The Key to Rebecca - Ken Follett [143]
Wolff let her go and sat down. She looked around. They were all staring at her. None of them would help her, for she was not just an Egyptian, she was an Egyptian woman, and women, like camels, had to be beaten from time to time. As she met the eyes of the other passengers they looked away, embarrassed, and turned to their newspapers, their books and the view from the windows. No one spoke to her.
She fell into her seat. Useless, impotent rage boiled within her. Almost, they had almost escaped.
She put her arm around the child and pulled him close. She began to stroke his hair. After a while he fell asleep.
27
VANDAM HEARD THE TRAIN PUFF, PULL AND PUFF AGAIN. IT GATHERED SPEED AND moved out of the station. Vandam took another drink of water. The bottle was empty. He put it back in his pannier. He drew on his cigarette and threw away the butt. No one but a few peasants had gotten off the train. Vandam kicked his motorcycle into life and drove away.
In a few moments he was out of the little town and back on the straight, narrow road beside the canal. Soon he had left the train behind. It was noon: the sunshine was so hot it seemed tangible. Vandam imagined that if he stuck out his arm the heat would drag on it like a viscous liquid. The road ahead stretched into a shimmering infinity. Vandam thought: If I were to drive straight into the canal, how cool and refreshing it would be!
Somewhere along the road he had made a decision. He had set out from Cairo with no thought in his mind but to rescue Billy; but at some point he had realized that that was not his only duty. There was still the war.
Vandam was almost certain that Wolff had been too busy at midnight last night to use his radio. This morning he had given away the radio, thrown the book in the river and burned the key to the code. It was likely that he had another radio, another copy of Rebecca and another key to the code; and that the place they were all hidden was Assyut. If Vandam’s deception plan were to be implemented, he had to have the radio and the key—and that meant he had to let Wolff get to Assyut and retrieve his spare set.
It ought to have been an agonizing decision, but somehow Vandam had taken it with equanimity. He had to rescue Billy and Elene, yes; but after Wolff had picked up his spare radio. It would be tough on the boy, savagely tough, but the worst of it—the kidnapping—was already in the past and irreversible, and living under Nazi rule, with his father in a concentration camp, would also be savagely tough.
Having made the decision, and hardened his heart, Vandam needed to be certain that Wolff really was on that train. And in figuring out how to check, he had thought of a way to make things a little easier for Billy and Elene at the same time.
When he reached the next town he reckoned he was at least fifteen minutes ahead of the train. It was the same kind of place as the last town: same animals, same dusty streets, same slow-moving people, same handful of brick buildings. The police station was in a central square, opposite the railway station, flanked by a large mosque and a small church: Vandam pulled up outside and gave a series of peremptory blasts on the horn of his bike.
Two Arab policemen came out of the building: a gray-haired man in a white uniform with a pistol at his belt, and a boy of eighteen or twenty years who was unarmed. The older man was buttoning his shirt. Vandam got off the bike and bawled: “Attention!” Both men stood straight and saluted. Vandam returned the salute, then shook the older man’s hand. “I’m chasing a dangerous criminal, and I need your help,” he said dramatically. The man’s eyes glittered. “Let’s go inside.”
Vandam led the way. He felt he needed to keep the initiative firmly in his own hands. He was by no means sure of his own status here, and if the policemen were to choose to be uncooperative there would be little he could do about it. He entered the building.