Hitler's peace

XXII

Slipping out of Elena’s bed in the early light of an Egyptian dawn, I went onto the balcony. Beyond the extensive chaos of Garden City rooftops, it was possible to see across the Nile as far as the river island of Zamalek and the Gezira Sporting Club, where Elena and I had dined just a few hours before.

The Gezira was something straight out of The Four Feathers, a club so stiff it hurt, and it left me puzzled why Elena should have wanted to go there. It was like seeing the whole of the British empire preserved in aspic jelly. Everyone was in uniform or evening dress, or a combination of both. A little quintet played dreary British popular music and red-faced men and pink-looking women shuffled their way across the dance floor. The only people with dark skins were the men holding silver trays or towels over their arms. Every time Elena introduced me to someone I caught a faint smell of snobbery.

There was only one person I was happy to see. The trouble was, Colonel Powell assumed I was eager to resume our philosophical discussion, and it took me quite a while to divert him onto a subject that now interested me more.

“Do you know a Polish colonel by the name of Wlazyslaw Pulnarowicz?” I asked.

Powell looked surprised. “Why do you ask?”

“I met him last night,” I said. “At a dinner party. I think I may have got on the wrong side of him. Since then, I’ve been informed that he is not a man to cross.”

“That was also my impression,” said Powell. “A most ruthless character. Might I inquire if your disagreement with Wlazyslaw Pulnarowicz was to do with philosophy?”

Thinking I had better keep off the subject of philosophy altogether, as far as Powell was concerned, I shook my head. “Actually it was about the merits-or lack of merits-of the Soviet Union. The colonel takes a very dim view of the Russians. And of Stalin in particular. I think Pulnarowicz perceives Stalin as a kind of modern Herodotus, if you like. As the ‘father of modern lies,’ I think he said.”

Powell smiled thinly.

“If you are concerned that the colonel is ever likely to seek you out, I can put your mind at rest, in a manner of speaking. Regrettably, Colonel Wlazyslaw Pulnarowicz was killed late this afternoon. The plane on which he was traveling was shot down somewhere in the northern Mediterranean. He was on a secret mission, you understand. As a result, I’m afraid I am duty bound to tell you no more than that.”

I let out a breath that was a mixture of relief and surprise. And for a moment or two, I was hardly aware that Powell had already changed the subject and was disputing my description of Herodotus.

“Herodotus only makes the mistakes that are common to all historians,” he said. “Which are that he was not there and often relies on sources that are themselves unreliable. After this war is over, don’t you think it will be interesting to read the many lies that will be told of who did what and when and why, and of the things that were done, and the things that were not? Although God cannot alter the past, historians can and do provide a useful function in this respect. Which persuades Him, perhaps, to tolerate their existence.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” I said vaguely.

Powell seemed to detect my relief that Pulnarowicz was dead, and he changed the subject back again. “Wlazyslaw Pulnarowicz was a good soldier,” he said. “But he was not a good man. It is the nature of war to find ourselves with some pretty strange bed-fellows.”

Standing on the balcony of Elena’s bedroom, I finished my cigarette and reflected that Enoch Powell was more right than he had known. My own current bedfellow was very possibly a German spy. I had to find out if my suspicions were justified. She remained soundly asleep, so I left the balcony and slipped quietly out of the bedroom. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I felt I would recognize it if I saw it.

On the sweeping marble staircase, I laid my hand on the wrought-iron balustrade and peered over into the hallway. Apart from the sound of a ticking grandfather clock and a stray dog barking somewhere in the street outside, the house was as quiet as a mausoleum.

At the end of a long corridor, I entered a door and found a set of stairs leading to a laundry room, a wine cellar stocked with some very choice vintages, and several storerooms that were filled mostly with old paintings. There were one or two pictures I recognized from Elena’s house in Berlin and various pieces of dusty-looking Biedermeier furniture.

I tiptoed back up to the second floor, where I checked that Elena was still sleeping before opening the doors to some of the other rooms. One set of double doors revealed a whole stone staircase and, at the top of this, another door that led into what looked like an apartment complete with drawing room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and library. There was even a sort of tower with bars on the windows. Just the place to lock up a mad prince or two.

I was about to call off the search and return to the bedroom when my eye caught sight of a book on one of the shelves. It was my own book, On Being Empirical, and, much to my surprise, I found that it had been substantially annotated. I could not understand the annotations, which were in Polish, but I did recognize Elena’s handwriting. And yet she had given me the impression that my book had been beyond her understanding. This hardly counted as evidence of anything except perhaps that she was a lot cleverer than I had always supposed.

But then I noticed a small curving mark on the carpet that ran from the corner of the bookcase toward the wall beside it-almost as if the bookcase itself was regularly shifted. Taking hold of the side of the case, I tugged at it gently, only to find it was also a door.

As I advanced into the darkness behind the bookcase, I noticed a smell. It was the same smell I had detected in the drawing room the previous afternoon. American cigarettes, Old Spice, and brilliantine. I reached out for a light switch and saw a room about ten feet square. The room was equipped with a chair and a table on which a lamp and a German radio stood. I recognized the radio immediately, for it had been one of the first things they had shown us on the OSS induction training course at Catoctin Mountain. One of the eight German agents arrested on Long Island in July 1942 had been equipped with just such a radio. It was standard Abwehr issue, an SE100/11 with the controls all printed in English to try and disguise it. The disguise might have fooled a civilian but not someone who was in the trade. Back in the States, just possessing a sender/receiver was enough to get you the electric chair.

On the table in front of the radio was a little Walther PPK automatic. It seemed to make clear that Elena meant business. If it really was her gun. The masculine scent in the room suggested she had another confederate besides Major Reichleitner. I picked up the pistol. Turning it upside down, I ejected the magazine from the plastic grip. The gun was loaded, not that I had expected otherwise. I shoved the magazine back into the handle and laid it down on the table.

I tiptoed back to the top of the stone stairs for a moment to check that my dirty little mission was still a secret. And it was about then that I had the sudden sensation I was being watched. I remained standing there for several minutes before concluding I had imagined it, and returned to the secret radio room.

I sat on the chair, reached underneath the table, and drew a metallic wastepaper bin toward me. It was full of paper. I placed it between my naked thighs and began to examine the contents. It showed a great want of vigilance not to have set alight the cellophane sheets intended to help burn any plaintext messages sent or received. Abwehr agents, even the ones from Long Island, were usually not so careless. Perhaps the secret room itself had lulled Elena into a false sense of security about normal spycraft. Or perhaps the lack of a window.

I fished a message out of the bin, spread the paper flat on the table, glanced over it, and then folded it up so that I could read it later. I was about to return the wastepaper bin to its place underneath the table when something else caught my eye.

It was an empty package of Kools. Kools were a mentholated American brand of cigarettes that neither I nor Elena smoked. Smoking Kools was like smoking a stick of chewing gum. Even more interesting was what I found crushed up inside the empty packet. It was a matchbook with only one match left. It was from the Hamilton Hotel in Washington. The Hamilton Hotel overlooked Franklin Park, where Thornton Cole’s body had been found. Finding this matchbook in the same room as an SE100 radio was all the evidence I needed to know that the man who had killed Cole, and very likely Ted Schmidt, too, had occupied the very chair I was sitting in.

All I had to do now was tell Reilly, and then he could arrange with the British to have the place staked out until the German agent showed up again. I snatched up the evidence-the plaintext message, the empty package of Kools, the Hamilton Hotel matchbook-and went out of the radio room. I knew I could hardly catch the spy without condemning Elena as well.

I turned out the light, closed the bookcase door, and returned to the bedroom. Seeing her stir under the single sheet, I pretended to fetch a pack of cigarettes from my coat pocket.

“What are you doing?” she asked, sitting up.

“I’m just going to the bathroom,” I said, lighting a cigarette. “Go back to sleep.”

I closed the bathroom door, sat down on the toilet, and unfolded the plaintext message headed OPERATION WURF. In German, wurf was the verb “to throw,” but, figuratively speaking, it also meant “success,” “a hit,” “a stroke of luck,” and even, “a decisive action.” The message, addressed to someone called Brutus, was short, and everything about it supported the idea of some kind of decisive action. I read the message several times before folding it carefully and sliding it inside my own cigarette packet, alongside the matchbook from the Hamilton Hotel. Then I stood up, flushed the toilet, and went back to bed.

There wasn’t much chance of my sleeping again-not now that I had read the plaintext message from the Abwehr. And as dawn broke, I was still repeating the message in my head. Brutus to proceed with the assassination of Wotan. Good luck.

It was a while since I had seen an opera by Wagner, but I remembered that Wotan was one of the gods in Das Rheingold. This seemed to suggest that Brutus, whoever he was, planned to kill just one of the Big Three. But surely not Roosevelt or Churchill. Neither of them appeared to match up to Wotan. No, there was only one of the Big Three who seemed to fit the bill, and that was Joseph Stalin.

Elena awoke for a few minutes and kissed me fondly before going back to sleep. I really did think she cared for me. I knew I cared for her. And I knew I wasn’t prepared to send her over, no matter who or what she was. I tried to sleep a little in the hope that when I awoke I would know the right thing to do. But the sleep never came. And after a while I could think of no other way forward than the one I had first thought of. I slipped out of bed and, before leaving her bedroom, took the photograph of Elena and Major Reichleitner from her album, to make sure that I would be believed.

Reichleitner was still eating breakfast when Lance Corporal Armfield brought me to his cell. The major greeted me coolly. At first I was inclined to ascribe this display of indifference to the fact that his breakfast was not yet over. But as I lit a cigarette and waited for him to look me in the eye, I realized that something had happened. And that was when, looking around the cell, I saw Donovan’s Bride transcripts piled neatly on the table, the task of rendering them into plaintext now complete.

“Everything is clear to me now,” said Reichleitner. He was wearing a superior smile I found annoying, after all that I had done for him.

“Why haven’t you tried to tell someone?”

“Don’t think I won’t. But, no, I wanted to speak to you first. To tell you what I require for my silence.”

“And what might that be?” I smiled, half enjoying his little show.

“Your help to escape.”

This time I laughed. “I think you’re being a little premature, Major. After all, I need to see what you think you know and how you think that you know it. Cards on the table. Then perhaps we can make a deal.”

“All right. If you want to play it that way.” Reichleitner shrugged and fetched the papers off the table. “The Russians call this ‘open packing,’” he said. “Even though it’s deciphered, the use of certain code words still makes it hard for the layman to understand. How to read what ought to be plain, but is not. You will note the date of this particular message, please. October eighth. The message concerns a meeting that took place in London.

I nodded, more or less certain now I knew the meeting to which he was referring.

“LEO reports in his last LUGGAGE that he had BREAKFAST in GLADSTONE with a 26 who we now know was formerly a NOVATOR for SPARTA in TROY during the year 1937. Codenamed CROESUS. VERSAILLES suggests watching brief minimum, since CROESUS now works for ORVILLE and STAMP in a special capacity, and might provide future KNAPSACK. At any subsequent BREAKFAST you should stress the desperation of the situation in SPARTA and, if all else fails, you should tell him that we may have to weigh the question of his 43.”

Reichleitner smiled. “LEO is the name of an agent,” he said. “And BREAKFAST is a meeting, of course. GLADSTONE is London. A number 26 is a potential recruit for the NKVD. A NOVATOR is an existing NKVD agent. SPARTA means Soviet Russia, and TROY refers to Nazi Germany. CROESUS is you, I suspect, since you work for both ORVILLE-that’s Donovan, I imagine-and STAMP-that’s Roosevelt, I know. KNAPSACK is information that might develop into something more important. Number 43 means last will and testament.”

“Well, that part about the last will and testament ought to tell you something, Major.”

“Not as much as the fact that you were once a NOVATOR for SPARTA.”

“‘Once’ being the critical word. For example, I imagine you’re no longer the enthusiastic Nazi you were back in 1933. Well, in 1938 I was a lecturer at the University of Berlin and occasionally came into contact with Dr. Goebbels. I decided that the best way I had of opposing Nazism was to pass on any information that came my way to the Russians. Only all that ended when I left Germany to return to the United States.

“Then, a few weeks ago, when I was in London researching a report for the president on the Katyn Forest massacre, I ran into someone I’d known back in Vienna. An Englishman who had been a fellow Communist and who now works for British intelligence. And, it would seem, from what you’ve just told me, Russian intelligence, too. We talked about old times and that was it. Or so I thought, until General Donovan mentioned these intercepts and codebooks. Naturally I wanted to know if I should expect the NKVD to try to reestablish contact. I suspect that the only reason they haven’t is because I’ve been away from Washington since November twelfth. I doubt that they’ve had time.

“All the same, I can’t deny that all of this would be embarrassing for me if Donovan and the president got to know about it. Embarrassing and perhaps even compromising. I would probably have to resign from the service. But I don’t think I’d go to the electric chair for something I did before the United States was at war with Germany. I don’t think I’d even go to prison for it. So, no, I’m not going to help you to escape. I’ll take my chances.”

I smiled nonchalantly. I actually felt better now that I knew what the Bride material contained.

“But, then, so will you.”

Reichleitner frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Only this. That if you do decide to tell Deakin and Donovan what you know, it might be worth bearing in mind that I won’t be the only person who’s arrested for spying. There’s you for one. Don’t forget, Major Deakin’s still got your name on chit for a firing squad. And for another, there’s this little lady. Cairo’s answer to Mata Hari.”

I handed Reichleitner the photograph from Elena’s album. “This was taken just a few months ago. At the opening of the Auberge des Pyramides. Quite apart from the many questions it begs about what you were doing here at that time, it also begs just as many about Elena Pontiatowska. You see, Major Reichleitner, I know all about the radio in the little room behind the bookcase. And that, on its own, would be enough to book her the firing squad after yours.”

“What do you intend to do?” Reichleitner asked grimly.

“If it was just you and her and the odd bit of information about what the SOE is up to in Yugoslavia, then I think I might be inclined merely to warn Elena that I was on to her. That she should cease operations and get the hell out of Cairo. You see, we’re good friends. Maybe good friends like you and she were good friends. That I don’t know.

“What I do know is that it’s more serious than just a bit of spying. A lot more serious. You see, I believe she’s involved in a plot to assassinate Stalin in Teheran.”

I showed Reichleitner the plaintext message I had taken from the bin in Elena’s radio room and tossed the half-baked part of my theory in his lap.

“What was the idea with the Beketovka File, anyway? To use it as some sort of post factum justification for killing Stalin? Yes, that might play quite well with the world’s press. Stalin was a tyrant, a monster, a mass murderer. He deserved to die because God knows how many others have been murdered on his orders. And here’s the proof. This is what Germany has always been fighting against. This kind of Bolshevik barbarism. And this is why Britain and America have been fighting the wrong enemy.” I nodded. “It makes a lot of sense when you think of it like this.”

“To you, maybe,” said Reichleitner. “But not to me, I’m afraid. It wasn’t like that at all. I don’t know anything about a plot to kill Stalin.”

“No? Then what about that photograph? At the very least it proves you’ve been here in Cairo before. As a spy.”

“It’s true, I’ve been here before. But not as a spy.”

“I get it. You were on vacation.” I grinned and threw my cigarette onto the floor of Reichleitner’s cell. “See the Pyramids and then back to Berlin with some dirty postcards and a couple of cheap souvenirs.”

Reichleitner said nothing. He was looking green around the mouth. But I was through being patient. I grabbed him by the vest and banged him hard against the cell wall.

“Come on, Max, you idiot,” I yelled. “It’s not just your ass that’s facing a firing squad. It’s Elena’s, too. Or are you too dumb to realize that?”

“All right. I’ll tell you what I know.”

I let him go and stood back. He sat down heavily and lit a cigarette. “From the top,” I said. “When you’re ready.”

“I’ve been operating in this theater for a while. Ankara and Cairo, mainly. But I’m not a spy. I’m a courier. I’ve been involved in some secret peace negotiations between Himmler, von Papen, and the Americans. In particular, a man named George Earle who is yet another of your president’s special representatives.”

“Earle? What’s he got to do with this?”

“Listen, I don’t deny that the Beketovka File was intended to undermine U.S.-Soviet relations. And, by the way, it’s completely genuine. But there was never any talk of an assassination. At least nothing of which I have been made aware.”

“How much did Elena know of your activities?”

“Almost nothing. Only that there was an important document I was required to go back and fetch from Germany. And which then had to find its way into the president’s hands by the shortest route possible.”

“I suppose that was where I came in handy,” I said grimly.

Reichleitner shook his head, hardly understanding what I was talking about. “She’s just the station master, that’s all. She helps whichever German gets off the train, so to speak. Not asking questions. Just facilitating one mission and then another.”

“This week a peace envoy, next week an assassin, is that it?”

“You say you’re an expert on German intelligence? Then you’ll know that the Abwehr and the SD don’t tend to share much in the way of information or operational plans. And neither of them is much disposed to keep the Foreign Ministry or the Gestapo informed of what they’re up to.”

“But surely Himmler knows what’s happening?”

“Not necessarily. Himmler and Admiral Canaris don’t get on any better than Canaris and Schellenberg. Or Schellenberg and von Ribbentrop.”

“And you. Where do you fit into all this?”

“I’m SS. Before the war I was with the Criminal Police. And, like I say, I’m just a courier between Himmler and von Papen, and your Commander Earle. I met Earle here in Cairo when I was last here. You could probably ask him to confirm my story. I’m certainly not an assassin.” Reichleitner handed back the plaintext message from the Abwehr. “But it’s possible I could help you catch him. This Brutus. If he really exists.”

“Why would you do that?”

“To help Elena, of course. If there is an attempt made to kill Stalin, then it might go badly for her. I’ve no wish to see any harm come to her.” He paused. “I might be able to persuade her to cooperate in bringing in Brutus. Or I could simply persuade her to tell you who this man is. How would that be?”

“All of that in spite of the fact you told me you’d like to see Stalin dead.”

“I’d much prefer that Elena stayed alive.” Reichleitner glanced wistfully at the photograph of himself and Elena that lay on the table. “I don’t see that she has got much choice but to cooperate, do you? And what have you got to lose?”

“Nothing, probably. All the same, I’d like to think about it. Over breakfast.” I glanced at my watch. “I’m going back to my hotel. Have a bath and something to eat while I’m considering your proposal. Then I’ll come back here and tell you what I’ve decided to do.”

By now it was clear to me that the major was fond of Elena-probably as fond of her as I was myself.

“What shall I do with these transcripts?” he asked.

“Don’t say I told you to. But burn them. And the codebooks.”

On the cab ride back to the hotel, I asked myself if I could risk telling Reilly and Hopkins what I had discovered. What was the life of a woman I was fond of, a woman who was, after all, a German spy, alongside the fate of the only man capable of driving Russia on to the Pyrrhic victory over Germany that seemed inevitable? I should probably just have walked around the corner from Grey Pillars to the American legation and placed the whole matter in the hands of the Secret Service. But then, I couldn’t rule out the possibility that one of the Treasury agents was Brutus, the potential assassin. I needed time to think, and with the conference in Teheran still several days away, the small matter of a few hours seemed neither here nor there.

Climbing out of the cab in front of Shepheard’s, I scratched my hand on a metal hinge. Having wrapped my handkerchief around the wound to stop it bleeding, I cleaned the cut with some iodine when I was back in my room. In Cairo, it didn’t do to neglect these things. Then I shaved and drew a bath. I was just about to step into the tepid water when there was a loud knock at the door. Cursing, I wrapped a bath towel around my middle and opened the door to find myself faced by four men, two of them tall, thin Egyptians wearing the white uniform of the local police. The two Europeans with them were breathing hard, as if they’d used the stairs. One of them addressed me politely, but behind his wire-frame glasses, he had a nasty look in his eye.

“Are you Professor Willard Mayer?”

“Yes.”

The man held up a warrant card. “Detective Inspector Luger, sir. And this is Sergeant Cash.” The inspector did not bother to identify the two Egyptians. In their white uniforms they looked like a couple of pipecleaners. “May we come in, sir?”

“All of you?” But the two detectives had already brushed me aside and entered my room. Cash didn’t look at me at all. He was looking around the room.

“Nice room,” he said. “Very nice. I’ve never actually been in a room at Shepheard’s. Officers only, you see.”

“Standards have to be maintained, you know,” I said, disliking him for the way he had of making me feel like I was a criminal. “Otherwise where would the empire be?”

He winced a little and fixed me with his stoniest look. Perhaps it worked on Egyptians, but it didn’t work on me. But then he smiled. His smile was terrifying. It was full of teeth. Bad teeth. I turned to Luger in disgust.

“Look, what’s going on? I was just about to take a bath.”

“Did you spend the night in this room, sir?” he asked.

“No, I just came here to take a bath.”

“Just answer the question, please, Professor.”

“All right. I spent the night at a friend’s house.”

“Would you mind telling me the name of your friend, sir?”

“If you really think it’s necessary. The house belongs to the Princess Elena Pontiatowska. I can’t remember the street number. But it’s on Harass Street, in Garden City.” Even as I spoke, I saw Sergeant Cash pick up my bloodstained handkerchief and catch Luger’s eye. “Look, what is all this? I’m with the American delegation.” I looked at Cash. “That’s spelled D-I-P-L-O-M-A-T-I–C.”

“We’ll try not to take up too much of your valuable time, sir,” said Luger. “When did you leave the princess’s house. Approximately?”

“Early this morning. At about seven.”

“And did you come straight here?”

“No, as a matter of fact I dropped into British Army GHQ at Grey Pillars. On official business. My boss, General Donovan, will vouch for me, if required. As indeed will Mike Reilly, who is head of the president’s Secret Service detail.”

“Yes, sir,” said Luger.

Cash replaced my handkerchief carefully on the table. A little too carefully for my liking. Almost as if he contemplated picking it up again and placing it in an envelope marked “Evidence.” That was bad enough, but now he collected my trousers off the back of the chair where I had thrown them, and was inspecting the pocket. There was a bloodstain on the edge of the pocket lining.

“Look, I’m not saying another goddamn thing until you’ve told me what’s going on.”

“In that case, sir, you leave me no alternative,” sighed Luger. “Willard Mayer, I’m arresting you on suspicion of having committed murder. Do you understand?”

“Who’s been murdered, for Christ’s sake?”

“Get dressed, sir,” said Cash. “But not these trousers, eh?”

“I cut myself. Climbing out of a cab about half an hour ago.”

“I’m afraid that’s for the laboratory to decide now, sir.”

“Look, this is a mistake. I haven’t murdered anyone.”

Luger had found my shoulder holster and the Colt automatic it contained. Holding the holster, he lifted the pistol to his nostrils and sniffed it experimentally.

“It’s not been fired for months,” I said, putting on some clothes. “I wish you’d tell me what this is all about. Has something happened to Elena?”

Neither of the two detectives spoke as they escorted me to a large black car parked outside the hotel. We drove south, to the Citadel, a centuries-old bastion that, with its needle-like minarets, was just about the most dramatic feature on Cairo’s skyline. Circling the Citadel, we entered it from the back, at a higher level, close to the center of the ancient complex, and then drove through the gate tunnel and into a courtyard in front of the police station.

I got out of the car and, still closely escorted, entered the building. There, in a large room with a wear-polished stone floor, a fine view over the city, and, on the wall, a portrait of King George, my interrogation began.

It very quickly became apparent that Elena had been murdered.

“Were you involved in a sexual relationship with Elena Pontiatowska?”

“Yes,” I said.

“How did you meet?”

“We were friends, from before the war. In Berlin.”

“I see.”

“Look, Inspector, she was still alive when I left the house this morning. But there’s something you should know. Something important.”

Luger looked up from the notes he had been making while I spoke. “And what might that be?”

“I need to see that she really is dead before I tell you.”

“All right,” sighed Luger. “Let’s go and take a look at her.”

The two detectives had the car brought back, and we drove to the house in Harass Street. It was now guarded by several Egyptian policemen and already subject to the close scrutiny of various scientific experts.

In the hall, Luger led the way up to the first floor. Cash brought up the rear. We went into Elena’s bedroom.

She lay beside a high French window, wearing a silk gown. She had been shot through the heart at fairly close range, for the wound was surrounded with black powder. I didn’t need to put a mirror in front of her mouth to know that she was dead.

“It looks as if she knew her attacker,” I observed. “Given the close proximity of her assailant. But it wasn’t me.”

On the floor beside her body lay a Walther PPK, and I realized with horror that it was very likely the same automatic I had handled in the radio room. It would have my fingerprints on it. But for the moment I said nothing.

“You’ve had your look,” Luger said.

“Just give me a minute, please. This was a good friend of mine.” But I was playing for time. There was something small on the floor, near Elena’s hand, and I wondered if I might see what it was before I was obliged to leave the crime scene. “This has all been a dreadful shock to me, Inspector. I need a cigarette.” I took out my cigarettes. “Do you mind?”

“Go ahead.”

I pretended to fumble with the pack and dropped a couple onto the floor. Placing another in my mouth I bent quickly down and retrieved only one of the two cigarettes from the carpet. At the same time I picked up the object close to Elena’s outstretched hand and slipped it into the pack.

“Here, here, you’re contaminating my crime scene,” objected Luger. “You’ve left one of your cigarettes on the floor.” And, bending down, he picked it up.

“Sorry.” I took the cigarette from Luger’s fingers and then lit the one in my mouth.

“Now, then, Professor. What were you going to tell me that’s so important?”

“That Elena Pontiatowska was a German spy.”

Luger tried to repress a smile. “This case really does have everything,” he said. “Yes, it’s been quite a while since we had such a sensational murder here in Cairo. You have to go back to 1927, I’d say-the murder of Solomon Cicurel, the owner of the department store-to have such a fascinating dramatis personae, so to speak. There’s you, Professor, a famous philosopher, and a Polish princess who used to be married to one of the richest men in Egypt. A man who I might add, was also shot. And now you say that this woman was a German spy.”

“You can forget that business about ‘now I say,’ ” I told him. “I don’t recall saying anything about her before now.”

“Is that why you killed her?” asked Cash. “Because she was a German spy?”

“I didn’t kill her. But I can prove she was a spy.” For a moment I thought of showing Luger the plaintext message that was still in my coat pocket and then decided it would be better to put that straight into the hands of Hopkins and Reilly. “There’s a German agent radio in a secret room upstairs. I could show you where it is.”

Luger nodded, and we left Cash in the bedroom and went back along the landing to the double doors that opened onto the stone stairs, and then up to the little apartment. I showed the detective how the bookcase was really a door and then led the way into the secret room.

But the German sender/receiver was gone.

“It was there on that table. And next to it was the gun that’s on the floor in Elena’s bedroom. The Walther. I’m afraid you might find my prints on that, Inspector. I handled it when I came in here and found the radio this morning. Just to see if it was loaded.”

“I see,” said Luger. “Is there anything else you want to tell me, sir?”

“Only that I didn’t kill her.”

Luger sighed. “Try and look at it from my point of view,” he said, almost gently. “There was blood on your trousers when we arrested you. By your own admission your fingerprints are on the probable murder weapon. You were sleeping with the victim. And, to cap it all, when you came here, with some cock-and-bull story about spies, you even tried to interfere with evidence. Yes, I’ll thank you to hand that button over. The one you picked off the floor when you dropped your cigarettes in the bedroom back there.”

I took out the button, scrutinized it momentarily, and then handed it over to the inspector. “It’s not one of mine. Sorry.”

“Did you think it might be?” asked Luger.

“As a matter of fact, no. But I don’t suppose that matters.”

“We’re not fools, sir,” said Luger, pocketing the button.

“Then you’ll already have noticed that none of my coat jackets is missing a button.”

“I have noticed that. So I’m still trying to fathom why you picked it up.”

I shrugged. “I guess I was hoping to meet a man who’s missing a coat button.”

“Of course it might have been there a while,” admitted Luger. “Still, it is evidence. Not as good as a gun with fingerprints on it, however. Your fingerprints, you say?”

“As well as the murderer’s.”

“It’s a pity that radio wasn’t here,” said Luger. “That might have made things very different.”

“I imagine that the same person who killed the Princess must have removed it. And for the same reason. To conceal the fact she was a German agent. Something must have spooked him.” I sighed as I realized what might have happened. “I think that must have been me. You see, I searched the house last night when everyone was asleep. At least that’s what I thought at the time. Someone must have seen me and decided to cover their tracks. The fact is, Inspector, I believe I’ve stumbled on a plot to kill the Big Three.”

I handed over the plaintext message. There was no sense in hanging on to it now. I was inches away from being charged with murder.

“I believe this message was received by someone, very likely the murderer, using that missing radio.”

Luger glanced at the message. “It’s in German,” he said.

“Of course it is. It was sent from Berlin. ‘Mordanschlag.’ That’s the German word for ‘assassinate.’”

“Is it?”

“German intelligence is my speciality. I’m with the OSS. That’s the American intelligence service. I’m the president’s liaison officer with the agency. It’s imperative that I speak to the head of the president’s Secret Service detail as soon as possible. His name is Mike Reilly.”

Cash appeared in the doorway. “No German radio, sir?” he asked.

“No German radio. And don’t let anyone touch that gun in the bedroom. The professor here has confessed his fingerprints are on it.”

“Actually, no. I said you might find them.”

Inspector Luger leaned forward. “Shall I tell you what I think happened, Professor Mayer?”

I groaned inside. It was easy to see where his elementary thought processes were going with this.

“My friend is dead, Inspector. And what you think about that is of little interest to me right now.”

“I think that sometime during the night, when you were in bed with Princess Pontiatowska, you had an argument. A lover’s quarrel. So sometime this morning, you shot her.”

“As complicated as that, eh?” I shook my head. “You must read a lot of novels.”

“We leave the complications to you. This was very simple. All this stuff about a German radio is complete nonsense, isn’t it? Just like the story about there being a plot to kill the Big Three.”

Luger advanced slowly on me, followed closely by Sergeant Cash, until I was close enough to smell the tobacco and the coffee on his breath.

“It’s bad enough that you should murder a woman in cold blood,” said Luger. “But what really pisses me off is that you should take us for a pair of fucking idiots.” Luger was shouting now. “German spies? Plots to kill the Big Three? Next thing you’ll be telling us that Hitler is hiding in the fucking cellar.”

“Well, I didn’t see him when I was down there this morning.”

“Why don’t you tell us the truth?” Cash said quietly.

“I don’t like Yanks,” said Luger.

“For the first time since you opened your big trap you’ve said something that makes sense. This is personal.”

“You were late for this war, just like you were late for the last one. And when you do finally bother to show up, you all think you can treat us like poor relations. Tell us what to do, like you owned this bloody war.”

“Since we’re paying for it, I think that gives us a say.”

“Tell us what really happened,” murmured Cash.

“You’ve told us a pack of bloody lies, that’s what,” bellowed Luger, taking hold of my coat lapels. “You’re full of shit, mate. Like the rest of your bloody countrymen.”

Cash grabbed hold of Luger’s arm and tried to pull him off me. “Leave it, guv,” he said. “It’s not worth it.”

“I’m going to have this bastard,” and Luger tightened his grip on my lapels. “That, or the truth, so help me.”

“You boys have got quite an act here,” I said, grabbing hold of Luger’s wrists and wrenching them off my coat. “It’s a real shame to waste it on someone who’s seen it performed before. By better actors, too.”

“The truth,” yelled Luger, punching me hard in the ribs.

I lashed back, catching Luger with a glancing punch on his jaw. Cash stepped in, just managing to hold us apart. Glancing sourly at Cash, Luger said, “Get him out of my sight.”

They drove me back to the Citadel and locked me in a hot stinking cell. I sat down on the solitary wooden bunk and stared into the solitary slops bucket. The bucket was empty but it seemed to be where my life was headed.

Toward the end of the day, I heard the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. His powerful, sonorous voice drifted through the still air of the Citadel. The sound was soothing, something felt as much as heard.

A minute after the muezzin had finished, the cell door opened and I was ordered out. A uniformed policeman marched me upstairs to a large room where Donovan, Reilly, and Agent Rauff were seated around a table. In front of them was the plaintext message I had given to Inspector Luger. I didn’t mention it. I was through volunteering information.

“It seems that the British want to charge you with the murder of your lady friend,” said Donovan.

I poured myself a glass of water from the decanter on the table.

“How about it? Did you kill her?”

“Nope. Someone else killed her. Someone who wanted to conceal that she was a German spy.” I nodded at the table. “I found that message in the radio room.”

“Would this be the radio room without a radio?” Rauff asked.

“Yes. I guess the person who took it away was worried that someone like you was going to shoot it.”

“This German spy you claim killed her,” said Rauff.

“Yes. You know, German spies are not at all unusual in the middle of a war with Germany.”

“Perhaps it just seems that way,” he said, “because you manage to make it sound like there’s a plague of them.”

“Well, we are in Egypt. If there’s going to be a plague of spies anywhere, it would have to be here. Along with lice and flies and boils and Secret Service agents.”

The artery on Rauff’s sweating neck started to throb. It was hot in the room and he had taken off his jacket so that it was impossible to see if he was missing a coat button.

Donovan picked up the plaintext message on the table. He regarded it as I suppose he would have regarded a disputed bill from his local butcher.

“And you say that this is evidence of a plot to kill the Big Three, in Teheran,” he said.

“Not the Big Three. Just Stalin.” I took the paper from Donovan’s thick fingers and translated from the German. “I think Stalin is Wotan,” I explained. “From the opera by Richard Wagner? Only I figured that the British police might be more inclined to pay attention if I told them it was all three Allied leaders, instead of just Marshal Stalin. It’s funny, but most of the people I speak to don’t care very much for Uncle Joe. You included, as I recall.”

Donovan smiled calmly. His blue eyes never left mine.

“It’s a great pity they didn’t find that German radio,” he said. “A radio would have corroborated your story nicely.”

“I imagine the man who killed my friend was of the same opinion, sir.”

“Yes, let’s talk about her for a moment. How exactly is it that you come to be friendly with a woman you say was a German agent?”

“She was beautiful. She was clever. She was rich. I guess I’m just the gullible kind.”

“How long had you known her?”

“We went way back. I knew her in Berlin, before the war.”

“Were you sleeping with her?”

“That’s my business.”

“Quite the swordsman, aren’t you, Willard?” said Rauff. “For a professor.”

“Why, Agent Rauff, you sound jealous.”

“I think it’s a fair question,” said Donovan.

“It didn’t sound like a question at all. Look, gentlemen, I’m not married, so I don’t see that who I sleep with is anyone’s business except me and the lady’s gynecologist.” I smiled at Rauff. “That’s a pussy doctor to you, Agent Rauff.”

“The British are saying that she was a Polish princess,” Reilly said.

“That’s right. She was.”

“Is it true that when you and she were living in Berlin you were both friends of Josef Goebbels?”

“Who told you that?”

“One of her Polish friends. A Captain Skomorowski. Is it true?”

I nodded. It made sense that Elena would have told him. What better way of persuading someone that you could never be a spy than by being hopelessly, charmingly indiscreet?

“I was never a friend of Goebbels. Only an acquaintance.” I nodded at Rauff. “Like me and your colleague.” I took another sip of water. “Besides, this was in 1938. The United States still had an ambassador in Berlin. Hugh Wilson. We used to see each other at Goebbels’s parties. I think I may even have left Germany before he did.”

“Did you mention this information when you joined the service?” asked Donovan.

“I think I told Allen Dulles.”

“Since he’s in Switzerland, it’s going to be hard to corroborate that,” said Donovan.

“Yes. But why would you want to? My short acquaintance with Goebbels hardly makes me unusual in the OSS. In the early days of COI, we had lots of krauts working for us. Still do. Everyone on Campus knows about FDR’s Doctor S project. Then there’s Putzi Hanfstaengl, Hitler’s former foreign press chief. Didn’t you bring him under the COI wing, General? Of course, that was before the FBI decided he ought to remain under house arrest in Bush Hill, monitoring German news broadcasts. And let’s not forget Commander George Earle’s several meetings with von Papen in Ankara. No, General, I hardly think my having met Goebbels is going to trouble anyone.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” said Donovan.

“Of course. But on Saturday the president is flying to Teheran to meet Stalin. Don’t you think that instead of quizzing me about whether I might have been a friend of the German propaganda minister you would do better to find out who it is among the American delegation that’s planning to assassinate Marshal Stalin?”

“That’s exactly what we were doing,” Rauff said, holding up the plaintext. “After all, this message was found on you.”

“I gave it to Inspector Luger.”

“He’d have found it when he searched you anyway. And let’s not forget that you were the one using the German radio back in Tunis.”

“I wondered what you were doing here, Rauff. I take it your clever theory is that ever since leaving Hampton Roads I’ve been crying wolf because I’m a wolf myself, is that it? Well, you’re certainly consistent, I’ll say that for you. Your stupidity looks chronic.”

I retrieved the Hamilton Hotel matchbook from my empty cigarette packet. I had hidden it inside the lining of my jacket.

“Whoever killed Princess Elena also killed Thornton Cole, back in Washington. I found this matchbook in the wastepaper basket beside that plaintext message from the Abwehr.”

“This is underneath the nonexistent radio, right?” said Rauff.

“It’s a little complicated, Agent Rauff, so I’ll speak slowly and in short words even you can understand. Cole was murdered because he stumbled onto a German spy ring. The Schmidts were murdered to help maintain the fiction that Cole had been cruising for homosexual sex-something that a State Department already nervous about losing presidential confidence in the wake of the Sumner Welles scandal was more than happy to see swept under the rug.

“The same man who killed the Schmidts-let’s call him Brutus-also killed his contact here in Cairo and is trying to frame me for it. My guess is that he hopes to clear the way for an attempt on Stalin’s life in Teheran.”

I thumped the table hard with the flat of my hand, which made Donovan jump. I upped the tone. “Look, you’ve got to listen to me. Someone, an American, is going to try to kill Stalin.”

Mike Reilly stirred in his chair. “Oh, there’s no doubt that there’s an assassination plot,” he said coolly. “In fact, the Russians know all about it. But there’s no American involved, Professor. That’s a fantasy. There was a plot to kill the Big Three. You were right about that. Two teams of German parachutists were dropped into the countryside outside Teheran on Monday. Most of them have already been arrested. And the rest are being picked up as we speak.”

I sat back on my chair, flabbergasted. “A parachute team?”

“Yes. They were SS. The same outfit that rescued Mussolini from the Hotel Campo Imperatore in Italy.”

“Skorzeny,” I said dumbly.

“As yet it’s unclear if he’s involved or not,” said Reilly.

“Our last intelligence was that he’s in Paris,” said Donovan. “Of course that could be a feint.”

“As many as a hundred men were dropped into Iran,” continued Reilly. “They were supposed to knock out local radar so that a team of long-range bombers based in the Crimea could attack the British embassy on Churchill’s birthday. When the bombers had done their worst, the two teams were supposed to coordinate a commando attack to kill any survivors. There’s your Operation Wurf, Professor. A renegade SS mission.”

“Renegade? What the hell do you mean by that?”

“It seems that the operation did not have official sanction.”

“But how do we know that?”

“We know it because it was the German government that betrayed their existence to the Soviets,” said Donovan.

I stood up from the table and put my hands on my head. Reilly’s mock-turtle story was beginning to make me feel like Alice in Wonderland. None of this made any sense.

“And why the hell would they do that?” I asked.

Donovan shrugged. “As I told you last Sunday, Professor Mayer. The last thing the Germans want right now is to kill President Roosevelt. For several weeks now our man in Ankara has been conducting secret talks with the German ambassador. I imagine that the Germans want nothing that might risk compromising these peace feelers. You should have paid more attention.”

“None of this explains Thornton Cole, the Schmidts, Brutus-”

“I’d say you’ve got quite enough to worry about right now,” said Donovan. “With the British, I mean. If I were you, Professor, I’d get myself a lawyer. You’re going to need one.”