by Glenn Meade
Pain contorted her face, and she coughed up blood. “You—you both know why. And now it’s time one of you returned the favor. Finish it here and now.”
A trickle of crimson spilled down her chin. “Let it end where it began.”
Weaver stood, desperation in his reply. “I’ll get help—”
Halder gripped his arm, said hopelessly, “I’m afraid it’s gone far beyond that.”
Rachel cried out, a terrible sound like that of an animal in torment, her eyes wet. “For pity’s sake, have you no mercy? Will one of you please shoot me.”
She moaned again, looked delirious with pain, and her eyes closed tightly. Weaver couldn’t bear it any longer, tugged out his pistol, stood over her. His hand shook as he aimed at her head, beads of perspiration running down his face, and for a long time he just stood there, his finger on the trigger, looking down at her, unable to act, and for the first time since childhood he felt like crying.
“Please . . .”
He heard a click, looked over at Halder, whose eyes were wet as he raised his gun.
The explosion rang around the stone walls.
• • •
They carried her body from the tomb, laid it on the sand, and then Weaver removed his tunic and covered her face. For a long time there was nothing but a harrowing silence between them, until Halder said in a trembling voice, “It was the only way, my friend. An act of mercy.”
Weaver’s face was ashen. “I could have got help—”
“It still wouldn’t have saved her. You know that, Harry.”
Weaver felt desolate, looked out towards the desert, saw a peppering of small bright fires, the burning wreckage of the aircraft. “It looks like Sanson got his reception committee to the landing strip.”
Halder’s face was grim, and he took out his pistol, swallowed hard. “I guess we all go to hell in our own way. And now it’s time you left me alone, and let me do the honorable thing.”
“Another death isn’t going to make any difference. It’s over, Jack. Put the gun away.”
“There’s really no other way, I’m afraid. If you arrest me, then it’s either a bullet or a noose. And I’d really rather not have to dangle from a rope.” Halder cocked the gun. “So if you don’t mind, do me a favor and step away.”
Very deliberately, Weaver put out a hand, gripped the barrel. “I said put it away, Jack.”
“You’re not making this any easier.”
“Take the car. Drive south, as far as you can. With luck, you can reach Luxor by morning. After that, God only knows.”
Halder was stunned into silence, and Weaver said, “Just leave, while you still have the chance, before Sanson’s men get here.”
“They’ll want to know what’s happened to me.”
“Let me worry about the afterwards. Go. Before it’s too late.”
Halder was almost overcome and knelt beside Rachel’s body, pulled back the tunic, and touched her face. It was almost too much to bear. “Promise me you’ll make sure she’s given a proper burial.” He looked out towards the desert, his voice thick with emotion. “Somewhere out there. Where we were all happy together, before this madness started.”
Weaver nodded. “And now, you really had better go.”
There was a sudden rage in Halder’s voice, and he looked on the verge of a breakdown. “What a terrible thing this lousy war has been. It’s destroyed us all in the end.”
Weaver didn’t reply, for there was really no answer, and Halder touched his arm in a final gesture. “Take care of yourself, Harry. I’m not sure we’ll ever meet again, but even so, try to get through the rest of this in one piece.”
He climbed into the staff car, started up, gave a final wave, and then the olive-green Humber moved off into the darkness, faded like a departing spirit.
Weaver slumped on his knees in the sand. He cradled Rachel’s head in his arms, buried his face in her hair, faintly aware of the noise of the car dying away. And then there was nothing but the sound of his own sobbing, and the vast and empty silence of the desert.
THE PRESENT
74
* * *
CAIRO
It was almost three in the morning when Weaver finished talking. The hotel lobby was empty, and the bar staff had gone home. The khamsin had stopped blowing hours ago, a heavy mist had crept in, covering the city in a ghostly veil, and somewhere out on the Nile a foghorn sounded. It faded, and he put down his glass. “Well, Carney, there you have your tale.”
I looked at him with amazement. “It’s almost unbelievable.”
“Almost, certainly, but it’s the God’s honest truth. You’ll keep to your promise not to publish anything until after I die? If you still want to write about it, that is.”
“Of course, you have my word. It’s just that I wonder if anyone would believe such a story.” I hesitated. “May I ask you something?”
“Ask away.”
“How did you know about the body at the morgue? And what made you suspect that Halder might still be alive after all these years?”
“I have a lawyer friend in Cairo, an old man now, someone whom I hired many years ago to try to help me find Jack. Like you, he read the piece in the newspaper, and immediately contacted me. The name and the age of the dead man, along with his German nationality, seemed too much of a coincidence not to investigate. So I got on the first flight I could, arriving yesterday afternoon. Lucky to make it, too. Those winds shut the airport down less than ten minutes after we landed.”
“And you had no stronger evidence than that?”
“Some, but it went back a long time.”
“How long?”
“I discovered some years after the war that the Halders’ family estate in New York had been sold through a Swiss bank attorney, in Zurich. Jack’s parents were both dead so naturally I wondered who had authorized the sale. I contacted the bank but they refused to give me any information. You know the Swiss, they’re paranoid about protecting their clients’ secrecy, so my inquiries led absolutely nowhere, despite help from old intelligence contacts. Then out of the blue, some months later, I received a single postcard from Casablanca. It said simply, ‘All is well, Jack.’ ”
“So he did escape and survive.”
Weaver nodded. “I tried to find him over the years, but it proved impossible. Franz Halder had been a much-liked and respected man, with lots of important contacts in the Middle East, people who would have been glad to help his son. Jack could have moved anywhere in the region. Besides, his father had been a wealthy man. I’m sure there was a little something salted away in a bank account somewhere, and with the proceeds from the estate, it would have helped him remain anonymous for the rest of his life.”
“Do you think Jack Halder learned the truth of what happened to his own son?”
“I’ve no doubt he did. I visited Pauli’s grave in Berlin many years ago. The boy is buried with his mother.” Weaver paused. “You know what was odd? There were two fresh lilies on the gravestone, one for each of them. Apparently, the flowers were delivered from a Berlin florist’s once a month. White lilies, exactly the kind my father grew for Halder’s mother. I eventually discovered that the instructions came from the same bank in Zurich, which led me absolutely nowhere. The last time I visited the graves was five years ago. The fresh flowers were there, as before. Another fact that made me suspect that Jack might still be alive.”
I went to refill my glass, but the bottle in front of us was empty. I put it down again. “And the others. What happened to them?”
“Canaris I’m sure you know about. Soon after Sphinx failed, the Abwehr was dissolved and its functions taken over by the SD. He was arrested as part of the group that plotted against Hitler, and later hanged. It eventually came out that he’d been supplying important information to the Allies for years, through contacts in British intelligence.
“Schellenberg, true to form, carried on thinking up more insane plots. A week after Sphinx, he tried much the sa
me trick, in Teheran this time, where Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin were meeting. Again, he came close to succeeding, but ultimately failed once more. He was captured by the Allies and sentenced at Nuremberg in 1949. He escaped the gallows but was sent to prison as a war criminal, then released two years later because of ill health, and died shortly after from lung cancer. Himmler was caught, too, trying to escape disguised as a private, but committed suicide before he could be brought to trial, by taking a vial of cyanide concealed in his mouth. As for the rest of them, Reggie Salter survived his wounds, believe it or not, but six months later he was found guilty of desertion and murder by a military court, and executed by firing squad. Harvey Deacon met the same fate, on charges of spying.”
“And what about Sanson, and Helen Kane?”
“Sanson had been right all along, of course. And I’d have to admit, a good soldier, despite our differences. The kind of Englishman you’d want on your side in a difficult battle—driven, relentless, determined not to give the enemy any quarter. He served out the rest of the war in Cairo, then returned to Britain. Surprisingly, he ran a successful public relations business for many years, until he eventually retired. He passed away ten years ago in London.” Weaver hesitated, and his eyes misted. “As for Helen Kane, she learned that her boyfriend was a prisoner in a German camp in Greece. They were reunited after Athens was liberated, married, and eventually settled in England. God knows if she’s still alive. But I often think of her. She was a remarkable woman.”
“You know what amazes me? How such a story could have been kept hushed up for all this time. It seems incredible.”
“There’s been a veiled hint or two in certain history books over the years, but I agree nothing substantial has ever come out, and certainly not the full truth. That it was kept secret shouldn’t really surprise you, not when you think about it. At such a critical stage in the war, the American and British public would have been totally demoralized to learn that the Nazis had come dangerously close to killing their leaders, not to mention the effect it would have had on the troops. Washington and London put a security clamp on the whole thing, as tight as anything I’ve ever seen.
“Berlin wasn’t too keen to admit failure, either. In late 1943, the Nazis were beginning to find their backs to the wall, and needed victories, not defeats. The humiliation wouldn’t exactly have been a morale booster for their armed forces, so Hitler gave instructions that all the papers on Sphinx be destroyed, and any personnel who knew about it sworn to secrecy. Besides, there were so many stories flying around in those days—some true, others incredible. The Allies were planning to assassinate Hitler, or kidnap Rommel, and Hitler was going to get Roosevelt and Churchill, or some top Allied commander or other. It was hard to distinguish fact from fiction. After the war ended, I guess Sphinx got lost among the bunch of them.”
“What happened to you?”
A tiny, wry smile played across Weaver’s lips. “I was never court-martialed, if that’s what you’d like to know. And that was the odd thing. For some reason best known to himself, Sanson never brought charges against me. The question of Halder’s disappearance came up, of course, but it wasn’t pursued, or the matter discussed further. Maybe behind it all, Sanson really knew what I was going through—a conflict between duty and love and friendship. After that, I became an unwitting expert in presidential security. What could I say? That Roosevelt’s life had been saved in part by a German agent, sent to help kill him, and I’d aided his escape? It would have caused unwelcome questions about what had really happened to Jack. So I guess I let sleeping dogs lie.”
“How did you learn all the facts about Rachel Stern’s true identity?”
“Some of the SD’s personnel files fell into Allied hands in ’45. Hers was among them, and I managed to get a copy. I was also lucky enough to wangle an interview with Schellenberg while he was in prison. It was he who filled me in on the rest of the story.”
I looked at Weaver’s face. “Do you reckon she really loved both of you?”
For a moment he said nothing, a wistful look in his eyes, a hint of infinite sadness. “You know, I guess I’ll never truly know the answer to that question. I’ll take it with me to my grave. And perhaps that’s the way it should be. Some questions are best left unanswered. But if you want the honest truth, I always liked to think she really did.”
“What happened to her body?”
“She was buried in an unmarked grave, in the desert near Sakkara. No proper religious ceremony, just a military burial detail, and a sergeant read a brief passage from Revelations, which seemed oddly appropriate under the circumstances.” Weaver shook his head. “I didn’t attend, I’m afraid. I guess I really didn’t feel up to it. But afterwards I drove out to the spot and said a prayer, for whatever good it did.”
“And her family?”
“Himmler, of course, was never one to keep his promises. Despite Schellenberg’s pleas for clemency, her father was executed with the other conspirators against Hitler, along with her two beloved younger brothers, innocents who had absolutely nothing to do with the plot. Only her mother was spared, but she passed away soon after, poor woman.”
I looked at Weaver steadily. “Why do you think Halder never tried to see you again? And why would he stay in hiding all these years? You said the United States could have hanged him as a traitor. But that was an outside chance, surely? He was a soldier, not a war criminal. And why the secrecy?”
He took a deep breath, sighed. “You’re probably right. God knows I’ve thought about it often enough, but there are only a couple of reasons I can think of as to why he hid himself away and never got in touch with me again, both of them connected. One, he was quite a proud man. I think in some way he felt he had let his mother’s country down by going along with the Nazis in the first place. But he had no choice, really. Like so many good Germans, he’d been swept along by the current. And he only agreed to play his part in Schellenberg’s plan because of his son. But you also have to remember he came from a strong Prussian background. Honor matters. The German word—pflicht—that Jack was driven by. It translates as ‘duty,’ but I’ve learned it means much, much more than that. It means you don’t dishonor those closest to you. I think he felt he had somehow dishonored our friendship, and believed he could never face me again. But who knows?
“As far as the second reason, it seems the most plausible. After all the pain Jack had been through—the loss of his wife and child, and his father’s death, not to mention what happened in Egypt on the mission—perhaps he simply wanted to put everything behind him, to start a new life and try to erase the torment of the past. I believe it happens, you know. It’s not been unknown for people who have been through unbearable trauma to cut themselves off totally from their old lives and try to start afresh. Give themselves a clean break—new identities, new families, new careers—and obliterate anything associated with their past. A kind of cleansing of the soul, I suppose. I’m sure the psychologists could explain it in better detail, but it seems to me to make some kind of sense. And I have a feeling it might be what Jack tried to do. You might say he never forgot his wife and son, and didn’t cut himself off completely by having flowers regularly delivered to their graves, but then I guess if you’d lost a family you’d dearly loved, you wouldn’t forget their memory entirely.”
There was a sound behind us. A couple of hotel cleaning staff on the night shift came in. They looked surprised to see anyone still in the bar, but they promptly ignored us and got down to work, clearing away tables and chairs. Weaver glanced at his watch.
“It looks like we’re overstaying our welcome. Well, I must get some sleep, Carney.” He stood. “I’ve got a flight to arrange tomorrow, back to the States.”
He offered a firm handshake, and I walked with him to the elevator. “I’ve one more question.”
“Oh? And what’s that?”
“You’re certain the body in the morgue wasn’t Halder’s?”
“Jack had a no
ticeable scar on his left leg, an old injury from childhood when we used to play together in the grounds of his mother’s estate. The poor soul in the morgue had none. As to who he really was, we’ll probably never know.”
“But it seems an odd coincidence. He was about the same age and had the same name as Halder.”
“He also had papers in the name of Hans Meyer, I believe.”
I nodded. “A contact I know in the Cairo police told me they found old identity documents in that name hidden at the apartment.”
“I suppose you heard that many Germans came to Egypt after the war? Some were wanted Nazis, others were young scientists, hired to work on Nasser’s secret rocket program at Helwan, out in the desert. There are still a few of them alive, I believe, living out their last days anonymously, in squalid apartments in places like Imbaba. In some cases, when they first arrived in Egypt, they gave themselves new identities or aliases, to try and cover their tracks. I think when the facts are finally known you’ll find the old man at the morgue was one of them, and that the name Johann Halder was an alias. There’s nothing remarkable about the name—it’s common enough in Germany. So is Hans Meyer. I’d place a bet that both identities were probably covers the dead man had used over the years.” Weaver paused.
“You still look doubtful, Carney.”
I shrugged. “I guess it’s because I’m a journalist, but I don’t like unfinished stories. I would have liked to have known once and for all if Halder was still alive.”
“You mean you’d like to find out what happened to his father’s collection?”
“Oddly enough, if I’m to be honest, I think it’s Jack Halder himself who intrigues me more.”
Weaver shook his head. “For all I know he could be long dead. There aren’t too many of us old survivors still around these days. The flowers on the graves of his wife and son once a month could easily have been arranged to continue after his death. It’s just the kind of touch I would have expected of Jack. A pity if he’s dead, though. I would have liked to have seen him again, at least one more time.” There was genuine regret in Weaver’s voice, an almost tangible sadness. “But everything that happened was all such a long time ago. What was it some writer once said? ‘The older I get, the more it seems that little by little I drift away from the shores of my past, until they become just a far-off, distant memory.’ It certainly seems that way.”
