City of Gold

‘Let me tell you a little secret,’ Smith said. ‘Last time we met, I was a little late getting here, remember? The reason being, I was taking a closer look at that truck of yours. I took a note of the engine number. You changed the licence plate number, but you didn’t think of the engine number, did you? Back at the depot I got my corporal to look that number up in the records. Stolen: well, I expected that. When stolen it was loaded with small generators. Generators are like gold dust round here, everyone knows that. But what I wasn’t ready for, was hearing that the driver was killed, murdered; the truck ran right over him.’ He looked Percy full in the eyes. ‘Run over! The death certificate said the cause of death was “accidental”, but no one explained how he came to lay himself down in the road and run over himself. Any ideas?’

Percy made no response.

Smith bared his teeth. ‘Now perhaps you see why I don’t want to do any more business with you.’

‘You took a long time deciding,’ said Percy. The variety of objections that Smith had offered had still not convinced Percy; there was something else. ‘What is your real reason? Forget the bullshit for a minute or two. Tell me the real reason.’

Smith gritted his teeth. He’d been bursting to tell the real reason, and now he could no longer resist it. ‘You’re selling all this gear to the Jews, aren’t you?’ His smile was fixed and challenging.

‘Jews?’

‘Come off it, you little bastard. This stuff is all going to the Jew boys in Palestine. They’re getting ready for the big show-down with the Arabs. That’s where the money is, and you lot know where the dough’s to be got.’ And then he looked down at the notes and said it again. ‘You know where the money is, all right. What I get is probably just a spit in the ocean.’

Percy looked at him soberly and without expression.

‘I was stationed in bloody Haifa, mate,’ Smith said. ‘I know what they are up to. Those Jews are worse than the bloody Arabs. They’ll skin you alive for a handful of small change. Don’t lie to me; I’ve heard them all. One of my mates was beaten up by a gang of them –…’

There was a tentative knock at the door. ‘Come in!’ called Percy. Now was the time when Percy had to make his decision. Could Smith be made to see reason, or had he gone off the rails? A malicious blabbermouth could betray them all.

The young Tunisian girl came in with a brass tray. On it was a pot of mint tea and a selection of small oriental pastries, over which rose water and thin dribbles of honey had been poured. She wore ornamental slippers and a brightly patterned cotton cloth that was tucked in and held only by the shape of her body. She eyed the two men with placid curiosity. She did not seem frightened or intimidated. Working for Lady Fitz had shown her men in all their many moods and tempers. It would be hard to surprise her. She put the tray on the bedside table and poured two cups of tea. She gave one to Percy. He nodded to her, and she gave a slight movement of the head that acknowledged his signal. Then she offered the other cup of tea to Smith, wafting the steam towards him with the side of her hand, inviting him to smell the fragrance of the mint. Smith sniffed it as he was expected to do, keeping his feet stretched out on the bed and letting his head relax against the pillow.

‘I think she likes you,’ said Percy. ‘Why not take a little tumble with her? It will put you in a better mood. We will talk again later.’ He got up as if to leave the two of them in privacy.

‘No, no. Stay where you are,’ said Smith, but Percy could detect a lack of resolution in his voice.

The girl lightly stroked Smith’s arm and walked her fingers across his body. Smith shivered. ‘What is your secret, Smith? She wants to get into bed with you, you can see she does.’

The bed creaked as Smith laboriously sat up on it, brushing the girl’s hand away. ‘You never give up, do you, Percy?’

‘What are you talking about? Have you never had the full treatment at Lady Fitz?’ said Percy with good-natured interest. ‘It is not the hurried gallop you are used to back home. This girl will anoint you with perfumed oils, smoke a little hashish with you to get you into the right mood, and afterwards she will bathe you. An hour in paradise: this is the way it is done in the East. You should try it. By God, she is a beautiful young creature.’

‘She’s just a kid. She can’t be more than fifteen.’

‘In a country where life expectancy is thirty years, fifteen is middle-aged. Look at her face; she wants you.’

‘And she must have cost you a packet,’ said Smith.

Undaunted by Smith’s words of rejection, the girl had opened his shirt and put her hand against his chest. Smith sat very still. His good sense told him that the behaviour of the girl was something of Percy’s devising, but his ego, fed by his desire, was overcoming that belief. He could smell the sweet lotions that the girl had used. Temptation, after months of celibacy, was fast overwhelming him.

Percy stepped over to the tray and helped himself to a pastry. ‘You can’t get this Turkish delight anywhere but Cairo,’ he said conversationally. He held it up to show Smith: dusted with powdered sugar it shone in the lamplight. Percy popped it into his mouth and chewed it with studied relish.

As if following this exchange, the young girl got a cube from the same plate and brought it close to Smith’s lips. She’d completely unbuttoned his shirt to expose his hairy chest, and now with her left hand she stroked him gently.

‘Open your mouth and shut your eyes, you lucky bastard,’ said Percy amiably.

Smith could smell the rose water and taste the dusted sugar as he bit down hard upon what turned out to be a cube of softened mutton fat. ‘Uggh!’ But the tepid fat clung to his teeth. He could not scream. It clogged his mouth and tongue and would not budge. Before he could spit it out he felt a strong hand clamped across his face. Unable to breathe through his mouth, he snorted violently like a frightened horse.

‘Imshi!’ said Percy.

The girl drew back. As she slid aside from the reclining figure, Percy brought a dagger down fiercely into Smith’s bared chest. Smith gave a mighty heave, but with his heart pierced the violent movement served only to pump blood and hasten his end. Still pressing down on the thrashing body, Percy glanced at the girl. She held her hand to her face, palm outward, splaying her fingers wide so that she could see between them. Her lips were moving, and he wondered if she would scream. Even if she did, it would not matter in a place like this, where screams and groans and gasps were commonplace.

But she did not scream. She watched the scene from behind her spread fingers as Percy twisted the knife a little, keeping his other hand pressing down upon Smith’s face.

Expiring through his nose, the dying man arched his trunk, gave one heave, and vomited fiercely through Percy’s fingers but did not break free. One leg shook violently, scattering the money across the bed. He writhed and seemed to shrink and then was still. Percy waited a minute or two before letting go of him. For a moment he stood looking down at the body. The bedding was marked by blood and smelly vomit. Dozens of tiny splashes of blood made a pattern on the bed cover, the pillows and up the wall. His military training had taught him to kill sentries quickly and silently, but they’d given no advice about not leaving a mess behind. He wondered how much more blood would spurt if he removed the dagger. For the time being he left it there. As if reading his thought the girl brought a towel and wrapped it around the handle of the dagger. Then she went and began to remove the pillows from the bed.

‘As soon as I have gone, you go quickly and get the men,’ he told her. They would know what to do. ‘Do you hear?’ He recognised the splayed fingers and the other gestures she was making with her hand as a sign to give protection against the evil eye. She was moving her lips soundlessly reciting verses from the Koran. He did not laugh at her; he felt like seeking the same sort of protection.

After a moment to catch his breath, he lifted Smith’s heavy body from the bed and thankfully dumped it onto the carpet. He flapped the ends of the carpet over Smith’s mortal remains.

At that moment the door opened. ‘All done, Percy, old bean?’

A slight young man was standing in the doorway. He was hatless; dressed in khaki shirt and officer’s-style khaki gabardine trousers, without any signs of rank or unit. The tone of voice, accent and confident manner were unmistakably the product of some exclusive school in England.

‘It is done,’ said Percy without looking at him. ‘He had cracked. He even checked the engine number of the truck. And he started on about the Jews. It was only a matter of time before he betrayed us.’

Percy gathered together the money that littered the bed. He went through the bundle of Egyptian notes. There were flecks of blood on them, but money was money. He took a couple of notes from the bundle and held them out to the girl. She took them without a change of expression, tucked them away and went on changing the bed cover. Irritated at the way she failed to thank him, Percy put the rest of the money back into his inner pocket.

‘All for one and one for all,’ said the newcomer. He said it solemnly, as he might repeat an oath. Then: ‘Phew what a smell!’ He looked at the dead man and then at the young girl as she began to remove the soiled bedclothes. She lowered her eyes as she felt his gaze. ‘Wow! I see what you mean about the bint: what a lovely piece of ass.’ And then in a brisker voice he said, ‘Give me the cash, old boy. We mustn’t forget that, must we?’ He took it and stuffed it into his pocket without counting it. ‘Let’s go. Mahmoud’s men will do the rest.’

3

At Cairo the water of the Nile divides to make the island of Gezira the coolest and most desirable residential area in the city. The moorings on the western side of the island had by 1942 become crowded with houseboats. They were mostly rented to visitors who liked the noisy parties and bohemian atmosphere. This too was a part of the city of gold.

With a small effort of the imagination, even the brown shiny ripples in the sluggish waters of the river Nile became gilding on a dark bronze underlay. There was something golden about the music too: subtle reedy Arab dissonances that came across the water mingled with the traffic and the street cries and other sounds of the city to make a hum like that from a swarming beehive. Wartime Cairo was like a beehive, thought Peggy West: a golden beehive frantically active, dribbling with honey, and always ready with a thousand stings. It was an inclement habitat for any unprotected woman. Peggy had no other home; seeing the city like this, at night across the waters of the Nile, she felt lonely and afraid.

‘My master will receive you soon, madam. May I bring you coffee?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘Sukkar ziada, madam?’ Only Cairo’s wealthy residents could afford servants who spoke clear English. This one – Yusef – did, but he persisted in using Arabic phrases as if to test her.

‘No thank you, no sugar; saada.’

The servant stared at her and smiled insolently. He was very thin. His face was hard with hollow cheeks and large brown eyes. He had a slight limp but was without the warped stance that is the product of malnourishment. Once he must have been very handsome. Now a broken nose marred the servant’s looks, giving to his unsmiling face a fierceness that did not reassure her.

She had told him on previous visits to the houseboat that she didn’t like the sweet coffee that they always served to women. But women counted for nothing in Egypt. Girl children were unwanted. Women wore the veil, held their tongues, and kept out of sight; women belonged to their husbands and took sweet coffee. He bowed his head to acknowledge her and soon brought coffee for her. It was in a tiny china cup decorated with flowers. He placed it on a brass tray that formed the top of the side table where she was sitting.

‘The master will not keep you waiting much longer,’ he said. He bowed again and departed without waiting for a reply. There was nothing to be said. Women – even educated European women like Peggy West, a highly respected nursing sister at the Base Hospital – could not expect to be treated like men. When Peggy West visited the boat she often had to wait here on the upper deck and drink coffee. It was arranged like this; important men made people wait.

She picked up the coffee cup. Even before she put it to her lips she could smell the heavy sugar syrup with which it had been made. She swore and resolved to complain about the wretched man. But she drank it anyway as he knew she would. As she sipped it she stared at the river. Coming to the island over the Khedive Ismail bridge, she’d noticed that the old Semiramis Hotel was fully lit. The once grand Semiramis was now taken over as the headquarters of ‘British Troops in Egypt’. The electric lights made the windows into yellow rectangles. Every room was lit; it was almost unprecedented for the British army to be working so late. Rommel was on the move again. The army that the British had chased to a standstill in the desert had suddenly revived itself and lunged forward. Cairo was in danger.

She buttoned her coat. There were rumbling sounds that might have been gunfire, and then a truck, with headlights on, went rattling over the nearby English Bridge and two more followed it as if trying to keep up. She recognised them as Morris Quads, curious-looking humpbacked vehicles used to tow 25-pounder field guns. The artillerymen were in a hurry, and they were heading for the Western Desert. Rommel’s soldiers were rushing to meet them. No one could guess where the big battle would take place.

It was easy to sit here and fancy she could hear the gunfire or smell the desolate space that started only a few miles down the road, but that was the sort of silly imagining that newcomers were prone to: the flashy English reporters and pink-faced officers straight out of school, who desperately wanted to become the heroes they’d so recently read about in their comic books.

Peggy always thought of her husband Karl, when she came out here to see this fellow Solomon and collect her money. It was natural that she should; Solomon was a close friend of her husband, or so he said. She sighed as she thought about it. You could not depend upon anyone here to tell the truth. The army, the Arabs, and even the BBC all smoothly lied like troopers when it suited their purposes.

She’d lived in this part of the world for a long time. She’d proved to her own satisfaction that a young Englishwoman with an ordinary suburban background could work and wander in the same casual carefree style that men so frequently did. She knew the southern Mediterranean coast all the way to Tunis, where she’d first arrived armed only with her nursing qualification and the promise of a job in a hospital supported by the funds of local European fruit farmers. Soon she discovered that an experienced nurse with European certificates could get a job almost anywhere along that coast.