Palace Circle (43 page)

It was, Jack reflected, a task easier said than done.

The music had now become frenetic. Her spine arched and her head thrown back, Zahra's hips were gyrating faster and faster.

It was then that he saw Darius.

He was seated with another man at a corner table. As their eyes met Jack knew Darius had been observing him for some time. Later he was to wonder whether Darius had intended to make his presence known.

For now he merely said to Archie, “I've just seen an old friend. It might be a good idea if you wandered down to the Kit-Kat. This place is far too seedy for the officer we are looking for.”

“Will do,” Archie said as Zahra exited the stage to a storm of applause.

Jack was already halfway to Darius's table. Seeing his approach,
the thin-faced man with Darius rose to his feet and walked speedily off to the bar.

Darius also stood. “I'd heard you were in town,” he said as they slapped each other on the back in an old-friends' gesture. “Are you just passing through or here for the duration?”

It was reminiscent of the way Fawzia had greeted him and he said wryly, “As far as I know, I'm here for the duration. How are things? The only person I've caught up with so far is Delia.”

“What about Fawzia? Surely you've seen her?”

“I have, but she's been seeing someone else and has no intention of giving him up. I'll be filing for a divorce at some point.”

Darius said with an odd smile, “And do you intend naming the boyfriend as corespondent?”

“I will. And if you know his identity I'd appreciate you telling me who he is.”

Darius remained infuriatingly silent.

“Come on, Darius,” he said impatiently. “Don't try and score points. I haven't the time for it. I may not look as if I'm working, but I am. I've another half-dozen clubs to visit before I hit the sack.”

“So you've come to the King Cheops to find a German spy?” He topped up his drink. “Rumor has it the city is crawling with them. You'll probably have a cell full before morning.”

“I doubt it, but I would appreciate the name of Fawzia's friend. I'm assuming he's an Egyptian and that you know his name.”

“You assume right on both counts, but I'm not sure you're going to cite him as a corespondent.”

Suddenly Zahra, who had changed into a scarlet cocktail dress, approached the table and sat down. “Where has Constantin gone to, Darius. Do you know?” she asked.

“The bar, I think. Let me introduce my brother-in-law to
you. Zahra, Jack Bazeljette. Jack, Zahra. Her boyfriend is a friend of mine.”

Jack nodded, then turned back to Darius. “The name,” Jack said, barely able to keep his patience in check, “and then I'll be on my way.”

“Farouk.” There was naked disgust in Darius's voice. “His Majesty, King of Egypt and of Sudan, Sovereign of Nubia, of Kordofan, and of Darfur. And if you attempt to lay a finger on him his aides will have your head. If you cite him as corespondent in your divorce action your government will have you cashiered.”

Jack knew instantly that Darius was telling the truth. Everything now made sense. Fawzia's amusement when he had said he intended to give her lover the hiding of his life; the cavalier way royal aides had whisked her off to the palace. The Queen had never been the object of her visits there. It had always been the King. And because it was the King there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.

One word of accusation and he would be whisked out of Egypt before he could bat an eyelid. Not only that, any word of accusation would be utterly pointless, for Farouk would merely deny everything.

In furious frustration he slammed his fist down on the table.

The bottle fell.

Champagne soaked the lamp. The lights fizzed and the club plunged into chaotic darkness. It was, Jack often reflected later, a fitting end to his reunion with Darius.

A week later and Jack had the lead he'd been praying for. His unit had picked up an unidentified transmitter in the Gezira/ Zamalek area. “We've picked it up a few times now,” his signals officer said. “It's broadcasting in code. Must be our guy, don't you think?”

“It's some bastard up to no good. How long is he on-air?”

“Not long, sir. Too short a time for us to be able to pinpoint his exact position. We'll just have to hope he soon gets a bit chattier.”

Later that afternoon Jack drove out to Gezira Island deep in thought. Until now he had been working on the assumption that top secret information was being transmitted by a German. It had been the only scenario that had made sense, but Gezira Island was one of the most elegant and expensive areas of Cairo, making it the very last place for a Nazi to hide.

Dominating the southern end of the island was the sporting club and it was inconceivable that anyone could be transmitting from there. Also on the southern end of the island were a hospital and a delightful area of tree-lined avenues boasting palatial houses, their residents mainly British officials connected with the embassy. It was where Petra and Sholto lived. It was where every British diplomat lived if they didn't have a residence in Garden City.

Jack took the road that rounded the island's southern tip. On his left-hand side was the Nile, glittering myriad shades of green under the hot rays of the afternoon sun. On his right were the little-visited Khedive Ismail gardens, where meandering gravel pathways were flanked by acacias and shaded by flowering jacarandas.

As he motored up the west side of the island he came to the bridge leading to Giza and the pyramids. Known as the English Bridge, it marked the beginning of a whole line of houseboats. He slowed to a standstill and lit a cigarette. A houseboat would make a good hideaway—but not for a German. In a place such as Gezira's houseboat community, everyone would know one another. A stranger would stand out, particularly a stranger with an accent.

Determining to have every houseboat searched Jack stubbed out his cigarette and put the jeep into gear again.

Within minutes he was driving along the western boundary of the sporting club. Beyond were the botanical gardens and with the botanical gardens behind him he was in the residential district of Zamalek. Here, several palatial houses faced the Nile, though this time, from the names on their high, carved gateways, it was clear that the owners were rich Egyptians and not British.

He stopped and smoked another cigarette. Had he been barking up the wrong tree? Was it a royal aide he should be seeking? But would a royal aide have access to British military plans?

Jack drove the quiet streets and then headed in the direction of the Bulaq Bridge. Here and there were a few more houseboats and the area they were in was far more deserted than the area of houseboat mooring adjacent to the English Bridge. Resolving that in the morning he would also have those searched and their owners questioned, he continued down the east side of the island until, once again, he was at the Kasr el-Nil Bridge.

Driving past the two bronze lions that guarded the entrance to the bridge he reflected that if his signals officer was correct, the German transmitter was in the area he had just circled. Though the homes of rich and influential Egyptians couldn't be checked without far more evidence than he presently had, the houseboats could be searched and his gut feeling was that such a search would be successful.

That evening he met with Brigadier Haigh and the commander of the Egyptian police force. Later he had dinner with Davina. It always amused him that she still looked like an English schoolgirl. Her pale blond hair was held away from her face by a dark-blue velvet headband and she was wearing a gray pleated skirt and pastel-blue twinset, her jewelry a single string of pearls.

“It's so absolutely wonderful to have you in Cairo, Jack,”
she said when they had ordered from the kind of menu people in rationed Britain could only fantasize about. “We've hoped you would be posted here. I haven't seen Fawzia since you arrived—Queen Farida monopolizes all her time—but she must be over the moon to see you.”

He'd ordered a bottle of Chablis Premier Cru and as the waiter filled their glasses he said, “I thought your mother might have brought you up-to-date where Fawzia and I are concerned.”

She shook her head. “Things are so manic at the hospital that apart from phone calls I haven't spoken to my mother for an age.”

Jack waited till the waiter had left and then said, “Fawzia and I will be getting divorced, Davina. Our marriage never had very deep roots. We both had expectations of each other that neither of us could fulfill and she's now into a love affair that's far too important to her for her to consider ending it.”

“But she can't be!” Davina looked shocked. “Fawzia loves parties of course—and there are lots of parties in Cairo. But if she had met anyone, word would have spread. Cairo thrives on gossip. Besides, I don't know when she would have found time for an affair. She's nearly always at the palace, visiting Queen Farida.”

He shot her a wry smile. “You're right about her being always at the palace, but it's not the Queen she's with when she's there. It's the King.”

Davina gasped. “You can't mean it! King Farouk's got an awful reputation—but King Farouk and
Fawzia
?”

“Why not?” he said reasonably. “She's exceptionally beautiful. She's Egyptian and from a good family. Zubair Pasha is a member of the Senate and he's served as a minister in one cabinet or another for more than thirty years. Farouk will have seen Fawzia at the palace several times when she visited with her father. When she returned to Cairo from London she must
have come to his attention almost immediately. And from Fawzia's point of view there's a lot at stake. Farouk is one of the richest men in the world, and, knowing Fawzia, I'm pretty sure she already has a fabulous collection of jewels safely squirreled away. If he's led her to believe he may divorce Farida and marry her, Fawzia might become Queen of Egypt.”

“But she'll be a divorced woman! And she is a Copt! The King will never marry her!”

“He isn't a British king, Davina. He can't be forced to abdicate like King Edward. I must admit he is unlikely to marry her, but Farouk's never given a damn about convention.”

“And what if he doesn't marry her? What will happen to her then?”

“Then he'll provide for her.”

Despite the hard certainty in his voice she said, not understanding, “But how can you be so sure? No one can make Farouk do what he doesn't want to. Not his prime minister. Not Sir Miles Lampson. No one.”

Suddenly his face hardened. It was the expression of a man who could be very tough. And who intended to be very tough indeed.

“Farouk will provide for her—and provide for her lavishly—because I'm going to make him,” he said grimly. “Fawzia and I have too much shared history for me to see her being treated shabbily. I may not be able to cite the King in my divorce action, but I can still put the fear of God into him. And I'm going to, Davina. Trust me.”

She looked so unhappy that he abruptly changed the subject.

“Tell me about the little boy you are going to adopt. What is his name? Angus? Alfred?”

“Andrew,” she said, the sparkle back in her eyes. “At the moment he's at Shibden Hall and your father is checking on him. I think Andrew is going to love it in Cairo. I know when
I was a child I would have adored spending time onboard the
Egyptian Queen
.”

“The
Egyptian Queen
?”

“Darius's houseboat at Zamalek.”

The trio had been playing slow waltzes in order that as many couples as possible could squeeze onto the dance floor. Now they began playing something more up-tempo.

Jack couldn't have cared less what they were playing. In his mind's eye he was seeing again the handful of houseboats moored in the quiet area north of the Bulaq Bridge. In a matter of hours members of the Egyptian police force would enter every one. If there was anything remotely suspicious on the
Egyptian Queen
it would be found.

And he passionately hoped that the
Egyptian Queen
would be as clean as a whistle.

Jack's tension the next morning, as he oversaw the large search operation he had put in place, was enormous. When many hours later it was concluded, crushing disappointment and overwhelming relief swamped him in equal waves.

His disappointment was because despite every houseboat having been rigorously searched, no radio transmitter was found. His relief was that Darius was as in the clear as every other houseboat owner.

“How many bearings indicated the transmission you picked up was sourced on Gezira?” he demanded of his signals officer. “Could your triangulation have been wrong?”

“No, sir. I've got three different bearings on it. It's so accurate that next time sonny boy starts transmitting our monitoring unit stands a chance of being able to jam his messages.”

Jack drummed his knuckles on his desk. Jamming the messages was all very well, but the German listening station would tell the radio operator transmitting that he was being jammed and then there would be no more transmissions—and no hope of catching the spy supplying the information. All that would happen was that when transmissions began again, they would do so from a different locale. Alexandria, possibly. Or the desert. Rommel would continue to get vital British military information
and any chance of the tables being turned on him would be lost.

It was that chance of turning the tables that was so vitally important. If they could capture the radio operator in the act of transmitting—if they could get hold of his codebook—then they could broadcast false information to Rommel, which might mean the difference between winning or losing the war in the Western Desert.

“With stakes like those to play for, we've got to allow the transmissions to continue,” Brigadier Haigh said, relaying Downing Street's take on the problem. “Once we jam them, he'll know we're onto him and go to ground. But we can't allow them to continue for long. And we've got to lay our hands on that codebook. With that in our possession we can scupper Rommel once and for all.”

Back in his office Jack studied the file that was the only tangible result of the massive search operation. It listed the name of every houseboat, the name of every owner, and if the occupier was different from the owner, the name of every occupier and any relevant details.