World War II Thriller Collection (9 page)

None of it mattered much to Vandam; nor did the fact that his wife had a short temper, an imperious manner and an ungenerous heart. Angela was graceful, dignified and beautiful. For him she was the epitome of womanhood, and he thought himself a lucky man.

The contrast with Elene Fontana could not have been more striking.

He drove to the Union on his motorcycle. The bike, a BSA 350, was very practical in Cairo. He could use it all the year round, for the weather was almost always good enough; and he could snake through the traffic jams that kept cars and taxis waiting. But it was a rather quick machine, and it gave him a secret thrill, a throwback to his adolescence, when he had coveted such bikes but had not been able to buy one. Angela had loathed it—like the Union, it was plebby—but for once Vandam had resolutely defied her.

The day was cooling when he parked at the Union. Passing the clubhouse, he looked through a window and saw a snooker game in full swing. He resisted the temptation and walked onto the lawn.

He accepted a glass of Cyprus sherry and moved into the crowd, nodding and smiling, exchanging pleasantries with people he knew. There was tea for the teetotal Muslim guests, but not many had turned up. Vandam tasted the sherry and wondered whether the barman could be taught to make a martini.

He looked across the grass to the neighboring Egyptian Officers' Club, and wished he could eavesdrop on conversations there. Someone spoke his name, and he turned to see the woman doctor. Once again he had to think before he could remember her name. “Dr. Abuthnot.”

“We might be informal here,” she said. “My name is Joan.”

“William. Is your husband here?”

“I'm not married.”

“Pardon me.” Now he saw her in a new light. She was single and he was a widower, and they had been seen talking together in public three times in a week: by now the English colony in Cairo would have them practically engaged. “You're a surgeon?” he said.

She smiled. “All I do these days is sew people up and patch them—but yes, before the war I was a surgeon.”

“How did you manage that? It's not easy for a woman.”

“I fought tooth and nail.” She was still smiling, but Vandam detected an undertone of remembered resentment. “You're a little unconventional yourself, I'm told.”

Vandam thought himself to be utterly conventional. “How so?” he said with surprise.

“Bringing up your child yourself.”

“No choice. If I had wanted to send him back to England, I wouldn't have been able to: you can't get a passage unless you're disabled or a general.”

“But you didn't want to.”

“No.”

“That's what I mean.”

“He's my son,” Vandam said. “I don't want anyone else to bring him up—nor does he.”

“I understand. It's just that some fathers would think it . . . unmanly.”

He raised his eyebrows at her, and to his surprise she blushed. He said: “You're right, I suppose. I'd never thought of it that way.”

“I'm ashamed of myself, I've been prying. Would you like another drink?”

Vandam looked into his glass. “I think I shall have to go inside in search of a real drink.”

“I wish you luck.” She smiled and turned away.

Vandam walked across the lawn to the clubhouse. She was an attractive woman, courageous and intelligent, and she had made it clear she wanted to know him better. He thought: Why the devil do I feel so indifferent to her? All these people are thinking how well matched we are—and they're right.

He went inside and spoke to the bartender. “Gin. Ice. One olive. And
a few drops
of very dry vermouth.”

The martini when it came was quite good, and he had two more. He thought again of the woman Elene. There were a thousand like her in Cairo—Greek, Jewish, Syrian and Palestinian as well as Egyptian. They were dancers for just as long as it took to catch the eye of some wealthy roué. Most of them probably entertained fantasies of getting married and being taken back to a large house in Alexandria or Paris or Surrey, and they would be disappointed.

They all had delicate brown faces and feline bodies with slender legs and pert breasts, but Vandam was tempted to think that Elene stood out from the crowd. Her smile was devastating. The idea of her going to Palestine to work on a farm was, at first sight, ridiculous; but she had tried, and when that failed she had agreed to work for Vandam. On the other hand, retailing street gossip was easy money, like being a kept woman. She was probably the same as all the other dancers: Vandam was not interested in that kind of woman, either.

The martinis were beginning to take effect, and he was afraid he might not be as polite as he should to the ladies when they came in, so he paid his bill and went out.

He drove to GHQ to get the latest news. It seemed the day had ended in a standoff after heavy casualties on both sides—rather more on the British side. It was just bloody demoralizing, Vandam thought: we had a secure base, good supplies, superior weapons and greater numbers; we planned thoughtfully and we fought carefully, and we never damn well won anything. He went home.

Gaafar had prepared lamb and rice. Vandam had another drink with his dinner. Billy talked to him while he ate. Today's geography lesson had been about wheat farming in Canada. Vandam would have liked the school to teach the boy something about the country in which he lived.

After Billy went to bed Vandam sat alone in the drawing room, smoking, thinking about Joan Abuthnot and Alex Wolff and Erwin Rommel. In their different ways they all threatened him. As night fell outside, the room came to seem claustrophobic. Vandam filled his cigarette case and went out.

The city was as much alive now as at any time during the day. There were a lot of soldiers on the streets, some of them very drunk. These were hard men who had seen action in the desert, had suffered the sand and the heat and the bombing and the shelling, and they often found the wogs less grateful than they should be. When a shopkeeper gave short change or a restaurant owner overcharged or a barman refused to serve drunks, the soldiers would remember seeing their friends blown up in the defense of Egypt, and they would start fighting and break windows and smash the place up. Vandam understood why the Egyptians were ungrateful—they did not much care whether it was the British or the Germans who oppressed them—but still he had little sympathy for the Cairo shopkeepers, who were making a fortune out of the war.

He walked slowly, cigarette in hand, enjoying the cool night air, looking into the tiny open-fronted shops, refusing to buy a cotton shirt made-to-measure-while-you-wait, a leather handbag for the lady or a secondhand copy of a magazine called
Saucy Snips.
He was amused by a street vendor who had filthy pictures in the left-hand side of his jacket and crucifixes in the right. He saw a bunch of soldiers collapse with laughter at the sight of two Egyptian policemen patrolling the street hand in hand.

He went into a bar. Outside of the British clubs it was wise to avoid the gin, so he ordered zibib, the aniseed drink which turned cloudy with water. At ten o'clock the bar closed, by mutual consent of the Muslim Wafd government and the kill-joy provost marshal. Vandam's vision was a little blurred when he left.

He headed for the Old City. Passing a sign saying, OUT OF BOUNDS TO TROOPS, he entered the Birka. In the narrow streets and alleys the women sat on steps and leaned from windows, smoking and waiting for customers, chatting to the military police. Some of them spoke to Vandam, offering their bodies in English, French and Italian. He turned into a little lane, crossed a deserted courtyard and entered an unmarked open doorway.

He climbed the staircase and knocked at a door on the first floor. A middle-aged Egyptian woman opened it. He paid her five pounds and went in.

In a large, dimly lit inner room furnished with faded luxury, he sat on a cushion and unbuttoned his shirt collar. A young woman in baggy trousers passed him the nargileh. He took several deep lungfuls of hashish smoke. Soon a pleasant feeling of lethargy came over him. He leaned back on his elbows and looked around. In the shadows of the room there were four other men. Two were pashas—wealthy Arab landowners—sitting together on a divan and talking in low, desultory tones. A third, who seemed almost to have been sent to sleep by the hashish, looked English and was probably an officer like Vandam. The fourth sat in the corner talking to one of the girls. Vandam heard snatches of conversation and gathered that the man wanted to take the girl home, and they were discussing a price. The man was vaguely familiar, but Vandam, drunk and now doped too, could not get his memory in gear to recall who he was.

One of the girls came over and took Vandam's hand. She led him into an alcove and drew the curtain. She took off her halter. She had small brown breasts. Vandam stroked her cheek. In the candlelight her face changed constantly, seeming old, then very young, then predatory, then loving. At one point she looked like Joan Abuthnot. But finally, as he entered her, she looked like Elene.

ALEX WOLFF WORE A GALABIYA AND A FEZ AND STOOD THIRTY YARDS FROM THE gate of GHQ—British headquarters—selling paper fans which broke after two minutes of use.

The hue and cry had died down. He had not seen the British conducting a spot check on identity papers for a week. This Vandam character could not keep up the pressure indefinitely.

Wolff had gone to GHQ as soon as he felt reasonably safe. Getting into Cairo had been a triumph; but it was useless unless he could exploit the position to get the information Rommel wanted—and quickly. He recalled his brief interview with Rommel in Gialo. The Desert Fox did not look foxy at all. He was a small, tireless man with the face of an aggressive peasant: a big nose, a downturned mouth, a cleft chin, a jagged scar on his left cheek, his hair cut so short that none showed beneath the rim of his cap. He had said: “Numbers of troops, names of divisions, in the field and in reserve, state of training. Numbers of tanks, in the field and in reserve, state of repair. Supplies of ammunition, food and gasoline. Personalities and attitudes of commanding officers. Strategic and tactical intentions. They say you're good, Wolff. They had better be right.”

It was easier said than done.

There was a certain amount of information Wolff could get just by walking around the city. He could observe the uniforms of the soldiers on leave and listen to their talk, and that told him which troops had been where and when they were going back. Sometimes a sergeant would mention statistics of dead and wounded, or the devastating effect of the 88-millimeter guns—designed as antiaircraft weapons—which the Germans had fitted to their tanks. He had heard an army mechanic complain that thirty-nine of the fifty new tanks which arrived yesterday needed major repairs before going into service. All this was useful information which could be sent to Berlin, where Intelligence analysts would put it together with other snippets in order to form a big picture. But it was not what Rommel wanted.

Somewhere inside GHQ there were pieces of paper which said things like: “After resting and refitting, Division A, with 100 tanks and full supplies, will leave Cairo tomorrow and join forces with Division B at the C Oasis in preparation for the counterattack west of D next Saturday at dawn.”

It was those pieces of paper Wolff wanted.

That was why he was selling fans outside GHQ.

For their headquarters the British had taken over a number of the large houses—most of them owned by pashas—in the Garden City suburb. (Wolff was grateful that the Villa les Oliviers had escaped the net.) The commandeered homes were surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. People in uniform were passed quickly through the gate, but civilians were stopped and questioned at length while the sentries made phone calls to verify credentials.

There were other headquarters in other buildings around the city—the Semiramis Hotel housed something called British Troops in Egypt, for example—but this was GHQ Middle East, the powerhouse. Wolff had spent a lot of time, back in the Abwehr spy school, learning to recognize uniforms, regimental identification marks and the faces of literally hundreds of senior British officers. Here, several mornings running, he had observed the large staff cars arriving and had peeked through the windows to see colonels, generals, admirals, squadron leaders and the commander in chief, Sir Claude Auchinleck, himself. They all looked a little odd, and he was puzzled until he realized that the pictures of them which he had burned into his brain were in black and white, and now he was seeing them for the first time in color.

The General Staff traveled by car, but their aides walked. Each morning the captains and majors arrived on foot, carrying their little briefcases. Toward noon—after the regular morning conference, Wolff presumed—some of them left, still carrying their briefcases.

Each day Wolff followed one of the aides.

Most of the aides worked at GHQ, and their secret papers would be locked up in the office at the end of the day. But these few were men who had to be at GHQ for the morning conference, but had their own offices in other parts of the city; and they had to carry their briefing papers with them in between one office and another. One of them went to the Semiramis. Two went to the barracks in the Nasrel-Nil. A fourth went to an unmarked building in the Shari Suleiman Pasha.

Wolff wanted to get into those briefcases.

Today he would do a dry run.

Waiting under the blazing sun for the aides to come out, he thought about the night before, and a smile curled the corners of his mouth below the newly grown mustache. He had promised Sonja that he would find her another Fawzi. Last night he had gone to the Birka and picked out a girl at Madame Fahmy's establishment. She was not a Fawzi—
that
girl had been a real enthusiast—but she was a good temporary substitute. They had enjoyed her in turn, then together; then they had played Sonja's weird, exciting games . . . It had been a long night.