The Cairo Code (53 page)

Halder examined the death masks on the wall with interest. “The wood carving's really first class. At least a couple of hundred years old, I imagine?”

Deacon nodded, took one down with a smile, brushed some dust from the wood with his sleeve. “Something the general picked up on his travels up the Nile. Along with a couple of exquisite female Nubian slaves I believe he was rather fond of.”

“And what about the villa's present owner?”

“You're looking at him.” Deacon replaced the mask. “Now, I believe you mentioned escape routes?”

•  •  •

Deacon held up the oil lamp as they went down the cellar steps. Light flickered on the arched walls, the air pleasantly cool, and Halder saw the stored racks of cobwebbed wine bottles off to one side. They moved to the end of the cellar where there was a metal door rusting on its hinges. Deacon pushed it open and brilliant sunshine flooded in. A tiny stone pier was revealed outside, well covered by tall reeds.

The Nile lay beyond, and a small rowboat was tied up, complete with an outboard motor, an old tarpaulin thrown over it to protect the engine.

“Interesting,” remarked Halder, seeing an aerial protruding outside, hidden by the reeds, the wire leading back to a wooden cabinet at the bottom of the stairs. “That's where you keep your radio?”

Deacon nodded, opened the cabinet, revealing the transmitter, his Luger pistol beside it, then closed it again. “The cellar was originally built as a
cave.
You know how fastidious the French are about storing their wine. But being a practical man, the general decided he'd be better served knocking out the end wall and using it as an escape route for his girlfriends, in case their husbands showed up, which apparently was often.”

Deacon smiled, went to shut the metal door, which creaked on its hinges. “An ace in the hole, should we need it. But let's hope not. I'll leave it to you to show the others. One other precaution I should mention. There's a solid metal bar I suggest you always leave in place on the villa's main entrance door upstairs. If there's danger brewing and anyone tries to force their way in, it should give you enough time to get down here and make your escape.”

“You're a cautious man, Deacon.”

“It's why I've lived so long.”

“Schellenberg also mentioned you'd have an overall escape route lined up, in case things went badly wrong at the airfield.”

Deacon nodded. “An Egyptian friend of mine is a serving captain with the Royal Egyptian Air Force. It was he who supplied much of the information about the Shabramant airfield. If we need him, he's arranged to ‘borrow' an aircraft from his unit and pick us up from a landing strip in the desert, a few miles from Sakkara. It'll be outside any air exclusion zone, and therefore less likely to get shot down.”

“I know the strip you're talking about. It was used to ferry in supplies for archeological digs.”

“I believe so. My friend the captain can be in the air, on standby, ready to pick us up if necessary, once he sees a prearranged signal on the ground. As soon as you decide when the attack will commence and we know Skorzeny's men are on their way, I'll contact him. But then I'm assuming everything will still go ahead as planned. If not, and we have to abort, the captain will attempt to fly you out anyway, to the nearest German airbase on Crete. But we can go over everything in more detail later.”

“This captain friend of yours doesn't know what we're up to, of course?”

“Naturally. But being a fervent sympathizer, he's willing to help the German cause any way he can.”

They came back up the steps to the hallway and Deacon blew out the lamp.

“Two things,” said Halder. “First, you don't reveal our intentions in front of the lady. She knows nothing about our plans, or our purpose here.”

“I understand. Berlin explained everything.”

“Second, I'll give you a list of things I'll need by this afternoon—mostly some heavy tools and digging equipment, as well as a pair of powerful binoculars, and a couple of the American uniforms you got from Salter.”

Deacon saw the tension on Halder's face, the man like a coiled spring. “You mind telling me what for?”

“My original intention was to try and bluff my way into the compound posing as an American officer, or somehow steal a pass, so I could carry out the necessary reconnaissance work. But that's just the kind of strategy the Allies would expect now that they're aware of our intentions. And one that's especially useless seeing as they know my identity. It looks to me like we now have only one option. Near Cheops pyramid, there's a tunnel, part of a natural rock cavern that runs for almost two hundred meters from a Second Dynasty burial vault. It leads from the direction of the hotel grounds.”

Deacon frowned. “How do you know?”

“It was discovered some years ago by Fräulein Stern's father, a respected archeologist. Schellenberg seems to think the passageway may lead inside the compound.”

“Amazing.” Deacon looked astonished, scratched his jaw. “So that's why Berlin had me confirm there was still digging going on at Giza. I wondered about that.”

“What's important is that we may have a way of getting into the compound, unseen. But the tunnel entrance will have to be reopened and the direction verified. Did you find out who's working on the site?”

“Mostly student groups from Cairo's universities.”

“There's no time to waste, so we'll have to carry out the necessary exploration late this afternoon. Just you, me, and Kleist. The students will have finished their work by the time it's getting dark. Is the site guarded?”

Deacon nodded. “There's usually either a few men on watch duty from one of the nearby police stations, or civilian guards from the Ministry of Antiquities.”

Halder produced his wallet and showed Deacon the documents stating that he was Paul Mallory, along with credentials from the American University. “Do you know of an expert forger? Someone trustworthy who can work fast?”

Deacon nodded. “Cairo's got no shortage of forgers who'll do anything for a price. Why?”

“Sanson checked my papers in Alex, as well as Fräulein Stern's. No doubt he'll alert the police and military to keep a lookout for our identities. But a clever forger should easily be able to alter the names without too much difficulty. Can you arrange it promptly, if I give you a couple of alternative names?”

Deacon shrugged. “It's a minor enough job, so I don't see why not. Care to tell me what you have in mind?”

“To all intents, I'll be a professor, conducting a legitimate inspection of my students' work at Giza, so it should be easy enough to bluff our way past the police, but even if it comes to the worst, and if my past experience is anything to go by, such guards are unreliable at the best of times, and totally corruptible. The poor devils are usually paid such a pittance they could probably be bribed not to bother us.”

Deacon studied the documents carefully. “They certainly look impressive enough. Don't you need to bring the woman along?”

Halder shook his head. “It's pointless putting her in any further unnecessary danger. She can tell me what I need to know. But you still need to arrange to have her papers altered, just in case we have to leave the villa at any stage. I'll fetch them for you before you go.”

Deacon raised his eyes. “Do I detect something between the two of you, Major?”

Halder avoided the question. “Just the three of us should be enough. Besides, a little distraction might help me mull over Salter's ultimatum. As it is, the problem has me completely stumped.”

“And what if we manage to find this tunnel and it leads where you think it does?”

“Kleist and I will assess the security inside the hotel grounds, and try to find out exactly where Roosevelt and Churchill are quartered. Which is why we'll need the uniforms.”

Deacon looked troubled. “But you won't have passes. And there are bound to be security checks inside the compound. Weaver and his comrades will be determined to catch you. All of which makes everything infinitely more hazardous.”

“My problems to worry about. And there's really no other option besides the tunnel. Unless you can think of one.”

“You've got me there, Major.”

“We'll need transport. And preferably a way of getting to Giza that helps us avoid any checkpoints, if possible.”

Deacon scratched his head. “There's a rough desert track nearby that leads directly to the village of Nazlat as-Saman, near the pyramids. But the Packard's heavily built and the suspension would take a hammering, so we'd be asking for trouble.” He thought for a moment. “I have a better suggestion. All of us traveling together would certainly be unwise. No doubt your friend Weaver has issued your description to every police station and military barracks from here to Luxor. Hassan has a motorcycle. Kleist and I could take the car, using the normal route, by road. You could take the motorcycle, and we can meet up on the far side of the village, near the Sphinx.”

Halder crushed out his cigarette, smiled tightly. “Perfect. It's settled, then. And don't fret about Harry Weaver. He's not going to find me.”

“What kind of an idiot are you?” Clayton banged his fist on the desk. “How could you let them escape?”

Weaver sat in the general's office, his eyes raw, his body aching from exhaustion. He hadn't slept for more than a couple of minutes throughout the entire night. After eight hours of trying to free himself from the ropes, all he had managed to do was loosen the gag. A little after seven, two local fishermen heard his shouts, wandered into the boathouse, and found him. Soon after he had made the telephone call to military HQ from Rashid police station, Sanson arrived, furious that he'd allowed Halder and Rachel to escape. Two hours later, Sanson had him on a plane to Cairo, and they drove straight to Clayton's office.

“I didn't have much choice, sir,” Weaver answered.

Sanson sat next to him. He and the general were still seething. “It's completely ridiculous,” Clayton said in astonishment. “We had half the army out, every road blocked off, and still they evaded capture. As for you, Weaver, allowing two enemy agents to dupe you into helping them escape is downright incompetence. What have you got to say for yourself?”

“I made a mistake going after them alone.”

Clayton flared. “Darned right you did. It seems to me you let personal sentiment get in the way of duty. In this instance, that's not only unforgivable, it's almost treasonable.” The general rose angrily from behind his desk. “You'd better tell me everything you know about this couple.”

The general stood there until Weaver had finished, then said to Sanson, “What about the boat they used?”

Sanson explained that every vessel on the waterway as far as Cairo had been stopped and boarded. “But the river patrols turned up nothing. We were obviously too late. By early morning, the boat could easily have reached any number of places along the Nile.”

Clayton turned back to Weaver. “Didn't you see the registration on the Arab's car?”

He had already gone over every detail with Sanson. “I couldn't see the license plate in the dark. The only thing I'm reasonably certain of is the car was an American model.” Weaver knew the information was pretty useless without an exact model description or license number. Cairo was full of American vehicles, military and civilian.

“That's not much help, is it?” Clayton grimaced, picked up Sanson's report from his desk, and slapped it back down again. “But there
are
a couple of things we
can
be pretty certain of. First, it's obvious we're dealing with more than just two enemy infiltrators. And second, they're most likely somewhere in the city by now.”

Weaver knew from the report Sanson had delivered that two Egyptian policemen had gone missing late the previous afternoon, not far from a village called Birqash, over twenty miles north of Cairo. Their bodies had been discovered early that morning, buried in a shallow grave, their throats cut. At ten the previous evening, their car was found abandoned near a railway station on the city outskirts. A Bedouin family living several miles from Birqash had been questioned by the police and claimed to have seen two men driving a military truck late the previous afternoon, heading in the general direction of the village. The truck had been found a couple of miles outside—a Fiat with an Italian army registration.

“The men were too far away for the Bedouin to provide descriptions,” Sanson had told Clayton. “But we know Halder and the woman were in Alex, so it couldn't have been them. It now looks like we're dealing with at least four German agents.”

The general crossed to the French windows, still enraged. “What about the Fiat? Someone must have owned the darned thing.”

“So far as we can tell, it wasn't on the register of confiscated enemy vehicles,” Sanson answered. “I've requested a list of all military vehicles missing in the last twenty-four hours. But the Fiat still had its original Italian army plates on, so unless it's reported stolen, it's unlikely we'll trace the owner.”

“You mind telling me why not?”

“General, there's enough surplus military hardware floating around this country to start another war. It's more than possible the truck was somebody's loot before it was stolen or borrowed by the Germans, so it's unlikely the owner would report it missing.”

The general came back and slumped into his chair. “The whole thing's a godforsaken mess. The president arrived this morning, Prime Minister Churchill yesterday afternoon. The fact that we've got at least four ruthless German agents at large in the same city doesn't bear thinking about.”

“If I might make a suggestion,” Sanson offered. “We ask the president and prime minister to cancel or delay their meeting until we locate these people.”