Nile Shadows

NILE SHADOWS

by Edward Whittemore

Copyright © 1983 by Edward Whittemore

FOR JANE

PART ONE

-1-

An Australian Hand Grenade

On a clear night in 1942 a hand grenade exploded in a Cairo slum, killing one man instantly.

The explosion shattered the mirror in the half-light of a poor Arab bar, a bare room where laborers went to sip arak into oblivion. The hand grenade had come flying in through a shabby curtain separating the bar from an alley, thrown from a group of Australian soldiers who were out drinking and brawling and victoriously celebrating life, recent survivors of the disastrous battle for Crete.

Other than the dead man, no one in the bar received more than superficial injuries. And in the confusion following the explosion, amidst the shouts and screams and drunken cries of bloody wogs, the young Australian soldiers had fled into the shadowy byways of Old Cairo and disappeared, never to be officially identified in life, some never to be identified in death as well.

Such violent incidents were far from uncommon in wartime Cairo. The fierce campaigns in the Western Desert still raged uncertainly, as Rommel's powerful Afrika Korps threatened to overrun Egypt and the Suez Canal. From there the Middle East and much more would be open to the invading Germans, so soldiers in the British forces were apt to play desperately with time and darkness before going into the desert to meet the advancing panzers.

In such a situation, one stray death in a Cairo slum could be of little significance, and an Egyptian policeman quickly concluded his routine investigation.

From documents found on the dead man he was identified as a minor criminal and morphine addict, a petty gunrunner sometimes known as Stern, a vagrant with no visible means of support who had moved erratically from one poor lodging to another in various Cairo slums over the last few years.

Stern's criminal record further stated that his name was to be found in the files of a number of police departments in the Middle East, and although he didn't appear to be of Egyptian origin, his dialect was said to be flawless. It was therefore assumed that he was probably a genuine Levantine by birth, whose sordid pursuits in the 1930s had caused him to spend at least as much time in Egypt as elsewhere.

The history of Stern's criminal activities was unimpressive. In the years leading up to the Second World War he had smuggled arms to many groups in the Middle East, with perhaps more emphasis on Palestine. Yet he had never been clever enough to make any money from these operations, for his record also showed that he had lived in unrelieved poverty. On several occasions he had been apprehended and sentenced to brief prison terms on secondary charges.

Stern, in short, had lived an obscure and meaningless life, a marginal existence that had come to nothing.

Only one brief entry in Stern's file tended to contradict this uneventful account, a daring escape he had made from a Damascus prison in the summer of 1939. From the nature of the escape it was apparent it had been unplanned, and what made it inexplicable was the fact that Stern had been due for release from the prison within twenty-four hours. But then a few weeks later Hitler's armored divisions had crossed the Polish border to begin the war, so the matter had soon been forgotten, a strange and isolated episode in Stern's otherwise purposeless career.

Stern's nationality was listed on the death certificate as Unknown, lost long ago in the maze of counterfeit documents he had used throughout his life. So numerous were the aliases in his record, in fact, there was no way to know whether Stern was the dead man's true name.

In addition, so contradictory were the disguises of his background, it could not even be determined whether he was a Moslem or a Christian or a Jew.

There were also no associates to question. Stern, or whoever he was, had not only worked obscurely but lived his life alone, without family or friends, without acquaintances or neighbors to remember him. To all appearances, without anyone at all. Yet when the time came to dispose of the body, done quickly in Cairo because of overcrowding among the dead, a shabbily dressed woman turned up at police headquarters saying she wished to make arrangements for a burial. The woman carried a Greek passport and the story she told seemed plausible.

She had first met the dead man about a year earlier, she said, in a small neighborhood restaurant where she sometimes took her evening meals. Subsequently they had fallen into the habit of eating there together on an irregular basis, never more than once a week and often no more than once every two or three weeks. It had been company of a sort for both of them. She had known the dead man only as Stern, and he had called her by her Christian name, Maud. Although she was an American by birth, she had lived in the Eastern Mediterranean for years.

Since Stern had never known more than a day in advance when he might be able to come to the restaurant, he had left notes there saying when he would show up. She had gone to the restaurant every day to check for these notes, even when she wasn't planning to eat there in the evening. She didn't know where he had lived or what he had done. It was wartime and people came and went. Explanations were pointless, reasons meaningless. She had assumed he held some kind of minor clerk's job, as she did.

Why do you say that? asked the policeman behind the desk.

Because of the way he dressed.

How was that?

Like me. Trying to make ends meet.

Did you speak Arabic together?

No, you can hear I don't speak it well. We spoke in Greek or in English.

French?

Sometimes.

The policeman switched to French, which he was studying in the evenings to promote his career.

Did he ever talk about the past? What he used to do?

The woman was trying hard to control herself. She looked down at her worn shoes and suddenly clenched her fists in despair.

No. I just assumed he was from somewhere and had done something once. Isn't everybody from somewhere? Hasn't everybody done something once? We never talked about the past. Can't you understand?

The woman broke down and quietly began to cry, and of course the policeman did understand. The Balkans had been overrun and Greece had fallen and there were refugees everywhere in Cairo, people who didn't want to remember what they had lost.

So he saw no need to go into the matter further. If this woman wanted to bear the expense of burying a man she had hardly known, out of whatever personal reasons might be involved, that was her affair.

Nothing would be served by telling her that Stern had been a petty criminal, a minor gunrunner and morphine addict. Obviously she wanted to bury someone, and it was no concern of his how she went about wasting the little money she had.

I'll just be a minute, he said, and went to make a telephone call to her office to prove that she was the person she claimed to be. The connection was made, to some obscure British department having to do with the Irrigation Works, and it took surprisingly little time. He returned and filled out the release papers, copying down the entries from her passport and marking her A friend of the deceased. He took the forms to be signed and told the woman where to obtain the body. She thanked him and left.

Whereupon the case was closed so far as the Egyptian authorities were concerned.

The policeman who had arrived at the Arab bar after the explosion had remained there for about half an hour, but most of that time he had spent helping himself to drinks. Another ten minutes or so had been spent by his superior at headquarters, the following morning, glancing through the dead man's file. And not much more time than that had been required for the interview with the woman that morning, to release what was left of the body.

In all, then, no more than twelve hours had passed since Stern had been killed at midnight. In just such a brief period of time were the formalities of his death concluded, his life forgotten. But there was one minor curiosity that seemed to have been overlooked.

How did it happen that this casual acquaintance of Stern, this shabbily dressed woman of American birth, had come to police headquarters in the first place?

Why had she turned up so suddenly when she was only accustomed to receiving notes from Stern once a week, or every two or three weeks, in a small neighborhood restaurant?

How, indeed, had she even known that Stern was dead?

For there had been no mention of the event in the newspapers, nor would there be. Such incidents occurred and it was generally known that they did. But the British censors still had no wish to see displayed in print the fact that Allied soldiers, drunk on occasion and facing possible death themselves, relieved their tensions by tossing hand grenades into Arab bars.

Yet these questions concerning the American woman, as it turned out, were of little importance.

Elsewhere, the real enigma behind the killing was already being studied by intelligence experts, and for them even the simplest facts involved in Stern's mysterious death, and his equally mysterious life, had begun to suggest a vastly disturbing puzzle that might decide the outcome of the entire war in the Middle East, and perhaps beyond.

-2-

The Purple Seven Armenian

The names of four witnesses appeared in the brief report drawn up by the Cairo policeman who had investigated the hand-grenade incident, the other customers having fled the bar immediately after the explosion at midnight. Of the four, one was the Arab owner of the bar and two others were glassy-eyed Arab laborers who had heard nothing of the world since sundown, due to the effects of opium.

The fourth witness had produced a passport that showed he was a naturalized Lebanese citizen in transit, an itinerant dealer in Coptic artifacts. The name of this fourth witness was unmistakably Armenian. And although the policeman at the scene had carefully noted that the Armenian's status was in transit, he had failed to determine where the Armenian was in transit to, or from.

Teams of British enlisted men routinely checked every name that appeared in any Egyptian police report, no matter how insignificant the case might be. They checked these names against master lists, which gave no indication whether the name listed was that of a deserter or an alleged informer, a male or female prostitute suspected of infecting lost battalions of soldiers on leave, or belonged to any of the other categories of people that might be having an adverse effect on the war.

The Armenian's name appeared on such a list. The facts were duly forwarded to Special Branch, where a further check was made against names listed in various color codes. The Armenian's name was found under the highly sensitive Purple Code, which required that the information be sent at once to Military Intelligence.

There, the significance of the name was accurately defined by locating it on the select list known as Purple Seven, the briefest of all the lists and also the only one of the many secret color codes to merit the ultimate British classification for speedy handling in the Levant.

Most Most Urgent:

Here we go again, old boy.

Let's forego tea and keep

the Hun on the run.

At once, a goggled officer courier signed for the packet of information and climbed into the sidecar of a powerful dispatch motorcycle, driven by an expert heavy-diesel mechanic who was fluent in Malay, also goggled and armed with a Sten gun, two automatics, three throwing knives and a hidden derringer. The courier's destination was a drab building housing the Third Circle of the Irrigation Works, an obscure civilian department that happened to be under the direct control of the British commander-in-chief, Middle East Forces, seemingly due to the strategic value of water. But actually the drab Third Circle was the headquarters of a secret British intelligence unit colloquially referred to by specialists as the Waterboys.

And thus by noon that day a sickly-looking British agent, a Cairo pimp and blackmarketeer with a bad liver and a certain low-level reputation along the riverfront, was flashing his stained teeth as he strolled through a filthy slum of the city, his jaundiced grin meant to welcome anyone who might be in need of illicit services of any kind.

To fortify himself against the swindles ahead, the yellowish black-marketeer decided to stop off for a glass of cheap Arab cognac. And the café he chose, by chance, happened to be only a few doors away from the bar that had been damaged the previous night by a hand grenade.

Gently the pimp eased his swollen liver under a table. He rubbed his eyes and casually turned his attention to the next table, where the owner of the damaged Arab bar, a neighborhood celebrity for the moment, was dramatically recounting for the hundredth time his experiences from the previous night. The bar owner had been doing so since sunup, speaking breathlessly to anyone who would listen, but more especially to anyone who would buy him a drink in exchange for the whole truth about the war and the world and history.

***

By now the Arab bar owner was thoroughly drunk and his account had taken on the proportions of a major battle in the ongoing struggle for Egyptian independence. Like many of his countrymen, he viewed the British as colonial oppressors and was more than ready to welcome the Germans into Cairo as liberators.

In fact it was precisely because of his well-known patriotism, he said, that the cowardly British had sent an elite platoon of masked commandos to attack his bar under cover of darkness. But he had valiantly repulsed the assault and was to receive a medal from Rommel when the invincible panzers entered the city.

By the weekend, he said, his eyes glittering from the noontime rush of gin in his veins. By the weekend, according to the secret information he was privy to.

There was no need to boast, he went on, but there was also no need to hide the truth any longer. Not now, after the British had showed how much they feared him by mounting a regimental assault at night with their very best antitank weapons.

He lowered his voice and adopted the manner of a dedicated revolutionary. Awesome nationalist victories and the great personal sacrifices that led to them, he noted, deserved the deepest respect.

The whole truth? he whispered. The whole truth is that Rommel no longer writes to me through intermediaries. Now when he asks for my advice he does so in his very own hand, on Afrika Korps stationery.

Sighs and shrewd nods passed through his audience. At that moment his unemployed listeners undeniably had the hard knowing eyes of determined men. From the next table, the yellowish black-marketeer leaned sideways toward the bar owner.

How's his Arabic? he whispered.

Whose?

Rommel's.

Excellent, of course. The Germans aren't stupid like the British.

I never doubted it. But next weekend, you say? Rommel is going to be here as soon as that?

He told me so himself, answered the bar owner.

The blackmarketeer looked suddenly pained. He eased his fingers down over the right side of his abdomen and tried to prop up his liver.

Then I'm in trouble, he whispered. The Germans drink beer, strictly beer.

They do?

Of course, and here I am with this left on my hands. I thought it was going to make my fortune, but now it's turned out to be useless.

Your liver? whispered the bar owner.

The blackmarketeer shook his head and reached down for the valise he had with him, opening it just enough for the bar owner to peek inside. What he saw was a new bottle of Irish whiskey, its seal unbroken. The valise was quickly snapped shut again.

Direct from Shepheard's Hotel, whispered the blackmarketeer. Stolen at great risk and at the cost of many bribes. But now I'm doomed by God's will.

How much? whispered the bar owner suspiciously.

Cheap. Absurdly so, in view of God's will and Rommel's arrival.

God speaks in mysterious ways, countered the bar owner.

Assuredly, He does. And only those who are deserving hear His voice. Now as one revolutionary patriot to another, I suggest we retire to your damaged premises to inspect this despicable destruction wrought by a division of cowardly British paratroopers hurtling down from the heavens under cover of darkness.

It was more like the whole Eighth Army, said the bar owner. Tanks, huge cannons, minefields, massive formations of lumbering bombers, everything.

I never doubted it.

And they were led by Churchill himself.

Who was probably raving drunk as usual. But you fought back with all your strength and Rommel will be personally toasting you this weekend. While in the meantime, a little privacy perhaps?

The bar owner rose and dismissed his audience with a haughty gesture, almost losing his balance as he did so. But the yellowish blackmarketeer was quickly by the bar owner's side, his sickly eyes darting to and fro as he tendered his support, and in another moment he had the bar owner in an upright position and was steering him down the alley, the two of them hand in hand with their bodies rubbing together in the traditional Levantine manner of wholehearted cooperation.

Early that evening, then, a British Major returned to the Irrigation Works after debriefing his agent, the unhealthy-looking pimp. The Major laid aside his pith helmet and went in to report to his Colonel, the man in charge of the Waterboys.

***

It's about the Purple Seven alert that came in this morning, said the Major. It took some time to look into because the bar owner needed sobering up.

The Colonel nodded. Let's call this Purple Seven the Armenian, he said. Go ahead.

He's described as a small dark man of European origin, closely clipped beard, deep lines around the eyes, probably a drinker. Thin, wiry, getting on toward forty. A reddish hue to his hair, or at least that was the impression in the poor lighting of the bar. Nothing particular about the way he dressed except that it was definitely on the shabby side. Collarless shirt, rumpled and none too clean. An old suit that might have been secondhand, rather too big for him as if he had lost some weight recently, or perhaps just seen better days in general. Shabby overall, but otherwise ordinary in appearance.

Or experienced, said the Colonel. Go on.

He entered the bar shortly after Stern did, sometime around ten maybe. The bar owner's pretty useless when it comes to time, he doesn't own a watch and there's no clock in the bar. Stern and the Armenian sat together at the counter. The two of them were speaking English and the bar owner only understands a little. They drank the local cheap brandy. Stern had a couple, the Armenian rather more. Stern did the ordering and also the looking about.

How?

They were sitting sideways facing one another, each with an elbow on the counter, Stern positioned so that he had a full view of most of the room and also the entrance, which he could see over the Armenian's shoulder without moving his head. A curtain hung in the open doorway, separating the room from the alley. They smoked cigarettes while they talked, Stern's cigarettes, a cheap Arab brand. It was a quiet conversation at first, low tones, some gesturing. The Armenian was doing most of the talking at that point.

But then Stern did some talking and the situation grew more heated, as if there were some kind of disagreement. The Armenian seemed to be the one who was disagreeing, while Stern's manner was more one of self-confidence or relief. But that might be a bit too strong. It's only based on an impression of an impression.

Relief over something he'd learned from the Armenian? Why that impression?

Stern began smiling at that point. Or smiling occasionally. We're on unsure ground here.

Go on.

The Armenian's reaction to Stern's relief or self-confidence or whatever it was, suggested puzzlement, not anger. He didn't seem to understand whatever it was Stern was feeling, or else he understood it but was reluctant to accept it. Something along those lines. It was at that point that the discussion became heated and the disagreement developed. Stern seemed to be trying to explain himself, or justify himself or whatever, and the Armenian was refusing to go along with it.

I see.

Stern would speak quietly, forcefully, for a minute or two while the Armenian listened, trying to understand what Stern was saying. Then the Armenian would shake his head no and gesture and argue again. Both men seemed tired, weary is a better word. Perhaps the disagreement was an old one, something they'd been through before. It went on like that until midnight and the explosion. Physically, Stern seemed exhausted, but also exhilarated. Again, that's only an impression of an impression. And that's all we have prior to the hand grenade.

The Colonel nodded. Let's stay with that for a moment, he said.

He rose and began pacing awkwardly back and forth, as if he wasn't quite used to walking on his false leg. There were no windows in the room. He filled his pipe and absentmindedly left it on a table.

Stern seemed exhausted but happy or relieved, said the Colonel. What about the Armenian? He'd be a good ten years younger than Stern, maybe more. Exhausted too, physically?

Impossible to say. Apparently he couldn't be read so easily.

Why not?

The way he moved or held himself. Tended to give less of himself away. More contained perhaps?

Unlikely. But experienced, I'd say, definitely. No one ever gave less of himself away than Stern, although one never had that impression of course. Quite the opposite. Naturally your man wouldn't have known that. Whom did you send?

Jameson.

Excellent taste, observed the Colonel. I'd tend to trust his impression of impressions, so yes, we do have a few things here.

The Colonel looked around for his pipe. The Major had his own questions to ask but the time for that would come later. He waited.

Let's go on to the hand grenade, said the Colonel. How did it start?

There were shouts outside in English and the sounds of scuffling getting louder, a brawl working its way down the alley. The owner was nervous and so were some of the others in the bar. The Armenian, whose back was to the curtain, turned around to look several times but Stern went on talking, appearing to take no notice. Of course he could see the curtain without moving his head, so he might have been taking an interest without showing it. In any case, Stern went on talking and the shouting grew louder.

Then the curtain flew back and something came lobbing into the room. The owner saw it all right but he didn't know what it was. Nobody knew what it was except Stern.

The Colonel frowned, looking down at the floor, a sad expression.

Yes, he said softly. I can imagine.

Stern hit the Armenian in the chest and sent him flying, continued the Major. The owner was standing near them at that moment, behind the counter, and he saw the Armenian's face when Stern hit him. The Armenian was astonished. Obviously he had no idea what was going on. At that point the owner went down, threw himself on the floor behind the counter. It was an instinctive reaction to Stern hitting the Armenian, a dive for cover. Not away from the grenade, which he didn't recognize, but away from Stern.

The roar went off and that's all we have from the owner until the glass stopped showering down.

Mirror behind the counter?

Yes.

The Colonel found his pipe. He went over and sat down on the sofa, using his hands to move his false leg into a straight position.

Stern?

The grenade must have been coming directly at him. He had time to hit the Armenian and knock him clear, and that was that. Full in the chest probably. Nothing much left above the waist.

The Colonel struck a match. Ever been close to that? he asked. Had it happen right next to you?

No.

It's the worst sound in the world. Does something to your brain. For an instant you're no longer human.

It's another existence, primeval, black. You see something inside yourself. Go on.

There was the roar and the shattering glass and smoke and confusion, said the Major. When the owner showed his face, men were screaming and pushing out the door. Bits and pieces everywhere, and blood.

The Armenian was still sprawled in the corner where Stern's blow had sent him. Besides the two Arabs who were unconscious from opium on the far side, the Armenian was the only other man left in the room.

He lay there on the floor in the smoke, staring up at the spot where lie and Stern had been sitting. Slowly he got to his feet, dreamlike, and just stood there staring. The owner was dazed and he did the same thing, just stood there staring. But the owner was watching the Armenian.

Yes, said the Colonel, the fascination is incredibly intense. You don't know whether you're alive or dead and you're not in your own body at all. In fact you have no body. It's strange . . . a kind of sudden sense of pure consciousness. Your mind looks around and the first thing with any sign of life utterly captivates you. At that moment the merest flicker of an eye contains all the mystery of the universe. Go on.

The Armenian still didn't move, he just stood there staring. After a bit the owner came to his senses and began screaming himself. People shouted and stuck their heads in, and there was nothing really after that until the policeman arrived.

What kind of man?

Average, unfortunately. The confusion and damage got to him but not much else, except for one curiosity.

When he first came in, something about the Armenian struck him as peculiar. But only vaguely, he can't recall it exactly. It happened when he first glanced around the place and he might have only imagined it, or it could have been a trick of peripheral vision. Anyway, it was a sensation of something unusual, in the sense of inappropriate or out of place. At least that's my interpretation of it. The policeman isn't able to describe it with any degree of accuracy, apparently it only flashed through his mind. But what it amounts to is, he had the sensation the Armenian was smiling. Staring and smiling. And that's all we have on the incident itself.

The Colonel nodded.

But there's one other very curious fact, added the Major. The owner says the Armenian came to the bar yesterday morning, very early. There was nobody else there and he'd just started his cleanup when all of a sudden the Armenian came rushing in with a wild man.

A what?

That's how the owner describes him. A ghostlike figure in rags, an Arab, thin and small and caked with dust and dirt, hair matted and eyes bulging out of his head. According to the owner, he looked like a desert hermit who'd been off in a cave somewhere for years. He seemed deranged. He was clawing at the air and making strange sounds as if he couldn't breathe. The Armenian came rushing in with this wild man and ordered coffee and the two of them collapsed in a corner. Then the wild man began to sob and a moment later they were rushing out again, the Armenian in the lead, the wild man running after him.

Nothing more specific on this other man?

The owner kept mentioning his eyes, frantic bulging eyes. Frightening, wild. He was convinced the man was insane. That was the only time the owner has ever seen this other man, and it was the only other time he has ever seen the Armenian.

And lastly there's this, said the Major, placing a small length of worn curved metal in the Colonel's hand.

The bar owner found it on the floor after the policeman left. It was lying at the foot of the counter where Stern and the Armenian had been sitting. So far as I can see it's exactly what it appears to be, an old Morse-code key. From the last century, probably.

The Colonel turned the small piece of worn metal between his fingers. The key was highly polished from innumerable handlings.

Stern used to carry that, murmured the Colonel. It was a kind of good-luck charm. He was never without it.

The Colonel frowned. He took a bottle of whiskey from a cupboard and poured into two glasses. The Major sipped his whiskey, waiting. The room was in the heart of the building and few sounds reached it.

The Colonel worked on his pipe in silence. Finally he picked up the other glass.

Are you and Maud friendly these days?

Yes. Should I speak to her?

The Colonel shook his head.

No. You see, I think we've stumbled upon an operation that belongs to somebody else, and the reason we found out about it is because something went wrong in that bar. I'm sure the Armenian's name was never supposed to turn up in a police report. No, certainly not. As for Maud, it's not possible that she has anything to do with the operation, because if she did, I would have to have been told.

But she knew Stern had been killed, said the Major, and someone had to tell her. A Purple Seven alert comes directly to us. So we were the first to know of Stern's death, and we're still the only ones who do know. Unless, of course, you've already passed the information along.

I haven't, said the Colonel. I will tonight. But as for us being the first to know of Stern's death, that's not quite true, is it?

The first to know inside, I meant. The Armenian knew, of course.

Yes, our Purple Seven knew. Our man with the Armenian name who's conveniently in transit while dealing, in Coptic artifacts. Our small shabby European who wears a secondhand suit and likes to have his morning coffee in a Cairo slum with some wild Arab hermit from the desert, and who has all the signs of being an experienced professional. He knew.

And told Maud?

That's right, said the Colonel. But what I meant before is that she can't have anything to do with the operation itself, as such. It's obvious she must have a good deal to do with some of the people involved in it. From a personal point of view.

Wasn't her connection with Stern known from the beginning?

Oh yes. Stern was the one who recommended her to us, and he was right on target as usual. She's been a fine addition. But tell me, what do you know about Stern?

Only what comes through from the files, replied the Major. That he seemed to be able to find out almost anything.

Ever wonder why that was so?

Excellent contacts, I assume.

Yes, the best. The French and the Germans and the Italians, Turks and Greeks and Arabs and Jews—he had them all. And why was that, do you suppose?

Because he must have made it his business to have them, said the Major. Because that was what he did.

His life.

Yes, what he did. But I'm beginning to wonder about that . . . what Stern really did. Stern gave information as well as took it, but the real reason people trusted him was because they always felt, deep down, that he was working just for them. In the end, just for them. We believed that, didn't we?

In answer, the Major frowned. In the short time he had worked for the Colonel, there had been some extremely sensitive operations set in motion almost entirely on the basis of information supplied by Stern.

And there must have been many other such operations in the past, so he found it difficult to follow what the Colonel now seemed to be suggesting about Stern.

That's not to say he wasn't working for us, continued the Colonel. It's just that ultimately . . .

The Colonel broke off, trying to order his thoughts. For some reason he had suddenly recalled an obscure incident from before the war, Stern's escape from a Damascus prison in the summer of 1939.

The episode had never made any sense to the Colonel, because Stern had been due for release from the prison within twenty-four hours.

Yet Stern had risked his life to escape. Why?

Later he had talked about it with Stern and Stern had turned the whole affair into a joke, moving around in his chair in his awkward way and belittling any courage it might have shown on his part, claiming simply that he had felt more useless than usual and had decided on a sudden whim to try to prove his superiority over his Syrian guards. Stern had even showed the Colonel the scars left by the thumbnail he had ripped away during the escape, clawing his way through some masonry, deep ugly scars slashing up the back of his thumb. The Colonel remembered how painful they had looked at the time, but Stern had dismissed them with a shrug.

It's nothing, Stern had said, laughing. Really painful wounds never bother with the body, do they? They cut deeper and the scars they leave are elsewhere.

And then they had gone on to talk of other things. But now the incident in Damascus troubled the Colonel and he began hunting through Stern's file. He seemed to recall that Stern had said he had gone to Haifa after the prison escape, and had hidden in Haifa until the war had broken out a few weeks later, turning everyone's attention elsewhere.

The Colonel stopped at a page in the file. He had found the corroborating evidence taken from the reports of other contacts that Stern had been in Haifa in August 1939. But when the Colonel looked at the evidence now, he realized that all the scattered bits and pieces of information had been provided by contacts who were known or suspected Zionist activists, involved with illegal immigration into Palestine.

The Colonel turned more pages in the file. Stern's unlikely adventure had also brought Poland to mind.

Why the association? Simply because the German invasion of Poland had followed so soon after Stern's escape?

No. There was a connection and he found it. A short paragraph from an informer's report to the Turkish police in Istanbul. To the effect that the informer had seen Stern in Istanbul shortly after his escape from Damascus. That Stern had been carrying a forged Polish passport and had been frantically arranging a secret trip to Poland. To the Pyry forest near Warsaw, on a mysterious mission of great importance.

Or so the informer had speculated, offering a personal opinion without a trace of evidence to back up his claim.

Under normal circumstances the Colonel would have smiled at these cobwebs of conjecture. The Turkish police were wildly inaccurate about everything, and Istanbul was notorious for its legions of aspiring informers who would gladly claim anything in exchange for a minor official favor. And in this case not even the informer's identity had been included in the report. Even the fact that the informer had subsequently been found dead floating in the Bosporus meant nothing, given the situation in Istanbul in that last summer before the war.

Pure invention from some desperate refugee. Ridiculous rumors whispered across a café table and set adrift in the clouded brain of a Turkish policeman lazily puffing hashish, dimly trying to focus his eyes on the crotch of a serving-boy across the way.

And yet?

The Colonel closed the file. He frowned.

Perhaps he had made a serious mistake in accepting Stern's explanation of what he had been doing in those last few days before the war began. Perhaps Stern had actually made a secret trip to Poland without telling anyone about it.

Why? wondered the Colonel. What did it mean and what had he been hiding? Why had he lied and taken such care to make sure his lie had been covered?

Stern had been unusually experienced and clever. He had been dedicated to a cause that was probably too idealistic ever to be realized, but the cause had still been straightforward and comprehensible, as splendid in its simplicity as Stern's ideals had been.

Or rather, as they had appeared to be. For it was obvious now that someone else had stumbled upon Stern's Polish adventure and had decided to look into it more deeply, and in so doing had caught a glimpse of something unexpected. A suggestion of some enigma, some profound truth, that must have subsequently been uncovered by the Armenian.

Who had then told Stern what he had discovered. Just before a hand grenade had come flying in through the door of a dingy Arab bar in a Cairo slum, and Stern had been killed saving the Armenian's life.

***

Where were we? asked the Colonel, looking up.

I'm not sure, replied the Major. You were talking about the important work Stern did for us, and then you seemed to have some doubts about something.

Yes, well, it's just that the situation isn't as clear in my mind now as it was. Because that seems to be the very nature of this operation. Somewhere a doubt arose, as I see it, a doubt with very serious implications. So a man who knew Stern from somewhere, an outsider, was recruited to come in and find out what he could about Stern.

That would be our Purple Seven, said the Major.

Yes, the Armenian. A professional who might have been a friend of Stern's once, or who might have worked with him at some point in the past. Possibly in Stern's gunrunning activities, without knowing they were just a cover for his role in intelligence. Well the Armenian went about his business and my guess is he was successful. Either he discovered the truth about Stern or he came close enough for it not to make any difference.

The Colonel leaned back. There was admiration and even a touch of awe in his voice.

My God, you just can't appreciate the enormity of that task without having known Stern. The layers to the man, the subtleties. He grew up in these parts and knew every language and dialect, every nuance, every corner and what lay around it. There was simply no competing with him out here. He could go anywhere and be anyone, and at one time or another he did seem to go everywhere and be just about everyone. As he wanted, as it served his purposes. Describe a tiny corner of the desert and he knew it.

Mention a shop hidden away in a bazaar in any of ten dozen towns and he'd been there, knew the owner.

An extraordinary experience, dealing with a man like Stern. And he was modest. You didn't even begin to sense the depths to the man until he happened to mention some unexpected thing in an offhand way.

The Colonel grimaced. He reached down and moved his false leg.

Anyway, the Armenian must have done whatever he did and then gone to Stern with what he'd learned, which is strange in itself. You'd think he would have gone first to the people who'd hired him, but obviously he didn't. Because if he had, those same people would now know that Stern is dead, and they don't. Not yet, because I haven't told them.

So the Armenian went directly to Stern, continued the Colonel, and that was the meeting in the Arab bar.

The Armenian got in touch with Stern and set up a meeting, and then he sat down in that bar and told Stern what he'd discovered, and it was the full truth or close to it. Which was what caused Stern to begin smiling halfway through their conversation. Because at last, after all these years of subterfuge, someone had uncovered the truth about him.

Stern's reaction to that would be to smile? asked the Major. Why not just the opposite?

I have no idea. It might have to do with who the Armenian is. The Armenian confronted Stern with the facts, in any case, and Stern's reaction was to smile with relief. That was the expression you used.

Jameson used, corrected the Major.

Yes, Jameson, our alter ego in this case. So we have Stern smiling and the Armenian not liking it at all, and that's when the conversation grew heated. The Armenian didn't agree with what Stern was doing, couldn't agree, and he argued about it. But Stern was confident. He was convinced of his rightness and he went on to justify himself. Your words again, or Jameson's rather. And that was where matters stood when the grenade came sailing in the door and Stern saved the Armenian's life.

The Colonel paused.

Important, that. I don't know why, but it has to be. It was Stern's last act and there's a meaning to it.

Something to do with the discovery the Armenian had made, or perhaps going further back, to the whole relationship between the two of them. Which was profound, I'd say. Something quite special to both of them.

You know, concluded the Colonel, the curious part in all this is that we seem to have some of the answers without knowing the questions. More whiskey for you?

The Major poured for them both. A clock ticked on the wall. When it appeared the Colonel had nothing more to say, the Major decided to ask his own questions.

Whose operation do you think it is? The Monastery's?

Yes, no doubt. It's much too deep and roundabout to be anyone else's. And it's bizarre and wildly improbable, not what anyone would expect. All the characteristics of a Monastery operation.

What about the Armenian?

I've been thinking about him but no one comes to mind. Frankly, I haven't the least idea. Of course I know who originally used that Purple Seven identity, in fact I helped put it together for him. But that was three or four years ago, in Palestine in connection with the Arab revolt, and somehow it all seems irrelevant now.

Who was that? The man who used the identity then?

A fellow from the ranks. Sergeant O'Sullivan was his name.

Sergeant O'Sullivan, murmured the Major, a faraway look coming into his eyes. You're not referring to the Sergeant O'Sullivan?

Oh yes, the same. It rather slipped my mind how famous he used to be. I suppose you must have heard of him, even though you were very young at the time.

Yes, replied the Major, leaning back in his chair to reflect upon this astonishing piece of information from the past.

***

During the First World War, at least in the early part of the war, the exploits of Sergeant Columbkille O'Sullivan had been gloriously famous in every household in Britain, after he had been awarded two Victoria Crosses for extraordinary heroism in the gruesome slaughter known as the First Battle of Champagne, the only man of any rank to be so honored in the Great War. Then he had been referred to everywhere as the Sergeant O'Sullivan, or with even greater affection as simply Our Colly of Champagne.

But the celebrated little sergeant's reputation had mysteriously begun to deteriorate after his Irish compatriots raised their Easter Rebellion in 1916. By the summer of that year a rumor was rife in London that Our Colly was drinking to excess, and by the time autumn blew around it was generally known throughout England that Their Colly's reckless bravado in combat had always been due to drink and drink alone.

Further, while stationed in France and slyly acquiring Victoria Crosses through gross misrepresentation at the First Battle of Champagne, Their Colly, according to updated reports, had had the absurd arrogance to pretend that drinking anything less than vintage champagne was beneath him, even though when he was home again and on tour as a hero, he had reverted to his natural ways by gleefully swilling down anything alcoholic that passed through his trembling hands.

Thus the once renowned the Sergeant O'Sullivan had been entirely forgotten by the end of the Great War. The Major himself, in the course of his professional army career, could not recall ever having heard the famous name in any context, historical or otherwise. Yet to him, as to tens of thousands of British schoolboys, Our Colly of Champagne had been a unique folk hero when they were growing up.

***

My God, exclaimed the Major. Whatever did happen to Our Colly?

Oh he reenlisted again after the war, replied the Colonel.

He did? Our Colly?

Yes. And because of all that notoriety he'd received at such a young age, he wanted to get away from England, so he joined the Imperial Camel Corps out here. He even reenlisted under another name, just plain Private So-and-So. He'd developed an absolute passion for anonymity.

The Camel Corps? Our Colly on camelback?

Exactly. But before long he'd been promoted to sergeant again, and of course it was impossible for Colly's extraordinary talents to go unnoticed anywhere, even if he happened to be just loping around the deserts on a camel. So he was invited into this end of the business, and once with us Colly couldn't help but carry on with his usual flair. Anonymously, of course, undercover. In fact you could say it was just what he'd always been looking for. And all that talk in the last war about his drinking was utter nonsense.

Colly enjoyed a glass as much as the next man, but he was careful never to take a drink on duty. Drank only water when he was on assignment, made a point of it. Wouldn't even touch a cup of tea. And there are stories that anyone would find hard to believe. Some remarkable episodes in Abyssinia against the Italians, and then later in Palestine when we had to deal with the Arab revolt.

Palestine? murmured the Major. I was in and out of there during the Arab revolt. Where was Our Colly working then?

Up around Galilee. He was using several covers at the time. One was as the Armenian dealer in Coptic artifacts and another was as a captain in the King's Own Scottish Regiment. Every few weeks he'd slip into Haifa and transform himself. Something of a trickster, Colly was. He enjoyed that sort of thing.

Our Colly, murmured the Major. What was he doing at Galilee?

Oh he had several assignments going on at once, as he usually did, but probably the most important one then was helping the Jewish settlers organize their Special Night Squads, the first real mobile strike force they had. Colly was the man who trained those squads and set them up. He did that in his cover as the Scottish captain, and the methods he developed soon became one of the important operating principles of the Palmach.

The Colonel smiled.

The fellow had dash, damn it, it just came natural to him. I remember talking later to one of the young Haganah men Colly had taken on as a deputy, fellow by the name of Dayan, and he told me how astonished they all were the first time they met Colly. The Arab revolt was in full swing and Dayan and Allon and these others had gone up to defend a settlement near the Lebanese border. Well one moonlit night they were manning the pickets when up drove a taxi with its headlights off and its taillights on the front of the car to confuse the enemy, and out of the taxi stepped this lean small figure carrying two rifles and a Bible and a drum, an English-Hebrew dictionary and five gallons of New England rum.

Our Colly?

None other. His daring at coming up there alone at night, Dayan said, made a tremendous impression on everyone. They'd never met a military man like that before and it affected their thinking a good deal. The idea that warfare, irregular warfare at any rate, could be based on something other than parade-ground drill.

Amazing, murmured the Major.

Yes. Colly often worked for me in the most difficult of situations, and more than once I tried to convince him to accept a commission. But Colly always adamantly refused, saying he preferred to keep his standing as the Sergeant O'Sullivan. Even though his rating was secret of course, and no one knew he had any standing at all. He was quite a man, no question about it. And as for the role he played in the Spanish Civil War, that still has to be kept close to the chest.

Why's that? asked the Major, his head spinning with these revelations about the hero of his childhood.

Because Colly was fighting on the Republican side, don't you see. Officially he was on a leave of absence, and unofficially he was doing a number of things for us, but still, a regular army man and all. It just wouldn't do. Not then, not even now.

The Major was more astounded than ever.

Our Colly? he repeated dreamily, gazing down at the papers in his hand. Then something caught his eye and he laughed abruptly.

Did you choose this name, sir?

Which name?

The cover name for Colly's Purple Seven identity. A. O. Gulbenkian.

The Colonel smiled.

Oh no, that was Colly's doing. As a matter of fact, it was the name he used when he reenlisted and went into the Imperial Camel Corps after the last war. Says something about his sense of humor, I suppose.

He thought it would be amusing to skulk around the Middle East on a camel, using the last name of a famous Armenian oil millionaire.

Bizarre, murmured the Major. Gulbenkian does seem to be an odd name to come across here. But what were the initials A.O. supposed to stand for?

The Colonel laughed.

Alpha and Omega, probably. Colly's sense of humor again.

Our Colly of Champagne, murmured the Major. Extraordinary.

Yes, the same. And he was small and dark all right, and thin and wiry and every bit a professional. So I admit the description you brought back had me disturbed for a moment.

The Major was even more confused.

Why? Couldn't he be our Purple Seven, working out of the Monastery? You said the identity was issued to him originally.

It was, and it's also true that he was working out of the Monastery the last time around. But those Monks in the desert have been up to something since then. Do you recall the facts concerning the kidnapping of the German commandant of Crete?

Certainly. Did Our Colly have something to do with that?

His show from the beginning. Thought it up and worked out the details and then went along to see that it went smoothly. Well it did go smoothly, as an operation. They grabbed the commandant and walked him across the island to the south coast, and the submarine was where it was supposed to be on the night of the pickup. But that night Colly's luck ran out. He'd been defying the law of averages for just too long.

What happened?

He and his group crossed tracks with a German patrol. Colly made a racket and headed up into the mountains to lead the patrol off the scent. He was shot and wounded in the darkness but he managed to keep on going, until he had to look for a place to hide toward dawn. That section of the mountains is as bare as a lunar landscape, and the only place where he could get out of sight was inside one of the underground stone cisterns the Cretan goatherds use up there, to gather the runoff in the spring when the snow melts.

The Colonel scowled.

On their way by, the Germans left one of their men at the cistern because he was having an attack of dysentery and couldn't keep up, but Colly didn't know that. Colly waited long enough for the patrol to move on across the mountain, then stuck his head out of the cistern to take a look. Shivering, numb, barely able to move. He'd been standing up to his nose in the mountain-cold water of that cistern for an hour by then. And as chance would have it, the lone German happened to be squatting on a knoll right behind Colly.

The Colonel grimaced.

A freak accident really, I don't like to recall it. The startled German tossed a hand grenade and death was instantaneous for Colly. Decapitation.

What? Our Colly?

So the only way he could be part of these new events is if he'd been resurrected, which would certainly explain the enigmatic smile on the Armenian's face after the explosion in the bar. If O'Sullivan had been resurrected, he'd certainly be one to smile about it.

What?

No, he's dead all right. This Purple Seven isn't Colly. There's another Gulbenkian out there somewhere now.

The Major recovered and thought for a moment.

As I remember, there wasn't any mention of a British sergeant in connection with the kidnapping in Crete.

That's right, said the Colonel.

It was described by us as the work of some British officers.

There were a couple along, yes. And we broadcast that so the Germans would stop rounding up Cretan villagers and shooting them in retaliation. Since it was army to army, we said we'd shoot German POWs if they did that, and they stopped.

But why didn't they mention the fact that they'd killed O'Sullivan?

Because they didn't know who the dead man was, said the Colonel. Colly was disguised as a Cretan mountaineer and the Germans decided to keep us guessing about whether that mountaineer was alive or not, just in case he happened to be someone who was important to us. And also, so we could never be sure what he might have told them. Is telling them, for that matter.

The Major nodded. It was obvious to him that since the Colonel knew exactly how O'Sullivan had died, he must have a source in Crete who had reported the truth to him. Most likely a partisan, he thought, who had been following the German patrol and had witnessed the incident at the cistern from afar. But Crete was outside the Major's area of concern, so he said nothing more on the subject.

The Colonel, meanwhile, was pursuing a new chain of thought that struck him as curious. In fact he did have a special source in Crete who had reported the circumstances of O'Sullivan's death, as the Major suspected, but the agent was far more valuable than a partisan in the mountains. And it was in order to protect this agent's highly sensitive position as an apparent collaborator with the Germans, a dangerous role to attempt in a place like Crete, that the Colonel had decided not to reveal to anyone the fact that he knew for certain Sergeant O'Sullivan was dead.

Until now, when these nostalgic reminiscences concerning Our Colly had caused him to forget himself in front of the Major.

But before this moment he had told no one. Not even the elite intelligence unit for which O'Sullivan had been working when he went to Crete, the obscure command in the desert often referred to by the Colonel and others, in private and with some disdain, as the Monastery.

Thus a question had suddenly occurred to the Colonel.

How did the Monastery know O'Sullivan was dead?

For they certainly had to know. Otherwise they would never have assigned his Purple Seven identity to another man. And yet the Monastery was unaware of the Colonel's special source in Crete. Was there someone else, then, who could have been in touch with the Colonel's special source without the Colonel knowing about it? One of the agents, perhaps, who had been landed in Crete by submarine since the time of Colly's death?

The Colonel reached for another file, then stopped and nodded to himself. There was no need to look up any names. Who, after all, had provided the Colonel with this valuable source in Crete in the first place?

Who indeed? Stern, of course. Stern had recruited the woman soon after Crete had fallen to the Germans. She had been an acquaintance of Stern's from somewhere over the years, and it had been Stern who had gone to her and convinced her to undertake the role of a collaborator, with all the danger and humiliation that entailed. And then not long after Colly had disappeared in Crete, Stern had managed to get himself sent there on another assignment altogether. But obviously his real purpose in going had been to find out about Colly.

Stern must have known Colly, the Colonel now realized, from the time when Colly had been in Palestine.

Perhaps they had even become close friends then, for they were the kind of men who would have been naturally attracted to one another. Colly with his resourcefulness and his many idiosyncrasies, an eccentric dreamer who was more religious than rational, who was a firm believer in the Bible and who had become an ardent Zionist while working in Palestine fired with a mystical sense of the special mission of the Jews.

Yes. Colly would have appealed to Stern and they had probably become close friends, unknown to the Colonel and even to the Monastery. So when Colly hadn't returned from Crete, Stern had worked out a way to get himself sent there, to find out what had happened to his friend.

It fit, the Colonel was sure of it. It was exactly the kind of thing Stern would have done. And once in Crete, Stern must have left the safety of the mountains and taken the risk of going down into town, disguised as a Cretan mountaineer, and looked up the woman he had previously recruited for the Colonel, to learn for himself what Colly's fate had been. And later mentioned the fact of Colly's death to the Monastery, disguising his source.

It fit, and it troubled the Colonel. It was a little bit terrifying sometimes to think of the chances Stern had taken. This one, for example, strictly on his own. Thinking up a plausible assignment in Crete and getting himself sent there, simply to find out about a friend. To the Colonel, there was something disturbing about that. Something profoundly puzzling and suggestive of Stern's whole character.

But for the moment the Colonel put aside these intriguing considerations. Before he did anything else, he had to set matters straight in his own office.

***

I'm afraid I might have given you the wrong impression just now, he said, when I implied O'Sullivan had been killed. The truth is, we don't know whether he's dead or not. Our Colly might well be still alive in the mountains of Crete, which are extensive and rugged, after all.

I understand, answered the Major.

I'm sure you do. Undoubtedly you heard a lot about him as a boy, and you know there was no stopping him ever. Absolutely astonishing when you think of it. The Sergeant O'Sullivan. The noncommissioned officer of the Empire. I mean our very own, yours and mine and everyone's Our Colly of Champagne, right? So all we can say about it now, here, is that Colly can't be the Purple Seven who was in that Arab bar last night with Stern. And that's all we can say in respect to Colly.

I understand fully, said the Major.

The Colonel paused. Another thought had come to him. He went back to the report drawn up by the Egyptian policeman, to the information that had been copied down from the Armenian's passport after the explosion. The physical characteristics given for the Armenian were the same as Colly's had been.

The Monastery hadn't even bothered to change any of the entries in the passport, although they certainly would have, if there had been any reason to. Did that mean the Armenian not only resembled Colly, but resembled him exactly?

The Major must have already noticed this coincidence of physical details.

Did Our Colly have a brother? he asked.

The Colonel groaned.

Please. There's no way we can get into that.

Sir?

There were an enormous number of brothers, all of them older, as I recall. Colly used to claim the reason he had so many brothers was because his father ate so many potatoes. Some kind of local superstition where he grew up. Anyway, most of the brothers emigrated to America at an early age, to someplace called the Bronx, where they became roofers or drunkards or both.

Roofers?

Reaching for the stars in the New World, was the way Colly used to put it. And becoming drunkards, sadly, when the stars still proved to be out of reach, even over there. But no matter. It's an intriguing idea but it can't lead anywhere. The Bronx is simply too far away. Even Jameson couldn't penetrate such an exotic place.

The Colonel shook his head.

Stern, he muttered. The Armenian. That bar in a slum. One way or another, I don't think they're going to be very happy at the Monastery when I tell them about this.

One way or another? asked the Major.

Yes. If the hand grenade was their doing, it has to mean they intended to kill both of them. And if it really was a sordid accident, at the very least it tells them the Armenian went to Stern with what he'd learned, rather than to them. And now that Stern's gone, the Armenian's word is all the Monastery has about anything and everything concerning this operation of theirs against Stern. . . . No, I'm afraid there's no way out of it for the Armenian. Whatever the situation, he's in trouble.

Perhaps we could look into it further?

On our own, you mean. Yes, we could try to do that. But it's still the Monastery's operation, so I can't wait any longer to tell them about Stern's death and all the rest of it. Even a little thing like our sending Jameson over for a look is going to make them furious.

What about Maud? She might be able to pass on a message to her friend, the current Gulbenkian.

Oh that's not important. He doesn't need to be told where he stands. But I did intend to speak to her anyway, she's waiting now.

The Colonel looked down at the floor. He sighed.

The point is, you know as well as I do that when the Monastery's running an agent as a Purple Seven in this kind of case, against a man who was probably our most valuable agent and perhaps their most valuable agent as well, then that Purple Seven can't help but have a very short life expectancy, considering what must have been at stake. What is at stake? If he won he loses, if he lost he loses. And he's going to have to be a very wily Armenian now to live even a day or two with the Monks after him. I only hope he's half as clever as his predecessor in that identity was.

From what you've said about O'Sullivan, that seems unlikely.

I know it does. You just don't come across a man like O'Sullivan very often. You can't expect to and you don't.

Once more the Colonel shifted his false leg. The Major rose to leave.

Sir?

Hm.

I'll look into this as quietly as possible, but do you think you could give me any suggestions? There are so many names and dates and events in Stern's file, I could spend a year just trying to sort them out. Do you have any idea at all what the Armenian might have been looking for?

It's just a guess, said the Colonel, but my inclination would be to start with Poland.

The Major looked completely bewildered.

Poland? Here in Cairo? . . . The war started with Poland, he added blankly.

And so it did, said the Colonel. Oddly enough, and so it did. But the war only ostensibly started there. Its origins have to lie more deeply in the past, as origins always do. By the time something becomes apparent, well, it's already traveled some distance, hasn't it? It's already been on its course for years and decades and it has a history to it. So although I'd start with Poland if I were you, I'd also keep in mind that's only a beginning. We have to go back, back, to find the Armenian. Because that's exactly what he did to find Stern. Does it sound complicated to you?

Frankly it does, said the Major.

But it's not really. It can't be. Stern was a man and the Armenian's a man and Poland's a place. And the Armenian managed to do it working alone, while we have enormous resources at our disposal.

Why do you say he was working alone? Surely he had the resources of the Monastery behind him?

No, I'm quite sure he didn't, not in any substantial way. The Monastery would never share anything of consequence with an outsider, that's not the way they operate. There's a reason why they have the name they have, as with most names in this world. So my guess is the Armenian was as alone before as he is now, and he's certainly alone now if the Monks are after him.

The Colonel gazed off into the distance. It must be an extremely important case, he mused.

Sir?

Just on the face of it, from what little we know. Stern and Colly's successor supposedly working against each other? Yet at the same time, not working against each other in some strange way? My God, if you had ever wanted two men to do something for you out here, it goes without saying you would have picked Stern and Colly.

And Colly's successor?

The Colonel shook his head.

Yes I know. It's a mystery, and a pity.

Sir?

Oh it's just that I always had such great affection for Colly, and I suppose I must be inadvertently transferring some of those feelings to his successor, this new Purple Seven.

The Colonel smiled, almost shyly.

Odd, how we do that. I haven't the least idea who this Purple Seven is. He's just a man without a name whom we call the Armenian for convenience. Yet I can't help but feel sad when I think about him. Where he is now and what he knows and what it's come down to for him, just all of it. Of course there's no rational explanation for my feelings, but all the same, a man who could uncover the truth about Stern . . .

The Colonel sighed.

Well I guess we'll just have to see, that's all.

***

At a remote site in the desert, deep within an ancient fortresslike structure, a monk in a hooded cassock moved quickly down a narrow subterranean corridor lit at rare intervals by torches fixed to the walls. The corridor disappeared in the gloom and the only sound was the muffled swish of the monk's robes as he padded quietly down the worn stones in the half-light.

The monk was a powerful stocky man with an unkempt beard, which only partially covered the piece of his jaw that was missing. He stopped at a low iron door cut into the rock, pausing before he flung it open, a shattering noise in the underground stillness.

The monk was facing a tiny cell. At the far end a man with only one arm knelt in front of a plain wooden cross, his back to the door, heavy chains twisting away from his ankles to a rusty iron ring in the wall.

When the door slammed open the man's wasted body jerked forward, flinching away from the crashing noise. But he didn't turn around nor did he lower his hand, which remained in front of him in an attitude of supplication.

The man looked like a desert hermit. His hair was matted and his bare feet were black with dirt.

Apparently he had been praying in absolute darkness, for the cell lacked even a candle, only a little light reaching it now from the flickering torches in the corridor. The face of the hooded monk was invisible in the blackness.

For a time neither man moved in the shadowy silence, the two of them somber and stationary in the separate poses of their separate worlds, the powerful stocky monk framed in the low iron doorway, the shackled man facing the crumbling wall as he trembled, waiting. And then all at once the distant opening chords of Bach's Mass in B Minor could be heard booming forth from somewhere high above them in the ancient fortresslike structure.

The monk crossed himself and removed a coiled whip from under his cassock, a long thick scourge of braided leather. He let the whip unwind until it dangled down to the floor, an ugly many-tongued lash.

The shackled man jerked slightly, his head sinking lower. It was cold in the cell, yet drops of sweat had broken out around the lips of the monk. He licked the sweat away and spoke in a hard contemptuous voice.

The Armenian survived the hand grenade, he said.

The stark words rang in the stillness and a sudden spasm gripped the shackled man, an unmistakable shudder of eagerness, an almost sensual expression of loathing. Frantically he began clawing at the rags on his shoulders, stripping them back to reveal his wasted flesh, deathly white skin crossed with dark uneven scars. In another moment the kneeling man had bared himself to the waist and buried his face in his single hand, rigid again, waiting.

The monk stood with his feet wide apart. He whipped the scourge into the air and brought it down with all his strength on the pale back of the kneeling man. The ugly leather tongues hissed and whined against the flesh, snapping up again. After the third brutal lashing the monk tossed the bloodied scourge into a corner. He licked his lips and stared. The shackled man had been driven to the floor by the force of the blows, and it was only with a great effort that he managed to raise himself to his knees.

He was breathing heavily, fighting to keep from falling back on his face. Again he raised his one thin hand to the cross on the wall in an attitude of supplication, the palm of his open hand now wet with tears. His body shook violently as he tried to control himself.

The Armenian's a dead man, muttered the tortured figure. He's dead but he doesn't know it yet. Kill him.

But he has eluded us, murmured the monk with great deference. We don't know where he is, Your Grace.

In that case, whispered the shackled man, find him and then kill him.

Yes, Your Grace.

The monk lingered a few moments to see if there were to be any further instructions. But the shackled man in rags seemed oblivious to his presence now, so the monk backed slowly away into the corridor and closed the heavy iron door on the tiny cell, leaving his scourged superior alone once more in the blackness with his ripped flesh and his simple cross, alone and bleeding . . . praying.

-3-

Hopi Mesa Kiva

Some months before the obscure gunrunner Stern was killed in Cairo, a large black automobile sped silently down a remote secondary road deep in the arid wastelands of the American southwest.

In the rear of the automobile sat three distinguished gray-haired men, wearing rumpled white linen suits and broad Panama hats, their faces creased by the long journey from Washington in a military aircraft. In addition to having been youthful heroes for their respective nations in the First World War, the three shared reputations for unorthodox brilliance in their different professions. And now with a new war sweeping over the earth, they had become men of vast secret powers in innumerable corners of the world.

Of the three, only the Britisher was completely unknown to his countrymen at large. An old Etonian and a member of two London clubs, he was a professional military officer who had been a colonel in the Life Guards before being anonymously seconded, years earlier, to an anonymous post requiring strictly anonymous secret duties, in keeping with traditional British anonymity in matters of intelligence.

At the moment he was knitting.

The Canadian was small and slight with hooded eyes that watched everything. Originally famous as an air ace in a Sopwith Camel, then as the world lightweight boxing champion and the man who had perfected the method of sending photographs by radio, he had gone on to become a millionaire industrialist with worldwide business interests.

The Canadian was stirring a mixture over ice in a chemist's beaker.

While the large Irish-American contented himself with gazing out the window at the dwindling light of that late desert afternoon. A law-school classmate of the American president and the former commander of the famed New York regiment known as the Fighting Sixty-ninth, he was a self-made success who had become a Wall Street lawyer with international dealings.

The Britisher was known to the other two men as Ming, from the first syllable of his surname, which wasn't spelled that way at all. He was the first to break the silence in the backseat.

Let's see how this is for length, he said, the knitting needles in his hands running through a final flurry of clicks.

He raised the black knitted material from his lap, held the end of a tape measure to one of its corners and reached across the rear seat. The American took the other ends and pulled them taut, while the small Canadian in the middle, his view suddenly blocked by the screen of black material in front of him, slid down in his seat and peeked beneath the knitting in order to keep his beaker in view.

Still a little short? suggested the American.

Although commonly known as Wild Bill, the American was referred to as Big Bill on the various joint committees run by the subordinates of the three men, to distinguish him from the Canadian, who was half his size and had the same first name, and who was consequently known as Little Bill. The small Canadian, in his quiet intrepid way, being considered as wild as anyone.

Rumpled white linen suits and dented Panama hats eccentrically cocked at odd angles.

Big Bill. Little Bill. Ming.

And in Washington and Ottawa and London, mysterious identical memos in the hands of their staffs stating cryptically that the chief would be in the company of the other two chiefs for the next forty hours or so, strictly out of touch on a secret mission of great importance, destination and purpose unknown.

Apparently Ming agreed with Big Bill about the length of his knitted material. He nodded without expression and went back to work with his knitting needles. Little Bill removed a chilled long-stemmed glass from an ice bucket, gave a last stir to the contents of his beaker and poured. He added a twist of lemon peel, then sipped judiciously.

Delicious, he murmured, immediately taking a much deeper drink so that none of the martini would spill.

For some minutes the three men sat once more in silence as the automobile sped across the barren wastelands, the stillness inside touched only by the hum of the automobile engine and the rhythmic clicking of Ming's knitting needles. Again it was Ming who interrupted their musings. Briefly he laid aside his handiwork and fitted a Turkish cigarette of strong black tobacco into a cigarette holder. Without lighting the cigarette he sucked vigorously on the mouthpiece of the holder three or four times, then stuffed the still-new cigarette into an ashtray on his armrest. Sitting very erect, he looked out the window to his right and surveyed the empty lunar landscape. They were now not far from the secret destination that had caused so much speculation in their respective capitals, a tiny Indian pueblo, or village, where they would meet the chief medicine man of the Hopi tribe.

What really might make him do it? asked Ming, as much to himself as to anyone else. Surely not patriotism, our cause isn't his. And not these illegalities we have on him, they're not enough of an inducement. Why would a man leave this peace and quiet to go halfway around the world and face the possibility of being killed? The war seems so far away here, it's almost as if it didn't exist.

Adventure? murmured Little Bill, sipping from his glass. From what your people in Cairo imply, he seems to be the kind of man who might be finding life in these deserted parts a bit too quiet by now, a bit too peaceful. After all, it's been about seven years since he came out here.

There's that certainly, agreed Big Bill. As for his illegal status and the dealings he had when he first entered the country, you're right that they amount to nothing, not even an opening card. A man like that could disappear whenever he wanted, just about anyplace he wanted, and no one would be able to trace him. Those are commonplace skills to him. No, if he does agree to go, I think it will be out of curiosity.

But not over Rommel, said Ming. That kind of concern, I suspect, would have no meaning to him at all.

Is the file handy?

Here, said Little Bill, retrieving a folder from the stack of confidential reading material they had brought with them to pass the hours on the flight from Washington. On the tab of the file the real name of the Hopi medicine man was typed in purple letters.

O'SULLIVAN BEARE, J.E.C.K.K.B. (JUNIOR, BUT NEVER so KNOWN)

Little Bill opened the file on his lap. He sipped his martini and peered at the first page.

What was it you wanted to review?

Nothing in particular. Just run through some of the basic facts, if you would.

Little Bill began to read.

Joseph Enda Columbkille Kieran Kevin Brendan O'SULLIVAN BEARE.

Subject was born in the Aran Islands and is commonly known as Joe. No formal education. His Christian names all represent saints who were originally from his island, which is tiny and windswept and rainy and has produced more saints and drunkards, per capita, than any other area in Christendom.

Subject grew up speaking Gaelic and worked as a boy on his father's fishing boat. He is the youngest of a large brood of brothers, only one of whom is ever known to have distinguished himself, the next to the last and the closest in age to the Subject. This brother dropped the appendage Beare and was known simply as Columbkille O'Sullivan, or occasionally as Their Colly in the vulgar press, where he attained a brief notoriety as a loutish drunken layabout during the First Battle of Champagne, the Great War, 1914-1918.

Now there's a name from our salad days, mused Little Bill. Although in my unit, we always called him Our Colly then.

And in mine, added Big Bill. Your archivist, he said to Ming, would seem to have some kind of historical bent.

Ming said nothing, his knitting needles clicking methodically. Little Bill smiled and read on.

Subject joined the Easter Rebellion in 1916, at the age of sixteen, and managed to escape from the Dublin post office when it fell. Went into hiding and fought alone until trapped, when he managed to escape again, this time disguised as a Poor Clare nun on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. In Jerusalem, through a ruse and another disguise, the Subject took up residence in the Home for Crimean War Heroes, a local British charity. There, on behalf of a grateful nation, he was awarded the standard prize of honor for all heroes who survived the Crimean War—a used khaki blanket. The Subject has carried this blanket with him ever since as a kind of memento.

Little Bill smiled.

A kind of memento? he murmured.

Big Bill cleared his throat as Ming's knitting needles clicked quietly. Little Bill sipped from his glass and read on.

Soon after arriving in Jerusalem, the Subject met Stern and went to work for him, running guns into Palestine.

Another initial acquaintance in Jerusalem was an American woman, Maud. The Subject lived with her for some months and a son was bom of the union in Jericho, while the Subject was away on one of his frequent trips for Stern. The American woman subsequently left Palestine with the baby, abandoning the Subject, who broke with Stern thereafter, blaming Stern for what had happened.

The Subject then took part in founding what came to be known as the Great Jerusalem Poker Game, a blasphemous game of chance that lasted for a full twelve years, or until 1933, when President Roosevelt announced a New Deal for the common man in the United States. The Subject then left Jerusalem and the Middle East but not before there was a complete reconciliation with Stern, initiated by Stern and welcomed by the Subject.

Since that time the Subject is known to have kept in touch with Stern, at least on an irregular basis. There is also evidence that he has sent money to Stern over the years, probably an arrangement whereby the Subject could provide funds to the American woman, Maud, without her being aware of their true source.

In 1934, the Subject crossed into the United States from Canada, in disguise once again, using forged papers. After spending a brief period of time in Brooklyn, organizing an illegal business, he traveled west and ended up on the Hopi reservation, where he became chief medicine man of the tribe. When entranced by firelight he is said to mutter in Gaelic, which his untutored parishioners take to be some mysterious tongue of the Great Spirit.

What kind of illegal business in Brooklyn? asked Ming.

Garbage, replied Little Bill. At least that's what it says here, but what's it supposed to mean?

Sometimes, explained Big Bill, the garbage or carting businesses in New York are controlled by mobsters.

Ming looked mystified.

You mean to say there's money in garbage in Brooklyn?

It's possible.

Money in dustbins, mused Ming. How very odd indeed. Even though you Americans are our cousins, it does seem you've been strangely affected by these wild dreams of the promise to be found in the New World.

***

Well that brings us up to date, said Big Bill. What do you think?

Good man to have in a scrape, commented Little Bill. Resourceful, independent, capable of thinking on his feet. And above all, experienced. The disguises and so forth. I like that.

Knows his own mind, added Ming. But with no use for politics, left that behind long ago. Twelve years playing poker in Jerusalem, only to give it all up because Roosevelt happens to announce a New Deal on the other side of the world? A romantic, an idealist. Yet right after that there's this dustbin episode in Brooklyn. Mobsters, you say. So a romantic with a twist, an idealist with a touch of cynicism. There are contradictions here, conflicts in the man's makeup. And then after that we have seven years out in this desert as a recluse, a hermit totally cut off from his own kind. But what is his own kind? That's the point.

On the face of it, there's no way to know.

Strictly his own man though, concluded Ming, and I like that. I'm just not sure how we can appeal to him.

Nor am I, said Big Bill. But I do think our important card, perhaps our only card, is his feeling for this man Stern. The curiosity he may have about Stern, what has happened to Stern and why. It's not that Stern might be secretly working for the Germans when he appears to be working for us. We know Stern deals with everybody, that's his value. And our Hopi medicine man may no longer care about our side and their side, but I think he may care about Stern's dozen sides. Why Stern is doing whatever it is he's really doing. I suspect an unusual bond still exists between the two of them, a unique bond even, despite the years that have passed since they've seen one another. And that might cause him to go, for his own reasons. We'll just have to explore it when we sit down with him. Get him to talk about Stern and see where it leads.

And let's not forget the American woman, added Little Bill. I've found it's best never to overlook the woman in a case.

Big Bill tipped his head.

Is that so?

Little Bill smiled.

Quite. Now let's just peruse the facts. Our man on the Hopi mesa that lies ahead was quite a remarkable revolutionary once, and although the romanticism may have worn a bit thin since then, or become a mite twisted as you call it, we have to consider what the Middle East must have meant to him once. A young Irish lad suddenly cast into the Holy Land and living in mythical places with names like Jericho and Jerusalem? It must have been pure magic for him after growing up on a deathly poor little rainy island in the Atlantic. The sun and the desert and Maud? Love in the Holy City? A son born in Jericho? Dreams come from the likes of that.

Ming, intent on his knitting, glanced sideways at the ice-cold martini perched on his friend's knee, the delicate stem of the glass lightly held between Little Bill's thumb and forefinger.

You're a romantic yourself, he said dryly. With a twist, of course.

Of course, agreed Little Bill, smiling. Then too, there's the fact that our Joe is still in the desert. Or once more in the desert, which should tell us something.

But what? murmured Ming, as much to himself as to anyone else.

So when you put it all together, continued Little Bill, it wouldn't surprise me if our Hopi medicine man turned out to be willing to leave the safety of his kiva for a journey halfway around the world. There's Maud and there's also his mysterious friend, the enigmatic Stern . . . A journey into his own past, perhaps?

He was a mere youth when he gave up on war and revolution, said Ming. That was twenty years ago and it's been almost that long since he's seen the woman. Men change their ways with time.

Or grow in their ways? said Little Bill. Just possibly his romanticism is incurable, despite two decades of this or that. Who's to know what to expect from an Irish-Hopi?

Ming nodded and held up his knitting. The three men stretched the black shawl across the rear seat. Big Bill read the tape measure.

Just right, he said. I'm told the Hopi take ceremonies very seriously.

Ming put his knitting needles away and Little Bill busied himself clipping the loose ends off the shawl with a small pair of scissors. On the horizon ahead several puffs of smoke had appeared. Ming pointed.

The Hopi signal corps announcing our arrival?

He fitted another strong Turkish cigarette into his holder and inhaled deeply three or four times, then crushed the unlit cigarette in the ashtray that was already full.

But this is preposterous, he suddenly roared. An utterly absurd situation. Leaving our three services to dither among themselves while we fly all the way out here for this?

Big Bill laughed.

Mostly it was an excuse to get you away and give you a feeling for the size and scope of our continent, your new ally.

Large, muttered Ming. But all the same, you two should be much too busy for this sort of thing.

We are, replied Big Bill. Still, it seemed only appropriate that the three of us, just once, should have the opportunity to recruit an agent together. Just once, as a matter of ritual.

A unique moment in the history of the great democracies, murmured Little Bill. If the Germans should win, it will all be over, all of it, because there's a streak in man that simply can't abide what freedom requires. So it does seem appropriate for the three of us to mark the moment in our little way. . . . And to hope.

Ming turned and gazed at the two of them.

All of that's true, I daresay, and I'd be the last man to say there's no meaning in rituals. But what could anyone make of this, when you look at it? The chiefs of our three secret intelligence services, at a moment like this in the history of the West, contemplating Hopi smoke signals at sundown? It's a ritual all right, but it's also a piece of secret intelligence I don't intend to report to anyone at home, and certainly not to Winston.

Little Bill smiled.

Then I will, he said at once. He'd love it.

Ming looked out the window and lapsed into silence.

Yes, he murmured after a time, that's true, Winston would love it. And that may be one of the quieter differences between our side and theirs.

***

Darkness was rising from the wastelands by the time the automobile left the road and slowly began to climb a stretch of hard-baked desert, heading now toward a huge lone mesa that soared above them in the twilight, the pink and purple hues of its lower reaches giving way to sheer golden cliffs in the sky. At last the automobile glided to a stop and the driver switched the headlights off and on three times. The three men stepped outside and gazed up at the awesome cliffs of gold.

Sunset and the myth of the Seven Lost Cities of Cibola, murmured Little Bill. The conquistadores must have kept their eyes on the ground. No wonder they were never able to sort out the dreams and realities of the New World.

Big Bill cleared his throat. No more than ten yards away a silent Indian was standing on one leg, his other leg drawn up beneath him in the timeless pose of a watchman in the wilds, his somber presence as immutable as the vast monoliths soaring majestically above the wastes. The Indian showed no sign of recognition, no sign of even being aware of their presence. He seemed to be as alone out there as he had always been, mysteriously rooted to some secret spot of sand and stone assigned to him at the very dawn of creation. He stood like that for some moments and then his eyes abruptly flickered and he raised his head toward the mesa, as if hearing a whisper descending from the massive walls of gold. The three men followed his gaze upward but heard nothing, not even a touch of wind that might have been caressing the towering dream above them.

The Indian turned and walked away. They followed him a short distance and came upon three burros standing behind a boulder, the creatures as immobile in their solitude as the Indian had been before them.

Preposterous, muttered Ming.

The three of them mounted the burros and the ascent began up a path cut into the face of the cliff, led by the Indian on foot. Higher and higher they climbed, the twisting ledge often no more than a few feet wide, the drop to the side falling off hundreds of feet to the desert below. As they worked their way upward the golden sheen of the rocks receded and the dark vistas beneath them spread out with ever greater mystery, until by the time they reached the summit of the mesa the faint glow on the horizon, the last of the dying sun, had left but a shadowy dimness to the air.

They slid to the ground amidst low adobe shapes built one on top of another, in what appeared to be the central courtyard of the pueblo. While they were dusting themselves off and straightening their clothes, their Indian guide drifted away with the burros. There was no sign of life anywhere in the village.

Not exactly what you'd call being piped aboard, whispered Ming. Is it possible we've come several hundred years too late?

They may all be at vespers, whispered Little Bill. In a setting such as this, a huggermugger at sundown would definitely seem to be in order.

But why are we all whispering? whispered Big Bill.

He squinted through the darkness and pointed.

Isn't that the kiva over there?

In the center of the courtyard a mound of fitted stones rose four or five feet above the surface of the ground, what appeared to be the roof of an underground chamber. Protruding from an opening in the top of the mound was the end of a ladder. They climbed up to the ladder and lowered themselves, one by one, down through the opening into the interior of the mound.

The underground vault they had entered was round and spacious with smooth walls of stone. In the middle of the chamber stood a low unadorned altar, and in front of the altar a lone Indian sat crosslegged on the ground, cloaked in a blanket. The chamber was roughly divided in half, the semicircle where the Indian sat having a lower floor level than the side where they had descended and now found themselves standing awkwardly, their disheveled linen suits filthy from the climb up the face of the cliff, their Panama hats bashed and askew. Here and there torches hissed on the walls, casting uneasy shadows.

The Indian watched them impassively, his dark skin deeply etched with lines. His hair was long and greasy, what little of it showed beneath a thick wool hat squashed down to his ears, a hat that might have been bright red once but was now badly faded by time and the elements. Although crudely woven by hand, the hat didn't seem to be of local manufacture. Instead it gave every appearance of being the product of some hovel-industry in the Old World, the meager handiwork of an aging peasant laboring in perpetual rain and twilight. In Ireland, perhaps.

The impression given by the hat was vaguely disquieting to the three visitors. Peaked front and back and pulled down over the Indian's head at a raffish angle, it suggested nothing so much as the shoddy costume of an itinerant frontier trickster eager to unload worthless bottles of some all-purpose health tonic, fortified with gin and laudanum, in exchange for valuable furs.

As for the Indian's outer garment, the threadbare khaki blanket covering him from neck to ankle, it was so worn and tattered it looked like a campaign relic from another century, and indeed, a legend stamped on its edge stated that it had originally been issued for use among Her Majesty's forces in the Crimea, 1854. Of course the blanket was immediately recognizable to the three men, having been prominently mentioned in their intelligence files as a souvenir from the Home for Crimean War Heroes in Jerusalem.

As soon as they were off the ladder and standing together, the Indian made a gesture commanding silence. Another gesture and the three of them were sitting in a row facing him and the altar, higher than he was both because he was such a small man and because of the lower level of the floor on his side of the chamber. They watched him as he reached under his blanket and brought out something in a closed fist. Solemnly the Indian thrust his fist in the air and muttered a guttural incantation, then dropped his fist and moved it sideways with a tossing motion.

From up to down. From left to right. The Indian was throwing cornmeal at them, sprinkling them with cornmeal. And as he did so, strangely, he seemed to be making the sign of the cross in the air.

His face still stern, the Indian reached under his blanket again and this time brought out a flat papery corn husk, together with a handful of rough homegrown tobacco. Deftly he rolled a thick cigarette, struck a wooden match on the sole of his bare foot and put the flame to the end of the cigarette, which flared briefly. The Indian puffed several times and handed the loose cigarette over to his three visitors, who drew on it in turn, coughing and sputtering. The Indian nodded and took the cigarette back. Abruptly he smiled, speaking in a soft Irish voice.

. . . takes getting used to, I guess, like life and a lot of things. And that business you've probably heard about Indians using peacepipes by way of welcome, well, it's strictly that. The business. The Hopi have always smoked their tobacco in what we'd call cigarettes. And speaking of myths, the Hopi view of creation is that the first thing ever said by anyone in the universe was simply this. Why am I here?

The Indian laughed.

. . . makes sense, you say? Well you're right about that, questions generally do. They have just a lovely way of being straightforward and to the point, I know it. It's only when we try to come up with answers that we lose our way and wander, like the stars overhead. For the stars do that, don't they? Forgetting what we've been told, I mean, isn't that surely the way the heavens look? Astray and incomprehensible?

***

. . . astray, muttered the Indian, and that's the truth of it. Well according to the Hopi myth of creation, those were the very first words ever spoken in the universe. Why am I here? And just maybe the longer we live, the more we feel the sense of them.

Nor do I need to tell you that this first and most basic query was spoken by a woman, the ancestress, don't you know. For the Hopi believe the first life in the void was a woman's, which also makes sense.

No strutting males for them in the beginning, because no life ever comes from us, only the living and the observing of it. Descent among the Hopi remains traditional and matrilineal, as I'm told it does in some other old societies.

Whereas my bare feet aren't poking out this way because I'm a savage, but only to show humility. The same reason I'm expected to sit in the lower half of the circle of life down here in the kiva. Among the Hopi, the more powerful you are the more humble. But I guess that's always the true way anywhere.

So to bring you rapidly up to date then, still following the Hopi view of the matter, this ancestress went on to create twins as the next step, males this time for balance, and what do you suppose were the very first words that popped into the heads of those two fellows?

That's right, just what you'd expect, the same as hers but with that added yearning for identity so common to our sex. Why are we here, certainly, but quickly right on top of that the other card in the main male riddle, the question that's always there worrying us to the grave, Who are we anyway?

So the basic human enigmas seem to dip well back in time and a sound answer on the spot has always been tricky stuff, which brings me around to us. That advance party of yours that climbed up here a couple of weeks ago didn't really say much about who you'd be when you turned up, and moreover, why you'd be turning up in the first place. So I wonder if one of you might have some thoughts on the matter?

Why we're here together, I mean?

The Indian reached under his blanket and scratched himself.

Feel free to consult among yourselves, he said. I'll just retire inside my head and you can give me a whoop whenever you're ready.

The Indian closed his eyes and began to snore. His three visitors exchanged glances and one of them cleared his throat. Instantly the Indian's eyes flew open.

How's that? What did you say?

We weren't sure how to address you, answered one of the men.

Oh is that all. Well as the wind carries you, is the answer. The Hopi are great believers in echoes. The way they hear it, everything in the universe is a sound coursing through everything else. So much so that most of my job as the resident shaman here is listening, no more. Straining to hear those echoes, don't you know. But as for me, well . . . why don't you call me Joe?

Fine, said one of the men.

The Indian nodded, smiling.

Yes, simple but fine. And you needn't bother to run out those cover names you must have packed along for yourselves, Gaspar and Balthazar and Melchior, or whatever strange ring the exotic names may have.

Since we're way out here in a desert of the West, I'll just put you down as the Three Wise Men from the East, traditional figures that a man can comprehend and sense, if not know. So tell me, have you turned up bearing those merry gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh, as you are said to do in the traditional tales?

We can provide gold, answered one of the men.

And I'm sure that's so, but unfortunately I don't have any use for it. What a medicine man needs is medicine, the kind that helps the soul. Now then, with everybody's credentials established, suppose we get down to the particulars of this era. You've made a long journey way out here because you must want me to do something for you. Where, I wonder?

In the Middle East.

Ah yes, I've heard of it. Said to be as dry as here but better-known to history. Where in the Middle East, I wonder?

Cairo.

Ah yes, I've heard of that too. It's in the ancient land of the pharaohs, said to be a place for pyramids and mummies and lost secrets in general. Known far and wide for its great river of life, and also for those steamy fleshpots that always seem to pop up along any river of life. But I don't know Cairo at all. I've never even been there. And that has to mean you need an outsider to poke around and look for something, either in the fleshpots or in a pyramid or two. But look for what, I wonder? A lost secret perhaps? A wandering pharaoh? A mummy who refuses to take you to his leader? . . . Just what might it be you want me to find, directly?

A person. A man.

Joe reached under his blanket and scratched. His face was thoughtful.

The one of you is American, another British, and the third speaks somewhere in between. Canadian?

Yes.

Then it's pretty much of a high-level international delegation I'm facing, which isn't my level at all, and that means one of two things. Either I know this man and you don't, or you know him and I don't. Which is it?

You know him. We're only acquainted with him through the files, and through others.

Joe stroked his chin.

I could grow a beard again. Indians don't do with beards and it hurts to pluck out your whiskers one at a time. But there's another angle. Did any of you know that Hopi means peace? Well it does, and although there aren't many of us left, that's what we are, the people of Peace. Our religion forbids us to harm anyone, to molest anyone, to kill anyone. We just can't do it and that's the shape of our sky, and also why we're so few. The Navajo are fierce and all around us and they've been plucking us off for years. So what do you say to that?

We wouldn't ask you to do anything that's against your beliefs, said one of the men.

I know it, no one ever does. It's just that others have a way of shifting your beliefs around a bit to make themselves more comfortable with them.

Joe pushed a forefinger into the earth at his feet.

Well I think it's time we had a name here. Who is it you're looking for?

Stern.

Joe's face grew serious. For several long minutes he gazed at his finger in the earth and said nothing.

When he finally looked up there was a deep sadness in his eyes.

I knew that would be it. The moment those men arrived here a couple of weeks ago, all secrecy and mystery, I knew it was the beginning of something that would lead to Stern. All they said was that I was going to have some important government visitors, but I knew. He's not missing, though, is he? That isn't what you meant by finding him?

No.

No, I didn't think so. Your problem is that Stern knows a thing or two, and you're not sure what.

Something like that.

Well what exactly? He's working for you, I'd imagine, and he's also working for the other side. But you always thought he was really working for you in the end, and now all at once you're not so sure. Is that it?

Yes.

And naturally it's important that you know. How important?

Very. It's crucial.

Crucial? Stern? You're not exaggerating?

No, not at all. We can't emphasize it strongly enough.

Joe looked from one face to another and the three men somberly returned his gaze.

I see, said Joe. Crucial, then. And yet Stern used to be known as a petty gunrunner with a morphine habit, so how could it be that such a nobody as him is suddenly upsetting the war in the Middle East? Or should I remind myself that almost everyone who has ever been important in history was nobody to begin with, and that maybe the most important ones of all always stay that way? . . . Invisible, don't you know.

Like a voice speaking the truth.

Joe's gaze drifted off into the distance. He stirred, scratched the side of his face.

Of course anyone who knows Stern at all would never think of him as a petty gunrunner with a morphine habit. That's just the way he might appear from a distance. Up close there's a whole secret world to Stern and one way or another he's always been in my life, just there, a big shambling bear of a man with a mysterious smile and an awkward way of moving sometimes, a bit of clumsiness about him from all the batterings through the years, and maybe even no shape to him you might say . . . or all shapes to him.

That's another way to put it. But just substantial and bulky and there with his soft voice and his kind touch and that gentle way he has with people. Helping them, that's what he does. Stern has this quiet way of helping people when they don't even know it, when they don't even suspect what he's doing, and he never says a word about it himself. Years can go by and maybe just by chance you happen to come across something he did once. Changed a life. Saved someone's life. Sure. . . . And as often as not a stranger's.

I remember an incident like that from years ago. Somebody else told me about it, not him of course, not the woman involved either. It was a dreadful rainy afternoon by the Bosporus and the light was dying and a desperate woman was standing by a railing getting ready to die herself, to throw herself in the water, and along came this big awkward man shuffling out of the rain, a stranger, Stern, and he went up and stood beside the woman at the railing and gazed down at the dark swirling currents with her, and he began to talk in that honest halting way he has, just nothing but the truth, and some time went by and pretty soon he'd talked her right back into life. . . . One little incident a long time ago. Just one that I happen to know about.

Yes. And I know there's no knowledge without memory, and certainly I remember every twist and turn of my times with Stern as clearly now as when they happened. It was right after the First World War when we met, in Jerusalem naturally, Stern's beloved myth of a Jerusalem. And I didn't know much of anything then, and Stern took me in and taught me things and I loved him dearly in the beginning, loved him with all my heart. . . . He can have that effect on you easily enough. His ideals, don't you know.

And then some things happened and I came to hate him with all the passion of a young man who feels betrayed. Because he can have that effect on you too. Those impossible ideals of his again. They can cut you to the heart and shame you maybe.

Stern's ideals. No wonder you're not sure whether he's working for you or not, in the end. Complex, that's what they are. . . . Unravel them and you just might learn a very great deal.

Well, so some more time passed and my feelings for him changed again as feelings can do with time, as the years and the loss of them weather a man's heart in the same way as the wind and the sun weather his face. And I understood it better by then. The trouble I'd always had with Stern was the trouble I'd always had with myself, and it's just awful how we do that. We're a damnably self-centered bunch, the curse of the race, it is. It's just so hard to learn to feel others even a little bit. To let them stand there in front of you and see them as themselves, rather than as some part of you that you happen to be liking or disliking at the moment. . . . It was with Stern and through Stern, you see, that I was first exposed to the truly harsh and pitiless winds of life. With him that I first heard the roaring oblivion of the universe in all its terrifying silence.

Joe poked at the earth.

Yes. So what it comes down to is, I've never been able to get Stern out of my life. I've spent years trying to forget him, and I even came halfway around the world to this little corner of peace and nowhere, thinking I was getting away from Stern and all the rest of it. But no matter, no matter at all. He's still right there in front of me as much as he ever was, a shuffling wreck of humanity who's never done anything but lose, just lose is all, one thing after another year after year. . . . Has none of you ever met him?

No, none of us has.

Makes sense of course, no reason why you should have. You're successful and powerful and it's never been that way for Stern, nor will it be, not like that. But I can tell you your files don't begin to catch the feeling of the man, especially that gentleness of his. I used to think he was out of place in what he was doing, but maybe not and who's to say where people belong. As Stern himself used to put it, our souls are always our own to make of what we will. . . . What's that?

Excuse me? said one of the men.

No, pay no mind. It's someone back in the pueblo, I'll see to it later.

Joe shook his head.

So it's Stern again, is it? Twenty years later and here I am still looking into the mirror and trying to make out the shadows, trying to decipher those whispers in the wind. Trying, something with a little clarity to it, something at least. . . . Stern. Sure.

Once more there was silence in the kiva as Joe gazed at the earth, lost in thought. His three visitors waited. Before he spoke again he reached under his blanket and scattered cornmeal in front of them.

The last time I saw him was just before I left Jerusalem, right at the end of my twelve years of poker.

Winter it was and snowing, and Stern was wearing those dreadful old shoes of his that I've never been able to forget, the ones he had on in Smyrna when we were there during the massacres in '22. How many hundreds of miles had he walked in those shoes to get to that hell of fires and screams and death in Smyrna? How many years and how many stumblings to get to that, God help us?

Well it was more than a decade later when I saw him the last time, and it was in Jerusalem. He got in touch with me and we met in a filthy Arab coffee house where we used to go in the old days, in the Old City it was. A cold and empty place, bare and cheerless, a barren little cave where the two of us used to huddle over a candle late at night, talking and drinking wretched Arab cognac. And it was snowing when he came shuffling in that night', a stumbling ruin of a man even worse off than I'd remembered. And he smiled that mysterious smile of his and said how good it was to see me again, and I took one look at him and I wanted to scream, that's all, just scream those questions that have the sad sad answers. . . . How does it happen, Stern? How does a man get to look like you? What kind of a hell does he live in? And for what? What?

But I didn't scream, not then I didn't. Instead I pulled out a roll of money because I happened to have money then, and I put it down on the table next to his hand. That's always the easiest way to deal with people. I mean there he was in front of me after all those years when I hadn't seen him, since Smyrna really, just there in his shuffling beaten way with all he owned on his back, still wearing those same Godawful shoes, a lifetime of devotion with nothing to show for it but still trying to smile in a way that would break your heart, poor as the night is long and still trying, and with what going for him, I ask you?

What, for God's sake?

The same as always. Dreams is all. He still had those and I suppose we all did once. I know I did.

But the thing about Stern was, you always knew he'd never stop dreaming. No matter how futile it was, no matter how it destroyed him, he'd go right on with his hopeless dreams. Just hopeless, there was no reasoning with him at all.

A great peaceful new nation in the Middle East? Moslems and Christians and Jews all living together in a great new nation with Jerusalem as its capital? All these pathetic specimens of a mad race living in peace in Stern's beloved myth of a Jerusalem? Everybody's Holy City?

No hope in that. No hope ever. No hope in Jerusalem for Stern's dream, no hope there or anywhere under the sun. But Stern went on believing despite what people are, and he knows what they are, more than most of us, he knows. Yet he insists on staggering along, shooting a little morphine into his blood at dawn to get himself through another coming of the light, as he used to call it.

So yes, we had times together, Stern and I did, and they were some of the best and the worst I've ever known. Because when you dream the way Stern does, when you look that high, it also means you have to look the other way, right down into the blackest of the black. And sometimes you slip, it has to happen sometimes. And when you begin to fall it's as deep as forever and there's no end to the darkness at all, by God. . . .

Joe broke off. He pointed to a small shallow pit in the earth beside the altar.

See that? Here in the kiva it represents the exit from the previous world the Hopi lived in. And the ladder-opening up there represents the entrance to the world yet to come. For the Hopi, there's only one entrance and one exit in this sacred chamber they call a kiva, which is to say in life. Or as they put it in one of their sayings, there's light in the world because the sun completes its circular journey at night, traveling from west to east through the underworld.

Joe frowned.

It's sad to say, but it seems we can't have light without darkness. It seems we can't stretch our souls in the sun without first being lost in the night and knowing terrible anguish. And I suppose it may have to do with that circular journey of the sun and with the nature of the sun wheel, which has always been our symbol for life and hope, the most ancient one of all. And a good symbol it is and a true one, but a wheel does go round and it does have spokes, and spokes on a sun wheel make crosses. And what with sun wheels today in their ancient form as swastikas, that cross spinning in the deep becomes as complex and contradictory as man himself. Death and life in the very same symbol, and one no less real than the other.

Joe rubbed the earth in front of him, feeling it, stroking it.

Will you do it, then? asked one of the men.

Do what?

Go to Cairo. Accept the Stern assignment.

Joe looked up. He smiled.

I would prefer not to, as a scribbling man once said.

Abruptly, then, Joe's smile was gone and his mood changed. A haunting somberness came over him and his voice was suddenly very quiet, very soft in the stillness.

Ah, but is that all you're asking? Just for a moment sitting up here in the sky as we are, underground as we are, I thought you might have had something difficult in mind. But now I see all you want is the truth about Stern and his strange doings in the bazaars and deserts of that mythical place he calls his home, that sandy stretch of crossroads and history where man has been dreaming and killing himself since ever he was around. . . . Just there in the desert sea is all, the truth about Stern and the tides.

A shudder passed through Joe's thin shoulders and he wrapped his arms around himself, under the blanket, trying to control it.

But Stern sits inside the Sphinx, he whispered, didn't you know that? His life is made up of the ancient enigmas of those ancient places, and he peers out from the Sphinx across the nighttide deserts of life, and what he sees is what the rest of us don't want to see. So you have to be careful when you look into Stern's eyes. You have to be careful because there are fearful things to be seen there . . . the world and yourself and a kind of madness, a kind of utterly futile hope without end.

Joe stared at the earth in front of him.

Stern, you say. A man as unjustified and lonely as other men, a man who has never known the secret adventures of order. And all you want is for me to look into his eyes and tell you what's there.

Sadly, Joe smiled.

Fancy. . . . Only that.

***

Another evening, another sunset, and Joe sat alone at the edge of a cliff on top of the mesa, watching the light die. He had spent the last days visiting each of the homes in the pueblo, and that night there was to be a special ceremony in the underground kiva, a solemn gathering of the elders of the various clans to honor his departure.

Of course I don't have to go, he thought, and as scared as I am, why should I? The New World's big and I could just go anywhere and nobody would ever have to know.

And who wants the eternal grief that's over there anyway? Who wants that desert? They dream and they make up our religions and they spin our tales of a Thousand and One Nights, and that's all just fine and lovely so long as you keep your distance from the madness and don't walk in those dreams and live in those tales and get yourself lost forever.

Oh the three of them were clever all right, passing themselves off as the Three Fates and getting me to go on and on about Stern, trying to get me to persuade myself I ought to go back there. And Maudie even, hinting at that too. The Three Fates just coming to call as clever as could be.

But I know what I'd run into over there. They've always been at each other's throats and always will be.

Bloody Greeks and Persians and Jews and Arabs and Turks and Crusaders, there's no end to it. And the odd bloated Mameluke floating down the Nile and the odd mad Mongolian whipping his horse into a frenzy, barbarians on their way in as usual to mix it up with assorted Assyrian charioteers and crazed Babylonians intent on the stars, while all the while the Chaldeans are sweeping in on the flanks and the Medes are sweeping out, and the Phoenicians are counting their money and the Egyptians are counting their gods, maybe the high priests of both of them getting together every millennium or so, to compare notes and see if either of them has come up with more of one than the other.

Talk about echoes. Talk about confusion and chaos. If there have been forty thousand prophets since the beginning of time, as rumored, surely most of them have spent their lives careening through those very wastes, shaking their fists and screeching their truths and clamoring on to their very last breaths right there.

Here it is, they shout. The one true God and the one true path at last, and just by chance that one true path happens to be the path where I've always been walking. So just listen to me, for God's sake. Me.

Listen.

Oh help. Why bother with it at all? Confusion and chaos raising a Tower of Babel, that's what He spotted over there a long time ago. The tower to me, not to anybody else. The tower everybody's always been trying to raise, everybody who's a man anyway. Dreadfully proud of our erections, we are.

Mythical spot all right. The birthplace of religions and man's first heavenly erections, and an eternal torment to the rest of us. Must have a lot to do with the desert, I suppose. Nothing like forty days or forty years tramping around in a desert sun to jumble your brains. Water hard to come by and feverish chills shaking you all night, and nothing to eat in the morning but a handful of locusts left over from last night's supper. Do that for a while and how can you help but begin to see things and hear things?

War again over there, I'm told? Most amazing piece of news since the last report that barbarians were scaling the heights of Jerusalem.

War in the beautiful wilderness?

Astonishing news, that's what. Or as Stern used to say, Good morning.

Joe tugged his faded red wool hat down Over his ears and pulled his new black shawl, a gift from his three visitors, more tightly around his thin shoulders. It was cold with the sun setting, cold with the coming of the night in the desert.

A small girl was standing some yards away, watching him. Joe made a sign and she came over and stood beside him, so young she had never known another medicine man in the pueblo. He wrapped his shawl around her against the cold and took her tiny hand and held it.

The little girl said nothing and neither did Joe. When the sun had sunk below the horizon she slipped away, still wearing the shawl, a gift he had made to her. Joe gazed after her as she disappeared in the shadows. He didn't think she had seen them but there were tears in his eyes. He didn't know why.

Ah well, he thought, we do what we can. It makes little difference but we have to do it anyway.

Stern's words, he suddenly realized. Stern's very own words spoken to him long ago, whispered now in the shadows in another time and place altogether.

Strange, he thought. Time is.

***

. . . and just as suddenly he was with Stern and it was a night twenty years ago in a city once called Smyrna, once long ago in the century before the age of genocide, before the monstrous massacres had come swirling out of Asia Minor to descend on Symrna while Stern and Joe were there . . . the massacres ignored then by most of the world but not by everyone, and not by Hitler, who had triumphantly recalled them only days before his armies invaded Poland to begin the Second World War. .

. . Who after all speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians? The world believes in success alone.

. . . a night, once, in a hell of smoke and fires and screams, Joe lying wounded on a quay and Stern standing over him and everywhere the dead and the dying huddling together, heaped near the sea while the city burned . . . while beside Joe, moaning softly, an abandoned little Armenian girl lay ripped and torn and dying in unspeakable pain.

. . . Joe unable to touch the knife by his hand and shrieking at Stern in his anger, his pain . . . yelling that Stern just wasn't as much in charge as he wanted people to believe, that he could do his own butchering if he wanted to play the great visionary who knew all the answers, the great hero dedicated to a cause of a kingdom come.

. . . Stern staring down with eyes that burned in blackness, Stern wild with anguish and violently shaking as he clutched the knife and buried his hand in the little girl's hair and pulled back her head, the tiny throat so white and bare.

. . . the wet knife clattering on the cobblestones and Joe not daring to look up then, not wanting to see Stern's eyes then . . . a night twenty years ago and forever and but a prelude to the century, but a shadow of the far deeper descent into darkness that was yet to come.

***

Joe shuddered. He passed his hand in front of his eyes.

And who will be Stern's witness now? he asked himself. . . . Who will do that for him, who will look into his eyes? A man with a dream that was just hopeless from the very beginning. A good dream and hopeless, with nothing coming from it ever. . . .

Joe got to his feet. Of course he already knew how it would end over there, how it would have to end for Stern. And he wasn't going because he felt he owed Stern something, because he didn't feel that way.

But after all these years of Stern trying and failing, someone somewhere did. And now when Stern was going to die, the gift had to be repaid.

Silently the greatly revered shaman of the Hopi walked up the path to the pueblo on top of the mesa, to the underground vault where the elders of the tiny nation sat repeating their guttural chants and birdlike whispers, those mysterious sounds of life and death they had heard since the beginning of time, echoing through all things in the universe.

PART TWO

-4-

Vivian

The sky was cloudless above Cairo airport, unmarred at that early hour by even the softest haze from the sun still low over Sinai. The cargo plane swung around and came to rest, bringing into view a pack of military men marching in twos and threes across the runway toward the plane. The men wore wide starched walking shorts and the different shirts and caps of uniforms from several corners of the British Empire.

Brisk and crisp and most of the colors of the species, thought Joe, watching the men. You'd have to know what you were up to, or think you knew, to march around the world looking like that every morning.

The military men advanced rapidly, intent and in step, their right arms swinging high, their left arms cradling clipboards tightly clasped at the ready. Some of them were already pushing on board when Joe reached the door of the plane and started down the stairs. He had only taken a few steps when he caught sight of a bizarre figure in white who seemed to be staring at him. Immediately the man nodded to himself with conviction, barking a silent order as he did so. Then he snapped to attention with parade-drill gusto and marched forward.

Jesus, thought Joe. What is that?

And indeed, the man cut an astonishing figure.

An elegant white shirt, open to the waist and displaying the insignias of a subaltern. White walking shorts and high white socks and snowy white tennis shoes. A regimental leopardskin casually draped over one shoulder, a glittering gold pendant bouncing on the man's chest. And looming above it all an enormous broad-brimmed white hat, one side attached to the crown in the Australian manner.

Christ, thought Joe, as he reached the bottom of the stairs and found his way blocked. The man in white came to attention no more than a foot away and slammed his foot into the runway, saluting.

Sah, he bellowed. I say, pleasant flight and all that?

A blast of early morning fumes struck Joe full in the face. Unable to speak, he nodded instead.

Right, bawled the subaltern, blasting him anew. Two massive rows of perfect white teeth suddenly flashed in the man's face. Without thinking, Joe ducked.

Right, shrieked the subaltern. Right? Right. But I say, sir, is it true you Yanks are coming over to win the war for us? Hands across the ocean again?

Joe swallowed.

I'm not American, he said.

What's that, sir? Not American? All the way from that barren wasteland, what do you chaps call the place, Arizona? All the way from a bloody colony like that and you're not even American?

Heads turned. Eyes stared. The subaltern was still screaming, blocking the stairs.

Sorry to hear that, sir, rum show actually. Just dropped in out there for a buffalo shoot, did you? Show the flag and let the wogs know who's in charge?

Joe pushed forward to move around the man, a gesture the subaltern misinterpreted as a sign of friendliness.

Or something else altogether, sir? A quiet foray among the little maidens in buckskin? New pelts for the library and a well-earned notch or two for the old blunderbuss?

At last Joe was around the man and heading in the direction of the terminal buildings. The subaltern dropped his salute and fell in briskly beside him.

No offense, sir, screeched the subaltern. About my taking you for a Yank, I mean. Some of my best friends are Yanks. Be glad to give you the name of my tailor here.

Joe walked straight ahead. The man had quick-stepped several times when he fell in beside Joe, trying to adjust his stride, but he didn't seem to be able to get it right and was now doing a permanent dance at Joe's elbow, prancing forward and falling behind a pace, quick-stepping again.

Different drummers, shrieked the subaltern. We're a race of individuals, after all. And please veer to the left, sir, as the Bolshies say. The clandestine war wagon's to the left.

Joe veered to the left without breaking stride. They were moving away from the groups of milling staring men. Joe spoke in a quiet voice.

Will you kindly tell me what the meaning of this is?

The subaltern caught the forceful tone in Joe's voice but apparently without hearing the words. In order to get closer he quick-stepped in, misjudging the distance and crashing into Joe with the power of a body-block. Joe pitched forward and landed on the runway on his hands, the subaltern coming to rest sprawled across his back. The subaltern peered upward, scanning the sky.

Spot something, sir? Jerry up there for an early morning go, is he? Shows good reflexes, that dive of yours.

Jesus Christ almighty, muttered Joe.

Can't spot the blighter, murmured the subaltern into Joe's ear, still scanning the sky intently. Blasted clever, the Hun.

Get off my back, muttered Joe. The subaltern, his face only inches away, peered sideways at Joe.

What's that, sir? You only thought you saw a Stuka coming in out of the sun?

Off my back. Now.

The subaltern grinned nervously and began to untangle himself.

Yes, sir. Sorry about that, sir. It's just that you can never be too careful when the Hun's around. War is hell, after all.

The subaltern climbed off Joe, grinding his knee into Joe's back. Joe struggled to his feet.

Listen, you bastard, you tell me right now what the meaning of that was supposed to be.

Meaning, sir? Meaning? Pardon me, sir, but in a world at war you're actually looking for meaning?

Stop it. That performance you put on back at the plane. And this ridiculous costume you're wearing.

What the hell?

Oh, my uniform. Well you see, sir, since secret intelligence work requires a high degree of initiative, we're encouraged to express our individualism in our dress of the day. And as for the manner in which I hailed you when you debarked, we've found that the direct approach is the best one. When matters are secretly at their murkiest, in other words, we try to keep outward appearances as natural as possible. It's by far the most effective cover.

I wasn't aware, said Joe, that tennis whites and a leopardskin would look natural at Cairo airport in wartime.

Oh yes, sir, if the whites are modified a bit. You may be a little rusty now, been out of touch and that sort of thing, it could happen to any retiree from Arizona attempting a comeback. But the naked truth of the matter today, sir, is that we don't carry on the way they did in the old films.

I see.

Precisely, sir, that's it in a nutshell. This is definitely espionage in the 1940s that we practice here and the old films are definitely out of date, irrelevant to say the least. And then too, we're in the plain old sandy sunny Middle East, not lounging around in a shadowy parlor car on the Orient Express as it goes weaving into Bulgaria, while you and I lunge at our glasses between hoots. The servant problem, sir. Lackeys just aren't what they used to be, neither as nations nor individuals. Take the Balkans, for example.

What?

Exactly, sir, especially the Balkans. They're not at all what they used to be. In fact it would probably be wise to put aside your secret hopes of outwitting some sneaky little Dimitri in the sewers of Sophia, despite his many masks, in order to obtain the truth about the Bulgarian submarine force. This just isn't the place for vague notions about honor and fair play and all that rot. Times change, sir, what?

Joe groaned.

. . . can't straighten at all, he muttered.

No? Well don't be discouraged, sir. People pretty much expect a spy to look like Quasimodo loping around in his belfry with a demented leer on his twisted face. The important thing is to keep abreast of the latest technical developments, that's the name of this game. In intelligence, you're modern or you're nothing. Can you just imagine how it would look if the two of us were to skulk around Cairo airport first thing in the morning in trench coats with a cigarette or two dangling out of the corners of our mouths?

Looking over our shoulders to see if Peter Lorre has caught up with us yet? Or possibly even the fat man?

Oh.

Precisely, sir, the locals. They may be no more dark-skinned than they were in the epics of yesteryear, but they're just not as predictable as extras used to be.

As he rambled on, the subaltern was keenly observing Joe. After several painful attempts, Joe managed to straighten. The subaltern grinned, nodding.

Very good, sir. I see we're making a stunning comeback. So the point is, we have this slovenly lot of blithering wogs hanging about with time on their hands, just waiting to catch a glimpse of something they can pass on to Jerry. Such as a suspicious little foreigner arriving at Cairo airport early one morning? A wiry little fellow in some dreadful secondhand suit that's much too big for him? Suspiciously sporting a scruffy growth of whiskers on his face as if he were trying to look like the anonymous spy of tradition?

Could it be that you're growing a beard, sir?

I am.

Very good, sir. Although given the sand in the air around here, most of our fighting men seem to prefer a moustache when it comes to providing that distinguishing touch. When a show of hair is wanted, sir, to emphasize brute masculinity.

Quietly, the subaltern guffawed. He himself wore an enormous walrus moustache, its waxed ends nearly reaching to the tops of his ears.

Hair aside, said Joe, I was told to expect a different reception.

Were you, sir? Could we be referring to the recognition signals, so called, which veteran spies use to spot one another when among the common herds in the trenches?

The subaltern immediately slammed his tennis shoes together, coming to attention. He saluted and narrowed his eyes.

Please assume we are in the airport terminal, sir, and you are having your papers examined by some barely literate enlisted swine. As you dither around, a handsome subaltern sweeps up and shrewdly engages you in amiable conversation, in the course of which he chances to use two key words. Brooklyn and garbage. At that point the subaltern suavely removes a key ring from his pocket and jangles the keys in the air, as if bored.

Still holding his salute, the subaltern reached into his pocket with his left hand and brought out a key ring.

He squinted intently at Joe, rattling the keys in front of his face.

Right, sir, and so far so good. Now stuffed into the left pocket of your shabby jacket is a rolled-up edition of a popular London illustrated weekly. You remove this rag with your right hand, the old cross-draw, and hold it up in the air as if curious about which way the wind is blowing. The formidable subaltern is satisfied as to your credentials and takes it from there. Well, sir, on the mark, are we?

Joe handed him the magazine.

It's a little old. I stole it from a library in London to save money. Chamberlain's on the cover announcing peace in our time.

Excellent, sir, we could all use a little of that. Now then, the trusty clandestine steed is right over here.

The subaltern opened the door of a small old-fashioned delivery van and stood proudly beside it, waiting.

The van was a civilian model, cream-colored and ancient, dented in a number of places. Bright green lettering, obviously new, was splashed across the side of the van.

AHMAD'S

GREASY FISH

&

LEVANTINE CHIPS

The subaltern followed Joe's gaze. He snorted.

Clever, what? Known secretly in undercover circles as the impregnable Ahmadmobile, and out here it's worth a regiment of tanks any day, I can tell you. Confuses the enemy and makes the wogs think we're in the delivery business, which in a way we are. But the fact is, you can never be too careful when you're serving a sentence in the spy trade. Not only a keen lookout at all times, but the keener the lookout the better the times, that's my motto. Are we right then, sir?

***

As soon as they had climbed into the cab of the small van, the subaltern made a show of carefully locking both doors. He then reached over and fumbled around in Joe's lap, groping for Joe's hand, pumping it enthusiastically when he found it.

Vivian's the name, sir, and despite appearances I'm not a regular army man. Actually I'm an archeologist in real life. I don't have to tell you how these intelligence types get carried away by men with unusual backgrounds. Their eyes positively light up. Well I did some digs over here before the war, and that's how I happened to get into this end of the show. Know the underground terrain, so to speak.

Oh. I see, yes.

Right, sir, the pharaohs that be don't miss a trick. Well briefly, it came about like this. When Jerry figured out another generation had gone by and it was time to give it another go, war, damn it, I naturally presented myself to the authorities in London straightaway. Vivian here, I said, and went on to explain that I'd be more than happy to carry a rifle in whatever trench was weak. But they took one look at my digging experience and packed me off to one of those unnumbered rooms you know about near Queen Anne's Gate. See here, old horse, said the unnumbered general in mufti, we can't have you oozing around in the mud of Flanders like some common uneducated lout, you're much too valuable for that. We simply have to have you in the secret show, what those on the outside call intelligence. Now what do you say to that?

Vivian wiggled his eyebrows.

Well needless to say, sir, what I said to that was, Top drawer. Just point me in the general direction of Mata Hari, I said, and I'm off to make do in the gloom. Whereupon the general in mufti gave me a hearty shake of the hand and mumbled, Good show, old fruit. And now that you're officially a secret agent, Viv old horse, Vivvy my boy, old Viv dear fellow, now that you're a mysterious spy like the rest of us, added the general in mufti, the first thing you have to do is trundle yourself out back and see C.

And do what? asked Joe.

Vivian chuckled.

Very good, sir. Well I went out the back door, as instructed, and strolled down the appropriate alley to another unnumbered address, and climbed more stairs to another unnumbered room, and all at once right there in front of me was the very secret chief of the Secret Service, C as we secretly call him, sitting in his very own chair but turned around and facing the wall, keeping his secret identity secret. Well. Here was a devilishly clever fellow, our good old secret C, I knew that from the beginning. So I flashed the old smile at his back and said, Viv here, secret agent of the Empire, ready and willing. Whereupon good old C

said, his back to the world, See here, Viv, C here.

Vivian guffawed.

Or perhaps our secret chief said, C here, Viv, C here. Or he might have said, See here, Viv, see here.

Or in other words, who in God's name has any idea what he said? No doubt a secret C has to be unknowable by nature, a regular Delphic oracle when it comes to garbled meanings and ambiguous messages.

Vivian nodded eagerly.

You're beginning to smile, sir, so it's obvious we agree as to the essentials. Now then, to continue.

Viv? muttered C, addressing the wall, please listen carefully because I can only say this once. The Suez Canal is in danger, the very lifeline of the Empire, and we need a reliable man down there to keep an eye on the locks. So just pick up that black pill on the desk behind me, that thing that looks like a jelly bean, regulation potassium cyanide in case life ever seems as black as all that, and head for the Nile and may the best team win.

And there you have it, sir, and all the time while C had his back to me, he seemed to be knitting.

Knitting? asked Joe.

Vivian chuckled.

Right, sir. The knitting needles of fate, I suppose. Then after that I was given intensive training in silence and exile and cunning, and a quick course in forgery with emphasis on forging the uncreated conscience of the race, and here I am. Vivian of Arabia. . . . Now then.

***

Vivian hummed a music-hall tune and started the engine. A thunderous roar crashed around them. Vivian grinned, shouting to be heard above the deafening noise.

Sorry about that, sir. Hole in the exhaust somewhere, only happened yesterday. Haven't had time to let the maintenance apes get their paws on it.

I see.

What?

It's a nice day, shouted Joe, leaning into Vivian in order to be heard. When Joe sat back again he seemed more at ease. He reached under his jacket, apparently to scratch himself somewhere, but actually to tuck away Vivian's wallet, newly stolen, in an inside pocket.

That's better, shouted Joe. Carry on.

Very good, sir. Off we go then.

There was a fierce grinding noise and the small delivery van went careening away down the runway at full speed, the heavy tread of its soft desert tires screeching wildly. Vivian laughed and swerved back and forth, assuming a racing position. Joe stared. The impressive walrus moustache had come loose in the wind, revealing a cloth backing to it and a thin line of glue above Vivian's upper lip. One end of the waxed moustache had climbed up his face, giving him a permanently crooked smile. And when he bared his teeth at a spot of grease on the runway and careened around it, snarling as he whipped the wheel to and fro, the expression on his face seemed dangerously close to delirium.

A gate with a sentry box came into view. Vivian began to slow down.

Security check coming up, he yelled. Just play dumb, sir. I'll handle these sun-crazed dolts.

They stopped. Several military policemen were standing around in front of the sentry box, metal cups in their hands. When one of them came over to the van, Vivian leaned out and sniffed at the man's cup.

Tea, he yelled to Joe, and turned back to the military policeman.

This shabbily dressed fellow, he screamed, is a Yank who's come over to win the war for us. But see here, lance corporal or battle-ax corporal or whatever you are, you look like you could use a stiff one this morning, right?

Vivian guffawed.

Am I right? Right?

The military policeman studied the card Vivian had given him.

What's this? he asked in wonder.

What's what, my dear fellow?

The military policeman read out loud.

This coupon good for all the bearer can drink at the Kit Kat Kabaret. Just say Ahmad sent you and you'll never be sorry. But remember, AHMAD SENT ME. Those are always the magic words in the ancient land of the pyramids.

(And Ahmad also has other coupons, if you are interested. See him today and make your dreams come true. Mummies available by special appointment.)

The military policeman stared down at Vivian, who laughed happily.

Wrong pocket, what? Have to keep a tight rein on before breakfast. But look here, my dear fellow, why don't you keep that bit of cheer as a gift from the management? Now then, this is what we're looking for when there's a war on.

Vivian fumbled in another pocket and came up with a pass. The military policeman waved them through.

They left the airport and worked their way into a long line of military traffic moving in the direction of the city. Before they had gone very far Vivian began screaming again.

Now I know what you're dying to ask me, sir. What about the locals, is that it? The other fellows can loll over their gin and beer when they're not giving it a go in their tanks, but a spy has to move through the desert the way a fish swims through water, right? As the old saying goes?

So what about the locals, you say, sir? Well as history tells us, the casts of thousands who built the pyramids were fed exclusively on onions and garlic and radishes.

Vivian belched noisily.

Got the picture, sir? Stink's the word I had in mind. No doubt onions and garlic and radishes must have fired up those extras who built the pyramids, but the truth is, five thousand years of history haven't made your average Gippo's breath any sweeter. Brings us up to date, does it?

They turned off the highway and drove through crowded streets. Vivian was continually honking the horn and waving and smiling at the masses of people.

Bloody wogs, he shrieked out of the corner of his mouth. They look a fruitless bunch but they're cunning, cunning's the word.

Joe's eyes widened. They had been inching along more and more slowly through the crowds until they had to stop altogether. While Vivian was turned toward Joe, the gaunt solemn face of an Arab had suddenly appeared in the window right behind Vivian. At first the Arab didn't seem to be begging, merely curious. He studied the interior of the van, a piece of chalk between his teeth. Then he stared hard at the back of Vivian's head, pulled his own head out of the window and took the chalk from between his teeth.

He seemed to be writing something, and sure enough, a small blackboard appeared outside the window a moment later.

I AM A MARXIST MOSLEM MUTE.

GIVE ME ONE LARGE FREE ORDER OF GREASY

CHIPS BUT PLEASE HOLD THE SALT. I'M

ON A SALT-FREE DIET BECAUSE IT IS WRITTEN,

LIKE DESTINY AND HISTORY.

PRAISE BE TO ALLAH AND MARX, ALL POWER

TO MOHAMMED AND STALIN.

THANKS. HAVE A NICE DAY.

A slatternly people, screamed Vivian, unaware of the blackboard wagging a few inches behind his head.

Just plain slack, he shrieked. Fingers always on the move, sir, never forget that for a moment.

The blackboard disappeared. A hard wipe of the Arab's arm across the slate and he was writing again.

The blackboard bobbed up.

ARE YOU REFUSING TO SERVE ME BECAUSE I'M DARK-SKINNED?

I've said it before and I'll say it again, screamed Vivian. You can never be too careful when you're rubbing shoulders out here.

The Arab looked murderous. Down went the blackboard, up it came again.

BUGGER YOUR CHIPS, YOU GREASY CAPITALIST FISH.

Vivian stared hard at Joe.

In other words, watch out for wogs. Got it, sir?

***

They drove awhile longer and finally pulled up on a quiet back street with the engine off. Joe sat entranced, listening to the squeals and cries of the city.

Here we are, sir.

Fine, Viv. Where?

A time-dishonored area, sir, well known to romantic travelers before the war as the Coptic Quarter and also as Old Cairo, but known to its residents, now as then, as simply a slum. Once infamous, now merely famous. This alley you will be going to is legally called the rue Lepsius, but popularly remembered as the rue Clapsius. It's said that a good part of nineteenth-century Cairo acquired an incurable dose of nostalgia in these shadowy byways, and certainly the byways do give that impression. So if I do say so myself, sir, it seems an appropriate setting for your poetic Irish reveries between passes at the bottle.

Well thanks for the lift, Viv.

And thank you, sir, for your charming company this morning. War is hell, after all, and we frontline fellows would do well to live life fully when we're not knee-deep in mud in the trenches.

Vivian vaguely pumped his hand in the air in a philosophical manner, a gesture apparently meant to end with a thoughtful fingering of his false moustache. But instead Vivian found his moustache halfway up the side of his face. He pressed it back into position and grinned.

The spy trade, sir, a queer and deadly game. Now if you meander forward and turn down the next alley, you'll come to what must have been one of the last of the bawdy houses in this quaint decaying neighborhood, an excessively unseemly place, and that is where you will find your lodgings. Look for a dirty nondescript structure called the Hotel Babylon, formerly a tenth-class hovel used by failed commercial agents and poor clerks in search of romance during their siesta hours, a place of broken dreams and dreams that could never be.

But that was formerly, sir. For some time now the Hotel Babylon has been under the clandestine supervision of HM's Secret Service, serving as an all-purpose hideaway for wandering spies in transit, a discreetly sordid haven amidst the turmoil for just such errant seekers as yourself.

Let's move right along, Viv.

Indeed, sir, now then. Immediately within the half-light that pervades this rotting structure, you will come across the local hermit-in-residence, the keeper of the keys to this odd kingdom, a large Egyptian who will be reading a newspaper and wearing a distinctive flat straw hat, of the kind referred to in civilian circles as a boater. You can call him Ahmad if you like, and all you have to do is tell him Mr Bletchley sent you.

Bletchley, you say?

That's it exactly, sir. The Bletch is our local groundskeeper, ancillary services and so forth, the man who sprinkles the potted palms in the background and arranges for the billeting of transients such as yourself.

A cipher, sadly, our Bletch. But you'll see for yourself.

That it, Viv?

For now, sir. But after you've had time to soak in a first-rate Babylonian bath and pop into your town outfit and burn those rags from your journey, one of our fellow spies will be coming around to collect you.

When?

This evening, I should imagine. All set, sir?

Joe asked a few more questions and then started down the street. Before he reached the corner of the rue Lepsius, or Clapsius, the van had thundered off in the opposite direction. At the corner Joe paused to light a cigarette and get his bearings. He also spent a little time apparently scratching himself under his jacket, actually looking through Vivian's wallet. A telephone number caught his eye.

The Viv, he thought. What a way to begin.

***

The Hotel Babylon was a narrow structure of four or five stories. The paint on the façade was peeling and the front door was open. The hotel lacked a lobby. Instead there was a counter built into one side of the narrow corridor on the ground floor. Farther on toward the back of the corridor an ancient pianola stood in the dusty gloom.

A large man was perched on a high stool behind the counter, peering at a newspaper through enormous horn-rimmed glasses. He was wearing a flat straw hat and he obviously heard Joe's footsteps in the corridor, but he didn't bother to look up from his newspaper.

Mr Bletchley sent me, said Joe.

The Egyptian reached up on the wall behind him, still without raising his eyes, and took down one of the keys.

Top floor rear, he said. It's the quietest room and also the largest. There's a tattered silk cord near the door meant for summoning the maid, but don't bother to pull it. There's been no maid here since the First World War.

I see. Mr Bletchley also said you might be able to send out for something for me.

The large Egyptian known as Ahmad looked vaguely annoyed.

Well I can try, but it's still rather early in the day, you know. Generally speaking, those sorts of people are just getting to bed about now.

I meant a bottle of whiskey and breakfast.

Oh. An English breakfast?

If you can, yes.

It will take about half an hour. There's a retired belly dancer up the street who understands that kind of thing. As for the whiskey, I can get that up to you in a few minutes.

That's about what I had in mind.

I'll see to it. Three knocks for the whiskey, two for breakfast.

Joe turned toward the stairs and stopped, as if a thought had just come to him.

Oh by the way, would you happen to have something on the first floor up? Heights bother me.

The large Egyptian reached for another key.

First floor rear. Smaller, but just as quiet really.

Joe climbed the stairs and found his room at the back of the building, away from the street. He looked around and then dropped lightly to his knees to peek through the keyhole. He could see the end of a narrow bed, a chair, a table. On the far side of the room was a window with a screen in it. He unlocked the door carefully and dropped the key into his pocket. Then he picked up his valise and held it to his chest. He turned the handle.

The door burst open under his hand and Joe went flying across the room, hurling his valise at the screen in the window. The screen and the valise disappeared and he dived after them, landing with a roll on the soft earth behind the hotel as a dull thud went off in the room above him. He was on his feet at once, in a crouch, but there was nothing to see. He was standing in a small courtyard strewn with debris. A door behind him led back into the hotel. Another door faced him from the far side of the small courtyard. Joe picked up his valise and crossed to the door in the far wall. He tried the handle and the door opened.

Stairs led down to a basement.

At the bottom of the stairs was another door. Joe opened it and found himself in a narrow cellar with a low ceiling. A man was sitting at a table, mostly obscured by the newspaper he was reading. A single naked light bulb burned overhead, a string hanging from it. An electrical cord spiraled down from the fixture to an electric ring at the man's elbow. A kettle was steaming and there was also a chipped teapot and several battered metal cups. Joe dropped into a chair and brushed off the dirt he had picked up in the courtyard.

Bletchley?

The man continued to read his newspaper, hidden behind it.

That's right.

What went off up there?

Oh, just a popper. Of course it could have been a bomb.

Of course. But is that your standard welcoming procedure?

You might call it that.

Why the game?

It's not a game, they just like to know whether you're on your toes or not. There's no room for amateurs out here.

On my toes, is it? And what did they expect after sending that crazed item to pick me up at the airport?

The man known as Bletchley peered over his newspaper at Joe, only one of his eyes showing. There seemed to be tears in his eye and there was something wrong with his expression, something very wrong.

But his head disappeared again and Joe didn't have time to make out what it was.

Is he crying? wondered Joe. Why is he hiding like that?

Vivian must have been in an expansive mood this morning, said the man known as Bletchley. He's an old music-hall trooper, an actor by profession, and he can put on quite a show when he has a mind to.

Perhaps you caught his fancy, or perhaps he's just bored these days. Cup of tea for you?

Thanks.

The teapot disappeared behind the raised newspaper.

How many sugars?

None.

It is just sugar.

I'm sure, but I don't take any.

Get your share through the drink, do you?

Something like that.

A metal cup, a hand pushing it, appeared from around the side of the newspaper. The hand was that of an old man, which the voice wasn't. A withered hand, trembling slightly. Joe reached for the cup and sipped, burning his lips on the metal. He held the cup away and blew on it.

Did you have all the rooms up there wired?

No, just two. The rear rooms on the first two floors. If you'd jumped out the front of the hotel on the first two floors you'd have taken a chance of breaking a bone on the cobblestones in the alley, and if you'd jumped from higher up, front or back, you almost certainly would have broken a bone, quite possibly your neck. But I didn't imagine you'd want to do that, so I didn't imagine you'd be anywhere but where you were.

Well that makes sense, said Joe.

Yes it does. Now I assume you'll want to get some sleep after your trip. These stairs in front of you will let you out in another alley. Follow your hose around to the left and you'll be back at the corner where you started. You didn't hurt yourself, did you?

No.

That's good. They wouldn't want that to happen before you even got started.

And that makes sense too. Tell me, is this cellar your regular office or just one of your forward supply depots in the field?

The newspaper rustled but the man's head didn't appear. For a moment there was silence at the table.

Unfriendly innkeeper, thought Joe.

Listen, said the voice from behind the newspaper. There's no reason for you to take this personally, but you might as well know from the beginning that you're nothing special to me. I don't know who you are or what your assignment is, and I don't care. That's not my job. I do what's required of me and the Monastery expects you to do the same. If my orders include wiring a door, I wire it. And if you're looking for fellowship, you can try your luck on the streets like anybody else. With me, business is business. Understood?

Fair enough, said Joe.

Good. I'll meet you here at nine o'clock this evening.

Joe tried his tea again but the metal cup was still too hot. He stood.

Know a man named Stern by any chance, Bletchley?

Not personally, all of that's much too high-level for me. I just chair the Monastery's arrival and departure committee. Pleasant dreams.

Joe started toward the stairs. When he was halfway up he turned and looked back at the raised newspaper.

Oh by the way, could you see that this wallet is returned to Vivian? There's not much of interest in it but he may be wanting it back all the same. And who might Cynthia be?

One of Bletchley's eyes appeared above the newspaper.

Who might what be?

This little lovely by the name of Cynthia. There's a slip of paper hidden in the lining of the wallet with her name and telephone number on it.

Who cares?

I don't know, I thought you might. The telephone number is almost the same as one I was given for emergency contact. I mean it wouldn't do, would it, to have one of your music-hall performers dallying with one of your secretaries, without you knowing about it. Of course it's all in the committee family, but I would imagine Papa would like to know what's going on in his family by way of a little incest. Insofar as it affects Monastery business, I mean, no other reason. I'll just leave the evidence on the step here so you can take a look when you're finished with the personal columns.

The man known as Bletchley said nothing. His withered hand trembled slightly and his single eye, rapidly blinking back tears, continued to glare over the top of the newspaper as Joe leapt up the last few steps and closed the cellar door behind him.

***

Once outside, Joe walked a short distance and stopped in a patch of morning sunlight. He leaned against a wall and closed his eyes, taking deep breaths.

From the Viv to the Bletch, he thought, heaven help us. But at least things ought to get better. Have to, you'd think, after starting out like this.

By the time Joe was walking back through the front door of the hotel he was whistling happily. An unusual occurrence in the Hotel Babylon, perhaps, for Ahmad immediately looked up from his newspaper.

Beautiful morning, said Joe.

Ahmad stared at him, an astonished expression on his face.

You people are amazing, he murmured.

Joe smiled.

We are? Why do you say that?

Because of your disguises. I could have sworn your exact double just walked in here.

Joe's smile broadened.

This double of mine, he headed upstairs, did he?

First floor rear. No more than five or ten minutes ago.

Badly in need of some whiskey, was he, when last seen passing in front of your counter?

Ahmad held up a bottle.

Here it is. I was just going to take it up.

Well there's no need for both of us to make the trip, said Joe. I'll see that he gets it all right. He and I have some talking to do.

Joe took the bottle as Ahmad studied him, perplexed.

Wait a minute, said Ahmad. Are you really that other one's double, or are you the same man?

That depends, replied Joe. We both happen to occupy the same head but that doesn't mean we think alike all the time, or even most of the time. That one upstairs tends to listen a lot and keep his thoughts to himself, while me, I'm not like that at all.

Slowly, a shy smile spread across Ahmad's somber features.

Oh I see. Well I ordered the breakfast, that's why the whiskey wasn't up sooner.

Lovely. And isn't it a beautiful morning here in the land of the Nile?

Ahmad looked confused.

You keep saying that but what are you referring to? The weather?

Yes.

But the weather's always the same here. It never changes.

And that may well be, but I'm not always the same.

And what does that mean?

Just that I like the desert and I like the sun, said Joe. And I think I'm going to like the Coptic Quarter, also known as Old Cairo. And probably this seedy place you call the Hotel Babylon, and probably Vivian too. Not Bletchley, I wouldn't imagine. But then, everything can't be perfect.

Ahmad stirred, gazing at Joe.

I know Bletchley of course, but who's Vivian?

Joe described him. Ahmad shook his head.

I've never seen anyone like that around here.

You haven't?

No. And I've never heard of anyone called Vivian, either.

I see. Well is this the only Hotel Babylon in the neighborhood?

Fortunately for all of us, it's the only one in Egypt.

And your name is Ahmad, isn't it?

Ahmad smiled. There's no doubting that, he said. I live with it and I know.

Well there. That's a start at least and more than enough for now by way of facts, I'd say. Too many facts at one time can only be confusing. So then. Beautiful morning, and good-night now.

Joe laughed and made for the stairs with the bottle of whiskey in his hand.

Breakfast? Ahmad called out.

Whenever it gets here. Two knocks, I'm waiting.

Joe went whistling up the stairs. Ahmad watched him until he was out of sight, then got down on his hands and knees again behind the counter, where he had been when Joe had come bursting into the lobby the second time. He didn't think Joe had noticed him down there, but all the same he decided he would have to be more careful now that there was a guest, at last, staying in the Hotel Babylon.

A mysterious smile played on Ahmad's face as he silently opened the secret panel in the wall behind the counter.

***

High in the ancient fortresslike structure in the desert known as the Monastery, an orderly climbed the last steep steps of a spiraling tunnel stairway and knocked on the wooden door at the top. He waited, slowly counting to twelve, then pressed down on the thick iron handle to the door.

The tower room he had entered might have served once as a lookout for the ancient place, for it was small and round with tall narrow slits cut through the thick masonry at regular intervals, giving a view or the desert in every direction. Tiny shafts of brilliant sunshine pierced the heavy shadows of the little room, which was still gloomy at that early hour despite the blinding light outside.

A man with only one arm, immaculately dressed in starched khakis, stood close to one of the slits in the far wall. His back was turned but he appeared to be studying the desert to the west, the direction of the advancing Germans. The man held himself rigidly erect at parade rest, his one hand tucked stiffly into the small of his back. The orderly waited. After a moment a dim strain of organ music rose from somewhere below in the ancient fortress. The man with one arm swung around to face the orderly.

Oh it's you. What is it?

The orderly held out a sheet of paper to his superior, who read the message at a glance and turned to gaze out again at the desert.

Well well, he murmured. So our new Purple Seven is finally in place and ready to begin. . . .

He smiled, his face hidden from the orderly.

Who met the Armenian at the airport?

The actor, sir. The man called Liffy. He knows nothing. He met the plane and took the Armenian directly to the Hotel Babylon.

The man with one arm laughed.

For the Armenian, a bizarre introduction to Cairo, no doubt. And also perhaps a trifle misleading. . . .

Well he has much to learn but not much time to do it in. Are the maps laid out for the briefing?

Yes, sir.

I'll be down in ten minutes. Have the shutters closed and everything ready.

Yes, sir.

That's all.

Yes, sir.

The orderly clicked his heels and left, quietly closing the door behind him. From the depths of the Monastery the organ music soared and swelled more loudly, filling the small tower room with its booming echoes.

Stern, muttered the man with one arm, his face hard. And now we'll finally be done with this traitor and Rommel won't know our every move before we make it. . . . But we must be meticulous, without a mistake.

Without a mistake, he repeated, his eyes narrow as he sensuously stroked the thick medieval masonry protecting him from the merciless glare of the desert sun.

-5-

Liffy

Several nights later Joe was sitting alone in his tiny hotel room, perched on the windowsill gazing out at the darkness, when all at once a light rapping fell on the door, so soft he almost didn't hear it.

Two knocks for food and three for drink, although he hadn't asked Ahmad for anything. With one hand in his pocket, Joe crossed to the door and opened it.

A slight man faced him from the middle of the corridor, a nondescript figure neither young nor old, his nationality impossible to place. The man's eyes darted back and forth and he kept moving his lips, a twitch here and a nibble there, his face abruptly smiling and somber and uneasy by turns.

Joe stared in wonder.

Most amazing mouth I've ever seen, he thought. Just never stops at all.

A wild gleam suddenly flashed in the stranger's eyes, an eerie play of colors and lusters and depths. He shuffled his feet and shifted his weight, his height shooting up and down as he did so. Then his gaze cast about in panic and he retreated even farther away down the corridor, never once looking at Joe, staring down at the floor in defeat.

Bundle of nerves all right, thought Joe.

The stranger sputtered and grinned, shaking his head as if some overwhelming doubt had seized him.

Even his size seemed to expand and contract as Joe watched him moving back and forth in the corridor, now large and looming as he worked his elbows and thrust his head forward, then small and shrinking as he subsided back into himself, not a part of him ever still, his entire presence constantly changing.

To and fro, thought Joe, like a wee boat tossing on the shadowy nighttides of the Nile. But what's it supposed to mean and who is he anyway?

The stranger's arms were heaped with shopping bags, which he was having trouble holding together. He took a step forward and attempted what might have been meant as a smile, but the smile abruptly faded and a gargling sound rose in his throat, an effort to speak gone wrong.

Arghh?

Graaa. . . .

Joe was reminded of a shy lion cub fitfully rolling its head and muttering to itself.

Can I help you? asked Joe, reaching for the bags before they fell. He scooped up several and carried them back inside the room. The stranger still stood in the hallway, nervously shifting his weight back and forth.

Don't you want to come in?

Two if for food and three if for drink, muttered the stranger. Paul Revere said that.

The stranger reluctantly shuffled forward, avoiding Joe's eyes. There was a wistful sadness in his voice.

The hell with Paul Revere, who cares about him. You don't recognize me, do you?

I don't think so, said Joe. Should I?

I suppose not. I suppose there's no reason why anybody should ever recognize me. That's my problem.

Excuse me?

Being recognized as myself, when I'm myself. Nobody ever does. Wouldn't you find that a problem too?

Joe had to resist an urge to wrap his arms around the stranger, so forlorn did he seem. Instead he eased the last paper bag out of the man's arms and put it safely down on the table.

They're heavy. What's in them?

The stranger shuffled his feet in embarrassment and said nothing. Joe touched the man's arm.

Who are you?

The stranger stole a timid glance at Joe and lowered his eyes.

I'm the official tourist guide for this street, he whispered, although frankly business has been terrible since the war started. The last war, that is, not this one. But nonetheless . . .

Yes?

The stranger took a deep breath.

. . . but nonetheless, the rue Clapsius was once world-famous among those who knew the secret of life.

In fact this little rue used to be considered the ultimate oasis of the soul by many, many philosophers.

There was even a popular saying acknowledging the fact. See the rue Clapsius and leave the world humming. And do you know why this little rue used to be considered more significant, finally, than the Sphinx and the pyramids and even the Nile?

Why?

Because of its hum-jobs. History is really very simple, isn't it?

Joe's eyes widened. He stared at the stranger, who continued to move nervously back and forth, his mouth working all the while, never still.

Hum-jobs, you say?

That's right, muttered the stranger, and I'm talking now about the ultimate in good vibrations. The whores on this little rue, you see, were once spectacularly clever at humming off their customers. So much so that it wasn't at all unusual to find philosophers from every corner of the globe, strong men, determined men, simply curled up and gurgling on the cobblestones at all hours of the day and night, unable even to drool, not even a hint of a syllogism in their heads, mere husks of their former selves. . . . But what do I mean? I mean drained.

The stranger flashed a smile, which immediately faded.

I'm talking about the best, he muttered. Europeans like to think hum-jobs were discovered in Bologna around the beginning of the Renaissance, what really got the Renaissance going, so to speak. But they go much further back in time than is generally suspected, like most things having to do with people. In fact the hum-job tradition on this street goes back to what Europeans call the Dark Ages, when things weren't nearly as dark in the East as in the West. In the East scholars were still studying the Thousand and One Nights and passing on nibbles of their erudite findings to selected acquaintances. . . . Are you familiar, perhaps, with this classical piece of literature?

Joe gazed at the man, dumbfounded. At last he found his tongue.

I believe I've heard of it, yes.

The stranger flashed another smile, apparently less nervous than before.

Good. Then you probably know the Arabs borrowed the Nights a long time ago from the Persians, who in turn borrowed them much earlier than that from India. . . . But it's intriguing, isn't it, this notion of an enlightened East with the primitive buzz of hum-jobs echoing up through the mists of ancient India?

Frankly, before I knew the truth, the very idea of all those strange tongues down there in the subcontinent of our souls always used to exhaust me. But now that I know better, I can see what a truly brilliant innovation it was on the part of the Indians to connect hum-jobs with the civilizing impulse. . . . Fakirs indeed. Fiendish really. . . .

The stranger tossed his head and snorted, a kind of depraved mysticism creeping across his face.

But admit it, he suddenly roared in excitement. Didn't you always think Om was the important sound out of India? Didn't they fool you with that one too? And doesn't this new information mean, then, that the Hum and the Om may be far more closely entwined than anyone has ever suspected? That to chant the one is secretly to chant the other? That the Indian sages, in their wisdom, may long ago have discovered this astounding way to sound the bells of the soul and the flesh simultaneously? That the soul and the body, therefore, contrary to Western thought, are not only on secret speaking terms with one another, but are actually one and the same thing beneath it all? That the entire human story can thus be summed up in one profound phrase? That it's all a matter of man seeking his true home? From hummmm to ommmm, in other words, and so to home? And so at last to hommmme. . . .

Joe stared. The humming sound went on and on as the stranger shifted his weight back and forth, all the while vigorously nodding his head in encouragement, a shy maniacal grin on his face. Finally Joe was able to shake himself out of the trance he had fallen into.

But this is extraordinary, he murmured.

Is it? asked the stranger eagerly. You mean wonders never cease? Not even in an alley as shabby as the rue Clapsius?

Joe laughed.

What did you say your name was?

The man's smile instantly disappeared. All at once he was gazing at Joe with an immensely grave expression Solemnly, he cleared his throat.

Didn't say, did I. But my name's Vivian and I drove you in from the airport and I'm sorry about everything. Sorry.

Vivian blushed, his arms swinging in agitation. Joe laughed and warmly shook his hand, once more resisting the urge to embrace him.

Viv? It's really you without the wigs and tennis whites and leopardskins? Good to see you again.

Vivian shrank back a little, looking even more doubtful than he had when he first entered the room.

Is it? I know who you are, they told me a little about you. Not much, just a little. You're not angry with me?

No, of course not. Why should I be?

Because of my rank behavior at the airport. But I'm sorry, it was a part, a role. When picking up someone new I'm expected to play some kind of exotic role. . . . I think . . . and sometimes I just lose hold and go blasting off in every direction. It's the madness of the times that does it to me.

Forget it, Viv. Anyway, you should be the one who's upset.

Vivian looked bewildered.

Me? What on earth for?

That business about Cynthia. I hope you realize it had nothing to do with you. It was Bletchley who was bothering me.

Vivian sighed.

Oh yes, the Bletch, none other. I understood that right away. Our local supply sergeant can be very unpleasant sometimes, especially when he adopts that business-is-business attitude of his. Don't take it personally, the Bletch likes to say, but what nonsense. Of course I'm going to take it personally. This is my life that's being tossed around out here in this Bletchedly dry business known as the Western Desert, and would you mind if I sat down immediately? My feet hurt.

Of course, Viv, take the chair or the bed. It's not much of a room.

Vivian pulled off his shoes and slumped down on the bed with grunts and sighs. When not playing a role he seemed to wheeze heavily. He moved the pillow down to the bottom of the bed, covered it with his jacket and lay down with his feet up. Briefly he gazed at the paint peeling off the ceiling, then closed his eyes.

Flaky, he murmured. But even so, when meeting someone in real life I always try to raise my feet above my head in order to increase the trickle of blood to my brain. Quite frankly, there's seldom a time when my brain couldn't use a little more oxygen. It's my asthma that slows me down and the odd thing is I never had it until I came to Egypt, can you imagine that? A desert climate is supposed to cure such things, not cause them, but there we are. Another performance of the blues.

Vivian smiled weakly from the bed.

Yes, the blues. For some reason life has always struck me as pretty much of a raffish rendition of the blues. Rhythmic intensity, a stressing of weak beats, riffs.

Vivian groaned. He felt his throat.

Oh this body, he muttered. This wheezing jazz band of the soul.

He opened his eyes and laughed.

Flaky, your ceiling, no question about it. But life as music aside, let me tell you straight off this visit has nothing to do with business. I'm here to apologize and I'm just me now, nothing more. Are you hungry at all?

Famished, Viv. I was just getting ready to go out when you knocked.

Good. I've brought some roast chicken along, and also some wine and loquats, to try to help you forget my body-block at the airport the other morning. The chicken's usually quite tasty, I get it from a retired belly dancer up the street whom Ahmad knows from another era. She's also the one who told me about the local hum-job tradition. And the wine should be good, if you can make do with German wine. One of our Long Range Desert Groups plucked it out of Rommel's personal supply van no more than a week ago.

Vivian frowned.

But perhaps you'd like to save the wine for a more important occasion. You wouldn't be hurting my feelings if you did. I'm used to slaps and kicks and punches.

Hold on, Viv, this is the important occasion. Just let me get to it.

Vivian smiled in relief and began singing a popular tune. Joe went to work opening one of the bottles.

Oh by the way, Viv, is your name really Vivian? I ask only because Ahmad chanced to mention he'd never seen or heard of a Vivian around here.

Vivian scowled. He groaned.

Oh he did, did he? Ahmad actually said that?

Yes.

Vivian rolled sideways and gazed sadly at Joe, his mouth nibbling and chewing, never still.

That's a heavy blow, he sighed. Why on earth would you ask me that?

Well I don't know, Viv, the thought just came drifting by. But no offense meant, let's forget it.

Forget it? My name? Please study me carefully and tell me the truth. Don't I look like a Vivian?

The cork popped out of the bottle.

Well maybe not, said Joe. Can't say you do, really.

Did I before? Coming in from the airport?

Yes, maybe so. I guess you did.

But I don't now?

No, maybe not.

Not even a little bit? Isn't there anything in this world but slaps and kicks and punches?

Wait, said Joe, I think I'm beginning to see it. Vivian, you say? Vivian? Of course, it's unmistakable.

There's a startling resemblance, Viv.

There is?

Oh yes, simply stunning. The only reason I missed it at first was because I'm not used to seeing a Vivian.

You don't come across one every day on an Indian reservation in Arizona.

I can imagine, muttered Vivian gloomily. And how about a Vivian McBastion, then?

A what? Is that true?

Yes.

Well now, I like it, said Joe. It has the tang of an aristocratic Scottish fortress hunkering down in the cool mists and repulsing every assault.

On his back, Vivian cast a bleak smile at the ceiling.

Don't leap to conclusions. There's an enormous amount of confusion in the world and I'm afraid I play a part in it. I'm afraid that's only the beginning of my persona. There's more to my mask, much more. Are you ready to hear all of it?

Of course, why not?

You'll see. Brace yourself then. My full name is Vivian McBastion Noël Liffingsford-Ivy.

Jesus, Viv, is that the truth?

Vivian scowled and his voice was gloomier than ever.

Furthermore, I'll tell you why I don't look like a Vivian, let alone all the rest of it. I'm not.

Well there, cried Joe with relief.

I mean that's my legal name, but it's not really me. My father's name was Lifschitz. When my parents came over to England from Germany they wanted something that sounded less foreign, so they did a potter around in a hunt for common syllables and Liffingsford is what emerged, like a new Tory leader in Parliament. The Ivy was an afterthought, meant to add a comfy appearance of having been around awhile. I'm not sure how well they understood English at the time.

I know how that is, said Joe. I didn't understand it myself until I was fifteen or sixteen.

They bought a little shop when they came to England, a cozy thatched-roof affair in the heart of London.

They thought it was the only decent thing to do. Fair play, England my England, a nation of shopkeepers and so forth. Then when I came along they did a hunt through the Sunday tabloids to find a name for me, and that odd lot is what they came up with. Later I disappointed them though. I didn't become a dentist.

I see.

But everybody has always called me Liffy, with the exception of my mother and father and Bletchley. . . .

Blasted authority figures, they always get everything wrong. But Ahmad knows me as Liffy, and everybody else around here does.

Fine, Liffy, that's what I'm going to call you then. And I like the name, because it just happens to recall a river I know.

I suspected it might, said Liffy, and it's always pleasant to remind someone of a river. But I never became a dentist, I have to tell you that right now. I became a clown, a sad clown. That's my problem.

***

Have some wine, Liffy?

Thanks, I will. My liver hurts.

Maybe you ought to ease up then?

No, it can't have anything to do with drinking, I almost never drink. My liver often hurts at night, and I think the reason it does is because the liver was considered the seat of the passions in the classical world, back before barbarians destroyed the classical world and the passions were transferred to the heart. But somehow in my case the transfer never seems to have been made. In other words, Joe, I'm a throwback.

To what?

I'm not sure, that's my problem. But I have an uneasy feeling I may be the Wandering Jew from antiquity.

Everything seems to suggest it.

Have you wandered a lot then?

Oh yes, that's all I did before the war. I wandered around Europe as an itinerant entertainer, making people laugh after dinner. Then I sat in empty railway waiting rooms late at night, feeling hungry and waiting for a milk train to nowhere. The restaurants were always closed by the time I finished work in the evening, and when I arrived in a new place the following morning I'd take a nap in the railway waiting room to save expenses, until it was time to appear in a show that night. So I almost never slept in a bed and I didn't see much daylight either. In those days I lived almost entirely on milk and it made me quite pale. All told, it was a ghostly experience.

Were you really a professional clown, Liffy?

Well it was that general aspect of life. I worked as a clown or a mime or an actor, a juggler or an acrobat or a song-and-dance man, the fat drunken companion of a Shakespearean king of merrie olde England or a not so merry Shakespearean moneylender in gloomy old Venice, sometimes in blackface and sometimes in white, but far more frequently in gray. And more often than not in the end, after giving my all, done in. It seems that in every human drama there has to be someone who loses, and for some mysterious reason that role became my specialty. Occasionally I had to be taken seriously, but in general I was the absurd chameleon of the species, the ludicrous jester and buffo, the all-purpose fool. Making people laugh was my profession. It's a sad way to make a living.

I believe it, said Joe. And what about your work here, Liffy? What do you do?

Little things. Play a role for an hour or two or a day. Anything that might require a disguise and some makeup and a language or two. I'm just a prop really. I do a turn as an Italian general or a Syrian merchant or a Czech peasant, whatever's wanted. When they need a prop they trundle me out and I rage and swagger or skulk and cringe, bending my knees and shifting my weight and detesting kulaks or Jews, Jerries or Tommies, as the case may be. I'm the local illusionist, that's all. A sad clown.

Why sad, Liffy?

Because the world's sad

Why a clown then?

Because the world's so sad we have to laugh, otherwise it would be an even more dangerous place than it already is.

Liffy smiled shyly.

But there. Like everybody else, I like to pretend there's some lofty explanation for my private quirks. The truth is I'm probably sad because I spent so much time in empty railway waiting rooms before the war, at night. Have you ever noticed that people who live at night seem to have no bones? Perhaps it's the bad lighting.

And why did you become a clown, Liffy?

Why? Well I don't think I did in the beginning. I started out as a child imitating grown-ups, as every child does, and before long I discovered my imitations could make people laugh, and making people laugh brought me a sweet or two. So I went on doing what I'd grown accustomed to doing, the thing that brought in a sweet or two, and thus a career and a life in the usual manner.

But you're not like most people, Liffy.

No, I'm sure I'm not. I've been drifting around the world too long for that.

Liffy smiled.

How long, you say? Do I really qualify as the Wandering Jew from antiquity? Well sometimes it does seem as if these wanderings of mine have gone on for a full twenty-five hundred years, more or less.

Sometimes it does seem that long when I'm alone at night and afraid.

Liffy sadly lowered his eyes.

And I am often afraid, he whispered. But then too, there's another reason why I may be different. In order to imitate people you have to understand them, and that's my problem, I do. You have to be angry to get ahead in this world, or if you really want to get ahead, you have to hate people. But how can I hate anyone when I know what people are feeling?

Liffy sighed.

Sometimes I wish I'd become a dentist. A spot of black turns up and you grind it away, just like that, and slap some shiny gold in its place. It's easy, it's satisfying, people wait in line to see you and call you Herr Professor Doktor or Panzergroupcommander. But to get ahead like that you have to think of people as teeth, the way the Nazis do.

Liffy gasped and stopped for breath. An asthmatic rattle wheezed up his throat.

Although it's not just hate in general that lets you get ahead. Mostly it has to do with yourself, like all strong feelings, so I guess you'd have to call it self-disgust. Have you ever noticed that people seem to hate us, Jews, according to how much they're secretly disgusted with themselves? Not that there aren't innumerable reasons why people choose Jews to hate, rather than themselves. After all, who wants to hate himself? Who wouldn't rather hate somebody else?

You've seen a lot of hate, Liffy.

Naturally, I'm a Jew. When I'm not the king of merrie olde England, that is. Or a buffoon. Or the Holy Ghost in some timeless tale of life and death and resurrection.

And you speak in a very crowded way, Liffy.

That's only because I've wandered so much, and been so many people in so many places, that I can't pretend, to separate the sounds of the world easily. Or fool myself into thinking they're simple, rather than mysterious and complex. . . . Hate a Jew? What could be simpler than that? It's as simple as hating a tree or the wind or the sunrise.

Liffy raised his eyes and gazed at Joe, a soft expression. All at once he seemed very small and fragile.

But I can also hear simple sounds, Joe. You may think from what I've said that I'm a bitter man who sees only the harsh things in life, and that's not true at all. It's the good things, the kindly side of people, that interests me and concerns me. It's just that sometimes now, with the war and the Nazis. . . .

I understand, Liffy.

Do you? Do you? Can I tell you how I really feel, then?

Liffy smiled shyly.

Do you know what I really feel life is, deep down? A golden bell and a pomegranate.

Liffy smiled even more shyly.

Isn't that a beautiful way to describe it? Long ago I heard that and I've never forgotten it. And when life does seem bitter and cruel to me, I take those words into my heart and whisper them over and over, until I can manage again.

It is beautiful, said Joe. And who might have spoken such words, I wonder?

Liffy's eyes shone.

Who? Who else but the good voice within us. God.

He laughed.

Yes. God speaking to Moses in the desert, describing the robe that the priests of life are to wear.

And beneath upon the hem of it thou shall make pomegranates of blue and of purple and of scarlet, round about the hem thereof, and bells of gold between them round about. A golden bell and a pomegranate, a golden bell and a pomegranate, upon the hem of the robe round about.

Liffy smiled.

And it has a special meaning for me that gives me hope so I can go on no matter how dark the way.

Can you share that special meaning, Liffy? Can you tell me what a golden bell is in this world? And a pomegranate?

Liffy lowered his eyes.

I am, he whispered. I'm both of them at once. And you are, and every human being is. For we are strange and wonderful creations and the sounds within our souls are as clear and haunting as the ring of a golden bell. And yet the taste on our tongues is always of the dusty earth, the sweet dusty taste of the pomegranate rich with seeds in the hot sun.

Liffy looked up. He smiled.

So you see, I haven't really wandered too much, nor have I played too many roles. Life is an awesome blessing and the more we know of it the richer we are. The more we know of its dust, no less than the golden toll of its bell. The two of them always together, inseparable upon our hearts.

***

Suddenly Liffy sat up and laughed, flashing two perfect rows of brilliant white teeth. Then his fingers flickered in front of his mouth and his shoulders sagged and all at once he was a shrunken little man, toothless and decrepit. He held up the two dental plates he had removed from his mouth and gazed at them, moving one and then the other in the manner of a puppeteer.

Up went the upper plate. Laughter.

Down went the lower plate. Tragedy.

He slipped the plates back into his mouth and stared at Joe.

Teeth, he said. They're false. Some time ago I formulated a theorem to cover my situation, which I've always referred to privately as Liffy's First Law. To wit, Good teeth suggest mindlessness. Do a little surreptitious checking around and you'll see I'm right, although it's also true we try very hard to justify ourselves. Naturally, since we can never escape the fact we're somebody's child. Even the wisest old man in the world, in his thoughts at least, is still a little boy to someone. But none of that's my problem.

I'm neither wise nor old and my problem is a bad lower back.

You're practical, Liffy.

No not really, as you'll find out soon enough. I understand practicality but it has never appealed to me. In fact when I examine myself, I come to the conclusion that fantasy has meant more to me than positive knowledge. And all of that's a quote. Do you know who said it?

Some dreamer?

Yes, Einstein. And do you also know Cynthia won't sleep with me these nights? She's upset because I got her into trouble with Bletchley.

I'm sorry to hear that.

Oh she'll get over it. Her only trouble seems to be she thinks the Middle East is romantic, so she always wants me to be someone different when I come to call. One evening I have to be a long thin Bombay Lancer charging the Khyber Pass, a randy brown fellow who never takes off his boots. Then the next night I have to be a short slimy sheik rolling around on the rug, obsessed with my greyhound.

Liffy frowned, his mood changing.

Romanticism? Imagination? But hasn't it always been the human enigma? Has anything ever been so circular and contradictory, right from the beginning? It spins from sublime to harmless, from Einstein to Cynthia, and so around the circle to the horrors that Zarathustra also spake, sadly for all of us.

Liffy groaned.

That's right. I'm talking about the lowest of the low now, German supermen. Before the war the Germans used to get very excited over the idea of a mud pit filled with muscular naked blond women, viciously wrestling with each other. After the regular evening entertainments were over in the provinces, that was often the special show put on backstage for an extra fee. A discreet side entrance for couples, single ladies invited free of charge. The mud flying and the slime oozing and naked grunting women sinking in primordial muck to the accompaniment of Bach and Mozart, the phonograph blaring, with a dramatic switch to Wagner and on-the-spot promotions to Panzergroupcommander for those who grunted the loudest, after one of the hulking combatants had managed to squash all the other heads under the mud. . .

. Bliss and more. Yes.

Liffy choked and sputtered for air, wheezing painfully.

The truth always takes a little bit out of me, he rasped. And have you noticed that when Rommel is wearing civilian clothes, he looks like some small-time hoodlum? Surly little Swabian fellow with a snarl on his face and his felt hat mashed down on his head? And he's supposed to be the good German general. Well if he's so good, how did he get to be the commandant of Hitler's personal headquarters before the war? Must have ingratiated himself, wouldn't you say? And Hitler must have liked what he saw, which says a good deal more about our Desert Fox than any amount of racing around in an African desert ever will. . . . Hitler likes him? That's good?

Liffy gripped his throat. For a moment he seemed unable to breathe.

And I also imagine that to someone from the New World, I may seem unduly sensitive to the loping images I find in that simple Germanic term, Panzergroupcommander. Well I can only say that it's much worse than you think. Much worse. Frankly, it's a howling nightmare of a word to me and you might as well scream COSSACK in my ear. The one conjures up the same primeval blackness as the other ?

Liffy shuddered, as if shaking off a mood.

***