Hitler's peace

“Now you’re talking.” The Ukrainian lit a cigarette for himself and thought out loud. “Some sort of nitrogen fertilizer, rich in nitric acid,” he said. “A nitrating agent to make a glycerine compound with the nitric acid-sugar, sawdust, lard, indigo, cork are all commonly obtained nitrating agents. A few grenades, some mercury, and some ethyl alcohol to make a reliable detonator. And an alarm clock and some batteries, on the assumption you don’t want to be around when the thing goes off.”

“Could you make such a bomb?”

Shkvarzev spat on the floor and then smiled. “Child’s play.”

“Then that’s settled. As soon as we get to another safe house I want you to start building a bloody big bomb.”

XXII

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1943,

CAIRO

Slipping out of Elena’s bed in the early light of an Egyptian dawn, I went onto the balcony. Beyond the extensive chaos of Garden City rooftops, it was possible to see across the Nile as far as the river island of Zamalek and the Gezira Sporting Club, where Elena and I had dined just a few hours before.

The Gezira was something straight out of The Four Feathers, a club so stiff it hurt, and it left me puzzled why Elena should have wanted to go there. It was like seeing the whole of the British empire preserved in aspic jelly. Everyone was in uniform or evening dress, or a combination of both. A little quintet played dreary British popular music and red-faced men and pink-looking women shuffled their way across the dance floor. The only people with dark skins were the men holding silver trays or towels over their arms. Every time Elena introduced me to someone I caught a faint smell of snobbery.

There was only one person I was happy to see. The trouble was, Colonel Powell assumed I was eager to resume our philosophical discussion, and it took me quite a while to divert him onto a subject that now interested me more.

“Do you know a Polish colonel by the name of Wlazyslaw Pulnarowicz?” I asked.

Powell looked surprised. “Why do you ask?”

“I met him last night,” I said. “At a dinner party. I think I may have got on the wrong side of him. Since then, I’ve been informed that he is not a man to cross.”

“That was also my impression,” said Powell. “A most ruthless character. Might I inquire if your disagreement with Wlazyslaw Pulnarowicz was to do with philosophy?”

Thinking I had better keep off the subject of philosophy altogether, as far as Powell was concerned, I shook my head. “Actually it was about the merits-or lack of merits-of the Soviet Union. The colonel takes a very dim view of the Russians. And of Stalin in particular. I think Pulnarowicz perceives Stalin as a kind of modern Herodotus, if you like. As the ‘father of modern lies,’ I think he said.”

Powell smiled thinly.

“If you are concerned that the colonel is ever likely to seek you out, I can put your mind at rest, in a manner of speaking. Regrettably, Colonel Wlazyslaw Pulnarowicz was killed late this afternoon. The plane on which he was traveling was shot down somewhere in the northern Mediterranean. He was on a secret mission, you understand. As a result, I’m afraid I am duty bound to tell you no more than that.”

I let out a breath that was a mixture of relief and surprise. And for a moment or two, I was hardly aware that Powell had already changed the subject and was disputing my description of Herodotus.

“Herodotus only makes the mistakes that are common to all historians,” he said. “Which are that he was not there and often relies on sources that are themselves unreliable. After this war is over, don’t you think it will be interesting to read the many lies that will be told of who did what and when and why, and of the things that were done, and the things that were not? Although God cannot alter the past, historians can and do provide a useful function in this respect. Which persuades Him, perhaps, to tolerate their existence.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” I said vaguely.

Powell seemed to detect my relief that Pulnarowicz was dead, and he changed the subject back again. “Wlazyslaw Pulnarowicz was a good soldier,” he said. “But he was not a good man. It is the nature of war to find ourselves with some pretty strange bed-fellows.”

Standing on the balcony of Elena’s bedroom, I finished my cigarette and reflected that Enoch Powell was more right than he had known. My own current bedfellow was very possibly a German spy. I had to find out if my suspicions were justified. She remained soundly asleep, so I left the balcony and slipped quietly out of the bedroom. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I felt I would recognize it if I saw it.

On the sweeping marble staircase, I laid my hand on the wrought-iron balustrade and peered over into the hallway. Apart from the sound of a ticking grandfather clock and a stray dog barking somewhere in the street outside, the house was as quiet as a mausoleum.