by Glenn Meade
“Doring and our friend Hassan will be taking turns on watch.”
Rachel bit her lip, a look of fear on her face. “I don’t like the idea of being alone with either of them. They make me feel uneasy.”
“You’ll be perfectly safe. Keep your door locked, but if anyone so much as bothers you—” He slipped Falconi’s automatic from his pocket, handed it to her. “Feel free to use this, and let me worry about the consequences.”
She handed back the weapon and shivered. “I don’t like guns. I never have.”
“No matter. I’ll leave it just in case.” He tossed it on the bed. “There’s something I need to discuss. It’s about your father.”
Her face darkened. “What—what do you mean?”
“Schellenberg told me about the discovery at Giza. I admit I wondered at the time what the professor was getting up to, coming back exhausted some mornings to Sakkara, looking like he’d been up half the night. I would have thought it was a risky business, not to mention highly illegal, him not informing the Egyptian authorities.”
Rachel blushed. “There were good reasons why my father kept his work secret.”
“Tell me.”
“There was a war looming. The Egyptians were pro-German. If the country had fallen, the last thing he wanted was for anything valuable he might discover to end up in Nazi hands.”
“And what exactly did he find?”
“A tunnel about two hundred meters long, most of it part of a natural underground cavern in the rock, which led to an important noble’s tomb from the Second Dynasty that hadn’t been discovered. My father believed that the area the tunnel originated in had once been the location of living quarters for some of the craftsmen and stonemasons working on the pyramids. The passageway had obviously been extended either by them or grave robbers who intended to reach Cheops pyramid and steal any valuables they found inside, but they must have miscalculated and ended up in the noble’s tomb instead.”
Halder frowned. “The area would have been closely guarded during the pharaoh’s time. Which I presume would explain why they burrowed from such a distance away.”
Rachel nodded. “We found a valuable hoard of jewelry and scarabs buried in the passageway—the treasure was probably discarded by the robbers before they were caught and executed by the royal guards. Their bodies were left in the tunnel before it was sealed up again—the normal punishment in those days—obviously as a warning to others. The skeletons were still there, or what was left of them.”
“I don’t understand what your father was doing at Giza in the first place. His work was at Sakkara.”
“A German professor named Braun had suspected the existence of the tunnel, and secretly made some preliminary explorations a couple of months before my family was due to leave Egypt. Braun was a former colleague of my father’s and confided in him, but before he could take his work further he was summoned back to Germany and conscripted. My father managed to get the necessary permission from the authorities to carry on with Braun’s work, but said nothing about the passageway, for the reasons I told you.”
“Schellenberg claimed it led from the direction of the Mena House. Is that where your father believed the workmen’s site might originally have been?”
She nodded. “In that general area, yes. Why?”
“I can’t tell you why exactly, but I’ll need to have a look at the tunnel. Can you remember its exact location?”
“Yes—yes, of course.”
“How difficult would it be to gain entry?”
“Not very difficult. My father sealed up the entrance again, but it’s well enough hidden, so no one would suspect its existence.”
“Good. We’ll go over everything in detail before I leave.”
“Is it dangerous what you have to do?”
“Not particularly, but you never know. Just a little reconnaissance work, and to see if we can find and enter the passageway.”
“Take me with you, Jack,” she said suddenly.
Halder shook his head. “For one, the army and police will be on the lookout. And I wouldn’t like to take the chance of you getting caught.”
“I’m well able to look after myself.”
“So I’ve noticed.”
“I’m also beginning to think I’m your good-luck charm.” She half smiled and leaned over, kissed him briefly on the lips.
Something sparked in him, and he responded, drawing her close, feeling the rise of her breasts against his chest through her cotton blouse as she moved into his arms.
He smiled. “And what the devil was that for?”
“Does there have to be a reason?”
“No, but I think there might be.”
“Take me with you. Please? I’d feel safer, rather than staying here. And I can help you find the passageway a lot quicker.”
“I guess I never could say no to a beautiful woman.”
ABU SAMMAR
4:00 P.M.
That same afternoon, Achmed Farnad was in the barn, working feverishly, sweat running down his face. He had the trapdoor open and he grabbed the Luger pistol, then hauled out the radio and battery.
Two truckloads of British troops had swept into the village, were searching every house and hovel. There was no point tempting providence. The best thing to do was bury the radio somewhere in the desert and get rid of the gun.
Mafouz had the donkey and cart waiting, and Achmed hefted the radio onto the cart, then the battery, and hurriedly covered them with old sackcloth and some scrap metal. “You know what to do, Mafouz. Be careful, my son. Quickly, now!”
As the boy led the donkey out, Achmed saw his wife hurrying towards them, chickens scattering in her path. “Achmed! The soldiers are coming—!”
Achmed’ s blood turned to ice. Pursuing her across the yard was a British officer and half a dozen of his men. Behind them was Wafa, the crabby old midwife, being helped by two more soldiers. The officer had his revolver out, and he led them into the barn. Wafa pointed an accusing finger. “That’s him. He’s the one!”
“Traitorous witch!” Achmed spat. In his panic, he realized to his horror that he still had the Luger in his hand. Before he had a chance to toss it away, one of the soldiers screamed, “The sod’s got a gun!”
A rifle shot cracked, a terrible pain blossomed in Achmed’ s side, and he clutched at his wound and keeled over. His wife and son screamed, and were held back as the troops covered him with their weapons.
“Get a medic!” the officer roared. “We want him alive.”
Achmed was still conscious as the soldiers rushed forward to give him first aid. Then he saw the officer pull the sackcloth from the cart and toss aside the metal junk, revealing the radio underneath. “Achmed Farnad, I’m arresting you on suspicion of aiding and abetting enemy agents.”
55
* * *
ROME
22 NOVEMBER, 4:30 P.M.
Captain Willi Neumann was unhappy.
A small man, broad and muscular, the son of a Hamburg docker, his ruddy twenty-six-year-old face looked aged before its time. Unlike his father and three generations before him who had succumbed to the lure of the sea, he’d been bitten by the flying bug and joined the Luftwaffe at seventeen. With three tours of duty in Russia flying Junkers transports behind him, in all kinds of weather imaginable and with Soviet fighter pilots and flak crews constantly doing their utmost to blast him out of the skies, Neumann had possessed the Devil’s own luck, suffering nothing more than a minor shrapnel wound in his left thigh that had barely needed a half-dozen stitches.
That afternoon at Practica di Mare airfield, he wondered if his luck was going to change for the worse. It was bad enough having to fly over enemy territory and land on enemy soil, but his latest problem only added to his troubles. As the senior flying officer, he was in charge of the two crews—four Luftwaffe flight officers including himself—manning the two Dakotas detailed to fly Skorzeny and his men on their mission to Egypt. He’d worked with Skorzeny on
ce before, dropping him and two dozen of his men on a mission behind Soviet lines in the dead of winter, and was quite certain the colonel was raving mad, even if after Mussolini’s daring rescue he was considered the golden-haired boy in Berlin. Neumann didn’t know exactly what the the colonel was getting up to in Cairo dressing his men and himself in American uniforms; his own briefings had been confined to the flying end of things and the rest wasn’t his business. But the weather was—and the safety of his crews.
He held the forecast sheets in his hand as he stood outside the hangar with Skorzeny, a cool wind blowing in from the sea, less than a kilometer away, the sun still warm and bright but starting to drop, twilight beginning to creep in. Back inside the hangar, his own crews and Skorzeny’s paratroops were waiting restlessly, men of action who found inactivity the worst fate of all. “It looks like we may have a problem, Colonel.”
Skorzeny stood before him, his massive size dwarfing Neumann. “Explain.”
“The reports indicate there’s a risk of very heavy fog all along this part of the Italian coast, over the entire twenty-four hours to come, and it could be on its way very soon. If the predictions are accurate, it may be really bad—treacherous, in fact. Which for us means poor visibility. And poor visibility, as you know, can hamper takeoff and landing.”
“I’m not concerned with landing,” Skorzeny answered brusquely. “Only takeoff, Neumann. Surely it can still be done even if the fog’s really bad?”
Neumann shrugged. “Any of my crews could take off pretty much blind, that’s not the problem. And we’re all reasonably familiar with the Dakota, having been trained on it at the Luftwaffe special operations unit in Berlin. In fact, two of the crew flew them while working for commercial airlines before the war. But it’s really a question of safety and risk. If we have very bad fog here at the airfield we could find ourselves in dire trouble, on or after takeoff, if either aircraft suffered engine failure or a serious technical problem.”
“But surely control tower could help guide us down by radio if we had to return to the airfield?”
“That’s still no guarantee of a safe landing, if conditions are bad. There’s such a thing as an aircraft’s operating limits, and they apply as much to weather and visibility. We might not be able to see the runway lights, let alone the runway, and that kind of thing spells nothing but danger. I wouldn’t like to take the risk of trying to land again in dense fog with near-zero visibility, not with two aircraft fully laden with fuel, men, and munitions. It would be insane. And there’s nowhere else we could try to land in these parts. South of Rome, the Allies control the airfields—and even there they’ll have the same weather, if the forecasts are to be believed.”
Skorzeny ran a massive hand over his face and sighed, then stared out at the coast with narrowed eyes, as if trying to discern the weather threat for himself. “Nothing can be allowed to stop us, Neumann. Not even the likelihood of heavy fog. The signal I received from Berlin expressly says we’re on alert. Which could mean taking off at a moment’s notice if we get the word. That’s unlikely until darkness falls, I know, but that’s how it stands.”
“But it’s the weather we’re talking about, Colonel. We can defy nature only at our peril. If anything should go wrong, the lives of your men could be at serious risk, and those of my crews too.”
“I’ll defy anything that gets in the way of this mission, Captain, nature included. We do what we must, and we go when we have to. Fog or no fog, I want those aircraft off the ground if and when the time comes.”
“But the safety of the crew and passengers—”
“You’ll do as you’re ordered, Neumann,” Skorzeny snapped bluntly, and with that he turned and strode away.
CAIRO
6:00 P.M.
Weaver arrived at Sanson’s office to find him talking to a thin-faced Egyptian with a hook nose. His dark, hooded eyes looked faintly sinister, his skin pockmarked with old acne scars. He carried a tattered leather briefcase and wore a pale, short-sleeved tropical suit. Something about the man looked oddly familiar, but Weaver couldn’t recall why.
Sanson made the introductions. “I’d like you to meet Captain Yosef Arkhan. Cairo Homicide.”
Weaver remembered the name. The captain in charge of Mustapha Evir’s murder investigation.
“A pleasure to meet you, Lieutenant Colonel Weaver,” Arkhan said in perfect English, and shook Weaver’s hand.
“You mind telling me what this is about?” Weaver asked Sanson.
“Yosef and I go back a long way. Before serving with Homicide, he used to work for the secret police—the Mukhabarat.”
Weaver glanced over at Arkhan. With his hooded eyes and menacing looks, the captain still had the look of a secret policeman. “I don’t get it.”
“You will, and very soon. Take a seat.” Sanson gestured to the chairs, then nodded to Arkhan. “Tell him, Yosef—”
The Egyptian removed two worn manila files from his briefcase and said politely to Weaver, “You were a member of an international archeological team at Sakkara in ’39.”
“What of it?”
Arkhan opened one of the files and read. “Harold Weaver. American citizen, born in New York, a graduate of engineering. Father an estate caretaker—Thomas Weaver—employed by a wealthy German-American family named Halder. Unmarried, but appears to have a platonic relationship with one Rachel Stern, German citizen, a member of same archeological team. No known vices, apart from occasional alcohol. Mr. Weaver appears a bona fide citizen of his country, and not engaged in any espionage activity.” Arkhan closed the file and looked up. “I could go on, there are lots more petty details, but I’m afraid they’re really not very interesting.”
Weaver stared angrily at the Egyptian. “You were watching me.”
Arkhan shrugged. “My men and I watched many of the archeological teams who came to our country. I’m sure you know the nickname by which the secret police are known—the Red Eye. The eye that never sleeps. We observed not only your team, but many other foreign visitors—anyone who interested us or we had our suspicions about. There was a long list—German and Italian oil workers and company executives, American professors at our universities. Even diplomats.” He paused. “In fact, our paths crossed once, four years ago. Oddly enough, it was in the grounds of the American residency. The occasion was a farewell party.”
Weaver felt stunned remembering where he had seen Arkhan before. “I was on the veranda with Rachel Stern. You were watching us.”
Arkhan gave a slight nod. “You’re observant, Lieutenant Colonel Weaver, and possessed of a good memory. Few people could recall a fleeting incident that happened so long ago.”
“Why were you watching us?”
“Not only you and the young lady. We had an interest in quite a number of the party guests that night.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Arkhan hesitated, and Sanson said, “Tell him, Yosef.”
“Some of the people we observed during that period were entirely innocent. Others were definitely not what they pretended to be. They were spies. Italian, German, even American. In extreme cases, we quietly expelled such people. But among the Germans at Sakkara, several especially interested us. In particular, Rachel Stern and her parents.”
“Why?”
“Because we strongly suspected they were German agents. Had they not left the country when they did, they would certainly have been arrested.”
Weaver looked at Sanson and said incredulously, “I can’t believe this.”
“Let him finish. Go on, Yosef.”
“The young lady was watched discreetly for a considerable time. On different occasions, she was seen near military installations, and in the same company as a number of my countrymen suspected of working for the Nazi intelligence services. Her father was also conducting several archeological digs in secret—an illegal act in itself. But I believe the true purpose of his work was much more dangerous.”
“What do you
mean?”
Arkhan glanced at Sanson before replying. “We felt certain the Germans would eventually invade North Africa, and that Egypt would be their principal target. We believed they had plans to store arms and munitions, supplies, and communications equipment in secret dumps, to be used to arm an Egyptian fifth column, which would stir internal unrest once war started. After all, there was, and still is, considerable support for the Nazi cause among the officer class and the general population. We think Professor Stern’s job was to locate suitable archeological sites around Cairo, which would have been used as secret supply dumps.”
“Did you find hard evidence of that?”
Arkhan hesitated. “No, but we were certain—”
“These people Rachel Stern met,” Weaver interrupted. “The meetings could have been entirely innocent. She could have simply bumped into the wrong people at the wrong time—or socialized with them unknowingly. Isn’t that possible?”
“Perhaps, but I don’t believe so—”
“Oh, come on, Captain. I can’t accept the Sterns were spies. How many times do I have to say it? The professor hated the Nazis, and his wife was Jewish.”
“His hatred of the Nazis was most certainly a cover story. And his wife’s race was nothing more than a rumor we couldn’t prove.” Arkhan paused. “We also suspected this other German, Halder, was a spy. However, apart from his closeness to Miss Stern, we couldn’t be absolutely certain. But we were positive about one thing.”
“What?”
“At least four of the people in your group at Sakkara were Nazi agents. More important, one of them was arrested on spying charges several months after the war began. He confessed that the top Nazi agent in the Middle East was operating in Cairo at the time of your dig—under the code name Nightingale.” Arkhan looked steadily at Weaver. “I believe Nightingale was none other than Rachel Stern.”
Weaver almost laughed. “On what basis?”
