“I’m just compiling a report. It’s not my job to formulate policy.”
“If you’re compiling a report, then what are you doing here in Cairo?” demanded Skomorowski.
“You’re Polish. I’m speaking to you, aren’t I?” I grinned at him. “I’d hate to have missed the opportunity to meet all of you tonight. Besides, I don’t have to be in Washington to write a report.” I paused. “Not that I feel at all obliged to explain myself in this company.”
Skomorowski shrugged. “Or is it that by taking your time in making your report, you give Roosevelt a very valuable opportunity for delay?”
“Is Katyn even on the agenda for the Big Three at Teheran?” asked Pulnarowicz. “Will they even talk about it?”
“I really don’t know what is on the agenda at Teheran,” I said truthfully. “But even if I did, I certainly wouldn’t discuss it with you. Security is hardly best served by this kind of conversation.”
“You heard the princess,” said Pulnarowicz. “It’s all over the city.”
Elena squeezed my arm. “Willy darling, if you stay here for any length of time, you’ll recognize how true that is. It really is impossible to keep a secret in Cairo.”
“So I see,” I said pointedly. All the same, I found it hard to be cross with her. It was my fault for not remembering what a tremendous gossip she was.
“Not that Poland exists, anyway,” Colonel Pulnarowicz added, smiling bitterly. “Not anymore. Not since January, when Stalin declared that all Polish citizens were to be treated as Soviet citizens. It’s said that this was because he wanted the Poles to have the same rights as Soviet citizens.”
“The same right to be shot without trial,” said Skomorowski. “The same right to be deported to a labor camp. The same right to be starved to death.”
Everyone laughed. It was obviously a set piece that the two Polish officers had performed together before.
“The key to this whole problem is Stalin himself,” said Skomorowski. “If Stalin were removed, the whole edifice of Soviet communism would collapse. That’s the only way forward I can see. As long as Stalin remains alive, we will never have a free and democratic Poland. He should be assassinated. I’ll do it myself if I ever get half a chance.”
There was a long silence. Even Captain Skomorowski seemed to recognize that he had gone too far. Removing his glasses, he began to wipe them again.
“Well, I don’t know,” said Major Sernberg. “Really I don’t.”
“You’ll have to excuse Captain Skomorowski,” Pulnarowicz told the major. “He was in Moscow when Russian troops marched into Poland and for a while he was a guest of the NKVD. In the Lubyanka Prison. And then in one of their labor camps. At Solovki. He knows all about Soviet hospitality, don’t you, Josef?”
“I think,” said Elena, getting up from the table, “that this conversation has gone far enough.”
We listened to one of the British officers play the piano after that. This did little to improve anyone’s spirits. Just before midnight, Elena’s servants stopped serving alcohol. And gradually she was able to shoo her guests away. I would have left, too, but she asked me to stay on for a while, to talk about old times. Our old times. Which sounded just fine. So I went outside and told Coogan that I was staying on for a while and after that I would probably walk home.
“Be careful, sir,” he told me.
“I’ll be all right,” I said. “I have my pistol.”
“If you were thinking of going anywhere on your own, sir, then the nicest chorus girls in Cairo are at Madame Badia’s, sir. There’s a belly dancer called Tahia Carioca who’s first rate, if you like that sort of thing.”
“No, thanks.”
“Or if you was with a lady, sir, there’s a new place on the Mena Road, on the way to the Pyramids. The Auberge des Pyramides, it’s called. Opened in the summer. Very flash. Young King Farouk goes there a lot, so it must be good on account of how that boy knows how to enjoy himself.”
I grinned. “Coogan. Go home.”
Back in the house, the servants had disappeared, the way good servants do when they’re not wanted anymore. Elena made us some mint tea, just to prove that she could still boil a kettle, and then showed me back into the drawing room.
“Where do you find these guys?” I was feeling kind of sore about the way the evening had gone so far.
“Wlazyslaw can be quite charming sometimes,” she said. “But I’ll admit, tonight was not one of those occasions.”
“Just sitting next to him made me want to look for some life insurance.”
“He was jealous of you, that’s all.”
“‘He was jealous, that’s all’? Elena, a guy like that gets jealous, you’re liable to end up with a pillow over your face. And me taking an early-morning plunge in the Nile.”
She sipped her tea from a glass, snuggled up next to me on the sofa, and crossed her legs, carelessly.
“Did you ever do this with him?”
“Now who’s jealous?”
“That means yes. In which case no wonder he’s pissed. If you were my girl, I’d be pissed myself.”
“I’m nobody’s ‘girl,’ Willy. He knows that. Anyway, whatever happened between me and Wlazyslaw happened right here on this sofa. He’s never seen the wallpaper in my bedroom. Nobody has. Not since Freddy died.”
“That’s a long time to spend on the sofa. Even in Egypt.”
“Isn’t it? A long time.” She sighed, and for a moment we were both silent. “Why did you leave Berlin?”
“I’m half-Jewish, remember?”
“Yes, but the Nazis didn’t know that.”
“Maybe so, but I did. It took a while for my Jewish half to wrestle my Catholic half to the floor. Longer than it should have, perhaps.”
“So it wasn’t me.”
I shrugged. “But for you, I’d probably have left a lot earlier. It’s all your fault.”
“It sounds like you’re going to punish me.”
“Right now I’m having a lot of fun thinking about it.”
For a moment Elena’s eyes grew more distant, as if she were trying to visualize something important. “What’s she like? The girl in Washington.”
“Did I mention a girl anywhere?”
“Not specifically. But I can tell that there is one. I always could with you.”
“All right. There is and there isn’t. Not anymore.”
“Sounds like Wlazyslaw.”
“We got further than the sofa.”
“What happened?”
“She wanted me to care when I was pretending not to.”
“Sounds complicated.”
“Not really.”
“Tell me about it. And don’t think you have to make a joke about it. I can see it still hurts.”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Only when I look in your eyes.”
So I told her about Diana. Everything there was. Including my betrayal of her. It took a while, but when I had finished I felt better. I had lifted something from my shoulders. Like a couple of hundred tons of self-pity. It helped that she kissed me, of course. For quite a long time. The way old friends do sometimes. But for now, we kept it to the sofa.
“Do you want to stay?” she asked at about two A.M. “There are plenty of spare rooms.”
“Thanks, but I have to get back to my hotel. In case there are any messages from my boss.”
“Would you like Ahmed to take you in the car?”
“No, thanks, I’ll walk. It will feel nice to put one foot in front of the other without breaking into a sweat.”
“Tomorrow evening,” she said. “Let’s do something.”
“Something sounds good,” I said.
