Nile Shadows

All his life the Major had wondered about Our Colly. What kind of man could he have been and how could anyone be expected to follow in his footsteps? Why would anyone, in fact, even dare to presume such a thing?

And yet Bletchley had done just that. Bletchley had gone out of his way to assign Our Colly's Purple Seven identity to this unknown agent who had been tracking Stern for months or years and had even been with Stern, finally, at the moment of his death.

So the circle was complete and the Major was brought back to the puzzle of the unknown Armenian, sketchily described as a small dark man with a deeply lined face and watchful eyes, wearing a torn collarless shirt and an old dark suit that was too big for him, that looked as if it might be secondhand, not even his to begin with. An apparent dealer in Coptic artifacts. An unknown man in transit, as Our Colly once had been.

***

The Major kept a clean desk. When he returned from the Colonel's office that evening the only thing on it was his pith helmet, which the Major raised to see if any messages had been left for him underneath it.

There was one, a note saying some calls had come in on his private telephone while he was in back with the Colonel. Three rings each time, the note said, the calls repeated every fifteen minutes on the quarter-hour. Since it was his private telephone, no one had taken the calls.

The Major looked at his watch, feeling a sudden rush of excitement. He paced impatiently behind his desk, waiting, and the next call came exactly on time on the quarter-hour. The Major picked up the phone and said hello, and that was all he said. He listened to the voice speaking to him, then when the call ended he hurried back to the Colonel's office, where the Colonel was locking up his files, preparing to leave for the night. The Colonel looked up, surprised.

Well well, what's this? I thought you'd already left.

I just had a telephone call, the Major blurted out. A very curious piece of business.

Oh? What was it?

The Major explained the repeated calls on his private phone and the one he had just taken. The code words used by the caller belonged to Liffy, including the code word dove, which was Liffy's mechanism for requesting an emergency meeting, something he had never done before.

But not at any of the places where we usually meet, added the Major. He wants the emergency meeting to be at the Sphinx.

The Colonel looked up again, smiling.

How's that? Liffy at the Sphinx?

But I don't think it was him, said the Major. I think it was somebody else.

Couldn't you tell from his voice?

No, not really. Liffy always disguises his voice on the phone with me. It's a game he plays.

Well whom did he sound like this time?

The voice had an Irish accent.

Child's play for Liffy, said the Colonel.

But I'm quite sure it wasn't him. There's no conceivable reason why he should need an emergency meeting. He's not in that end of things.

Then perhaps he's just lonely and wants you to hold his hand, said the Colonel. It happens.

The Major frowned, an expression of disagreement he had picked up from the Colonel.

At two o'clock in the morning in front of the Sphinx? Tonight? And only calling now to set it up?

Normally he couldn't even expect to find me in the office this late in the evening. He knows that.

The Colonel continued to sort through his papers, putting them away in his file cabinet.

He's been drinking a bit, do you suppose?

No, Liffy never gets out of hand that way.

Well who else knows his code words?

No one. Just the two of us.

Then he must have made an exception and gotten drunk, said the Colonel. Probably thinks he's playing a practical joke, mentioning the Sphinx. If I were you I'd get ahold of him in the morning and let him have it.

Inexcusable, really, at a time like this.

The Major said nothing, waiting. He understood the reasons for the Colonel's reluctant reaction to the phone call, but he was still determined to get some resolution to the matter. The Colonel, meanwhile, put his last folder in the file cabinet and locked it. He checked the file drawers and walked stiffly on his false leg to the door. He reached for the door, hesitated, spoke in a casual tone of voice.

How are you and Liffy getting on these days?

We get along well, replied the Major. I think if he wanted to help someone, to give them a contact here, he'd think of me.

I see.

The hand-grenade explosion in the bar, Colonel. You said that if it was the work of the Monks, it was probably intended for the Armenian as well as for Stern.

Yes, I believe I did suggest that.

But the Armenian got away, said the Major. He wasn't killed, he escaped.

Yes, so it seems. But the Sphinx, you say? That certainly seems a bizarre place for a meeting with Liffy.

The Colonel smiled to himself.

Unless, he thought, Liffy has finally decided to go all the way and do that impersonation.

Yes, quite, he murmured. But if one were to go to such a meeting, how could any backup men be taken along without them being seen?

No backup, said the Major. The caller was specific about that.

Oh he was, was he? That sounds rather arrogant to me.

Or cautious perhaps, out of necessity. He implied it was the Monks he was concerned about.

The Colonel looked shocked.

You mean he mentioned Monks on the phone?

No, not directly. He made an allusion to St Anthony as the founder of monasticism, although he didn't come out and say that directly either, and he said something about fifteen hundred years in the desert being a danger to a man's health. Or to his spiritual balance, as he called it.

The Colonel smiled despite himself.

Erudite fellow, it seems, and rather accustomed to alluding to things. Colly was like that.

He also said he'd call back in fifteen minutes, added the Major, looking at his watch.

The Colonel's smile faded.

What on earth for?

To find out whether I'm coming or not. He said that given the nature of competing bureaucracies, as he put it, not directly again, he imagined I'd have to check with you before I could agree to come.

That's not just arrogance, muttered the Colonel, that's a perverse sense of humor. How could he have known I'd be here?

He said he assumed it. He said that in perilous times, as he put it, the old man tends to work late.

Definitely a perverse sense of humor, muttered the Colonel. He seems to have said quite a lot in his indirect way.

He was speaking quickly.

Yes, I can see that. Tell me, do you ever take walks alone in the desert at night? To clear your head and get things in order a bit?

I have, replied the Major.

Ever go out to the pyramids just to take in the majesty of the place?

I have.

Well these days, said the Colonel, I'd go well-armed if I were you. And other than that all I can say is Bletchley's business belongs to Bletchley, and if I were to interfere he'd have my head in twenty-four hours, and rightly so.

I understand, said the Major.

It was bad enough that I sent Jameson to check into a killing where a Purple Seven was involved. But to do anything more than that is out of the question. I couldn't authorize it and I wouldn't. Moreover, if I knew anything about it I'd have to put a stop to it immediately.

I understand, said the Major.

So I'm sorry I missed you tonight, the Colonel went on, after our discussion earlier on Jameson's findings.

I'm leaving to get some rest because I haven't been sleeping well lately. I fall asleep but then some damn worry wakes me up at three in the morning and I can't get back to sleep. I pass the time as best I can but it would certainly be much pleasanter to share a pot of tea with someone then, if someone had some late business and chanced to drop by after it was over.

The Colonel glanced around the office, his hand on the door.

I enjoyed reminiscing about Colly this evening, he added, but we do have to keep in mind that Purple Sevens aren't everyday sorts . . . Not at all. That's why they have the designation.

***

And beyond the rumbling chaos of the city it was an eerie night of luminous stars and strange wan moonlight full upon the reaches of the Nile. In the rambling houseboat of the Sisters, in that pale airy sunroom that had once rung with gaiety and laughter and was now filled to overflowing with empty furniture, in that gently familiar place where faded voices and small unbroken melodies came to mingle in the delicate half-light, there in the stillness Big Belle and Little Alice sat gazing at the Nile, at their own restless currents of memory. The night was too bright for candles so they sat with only the moon and the stars as their guides, occasionally one of them stirring, speaking.

Little Alice touched her hair.

There's no end to it, she murmured. They go right on doing the same things, claiming it serves some purpose. I remember Uncle George used to say when things went wrong that it didn't matter, because summer was coming. He so loved summer. But then when he ended his life it wasn't summer at all, it was the dead of winter.

And cold, said Alice. Such a cold New Year's Day when they found him, all the people in the village gathered down at the pond. At least it seemed like a great crowd then, everybody standing around with somber faces, not even shuffling their feet the way they did in church. I remember that.

And they made a great show of standing in front of us and holding us back so we wouldn't see. Poor dears, they were whispering, poor little dears. But I peeked while they were leading us away and I caught a glimpse of him, just the barest glimpse when they were laying him down on the ground, before they covered him up.

Oh I didn't really know what it meant then. All those whispers and those arms around us gently pulling us away, and the solemn staring faces and Mother crying and crying and trying to be so brave, trying to hold back her tears as she squeezed us and pressed us to her.

It was all so confusing and I began crying too, not for Uncle George, because I didn't understand that yet. But for Mother, because she seemed to be in so much pain, and because of the way everybody else was acting, whispering first their father and now this, and looking at us with such sad faces I wanted to cry for their sake.

No, I didn't understand it at all, not even the funeral and the words they said under the heavy sky at the cemetery. I don't think I even heard what they said, but I can still see that sky and the hill beyond the cemetery, against it, as if it were yesterday.

And then there's something I remember that happened after that. It was warmer by then so it must have been late spring, not long before we left for good. I was playing out back and I went into the shed where Uncle George had lived, where Mother had forbidden us to go after he died, to protect us so we wouldn't think of him.

I didn't have anything in mind really. I just tried the door without thinking and it opened, so I walked in.

And the sun was streaming in the window and the air was warm and dusty and close, and there were cobwebs everywhere, and the room looked so small and empty.

Most of his things had been taken away, but the little tarnished mirror still hung by the window and the pegs were still in the wall by the door where he used to hang his clothes, and his paddle was still up on the rafters where he'd always kept it, the one he'd used when he went fishing. So those things were still there, but they just seemed to make the room look smaller and emptier than ever. . . . So very empty, so terribly empty, I've never forgotten that. It made me sad because it looked as if no one had ever lived there.

Little Alice gazed down at the floor. She touched her hair.

Belle? Why do you think Uncle George did that? He had a place in the world and people liked him, and he had his job and things to do in his free time. Certainly Mother loved him and he always seemed to enjoy having us around. He was always joking with us and showing us how to do things, how to make little things.

I suppose you'd have to say it wasn't a life with any particular surprises to it, for good or for bad, and there weren't going to be any great accomplishments to come from it, I know that. But it was a decent life and he was a good man, and there didn't seem to be any reason why he had to end it like that, all alone down at the pond on a cold night, drowning himself in the darkness.

I've just never understood that kind of thing. Summer would have come again, he was the one who always used to say that. And it's not enough to call him weak because I'm weak, no one has ever been weaker than I am. And I'm foolish too, which Uncle George never was.

I just don't understand it, Belle, I've never understood it. Why did he do it?

Belle looked at her sister. She shook her head.

I don't know, Alice, I truly don't. But why do any of them do what they do? Why did Stern? Why did Joe? Why are there all those tens of thousands of men out in the desert right now doing what they're doing? Doing the same things that were done in the same places a hundred years ago and a thousand years ago and five thousand years ago? How does it help? What does it change? What's the point of it all? How can. . . .

Belle stopped. She turned abruptly in her chair to stare at the shattered French doors, at the narrow veranda beside the water.

What is it, Belle? What did you hear?

Nothing. I was imagining it.

Alice's voice had dropped to a whisper.

Please, Belle, you know I don't hear well. What was it?

It sounded like something scraping. A piece of driftwood must have gotten caught.

Belle gripped the arms of her chair and began to pull herself forward, her mouth set.

Don't you dare get up, whispered Alice. Don't you dare go over to those doors. That's where it happened.

I have to see what's making that noise.

Don't you dare, whispered Alice. I'll go.

But she didn't move. She sat on the edge of her chair, staring at the open shattered doors, her hands clasped tightly together. The sound was louder now and Alice could also hear it, wood bumping against wood.

Alice gasped. An apparition had appeared in the moonlight, a looming chalk-white shadow of a man rising up out of the river and crouching on the small veranda, the ghastly face masklike, the whole pale figure as insubstantial as a spirit risen from the grave. Alice put her hand to her mouth and silently shrieked. Belle stiffened, her gaze unwavering.

Stop, commanded Belle. Stop right there. I refuse to believe in ghosts.

A smile appeared on the white dusty face.

And so do I, said a soft Irish voice, and not for a moment and not a bit of it. Of course it's also true that on nights such as this I've heard the odd pooka puttering around in the moonlight on occasion, muttering his jokes and his riddles and his scraps of rhymes the way their kind are wont to do. But that's only natural and pookas aren't ghosts anyway, they're just like the rest of us only more so.

The apparition grinned and hopped from one foot to the other, nodding encouragement, but Belle's stare remained defiant.

Leave, she commanded. Leave, o shade, and return whence you have come.

Oh I can't do that, said the ghostly figure. There's no going back in this world, as we well know.

Suddenly Alice found her voice.

Did he say he's a pooka, Belle? What's that?

A kind of spirit, replied Belle. One of those odd little creatures the Irish believe in.

Oh, squeaked Alice, one of those? . . . An odd little creature, she added shyly, peeking through her fingers.

And I don't have to tell you, continued the spirit, that I'm sorry about climbing in on you like this, just rising up out of the river and all. But the moonlight was right tonight and for once the Nile was going my way, so I borrowed a dinghy and here I am straight from the crypt.

The crypt, shrieked Alice. Odd little creature or not, he's straight from the dead and still wearing his shroud.

The figure took another step and stopped. He looked down at Alice cowering in her chair.

Here now, what's this terrible thing I've done? Why do you look at me like that?

You're dead, whispered Alice in horror.

The ghost's smile faded.

Dead, you say? Me?

A puzzled expression came over the dusty masklike face as the ghost stood there with his arms hanging awkwardly at his sides, his dusty jacket too big for him, his dusty baggy trousers gathered in at the waist.

Not that I know of, he said in a quiet voice. I could have been but I'm not . . . I don't think. But don't you recognize me at all? It's me, Joe.

Belle's face was set. She spoke calmly and with complete conviction.

Joe's dead. If you're Joe, you're dead. We saw it happen with our own eyes, right there where you're standing.

Me? Here? . . . I don't understand.

Right there, right on that very spot, we saw it with our own eyes.

They came here right after you did and they burst in and they shot you. It was all over in an instant. Then they carried your body away.

He frowned and wiped at the dust coating his face, forgot what he was doing, held his hand in midair. He turned and looked at the shattered glass of the open French doors, noticing it for the first time. He looked back at the room.

He was moving slowly now, as if in a dream. Some profound emotion was working within him, causing his face to change rapidly. He felt his short dusty beard.

They? Who's they?

The ones who came after you, they must have been Bletchley's men. It was all over in an instant.

A kind of wild despair seemed to grip him. They could see him trying to resist it but he had begun to tremble. He pushed at the air with his hand again and again, a pathetic gesture.

The man you thought was me, what did he look like?

Alice was no longer peeking through her fingers. She was straining forward in her chair, her face filled with wonder.

Joe? she murmured. . . . Joe, is it you? Have you really come back?

He looked just like you, whispered Belle, shaking her head. He looked just like you and he talked the same way and he dressed the same way and he moved the same way. It's uncanny. The only thing different about him was that he was so distracted he seemed to be in another world.

Joe was losing hold now, they could see that. He had begun to sway back and forth and his hands were opening and closing, grasping at nothing. He seemed to be sinking, his frail body giving way beneath him.

Desperately, he whispered.

But what did he say before they shot him? What did he say, for the love of God?

He spoke of everyone leaving, answered Belle. And he spoke of the Nile turning to blood and of those who were going to the land of their pilgrimage. . . .

Belle lowered her eyes.

And he named jewels and called them precious, she whispered, and he called them beautiful, twelve jewels in all he named. And he said they were the names of the children of Israel, twelve, according to their number. Every one with his name shall they be, he said, according to the twelve tribes....

Oh forgive us, whispered Belle. It's all so clear now but at the time we thought he was raving and hurt somehow, wounded somehow, and didn't know what he was saying.

Joe sagged as if from a blow. He sank to his knees and raised his hands, pleading.

And what else did he say? What else, for the love of God?

He said their lives had been bitter with bondage and he knew their sorrows. And he spoke of a ransom of souls and he said an angel had been sent before thee to keep thee in the way, and to bring them into a good land and large, flowing with milk and honey. . . . And lastly he spoke of a golden bell and a pomegranate. Upon the hem of the robe, he said, a golden bell and a pomegranate round about. . . .

Belle stared down at her lap. Alice half rose in her chair, tears streaming down her face.

I should have recognized the words, whispered Belle, but it all happened so quickly and it was so strange the way he acted, we didn't understand. He seemed a man possessed but he was speaking from the Book of Exodus, wasn't he?

Oh God, shrieked Joe, why did he do it? Oh God. . . .

Joe buried his head in his hands. Alice was kneeling beside him now, her arms around him. Belle raised her eyes.

But who was he? We were so sure he was you. Who was he?

A friend, whispered Joe, choking out the words. A man speaking to his people . . . a dream, a beautiful dream, a golden bell. A man with the gift of faces and the gift of tongues who came and went as anyone .

. . the wandering Jew in all of us. Liffy was his name. . . .

But why did he come here like that, Joe? Why did he do it? To save you?

Oh no, not me, much more than that. So much more. . . .

Joe broke down completely then, sobbing on the floor as Alice held him in her arms, rocking with him and stroking the dusty scars in his face that ran with tears.

***

After a time, when Joe had managed to recover a little, the three of them sat talking amidst the pale wicker shapes of that dilapidated mansion moored on the nighttide of the great river, speaking in low voices in the shadowy moonlight.

As best he could, Joe recounting what had happened. Being in the poor Arab bar when the hand grenade had come sailing in through the shabby curtain at midnight, instantly killing Stern. Joe stunned by the explosion and wandering in a daze through the sordid alleys, stopping to telephone Maud and eventually finding himself back beside the Nile, in the dingy public garden where old Menelik's secret crypt lay buried.

Descending the stairs once more and letting himself into the crypt and lying down on one of those hard park benches from another era. Feeling dizzy and exhausted and slipping into a deep sleep that stretched on through an invisible dawn and the invisible day that followed Stern's death, a fugitive from the light fitfully sleeping into the evening of the second night.

Waking up at last on the park bench with his body cramped and aching, the distant roar of Stern's death and a dim cry from the darkness still echoing in his mind . . . a beggar . . . a beggar. . . . Joe appalled by the murkiness of his suddenly strange surroundings and not even sure for one brief moment that he was still alive, above all wanting to escape from the gloomy crypt.

Noticing then that Liffy's small battered volume of Buber was lying open on one of the park benches, which wasn't the way he remembered it having been when he and Stern had left the crypt. Noticing also a small pile of clothes neatly folded near the door, beside them an old makeup kit that Liffy had often carried with him.

Joe realizing then that Liffy must have come to the public garden on the previous night and followed him and Stern to the poor Arab bar, where he had witnessed the explosion at midnight and subsequently followed Joe back to the crypt once more, letting himself in while Joe slept and keeping watch through the dangerous night, until daylight had come aboveground and it was time for Liffy to change into the final costume of his final role, while still Joe had gone on sleeping.

And what had that final costume of Liffy's been? What transformation had Liffy chosen for himself in the end?

A mystery to Joe when he had awoken in the crypt, hours after Liffy had left. Joe wanting only to escape, for safety using the emergency exit Stern had showed him, a low narrow tunnel thick with the dust of the past. Joe emerging chalk-white from the secret passageway and discovering that it was night again, fleeing wildly through the park in the exhilaration of his escape from death, a ghostly figure floating beside the river on the mild breezes of that clear Cairo night.

And furtive telephone calls made to the Major, a man Liffy had known, and stealing a dinghy and paddling downstream to the houseboat, where he had come rising up out of the currents only to find that Liffy had been there before him, disguising himself as Joe so the anonymous Monks from the desert would think their work was done and Joe would have another chance to escape, another chance to survive..

Liffy.

Joe still couldn't mention his name without breaking down. It was different somehow with Stern, because everything having to do with Stern had always been expected in a way. Stern himself had always seemed to know what his destiny would be, and it had been impossible to be around him without sensing that sooner or later. Joe had felt it long ago when he had first met Stern in Jerusalem, as had others before and since then.

But Liffy? . . Liffy?

Joe turned away, too wrenched with pain to dwell on that vast multitude of faces and voices once conjured up in Liffy's sorrowing magic, and laughter, lost now to the world. It was too much for Joe so they talked for awhile of other things, and then Joe rose.

***

Well I'll be leaving now, he said. There are things I must try to do, and whatever way it turns out, I'm afraid we won't be meeting again.

Little Alice looked at him tenderly, and Big Belle's sad eyes were as strong upon him as ever. They watched as he went to stand on the small veranda one last time, gazing out over the river. Then he came back into the room to face them.

And where will you go from here? asked Belle.

Joe tried to smile.

To meet a man at the Sphinx, he said. I have no answers for him, but I might know the questions to ask at least.

And this time he did smile. Thinly, but he managed it.

I have to tell you I've never been able to handle good-byes, he said. I've just never gotten used to leaving people, even though I've done little else in my life. People have a way of slipping into our hearts and staying there, and we treasure them and don't want to let them go, and more than that, we never can let them go.

Once long ago I tried to live differently, but it never really worked. I used to pretend something could be over and done with, a place or a person, and I could move on and nothing was the worse for it. But I learned soon enough that was only a turn of words on the surface of things, mere childish pretending, and it was pain that taught me that, I'm sorry to say. Of course we do move on all right, but we don't forget nor should we, and nothing important is ever left behind, and no one we've loved ever goes out of our lives. They live on in other ways, that's all, in our words and our gestures, changing us and changing with us and even speaking to us in the quiet moments. Sometimes recognized, mostly not, but always a part of us, woven into the stuff of our lives.

And as for what's out there where I'm going now, well, when you look at it one way it's surely not much of a world, is it? We lose and we lose and that's all we ever do from the time we're born. Lose those who brought us into the world and lose the place where that was, the only safe place we ever know, and then we go right on losing other places and other people and the hopes and dreams that go with them, losing those we love and finding others if we're lucky, only to know we'll lose them too with time. Lose is all.

And that's one way to look at it surely, and all of it true and undeniably the way it is. But then there's also that other side to life, those moments that have a kind of grandeur to them, that speak of love so beautiful it takes your breath away. Rare moments that shine in the darkness, rare precious gems in the night, jewels of the soul beautiful and ancient. . . .

Joe nodded, smiling. He leaned down and embraced Belle and then Alice, kissing each of them. At the door he paused.

I've known those moments here with the two of you. I've known them and I'll always know them, and I'll always remember this room one way. The way it was the other night when I came here, one timeless night like all others on the Nile, and I sat in the candlelight looking at the river and listening to your beautiful music. A night unlike any other for me, on the Nile in the shadows at the end of the darkness, listening to your beautiful music. Yours, and now mine. . . .

Then all at once he was gone and the two tiny women were alone in the moonlight of their airy sunroom, alone again with their memories. . . . Big Belle sitting stiffly erect, staring straight ahead at the river. Little Alice touching her hair and softly humming a tune against the night.

-21-

Purple Seven Moonglow

Midnight past in the serenity of the still desert.

The pyramids stately before the stars.

And far away in the moonlight a wisp of sand swirling lightly over the crest of a dune, billowing softly in the wake of a distant horseman who had suddenly come racing into view from out of the pale stony reaches of the night, pounding swiftly down through the wastes in a headlong charge aimed at that huge crouching figure on guard among the pyramids, the calm and graceful Sphinx.

. . . this mysterious solitary charge in the moonlight carefully observed all the while from an unsuspected lookout. From a black hole in the right eye of the Sphinx. . . .

The horse and rider dropped from sight and came flying over a final ridge to gallop wildly down the last hard stretch of desert, the hoofbeats of the animal drumming more loudly as the charge narrowed, the dashing figure on horseback now clearly visible.

The pale rider wore a pith helmet, a safari jacket and jodhpurs. His face was masked by a gleaming white silk scarf tied around his head and flowing on the wind. His eyes were masked by racing goggles that caught the drift of the moon and blankly reflected it back in opaque white discs. The horse reared in front of the Sphinx as the rider broke his gallop, then went charging off to one side and quickly circled the enormous stone figure so tranquilly in repose in the moonlight.

Nothing. The Major had found no one lurking along the sides of the great stone beast. No one crouching in the crevices of antiquity's hindquarters. The Major was quite sure he was alone.

He drew up again in front of the Sphinx and dismounted, removing his carbine from its case on the side of the saddle. He also checked his long-range sniper's rifle nestling on his back, the large automatic pistols strapped to each of his hips, the small automatic in one pocket of his jodhpurs and the even smaller automatic in the other pocket, and the minuscule ivory-handled derringer under his jacket to the side.

Lastly he felt for the hunting knife at his waist, the two smaller slashing knives taped to his back, and the four throwing daggers strapped to his shins. Jingling around on the Major's web belt was a mass of extra ammunition clips, a half-dozen for each of his automatic pistols and a full dozen for his carbine.

In addition to the large supply of shiny brass bullets bristling from bandoliers crisscrossing the Major's chest, deadly fifty-caliber tracers as long as a man's hand and of no use whatsoever without a large water-cooled machine gun to fire them. But although these utterly useless bullets were no more than a kind of brassy display of symbolic mail firepower in the moonlight, they were still undeniably impressive, awesome because of sheer size alone.

Equipped. Armed. Ready.

Rifles, pistols, knives, tracers, daggers.

Automatic bolt actions and slippery blowback loading and well-oiled breechblock plungers. Beady sights and solid safety switches and slithering barrel screws, and but the merest squeeze of a taut trigger needed to make a hammer slam home and balls explode.

Equipped.

And finally, for reserve firepower, the Major had also brought along a monstrous nine-shot Czech revolver, an enormous pistol once claimed by Balkan assassins to be the ultimate all-purpose secret weapon of the future. This crude Czech masterpiece hidden in a saddlebag on the Major's high-spirited Arabian mare, in case the Major suddenly found himself stripped of his other weapons. In case he suddenly had to leap from the Sphinx onto his mare, against all odds, and make a daring escape in the moonlight, blasting away at skulking shadows as he thundered over the dunes.

Armed.

Grimly the masked Major smiled beneath the flowing silk folds of his white scarf, behind the pale white discs of his racing goggles.

Ready.

As prepared as any masked man could ever be for a dangerous nighttime meeting with a Purple Seven fugitive in the shadows of the inscrutable Sphinx.

***

The Major cocked his pith helmet at an angle and fitted his swagger stick more securely into his left armpit, which was unaccountably wet in the cool night. Then he went striding up toward the impassive stone face of the gigantic beast and planted his feet in a solid position, just below the great stone nose, which was badly bent and mostly missing as a result of having been used for target practice by Napoleon's artillery, nearly a century and a half earlier.

Standing there between the great stone paws with his carbine at the ready, loosely aiming at the immense expanse of open desert with the noble head of the mythical stone creature looming up behind him, the Major momentarily had the sensation of himself being the courageous British lion, the very beast of the Empire, alone in the pale moonlight facing the vastness of the unknown.

And all the while, unbeknown to him, the Major was being carefully observed from above. . . . From the blackest of the black holes of antiquity

The Major checked his watch. Two o'clock in the morning and still no sign of the Purple Seven.

The Armenian's late, he thought, fingering his carbine. Late. Not even on time. And not exactly the way for a Purple Seven to maintain his reputation for being dangerous, or even clever for that matter. But out here, how dangerous could one fugitive agent be? Here in bright moonlight, where the Major had a clear field of fire in front of him and a solid mass of mythical stone beast behind him? With the arsenal he was carrying, in fact, the Major thought he could probably have held off a small army of marauding bedouin tribesmen from his superior vantage point under the nose of the Sphinx. Nor was it difficult for the Major to imagine himself doing just that.

With the telescopic sights of his sniper's rifle trained on the distant dunes, picking off the shrieking rebel sheiks the moment they galloped into view. . . . Quickly lowering his sights and picking off the banner-bearer and his cutthroat bodyguards. . . . Throwing aside the now useless sniper's rifle as the hordes kept coming. . . . Seizing his rapid-fire carbine and gunning down whole mobs of howling tribesmen as they came milling around the base of the Sphinx, blazing away from his hip, bravely slamming in new clips until the burning weapon jammed from the incessant explosions. . . . Finally driven back against the throat of the Sphinx itself by the overwhelming numbers of the enemy. Crouching beneath the great stone chin with an automatic pistol in each hand, a knife in his teeth, fearlessly blasting away at the shadows that came sneaking up from the hindquarters of the mythical beast, recklessly blasting away at this native gas from the bowels of antiquity. The automatics jamming and the Major hurling daggers in a last heroic stand for the sake of the Empire and the British lion. . . .

Tinkle.

The ammunition clips dangling around the Major's waist clinked lightly together. Stupid of the Armenian, he thought, to pick a rendezvous as open as this one. The Armenian must have imagined it would save him from being taken by surprise, but obviously he hadn't foreseen the possibility of the Major's quick dash in from the desert on a swift Arabian mare. And now the Armenian must be out there somewhere hiding behind a dune, helplessly watching the Major astride his commanding position in the lap of the Sphinx. Still, the Major was more than a little disappointed by the silence on every side. This was to be his first meeting, after all, with the Purple Seven who was Our Colly's successor, and somehow he had expected a more romantic encounter, a more dramatic confrontation. Especially in view of the unusual setting.

But it wasn't the first time the Major had been disappointed since coming to the Middle East, and all because, early in life, he had fallen so deeply under the spell of the extraordinary explorers who had roamed the region in the nineteenth century . . . Burton and Doughty, Szondi and Burckhardt, and above all the incomparable Strongbow. The startling images of those romantic adventurers had always been the Major's ideal. Ever since childhood he had been haunted by their unconquerable visions in the strange sun-splashed reaches of distant deserts. So perhaps it wasn't surprising that contemporary life in the bazaars and deserts of the Middle East, for the Major, had never been as romantic as he had always dreamed it would be.

Tinkle.

And so it seemed once again in the case of this unknown Purple Seven. Dreams had proved to be false for the Major and life had never been as exciting as it had been for other men in other eras. Not even here in the lap of the Sphinx, under a full moon, in a perilous wartime meeting with an anonymous secret agent.

Tinkle.

Wistfully the Major sighed behind his raffish white silk mask, behind his dashing racing goggles, beneath his weathered pith helmet tipped at a rakish angle, weighted down with arms as he was in the best tradition of a desert brigand. Sighed and listened to his heavy ammunition clips clinking ever so softly in the stillness, tinkling as merrily as the gay little sounds made by goats' bells wafting through the night to the ears of some illiterate goatherd. Sighed and checked his watch and gazed longingly up at the moon.

A goatherd. Soft breezes. A lunatic setting. . . . But how could anyone pretend for long to be a mysterious masked man in the moonlight, when an Armenian couldn't even be on time?

The Major sighed, vastly disappointed by all of it. Thoroughly glum over his first meeting with a man who carried the fabled designation that was the most secret the Secret Service could bestow. Sighed and groaned.

Where in God's name was this Purple Seven?

***

The first warning that something was out of the ordinary came from the Major's Arabian mare. Abruptly the animal stopped poking around in the sand and raised her head. Was it a sound too distant for human ears? A scent from far away drifting in on the clear night air?

The Major peered, seeing nothing. He gripped his carbine, staring intently, and all at once a booming sinister voice broke over him, a hollow inhuman voice which seemed to come echoing up from the very bowels of the earth.

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?

The Major whirled. He spun and kept on spinning, turning around once and twice and thrice under the great stone face, his loaded carbine at the ready. But there was nothing new to be seen no matter how hard he stared.

The pyramids in the moonlight.

The calm face of the Sphinx looming up behind him.

And other than that only stars and the empty desert, a full moon and sand rippling distantly.

Again the unearthly voice boomed and echoed briefly, thundering from nowhere and everywhere, hollow and deep and sinister in the night.

Who knows? The Sphinx knows. . .

The hideous voice broke into a cackle, a deluge of mocking laughter which seemed as if it would never end. Only to be followed at once by a clear human voice, a soft Irish voice gently calling out in the moonlight.

Easy with the carbine, Major. Easy does it now, please.

The Major stood rooted to his spot, struck dumb in the moonlight. He listened to his breathing and to the reassuring tinkle of goats' bells, and some minutes seemed to pass before he heard light trotting footsteps alongside the Sphinx behind him, coming from the direction of the mythical beast's hindquarters. And then a strange figure came trotting around the side of the Sphinx and began scrambling up one of its huge stone paws . . . a small man in an old baggy suit.

The Major stared. The small man climbed nimbly up to the top of the stone paw and stood there with his hands in the air. He was smiling. He took a deep breath and nodded pleasantly.

Nice night, Major. Lovely air out here.

The Major recovered at once from his shock and edged forward, his carbine trained on the man's middle.

Don't move, he shouted.

Not a finger, came the answer.

Not a hair, shouted the Major.

That too, certainly.

Hands over your head.

Right you are. In our lowly way, we all try to reach for the stars.

The man nodded, smiling, and the Major suddenly blushed behind his mask. In his excitement he had been screaming. He stopped for a moment to get a grip on himself.

Tinkle.

The small man in the baggy suit looked surprised. Are there goats around here? he asked.

No, replied the Major, managing a normal tone of voice.

Odd, I thought I heard goats, said the man. Didn't you hear the tinkling sound of goats' bells? I wonder where the goatherd is.

My ammunition clips, said the Major.

Oh.

Who are you? screamed the Major. No evasions. Speak up.

Oh. Well the name's Gulbenkian. Gulbenkian, I presume. At least that's what was on my papers the last time I looked at them. They also say I'm a dealer in Coptic artifacts by profession, which may well be true. As for my status in this war zone, that's down as in transit, but I suspect it doesn't tell us much because it's probably the status of most of us in this world. Just passing through, don't you know. They're a first-class forgery though, these papers of mine. So good you could even say Ahmad did them. You know that old Cairo saying, don't you? When in doubt, say Ahmad sent you?

Don't move.

Right, square one.

The Major again made an effort to control his voice.

Slowly now, he commanded, do exactly as I say. Lower your left hand to your jacket collar, slowly, and pull your jacket off. Slowly, now drop it.

Clunk, said the man, why not. Never was anything very grand about it.

Your shoes next. Don't bend over. Kick them off.

Sure. Been doing it that way for years, actually.

Now, left hand only. Undo your belt buckle.

Ah yes, said the man. Life is trouble, only death is not. To be alive is to undo your belt and look for trouble, as that old Greek saying has it. Ever come across that saying yourself, Major?

Same hand, slowly. Unbutton your trousers.

Ah, slow as slow for the sake of anticipation. And if I'm not mistaken, that's exactly what the old Greek saying had in mind. But I'm not so sure it was meant to apply to a cool night in the desert. More of an idea for lovely summer evenings on a deserted beach, maybe.

Drop them. Kick them to the side.

Right, a gentle kick maybe. My anticipation's waning in the general chilliness.

Left hand, slowly. Unbutton your shirt.

I'm getting there, Major, but it's also getting cold out here.

Slowly. Do exactly as I say.

The man smiled, nodded.

Yes, and do you suppose that could have been an old pharaonic saying? Do exactly as I say, I mean. It sounds like it might have been some pharaoh's standing order from on high to the troops who were building the pyramids. Think so?

Left hand only. Pull off your shirt. Drop it. Now raise one leg, slowly.

Oh dear.

Pull off your sock. Now the other one. Left hand only.

Right. And I guess you've assumed all along I'm right-handed, which only goes to show it's a good thing I'm not Colly.

The Major stared.

What's that? Who?

You know, the man who had this Armenian identity before me. The original Gulbenkian of clandestine obscurity, also known at one time as Our Colly of Champagne. As long as I can remember, Colly always used his left hand when he was taking a piss over the side of the boat.

What?

Yes. Colly was left-handed, in other words, so he always used his left hand when the time came to be sinister, to do something fast and unexpected.

What? Don't move.

Right. All I meant was that Colly's left hand was his shooting hand and his throwing hand, as well as his pissing hand don't you see, so it wouldn't have been a good idea to have him undressing with it. Fast on the draw, Colly was. But of course that's just by way of being of historical interest and it doesn't matter tonight, because I'm not Colly and I use both hands for things. Born ambidextrous, I don't know why.

Don't move.

Right.

One hand, either hand, slowly. Pull down your underwear and step away from your clothes. Out there, over to the end of the paw.

Right. For another of life's maulings, probably.

Joe smiled and walked to the end of the paw where he stood naked, shivering. The Major kept his carbine pointed at Joe while he knelt beside the pile of clothing and felt his way through it. Other than Joe's papers and a handful of Egyptian coins, the only thing he found was a large wad of money in various currencies, in denominations he had never seen before. The Major backed away, perplexed.

Where are your weapons?

Don't carry any.

What?

That's right. I dropped out of the maiming and killing business a long time ago. It may be necessary sometimes but myself, I'd rather not take part. Personal prejudice.

The Major looked confused.

No weapons?

None but what's in the head, and do you suppose I could get dressed now? Just plain cold is what it is.

The Major nodded. He kept his carbine trained on Joe while he pulled on his clothes, at the same time sneaking glances at the wad of money he had taken from Joe's pocket. A bewildered expression came over the Major's face, hidden by his white silk mask. The money was printed on only one side.

I keep some money on hand because you never know when you might have to take a quick trip when you're in transit, said Joe, watching the Major out of the corner of his eye. Of course it's true those Bulgarian leva and Rumanian bani can't be worth much this year, and the paras have probably also seen better days. None of them could be worth more than half of what they used to be, which is maybe why they were printed that way. In halves, I mean, on one side only. . . . Things are always deteriorating all over, have you ever noticed that?

The Major forgot himself and nodded. Joe pulled on his shoes.

But the real beauty in the pack, said Joe, is that bill on the bottom. See it? One hundred Greek drachmas on one side, ten thousand Albanian leks on the other. Or is it the other way around? The Balkans have always been a confusing concept to me, I've just never been able to make much sense out of them.

Know what I mean?

Again the Major nodded dumbly in agreement. He was having trouble remembering what he was supposed to be doing, so bewildering did he find Joe's manner. This isn't right, thought the Major. Things aren't going the way they're supposed to.

Tinkle.

Joe smiled, pulling on his jacket, as the Major quickly tried to think of another command to deliver. Any command would do.

Sit down there, he said. Feet apart, please.

Sound reasoning in the moonglow, Major. I was just thinking myself we ought to relax a bit. After all, the Sphinx is a riddle and we're right in the lap of that riddle, aren't we?

The Major nodded without thinking. He pulled down his white silk mask, absentmindedly, and wiped his mouth. Joe asked for a cigarette and the Major handed him a packet.

Would you care to sit down yourself? Joe asked pleasantly, striking a match.

The Major nodded, confused, and sat down a few yards away from Joe on the paw of the Sphinx. He removed his pith helmet and wiped his brow Then he realized he couldn't see very well and he removed his goggles.

This is an impossible situation, he muttered.

Joe peered over the end of his burning cigarette and smiled.

Tut tut, Major, tut and ho. Impossible, you say? Best to be wary of words like that in the moonglow here, where the secrets of the pharaohs reside all around us. A few minutes ago you might even have been wondering where I was when you first rode up and the Sphinx seemed to be speaking to you.

Were you maybe wondering about that?

The Major stared, fascinated. He nodded.

Sure and why not, said Joe, and I was inside the Sphinx, that's all. It's too long a story to go into now but it has to do with tunnels of the past and lookouts people don't know about, and holes in the universe that are so mysterious they seem to be black, and other lives that affect our own even though those other lives seem to be gone and underground and forgotten to all appearances, even lost. But that's appearances only. They're there all right.

Joe looked up at the sky.

Here now, what's this? What moonglow was I referring to? Seems our gentle white goddess has just down and finished her tour for the night, making the black holes less black but leaving us in more darkness until dawn for sure.

What's that? asked the Major.

No more moon, said Joe. And speaking of that, we were talking about appearances and what's hidden and the apparent differences thereof, and Stern used to have a way of describing such things. He borrowed it from the Delphic oracle and it ran something like this. Summoned or unsummoned, the gods are there. Inside of us, it means. Calling themselves by all the names we can think up, some of which we recognize when the mirages come into focus at dawn, now and then when they do. Or in the middle of the night when everything's black and we also see things clearly for a change. Sometimes, for a moment anyway.

Joe smiled, gazing up at the head of the Sphinx.

I may be rambling now, Major, but that's only because the thought of Stern always sets my mind wandering and whisks me right off over time's dunes. A piece of personal dizziness, that's all. Fair enough?

The Major nodded, not at all sure what he was agreeing to anymore, his thoughts tumbling in utter confusion.

Right, said Joe. And it is odd how things can come around and come together. But I have another problem now and I'd like to tell you about it, and it's simply this.

Joe paused, turning his head to the side to cough. While the Major waited for Joe to continue he absentmindedly removed the heavy sniper's rifle that had been resting on his back. Then he lifted off the heavy bandoliers that were weighing down his shoulders. He also undid his web belt with its heavy load of ammunition and laid it on the stone, relieving the pressure on his kidneys.

Joe coughed again, his head still to the side. Numbly the Major went on pulling out weapons and laying them down, unencumbering himself. The automatic pistols appeared, small and large, and the various knives and daggers. When the Major was freed at last of all his weapons he stretched languidly, easily, sensuously. Joe glanced down at the small arsenal and cleared his throat.

Right. Now as I was saying, my problem is simply this. Bletchley has some kind of standing order out to kill me and I don't see any need for it, but to get the order changed I have to talk to Bletchley, and I can't arrange that by myself. I can't just give him a ring and ask for a chat, because the way things are now he probably wouldn't get the call and certainly wouldn't show up. The fellows who take his orders would.

Those Monks, damn them. See what I mean?

The Major nodded.

Therefore I'd take it ever so kindly, said Joe, if you could arrange a meeting for me with Bletchley. Surely you know I'm not going to go blasting my way out of Egypt these days, couldn't, even if I had a mind to.

Bletchley's my star this night and I have to follow his lead. I need his approval to keep my in transit status, and I think I could get it if I could talk to him. So what do you think? Could you discuss it with your Colonel before the night's out? The way things are at the moment I'm short on time. Officially dead as a matter of fact, which isn't a promising condition to be in for long. Makes me uneasy, naturally.

The Major found his tongue at last.

What do you mean, you're officially dead?

I mean, according to the Monks, said Joe. According to official Monkish reality. So, can you do this and speak to your Colonel for me?

But what if I did? asked the Major. What arguments could I give him for stepping in? Bletchley's operations belong to Bletchley. The Colonel can't interfere for no reason.

True enough, said Joe, but as I see it it's not so much a matter of argument as it is of points of interest, and those interests are Colly for one and Stern for another and me for a third. Your Colonel, like Bletchley, must have respected Stern a great deal, that's a given for anyone who knew the man. And as for Colly, well I wouldn't doubt they both loved Colly, mysterious presence that he always was. And Colly was my brother, which is by way of slipping me into this configuration.

What? Colly was your brother?

Yes, that's who he was. There were a lot of us to begin with and Colly was the next to the last, and I'm the last. But that's an aside. The points of interest here are the Colly and the Stern and only lastly me.

The Major shook his head, completely bewildered.

None of this makes any sense, he muttered.

Joe smiled.

It doesn't?

No. I have no idea what you're talking about most of the time.

Joe smiled more broadly.

You don't?

No. The Delphic oracle and the Sphinx and moonglow, and Colly and Stern and you? What does it all add up to? I just can't seem to get my hands on it.

Joe laughed.

Oh is that all. Well I wouldn't worry too much about that. There seem to be all kinds of things we can't get our hands on in life. What we have to ask ourselves is, does the intangible thing in question have a certain ring to it?

A ring?

Yes. As with a bell mainly, but also as with a circle. Sometimes that seems to be as close as we can get.

I'm lost, muttered the Major.

Joe laughed.

Then just think of everything as being a tentative arrangement for the moment, a set of circumstances that never stops shifting around, confusing only because it is just for the moment. Like you and me, say, with our in transit status in a universe that's also in transit. Or a meeting with Bletchley, say. That's just another tentative thing. He could always change his mind or he could refuse outright.

And what if he did refuse? asked the Major. What would you do then?

Joe shrugged. He looked down at his hands.

Don't know, do I. Liffy used to talk about sitting in empty railway stations late at night, hungry and tired and never sure when a train might show up. Never sure where it might be going, if it did.

Liffy?

Joe opened his hands and looked at them.

Better we don't talk about him. Some things are just too painful and enormous to get ahold of right away, and Liffy's death is one of them for me.

The Major was stunned.

Liffy? Dead?

Yes, God bless him.

But that's terrible. How did it happen?

He was shot and bayoneted and blown up and gassed and knifed and beaten and starved and buried alive and burned to ashes, and the ashes were scattered on the waters of the Nile.

What?

Dead, that's all.

But who killed him?

The war? Hitler? Some army or other? I don't know.

But why?

On the face of it, a case of mistaken identity. But that doesn't tell us much because so many identities are always being mistaken in life. Why then, beneath it all? Simply because of what he was.

I don't understand. What was he?

A sound as clear as a golden bell, whispered Joe. A sound as of a mighty rushing wind. There all right, but never something you could get your hands on.

What?

Yes, that was him. And truly, Major, your question is one that ought to be asked here in the lap of the Sphinx, for the answer to it is the very same answer that solved the riddle of the Sphinx three thousand years ago. Remember how the riddle went? What walks on four legs in the morning, on two at midday, and on three in the evening? And the answer then was a man, first as a baby crawling, then strong in his years, then old with his cane. So a man is the answer to the ancient riddle, now as then and forever. A human being is the answer, no more and no less, and that's why Liffy was killed. Because he was human and because he was good, and it's as simple as that and just as complex.

Joe gazed down at the crumbling stone at his feet.

Major? I need you to help me. Will you do that?

If I can.

Good. I'll call you at noon. You won't be able to speak freely on the phone, but if you use the word Sphinx when we talk, I'll take it to mean there really is a meeting on with Bletchley. And if you don't use the word, no matter what you say, I'll take it to mean there's not going to be any meeting and I'm being set up to be killed. . . . All right? Just between the two of us?

Yes.

Joe talked then about many things, but especially about Stern and himself and Liffy. Finally he rose and put out his hand.

In any case, Major, I appreciate you coming here no matter how it turns out, and I'm glad we had a chance to listen to the Delphic oracle in the moonglow and hear what the Sphinx had to say, and refresh ourselves by recalling Colly and Stern and Liffy. Things do have a way of being passed along, don't they?

Despite even adverse winds and sunspots. Well then. . . .

Joe slipped down to the ground and was quickly gone in the darkness, leaving the Major naked of weapons and lost in thought.

. . . Liffy impersonating Joe at the houseboat and his reasons for doing so . . . Joe's mysterious connections with Stern and others over the years . . . Liffy's feelings for Stern and . . .

But what does it all mean? wondered the Major, gazing up at the calm and battered face of the Sphinx.

***

A light burned in the back of the Colonel's bungalow. The Major went in through the gate and walked down the path to the kitchen door, where he rapped lightly. A voice was humming inside. The door opened.

Morning, Harry.

Morning, sir.

Cup of tea?

Thank you.

He sat at the small kitchen table, his head tipped sideways under an overhanging shelf, while the Colonel busied himself at the other end of the room near the stove. Tipsy unpainted cupboards made from packing-case lumber lurched along the crowded walls of the narrow kitchen, products of the Colonel's fondness for carpentry in his off-duty hours. Every shelf in the cluttered kitchen was askew and the cabinet doors all hung ajar, unable to close. The unpainted kitchen table was heaped with the Colonel's customary assortment of scholarly books on early Islamic calligraphy, medieval Jewish mysticism, the Bahai sect, Persian miniatures, Jerusalem at the time of the Second Temple, archeological finds in central Anatolia. A plate of muffins was squeezed in beside the books and the Major pinched one.

Harder than a paw of the Sphinx, he thought. The Colonel, happily banging around in the corner, interrupted his humming to call out over his shoulder.

Piece of cheese to go with your muffin, Harry?

No thank you, sir.

The Colonel came ambling over and cups and saucers clattered down on the table. He wandered off once more and the Major just had time to pluck the wing of a fly out of his cup before the Colonel came ambling back with the teapot, still merrily humming to himself and doing a sort of bearish dance as he slowly shuffled up and down the narrow room on his false leg.

One step forward and a feint to the side, two steps backward and a feint to the side. Feint and shuffle and one and two, the Colonel turning around to make some backward headway and sidling up to the table more or less rumpside first. One step forward and two steps backward.

The Colonel's Bolshie Trot, as it was called, after Lenin's famous description of the backward advance of historical necessity in a world that seemed to care nothing at all about necessity, historical or otherwise, and preferred to do its advancing hindside first, as the Colonel said, both for protection and in order to keep its eye on the past. A dance indulged in by the Colonel only before breakfast and late at night, rarely, when he had drunk too much brandy.

In his hand the Colonel was carrying a chunk of hard white decaying matter, greasy and crumbling. A vague smile drifted across his face as he popped a piece of it into his mouth and stood beside the table, swaying on his false leg, gazing down at his hand.

Cheese, he muttered, chewing thoughtfully. Do you realize that's what we all must have looked like once upon a time, back when the protein molecules were getting started on this bit of stray matter we call the earth? Makes you think all right, doesn't it. Did you say you wanted a piece, Harry?

I think not.

No? Well the truth is breakfast has always been my best meal. Any old thing in the cupboard tastes delicious and the first pipe tastes delicious and I'm ready to take on the world. But then a half-hour later I begin to creak and wheeze and feel as if I weighed a thousand pounds, and that's it for me for the day.

Cheese to cheese. Makes you think all right.

The Colonel hadn't gotten around to dressing yet. He was wearing huge baggy underdrawers that hung down to his knees and one khaki sock, on his real foot, with a large hole in the toe. His undershirt was so poorly darned in so many places it gave his upper torso the appearance of a mass of poorly healed wounds. A faded old yachting cap was perched on the side of his head, and even though most of his body was covered, he looked far more naked than any unmutilated man ever could.

Feint and shuffle, one and two. Humming happily, the Colonel sat down at the table.

Nice out, Harry?

Clear, cool, no wind.

Lovely, yes. Best time of the day really. People haven't had time to muck up the camp and the air's sweet and everything tastes delicious. Later it's all just one stale pipe. No cheese for you?

Not at the moment, thank you.

No? Well the tea's almost ready. Been out for an early turn in the desert, have you?

The Major nodded, waiting. The Colonel maneuvered his false leg into a more comfortable position and poured tea. After they had added sugar and stirred, and sipped, the Colonel fell to studying the plate of muffins on the table. He pinched one.

Hm. I thought I'd picked those up this week, but it must have been last week.

The Colonel glanced at one of the open books on the table and raised his eyes.

Well now. You've been to consult the Sphinx?

He's Colly's brother, the Major blurted out.

What?

Colly's brother, repeated the Major. Our Colly's younger brother.

The Colonel's eyes lit up.

Is that true?

Yes.

What's his name?

Joe. Joe O'Sullivan Beare. He still uses the full family name. From the Aran Islands by way of a dozen years in Palestine and more recently a tour in America as the shaman of an Indian tribe in the Southwest.

He seems to know everyone from his days in Palestine. Stern and Maud and all kinds of people Stern used to work with years ago. I haven't heard of most of them but you probably have.

The Colonel's eyes flickered brightly.

Well well well, and here's more than a chapter or two from the past turning up unexpectedly. . . Colly's brother, of all people. What's he like?

Nimble, speaks quickly sometimes, seems to have an odd way of expressing himself. It's hard to describe.

The Colonel beamed.

As if things were a bit off-balance, perhaps? As if you were in a small boat at sea and the sky and the land and the water were all moving around? Up, down, sideways, never quite still?

The Major nodded eagerly.

That's it exactly. As if nothing were ever able to find a safe place for itself.

The Colonel laughed.

Colly, on the nose. His brother must be just like him.

And there's also something strange about the way he views time, continued the Major. It seems to be all of a piece to him with no past and present and future particularly, just one big sea with us upon it. The dead, for example. No one seems to be really dead to him. But it's not as if they were still out there somewhere, or off somewhere, it's very different from that. It's much more concrete and seems to do with thinking of them as being within us, a part of us, not dead in that sense. Alive because we've known them and therefore they're a part of us.

Hm. You had that feeling with Colly sometimes, but not as much as with his brother, apparently.

The Colonel smiled.

You were taken with him, weren't you?

I suppose I was.

Yes, well, it's not surprising. Colly was a man of great charm. There was something out of the ordinary to him, another dimension. And if his brother is like him only more so, and meeting him for the first time at the Sphinx as you did, under a full moon . . .

The Colonel broke off, humming happily to himself.

Colly's brother, he murmured. How astonishing.

He gazed down at the crumbling piece of cheese in his hand.

Yes, curious. What does he want?

A meeting with Bletchley.

That's all?

Yes, that's all. He says Bletchley has a standing order out to kill him, so he can't arrange a meeting by himself.

Bletchley? A standing order to kill Colly's brother?

Yes, and Liffy's already dead. Killed because he was mistaken for Joe.

The Colonel was shocked.

What?

Yes.

But that's not right. That's not right at all.

It certainly isn't. And Ahmad is also dead. The desk clerk at the Hotel Babylon.

Ahmad? But he was a delightful fellow, perfectly harmless. What's going on here?

And a young man named Cohen, said the Major. David Cohen.

Of the Cairo Cohens? Cohen's Optiks?

Yes. He was a Zionist agent apparently, and a close friend of Stern.

Well of course he was a friend of Stern, all the Cohens were. That goes way back to Stern's father's time. But what in God's name is going on here? Has Bletchley lost his mind? How could his men have mistaken Liffy for Joe?

It seems Liffy was passing himself off as Joe. On purpose.

Why?

To give Joe time to recover after the hand-grenade explosion and Stern's death. To give Joe time, a chance, to save himself.

The Colonel frowned.

Why did Liffy do that?

Because Joe knew Stern so well and Liffy felt Stern's life was. . . what shall I say? Of great importance somehow. More important to him, to Liffy, than anything else. Even more important than his own life.

Is that true?

Yes.

And Ahmad and young Cohen? Why were they killed?

Because they'd talked to Joe about something, or at least the Monastery thought they had.

The Colonel frowned deeply and poked at his pipe, his mouth working. The Major had no idea what connections with the past he was making, and he knew it was useless to ask. Finally the Colonel heaved himself forward and planted both elbows on the table.

So Liffy sacrificed himself in order to save Joe, is that it?

Yes.

But why? What's it got to do with Stern? I don't understand what you're trying to tell me.

Well I don't have it too clearly in my own mind yet. But it seems that above and beyond whatever Joe was trying to find out about Stern, above and beyond all that, it seems Liffy felt that Stern, Stern's life . . .

Well it's hard to describe without sounding mystical.

The Colonel's tone was suddenly curt, impatient.

Never mind how it sounds, Harry. Just say it.

Well it seems Liffy felt there was some kind of special significance to Stern's life. In his peculiar background and his sufferings and his failures, in the ambiguities and paradoxes of the man. That just all of it, everything having to do with Stern, added up to a different kind of life. Something more than . . .

The Major gazed into his teacup.

. . . It's almost as if to them, to Joe and Liffy and the other people Joe spoke of . . . almost as if Stern's life is a kind of tale of all our hopes and failures. Living and trying as he did, failing and dying as he did.

Ideals that may lead to disaster and yet still contain within them . . . Oh I don't know what.

A clock clicked in the stillness. The Colonel reached out and touched the Major's arm, a kindly gesture.

Never be afraid how anything sounds, Harry. A good deal of what's in these books of mine could be called mystical, or could have been once. It's just another word we use for things we don't understand very well, things we don't understand. To somebody else those same things might be commonplace, as routine as the most routine matters are to us. People have different realities, as Stern used to say, and there are many of them going on simultaneously for all of us, and the fact that one is true doesn't make any of the others less true. . . . As for Stern, he was a man who had a powerful effect on anyone who knew him. You instinctively felt great affection for him, even love, you couldn't help it. Yet at the same time there was a kind of indefinable fear you knew when you were with him, a fear that seemed to come from being in the presence of emotions so profoundly contradictory they could never be resolved.

Something suggestive of the eternal conflicts in man, the mixture of the divine and the profane, holiness crossed with our dark natures and all of it pushed, pushed . . . because that's the man Stern was. . . .

The Colonel nodded. He leaned back and went to work on his pipe.

You were saying, Harry?

Well that's all, really. Liffy felt Joe had to live on as a witness to Stern's life. As Liffy himself expressed it to Joe, so that one man at least would know, no matter what the war brings . . .

A witness, murmured the Colonel. Yes, I see. And of course at the time Liffy said that, Joe didn't realize what Liffy was telling him? What Liffy intended to do?

No, not at all. He can hardly mention Liffy's name now without breaking down. He just goes to pieces and I'm sure that's not like him. Obviously he's a man of great discipline.

Yes yes, I understand, said the Colonel. It's a terrible burden for Joe and he knows it full well and he knows it will always be that way. But how strange this all is. . . . Stern, Joe, Liffy. . . . The three of them coming from their various corners of the world to have their fates crossed here, in front of us. Yes. . . .

The clock clicked. A match was struck in the stillness. The Major smelled pipe smoke and looked up from his teacup.

Well, what do you think?

The Colonel puffed.

I think I'd like to hear it all from the beginning, everything that happened out there at the Sphinx tonight.

So I'll know where I stand when I speak to Bletchley. But also, frankly, for my own reasons.

***

The grayness of dawn had come to the windows by the time the Major finished his account. Both men looked exhausted as they faced each other across the kitchen table, but in fact neither one of them felt tired at all. Suddenly, the Colonel slammed his fist down on the table.

Whatley, he exclaimed, referring to the officer who was chief of operations at the Monastery, Bletchley's second in command.

Whatley, he repeated angrily. It's his doing, I'm sure of it. Bletchley must have turned the case over to him and gone on to other things, and Whatley's had his gunmen out running around pushing people off roofs and pushing them in front of lorries and shooting up houseboats. Damn Whatley. Damnable little snit. Bletchley has always spent most of his time in the field trying to know his agents, almost compulsively conscientious about it, and what does Whatley do out there at the Monastery when he's left in charge? What does he do, I ask you?

The Major lowered his eyes. He had heard others speak of Whatley with disgust, but never the Colonel.

Normally the Colonel was much too circumspect to speak openly of the defects of a fellow field grade officer.

Dress-ups, hissed the Colonel. That's Whatley's infernal game. Leave him alone for a minute out there in the desert and he slips into a cowl and habit and ties an old piece of rope around his waist and pretends he's a militant monk from the Dark Ages, or worse, some sort of fourth-century abbot doing battle over doctrinal disputes in the early days of Christianity. Pretends he's plotting his way through the intricacies of the Arian controversy, or some such nonsense. Actually keeps a map on the wall showing which parts of Europe and North Africa are on the side of the angels, his side, and which parts are on the side of Arius and the devil. Lucifer and the heresiarchs in one camp, the true defenders of the faith in the other.

Arianism and the Arian heresy today? God and His Son are the same substance? Are not the same substance? What rubbish. Go back far enough and we're all the same substance, just so much cheese.

And how did Whatley ever arrive at these grandiose delusions in the first place? Simply because Arian sounds the same as Aryan? I thought only schizophrenics and poets were supposed to be afflicted with sound-alike fantasies?

Malicious nonsense, muttered the Colonel, all of it. Whatley and his incense and his censers and candles and his organs booming out Bach's Mass in B Minor, and acolytes and terrified novices tiptoeing back and forth and aides passing themselves off as monks-in-waiting. Standing directives from faceless bishops and indulgences handed out in the form of overnight passes to the fleshpots of Cairo, staff rooms disguished as gloomy chapels and orders from the desert to kill. Real orders to kill from the heart of the wasteland, blandly referred to as excommunication with extreme prejudice.

Extreme what? Madness is more like it, the vicious madness of dress-ups. What is it about men that makes them do that in wartime, or any time? Weren't they able to get enough of it as children, this strutting and skulking and prancing around in costumes? Make-believe is horrible. War isn't a little boy's dress-up dreams come true. It isn't meant to give grown men the chance to be little boys running riot in the nursery.

The Colonel glared, fuming.

Or at least it shouldn't be. Damn that Whatley and his kind. Damn him to hell with his parchment maps and his toys and costumes and his incense and organ music, his monks-in-waiting tiptoeing in and out with candles. Yes Your Grace, No Your Grace, Up-my-arse-with-pleasure Your Grace. The truth is that man always wanted to live in the fourth century or whatever it is, and that's exactly what he's doing.

Reveling in the obedience and piety and obscurantism of the Dark Ages, righteous as he can be as he piously fasts in some filthy hole beneath the Monastery which he pretends was once St Anthony's cell, joyously having himself flagellated before he issues another righteous order of excommunication, murder in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost.

Piety and power, muttered the Colonel. Self-righteous murder and that repulsive flagellation that goes with it. All power to the nursery, in our age. All power to the gruesome little boy who dizzily sniffs his forefinger and giggles over his playthings.

The Colonel's face grew even darker.

And the other side's unspeakably worse. At least we don't honor these practices officially and make them into institutions by handing out habits as regular issue, the way the Nazis hand out black uniforms and black jackboots and death's-head insignias. Even Whatley can't begin to compare to that Nazi crowd with their insatiable need for blackness. They just keep lusting backward into the past until they've become so many packs of animals loping around in the primeval gloom. Smell blood and you snap at it.

Massacre enough and the beast inside may be able to know peace for a moment or two, with the help of some Bach or Mozart of course. Slaughter enough and you have the illusion of immortality because everybody around you is dying.

A civilized people, the Germans. Some of the finest music in the history of the species served up to soothe the beast in Western culture, a beast the Germans just happen to know a great deal about.

Damn Germans, damn Whatley, damn. Nothing's as simple as it used to be, or maybe it's just the opposite. Maybe everything's as simple as it used to be, sadly for us. . . . But the damn problem is, Whatley's a good staff officer when he's not playing his games, which is why Bletchley probably couldn't get rid of him even if he wanted to. Whatley's very diligent and thorough and hardworking, not unlike the Germans. . . .

The Colonel paused.

I wonder why those traits always have to bring the Germans to mind today? Thorough . . . diligent . . .

those traits seem to have become dangerous somehow in our century. As if there's no room anymore for the wobbly human factor. Automatons seem to be what society wants today. By the numbers, one two three. . . . Whatley will even tell you he's not a very aggressive man by nature. Just competitive. . . .

The Colonel paused again

It's true he used to be a good sportsman before he lost his right arm. . . .

A sudden change came over the Colonel. His chest sank and he groaned, looking more naked than ever in his mended undershirt and his faded yachting cap. He reached down to move his false leg and a look of resignation settled over his face.

Damn, he muttered, that's it for me. I've had my early morning fling at being defiant and ready for anything. From now on I take what comes and deal with it in whatever plodding way I can. Breakfast is over.

The Colonel looked at his watch.

Time to get cleaned up. I'll call Bletchley as soon as I get to the office. I can't imagine there'd be any difficulty about a meeting with Joe. Bletchley was a great fan of Colly's after all, and it must have been Bletchley who came across Joe's name in Stern's file in the first place and decided to get him over here from America. Nor can it be a coincidence that he assigned Colly's old cover to Joe, resurrecting this notion of a Purple Seven Armenian. Bletchley had to know what he was doing, and I can't imagine he'd want to give Joe serious trouble now. Maybe he has to straighten some things out with him, but surely it can't have anything to do with the way Whatley's been going about matters.

The Colonel rummaged around cleaning out his pipe.

Oh by the way, Harry. I assume you had your bad ear turned this way when I was going on about Whatley a moment ago. Fellow officer and so forth.

Didn't hear a word, Colonel.

Yes. Well then....

The Major was ready to leave but he hesitated. He had the impression the Colonel wasn't quite finished.

Was there anything else, sir?

The Colonel fumbled with his pipe.

No not really. I was just . . .

The Colonel glanced at the pipe in his hands and put it down on the table, an emphatic motion. There was an odd mixture of regret and wistfulness in his face, something the Major wasn't used to. In his shapeless underwear and his old yachting cap, the Colonel suddenly looked forlorn.

Silence, the Colonel muttered. . . . Why does there have to be so much silence in our lives?

He looked up at the Major.

Did I ever tell you I just missed being given command of the Monastery? It was the plum of course, but .

. .

The Major shook his head and waited. Something about the Stern case, he realized, had released a profound surge of emotion in the Colonel.

But I didn't get it, muttered the Colonel. It happened a few years ago. I had the background for it, that wasn't in doubt, and I even had this new false leg as an added qualification. . . .

The Colonel attempted a smile, a sad expression.

But I didn't get it in the end. I wasn't considered determined enough, whatever that's supposed to mean.

A polite way of saying ruthless, I suppose. So they decided to go with Bletchley even though this wasn't the area he knew, and they gave him Whatley as a deputy because Whatley's so thorough, and I was given the Waterboys instead. More your line, they said. Pretty much the traditional kind of operations and a much larger staff and all the ancillary services, which you can handle. . . . Not that Bletchley didn't deserve the job, he did. He's good and no one would deny he's conscientious, and they might have been right about me when it comes to the sort of work the Monastery does. But still. . . .

The Colonel's voice trailed off. He gazed down at the table and shook his head.

Anyway, Bletchley got the Monastery and he saw a lot more of Stern after that than I did. And he also saw a good deal more of Colly, whom he seemed to take a particular liking to, and so . . .

The Colonel's hand slowly went out to the chunk of cheese on the table. He picked up a small piece, toying with it, the crumbs spilling through his fingers.

Enigma, he thought all at once, the idea coming to him from nowhere. That's what's behind all of this.

Somehow Stern found out about Enigma. . . . Of course, that was his Polish story. And Bletchley found out Stern knew and he dug Joe's name out of Stern's files, Colly's brother, of course, and he got Joe over here and gave him Colly's old identity and . . . But how did Bletchley find out about Stern? There's no one here who . . .

Unless Stern had told someone, thought the Colonel . . . and that someone had spoken to Bletchley.

The Colonel stared at the table. If that was what had happened and Joe knew the truth, there was simply no way Bletchley could let him go now. Joe could never leave Cairo, it was out of the question. Bletchley had no choice in the matter. He would agree to a meeting and then he would have to . . . Well maybe they were right to have given him the job, thought the Colonel. Maybe he is better fitted for it than I am, more determined or whatever. After all, Colly's brother. . . .

The Major was still standing beside the kitchen table. The Colonel glanced up at him and smiled sadly.

He shrugged.

Just my mind wandering, he said, it has nothing to do with this. Anyway, I'll call Bletchley as soon as I get to the office and explain the situation. I'm sure he'll agree to a meeting.

The Major nodded eagerly.

Very good, sir.

Yes, well. . . .

The Colonel groaned and heaved himself up from the table. For a moment he stood there tottering on his false leg, getting his balance, gazing down at his books.

Well that's it for now, Harry, it's time to get on with the day. And I hate to say it but I already feel as if I weighed a thousand pounds. Somehow the good things in life always seem to be over almost before we knew they were there. . . .

***

The Major was at his desk when his private telephone rang exactly at noon. He picked it up and said hello.

A wandering minstrel here, Major. Any news of a meeting with the local pharaoh before the sun sets?

The Major gave Joe a time and a place.

After the sun sets, you say? Well that's all right with me. Most of my business seems to have been conducted at night since I've been in Cairo. Nature of the business maybe, wouldn't you say?

The Major laughed, adding that he was sorry the location of the meeting wouldn't be as dramatic as the Sphinx had been the night before.

No, well, we can't always have such sweeping views of the night-tide sky, now can we, Major? Life has to go on in its little ways and the Sphinx is just too big a concept for any of us to be visiting it every night.

Too big and then some, too hard to understand too. An inscrutable notion after all, like life and a lot of things. Until the appointed time and place then. . . .

The line went dead. The Major hung up the phone and looked across the room at the Colonel, who was sitting in the corner watching him. The Colonel nodded, rose.

That's it, said the Colonel. We've done what we could and it's up to Bletchley now.

The Colonel went limping back to his office.

Shameless, he thought, Harry using a private code like that right in front of me. The Sphinx, indeed. It's easy enough to understand how he was taken with Joe, but all the same charm isn't really what's wanted in wartime. It turns heads. . . .

And abruptly an image came to the Colonel from before the war, during the Arab revolt in Palestine. An image of Colly arriving at night at a Jewish outpost manned by settlers above Galilee, near the Lebanese border, Colly turning up in one of his disguises to train the settlers and to organize what would later become the Special Night Squads of the Palmach.

A taxi with its headlights off, its taillights on the front of the car to confuse the enemy. And Colly's two young future deputies, Dayan and Allon, approaching the mysterious taxi and seeing a small lean figure come jumping out of the car with two rifles and a Bible and a drum, an English-Hebrew dictionary and five gallons of New England rum.

Flair, thought the Colonel, there's no other word for it. Colly had flair. . . .

He smiled at the memory, then thought of Joe and lost his smile, recalling a saying Stern had once been fond of repeating.

The Panorama Has Moved.

Finished, he thought. What a shame. It's all over for Joe and Liffy died for nothing, but of course there can't be any other resolution to the Stern case. With the secret of Enigma at the heart of it, there's no other way. None. Bletchley can only do what has to be done. End the case and close the file with those terrible words, No surviving witnesses. But still. . . .

The Colonel closed his door and leaned against it, recalling the strange account of a voice that had come booming out of the Sphinx under a full moon.

. . . Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?

Well the Sphinx surely, thought the Colonel. The Sphinx finally, but which one out of all of them was really the Sphinx in the end? Or is everyone, finally. . . ?

-22-

Bernini's Bag

They sat on the narrow shaded balcony that opened off Maud's living room, on the far side of the building away from the fierce sinking sun, a promise of twilight gathering in the corners of the alley below.

. . . and when the Major let me know there was truly a meeting on with Bletchley, said Joe, I couldn't stop myself from doing a little dance in place for about five minutes. I tried to call you here but there was no answer, so I made my way back to the public garden where old Menelik's crypt lies buried, and I found a sheltered little spot to sit in the shade by the river, and that's what I did. Just sat and watched the currents and let my mind drift.

Joe's hair was wet from the shower he had just taken. His left ear was newly bandaged.

But it wasn't just anyplace by the Nile, he went on. It was the very same spot where Strongbow and old Menelik had once spent a silent afternoon together toward the end of their long lives, just before the First World War, the place where there had once been a cheap open-air restaurant with beautiful trellises and vines and hanging flowers, with a pool where ducks paddled and a cage where peacocks squawked, that very same rendezvous where Strongbow and old Menelik and Crazy Cohen had met for their dreaming and drinking bouts on Sunday afternoons so long ago, when they were three young men starting out. A place for forty-year conversations and then some, the same spot where a famous sign had stood years later in the midst of emptiness, all by itself in a vacant lot . . . THE PANORAMA HAS MOVED. And I guess I got to thinking about that sign and its worlds within worlds, and before I knew it I'd just dozed off to the murmuring spell of the river.

There hasn't been much sleep for me lately, he added, despite my being officially dead. . . . A case of the restless dead, I guess you'd have to call it.

Maud smiled.

Was that really where the sign used to be?

Oh that was the spot all right. Stern pointed it out to me when we were leaving the crypt that night. So I dozed off without meaning to, and by the time I woke up it was late afternoon, so I came straight here.

The Colonel told me I might have a visitor waiting for me at home. Oh Joe, I was so excited. I was sure it meant things were going to turn out all right for you.

And was that all he said?

Yes, but it was enough. I knew what it meant.

Well I'm glad you did, but it was still cryptic of him and that's the trouble with this business. Nobody says more than he has to and you miss a lot that way. Me, I just wanted to shout because I was alive again.

Maud laughed.

Can I get you something to eat? she asked. You must be starved.

I must be, but I don't feel it. I think I might have a drink though.

Have it then. Do you want me to get it?

No, don't bother yourself, I can manage. Where do you keep it?

In the kitchen. In the cabinet over the broom closet.

Swept away, said Joe, and disappeared inside.

Maud heard the cabinet door bang in the kitchen. It swelled and stuck sometimes in the heat, and then flew back against the wall unless you were expecting it. She heard Joe muttering to himself. Glass clinked and there was the sound of ice being broken out of an ice tray.

I forgot to mention the cabinet door, she said when he came back.

Joe smiled.

It makes a racket all right when there's somebody as clumsy as me around. It just goes to show I'm not cut out for this kind of work. The moment I feel a little safe I go crashing around as if I didn't have a care in the world.

He took a long drink from his glass and sat down on the low wall of the balcony. Maud was bent over her knitting. She spoke without looking up.

You seem to drink a lot.

I do, yes.

Does it help?

Yes, I'm afraid it does.

Well that's good then, I guess.

No it isn't, Maudie, it's a kind of weakness surely, but it eases things. So often the world seems such a dark and unyielding place that anything that stills the whispers inside seems to have its uses, even when you know it's a false quiet.

Could you stop, do you think?

If I had to. Human beings seem to be able to do about anything if they have to. Even those things they're doing right now out in the desert.

Maud bent her head, a sudden uneasiness coming over her. She was trying not to let him see her concern, but he felt it anyway.

Are you really sure Bletchley's going to let you leave?

Not sure, no, but it seems likely. If it were going to be otherwise I don't think he'd be handling it like this, giving me the afternoon off and telling your Colonel to give you the afternoon off, too.

But you said he's having you followed again.

Just company, Maudie. I suppose Bletchley doesn't want anything to happen to me between now and tonight. Besides, I was the one who gave him the opportunity by going back near Menelik's crypt, which I knew he'd be having watched. I didn't have to do that.

Why did you then?

So he'd know where I was today and know there was nothing to worry about.

But why didn't you just stay out of sight until tonight?

Well for one thing, I wouldn't have been able to see you then. And anyway, it seemed like the time had come to get some things out in the open. After the way the Major went on last night about Stern and Colly, Colly in particular, it just didn't seem that Bletchley would have gone to all the trouble it must have taken to get me over here, just to do me in in the end.

But does the Major's opinion count? Does it really matter that he happens to have such a high regard for Colly's memory? Bletchley may feel very differently about it. About everything.

He may, but I doubt it.

But how can you be sure?

I can't.

Well I don't like it, Joe. It frightens me. Bletchley has a reputation for being very single-minded.

As well he should be, in a job like that.

But people say he'll stop at nothing to get what he wants.

I know, he told me so himself once. He said he'd do anything to defeat the Germans. Anything, and he meant it.

But couldn't that mean you're still in danger?

I don't think so. Bletchley has always treated me in a certain way, which I can respect, and besides, there comes a time when you have to trust somebody. You play it alone as best you can for as long as you can, and then finally you have to come out and say, Look, this is all there is. This is all I am and I can't do anymore. Eventually that time comes, and I know it and Bletchley knows it and it's just that simple in the end.

It doesn't sound simple, said Maud in a low voice. Nothing about it sounds simple to me.

Joe watched her affectionately as she bent over her knitting needles. It was the second or third time she had brought it up. . . . Was it going to be all right? Was he going to be able to leave Cairo? Why would Bletchley let him go after all the things that had happened?

And of course Joe understood her concern. He knew she couldn't share the relief he felt, because she hadn't been through what he had experienced since his arrival in Cairo. For him, something was coming to an end and there was a finality about it, and the inevitable calm that brought. But not so for Maud.

Stern was dead and that was final, but the other parts of her life were still the same. It was all just as precarious for her as it had been a day or a month or a year ago, and their son Bernini was still in America and none of that had changed, and there was no finality, no ending. It looked now as if Joe would be able to escape and that was wonderful, a blessing, but everything else was still the same for her.

Except that the British might not be able to hold the line at El Alamein, which would mean packing up and leaving for Palestine and leaving the little place she had made for herself here ... moving again, returning to Palestine again after all these years. After all, she had only gone there once in her life and that was long ago when she had first met Joe in the crypt of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. So long ago now, when her dreams had still been young. . . .

Her hands came to rest in her lap, her head bowed. All at once she felt utterly exhausted. To move again? Couldn't anything ever stay the way it was for just a little while? . . . But then all at once Joe was standing behind her and she felt his hands on her shoulders, and even now, despite the years . . .

Joe? There's one thing you don't have to worry about, at least. The Major's feelings are every bit as strong as you think they are. I've heard him talk about Colly and all the rest and . . . well you see the Major, Harry and I, we're . . . close.

Are you? Well that's good, Maudie, I'm glad to hear it. It makes it so much better when there's someone to share with. . . . And I liked him too, for what that's worth.

He's not just the way he appears sometimes, she said. There are other sides to him. It's just that he's young and sometimes he romanticizes things and . . . well, he's young.

Joe smiled warmly.

And a good thing, too, for a man to be. As I recall, I moved along those lines once myself.

He nodded, smiling, then turned serious.

So you mustn't worry, my love. It's going to be all right, I know it. . . . And what were you thinking about just now, I wonder? Besides this good piece of news about Harry?

Oh. Oh I was thinking about Jerusalem. A friend there has written, asking if he can help in any way. He doesn't know what I do here, what I really do, but he said he could always find me a place in Jerusalem if I needed one.

Ah and that's just fine, Maudie. You have some very good friends who think of you.

I'm fortunate.

You are, but it's not by chance, you know that. People do such things because they know how much you've always cared, because you've taken the time to show them and it means a lot to them. It helps them. To them you're a still point, a touch of sureness and certainty in all the flux and turmoil.

She frowned.

A still point? I don't feel that way at all. I don't feel there's anything certain about my life. It's all been just one wrenching experience after another, and I haven't handled any of them very well.

Oh yes you have, Maudie, better than most of us ever do. You've worked hard to understand people and it shows. Just look at that little table inside the door. There are letters from all over the world there, people you've befriended through the years in one place or another, people who remember and want to stay in touch, because it helps them to do that.

People are so terribly uprooted in wartime, she said. They're scattered and frightened and they have to survive dreadful things.

Yes they are and yes they do, but in a way that's not just wartime. In a way that's what there always is, and you've been helping in your quiet way for a long time now. Stern mentioned it once in a letter he sent to Arizona. All those people who write to Maud from their little corners of the world, he said.

Could they ever manage half as well without her?

Well it was kind of him to say that but of course they could manage, and perfectly well.

No, not quite so well, and I suspect you know that. You do something special for them, Maudie. You honor the memories they have of whole parts of their lives, and in doing that you honor them. It's trust you give them and faith, the good things. They look to you for it and you give it to them, and that means a lot. The one truly dreadful thing is when people no longer have the faith to go on, when it seems to no longer matter whether they survive or not because nothing they can do is worthwhile and no one cares.

And that's when the smallest thing can make all the difference. I owe Maud a letter, she must be expecting a letter. She hasn't heard from me in months. When you're off somewhere and everything seems black and hopeless, even a thought as small as that one can be something to hold on to. Maybe even the difference between living and dying.

Pride, Maudie. When we have it it's no more than the air we breathe and the sun overhead. But when we don't have it, God have mercy. To give it to even one person is a beautiful thing, because what is it after all but the laying on of hands, the human act. What can be done when we learn to think about more than just ourselves. And you do that, Maudie, and people know it and feel it deep down.

How you do go on, she said.

Joe laughed.

And that's true too, talk's always been my affliction. Long thoughts standing around like pilgrims outside an oasis, leaning on their staves and restlessly waiting to be spoken to life. Talk, the poor man's gold. The thirsty man's water.

She looked up at him, her face suddenly serious.

Then tell me something, Joe? Why are the letters always from so far away? Why are they always from some distant place?

Ah well, because your life has been like that, I suppose. Because you've looked so hard for your place, and that's led to moving and to wandering.

Too much, she murmured. Too much, it seems. Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever find a place of my own, yet it's not something so special I want, not something unusual. . . . Well, someday maybe.

Of course someday, Maudie. After the war. There's no question you'll find it, no question at all.

She pushed back her hair.

Yes, she whispered. After the war. . . .

Joe felt her uneasiness. He was sitting on the low wall of the balcony again, looking out at the little buildings and the rooftops and the laundry hanging out to dry, not far from the little square with its neighborhood restaurant and its neighborhood café and its everyday people with their everyday concerns, that little place so far from the war where he had seen Stern sitting in the dust not too long ago.

In rags then, a beggar, a solemn quiet man sitting in the dust at the end of the day.

In the alley below, a little farther along, some children were playing. They had scratched figures on the hard baked earth of the alley, circles and squares, and they were following some complicated set of rules to advance from figure to figure, hopping on one leg. When one of the children reached the end he had to start again at the beginning. They were shouting and laughing as they played, but they also seemed to be going about it very intently.

I hope it's not some kind of war game, said Joe.

What's that?

The children playing down there.

Maud leaned forward and looked over the balcony. She smiled.

Don't you recognize it? It's Greek hopscotch.

Is it now? And how could they have learned that, I wonder?

Maud laughed.

I can't imagine. Some old Greek spinster must have taught them.

More likely a younger woman than that, given the leaping and hopping going on. But do you know them well then?

Yes, I know the family. Most of them are from the same family. That doorstep down there where the cat sleeps is the door to their kitchen. Is he there?

The cat? Yes indeed, soundly asleep. What's his name?

Homer. That's his place before dinner. The grandfather of the family lived in Turkey once and he likes to talk about it, and the children are fascinated by descriptions of any foreign place. I'm afraid I spend more time at their kitchen table than I should, they've practically adopted me. Sometimes the wife sneaks over here in the afternoon when I'm home and has a cigarette. She looks at my little mementos and imagines all sorts of grand things, having no idea how tattered my life has been. But then before long she has to leave again because of all the things she has to do . . . all the people who are waiting for her and need her.

Maud looked into the distance.

Sometimes when I leave their kitchen in the evening I take the long way around, strolling through the alleys and just listening to the sounds of the night, people talking in low voices and getting ready to go to bed. The soft yellow glow in the little windows always looks so inviting. I know the people inside may not be content with what they have, but that's never the feeling I have when I walk by.

She was silent for a moment.

I've been to see Anna, she said. It's very difficult for her because she and David were so close, just the two of them for so many years. And Stern going at the same time makes everything worse. But she's a strong person and I'm sure she'll manage. We've talked about some things that might make a difference.

Maud paused.

I'm not supposed to mention this, Anna wasn't supposed to say anything about it. . . . It seems Bletchley is being very helpful and doing a great deal for her, papers and money and so forth. It rather surprised me when she told me. It's not the kind of reputation he has at all.

No I guess it isn't, said Joe, but I'm certainly glad to hear it. Have you known her long?

No. I met the two of them once with Stern three or four months ago. At the time it seemed like an accidental meeting, but later I realized it wasn't. Stern had planned it of course, without telling either them or me. Anna and I figured that out.

Yes.

And I also intend to follow your suggestion about looking up Belle and Alice. I've already sent them a note explaining who I am and asking if I could come to call some evening. If there's time. If I'm still here.

That was thoughtful of you, Maudie. They haven't had many visitors in recent years and I know they'd appreciate it. They'll like you, and it would mean a lot to them because you knew Stern so well.

Good, she said, and fell to studying her knitting.

It's in the silences, he thought. When you're close to someone they speak to you in the silences and the feelings just tumble out.

But there was still one presence softly echoing through all their thoughts, a man who had to be spoken to life between them before they parted. And so as the darkness gathered, Joe told her about his last evening with Stern.

. . . and I realize, he concluded, there's no way for us to know, ever, whether that peace I saw in Stern's eyes in the end was because he was at peace with himself, finally, or simply because he saw the hand grenade coming . . . death. But we do know the last word he said before he spoke my name and struck me and saved my life.

Maud sat very still.

Yes, she whispered. Love. . . .

***

Joe muttered something about his glass. He walked inside and a light went on behind Maud. She heard him rattling around in the kitchen and then the light went off and he was back again, resting his hand on her shoulder before he moved away to sit on the low wall of the balcony.

Once Stern repeated something to me, she said, that I've never quite forgotten. It was an ancient Chinese account of caravans in the Gobi desert, of all things. He'd come across it in some obscure book he was reading, and I suppose the description has stayed with me because the images seemed so haunting. It was written about two thousand years ago, he said. Anyway, it went something like this.

***

A region of sudden sandstorms and terrifying visions. Rivers disappear overnight, landmarks go with the wind, the sun sinks at midday. A timeless nonexistent land meant to plague the mind with its mirages.

But the most dangerous thing that must be mentioned is the caravans that appear at any moment on the horizon, there to drift uncertainly for minutes or days or years. Now they are near, now far, now just as assuredly they are gone. The camel drivers are aloof and silent, undistinguishable, men of some distant race. But the men they serve, the leaders of the caravans, are truly frightening. They wear odd costumes, their eyes gleam, they come from every corner of the world.

These men, in sum, are the secret agents who have always given the authorities so much to fear.

They represent the princes and despots of a thousand lawless regions.

Or is it perhaps that they represent no one at all? Is that why their aspects make us tremble? In any case we know only that this is their meeting place, the unmarked crossroads where they mingle and separate and wander on their way.

As for where they go and why, we cannot be sure of such things. There are no tracks in such a barren waste. The sandstorms blow, the sun sinks, rivers disappear, and their camels are lost in darkness. Therefore the truth must be that the routes of such men are untraceable, their missions unknowable, their ultimate destinations as invisible as the wind.

If the Son of Heaven is to continue to rule with integrity, we must defend our borders at all costs from such men.

***

Maud turned to Joe.

Thus an ancient Chinese description of the Gobi desert . . . the unknown . . . written two thousand years ago.

She smiled sadly.

But that's enough of that. Let's not talk about Stern anymore. Life is always a gift of faces and a gift of tongues, and I don't mean just those of others. I mean our own. . . . All the faces we're given in the course of a lifetime . . . and all the many tongues we learn to speak in.

***

It's curious you should use those words to describe life, said Joe. I used them myself just last night when I was talking about Liffy. What an odd coincidence.

Maud looked thoughtful, searching her memory. Suddenly she smiled.

It's a coincidence, but I don't know how odd it is. We were together when we first heard those words.

We were?

Maud beamed, she was so pleased she had remembered. She laughed.

Yes. It was in Jerusalem but we never knew who said it. We'd just come back from the Sinai and it was our first evening in Jerusalem and we went for a walk in the Old City. And it was crowded and noisy and so confusing after the desert, overwhelming even. Then all at once there was a great commotion in front of us and we couldn't move. Don't you remember?

Joe was smiling.

Yes, I do now.

It had something to do with a donkey, said Maud. Either a donkey had pitched his load or kicked someone or was just braying at the sky and wouldn't move, something like that, and right away everybody was pressing in and shouting and waving their arms and yelling in all their different languages, every conceivable kind of person, the way it is in the Old City. All those milling throngs of people who look as if they might have lived a thousand years ago or two or three thousand years ago, all of them shouting and waving their arms and yelling as if the world were coming to an end. Remember?

Joe nodded, smiling.

Yes.

And that was when it happened, said Maud. It was just a voice near us, just another voice in the crowd, but there was a yearning and a reverence in the words that rose above everything else and carried to us, part prayer, part anguish, part hope. And clear somehow, so very clear. . . . O Jerusalem. O gift of faces, o gift of tongues . . . remember?

Ah yes. Laughter and shouts and a donkey braying to the heavens and the chaos of life on every side, and a clear voice in the midst of the chaos which we could hear, the two of us just rejoicing in all of it. It was one of those beautiful moments all right, one of those rare precious moments that make it all worthwhile and should never be lost, should always be passed on. . . . Must always be passed on.

So you know what I intend to do someday, Maudie? Someday I'm going to tell Bernini all about this, every last detail of it. Liffy with his miraculous disguises and Ahmad with his secret closet, and me with them in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. And going back, Strongbow with his magnifying glass for seeing through the ages and old Menelik with his underground musicales and Crazy Cohen with his back-to-back dreams in sevens, the three of them feasting away the last century in an oasis called the Panorama. And later on, Half-Crazy Cohen and Ahmad père out on the Nile with the Sisters drinking champagne from cups of pure moonlight, and later still, Big Belle and Little Alice playing their bassoon and harpsichord in a timeless shadowy moonroom while keeping watch on the river. And David and Anna dreaming their way to Jerusalem beneath a motionless clock in the dusty back room of Cohen's Optiks. And before them, another Cohen and another Ahmad and Stern striding down the amazing sidewalks of life, three kings of the Orient of old, the one with his oboe and the other with his dented trombone and above all Stern, that one . . . alone with his violin in the eye of the Sphinx in the last darkness before dawn, soaring with all our tales of tragedy and yearning.

Rich music, Maudie, the whole of it circular and unchronicled and calmly contradictory, suggesting infinity, and the tales themselves no less preposterous than true things always are. So why not a grand collection of them for that old white canvas bag Bernini always seems to have with him over there in New York? A little of this and a little of that always carefully tucked away in that shapeless old white canvas thing, like a shopping bag of life. But maybe Bernini's kingdom too in a way, at least that seems to be how he thinks of it. Nothing in it really, just his treasures, as he calls them. . . . So yes, I'd like to think of him roaming around over there in the New World someday with this legacy of tales from the Old, rich music to carry with him always, now that he's just starting out on his journey.

Things he can understand straightaway, after all. Jokes and riddles and scraps of rhymes a lad can take to heart and make his own.

Joe laughed in the darkness.

Yes Maudie, I do like it. . . . It has a ring to it, Bernini's bag. A sound that can't be mistaken. . . .

***

They talked of other things, the time drifting and softly slipping away in the night. They talked and fell silent and finally Joe rose and she followed him inside, where he stood looking down at her little mementos.

You'll take care, Joe, won't you? You're very precious to me.

I know, I feel the same way, Maudie. I always have. So you take care too and someday there'll be another time, someday after the war. I do know it, Maudie. . . .

He picked up her seashell, the one she had saved from the oasis on the Gulf of Aqaba where they had gone when they were young, long ago in the beginning of love. He put the seashell to his ear and listened, his eyes closed, listening and listening, then replaced it. And held her and kissed her and looked into her eyes, and was gone.

Maud stood watching the door for a time, as if it might open again. Then she wandered back to the balcony and sat in the darkness with the seashell in her hands, gazing out at the little lights in the night and thinking of many things, a world of faces and voices welling up before her under the stars. And every so often she put the seashell to her ear and listened as Joe had done, hearing once more the soft familiar roar of the sea, the quiet murmur of waves forever caressing the worn sands of memory . . . breaking and washing smooth the sands . . . bare the shores.

Tides echoing in the turnings of the all-healing sea. As Stern had once said, the closest we ever come to the sounds of infinity. . . . Echoing now from the tiny universe in her hand, these soft tides and these ancient waves of all that was and would be. . . .

***

Bernini's bag, she thought much later, still cradling the seashell in her hands, still cherishing the shadowy whiteness of its memories against the night.

Yes, Joe's right, she thought. Bernini would love it if only Joe could have a chance someday to pass on those worlds he's known. Jokes and riddles and scraps of rhymes . . . rich music on the shores and tales suggesting infinity. . . . Oh yes, Bernini would love every single whisper of it, every last whisper from a beginning that never was, to an end that will never be. If only Joe could have the chance. If only. . . .

For of course the Colonel had said more that afternoon than she had told Joe. The Colonel had called her into his office as she was leaving and closed the door and taken her hands in his, holding them tightly, something he had never done before. And when he had quietly spoken his few words, trying to help as best he could, she had heard the sorrow in his voice and had understood what he was telling her about Joe, and about Bletchley and what would happen now.

***

. . . maybe tonight, Maud, we ought to think of something Liffy used to say. He used to say miracles happen all the time, it's just that we don't raise our eyes to look for them. Well you and I know words are easy and life never is, but Liffy knew that too and he knew it as well as anyone, but still he went on trying to look for the miracles. He always tried to see more and feel more, and so for him, miracles did happen all the time. They did. . . .

In the darkness of her balcony, Maud suddenly pushed away her tears and held up her seashell to the stars, whispering.

It's yours. It's a part of you too and so is Bernini, and so is Joe. And how I wish . . .

-23-

Nile Echoes

An empty street corner with a single streetlamp casting a small circle of weak light. A distant clock striking the hour.

Five minutes passed.

A rickety old-fashioned delivery van came rattling out of the darkness, so old it might once have served as an ambulance in the First World War, so dilapidated it might once have been on permanent tour through the rutted back streets of greater Cairo, its bell clanging pied-piperly, its large awkward owner wistfully offering freshly cooked fish and chips at modest and movable prices.

The small van came sputtering in from the night, its cream-colored side panels recently painted to obliterate any hint of that bright green lettering that had once announced the approach of the fabled Ahmadmobile. The van shuddered and heaved to a stop in the shadows beyond the corner, near a darkened colonnade that ran the length of a block of shops. A small man, no more than a shadow himself, came ducking out of the colonnade and quickly slipped into the van beside the driver.

Bletchley nodded, keeping both hands on the steering wheel.

Evening, he said.

Evening, said Joe.

A match suddenly flared, illuminating the interior of the driver's cab. Joe lighting a cigarette.

There's no one in back, murmured Bletchley, still staring straight ahead.

I can see that, said Joe, but I was doing it more for the sake of your posse scattered up and down the street. Who in God's name do they think I am anyway? Some desperado from Tombstone out to hijack the Suez Canal? I've never seen such elaborate precautions.

Perilous times, murmured Bletchley.

And I believe it, and that's why I lit the match. So your cavalry could see I'm empty-handed and not holding a sword over your head, heaven help us. Sword of justice, I guess they'd call it in Tombstone.

Bletchley snorted noisily and threw back his head, breaking into a braying sound. . . . Bletchley's laughter, Joe reminded himself. Bletchley's infernal laughter.

What do you call that, Joe? Monastery humor?

Joe stared at him.

Well I never have before but now might be the time to start. In fact I should've thought of that when Liffy was still alive, ho ho ho. . . . Gallows humor, you say, Liffy? No I was referring to something much blacker than that, so black it's the very heart of blackness. I mean Monastery humor, Liffy, the pitiless kind. . . .

So what do you think, Bletchley? Would it sell in the Christian provinces or would good Christians like the Germans rather not hear about it? Would they rather ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist except as an aberration, yours and mine, I mean? But maybe we could get a laugh or two if we worked up a song-and-dance routine to go with it? A gaggle of jokes we could put together in the empty railway waiting rooms where we pass our lives deep in the night? Or in a concentration camp, maybe? . . . Liffy jokes, we could call them. Yes? No? Too black altogether for good Christians? Or only when Nazis are massacring Jews, maybe? Or only if you and I are Jews, maybe?

Bletchley was suddenly angry.

You must know none of this has turned out the way I planned.

No? Well I'm certainly glad to hear it, Bletchley. I certainly wouldn't like to think any of this had been planned. Because if it had been, it could only mean God's been off in a different part of the universe these last ten or twenty thousand years, which could only mean He doesn't spend all His time mulling over the grand sweep of human affairs on our little planet, unlike the rest of us.

We'll talk about it later, Bletchley said angrily.

He shifted gears and the van lurched forward.

***

They pulled up beside the Nile in the moonlight, near a small pier thrusting out into the river. It seemed to be a warehouse district, an area of deserted streets and squat windowless buildings, all of them dark.

Bletchley switched off the engine and began wiping the skin around his bulky black eye patch, folding and refolding his handkerchief.

I'll just be a moment, he murmured, his face averted. Joe watched him. He shook his head.

It must be next to impossible driving with only one eye.

It is.

But how do you manage it at all?

Bletchley glanced at him, then turned away.

Like anybody else with what they have to live with. Not very well and as best I can. You just keep trying to make some sense out of the flat picture you're given, which is too flat and never enough, especially when it comes to people suddenly appearing in front of you. You can memorize a street with its buildings, but you can't memorize people. There are too many of them. And anyway, they're always changing their sizes and shapes.

Bletchley finished cleaning around his empty eye socket and put his handkerchief away. He looked at Joe, averted his gaze.

Let's step outside for a minute.

Bletchley climbed out of the van and walked a few feet on the sandy gravel. He stopped, waiting for Joe, gazing out at the Nile. Joe noticed that Bletchley had closed the door very quietly behind him. Once they were out in the night the two of them strolled forward in a natural way toward the river. They crossed onto the pier and strolled out to its end, where they stood side by side looking down at the water. Joe nudged a pebble over the edge with his foot.

You barely make a sound when you close a door. Why is that?

Bletchley stirred.

What? Oh habit, I suppose.

Joe nodded. He looked back at the dark buildings and the empty streets and whistled softly.

What's that? asked Bletchley.

Just me whistling in the dark, said Joe. This looks like the kind of place where a man might be taken to walk the plank, but of course you didn't bring me out here for that, at least I don't think so. . . . Are we going to be here for a bit, do you suppose? I'd like to sit down. I'm exhausted.

Of course.

Joe sighed wearily and sat down on the end of the pier with his legs dangling over the edge. Bletchley sat down beside him and took a flask from his pocket. He drank, swallowed, wiped the corner of his mouth with his hand. He held out the flask to Joe.

Brandy.

Thanks.

Joe took a drink, coughed, took a longer one.

Not only brandy but the real stuff for a change. Not that I'm complaining about the Arab variety, you understand. Any oasis in a sandstorm, as we bedouin say. But the real stuff does have a way of not slashing your throat on the way down. Smooth is what it is, like a trackless path in the desert. Or like a felucca coming around in the wind on a clear night on the Nile. A reassuring motion after all. See that one out there?

He drank again and handed the flask back to Bletchley, who put it down on the worn boards between them.

And it is a clear night too, said Joe. Ahmad used to find it amusing the way I mention the weather. It's always the same here, he used to say.

Bletchley stared straight ahead. Abruptly, he passed his hand over the side of his face, as if brushing something away.

I'll give you the important details first, he said.

Joe nodded, then all at once sagged forward.

Are you all right? asked Bletchley.

Yes. Exhausted, that's all. Tired deep down.

Bletchley looked at him again, quickly, a nervous motion. He spoke in a low voice.

You'll be leaving by plane tonight for England. You won't stop there. You'll be put on another plane for Canada and when you get to Canada you'll disappear. But there's a proviso.

Only to be expected, said Joe. If there weren't, we'd be in a better world. What's the proviso?

Bletchley stared straight ahead. You're dead, he said in a quiet voice. A. O. Gulbenkian is dead, which means the agent who was using that cover is dead.

Joe fumbled for a cigarette.

Forever, added Bletchley, officially and unofficially. So far as the Waterboys and the Monastery are concerned, so far as London is concerned, so far as everybody is concerned.

Joe's hands were trembling. He gripped his knees and looked down at the water.

How'd I die, did you say?

In a fire. There's been a fire.

Oh.

Bletchley reached inside his jacket and pulled out several sheets of folded paper. He handed them to Joe, who leaned over to peer at them. With the moon and the reflections off the water, there was just enough light to make out the typed words.

***

At the top of the first sheet of paper there was a printed heading, the name and address of a Cairo news agency. The typed copy was in the form of a news story, marked for immediate release.

A fire had broken out in the Coptic Quarter of Old Cairo, destroying a small run-down hotel, the Hotel Babylon. The fire was thought to have started in the tiny cluttered courtyard behind the hotel, where the desk clerk, neighbors reported, had recently been in the habit of sitting up late at night beside a small campfire, along with the only guest who had been staying in the hotel during recent weeks.

The courtyard had been strewn with old newspapers and other inflammable debris. It was assumed a spark had settled into the debris and caused it to smolder until after the desk clerk and his guest had retired for the night, when a fire had broken out and ignited the decaying old structure just before dawn, quickly raging out of control and burning the hotel to the ground.

Fortunately, no other buildings had been damaged due to the alarm sounded by an alert neighbor, a retired belly dancer up the street who for the last thirty years or so had risen every morning before dawn to go in search of fresh chickens, which she roasted and sold locally to support herself.

Two men had perished in the fire, the desk clerk and his solitary guest, both of whose bodies had been recovered.

The desk clerk, a longtime employee of the hotel and an astute observer of the Cairo social scene, had been known as Ahmad the Poet on his little street, itself known colloquially as the rue Clapsius, a mere shadowy byway of an alley and a short stroll to nowhere. Yet although it led nowhere, it was also the place where a good part of nineteenth-century Cairo was said to have acquired an incurable dose of nostalgia during the long lazy siesta hours of yesteryear. This desk clerk's finely tuned social sense was the result of a thoughtful scrutiny of the Cairo scene over the years, particularly on Saturday evenings, which Ahmad the Poet was known to have devoted to undisturbed meditations on the roof of the Hotel Babylon. There in the darkness he had studied the city through a spyglass, aided by melancholy surges of music conjured up on an ancient dented trombone.

It was further recalled that the poet, Ahmad fils, had been a fiercely loyal supporter of Ahmad père's idealistic nineteenth-century political cause, the Movement, a loosely spun Old World organization which had fearlessly advocated social progress from the there and the then, defying all opposition, in the general direction of the here and the now.

And although Ahmad fils had been in seclusion for decades, maintaining his privacy over bouts of solitaire and infusions of opera, he had once enjoyed a stunning reputation as a wildly charismatic figure in Cairo society, both in his professional duties as an interior decorator and in his more unpredictable role as an all-around boulevardier and dandy.

In particular, the poet was remembered for having served as the powerful stroke, and captain, of a racing crew of Cairo dragomen who had triumphantly swamped a racing shell rivered by the British naval establishment back before the First World War, the only time that astounding feat had ever been accomplished by an all-Egyptian crew, in what had been known in those days as the Annual Battle for the Fleshpots of the Nile.

In addition, Ahmad the Poet had once been famous for having introduced the racing tricycle to Cairo, around the turn of the century.

Sadly, it was Ahmad the Poet's fondness for recalling the remarkable exploits of his past glories, in the form of old newspaper stories, that had probably caused the hotel to ignite so quickly. Reference was made to a large closet just off the hotel lobby, a small room really, which had been heaped from floor to ceiling with dusty yellowing newspapers, none of them less than thirty years out of date.

This closet had become a brilliant torch when the fire reached it, causing the hotel to consume itself instantly in a towering pillar of the purest white smoke.

Little was known about the other victim, the lone guest in the hotel at the time of the fire. Through information routinely filed on all foreigners at local police stations, he was identified as a commercial traveler of Armenian extraction, a dealer in Coptic artifacts by the name of A. O. Gulbenkian, who had worn false teeth.

There was no further mention of the commercial traveler. But it was noted that an anonymous group of public-spirited Cairenes, calling themselves the Friends of Ahmad, had taken up a subscription to provide their once-renowned social leader with a proper funeral and full memorial services.

The former belly dancer up the street was acting as director general, coordinator, and secretary-treasurer of this anonymous ad hoc group.

Addresses and dates were given.

***

Joe took a deep breath. For several minutes he sat with the sheets of paper in his lap, gazing down at the river. Finally he handed them back to Bletchley and took a roll of money out of his pocket. He found the bill he was looking for and gave it to Bletchley.

For the Friends of Ahmad, he said.

Bletchley looked down at the bill

I know, said Joe, it's not much but it's all I have at the moment. And anyway, Ahmad would appreciate it. Behind that dour exterior of his, if you could find the secret panel in his wall of defenses, there was always a droll sense of humor lurking inside.

Suddenly, Joe shuddered. His voice sank to a whisper.

Was there really a second body in the ruins?

Yes.

Liffy wore false teeth.

Yes.

And no service for Gulbenkian, I suppose.

He wasn't that kind of man, said Bletchley. Gulbenkian was in transit here, just passing through. No one knew him.

No.

And if no one knew him, there can't be anyone to provide him with a service.

No, murmured Joe, it would only look strange, suspicious. He was just passing through after all.

Joe turned away from Bletchley and wiped his eyes, his head sinking lower.

Well if that's it for Gulbenkian's remains, he whispered, could you tell me what happened to that man Liffingsford-Ivy who used to work around here? A movable prop, he called himself. The local illusionist.

Bletchley stared straight ahead.

He's been reported missing while on assignment in the desert, said Bletchley. We've lost a great many of our intelligence agents like that, it's absolute chaos out there. Whole battalions just disappear. Back here, for convenience, we call it a line, a front, but it's not like that at all. Everybody's mixed up with everybody else and it's shifting all the time, a unit here and stragglers there, ours and theirs, back and forth and God knows where. There aren't even any sides out there. Just thirsty exhausted men covered with burns from their own weapons, fighting in any direction they can with no idea where they are, just men fighting desperately and going nowhere. Or wounded and dying in the terrible sun, lying where a shell or a mine went off, one of our shells or one of theirs, one of our mines or one of theirs. . . . The sand blows all night and buries everything except the burning tanks by morning, and the twisted skeletons of the other vehicles. It even covers open eyes by morning, but the one thing it can never cover is the smell, the stench. Radios sit all alone crackling, speaking to no one. . . . This is Coventry, come in please. . . .

You can be in a place so desolate it might as well be the end of the earth and suddenly there's a whine shrieking across the sky and the ground shakes and the intolerable silence descends as you wait, as you count, one two three. . . You drive over a ridge and all at once there are hands reaching out of the sand, out of nothing, hands grasping and reaching . . . just hands. Rigid hands. The fingers fallen and broken, too weak, too frail, and it's horrible. . . . It's just horrible.

I knew him, whispered Joe, hunched over and sobbing as Bletchley stared straight ahead at the river.

***

The felucca in the distance came around into the wind. Bletchley stirred.

Shall I finish with the details?

Yes, said Joe, I guess you'd better. . . . I'm dead. What comes after that?

Once you leave here there won't be any stopovers, as I mentioned. You'll be traveling under a temporary cover that's only good for the trip. When you get to Canada you'll disappear, and then you'll have to begin working out a new identity for yourself. A new history and a new background, everything.

Yes.

I could help you but it wouldn't be as safe as doing it on your own. And anyway, I can't imagine you'd need my help with that.

No, I'll make do.

But understand, Joe, I mean a new real name and a new real history and background to go with it. The real Joseph O'Sullivan Beare, born in the Aran Islands on April 15, 1900, died in a fire in Cairo in June 1942.

Joe nodded.

And so he did . . . and so he did.

Our records will show that, continued Bletchley, and that's what the report to London will say, and the reports London will send to Washington and Ottawa. The Stern case is closed and everybody who was connected with it in any knowledgeable way has been accounted for. The case is closed and there are no surviving witnesses.

Yes, I can see that.

So this has to be an absolute agreement between the two of us, Joe. No one else inside will know the truth but me, and therefore I have to be able to count on you completely. . . .

Bletchley paused.

Completely, he repeated.

Joe looked at him.

How can I assure you of that?

By telling me, said Bletchley. If you know you can do it, you'll tell me so. If you have any doubts, you'll tell me that.

Joe shook his head.

No, no doubts. I can do it and you can count on me.

All right, I will count on you then.

Joe nodded. He waited but Bletchley seemed to have finished. Let it go, thought Joe, for God's sake let it be. He's going way out of his way and doing an enormous amount to make this possible, so just let it be and don't push him. . . . But Joe couldn't let it be. He moved his legs and let his feet swing, gazing down at the water.

You said there would be . . . there are, no surviving witnesses to the Stern case. What about the Sisters?

The Sisters weren't connected to the Stern case, said Bletchley. The two of them are half as old as time and they live on the Nile and maybe they are the Nile, and for all I know they haven't spoken to anyone but the Sphinx in decades. And for all anybody knows they'll outlive your grandchildren and Stern's grandchildren and they'll still be around when the Sphinx is turning to dust. They knew Stern over the years, I imagine, but over the years they've known just about everybody on every side of any war, so that doesn't connect them specifically to the Stern case. Their concerns aren't the same as mine, or as yours and Stern's used to be.

Yes, whispered Joe. I can see that.

Joe hesitated. Damn, he thought. Why can't we ever let good enough alone? Why do we have this incurable need for answers?

Again Joe swung his feet, gazing down at the water.

You said no one else inside would know the truth. Does that include Maud? I wasn't sure whether you consider her inside or not.

I don't, said Bletchley. Not really, but I was going to mention that. I intend to speak to Maud privately, after you leave. I feel she has to know the truth, that you're not dead, I mean. I don't think it could work otherwise. But even so, you mustn't try to contact her or anyone else you know out here, after you get back. It has to be all or nothing, Joe, and that still holds no matter what identity you adopt for yourself and no matter how plausible it might be for the man in that new identity to get in touch with Maud in one way or another, or with anyone else. There are people who might be interested and I don't want them to have the least justification for being interested. Private suspicions and private conjectures are one thing.

But a cause for suspicion is something else.

Yes.

I'm thinking now of people who are on the inside and have access to files. People who became involved in this and shouldn't have been, or people who simply might be curious for their own reasons. I'm referring to the Major from the Waterboys whom you met, and to his superior the Colonel, and I'm also referring to Whatley. They're all professionals, and good ones, but they should be allowed to forget these incidents so they can move on to other things.

Yes, I can see that.

And I'm not being sentimental when I say Maud has to know you're alive or it wouldn't work. I feel she has to know for security reasons. Because if she didn't, I don't see how she could keep from trying to find it out somehow, and that could cause trouble. Not because of where she is in her job exactly, but because of connections she has.

Yes. I know how close she and the Major are, by the way. She told me.

I wasn't going to mention that, said Bletchley. There didn't seem to be any reason to.

There wasn't, not for you. I only mentioned it so you'd know I really do understand what it means in terms of security, and the agreement between you and me.

Joe hesitated.

This isn't your concern, I know, but what about Bernini in New York?

Bletchley shook his head. He looked out at the river and shook his head again.

I've thought about that, Joe, and I don't know what to say. Out here, tonight, New York seems very far away from the war, and Bernini isn't involved with the war and he's never going to become involved. So on the face of it there wouldn't seem to be any reason why you and Bernini . . . But damn it, look at it the other way, Joe. We have to consider everything and Harry knows about Bernini, and we don't know what might become of that, Harry and Maud, I mean, so there again, it's just too dangerous now. Your death and all the rest of it has to be absolutely secure and certain with not a shred of evidence to the contrary. After all, we're talking about something that comes before everything else. Before everything else. So perhaps someday, after the war's over . . . if it ever is. . . .

Bletchley shook his head, perplexed, saddened.

Anyway, I don't see what you could say to Bernini now, how you could explain anything to him. I mean .

. . well forgive me, but from what I understand he's not the kind of boy, young man, who could take this in. How could he even begin to make any sense out of Monks and Waterboys in Egypt, or a mysterious houseboat on the Nile, or the Sphinx speaking to Harry on a clear night and what that means. Forgive me, Joe, but I don't see how Bernini could even begin to make any sense out of any of it.

Joe smiled.

Either that or he'd make better sense out of it than we do.

Joe?

No, it's all right. I do understand and you're right of course, and it'll be as you say. Maud will have to let him know I died in a fire. . . .

Only he won't believe it, thought Joe. Not him, not for a moment. But that's all right. The two of us will have a chance to straighten out matters someday. After the war. Someday. . . .

Bletchley glanced at his watch. He picked up the flask of brandy.

We still have a little time, he said, uncomfortable all at once, an uneasy tone in his voice.

He took a drink from the flask and passed it to Joe.

I don't know, he said, I don't know whether . . . you want to talk about any other things.

What happened, you mean?

Yes.

Well maybe just in passing. Maybe there are a couple of things.

As you like, Joe. I'll tell you what I can, and what I can't tell you, I won't.

***

Joe touched Bletchley on the arm and Bletchley turned away from the river to face him.

There's one thing that's been troubling me, said Joe. It has to do with Stern. I was wondering if there was any way he could have known where that hand grenade was going to go off? And when?

Deep lines appeared in Bletchley's forehead and he smiled in an arrogant manner, his good eye bulging, a twisted smirking expression.

Surprise, Joe reminded himself. Bletchley's face of surprise.

What do you mean? asked Bletchley. I don't think I understand. How could Stern have known that?

Someone might have told him, said Joe.

Who?

You.

Bletchley's one eyebrow slipped lower and the lines in his forehead disappeared. His expression became one of cunning. Devious, cruel, scheming.

Regret, Joe reminded himself. Bletchley's face of sadness and regret.

Bletchley found it so difficult to answer he almost stuttered.

. . . me?

Yes, you. You admired him and you might have done that for him. He was finished after all and he knew that, and you did, so you might have helped him out by telling him where and when. So he wouldn't have to think about it and could go on to other things, and settle his affairs in a way.

I don't understand. What affairs did he s-s-s-settle?

Oh, with Maud, say. He was with her the night before he was killed and he told her a great many things he never had before, and it was a summing up of sorts and a final parting, he made that clear enough.

They sat up together by the pyramids and then he took a photograph of her at dawn. Maud robust and smiling for him on his final day, framed between the Sphinx and the pyramids, a photograph she'd always have, taken by Stern on his final day. Because he did say that, he did tell her it was the last dawn he'd ever see. And he did seem to know all right. He didn't seem to be just guessing.

Bletchley looked down at his hands, the normal one and the crippled misshapen one with its tight grafted skin.

I didn't know about that, Joe. I didn't know what he'd told Maud. But if that's what happened, then he did seem to know. You're right.

And so?

Bletchley covered his bad hand with his good one. He gripped his bad hand, holding it tightly.

You have to understand some things, Joe. Ahmad and Cohen and Liffy, those things were done. It was wrong and it shouldn't have happened, but it did. But the hand grenade in the bar . . . that was pure chance, that was an accident. Some soldiers were out drinking and brawling and one of them, in his drunkenness, tossed a hand grenade through an open door as a joke, a door to a poor Arab bar that none of them had ever seen before, as a joke. . . . Well I don't have to tell you how funny the world is, but no one ordered it and no one knew anything about it. The Monastery had nothing to do with it and no one else did, just the soldier who threw the grenade. No one knew anything about that bar or who was in it. No one had ever heard of it. It was all pure chance.

Bletchley gripped his bad hand more tightly, as if to hide its ugliness.

I had it looked into and I was able to have the soldiers traced. They were Australians who'd been in Crete when the island fell and somehow they managed not to be captured. They spent months hiding in the mountains and it was only this spring that they escaped from Crete, by paddling a rowboat across the Libyan Sea. There were five of them who escaped together and they were out drinking that night, having a last celebration. They'd all been reassigned and their unit was moving up to the front the next day. And it did, and of the five, two are dead and one is missing and presumed dead, and another one is wounded.

. . . Their new unit took it very heavily. There was nothing much left of it after a few hours. The man who threw the hand grenade is one of those who's dead. Known dead. None of the five was over twenty.

Bletchley fell silent. He rocked, gripping his hand.

That's all, he added in a whisper. That's all. . . .

Joe looked out at the river.

And so that's how it was, he said. And what we call Stern's fate turns out to be some lads roaming in the nighttime and having a last round of fun before their own turn comes, and the playfulness was playful, but not really. And destiny's hand belongs to a twenty-year-old kid from Australia, now dead, who maybe wanted to sing Waltzing Matilda while marching across the sands of the Middle East the way his father did the last time around, in the last war. He didn't get much of a chance, that kid, too young by far. And will they send a medal for him to his people back home, because he survived in the mountains of Crete and escaped across the sea and was blown apart at a place called El Alamein, somewhere in the desert in his twentieth year? Will they do that for an Australian kid who had a song in mind?

I imagine, whispered Bletchley, rocking, gripping his bad hand.

Sure, said Joe. His unit took it heavily and so did he, and that's the way it works. And history has a way of dealing with its grand events not very grandly, doesn't it? Here Stern dies in a sordid little place without a conspiracy in sight, without the great powers or the lesser powers taking any notice whatsoever, and what's to mark it? What's to mark Stern's death?

Joe pushed a pebble into the river.

Nothing of course. Nothing reaching that sordid little place but the usual cries of the night, the usual meaningless cries to echo in Stern's ears at the end. Just some yells and drunken shouts and bloody wogs and that's it for Stern, and it's as you say. No one knew that bar and no one had any idea who was in it, and no one gave an order and no one knew anything about anything. The whole thing just a case of the night coming around again. . . . Just the night, as Stern said.

Ah well, I guess I had it figured that way, the hand grenade being chance, I mean. I just wanted to make sure I had it right. Stern always was one for knowing his particular patch of the desert, and after all these years of living in a certain way . . . Well I guess you learn to sense things, that's all, and Stern sensed the when, and as for the where, well what can you say about that bar except that it was Stern's kind of place? . . . A poor barren room with bare walls and a bare floor and all of it halfway to darkness, a desolate place and unkind, dreadfully so, but also the sort of place Stern understood. Knew that bare floor and those bare walls, he did, although they'd never been fit for living, as he said. . . . Barren, that's what. Just bare as bare and a cracked grainy mirror for a view of the kingdom and a shabby curtain as the gates to the kingdom, a sordid unkind place. And shouts outside in the darkness and laughter and scuffling and a hand grenade sailing in from nowhere, the darkness coming to meet Stern at last in a roar of blinding light. . . . Light. Stern gone. Yes. . . .

Joe sighed.

All right, so that's the way it was then. But what if those Australian lads hadn't staggered down that particular alley on their way to die in the desert? And what if they hadn't been quite so drunk and so playful and hadn't tossed a grenade at the bloody wogs for the fun of it? What then? Would there have been some other kind of accident for Stern before the night was out?

Bletchley shook his head, his round eye blank and bulging, empty.

No good, Joe, no good at all. That's not a question and it doesn't deserve an answer and you know it.

There are no what ifs in this business, only what is and nothing else. What if is playing with things and you don't do that, and I don't, and Stern didn't. . . . Or are you asking me whether I would have ordered Stern killed sometime, somewhere, if it had been necessary? Well the answer to that is anytime, anywhere. And I'd have you killed and I'd kill myself for the same reason, if it were necessary. I detest the Nazis and I'd do anything to see them defeated.

Bletchley's eye was huge, bulging, overwhelming in its nakedness.

Do you hear me, Joe? Anything. I believe in life and the Nazis wear the death's-head and they are death. So don't play with things here. It's not a game we're in.

Joe nodded.

You're right and I deserved that. The question was out of line. I'm sorry. . . . So that barren cave of a bar and a man named Stern and a stray grenade in the night aside, some things got out of hand during the last few days, I take it? A matter of somebody, Whatley say, pursuing his righteous course in the name of God and goodness? Is that why there were those other killings?

There was a serious misunderstanding, said Bletchley. Mistakes were made but I'm in command at the Monastery, so the responsibility is mine. Nobody else's.

True enough, said Joe. It always does work that way when you're in charge, and Stern could manage that and you can, but I never could. Well, there's nothing more to say about that I guess, but do you think you could tell me what you did have in mind when you decided to get me over here?

Of course, that's easy enough. Some new information had turned up about Stern and it worried me.

By new information, you mean some facts having to do with Stern's Polish story?

Yes.

Can you tell me how that new information happened to turn up?

Bletchley looked at him.

No I can't. And anyway, Joe, the man who came to Cairo to find out about Stern died in a fire in the Hotel Babylon, and his interest died with him.

And so it did, said Joe. A fire decided it in the end. . . . And so this new information came your way and then what?

And it worried me, said Bletchley. I knew Stern wasn't well and I was afraid he was beginning to say things to those who were close to him. I didn't know what might happen and I thought someone from the outside might be able to help, someone who had known Stern in another context, from the past. So I went through his file and your name turned up.

Bletchley looked down at the river and a sad, empty expression came over his face.

If I'd told you more in the beginning it might not have turned out the way it did. But that . . . well, that's not how it was.

How it was, murmured Joe. How it was. . . .

Joe squinted, gazing out over the river.

Bletchley?

Yes.

Listen to me. Don't take so much of this on yourself. You came into this in the middle of things, just like the rest of us. Like me, like Liffy, like David and Ahmad and everybody else. You didn't start it and you did the best you could with what was in front of you, so let up on yourself a little. . . .

Joe paused.

Anyway, he added, I know who told you Stern's Polish story.

Bletchley's head jerked back and he raised his hands, stopping Joe almost pleading with him.

No names, he whispered. For God's sake, Joe, no names. We haven't spoken of this.

Joe nodded.

No, we haven't spoken of it and there'll be no names. I'm merely referring to persons unknown and to their haunting elegy that's half as old as time, an allusive recitation to the stars and a hymn as anonymous as the night. So no names, then, but I want you to know you're not alone here, because I know who told you, and I know why they told you.

Bletchley sat perfectly still, unable to look at Joe. Again Joe paused, looking out at the water. He spoke in a very quiet voice.

Yes, they loved him, and they loved him too much to see him coming apart like that. They just couldn't bear to see it happen because Stern was special for them. You could see it in his eyes, they said, and you could hear it in his laughter. . . . Hope, they said. For he was a man who stood by the river and saw great things, and his eyes shone at the splendor of the gift, like a hungry man brought to a great table.

Precious, they said. Always to be so, they said.

But then they saw him coming apart like the world itself, and he was too precious to them to be destroyed like that, too beautiful by far, so they took his burden from him and spoke to you. . . . We would do anything for him, they said to me. But there's nothing we can do for him now but weep, and so we do that . . . for Stern our son.

***

Joe felt Bletchley move beside him. He looked down and saw that Bletchley had taken something out of his pocket and was holding it in his good hand, slowly turning it over and over.

That looks like an old Morse-code key, said Joe. Worn and smooth with a soft sheen to it, the way things get with a lot of handling. . . . Tell me, what happens to old Menelik's crypt now?

Nothing, said Bletchley. It will stay the way it is . . . locked. The way it was left.

Good. That's something at least.

Slowly, Bletchley turned the worn Morse-code key over and over in his good hand.

I also ought to mention, he said, that someone checked through your room before the fire. All that was found were some clothes and your small valise. The valise had a faded red wool hat in it and a khaki blanket from the Crimean War. Was there anything else?

No, that was it, said Joe. They went the way of the fire, did they?

Bletchley nodded. Joe shook his head.

That must be Liffy's Third Law, said Joe. I guess he didn't have time to mention it. Only the things you care about go up in smoke.

He took another drink from the flask and they both fell silent, gazing out at the river.

***

What were you thinking about just now? asked Joe.

The front. El Alamein.

Will it hold, the way you see it?

I hope so. In any case it has to. The tide has to turn and it has to turn now or people will lose hope.

Yes. And in the meantime, what will you be doing with that good-luck charm in your hand, do you think?

I'll carry it with me for a while, said Bletchley, and someday, if things work out that way, I'll give it to someone.

Who?

Bletchley glanced at him and looked away.

Did you know there was a child, Joe?

Whose child? What do you mean?

Eleni and Stern. Did you know they had a child?

Joe was stunned.

What? Is that true?

Yes.

Are you sure?

Yes. Stern told me about her. She's a young woman now.

Joe whistled softly.

But that's just astonishing. Who is she? Where is she? Oh my God.

She's Greek, said Bletchley. She was born in Smyrna but later on she grew up in Crete. Eleni's uncle, Sivi, had relatives in Crete. His father came from there, from a little village up in the mountains.

I know that.

Well that's where she grew up when Eleni could no longer manage. Stern took her there as a child.

Joe whistled very softly.

That's just astounding. What else do you know about her?

Very little, that's all really. It came up in an odd way about a year ago, just after Crete fell. Stern said he had an agent there who could do certain things by posing as a collaborator with the Germans. But I thought the agent, as he described her to me, was much too young to do what he had in mind. I didn't think we could trust someone like that in such a sensitive role, and that's when Stern told me she could be trusted because she was his daughter. I was as surprised as you are. Of course, she doesn't carry his name. She uses the Greek name of Sivi's relatives.

That's just amazing, said Joe.

Something crossed his mind and he thought for a moment.

Here now. Don't I recall that it was from an agent posing as a collaborator that Stern found out how Colly died in Crete? That time Stern made a special trip there, after Colly was killed?

Yes. She was the one.

Joe smiled.

What a wonder of a trickster Stern was, always another surprise yet to come. Do you realize I never even knew about Eleni until that last night we were together in the bar? And now it turns out there's a child. Absolutely astonishing, that's what. Does anybody else here know about her?

I doubt it. In fact I'm quite sure no one does. It seemed to be one thing he wanted to keep very close to himself. He asked me never to tell anyone.

Why? Did he say?

Not directly, but it was obvious it had to do with his work. That and the fact that he didn't want to endanger her in any way.

Yet she could have left Crete before it fell, said Joe, or probably even after it did. Stern could have arranged that. Why didn't he?

I had the impression she didn't want to leave.

Oh.

Joe shook his head.

And despite all the things he told me that last night, he never even hinted at this. Why, I wonder? Why?

For the same reasons he never told anyone else? Not even Maud?

Yes, I suppose. Still, it does seem strange. . . . But don't you know anything else about her?

No, I truly don't. He really wouldn't say much of anything, other than who she was and where she was.

Joe was silent for some moments. All at once he touched Bletchley's arm, startling him.

But Stern also asked you not to tell anyone about her. Why did you?

Bletchley moved around where he was sitting. He seemed uncomfortable.

Because you're leaving. And since no one else knows but me, and since something could always happen out here, well, I felt . . .

Bletchley's voice trailed off. He glanced at his watch.

The time's getting on. We should be starting for the airport soon.

In a moment, said Joe. I think there's something we haven't quite covered yet.

That's not so, I've told you what I can. There are certain matters . . .

I know, but I wasn't referring to certain matters. I mean something between you and me.

It's getting on, said Bletchley. We ought to . . .

Bletchley moved as if to rise but Joe put his hand on Bletchley's arm, stopping him.

It's just this. What was the real reason you picked my name out of Stern's file?

I told you. Because you'd known Stern well in the past, and because you cared for him, and because you seemed to have the experience and the temperament that were needed for the assignment.

Yes. Go on.

But that's all.

Joe smiled.

No it's not.

It's not?

Joe shook his head, still smiling.

No, of course it's not. That's what got put down on paper and that's what London understood, but that's not all of it.

I've told you the truth, said Bletchley, his voice defiant.

Yes, and you've always done that, and I appreciate it. It's just that you've also left things out here and there, bits and pieces along the path. And we both know that's the cleverest way to hide things, from others or from ourselves. But now that I am leaving, why don't you go on for once and say those things to yourself? Not hide them anymore? . . . So then. You studied Stern's file and chose me. Why? What's the rest of it?

Suddenly Bletchley pulled away from Joe, freeing his arm. He seemed both angry and hurt as he stared out at the river, an empty expression on his scarred face, his eye wide and bulging. When he spoke his voice was harsh with resentment.

The rest of it? . . . I don't know what you mean.

Oh yes, said Joe softly, and what does it matter here and now between the two of us? And why does it ever matter anyway? I'm leaving and what's more I'm disappearing, and I'll never be able to talk about any of this . . . so then. Why not the rest of it?

Bletchley looked confused, even frightened. His resentment was gone and his voice was little more than a whisper.

Do you mean . . . Colly?

Yes, said Joe. . . . Colly. I mean him.

***

Bletchley gripped his bad hand again, covering it.

Well I knew him. I knew him, of course. I'd worked with him.

Much?

No, not really. Just since the war started, before he was killed. And I didn't know him well the way some of the others did, the Colonel at the Waterboys, say, Harry's superior. He'd worked with Colly all through the thirties, so he knew him very well. But I wasn't around here much then, I was mostly in India.

So I never really saw that much of Colly, although I'd always known about him, by reputation.

And admired him?

Well naturally. Everybody admired him. He was such a talented man and he always seemed to do things with so much dash.

And more than that, said Joe softly, you envied him, didn't you?

Bletchley glanced at Joe and looked back at the river, his eye round and empty, confused.

I suppose I did, he said in a low voice.

Joe strained forward.

Because he seemed to be everything you never could be, wasn't that it?

In a way, perhaps. But I don't see how any of this . . .

Just everything, said Joe. A hero in the last war and a grand one, a hero who survived it intact and all of a piece, in his body and his mind, without a ripped-up face and a crippled hand and maybe crippled other things. Who was so famous as a young man he could afford to go and enlist in the Imperial Camel Corps as just plain Private Gulbenkian. Who was so sure of himself and who he was he never had to worry about ranks and titles and positions, or even about his own name, just imagine that. Who could even be an A. O. Gulbenkian on camelback, anonymous to all appearances, and still be famous wherever it counted because beyond and beneath it all, no matter what name he used and what disguise he put on and no matter where he went, he would always be Our Colly.

That's right. Always. The Sergeant of the Empire, Our Colly of Champagne, a legend no matter what.

You remember what they used to say about him when we were young. There was just no stopping Our Colly, not ever. He was a class apart and a man apart and they just don't make them like that anymore, that's what they used to say. . . . Our Colly? He was the man who defied the law of averages a hundred times and got away with it. No man could ever do what he did, but Our Colly did it all the same. . . .

That's what they used to say, wasn't it?

Yes, whispered Bletchley. . . . Oh yes.

Sure. Oh yes is what it was, and I remember it and so do you. But did you ever know that way back then in the beginning, when the last war started, Colly tried to enlist first in the royal marines?

No, I've never heard that, said Bletchley. Is that true?

Yes, they wouldn't take him. Undersized, Colly was, too scrawny altogether. So next he tried the navy and they wouldn't have anything to do with him either. Not only undersized but his English was still pretty limited then. Yes. No. Thank you. Please pass the potatoes. A stunted childhood, you see. He'd always been handy in a fishing boat as a boy, but the cold winds had kept him low to the deck and they'd also kept him from putting on any weight. Cold winds can do that. The weight goes to keeping the wind out and keeping the body halfway warm. So after that, Colly went around to the army, and they weren't about to be particular if a body was halfway warm, so they took him. One scrawny undersized kid who couldn't speak very well. That was Colly and that was how it all began for him.

I never knew that, said Bletchley.

No, most people don't. A hero's a hero, after all, and we like to have them in troubled times. So Colly managed to get into the army by lying about his age and by drinking a couple of quarts of water before they weighed him in, and then he took a big piss and went to France and did what he did there, and pretty soon he was known as Our Colly, everybody's, the man who could defy the law of averages and get away with it. And then later he went on to do the same kinds of things out here, on camelback, a mysterious Gulbenkian in disguise pulling off all sorts of wild tricks in Ethiopia and Palestine and Spain.

So that was Colly's way and Colly's path, the way of the Our, and once we talked about it in Jerusalem when I was still playing poker there, just before I left. Colly came to call and we put up our feet and talked about it. And the worst part about being an Our, he said, is living up to what people expect of you. You have to keep giving more and more of yourself, he said, until . . .

Not that he didn't like what he was doing, he did like it. In fact he loved it. But still. . . and yet . . .

as he said. But still. And yet.

Sure. You remember all the things they used to say about Our Colly when we were young. I heard them often enough and you must have heard them in whatever hospital you were lying around in then, feeling useless with your dreams of a career in the army as shot up as you were, as shattered as the left side of your own face. And maybe you thought about Colly more than once as those next years came along and you were still lying around in hospital beds, waiting while they performed one useless operation after another and tried to get the rest of those glass and metal fragments out of your eye socket, just waiting and waiting while they reconstructed the bridge of your nose a little and kept breaking your hand and trying things a different way so you might be able to move it a little.

Waiting, you were. Waiting. Waiting and hoping they could put a glass eye in. But the bones and the muscles weren't there anymore, and the glass eye looked like a colored bead off in the side of your face somewhere, so you had to settle for an eye patch and wiping around it and being stared at.

And maybe Our Colly came to mind again when more years went by and you decided to settle for this, because it was the closest you could ever come to being in the regular army, which was all you'd ever wanted in life because you came from an army family and you'd grown up thinking that someday, someday, you might even have your own regiment. Maybe even the regiment your father commanded and his father before him, because it was a career and a calling that was in your blood and just a natural part of fathers and sons, a natural part of the scheme of things. . . .

Nothing to wonder about. Just the way it was.

Or rather, the way it had been back then in the beginning, before it turned out otherwise. Before you went to the front as a young man and put a spyglass to your eye and a bullet shattered the spyglass and shattered your face, shattering everything in sight, all that was and all that would be, shattering every dream you ever had and leaving you with a face that terrifies children and terrifies just about everybody, if the truth be known.

The evil eye, Bletchley. Anybody would be secretly frightened by it and you know why that is. We look at you and we see something that could happen to us, that is us, and it terrifies us. So we try not to look at you and we try to ignore you because we're not like you after all, of course we're not, we're nothing like you.

Just consider it. Now, when there's a great war going on and everybody's killing everybody for the sake of . . . just consider the matter rationally for a moment. Children look at you and scream.

Children look at you and run away. But don't the rest of us say nice things to little children? Don't we smile at them and don't they smile back? Of course, and we're not like you, we're not ugly.

That's not why the whole human race is killing somebody or other. There's no evil in us. . . .

And so we like to scorn you a bit because that's the easier way. Because you're not really human, because you're not like the rest of us. Because we're not ugly, you are, and we don't want to face that face of yours. Our own face . . . adjusted a little by circumstances. . . .

Bletchley was moving around uneasily as he sat there on the end of the little pier beside Joe. He was gripping his bad hand with his good hand and staring out at the river, not sure what to make of Joe's sudden rush of words, so demanding and insistent, so unlike any side of Joe he had seen before.

Joe, I think that . . .

I know it. We have to be leaving and I'm almost finished, and I will be by the time that felucca comes around into the wind again. It's working its way up the river all right and it's due to come around, so just give it another few seconds tacking on its present course.

Joe smiled. He touched Bletchley's arm.

There's a point to all this. Could you just turn and look at me?

Slowly, Bletchley did so. Slowly, he turned and looked at Joe, who was smiling.

Good. It's just this, said Joe. You're not very different from Colly. You're not very different at all.

A peculiar expression came over Bletchley's face, disbelief followed by sadness and resignation, and then by a terrible uncertainty. He was about to say something when Joe tightened his grip on Bletchley's arm.

Wait, whispered Joe. I'm not making fun here and I'm not taking matters lightly and I'm not saying that spyglass didn't do its unkind work years ago, because it did. We both know it did. But I knew Colly, you have to remember that. Not only Our Colly but the one behind that. When we were young we worked our days together with fishing nets, and there were also long nights when we lay in bed and talked of what was to come for us, the wind howling and the rain beating down as if it would never stop, back before he became Ours, everybody's. Just him back then, scrawny and undersized, the way it was, that's all. And when I see what's behind that mask of yours, I know the two of you have a lot in common deep down where it counts. The little things on the surface aside.

I wear a beard so I scratch it sometimes. And you wear an eye patch so you carry on as you do sometimes. But that's on the surface of things and it's not important. Founding the Friends of Ahmad, as you did, that's important. And doing for Anna what I gather you're doing on the quiet, from what Maud says, that's important. And as for Liffy, well, it's not even necessary for us to talk about him. His voice will always be inside us and his sorrowing smile will always be there, and all we have to do with him is just listen, listen, and get to know him a little better as time goes on.

So those things are important, and maybe the most important thing of all is that worn old key you're holding in your hand. Just holding and turning it and quietly polishing it with the oils of your skin. That little thing you intend to pass on someday . . . if it works out that way.

Meant for sending messages in code. Once upon a time anyway, seemingly so. Meant for tapping out secret messages in all the codes of the race. But not so secret in the end, and not so hard to understand either. Strongbow came across it once in his travels and he took it along with him, and then Stern had it for a time, and now you do. And although its messages may seem complicated in the speaking of them, they're cryptic only at first glance, only on the face of it, for there's a flow to all of this as sure as a river flowing away to the sea. Things sensed in the heart and always known, and I'm glad you have that key now. I'm glad it's in your hand and you're keeping it and taking it with you . . . for a time. Until someday, if things work out. . .

Joe nodded at Bletchley. He smiled and stretched, raising his hands to the sky.

So that's all I wanted to say, and there's a finish to our moment by the river and an end of sorts.

That felucca out there is coming around into the wind now and we can be leaving for the airport if it's time, a few things resolved but mostly not. The Nile still doing what it's always been doing and that felucca trying to make its way as we do, and a terrible war upon the world and too many of those we love gone now, not here with us where they should be . . . t here with us too in a way.

Echoes within us, always to be so. . . . like Colly, who came along and turned up in your heart tonight to save my life. He never knew he was going to do that, did he? But he has, and he did it just by being what he was. Because what he was got inside you a long time ago and gave a cast to your mind and your feelings over the years, and not only him but all the others who are here with us as well. Just here in the shadows in the strong quiet sounds of their being. . . . Nile shadows after all, the shadows of a world raging. But those strong quiet echoes of the river are within us too, thank God, going right on and never to be still. . . .

They stood. Joe smiled and picked up a pebble.

Three weeks I've been in Cairo, he said, just think of that. It only goes to show there's no shape to time at all but what we give it. . . .

He turned and scaled the pebble out over the water and for an instant they saw it glitter, a reflection from the river set free in the moonlight.

***

Neither of them spoke more than a few words on the way to the airport. Bletchley was concentrating on the driving and Joe gazed out the window trying to absorb it all, filling himself with the sights and sounds and smells he was leaving, the vastness of the desert and the even greater vastness of the desert sky.

At the airport Bletchley led Joe through a few quiet offices and then they were standing together on the runway, off by themselves under the stars. A wind had come and was blowing strongly.

Bletchley handed Joe an envelope with some documents and money, and Joe put it away.

That's your plane over there, said Bletchley, pointing.

He turned to Joe and reached out, stiffly shaking Joe's hand. Then he stood with his arms hanging awkwardly by his sides, the wind fluttering his shapeless old khakis, his eye immensely large and round, waiting.

Joe laughed.

Here now, that's not going to make it at all.

What?

What, you say? Just a shake of the hand, is it, after what's gone on here?

Joe threw back his head and laughed again. He took a step forward and put his hand on Bletchley's shoulder, smiling.

Don't you know it yet, man? Don't you know we're on the same side in this world? And I don't mean just the British side or the Allied side with their Whatleys.

Joe leaned forward into the wind, his eyes bright, shadows darkening the deep lines in his face.

Listen to me. I mean the only side there is. And you've been in the Mediterranean long enough to know you have to press flesh when the important moments come, because it's all we have in the end, all we can ever give someone we care for. And anyway, you're not a regimental commander out in front of your troops on parade. You were never that and now you're just another anonymous member of that motley crowd known as the Friends of Ahmad, a scarred and tattered little band of irregulars that carries on behind the lines with nothing much in the way of success, and nothing at all in the way of dash. Just passing through, we are, in transit. So open your arms and give me a hug, man. Just give me a hug to help keep out the cold when those nights come, as they surely will. It's not much and it lasts but a moment, but on the other hand, good hand or bad, it's everything and it's all we'll ever really know.

Bletchley laughed and they embraced, warmly.

There that's better, said Joe. And now it is time, and as a man we both know used to say at moments like this, God bless. Mysterious presence that he always was, so much so I could never even figure out in the end whether he was a Moslem or a Christian or a Jew.

Curious man, really. Just large and awkward and there and no shape to him particularly, yet reassuring somehow, strangely so. And an odd smile on his face and a certain clumsiness about him sometimes, last seen in these parts as a beggar, a dignified man and poor, surveying his limitless kingdom in the deep of the night. . . . Stern. I wonder how he ever got a name like that?

Because he was always anything but that. Everything else probably, but not that.

Yes. God bless now. . . .

Joe turned and waved and began walking across the runway, a slight figure in a collarless shirt and shabby clothes that looked too big for him, his head down as he bent forward against the wind . . . a small man.