Then they went out.
Major Vandam’s office was at Gray Pillars, one of a group of buildings surrounded by barbed-wire fencing which made up GHQ Middle East. There was an incident report on his desk when he arrived. He sat down, lit a cigarette and began to read. The report came from Assyut, three hundred miles south, and at first Vandam could not see why it had been marked for Intelligence. A patrol had picked up a hitchhiking European who had subsequently murdered a corporal with a knife. The body had been discovered last night, almost as soon as the corporal’ti absence was noted, but several hours after the death. A man answering the hitchhiker’s description had bought a ticket to Cairo at the railway station, but by the time the body was found the train had arrived in Cairo and the killer had melted into the city. There was no indication of motive. The Egyptian police force and the British Military Police would be investigating already in Assyut, and their collekgues in Cairo would, like Vandam, be learning the details this morning. What reason was there for Intelligence to get involved? Vandam frowned and thought again. A Europe-an is picked up in the desert. He says his car has broken down. He checks into a hotel. He leaves a few minutes later and catches a train. His car is not found. The body of a soldier is discovered that night in the hotel room. Why? Vandam. got on the phone and called Assyut. It took the army camp switchboard a while to locate Captain Newman, but eventually they found him in the arsenal and got him to a phone. Vandam said: “This knife murder almost looks like a blown cover.” “That occurred to me, sir,” said Newman. He sounded a young man. “That’s why I marked the report for Intelligence.” “Good thinking. Tell me, what was your impression of the man?” “He was a big chap–2′ THE KEY TO REBECCA 21
“I’ve got your description here-six foot, twelve stone, dark hair and eyes-but that doesn’t tell me what he was like.” “I understand,” Newman said. “Well, to be candid, at first I wasn’t in the least suspicious of him. He looked all in, which fitted with his story of having broken down on the desert road, but apart from that he seemed an upright citizcn: a white man, decently dressed, quite well spoken with an accent he said was Dutch, or rather Afrikaans. His papers were perfect-I’m still quite sure they were genuine.” “But … ?11 “He told me he was checking on his business interests in Upper Egypt.” “Plausible enough.” “Yes, but he didn’t strike me as the kind of man to spend his life investing in a few shops and small factories and cotton farms. He was much more the assured cosmopolitan type: if he had money to invest it would probably be with a London stockbroker or a Swiss bank. He just wasn’t a small-timer . It9s very vague, sir, but do you see what I mean?” “Indeed.” Newman sounded a bright chap, Vandarn thought. What was he doing stuck out in Assyut? Newman went on: “And then it occurred to me that he had, as it were, just appeared in the desert, and I didn’t really know where he might have come from … so I told poor old Cox to stay with him, on the pretense of helping him, to make sure he didn’t do a bunk before we had a chance to check his story. I should have arrested the man, of course, but quite honestly, sir, at the time I had only the most slender suspicion—~’ “I don’t think anyone’s blaming you, Captain,” said Vandam. “You did well to remember the name and address from the papers. Alex Wolff, Villa les Oliviers, Garden City, right?” “Yes, sir.” “All right, keep me in. touch with any developments at your end, will youT’ “Yes, sir.” Vandam hung up. Newman’s suspicions chimed with his own instincts about the killing. He decided to speak to his 22 Ken Follett
immediate superior. He left his office, carrying the incident report. General Staff Intelligence was ran by a brigadier with the title of Director of Military Intelligence. The DMI had two deputies: DDMI(O)-for Operational-and DDMI(I)-for Intelligence. The deputies were colonels. Vandam’s boss, Lieutenant Colonel Bogge, came under the DDMI(l). Bogge was responsible for personnel security, and most of his time was spent administering the censorship apparatus. Vandam’s concern was security leaks by means other than letters. He and his men had several hundred agents in Cairo and Alexandria; in most clubs and bars there was a waiter who was on his payroll, he had an informant among the domestic staffs of the more important Arab politicians, King Farouk’s valet worked for Vandam, and so did Cairo’s wealthiest thief. He was interested in who was talking too much, and who was listening; and among the listeners, Arab nationalists were his main target. However, it seemed possible that the mystery man from Assyut might be a different kind of threat. Vandam’s wartime career had so far been distinguished by one spectacular success and one great failure. The failure took place in Turkey. Rashid Ali had escaped there from Iraq. The Germans wanted to get him out and use him for propaganda; the British wanted him kept out of the limelight; and the Turks, jealous of their neutrality, wanted to offend nobody. Vandam’s job had been to make sure Ali stayed in Istanbul, but Ali had switched clothes with a German agent and slipped out of the country under Vandam’s nose. A few days later he was making propaganda speeches to the Middle East on Nazi radio. Vandam had somewhat redeemed himself in Cairo. London had told him they had reason to believe there was a major security leak there, and after three months of painstaking investigation Vandam had discovered that a senior American diplomat was reporting to Washington in an insecure code. The code had been changed, the leak had been stopped up and Vandam had been promoted to major. Had he been a civilian, or even a peacetime soldier, he would have been proud of his triumph and reconciled to his defeat, and he would have said: “You win some, you lose some.” But in war an officer’s mistakes killed people. In the aftermath of the Rashid Ali affair an agent had been mur- THE KEY TO REBECCA 23