Glenn Meade (43 page)

'I'm well able to look after
myself 'So I've noticed.'

'I'm also beginning to think I'm
your good-luck charm.' She half smiled and leaned over, kissed him briefly on
the lips.

Something sparked in him, and he
responded, drawing her close, feeling the rise of her breasts against his chest
through her cotton blouse as she suddenly moved into his arms.

He smiled. 'And what the devil was
that for?'

'Does there have to be a reason?'

'No, but I think there might be.'

'Take me with you. Please? I'd
feel safer, rather than staying here. And I can help you find the passageway a
lot quicker.'

'I guess I never could say no to a
beautiful woman.'

That same afternoon, Achmed Farnad
was in the barn, working feverishly, sweat running down his face. He had the
trapdoor open and he grabbed the Luger pistol, then hauled out the radio and
battery.

Two truck-loads of British troops
had swept into the village, were searching every house and hovel. There was no
point tempting providence. The best thing to do was bury the radio somewhere in
the desert, and get rid of the gun.

Mafouz had the donkey and cart
waiting, and Achmed hefted the radio on to the cart, then the battery, and
hurriedly covered them with old sackcloth and some scrap metal. 'You know what
to do, Mafouz. Be careful, my son. Quickly, now!'

As the boy led the donkey out,
Achmed saw his wife hurrying towards them, chickens scattering in her path.

'Achmed! The soldiers are
coming-!'

Achmed's blood turned to ice.
Pursuing her across the yard was a British officer and half a dozen of his men.
Behind them was Wafa, the crabby old midwife, being helped by two more
soldiers. The officer had his revolver out, and he led them into the barn. Wafa
pointed an accusing finger. 'That's him. He's the one!'

'Traitorous bitch!' Achmed spat.
In his panic, he realized to his horror that he still had the Luger in his
hand. Before he had a chance to toss it away, one of the soldiers screamed,
'The sodding bastard's got a gun!'

A rifle shot cracked, a terrible
pain blossomed in Achmed's side, and he clutched at his wound and keeled over.
His wife and son screamed, and were held back as the troops covered him with
their weapons.

'Get a medic!' the officer roared.
'We want him alive.'

Achmed was still conscious as the
soldiers rushed forward to give him first aid. Then he saw the officer pull the
sackcloth from the cart and toss aside the metal junk, revealing the radio
underneath. 'Achmed Farnad, I'm arresting you on suspicion of aiding and
abetting enemy agents.'

Captain Willi Neumann was unhappy.

A small man, broad and muscular,
the son of a
Hamburg
docker, his ruddy twenty-six-year-old face looked aged before its time. Unlike
his father and three generations before him who had succumbed to the lure of
the sea, he'd been bitten by the flying bug and joined the Luftwaffe at
seventeen. With three tours of duty in Russia flying Junkers transports behind
him, in all kinds of weather imaginable and with Soviet fighter pilots and flak
crews constantly doing their utmost to blast him out of the skies, Neumann had
possessed the Devil's own luck, suffering nothing more than a minor shrapnel
wound in his left thigh that had barely needed a half-dozen stitches.

That afternoon at Practica di Mare
aerodrome, he wondered if his luck was going to change for the worse. It was
bad enough having to fly over enemy territory and land on enemy soil, but his
latest problem only added to his troubles. As the senior flying officer, he was
in charge of the two crews - four Luftwaffe flight officers including himself-
manning the two Dakotas detailed to fly Skorzeny and his men on their mission
to
Egypt
.
He'd worked with Skorzeny once before, dropping him and two dozen of his men on
a mission behind Soviet lines in the dead of winter, and was quite certain the
colonel was raving mad, even if after Mussolini's daring rescue he was
considered the golden haired boy in
Berlin
.
Neumann didn't know exactly what the hell the colonel was getting up to in
Cairo
dressing his men and
himself in American uniforms; his own briefings had been confined to the flying
end of things and the rest wasn't his business. But the weather was - and the
safety of his crews.

He held the forecast sheets in his
hand as he stood outside the hangar with Skorzeny, a cool wind blowing in from
the sea, less than a kilometer away, the sun still warm and bright but starting
to drop, twilight beginning to creep in. Back inside the hangar, his own crews
and Skorzeny's paratroops were waiting restlessly, men of action who found
inactivity the worst fate of all. 'It looks like we may have a problem,
Colonel.'

Skorzeny stood before him, his
massive size dwarfing Neumann.

'Explain.'

'The reports indicate there's a
risk of very heavy fog all along this part of the Italian coast, over the
entire twenty-four hours to come, and it could be on its way very soon. If the
predictions are accurate, it may be really bad - treacherous, in fact. Which
for us means poor visibility. And poor visibility, as you know, can hamper
take-off and landing.'

'I'm not concerned with landing,'
Skorzeny answered brusquely.

'Only take-off, Neumann. Surely it
can still be done even if the fog's really bad?'

Neumann shrugged. 'Any of my crews
could take off pretty much blind, that's not the problem. And we're all
reasonably familiar with the Dakota, having been trained on it at the Luftwaffe
special operations unit in
Berlin
.
In fact, two of the crew flew them while working for commercial airlines before
the war. But it's really a question of safety and risk. If we have very bad fog
here at the aerodrome we could find ourselves in dire trouble, on or after
take-off, if either aircraft suffered engine failure or a serious technical
problem.'

'But surely control tower could
help guide us down by radio if we had to return to the airfield?'

'That's still no guarantee of a
safe landing, if conditions are bad. There's such a thing as an aircraft's
operating limits, and they apply as much to weather and visibility. We might
not be able to see the runway lights, let alone the runway, and that kind of
thing spells nothing but danger. I wouldn't like to take the risk of trying to
land again in dense fog with near-zero visibility, not with two aircraft fully
laden with fuel, men and munitions. It would be insane. And there's nowhere
else we could try to land in these parts. South of
Rome
, the Allies control the airfields and
even there they'll have the same weather, if the forecasts are to be believed.'

Skorzeny ran a massive hand over
his face and sighed, then stared out at the coast with narrowed eyes, as if
trying to discern the weather threat for himself. 'Nothing can be allowed to
stop us, Neumann. Not even the likelihood of heavy fog. The signal I received
from Berlin expressly says we're on alert. Which could mean taking off at a
moment's notice if we get the word. That's unlikely until darkness falls, I
know, but that's how it stands.'

'But it's the weather we're
talking about, Colonel. We can defy nature only at our peril. If anything
should go wrong, the lives of your men could be at serious risk, and those of
my crews too.'

Till defy anything that gets in
the way of this mission, Captain, nature included. We do what we must, and we
go when we have to. Fog or no fog, I want those aircraft off the ground if and
when the time comes.'

'But the safety of the crew and
passengers-'

'You'll do as you're ordered,
Neumann,' Skorzeny snapped bluntly, and with that he turned smartly and strode
away.

Weaver arrived at Sanson's office
to find him talking to a thin faced Egyptian with a hook nose. His dark, hooded
eyes looked faintly sinister, his skin pockmarked with old acne scars. He
carried a tattered leather briefcase and wore a pale, short-sleeved tropical
suit. Something about the man looked oddly familiar, but Weaver couldn't recall
where he had seen him before.

Sanson made the introductions.
'I'd like you to meet Captain Yosef Arkhan.
Cairo
Homicide.'

Weaver remembered the name. The
captain in charge of Mustapha Evir's murder investigation.

'A pleasure to meet you,
Lieutenant-Colonel Weaver,'

Arkhan said in perfect English,
and shook Weaver's hand.

'You mind telling me what this is
about?' Weaver asked Sanson.

'Yosef and I go back a long way.
Before serving with Homicide, he used to work for the secret police - the
Mukhabarat.'

Weaver glanced over at Arkhan.
With his hooded eyes and menacing looks, the captain still had the look of a
secret policeman. 'I don't get it.'

'You will, and very soon. Take a
seat.' Sanson gestured to the chairs, then nodded to Arkhan. 'Tell him, Yosef-'

The Egyptian removed two worn
manila files from his briefcase, and said politely to Weaver, 'You were a
member of an international archaeological team at
Sakkara
in '39.'

'What of it?'

Arkhan opened one of the files,
and read. 'Harold Weaver.

American citizen, born in
New York
, a graduate of
engineering.

Father an estate caretaker - Thomas
Weaver - employed by a wealthy German-American family named Haider. Unmarried,
but appears to have a platonic relationship with one Rachel Stern, German
citizen, a member of same archaeological team.

No known vices, apart from
occasional alcohol. Mr Weaver appears a bona ride citizen of his country, and
not engaged in any espionage activity.' Arkhan closed the file and looked up.
'I could go on, there are lots more petty details, but I'm afraid they're
really not very interesting.'

Weaver stared angrily at the
Egyptian. 'You were watching me.'

Arkhan shrugged. 'My men and I
watched many of the archaeological teams who came to our country. I'm sure you
know the nickname by which the secret police are known - the Red Eye. The eye
that never sleeps. We observed not only your team, but many other foreign
visitors - anyone who interested us or we had our suspicions about. There was a
long list - German and Italian oil workers and company executives, American
professors at our universities. Even diplomats.' He paused.

'In fact, our paths crossed once,
four years ago. Oddly enough, it was in the grounds of the American residency.
The occasion was a farewell party.'

Weaver felt stunned, remembering
where he had seen Arkhan before. 'I was on the veranda with Rachel Stern.

You were watching us.'

Arkhan gave a slight nod. 'You're
observant, Lieutenant Colonel Weaver, and possessed of a good memory. Few
people could recall a fleeting incident that happened so long ago.'

'Why were you watching us?'

'Not only you and the young lady.
We had an interest in quite a number of the party guests that night.'

'You didn't answer my question.'

Arkhan hesitated, and Sanson said,
'Tell him, Yosef 'Some of the people we observed during that period were
entirely innocent. Others were definitely not what they pretended to be. They
were spies. Italian, German, even American.

In extreme cases, we quietly
expelled such people. But among the Germans at
Sakkara
,
several especially interested us. In particular, Rachel Stern and her parents.'

'Why?'

'Because we strongly suspected
they were German agents.

Had they not left the country when
they did, they would certainly have been arrested.'

Weaver looked at Sanson and said
incredulously, 'I can't believe this.'

'Let him finish. Go on, Yosef.'

'The young lady was watched
discreetly for a considerable time. On different occasions, she was seen near
military installations, and in the same company as a number of my countrymen
suspected of working for the Nazi intelligence services. Her rather was also
conducting several archaeological digs in secret - an illegal act in itself.
But I believe the true purpose of his work was much more dangerous.'

'What do you mean?’

Arkhan glanced at Sanson before
replying. 'We felt certain the Germans would eventually invade North Africa,
and that Egypt would be their principal target. We believed they had plans to
store arms and munitions, supplies and communications equipment in secret
dumps, to be used to arm an Egyptian fifth column, which would stir internal unrest
once war started. After all, there was, and still is, considerable support for
the Nazi cause among the officer class and the general population. We think
Professor Stern's job was to locate suitable archaeological sites around Cairo,
which would have been used as secret supply dumps.'

'Did you find hard evidence of
that?'

Arkhan hesitated. 'No, but we were
certain-'

'These people Rachel Stern met,'
Weaver interrupted. 'The meetings could have been entirely innocent. She could
have simply bumped into the wrong people at the wrong time - or socialised with
them unknowingly. Isn't that possible?'

'Perhaps, but I don't believe so-'

'Oh, come on, Captain. I can't
accept the Sterns were spies.

How many times do I have to say
it? The professor hated the Nazis, and his wife was Jewish.'

'His hatred of the Nazis was most
certainly a cover story. And his wife's race was nothing more than a rumour we
couldn't prove.' Arkhan paused. 'We also suspected this other German, Haider,
was a spy. However, apart from his closeness to Miss Stern, we couldn't be
absolutely certain. But we were positive about one thing.'

'What?'

'At least four of the people in
your group at Sakkara were Nazi agents. More importantly, one of them was
arrested on spying charges several months after the war began. He confessed
that the top Nazi agent in the Middle East was operating in Cairo at the time
of your dig - under the code name Nightingale.'

Arkhan looked steadily at Weaver.
'I believe Nightingale was none other than Rachel Stern.'..

Weaver almost laughed. 'On what
basis?'

'Instinct. Nightingale was
undoubtedly the most brilliant agent the Germans had. Catching her in the act
proved impossible. She was far too clever. So in the end, instincts were all we
had to go by.'

Sanson said, 'Well, Weaver?'

'I don't buy it. You can't condemn
someone on instinct alone. You need hard facts.'

Arkhan offered across the second
file. 'Perhaps we didn't have irrefutable evidence, as you say. But instinct is
often the best attribute an intelligence officer can possess. We kept a dossier
that detailed the lady's meetings and the places she went.

Perhaps you'd care to read it for
yourself? It might help you understand our suspicions.'

Weaver ignored the file. 'I don't
need to. You know as well as I do even the best-intentioned intelligence report
can lead to false conclusions. Didn't you ever have an intuition about
something that was wrong?'

'Of course, but-'

'But nothing. This time you got it
wrong. You even got it wrong about me.'

'Pardon?'

'I was born in
Boston
,
not
New York
.'