Until the airplane was repaired there was a good deal to see and do in Cairo.
Madamejeanine d’Autrey-Lascal–who was thirty, tall for a French woman, blond, blue-eyed, and who saw no need to wear a brassiere–leaned close to Capt. Whittaker and laid her hand on his.
Madame d’Autrey-Lascal had been left behind in Cairo when her husband, who had been managing director of the Bane d’Egypte et Nord Afrique, had gone off to fight with the Free French under General Charles de Gaulle. She had been in the bank lobby when Capt. Whittaker had appeared to change money and to see if the bank, with which his family’s firm had had a long relationship, could do something about getting him into a decent hotel. He had spent the previous night in the transient officers’ quarters at the airfield and really didn’t want to do that again.
They had been introduced quite properly, after which it had seemed to Madame d’Autrey-Lascal simply the courteous thing to do to offer to drive him to Shepheard’s Hotel. The bank would call in as many favors as it could to get him accommodation in Shepheard’s. No promises. The place was always jammed.
The assistant manager who greeted them said that he would try to find something. No promises. But perhaps if the Captain would not mind waiting for a bit in the bar…
It had seemed to Madame d’Autrey-Lascal that simple courtesy dictated that she not just leave him stranded high and dry in the bar at Shepheard’s. If the bank’s influence could not get him into Shepheard’s, then something else would have to be arranged.
Capt. Whittaker spoke French, which was unexpected of an American, and they chatted pleasantly. She told him that her husband was off with General de Gaulle, and he told her a story about de Gaulle that took her a moment to understand. It seemed that General de Gaulle had declined an invitation to visit with President Roosevelt, on the grounds that it was too long a walk.
But finally she understood and laughed, and then he told her about London.
She hadn’t been in London since 1939, and she found what he told her very interesting.
By the time they had had three drinks from his bottle of single-malt Scotch whiskey, it occurred to Madame d’Autrey-Lascal that it didn’t look as though the assistant manager was going to be able to find a room for him in Shepheard’s (and if he did, it would be little more than a closet), and that there was absolutely no reason she couldn’t put him up overnight, or for a day or two, at her house.
The first time she suggested this, Capt. Whittaker smiled at her (and she noticed his fine, even teeth) and told her that she was very kind, but he wouldn’t think of imposing.
She told him it would be no imposition at all; the house was large, and at the moment empty, for her children were spending the night with friends.
He repeated that he wouldn’t think of imposing. And then he lapsed into silence, broken only when she laid her hand on his.
“Sorry,” Whittaker said.
“I was thousands of miles away.”
“Thousands of miles away, you would probably have a hotel room,” Madame Jeanine d’Autrey-Lascal said.
“Here, you don’t. I think you are very sweet for not wanting to impose on me, and very foolish for not believing me when I say it will not be an imposition.”
He turned his hand over and caught hers in it.
“And you are very kind to a lonely traveler,” he said.
And I knew the moment I saw you in the bank manager’s office that you had an itch in your britches, and miserable, amoral, no-good sonofabitch that I am, given half a chance, that I would wind up scratching it.
“You have such sad eyes,” Madame d’Autrey-Lascal said, very softly, as she looked into them.
And then, finally, she reclaimed her hand and stood up.
“Shall we go?” she asked.
Whittaker followed her out of the crowded bar. As they walked across the lobby, she took his arm.
[TWO]
OSS Station Cairo Savoy Hotel, Opera Square
The Chief, Cairo Station, was Ernest J. Wilkins, thirty-six, a roly-poly man whose face darkened considerably whenever he was upset. He was upset now, and smart enough to know that he was. Before speaking, he went to his window and looked out at the statue of Ibrahim, sitting on his horse in the middle of Opera Square. And then he looked at the Opera building itself, until he was sure he had his temper under control.