by Len Deighton
‘Is this a fancy way to sell a yarn about gunrunning?’ said Wallingford, his voice plummy and mocking.
Wechsler grinned. ‘Yeah, that’s a part of it. An army has got to have guns, and right now there are guns lying around in the desert for anyone to pick up.’
‘I can see why you had problems with the censor,’ said Piotr.
‘I never filed a story that revealed any kind of military secret,’ said Wechsler.
Darymple decided to get away from this conversation. These were disturbing issues that he didn’t want to think about, let alone discuss. As he went across the room he heard Wallingford give a howl of laughter at something Piotr had added when he was out of earshot. Darymple wondered if his sudden departure was the subject of the joke, but he didn’t look round to see if they were looking at him.
It was all right for Wally, thought Darymple; he didn’t work at GHQ amongst all the big brass. Wallingford didn’t care what outrageous things Wechsler said. Wally frequently said things about the generals at GHQ that shocked and offended Darymple. Wallingford was pouring on the charm tonight. He must have decided that Prince Piotr would be useful to him. At school Wally had always been like that: crawling to anyone in authority. He was an awful little swine. One day Darymple would tell him some home truths, but not now.
Darymple went to the bathroom and washed his hands. It was his way of escaping from the conversation. By the time he got back there he hoped they would have changed the subject.
Darymple spent a long time washing and drying his hands. Even then he didn’t return to the party. He stood there admiring Piotr’s amazing bathroom. There was a huge marble bath, with silver taps, a couple of lovely old mirrors in heavy baroque frames, and heavy pink damask wall hangings. The floor was strewn with silk carpets. On a side table there was a set of silver-backed hairbrushes and an array of oils and lotions. It was the bathroom of a sinister old deviant, Darymple decided, not for the first time.
When Darymple got back into the main room the corporal was playing Gershwin on Piotr’s old Bechstein. He’d gone to the piano as a way of escaping the exchanges that had so disturbed Darymple. He played a few chords that became ‘Willow Weep for Me’. Even Darymple had to admit that this corporal could play the piano. If one had to have an other rank present, having him at the keyboard made his presence less of a constraint. Suddenly Jimmy Ross looked up at Darymple and winked. Darymple’s face stiffened as he forced a brief smile and moved away hurriedly. That was exactly the sort of embarrassing exchange that was bound to come when ranks mixed in social gatherings.
Alice had discovered that Peggy West had been a talented amateur soprano. Now that they suddenly had a wonderful pianist, she was determined to get her to sing. Peggy was reluctant but Alice Stanhope was determined. She knew that Peggy needed cheering up.
‘It’s a lovely song but it’s too difficult for me,’ said Peggy. She said it mechanically, as if her mind was somewhere else.
Peggy West had not been herself since getting caught up in the afternoon’s big political demonstration. Nothing like that had ever happened to her before. She had lived here for years and got along well with many Egyptian friends, both men and women. Today, however, had been different. The crowd had closed in around her, and she’d found it terrifying. It had been stifling and claustrophobic. They’d been shouting very loudly, so that she was deafened, and she’d been aware of the sweat on their faces and the foul smell of their bodies. Some of them had pushed her from one to the other, grinning, spitting and shouting their anti-British slogans all the while.
Once home she had got into the bath and stayed there a long time. Tonight she was looking truly radiant. It was part of her attempt to cheer herself up, but it hadn’t completely done so. The irreparable damage was that done to Peggy’s ego, or to her soul. Until this afternoon she’d known herself to be an educated liberal who viewed all the inhabitants of this world as equals. She’d been proud of the relationships she’d been able to develop with Egyptian friends at work and everywhere else. Everyone always said that Peggy West understood the Egyptians and loved them. Now she knew that it was not true. She’d loathed those demonstrators with all her heart. At that moment, with those people crushing her half to death, she would have given anything to be home in England again. And this feeling had not completely left her. This was a foreign land and she didn’t want to die here.
Standing at the piano, watching the hands on the keys, she kept telling herself that the Egyptian demonstrators had been relatively good-natured. Their pushes had not been violent punches and they’d not seriously hurt her. She told herself that their strained faces had not shown real violence; they were just the faces of men shouting. But Peggy wanted to go home.
Jimmy Ross changed key and said, ‘We’ll find something for you.’ He began playing ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’.
She saw that people were looking at her. ‘Do sing, Peggy,’ said Alice. ‘It would be lovely.’ There were affirmative sounds from the other guests.
‘I promised Piotr I’d make coffee. His servant can’t make it European style.’
‘I’ll do that, Peggy. You sing.’
Peggy still wasn’t sure. ‘Use the big blue jug: three measures of coffee and a pint of boiling water.’
‘Don’t fuss: sing.’
Peggy let the melody go round in her head. She had sung this one at the Christmas concert in aid of the Empire Services Club, sung it so well she’d been pressed to do an encore.
‘Can you do it in E flat?’ said Peggy.
Obligingly he modulated to the required key and gave her a few bars of introduction. She smiled to him to say she was ready to start.
‘I may be right; I may be wrong,’ sang Peggy. It was a firm clear voice. Once she started singing, her gloomy mood lifted a little. Alice could hear the music while she waited for the kettle to boil. Harry Wechsler had followed her into the kitchen. He’d become keyed up by his earlier arguments, and when the music started he’d come into the kitchen to find a new audience. Now he was in full swing.
‘When this European war broke out in ’thirty-nine, I was covering the Japanese army in what everyone said would be the final push along the Yangtze. My agency sent me to Berlin. What happens? The Battle of Britain gives our London man all the front pages. When I decide the big story is Rommel, the German propaganda ministry take weeks to accredit me to Rommel’s HQ. While I’m kicking my heels, Hitler invades Russia. By that time I’m on my way to Rome. Still in Rome, waiting for a plane to Tripoli, what happens? The Japs bomb Pearl. Can you beat it? I would have done better to stay with the Japs on the Yangtze. That’s the story of my life, honey.’ She pushed past him to get to the stove. He drank some wine.
Over her shoulder Alice said mockingly, ‘And then, when finally the Cairo brass hats let you go and take a look at the battlefront, you get a virus and end up back here again.’
He put an arm round her waist. ‘That’s it. What do you think I do wrong?’
‘You try too hard, Mr Wechsler,’ she said slipping away from his attempted embrace to warm the coffee jug.
He took this rejection with good grace. ‘My name is Harry. Maybe you’re right. All I can be sure about is that with the Japs fighting American boys, Mr and Mrs America are not going to be too concerned about the British letting the Krauts snatch back a few desert villages somewhere in Africa.’
‘Does that mean you’ll try and get to the Pacific?’
‘No.’ Wechsler bent over to sniff at the flowers. ‘Like I said, there is a big story here: Arab nationalism, British colonialism, the Jewish homeland and Nazi expansionism. Everybody fighting everybody. I’d say this story could run and run.’
‘I hope not, Mr Wechsler.’
‘It’s principally a matter of finding the right angle. Say, none of these flowers have any smell.’
‘I know.’
‘But they all have thorns.’
‘Don’t complain that the rose bush has thorn
s; rejoice that the thornbush bears roses.’
‘Say, that’s cute. Did you just make that up?’
‘It’s from the Koran,’ said Alice.
‘Is that right? I like it. I’ll try and work it into my next story.’ It was very unlikely that he’d find a way of doing this, but he’d found that people liked him to say such things.
It was while Alice was in the kitchen with Harry Wechsler that Piotr’s servant answered the door to a soldier bearing a message for ‘Corporal Cutler’. He was wanted downstairs in the hotel lobby. It was an emergency and he must hurry. ‘Oh, dear,’ said Piotr.
When the song ended to polite applause, the prince conveyed the message to him. ‘Duty calls, corporal. A sergeant has come to take you away from us. I do hope you’ll come back and see us next week. I’m so sorry about the piano; it’s so difficult getting it tuned nowadays.’
‘Thank you,’ said Jimmy Ross. Such a sudden summons alarmed him, but he tried not to show it. ‘It was wonderful to play a really good piano again.’
‘What can you have done?’ said Peggy anxiously. She knew that there was seldom anything desirable awaiting corporals who were rounded up and summoned back to barracks.
‘Tell Alice not to worry. I’ll soon sort it out,’ he told Peggy. He told himself that it couldn’t be really serious or they would have come up here and arrested him. On the other hand they could wait downstairs in the confident knowledge that there was no other path of escape.
‘Did you leave the typewriter ribbons unguarded?’ called Darymple mockingly. ‘Well, don’t worry, corporal. I’ll look after Alice for you.’
Ross smiled. He looked around and couldn’t see Alice anywhere. But they were all watching him, so he waved and took his leave.
He was down two flights of stairs when Peggy noticed that he’d left his silver pencil on the piano. She could hear his metal studded boots on the stairs as she hurried after him.
But Ross was moving fast and he was already greeting an MP sergeant as Peggy got to the top of the final flight. The sergeant was standing in the lobby with an officer’s army battle-dress blouse draped over his arm.
‘What is it, sergeant?’
‘It’s not too good, sir,’ said the sergeant. ‘Captain Marker is waiting in the car outside. He’s got all the latest gen. He’ll explain.’ Still talking they both pushed their way through the entrance doors.
‘Bert!’ called Peggy. But by the time she was downstairs and out into the street she saw him a hundred yards away. He was scrambling hurriedly into the front seat of an Austin utility. The sergeant jumped into the back, still clutching the army jacket, just as the driver let in the clutch and pulled away into the traffic.
Peggy stood there for a moment in the evening gloom. Poor Bert Cutler, she thought, what were they going to do to him? The driver looked just like that Captain Marker who’d searched Solomon’s houseboat and brought her back here to check on her identity papers. But it was almost dark; she was probably mistaken.
11
‘The balloon’s gone up,’ said Lionel Marker as he pressed the accelerator of the Austin pickup and pulled away into the traffic. Marker liked driving in these crowded streets. It had become a game with him.
Jimmy Ross grunted and took a tight hold on his seat. He’d heard about Marker’s driving.
Marker said: ‘Nothing coming through on the teleprinter as yet, sir. It sounds like the king was told to change the government, turned nasty and was being kicked off the throne. The brigadier’s flown back to be here. He said there was a colossal flap at GHQ. He’ll be outside the palace. Wants to talk to you there, he says.’
‘I brought your jacket, sir,’ said the sergeant from the back. ‘It came from the tailor this evening.’ He passed forward the new battle-dress blouse with major’s crowns on the shoulder straps.
‘Yes, I’d better wear it,’ said Ross with a sigh of relief. So he’d meet the brigadier. It was as well that he wasn’t going to face him wearing the corporal’s uniform and try to explain that he needed it for some nonexistent investigation. Awkwardly he took the jacket and twisted round as he put his arms through the sleeves, and then buttoned it up. His sergeant passed him his webbing belt with a revolver in the holster.
‘It’s a stand-to,’ said the sergeant. ‘Officers with side arms, I expect.’ Sergeant Ponsonby was assigned as assistant and clerk to the major. He looked like an artful old devil but very efficient.
‘Thank you, sergeant.’
‘I knew this would happen,’ said Marker, ‘I knew it. Lampson is determined to put the Wafd party back in power.’ The streets were crowded. A donkey came wandering out from a side alley. It brayed its anger as Marker narrowly missed hitting it. ‘I predicted it.’
Ross held his breath for a moment. Three old men grabbed the donkey and shouted something after them. Their vehement curses were lost in the swirl of exhaust smoke. ‘Did you?’ said Ross with studied calm. ‘Then I wish you would explain it to me in words of one syllable.’
Marker took a deep breath. ‘Well, that arsehole Lampson is the troublemaker. The Foreign Office people in London have never understood what’s going on here. Those people still live in the age of send-in-a-gunboat. They won’t listen to the commander in chief … and they can’t get it through their thick skulls that the army have enough on their plate trying to stop Rommel, without coping with the consequences of their chronic diplomatic failures. And we can’t hold down a few million excited Egyptians with our little garrison, and fight a war as well.’
So that’s why Marker was upset. Well, that was all right, at least the death of Major Cutler had not been uncovered. Marker just wanted to vent his anger about the strange activities of the British embassy people. That was a tirade that Ross could understand – and join, if need be.
‘Have you got any cigarettes, sir?’
Ross took out a packet and passed him one. He had read up on Egypt over the last few days, and picked Alice’s brains as well. ‘But what’s the problem? Lampson wants the Wafd back in power, and the Wafd is popular – they are the Nationalists, the biggest political party in the land.’
‘Well the Wafd won’t be so bloody popular after its been put back into power by means of British bayonets,’ said Marker, getting a lighter from his pocket.
‘I don’t get it,’ said Ross. In response to awkward questions, Ross had found the best course was to say that in Scotland he’d been a police detective, and there police work had always meant staying out of politics. But, as Alice had told him, here in Egypt politics permeated everything the department did. There was no way of avoiding it. According to Alice, Marker had an instinct for local politics. He always knew the score and seemed to get the political line right. She said even the brigadier, surrounded as he was with all the GHQ experts, would sometimes invite Marker’s interpretations of what was happening.
Marker deftly lit his cigarette, using only one hand. ‘Official British policy in Egypt has always been to drive a wedge between the king and any big political movement. That’s the whole theory behind British power here.’
‘So what will the king do now?’
‘Lampson is a mad, vindictive sod. Giving orders to a king has turned his head. Now that he’s kicked Farouk off the throne, Lampson will start to play emperor. I think we should prepare for the worst.’
‘Riots?’
‘I just hope someone is watching the Egyptian army. They’ve got heavy weapons.’
‘Jesus! Will it come to that?’
‘Why not? No matter what the soldiers privately think about their king, the Gyppo army will regard our booting him out as a stain on their honour. You know what all those hotheads are like: Long live Rommel and all that shit.’
‘And the king got the army their big pay rise. That was smart.’
Marker shot him a glance of appreciation. His new major had done some homework. ‘King Farouk is not a fool,’ said Marker. ‘Fatty is as cunning as a wagon load of monkeys. That’s where
Lampson always gets it wrong.’
By now they were turning into Midan Abdin, the vast square that fronts Abdin Palace. Some soldiers and policemen were standing in groups, talking. Apart from three British armoured cars, parked unobtrusively away from the palace forecourt with their lights extinguished, it all seemed very quiet. The only thing that made the scene in any way unusual was that lights were shining from all the windows of the palace. Through one window, some servants could be seen moving furniture around.
The police must have blocked off all the entrances to the square, but even so there were a couple of Arabs peddling trinkets. They could always wriggle through: even in GHQ, with armed military police on every door, they’d find Arabs in the upstairs corridors, selling their wares. What a thankless task for a security officer.
The three men looked around for their brigadier but without success. They drove on to the corner of Sharia el Bustan. There were two khaki-coloured staff cars with British Troops in Egypt markings and a Bedford truck with British infantry sitting unnaturally silent in its dark interior. The truck was parked right across the streetcar tracks at the place where they turn the corner.
In Abdin Square, near the tall railings, half a dozen British officers stood in twos, talking together. All wore revolvers. At the palace gates, near the regular Egyptian army sentries, there were some Egyptian policemen in their black wool winter uniforms.
‘Look,’ said Marker. ‘That gangly-looking lieutenant is named Spaulding. He works in the brigadier’s office at GHQ. Ex-university don or something of that kind, they tell me. He’s too damned keen. Watch out for him: he’s a sycophantic little crawler, and the brigadier thinks the sun shines from his arsehole.’ The subject of Marker’s description was standing near a staff car bearing the brigadier’s markings. They drove over to him.
