briefcase anything more useful than menus. Finally they would have to find a way to get the secrets out of him. There were too many maybes and too little time. He could only go step by step, and the first step was to get Smith in his power. They finished their drinks and set out for the Cba-Cha. They could not find a taxi, so they took a gharry, a horsedrawn open carriage. The driver mercilessly whipped his elderly horse. Smith said: “Chap’s a bit rough on the beast.” “Isn’t he,” Wolff said, thinking: You should see what we do to camels. The club was crowded and hot, again. Wolff had to bribe a waiter to get a table. Sonja’s act began moments after they sat down. Smith watched Sonja while Wolff watched Smith. In minutes the major was drooling. Wolff said: “Good, isn’t she?” “Fantastic,” Smith replied without looking around. “Matter of fact, I know her slightly,” Wolff said. “Shall I ask her to join us afterwards?” This time Smith did look around. “Good Lord!” he said. “Would you?”
The rhythm quickened. Sonja looked out across the crowded floor of the club. Hundreds of men feasted their eyes greedily on her magnificent body. She closed her eyes. The movements came automatically: the sensations took over. In her imagination she saw the sea of rapacious faces staring at her. She felt her breasts shake and her belly roll and her hips jerk, and it was as if someone else was doing it to her, as if all the hungry men in the audience were manipulating her body. She went faster and faster. There was no ar- tifice in her dancing, not any more; she was doing it for herself. She did not even follow the music-it followed her. Waves of excitement swept her. She rode the excitement, dancing, until she knew she was on the edge of ecstasy, knew she only bad to jump and she would be flying. She hesitated on the brink. She spread her arms. The music climaxed with a bang. She uttered a cry of frustration and fell backward, 88 Ken Follett
her legs folded beneath her, her thighs open to the audience, until her head hit the stage. Then the lights went out. It was always like that. In the storm of applause she got up and crossed the darkened stage to the wings. She walked quickly to her dressing room, head down, looking at no one. She did not want their words or their smiles. They did not understand. Nobody knew how it was for her, nobody knew what she went through every night when she danced. She took off her shoes, her filmy pantaloons and her sequined halter, and put on a silk robe. She sat in front of the mirror to remove her makeup. She always did this immediately, for the makeup was bad for the skin. She had to look after her body. Her face and throat were getting that fleshy look again, she observed. She would have to stop eating chocolates. She was already well past the age at which women began to get fat. Her age was another secret the audience must never discover. She was almost as old as her father had been when he died. Father … He had been a big, arrogant man whose achievements never lived up to his hopes. Sonja and her parents bad slept together in a narrow bard bed in a Cairo tenement. She had never felt so safe and warm since those days. She would curl up against her father’s broad back. She could remember the close familiar smell of him. Then, when she should have been asleep, there bad been another smell, something that excited her unaccountably. Mother and father would begin to move in the darkness, lying side by side; and Sonja would move with them. A few times her mother realized what was happening. Then her father would beat her. After the third time they made her sleep on the floor. Then she could hear them but could not share the pleasure: it seemed so cruel. She blamed her mother. Her father was willing to share, she was sure; he had known 0 along what she had been doing. Lying on the floor, cold, excluded, listening, she had tried to enjoy it at a distance, but it had not worked. Nothing had worked since then, until the arrival of Alex Wolff … She had never spoken to Wolff about that narrow bed in the tenement, but somehow be understood. He had an instinct for the deep needs that people never acknowledged. He THE KEY TO REBECCA 89