Nile Shadows

Bletchley glanced at his watch. He picked up the flask of brandy.

We still have a little time, he said, uncomfortable all at once, an uneasy tone in his voice.

He took a drink from the flask and passed it to Joe.

I don't know, he said, I don't know whether . . . you want to talk about any other things.

What happened, you mean?

Yes.

Well maybe just in passing. Maybe there are a couple of things.

As you like, Joe. I'll tell you what I can, and what I can't tell you, I won't.

***

Joe touched Bletchley on the arm and Bletchley turned away from the river to face him.

There's one thing that's been troubling me, said Joe. It has to do with Stern. I was wondering if there was any way he could have known where that hand grenade was going to go off? And when?

Deep lines appeared in Bletchley's forehead and he smiled in an arrogant manner, his good eye bulging, a twisted smirking expression.

Surprise, Joe reminded himself. Bletchley's face of surprise.

What do you mean? asked Bletchley. I don't think I understand. How could Stern have known that?

Someone might have told him, said Joe.

Who?

You.

Bletchley's one eyebrow slipped lower and the lines in his forehead disappeared. His expression became one of cunning. Devious, cruel, scheming.

Regret, Joe reminded himself. Bletchley's face of sadness and regret.

Bletchley found it so difficult to answer he almost stuttered.

. . . me?

Yes, you. You admired him and you might have done that for him. He was finished after all and he knew that, and you did, so you might have helped him out by telling him where and when. So he wouldn't have to think about it and could go on to other things, and settle his affairs in a way.

I don't understand. What affairs did he s-s-s-settle?

Oh, with Maud, say. He was with her the night before he was killed and he told her a great many things he never had before, and it was a summing up of sorts and a final parting, he made that clear enough.

They sat up together by the pyramids and then he took a photograph of her at dawn. Maud robust and smiling for him on his final day, framed between the Sphinx and the pyramids, a photograph she'd always have, taken by Stern on his final day. Because he did say that, he did tell her it was the last dawn he'd ever see. And he did seem to know all right. He didn't seem to be just guessing.

Bletchley looked down at his hands, the normal one and the crippled misshapen one with its tight grafted skin.

I didn't know about that, Joe. I didn't know what he'd told Maud. But if that's what happened, then he did seem to know. You're right.

And so?

Bletchley covered his bad hand with his good one. He gripped his bad hand, holding it tightly.

You have to understand some things, Joe. Ahmad and Cohen and Liffy, those things were done. It was wrong and it shouldn't have happened, but it did. But the hand grenade in the bar . . . that was pure chance, that was an accident. Some soldiers were out drinking and brawling and one of them, in his drunkenness, tossed a hand grenade through an open door as a joke, a door to a poor Arab bar that none of them had ever seen before, as a joke. . . . Well I don't have to tell you how funny the world is, but no one ordered it and no one knew anything about it. The Monastery had nothing to do with it and no one else did, just the soldier who threw the grenade. No one knew anything about that bar or who was in it. No one had ever heard of it. It was all pure chance.

Bletchley gripped his bad hand more tightly, as if to hide its ugliness.

I had it looked into and I was able to have the soldiers traced. They were Australians who'd been in Crete when the island fell and somehow they managed not to be captured. They spent months hiding in the mountains and it was only this spring that they escaped from Crete, by paddling a rowboat across the Libyan Sea. There were five of them who escaped together and they were out drinking that night, having a last celebration. They'd all been reassigned and their unit was moving up to the front the next day. And it did, and of the five, two are dead and one is missing and presumed dead, and another one is wounded.

. . . Their new unit took it very heavily. There was nothing much left of it after a few hours. The man who threw the hand grenade is one of those who's dead. Known dead. None of the five was over twenty.

Bletchley fell silent. He rocked, gripping his hand.

That's all, he added in a whisper. That's all. . . .

Joe looked out at the river.

And so that's how it was, he said. And what we call Stern's fate turns out to be some lads roaming in the nighttime and having a last round of fun before their own turn comes, and the playfulness was playful, but not really. And destiny's hand belongs to a twenty-year-old kid from Australia, now dead, who maybe wanted to sing Waltzing Matilda while marching across the sands of the Middle East the way his father did the last time around, in the last war. He didn't get much of a chance, that kid, too young by far. And will they send a medal for him to his people back home, because he survived in the mountains of Crete and escaped across the sea and was blown apart at a place called El Alamein, somewhere in the desert in his twentieth year? Will they do that for an Australian kid who had a song in mind?

I imagine, whispered Bletchley, rocking, gripping his bad hand.

Sure, said Joe. His unit took it heavily and so did he, and that's the way it works. And history has a way of dealing with its grand events not very grandly, doesn't it? Here Stern dies in a sordid little place without a conspiracy in sight, without the great powers or the lesser powers taking any notice whatsoever, and what's to mark it? What's to mark Stern's death?

Joe pushed a pebble into the river.

Nothing of course. Nothing reaching that sordid little place but the usual cries of the night, the usual meaningless cries to echo in Stern's ears at the end. Just some yells and drunken shouts and bloody wogs and that's it for Stern, and it's as you say. No one knew that bar and no one had any idea who was in it, and no one gave an order and no one knew anything about anything. The whole thing just a case of the night coming around again. . . . Just the night, as Stern said.

Ah well, I guess I had it figured that way, the hand grenade being chance, I mean. I just wanted to make sure I had it right. Stern always was one for knowing his particular patch of the desert, and after all these years of living in a certain way . . . Well I guess you learn to sense things, that's all, and Stern sensed the when, and as for the where, well what can you say about that bar except that it was Stern's kind of place? . . . A poor barren room with bare walls and a bare floor and all of it halfway to darkness, a desolate place and unkind, dreadfully so, but also the sort of place Stern understood. Knew that bare floor and those bare walls, he did, although they'd never been fit for living, as he said. . . . Barren, that's what. Just bare as bare and a cracked grainy mirror for a view of the kingdom and a shabby curtain as the gates to the kingdom, a sordid unkind place. And shouts outside in the darkness and laughter and scuffling and a hand grenade sailing in from nowhere, the darkness coming to meet Stern at last in a roar of blinding light. . . . Light. Stern gone. Yes. . . .

Joe sighed.

All right, so that's the way it was then. But what if those Australian lads hadn't staggered down that particular alley on their way to die in the desert? And what if they hadn't been quite so drunk and so playful and hadn't tossed a grenade at the bloody wogs for the fun of it? What then? Would there have been some other kind of accident for Stern before the night was out?

Bletchley shook his head, his round eye blank and bulging, empty.

No good, Joe, no good at all. That's not a question and it doesn't deserve an answer and you know it.

There are no what ifs in this business, only what is and nothing else. What if is playing with things and you don't do that, and I don't, and Stern didn't. . . . Or are you asking me whether I would have ordered Stern killed sometime, somewhere, if it had been