City of Gold. Len Deighton

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      ‘Her mother arranged it with the brigadier,’ said Marker. In a way Marker enjoyed explaining the situation to his boss, just to watch his face.

      ‘I can’t wait to meet her,’ said Ross.

      ‘You won’t be disappointed,’ said Captain Marker.

      He guessed of course that the big surprise was yet to come, so he was watching very carefully when Alice Stanhope came down the exterior balcony and swung in through the door. ‘I’m so sorry I’m late, sir,’ she said. Then, remembering she should have saluted, she came to attention and put her hat back on.

      ‘That’s quite all right,’ said Ross. Until that moment he’d firmly intended to leave his quarters that evening and disappear, thanking his lucky stars for preserving him. Now his plans, and indeed his life, changed. He would have to come back to the office tomorrow.

      Alice Stanhope was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. He must see her again, if only just once.

      2

      The region called El Birkeh, where so many of Cairo’s brothels were found, stretched from the railway station almost to Ezbekiya Gardens. This forbidden area – marked OUT OF BOUNDS by means of circular signs bearing a black cross – was constantly patrolled by red-capped military policemen. Its main streets were Clot Bey – named after a physician who did notable work on venereal disease, and Wagh El Birkeh, after which the whole ‘Birkeh’ district was named. For centuries this pleasure district had been spoken of with wonder throughout the Arab world, from Casablanca to Zanzibar.

      The extreme western edge of El Birkeh was a maze of narrow alleys, twisting and turning between low mud-brick buildings. Day and night it was always populous, rowdy and predatory. Once musicians, magicians, soothsayers and dancers had plied their trades along with the whores. Now, in January 1942, the cabarets, peep shows and whores predominated. Women of all colours, all sizes, all shapes and all nationalities were to be had here. There were women for the rich and women for the poor. They sat on their tiny balconies calling down to men in the streets below. They were available in accommodations that varied from curtained alcoves in mud-wall huts to ornate rooms in palatial houses.

      One of the more expensive establishments in El Birkeh was the brothel the soldiers called Lady Fitzherbert’s after the heroine in a ribald army song. The woman they called Lady Fitz was a fifty-year-old Greek dentist who’d arrived in Cairo penniless in 1939. The war, and the buildup of the army, was making her rich. She had already become one of the most influential people in Cairo. Lady Fitz ran her establishment with all the managerial skills of a Swiss hotelier. She sent gold coins to the ministers, provided the choicest young women for the Cairo police inspectors and gallons of whisky for the British red caps.

      It was a cardinal rule with Lady Fitz that she did business only with those she knew. She knew the two soldiers who were using one of her best upstairs rooms. They came regularly. She knew them as Sergeant Smith and Sergeant Percy. What their real names were she did not care; the money they paid was genuine and they never gave her any trouble. She looked at her watch. The expensive Longines wristwatch was one of her few concessions to luxury, for her hair was simply combed, her makeup minimal, her dark blue cotton dress was simple and her flat-heeled shoes purchased in the souk. It was almost time; she made a signal to one of her girls.

      The two soldiers had been upstairs for almost an hour. It was time that Lady Fitz sent the girl up to them. She was a beautiful half-Tunisian child who didn’t know the date of her own birth. She knew only that all her family had been killed during the fighting in Sidi Barrani in December 1940. From there she had walked about 350 miles to Cairo. Lady Fitz had found her begging outside the great al Azhar mosque. She’d looked after her well, and was saving her for someone special, which meant someone who could pay.

      Sergeant Percy always paid for everything well in advance, and without argument or complaint. Sergeant Percy was different from all the others. He wore South African badges, but she was not convinced that he was from South Africa. She didn’t inquire. The important thing to her was that he was quiet, sober and polite. He seldom smiled, never made a joke and always wanted a different girl. It was the sort of behaviour that Lady Fitz expected of men, and she liked him. The other one, Smith, was sober too but fat, flashy and arrogant and too ready with sarcastic jokes. He ordered everyone around as though they were his subordinates, but for Lady Fitz his worst fault was in showing a complete indifference to her girls. Sometimes she wondered whether he was a homosexual. She could have offered him boys, men, anything he wanted, but he showed no interest in her offerings. She’d never fathomed him.

      ‘Get ready now,’ she told the girl. ‘Prepare the tea. It will soon be time to go to them. Do exactly as I told you.’

      The girl had that earnest expression with which many children face the world of grown-ups. She looked at Lady Fitz and nodded solemnly.

      The rough surfaces of the khaki uniforms the two soldiers wore, and even their tanned flesh, was made into gold by the light of the oil lamp. The big brass bedstead glinted like gold, and across it a lace shawl had been draped. The polished metal fittings on the chest of drawers glittered, and the flame of the oil lamp was seen again in the swivelled vanity mirror that reflected the room. To a casual observer they could have been old friends getting drunk together, but a closer look might have revealed the sort of tension that came from arguing and bargaining, for when the two men met here it was for business, not for pleasure. A brothel provides a discreet rendezvous for men who want their meetings to remain secret.

      Sergeant Smith was on the bed. At first his feet had been resting on the large oriental carpet but, having stubbed out his cigarette, he untied his laces, eased off his boots, and swung his stockinged feet up onto the bed. ‘Ahh!’ he said wriggling his toes and delighting in the feeling of resting full-length upon the freshly laundered bedding.

      Smith was thirty-three years old. His cheerful face was made memorable by a waxed moustache, its ends twisted into sharp points. The Grenadier Guards drill sergeant who had taught him, and his recruit intake, to march had had a moustache like that, and Smith had immediately decided to grow one for the duration of the war.

      Smith glanced at the mirror to see himself and the big bed reflected there, and then he sipped at his glass of lemonade. On his eighteenth birthday he had promised his father that he would never touch alcohol, and he had kept his promise. Even at his wedding he’d stuck to soft drinks. That was long ago. Now his wife and two daughters lived in the upstairs part of his mother-in-law’s house near the big railway depot at Crewe in Cheshire, England. Although he missed his family, Smith did not brood about things he could not change. Before the war he’d worked for the railway as a senior storeroom clerk, and they were holding his job open for him. Meanwhile he was making a great deal of money, and his work did not entail exposure to enemy bombs, bullets or shells. As Smith repeatedly said in his letters home, he was a very lucky man.

      The other soldier, Percy, was sitting in a large wicker armchair. He was younger, twenty-seven years old, and exceptionally neat and tidy. He’d sewed on the buttons, the South African shoulder flashes, and the white, coiled-snake unit badges, with the same meticulous care that he serviced the engine of his truck and oiled the guns he used. The tight webbing belt he wore was perfectly brushed and its brass-work was fastidiously polished so as to leave no stains on the webbing. The only jarring note in Percy’s uniformed appearance was the dagger attached to his belt. It was a German army trench knife. Some people said that Percy had killed its previous owner.

      Percy was not his real name. He’d adopted the name Percy on the battlefield when he deserted. That’s why he liked to call it his nom de guerre. He was very adaptable. He told anyone interested that he had made the transition from civilian СКАЧАТЬ