Hitler's peace

Outside Grey Pillars, I found myself feeling light-headed. Light-headed but heavy of spirit. Diana Vandervelden seemed almost as far away from me as Beketovka. Which was a pity, as the battery inside my chest was needing the kind of boost that only the company of a good friend could provide. A good female friend who still cared for me a little, perhaps. So I bought some flowers and walked round to Elena’s house. We had arranged to meet that evening.

Elena’s butler, Hossein, asked me to wait in the drawing room until his mistress was awake, explaining she always slept for a couple of hours in the afternoon. But I had the distinct impression that she was not alone. There was a certain masculine smell in the air. A smell like American cigarettes, Old Spice, and brilliantine. On the sofa was the October edition of Jumbo Comics, featuring Sheena Queen of the Jungle, which hadn’t been there the previous evening. I flicked through the comic book while I waited. Sheena had large breasts and wore a fetching sort of loincloth made from leopard skin. For killing panthers and riding elephants, Sheena’s outfit looked like a good choice. But you needed something different when your prey had just two legs. Elena knew that. And when, eventually, she came into the drawing room, she was dressed in something much more practical. She was wearing a white silk dressing gown underneath which she was practically naked. Which was fine if she really had been sleeping. A lot of people sleep naked. A few of them even do it alone. Not that she felt any pressing need to explain herself.

“What a nice surprise,” she said.

“I’m a bit early,” I said. “But I was in the area. So, I thought I’d drop by.” I brandished the magazine as evidence. “I hope I’m not interrupting something.”

She took the magazine from my hand, glanced at it, and then tossed it aside. “One of the boys from last night must have left it.”

“That’s what I thought.”

We sat down on the sofa. Elena crossed her legs, affording me a fine curving view of her upper thigh.

“Light me a cigarette, will you, darling?”

I lit us each one and concentrated on the little matching silk slipper that was holding on to the end of her perfect toes.

“I called your hotel this morning, but they said you’d already gone out.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I wanted to see that you were all right. Last night, just after you’d left, I went up to bed and as I was drawing the curtains in my room, I saw a car parked on the corner. And a man standing beside it.”

“What kind of car?” I asked.

“Dark green. Alfa Romeo sports sedan.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I had the strange idea that the driver was Wlazyslaw Pulnarowicz. I mean, it looked very much like the colonel. Except for the fact that he wasn’t wearing his uniform. And he owns a white BMW.”

“I see. What was he wearing? This man you saw.”

Elena shrugged and played with her cigarette.

“The light wasn’t good. But I think he was wearing a light brown suit and spat shoes. You know, white, with a dark toe.”

“How about a hat?”

She shrugged. “Yes. A Panama. He was holding it in his hands.”

I thought for a moment about the man who had shot at me. “When you first talked about the colonel, you said he was the old-fashioned type and that he might get jealous and challenge me to a duel.”

Elena nodded.

“Do you think he’s the type that could murder a man in cold blood?”

“Oh, darling, they all are. That’s what the SOE is all about.”

“Someone took a shot at me last night. In Ezbekiah Gardens. He missed me, but another man, an Egyptian, was killed, Elena.”

“Oh my God, you don’t think it was Lazlo?”

“It looks that way. The only people running around Cairo carrying pistols with silencers work for SOE, or the German Abwehr.” I shrugged. It wasn’t anything like the ball I had pitched Harry Hopkins, but I still liked a German spy ring for the murders of Ted and Debbie Schmidt. I would have to speak to Colonel Powell about Wlazyslaw Pulnarowicz. “It might be that after the party, the colonel drove back home, changed out of his uniform, borrowed someone’s car, and then came back to see if I was still here. Then he followed me back to my hotel, where he tried to give my brain some air-conditioning.”

This time Elena took a proper hit on her cigarette. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

“Don’t be. You’re Desdemona in this play. Not Othello.”

“All the same, it was me who put you in harm’s way, Willy. It was me who made him jealous.” She shook her head. “God damn the man. It’s not like there was even anything to feel jealous about. We were just two old friends, catching up.”

“Maybe that was true last night,” I said and then kissed her on the lips. “But not now.”

She smiled and kissed me back. “No, you’re right. Now he would have every reason to feel jealous.”

“He’s not hiding upstairs, is he?”

“No. Would you like to check?”

“I think I should, don’t you?”

Elena stood up and, taking me by the hand, led me out of the drawing room toward the stairs.