Lawrence Durrell - Judith

“Come, we will speak to them,” he said, still uttering his side-splitting giggle. “They are all my friends.”

Still puzzled and disbelieving, they followed him hesitantly towards the figures. As he reached the first one, he pushed it over on to the sand and turned his torch on it. It was a dummy made of wood, obviously manufactured for target practice. Sami beat his chest and laughed. “The nearest soldier is one mile,” he said.

They reached the road and bade their guide a tender farewell; his rendezvous was in a different direction, and they heard his laughter dwindle in the darkness. Nor was it long before they saw the slow arc of headlights approaching along the desert road. David lit a cigarette as he stood beside the road, and soon they heard his low tones uttering the password “Galilee”. The mission had begun propitiously.

Horvatz, their host, and the chief agent of the Jews in Cairo, was a comfortable-looking middle-aged man, a stockbroker by profession, who owned a large and comfortable house in Maadi, outside Cairo. As they sped down the desert road towards the whistling sky he told them, in slow confident tones, what there was to be known about the object of their curiosity — Schiller alias Schmidt. Horvatz himself had been signalled from Jerusalem about Grete’s participation, and he showed evident relief that at least one person among them would be in a position to make a positive identification.

“The Office is always so hasty,” he said. “I dreaded a mistake — for after all I spotted the man and signalled him myself ; I wouldn’t like us to carry off an innocent Swiss.” By the time they reached the edge of the desert road and saw the minarets grow up on the pale-rinsed dawn air, Grete herself was asleep. She saw nothing of the town they crossed; indeed, when she awoke it was to find they had entered the grounds of a handsome white house set by the river. Here they were shown to quiet rooms with comfortable beds in them and allowed to lie down and sleep. It was four in the afternoon before they assembled once more to discuss the business in hand. It seemed absurd, incongruous, to be sitting on a green lawn eating cucumber sandwiches and drinking tea, and discussing something as momentous as the carrying off of a war criminal. Horvatz behaved very much like a banker conducting a board meeting, putting before them proposals which, he felt, must appeal to their intelligence… There was no need for special pleading, for histrionics; his case rested on pure logic. At least, that was what his tone of voice conveyed. His daughter, Eva, sat beside him, smoking.

Horvatz said: “Whatever happens, we must not alarm him and we must — that is to say, you must, Miss Schiller — see, without being seen. Am I right?” He waited for their low murmur of assent before going on. “Now, I think we can arrange for rather a good sighting for you. By a stroke of good luck, one wall of the Abu Sergeh Church abuts onto the garden of the Egyptian officers’ club.” He started sketching lightly with a fountain pen on the back of a cigarette box. “In these Coptic churches,” he explained, “the fenestration of the women’s gallery is — well, like it is in a synagogue. The women can see through a thick filigree carved wooden screen, while they themselves remain invisible. One such screen is in the side wall of the church directly over the lawn where our man lunches and dines every day. I have arranged for you, Miss Schiller, to visit the church and look through the screen. I hope you can identify him.”

Grete swallowed. “A Coptic church?” she queried in surprise and dismay.

“Yes,” said Horvatz. “My daughter Eva will go with you. Abu Sergeh is behind the bazaars and you will have to walk there. I’ve arranged for you to wear Arab clothes and a face veil. It would be wiser to cross the bazaar as inconspicuously as possible. You will have nothing to do, for Eva speaks perfect Arabic and a few piastres to the sacristan will admit you to the church. He knows Eva, for she has been going regularly all this last week — keeping the place warm for you, so to speak. The sacristan will only see two devout Coptic ladies of Cairo at their devotions. Indeed, the custom of private praying is not uncommon, and there may be another lady engaged in genuine prayers, in which case you will have to wait a while. Do you follow me?”

“Yes.”

“Now then,” he continued, still sketching away. “As you know, here in Cairo in summer everything takes place outdoors. The Egyptian officers who mess at this club, lunch and dine out on the grass every day. Now, the object of our curiosity is always at the same table. Look!”

His pen roughed out a rectangular lawn, sketching in some palm trees in profile and representing the layout of the tables by a series of circles.

“You will be looking down from this point. This is the table. From your position you should get a good look at him. The rest is our affair.”

“Yes,” said Grete, feeling her heart beat faster.

The luck which had so far assisted their enterprise showed no signs of dwindling; that night they moved into Horvatz’ residence in the capital — a great rambling house, one half of which looked over the river and the other over the covered bazaars of Babalukhan. One frontage was along a narrow street which led directly to the Abu Sergeh Church. They would have to walk only about fifty yards before they turned into its courtyard. So it was that, the following afternoon, two Coptic ladies, well dressed in the Arab fashion, obviously of good Cairo families, slipped into the crowded street from the side gate of the house and made their way circumspectly along the street. They each held a small but richly bound prayer book, and each wore her yasmak , which allowed her to reveal no more than a pair of kohl-fringed eyes. They were accompanied by an elderly duenna, imposing and hideous, but she herself did not enter the church. Her duty was to wait for them in the courtyard.

Everything went without a hitch; the old sacristan bowed low before them and accepted the customary pourboire with joy. They crossed the cold flags of the echoing church and climbed the musty creaking stairs which led to the womens’ gallery. They were quite alone here, and with a swift silent step Eva crossed to the screened window, beckoning Grete to follow suit. With a strange sensation of breathlessness, a choking feeling which made her lips tremble, Grete followed her guide and found herself looking down, almost through the fronds of a palm tree, on to a green lawn covered with tables. She recognized their disposition easily from the diagram Horvatz had drawn. He had not been wrong about the siting, for immediately under her sat a man wearing dark glasses. He was drinking tea with lemon and eating a cream cake. As Grete focussed her glance on him and stared, he removed his dark glasses and — as if deliberately to oblige — looked up at the window. It was almost as if he was looking into her eyes. Instinctively she shrank back, forgetting that the ornamental window was screening her. Panic seized her as she stared down into those grey lustreless eyes of her husband, with their familiar expression of apathy and arrogance. He had changed, yes. He was stouter. He was very much greyer. But there could be no mistaking him. The cicatrices on his cheeks, for example, he had not been able to disguise those — ancient duelling scars of which he had always been so proud and which had always reminded her of the mutilations that African tribes inflict on their youth as marks of ornament. She was terrified of him for a moment, and almost cried out; then her fear left her and was replaced by a cold and scientific hate. How familiar it was — the arrogant set of the head, the small sharp cocksure nose, the circumflex of moustache with its waxed ends.