And later, when it was all over, and Marlow had gone home in any case, he had resented still more Bridget’s compassion for him, the responsibility she felt for the disaster, which had worked itself to the surface long after she had ceased to have anything to do with him, which had soured some of their own days together. It was the quality in Bridget which he most feared — these obsessive residuals, which could flare again. If Marlow ever did come back to Egypt, he thought … The nostalgic temperament which he recognized so well in her, could fall in love with remembered passion just as easily as falling off a log.
Marlow would be the least expected person in Cairo, yet it was exactly his nature to come untimely. And so, the Colonel argued, with that certainty of intuition that comes of loving, fearing loss, Marlow would return — just as surely as if he had bought the ticket for him in London himself.
He feared Marlow. He was another of the signs of the last twenty-four hours; they were not messages of logic but a kind of magic which until now had preserved him in his profession and protected his passion — signs, there was no other way of putting it, given in tents, heard on the wind, written on sand. But he could no longer interpret them. He feared his luck had just started to run out.
The Colonel thought of his long affair with Bridget Girgis as if it were already finished. It had begun when she was hardly twenty, and he nearly twenty years older, just after the war. It had started so easily in those fluent days of parties and dances before the British had left; it had been an affair of light carried forward effortlessly on a tide of dazzling linen tablecloths, sheets, glazed martini glasses, picnic hampers. She had taken to him without a murmur, had become a perfect part of his conspiracy.
Perhaps she had found out that he had once been with British intelligence in Egypt from her father, with whom he’d had professional contacts during the war. And the rest had followed without any strain: Bridget had gone on assuming he was with the British, working now as one of their men in Egyptian security. It had been a joke between them on the few occasions when the subject had come up; he had warned her never to talk about it — and they had both subsequently contrived to forget their knowledge of each other’s work, when they were apart — or together. It had been a matter of no importance, a detail which, though acknowledged, had nothing to do with their real focus of intent, their ambition as lovers.
And yet she had gone on seeing Edwards whenever he came to Cairo — in the same generous, impossible way that she had taken up with Marlow. He knew that; he’d had Edwards followed, though he’d never mentioned it to her. That had been the one proviso in their love — never to question trust. And she had been trustworthy, certainly: to him, to Edwards, even to Marlow. She had been more than kind to everyone. While he and Edwards, and no doubt Marlow, nursed uneasy consciences, she seemed to ride high above doubt, living with suspicion and dissension as happily as she did with the men who brought these things to her.
But Edwards had more than a bad conscience now; he had come to the last peg as an agent: Edwards was beyond trust, therefore he was as good as dead. And in any case one never picked women up on the way down, on the run, even if they were old friends. A passion to save yourself — your neck or your conscience — stopped the kissing like bad breath. Henry was finished with loving too.
The Colonel thought of Bridget again with sudden hope, as something vital still within his grasp; for her sake alone, perhaps, he had not yet tired of conspiracy; because of her he still had armour, could bring foresight and professional skill against disruption or whatever the signs held for him. He would hold her as long as he never came to pity himself — that was the way to look at it.
Edwards had been chattering away about “devious plots”. The Colonel was bored out of his mind by his theories. He knew the facts now: Edwards was going to double-cross him, expose him and the other Tel Aviv men in Egypt. He would kill him in the morning: not now, but tomorrow. He was late already now.
The ceaseless questions which had raged through the Colonel’s mind for the past twenty-four hours drifted away as he remembered his appointment with Bridget that night. He was due to pick her up later at Maadi. They were going on to dinner afterwards on the Semiramis terrace.
The Colonel turned to Edwards. “Look, you’ll have to stay on here for the moment. I can’t immediately countermand Major Amin’s orders. It’s his show — this business with Yunis, and you’re involved with it one way or another. I believe what you say; there’s been a mix-up, we’ll get it straightened out. I’ll see Amin tomorrow and we’ll talk about it then. The quarters are comfortable enough here. I’ll have them send you some food.”
“Yes. Certainly.”
Edwards spoke with the good nature of someone trying to ingratiate himself, having decided some time before that he would get himself out of the hospital at the first opportunity and make his way — by whatever means, the canal seemed promising — to Bridget’s house in Maadi.
Edwards was quite determined to escape for he was certain now that he was involved, not just in a trap, but in a trap set to kill him in the morning. He couldn’t understand why the Colonel hadn’t got under way with it that night. Perhaps he was in a hurry, was late already for an appointment with a woman or something.
10
After the Colonel had left, Edwards sat in the office and listened. Now, twenty minutes later, he was in complete darkness. All the lights had gone out just after they’d brought him some food — a plateful of mushy courgettes and some stringy meat fried in breadcrumbs. It was the last he’d see of it, thankfully.
They hadn’t locked the door. They had brought blankets and shown him to a bed in the next inter-connecting office. But the entrance to the low building would still obviously be guarded on the outside. Before the lights went out there had been a noise too, Edwards remembered now that it had stopped: a generator or a boiler, an insistent powerful humming noise. What was it? And now the room was getting warmer, the whole atmosphere of the building becoming slightly muggy and velvet, like any other Egyptian night, while before there had been a slight crispness.
Minute beads of sweat began to form around his hairline before Edwards understood: the Colonel’s office was next to the hospital’s refrigeration plant — the cold rooms where they kept drugs, food and obviously the bodies as well. Presumably the humming would start again the moment power returned, or the emergency generator was activated.
The lights came on. The soft purr from behind the walls returned. A power failure; as regular and certain an occurrence in Cairo as the weather. But there had been several minutes during which the whole building must have been in complete darkness. Which meant that the emergency generator didn’t cut in automatically.
Edwards looked around the office and noticed two strands of exposed cable above the Colonel’s desk, the beginning of a light fitting which hadn’t yet been installed. Both ends of the flex had been bound up with tape, something they’d have hardly bothered to do, he thought, if the wires had been dead.
He got a chair, stood up and wound the tape off each strand of wire. He took a coin out of his pocket, an old copper piastre with Fuad’s head almost rubbed away, and pushed it into the plastic clip of his pen …
In the first moment of blackness Edwards ran as fast as he could down the corridor towards the entrance, shouting in Arabic:
“Quick, quick! The foreigner — he’s broken through the window. Out the door — quick!”
He avoided the approaching beams of torchlight, which now swung away from the corridor towards the main door of the building. He actually opened the door himself, cursing and shouting at the other two figures by his side, and the three of them raced out into the night, two to the left of the building where his window was, and the third to the right, making eastwards towards the white spurs of the Mokattam Hills which showed in the faint light.