“Now, Lord Fancourt — over there in the easy chair. And remember, this is Oxford in the ’twenties: very blue porcelain, very la-di-dah. Jack Chesney? Where is Fawzi, for God’s sake?”
Fawzi peered round a door on the set, a thickset Egyptian with Presley locks and campus sweater, smoking one of the new hundred-millimeter cigarettes.
“Fawzi,” the American yelled, “make that entrance much sharper. And remember you light the cigarette after you get in. His Lordship gives it to you. So put that one out and start again.”
The Lord Fancourt in the proceedings, in plimsolls and T shirt, remonstrated at this stage direction.
“Mr. Pershore, it’s just an excuse. Fawzi’s just smoking all my cigarettes. That’s the third one I’ve given him.”
I crept up behind Mr. Pershore. “I’m sorry to bother you. I was looking for the Science lab.”
He turned and I explained my purpose, brandishing my nature study which I’d stuck neatly in the pages of a book I’d brought with me.
“It’s closed, I guess. But Magda might be able to help. She’s majoring in Science — over there. Don’t keep her too long. She’s Donna Lucia quite soon, goddammit.”
Magda, a tall girl with good legs, was more than willing and only her dramatic commitments prevented her from leaning over the microscope with me throughout. Luckily botany wasn’t her speciality. None the less she gave me some uneasy moments.
“That looks like a weed to me.”
“Yes, it is. Quite right. It’s the earth attached to the roots that I’m interested in. The properties of the soil — it’s quite different in Egypt. The Nile mud, you know. I want to see what bearing it has on the seeding. I suspect pollination here is induced by quite a different trigger mechanism than is usual. And of course this would have an important bearing on the growth and spread of wild flowers generally in Egypt.”
“Of course.”
Magda left me to it. I cleaned the earth from the two glass plates, slipped the microfilm in between them and pushed the tray back under the lens. The magnification was far too high, giving me a bad photograph of light and shadow on the moon. I swivelled to the next smaller lens, and then to the one below that. Now I could make it out, at least the heading and part of the first paragraph.
It was an Israeli Ministry of Defence memorandum from the Chief of Staff, General Yitzhak Rabin, to the Commander Northern Front, General David Elazar, dated a few days previously, May 7, 1967. It outlined a series of recent El Fatah raids made from Syria and the Lebanon on Israel’s northern borders: a water pipe line at the kibbutz Hagoshrun damaged on April 29, an irrigation pump destroyed near Kfar Nahun on May 5 and an Army truck mined on the Tiberias-Rosh Pina highway on the same day the memo was written. I moved the slide up a fraction. The note went on to say that in view of this dangerous escalation of guerrilla activity General Rabin was authorizing a large military deployment near the Syrian border — six armoured brigades, an engineering corps, commando units and artillery, supported by various detachments of the local National Guard, a supply and pay corps, field hospitals, etc. The memo then outlined primary targets in Syria — the fortified village of Kalian, the hills of Tel Faq’r and Azaziat — and discussed the necessary first-strike immobilization of the Syrian 130 mm and 122 mm artillary emplacements in these areas. The note ended with a provisional strike date: May 17 at 0300 hours, a week hence.
Israel was going to knock the Syrians out of the ring in a pre-emptive strike. Nasser, with all his bellicose trumpetings of the past month, could hardly stand by and watch: with this sort of information in his hands he would be forced to mobilize his own troops on Israel’s southern flank in Sinai as a diversionary tactic. If he heeded this memorandum, as he must, he was going to be dragged into a war he couldn’t win.
The message, if Egyptian Military Intelligence believed it, was more or less the President’s death warrant. And they would believe it, wouldn’t they? — having found it on Marcus, or myself, genuine Mid-East section men. Which of course didn’t mean that the memo hadn’t been forged. But true or false its results would be the same. Who could have wished such ill will on the two of us? And on President Nasser. Williams again. We were one of his “ploys” in action, implementing his or the U.S. State Department’s view that Nasser was another Hitler and must be deposed at all costs. Marcus and I had been sent out to start a war, planted, and with Marcus the roots had taken well, I had no doubt. But why Marcus? What had he done to incur Williams’s disfavour? Just then, I couldn’t imagine.
I walked back to the Semiramis and called Cherry at the Anglo-American from my room. It was just after six and I could see across the river from my window the usual chocolate box sunset over Gezira; an orange sinking out of a violent and gold sky into the palms of the exhibition ground. And there were all the other sounds and senses of the city waking again, grinding into life, after the hours of silence. It was just the sort of evening, among so many in the past, when one felt like doing something, starting afresh. Going to a party.
“Herbert? — what are you doing? Usher’s party — are you coming to it?”
It turned out he’d had a call from Usher that morning and had been trying to contact me. I met him downstairs in the bar half an hour later.
“Well?” he said.
“Well nothing. I’ve been looking round, that’s all.”
“Not with Mr. Khoury, though. He’s been on to me all day. You were due with him out at Helwan this afternoon. And he’s got a trip arranged for Sakkara tomorrow.”
“One can’t do everything. How’s Madame?”
“The same. But listen — ” Cherry assumed one of his serious expressions, screwing his face up, tightening his skin, like air being sucked out of a bladder “—if you don’t make an effort to play the part, aren’t they going to wonder?”
“Who?”
“Khoury has friends. In Security. They all have. They talk.”
“Have you heard something?”
“The jump is on about something. They picked up someone else today. From London.”
“You’re thinking of me, Herbert. I was. They got the wrong passport. A mistake.” And I told him of my visit to Heliopolis. He would learn of that from Pearson in any case, it would be all round the place within hours. We ordered drinks and I started to try and add up what Marcus’s capture might lead to. It was possible, of course, that my laissez-passer about the city might run out if they put any pressure on him. Marcus had never had the training to withstand the water drop — or whatever the favoured technique of the moment was with Egyptian intelligence; unless one could expect his native intransigence to stand foil against any torture. It was possible.
He knew about my being in Cairo — and Herbert and Usher for that matter. Perhaps this really was the end of the Cairo-Albert circle — the end of so many good days — on so little money, for even less information.
I tried to think of Marcus under pressure, strapped to a chair or something, a moist and swarthy gentleman moving towards him with a carpet beater. Was that how they did it? But whatever they did to Marcus he wouldn’t see Holbora again for a long while. And the rest of the picture suddenly came into focus: I saw why Williams had switched to Marcus, made him take the fall instead of me: Marcus, the spy-catcher, had been on to him. Williams didn’t work for Holborn or the CIA. He could only have been from the other side, from Moscow. And I saw, too, how the Israeli memo would serve Russian purposes even better than our own: a war with Israel, which Egypt would lose, and Nasser’s subsequent fall which would allow Moscow really to take over in Egypt; to make good their battle losses and install a properly Marxist government with someone like Yunis at the head of it. Nothing would suit Moscow better than that Egypt should suffer a quick knock-out blow from Israel, a blitzkrieg war over the cities and across Sinai; such an outcome would ensure the Soviet position in Egypt for years to come.