Palace Circle (47 page)

Jack put a handful of bullets into his top pocket, shoved his revolver into his holster, and took the dusty prayer book from her.

On the flyleaf, written in German, was a list of family birth dates. The last name on the list was Sholto's name and place of birth. Munich.

“What made you suspicious?” Jack demanded, taking fierce satisfaction from the fact that his suspicions where the embassy was concerned had been right.

“Lots of things.”

Knowing the jeep would be with them within seconds she began speaking fast.

“He had so much money it was as if he was printing it— and I realized it was coming via a diplomat at the Romanian legation. He only met with Constantin when he thought no one would see. And Constantin's colleague at the Romanian legation was expelled for spying.”

She took a deep shuddering breath and pushed her hair away from her face. “Then there's the contempt he has for Sir Miles and everyone else he works with at the embassy—though it's a contempt he keeps well hidden from everyone but me. I finally realized that he only married me so that he could gain contact with Ivor and Ivor's friends. When he drinks heavily and talks in his sleep he does so in German. In the early days he laughed it off by saying he'd been dreaming he was twenty-three again and studying for his Foreign Office exams.”

The jeep screeched to a halt outside the flat.

He gripped her shoulders. “You're to stay here. If he's already left Sharia Aziz he'll be on the hunt for you. Don't go to Nile House. It's one of the first places he'll look. I doubt he knows this address, but I am going to leave an armed sergeant with you until I get back. Got it?”

She nodded. “Be careful,” she said, her voice breaking. “I couldn't bear it if anything happened to you. It would kill me, Jack. Truly.”

In the sudden knowledge that no matter what had gone wrong between them, she loved him still, he pulled her toward him, kissing her hard.

A minute later he was in the driver's seat, saying savagely to the officer he had ejected, “You're to let no one—
no one
—into this flat until I return. The woman in it is Lord Conisborough's daughter. You guard her with your life. Understand?”

“Yes, sir. Absolutely.”

With a squeal of tires Jack careened away, heading for the
Kasr el-Nil Bridge, the palm of one hand slammed against the jeep's horn.

It was dark now and the streets were dimly lit to comply with halfhearted blackout restrictions. The bridge was as crowded as always and he fumed and swore as it took a seeming eternity to cross. Jack glanced at his watch. With luck, Archie and the squad of men would already be in Sharia Aziz.

As he swerved off the bridge onto the island he headed for the wealthy residential area favored by the embassy's diplomats. And then he saw the road to Zamalek and the handful of houseboats moored there.

He remembered how expertly Darius had hidden the fact that he was still anti-British. He remembered how the
Egyptian Queen
had been Sadat's first port of call when he returned to Cairo. He remembered how Constantin, who, according to Petra, was hand in glove with Sholto, had been with Darius the night Jack had first made contact with Darius—and of how speedily Constantin had disappeared when he had seen Jack's uniform. He remembered seeing Constantin with Sholto as the two of them entered a cafe off Kasr el-Nil Street.

If Darius was involved with Anwar Sadat, was he also involved in a quite different form of anti-British activity? Was Darius a German spy as Sholto Monck most definitely was?

Jack brought the jeep to a halt, perspiration beading his forehead. It was a possibility. As he looked at the fork in the road and realized just how very near to each other Darius and Sholto lived, he acted on gut instinct and slewed onto the road leading toward Zamalek, dreading what he might find.

The riverside road curved up the island past the Gezira Sporting Club. On the far side of the bridge the lights of restaurants and cafes glimmered. On the northeast side of the island there were only dense palm groves reaching down to the water.

Twenty yards away from the moorings he cut the engine
and rolled to a standstill. Making as little noise as possible, he walked toward the
Egyptian Queen.
The lights in the stateroom were on, though the curtains were drawn. Darius's Mercedes was parked beneath the nearby date palms. There was no sign of any other car.

As he stepped onto the gangplank he could hear a woman crying.

With a hand resting on his revolver he crossed the deck and began to descend the ladder leading to the saloon. There was a sharp intake of breath and the crying stopped, but neither Darius nor Sholto challenged him.

They weren't there.

Only Zahra was in the cabin.

“What do you want?” she demanded, recognizing him at once. She knuckled away tears of fury. “If you've come to see your brother-in-law, he's gone. They've all gone.”

The anger and bitterness in her voice was scorching.

“They?” he asked, as if it wasn't of much importance, knowing she would remember that as well as being Darius's brother-in-law, he was also a British officer. At the moment though, she was treating him as if he were a fellow conspirator.

“The Sholto man dragged me and Constantin here because he said his cover had been blown and he had to run, but first he needed Constantin to send a wireless message.”

Jack's heart stopped. In one sentence she had confirmed there was a wireless transmitter aboard the
Egyptian Queen
and branded Darius a spy.

“What message did Constantin send?” he said tersely.

She shot him a withering look. “How do I know? He transmits in code. After he'd finished the row started.”

“The row?” Precious minutes were ticking away, yet he knew he couldn't push her. To lose his temper would be fatal.

“Sholto said Darius and Constantin had to go with him and they didn't want to. Constantin said even if Sholto's cover
was blown, his wasn't and the worst that could happen to him as a diplomat was that he would be sent back to Bucharest. And that if he was sent back, he would make sure I was able to join him there.” Her voice shook with explosive fury. “But now that Sholto pig has taken him to Germany!”

“Germany
?” Not all his long training in remaining ice-cool could keep him ice-cool now.

Zahra was too crazed with fury to register his stupefaction.

“Sholto said a plane would land at Malaqua and take them to Tripoli.”

Jack had never heard of Malaqua, but if a German plane was to land there it had to be deep in the desert and presumably close to the German positions across the Libyan border. Which meant they were heading to an area that only a British army Long Range Desert patrol would be able to reach.

“Darius didn't want to go,” Zahra was so angry at Constantin's betrayal in leaving her behind that she was happy to tell him everything, “but Sholto said he had to drive him and Constantin at least as far as El-Laban where he had a Bedouin contact who knew the route to Malaqua. And he said they had to take the transmitter with them so that they could keep in touch with the people sending the plane.”

Jack knew El-Laban. It was a scattering of mud-brick houses set around an oasis thirty miles or so farther south than Saqqara. He'd been there years ago with Darius, but whether he could find his way alone, and at night, was another matter. He was, though, going to give it a hell of a try.

Knowing that he'd got all the information he could get and that what he was about to do could cost him his professional future—if not his life—he scrambled back up the ladder to the deck.

Ten minutes later he was driving fast across the English Bridge, heading for Giza. Even though it was night the road
was still busy with carts and camels and military trucks. He tried to work out how much of a start Darius and the others had on him. Sholto must have recovered consciousness only minutes after Petra had fled from the house. He had then gone straight to the houseboat, picking up Constantin and Zahra en route. How long would that have taken? Fifteen minutes? Twenty?

He swerved past an armored car. At a rough estimate Darius, Sholto, and Constantin were a good fifteen minutes ahead of him. And if he didn't catch up with them before El-Laban, the race would be over. Only a Bedouin could travel the desert at night. Jack couldn't. He might not even be able to see the tracks of Sholto's car. And day or night, no one went into the Sahara unaccompanied. He had no emergency supply of water with him and no clothes to protect him from the crucifying cold.

Dark fields of sugarcane stretched out on either side of him and then, in the moonlight, the familiar shape of the pyramids reared blackly against the night sky.

The road to the Western Desert veered off one way. Another road, far narrower, led to Saqqara.

Within yards of racing down it he was stopped by two military policemen. He flashed his SIB card and they waved him on. Sholto's diplomatic identity card had, presumably, carried equal weight.

The road was one he knew well. Ever since he'd been a boy, he had hired a horse from the Mena House Hotel stables and ridden to the Step Pyramid, sometimes with Darius, sometimes with Davina.

Davina.

He couldn't even begin to imagine Davina's agony if Darius were to leave Egypt with Sholto and Constantin. And his leaving Egypt wasn't the worst scenario. The worst was that he would stay and be sentenced to a firing squad.

There were coils of barbed wire on both sides of the road and in the distance something that looked suspiciously like a skull and crossbones signaling a minefield. He kept to the middle of the road, mindful that the verges would be soft, deep sand. A motorbike zoomed out of the darkness toward him, the rider wearing the blue-and-white of the Signals Corps.

Jack was shivering with cold. What the devil was he actually going to do if Sholto's Chrysler came into view? He didn't want to draw his revolver on Darius, but what if they shot first?

Jack's stomach muscles tightened as in the brilliant moonlight he saw the Step Pyramid. From here, his only chance of catching Sholto was to pick up the Chrysler's wheel marks on the desert track.

As he covered mile after mile, with the Sahara stretching out on either side of him as vast as all eternity, his tension mounted. What if the tracks he was following weren't the Chrysler's? What if he lost sight of them or couldn't find them again?

After an hour or so he saw scrubby bushes in his headlamps and then he picked out the black silhouette of date palms. His relief was overpowering. Even if it wasn't El-Laban, it was at least an oasis—and an oasis meant water.

Minutes later he saw mud walls and knew that unless Sholto was still in the village making preparations with his Bedouin friend, his own journey had come to an abortive end.

There was no way that he could enter the oasis silently. In the desert the faintest sound carried for miles and El-Laban's inhabitants would have been aware of his jeep's approach for the last ten minutes. None of them, however, appeared to be curious.

As he cut his engine and stepped out of the jeep, there was no sign of any human movement. And no sign of a car.

In the starlight a skinny dog growled at him. From behind
one of the mud-brick houses a donkey brayed. In the center of the ramshackle collection of houses was the village well. Sitting on its waist-high wall was the dark outline of a familiar figure.

“Who,” Darius asked conversationally, “is going to shoot first, Jack? Am I to shoot you? Or are you going to shoot me?”

Jack stopped. “Where's Monck?” he demanded.

“He's long gone. And there's no way you can catch up to him, Jack. Not without a Bedouin as a guide.”

“I need a cigarette.” He didn't want Darius thinking he was reaching for his Colt instead of a packet of Camels.

He took the cigarettes out of his shirt pocket. “Want one?” he asked.

The moonlight was bright enough for him to see Darius nod.

Not yet prepared to close the distance between them, he tossed a cigarette and his lighter to Darius.

“What is at Malaqua?”

Darius lit his cigarette. “An abandoned Italian airfield. Another six hours and Monck and Constantin will be in Tripoli.”

“And how do you feel about that?”

“About Monck getting away?” Darius shrugged. “I'm indifferent. About Constantin? Constantin would be better off not getting on the damn plane. It's an option I doubt Monck will give him.”

Jack inhaled deeply. “Tell me about Monck. For how long has he been Rommel's spy?”

“For as long as Rommel has been in North Africa. But he's not Rommel's spy, Jack. According to Constantin, Sholto has
been spying for Ribbentrop since 1933. The payoff now is the promise that he'll be given a leading role in the future German government of Britain—assuming, of course, that Germany wins the war.”

Jack was so stunned that it took him a moment or so to make sense of what Darius was telling him. He'd been a junior diplomat in the Foreign Office when Ribbentrop, as Hitler's special commissioner, had regularly visited London and met with Ramsay MacDonald, and with MacDonald's foreign secretary, Sir John Simon.

He'd met with a lot of other people too. When war with Germany was still six years away, Joachim von Ribbentrop had been a popular guest at many society dinner tables. Jack remembered Delia telling him of a dinner party where Ribbentrop and the Prince of Wales were both guests.

Had Ribbentrop's brief been to snare the Prince of Wales into friendship with Hitler so that when he became king, he would be king of a country Nazi Germany could count on as an ally? Not only did Edward have a host of German relatives, he also spoke German flawlessly. To Hitler, it would have seemed a viable possibility.

Ribbentrop had obviously set out to target other British aristocrats as well. He remembered seeing him with Lord Rothermere. When German intelligence unearthed the fact that Sholto had a German father, Ribbentrop must have thought he had struck gold.

“And Monck contacted Constantin, in order for Constantin to act as his radio operator?”