The Key to Rebecca

by Ken Follett

  "I would do it for anyone but you." She finished her champagne and refilled her glass.

  Wolff took the glass from her hand and drank. "Sonja. If I had sent you a postcard from Berlin the British would have thrown you in jail. You must not be angry, now that you know the reasons why." He lowered his voice. "We can bring those old times back. We'll have good food and the best champagne, new clothes and beautiful parties and an American car. We'll go to Berlin, you've always wanted to dance in Berlin, you'll be a star there. Germany is a new kind of nation--we' re going to rule the world, and you can be a princess. We--" He paused. None of this was getting through to her. It was time to play his last card. "How is Fawzi?"

  Sonja lowered her eyes. "She left, the bitch."

  Wolff set down the glass, then he put both hands to Sonja's neck. She looked up at him, unmoving. With his thumbs under her chin he forced her to stand. "I'll find another Fawzi for us," he said softly. He saw that her eyes were suddenly moist. His hands moved over the silk robe, descending her body, stroking her flanks. "I'm the only one who understands what you need." He lowered his mouth to hers, took her lip between his teeth, and bit until he tasted blood.

  Sonja closed her eyes. "I hate you," she moaned.

  In the cool of the evening Wolff walked along the towpath beside the Nile toward the houseboat. The sores had gone from his face and his bowels were back to normal. He wore a new white suit, and he carried two bags full of his favorite groceries.

  The island suburb of Zamalek was quiet and peaceful. The raucous noise of central Cairo could be heard only faintly across a wide stretch of water. The calm, muddy river lapped gently against the houseboats lined along the bank. The boats, all shapes and sizes, gaily painted and luxuriously fitted out, looked pretty in the late sunshine.

  Sonja's was smaller and more richly furnished than most. A plank led from the path to the top deck, which was open to the breeze but shaded from the sun by a green-and-white-striped canopy. Wolff boarded the boat and went down the ladder to the interior. It was crowded with furniture: chairs and divans and tables and cabinets full of knickknacks. There was a tiny kitchen in the prow. Floor-to-ceiling curtains of maroon velvet divided the space in two, closing off the bedroom. Beyond the bedroom, in the stern, was a bathroom.

  Sonja was sitting on a cushion painting her toenails. It was extraordinary how slovenly she could look, Wolff thought. She wore a grubby cotton dress, her face looked drawn and her hair was uncombed. In half an hour, when she left for the Cha-Cha Club, she would look like a dream.

  Wolff put his bags on a table and began to take things out. "French champagne ... English marmalade ... German sausage ... quail's eggs ... Scotch salmon ..."

  Sonja looked up, astonished. "Nobody can find things like that--there's a war on."

  Wolff smiled. "There's a little Greek grocer in Qulali who remembers a good customer."

  "Is he safe?"

  "He doesn't know where I'm living--and besides, his shop is the only place in North Africa where you can get caviar."

  She came across and dipped into a bag. "Caviar!" She took the lid off the jar and began to eat with her fingers. "I haven't had caviar since--"

  "Since I went away," Wolff finished. He put a bottle of champagne in the icebox. "If you wait a few minutes you can have cold champagne with it."

  "I can't wait."

  "You never can." He took an English-language newspaper out of one of the bags and began to look through it. It was a rotten paper, full of press releases, its war news censored more heavily than the BBC broadcasts which everyone listened to, its local reporting even worse--it was illegal to print speeches by the official Egyptian opposition politicians. "Still nothing about me in here," Wolff said. He had told Sonja of the events in Assyut.

  "They're always late with the news," she said through a mouthful of caviar.

  "It's not that. If they report the murder they need to say what the motive was--or, if they don't, people will guess. The British don't want people to suspect that the Germans have spies in Egypt. It looks bad."

  She went into the bedroom to change. She called through the curtain: "Does that mean they've stopped looking for you?"

  "No. I saw Abdullah in the souk. He says the Egyptian police aren't really interested, but there's a Major Vandam who's keeping the pressure on." Wolff put down the newspaper, frowning. He would have liked to know whether Vandam was the officer who had broken into the Villa les Oliviers. He wished he had been able to look more closely at that man, but from across the street the officer's face, shaded by the peaked cap, had been a dark blank.

  Sonja said: "How does Abdullah know?"

  "I don't know." Wolff shrugged. "He's a thief, he hears things." He went to the icebox and took out the bottle. It was not really cold enough, but he was thirsty. He poured two glasses. Sonja came out, dressed: as he had anticipated, she was transformed, her hair perfect, her face lightly but cleverly made up, wearing a sheer cherry-red dress and matching shoes.

  A couple of minutes later there were footsteps on the gangplank and a knock at the hatch. Sonja's taxi had arrived. She drained her glass and left. They did not say hello and good-bye to one another.

  Wolff went to the cupboard where he kept the radio. He took out the English novel and the sheet of paper bearing the key to the code. He studied the key. Today was May 28. He had to add 42--the year--to 28 to arrive at the page number in the novel which he must use to encode his message. May was the fifth month, so every fifth letter on the page would be discounted.

  He decided to send: HAVE ARRIVED. CHECKING IN. ACKNOWLEDGE. Beginning at the top of page 70 of the book, he looked along the line of print for the letter H. It was the tenth character, discounting every fifth letter. In his code it would therefore be represented by the tenth letter of the alphabet, J. Next he needed an A. In the book, the third letter after the H was an A. The A of HAVE would therefore be represented by the third letter of the alphabet, C. There were special ways of dealing with rare letters, like X.

  This type of code was a variation on the one-time pad, the only kind of code which was unbreakable in theory and in practice. To decode the message a listener had to have both the book and the key.

  When he had encoded his message he looked at his watch. He was to transmit at midnight. He had a couple of hours before he heeded to warm up the radio. He poured another glass of champagne and decided to finish the caviar. He found a spoon and picked up the pot. It was empty. Sonja had eaten it all.

  The runway was a strip of desert hastily cleared of camel thorn and large rocks. Rommel looked down as the ground came up to meet him. The Storch, a light aircraft used by German commanders for short trips around the battlefield, came down like a fly, its wheels on the ends of long, spindly front legs. The plane stopped and Rommel jumped out.

  The heat hit him first, then the dust. It had been relatively cool, up in the sky; now he felt as if he had stepped into a furnace. He began to perspire immediately. As soon as he breathed in, a thin layer of sand coated his lips and the end of his tongue. A fly settled on his big nose, and he brushed it away.

  Von Mellenthin, Rommel's Ic--intelligence officer--ran toward him across the sand, his high boots kicking up dusty clouds. He looked agitated. "Kesselring's here," he said.

  "Auch, das noch," said Rommel. "That's all I need."

  Kesselring, the smiling field marshal, represented everything Rommel disliked in the German "armed forces. He was a General Staff officer, and Rommel hated the General Staff; he was a founder of the Luftwaffe, which had let Rommel down so often in the desert war; and he was--worst of all--a snob. One of his acid comments had gotten back to Rommel. Complaining that Rommel was rude to his subordinate officers, Kesselring had said: "It might be worth speaking to him about it, were it not that he's a Wuerttemberger." Wuerttemberg was the provincial state where Rommel was born, and the remark epitomized the prejudice Rommel had been fighting all his career.

  He stumped across the sand toward the comm
and vehicle, with von Mellenthin in tow. "General Cruewell has been captured," von Mellenthin said. "I had to ask Kesselring to take over. He's spent the afternoon trying to find out where you were."

  "Worse and worse," Rommel said sourly.

  They entered the back of the command vehicle, a huge truck. The shade was welcome. Kesselring was bent over a map, brushing away flies with his left hand while tracing a line with his right. He looked up and smiled. "My dear Rommel, thank heaven you're back," he said silkily.

  Rommel took off his cap. "I've been fighting a battle," he grunted.

  "So I gather. What happened?"

  Rommel pointed to the map. "This is the Gazala Line." It was a string of fortified "boxes" linked by minefields which ran from the coast at Gazala due south into the desert for fifty miles. "We made a dogleg around the southern end of the line and hit them from behind."

  "Good idea. What went wrong?"

  "We ran out of gasoline and ammunition." Rommel sat down heavily, suddenly feeling very tired. "Again," he added. Kesselring, as commander in chief (South), was responsible for Rommel's supplies, but the field marshal seemed not to notice the implied criticism.

  An orderly came in with mugs of tea on a tray. Rommel sipped his. There was sand in it.

  Kesselring spoke in a conversational tone. "I've had the unusual experience, this afternoon, of taking the role of one of your subordinate commanders."

  Rommel grunted. There was some piece of sarcasm coming, he could tell. He did not want to fence with Kesselring now, he wanted to think about the battle.

  Kesselring went on: "I found it enormously difficult, with my hands tied by subordination to a headquarters that issued no orders and could not be reached."

  "I was at the heart of the battle, giving my orders on the spot."

  "Still, you might have stayed in touch."

  "That's the way the British fight," Rommel snapped. "The generals are miles behind the lines, staying in touch. But I'm winning. If I'd had my supplies, I'd be in Cairo now."

  "You're not going to Cairo," Kesselring said sharply. "You're going to Tobruk. There you'll stay until I've taken Malta. Such are the Fuehrer's orders."

  "Of course." Rommel was not going to reopen that argument; not yet. Tobruk was the immediate objective. Once that fortified port was taken, the convoys from Europe--inadequate though they were--could come directly to the front line, cutting out the long journey across the desert which used so much gasoline. "And to reach Tobruk we have to break the Gazala Line."

  "What's your next step?"

  "I'm going to fall back and regroup." Rommel saw Kesselring raise his eyebrows: the field marshal knew how Rommel hated to retreat.

  "And what will the enemy do?" Kesselring directed the question to von Mellenthin, who as Ic was responsible for detailed assessment of the enemy position.

  "They will chase us, but not immediately," said von Mellenthin. "They are always slow to press an advantage, fortunately. But sooner or later they will try a breakout."

  Rommel said: "The question is, when and where?"

  "Indeed," von Mellenthin agreed. He seemed to hesitate, then said, "There is a little item in today's summaries which will interest you. The spy checked in."

  "The spy?" Rommel frowned. "Oh, him!" Now he remembered. He had flown to the Oasis of Gialo, deep in the Libyan desert, to brief the man finally before the spy began a long marathon walk. Wolff, that was his name. Rommel had been impressed by his courage, but pessimistic about his chances. "Where was he calling from?"

  "Cairo."

  "So he got there. If he's capable of that, he's capable of anything. Perhaps he can foretell the breakout."

  Kesselring broke in: "My God, you're not relying on spies now, are you?"

  "I'm not relying on anyone!" Rommel said. "I'm the one upon whom everything else relies."

  "Good." Kesselring was unruffled, as always. "Intelligence is never much use, as you know; and intelligence from spies is the worst kind."

  "I agree," Rommel said more calmly. "But I have a feeling this one could be different."

  "I doubt it," said Kesselring.

  4

  ELENE FONTANA LOOKED AT HER FACE IN THE MIRROR AND THOUGHT: I'M twenty-three, I must be losing my looks.

  She leaned closer to the glass and examined herself carefully, searching for signs of deterioration. Her complexion was perfect. Her round brown eyes were as clear as a mountain pool. There were no wrinkles. It was a childish face, delicately modeled, with a look of waiflike innocence. She was like an art collector checking on his finest piece: she thought of the face as hers, not as her. She smiled, and the face in the mirror smiled back at her. It was a small, intimate smile, with a hint of mischief about it: she knew it could make a man break out into a cold sweat.

  She picked up the note and read it again.

  Thursday

  My dear Elene,

  I'm afraid it is all over. My wife has found out. We have patched things up, but I've had to promise never to see you again. Of course you can stay in the flat, but I can't pay the rent anymore. I'm so sorry it happened this way--but I suppose we both knew it could not last forever. Good luck.

  Your,

  Claud

  Just like that, she thought.

  She tore up the note and its cheap sentiments. Claud was a fat, half-French and half-Greek businessman who owned three restaurants in Cairo and one in Alexandria. He was cultured and jolly and kind, but-when it came to the crunch he cared nothing for Elene.

  He was the third in six years.

  It had started with Charles, the stockbroker. She had been seventeen years old, penniless, unemployed and frightened to go home. Charles had set her up in the flat and visited her every Tuesday night. She had thrown him out after he offered her to his brother as if she were a dish of sweetmeats. Then there had been Johnnie, the nicest of the three, who wanted to divorce his wife and marry Elene: she had refused. Now Claud, too, had gone.

  She had known from the start there was no future in it.

  It was her fault as much as theirs that the affairs broke up. The ostensible reasons--Charles' brother, Johnnie's proposal, Claud's wife--were just excuses, or maybe catalysts. The real cause was always the same: Elene was unhappy.

  She contemplated the prospect of another affair. She knew how it would be. For a while she would live on the little nest egg she had in Barclays Bank in the Shari Kasr-el-Nil--she always managed to save, when she had a man. Then she would see the balance slowly going down, and she would take a job in a dance troupe, kicking up her legs and wiggling her bottom in some club for a few days. Then ... She looked into the mirror and through it, her eyes unfocusing as she visualized her fourth lover. Perhaps he would be an Italian, with flashing eyes and glossy hair and perfectly manicured hands. She might meet him in the bar of the Metropolitan Hotel, where the reporters drank. He would speak to her, then offer her a drink. She would smile at him, and he would be lost. They would make a date for dinner the next day. She would look stunning as she walked into the restaurant on his arm. All heads would turn, and he would feel proud. They would have more dates. He would give her presents. He would make a pass at her, then another: his third would be successful. She would enjoy making love with him--the intimacy, the touching, the endearments--and she would make him feel like a king. He would leave her at dawn, but he would be back that evening. They would stop going to restaurants together--"too risky," he would say--but he would spend more and more time at the flat, and he would begin to pay the rent and the bills. Elene would then have everything she wanted: a home, money and affection. She would begin to wonder why she was so miserable. She would throw a tantrum if he arrived half an hour late. She would go into a black sulk if he so much as mentioned his wife. She would complain that he no longer gave her presents, but accept them nonchalantly when he did. The man would be irritated but he would be unable to leave her, for by this time he would be eager for her grudging kisses, greedy for her perfect body; and she would s
till make him feel like a king in bed. She would find his conversation boring; she would demand from him more passion than he was able to give; there would be rows. Finally the crisis would come. His wife would get suspicious, or a child would fall ill, or he would have to take a six-month business trip, or he would run short of money. And Elene would be back where she was now: drifting, alone, disreputable--and a year older.

  Her eyes focused, and she saw again her face in the mirror. Her face was the cause of all this. It was because of her face that she led this pointless life. Had she been ugly, she would always have yearned to live like this, and never discovered its hollowness. You led me astray, she thought; you deceived me, you pretended I was somebody else. You're not my face, you're a mask. You should stop trying to run my life.

  I'm not a beautiful Cairo socialite, I'm a slum girl from Alexandria.

  I'm not a woman of independent means, I'm the next thing to a whore.

  I'm not Egyptian, I'm Jewish.

  My name is not Elene Fontana. It's Abigail Asnani.

  And I want to go home.

  The young man behind the desk at the Jewish Agency in Cairo wore a yarmulke. Apart from a wisp of beard, his cheeks were smooth. He asked for her name and address. Forgetting her resolution, she called herself Elene Fontana.

  The young man seemed confused. She was used to this: most men got a little flustered when she smiled at them. He said: "Would you--I mean, do you mind if I ask you why you want to go to Palestine?"

  "I'm Jewish," she said abruptly. She could not explain her life to this boy. "All my family are dead. I'm wasting my life." The first part was not true, but the second part was.

  "What work would you do in Palestine?"

  She had not thought of that. "Anything."

  "It's mostly agricultural labor."

  "That's fine."

  He smiled gently. He was recovering his composure. "I mean no offense, but you don't look like a farmhand."

  "If I didn't want to change my life, I wouldn't want to go to Palestine."

  "Yes." He fiddled with his pen. "What work do you do now?"