The Key to Rebecca (6 page)

First they had to listen to an overweight Greek woman sing “I’ll See You in My Dreams” and “I Ain’t Got Nobody” (which made them laugh). Then Sonja was announced. However, she did not appear for a while. The audience became noisier and more impatient as the minutes ticked by. At last, when they seemed to be on the verge of rioting, there was a roll of drums, the stage lights went off and silence descended.

When the spotlight came on Sonja stood still in the center of the stage with her arms stretched skyward. She wore diaphanous trousers and a sequined halter, and her body was powdered white. The music began—drums and a pipe—and she started to move.

Wolff sipped champagne and watched, smiling. She was still the best.

She jerked her hips slowly, stamping one foot and then the other. Her arms began to tremble, then her shoulders moved and her breasts shook; and then her famous belly rolled hypnotically. The rhythm quickened. She closed her eyes. Each part of her body seemed to move independently of the rest. Wolff felt, as he always did, as every man in the audience did, that he was alone with her, that her display was just for him, and that this was not an act, not a piece of show-business wizardry, but that her sensual writhings were compulsive, she did it because she had to, she was driven to a sexual frenzy by her own voluptuous body. The audience was tense, silent, perspiring, mesmerized. She went faster and faster, seeming to be transported. The music climaxed with a bang. In the instant of silence that followed Sonja uttered a short, sharp cry; then she fell backward, her legs folded beneath her, her knees apart, until her head touched the boards of the stage. She held the position for a moment, then the lights went out. The audience rose to their feet with a roar of applause.

The lights came up, and she was gone.

Sonja never took encores.

Wolff got out of his seat. He gave a waiter a pound—three months’ wages for most Egyptians—to lead him backstage. The waiter showed him the door to Sonja’s dressing room, then went away.

Wolff knocked on the door.

“Who is it?”

Wolff walked in.

She was sitting on a stool, wearing a silk robe, taking off her makeup. She saw him in the mirror and spun around to face him.

Wolff said: “Hello, Sonja.”

She stared at him. After a long moment she said: “You bastard.”

 

She had not changed.

She was a handsome woman. She had glossy black hair, long and thick; large, slightly protruding brown eyes with lush eyelashes; high cheekbones which saved her face from roundness and gave it shape; an arched nose, gracefully arrogant; and a full mouth with even white teeth. Her body was all smooth curves, but because she was a couple of inches taller than average she did not look plump.

Her eyes flashed with anger. “What are you doing here? Where did you go? What happened to your face?”

Wolff put down his cases and sat on the divan. He looked up at her. She stood with her hands on her hips, her chin thrust forward, her breasts outlined in green silk. “You’re beautiful,” he said.

“Get out of here.”

He studied her carefully. He knew her too well to like or dislike her: she was part of his past, like an old friend who remains a friend, despite his faults, just because he has always been there. Wolff wondered what had happened to Sonja in the years since he had left Cairo. Had she got married, bought a house, fallen in love, changed her manager, had a baby? He had given a lot of thought, that afternoon in the cool, dim church, to how he should approach her; but he had reached no conclusions, for he was not sure how she would be with him. He was still not sure. She appeared angry and scornful, but did she mean it? Should he be charming and full of fun, or aggressive and bullying, or helpless and pleading?

“I need help,” he said levelly.

Her face did not change.

“The British are after me,” he went on. “They’re watching my house, and all the hotels have my description. I’ve nowhere to sleep. I want to move in with you.”

“Go to hell,” she said.

“Let me tell you why I walked out on you.”

“After two years no excuse is good enough.”

“Give me a minute to explain. For the sake of ... all that.”

“I owe you nothing.” She glared at him a moment longer, then she opened the door. He thought she was going to throw him out. He watched her face as she looked back at him, holding the door. Then she put her head outside and yelled: “Somebody get me a drink!”

Wolff relaxed a little.

Sonja came back inside and closed the door. “A minute,” she said to him.

“Are you going to stand over me like a prison guard? I’m not dangerous.” He smiled.

“Oh yes, you are,” she said, but she went back to her stool and resumed working on her face.

He hesitated. The other problem he had mulled over during the long afternoon in the Coptic church had been how to explain why he had left her without saying good-bye and never contacted her since. Nothing less than the truth sounded convincing. Reluctant as he was to share his secret, he had to tell her, for he was desperate and she was his only hope.

He said: “Do you remember I went to Beirut in nineteen thirty-eight?”

“No.”

“I brought back a jade bracelet for you.”

Her eyes met his in the mirror. “I don’t have it anymore.”

He knew she was lying. He went on: “I went there to see a German army officer called Heinz. He asked me to work for Germany in the coming war. I agreed.”

She turned from her mirror and faced him, and now he saw in her eyes something like hope.

“They told me to come back to Cairo and wait until I heard from them. Two years ago I heard. They wanted me to go to Berlin. I went. I did a training course, then I worked in the Balkans and the Levant. I went back to Berlin in February for briefing on a new assignment. They sent me here—”

“What are you telling me?” she said incredulously. “You’re a spy?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Look.” He picked up a suitcase and opened it. “This is a radio, for sending messages to Rommel.” He closed it again and opened the other. “This is my financing.”

She stared at the neat stacks of notes. “My God!” she said. “It’s a
fortune.”

There was a knock at the door. Wolff closed the case. A waiter came in with a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice. Seeing Wolff, he said: “Shall I bring another glass?”

“No,” Sonja said impatiently. “Go away.”

The waiter left. Wolff opened the wine, filled the glass, gave it to Sonja, then took a long drink from the bottle.

“Listen,” he said. “Our army is winning in the desert. We can help them. They need to know about the British strength—numbers of men, which divisions, names of commanders, quality of weapons and equipment and—if possible—battle plans. We’re here, in Cairo; we can find these things out. Then, when the Germans take over, we will be heroes.”

“We?”

“You can help me. And the first thing you can do is give me a place to live. You hate the British, don’t you? You want to see them thrown out?”

“I would do it for anyone but you.” She finished her champagne and refilled her glass.

Wolff took the glass from her hand and drank. “Sonja. If I had sent you a postcard from Berlin the British would have thrown you in jail. You must not be angry, now that you know the reasons why.” He lowered his voice. “We can bring those old times back. We’ll have good food and the best champagne, new clothes and beautiful parties and an American car. We’ll go to Berlin, you’ve always wanted to dance in Berlin, you’ll be a star there. Germany is a new kind of nation—we’ re going to rule the world, and you can be a princess. We—” He paused. None of this was getting through to her. It was time to play his last card. “How is Fawzi?”

Sonja lowered her eyes. “She left, the bitch.”

Wolff set down the glass, then he put both hands to Sonja’s neck. She looked up at him, unmoving. With his thumbs under her chin he forced her to stand. “I’ll find another Fawzi for us,” he said softly. He saw that her eyes were suddenly moist. His hands moved over the silk robe, descending her body, stroking her flanks. “I’m the only one who understands what you need.” He lowered his mouth to hers, took her lip between his teeth, and bit until he tasted blood.

Sonja closed her eyes. “I hate you,” she moaned.

 

In the cool of the evening Wolff walked along the towpath beside the Nile toward the houseboat. The sores had gone from his face and his bowels were back to normal. He wore a new white suit, and he carried two bags full of his favorite groceries.

The island suburb of Zamalek was quiet and peaceful. The raucous noise of central Cairo could be heard only faintly across a wide stretch of water. The calm, muddy river lapped gently against the houseboats lined along the bank. The boats, all shapes and sizes, gaily painted and luxuriously fitted out, looked pretty in the late sunshine.

Sonja’s was smaller and more richly furnished than most. A plank led from the path to the top deck, which was open to the breeze but shaded from the sun by a green-and-white-striped canopy. Wolff boarded the boat and went down the ladder to the interior. It was crowded with furniture: chairs and divans and tables and cabinets full of knickknacks. There was a tiny kitchen in the prow. Floor-to-ceiling curtains of maroon velvet divided the space in two, closing off the bedroom. Beyond the bedroom, in the stern, was a bathroom.

Sonja was sitting on a cushion painting her toenails. It was extraordinary how slovenly she could look, Wolff thought. She wore a grubby cotton dress, her face looked drawn and her hair was uncombed. In half an hour, when she left for the Cha-Cha Club, she would look like a dream.

Wolff put his bags on a table and began to take things out. “French champagne ... English marmalade ... German sausage ... quail’s eggs ... Scotch salmon ...”

Sonja looked up, astonished. “Nobody can find things like that—there’s a war on.”

Wolff smiled. “There’s a little Greek grocer in Qulali who remembers a good customer.”

“Is he safe?”

“He doesn’t know where I’m living—and besides, his shop is the only place in North Africa where you can get caviar.”

She came across and dipped into a bag. “Caviar!” She took the lid off the jar and began to eat with her fingers. “I haven’t had caviar since—”

“Since I went away,” Wolff finished. He put a bottle of champagne in the icebox. “If you wait a few minutes you can have cold champagne with it.”

“I can’t wait.”

“You never can.” He took an English-language newspaper out of one of the bags and began to look through it. It was a rotten paper, full of press releases, its war news censored more heavily than the BBC broadcasts which everyone listened to, its local reporting even worse—it was illegal to print speeches by the official Egyptian opposition politicians. “Still nothing about me in here,” Wolff said. He had told Sonja of the events in Assyut.

“They’re always late with the news,” she said through a mouthful of caviar.

“It’s not that. If they report the murder they need to say what the motive was—or, if they don’t, people will guess. The British don’t want people to suspect that the Germans have spies in Egypt. It looks bad.”

She went into the bedroom to change. She called through the curtain: “Does that mean they’ve stopped looking for you?”

“No. I saw Abdullah in the souk. He says the Egyptian police aren’t really interested, but there’s a Major Vandam who’s keeping the pressure on.” Wolff put down the newspaper, frowning. He would have liked to know whether Vandam was the officer who had broken into the Villa les Oliviers. He wished he had been able to look more closely at that man, but from across the street the officer’s face, shaded by the peaked cap, had been a dark blank.

Sonja said: “How does Abdullah know?”

“I don’t know.” Wolff shrugged. “He’s a thief, he hears things.” He went to the icebox and took out the bottle. It was not really cold enough, but he was thirsty. He poured two glasses. Sonja came out, dressed: as he had anticipated, she was transformed, her hair perfect, her face lightly but cleverly made up, wearing a sheer cherry-red dress and matching shoes.

A couple of minutes later there were footsteps on the gangplank and a knock at the hatch. Sonja’s taxi had arrived. She drained her glass and left. They did not say hello and good-bye to one another.

Wolff went to the cupboard where he kept the radio. He took out the English novel and the sheet of paper bearing the key to the code. He studied the key. Today was May 28. He had to add 42—the year—to 28 to arrive at the page number in the novel which he must use to encode his message. May was the fifth month, so every fifth letter on the page would be discounted.

He decided to send: HAVE ARRIVED. CHECKING IN. ACKNOWLEDGE. Beginning at the top of page 70 of the book, he looked along the line of print for the letter H. It was the tenth character, discounting every fifth letter. In his code it would therefore be represented by the tenth letter of the alphabet, J. Next he needed an A. In the book, the third letter after the H was an A. The A of HAVE would therefore be represented by the third letter of the alphabet, C. There were special ways of dealing with rare letters, like X.

This type of code was a variation on the one-time pad, the only kind of code which was unbreakable in theory and in practice. To decode the message a listener had to have both the book and the key.

When he had encoded his message he looked at his watch. He was to transmit at midnight. He had a couple of hours before he heeded to warm up the radio. He poured another glass of champagne and decided to finish the caviar. He found a spoon and picked up the pot. It was empty. Sonja had eaten it all.

 

The runway was a strip of desert hastily cleared of camel thorn and large rocks. Rommel looked down as the ground came up to meet him. The Storch, a light aircraft used by German commanders for short trips around the battlefield, came down like a fly, its wheels on the ends of long, spindly front legs. The plane stopped and Rommel jumped out.