“And you’d like this lawyer to keep you in touch with developments, no doubt?”
Pearson smiled, giving me the straight look. “It’s a good story, you know.”
“I thought journalists had given up suggesting that sort of deal long ago.”
“I don’t know, Mr. Marlow. Perhaps you freelance people are a little out of touch. There’s a lot of money in a story like this.”
“Well then, you go and ask this man Marcus about it all yourself. Put your foot in the door. You professional pen men are supposed to be good at that sort of thing.”
I lowered half the shandy he’d bought me and got up.
“I will. I will ask him. Usher — you know Robin Usher, don’t you? — he’s having some people along this evening for drinks. He’s asked Marcus. No ambassador here now, so Usher acts as a kind of unofficial host when business people come out from London. Perhaps you’ll be there yourself?”
“I’ve not been asked.”
“You’re sure to get a message then.”
“You told him I was in Cairo?”
“Of course. The British are a pretty small community now. We don’t get many visitors from home. Everybody knows everyone else. There aren’t many secrets between us all out here, you’ll find.”
Pearson was a limpet, a little drummer who’d never let up. And why not? He had the makings of a story all right. As far as he was concerned British Intelligence was playing some sort of extraordinary leap-frog in Cairo. He must have known that Usher had some connection with the service, and Henry too with his frequent visits to the Middle East, and he’d guessed that I was in the same line of country. And now Marcus. He had more of a picture of what was going on than I had myself.
But what sort of leap-frog? What was the large view? What had Marcus come for? Enough was happening in the area politically at the moment to justify a visit by one of our senior staff. But Marcus didn’t fit that bill — knowing little of Arab affairs, he’d come to our section with a security brief, primarily as an interrogator, a ferret to smell out the vermin, the double dealers and defectors. He was practised in that and it must have been his role now. Presumably he was after Henry — they’d had some definite news of him since I’d left. Or had he come after both of us now? — with the idea that I was on my way over to the other side as well? Marcus was the sort of person who, if he couldn’t find a plot, would invent one. And so, I thought, was Williams. In the business of espionage they were always seeing double.
I called at reception for my key. There was another message for me — a phone call from Usher giving me his address up behind Abdin Palace beneath the Citadel and an invitation for that evening. My passport was there as well, back from its police check. I’d forgotten about it. The clerk handed it over with a little less than his usual obsequious bonhomie. He glanced over my shoulder and I knew at once what was up. Someone from the ‘authorities’ was standing behind me, waiting for me.
In fact there were two of them, over by the huge copper globe labelled COMPLAINTS at the end of the reception desk, dressed in the usual shimmering Dacron suits and Italian winkle-pickers which Egyptian plainclothesmen had made their uniform. With their tooth-brush moustaches, well kept weasel faces and dark glasses they looked like night club owners nervously and unaccountably involved in some dangerous daytime venture. For Egyptians there was something unusually aggressive about them too, a threatening, hair-trigger efficiency.
The taller one approached while the other stood back blocking the corridor which led to the rear entrance of the hotel. I might just have made it down the regal brass-railed shallow steps which faced the corniche but I honestly didn’t feel like running.
“Mr. Marcus?” it sounded like, but I must have misheard in the confusion.
“Yes?”
“You would come with us please. Thank you very much.”
“Why — what’s up?”
“Something is irregular in your passport. If you would not mind. For a few moments.”
‘What’s wrong with my passport? I had the visa through your London Embassy. The press section there …”
I opened the passport — and closed it again quickly. The photograph on the first page was familiar enough, a fellow with a receding hairline, balding slightly, not unlike my own. But the chin definitely wasn’t me, jutting out aggressively like an icebreaker, or the narrow formless lips and bitten-in mouth: the general air of disquiet and deviousness belonged unmistakably to David Marcus.
The tougher, taller man took the passport from me and his friend closed in on one side. I was certainly coming quietly. I’d got the wrong passport and they’d got the wrong man — a typical Egyptian police muddle — and I’d probably only got an hour or two before they found out their mistake: just time, if I was lucky, to find out what they were on to Marcus for.
“Very well. May we go?”
Pearson had come out of the bar to our left and I think he had it in mind to try and stop us as we moved across the lobby and out of the main entrance. But he thought better of it, his mouth twitching in agitation and surprise. Instead he followed us down the steps.
“Where are you taking him?” he shouted in Arabic, flourishing his press card, as the two men opened the door of a small Mercedes at the kerb. ‘He’s a journalist. What have they got you for?’ He made an anguished appeal to me, a hair or two out of place in his immaculate black shine so that he looked almost unkempt. I shrugged and got into the back seat. I didn’t feel like helping him. His interest was so transparent. He wasn’t worried about me, whether I was thumbscrewed, beaten about the soles or had my balls plugged into the Direct Current; Pearson was worrying about his story: the plot was thickening about him while he watched, and he was losing his way. I couldn’t blame him. He was by temperament a journalist of the old blood-and-smut school — a fiver in a saloon bar in Earl’s Court, the dead call girl in the basement opposite — and these present developments were clearly putting a strain on his self-control.
We went across El Trahir, up to Ramses Square, past the station and then along beside the metro towards Heliopolis before pulling off through the main sand-bagged entrance to the military barracks there, the armour depot and G.H.Q. for the Cairo area forces. This was where Egyptian Military Intelligence operated from, I knew, and the man I met in the weather-blown Nissen hut, still doing duty from British days, was no passport control officer: a Major with an overkeen face and unusually slim-fitting uniform for a senior Egyptian Army man. When you got anywhere in his job it was back to the tailor’s every year to let the seams out. They gave him Marcus’s passport and he put it down on the desk in front of him, fiddling with it, but he didn’t open it. And I didn’t expect to learn much from him either, for the moment he did look at it — and me — carefully, it would all be over. But I was lucky. He started straight away, confident, going in at the deep end.
‘Why have you been bringing messages in your passport, Mr. Marcus?’
‘Messages?’ I put in quickly, covering the name.
‘Microfilm.’ He held up an envelope, opened it, and took out a card with a speck of dark negative attached to it I laughed. How far could I get with him? I wondered.
‘What does it say?’
‘That is no matter.’ The Major looked puzzled.
‘I’ve not been bringing in any microfilm. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’