The Cairo Code (12 page)

Schellenberg nodded. “I'm sure you're familiar with some of our best fliers, those who've worked on Abwehr missions. So if it's any consolation, I'll let you pick your own.” He paused, gave it one final smile. “Well, are you in? This one last thing and then you're free.”

Harry Weaver woke with a blinding pain between his eyes. The window in his bedroom was open, sunlight pouring in, and through the curtains came the din of voices and the hooting horns of morning traffic. He raised himself from the bed and swore.

His body was full of small pains and his head throbbed. He climbed out of bed, ran the shower, and looked at himself in the mirror. His eyes were hooded with pain, swollen and bloodshot, and the flesh on his face looked like folds of rubber. And then he remembered why. He'd been to a farewell party at Shepheard's Hotel, given by a couple of British officers from GHQ who were being transferred home, and the celebration had lasted until 3:00 a.m.

He shaved, then stepped under the steaming-hot water, which brought him back to life, before he toweled himself dry and got dressed. He wore the uniform of a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. When he went downstairs Ali was in the kitchen making scrambled eggs, bacon, and coffee over a wood stove. The house servant was an elderly, gray-haired Nubian.

“Good morning, Ali. Have the others left?”

“They've all gone, sir. You're the last for breakfast. The effendi doesn't look well this morning.”

“The gin they serve in Shepheard's, do you think it's real? Someone told me last night that the taxi drivers use it in their cabs instead of gas.”

Ali smiled. “Who's to say? But you might be right.”

Weaver laughed and went out to the patio. The table was set, and he picked the shaded end, out of the warm sunlight. There was fresh bread and iced mango juice, and he poured a glass, drank it down quickly, then buttered some bread. He shared the big old villa in Zamalek with two other American officers, a signals lieutenant and a translator at the American embassy. Zamalek was one of the better districts in Cairo, situated on a large island in the middle of the Nile, and the villa had once been the home of a wealthy Italian merchant. It had its own private gardens, well stocked with lemon and orange trees, and a large, stone-flagged patio at the rear with cool palms and a bubbling stone fountain.

There was a newspaper on the table, the
Egyptian Gazette.
While Ali served him, Weaver glanced through the pages. Several reports caught his interest. The Red Army had crossed the River Dnieper and broken through the German defenses; the invasion of Italy had pushed towards the south of Rome, and it was rumored that the Germans soon planned to loot and evacuate the city. Churchill had claimed that sixty U-boats had been destroyed in the last three months, and President Roosevelt had promised Congress that the U.S. Air Force would continue to step up its bombing of German cities until Hitler had been crushed or accepted defeat. All good news, though somehow Weaver didn't think any of it was going to make the Germans surrender. But it sure had them on the run.

He put aside the paper, glanced at his watch, and finished his breakfast. It was way past nine, and he was late for work.

“Good news, effendi?”

Weaver drained his coffee, pulled on his jacket, and smiled at Ali. “It looks like we're really winning the war.”

•  •  •

Weaver's office was a short walk away at British GHQ, Middle East, on Tolombat Street in Garden City. Known as Grey Pillars, it was a large four-story building surrounded by barbed-wire fencing and had once belonged to an Italian insurance company. As a U.S. Army intelligence officer with the attaché's office, Weaver was responsible for liaising with the British command, and he reported directly to the American military attaché, General George Clayton, at the American embassy.

He had been transferred to intelligence a month after completing his officer training, where his specialist background and knowledge of Arabic was soon put to good use, first with the U.S. Army's invasion of North Africa, Operation Torch, and later when he was seconded to the Cairo embassy, with the brevet rank of lieutenant colonel. He was glad to be back in Egypt but found intelligence work in Cairo pretty boring. Far from the battlefield, intelligence officers spent their time shuffling papers and engaging in endless bureaucratic skirmishes, a practice Weaver had little time for. There was a hectic social life, of course. Drinks at Shepheard's bar and the Gezira Club, where there was a constant round of socializing, golf and tennis, polo matches, sailing and dinner parties, not to mention beautiful women. Cairo was in full bloom now that Rommel's threat had been lifted.

Weaver took the elevator to his office on the third floor and took off his jacket. There was a silver-framed photograph on his desk, the one taken at Sakkara, of himself, Rachel, and Jack Halder. After he had learned of Rachel's death he had had a copy framed, and sometimes he liked to look at the snapshot and recall with fondness the best summer of his life. There was also a pile of paperwork on the desk, reports to be filed and written, and he had just started making headway when there was a knock on his door.

“Come in.”

A woman lieutenant entered. Helen Kane had been Weaver's aide for the last six months. Despite her name, she was half English, half Egyptian, dusky and faintly exotic, with expressive brown eyes, her dark hair trimmed into a pageboy bob, its ends curling inward, as regulation demanded, just over the collar of her uniform jacket, the green flash of the Intelligence Corps on her sleeve. She had been at the party at Shepheard's, and he'd danced with her for most of the night, the first time since working together that they'd had any social contact. He still remembered the pleasant feel of her body against his, the faint scent of her perfume, but he'd been a little drunk and he felt slightly embarrassed.

“Good morning, sir. If you don't mind me saying so, you look a little under the weather.”

“It shows?”

“I'm afraid so.”

“I hope I didn't make a fool of myself last night, Helen.”

She smiled back, playfully. “No more than most.”

“Is there anything happening I should know about?”

“Lieutenant Colonel Sanson asks if he can see you in his office.”

British military intelligence had two chief sections: the DDMI (O)—for Operational—and DDMI (I)—for Intelligence. Alfred Sanson came under the latter, and was responsible for security leaks. Weaver and he were not exactly friends, but he knew that Sanson formerly served as a police inspector with the British-controlled Cairo constabulary before the war, having risen up through the ranks. He had a reputation as a tough, meticulous officer, a loner wedded to his job. At Shepheard's the previous night, Weaver had noticed him sitting alone at one of the tables, a drink in front of him, watching Helen and him with more than a passing interest.

“Did he say what it was about?”

“No, sir.”

Weaver stood, pulled on his uniform jacket. It was difficult to accept her still calling him
sir
after they had danced so intimately the night before. “Then I guess I'd better see what he wants.”

•  •  •

Sanson's office was across the hall, a cramped room with peeling walls, a rusting filing cabinet, a scratched wooden desk, and a couple of chairs. It was also scrupulously neat, everything in its place. There was a tray of tea and some cups ready on the desk that morning as Weaver was led in by a corporal.

Sanson stood but didn't offer his hand. “Lieutenant Colonel Weaver. Please, sit down. Some tea?”

The Englishman was tall, well built, with a prizefighter's physique and a disfigured face. A black leather patch covered his left eye and there was a thick mass of pink scar tissue on his left jaw. The facial injury had been badly sewn by the surgeon, and gave the impression of a tortured smile. The effect was unsettling. Weaver took a seat.

“Thanks.”

Sanson poured a cup and pushed it across the desk. “I take it you're enjoying your posting in Cairo?”

“Sure.” Weaver ignored the tea, knowing Sanson wasn't the type to waste time on social chit-chat. “What did you want to see me about?”

Sanson lit a cigarette, opened his desk drawer, and pulled out a file. “Last night the Cairo police recovered the corpse of a man from the Nile, near the old docks. Just the upper torso, to be precise. It was spotted by the crew member on one of the local ferry boats. The remains had been in the water for several days.”

Weaver knew it wasn't uncommon for bodies to be washed up on the Nile's banks. The river was noted for suicides and murder victims. “So?”

“Despite the fact that the corpse was badly mutilated, the police managed to identify the man. He was a criminal well known to them, and me personally. His name was Mustapha Evir.”

“What's this got to do with me?”

“Evir was murdered. His throat had been cut. When his house was searched, one of the policemen found this hidden among his belongings.”

Sanson removed a crumpled-looking piece of paper from the file, smoothed it out, and handed it over. Weaver saw that it was a rough sketch in heavy pencil, a series of boxes and shapes, like something a child might have drawn. It appeared to be of a large house and gardens, marked off inside a rectangular shape. What looked like some clumps of trees were penciled inside the square, and an odd image, like a small cupola-topped pavilion. There were also two other box shapes that Weaver couldn't figure out. He studied the sketch, then looked at Sanson and shrugged. “I still don't see your point.”

“The man in charge of the murder investigation is Captain Arkhan, an old colleague of mine. For a time he was in command of the police guard at the American ambassador's villa. He believes that what you're looking at is a sketch of the same residence. The grounds have a similar distinct shape, and there's a pavilion in the gardens. I also seem to remember there are two sentry huts on the property, which correspond to the two boxes in the drawing. Arkhan wanted you to have a look at it and give your opinion.”

Weaver looked at the sketch again. He recalled the layout, the pavilion, and the sentry huts. “You could be right. But I still don't see what it has to do with me.”

“Mustapha Evir had a reputation as an excellent safe-breaker and burglar. Among the criminal fraternity, he was known as The Fox. But a while back he got caught and served eighteen months in prison. He was released three months ago. He tried to lead an honest life after his release, but he found only badly paid work.” Sanson paused. “Captain Arkhan believes Evir intended to return to his old career. That perhaps he meant to break into the ambassador's residence, and that's why he had the drawing. He also had a reputation for planning his burglaries meticulously, though to break into the well-guarded home of a foreign ambassador wouldn't have been typical of him. But because he was murdered, it crossed Arkhan's mind from the information he's gathered that Evir might already have carried out his work, and that it perhaps had something to do with his death.”

Weaver frowned. “What information?”

“The police questioned his wife. Evir had little money and his wife was complaining. She said her husband told her he had important business to attend to on the evening he was killed, and boasted that he'd have a lot of money for her that night. But he never came home.”

“You're suggesting he broke into the ambassador's home and stole from the safe?”

Sanson pursed his lips, made a steeple of his fingers. “Perhaps something valuable. Something worth killing him for. A couple of things you should know. Evir worked to order. Because of his talents, he was usually hired by other criminals, with a particular theft in mind. We also suspected he might have been behind the theft of confidential papers from the briefcase of one of our officers a couple of years ago—carried out at the behest of a German agent or sympathizer, no doubt. But the theft wasn't noticed for twenty-four hours and by then it was too late. Evir never admitted to the crime when we took him in for questioning, and seeing as we had no hard evidence, we had to let him go.”

“I haven't heard of any theft from the ambassador's home.”

“There's always the chance it went unnoticed.”

“I doubt it. The residency is tightly guarded.”

Sanson gave a razor smile, as if amused by Weaver's naïveté. “If I've learned one thing as a policeman, Weaver, it's that no security is watertight in Cairo. I've known burglars who could rob a place blind and nobody would see or hear a thing. Besides, Evir wasn't called The Fox for nothing. Most of his burglaries went undetected, until he was long gone.”

“Have the police any suspects for the murder?”

Sanson shook his head. “Not so far. Arkhan questioned most of Evir's criminal acquaintances, and he's reasonably certain none of them had anything to do with his death.”

“How was he mutilated?”

“His legs and buttocks had been severed by a ship's propeller.” Sanson crushed out his cigarette. “His widow claims she doesn't know why her husband was murdered, or who might have killed him. And she says she knew nothing about the sketch. But she belongs to a family of thieves and liars, and you couldn't believe any of them. However, we might be able to help Arkhan's investigation.”

“How?”

“Like most Egyptian peasants, Evir's wife has a grudging fear of authority. Arkhan thinks that the sight of a couple of military officer uniforms might help loosen her tongue.”

“You really think that would help?”

Sanson shrugged. “Right now, the case has Arkhan baffled, and he'd appreciate any assistance. Besides, if Evir's wife knows more about this matter than she's telling, or there's been a breach of security, it may concern us.”