Hitler's peace

XIX

The Headquarters of SOE-British military intelligence in Cairo-was a supposedly secret location on Rostom Street that every taxi driver and street waif in the city seemed to know as “the secret building,” much to the irritation of those who worked there. Since the battle of El Alamein, it was the most important military building in Cairo. It was located in a large and ornate block of apartments right next door to the American legation and only a stone’s throw from “Grey Pillars,” the British GHQ.

The area outside Rostom Buildings was surrounded with checkpoints, barbed wire, and dozens of soldiers. Inside, the atmosphere was of a busy department store. It was here that the whole military effort in the Balkans was centered, most of it related to finding safe places in Yugoslavia where the new missions could be deployed.

“Of course, they’re much more formal than we are,” explained General Donovan as he and I climbed the stairs behind a young lieutenant escorting us up to the office of the SOE’s operational commander. “But I think you’ll see some similarities. They’re mostly academics, like us. Not much regular army. Soldiers are probably not bright enough for this outfit. The fellow who’s nominally in charge, General Stawell, is a good example. He has absolutely no experience of running a secret organization. Which is why we’re seeing his number two, Lieutenant Colonel Powell. Quite an interesting fellow, this Powell. I think you’ll like him. Like you, he was a professor before the war. Of Greek, at the University of Sydney.”

“Is he Australian?”

“Good grief, no, he’s as English as they come. Stiff as a board to look at. But as bright as new paint.”

Carrying Donovan’s Louis Vuitton suitcase, I trudged up the steps like a man ascending the scaffold.

Colonel Enoch Powell was a curious man. Donovan and I looked like a pair of wilted wedding cakes in our white tropical suits, but unlike his two junior officers and in spite of the heat, Powell was wearing full service dress: a collar and tie, long trousers (not the more usual shorts), tunic, and Sam Browne belts.

Donovan made the introduction. Noting my quizzical look, Powell felt moved to explain his appearance in a reedy, almost musical voice that spoke sentences as precise as any Mozart concerto.

“It’s a curious fact but I find that wearing full uniform keeps up my morale,” Powell explained. “By temperament I am something of a Spartan, you see.” Powell lit a pipe and sat down. “I wonder. Are you the Willard Mayer who wrote On Being Empirical?”

I said I was.

“In many ways it was an admirable philosophical work,” said Powell. “But quite wrong. I hope you will forgive me when I opine that your chapter on ethics was the most puerile piece of logic I have ever read. Sheer casuistry.”

“Well, Colonel,” I said, “I am an Athenian by temperament. I doubt that an Athenian and a Spartan are ever destined to agree about very much.”

“We shall see,” smiled Powell.

“Besides, I was describing not a first-order ethical theory but a theory of the logic of moral language.”

“Indeed so. I merely question your implied assertion that our moral and aesthetic convictions are separable from our empirical beliefs.”

Donovan cleared his throat, loudly, to stifle this philosophical debate before it could really get started. “Gentlemen,” he said. “If I could ask you to postpone this debate until another time.”

“By all means,” agreed Powell. “I should like a chance to debate you, Professor Mayer. Perhaps over dinner this evening? At the Gezira Sporting Club?”

“I’m sorry but I have a prior engagement. Another time, perhaps.”

“Then let us talk of your Russian transcripts,” said Powell. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but cipherenes are in rather short supply right now.”

“Cipherenes?” frowned Donovan.

“Cipherists, if you prefer,” allowed the colonel. “Or even decipherers. Either way, there is a huge backlog of important signals traffic that has yet to be decoded. German signals to which, per-force, a greater degree of urgency is due. They are our own bread and butter, General Donovan. Since we are not yet at war with the Soviet Union, but with Germany, I am afraid that I cannot grant your material a greater priority, with or without the facility of a Russian codebook. You do understand, gentlemen?”

I breathed a sigh of relief. “Yes, I understand, perfectly,” I told him.

“However,” added Colonel Powell, “our Major Deakin believes he may have a somewhat unorthodox solution to your problem.” Powell turned to one of the two majors who were sitting on either side of him. “Major Deakin taught history at Wadham College, Oxford,” added Powell, as if this were some kind of recommendation for the British major’s solution to our problem.

Major Deakin was a tall, genial man with a dark, clipped mustache and a wry sort of smile. He was handsome in a second-feature movie kind of way, except that he had a long scar over one eye. He picked a piece of tobacco off his tongue and smiled awkwardly. “Colonel Guy Tamplin would have been your best bet, of course,” he said. “He used to be a banker in the Baltic states and was an expert on all things Russian. Unfortunately, he’s dead. Heart attack, most probably, although there’s a lot of guff going around that he was poisoned. Poison was one of Guy’s pigeons, you see, for using on Jerry. It’s Guy’s death that has left us a bit shorthanded on the deciphering side of things.”

Donovan nodded patiently, hoping that Major Deakin was about to come to the point.

“Anyway, it’s my understanding that you, Professor Mayer, speak fluent German.”

“That’s right.”

“All right. A couple of days ago one of your B-24s with an antisubmarine squadron in Tunis shot down a long-range Focke Wulf over the Gulf of Hammamet and picked up a German officer swimming for it. It’s possibly because he’s so keen not to be taken for a spy that he’s actually being quite talkative. Claims that until recently he was working for the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau in the Ukraine.”

At the mention of war crimes in the Ukraine I felt my ears prick up.

“I’m not sure how that helps us,” Donovan said stiffly.

“Before joining the Jerry War Crimes Bureau, this chap claims he was a signals and intelligence officer, on the Russian front. The chances are he might know something about Russian codes. Well, put simply, my idea is this. That we persuade the Jerry to see if he can shed some light on deciphering Bride.”

“What makes you think he’ll cooperate?” I said.

“As I said, he’s rather keen that we don’t think he’s a spy. In case we should decide to shoot him. He’s not a bad egg, really. Quite intelligent. Major Max Reichleitner’s his name. I reckon we could play him a little. What do you Americans call it? ‘Good cop, bad cop’?”

“I’ll scare him with talk of a firing squad, and you, Professor Mayer, you can do your friendly American thing. Sweeten him up with some cigarettes and chocolate and a promise to square me. I’m sure you know the kind of thing I’m talking about.”

“Where is he now?” asked Donovan.

“Sitting in a cell at number ten,” said Deakin.

“Can we meet him right away?” asked Donovan. “There’s not much time before we have to hand these onetime pads over to the Russians.”

“Yes, by all means,” said Powell. “See to it, will you, Deakin?” Donovan stood up and I followed, collecting the suitcase as I left the office.

Outside Rostom Buildings, Donovan said good-bye to me, much to my relief.

“You go on with Major Deakin,” he said. “I’ve got to get over to Mena House for a lunch with the president. Good luck with your kraut. And keep me posted on your progress. Remember, we’ve got just five days before we have to hand these onetime pads back to the Russians.”

He handed me a large manila envelope containing the Russian codebooks. I smiled thinly. But Donovan was too busy looking around for his staff car to notice the probably insubordinate look on my face. Deakin noticed it. Deakin noticed a lot. I decided it was probably why he was in intelligence.

“Don’t worry, sir,” Deakin told Donovan. “I’m sure the professor and I can crack it.”

Once Donovan was gone, Deakin lit a pipe and indicated the way. “It’s not far,” he said. “Just around the corner. Bit of luck really. That we didn’t have time to send him back to BTE last night.”

“What and where is BTE?”

“British Troops in Egypt. They’re in the Citadel. Bit of a hike getting over there, so those prisoners we do get for interrogation, we try to do it here. In Garden City. I say, can I help you with that case?”

“No, it’s okay. This is my cross. I can manage it.”

“You know, it’s a lucky break, you turning up like this, Professor.”

“Please. Willard.”

“My name’s Bill,” said Deakin. “Pleased to meet you. Actually, we’ve met before. In London about six weeks ago. I was with SIS before joining SOE. I’m a pal of Norman Pearson’s. Professor Pearson? The Yale professor of English? The two of you breezed into Broadway Buildings one afternoon while I was there and had a chat with old Kim Philby.”

“Yes, of course. I’m sorry I didn’t remember. I met a lot of people on that trip. It’s kind of hard to remember all of them.”

“Anyway, as I was saying, it’s a lucky break, your turning up like this. I mean, your having been the president’s special representative and whatnot.”

“That was then, Bill. Now I’m just a liaison officer between Donovan and FDR. That’s code, you know. For house parlormaid, assistant stage manager, and general dogsbody. I’m not even required to go to the Cairo Conference.”

“Yes, but you know the president. That’s the point. And you are an accredited member of his delegation.”

“That’s what it says on my security pass.”

“So I was rather hoping you might help me at the same time as I help you. It’s rather strange, really. You and Major Reichleitner both having been investigating the Katyn Forest massacre for your respective governments.”

“Yes, that is a coincidence.”

“Of course, that’s what he was doing then. He has told us quite a bit about himself, but he won’t tell us what he was doing so close to Tunis. Where he was going. What his mission was. At first he said he was on his way to Ankara when his plane hit some bad weather and they were forced to go south around it. Which was when he was shot down by your people. Only we checked the weather reports and conditions over the south of Europe and the northern Med were perfect that day. When I said as much to our Jerry-and this is where you come in-he went all stiff on me and told me that it was imperative he speak to someone close to President Roosevelt. That he had an important message he could put only into the hands of a member of FDR’s delegation. So, as you can see, it’s a stroke of luck your needing our help, too. Once he’s got whatever it is off his chest, I don’t see how he can fail to cooperate with your request.”

“Yes, that is good news.”

“If you don’t mind, we’ll play it the way I outlined it. I’ll wear the black hat and you can wear the white one.”

“I get the picture.”

Grey Pillars was a stately-looking building at number 10 Tolombat Street. British officers called it “number ten,” but it was better known to almost everyone in Cairo as Grey Pillars, because of the four Corinthian colonnades that enclosed its stately foyer. It was the headquarters of the British army in Egypt, although GHQ had long outgrown the original building and now occupied the whole street. Beyond the glass doors, things were less like a military HQ and more like a large Swiss bank, probably because Assicurazoni, a Trieste-based insurance company, had occupied the building before the British.

Deakin led the way down a plain marble staircase to a makeshift series of prison cells guarded by a bespectacled lance corporal reading a copy of Saucy Snips. Seeing Major Deakin, he hurriedly put the obscene magazine aside, snatched off his glasses, and sprang to attention. Despite a large fan on the ceiling, the heat in the cell area was almost unbearable.

“How’s our Jerry?” asked Deakin.

“Claims he’s sick, sir. Wants the khazi all the time.” The khazi was a British army term for lavatory.

“I do hope you’re taking him, Corporal. He is an officer, you know. And, as it happens, a damned important one right now.”

“Yes, sir. Don’t you worry about the Jerry, sir. I’ll look after him.”

The lance corporal unlocked the cell door and there, on an iron bedstead, wearing just his underwear, lay the German officer, apparently none the worse for his recent experiences. Major Reichleitner was a heavy-looking man with shortish fair hair and cornflower blue eyes. His jaw was as big as a sandbag, and his lips were thick and pink. He reminded me a little of Hermann Goring, the Reich’s air marshal. Seeing his two visitors, he swung his legs off the bed. They were pink, with lots of short fair hair, like a breeding pair of Chester White pigs. They didn’t smell much better, either. He nodded affably.

I leaned against the cell wall and listened patiently as Deakin spoke in a coarse, chewed-up, oatmeal kind of German. Probably it was the kind of German that the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V employed when he was famously speaking to his horse. Only the French spoke worse German than the English. I lit a cigarette and waited for a verb.

“This is Major Willard Mayer. He is with American intelligence, the OSS. He has come to Cairo as part of President Roosevelt’s delegation. But previously, when I met him in London, he was the president’s special representative.”

For all of the lance corporal’s assurances about Major Reichleitner’s welfare, I thought he could have used a shave and a comb. There was a burn mark on one cheek, presumably received when his plane had been shot down, and it lent a belligerent cast to his face.

“What can I do for you, Major?” I asked.

“I’ve no wish to insult you, Major Mayer,” Reichleitner said. “But have you any way of proving you are what he says you are?”

I showed Reichleitner the Cairo Security pass given to me at the airport. “Do you speak English?”

“A little.” Reichleitner handed me back my pass.

“So what’s this all about?”

“Have you heard of the massacre in the Katyn Forest?” asked Reichleitner.

“Of course.”

“I was part of the investigating team,” said Reichleitner.

“Then I’ve read your report,” I said, and explained the circumstances of my having been appointed FDR’s special representative. “Is that what you wanted to talk about?”

“No. Not directly, anyway. Something similar. Murder on a massive scale.”

“Well, that’s worth some cigarettes, at least.” I handed Reichleitner a cigarette and lit it, before tossing him the packet. Then we all sat down at the table as if we were about to play a game of cards.

“Your report was very thorough,” I told him. “For what it’s worth, I agreed with your conclusion. That, on this particular occasion at least, the German army was not responsible for mass murder.”

“Your German is very good,” said the major.

“It should be. My mother always read fairy tales to me in German.”

“Is she German?”

“Kind of. You know, the American kind.” I threaded my cigarette between my lips and sat back in my chair, my hands in the pockets of my trousers. “You were telling me a story yourself, weren’t you?”

“The suitcase you found when I was picked up,” Reichleitner said to Deakin. “Where is it, please?”

Deakin stood up and shouted through the judas hole. Reichleitner said nothing until the case was open on the table in front of him. It was empty.

“The clothes that were in here are at the laundry,” explained Deakin.

“Yes, I know. The lance corporal explained. Have you a pen-knife, please?”

This time Deakin hesitated.

Reichleitner shook his head and smiled. “It’s all right, Major. I give you my word as a German officer, I will not attack you with it.”

“We’ve already cut the lining,” said Deakin, handing over the knife he used on his pipe.

“It has a double lining,” said Reichleitner. He unfolded the blade of Deakin’s knife and levered it inside the leather lid. “Also, you have to know where to make the cut. This has been stitched in with very fine wire. With one cut you might remove the first lining, but not the leather underneath.”

It took Reichleitner several minutes to remove the leather lid of his suitcase. He laid it flat upon the desk and then opened it like a large portfolio to reveal a waterproof package containing several neat piles of paper and a small roll of photographs.

“Very clever,” said Deakin.

“No,” said Reichleitner. “You were careless, that’s all.” He made one pile of pages out of the several smaller ones and then pushed the documents toward me.

“After Katyn Forest,” he said, “this was the next investigation. Hardly as thorough, but just as shocking. It relates to a place in Russia called Beketovka. The largest POW camp for German soldiers captured at Stalingrad. The conditions described here apply in all Soviet POW camps for German soldiers. Except those for the SS. For the SS things are much worse. Please, read this file. Several men died to bring the information and these pictures out of Russia. I shan’t detain you with the precise figures now, gentlemen. Instead I shall merely give you one statistic. Of the two hundred fifty thousand Germans captured after the surrender at Stalingrad, about ninety percent are now dead from cold, starvation, neglect, or just plain murder. My mission here is simple. To deliver this file to your president with a question. If the deaths of twenty-seven thousand Poles are not enough for you to break off your alliance with the Soviet Union, then what about the deaths of two hundred and twenty-five thousand German prisoners?”

“Only four thousand Poles have been found. So far.”

“There were other graves,” said Reichleitner. “In truth we had no time to examine all of them. However, our intelligence sources in Russia have indicated that this may be only the tip of the iceberg. Of the million or more Poles deported in 1941, perhaps as many as a third of them are now dead, with many more unaccounted for in Soviet labor camps.”

“Bloody hell,” breathed Deakin. “You can’t be serious.”

“Had I not seen what I have seen, then I might have agreed with you, Major Deakin,” said Reichleitner. “Look, this is what I know. But what I suspect is much, much worse. There are terrible things that Germany has done, too. Dreadful things to the Jews in Eastern Europe. But we are your enemy. The Russians are your friends. Your allies. And if you do and say nothing of these things, you will be as bad as them, for you will be condoning what they have done.”

Deakin looked at me. “These figures he mentions, they’re impossible, surely.”

“I don’t think so.”

“But three hundred thousand Poles?”

“Men, women, and children,” said Reichleitner.

“It doesn’t bear thinking of.”

Reichleitner threw himself down on his bed. “Well, I have done my duty. Everything is explained in the file. I can tell you no more than you may read for yourselves.”

Deakin tapped the bowl of his pipe against the heel of his hand and, catching my eye, nodded.

“Actually there’s quite a lot you haven’t told us, Major,” he said. “Such as who sent you on this mission. And who you were to make contact with when you arrived in Cairo. You don’t expect us to believe that you were going to make your way to the American legation and hand this dossier over to the president in person. To whom were you intending to entrust this?”

“Good point,” I said.

“You might not be a spy yourself, but the person with whom you were supposed to make contact in Cairo almost certainly is.”

“I was sent on this mission by Reichsfuhrer Himmler,” admitted Reichleitner. “My orders were to check in to Shepheard’s Hotel posing as a Polish officer. I speak Polish and English. Better English than I led you to believe earlier. And I’m afraid that I was planning to do exactly as you have said. To deliver the dossier to the American legation. Number twenty-four Nabatat Street, is it not? Here in Garden City.”

Deakin threw a nod in my direction. “That’s the address, all right.”

“I was to place the dossier in a parcel marked for the attention of your American minister, Alexander Kirk. I had a covering letter addressed to Mr. Kirk, but I lost that when I bailed out, along with my Polish passport.”

“Very convenient,” said Deakin.

Reichleitner shrugged. “Can you think of a better way to deliver a dossier into the hands of the Americans than simply to hand it in at the legation? I know Cairo. I was often here before the war. So why would I need a contact? A contact might only have compromised me and my mission.”

“A contact might help you to escape from Egypt,” I suggested.

“That’s not so difficult, with money.”

“He had several hundred pounds on him when we picked him up,” explained Deakin.

“A ninety-minute train ride to Alexandria,” said Reichleitner. “Then a ship to Jaffa, in Palestine. From there it’s easy enough to get passage for Syria and then Turkey. I’m often in Ankara.”

“Nevertheless, I still think we will have to try you as a spy,” said Deakin.

“What?” Reichleitner leaped off the bed and pointed to the papers he had brought from Germany. “I came to bring you information, not to spy. What kind of spy brings papers and film with him? Answer me that?”

“These might be forgeries,” said Deakin. “Disinformation designed to drive a wedge between us and our Russian allies. We call that sabotage. Same as blowing up an oil refinery or an officers’ mess.”

“Sabotage? But that’s idiotic.”

Deakin collected the Beketovka papers from the table. “These will have to be evaluated. And if they don’t check out, you could find yourself facing a firing squad.”

The German closed his eyes and groaned. “But this is preposterous,” he said.

“Major Deakin,” I said, laying my hand on the German’s papers. “I wonder if I might be allowed to speak to Major Reichleitner alone for a moment? It’s all right. I don’t think the major will try to injure me, will you, Major?”

Reichleitner sighed and shook his head.

“All right,” said Deakin. “If you’re sure.” He knocked on the door to summon the lance corporal, and a moment or two later Reichleitner and I were alone.

“I don’t feel so good,” groaned the German.

I helped myself from the packet of cigarettes I had given the major. “I can get you some medicine when I leave this cell. If you like.”

Major Reichleitner nodded. “It’s my stomach.”

“I’m told everyone gets stomach trouble in this country. So far I’ve been lucky, I guess. But then, I don’t think you can catch much from cigarettes and scotch.”

“I don’t know if it’s something I ate, or just nerves. Do you think that English idiot really means to charge me with spying?”

“I could probably persuade him not to. If you were to do me a small favor.”

It was a dangerous game I had decided to play. But now that I had met Major Reichleitner, it was a game I felt I could control. I had decided that it would be better to know what the Bride material actually contained, rather than live in fear of mere possibility. If Reichleitner did manage to decode Bride, I’d decide what to do about it afterward. Controlling a man like Reichleitner, a prisoner of war, with the aid of some cigarettes and scotch and some medicine would be a lot easier than trying to deal with an Allied officer in SOE.

“What kind of a favor?” The German frowned suspiciously. “Look here, if it’s information you want, there’s nothing I can tell you. I can’t imagine that the work of the German War Crimes Bureau is of much interest to American intelligence.”

“It’s my understanding from Deakin that before joining the bureau you were with a signals and communications battalion on the eastern front.”

“That’s right. At Heinrich East, the Regimental HQ in Smolensk. My God, it seems like a hundred years ago.”

“Why did they assign you to the Katyn Forest massacre?”

“For one thing, my languages. I speak Russian and Polish. My mother is Russo-Polish. And for another, before joining the army I was a detective in Vienna. Cryptology was always a sort of hobby of mine.”

“A few minutes ago-what you were saying about the Russians. I didn’t want to say anything in front of Deakin, but there are an awful lot of Americans who believe that Russia is the enemy, not Germany. My boss in the OSS, for one. He hates the Bolsheviks. So much so that he’s set up a secret section inside the OSS to spy on the Russians. A while ago, we started monitoring Soviet signals traffic in Washington. It seems that our ally is spying on us.”

The German shrugged. “When you lie down with dogs, you catch fleas.”

“More recently, we came into possession of some Soviet onetime cipher pads. For political reasons, it’s been decided we’ll have to return these ciphers to the Russians. But until this happens my boss wants to make whatever use of them he can, in the hope that we might get some idea as to the identity of these Russian spies in Washington. The British aren’t being of much help. Frankly, they’re overstretched just trying to deal with German signals. But it occurred to me that you might have had some experience with Russian ciphers because of your work on the eastern front. And given your obvious and quite understandable desire to drive a wedge between us and the Russians, I wondered if you would like to cast your eye over what we’ve got.”

“And in return you’ll persuade Deakin to drop these spying charges, is that it?”

“Yes.”

Reichleitner took one of the cigarettes, lit it, and regarded me through narrowed eyes. “Did you bring the material with you?” he asked.

“It’s outside.”

He glanced away for a moment and then shrugged. “It might give me something to do. You have no idea how boring it is in here. And a few creature comforts would be appreciated. Some more of these American cigarettes. Some decent food. Some beer. Some wine, perhaps.”

“All right.”

“And don’t forget that medicine. My stomach feels like there’s a family of rats living in it.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“But I’ll tell you frankly, five days is hardly enough time. Even with the codebooks. Cryptologically speaking, the Popovs take no chances. With most systems, operators bow to convenience, because total encipherment takes time. But the Popovs are slavish in their adherence to security. And my guess is that you’re not going to end up with a plaintext message. The chances are there will be lots of code names for this and that.”

Reichleitner watched me for a moment and I watched him back. Then he broke off, helping himself to another cigarette.

“Luckily for you, I know what a lot of these code names mean. For example, when you see the word ‘luggage’ it means ‘mail.’ ‘Novator’ means ‘secret agent’; and ‘Sparta’ means ‘Russia.’ That kind of thing. So we’ll see what we can see.”

I stood up and offered him my hand. “Sounds like we’ve got a deal,” I said.

From Grey Pillars, I caught a taxi and ordered the driver to take me back to Shepheard’s Hotel. As I sat back in the car, a large cockroach crawled across its carpeted dashboard, and I realized the driver was either wholly oblivious of or utterly indifferent to the presence of the shiny brown insect. One way or the other, it seemed to say something about the country I was in.

At seven, bathed and dressed for dinner, I came downstairs to find Corporal Coogan waiting with the car in front of the hotel, as arranged. We drove south, back to Garden City, which, despite being where the British GHQ and SOE were located, was still Cairo’s most fashionable residential district.

A series of narrow winding streets that changed names at vague intervals, and in which it was not uncommon to end up exactly where you started, led to lush gardens in which sat several large white stucco mansions. Some of these might be better described as palaces. Which seemed only appropriate, given that I had been invited to dinner by a princess.

I got there early, since I guessed we had a lot of catching up to do.

Elena’s house, next to what had been the Italian legation on Harass Street, was made of white stone in the French Mediterranean style, with large continuous balconies and French windows that would have let in a sphinx or two. A wrought-iron fence enclosed a large garden dominated by a stately mango tree, which was surrounded by purple and red bougainvillea.

The gate was opened by a tall man wearing a white djellaba and a red tarboosh. He directed me along a path to some steps leading up to a large terrace, where one or two figures were already milling about with cocktails in their hands. It was a hot, sticky night. The air felt like warm molasses. All the lights in the house were burning, and flaming torches illuminated the path that led from the gate to the front door, where another man in a long white robe held a tray with drinks.

I picked up a glass heavy with champagne and mounted the steps. At the top was Elena, dripping with diamonds and wearing a low-cut lilac cocktail dress, her long blond hair piled ornately on top of her head. Seeing her again, it was a little hard to believe that, for a while at least, I had shared a bed with this woman.

“Willy darling.”

“You remembered my middle name.”

“How lovely to see you again. The cleverest man I ever knew.”

She made it sound as if I had been dead for a while. And perhaps I had, at that. Certainly since leaving Washington I had felt like a man without a future. For the first time in more than a week, I found myself smiling. I made a heroic effort to keep my eyes on her face.

“And you. Look at you. Still the most beautiful woman in the room.”

She hit me playfully on the shoulder with a little fan. “Now, you know there aren’t any other women here. Not yet.”

“Actually I hadn’t really noticed. Not since the moment I laid eyes on you.”

That was what Elena did. She dazzled. Men, of course. I had never met a woman who liked her. And I couldn’t blame them. Elena would have been stiff competition for Delilah. In any room, she was always the brightest thing in it. Naturally, this meant there were always lots of moths around her flame. I could see a few of them floating around on the terrace. Most of the moths were wearing British uniforms.

Elena hugged me fondly and, taking me by the elbow, hustled me off the terrace into an enormous drawing room furnished in an opulent Second Empire style with just a touch of the Levantine. The Count of Monte Cristo would not have looked at all out of place there with the daughter of Ali Pasha, the Princess Haydee. There were hookahs and tapestries and Orientalist oils by Frederick Goodall showing harem scenes and slave markets, all of which gave the room a sort of stage-sexiness. We sat down on a long French Empire sofa.

“I want you all to myself before the other guests arrive. So you can tell me what you have been doing. God, it’s wonderful to see you again, darling. Now, look here, I know about the book. I even tried to read it, only I couldn’t understand a word. You’re not married?”

“No, I’m not married.”

She seemed to read something between the frown lines appearing on my forehead.

“Marriage isn’t for you, Willy darling. Not with your looks and your sex drive. Take it from someone who’s been there. Freddy was a wonderful husband in many ways, but he was exactly like you in that department. Couldn’t keep his hands off other men’s wives, which is why he’s no longer alive.”

Five years had passed since I had last seen Elena. After I left Berlin, she had gone to Cairo as the wife of a very rich Egyptian banker, a Copt named Rashdi, who managed to get himself shot dead during a card game in 1941. Bill Deakin had told me that Elena was famous in Cairo, and this was hardly surprising. He also told me she was keen to do her bit for the Allies, and regularly threw soirees for SOE officers whenever they were on leave. Elena’s parties were almost as famous as she was.

“So, what are you doing in Cairo? I assume you’ve something to do with the conference.”

I told Elena I was in the OSS, serving as the president’s liaison officer, and that I’d been Roosevelt’s special representative in London investigating the Katyn Forest massacre. Elena’s father, Prince Peter Pontiatowski, and his family had been forced to leave their family estates in the Kresy-the Polish northeast-during the Russo-Polish war in 1920. Their lands had never been recovered. As a result, Elena didn’t care much for the Russians.

“There are lots of Polish officers coming tonight, and you’ll find nearly all of them knew someone who was murdered at Katyn,” she said. “I must get some of them to tell you about what really happened in Poland. They’ll be so pleased to meet an American who knows something about what happened in Poland. Most of your countrymen don’t, you know. They don’t know, and I think they don’t care.”

There was a Baroque marble statue on a table depicting some ancient Greek hero who was being attacked by a lion that had its teeth planted very firmly in his bare ass. It looked uncomfortable. And for a moment I saw myself at the dinner table having my skinny Yankee ass similarly chewed by some disgruntled Polish officer.

“Actually, Elena,” I said, “I’d rather you didn’t mention my working for the president.”

“I’ll try, darling. But you know me. I’m hopeless with secrets. I tell all the boys who come here, ‘Don’t tell me anything.’ I can’t keep a secret to save my life. I’ve been an inveterate gossip ever since school. Remember what the little doctor said to me once?”

I knew she was referring to Josef Goebbels, whom we’d both known well in Berlin.

“‘I have two ways of releasing information to the world,’” she said, speaking German and imitating perfectly Goebbels’s impeccable, professorial, High German accent. “‘I can leave a memorandum on the desk of my secretary at the Leopold Palace. Or I can tell Princess Elena Pontiatowska something in complete confidence. ’”

I laughed. I remembered the occasion when Goebbels had said it, not least because the same night I had slept with Elena for the first time. “Yes, that’s right. I remember.”

“I do miss him sometimes,” she sighed. “I think he was the only Nazi I ever really liked.”

“He was certainly the cleverest Nazi I ever knew,” I admitted.

She sighed. “I suppose I had better go back and join my other guests.”

“It’s your party.”

“You don’t understand what it’s like, darling. Entertaining the troops like this. They all fancy their bloody chances. Especially the count.”

“The count?”

“My Polish SOE colonel, Wlazyslaw Pulnarowicz. Carpathian Rifle Brigade. He’s liable to challenge you to a duel if he sees me talking to you like this.”

“So why do you bother doing it? Entertain the troops.” I laughed. “Jesus, I make you sound like Bob Hope. Is Pepsodent paying for this party?”

“I do it for morale, of course. The British are very keen on morale.” She stood up. “Come on. Let me introduce you to some people.”

She took me by the arm again and led me back onto the terrace, where several British and Polish officers now eyed me suspiciously. There were other women at the party by now, but I didn’t pay them any attention. I just meekly followed Elena around the terrace as she introduced me to one person and then another. And I made her laugh. Just like we were back in Berlin.

Eventually we went in to dinner. I was seated between Elena and her Polish colonel, who seemed none too pleased that I had usurped his position on Elena’s right-hand side. He was a striking man with dark hair, a longish chin, a Fairbanks mustache, and a beautiful speaking voice that seemed quite unaffected by the harsh-smelling tobacco he rolled in his neat little cigarettes. I smiled at him a few times, and when I wasn’t speaking to Elena, I even tried to make conversation. The colonel’s replies were mostly monosyllabic; once or twice he didn’t even bother to reply at all. Instead he just busied himself sawing at a piece of chicken as if it were a German’s throat. Or mine. He wasn’t the only Pole at the dinner table. Just the least friendly. There were eighteen guests, of whom at least five other officers present, not including Colonel Pulnarowicz, wore the shoulder patches of the Polish army. They were much more talkative. Not least because Elena seemed to have a limitless supply of excellent wines and spirits. There was even some vodka from the famous Lancut distillery in Poland.

Toward the end of the meal I lit us both cigarettes and asked her how it was that there were so many Poles in Egypt.

“After the Russians invaded Poland,” she said, “many Poles were deported to the southern Soviet republics. Then, after Germany attacked Russia, the Russians set many Poles free in Iran and Iraq. Most joined the Polish army of General Anders to fight the Nazis. Here, in the North African theater, the Polish army was commanded by General Sikorski. But, as you know, relations between the Poles and the Russians collapsed with the discovery of the bodies in the Katyn Forest. Sikorski demanded that the Red Cross be allowed to investigate the site. In response, Stalin broke off all relations with the Polish army. A few months ago, Sikorski himself died in a plane crash. An accident, it was said. But there isn’t a Pole in North Africa and Egypt who doesn’t think he was murdered by Stalin’s NKVD.”

A captain on Elena’s left was also Polish. Overhearing her, he added some comments of his own. These left me in no doubt that Elena had let the cat out of the bag as far as my report on the Katyn Forest massacre for FDR was concerned, despite my having asked her not to.

“She’s right,” he said. “There isn’t a Pole in North Africa who trusts Stalin. Please tell Roosevelt that when you’re compiling your report. Tell him that when you get to Teheran.”

I shrugged. “Perhaps you know more than I do,” I told him.

“That the Big Three Conference will be in Teheran?” He laughed. Captain Skomorowski was a large man, with dark hair and a nose as sharp as a draftsman’s favorite pencil. Every few minutes he would remove his glasses and wipe away the moisture that had collected on the lenses from the heat generated by his large red face. He laughed again. “This is no big secret.”

“Easy to see why,” I said pointedly.

“Darling, it’s true,” said Elena. “ Everyone in Cairo knows about Teheran.”

Elena’s colonel laughed with contempt as he saw the look of surprise in my eyes. I was beginning to dislike him almost as much as he seemed to dislike me.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “We know all about the Big Three in Teheran. And, by the way, that’s another city full of displaced Poles. More than twenty thousand of them, for your information. There are so many Poles in Teheran, and in such disadvantaged conditions, that the Persians have even accused our people of spreading typhoid in the city. Imagine that. I wonder if you can.”

“Right now I’m still trying to imagine why a colonel would be so free with this kind of information across the dinner table,” I said stiffly. “Haven’t you heard? Walls have ears. Although I’m beginning to think that walls in Poland have tongues instead.”

“What do you Americans know about Poland?” he asked, ignoring my rebuke. “Have you ever been to Poland?”

“The last I heard it was full of Germans.”

“We shall suppose that means no.” The colonel snorted with derision and looked around at his fellow officers. “This makes him the ideal sort of person to be writing a report for the president of the United States about Katyn. Another stupid American who doesn’t know anything about Poland.”

“Wlazyslaw, that’s enough,” said Elena.

“Everyone knows that Roosevelt and Churchill are going to sell Poland out,” persisted Skomorowski.

“Surely you can’t believe that,” I told him. “Britain and France went to war for the sake of Poland.”

“Maybe so,” said Colonel Pulnarowicz. His eyes widened. “But will it be Britain and France that throw the Germans out of Poland, or will it be the Russians? For us, there’s nothing to draw between them, the Russians and the Germans. That’s what the Americans don’t, or won’t, understand. Nobody can see the Russians giving up Poland if the Red Army reoccupies it. Will Roosevelt persuade Stalin to return land for which the Red Army has sacrificed so many men? I think I can hear Stalin laughing about that one now.”

“After the war is over,” a third Polish officer pitched in, “I believe it will be discovered that Stalin was much worse than Hitler. Hitler is only trying to wipe out the Jews. But Stalin is trying to eliminate whole classes of people. Not just the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy, but the peasant class, as well. Millions have died in the Ukraine. If I had to choose between Hitler and Stalin, I’d choose Hitler every time. Stalin is the father of lies. By comparison, Hitler is a mere apprentice.”

“Roosevelt and Churchill will sell us down the river,” said Skomorowski. “That’s what we’re fighting for. Two knives in the back.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” I said. “I know Franklin Roosevelt. He is a decent, honorable man. He is not the kind of man to sell anyone out.”

My heart was hardly in this argument. I could not help but recollect my own conversation on the subject with the president. His words hadn’t exactly suggested a man who felt any obligation to protect the interests of Poland. Roosevelt had sounded more like someone intent on appeasing Stalin, in much the same way as the former British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, had appeased Hitler.

“This report you are compiling,” said Pulnarowicz. He lit one of his little cigarettes and exhaled smoke in my face. It looked thoughtless rather than deliberate. But that was just how it looked. “Does it mean the Americans are going to pay any more attention to what happened at Katyn than the British?”

I hardly felt like telling him that my completed report was already buried on the president’s direct order, exactly as the colonel had suspected it would be.

“I’m just compiling a report. It’s not my job to formulate policy.”

“If you’re compiling a report, then what are you doing here in Cairo?” demanded Skomorowski.

“You’re Polish. I’m speaking to you, aren’t I?” I grinned at him. “I’d hate to have missed the opportunity to meet all of you tonight. Besides, I don’t have to be in Washington to write a report.” I paused. “Not that I feel at all obliged to explain myself in this company.”

Skomorowski shrugged. “Or is it that by taking your time in making your report, you give Roosevelt a very valuable opportunity for delay?”

“Is Katyn even on the agenda for the Big Three at Teheran?” asked Pulnarowicz. “Will they even talk about it?”

“I really don’t know what is on the agenda at Teheran,” I said truthfully. “But even if I did, I certainly wouldn’t discuss it with you. Security is hardly best served by this kind of conversation.”

“You heard the princess,” said Pulnarowicz. “It’s all over the city.”

Elena squeezed my arm. “Willy darling, if you stay here for any length of time, you’ll recognize how true that is. It really is impossible to keep a secret in Cairo.”

“So I see,” I said pointedly. All the same, I found it hard to be cross with her. It was my fault for not remembering what a tremendous gossip she was.

“Not that Poland exists, anyway,” Colonel Pulnarowicz added, smiling bitterly. “Not anymore. Not since January, when Stalin declared that all Polish citizens were to be treated as Soviet citizens. It’s said that this was because he wanted the Poles to have the same rights as Soviet citizens.”

“The same right to be shot without trial,” said Skomorowski. “The same right to be deported to a labor camp. The same right to be starved to death.”

Everyone laughed. It was obviously a set piece that the two Polish officers had performed together before.

“The key to this whole problem is Stalin himself,” said Skomorowski. “If Stalin were removed, the whole edifice of Soviet communism would collapse. That’s the only way forward I can see. As long as Stalin remains alive, we will never have a free and democratic Poland. He should be assassinated. I’ll do it myself if I ever get half a chance.”

There was a long silence. Even Captain Skomorowski seemed to recognize that he had gone too far. Removing his glasses, he began to wipe them again.

“Well, I don’t know,” said Major Sernberg. “Really I don’t.”

“You’ll have to excuse Captain Skomorowski,” Pulnarowicz told the major. “He was in Moscow when Russian troops marched into Poland and for a while he was a guest of the NKVD. In the Lubyanka Prison. And then in one of their labor camps. At Solovki. He knows all about Soviet hospitality, don’t you, Josef?”

“I think,” said Elena, getting up from the table, “that this conversation has gone far enough.”

We listened to one of the British officers play the piano after that. This did little to improve anyone’s spirits. Just before midnight, Elena’s servants stopped serving alcohol. And gradually she was able to shoo her guests away. I would have left, too, but she asked me to stay on for a while, to talk about old times. Our old times. Which sounded just fine. So I went outside and told Coogan that I was staying on for a while and after that I would probably walk home.

“Be careful, sir,” he told me.

“I’ll be all right,” I said. “I have my pistol.”

“If you were thinking of going anywhere on your own, sir, then the nicest chorus girls in Cairo are at Madame Badia’s, sir. There’s a belly dancer called Tahia Carioca who’s first rate, if you like that sort of thing.”

“No, thanks.”

“Or if you was with a lady, sir, there’s a new place on the Mena Road, on the way to the Pyramids. The Auberge des Pyramides, it’s called. Opened in the summer. Very flash. Young King Farouk goes there a lot, so it must be good on account of how that boy knows how to enjoy himself.”

I grinned. “Coogan. Go home.”

Back in the house, the servants had disappeared, the way good servants do when they’re not wanted anymore. Elena made us some mint tea, just to prove that she could still boil a kettle, and then showed me back into the drawing room.

“Where do you find these guys?” I was feeling kind of sore about the way the evening had gone so far.

“Wlazyslaw can be quite charming sometimes,” she said. “But I’ll admit, tonight was not one of those occasions.”

“Just sitting next to him made me want to look for some life insurance.”

“He was jealous of you, that’s all.”

“‘He was jealous, that’s all’? Elena, a guy like that gets jealous, you’re liable to end up with a pillow over your face. And me taking an early-morning plunge in the Nile.”

She sipped her tea from a glass, snuggled up next to me on the sofa, and crossed her legs, carelessly.

“Did you ever do this with him?”

“Now who’s jealous?”

“That means yes. In which case no wonder he’s pissed. If you were my girl, I’d be pissed myself.”

“I’m nobody’s ‘girl,’ Willy. He knows that. Anyway, whatever happened between me and Wlazyslaw happened right here on this sofa. He’s never seen the wallpaper in my bedroom. Nobody has. Not since Freddy died.”

“That’s a long time to spend on the sofa. Even in Egypt.”

“Isn’t it? A long time.” She sighed, and for a moment we were both silent. “Why did you leave Berlin?”

“I’m half-Jewish, remember?”

“Yes, but the Nazis didn’t know that.”

“Maybe so, but I did. It took a while for my Jewish half to wrestle my Catholic half to the floor. Longer than it should have, perhaps.”

“So it wasn’t me.”

I shrugged. “But for you, I’d probably have left a lot earlier. It’s all your fault.”

“It sounds like you’re going to punish me.”

“Right now I’m having a lot of fun thinking about it.”

For a moment Elena’s eyes grew more distant, as if she were trying to visualize something important. “What’s she like? The girl in Washington.”

“Did I mention a girl anywhere?”

“Not specifically. But I can tell that there is one. I always could with you.”

“All right. There is and there isn’t. Not anymore.”

“Sounds like Wlazyslaw.”

“We got further than the sofa.”

“What happened?”

“She wanted me to care when I was pretending not to.”

“Sounds complicated.”

“Not really.”

“Tell me about it. And don’t think you have to make a joke about it. I can see it still hurts.”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Only when I look in your eyes.”

So I told her about Diana. Everything there was. Including my betrayal of her. It took a while, but when I had finished I felt better. I had lifted something from my shoulders. Like a couple of hundred tons of self-pity. It helped that she kissed me, of course. For quite a long time. The way old friends do sometimes. But for now, we kept it to the sofa.

“Do you want to stay?” she asked at about two A.M. “There are plenty of spare rooms.”

“Thanks, but I have to get back to my hotel. In case there are any messages from my boss.”

“Would you like Ahmed to take you in the car?”

“No, thanks, I’ll walk. It will feel nice to put one foot in front of the other without breaking into a sweat.”

“Tomorrow evening,” she said. “Let’s do something.”

“Something sounds good,” I said.

“Come around seven.”

I WALKED NORTH, with the Nile and the British embassy on my left. In front of the embassy, British soldiers stood in sentry boxes looking slightly embarrassed at the size and grandeur of the building, a great white wedding cake of a place set in lush green gardens that looked as big as, and a lot nicer than, Buckingham Palace. For a while it seemed that a dark green sedan was following me. But after I had crossed the road, close to the Cairo Museum of Antiquities, and walked east along Aldo Street toward Opera Square, I looked back and saw that it had gone.

Not that I felt at all nervous. Cairo was still wide awake. Despite the late hour, shops remained open, clinging on to life like moss-covered shellfish in some ancient aquarium, their shabby owners surveying me with a mixture of amusement and toothless fascination. Old men in turbans dozed on street corners. Families sat in gutters and talked and pointed at me. And from an open window in a building, what sounded like a party was under way: rhythmic hand-clapping and women ululating like a war party of Cherokee Indians. Dogs barked, trams whined, car horns blared. That night, Cairo seemed like the most magical city on earth.

I walked past Groppi’s, the Turf Club, and Sha’ar Hashmayim-Heaven’s Gate, the largest synagogue in Cairo and instantly recognizable from the Hebrew inscriptions on the wall. The black sky above my head was swept by the cones of searchlights, hunting for German bombers that would never come. In Opera Square, near Shepheard’s, neon lights advertised the existence of Madame Badia’s Opera Casino. I looked at the place, remembered Coogan, and smiled. I thought I saw a man in a tropical suit step smartly sideways into a shop doorway.

Curious to see if I was being followed, I retraced my steps a few yards, but was forced to make a retreat when I encountered a whole posse of fly-whisk sellers, shoe-shine boys, flower sellers, and unshaven men selling razor blades (mostly used), at the edge of the open-air movie theater in Ezbekiah Gardens. There was a movie showing. Or rather, it was just ending, and I found myself walking against a human current made up of hundreds of people on their way out of the gardens.

I had removed my jacket to walk home. And now I dropped it on the grass. As I bent down to retrieve it I felt and heard a smallish object zip over my head. It sounded like a thick rubber band flying through the air and then striking something. I straightened up again and found myself face-to-face with an Egyptian wearing a tarboosh and a surprised expression on his face. His mouth was wide open as if he had been trying to catch the largish red fly that was crawling on his forehead. Almost immediately he dropped onto his knees in front of me, and then collapsed onto the ground. I glanced down and the red fly seemed to settle on the man’s head; then I saw that it was not a fly at all, but a very distinct hole from which six small leglike threads of blood were now running. The man had been shot between the eyes.

I knew that the shot had been meant for me. I put my hand in the specially tailored pocket of my tux and on the grip of the little. 32-caliber hammerless Colt they had given us at Catoctin Mountain for evening wear. I was ready to put a hole through the lining if I saw what I was looking for. A man with a silencer on the end of a small-caliber pocket pistol like my own. At the same time, I walked quickly away from the body, which no one had yet noticed belonged to a dead man. Cairo wasn’t the kind of place where it was uncommon for people to lie on the ground. Even dead ones.

I walked back toward Shepheard’s Hotel, my tux jacket wrapped around my hand like a large black bandage, my finger on the trigger of the little Colt. Ahead of me I saw a man walking almost as quickly. He was wearing a beige tropical suit, a straw hat, and two-tone wingtips. I couldn’t see his face, but as he went by a shop window, I saw that he had a newspaper in his hand. Or rather he had a newspaper folded over his hand, and pressed close to his chest, like a bath towel. He didn’t run. But he was on his toes, and I knew that this was my man.

I wanted to shout after him but guessed that this would only have made him run or draw his fire. I had no idea what he was going to do. I didn’t expect him to run smartly up the red-carpeted steps of my own hotel, neatly sidestepping the man who had been there all day working a dirty postcard pitch. The street hawker had his reputation to consider. He wasn’t about to be sidestepped so easily again. Not when he had a living to make. As soon as I neared the edge of the red carpet, he saw me and calculated my likely route. Wheeling around, he held up his obscene wares in front of my face and brought me to a standstill, using his malodorous body to block me first one way and then the other. The third time he did it, I swore and pushed him roughly out of my way, which earned me a mild rebuke from a British officer sitting behind the safety of the brass rail on the terrace.

Entering the lobby of the hotel, I glanced around and saw that my quarry was nowhere in sight. I went to the desk. The clerk sprang to my assistance, smiling handsomely.

“Did you see a man come in here a second ago? A European, about thirty, beige suit, panama hat, brown-and-white shoes? Carrying a folded newspaper.”

The desk clerk shrugged and shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir, no. But there is a message for you, Professor Mayer.”

“All right. Thanks.”

I checked the bar. I checked the Long Bar. I checked the dining room. I even checked the men’s room off the lobby. But there was no sign of the man with the newspaper. I went outside and back down the steps. The man with the postcards saw me and backed away nervously. I smiled and apologized and handed him a fistful of the greaseproof paper he called money. He grinned back at me, with absolute forgiveness. I had made his evening. He had sold another stupid American some dirty postcards.