The Key to Rebecca - Ken Follett [8]
He pushed the thought aside and spoke to Cox with as much grace as he could muster. “Well, thank you.”
He turned to the desk and asked for a room. He looked at his watch: he had fifteen minutes left. He filled in the form quickly, giving an invented address in Cairo—there was a chance Captain Newman would forget the true address on the identity papers, and Wolff did not want to leave a reminder.
A Nubian porter led them upstairs to the room. Wolff tipped him off at the door. Cox put the cases down on the bed.
Wolff took out his wallet: perhaps Cox expected a tip too. “Well, Corporal,” he began, “you’ve been very helpful—”
“Let me unpack for you, sir,” Cox said. “Captain said not to leave anything to the wogs.”
“No, thank you,” Wolff said firmly. “I want to lie down right now.”
“You go ahead and lie down,” Cox persisted generously. “It won’t take me—”
“Don’t open that!”
Cox was lifting the lid of the case. Wolff reached inside his jacket, thinking Damn the man and Now I’m blown and I should have locked it and Can I do this quietly? The little corporal stared at the neat stacks of new English pound notes which filled the small case. He said: “Jesus Christ, you’re loaded!” It crossed Wolff’s mind, even as he stepped forward, that Cox had never seen so much money in his life. Cox began to turn, saying: “What do you want with all that—” Wolff pulled the wicked curved Bedouin knife, and it glinted in his hand as his eyes met Cox’s, and Cox flinched and opened his mouth to shout; and then the razor-sharp blade sliced deep into the soft flesh of his throat, and his shout of fear came as a bloody gurgle and he died; and Wolff felt nothing, only disappointment.
2
IT WAS MAY, AND THE KHAMSIN WAS BLOWING, A HOT DUSTY WIND FROM THE south. Standing under the shower, William Vandam had the depressing thought that this would be the only time he would feel cool all day. He turned off the water and dried himself rapidly. His body was full of small aches. He had played cricket the day before, for the first time in years. General Staff Intelligence had got up a team to play the doctors from the field hospital—spies versus quacks, they had called it—and Vandam, fielding on the boundary, had been run ragged as the medics hit the Intelligence Department’s bowling all over the park. Now he had to admit he was not in good condition. Gin had sapped his strength and cigarettes had shortened his wind, and he had too many worries to give the game the fierce concentration it merited.
He lit a cigarette, coughed and started to shave. He always smoked while he was shaving—it was the only way he knew to relieve the boredom of the inevitable daily task. Fifteen years ago he had sworn he would grow a beard as soon as he got out of the Army, but he was still in the Army.
He dressed in the everyday uniform: heavy sandals, socks, bush shirt and the khaki shorts with the flaps that could be let down and buttoned below the knee for protection against mosquitoes. Nobody ever used the flaps, and the younger officers usually cut them off, they looked so ridiculous.
There was an empty gin bottle on the floor beside the bed. Vandam looked at it, feeling disgusted with himself: it was the first time he had taken the damn bottle to bed with him. He picked it up, replaced the cap and threw the bottle into the wastebasket. Then he went downstairs.
Gaafar was in the kitchen, making tea. Vandam’s servant was an elderly Copt with a bald head and a shuffling walk, and pretensions to be an English butler. That he would never be, but he had a little dignity and he was honest, and Vandam had not found those qualities to be common among Egyptian house servants.
Vandam said: “Is Billy up?” “Yes, sir, he’s coming down directly.”
Vandam nodded. A small pan of water