City of the Sun (31 page)

“Very good,” Abdoul said.

Kesner thought of mentioning his displeasure about the king’s mistress Riri Charbit’s involvement in Saturday night’s Jewish event on the royal yacht, but decided to wait. Abdoul had all he could handle. He might have to take care of Miss Charbit himself. “Well …” he said as he started to get up.

Picking up on the cue, Abdoul also rose. “I’ll put some men on this American reporter’s trail immediately.”

“Excellent.”

CHAPTER 29

On Monday morning, Mickey bounded up the stairs to the embassy gate, whistling and feeling light as a feather. He was still basking in the afterglow of that most beautiful night. Now, however, he needed to push aside his ever-present daydreams about Maya and ready himself for that “little chat” Dorothy had wanted to have. It was too bad she’d missed the spectacular evening on the yacht. When he’d rung her office at nine, she hadn’t arrived yet. Was she ill? This was not like her, dedicated bird that she was.

He decided to swing by the mail room on his way to her office. It would only take a second. The clerk had rung him this morning; there was a postcard with a view of Lake Saint Claire waiting for him. Must be from his father, who loved going there to fish. Dad wouldn’t be too pleased to learn that he’d found a Jewish girlfriend. “They think they’re too good for the rest of us,” his old man would say, and not only when he was drunk. Mickey could never get him to understand the inconsistency of his thinking. On the one hand he accused the Jews of being Communists, on the other, he vilified them as money lovers. Which is it, Dad?

Mickey was ashamed of his father’s bigotry, which included not only Jews but also every segment of the population that differed from him—basically the entire world. But Maya was right: Bigot or not, his father was his father.
He softened for a moment, reminding himself that deep down his father was a decent human being, just a fearful and ignorant one, and Mickey promised himself to be more patient with him.

As he looked at the picture of the lake on the postcard, a man raced into the mail room, shouting, “Dorothy Calley has been murdered!”

As Mickey’s taxi raced toward Dorothy’s bungalow in Zamalek, he wondered why anyone would want to kill her. He took in deep gulps of air, his chest heaving. He was flattened by this news. When he arrived, an ambulance and police van were pulling away from the house, leaving only one Egyptian police car, a Jeep with an American flag on its fender, and Kirk’s black embassy Packard.

Kirk’s chauffeur recognized him as he got out of the taxi. “The ambassador is inside,” he said in a solemn voice.

The front door was wide open and Mickey raced in.

Egyptian police were swarming around Kirk, who sat on the sofa, his face in his hands. Two US marines also stood near Kirk and hurried to block Mickey’s rushed approach.

“Ambassador!” Mickey cried out, pushing away the marines, who stepped aside when Kirk rose and opened his arms to Mickey.

“God bless you, you’re here, Mickey,” Kirk cried. His pale eyes were bloodshot and swollen, and his face looked like a rag that had been washed too many times.

“I’m so sorry,” Mickey said. “I know how close you were.”

Kirk quivered. “They broke her neck.” He started to cry, but quickly got ahold of himself. “I apologize. I’m still very shaken. She was my anchor. I don’t know what I’ll do without her.”

“What happened?” Mickey asked.

Kirk shook his head, unable to speak. “No robbery. No sexual assault,” he finally said. “Her purse had been emptied, but her
wallet had plenty of cash.” He pointed to a spot on the floor where the bag’s contents had been dumped. “Her jewelry was still in a silk pouch in her bedroom, behind her dozens of nail polish bottles. You know how important her nails were to her …”

“Then why?” Mickey asked.

“I don’t know,” Kirk answered plaintively. “I’ve gone through this with the police. She didn’t have any enemies or jealous lovers that I’m aware of. We never talked much about personal things, you know, but I think she would have told me if she had a fellow. She seemed pretty content with her cat. When I came by this morning, I knew right away something was very wrong when I found the cat howling outside the door. The neighbor said he’s had to feed her for the last two days.”

Mickey took him by the arm and sat him down. He kept quiet, waiting for Kirk to find the strength to go on.

“She was getting ready for Saturday night’s ball. She’d laid out her clothes for the evening,” Kirk explained. “They found curlers scattered everywhere …” He swallowed hard and resumed. “I tried to reach her yesterday morning. She hadn’t called, and I was worried she might be sick, but I had to leave for Alexandria on a hospital tour and didn’t return until very late. I should have tried again last night.” His voice was riddled with guilt.

Mickey put a hand on Kirk’s shoulder. “It wouldn’t have done any good. She was already dead.”

“I told her she should live in a building with a doorman, but she liked this place’s charm. And the oak tree out front,” Kirk sighed. “The back door was unlocked. The killer must have opened it with a blade, that’s easy enough to do, and caught her by surprise …” His voice cracked and he fought to compose himself. “I found her tied to that chair.” He pointed to a chair tucked against the small dining room table in an alcove. “Her ankles were bound and her arms were tied behind her. Her neck was broken,” he choked.

Mickey winced, but his throat was too constricted for any words to come out.

Except for the sounds of the police photographer’s camera and some movement upstairs, the room had now fallen silent. Mickey stood up and walked around aimlessly as the reality of Dorothy’s murder fully sank in. His chest ached from the pain. He stroked the back of the chair she had sat on, trying to feel her one last time. His eye caught her gold watch on the dining table. He picked it up and recoiled—it was still ticking.

“She was tortured,” Kirk said, his voice shaky. “My poor little girl was tortured. The tips of her fingers were burned and her nails were scorched. Her face was covered with blood and bruises. She was hit hard.”

Tortured? Mickey held his head in his hands as he tried to fully digest the word in his brain. He kneeled in front of Kirk.

“What kind of information could someone have expected to get out of her?”

Kirk shook his head, more and more rapidly, his face pained as he wrestled with his thoughts. “She was privy to all kinds of top-secret information,” he muttered. He passed a heavy hand through his hair and winced as some new realization came to light. He turned to the marines. “Would you please wait outside?” he asked them.

Mickey frowned, his heart beating. He sensed that Kirk was about to reveal something important.

When the marines were gone and the Egyptian police were out of earshot, Kirk spoke softly. “Blumenthal’s new photo. You know she went to fetch it at the library. Did she give it to you?”

“No, she told me she would be bringing it to the ball,” Mickey responded, scratching his head. “Why?”

Kirk just kept looking at Mickey, his expression inscrutable, but Mickey understood that Blumenthal’s photo might have something
to do with Dorothy’s death. Mickey jumped to his feet and rushed to the spot on the floor where the contents of Dorothy’s purse had been dumped. He furiously sifted through them. No photo there. He sprinted upstairs. As Kirk had said, her clothes were all laid out on her bed—dress, girdle, stockings. She’d even put aside a black lacy brassiere. Mickey surveyed the bedroom. There, on the dresser, was a beaded, golden clutch.

“
La-eh
. No,” one of the policemen stepped in front of him, wagging a finger in his face. “No touching, sir.”

Mickey ignored him and opened the purse anyway. There wasn’t room for much. A lipstick, a miniature comb, a perfume vial, a handkerchief, and the invitation to the ball. It was obviously the bag she had intended to take to the ball.

“Ambassador,” he shouted as he charged down the stairs. “I found her evening bag. No photo.”

Kirk’s eyes widened.

“Sir, I need the truth,” Mickey demanded. “Just who is Erik Blumenthal?”

They waited while the police wrapped up their search of the house. Mickey could barely contain himself. He needed answers now. He was pacing the room, his hands in his pockets, his mind racing a mile a minute. They had not told him the whole story about the scientist. Why had Dorothy pressed him so forcefully to get off the case? And why did she want him to carry a gun?

“We’ll be back tomorrow,” the police captain told Kirk in a quiet, respectful tone.

“I’ll lock the place up when I leave,” Kirk said. “Please tell the marines to go.”

Kirk listened to the sounds of the police car and Jeep driving off
before turning to Mickey. “I’ll try to answer your questions as best I can. But first things first. I need a drink.”

As he headed to the bar, Mickey spun one of the dining room chairs around and straddled the seat, waiting. The ambassador poured himself a generous glass of scotch and downed it. He refilled his glass and headed for the sofa.

“Dorothy wanted to warn you that someone else had come looking for Erik Blumenthal,” he began. “She received a call a week ago from a fellow you met at the Jewish community center, Jacques Antebie. Apparently a Westerner with an indistinct accent was also looking for our man. Dorothy went down to the community center to check for herself and learned that the man was in his early thirties and was wearing a tweed suit. He left no name or address.”

“Why didn’t she tell me?” Mickey asked.

“Ambassador Lampson alerted us that there is a master German spy operating in Cairo,” Kirk responded. “She thought this might be the guy and she wanted to take you off the case and out of harm’s way.”

“Why would the Germans want Blumenthal? I thought the Nazis rejected ‘Jew science’ and expelled their Jewish scientists from their country.”

“Perhaps what Blumenthal knows now has become of interest to them.”

“Like what?”

Kirk crossed one leg over the other and downed his drink. His eyes revealed his inner conflict about saying more.

“Please,” Mickey asked. “I’m up to my neck in this, too. I deserve to know the truth.”

“Erik Blumenthal’s research with Niels Bohr had something to do with atomic energy,” Kirk finally admitted. “In France, he had been actively working with the French team on using nuclear
fission to produce a weapon, an atomic bomb of unimaginable power, equal to thousands of tons of TNT.”

“Is that really possible?” Mickey asked.

“We believe it is, and Roosevelt has given the project a green light. Enrico Fermi, our lead scientist, is going full throttle, in complete secrecy, of course. Even the English don’t know. That’s why we can’t get them involved, although this will soon change.”

“The Germans must be working on an atomic bomb, too,” Mickey deduced.

“Yes. Einstein warned Roosevelt about their potential to build such a bomb two years ago, but we didn’t know the status of their program.”

“And now you do?”

“A week ago we learned that Hitler bought all of Norway’s heavy water, one of the key components.”