The Key to Rebecca - Ken Follett [104]
“Our lot’s off to Jerusalem. So’s everyone who knows too much. Keep people out of enemy hands, you know.”
“The brass is getting nervous, then.” It was logical, really: Rommel could cover sixty miles in a day.
“There’ll be riots at the station, you’ll see—half Cairo’s trying to get out and the other half is preening itself ready for the liberation. Ha!”
“You won’t tell too many people that you’re going ...”
“No, no, no. Now, then, I’ve got a little snippet for you. We all know Rommel’s got a spy in Cairo.”
“How did you know?” Vandam said.
“Stuff comes through from London, old boy. Anyhow, the chap has been identified as, and I quote, ‘the hero of the Rashid Ali affair.’ Mean anything to you?”
Vandam was thunderstruck. “It does!” he said.
“Well, that’s it.” Brown got off the table.
“Just a minute,” Vandam said. “Is that all?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“What is this, a decrypt or an agent report?”
“Suffice it to say that the source is reliable.”
“You always say that.”
“Yes. Well, I may not see you for a while. Good luck.”
“Thanks,” Vandam muttered distractedly.
“Toodle-oo!” Brown went out, puffing smoke.
The hero of the Rashid Ali affair. It was incredible that Wolff should have been the man who outwitted Vandam in Istanbul. Yet it made sense: Vandam recalled the odd feeling he had had about Wolff’s style, as if it were familiar. The girl whom Vandam had sent to pick up the mystery man had had her throat cut.
And now Vandam was sending Elene in against the same man.
A corporal came in with an order. Vandam read it with mounting disbelief. All departments were to extract from their files those papers which might be dangerous in enemy hands, and burn them. Just about anything in the files of an intelligence section might be dangerous in enemy hands. We might as well burn the whole damn lot, Vandam thought. And how would departments operate afterward? Clearly the brass thought the departments would not be operating at all for very much longer. Of course it was a precaution, but it was a very drastic one: they would not destroy the accumulated results of years of work unless they thought there was a very strong chance indeed of the Germans taking Egypt.
It’s going to pieces, he thought; it’s falling apart.
It was unthinkable. Vandam had given three years of his life to the defense of Egypt. Thousands of men had died in the desert. After all that, was it possible that we could lose? Actually give up, and turn and run away? It did not bear contemplating.
He called Jakes in and watched him read the order. Jakes just nodded, as if he had been expecting it. Vandam said: “Bit drastic, isn’t it?”
“It’s rather like what’s been happening in the desert, sir,” Jakes replied. “We establish huge supply dumps at enormous cost, then as we retreat we blow them up to keep them out of enemy hands.”
Vandam nodded. “All right, you’d better get on with it. Try and play it down a bit, for the sake of morale—you know, brass getting the wind up unnecessarily, that sort of thing.”
“Yes, sir. We’ll have the bonfire in the yard at the back, shall we?”
“Yes. Find an old dustbin and poke holes in its bottom. Make sure the stuff burns up properly.”
“What about your own files?”
“I’ll go through them now.”
“Very good, sir.” Jakes went out.
Vandam opened his file drawer and began to sort through his papers. Countless times over the last three years he had thought: I don’t need to remember that, I can always look it up. There were names and addresses, security reports on individuals, details of codes, systems of communication of orders, case notes and a little file of jottings about Alex Wolff. Jakes brought in a big cardboard box with “Lipton’s Tea” printed on its side, and Vandam began to dump papers into it, thinking: This is what it is like to be the losers.
The box was half full when Vandam’s corporal opened the door and said: “Major Smith to see you, sir.”
“Send him in.” Vandam did not know a Major Smith.
The major was a small, thin man in his forties with bulbous blue eyes and an air of being rather pleased with himself. He