The Cairo Code (18 page)

“And it's only going to get better,” Christina said with a smile. “The Führer has tremendous plans.”

“Something surprises me. You're an intelligent, seductive woman, but you're not married. Why?”

Christina laughed. “I think I'm what you might call a committed mistress.”

“To whom?”

“The Nazi Party.”

“That surprises me, too. Why would a deputy minister take his female secretary on a trip like this? Unless he's sleeping with her?”

She laughed again. “Hardly. My boss's tendencies lean the other way. But let's just say I'm something more than a secretary.”

There was mystery in her reply, and before Deacon could inquire further, Christina looked towards the Kasr-el-Nil army barracks as a squad of grenadiers went marching smartly through the gates. “Look at that, not a step out of line. They're well-trained soldiers, the British, I'll give them that.”

Deacon almost spat, bile in his reply. “Scum. They act like they're God's gift to the world.”

“You still hate them for what they did to your father?”

“They're arrogant imperialists. Always have been, always will be. I despise them.”

Christina stopped walking, put a hand on his arm, and said casually, “How would you like to work for your Fatherland, Harvey? There's going to be a war, and this time Germany can't make the mistake of losing. We need to plant the seeds of success, have people in place for when the time comes. Sympathizers in every part of the globe who can help our cause.” She looked directly at him. “Britain's going to be our enemy again, and Egypt's her colony, so she's not going to be left out of the conflict.”

Deacon felt the touch on his arm, aware of an intense, pleasant sensation in his groin, and at that moment he wished they hadn't been related. He laughed back. “So that's it? Berlin wants to recruit me as a bloody spy. And who better to do it than someone I know. Crikey, but why me, for pete's sake? What could I do?”

“You fit the bill perfectly. A British citizen, with no apparent connections to the Fatherland, your past hidden behind the veil of adoption. An outwardly loyal citizen of the Crown. You're an ideal candidate. And I have a distinct feeling you could be very useful. Well, what do you say?”

Deacon looked back at Christina Eckart's face, drank in her womanly, handsome figure, knowing he would have done anything for her, then he shivered, remembering his father's last days alive in the camp, fevered and coughing up blood. “What would you have me do?”

There was mischief in her eyes. “First, I want you to take me to bed. Then I want you to come to Berlin.”

•  •  •

Three months later, Deacon arranged a ten-week touring holiday in Europe. He was met off the train at Zurich station, given a false passport, driven across the border into Germany, and taken on the overnight sleeper to Berlin.

At SD Ausland headquarters, the SS intelligence arm to which Christina belonged, he was subjected to a series of rigorous interviews over three days. He was recruited as an agent and immediately began an intensive training course that lasted two solid months. He learned how to operate a radio and communicate in code, how to read maps, avoid surveillance, and gather intelligence. Above all, he was trained to observe. Where were the enemy arsenals, tank and airfield facilities? Where were troops deployed? Artillery? What size, how much, where was it positioned? Railways? What lines were active, what was in the yards and sidings? It was hard work, but it proved an exhilarating experience, and back among his father's people Harvey Deacon felt for the first time in his life that he truly belonged.

He also spent the weekends sleeping with Christina, indulging in even more pleasure than he'd enjoyed in Cairo. It was the first and only time Harvey Deacon had ever felt what passed for passionate love in his life. On their last weekend, as he made love to her, she whispered softly in the darkness, “Do wonderful things for the Führer in Egypt, Harvey. And who knows, maybe someday we can be together?” Deacon went back to Zurich and spent ten days touring Europe to maintain his cover, then returned to Egypt.

On SD instructions and with a draft sent through a Swiss bank, he purchased the Sultan Club outright, expanding the enterprise with a gaming license. When the war finally came, his venture proved to be a hotbed of gossip and information, just as his masters predicted. Once British troops started to arrive in their thousands to fight Rommel, the bars, nightclubs, and red-light districts were the places to which they headed for recreation. There was nothing like drink and women to impress a man into talking, and Deacon kept his ears and eyes open. Soon he had more intelligence material than he could handle, with contacts and unwitting informers in every stratum of society, from lowly army subalterns up to the royal palace itself. What he didn't transmit by radio, he passed on to a clerk at the Spanish embassy who used the diplomatic bag to send it via Madrid to Berlin.

•  •  •

It was after eleven that evening when Deacon drove his black Packard towards Giza, but instead of taking the road west out to the pyramids, he turned south, out along the banks of the Nile, and ten minutes later he reached the villa. Maison Fleuve was large and whitewashed, with shuttered windows, two floors with four bedrooms, and a small overgrown garden surrounded by creeper-clad walls. It stood alone, had its own private river mooring, and was originally built by one of Napoleon's campaign generals to entertain his mistresses. It had been rebuilt several times before it had belonged to Deacon's adoptive parents. He hardly ever used it now, preferring his quarters on the houseboat. Besides, most of the villas in the area were the secluded weekend retreats of the city's wealthy, vacant during the week, and the property hadn't even got a telephone.

He pulled in under the shadows of a cluster of banyan trees in the front garden and stepped out of the car. There was a full moon and he could just make out the dark outline of the great pyramid at Cheops ten miles away, flat fields of sugar cane in between, stretching towards the desert.

He unlocked the door and stepped into the darkened hallway. The villa had no electricity, but a couple of palm-oil lamps stood on the hall table, and he fumbled to light one with a match. He locked the front door behind him and fitted a solid, heavy metal bar into a couple of slots on either side, a precaution he'd installed for added security. No one was going to come through the front entrance easily.

He turned towards another door leading off from the hallway and unlocked it. A flight of stairs led down into darkness. At the bottom of the steps was what had originally been a wine cellar, the ancient racks covered in dust and cobwebs, dozens of wine bottles stored there. But the general had found another use for the
cav
e
: a secret escape route. At the end of the cellar was a short tunnel leading to a metal door, rusting on its hinges.

Deacon unbolted the door, opened it, and a breath of fresh air wafted in. Tall reeds lay beyond, a tiny stone jetty hidden among them, leading out to the river, where there was a small wooden rowing boat complete with an engine, covered with tarpaulin. He stepped back to the bottom of the stairs. There was a single chair and a cupboard. He unlocked the cupboard door and removed the radio transmitter hidden inside, ignoring the loaded Luger nine-millimeter pistol beside it, then ran out the wire to the aerial mounted on the tunnel's exterior wall, connected the battery, switched on, and sat in the chair. The small green light glowed on the console, but he still had another ten minutes to wait before the transmission began.

What had happened at Hassan's apartment nagged at his mind. Killing Evir, the burglar, had been a messy business, but the man might have talked and that would have jeopardized everything. Even though he'd managed to survive four years of war without detection, Deacon knew the Allies were not fools. From this point on they'd be looking, and looking hard, reason enough for him to be extra careful.

Especially now that Berlin had its proof that Roosevelt and Churchill would be visiting Cairo. With the war going badly for Germany, he had a feeling the information would almost certainly elicit some sort of response—why else would Berlin have urgently wanted confirmation, unless Schellenberg intended to do something about it?

But from his report last night, Berlin was also aware of the problem of the safe house being discovered, and he awaited their reply. When the radio had warmed up, he tuned in. A relay station in Rome passed on his messages to SD headquarters, and once he heard the call sign he readied his notepad. The signal was longer than usual this time, and it was over twenty minutes later when he heard the letters AR, meaning the message had finished, then came
“Good luck”
and
“Please acknowledge,”
and lastly K for over. He replied with a series of Rs, to indicate he had received the transmission, and then he decoded.

When he was done, he stared at the message. The enormity of it all was almost too much for him to take in. His mouth went dry. He felt his bowels turn to water and a cold sweat broke out on the back of his neck. He could hardly believe what he was reading, and he whistled aloud.

“Well, blow me,” Deacon said, smiling excitedly to himself, “it looks like we're really in business.”

•  •  •

At that same moment, Hassan was in the crowded back streets of Ezbekiya, a chaotic district full of lodging houses and greasy restaurants, teeming with Arabs and European refugees.

The Imperial Hotel looked dilapidated, set in the middle of a row of similar cheap hotels and decaying tenement buildings with peeling shutters and cracked exterior walls. He had stayed here before, when he first returned to Cairo after crossing the Allied lines. This time, he had carefully waited in an alleyway across the street for almost the entire evening to make sure the hotel wasn't being watched and it looked safe to enter, before he went up the steps into the threadbare lobby.

A stoutly built man, very overweight, who walked as if his feet were precious, waddled up to the counter, munching fresh dates. He wore a fez and a loose shabby suit flecked with cigarette ash, his legs under strain, his heavy cheeks puffing air. He barely glanced at his customer's face. “We're full.”

“Cousin Tarik.”

The man paled when he recognized Hassan, quickly gestured for him to join him in his private office. He looked aghast at the swollen face. “What happened to you?”

“The army is looking for me. I need somewhere safe to hide.”

“What did you do?”

“I may have killed a British soldier.”

Tarik smiled. “I have the room you used before. You'll be safe there.”

“You have my gratitude, Tarik.”

The man grunted, as if thanks were unnecessary. “We are of the same blood, with the same enemy.”

The room was on the third floor, small and bare, with just a single bed, worn sheets, a cracked mirror hanging above a chipped washbasin and jug. It looked like a large, converted storage cupboard. Tarik was out of breath after the climb and unlocked the door with a special key he kept in his pocket. He pointed to a small, round electric buzzer above the door, barely noticeable because it had long ago been painted over with the same cream color as the walls, stained yellow by years of tobacco smoke. “You remember the warning signal?”

Hassan nodded. Tarik had told him about the alarm button under his office desk.
Once for caution. Twice to get out.

“Anything you need, tell me,” Tarik wheezed.

“Tomorrow, I will need you to shave me, and cut my hair. I will give you money to buy me a suit of secondhand clothes.”

“It is wise to disguise yourself,” Tarik answered simply. “Remember, the room is very private. It isn't listed on the register, and the staff have no key. To come and go discreetly, use the fire escape at the end of the hall. No one should see you if you're careful. I bid you goodnight, cousin.”

They kissed, Tarik gently grazing the injured jaw, and then Hassan was alone. He undressed, lay in the darkness, cradling his throbbing cheek in his hand, his tongue licking at the two tender hollows in his gums where his teeth had been, his mind boiling with thoughts of revenge.

Of one thing he was certain. No matter what Deacon said, the American intelligence officer would pay with his life.

Weaver dropped a thick batch of files on his desk with a solid thump, took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and went to work.

The files dealt with Axis sympathizers, at least the ones GHQ knew about. With the Afrika Corps' defeat, all the known German agents in Egypt had been apprehended, but the very fact that any V-men—
Vertrauensmanner,
the German term for agents—had operated in the country was hardly surprising. Egyptians had long been pro-German, and scores of Nazi agents had been in place for as long as five years before the war, furnishing their masters with a steady flow of information, much of it of importance.

Weaver was familiar with the file on the most notorious. In 1942, the Abwehr put a spy ashore from a U-boat off the coast of Libya. His name was John Eppler, born in Alexandria of a German father and Egyptian mother, and with him he brought a radio and a suitcase full of expertly forged sterling five- and one-pound notes. He was guided across the desert, a journey of over seventeen hundred miles, by a Hungarian-born explorer named Count Almaszy, and eventually made his way to Cairo. In the guise of a wealthy young Arab, Eppler rented a luxurious Nile houseboat, lived a champagne lifestyle, and used a number of alluring women to try to wheedle top-secret information from unsuspecting Allied officers. With a codebook based on Daphne du Maurier's
Rebecca,
he sent his intelligence messages to one of Rommel's listening posts until GHQ eventually caught up, after tracing the forged banknotes back to him.