I was conscious of a sinking feeling at the pit of my stomach. “I thoroughly disapprove, Ramses. You are too well known to the enemy. Let them find someone else.”
“I must go, Mother. I can’t leave it to someone else. You don’t understand.” He looked from me to Nefret; and on her face I saw the same dawning horror that I felt on my own.
“They ordered you to kill him,” she whispered. “Is that it?”
“That is how the Great Game is played.” Ramses’s voice was hard, his expression withdrawn. “Assassination, deception, corruption – nothing is too vile if it can be labeled patriotism. Whether he is guilty or under duress, he can give away vital information. Cartright wouldn’t tell me what that information is, but it is obviously enough to make him extremely dangerous.”
I cleared my throat. “You agreed, of course.”
Ramses came to me with his long strides and bent to kiss my cheek. It was a rare gesture for him, and I took it as the compliment he intended. “I would have done, Mother, if I had supposed they’d believe me. Murray would have; he hasn’t imagination enough to suppose anyone would dare disregard his orders, and he doesn’t know the man he wants me to assassinate is my uncle. Not that that little matter would bother him.”
“ ‘If thy hand offend thee, cut it off,’ ” I murmured.
I ought to have known better than to quote Scripture when Emerson was already in a vile humor. His heavy brows drew together, but before he could bellow, Ramses spoke again. “Cartright knows me well enough to suspect I would balk at assassination, so we arrived at a compromise. I will get a look at Ismail Pasha and ascertain whether he is Sethos, and whether he is being used by the Turks against his will.”
“Rather a tall order, that,” I remarked.
“The first part shouldn’t be difficult. He’ll be showing himself in public, as he did in Constantinople. I only hope he hasn’t altered his appearance so much I can’t recognize him.”
“And then what?” Nefret demanded.
Ramses shrugged. “One can’t plan very far ahead when there are so many unknowns in the equation. I’m not counting on anything except making a preliminary reconnaissance. Depending on what I learn, if anything, we’ll decide what to do next.”
“Can you get in and out of the city undetected?” I asked, endeavoring to conceal my concern.
“Oh, I think so. The trouble is, Cartright insisted I take someone else with me.”
“It’s safer for two than for one,” Nefret said hopefully.
“Not when one of the two is fresh out of the nursery,” Emerson growled. “Fair, young, speaks Arabic like a textbook, stammering with excitement at the prospect of playing spy…” Emerson summed it up with an emphatic “Damnation!” and went back to filling his pipe.
“He can’t be that bad,” Nefret protested.
“Ha! D’you remember Lieutenant Chetwode?”
“Oh dear,” I said. “Not that ingenuous baby-faced young man who came to Deir el Medina with Cartright?”
“Cartright claims he is his best man,” Ramses said. “He must be older and less ingenuous than he looks, since he has been in intelligence for over two years.”
“Doing what?” Nefret demanded. “Sitting behind a desk filing reports?”
“What does it matter?” Emerson said. “His assignment is not to assist Ramses but to make sure he does what he has said he will do. That bastard Cartright doesn’t trust him.”
Nefret let out an indignant expletive. I said judiciously, “He does have a nasty suspicious mind. To be sure, a sensible individual, which Ramses is not, would go into hiding for a few days and then report that he had determined that Ismail Pasha was not the man they are after. Perhaps if I were to have a little chat with General Murray -”
“No, Mother,” Ramses said, politely but emphatically. “He wouldn’t have approved the scheme if I had not agreed to take Chetwode with me. He’s a likable boy, and not as hopeless as Father makes him sound. It’ll be all right.”
“Every time you say that, something disastrous occurs,” I exclaimed.
“Now, Mother, don’t exaggerate. It doesn’t always.” He was back to normal, his smile broad and carefree, but the concern of a mother informed me he was holding something back.
“What other orders do you have?” I asked.
Emerson, who had been deep in thought, looked up. “Oh, nothing much,” he said sarcastically. “Scout the Turkish defenses, look for weak points, and while you’re at it, sound out the governor to see if he would accept a bribe.”
“Hold your fire, Mother, I’ve no intention of doing anything of the sort,” Ramses said quickly. “The chaps in charge still labor under the delusion that ‘Johnny Turk’ is a white-livered coward. You’d think they’d have learned better after Rafah and Gallipoli.”
“But the military mind is slow to accept new ideas,” I agreed. “Are they planning a direct assault on Gaza?”
“I have not been taken into their confidence,” Ramses said dryly. “I’d bribe the damned governor if I could. It would save countless lives.”
“You can’t,” Emerson said positively. “Anyhow, von Kressenstein is the one in command of the Gaza defenses. He’d have you shot if you offered him a bribe. Stick to your primary aim, my boy, and get the hell out of Gaza as soon as you can.”
“Yes, sir,” Ramses said.
“When do you leave?” Nefret asked steadily.
“It will take a while to make the necessary arrangements,” Ramses said. She gave him a reproachful look, and he went on, “I’m not being deliberately evasive, dear. I need to learn all I can about our present dispositions in south Palestine before I decide on the best way of getting into the city. Then there’s the little matter of transport. They’ve pushed the rail lines as far as Rafah, but most of the traffic is military, and if I tried to pass as a British officer, it would mean being subject to orders from people who didn’t know who I was, or letting too many military types in on the secret. I don’t want even Cartright to know my plans: I politely refused several of his suggestions.”
“You don’t trust him?” I asked.
Ramses began pacing restlessly up and down the room. “I don’t trust any of the bas – - any of them. I still don’t know how Bracegirdle-Boisdragon fits into this; he’s made no further attempt to communicate with us, and when I posed a carefully phrased question to Cartright, he stiffly informed me that I was taking orders from him and no one else.”
“It’s the usual interservice rivalry, as I said,” remarked Emerson, with a curling lip. “They keep more secrets from one another than from the enemy.”
Ramses shrugged. He had said all he was going to say on the subject.
“What makes them suppose Sethos – if it is he – will stay in Gaza?” I asked. “Ramses, you won’t go haring off to Constantinople or Jerusalem after him?”
“Even if he’s left by the time I arrive, there will be news of him. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
He was being deliberately evasive now, and we all knew it. He was right, though; it was impossible to plan ahead.
For the next several days we were all busy about our different affairs. At my insistence, we kept up the pretense that we were in Cairo for personal reasons – a little holiday away from the family, the need to do a little research at the Museum. We dined out every evening, at one of the hotels, with as carefree a mien as we could manage, and if Emerson shouted at the waiters more often than usual, no one thought anything of it.
I remember one of those evenings with a particular poignancy. We were lingering over coffee after an excellent dinner at Shepheard’s and listening to the orchestra render a selection from The Merry Widow. Emerson came out of his fog of frowning introspection when he heard the familiar strains of the waltz, and asked if I would like to dance. I pointed out to him that the dancing had not yet begun. It did soon thereafter, and several couples took the floor. Emerson asked me again, and I pointed out to him that the tune was not a waltz. It was another of the ballads that had become popular in the past few years – the kind of song Ramses had once described as tools of the warmonger, with their sentimental references to love and duty and sacrifice. I knew this one very well. Nefret had played it the night we got the news of the death in battle of our beloved nephew Johnny.