Liffy frowned, his mood changing.
Romanticism? Imagination? But hasn't it always been the human enigma? Has anything ever been so circular and contradictory, right from the beginning? It spins from sublime to harmless, from Einstein to Cynthia, and so around the circle to the horrors that Zarathustra also spake, sadly for all of us.
Liffy groaned.
That's right. I'm talking about the lowest of the low now, German supermen. Before the war the Germans used to get very excited over the idea of a mud pit filled with muscular naked blond women, viciously wrestling with each other. After the regular evening entertainments were over in the provinces, that was often the special show put on backstage for an extra fee. A discreet side entrance for couples, single ladies invited free of charge. The mud flying and the slime oozing and naked grunting women sinking in primordial muck to the accompaniment of Bach and Mozart, the phonograph blaring, with a dramatic switch to Wagner and on-the-spot promotions to Panzergroupcommander for those who grunted the loudest, after one of the hulking combatants had managed to squash all the other heads under the mud. . .
. Bliss and more. Yes.
Liffy choked and sputtered for air, wheezing painfully.
The truth always takes a little bit out of me, he rasped. And have you noticed that when Rommel is wearing civilian clothes, he looks like some small-time hoodlum? Surly little Swabian fellow with a snarl on his face and his felt hat mashed down on his head? And he's supposed to be the good German general. Well if he's so good, how did he get to be the commandant of Hitler's personal headquarters before the war? Must have ingratiated himself, wouldn't you say? And Hitler must have liked what he saw, which says a good deal more about our Desert Fox than any amount of racing around in an African desert ever will. . . . Hitler likes him? That's good?
Liffy gripped his throat. For a moment he seemed unable to breathe.
And I also imagine that to someone from the New World, I may seem unduly sensitive to the loping images I find in that simple Germanic term, Panzergroupcommander. Well I can only say that it's much worse than you think. Much worse. Frankly, it's a howling nightmare of a word to me and you might as well scream COSSACK in my ear. The one conjures up the same primeval blackness as the other ?
Liffy shuddered, as if shaking off a mood.
***
More of Rommel's wine was opened as the night deepened and the talk swirled in the little room in the Hotel Babylon, as Liffy learned more about Joe and his interest in Stern, and Joe learned more about Ahmad and Bletchley and the British intelligence units known as the Monks and the Waterboys, the one with its headquarters in the desert, the other in the Irrigation Works in Cairo itself.
Of course Liffy knew Joe had been brought to Cairo by the Monks, since Bletchley was a Monk. And he was also friendly with Stern, as it turned out, although he had no professional connection with Stern and knew almost nothing about what Stern did.
We met through work, said Liffy, but that's not how we're friends and we never talk about work. With a war on, who'd want to? Mostly we just sit in one dim Arab bar or another and talk.
What do you talk about? asked Joe.
Oh, empty railway stations, living at night, Europe before the war. Stern was a student in Europe when he was young and he likes my imitations. They make him laugh, or at least they used to. Nothing much makes him laugh these days.
Have you met any of his other friends then?
Well there's the American woman, Maud, who works for the Waterboys. Translations, I think, not operations. I've met her with him once or twice. And of course there's Ahmad, they used to be friends.
But you know how it is out here these days, Joe. People tend to keep the different parts of their lives separate, very much so.
Joe nodded.
But what about these Monks and Waterboys, Liffy? What can you tell me about them?
Liffy's mouth worked silently, nibbling and chewing over his thoughts.
Well they have their different areas of interest, naturally, but the areas don't seem to have anything to do with geography. It's more a matter of the kinds of intelligence involved, or the levels, I guess you could say. The things the Monks do always seem more obscure, and they're fanatical about keeping their affairs to themselves. They take things from the Waterboys all right, information and support and so forth, but it never works the other way. The Monks are always careful to keep an outsider on the periphery of things.
Do the two groups compete with each other then?
Liffy shook his head.
You couldn't say that really. I suppose there's some overlap in their operations sometimes, there'd have to be. But in the end their goals are different, their levels of interest again. The deeper you go, the more likely you are to find it's the Monks who are involved, not the Waterboys. The more regular aspects of the business, that's what concerns the Waterboys. And the Monks . . . well something more, but I couldn't begin to define it exactly. . . . By the way, just out of curiosity I checked to see if the Waterboys know anything about you, and they don't. They've never even heard of you.
No? But why would the Waterboys tell you something like that, one way or the other?
Liffy smiled.
Oh they wouldn't, so I didn't bother to ask them. There's a file clerk on the graveyard shift who's a friend of mine, and . . . well, and so forth.
I see. And Stern? Which group is he with?
Liffy hesitated. He frowned.
Stern's an exception in many ways, isn't he? He seems to have done a lot of work for both the Monks and the Waterboys, which is so dangerous I don't even like to think about it. . . . But look here, Joe, I'm sure you realize by now how little I understand these things. I'm just a prop out here as I told you, and I only work on the fringes, and who knows, anyway, what to make of people called Monks and Waterboys? These days intelligence groups seem to pop up out here the way religions once did. In fact it's enough to make you wonder sometimes whether it's not our modern way of doing things, although God knows I'd certainly prefer to believe the Monastery is some kind of wartime aberration out there in the desert, rather than a permanent anything.
You speak of the Monks in a curious way, Liffy.
Well they're a curious bunch, and Bletchley with his grim business-is-business attitude is just the beginning of it. One of the more bizarre assignments I've had with the Monks is being taken on drives at night out to the pyramids, Bletchley acting as a silent chauffeur in front while some stranger sits in back with me talking inscrutably, while I fiddle around with a cigarette holder and occasionally toss off a prearranged question I don't understand. . . . Come on, Joe. A businesslike Cyclops who simply enjoys a nighttime spin at the wheel and a glimpse of the Sphinx by moonlight? Is this the spy trade, then, or some convention of myths, or both? . . . But if you think Bletchley's odd, just wait until you meet Whatley.
Who's he?
The end of the line. The man in charge out at that parched and pitiless center of nowhere. The abbot, I guess you'd have to call him. Or simply, Your Grace. He seems to like that. And he's really peculiar. I know it's human nature to prefer to fight the last war, yesterday being easier to understand than today, but Whatley seems to overdo it. Excessive in his obsessions, you know. So much so that sometimes I wonder if he's aware what century he's in. Of course everybody's born at the wrong time in the wrong era, and it's also true that madness doesn't age, that it's simply ageless. But all the same, you see some strange things in the inner cells of the Monastery, cancerous things perhaps. Life living and growing, but living and growing the wrong way and coming out deformed somehow, destructive somehow. . . .