City of Gold

by Len Deighton

  It was about half an hour later when they saw a blur on the horizon. ‘It could be a mirage,’ Chips warned. But it was exactly in the right place, and soon the blur became the palms that marked Al Jaghbub. ‘We could brew up some tea and get a sleep while the sun is up.’

  ‘Tea and sleep: that’s all you guys think about,’ said Harry, but Chips had got to know him well enough to discern agreement in his voice. The village of Al Jaghbub shelters under the cliffs of a depression. And nearby there was a lake deep and wide enough for a swim.

  Chips brewed some tea in the traditional way of the desert army. He filled a can with sand, poured some petrol in it, and set it alight. Over it he boiled a kettle of water. The tea tasted good. Even Harry had to admit it.

  They dropped into the water with a whoop of delight. Water acquired its true significance in the desert environment. Dipping his head below the surface Harry found it to have a strange texture, and it tasted of salt and sulphur. Back home such a swimming hole would have been a place to avoid, but in this dusty, dirty, gritty world, to be immersed in the cool water was a luxury beyond compare. Neither of the men spoke. They floated in the buoyant water and flapped their arms gently enough to stay afloat with head above water.

  While they were in the pool there came the sudden loud noise of an aircraft. They looked up. It was a light plane, flying so low that it seemed as if it must crash into the cliff side. It turned and came back again but this time it banked steeply, sideslipped, and disappeared behind the trees.

  It was a secluded place, and for a time it was as if they had the whole world to themselves. After they had bathed they found a patch of shade and sat around drying themselves. The salt was sticky on the skin and stiff in the hair. An Arab boy found them, and sold them a pile of fresh dates, which they ate. ‘Ever go to a ball game, Chips?’

  ‘No, never.’

  Harry sighed and sank back in the sand and went to sleep…

  He awoke when a boot kicked him hard in the shoulder. He looked up to find half a dozen men had arrived at the water hole. ‘Stretch your hands out! Roll over!’ The voice was harsh, with a regional English accent that Harry found difficult to comprehend.

  Harry hesitated. Half-asleep and not understanding what he was expected to do, he grabbed his shoe, in which he’d put his glasses and wristwatch for safekeeping. He was kicked again, spitefully enough to make him call out with the pain.

  ‘You heard me, you bastard! Roll over!’ It was a man wearing khaki shorts and bush shirt with sergeant’s stripes, although without his glasses Harry Wechsler was mostly aware of his heavy army boots and woollen stockings. The sergeant reached down and snatched Harry’s shoes away from him and examined them carefully.

  Chips seemed to understand what it was that these aggressive newcomers wanted. He reached out his arms, with open palms, and rolled over, well clear of the place where he’d been sleeping. They wanted to be quite sure the sleeping men did not have guns tucked down beside them in the sand. As another kick was aimed at him, Harry rolled over too.

  The sergeant trailed the heel of his boot through the sand, to be sure there was nothing buried there, and then kicked the surface, but he found nothing. ‘We locked everything in the Ford,’ said Harry. ‘Give me my glasses.’

  The sergeant passed his shoes to him, and Harry put his glasses on. Now he could see that the sergeant was a weatherbeaten man, about forty years old. His exposed arms, right to the wrist, were covered with an intricate pattern of tattooing. His open-necked shirt revealed more tattoos that went right up to his neck. On his shirt some campaign ribbons marked him as a long-service soldier. Standing well back, guns in evidence, there were a dozen or more soldiers – young lance corporals – all wearing the clean and well-pressed uniforms that, military policemen are taught, are a necessary sign of their trade. ‘So you say that’s your Ford?’

  ‘Where’s your officer?’ said Harry. ‘I’m a US citizen in a neutral country. I don’t have to put up with British army bullshit.’

  Chips made a frantic sign with his hand, trying to make his boss see reason. He knew that the sort of men who became military police sergeants did not readily endure such rebukes in front of their inferiors.

  The sergeant saw the gesture. ‘Get up. And put on your shorts and your shoes.’ He tossed Harry’s other shoe into the sand and then looked at Chips. ‘And you, chum! I don’t want any trouble with either of you. Get it?’

  ‘I’m an American; we’re both civilians,’ said Harry.

  ‘And you’re both under arrest,’ said the sergeant.

  ‘What for?’ said Chips.

  ‘Talk to my officer about it,’ said the sergeant. ‘He’s in charge.’

  Jimmy Ross preferred to stay in Cairo. He felt safer in the bustle of the town, and he wanted to be in regular contact with the office so that he would be prewarned of any development that would affect him. It did not improve his temper when, after suffering the discomfort of the journey out to the oasis and finding nothing but old guns and a couple of war correspondents, the brigadier came swooping in unexpectedly in a light plane. The brigadier was in a hurry, and so they stood having their conversation in the shadow of the plane’s wing.

  ‘I don’t want you to think that I’m breathing down your neck, Major Cutler.’

  ‘No, sir.’ He looked at the brigadier and then at Lieutenant Spaulding at his side. He hadn’t seen Spaulding since the fiasco at the Abdin Palace. Did Spaulding go along on the brigadier’s duck shoots and all the other outings to which the brass devoted so much time? Spaulding smiled, almost as if guessing what was in the other man’s mind.

  The brigadier looked at one and then at the other: there was not much love lost between these two men; they had hated each other on sight. They were a couple of prima donnas, thought the brigadier. Spaulding played soldier but wouldn’t give up being an Oxford don. Cutler: too damned distant. Perhaps he was convinced that his time in the police service made him the only professional amongst them. No matter; in wartime the army had to use what it could get. ‘Two captives, I hear?’

  ‘Not exactly, sir. Two men arrived here a couple of days ago but were frightened away. The chaps arrested today are bona fide war correspondents.’

  ‘Are you quite sure?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I know one of them by sight and am staying away from him for that reason.’

  ‘Quite so. Good security. Are you feeling well, Major Cutler? I hear you’re in that damned office all day and all night, reading through every file and report they have there. Don’t overdo it. I don’t want you going down sick.’

  ‘I’m perfectly fit, sir. With respect, sir, what I need is time to get on with the really important investigation.’

  ‘Rommel’s spy, you mean? Yes, that’s the big one, but in the army we have to obey orders no matter how illogical they sometimes seem.’

  ‘I must take the rough with the smooth,’ said Ross. ‘My sergeant told me that.’

  The brigadier was not pleased with this reply: in the prewar army such a response would have been punished as open rebellion, but this was wartime and this specialist was a special case. And the brigadier was astute enough to see that an obsession with tracking down the spy might eventually bring immense benefit. The brigadier, having had a sound night’s sleep, an excellent breakfast, and with that feeling of well-being that comes from being given the exclusive use of an airplane, said, ‘Yes, yes, yes. As I said, the chief sent a plane for me. There’s a big pow-wow at Corps. I’m bound to face a quizzing about this little discovery here, so I dropped in to see exactly what has been found.’

  Jimmy Ross, who’d been awake all night bumping around in a truck, said, ‘Eight hundred and fifty Beretta submachine guns and about a million rounds of ammunition.’ He was repeating what he’d already told Lieutenant Spaulding on the telephone that morning. Spaulding’s face registered surprise as if hearing it for the first time.

  ‘Here’s one of them,’ said Spaulding. He had wandered off and
picked up one of the Italian guns from a wooden packing case. Now he was brandishing it, stroking its machined metal parts and waiting for his chance to explain it.

  It was curious that Spaulding was so fascinated by guns, thought Ross. It wasn’t something one associated with academics.

  ‘Yes,’ said the brigadier. He craned his head while keeping his distance. Politely he inspected the gun that Spaulding was holding out to him like a baby being offered to the Pope for a benediction. ‘What’s the verdict, Major Cutler?’

  It was Spaulding who answered. ‘Enough for five paratroop Kompanien of one hundred and forty-four men each.’

  ‘I wanted Major Cutler’s opinion,’ said the brigadier mildly, although inwardly he was angry that Spaulding should jump in with his answer so pat. It made him look a fool.

  Ross looked from one to the other of the two men. ‘They’re Italian guns. Do the Italians have parachute formations?’

  The brigadier didn’t smile, but he was amused at this reply. The major was probably right: there were no Italian paratroops as far as anyone knew. The brigadier decided to keep that foxy response up his sleeve, to counter any sticky questioning at headquarters.

  ‘No one would be asking them for their passports,’ said Spaulding in his dry, donnish manner. ‘Germans, Italians: what’s the difference? And anyway, it’s as good as the German equivalent – the MP Thirty-eight. They might well have some logistic reason, like ammunition supply.’

  ‘I’m not an expert on firearms,’ said Ross.

  The brigadier said, ‘If the Hun dropped in and seized this oasis, plus the Siwa one across the wire, he’d be a thorn in our flesh, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘He’d have to be fed and supplied,’ said Ross. He knew little or nothing about weapons, strategy, or tactics.

  ‘Water is the main problem for a besieged garrison,’ said Spaulding authoritatively. ‘Men can go a very long time without food.’

  Ross was tempted to add: but not without ammunition. But getting into a wrangle with Spaulding – even a good-natured wrangle – was not a good idea. He was in enough trouble already, without making more. And according to Lionel Marker, the brigadier was in awe of Spaulding’s academic qualifications and listened to his theories on everything from astronomy to Zionism.

  Spaulding interpreted the silence as a sign that both men wanted to learn more of his theory. ‘I don’t know if you’ve been reading the intelligence summaries about the Hun paratroop forces, but he’s likely to take over a few places like this without anyone catching a sniff of what’s happening. Then suddenly we have to contend with a German box sitting out here in our rear, preying on our supply lines.’

  The brigadier was not immune to the pleasure that comes from watching subordinates vying to impress. ‘What do you say to that, Cutler?’

  ‘I’ve certainly read a great many intelligence summaries lately. Too many. The Crete invasion has given a lot of people an obsession about German paratroops. My people think that these guns are just part of a consignment from one of the old Italian dumps.’

  ‘Dangerous toys, Cutler,’ said the brigadier, who was rehearsing the sort of discussion he’d face at the powwow. ‘If the Hun has left this sort of thing round here, plus explosives and ammunition and so on, he could drop his men in and be ready to go in an hour or so.’

  ‘From the intelligence summary I read,’ said Ross doggedly, ‘a three-engined Junkers transport plane holds only twelve fully equipped paratroops. To bring five infantry companies in here, they would need about seventy of those big planes. That’s a lot of noise and commotion for a clandestine operation. And they would need a lot of luck to fill the sky with planes and still avoid our radar and fighter defences.’

  ‘Even so,’ said the brigadier. He didn’t want to entirely abandon this threat to the oasis. Writing it off as briefly as Cutler had done would mean his time in the conference limelight would be severely limited. He decided to handle it the way it would do most good: a little danger but not more than his men could deal with. ‘I think we must leave the Beretta guns here and put a guard on the place: twenty-four-hour watch. The usual sort of thing. Sort out some reliable chaps, Cutler.’

  ‘There is another dimension, sir,’ said Spaulding. ‘The Siwa Oasis was a base for the Egyptian army at one time.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ said the brigadier. He grabbed at his face and massaged it. It was a sign that he didn’t follow what Spaulding was trying to tell him, and Spaulding was quick to recognise such signs.

  ‘Could this be a dump for the use of our Egyptian army friends?’ said Spaulding, who, having had his entire kit stolen at the quayside on the day he arrived, found it hard to look charitably at anything the Egyptians said or did.

  ‘Umm,’ said the brigadier. ‘They’ve been decidedly unfriendly of late. What do you think, Cutler?’

  ‘It’s quite possible, sir. There is of course a very disgruntled element in the middle ranks of the Egyptian army. Our most recent information is that the usual dozen or so conspirators are threatening to contact Rommel with as much intelligence material as they can lay their hands on. But mustering a fighting unit of Egyptian volunteers, arming and equipping them so that they could assist Rommel … It’s a tall order.’

  ‘Yes, usually they are more vocal than active,’ said the brigadier.

  ‘They don’t go round shooting at British soldiers,’ said Ross, ‘and I hope they don’t start doing so.’

  ‘Of course, of course.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Is my pilot here?’

  ‘He’s waiting, sir,’ said Spaulding.

  The brigadier spent a moment staring at the toes of his high boots and thinking. ‘We’re all of one mind, chaps. The message is: Don’t provoke the locals or we’ll have a civil war on our hands. Eh? What?’ He wasn’t asking them, he was telling them. ‘There’s just one other thing, Cutler.’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘I don’t like the idea of these damned machine guns sitting round here, waiting for their owners to arrive. We’d better get some boffins from Ordnance to come down here and take the firing pins, out or whatever you do to make guns inoperable.’

  ‘Better than that,’ said Spaulding, ‘make them so the rounds explode in the breech after a couple of shots are fired. That way we write off a few extra Huns for nothing.’

  ‘Good idea, Spaulding. Get on to that one, Cutler.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ He didn’t know if Spaulding’s artful modification was a practical possibility, but he didn’t want to delay their departure.

  The brigadier turned to the plane. Spaulding called to the pilot, and opened the door, and made sure the brigadier’s booted foot was firmly positioned on the step. Then he steadied the brigadier’s arm to help him clamber up into the cabin.

  Ross watched impassively. Then Lieutenant Spaulding climbed into the plane, still clinging to his Beretta machine pistol. ‘I’ll keep this, Major Cutler. Someone at headquarters might want to see it.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Spaulding,’ said Ross. At the prospect of being alone again, he felt better. There were times when he thought he could continue his impersonation forever. On the other hand, it was tempting to believe that his best way of escape was to get nearer to the fighting. How many other men had solved their personal problems by assuming the identities of fallen comrades? The essence of the dilemma was whether it was better to carry the identity papers of a real person, or of a fictitious one. Real identities got paid and were a part of the legitimate organisation, but real identities could be proved false very easily.

  He saluted, and the brigadier waved imperiously. Ross stood and watched the plane trundle out to the end of the hardened sand strip. The pilot ran up the engine and, flaps down, it roared along into the wind, and teetered unsteadily into the warm air. There hadn’t been room in the plane for all the brigadier’s kit and his servant too. Poor Spaulding. He’d probably find himself polishing the brigadier’s boots. It was a comforting thought.

  Two and a half h
ours later the Ford station wagon containing Harry Wechsler and Chips O’Grady could have been seen driving along the desert track that leads from the oasis of Al Jaghbub, alongside the old frontier wire, to the coast. The going was not as good as it had been on the Egyptian side of the frontier, and every now and again Chips slowed down to make sure he was keeping to the marked track. Several times Harry Wechsler got out and went ahead to find the markers that had been buried by the drifting sand.

  It was only when they were a long way north that Harry brought up the subject of the long and hostile interrogation they’d been given by a British captain named Marker before getting a grudging permission to go.

  ‘We never saw that godamned major,’ complained Harry. ‘He kept well out of the way, didn’t he? At first they kept threatening us with what the major would say. Then suddenly he was not available.’

  ‘Yes, funny, that,’ said Chips.

  ‘Nothing funny about it,’ said Harry. ‘That son of a bitch knew that I would make it damned hot for him. I still might.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that, Harry. Those security people are a law to themselves. You start stirring the shit for those buggers, and you’ll suddenly find your accreditation withdrawn.’

  ‘They couldn’t do that,’ said Harry angrily.

  ‘I wouldn’t bet on it,’ said Chips.

  ‘How?’

  ‘They just say you were a security risk, and suddenly your newspaper agency will disown you. I’ve seen it happen. Newspapers make sure they don’t upset the army, or maybe they’ll lose out on all their other reporters. You can see the sense of that.’

  ‘I can see the sense of it,’ growled Harry. ‘So can the Gestapo.’