The Cairo Code (19 page)

Sympathizers were more common than actual agents. These were people whose pro-German support was strongly suspected. They ranged from waiters, bargirls and hotel doormen, belly dancers and taxi drivers, to minor diplomats, neutral businessmen, Egyptian army officers with pro-fascist leanings, and even senior members of the Egyptian government. Some were nationalists—Muslim Brotherhood extremists or patriots, prepared to help any enemy rid their country of the British—while others simply did it for the excitement or the money. Many more sympathizers were known to exist among the hundred-thousand-strong foreign community residing in Cairo, some of whom were war refugees or displaced persons, either planted by the Nazis or willingly pro-German.

During the “flap” of spring and summer 1942, when the British feared defeat, they had rounded up and interned anyone suspected of working for the Axis. But scores of suspects had escaped the net because of lack of any reasonable evidence, or simply disappeared before they could be arrested, and it was these files that Weaver went through one by one. It was all very well for General Clayton to tell him he had to track down the Arab spy. But what kind of person was he, how was he masquerading, and what was his modus operandi? Still, he was determined to find the man who had tried to kill him. Four hours later he hadn't got through all the files but had picked out a half-dozen suspected Nazi supporters—five Egyptians and a Turkish businessman—whose descriptions vaguely resembled the Arab.

There was a knock on the door and Helen Kane came in, carrying an enamel mug of coffee. “I thought you could do with this.”

“Thanks. Haven't you finished your duty yet?”

“I was just about to leave. Feeling any better?”

Weaver had ignored the doctor's advice to rest up, and was paying the price—his neck felt as if it were on fire. “Not much.”

She hesitated, then said tentatively, “If it's any consolation I could cook you dinner tonight after you finish up here.”

She smiled. “I forgot, you have to stick to liquids. Still, I'm sure I could rustle up something. Even a drink, if that's allowed?”

“That's very kind of you, Helen. You're sure it's not any trouble?”

“If it was, I wouldn't have asked. I'll give you the address of my flat.”

As she finished writing the address and handed it to him, the door opened again and Sanson came in, a folder under his arm. He noticed her hand the slip of paper to Weaver and reddened slightly. “Not gone yet, Helen?”

“I was just leaving.”

•  •  •

When Helen Kane had gone, Sanson said sharply, “Well, have you had any luck, Weaver?”

“Have a look at these.”

Sanson took the folder from under his arm, sat in one of the chairs, and studied the files Weaver handed him. “At a guess, they're probably harmless enough. Most Arab sympathizers are bloody useless to Berlin at the best of times. All talk and no action. Still, we'd better pull them in and have a look at their faces.”

Weaver had already questioned the guards on duty at the residency. Nothing unusual was logged in their shift reports, but the duty officer admitted that on Wednesday evening, about nine, he thought he had heard a noise like a door banging in one of the ground-floor rooms. He personally searched the entire building but found nothing amiss. It was something but nothing, Weaver reflected. “What about the hotels and lodging houses?”

“We're still checking, but it's going to take at least another day or two before we get through them all. So far, we've drawn a blank. As for the tenement landlord, according to his wife he's in Alex on business. He's not due back for a couple of days, but we'll try and locate him in the meantime.” Sanson picked up the folder he'd brought, and Weaver noticed that the cover was marked in red lettering:
Top Secret.
“However, I'd like you to take a look at something.”

“What is it?”

“A record of decrypted and untraced transmissions that Signals have picked up over the last year.”

Weaver knew that the British “Y” section at GHQ and the U.S. Army Signal Corps unit based in the former Italian colony of Eritrea scanned the airwaves nightly, when most agent transmissions were made. They recorded everything on punched tape, and signals originating in North Africa that could not be accounted for by any of the military services were assumed to be messages from spies, which were then sent to London and Washington for the boffins to work on.

Sanson opened the folder and showed Weaver a radio intercept about troop reinforcements in Cairo. “It was made about a year ago, from an agent code-named Besheeba our monitoring boys stumbled upon. They call his transmissions the Cairo Code, because they've usually transmitted from somewhere within the city, and they haven't been able to decipher them.”

“What's so interesting about all this?”

“Apart from the fact we haven't caught Besheeba yet, you'll see a rather remarkable coincidence in one of the signals. But have a look at these other ones first.” He showed Weaver two other radio messages recorded six months earlier. This time, they gave details of the morale of British and American troops stationed in the city, and the arrival of New Zealand replacements in Maadi, a Cairo suburb.

“Is any of this stuff true?”

“The information's faultless. He's not a low-grade collector of rumor and gossip—he's definitely a highly trained pro. Look at his messages. Terse but detailed. Signals have picked him up a couple of dozen times in the last eighteen months, but he usually keeps it short, which makes it difficult for us to get a fix on his transmitter.”

“Do we know anything about him?”

“He provides excellent information, probably lives in Cairo and comes into contact with military personnel, and signs himself Besheeba. But apart from all that, sweet nothing.”

“What about this coincidence you mentioned?”

Sanson rubbed his scarred jaw. “Now that's where it definitely becomes interesting.” He handed Weaver one more intercept. “It was picked up last Thursday morning, just after midnight.”

This time the message was long and just a series of unintelligible letters and numbers. Weaver looked at Sanson. “I don't get it. It's still in code.”

“Shortly after Eppler was caught, the Germans tightened up their operation and Besheeba's code changed. It seems he probably switched to one-time pads which are impossible to decipher. Still, that's not the point. Besheeba doesn't transmit that often, and when he does, the information is usually important. We reckon Evir was murdered sometime last Wednesday evening. Not long after, Y Section picked up this transmission. I'm not for a moment saying we've linked the two events, though it's an interesting coincidence, wouldn't you say?”

“But you think Besheeba transmitted the signal?”

“I'd bet my nuts on it.”

“Why?”

“Not only did he use one of the same frequencies, but every Morse key operator has what the signals boys call a signature. It's a kind of individual style, if you like—a distinct way in which the Morse key is handled. Heavy or light, fast or slow, there's always a certain tempo and emphasis unique to the person working the key, so much so that trained signals personnel listening in can usually differentiate one sender from another, no problem. And the chap who picked up the signal last Thursday morning is an experienced fellow who had heard Besheeba transmit on many occasions before. He knows his signature style, and swears it was him—he thinks we've got another Cairo Code.”

“Do you reckon Besheeba might be our Arab friend?”

“God only knows, but I suppose it's a possibility. Like I said, he's a pro, and by my estimation there can't be that many thoroughbred Nazi spies left in Cairo.” Sanson looked up. It was past nine o'clock and dark outside. He put the intercepts back in the folder and stood. “OK, we'd better call it a day. Let's meet back here at six a.m. You can carry on with the files.”

“What about you?”

“There's a pile of intelligence reports we captured when Jerry evacuated Tunis. They're stored in one of our depositories over in the Ezbekiya district. We haven't sorted through them all yet, mainly because there hasn't been much of an urgent need since Rommel got his comeuppance. My German's reasonable enough, but I've arranged for a couple of translators to help me have a look through them, first thing tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“To see if there's any reference to Besheeba.”

“You think that's likely?”

Sanson shrugged. “Right now it's all I can think of. It's always possible that Rommel's people knew about him, and were picking up his signals direct. It makes some kind of sense. At that time, the Germans were on a roll, and they needed their intelligence information fast—routing it through Berlin could have cost them valuable time.”

“When I get done here tomorrow, and if you don't mind company, I'd like to come along.”

Sanson raised his good eye. “Are you looking for a medal, Weaver?”

Weaver reached for his coat. “No, just a dangerous German spy.”

•  •  •

Helen Kane's apartment was on Ibrahim Pasha Street. Weaver showered and changed back at his villa, his neck still throbbing, but he was trying to avoid taking the morphine pills until the pain became unbearable. He hailed a cab in the street outside and took it as far as the Ezbekiya Gardens, where he decided he needed air and some exercise and would walk the rest of the way.

Taking his time, he strolled past the Birka, the notorious red-light district. It was a busy place, riotous with noise and sound, and patrolled by the military police. The area was bounded by white signs with a black “X,” denoting that it was out of bounds to all ranks, but that didn't deter the soldiers. Young girls and middle-aged women leaned over little balconies, cooling themselves with paper fans. Most were Egyptian, some were dark-skinned Nubian and Sudanese, and they smiled and waved as they offered their bodies to the men passing below, while their Arab pimps solicited for business. “Hello, my friend, you like that girl? Very nice, very clean. Special price.”

Weaver waved them away. On occasion, he'd come to the Birka for comfort, as did most of the officers and men, single or married, but the experience always left him feeling empty afterwards. The truth was, if he cared to admit it to himself, in over four years he'd never got over Rachel Stern. It had seemed the one moment in his life when he had truly wanted someone, felt deeply in love, and everything afterwards was something infinitely less than that. He put the thought from his mind as he walked, reminded himself he was looking forward to seeing Helen Kane.

As always in the streets, officers and enlisted men had an endless obstacle course to contend with. Apart from pimps, they were pestered by cripples, vendors, and pitiful begging women with crying babies, their faces covered with dirt and flies. Urchin shoeshine boys ran alongside anyone who looked remotely foreign, pleading for business. A thought struck him: What chance did they have of finding an enemy agent in such a swarming, disordered city?

Five minutes later he reached Helen Kane's apartment. It turned out to be a neat and tidy two-bedroom affair, with a tiny kitchen. There was a drinks trolley with a couple of bottles and some glasses. When she let him in, she was still in uniform.

“Jenny, my flatmate, has gone to Alexandria for a week.” She explained that the young woman she shared with was a typist at U.S. military headquarters. “She met an RAF captain who swept her off her feet. Help yourself to a drink. I was just going to shower and change.”

When she left the room, Weaver poured himself a Scotch. The fire in his neck had become irritating, and he swallowed two morphine pills, washed them down, and looked around the apartment. Lots of books lined the shelves, mostly on Egypt, and some novels, and he noticed a photograph of an attractive man in naval uniform. The room was hot, and when Helen Kane came back she opened one of the windows. She wore a dark blue skirt and a white blouse and her hair was down around her shoulders. It was the first time Weaver had seen her out of uniform—even at the party in Shepheard's she had been in khaki—and the change was remarkable.

“What's wrong?” she asked.

“You look different, that's all.”

“You mean I don't look like an intelligence officer anymore?”

“I meant you look . . . very pretty.”

She blushed. “Thank you.” She poured herself a drink and came to sit beside him. “Do you think we'll find this Arab spy?”

“We've got to. There's no telling what he might be up to. He has a radio. With a radio he could be in contact with Berlin, or with a listening post that relays his messages.”

Weaver put down his glass, looked at the photograph on the shelf, and before he had a chance to ask she said, “Peter was my boyfriend. He was on Crete when the Germans invaded, over two years ago. I've heard nothing about him since.”

“I'm sorry.”

“I got over it, but it took me a long time.”

“Tell me about yourself.”

She half smiled and Weaver said, “What's so funny?”

“You, asking me a personal question like that. It's sort of hard to get used to with all the military formality of the office. But there isn't much to tell. My father worked in Cairo for a British legal firm, and met my mother. We lived here when I was a child and then moved to England.”

“Where's your father now?”

“He died when I was twelve.”

“And your mother?”

“She lives in Boston. She eventually married again, a nice American lawyer.” She smiled faintly, then refilled his glass and handed it to him. “Now it's your turn. How did you end up being posted to Egypt?”

He found himself telling her about his time at Sakkara, about Rachel Stern and Jack Halder. There was also something Weaver couldn't ignore, a sexual chemistry he'd been aware of since the party at Shepheard's. He could see the firm outline of her breasts through the cotton blouse, and the way her bare, lightly tanned legs were crossed excited him. This was wartime, death a real possibility, and people took their comfort where they could, but he knew if he stayed longer he might make a fool of himself.