The Sand Panthers (12 page)

She was a small woman, who stepped out of the car like a jewelled bird, all fluttering hands, her bright eyes darting along the faces of the staring soldiers, her raddIed cheeks rouged and her dyed canary-yellow hair aglow. ‘Hello, boys,’ she cried in a husky American voice and waved a hand at them, the fingers of which looked as if they had just been dipped in bright-red blood. ‘I must look a sight. My maid didn’t have time to arrange my eyelashes in Alex.’ She giggled at her own joke, which meant nothing to the gawping German and Egyptian soldiers.

The beaming Egyptian Major turned to von Dodenburg. ‘Major,’ he said with smirking formality, ‘may I present you to your contact from our glorious Movement, Madame –’

The strange woman beat him to it. She extended her skinny, hand to von Dodenburg to be kissed and said: ‘They call me Pomme,’ she breathed, fluttering her false eyelashes madly, ‘because I’ve been eaten so much, I guess.’ And with that she went off into another peal of shrill laughter…

*  *  *

Sue-Ann ‘Appleblossom’ Keppel had been born in Austin, Texas. Her voice as a long-distance telephone operator had so charmed a Texas cattle baron that he had made a blind date with her and within the month they were married. Six months later, he was dead – ‘She plum screwed him to death,’ the neighbours said maliciously – and suddenly she found herself the heiress to a fortune of fifty million dollars.

The widow, clad in black from head to foot, flew immediately to New York, where she dumped the expensive widow’s weeds in a hotel room, changed into an outrageous red costume, picked up the first man she found in the hotel bar, went to bed with him for the next forty-eight hours and left for Europe the day afterwards. She bought her way into London society, or that part of it which suited her own tastes – ‘dope, drink and niggers’, as they were in those years But there were those in London society who felt she was ‘common’ with her vulgar American accent and her painted face. In 1930 she gave it up and moved to the Riviera, where the local ‘set’ were more to her own wild taste.

There were naked luncheon parties on board the flat-bottomed boats anchored off their gleaming coastal villas; drunken speed-boat trips; long hours of naked, doped sunbathing; masked balls that invariably ended in an orgy. For half a decade she drifted in drunken, drugged ecstasy through the decadent pleasures of a glamorous society which was doomed to extinction in 1940.

In 1935 she met Ali, an Egyptian who was half her age, a ‘simply divine dancer’, as she described him to the set. Ali swept her off her feet and when he learned that the middle-aged woman was a multi-millionairess, his ardour increased tenfold. He promised her the Pyramids, the Nile, the Desert. Pomme’s romantic imagination, which had been moulded as an adolescent by Ramon Navarro, blossomed. She told the set she was going to Egypt on her ‘honeymoon’. When they replied that she was not yet married, she told them that ‘Pomme never buys a pig in a poke. You know these Eastern guys – very exotic, but no endurance. We’ll get hitched later.’

But the ‘honeymoon’ on the Nile had never taken place. At Alex the British security police were waiting for Ali. Not only had he stolen five thousand Egyptian pounds from the Cairo bank where he had worked, he had also used half of it to buy weapons for the illegal Egyptian terrorist movement. Ali disappeared behind bars; she never saw him again.

Pomme stayed in Egypt. She discovered that Cairo and Alex were full of ‘Alis’. A succession of them comforted her, and her sexual desires were replaced by political ambition. As she told visiting members of the set who wondered why she had buried herself in Egypt: ‘Peggy Guggenheim collects paintings. I collect revolutionaries – they’re much more stimulating!’

But the slaughter of the Cairo underground movement the previous day had made her realize for the first time in a long life of pleasure that she was in danger – real danger. The game – playing at revolution – was over. Either the Egyptians pulled it off and kicked out the English, or the limeys would throw her into jail. All her money wouldn’t save her, she knew that. The English had shown just how cruel, how ruthless they could really be when the chips were down. On this October afternoon in the desert Sue-Ann Keppel was scared!

*  *  *

She rapped her hard bony fingers on the table, as if she was wearing tiny ivory thimbles and announced ‘Major von Duisburg–’

‘Dodenburg,’ von Dodenburg corrected her, half amused and half alarmed by this flamboyant woman whose orders he was – apparently – to follow.

‘Now there has been serious trouble in Cairo, very serious. The Limeys must have tumbled to what was going on there. All day yesterday, they sent out their killers…’ In a hectic, breathless flow of words, she explained the events of the past twenty-four hours in the Egyptian capital, and how Slaughter’s murderous methods had crushed the planned revolt in that city. ‘Sadat and Nasser,’ she said, mentioning names which meant nothing to von Dodenburg, but which earned the fat Egyptian Major’s enthusiastic praise, ‘have gone underground. We can count them out of what is to come. But the Limeys have not reckoned with yours truly. Pomme managed to get out from under and warn our organization in Alexandria. Our group is still pretty well intact there, and Pomme still has a couple of surprises for the Limeys up her knickers. If she wore any, which she don’t!

‘Before I discuss any plans, young man,’ Pomme went on, ‘let’s have a drink. My tonsils are shrivelled.’

‘Coffee?’ von Dodenburg suggested.

‘
Coffee!
’ she exclaimed in mock horror. ‘Coffee is for peasants. I only drink champagne.’ She looked up at Schulze, his enormous chest gleaming with sweat. ‘Sonny, you go over to my vehicle and get the key from that nigger at the wheel. You’ll find a chest of iced champagne in the boot.’

Schulze sprang to attention and bowing stiffly, saluted as if he were a member of the old Prussian
Garde du Corps
. ‘
Zu Befehl, gnadige Frau
,’ he snapped in his best German. Von Dodenburg looked up at him in open disbelief. ‘Nice young fellah,’ Pomme said slowly and thoughtfully, as Schulze moved out of the shade of the palms to fetch the champagne. ‘From the way his shorts grab his crotch, it looks as if he carries a nice cannon around with him.’

Five minutes later, Pomme raised her sparkling glass of pink champagne. ‘Well, gents,’ she toasted the officers, ‘here’s mud in your eyes. Down the hatch!’ She downed the sparkling wine in one gulp, much to the admiration of a watching Schulze.

‘The Limeys think they’ve got everything nicely wrapped up in the Delta. Well, they might have in Cairo. All the same, old Pomme thinks she can still catch them out.’

‘How?’ von Dodenburg demanded.

By way of an answer, she thrust her empty glass at Schulze. ‘Here, handsome, fill ’em up again,’ she said.

Schulze did not understand English, but he understood that particular gesture well enough. He did what she commanded, while von Dodenburg waited impatiently for the woman to answer his question. ‘Thanks, handsome,’ she looked up at the giant ex-docker. ‘I bet you could bring a sparkle to a girl’s eyes,’ she breathed, fluttering her long false eyelashes in maidenly confusion.

‘
Madame Pomme!
’ von Dodenburg said firmly.

‘Oh, yes, I was saying.’ She downed the champagne in one quick gulp. ‘
Alex! ... Alexandria is the place where we’re gonna screw the Limeys!
’

Schulze lay exhausted in the palms, next to a disgruntled Matz, watching the departure ceremonies. Idly he soothed the blood-red marks that covered his broad back. ‘What a woman,’ he breathed, as he followed Pomme’s progress to the waiting Rolls, ‘what a damn woman!’

‘You might have thought of yer old pal, Schulze,’ Matz said miserably. ‘I haven’t had a bit since the House.’ Schuize did not take his admiring gaze off the woman, who was now saying a few last words to von Dodenburg at the door of the Rolls. ‘You don’t share a woman like that, even with your best friend, Matzi,’ he replied in a hushed voice. ‘That would be almost… almost…’ he fumbled for a word to express the depth of his emotion, ‘…against religion. Sacrilege, I think they call it.’

‘Ballocks,’ Matz snapped unfeelingly.

Schulze ignored his friend’s impassioned outburst. Out in the desert, the coloured driver had started the engine. Von Dodenburg closed the door behind Pomme. The driver engaged first gear and with a rusty squeak of tracks, the Rolls started to move off. Von Dodenburg and the Egyptian Major stiffened to attention and saluted. A white arm appeared through the window and answered their salute with a flutter of a white lace handkerchief.

The Major caught sight of Matz. ‘Corporal, where’s the other rogue?’ he demanded.

‘Sergeant Major Schulze?’

‘Yes.’

‘He’s over there in palms, sir.’

‘The latrine?’ von Dodenburg queried.

‘No sir,’ Matz answered, completely straight-faced, though there was a malicious gleam in his wicked little eyes, ‘I think he’s collecting a few flowers – for Madame.’

‘You’ll have my boot up your flowery arse in a minute, you cheeky rogue,’ von Dodenburg snorted. ‘Get him over here. I want to assemble the company. I have something to say to them.’

‘At the double, sir!’ Matz answered smartly. He floundered through the sand to where Schulze still lay dreamily, staring after the black dot of the Rolls.

With a reluctant sigh, Schulze clambered to his feet and cupping his hands to his mouth, he called with unusual mildness: ‘All right, you fellows, fall in in the centre of the oasis. The CO wants to have a chat with us.’

Matz shook his head in disbelief. ‘As I live and breathe,’ he said, ‘
Schulze’s in love!’

*  *  *

But Major von Dodenburg’s voice, when he spoke to the assembled company, was dry, cold and completely unemotional. Pomme was a bold, resourceful woman and the Egyptian Major had been full of enthusiasm for her plan. But to von Dodenburg it seemed not only ‘daring’ (as the Egyptian had described it the night before), but decidedly dicey. If it went wrong, the company would be isolated in the middle of a British-held town, hundreds of kilometres away from the nearest German troops.

‘Soldiers, comrades,’ he began formally, staring at the honest young faces of the boys seated around him. ‘At last, I can tell you what the real purpose of our mission here is – why we have had to undertake such a terrible journey through the desert to this God-forsaken place. We are to strike a blow against the enemy in Egypt, which will enable Marshal Rommel to achieve final victory and allow him to throw the Tommies out of Egypt for good – perhaps out of Africa altogether.’

He allowed them a few moments of excited chatter, before holding up his hand for silence. ‘As you all realize, a handful of men, even from Assault Regiment Wotan, cannot drive the Tommies from Egypt. We need the aid of the native population to do that, and we must realize that the local people need proof that the Germans will come to their assistance and support them when they rise against the English tyrants.’

‘What then is our task, comrades?’

Von Dodenburg answered his own question. ‘It is going to be a bold and dangerous one. To the north of this oasis lies Egypt’s second largest city. At present, according to the information I have received from our Egyptian allies, it is thinly defended by British troops. They have all been sent to the desert. What is left of them is concentrated in one large military installation – Mustafa Barracks.’ He licked his lips, suddenly dry, when he thought of what he was going to have to say next in order to persuade these innocents that what they were intending to do was feasible; when it was the most harebrained, crazy plan of operation he had ever been party to.

‘It will be our task to knock out that base so that the Egyptian people can rise against the English oppressors without fear of military intervention. Once Alexandria revolts, so I have been assured by our Egyptian friends, all of Egypt will be up in arms. The Eighth Army’s supply lines will be cut to the desert. They will be forced to move large numbers of troops from the front to deal with the revolt. In that moment, Field-Marshal Rommel will launch an all-out attack on the 8th Army’s positions and sweep all before him.’ He pressed the fingers of his right hand to emphasise his point, as if he were crushing a fly in them. ‘The British will be finished. They won’t be able to stop running till they reach the Suez Canal – and Egypt will be ours.’

He paused for breath and stared at his men’s faces. They were glowing with excitement and he knew what thoughts were flashing through their heads: youthful dreams of glory, leading a popular revolt against the British oppressor to return home to the Reich, laden with medals, with flowers cast at them as they marched through the streets by pretty young girls in Hitler Maiden uniforms. Perhaps even a reception by the
Führer
himself! It would be the summer of 1940 all over again: that heady June of victory when it had seemed Germany had won the war and was well on the way to creating a new and better Europe, freed of the decadence, injustice and inequality of the past.

He forced his own gloomy thoughts to the back of his mind. ‘Comrades, I shall be working out the details of our attack on Mustafa Barracks with your officers and NCOs later, but before I dismiss you, I should like to enquire if you have any questions.’

‘Yes sir,’ the cry went up from a score of enthusiastic throats. ‘
WHEN?
…
WHEN DO WE ATTACK?
’

Von Dodenburg looked at their excited faces, eager for some desperate glory, and felt sadness welling up inside him. He swallowed hard.

‘On the morning of 24 October, 1942…’ He answered, then he could no longer bear to look at them. Almost brutally, he cried ‘Dismiss!’

The die had been cast.

‘Listen Schulze, I can’t risk those boys back there on a half-assed job like this. I need more gen before I attack that barracks.’

Major von Dodenburg to Sergeant-Major

Schulze, Alexandria