Death or Glory II: The Flaming Sword: The Flaming Sword

by Michael Asher

  Hekmeth’s eyes were crescent moons. She hooked a slender arm around his head, parted her lips, slanted his face towards her, kissed him first softly on the neck, then harder on the mouth. Beeston was breathing hard: he tasted her perfume, felt strands of hair tingling his face, saw the breathtaking gleam of compliance in her eyes. ‘Give it to me,’ she breathed.

  He sensed his advantage: now it was his turn to be coy. ‘I’ve half a mind not to,’ he said, ‘after the way you received me – after all the information I’ve given you. I’m risking everything. I could go to the firing squad for this.’

  Hekmeth cupped his face in both hands, removed his spectacles. ‘Ah, but it’s worth it, isn’t it, darling?’ she hissed. ‘Worth every minute, no?’

  She kissed him again, letting her tongue glide gently into his mouth, guided his hand, first down to her brassiere, then, when that was gone, across her jewelled abdomen to the place between her legs. She began to run her hands down his body, unbuttoning his battledress blouse, working at his belt buckle.

  A moment later they were on the divan, Beeston thrusting inside her with a fast, powerful rhythm, his hands exploring her shoulders and breasts. Hekmeth’s ornaments jingled with his thrusts. She wrapped her thighs up around him, threw back her head so that her hair fell over the edge of the bed in an explosive mass. She clutched him tightly with her arms, brought his head down to kiss her again, abandoned herself, panting, crying, heaving.

  When it was over they lay side by side catching their breath. Beeston was reaching for cigarettes when Hekmeth said, ‘Where’s the address, Clive?’

  He froze in the act. ‘I told you,’ he said. ‘I’ve a mind not to give you it. It could get me into a lot of trouble. Why do you need Nolan’s address anyway?’

  Hekmeth tilted her elegant head to one side, letting her thornbush mass bristle. ‘That’s none of your business,’ she said. ‘It’s better that you don’t know, anyway.’

  Beeston took a cigarette and lit it. ‘If anything happens to Nolan,’ he said, ‘they’ll find out it was me.’

  ‘Nothing’s going to happen to her,’ Hekmeth said. She stroked his hand, her mobile features lighting up: her eyes glittered, her lips flickered, exposing the pearlwhite teeth. ‘Give it to me, darling,’ she said.

  Beeston’s sullen look hardened, but his resolve failed to hold out in the headlamp glare of her charm. A moment later he stubbed out his unfinished cigarette, stood up. He picked up his battledress blouse, slipped his hand into the breast pocket, produced a wadded square of paper. He slapped it into her open palm. Hekmeth beamed once in triumph, then her face shut like a trap. She sat up straight. ‘I told you not to come here, darling,’ she said. ‘Your days are Mondays and Thursdays at the houseboat. Now get out, and don’t make a fuss or you’ll regret it.’

  The major looked as if she’d just hit him with a mallet. His mouth worked soundlessly. He hovered, trying to say something cutting: he realized that he no longer had any bargaining chips. ‘So now you’ve got what you want, you’re packing me off ?’ he said petulantly.

  Hekmeth did the alluring, seductive thing with her lips. ‘Didn’t you get what you wanted, darling? Coming here was dangerous for both of us. If you get caught, what will happen to me?’

  Beeston began to dress hurriedly, wondering why he, a senior officer at GHQ, and a married man with a wife back in Blighty, should humiliate himself, should risk his life, his liberty, his reputation – everything – over a Gyppo hussy, a slut whose pimps, it was rumoured, brought strangers in off the street to fuck her for nothing. ‘I ought to slap your face,’ he said.

  ‘But you won’t, will you, darling? You haven’t got it in you to hurt me. We both know you’ll soon be back with your tongue hanging out like a dog, desperate to fuck me again. I’m like a drug to you, Clive. Like opium. You don’t like me, but you’ve got to have me. Just get out, now. I’ll see you at the houseboat at the usual time, but don’t come back here again. Ever.’

  Beeston’s eyes bulged. He sent a last desperate glance to her, then withdrew, and closed the door.

  He left by the stage entrance, walked to the end of the alley, then turned into the stream of humanity flowing along the corniche. There was supposed to be a curfew in Cairo, but no one took it seriously. The street was packed with soldiers, sailors, airmen: British, Commonwealth, Free French, Slavs, Poles, Cretans, Greeks, all meandering along in boisterous groups. Since he’d last been here, new bars seemed to have blossomed on every street corner, each with its bevy of garishly attired sirens outside. The scents of apple-tobacco, hashish and coffee drifted from open shopfronts. The jingle of horsedrawn gharries and the honk of motor taxis blended in with the endless babble of street vendors crying their trivia – trays laden with flywhisks, pens, haircombs, safety razors, toothbrushes, soap, shampoo and dentifrice. There were men offering girls, shoeshine or dirty postcards: there were girls offering themselves. When Rommel’s victory had seemed imminent back in June, these same streets had been a wasteland. Now, after a three-month relative lull in the fighting, the Mother of all Cities was awake once more.

  Beeston had been trained in countersurveillance, but he was too preoccupied with thoughts of Hekmeth to notice the couple in mufti lurking in a doorway near the Kit-Kat’s main entrance: a small, balding, bespectacled man with eyes like blue Very flares and a younger woman with a pneumatic figure and a cataract of dense red curls. Both were wearing tropical suits with fashionably padded shoulders whose colour was pale but indefinite in the lamplight. They were Major John Stocker and Lieutenant Celia Blaney of Field Security, and they had seen Beeston enter the Kit-Kat stage door an hour earlier. They’d been waiting for him ever since.

  ‘Do you think we ought to follow him, sir?’ Blaney asked. She was new to the watching game, and anxious to get it right. Stocker had taken her on as his new assistant because he found her a genuinely nice girl, not cocky like so many became when they found themselves in a society where females were as rare as hensteeth. She had a quiet way of speaking, a tactful way of putting things – kind, without being ingratiating – and she was always on the ball.

  Stocker shook his head and stuck his pipe in his mouth. He watched Beeston vanish into the shadows with a feeling of satisfaction. His first hunch that the major might be a traitor had come by chance: from his interrogation of the spy Eisner, who’d let drop that the houseboat he’d taken at Zamalek was moored next to that of a military intelligence officer: ‘Who’d suspect the neighbour of a senior British intelligence officer of being a spy?’

  It was only later, after Eisner had escaped, that Stocker remembered this comment. He’d quickly established that the houseboat next to Eisner’s was occupied by a Major Clive Beeston, who, to Stocker’s great interest, turned out to be liaison between the DMI, Director of Military Intelligence, and G(RF), the cell that controlled special service ops, including those involving the LRDG, the SAS, and G(R) undercover agents. Beeston was thus in a perfect position to supply data to the Hun on secret raiding missions: Stocker was now certain that the failures at Benghazi, Tobruk, Fuja and el-Gala were down to him.

  Eisner had been quiet since getting sprung from military custody by a gang of Egyptian cutthroats back in July, but Stocker had been able to keep indirect tabs on him via Hellfinger, a new wireless callsign that had appeared on the net at about the same time: he was sure Hellfinger was Eisner. The one thing he didn’t know, though, was Eisner’s whereabouts. He hadn’t arrested Beeston yet because he hoped to use the major to flush him out.

  Stocker gave Beeston a few minutes, then nodded to Blaney: the two of them struck out into the crowds. They didn’t speak until they’d reached their jeep, parked down a sidestreet with the cover up. It was Blaney who took the driver’s side. She paused before pressing the starter. ‘Do you think he gave Hekmeth Nolan’s address, sir?’ she enquired.

  Stocker began to fill his pipe from a pouch of Dark Empire Shag: he changed his mind and stuck the pouch back in his pocket. ‘I�
��d put money on it,’ he said. ‘I’d also like to think that Eisner will have it very soon.’

  ‘How did you cotton on to the fact that Hekmeth was working with Eisner?’

  ‘It was a hunch, and it’s still no more than that, really: Eisner let drop that Hekmeth was a friend. Then I discovered that she lived in a houseboat on the same dock at Zamalek. It seemed too much of a coincidence: Eisner, Beeston and Hekmeth, all close neighbours. I concluded that they must all know each other. Then the trace we put on Beeston revealed him rushing off from Grey Pillars early, twice a week, regular as clockwork, always carrying a briefcase stuffed with documents. He turned out to be visiting Hekmeth on her boat, and it was obvious that he was having a regular fling with her: it didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to deduce that she was peddling her charms for secrets.’

  ‘Excuse me, Major, but how do we know that Hekmeth isn’t dealing with the Hun directly?’

  Stocker shook his head. ‘It’s unlikely. She’s an Egyptian, don’t forget, not a German. She’s not a trained spy, either, and she doesn’t know how to operate a wireless. No, she’s got to be passing Beeston’s intelligence on to someone else: I can’t prove it, but I’d bet it’s our friend Johann.’

  ‘Pity you never caught him paying her a visit.’

  Stocker chuckled. ‘I did think at first they might be lovers. When I talked to Eisner, though, I got the impression that he doesn’t like women. I don’t mean he’s queer or anything but that he’s got some deep-seated fear of the female sex, one that stops him having a proper relationship with a woman. And hence his obsession with Betty Nolan: I’ll see that Nolan bitch in hell if it’s the last thing I do.’

  Blaney winced. She felt for the starter with a delicate toe, hesitated again. ‘Why don’t we just put a trace on Hekmeth?’ she asked. ‘Surely she’ll lead us to Eisner sooner or later.’

  ‘We’ve tried that already and it didn’t work. Either she’s too wily, or she’s making contact with him in a way we haven’t discovered.’

  ‘So you believe that, once Eisner knows where Nolan is, he’ll try to snatch her?’

  ‘Yes, and we’ll be waiting for him when he does.’

  6

  Caine got himself discharged from hospital in the afternoon, took a horsecab to the railway station, checked his weapon into the lockup. The storeman squinted at his sandcoloured beret with its flaming sword badge, at the SAS wings and DCM ribbon on his chest. ‘You a pilot, sir?’ he enquired.

  He arrived at Nolan’s place in Garden City an hour after sundown, wild with anticipation. Since he’d seen her at the hospital the previous morning, he hadn’t been able to get her off his mind. He could imagine that liquid look in her eyes, the acquiescent, waif-like expression that drove him mad with desire, mad to hold her, to feel her lips on his, feel her body moving in his arms. When he rapped on the door, no one answered. He knocked a second time: still no response. He felt in his pocket for the key. He had hardly inserted it in the lock when the door snapped open. His smile faded: instead of Nolan’s melting eyes he found himself staring down the barrel of a .38-calibre Enfield revolver in the hand of a hefty Military Police sergeant with a peachred face. ‘Who are you?’ the sergeant demanded.

  ‘Who are you, sir,’ Caine growled. He didn’t normally pull rank, but the Redcap’s impertinence annoyed him. ‘I’m Lieutenant Tom Caine, 1st SAS Regiment.’ He put out a hand, suppressed the pistol’s barrel gently. ‘Never point a weapon at anyone, Sarn’t,’ he said. ‘Not unless you intend to kill them, that is.’

  The sergeant lowered the pistol. ‘SAS Regiment?’ he repeated. ‘Isn’t that some kind of dummy outfit … sir?’

  ‘Yep,’ Caine nodded, ‘and I’m one of the dummies. Now, where’s Captain Nolan?’

  ‘Gone, sir.’

  For a split second Caine wondered if he’d missed the joke. Then it hit him that a Redcap hadn’t been posted at Nolan’s door with a weapon at the ready just for window dressing. He sucked breath through his teeth, felt scalphairs prickle, felt his skin go cold. ‘I want to speak to the officer in charge,’ he said.

  The sergeant holstered the revolver, threw up an insolent salute, pointed to the sitting room. Caine hustled past him with a hard glare. In the room, scouring the remains of overturned and shattered furniture, was a team of Field Security staff. Caine recognized Major John Stocker, the DSO who’d investigated the sabotage incident on his parachute course. With him were a shapely female lieutenant with a mass of ginger curls and a tall Redcap major with postbox slits for eyes and a coypu’s front teeth. Caine didn’t know the woman, but he recognized Rodent Teeth instantly: his old enemy from the commandos, Major Robin Sears-Beach, now Deputy Provost Marshal of the Military Police. The three officers turned to gawk at him as he came in.

  ‘Lieutenant Caine,’ Stocker said absentmindedly. ‘I was wondering if you’d turn up.’

  The woman’s syrup-coloured eyes were interested; Sears-Beach scowled.

  Caine noticed a corporal crouching on the floor, taking blood samples: his heart bumped. He stared at Stocker. ‘What’s going on, sir?’ he demanded. ‘Where’s Captain Nolan?’

  Stocker’s eyes glinted darkly. ‘It’s not her blood,’ he said. ‘At least I don’t think it is. Her flatmate, Second Officer Rigby, was shot in the chest by intruders. She’s alive but unconscious.’

  ‘Intruders?’ Caine licked sandpaper lips. ‘What about Nolan?’

  ‘Gone,’ Stocker said. ‘Abducted, I’m afraid.’

  The room reeled. Caine gripped the back of an upright chair to steady himself as a pattern of lightsquares diapered about him like a carousel. For a second he couldn’t get any words out. He forced himself to take deep breaths, shrugged off the mobile display, found himself gazing into Stocker’s face. ‘It’s a mistake,’ he grunted. ‘She can’t be gone. You haven’t searched the place properly.’

  There was the faintest pink glow on Stocker’s cheeks, as if Caine had caught him doing something scurrilous. ‘We’ve gone over the flat with a fine toothcomb,’ he said. ‘They got in via the bathroom window.’ He nodded towards sticks of smashed chairs, scattered ornaments, upended tables. ‘As you can see, she put up quite a fight.’

  Caine shifted his gaze to Sears-Beach, saw a gleam of satisfaction in the Redcap’s gimlet eyes: he seemed pleased to observe Caine’s discomfort. Caine turned back to Stocker. ‘Nolan only changed address recently,’ he said. ‘No one knew she was here …’

  ‘You knew,’ Sears-Beach cut in. ‘God only knows how many other men she told.’

  Caine grasped the hint: his eyes burned acid. He took another breath, found Stocker regarding him uneasily. He had a feeling that there was something going on here, something Stocker wasn’t telling him.

  The DSO whipped off his glasses and started cleaning them with a piece of four by two. ‘It’s my fault,’ he said. ‘I thought she’d be safe …’

  Caine gasped. ‘Don’t tell me it’s Eisner? I thought he was out of the picture.’

  The DSO sighed, placed his glasses carefully back on his nose, stuffed away the four by two. ‘Unfortunately,’ he said, ‘he’s back.’

  ‘So you’re saying this is his work? He shot Rigby, kidnapped Nolan … ?’

  Stocker shook his head. ‘No, I’m not saying that. There were at least three of them. Eisner may well be behind it, but this isn’t his style. He wouldn’t have left Rigby alive, for a start – not to recover and identify her attackers. Since he has sworn to kill Nolan, why kidnap her at all: why not just do her in on the spot?’

  He was about to say something else when Sears-Beach cut in again. ‘As far as I’m concerned, Nolan could be in cahoots with Eisner. I never trusted that tart, anyway.’

  ‘Tart?’ Caine’s vision blurred as if the MP had just spat in his eye: hot lava squirted in his chest, a silent shriek of rage shrilled in his eardrums. Before he even realized what he was doing, he’d swung round on Sears-Beach, whalloped him twice in the face: his fists moved so fast that the maj
or’s expression didn’t have time to change before his eyes went dim. He hit the floor with a clump, out like a light.

  For an instant no one budged. The security detail in the room ogled Caine, unable to believe they’d just seen him knock down a deputy provost marshal. Then the surly MP sergeant who’d met Caine at the door moved in on him, a baton raised in his hand. Caine ripped the stick from his grip, tossed it aside, gave him a sharp head-butt that sent him crashing into the wall.

  ‘Stop it,’ a contralto voice sang.

  Caine wheeled round to see Celia Blaney drawing a bead on him with a .38. She cupped the sixshooter double-handed in a professional manner: her golden-syrup eyes held conviction. Her hands were steady.

  Caine watched her, wondering whether to call her bluff. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Stocker backing away, shaking his head. Caine reckoned he could flatten the redhead before she pulled the trigger, but he knew he wasn’t going to. He could never attack a woman, not even in this foul mood.

  He raised his hands. The MP sergeant was up almost at once, swearing at him, restraining his arms, handcuffing him with rough jerks. Stocker hung back; Caine watched Sears-Beach clamber to his feet, probe his jaw, touch the dribble of blood from his nose. He gaped at Caine through wide, incredulous eyes; his battered face lit up suddenly with delight, as if it had just dawned on him that Christmas had come early. ‘I knew it,’ he gloated triumphantly. ‘I knew I’d have you sooner or later, Caine. Funny how everything comes to those who wait.’

  7

  When the LRDG patrol carrying Captain Eric Hooker of G(R) arrived at Eighth Army TacHQ, Burg el-Arab, the sun was coming up over the Mediterranean, a bloodorange globe strangled by fingers of cloud, bathing the sea with cool copper light. Hooker had a 9mm round lodged in his neck: he’d lost some blood but was feeling like the luckiest man on earth. Riding high from the morphia the LRDG orderly had given him, he refused to report to the forward surgical unit before he’d talked to the GOC. He hunched in a camp-chair in the HQ tent, gulped hot tea, puffed a cigarette, grinned at Eighth Army’s top brass, who clamoured around him in anticipation: Chief of Staff Maj.-General Freddie de Guingand; Chief Intelligence Officer Brigadier Edgar ‘Bill’ Williams, Desert Air Force Commander Air Vice-Marshal ‘Mary’ Coningham; Lieutenant Colonel John Airey, Commanding G(R); a bevy of staff specialists and ADCs – and the GOC, Lieutenant General Bernard Law Montgomery himself.