by Jana Petken
Max halted mid-step, his jaw tightening with indignation. In this commercial street, a shopkeeper was decorating his windows with signs of welcome, written in German, proclaiming: ‘Long Live Adolf Hitler.’ Next door, a handwritten placard outside a ladies’ dressmaking store said in German and Italian, ‘Get out your party dresses – we’re on our way!’
His temper flaring, Max pulled the placard from the window and kicked it halfway along the street, cursing the shopkeeper who ran after him. Perhaps the man was expecting Il Duce to ride in on his white stallion claiming victory – Mussolini saw himself as a Caesar in the throes of building a new Roman Empire stretching across the Middle East. The man was as corrupt as Hitler, if not quite as ruthless.
Max had learnt that the Egyptians curried favour with those who held the balance of power and purse strings, but they were not against the idea of transferring their allegiance. Foreigners fuelled the economy, and there was no place for sentiment or loyalty. The British were there today, but the Germans could walk in tomorrow, and the Arabs were prepared to switch portraits of Churchill and King George VI for Hitler and Mussolini at a moment’s notice.
Max scoffed at the British incompetence as he strode through the district where the British Consulate and military offices stood. The city couldn’t be more inviting to the enemy if it tried. He’d made detailed maps of Alexandria and its harbour and airfield to the west. Each drawing was accompanied by warnings to the Intelligence services in London about the danger of clustering innumerable tanks of crude oil and benzine together in small areas and surrounding them with timber yards, warehouses, and a highly populous native quarter. Generalleutnant Rommel was now at a railway halt in a town called El Alamein, sixty miles from this stunning, ancient city. It didn’t take a genius to presume he had numerous spotters in Alexandria, reporting that a booty of supplies and gasoline was lying around like a whore with her legs invitingly open.
When he got to the financial district, Max saw quite a different sight. These streets were not empty; queues stretched along the pavements and spilled into the road as people waited impatiently to withdraw all their money from the banks. He stopped walking to listen to a heated argument between two British men, pompously colonial in appearance but cursing like London dockyard labourers while pushing each other for a spot further up the line. Tempers were frayed, especially amongst the Europeans, who were unaccustomed to waiting in line for anything.
Max backtracked and arrived at an apartment located a stone’s throw from the consular offices. Anubis, his MI6 asset, opened the door.
“You’re back, then.”
Without waiting for a response, the Egyptian, who came up to Max’s shoulders, walked down the hallway to a room that was both bedroom and living room.
Max went straight to the shade at the French doors and let the cool air hit his burning face; his head was a little cooler since he’d worn his fedora.
Anubis el Masri was a trim, fastidious man, well-groomed and well-scented. He dabbed on his jasmine-based cologne numerous times a day, he’d informed Max, after the latter had remarked that the apartment smelt like a brothel. I like spices, Anubis had explained, but his favourite, harissa chilli-paste from Tunisia, didn’t care much for him. Its smell seeped through his pores along with his sweat and shot out his arse like bullets. But, he’d boasted, I’ve never been constipated.
MI6’s Egyptian mission, known as Operation Lanner Falcon, was concealed behind two other British operations: one, a double murder investigation; the other, an assignment to identify the gunrunners in the Muslim Brotherhood. As tragic as the death of John Bryant, an MI6 agent, had been, the crime had allowed Max to pursue Heller’s primary objective, which Max and one other person in Egypt knew about. That operation had not yet begun.
The murdered men, John Bryant and an Arab boy called Farid, had worked together at the Alexandria consular offices. Anubis, whom MI6 had placed in the same office, was being tasked with finding possible suspects to the murders and integrating himself into the Muslim Brotherhood. He was Max’s key to opening that elusive door, but like many other informants he’d had, Anubis was not an enthusiastic participant in Max’s game.
“Have you seen the panic out there?” Anubis asked, spreading his arms in horror. “Two-thirds of the British Navy ships have gone. We are defenceless. The BBC bulletins talk of Rommel’s successes being due to his superior tactics and weaponry. They are calling the fighting around El Alamein the battle for Egypt – battle for Egypt!”
“Calm down. Don’t believe everything you hear.” Max slumped into a chair, removed his shoes and asked Anubis to bring him water. His face was crimson with heat, and his shirt, damp with sweat, stuck to his skin.
“I should have taken a damn taxi,” he muttered, studying Anubis who was filling both a glass and an Arabic coffee pot with water. The pot had so many names, Max couldn’t keep up with them all: dallah, cezve, rikwah or kanaka, depending on which coffee house one went into. He hated the stuff.
“… you want Qahwah arabiyya – Arabic coffee?” Anubis asked Max as an afterthought.
Anubis was sullen, either by nature or as a result of his subjugation. He had not volunteered his services; military police were holding his wife and children hostage.
Max, frustrated by the Egyptian’s lethargic attitude, had made it clear they would be killed if Anubis betrayed the British. Of course, that was a lie and a cheap tactic, Max admitted, but an effective method of keeping the Egyptian in line. Max appreciated the irony of threatening the man’s family; the British were doing to Anubis what the Abwehr had done to Romek when they’d coerced him into working for them. Holding hostages over people’s heads was the order of the day in this war.
Anubis, in his late thirties but with skin the colour and texture of a dried prune, had complained to the British authorities upon his arrest the previous summer that the vanity of women was to blame for his downfall. Apparently, European blondes in Alexandria were having a hard time finding peroxide. Anubis, using two small Greek boats, crossed with his band of British deserters and thieves to Malta under a sky of angry Stukas and found a stash of the chemical. Not satisfied with merely that, he and his men then went on to Tunis to stock up on other contraband, such as silk stockings, condoms, spaghetti, cheeses, and medical supplies. He was captured upon his return to Alexandria after one of his buyers had been encouraged by the British to give him up. His men were shot by firing squad.
“I won’t be going back to the office today,” Anubis dourly informed Max. “The consular officers are burning their files. Rumours are spreading that British forces are going to burn everything in Alexandria as they withdraw. It is haram – forbidden! This is not their country to burn.”
Anubis continued to curse the British, and Max’s anger simmered. He hated the rumourmongers. They were causing the mass evacuations and fomenting panic with their over-exaggerated talk of destroying nearby villages. The British contingency plans were, in fact, limited to blowing up the power stations, excluding those harnessed to sewage and irrigation systems.
Despite Anubis’ furious glare, Max lit a cheroot and relaxed. It was like staring at another Romek, he thought. The man’s eyes were full of condemnation, and he had an ugly downturned curl at the edges of his lips. Look how well my relationship with Romek turned out. Max had learnt his lesson on that score; he would not befriend or fully trust Anubis.
The Egyptian handed Max the coffee mug and watched Max lob three sugars into the cup. The former’s disapproval was etched in the deep lines between his eyebrows and the way he clicked his tongue, but when he next spoke, it was not about Max’s sweet tooth.
“You asked me to spy on my Arab colleagues in the consulate. You told me to look for the Muslim Brotherhood’s connection to the people who work there, but you did not say what you were going to do with my information. If you are putting my life in danger, you will tell me what your plans are.”
Max drew on his thin cigar, and Anubis’ eyes nar
rowed further.
“Why do the British authorities need me to help them solve two murders?” Anubis demanded. “Tell me, Rolf Fischer from Switzerland, whom you are probably not, why are the British military police not in charge of this investigation? And if you are fixated on the people at the consular office, why are you not working there instead of me? You talk like an Englishman, yet you say you are a Swiss businessman whose native tongue is German. I do not know if you are a British intelligence officer or a German spy pretending to be Swiss, but I do know you are a liar. Ever since I met you, I am blind beggar fumbling in the darkness. It is time you gave me answers.”
Anubis took a breath, then went to the French doors where the sun was now entering. He closed them, then bleated, “I might be a poor fellah to you, but even fellahin peasants have the right to ask questions and receive answers when it concerns their safety. They also have a responsibility to keep their families safe, but you have taken that most sacred duty from me. May Allah forgive you for what you are doing to my poor wife and children!”
“Don’t be so damn melodramatic,” Max grunted.
Anubis, furious now, waved his finger in Max’s face. “I know who you are. I can smell the deceit … your dirty tricks.” He reopened the French door and spat over the balcony. “That is what I think of you and your English Empire!”
“That would be British Empire,” Max corrected him, unperturbed by the insults. Had Anubis been more cooperative with the British, they wouldn’t have threatened to kill his family, would they?
Anubis returned to his chair and slurped his coffee from a small tubular glass. Eyes blazing, he slammed it into the grooves of its decorative saucer, smashing it into three pieces. He grunted, wiped his mouth, and clearly not finished with Max, hissed, “See what you made me do. What is your real name, eh?”
Which question should I answer first? Max pondered, staring at the broken saucer. The one about why the British military police are not investigating the murders or the question of my identity?
“If you do not answer my questions, I will go no further with you,” Anubis threatened before Max could speak. “I swear to you – whoever you are – I will not. My family will be martyrs!”
Max leant forward in his chair to stub out his cheroot in the ashtray. “Cut it out, Anubis. It is thanks to the British authorities you’re not being executed for your crimes, and you know it. You’re a free man for as long as you’re useful to me, but if you cross me you will get a bullet in your head. Do you understand?”
Anubis gave a reluctant nod.
“Good.”
“Am I allowed to ask any questions at all?” Anubis asked in a chastened tone.
“You may, but you will not demand answers.”
“Very well. Why are you here? Are your military police not clever enough to find a murderer? It has taken me six weeks to befriend the Arabs in the consular office and to uncover the Sudanese driver’s allegiance to the Muslim Brotherhood. All that I have done, you could have achieved in a week under interrogations. I know how much the British like to torture people – yes, yes, I know you are British and not a Herr this or that or anything.”
“The British are efficient, but there’s more at stake here than capturing a murderer,” Max replied, neither denying nor confirming Anubis’ nationality assessment. “Yes, I could have worked at the consulate instead of you, but I wouldn’t have got the information you did. Only an Arab can weed out secrets from another Arab. You know that better than I do.”
Max swallowed the last of thick powdery coffee laced with cardamom seeds and grimaced at the unpleasant texture and taste on his tongue. “More importantly, had I spoken directly to the Muslims working at the consular offices, I wouldn’t now be able to get close to the Brotherhood, who are at the heart of my enquiry.”
Anubis’ eyes widened in surprise.
Max measured his next words. Give too much away, and he risked being vulnerable. Tell Anubis too little, and he risked losing the man’s cooperation. “I am Rolf Fischer, a successful watch salesman and Swiss national. I am most certainly not a German spy. That is all you need to know about me, and what everyone else in Egypt must believe.”
Max moved on to more pressing matters. He was tired and could do without this annoying budgie chirping in his ear. “Here’s what I can confirm. The murdered men were connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, but perhaps in different ways and for different reasons…”
“I already know that.”
“And knowing that, do you think your Sudanese friend was capable of committing these two murders?”
“No. You joke. Abu Hanifa is a small, skinny man with bones almost visible under his skin. He wouldn’t be able to punch his way to the bottom of a bucket full of water. How could he strangle the British man, a much bigger and stronger fellow? How would he get to Cairo and back in a matter of hours with the little money the British pay him?”
Max raised a suspicious eyebrow. “How do you know the size of the British man?”
“Everyone at the office is whispering about John Bryant. The Arabs are afraid. They believe they will be blamed for his death. We get the blame for everything.”
Max ignored the petty complaint and continued, “Before Bryant died, he’d been investigating the Muslim Brotherhood’s propaganda in support of Germany. Unfortunately, his intelligence is sketchy, mostly second-hand and without any eyewitness accounts of where the Islamist group gathers to plan their subversive activities. I know they recruit young men from the Egyptian military academy and universities, but Bryant wasn’t successful getting anywhere near the group, which means he was either lax in his job, some of his findings were stolen from other sources, or someone was always one step ahead of him.”
Max had never met John Bryant, his fallen MI6 colleague. His records showed him to be a family man, not one to blur lines of conduct or stray from orders. An uninventive but decent agent in his early forties, he’d had years of experience in Egypt and North Africa. He had married an Egyptian woman from a wealthy Cairo family, had three children, and had never been keen to return to Britain. In other words, he had not been hungry for a win.
Max had cooled down, but his skin was still moist, and his hair plastered to his head was itching. He pushed his fingers through it, saying, “According to John Bryant’s records, the dead Egyptian, Farid, accompanied him on trips to Cairo. He might have been using the boy to find out more about the Muslim Brotherhood, as you are doing with your Sudanese friend … maybe Farid knew too much?”
“It is possible, I suppose, that Farid used the opportunity to spy for the Islamist group. It’s no secret that young people like the Brotherhood’s doctrine,” Anubis said, a glimmer of thoughtful optimism in his expression.
“Perhaps. But it’s also possible the Islamists found out he was working for British intelligence if, indeed, he was. This is all conjecture … all I have. And now you know what I know.”
“I have something for you.” Anubis looked pleased with himself. “I have discovered the location of the next Muslim Brotherhood meeting. It will take place in a village outside Alexandria.”
“When?” Max shot up in his chair.
“Tomorrow, when the sun goes down. I believe their Supreme Guide, Hasan el Banna, will speak, or someone will deliver texts written in his hand – and I have more for you … my Sudanese friend has asked me to go with him. I will not, of course, but it shows he is beginning to trust me, as we wanted.”
Max digested the news with a mixture of excitement and apprehension. This was exactly what he’d been hoping for. Anubis had come through for him, albeit without knowing what he was getting himself into.
“You should go,” he said, the cogs in his mind turning. “Ingratiate yourself with the leaders. Find out what they’re planning, if they’re carrying weapons. Eventually, I want you to get close to the paramilitary branch, the Secret Apparatus, as they’re called. Remember names, find out where people work and live, make yourself popular…”
/>
“No. You are a crazy man! The leadership of the Nizam al-khass – the Secret Apparatus –is reserved for the elite members of the Muslim Brotherhood, many of whom are influential members of the Guidance Council. This is not an insignificant off-shoot. It is the future. The Supreme Guide is impressed by the fascist youth groups in Italy and Germany, and he wants to establish an Islamic equivalent. He began the Secret Apparatus after compromising with the more radical conservatives who demanded that Islamic tradition and sharia be implemented through force if necessary –”
“You know a lot about them for a man who knew nothing four weeks ago,” Max interrupted. “Have you been lying to me? Have you dabbled with this group in the past?”
“I have not. I am interested in enterprise not religion.”
Max studied the man’s steady gaze. He was probably telling the truth. There were two kinds of Arabs; religious fanatics, or those who craved wealth and power. Anubis was the latter.
“I have taught myself many things over the years,” Anubis said matter-of-factly. “Reading material on the Muslim Brotherhood is widely available if a person is looking for it, as are its members, who are more than willing to spread al Banna’s doctrine to any Arab who is willing to listen.”
When Max said nothing, Anubis stormed from the room, returning moments later waving a sheaf of papers.
“Abu Hanifa told me to study these teachings.” he said, leafing through the pages until he found what he was looking for. “Listen to this one: Allah is our objective, the Qur’an is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our path, and death in the name of Allah is our goal. I will not get myself killed for British Imperialists. If the Brotherhood find out what I am doing, they will cut my head from my neck and feed it to their dogs. Even if they don’t find out I’m working for you, I will never be able to turn my back on them. Once they know my face, they will never un-know it.”
