behind, a loud whisper, “Get
down
you fucking cheesehead.” What? A name stuck to Dutchmen, so it must be him. He started to turn around, then flinched as a Sten fired off and something whizzed past his ear. Now he went down, fumbling beneath the oilskin for the Browning. Somebody else fired as DeHaan turned back to look for the bearded man but he’d vanished.
Kepi, French Foreign Legion
. He managed to get the pistol free and worked the slide to arm it as men ran past him and somebody yelled, “Get him, Jimmy.” Another burst, where he couldn’t see, and another, which produced an indignant roar, as though somebody’d had his foot stepped on. Indignation ended abruptly by a third, very short, burst.
“They’re over there.”
They were. Stuttering flashes and French shouts and a thousand bees. DeHaan pointed the Browning toward the gunfire and pulled the trigger, shells ejecting past his cheek until they stopped. A few seconds later, silence. Then the metallic snap of magazines being replaced and the voice of the sergeant. “Right, then. Hop it.” One of those wizards with a mystical sense of direction, DeHaan thought, hoped, he now led them off down some new path.
A bizarre procession. The lieutenant hobbling along with his Sten-gun cane, his helper pulling him by the elbow, the German prisoner—a balding clerk, squinting as though he’d lost his glasses—hurried along by a commando at his side, behind them a man with a Bren in one hand while the other dragged the parabolic mirror, which bounced along the slippery rock as he ran low to the ground. DeHaan followed, trying to free the empty clip from the Browning with one hand as he trotted past Patapouf, who lay on his back, arms flung wide, staring up at the rain. DeHaan knelt by his side, reached for the pulse in his neck with two fingers. The commando behind him took a handful of DeHaan’s oilskin and hauled him to his feet. “Gone to God, sir. Leave him be.”
“Patapouf,” DeHaan said.
Fatso.
The immense stupidity of it clouded his vision.
“I know, sir. Can’t be helped.” A thick accent, high-pitched voice, the teenager with the pinched face. “He stood up to fire, see, and you oughtn’t to do that.”
DeHaan picked up the Enfield and the boxes.
Then, reluctantly, he began to run.
IN ADMIRALTY SERVICE
20 MAY. ALEXANDRIA.
Room 38 in the Hotel Cecil, on the Ras el Tin seafront.
Demetria.
She was, she said, Levantine, of Greek origin, and, hair, eyes, and spirit, dark in every way. By day, the headmistress of a school for young women, “very prim and decorous, with uniforms.” But—she’d looked at him a certain way—she wasn’t really like that. The look deepened. Not at all.
True. Freed of her daily life, and a stiff linen suit, her underwear buried somewhere in the tumbled sheets of the hotel bed, she lay back in her flesh, luxuriant, legs comfortably apart—the color the French called
rose de dessous
casually revealed—and smoked with great pleasure. Black, oval cigarettes with gold rims, and heavy perfume. Idly, she played with the smoke—let it drift from her mouth, then, with little puffs, sent white whorls rolling up to the plaster medallion on the ceiling. “It shames me to say it,” she said, “but I smoke only in secret.”
Something shamed her? DeHaan lay at her feet, across the bed, propped on an elbow. “I won’t tell,” he said.
Her smile was tender. “I was truly proper, you know, once upon a time. Then, my husband went and died on me, poor soul, when I was thirty-eight.” She shrugged, exhaled, puffed at the smoke. “These Greek communities, Odessa, Beirut, Cairo, are very straitlaced, if you are of a certain class. So, wickedness is a problem. Which is strange in this city—it’s very free here, for certain people, but not for someone like me. I did have a few, suitors, for a time, even a matchmaker. Oh Demetria, for you this gentleman of decent means,
down
you fucking cheesehead.” What? A name stuck to Dutchmen, so it must be him. He started to turn around, then flinched as a Sten fired off and something whizzed past his ear. Now he went down, fumbling beneath the oilskin for the Browning. Somebody else fired as DeHaan turned back to look for the bearded man but he’d vanished.
Kepi, French Foreign Legion
. He managed to get the pistol free and worked the slide to arm it as men ran past him and somebody yelled, “Get him, Jimmy.” Another burst, where he couldn’t see, and another, which produced an indignant roar, as though somebody’d had his foot stepped on. Indignation ended abruptly by a third, very short, burst.
“They’re over there.”
They were. Stuttering flashes and French shouts and a thousand bees. DeHaan pointed the Browning toward the gunfire and pulled the trigger, shells ejecting past his cheek until they stopped. A few seconds later, silence. Then the metallic snap of magazines being replaced and the voice of the sergeant. “Right, then. Hop it.” One of those wizards with a mystical sense of direction, DeHaan thought, hoped, he now led them off down some new path.
A bizarre procession. The lieutenant hobbling along with his Sten-gun cane, his helper pulling him by the elbow, the German prisoner—a balding clerk, squinting as though he’d lost his glasses—hurried along by a commando at his side, behind them a man with a Bren in one hand while the other dragged the parabolic mirror, which bounced along the slippery rock as he ran low to the ground. DeHaan followed, trying to free the empty clip from the Browning with one hand as he trotted past Patapouf, who lay on his back, arms flung wide, staring up at the rain. DeHaan knelt by his side, reached for the pulse in his neck with two fingers. The commando behind him took a handful of DeHaan’s oilskin and hauled him to his feet. “Gone to God, sir. Leave him be.”
“Patapouf,” DeHaan said.
Fatso.
The immense stupidity of it clouded his vision.
“I know, sir. Can’t be helped.” A thick accent, high-pitched voice, the teenager with the pinched face. “He stood up to fire, see, and you oughtn’t to do that.”
DeHaan picked up the Enfield and the boxes.
Then, reluctantly, he began to run.
IN ADMIRALTY SERVICE
20 MAY. ALEXANDRIA.
Room 38 in the Hotel Cecil, on the Ras el Tin seafront.
Demetria.
She was, she said, Levantine, of Greek origin, and, hair, eyes, and spirit, dark in every way. By day, the headmistress of a school for young women, “very prim and decorous, with uniforms.” But—she’d looked at him a certain way—she wasn’t really like that. The look deepened. Not at all.
True. Freed of her daily life, and a stiff linen suit, her underwear buried somewhere in the tumbled sheets of the hotel bed, she lay back in her flesh, luxuriant, legs comfortably apart—the color the French called
rose de dessous
casually revealed—and smoked with great pleasure. Black, oval cigarettes with gold rims, and heavy perfume. Idly, she played with the smoke—let it drift from her mouth, then, with little puffs, sent white whorls rolling up to the plaster medallion on the ceiling. “It shames me to say it,” she said, “but I smoke only in secret.”
Something shamed her? DeHaan lay at her feet, across the bed, propped on an elbow. “I won’t tell,” he said.
Her smile was tender. “I was truly proper, you know, once upon a time. Then, my husband went and died on me, poor soul, when I was thirty-eight.” She shrugged, exhaled, puffed at the smoke. “These Greek communities, Odessa, Beirut, Cairo, are very straitlaced, if you are of a certain class. So, wickedness is a problem. Which is strange in this city—it’s very free here, for certain people, but not for someone like me. I did have a few, suitors, for a time, even a matchmaker. Oh Demetria, for you this gentleman of decent means,
Similar Books
