City of the Sun (10 page)

Slowly, the sound of fingernails clicking persistently on glass drew his attention. It was Dorothy, sitting in a nearby alcove, nursing a martini and daintily smoking a cigarette, a bowl of pistachio shells in front of her. She waved at him, her lips pursed.

“You’re late,” she reprimanded as he approached her. “Even later than me. I hate waiting for a man.”

“Sorry,” Mickey said, letting out a sigh as he sat down. “I
was actually here early, but I had to help a young lady who wasn’t feeling well.”

“I bet you did,” she replied, her tone friendlier. “Got a girl back home, slugger?”

Mickey pulled his chair closer to the table and shook his head. “Used to.”

“You hold out for the right one. There should be a law against marriage before thirty. Take it from me,” she said. Then, after looking him up and down, she exclaimed, “You look awful. Stop at Antoine’s and get fitted for some new clothes. We’ll pick up the tab. We can’t have you running around looking like that.”

He snapped his fingers to attract a passing waiter’s attention and gave Dorothy a quick rundown of his last few days searching the city’s shelters.

“Monsieur?” the waiter interrupted them.

“A beer please,” Mickey ordered. He turned to Dorothy, checking her drink. “You’re good?”

“For now.” She put a refusing hand on top of her glass. “Go on.”

“It ain’t pretty, I have to tell you,” Mickey continued. He shook his head as he thought about schools that had been converted into dormitories that reeked of urine. “But they have roofs over their heads and food for their bellies.”

She downed the rest of her drink. “What are you going to do now?”

“I’ll continue with the list, assuming Blumenthal is here in Cairo.” He closed his eyes for an instant, feeling the fatigue of the day wash over him. His mood shifted.

“What’s wrong?” Dorothy asked.

“I saw something upsetting today,” he reflected. “I visited another side of the Jewish community—the old Jewish quarter, the
Hara
, as they call it. It’s a far cry from the opera house. Abysmally poor and dirty, just as bad as the Arab neighborhoods of
Shubra or Bulaq. There was this kid in the street with hundreds of flies eating at the pus coming out of his eyes. He must have been blind. The mother did nothing to chase them away. Sometimes you wonder—”

“Your beer, sir,” the waiter interrupted. “A fresh one for madame?”

“Why not?” Dorothy passed him her empty glass.

Mickey resumed. “I had an interesting conversation with the rabbi of the Ashkenazi synagogue over there. He said there is an international organization against anti-Semitism, known as LICA, which had once set up a branch to resettle refugees from Germany here in Cairo. It turns out that this branch in Cairo was very short-lived.”

“How come?” Dorothy asked.

“The rabbi wouldn’t say. But I find it strange that they shut themselves down at the height of the Jewish exodus in ’38. LICA has a branch in New York. Maybe you can find out why the Cairo branch closed, and who its members were,” he said, picking out the few remaining pistachios.

“Sure thing,” she said, lighting a cigarette. “Now let me update you on the immigration policies you asked about.” She blew a thin stream of smoke over her shoulder. “It’s very simple. Nobody wants the Jewish refugees.” She looked at her notes. “Listen to this. Australia’s prime minister says, and I quote: ‘We don’t have a Jew problem and we do not want one.’ The US State Department has come up with all kinds of obstacles to prevent their admittance, saying they’re communist agitators, they’ll be a burden on the state, and so on. Britain claims to have no room for large-scale immigration, but that country’s hardly a safe haven anyway with all the bombs falling. As for the rest of the Americas—Peru, Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, Mexico—they won’t take any Jews at all. It’s pretty much the same in Brazil and Argentina, where boats carrying hundreds of Jewish passengers were prohibited from landing
and quarantined as if they carried the plague. They were sent back to Germany, where God knows what happened to them. We did the same thing, you know. You remember the SS
St. Louis
a few years ago when the US denied landing to a ship full of European Jews, causing a furor among American Jewish groups?”

Mickey nodded yes.

“In fact, China, is the only country with a real open-door policy for Jews,” she resumed.

“What about Palestine?” Mickey asked. “Is there any way to get around the immigration restrictions in the White Papers?”

“It’s tight as a drum,” she said, taking a sip of her fresh drink. “To appease the Arabs, the English are enforcing the restrictions with an iron fist. They’re afraid of riots like they had in ’36. Just last week a ship with fifty Jewish French passengers left Istanbul for Palestine. Supposedly they all carried visas, but when they arrived they were interned by the British.” She gave him a tight smile. “Apparently a group of militant Arabs promised to slaughter any Jews that stepped off the boat.”

Mickey rubbed his temples. “What are they going to do with them?”

“Probably send them to Mauritius until things cool down a bit. This kind of stuff never makes the papers.”

“Maybe Blumenthal could slip into Palestine illegally, through the desert?”

“You’re talking about a brutal journey on the back of a camel in scorching heat. Only a Bedouin could bear it. And going by sea is out. The English blockade would grab him in a minute.”

He bit his lip and shook his head. She was right—the odds of the scientist getting into Palestine were a long shot. Besides, according to the rabbi at the Ashkenazi synagogue, Jews were now leaving Palestine because of Arab violence and coming here.

“You turned up a lot of good information,
Miss
Calley.”

“I just try to do my job,” she said, a smirk on her lips as she crossed her legs. She blew a smoke ring in his face.

“You enjoy this, don’t you?” he asked playfully, knowing better than to rise to the bait.

“Immensely,” she admitted with a devilish smile.

“Is this how you got that information, by flirting?”

Dorothy’s laughter echoed through the hall, drawing disapproving stares. “Hardly, darling. I only use that weapon when I have to. Actually, our COI agent in Tel Aviv gave us the scoop.” She lifted a shopping bag full of papers from beside her chair and set it on her lap. “Okay, and now,” she chirped, “it’s reading time. Here are the newspapers you asked for—
La Tribune Juive, Israel, L’Aurore
 …” She piled the papers, about two dozen of them, on the table one by one. “Greek, Italian, and French press—
Kathimerini, La Stampa, Ce Soir
 … Happy reading,” she said, dusting off her hands.

“You’ve really held up your end,” Mickey said. “I hope I can do mine, but I keep feeling there’s more to this puzzle. Didn’t Donovan mention that Einstein was working on weapons?”

“Submarines,” she corrected. “I don’t know the details and even if I did, I don’t think I would understand them.”

“Have you contacted Blumenthal’s colleagues from the Paris Group yet?”

“We can’t do that. They’ve escaped to England, and Donovan won’t risk alerting the British authorities about COI activities.”

She started gathering her things, then leaned forward. “You were right, Connolly, the Germans had Panzer IVs,” she said in a low conspiratorial voice. “They had been spotted being moved to the front, but High Command ignored the report.” She took a deep breath. “The Brits can’t afford more of these kinds of blunders or they can kiss the Suez Canal good-bye.”

“And all of North Africa as well. The Germans will end up with complete control over the Mediterranean,” Mickey added, his mind reeling with the consequences of losing this vital supply route.

“What a nightmare,” she sighed. “Anyhow, I’ve got to go. The kings of Greece and Yugoslavia just arrived and the British Embassy is overflowing with dignitaries. They’ve asked us if we could house a few.”

The sound of laughter and breaking glass spilled from the doors of the Long Bar. Dorothy rolled her eyes. “Boys will be boys,” she pronounced as she snuffed out her cigarette. “I need to get home to my kitty. She’s waiting for me to feed her. A pure Russian Blue, the sweetest thing you’ve ever seen.” She got up.

Mickey gallantly rose to his feet.

She quickly assessed him top to bottom once again, saying nothing this time but shaking her head in disapproval at his choice of attire. As she walked away, she put an extra swing in her step for the soldiers exiting the Long Bar.

When Mickey returned to the Immobilia it was dark, and Hosni had gone home for the evening. The night doorman gave him a note that had been left for him.

I’m back in Cairo on leave. Let’s get together for beers, birds, and bloody fantastic lies about our sex lives.

It was from Hugh, who’d left a number where he could be reached. Hooray! Finally, he’d get to see his good buddy. It was too bad he wouldn’t be able to tell him he had a gig as a spy. They would have shared a good laugh over that.

He loosened his tie as he dragged himself into his apartment. He
was tired, dirty, and smelly from his day. He emptied his pockets, threw his change on the table, and opened the book that belonged to the girl from the Shepheard’s. On the front page was an inscription in sprawling letters: “
Chérie, nourritures de l’esprit. On en parlera Lundi. Bisous
(Darling, food for thought. Let’s talk on Monday. Kisses).” It was signed Jean-Jacques. A boyfriend, he assumed, and he wondered how serious they were. He flipped through the pages, stopping to read one of the passages she’d underlined:

My body, I saw with its eyes, I heard with its ears, but it was no longer me: it sweated and trembled by itself and I didn’t recognize it any more. I had to touch it and look at it to find out what was happening, as if it were the body of someone else.

Hmm … More underlinings revealed the same morbidity. He brought the book to his nose, seeking the girl’s scent, but it smelled only of mildew, and he tossed it on the table. “She’s definitely worth a further look,” he confirmed to himself. He would ask the manager of the hotel about her. She shouldn’t be too hard to find. “If you don’t step up to the plate and swing, you never get any hits,” he told himself.

After a vigorous shower, he felt refreshed in mind and body. He settled into the plush, oversized armchair that took up a good part of the living room, put his feet up on a pouf, and luxuriated. Splashed with cologne and wrapped in the cotton bathrobe he’d found at the Khan el-Khalili bazaar, he felt like a new man.

With the door to the balcony opened wide to the balmy night air, he started poring over the Jewish newspapers. To his surprise, most stories dealt with picnics, canoe trips, tennis matches, dance contests, and marriage announcements, amid large advertisements for local businesses—as if the plight of their brethren in Europe did not exist.
The few references to the war consisted of appeals for volunteers and contributions to the Comfort Fund for Jewish Soldiers, or the Jewish Welfare Committee for Sailors, Soldiers, and Airmen.

He did learn, however, that King Farouk, the king of Egypt, was lending his yacht to B’nai B’rith for a fund-raising ball at the end of the month. This struck Mickey as a very friendly gesture, and further evidence of a strong connection between Egypt and its Jewish community. Another article about the Chief Rabbi of Egypt, a former member of the Egyptian Senate, declaring in a speech to Parliament the unfailing loyalty of Egypt’s Jews to their government, confirmed such closeness.

Nevertheless, Mickey could see that the Jews were still defining themselves as a people separate from the Egyptians. The front page of
L’Aurore
bore an inscription printed in small letters next to the newspaper’s name:

I am Jewish. I accept this designation, which for some means an insult but which I want to make a title of glory.

The publisher had signed his name beneath it.

An open letter from Simon Cattaoui, the president of the community, piqued his interest, inasmuch as it appeared in several of the papers. Cattaoui was appealing to his fellow Jews to remain calm and not to participate in the riots or to make charges of anti-Semitism against the
Banque de France
over their firing of a longtime Jewish employee. “As mature citizens of this country, we must do our share to keep Egypt stable in these uncertain times,” he’d written.

Where’s this guy’s spine, Mickey wondered, and he was pleased to read that a lawyer was threatening to file an action against the bank for the firing.

It was close to midnight when Mickey finished reading. In his bedroom, he retrieved the photo of Erik Blumenthal from his wallet.
It was a group picture torn from a page in a science journal dated June 1934. He studied it for a long moment. Blumenthal, whose face was circled in ink, was awkward looking and had big teeth and fleshy lips. He put it on his nightstand and clicked off the light, but as he lay under the cool sheets, his mind wandered back to the photograph. He sat up and turned on the light. Why was Blumenthal the only one seated while women and elderly men were standing?