozen for his carbine.

  In addition to the large supply of shiny brass bullets bristling from bandoliers crisscrossing the Major's chest, deadly fifty-caliber tracers as long as a man's hand and of no use whatsoever without a large water-cooled machine gun to fire them. But although these utterly useless bullets were no more than a kind of brassy display of symbolic mail firepower in the moonlight, they were still undeniably impressive, awesome because of sheer size alone.

  Equipped. Armed. Ready.

  Rifles, pistols, knives, tracers, daggers.

  Automatic bolt actions and slippery blowback loading and well-oiled breechblock plungers. Beady sights and solid safety switches and slithering barrel screws, and but the merest squeeze of a taut trigger needed to make a hammer slam home and balls explode.

  Equipped.

  And finally, for reserve firepower, the Major had also brought along a monstrous nine-shot Czech revolver, an enormous pistol once claimed by Balkan assassins to be the ultimate all-purpose secret weapon of the future. This crude Czech masterpiece hidden in a saddlebag on the Major's high-spirited Arabian mare, in case the Major suddenly found himself stripped of his other weapons. In case he suddenly had to leap from the Sphinx onto his mare, against all odds, and make a daring escape in the moonlight, blasting away at skulking shadows as he thundered over the dunes.

  Armed.

  Grimly the masked Major smiled beneath the flowing silk folds of his white scarf, behind the pale white discs of his racing goggles.

  Ready.

  As prepared as any masked man could ever be for a dangerous nighttime meeting with a Purple Seven fugitive in the shadows of the inscrutable Sphinx.

  ***

  The Major cocked his pith helmet at an angle and fitted his swagger stick more securely into his left armpit, which was unaccountably wet in the cool night. Then he went striding up toward the impassive stone face of the gigantic beast and planted his feet in a solid position, just below the great stone nose, which was badly bent and mostly missing as a result of having been used for target practice by Napoleon's artillery, nearly a century and a half earlier.

  Standing there between the great stone paws with his carbine at the ready, loosely aiming at the immense expanse of open desert with the noble head of the mythical stone creature looming up behind him, the Major momentarily had the sensation of himself being the courageous British lion, the very beast of the Empire, alone in the pale moonlight facing the vastness of the unknown.

  And all the while, unbeknown to him, the Major was being carefully observed from above. . . . From the blackest of the black holes of antiquity

  The Major checked his watch. Two o'clock in the morning and still no sign of the Purple Seven.

  The Armenian's late, he thought, fingering his carbine. Late. Not even on time. And not exactly the way for a Purple Seven to maintain his reputation for being dangerous, or even clever for that matter. But out here, how dangerous could one fugitive agent be? Here in bright moonlight, where the Major had a clear field of fire in front of him and a solid mass of mythical stone beast behind him? With the arsenal he was carrying, in fact, the Major thought he could probably have held off a small army of marauding bedouin tribesmen from his superior vantage point under the nose of the Sphinx. Nor was it difficult for the Major to imagine himself doing just that.

  With the telescopic sights of his sniper's rifle trained on the distant dunes, picking off the shrieking rebel sheiks the moment they galloped into view. . . . Quickly lowering his sights and picking off the banner-bearer and his cutthroat bodyguards. . . . Throwing aside the now useless sniper's rifle as the hordes kept coming. . . . Seizing his rapid-fire carbine and gunning down whole mobs of howling tribesmen as they came milling around the base of the Sphinx, blazing away from his hip, bravely slamming in new clips until the burning weapon jammed from the incessant explosions. . . . Finally driven back against the throat of the Sphinx itself by the overwhelming numbers of the enemy. Crouching beneath the great stone chin with an automatic pistol in each hand, a knife in his teeth, fearlessly blasting away at the shadows that came sneaking up from the hindquarters of the mythical beast, recklessly blasting away at this native gas from the bowels of antiquity. The automatics jamming and the Major hurling daggers in a last heroic stand for the sake of the Empire and the British lion. . . .

  Tinkle.

  The ammunition clips dangling around the Major's waist clinked lightly together. Stupid of the Armenian, he thought, to pick a rendezvous as open as this one. The Armenian must have imagined it would save him from being taken by surprise, but obviously he hadn't foreseen the possibility of the Major's quick dash in from the desert on a swift Arabian mare. And now the Armenian must be out there somewhere hiding behind a dune, helplessly watching the Major astride his commanding position in the lap of the Sphinx. Still, the Major was more than a little disappointed by the silence on every side. This was to be his first meeting, after all, with the Purple Seven who was Our Colly's successor, and somehow he had expected a more romantic encounter
, a more dramatic confrontation. Especially in view of the unusual setting.

  But it wasn't the first time the Major had been disappointed since coming to the Middle East, and all because, early in life, he had fallen so deeply under the spell of the extraordinary explorers who had roamed the region in the nineteenth century . . . Burton and Doughty, Szondi and Burckhardt, and above all the incomparable Strongbow. The startling images of those romantic adventurers had always been the Major's ideal. Ever since childhood he had been haunted by their unconquerable visions in the strange sun-splashed reaches of distant deserts. So perhaps it wasn't surprising that contemporary life in the bazaars and deserts of the Middle East, for the Major, had never been as romantic as he had always dreamed it would be.

  Tinkle.

  And so it seemed once again in the case of this unknown Purple Seven. Dreams had proved to be false for the Major and life had never been as exciting as it had been for other men in other eras. Not even here in the lap of the Sphinx, under a full moon, in a perilous wartime meeting with an anonymous secret agent.

  Tinkle.

  Wistfully the Major sighed behind his raffish white silk mask, behind his dashing racing goggles, beneath his weathered pith helmet tipped at a rakish angle, weighted down with arms as he was in the best tradition of a desert brigand. Sighed and listened to his heavy ammunition clips clinking ever so softly in the stillness, tinkling as merrily as the gay little sounds made by goats' bells wafting through the night to the ears of some illiterate goatherd. Sighed and checked his watch and gazed longingly up at the moon.

  A goatherd. Soft breezes. A lunatic setting. . . . But how could anyone pretend for long to be a mysterious masked man in the moonlight, when an Armenian couldn't even be on time?

  The Major sighed, vastly disappointed by all of it. Thoroughly glum over his first meeting with a man who carried the fabled designation that was the most secret the Secret Service could bestow. Sighed and groaned.

  Where in God's name was this Purple Seven?

  ***

  The first warning that something was out of the ordinary came from the Major's Arabian mare. Abruptly the animal stopped poking around in the sand and raised her head. Was it a sound too distant for human ears? A scent from far away drifting in on the clear night air?