by Len Deighton
Ross got out of the car and said, as casually as possible, ‘What a glorious evening. Now what’s it all about, Mr Spaulding?’
The lieutenant was wearing a steel helmet and had a pistol in a canvas holster at his hip. There was an air of keenness about him. Some men took naturally to the military life, thought Ross. Perhaps it wasn’t too different to the monastic world of the university.
Lieutenant Spaulding saluted with all the energy and precision of a Guards sergeant and said, ‘Yes, sir, a truly memorable evening, sir. Are you up to date on the palace situation, sir?’ Spaulding meant was his major up to date on what he, and the rest of GHQ, thought about the palace situation.
‘No, I’m damned if I am,’ said Ross. It was wonderful being a major. He was saying the same sort of things he’d said while a corporal, but now he was taken seriously by those around him.
Perhaps the lieutenant was suddenly affected by the beauty of the night – the air cool and silky, the purple sky pricked by countless stars – for he smiled and in a more normal voice said, ‘Ambassador Lampson gave the king an ultimatum. It expired at eighteen hundred hours. The king’s in there now, with a crowd of politicians. He’s decided to abdicate, but no one is quite sure who will take over.’
‘What sort of ultimatum?’ Ross looked at Spaulding; there was nothing wrong with the lieutenant’s uniform, it was of good quality and fitted well, but Spaulding was one of those men who, despite all his obvious efforts, would never look like a soldier.
‘The king has been told to invite the Wafd to form a government. London have had enough of this crowd.’
‘And if the king refuses?’
Spaulding gave a dry donnish smile. ‘That’s what I’m telling you: he’s already refused. The ultimatum expired at six P.M.’
‘So, what now?’
‘Lampson has demanded an audience and he’s due back at any minute. As I understand it, he’ll have General Stone or someone else from BTE with him. They are going to force the king to sign the abdication.’
‘And then?’
‘They want the army to escort him to the airport straightaway. The RAF have brought a plane in and have it standing by. I’m not sure where he’ll be flown to. Somewhere in the Sudan, perhaps.’
‘What a shambles,’ said Ross. ‘Are they our people?’ he nodded in the direction of the Bedford and the men inside.
‘No. None of our people are here, except us. The brigadier said our own people should be kept out of this: it’s too public. I kidnapped a platoon of red caps from the barracks to do the dirty work. Motorcycle outriders and all the trimmings. We’ll do it right. I’m keeping them out of sight in Sharia el Bustan until the time comes.’ He took off his steel helmet and wiped his brow with a handkerchief. Spaulding wished he’d not brought the steel helmet but, having nowhere to put it, there was little alternative but to keep wearing it.
‘Good,’ said Ross without enthusiasm. ‘Sounds as if it’s going to be a long night.’
‘You never said a truer word, Major Cutler,’ said a low plummy voice. It was the intelligence brigadier from GHQ. He’d been going around inspecting the military police detachment that Spaulding had hidden away in the next street. So this was the man Ross had heard about; he looked an avuncular figure. He was a big bear-like man whose long service in the tropics seemed to have thinned his blood. Even on this unusually mild evening he was wearing an overcoat, and had it buttoned to the neck over a thick wool scarf. He returned the salutes of his two officers with a wave of his leather-covered swagger stick. ‘At last we meet, Major Cutler. Well, this is what the bloody civilians get us into. Don’t forget it.’ He looked at his wristwatch.
‘No, sir.’
‘And that bloody man Lampson doesn’t even speak Arabic. I can’t think why Winston keeps him here.’ He looked at his watch again. ‘What time is Lampson due back?’ he asked Spaulding.
‘At twenty-one hundred hours, sir.’
‘It’s almost that now,’ said the brigadier petulantly. ‘Everyone at GHQ is damned jumpy today. The map room is running short on pins.’ He grinned to show it was a joke. ‘If they don’t stop Rommel soon, he’ll be sitting on the verandah of Shepheard’s Hotel finishing up the last of the Stella beer.’
Just about everyone in Cairo was making the same joke. Ross was not quite sure how to react to a brigadier in one of these you-and-me-back-to-back-fighting-all-the-world moods. Was he expected to say yes, or no? Ross nodded and cleared his throat.
‘Looks like the Auk will sack Ritchie,’ said the brigadier, wanting to show the lower ranks the sort of high-level discussions he was a party to.
‘Will we be able to hold them?’ said Ross.
‘At Gazala? I hope so. Ritchie should be fired, really. No one has faith in him any more.’
Ross looked at Spaulding, but artfully Spaulding was looking at him for a reply. Ross said, ‘Will it improve morale to sack the army commander?’
The brigadier looked at him and smiled. This new major was sharp; some of these civvies were bright. ‘That’s exactly what the old man will be thinking, eh?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And here they come. At least the wretched man is on time.’
Into the square there came Lampson’s car, accompanied by a car filled with embassy people. Then came four armoured cars and three trucks that were weighted down with infantry in full battle order, complete with rifles.
The palace gates were closed and locked. The little procession came to a halt there. The Egyptian sentries were standing well back from the railings. A British officer went forward and grabbed the gates. He rattled them vigorously but found them locked. He went back to the car for instructions and evidently got them, for he was immediately on his way again. Using his Webley revolver he shot the lock off the gates. The shots echoed right across the empty square. There was a squeak of metal as he opened the gates wide. The first car through was an armoured car. The driver took the turn too steeply and there was a loud screech as the armour tore a piece of metal off the gate.
Lampson’s car followed, stopped, and the men inside alighted. Walking past the armoured car, Lampson led the way along the drive to the front doors of the palace. The door opened as he got there, and he went inside. The armoured cars and the trucks remained near the railings. No one got out.
The brigadier watched it all in silence until Lampson disappeared inside. ‘History is being made tonight, gentlemen.’ After leaving a few moments for this ponderous pronouncement to take effect, the brigadier went off to confer with someone in one of the armoured cars.
Lieutenant Spaulding said, ‘The most bizarre thing is that Sir Walter Monckton is here in Cairo. He’s the man who drafted the abdication signed by the Duke of Windsor. Now they have him drafting the abdication for Farouk.’
‘Why is he here?’ said Ross.
‘Entirely coincidence. He’s been polishing a seat in one of these offices where the real war is being fought. Director General of British Propaganda and Information Services is, I believe, his full title.’
‘Do I hear a note of cynicism in your voice, Mr Spaulding?’
‘Not at all, sir. They also serve who only stand and propagate.’
Ross smiled; you got better jokes as a major, as well as better food and lodging.
The brigadier came back with good news. ‘Lampson seems to have pulled it off. No abdication. The king has agreed to put the Wafd party back into power. We can all go and get a night’s sleep after all. Except the provost people, of course. All leave and passes are cancelled: all troops are recalled to barracks. They’ll double up the street patrols, and crack down on all the usual whorehouses. With average luck, it will all pass off peacefully tonight. What tomorrow brings is anyone’s guess.’
He reached out with his swagger stick to tap Ross’s shoulder. He waved the stick in the air to indicate that he should follow him as he walked away. Marker said he was a man much given to signalling. Rumour said he’d started his military c
areer as a subaltern of a signals platoon in the days of semaphore flags.
‘A word in your private ear, Major Cutler.’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘I know you have your own way of doing things. Cloak and dagger … dressing up in false beards and climbing up the minarets.’
‘Only when absolutely necessary,’ said Ross.
The brigadier continued as if not hearing him: ‘Yes! Just what that fellow Lawrence of Arabia did back in the last show. Splendid! Buried in Westminster Abbey, they tell me. Or St Paul’s or somewhere. But there are one or two aspects of your present task that I should like you to bear very much in mind.’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘London, sometimes even Winston himself, has been giving the old man a bad time lately. Winston is getting rather fed up with being forced to make so many of those backs-to-the-wall speeches he does so well. He seems to be looking for a theme more spirited: a few significant battlefield victories, naval battles won. Something more suited to that slightly overwrought prose style of his.’ The brigadier laughed to indicate that his criticism of the prime minister was limited to that great man’s literary efforts.
Ross said nothing. He tried to guess what was coming, but so far this evening the brigadier had proved a man of constant surprises.
‘Fact is, Cutler, old chap, I’m getting a serious hurry-up on this one. I know you can’t work miracles but’ – he lowered his voice to emphasise confidentiality – ‘London have some sort of mumbo-jumbo earhole so they know verbatim what our pal Rommel receives in the way of secret signals from Berlin. Ver-bloody-batim!’
The brigadier paused long enough for Ross to peer at him trying to see what might be coming next. When he was quite sure of his major’s whole attention, the brigadier went on.
‘I’m sorry not to have seen you before this, but I knew you’d go through your predecessor’s confidential files. So you’ll know that Rommel is getting to hear of every disposition the old man makes, even before the dust settles. Every tank squadron, every infantry battalion, every last detail down to the mobile bath and delousing units.’ He paused and nodded to himself.
Ross said nothing. Marker had told him not to interrupt the old man’s speeches. He liked to say everything two or three times; it was the army method.
‘Yes,’ said the brigadier, ‘Rommel is being told every last detail of our chain of command and deployment. And whoever is telling him, is getting it right. It must be coming from Cairo: some of it is stuff London don’t know. If we don’t crack this one soon I’m going to have my head in a sling: know what I mean?’
‘Yes, sir.’ It was exactly the brief he’d read in the files. And exactly what Marker had told him the brigadier would say.
‘Good man. Gyppo army chaps eh?’
‘I beg your pardon, sir?’
‘Egyptian army. That’s where it’s all coming from. That’s obvious, I should think.’
‘I’m not yet sure on that one, sir.’
‘You’re the detective, Cutler. I’m just a soldier. But surely you can see that it has to be someone who knows his way through British army paperwork. It’s not one of our people. In GHQ we’ve sifted through every last man with access to this sort of material and come up with nothing. It’s got to be someone outside. There is too much of it for it to be collected by a single spy; it’s a network. Who else but those Gyppo army types? We know they want Rommel to win; we’ve heard them say so often enough.’
‘I’ll keep at it, sir.’
‘I understand that you have one of those Gyppo army firebrands in your sights?’
Sayed, of course. Ross wondered what else had got back to the old man on his duck shoot. ‘Yes, sir, I do. But if we move too soon he’ll bolt and we’ll be back to square one.’
The brigadier slashed the air with his stick. ‘No need for every last jot and tittle of evidence, major. You won’t be standing in the Old Bailey, facing a cross-examination from-some nasty little KC for the defence. If you point the finger at who you think this bugger is, we’ll spirit him away and that’s the end of it.’
‘I know, sir.’
‘That’s the way things are done here.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The brigadier didn’t want to leave it like that. He felt he hadn’t made his subordinate understand how things were here. ‘King Farouk has decided what’s best for him. Tomorrow the old government will be kicked out and the Wafd will be sworn in. The new boys will go after the old lot with a ferocity that knows no bounds. Some of them will wake up in the clink, and some of them will end up feeding the fishes in the Sweet Water Canal. By the end of next week, all the bribes will be paid into new bank accounts, and Egypt will settle down to stable government while we get on with the war.’ Another fierce slash with the stick. ‘Still, all this sudden upheaval might provide you with a chance to nab the fellows we are looking for. If we have to pay a big fat back-hander to someone, to make them do their duty, so be it.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You know what I mean?’
Ross suspected that the brigadier wanted him to pay for false witness but he wasn’t sure. ‘The corruption here is one of the things that makes my job difficult.’
‘Nonsense, Cutler. You mustn’t think of it like that. It’s as misleading to look at Egyptian corruption through the eyes of an Englishman as it is to look at English drunkenness through the eyes of an Egyptian Muslim.’
‘I’ll remember that, sir.’ He decided not to tell the brigadier that he was Scottish not English. Such corrections, no matter how gently offered, always made Englishmen excited.
The brigadier sniffed and tackled him head on. ‘You don’t think it is the Gyppos, do you?’
‘I’m keeping an open mind, sir.’
‘It’s got to be a network, major. Admit that.’
Ross had spent hours going through every last file in the office. ‘That wouldn’t reduce it to the Egyptian army, sir. There are many espionage networks in this town. The Italians, the Vichy French, the Greeks and the Jews from Palestine all have tightly knit nationalistic communities, here in Cairo, and in Alex. Some big, some small. Some official, some less so. Such people all gather information and coordinate it. You might almost say they all have networks.’
The brigadier had been certain that his theory about the Egyptian army was unassailable. Now these alternative suspects made him less certain. He blinked as if hit, but he soon recovered from his dismay. ‘And are you following all these blighters up?’
‘Yes, I am, sir.’
‘Cheer up, Cutler. You couldn’t wish for a more understanding and unconventional commander than me, eh?’
So that’s how the brigadier saw himself. ‘No, sir. Indeed I couldn’t.’
‘Ah, look at that! Lampson and his merry men are coming out of the palace. What it must be to walk with kings and keep such a very common touch!’
12
Bab-el-Hadid barracks was a curious-looking, three-storey structure, built to look like a small crusader castle, complete with castellated ramparts and a square-shaped tower. Facing across the gardens and open spaces to Cairo’s main railway station, it was seen by hundreds of people who arrived and departed every day. Yet few people, except those from the army’s Special Investigation Branch, Field Security staff, military policemen, and prisoners, ever saw inside this outlandish place on Sharia Malika Nazli.
The office where Jimmy Ross now reigned was a large high-ceilinged room with an electric fan and two good-sized windows. One of them gave a view across the square to the railway station. From the other one you could see roofs of the Bulaq, a squalid neighbourhood where Europeans seldom went. The view downward was a parade ground, with sand-bagged emplacements in front of the guardhouse. At ground level there was a row of cells, their doors all newly reinforced since the previous June, when five handcuffed Australian soldier prisoners ingeniously removed the screws from their cell doors and escaped in a refuse truck. At present the courtyard was empty ex
cept for a big Humber saloon car with balloon tyres, and two Austin Tillys: utility pickups with canvas tops. One of them was assigned to Major Cutler, and Jimmy Ross delighted in the luxury of using it.
He told himself over and over again that he should make a run for it, but he was enjoying himself so much that he couldn’t tear himself away. He treasured every minute he spent with Alice; she’d made him discover things about himself he’d never before known. Was that a symptom of falling in love? But it wasn’t only his infatuation with Alice Stanhope that kept him coming back here every day instead of bolting. At least he tried to convince himself it wasn’t that. Perhaps it was the actor in him. Or the infantile delight he got from deceiving them all. Or the pleasure that came from being the boss after a lifetime of being a nobody. Whatever the reason he kept extending the deception, continuing and refining his role. Only an actor could understand the challenge. Success would come not so much from providing an authentic Albert Cutler as from skilful creation of the person they all expected Cutler to be.
He sat back in his chair, and put on a slight frown, as Captain Lionel Marker gave him his daily briefing. It was Jimmy Ross’s great good fortune that his immediate superior, the brigadier, had his office in the monolithic GHQ ‘Muddle East’ building in Garden City on the other side of the town. He was left to run things the way he liked. It was nice to wonder what would happen if he did the impossible and found Rommel’s spy. Sometimes, losing himself in his impersonation, he had the feeling he was on the way to doing so.
‘And what do you make of it, Captain Marker?’ he said as Marker’s briefing came to an end.
It was Marker’s daily task to go through all the new paperwork, sifting from such diverse sources as the embassy to the meanest Arab informant. This had been a long morning for him. Since the British brought their armoured cars to browbeat the king in his palace, the atmosphere in Cairo had been threatening. The city was alive with rumours and stories. The regular police informants were lining up to report endless variations on a plot to overthrow the British occupying forces.
