City of Gold

‘Don’t go with closed ears,’ he said.

‘I shall report to you every last little drunken exchange I hear.’

‘Prince Piotr tells everyone he has an American shortwave radio. I want you to look at it carefully and tell me what name it has and which wavebands it can receive.’

‘Why?’

‘Everyone in this town knows that there is some big security leak. The British top brass are running round in small circles trying to find out where Rommel is getting his information about the British strengths and positions.’

‘Where would Prince Piotr get such secrets?’ she said scornfully.

He wasn’t going to debate with her. ‘We have to look into the future, Peggy. Whatever happens between the Germans and the British armies, we Jews will still have to defend ourselves against the Arabs. To do that we must have guns. Violence is the only language an Arab understands, Peggy. There will be no negotiations when the day comes. It will be a fight to the death.’

‘Whose death? Do you know how many million Arabs there are?’

He dismissed this with a flick of the fingers and a deep inhalation on his cigarette. She wondered how much of this stirring rhetoric he believed. ‘Are you familiar with the word tzedaka, Peggy?’

‘Charity?’

‘My father used to say it means, if we Jews don’t look after ourselves, we can be sure no one else will.’ He blew smoke in a studied way, as if demonstrating that he had his feelings completely under control. ‘You’re an old-timer, Peggy. We both know Cairo is a snake pit of conspiracy and betrayal. There are so many factions fighting for control of their particular little backyard that no one can see the true picture.’

‘Except you?’ She tried not to show her resentment at the way he liked to call her an old-timer. He only did it to ruffle her.

‘Except Tel Aviv.’

There was a knock at the door. Four knocks sounded in rapid succession, and in a rhythm that denotes urgency in any language.

‘I’m busy!’

Despite this response, the thin servant came into the room and said without pause, ‘There are soldiers, sir, searching all the houseboats.’

‘British soldiers?’ Solomon asked calmly.

‘Yes, British soldiers.’

‘Yes, British soldiers,’ said another voice and a man in the uniform of a British captain pushed the servant aside with a firm and practised movement of arm and body. He was in his middle thirties, a clean-shaven man with quick eyes. ‘And Egyptian policemen too. This is my colleague, Inspector Khalil, should you want to know more.’ He ushered a slim young Egyptian police officer past him into the room. The Egyptian was dressed in the black wool winter uniform with shiny buttons. Despite the deference shown to him, his presence was only to keep the legal niceties intact.

Solomon got to his feet. ‘My name is Solomon al-Masri.’ He put on a calm and ingratiating smile. ‘May I offer you a drink, major?’ He didn’t ask Khalil, politely assuming that he observed the Muslim strictures on alcohol.

‘Captain actually. Captain Marker. Field Security Police. No, thank you, sir.’

‘Captain, is it? How stupid of me. I can never remember your British rank insignia. Your face is familiar. Have I seen you at the Turf Club, Captain Marker?’

‘No, I’m not a member,’ said Captain Marker, without giving an inch. Marker’s voice was soft and educated but his eyes were hard and unblinking. Solomon had spent a lot of his life under British rule, but for the moment he could not decide whether this man was one of the regular soldiers from BTE – British Troops in Egypt, the peacetime occupying army – or one of the senior British policemen who’d been put into khaki and sent here, there, and everywhere to cope with the flood of serious crime that the war had brought to the Middle East.

‘The Sweet Melody Club, perhaps?’ said Solomon. It was a joke; the Melody was a notorious place where every evening’s performance ended with the Egyptian national anthem, to which British soldiers bellowed obscene words. A riot always ensued. Lately the band had been protected behind barbed wire.

Marker looked at him for a moment, and then sniffed. ‘Inspector Khalil’s men will search your boat.’ Through the wooden bulkheads and deck came noises made by men opening and closing cupboards and containers. Solomon recognised the sounds as those made by police specially trained to search carefully and thoroughly. Sometimes the British brought men who were encouraged to break furniture and chinaware and do as much damage as possible.

‘Of course,’ said Solomon. ‘Search. Yes. I insist. Please treat this boat in the same way as any other. I want no special treatment. It is my privilege to cooperate with the security forces in any way possible.’

‘May I see your papers, miss?’ said Captain Marker. He was looking at Peggy.

Solomon answered. ‘I can vouch for Peggy West. She is one of Cairo’s fairest and firmest fixtures.’

Captain Marker still looked at Peggy as if he’d not heard Solomon. ‘Is that your 1938 Studebaker parked under the trees, Miss West?’

‘Mrs West. No, I don’t have a car. I walked here.’

‘It’s a chilly night for a stroll. Do you have your passport, Mrs West?’

‘I don’t have it with me. It’s at the Hotel Magnifico. I live there.’

Solomon said, ‘She drops in on me once a week. I let her have recent English newspapers. We were just saying good night.’

‘Recent newspapers?’ said Marker raising his eyes to give all his attention to Solomon.

‘The planes come via Gibraltar – sometimes ships too. One of the senior customs officials lets me have them.’

Solomon turned away from the Englishman’s stare. He got his passport from a drawer and handed it to the captain. The cover announced that it was a US passport.

‘We’re in the war together now, Captain,’ said Solomon as he passed the American passport to him. ‘We’re friends and allies now, right?’

Marker studied the cover, then the photo and then looked at Solomon. The passport was in the name of Solomon Marx. ‘We always have been, Mr Marx.’ He gave him the passport back. ‘Thank you, sir. My men will not take long. Since you’re just saying good night, I’ll take you back to your hotel, Mrs West. You’ll be able to formally identify yourself.’

She hesitated but then agreed. There was no alternative. It was wartime. Egypt was a sovereign state and technically a neutral in the war, but any order of the British military police here was law.

When Peggy West, Captain Marker and all the policemen had departed, Solomon sat down with a large bottle of beer. His manservant shed a measure of his deference. ‘What was that all about, then?’ he asked Solomon. The servant was in fact his partner, a Palestinian Jew named Yigal Arad. He’d lived amongst Arabs all his life and had no difficulty in passing himself off as one. For a year or more he’d been an officer of the Haganah, an armed Jewish force. He collected a British army commendation and a gunshot wound in the knee from a Châtellerault machine gun, when guiding British troops across the Syrian border to attack the Vichy French forces the previous summer. The 7.5mm round, now a bent and twisted talisman, hung from a cord round his neck.

‘What was it all about?’ repeated Solomon as he thought about the question. ‘The British simply want to let us know they have their eye on us.’

Solomon was the leader of this two-man Cairo mission. Solomon al-Masri – or to those who knew him well, or got a look at his US passport: Solly Marx – had also been born in Palestine, the son of a Russian Jew. His father had lost all his relatives in a pogrom and had never come to terms with the strange and sunny land to which he’d escaped, except to marry a young Arab woman who gave birth to Solomon and five other children. When his father became bedridden, it was Solomon who’d found ways of keeping the family clothed and fed. Some of those ways he now preferred to forget about. That’s why he had taken the first opportunity to leave his homeland. Never now would he discuss his early life, and yet the key to all Solomon’s thoughts and actions could be found in the pity and disgust he felt for that child he’d once been.

‘That’s all?’ Yigal persisted.

Solomon yawned. It was an affectation, like his languid manner and the fictitious stories about his father, and the sumptuous Cairo mansion which he liked to pretend had been his family home. ‘There are not many real secrets in this town. We must let the British discover some of our little secrets in order to keep our big secrets intact.’

‘She always wants unsweetened coffee.’

‘Perhaps she doesn’t want to get fat.’

‘At home we drink it sweet. Unsweetened coffee is only served for funerals.’

‘Because your people are all peasants,’ said Solomon without rancour. ‘Here in Cairo people are more sophisticated.’

‘Will you confide in the woman?’ He poured a beer for himself.

‘Peggy West? I might have to.’