The Key to Rebecca - Ken Follett [74]
Vandam thought: A knife!
The blade flashed toward his throat. He jerked back reflexively. There was a searing pain all across his cheek. His hand flew to his face. He felt a gush of hot blood. Suddenly the pain was unbearable. He pressed on the wound and his fingers touched something hard. He realized he was feeling his own teeth, and that the knife had sliced right through the flesh of his cheek; and then he felt himself falling, and he heard Wolff running away, and everything turned black.
13
WOLFF TOOK A HANDKERCHIEF FROM HIS TROUSERS POCKET AND WIPED THE blood from the blade of the knife. He examined the blade in the dim light, then wiped it again. He walked along, polishing the thin steel vigorously. He stopped, and thought: What am I doing? It’s clean already. He threw away the handkerchief and replaced the knife in the sheath under his arm. He emerged from the alley into the street, got his bearings, and headed for the Old City.
He imagined a prison cell. It was six feet long by four feet wide, and half of it was taken up by a bed. Beneath the bed was a chamber pot. The walls were of smooth gray stone. A small lightbulb hung from the ceiling by a cord. In one end of the cell was a door. In the other end was a small square window, set just above eye level: through it he could see the bright blue sky. He imagined that he woke up in the morning and saw all this, and remembered that he had been here for a year, and he would be here for another nine years. He used the chamber pot, then washed his hands in the tin bowl in the corner. There was no soap. A dish of cold porridge was pushed through the hatch in the door. He picked up the spoon and took a mouthful, but he was unable to swallow, for he was weeping.
He shook his head to clear it of nightmare visions. He thought: I got away, didn’t I? I got away. He realized that some of the people on the street were staring at him as they passed. He saw a mirror in a shop window, and examined himself in it. His hair was awry, one side of his face was bruised and swollen, his sleeve was ripped and there was blood on his collar. He was still panting from the exertion of running and fighting. He thought: I look dangerous. He walked on, and turned at the next comer to take an indirect route which would avoid the main streets.
Those imbeciles in Berlin had given him counterfeit money! No wonder they were so generous with it—they were printing it themselves. It was so foolish that Wolff wondered if it might be more than foolishness. The Abwehr was run by the military, not by the Nazi Party; its chief, Canaris, was not the staunchest of Hitler’s supporters.
When I get back to Berlin there will be such a purge...
How had it caught up with him, here in Cairo? He had been spending money fast. The forgeries had got into circulation. The banks had spotted the dud notes—no, not the banks, the paymaster general. Anyway, someone had begun to refuse the money, and word had got around Cairo. The proprietor of the restaurant had noticed that Wolff’s money was fake and had called the military. Wolff grinned ruefully to himself when he recalled how flattered he had been by the proprietor’s complimentary brandy—it had been no more than a ruse to keep him there until the MPs arrived.
He thought about the man on the motorcycle. He must be a determined bastard, to ride the bike around those alleys and up and down the steps. He had no gun, Wolff guessed: if he had, he would surely have used it. Nor had he a tin hat, so presumably he was not an MP. Someone from Intelligence, perhaps? Major Vandam, even?
Wolff hoped so.
I cut the man, he thought. Quite badly, probably. I wonder where? The face?
I hope it was Vandam.
He turned his mind to his immediate problem. They had Sonja. She would tell them she hardly knew Wolff-she would make up some story about a quick pickup in the Cha-Cha Club. They would not be able to hold her for long, because she was famous, a star, a kind of hero among the Egyptians, and to imprison her would cause a great deal of trouble. So they