And then — I can’t think how or why, his unfailing nose for a good story prodding him, perhaps, even in this deepest unconsciousness — Pearson stirred. His eyes fluttered and opened and he licked his lips, before he began to push himself forward, slowly, a ghostly man, from his upholstered tomb. The officer, still holding the door open, turned and the three of us helped him out of the car.
It looked all right in the event, Pearson seeming to be afflicted with no more than a bad leg, earned gallantly at Alamein in the circumstances, stumbling with game dignity across the red carpet and up the steps in our arms. In fact he was in a speechless dream, his mind had not yet begun to catch up with events.
The young officer showed us all into a small drawing-room off the hall and we got Pearson down on to a sofa. Usher came in shortly afterwards, having parked the car, all bustle and British, going straight over to tend Pearson.
“I’m sorry about this, Captain. He so much wanted to come. An old wound. We did our best to warn him. A glass of water perhaps?”
“Certainly.” The Captain, extremely solicitous, went away to fetch the refreshment.
“That’s one of their Military Intelligence people,” Usher said. “Foreign Ministry is giving the do for Monty.”
Pearson had begun to doze again.
“I don’t suppose they’re likely to look for us here then,” Cherry offered, though his face suggested no sort of belief in the statement.
“Where can we go?” I asked. “What’s the point?”
“We shall go where we set out to go,” Usher retorted heavily. “We are not going to have orange juice with Monty, I can assure you. I’ll try and get Pearson back home, you no doubt to your hotel, Cherry to his wife. We must do as we set out to do.”
Usher immediately seemed to contradict his plan of campaign by sitting down suddenly on a tiny gilt chair, his bulk enclosing it completely, like a hen settling on a nest. He looked beaten. A pair of French windows behind the sofa led out to a closed terrace which ran all the way round the ground floor of the building. I couldn’t see any of the blazing lights coming in from the street so I assumed the room beyond must face away from Bustani Street and on to a side street.
“Perhaps there’s something out that way. Might be able to get over the balcony.” The others looked at me dully and I saw Pearson swivel with me as I moved towards the window, a look of hate creeping into the doped lines of his face.
I pushed through the half-opened curtains and went into an empty unlit terrace beyond. There was a balustrade on the outside and a drop of about ten feet down on to a side road crammed tight with cars, their drivers chattering in groups here and there up its length. I could make it, I thought. But the others? We might possibly have to run from the chauffeurs as well. And run where? I turned back. A door opened. Several people had come into the little room. One of them had started to talk. I recognized the stumbling accents at once, the extraordinary arabesques decorating the English vowels: it was the Major I had seen earlier that day in Heliopolis welcoming his unexpected guests.
“A pleasure, Mr. Usher,” he said, a caricature opening in the circumstances. He’d seen too many films. All Egyptians have. “We were just looking for you on a call to your house up-town. You were giving a reception there yourself — no? We did not expect you here. But you are — not very well — yes? But very welcome …”
I heard the tinkle of a tray and saw Usher’s arm stretch across the window. He took the glass of iced water, then his head bent into view, the long nose dipped and he started to gulp it down in one swill. Greedy to the end, I thought I turned and cocked one leg over the balustrade, suddenly feeling an appalling thirst myself.
The chauffeurs heard me as I hit the ground. There was a group of them fifteen yards away, probably security men as well. I brushed myself down, saluted them formally and walked casually towards the main street. I had ten seconds before they made their minds up about me, then I’d have to run. I turned the corner into Bustani Street. Ten, twenty seconds; nothing happened. I walked past a deserted police barrier towards the bottom of Kasr el Nil, stragglers moving with me now that the gaiety was over. Constables gathered in groups mopping their faces on the other side of the road and a few white-suited officers directed the returning flow of traffic.
Then they came — a whistle and raised voices behind me. I had gone beyond the point of running; they’d seen the direction I’d taken; it could only be a chase which I would be bound to lose: police were in groups every ten yards or so along the road in front of me. I pulled off my coat and tie in almost a single gesture, heeled right round in my tracks, and walked smartly back, slightly crouched, in the same direction as I’d come.
They passed me on the run, pushing the stragglers out of the way, a group of security men and an Army officer, shouting hard. One of them barged me off the pavement into the arms of a startled traffic policeman standing by the kerb. I stopped and looked after them with annoyance, but not for long. “The foreigner,” they were shouting, “in the tie and suit. The tall one!” I turned to the bemused policeman, smiled, shrugged my shoulders as he gazed at my open-necked shirt: Marks & Spencer some months back, one of the last they’d made in pure white cotton. The little man saluted me, helped me back on the pavement, and I went on my way, returning the salutation. Egyptians are much given to that form of address.
It was after ten o’clock when I’d crossed the bridge and let myself into the Armenian’s apartment on Gezira. The darkness smelt of paper; fine weave and heavy rag, manilla and best hand laid; years of warm paper. I lit the matches, one by one, carefully dousing them on the floor as I made my way across the apartment to the perch; circles of light, flaring up, dying, briefly illuminating the chronicles of the Law. I felt as secure as the passengers in the next cabin, all of us inmates now, the ship stalled and perfectly camouflaged in a Cairo backwater.
I had almost fallen asleep by the ventilator, for although there was a light on in the room next door, there wasn’t a sound from the place.
The smell of illness had disappeared almost completely. Had Colonel Hamdy decided to run as well? I had turned away, was resting my head against the ridge of the ventilator, when I heard the telephone start, a faint, insistent buzz from the far side of the sofa. My head was in the grille again, just in time to see Hamdy crossing the room smartly in a bath robe, eager and quick indeed for an ill man.
He answered in Arabic, calling himself Mahmoud, listened for a minute and then seemed to confirm some details about fruit, the importation of so much dried fruit, coming in on a Greek boat the following day at Alexandria. The Salonika. He repeated some customs and consignment numbers, thanked his caller in a bored way, and that was it.
A code call. Their way out. Arrangements had been made; the call they’d all been waiting for — if they could make it to Alex and get past the harbour authorities. The Colonel, not Crowther or Usher, must have been the king pin in Cairo, to be protected at all costs, and now he was on the run with the rest of them.
He came into view, slumped on one end of the sofa, lit a cigarette. His head knocked against the wall and a shudder of nausea closed up the lines over his face and neck. He rubbed the back of his skull. Then he seemed to settle, composing himself with a drawn hang-dog look, a man waiting for someone to be sorry for him; pretending.
Some time later I was in the shaft again. A door had opened and now Bridget came into the room with a package. The Colonel looked asleep.