City of Gold. Len Deighton

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СКАЧАТЬ said Jeannie.

      ‘Yes, she’s trying to get the office in order. It’s a terrible mess. You know Blanche never files anything.’

      ‘Before coming to us, this Alice woman was working as a clerk in that big military police building, the one opposite the railway station,’ said Jeannie and looked at Peggy, smiling triumphantly. ‘She admitted it.’

      ‘Yes, she told me. What about it?’

      ‘Didn’t you read what the newspapers said about police spies watching everywhere. Is she a police spy?’

      ‘Oh, Jeannie, I’ve not had an easy morning. Surely you don’t believe all that rubbish the papers print?’

      Jeannie would not abandon her theory: ‘And Hochleitner is a German name, isn’t it?’ She bit her lip and stared at Peggy.

      Peggy West took a deep breath. ‘Jeannie, you’re a senior nurse. Are you seriously suggesting that Alice is some sort of spy sent here to find out if the Hoch is a Nazi?’

      ‘I know it sounds farfetched,’ admitted Jeannie. The lowered tone of her voice suggested a retreat from her previous position, but she didn’t like the way that Peggy was trying to make her feel foolish. ‘But there are spies everywhere, you know that.’

      ‘I don’t know anything of the kind,’ said Peggy. ‘All I know is that there are stories of spies everywhere! How I wish everyone would calm down and be more sensible. We’re English, Jeannie; let’s try to keep a sense of proportion.’

      ‘I’m not English, I’m a Scot,’ said Jeannie sullenly.

      Peggy laughed. ‘That’s no excuse,’ she told her.

      Only with great difficulty did Jeannie MacGregor keep her temper. Her admonition was soft but bitter. ‘You used to be so sensible about everything.’

      ‘I didn’t mean to be rude. But you are piling the agony on. Alice is a nice girl … and she’s a good typist. Things are not so good at the front. Any day now we might be fighting Rommel in the suburbs of Cairo, so I suppose the police have to keep an eye on people. Meanwhile we British all have to help each other.’

      There was a long silence. Then Jeannie said, ‘I have instincts about people and that girl is trouble. I’m always right about these things, sister. You mark my words.’

      So it was one of Jeannie’s ‘instincts’? Oh, my God, thought Peggy. Her instinct was another treasured thing she’d inherited from her grandfather. ‘The Hoch has taken her on,’ said Peggy. ‘Nothing can be done about it now.’

      ‘We’ll see about that,’ said Jeannie spitefully. ‘That girl is a viper; I can see it in her face. I’ll get rid of her. I’ll see her off, if it’s the last thing I do.’

      ‘Oh, go to hell!’ said Peggy and turned away. Immediately she regretted it. Had she spent five more minutes with her she might have brought her to a more amiable point of view. Jeannie MacGregor had all the tenacity of her race. If she wanted to make things difficult for Alice, or anyone else, she’d find ways of doing it.

      ‘The dispatch riders are here,’ someone called from the window. ‘That usually means the ambulances are right behind them.’

      ‘It’s too early,’ said Peggy.

      ‘I heard there will be two convoys,’ called Jeannie. ‘I’d better get back to my girls and make sure they’re ready.’ She was more positive now she had work to do.

      ‘Yes,’ said Peggy with a sigh. Perhaps she could get nurse MacGregor an exchange posting to one of the new Advanced Surgical Centres, where emergency operations were done as near the battlefield as possible.

      She heard the ambulances arriving. It was starting. ‘Time to earn our pay,’ said Peggy loudly. She always said that when the ambulances arrived.

      7

      No one claimed to remember when or where or why the little gatherings began, but it had become a custom that, early on Friday evenings, a glass or two of chilled white wine and some tempting snacks, were freely available on the top floor to the residents of the Magnifico and any hangers-on.

      ‘Happy days, Piotr,’ said Peggy West nodding to the prince as more wine was offered to her by Sammy, his Egyptian servant dressed in a long black galabiya with elaborate gold facings. ‘What do you think of your neighbours, Alice?’

      ‘It’s so good of you to let me have the room,’ said Alice, also taking a second glass of wine.

      Peggy smiled and looked round the room. Captain Robin Darymple, in starched khaki shirt and pants, was always among the first to arrive. Talking to him there was a sleekly beautiful Egyptian girl, Zeinab el-Shazli, and her brother, Sayed. There were strangers too. Some of them must have started drinking in the afternoon, for there was a loud buzz of talk and laughter.

      Peggy smiled across the room at the two Egyptians. She described them briefly to Alice. They were both students at the American University and living on the first floor of the Magnifico. Sayed was a handsome young man. His light-coloured healthy skin and clear blue eyes were said in Cairo to be the legacy of Circassian concubines, women renowned for their beauty. Captain Darymple was holding forth about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, using his free hand to bomb his wineglass. America’s entry into the war had been the predominant topic of conversation for weeks. Sayed, an Egyptian army reserve officer, was listening to Darymple with a patient look on his face. Peggy pushed past them and, raising her glass to the prince, said, ‘Thank you, Piotr.’

      Alice looked him: this was the man who was said to be Rommel’s spy in Cairo.

      The prince dwarfed everyone in the room. He was a tall, large-framed man dressed in a black velvet smoking jacket and white trousers. At his neck there was a patterned silk cravat, fastened by a gold pin set with diamonds. Ever since the war started, Piotr Nikoleiovich Tikhmeibrazoff had been calling himself Colonel Piotr. If challenged – as once he had been by Captain Darymple, who lived on the second floor – he calmly pointed to a photo of a smart infantry regiment marching past the Rossisskaya cotton mill during the disturbances in St Petersburg in January 1913. His father, Prince Nikolei, had owned that regiment, lock, stock and barrel. When his father was killed in action in 1916, Piotr Nikoleiovich inherited it along with vast acreages of land, farms and villages, the grand townhouse, and the seaside summer palace in the Crimea. The title of ‘Colonel – retired’ was a modest enough claim under the circumstances.

      Piotr Nikoleiovich had been studying archeology at Oxford University at the time of his father’s death. He remained there during the revolution, which came soon after it. In 1925 he’d visited Russian friends in Cairo and decided to make it his home. Some of the treasures to be seen here in his apartment had been in the twenty-seven packing cases of clothes, furniture, carpets, paintings, icons and ornaments that his mother had selected and sent from Russia as essential to him while he was at university in England. He liked to talk about his days at Oxford and lately was apt to call himself ‘a student of world affairs’. This was to account for the way in which he spent most of his mornings reading newspapers and many of his afternoons in the cafés and bazaars, drinking coffee with a large and cosmopolitan collection of leisured cronies.

      ‘Peggy, darling, don’t tell me this is our new neighbour. I heard there was a quite ravishing young lady living here.’ The prince spoke in the astringent СКАЧАТЬ