The Key to Rebecca - Ken Follett [103]
Rommel suppressed the urge to tell von Mellenthin not to answer: he knew this was a weak point.
“Sixty tanks, Field Marshal, and two thousand five hundred men.”
“And the Italians?”
“Six thousand men and fourteen tanks.”
Kesselring turned back to Rommel. “And you’re going, to take Egypt with a total of seventy-four tanks? Von Mellenthin, what is our estimate of the enemy’s strength?”
“The Allied forces are approximately three times as numerous as ours, but—”
“There you are.”
Von Mellenthin went on: “—but we are very well supplied with food, clothing, trucks and armored cars, and fuel; and the men are in tremendous spirits.”
Rommel said: “Von Mellenthin, go to the communications truck and see what has arrived.”
Von Mellenthin frowned, but Rommel did not explain, so he went out.
Rommel said: “The Allies are regrouping at Mersa Matruh. They expect us to move around the southern end of their line. Instead we will hit the middle, where they are weakest—”
“How do you know all this?” Kesselring interrupted.
“Our intelligence assessment—”
“On what is the assessment based?”
“Primarily on a spy report—”
“My God!” For the first time Kesselring raised his voice. “You’ve no tanks, but you have your spy!”
“He was right last time.”
Von Mellenthin came back in.
Kesselring said: “All this makes no difference. I am here to confirm the Fuehrer’s orders: you are to advance no farther.”
Rommel smiled. “I have sent a personal envoy to the Fuehrer.”
“You ... ?”
“I am a Field Marshall now, I have direct access to Hitler.”
“Of course.”
“I think von Mellenthin may have the Fuehrer’s reply.”
“Yes,” said von Mellenthin. He read from a sheet of paper. “It is only once in a lifetime that the Goddess of Victory smiles. Onward to Cairo. Adolf Hitler.”
There was a silence.
Kesselring walked out.
19
WHEN VANDAM GOT TO HIS OFFICE HE LEARNED THAT, THE PREVIOUS EVENING, Rommel had advanced to within sixty miles of Alexandria.
Rommel seemed unstoppable. The Mersa Matruh Line had broken in half like a matchstick. In the south, the 13th Corps had retreated in a panic, and in the north the fortress of Mersa Matruh had capitulated. The Allies had fallen back once again—but this would be the last time. The new line of defense stretched across a thirty-mile gap between the sea and the impassable Qattara Depression, and if that line fell there would be no more defenses, Egypt would be Rommel’s.
The news was not enough to dampen Vandam’s elation. It was more than twenty-four hours since he had awakened at dawn, on the sofa in his drawing room, with Elene in his arms. Since then he had been suffused with a kind of adolescent glee. He kept remembering little details: how small and brown her nipples were, the taste of her skin, her sharp fingernails digging into his thighs. In the office he had been behaving a little out of character, he knew. He had given back a letter to his typist, saying: “There are seven errors in this, you’d better do it again,” and smiled at her sunnily. She had nearly fallen off her chair. He thought of Elene, and he thought: “Why not? Why the hell not?” and there was no reply.
He was visited early by an officer from the Special Liaison Unit. Anybody with his ear to the ground in GHQ now knew that the SLUs had a very special, ultrasecret source of intelligence. Opinions differed as to how good the intelligence was, and evaluation was always difficult because they would never tell you the source. Brown, who held the rank of captain but was quite plainly not a military man, leaned on the edge of the table and spoke around the stem of his pipe. “Are you being evacuated, Vandam?”
These chaps lived in a world of their own, and there was no point in telling them that a captain had to call a major “sir.” Vandam said: “What? Evacuated?