Authors: The Sands of Sakkara (html)
'But it seems an odd coincidence.
He was about the same age and had the same name as Haider.'
'He also had papers in the name of
Hans Meyer, I believe.'
I nodded. 'A contact I know in the
told me they found old identity documents in that name hidden at the flat.'
'I suppose you heard that many
Germans came to
work on NASA's secret rocket
programme
at
Helwan
, out in the desert. There are still a few of them
alive, I believe.
They're old men now, too old to
return home, living out their last days anonymously, in squalid flats in places
like Imbaba. In many cases, when they first arrived in
identities or aliases, to try and cover their tracks. I think when the facts
are finally known you'll find the old man at the morgue was one of them, and
that the name Johann Haider was an alias. There's nothing remarkable about the
name - it's common enough in
So is Hans Meyer. I'd place a bet that both identities were probably covers the
dead man had used over the years.' Weaver paused.
'You still look doubtful, Carney.'
I shrugged. 'I guess it's because
I'm a journalist, but I don't like unfinished stories. I would have liked to
have known once and for all if Haider was still alive.'
'You mean you'd like to find out
what happened to his father's collection?'
'Oddly enough, if I'm to be
honest, I think it's Jack Haider himself who intrigues me more.’
Weaver shook his head. 'For all I
know he could be long dead. There aren't too many of us old survivors still
around these days. The flowers on the graves of his wife and son once a month
could easily have been arranged to continue after his death. It's just the kind
of touch I would have expected of Jack.
A pity if he's dead, though. I
would have liked to have seen him again, at least one more time.' There was
genuine regret in Weaver's voice, an almost tangible sadness. 'But everything
that happened was all such a long time ago. What was it some writer once said?
"The older I get, the more it seems that little by little I drift away
from the shores of my past, until they become just a far-off, distant
memory." It certainly seems that way.'
'But you recall it very well.'
Weaver hesitated, then slowly
reached into his pocket, took out his wallet, and handed something to me.
'That's because I have this to remind me.'
It was a very old, faded
black-and-white photograph, kept preciously in a protective plastic cover, the
paper wrinkled and cracked. Three young people stood among the tombs near the
Step pyramid, their faces healthy and tanned, their arms around one another's
waists as they smiled out at the camera. I recognized Harry Weaver at once, as
a young man. Beside him stood a striking woman. She was very beautiful, her
features finely chiseled, her blond hair bleached from the sun. Next to her was
a handsome man, a smile etched on his face. Jack Haider and Rachel Stern.
I stared down at the photograph
for a long time, the images suddenly real, faces to go with the story, then
silently handed it back, stuck for something to say. There was really nothing I
could think of.
Weaver returned the photograph to
his wallet. 'I'm glad we talked, Carney. If ever you're back Stateside, I'm
always happy to see visitors, so do look me up some time. There are so few old
friends still around these days - they seem to pass away with monotonous
regularity.'
'I'll do that.'
'Well, goodnight, or should I say
good morning.’
'Good morning, sir.'
He entered the elevator, the doors
closed, and he was gone.
I walked back to my apartment but
couldn't sleep. For some reason, I kept going over Weaver's story in my mind. I
sat there restlessly, drinking coffee, watching the sun come up, thinking about
everything Weaver had told me, until a little later I got dressed and went down
to the street and walked towards the deserted Kasr-el-Nil Bridge. When a
solitary taxi drove past, I hailed it. The driver looked surprised to see a
customer at such an early hour.
'Where to, sir?'
'
He didn't register astonishment
that someone would want to visit the famous site at dawn, but simply shrugged
as I climbed in.
We drove out along the Pyramids
Road before turning south, out into the green Nile countryside and along the
canal, the shabby villages along the way deserted, hardly a sinner in sight,
and then we came to the ruins of the fabled city of Memphis, and at last
Sakkara, that awesome monument to a long-dead king, loomed ahead.
It looked a very beautiful place
just after dawn, truly glorious, sky and earth the colour of fiery sandstone, a
tangerine sunrise washing over the oldest pyramid in
where the most fertile land on earth, the lush
There was a hut where the tourist police checked the incoming traffic, but
there was no one about so early in the morning, and I told the driver to carry
on, up the steep winding road to the site.
When we reached the gravel carpark
below the entrance, I got out.
'Wait here, please.'
I walked up the hill. It was still
cool in the desert after the freezing cold of night, and the place was desolate
- no hordes of tourists, or annoying camel drivers and guides offering their
services. I walked among the ruins and stood in the pale shadows of the
splendour of Zoser's pyramid. There was a sign near by, saying that an
international archaeological team was at work, another dig in progress, but I
saw no one, so I went to sit on one of the stone blocks at the base.
There were faded initials carved
into the stepped layers of ancient brown rock, hundreds and hundreds of them,
scratched and chiseled by visitors and victors over countless centuries.
Primitive marks left by Roman
legionnaires, ciphers scraped into the weathered stone by Napoleon's conquering
armies, and endless forgotten memorials to lovers, long dead. I searched for a
long time, brushing away sand, moving from stone to stone, the rock so badly
eroded in places that it was impossible to read some of the inscriptions, until
finally a chill went through me as I found what I was looking for, the letters
so badly worn I had to trace their faded outline with the tip of my finger.
But there they were. RS, HW,
JH
. 1939.
I thought of that summer when
Harry Weaver had first come to
thought of Jack Haider and Rachel Stern, and all the dead names from the past,
their bodies long gone to dust, with their passions and pain, hates and
intrigues, and I thought how none of it mattered any more. Above all, I
wondered if Jack Haider was still alive. He'd be a very old man now, but really
it was no use wondering.
Like Weaver had said, little by
little we drift from the shores of the past, until they become just a distant
memory. All that remained of the truth was a worn old photograph, and these
neglected initials chiseled in stone. But for me, they were truth enough.
I stood, dusted my hands, and
walked back down the hill.
I never discovered what happened
to Franz Haider's collection, and I never saw Harry Weaver again. He passed
away almost four months later in a
York
The prominent newspapers all had obituaries.
He was to be buried in a local
church cemetery in his home town, where he and Jack Haider had spent their
childhood together.
I was back in
to hire a car and make the long drive upstate to pay my final respects. There
was a bad storm, I was delayed, and by the time I arrived the funeral had
ended. There were dozens of mourners, and more than a few familiar White House
faces. Rain drifted in across the cemetery in sheets, and it didn't take long
for the crowd to disperse back to their cars as the sound of thunder rolled
above us, and then I was alone.
Beyond the white-painted wooden
church, on a distant rise, I could see what had once been the site of the
residence belonging to Jack Haider's family. It was long gone now, a shopping
mall and a parking lot in its place. For some reason I thought about two small
boys who had once played there and become friends, until passion and
circumstance had made them enemies, and their love for a woman had almost
destroyed them both.
As I stood there, drenched by the
rain, I let my eyes wander over the grave. It was covered with wreaths and
bouquets of every description. More than a few were from the Pentagon and the
veteran associations, and there were even two from former American Presidents.
But among the wreaths and flowers
I noticed a solitary snow white lily, lying at the base of the black marble
slab. A cold shiver ran through me. I picked up the envelope, read the plain
white card inside, the handwriting frail and scratched, but the words
unmistakable.
They said:
lA
promise kept. Jack.'
As ever, no book is written
without help, and of the many people who assisted my research I would
especially like to mention James H. Griffith, former Secret Service agent to
President Roosevelt, who experienced the Cairo conference in 1943 at first
hand; Secret Service archivist Mike Sampson, and H. Terrence
Samway
, Assistant Director, Office of Government Liaison
and Public Affairs, Washington, for their kind help in providing archival
material; Ted
Allbeury
, author, and Steven Frank, of
the Middle East Services Group, for their much-valued advice on intelligence
matters. John Hackett, a true English gentleman, with more stories to tell than
any writer could hope to hear in a lifetime; and
Samir
Raafat
, author and historian, for his expert
knowledge of wartime Cairo, and for the courtesy and kindness he extended to me
during my research in Egypt.
The Sands of Sakkara is a work of
fiction tempered with a measure of truth, and any errors - historical,
intended, or otherwise - are solely mine. That the Nazis intended to assassinate
President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill during the series of important
Allied conferences that took place in the
The Sphinx mission is loosely
based in part on Operation Long Jump, a daring top-secret plan conceived by
Heinrich Himmler and Walter Schellenberg, after the infamous Nazi spy in
Turkey, Cicero, provided the information - stolen from the safe of the British
ambassador - that the American President and British Prime Minister were to visit
Cairo, and then Teheran, for secret talks.
p$«p / the SD and the to pinpoint
the exact
aen
the final stage of the patched two
plane-loads of
i
being to storm the conference
xd
Churchill - the principal target jnt. Though it came
perilously close, but failed virtually at the last minute, an agent revealed
the conspiracy. The SS was to have guided down the aircraft, and a hidden in an
ancient tomb, was destroyed, rest of the Luftwaffe transports of SS troops
being shot, and the second forced to turn back. Until the remaining
infiltrators had been killed or captured, President Roosevelt was hastily moved
to a secret location by his Secret Service team.
So much of what happened during
those dark, intriguing and exciting days of the Second World War is veiled by
the clouds of time and distance. Old intelligence hands fade away, and take
untold secrets with them to the grave. Whether Sphinx ever really came close to
changing the course of world history will forever remain a mystery.