We came down the narrow winding stairway on the far side of the harem and I made my way over towards Usher. But Pearson was right in with his feet before I got half-way across the crowded mosaic, gibbering in a state of some energy and excitement.
“Well, my God, man, what happened?” He was obviously holding the front page.
“Nothing. A police muddle. The usual thing. I was given someone else’s passport. They hadn’t got a proper visa.”
“And Marcus? — our friend Marcus?” Pearson fidgeted nearer, taking a pushy stance. “Where’s he got to?”
“Your friend, Mr. Pearson. And where should he have got to? Here, I thought you said. Isn’t he?” I looked around.
“He was picked up at the Hilton about an hour after you were.”
“Probably had business with his whisky people then.”
“Like hell. These were jokers from the same pack as you had.”
“How unfortunate. I expect he’ll be along any minute. Probably had something wrong with his passport too. They’re very careful about that sort of thing out here now, aren’t they?” I moved on.
“Mr. Marlow! How long it’s been. What a very long time.” Usher actually stood up. His voice was full of mild generosity. “I was so hoping you could come. Feel responsible for you in a way,” he went on in a lower voice, leading me by the arm up some steps behind his throne and into a minute whitewashed cell-like ante-room.
“Have a drink. Some champagne, I remember it was, last time. How have you been? No hard feelings, I hope; that business over your wife. I hear it ended badly. She was due along here tonight but I couldn’t get any answer from her number. Probably just as well. Let old acquaintance be forgot, in the circumstances, I imagine.”
There was a huge double bed, with a Moroccan weave counterpane, filling half the space; a camel-saddle stool and a lot of champagne on ice in several buckets: an austere room, but not entirely unrelieved.
“Quieter here. And we should talk. Henry Edwards?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. David Marcus, late of the Scottish Office?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Pearson, the news hound?”
I nodded. “You know all about it then.”
“I thought so. An awkward business, especially with Monty here. Truth to tell there’d have been a hell of a row by now, but for that. They’re playing it down. Don’t want to spoil their military reunion. Monty’s showing them how to drive a tank. Otherwise we’d all be in Heliopolis barracks by now.”
“I expect so.”
Usher smacked his lips and, bending down, he nursed a bottle out of the ice and cracked it with a resounding pop. He relished the proprieties, holding the foaming mouth high in the air for a second before quickly dousing it in two gold-stemmed Arab goblets. The crystal winked in the soft light and the bubbles sparkled and I thought, “He has the conviction of his clichés; you live for ever like that. You become myth.”
How old was he, in fact? — ten years on from whatever he’d been when I last saw him — had he been sixty-odd then? At least. But he didn’t look seventy now. He had lost weight since, the eyes were more a pearly watery blue than ever, islands of mischief and abandon in the parchment map of his face. The skin here was tired and blotchy if one looked closely, but the lips were as full and purple as ever, the hair as white and blossomy. He had obviously put up so little resistance to the attack of age, cared so little how time might damage him, that he had escaped into the last lap of life practically untouched. Contrary to expectation, and all the other grim cold Saxon warnings long ago, fidelity to pleasure had preserved him, even made him younger — that fidelity which, in betraying it, other people grow genuinely old. Usher was a living affront to all his dead nurses and mentors.
He held up his glass, spun the stem a fraction in his fingers, his eyes clear blue orbs surveying the sparkle. There was nothing of the antiquary in the gesture, or the wine snob; it was an expression of genuine, deeply-felt greed.
“Pearson particularly,” I said. “He’s been on at me about Edwards and Marcus ever since I got here. I suppose he can’t be prevented from filing something now that they’ve taken Marcus. He’s probably been on the blower already.”
“No, he hasn’t. I said I had something for him on all that — later this evening. And I have. It would be quite the wrong moment for anything to appear on Marcus in the U.K. While Monty’s here. And more importantly, while we’re here. The Egyptians will keep the whole thing under a lid — as long as we do. If we break anything, they’ll be bound to as well. And rope us all in. Our friend Williams has made a cock-up: first Edwards comes out here running, then you, then Marcus. And you’re the only one left. Williams has effectively smashed the entire circle. Any idea what’s behind it?”
“No. I was sent out simply to look for Edwards.”
“A likely tale. And Marcus to check out a Soviet defector, a Russian doctor at the Kasr el Aini. And the result: at least two of our men in jug — and probably your wife as well. And the rest of us hanging on by the skin of. The whole circle smashed — don’t know why they haven’t picked you up before now; don’t follow it at all. But the message I get from the Egyptian side is clear enough: as long as we make arrangements to break up and clear ourselves out of here in the next few days, or at least before Monty leaves, we won’t get the hammer. The others will, no doubt: a trial and what have you — and a spell in Siwa. But there’s nothing to be done. Mr. Williams has a lot to answer for. I had three of my Saudis off today to Bahrein; nice boys. I’ve got an English teacher from some mission school downstairs running round in circles, a ticket man and an airport officer wondering about their pensions, plus Cherry and myself — all to be sent packing in the next forty-eight hours. What sort of arrangements have you made?”
“I have a return ticket.” It was like saying I had wings.
“Well, keep out of the way after this and get straight to the airport tomorrow. You seem to be in the clear, probably the only one of us. And remember, if we don’t get back — remember what I’ve said: find out what the hell Williams has been up to; take it to the highest level if necessary.”
“What happens if they decide to hold you people?”
“I should have a warning, if they’re coming for us. I still have contacts.”
“But if you do have to go under — how would you get out of the country? What arrangements are there?”
“You mean you weren’t told?” Usher looked at me in some astonishment. “Williams must really have it in for you. There isn’t a ‘way out’—for us, not since Suez. No escape plans, couriers, code messages or false moustaches. If you go under here — you stay under as far as Holborn is concerned. Now, you go out and circulate a bit and I’ll deal with Mr. Pearson. We shall be all right for an orderly retreat unless he breaks some coat-trailing story about ‘missing diplomats’ in Cairo.”
Usher was approaching this climacteric in his life with too great a show of efficiency and unconcern, I thought. I wondered if he really intended moving out from fifty years in Egypt with just a toothbrush, taking a taxi to the airport. But perhaps the flabby lips deceived the eye; he had been with Lawrence in the Hejaz after all, survived the self-destructive ambitions so favoured by that tortured martinet; there must have been a fiery streak in him somewhere, which this lifetime’s interlude of pleasure had damped but not extinguished. I thought how quickly he would age in St. John’s Wood.