couple of night-fighter squadrons north of Cairo. Bring in some more armored cars. More troops.”
“Makes sense,” agreed Leahy. “What else?”
“Since the two principal targets are the president and Mr. Churchill, perhaps we ought to leave the final decision to them. A short delay in the departure for Cairo might be a good idea, just to give them time for an exchange of telegrams.”
“Mike? What do you think?”
“It couldn’t do any harm to stay here another day,” agreed Reilly. “And it might be better if the president flew at night.”
“That’s true,” said Arnold. “There would be no need for a fighter escort at night.”
“How about this?” I said. “All the Joint Chiefs to fly on Sunday morning, six A.M., as scheduled. But the president doesn’t fly until late Sunday evening, which means he wouldn’t arrive in Cairo until Monday morning. In other words, we fool the world into believing the president is arriving in Cairo at lunchtime on Sunday, when in fact he won’t be there for another twenty hours. That way, if the Germans were to mount an attack, then the president would be safe.”
“Let me get this straight,” said General Marshall. “Are you proposing to use the Joint Chiefs as decoys?” The cavernous dining room at La Mersa seemed to give his words an extra resonance.
“That’s right, sir, yes.”
“I like it,” said Reilly.
“You would,” growled King.
“My suggestion has another advantage,” I added.
“What do you want us to do now?” asked Arnold. “Put up some smoke for German bombers?”
“No, sir. I was thinking that when you all arrived in Cairo, who better than yourselves to evaluate the security situation on the ground for the president? If you get there and decide that the situation warrants a change of location, you could direct the president somewhere else. Alexandria, for example. After all, that’s where Churchill is due to arrive tomorrow morning. And I’m told there are some excellent hotels in Alexandria.”
“I don’t like Alexandria,” said General Marshall. “It’s a hundred miles nearer to Crete, and the last I heard, there were thirty thousand German paratroopers on Crete. Not to mention, the Luftwaffe.”
“Yes, sir, but the Luftwaffe on Crete is mostly all fighters, not bombers,” I said. This was the advantage of being a specialist in German intelligence. I did at least know what I was talking about. “And they’re short of fuel. Of course, we could always choose Khartoum. But the logistics of moving everyone in Cairo a thousand miles to the south might be too much to contemplate.”
“Damn right they are,” muttered King.
“There are no good hotels in Khartoum, in any event. I’m not sure there are even any bad ones.”
I found myself beginning to warm to Arnold.
“Gentlemen,” said Marshall. “I think we’ll just have to hope that for once British defenses are as good as they say they are.”
I went back to La Mersa, had a shower, and checked my mail. There wasn’t any. Poole wanted me to see four of the local sights. Two of the local sights were named Leila and Amel, the other two were called Muna and Widad. But I’d had enough excitement for one day. Besides, I could hardly have looked in my shaving mirror and told myself I was in love with Diana with some Tunisian broad’s lipstick on my shirt collar. So I had a lousy dinner and went to bed early, although, as things turned out, I was not alone.
Early on the morning of Sunday, November 21, I awoke, with a couple of flea bites. It was a bad start. And when I looked in my shaving mirror I didn’t feel I had gained very much from declining Ridgeway Poole’s offer of hospitality. Awakening with a couple of Tunisian girls had to be better than awakening with a couple of flea bites. Things always look a lot different in the morning.
At six A.M. I accompanied the Joint Chiefs on one of the C-54s leaving the airfield of El Aounia. Ahead of us lay a five-and-a-half-hour flight to Cairo. I was pleased to discover that none of the president’s Secret Service agents were on our plane. The last thing I wanted was to endure the further scrutiny of Agents Rauff and Pawlikowski.
Approaching Cairo from the west, we enjoyed a spectacular view of the Pyramids before putting down at an RAF airfield in the western desert. Minutes later, the RAF were driving the Joint Chiefs and their liaison officers to the Mena House hotel, near the Pyramids at Giza. I was driven to Shepheard’s Hotel in the center of Cairo.
“Imshi,” yelled my driver, or, as often, “Fuck off,” as he steered the little Austin Seven between ancient- looking Thorneycroft buses, nervous flocks of sheep, cruelly laden asses, and other impatient drivers.
“From America, sir?” asked the driver. He was a blue-eyed, hatchet-faced man, as lean as a garden hose, and by the look of things, just as wet. Sweat rolled out of his wavy short black hair, down his thin white neck, and underneath his khaki shirt collar, to join a large damp patch between his shoulder blades.
“Yes. And you?”
“Manchester, England, sir. I used to dream of being somewhere hot, sir. And then I came here. Did you ever see such a bloody place, sir? Bloody chaos, that’s what it is.”
“Seen much action?”
“None since I’ve been here. At least not from the bloody Germans. You’ll see the antiaircraft searchlights at night, but there’s little chance of any bombers coming this far south. Not since the summer. By the way, sir, the name is Coogan, sir. Corporal Frank Coogan, and I’ll be your regular driver while you’re here in Cairo.”
“Nice to meet you, Frank.”
At last Coogan turned down a side street and I caught my first sight of the famous Shepheard’s Hotel, an ungainly building at whose large front terrace dozens of British and American officers were seated. Coogan pulled up, waved away an Arab guide wearing a bright red tarboosh, and, collecting my cases off the luggage rack, led the way inside.
Battling my way through officers of all ranks and races, prosperous Levantine businessmen, and several dubious-looking women, I presented myself at the reception desk and glanced around at the Moorish-style hall with its vast pillars, thick and lotus-shaped, and the grand staircase that swept upward, flanked by two tall caryatids of ebony. It was like being on the set of a film by Cecil B. DeMille.
There were three messages for me: one from Donovan, suggesting that we meet for a drink in the hotel’s long bar at three o’clock; an invitation for dinner the following evening from my old friend, the Princess Elena Pontiatowska, at her house in Garden City; and a letter from Diana.
I dismissed Coogan, and, thinking I might try one last time to lose Donovan’s case, I let the hotel manager organize its delivery to my hotel room. But fifteen minutes later, I was safely ensconced in my suite with all my bags, including Donovan’s. Throwing open the shutters and the windows, I stepped onto the balcony and surveyed the rooftops and the street below. There was no doubt about it: Donovan had done me proud; I could not have chosen better myself.
I put off reading Diana’s letter for as long as I could, the way you do when you’re afraid of finding out a truth. I even smoked a cigarette while I contemplated it from a safe distance. Then I read it. Several times. And there was one passage in her letter to which I paid particular attention.
You mentioned the injustice of my walking out on you as I did and avoiding you these last few days. I’m afraid I was and still am very angry with you, Willard. The person with whom I had spent that evening, when I was supposed to be at the movies, was an old friend of mine, Barbara Charisse. I don’t think you’ve ever met her, but she has heard of you and, recently, she had been in London. She’s also an old friend of Lord Victor Rothschild, whom I believe you do know. It seemed she had been at a party you were also at, and had heard from some pansy that while you were in London you were sleeping with someone called Rosamond Lehmann. Normally I wouldn’t mind, but it irritated me the way you quizzed me about whether I’d seen that film or not, and your unspoken assumption that you had occupied the moral high ground by not asking me about it further. And I thought to myself, Fuck you, mister. Fuck you, for making me feel like I was the betrayer. So, since you ask, I find that I haven’t really changed that opinion. I also find that I’m not likely to change it, either. Fuck you, Willard.
I folded Diana’s letter up and put it in my breast pocket, right next to the aching hole where my heart had
