The Cairo Code (30 page)

Weaver didn't reply, and Clayton said, “You look like you've got something on your mind, son. Spit it out.”

“There's nothing, sir,” Weaver replied.

Clayton said to the others, “Lieutenant, gentlemen, will you excuse us? Let's take a walk, Harry.”

He led Weaver a short distance towards the gardens. “I'm not going to pussyfoot around, son. I get the feeling you and Sanson don't see eye to eye.”

“Sir?”

“He told me what happened with Berger. Beating a prisoner isn't exactly your kind of ball game, but it's war, Harry, and we're all tired of it. Like I said, Sanson's had a lot more experience in these matters. And he gets results. So from now on, you'll just have to bow to his judgment. He's in the driver's seat. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If the Krauts are going to try anything, bottom dollar it's going to happen real soon. Gabar, or whoever the guy is, has got to be involved in some way, so I'm putting it up to you and Sanson to stop this thing in its tracks. Whatever resources you need, you've got. If this Kraut team isn't shot out of the skies first, I want this whole sorry business wrapped up, put in a box, and buried.”

“I understand, sir.”

“I sure hope so, Harry. The president arrives in thirty-six hours. I want to see progress. You find our Arab friend, and find him fast, or you'll be walking the plank of this one, got it?”

The village of Nazlat as-Saman was no more than a collection of mud-brick houses and ramshackle shops along a dusty main street. The pyramids stood several hundred yards away, and the village existed only because of the tiny shops selling trinkets and an assortment of cheap leather goods to visiting tourists.

Harvey Deacon's car was covered in dust, and as soon as he halted, a half-dozen ragged, barefoot village children crowded round the Packard. He beckoned the toughest-looking boy and gave him ten piastres.

“You get another ten when I return. Allow anyone to touch my car and I'll cut your ears off.”

Deacon patted the boy's cheek and turned into a flagged courtyard with a couple of fig trees on either side. It brought him to the far end of the village. He walked across the unpaved road towards the pyramids. The ancient site was on a plateau with a sweeping view of the Nile valley, and he started to walk up the incline, past a scattered herd of goats cropping at the sparse grass near the edge of the desert. He noticed that sandbags were still in place in front of the Sphinx, shielding the human face of the ancient god of death, a blast wall built by the British to protect the monument from German aerial bombing.

The site was busy. Several military staff cars and a dozen or more horse-drawn gharries were parked nearby. Groups of American GIs and British squaddies who had traveled out from the city in the hired gharries were having their photographs taken sitting on Bedouin camels, while dozens of officers and civilians wandered among the ancient mastabas—large rectangular stones that marked the tombs of the pharaohs' nobles and royal princesses—pestered endlessly by local villagers trying to sell them trinkets and paper fans, or offering their services as guides. Most of the tombs dated from the fourth and fifth dynasties, in the third millennium BC. Deacon knew that many had already been excavated, but the work was painfully slow and ongoing, and groups of Arab students and archeologists were still busily digging among the ruins of several.

There were no troops guarding any part of the site, and the only military presence was the off-duty soldiers. He walked farther up the incline and halted near the top. To the south he could make out the distant outline of the Sakkara pyramids. He shielded his eyes from the strong sun and stood there, pretending to admire the view down to the Nile. When he was sure no one was watching him, he turned casually towards the north.

The Mena House compound lay below, less than half a kilometer away. He stared hard at the view, made a careful mental note of everything he could see—the outline of the perimeter, the machine-gun emplacements, and the daunting sight of several tanks and armored cars parked in front of the hotel entrance. He would add any differences he spotted to the observation notes he had already made over the last few days, and that night he would send off his signal, informing Berlin he was ready.

What happened at the Imperial still bothered him, but he had made up his mind that it wouldn't deflect his work. He still couldn't understand how the army had located Hassan—it had to have been luck, or chance—but he reasoned that they'd have their work cut out from now on trying to find him. There was nothing to link Tarik Nasser back to either of them. And the man was safely out of the way—dead from a heart attack. A phone call to the hotel on the pretense of booking a room, and a few gentle questions posed to the gullible clerk who answered had told him enough to figure out what had happened. Feeling reasonably pleased with himself, he walked back down to the village.

The boy was still there, scratching himself as he sat in the sun, guarding the Packard. Deacon tossed him another ten piastres, climbed in, started the engine, and headed south for Shabramant airfield.

When Weaver returned to GHQ, he went to his office and sat at his desk, totally confused. The handful of staff at the Imperial had been thoroughly questioned, and it was obvious they knew nothing about Gabar. The room had been searched and no personal effects had been found. There were no clues, nothing more to go on that might help them. Briggs had barely glimpsed the Arab climbing onto the roof from the fire escape—or at least he
thought
it was him—except to note that the man appeared to be wearing a suit, not a djellaba, and he hadn't got a look at his face before he challenged him and fired two warning shots. None of the questioned guests had admitted seeing anyone resembling Gabar. But Weaver
knew
it had to be him.

The city brothels were being visited by the police, as well as the almshouses, and the army was mounting mobile checkpoints in every district, but time was fast running out. He glanced at his desk, at the mound of paperwork he'd been ignoring for the last five days. His eye caught sight of the photograph taken at Sakkara, and for no particular reason he picked it up, looked at the faces of Rachel Stern and Jack Halder. It all seemed such a long time ago, and a happier time.

“Get out of this black mood, Harry,” he scolded himself. He replaced the photograph on his desk and pressed the intercom. Helen Kane came in. “What's happening with the checks on the hotels, Helen?”

“They were completed this afternoon.”

“And?”

“I'm afraid there's been nothing. They've drawn a blank.”

Weaver sighed. He could think of nothing else to do. He was exhausted, had barely slept or eaten since returning from Bitter Lakes. “Where's Lieutenant Colonel Sanson?”

“He left word to say he's gone to RAF GHQ. It's something to do with the air patrols the general spoke about. He said he shouldn't be long.”

Weaver's neck hurt but he didn't want to take any more morphine. It made him drowsy, and it became difficult to think straight. “The files on Arab sympathizers, I want to have a look at them again. I guess we'll have to skip dinner. Unless we try the Kalafa? Then we can come back here and trawl through the files together.”

The Kalafa was only a street away. The food wasn't up to much and the cheap restaurant was usually packed with military staff, but Helen Kane smiled at the offer. “I'll leave word with the duty officer where we'll be, in case anything comes in.”

Deacon observed the airfield as he drove past the approach road. There was no proper fence, just a barbed-wire perimeter, no more than a meter and a half high, and he could see the dirt runway with a couple of barrack huts and two hangars nearby, two old Gloster Gladiators and another biplane of some sort parked on the tarmac.

It was his second journey out to Shabramant in the last three days, and nothing had changed. The two sentry huts at the entrance were still manned by a pair of Royal Egyptian Air Force privates, sitting in the shade out of the blazing sun, swatting away flies with their paper fans. They looked up lazily as Deacon drove by, barely showing interest.

Apart from a couple of mechanics tinkering away at one of the planes, there appeared to be little activity on the airfield. He knew from Captain Rahman that it was used mainly for training flights—there were no navigational aids, and during the day the place was never manned by more than two dozen men. At night even fewer. By 6:00 p.m. and usually earlier, all of the officers had returned to Cairo, while only half a dozen soldiers remained behind on sentry duty. Deacon knew that even then, security was pathetic. According to Rahman, some of the guards had a habit of disappearing into the local town after hours or cycling home to the city for the night.

The airfield was perfect—a straight run from there to Giza and the Mena House, a distance of no more than five miles. The question was, could it be safely secured and held until the SS paratroops landed, and without alerting trouble?

Deacon drove past the field and on for two miles towards the dusty little town of Shabramant, where he wasted twenty minutes buying fresh vegetables in the local market, then did a U-turn and came back, heading toward Cairo as the sun began to set.

When he was almost past the airfield again, he had to halt for several minutes until a wizened old man herded some goats across his path, ushering them towards the rolling, parched landscape across the road from the camp. As Deacon sat there patiently, he used the time to etch again in his mind everything he could see, to verify the notes and drawings he had already made from memory: the distance from the sentry posts to the barrack huts, the hangar, and airfield; the overhead telephone lines that ran up from the village, and the radio aerial on top of one of the buildings.

But what he failed to see was the motorcyclist who had followed him at a good distance from Cairo and stopped a safe five hundred yards behind, observing the Packard through a pair of powerful British army field glasses.

The Kalafa was busy, but they got a table near the door. The food was lousy—greasy and overcooked—and as they finished their coffee, Weaver said, “I guess we haven't seen much of each other these last few days. I'm sorry.”

“Don't be.” She put a hand on his. “When this is over, we'll make up for it.”

The restaurant door opened and Sanson strode up to their table. “There you are, Weaver. Could you excuse us for a moment, Helen? I'd like a private word.”

She blushed, took her hand away. “Of course. I'd better be getting back anyway.” She looked at Weaver, embarrassed. “I'll get those files ready for you, sir.”

When she left, Sanson removed his cap, placed it on the table, and took her chair. “All very cozy. I'm surprised you have time for that sort of thing in a crisis like this.”

“We came to eat. What's on your mind?”

“I've spoken with RAF command. They'll let us know immediately if anything turns up. One of us had better stay in the office overnight, in case anything comes in. I thought I'd allow you the honor.”

“What about Gabar?”

“At this stage, all we can hope for is that the checkpoints and the brothel and almshouse searches turn up something.” Sanson looked bothered. “One other thing. I take it you had a chat with the general?”

“That's right.”

“Good. Then you'll be absolutely clear about your role from now on. This is a harsh war, Weaver, and whatever tactics I deem necessary are my business. If you don't like it, by all means take it up with your superiors, but you don't
ever
countermand my orders again, especially in front of a prisoner. Never. Is that plain enough?”

“It couldn't be plainer.”

Sanson picked up his cap. “I'll be at my flat catching up on some sleep if you need me. Otherwise, you'll see me bright and early.” He stared at Weaver. “I really do hope everything's crystal clear. If by any slim chance the Germans manage to get this team of theirs past our air defenses, it'll be our job to hunt them down. I don't need an officer who's not prepared to do his duty—and that means killing the enemy if we have to.”

The Dakota came in over the sea and touched down at Practica di Mare military airfield on the coast just after seven that evening. It turned off the runway and taxied towards a large hangar. The doors were open and the inside was lit by powerful Klieg lamps, the area around it guarded by half a dozen armored troop carriers filled with crack SS troops.

Once the plane rolled inside, Falconi cut the engines and the hangar doors were shut. A half-dozen Luftwaffe mechanics immediately made busy, preparing to give the aircraft a final check, while a paint crew set about rigging up metal gantries to paint American markings on the fuselage and wings. Halder noticed that two other identical Dakota aircraft were already parked inside, freshly painted in desert camouflage and bearing U.S. decals.

Schellenberg led his fellow passengers down the metal steps and across the hangar to a private office that served as a rest room. There was a table and some easy chairs, half a dozen crew bunks, and refreshment of sandwiches and real, freshly made coffee. The copilot and Falconi followed them in, and the Italian beamed when he smelled the aroma.

“Real coffee. I don't believe it. You've really outdone yourself, Walter. I just hope this isn't some kind of ominous Last Supper?”

“Let's hope not, so enjoy it while you can.”

Falconi filled a cup and swallowed a mouthful. “My, that's good. You can keep that lousy ersatz stuff they serve in Berlin. I suppose there's no chance of a few free hours to visit the Eternal City?”

“Absolutely not. You're confined to base.”