The Wild Rose (38 page)

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

Willa opened her eyes.

The world, bright and sand-colored, spun sickeningly beneath her. She tried to move, but pain, breathtaking and horrible, shot through her side. She tried to right herself, tried to sit up, but she could not make her arms and legs work.

She wondered, for a few seconds, if she was dead.

She managed to pick her head up, but was seized by a dizziness so strong that she was sick. Her stomach heaved again and again, but nothing came up. She lowered her head. Her cheek pressed into something thick and soft. It seemed to be moving. She seemed to be moving.

“Water,” she moaned, closing her eyes. Her throat was parched. It felt like it was on fire. Her lips were cracked. “Water, please . . . .”

A voice was yelling. A man’s voice. The words sounded like Bedouin, but she couldn’t understand them.

She opened her eyes again, and this time they focused. She saw rocks and sand going by. She saw a camel’s leg. And her own hands, tied at the wrists by a length of rope, hanging down in front of her.

She realized she was lying across the back of a camel, bound fast against the back of the rider’s saddle. How long had she been like this? Hours? Days?

She struggled, trying again to right herself, to sit up. The rider must have felt her movements, or heard them, for he turned around to shout at her. He was telling her to stop, to lie still, but she did not understand him, and would not have heeded him if she had. Frenzied by pain and fear, she kept struggling, kept pleading for water.

The camel driver was angered by this, for her movements were spooking his animal. He shouted once more for her to be still, then he struck her where he could easily reach her—on her side. Willa screamed with pain as her damaged ribs received his blows.

Pain filled her senses. She could see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing but it’s awful suffocating blackness. She cried out once more, and then she was still.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

“Come on, Albie. What’s the news? Did Lawrence take Damascus yet? Are Gerry and Johnny Turkey chasing him all around the sand dunes?” Seamie Finnegan said. He was sitting in a chair in Albie’s office in the building that housed the Bureau of Arab Affairs in Haifa.

“I could tell you,” Albie Alden said, not looking up from the document he was reading—a telegram, taken from a stack that his secretary had just delivered. “But then I’d have to kill you.”

Seamie shook his head. “I still can’t believe it: Albie Alden, spy catcher. The Secret Service Bureau. Room 40. And you cool as a cucumber the whole time. Never said a word.”

Albie looked at Seamie over the top of his spectacles. “Stop pestering me and let me get these telegrams read. Or else I’ll have the guards come and escort you back to hospital. Where you should be. In your bed. Recovering.”

“Bugger that. I can’t stand it anymore. I’m going mad in hospital. I shouldn’t be there at all. I’m fit enough to take command of another vessel right now, but the bloody doctors won’t let me. I’m getting a new ship, the
Exeter
, but not for another five weeks.”

“Fit? Didn’t you just take a two-inch chunk of shrapnel to the torso? Lift up your shirt. No, go on. Lift it up. . . .” Albie stared at Seamie’s torso, shaking his head. “Your dressings haven’t even come off yet,” he said. “They’re covering your entire right side. What happened anyway? You still haven’t told me the whole story.”

“My ship,
Hawk
—she was a destroyer—tangled with a German gunboat about twenty miles west of here. We took a hit to the hull, just above the waterline. And then another to the foredeck. I caught a piece of it.”

“Bloody hell,” Albie said.

“Yes, it was,” Seamie said, with a sardonic smile. “The shrapnel missed my ribs and my vitals, but it took a chunk of flesh out of my side. Luckily, we’d sited the gunboat and were able to radio one of our own boats about fifteen minutes before we were hit. They got there too late to stop the attack, but in time to rescue us.” His smile faded. “Well, most of us. I lost five men.”

“I’m sorry,” Albie said.

Seamie nodded. “I am, too. The gunboat got us back to Haifa and the hospital here, but I swear, if I’d known they were going to keep hold of me for so long, I’d have stayed in the water. I’m going off my nut with boredom. I was so happy when I heard you’d arrived in Haifa. I still can’t believe it.”

“How
did
you hear about it? I’m supposed to be keeping a low profile here.”

“Completely by chance. I overheard one of the nurses talking to her friend about you. Seems you were in for some sort of stomach trouble.”

Albie made a face. “Yes. Dysentery. Picked it up in Cairo. Bloody awful thing.”

“Anyway, I guess she gave you some medicine and fell in love at the same time. God knows why. The heat must be affecting her head. When I heard your name, I asked her to describe you. When she had, I knew it was you. Couldn’t possibly be two gangly, four-eyed boffins in the world with the name of Albie Alden.”

Albie laughed. “Can you keep quiet for two more minutes so I can finish reading these telegrams?”

“I’ll do my best,” Seamie said, picking up a folder and fanning himself with it, for the August heat was brutal.

He had knocked on Albie’s door about half an hour ago. His old friend had been so surprised to see him. He’d invited him in and had him sit down, and Seamie had learned that Albie had arrived in Haifa two days ago. After Albie had sworn him to secrecy, he’d also learned that Albie had been posted from London, where he’d been working since 1914 for Room 40, a group of code breakers under the aegis of the Royal Navy, to head intelligence and espionage in western Arabia.

Seamie was astonished to learn that his shy, quiet friend was part of Room 40. He remembered Albie back in 1914, remembered how weary and tense he’d been. He’d thought it had all been caused by his father’s illness and by overwork. Now he knew that Albie and a team of brilliant Cambridge academics had been working feverishly, before the war had even begun, to intercept and unravel German intelligence communications. He had always admired Albie greatly; he admired him even more now, knowing how relentlessly he had worked—literally night and day—even when he had lost his beloved father.

Albie, finished with the stack of telegrams now, rose and called for his secretary. He asked her to file them all before she left, then he picked up his briefcase.

“Sorry to be so distracted. It’s been a bit hectic. I just have to gather some things for an early meeting tomorrow and then we can go,” he said. He stopped shuffling papers for a few seconds, looked at Seamie, and earnestly said, “It’s ever so good to see you here. Truly.”

“It’s good to see you, too, Alb,” Seamie replied. “Haifa . . . who’d have guessed it?”

Neither man said, for it was not in either’s nature to be overly emotional, but they both knew what their words really meant—not so much that they had never expected to see each other in Haifa, but that they had never expected to see each other anywhere again. Ever.

The war had taken millions of lives, including those of many of their friends—men they’d known as boys, men they’d gone to school with, grown up with, sailed and hiked and climbed and drunk with. Sometimes it seemed everyone they’d ever known was gone.

“You hear much about Everton?” Seamie said now.

“Dead. The Marne.”

“Erickson?”

“The Somme.”

Seamie rattle off another dozen names. Albie told him that ten had been killed and the other two had been injured.

“Gorgeous George?” Seamie asked hesitantly, afraid of the answer.

“Mallory’s still with us. Last I heard.”

“I’m so glad,” Seamie said. “Someday, when this whole damn thing is over, we’re going climbing again, Alb. All of us. On Ben Nevis. Or Snowdon.”

“Wouldn’t that be lovely?” Albie said wistfully. “We could rent a cottage. In Scotland or Wales. Or maybe the Lake District.”

“Anywhere, as long as there’s a good pub close by.”

“Oh, for a plate of cheese sandwiches with Branston pickle.”

“You’re a madman, Albie. You really are,” Seamie said, laughing. “Ask any man here what he misses and he’ll say women. A pint of good ale. Roast beef with gravy. Not you. You want Branston pickle.” Seamie suddenly stopped laughing and turned serious. “We’ll do it, Albie. We will. All of us together again. You and I, and George, and . . . well, maybe not quite all of us.” He was quiet for a bit, then he said, “Do you . . . do you ever hear anything from her?”

Albie sighed. “Very little,” he said. “Mother received a letter, late in 1914, from Cairo. A few more in 1915. Not much since.”

“Cairo? You mean here in the Mideast?”

“I do,” Albie said. “She’d followed Tom Lawrence out here, if you can believe it.”

“Yes, I can.”

“She arrived here in September of ’14. Just after the war broke out. Lawrence got her a job under Allenby. She was working on maps. I’ve seen some of them. They’re bloody good. Then she resigned her position. Left Cairo. Right about the same time Lawrence went into the desert. Wrote to Mother and said she was traveling east. That was the last we heard from her. I imagine she went back to Tibet, but I really have no idea.”

Albie’s expression was pained as he spoke.

“I shouldn’t have mentioned her,” Seamie said. “I’m sorry.”

Albie smiled ruefully. “It’s all right, old mole,” he said.

No more was said about it. No more needed to be. Seamie knew Albie’s relationship with his sister was a difficult one. He was glad, however, that Albie knew nothing about the relationship he and Willa had had in London, shortly after he’d married Jennie.

“Now, if I can just find those figures . . . ,” Albie said, digging under a pile of papers on his desk.

“Albie, you didn’t tell me . . . why the devil did London post you all the way out here, anyway? Why Haifa? Are you being sent down? Did you bugger something up? Get a code wrong?”

Albie laughed unhappily. “I only wish it was that,” he said. “I’d be having myself a holiday. Buy myself a nice pair of field glasses and see the sights.”

Seamie, who’d gotten out of his chair and walked over to the window, turned around, worried by the grim note in his friend’s voice.

“What is it, then?” he asked him.

Albie gave Seamie a long look, then gravely said, “I shouldn’t tell you this either, but I will because your life may well depend on it and because you may be able to help me. However, you must keep the information to yourself.”

“Of course.”

“We have a German mole in London. A very effective one. Somewhere in the Admiralty.”

“What?” Seamie said. “How can that be?”

“We don’t know. We’ve taken great pains to ferret him out—for years—but we’ve not been successful. I can tell you, though, that we’re almost certain someone has been feeding information on our ships to German high command and that it’s been happening for years. At the beginning of the war, they received intelligence on the design and capabilities of our dreadnoughts. Now they’re getting information on deployment of our ships. In the European theater. And here, in the Mediterranean.”

Seamie’s blood ran cold.

“For a long time, Germany was not overly concerned about the eastern front,” Albie said. “Now that Lawrence is making such headway in the desert—and now that it actually looks like he has a crack at Damascus—they are paying more attention. Messages appear to be going from London to a contact in Damascus. We don’t know how. Or to whom. But we do know why—the Germans and the Turks want to keep hold of the city at all costs. They plan to strongly defend it—which means putting paid to Lawrence and his band. When they’ve done that, they want to retake Aqaba, then advance on Cairo. This entails added ground troops, of course, but they’ve also begun to step up their naval presence here.”

“My God. The
Hawk,
” Seamie said, stricken. “My men.”

Albie nodded. “We don’t believe it was luck that led that German gunboat to you. They knew where you were. We lost two more ships in the last three days as well. One off the coast of Tripoli, the other south of Cyprus. The Admiralty wants it stopped. Now.”

“But how?” Seamie said. “You haven’t been able to find the mole in London, you said. And he’s been operating for years.”

Albie nodded. “Captain Reginald Hall, the head of Room 40, thinks that if we can’t nab him, perhaps we can nab his counterpart here. It’s a long shot, admittedly, but a great deal of intelligence comes and goes through Cairo, Jaffa, and Haifa. People here hear things and see things. I’m hopeful that we can collect enough pieces to put the puzzle together. We’re cultivating a lot of sources—Bedouin traders who move between Cairo and Damascus, and who courier goods and parcels. Brothel owners whose girls service Europeans. Hotel owners. Waiters. Barmen. I’m not sure whom the information is going to come from, but I’m chasing down every lead I can think of. We have to find the man and soon. Before it’s too late. Before he does any more damage.”

“How can I help, Albie?”

“You can keep your ear to the ground,” Albie said. “It’s amazing who these people are. He could be the man who cuts your hair. The one who serves your lunch. You never know how close you might be.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Alden. . . .” A young woman was standing in the doorway. She was small and pretty and serious. She wore a white blouse and gray skirt. Her hair was neatly pulled back.

“Yes, Florence?”

“One more thing . . . this just arrived classified from General Allenby’s office,” she said, handing him an envelope.

“Thank you, Florence,” Albie said. “That will be all. I shall see you tomorrow. I expect to be back here by ten o’clock.”

“Very well. Good night, sir.”

“Good night.”

“I’ll just take a quick look at this and we’ll be off. Grab our jackets, will you?” Albie said to Seamie.

As Albie opened the envelope and pulled out a typed memo, Seamie took their jackets off the coat stand in Albie’s office. He was glad they were finally leaving for the officers’ mess. Never mind bed rest, a tall cool gin and tonic would be just what the doctor ordered.