by Philip Kerr
“It’s outside.”
He glanced away for a moment and then shrugged. “It might give me something to do. You have no idea how boring it is in here. And a few creature comforts would be appreciated. Some more of these American cigarettes. Some decent food. Some beer. Some wine, perhaps.”
“All right.”
“And don’t forget that medicine. My stomach feels like there’s a family of rats living in it.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“But I’ll tell you frankly, five days is hardly enough time. Even with the codebooks. Cryptologically speaking, the Popovs take no chances. With most systems, operators bow to convenience, because total encipherment takes time. But the Popovs are slavish in their adherence to security. And my guess is that you’re not going to end up with a plaintext message. The chances are there will be lots of code names for this and that.”
Reichleitner watched me for a moment and I watched him back. Then he broke off, helping himself to another cigarette.
“Luckily for you, I know what a lot of these code names mean. For example, when you see the word ‘luggage’ it means ‘mail.’ ‘Novator’ means ‘secret agent’; and ‘Sparta’ means ‘Russia.’ That kind of thing. So we’ll see what we can see.”
I stood up and offered him my hand. “Sounds like we’ve got a deal,” I said.
From Grey Pillars, I caught a taxi and ordered the driver to take me back to Shepheard’s Hotel. As I sat back in the car, a large cockroach crawled across its carpeted dashboard, and I realized the driver was either wholly oblivious of or utterly indifferent to the presence of the shiny brown insect. One way or the other, it seemed to say something about the country I was in.
AT SEVEN, bathed and dressed for dinner, I came downstairs to find Corporal Coogan waiting with the car in front of the hotel, as arranged. We drove south, back to Garden City, which, despite being where the British GHQ and SOE were located, was still Cairo’s most fashionable residential district.
A series of narrow winding streets that changed names at vague intervals, and in which it was not uncommon to end up exactly where you started, led to lush gardens in which sat several large white stucco mansions. Some of these might be better described as palaces. Which seemed only appropriate, given that I had been invited to dinner by a princess.
I got there early, since I guessed we had a lot of catching up to do.
Elena’s house, next to what had been the Italian legation on Harass Street, was made of white stone in the French Mediterranean style, with large continuous balconies and French windows that would have let in a sphinx or two. A wrought-iron fence enclosed a large garden dominated by a stately mango tree, which was surrounded by purple and red bougainvillea.
The gate was opened by a tall man wearing a white djellaba and a red tarboosh. He directed me along a path to some steps leading up to a large terrace, where one or two figures were already milling about with cocktails in their hands. It was a hot, sticky night. The air felt like warm molasses. All the lights in the house were burning, and flaming torches illuminated the path that led from the gate to the front door, where another man in a long white robe held a tray with drinks.
I picked up a glass heavy with champagne and mounted the steps. At the top was Elena, dripping with diamonds and wearing a low-cut lilac cocktail dress, her long blond hair piled ornately on top of her head. Seeing her again, it was a little hard to believe that, for a while at least, I had shared a bed with this woman.
“Willy darling.”
“You remembered my middle name.”
“How lovely to see you again. The cleverest man I ever knew.”
She made it sound as if I had been dead for a while. And perhaps I had, at that. Certainly since leaving Washington I had felt like a man without a future. For the first time in more than a week, I found myself smiling. I made a heroic effort to keep my eyes on her face.
“And you. Look at you. Still the most beautiful woman in the room.”
She hit me playfully on the shoulder with a little fan. “Now, you know there aren’t any other women here. Not yet.”
“Actually I hadn’t really noticed. Not since the moment I laid eyes on you.”
That was what Elena did. She dazzled. Men, of course. I had never met a woman who liked her. And I couldn’t blame them. Elena would have been stiff competition for Delilah. In any room, she was always the brightest thing in it. Naturally, this meant there were always lots of moths around her flame. I could see a few of them floating around on the terrace. Most of the moths were wearing British uniforms.
Elena hugged me fondly and, taking me by the elbow, hustled me off the terrace into an enormous drawing room furnished in an opulent Second Empire style with just a touch of the Levantine. The Count of Monte Cristo would not have looked at all out of place there with the daughter of Ali Pasha, the Princess Haydée. There were hookahs and tapestries and Orientalist oils by Frederick Goodall showing harem scenes and slave markets, all of which gave the room a sort of stage-sexiness. We sat down on a long French Empire sofa.
“I want you all to myself before the other guests arrive. So you can tell me what you have been doing. God, it’s wonderful to see you again, darling. Now, look here, I know about the book. I even tried to read it, only I couldn’t understand a word. You’re not married?”
“No, I’m not married.”
She seemed to read something between the frown lines appearing on my forehead.
“Marriage isn’t for you, Willy darling. Not with your looks and your sex drive. Take it from someone who’s been there. Freddy was a wonderful husband in many ways, but he was exactly like you in that department. Couldn’t keep his hands off other men’s wives, which is why he’s no longer alive.”
Five years had passed since I had last seen Elena. After I left Berlin, she had gone to Cairo as the wife of a very rich Egyptian banker, a Copt named Rashdi, who managed to get himself shot dead during a card game in 1941. Bill Deakin had told me that Elena was famous in Cairo, and this was hardly surprising. He also told me she was keen to do her bit for the Allies, and regularly threw soirées for SOE officers whenever they were on leave. Elena’s parties were almost as famous as she was.
“So, what are you doing in Cairo? I assume you’ve something to do with the conference.”
I told Elena I was in the OSS, serving as the president’s liaison officer, and that I’d been Roosevelt’s special representative in London investigating the Katyn Forest massacre. Elena’s father, Prince Peter Pontiatowski, and his family had been forced to leave their family estates in the Kresy—the Polish northeast—during the Russo-Polish war in 1920. Their lands had never been recovered. As a result, Elena didn’t care much for the Russians.
“There are lots of Polish officers coming tonight, and you’ll find nearly all of them knew someone who was murdered at Katyn,” she said. “I must get some of them to tell you about what really happened in Poland. They’ll be so pleased to meet an American who knows something about what happened in Poland. Most of your countrymen don’t, you know. They don’t know, and I think they don’t care.”
There was a Baroque marble statue on a table depicting some ancient Greek hero who was being attacked by a lion that had its teeth planted very firmly in his bare ass. It looked uncomfortable. And for a moment I saw myself at the dinner table having my skinny Yankee ass similarly chewed by some disgruntled Polish officer.
“Actually, Elena,” I said, “I’d rather you didn’t mention my working for the president.”
“I’ll try, darling. But you know me. I’m hopeless with secrets. I tell all the boys who come here, ‘Don’t tell me anything.’ I can’t keep a secret to save my life. I’ve been an inveterate gossip ever since school. Remember what the little doctor said to me once?”
I knew she was referring to Josef Goebbels, whom we’d both known well in Berlin.
“‘I have two ways of releasing information to the world,’” she said, speaking German and
imitating perfectly Goebbels’s impeccable, professorial, High German accent. “‘I can leave a memorandum on the desk of my secretary at the Leopold Palace. Or I can tell Princess Elena Pontiatowska something in complete confidence. ’”
I laughed. I remembered the occasion when Goebbels had said it, not least because the same night I had slept with Elena for the first time. “Yes, that’s right. I remember.”
“I do miss him sometimes,” she sighed. “I think he was the only Nazi I ever really liked.”
“He was certainly the cleverest Nazi I ever knew,” I admitted.
She sighed. “I suppose I had better go back and join my other guests.”
“It’s your party.”
“You don’t understand what it’s like, darling. Entertaining the troops like this. They all fancy their bloody chances. Especially the count.”
“The count?”
“My Polish SOE colonel, Wlazyslaw Pulnarowicz. Carpathian Rifle Brigade. He’s liable to challenge you to a duel if he sees me talking to you like this.”
“So why do you bother doing it? Entertain the troops.” I laughed. “Jesus, I make you sound like Bob Hope. Is Pepsodent paying for this party?”
“I do it for morale, of course. The British are very keen on morale.” She stood up. “Come on. Let me introduce you to some people.”
She took me by the arm again and led me back onto the terrace, where several British and Polish officers now eyed me suspiciously. There were other women at the party by now, but I didn’t pay them any attention. I just meekly followed Elena around the terrace as she introduced me to one person and then another. And I made her laugh. Just like we were back in Berlin.
Eventually we went in to dinner. I was seated between Elena and her Polish colonel, who seemed none too pleased that I had usurped his position on Elena’s right-hand side. He was a striking man with dark hair, a longish chin, a Fairbanks mustache, and a beautiful speaking voice that seemed quite unaffected by the harsh-smelling tobacco he rolled in his neat little cigarettes. I smiled at him a few times, and when I wasn’t speaking to Elena, I even tried to make conversation. The colonel’s replies were mostly monosyllabic; once or twice he didn’t even bother to reply at all. Instead he just busied himself sawing at a piece of chicken as if it were a German’s throat. Or mine. He wasn’t the only Pole at the dinner table. Just the least friendly. There were eighteen guests, of whom at least five other officers present, not including Colonel Pulnarowicz, wore the shoulder patches of the Polish army. They were much more talkative. Not least because Elena seemed to have a limitless supply of excellent wines and spirits. There was even some vodka from the famous Lancut distillery in Poland.
Toward the end of the meal I lit us both cigarettes and asked her how it was that there were so many Poles in Egypt.
“After the Russians invaded Poland,” she said, “many Poles were deported to the southern Soviet republics. Then, after Germany attacked Russia, the Russians set many Poles free in Iran and Iraq. Most joined the Polish army of General Anders to fight the Nazis. Here, in the North African theater, the Polish army was commanded by General Sikorski. But, as you know, relations between the Poles and the Russians collapsed with the discovery of the bodies in the Katyn Forest. Sikorski demanded that the Red Cross be allowed to investigate the site. In response, Stalin broke off all relations with the Polish army. A few months ago, Sikorski himself died in a plane crash. An accident, it was said. But there isn’t a Pole in North Africa and Egypt who doesn’t think he was murdered by Stalin’s NKVD.”
A captain on Elena’s left was also Polish. Overhearing her, he added some comments of his own. These left me in no doubt that Elena had let the cat out of the bag as far as my report on the Katyn Forest massacre for FDR was concerned, despite my having asked her not to.
“She’s right,” he said. “There isn’t a Pole in North Africa who trusts Stalin. Please tell Roosevelt that when you’re compiling your report. Tell him that when you get to Teheran.”
I shrugged. “Perhaps you know more than I do,” I told him.
“That the Big Three Conference will be in Teheran?” He laughed. Captain Skomorowski was a large man, with dark hair and a nose as sharp as a draftsman’s favorite pencil. Every few minutes he would remove his glasses and wipe away the moisture that had collected on the lenses from the heat generated by his large red face. He laughed again. “This is no big secret.”
“Easy to see why,” I said pointedly.
“Darling, it’s true,” said Elena. “Everyone in Cairo knows about Teheran.”
Elena’s colonel laughed with contempt as he saw the look of surprise in my eyes. I was beginning to dislike him almost as much as he seemed to dislike me.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “We know all about the Big Three in Teheran. And, by the way, that’s another city full of displaced Poles. More than twenty thousand of them, for your information. There are so many Poles in Teheran, and in such disadvantaged conditions, that the Persians have even accused our people of spreading typhoid in the city. Imagine that. I wonder if you can.”
“Right now I’m still trying to imagine why a colonel would be so free with this kind of information across the dinner table,” I said stiffly. “Haven’t you heard? Walls have ears. Although I’m beginning to think that walls in Poland have tongues instead.”
“What do you Americans know about Poland?” he asked, ignoring my rebuke. “Have you ever been to Poland?”
“The last I heard it was full of Germans.”
“We shall suppose that means no.” The colonel snorted with derision and looked around at his fellow officers. “This makes him the ideal sort of person to be writing a report for the president of the United States about Katyn. Another stupid American who doesn’t know anything about Poland.”
“Wlazyslaw, that’s enough,” said Elena.
“Everyone knows that Roosevelt and Churchill are going to sell Poland out,” persisted Skomorowski.
“Surely you can’t believe that,” I told him. “Britain and France went to war for the sake of Poland.”
“Maybe so,” said Colonel Pulnarowicz. His eyes widened. “But will it be Britain and France that throw the Germans out of Poland, or will it be the Russians? For us, there’s nothing to draw between them, the Russians and the Germans. That’s what the Americans don’t, or won’t, understand. Nobody can see the Russians giving up Poland if the Red Army reoccupies it. Will Roosevelt persuade Stalin to return land for which the Red Army has sacrificed so many men? I think I can hear Stalin laughing about that one now.”
“After the war is over,” a third Polish officer pitched in, “I believe it will be discovered that Stalin was much worse than Hitler. Hitler is only trying to wipe out the Jews. But Stalin is trying to eliminate whole classes of people. Not just the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy, but the peasant class, as well. Millions have died in the Ukraine. If I had to choose between Hitler and Stalin, I’d choose Hitler every time. Stalin is the father of lies. By comparison, Hitler is a mere apprentice.”
“Roosevelt and Churchill will sell us down the river,” said Skomorowski. “That’s what we’re fighting for. Two knives in the back.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” I said. “I know Franklin Roosevelt. He is a decent, honorable man. He is not the kind of man to sell anyone out.”
My heart was hardly in this argument. I could not help but recollect my own conversation on the subject with the president. His words hadn’t exactly suggested a man who felt any obligation to protect the interests of Poland. Roosevelt had sounded more like someone intent on appeasing Stalin, in much the same way as the former British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, had appeased Hitler.
“This report you are compiling,” said Pulnarowicz. He lit one of his little cigarettes and exhaled smoke in my face. It looked thoughtless rather than deliberate. But that was just how it looked. “Does it mean the Americans are going to pay any more attention to what happened at Katyn than the British?�
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I hardly felt like telling him that my completed report was already buried on the president’s direct order, exactly as the colonel had suspected it would be.
“I’m just compiling a report. It’s not my job to formulate policy.”
“If you’re compiling a report, then what are you doing here in Cairo?” demanded Skomorowski.
“You’re Polish. I’m speaking to you, aren’t I?” I grinned at him. “I’d hate to have missed the opportunity to meet all of you tonight. Besides, I don’t have to be in Washington to write a report.” I paused. “Not that I feel at all obliged to explain myself in this company.”
Skomorowski shrugged. “Or is it that by taking your time in making your report, you give Roosevelt a very valuable opportunity for delay?”
“Is Katyn even on the agenda for the Big Three at Teheran?” asked Pulnarowicz. “Will they even talk about it?”
“I really don’t know what is on the agenda at Teheran,” I said truthfully. “But even if I did, I certainly wouldn’t discuss it with you. Security is hardly best served by this kind of conversation.”
“You heard the princess,” said Pulnarowicz. “It’s all over the city.”
Elena squeezed my arm. “Willy darling, if you stay here for any length of time, you’ll recognize how true that is. It really is impossible to keep a secret in Cairo.”
“So I see,” I said pointedly. All the same, I found it hard to be cross with her. It was my fault for not remembering what a tremendous gossip she was.
“Not that Poland exists, anyway,” Colonel Pulnarowicz added, smiling bitterly. “Not anymore. Not since January, when Stalin declared that all Polish citizens were to be treated as Soviet citizens. It’s said that this was because he wanted the Poles to have the same rights as Soviet citizens.”
“The same right to be shot without trial,” said Skomorowski. “The same right to be deported to a labor camp. The same right to be starved to death.”
Everyone laughed. It was obviously a set piece that the two Polish officers had performed together before.
