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horse, I think. Or even camel.”
    Hagen groaned and held his stomach for a moment. I told them I had brought Fievel Polkes with me and that he was staying at the Savoy. “That’s where we should have stayed,” complained Hagen. And then: “I know why Polkes came to Cairo. But why did you come, Papi?”
    “For one thing, I don’t think our Jewish friend quite believed you really were here,” I said. “So you can call it a sign of good faith, if you like. But for another, my business was concluded sooner than I had expected. And I decided that I might never have a better chance to see Egypt than this. So here I am.”
    “Thanks,” said Eichmann. “I appreciate your bringing him down here. Otherwise we very probably wouldn’t have met him at all.”
    “Gunther’s a spy,” insisted Hagen. “Why listen to him?”
    “We applied for a Palestinian visa,” said Eichmann, ignoring the younger man. “And were turned down again. We’re applying again tomorrow. In the hope we can get a consular official who doesn’t dislike Germans.”
    “It’s not Germans the British don’t like,” I told him. “It’s Nazis.” I paused for a moment. Then, realizing that this was a good opportunity to ingratiate myself with them, said, “But who knows? Maybe the official you got last time was a yid.”
    “Actually,” said Eichmann, “I think he was Scottish.”
    “Look here,” I said, affecting a tone of weary honesty. “I might as well level with you. It wasn’t your boss, Franz Six, who asked me to spy on you. It was Gerhard Flesch. From the Gestapo’s Jewish Department. He threatened to investigate my racial origins if I didn’t. Of course, it’s all a bluff. There are no kikes in my family. But you know what the Gestapo are like. They can put you through all sorts of hoops in order to prove that you’re not a yid.”
    “I can’t imagine anyone who could look less Jewish than you do, Gunther,” said Eichmann.
    I shrugged. “He’s after proof that your department is corrupt,” I said. “Well, of course, I could have told him that before we left Germany. I mean about my meeting with Six and Begelmann. But I didn’t.”
    “So what are you going to tell him?” asked Eichmann.
    “Not much. That you didn’t get your visa. That I didn’t have a proper opportunity to see much more than that you cheated on your expenses. I mean, I’ll have to tell him something.”
    Eichmann nodded. “Yes, that’s good. It’s not what he’s looking for, of course. He wants something more. To take over all the functions of our department.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “Thanks, Gunther. You are a real mensch, do you know that? Yes. You can tell him I bought a nice new tropical suit, on expenses. That will piss him off.”
    “You did buy it on expenses,” said Hagen. “Not to mention a whole load of other stuff besides. Solar topees, mosquito nets, walking boots. He’s brought more kit than the Italian army. Except for the one thing we really need. We don’t have any pistols. We’re about to meet some of the most dangerous terrorists in the Middle East and we don’t have any means of protecting ourselves.”
    Eichmann pulled a face, which wasn’t difficult. His normal expression was a sort of grimace and his mouth was usually a cynical rictus. Whenever he looked at me I thought he was going to tell me he didn’t like my tie. “I’m sorry about that,” he told Hagen. “I told you. It wasn’t my fault. But I don’t know what we can do about it now.”
    “We’ve been to the German embassy and asked them for some weapons,” Hagen told me. “And they won’t give us any without proper authorization from Berlin. And if we asked for that it would make us look like a couple of amateurs.”
    “Can’t you go to a gunsmith and buy one?” I asked.
    “The British are so alarmed about the situation in Palestine that they’ve stopped the sale of weapons in Egypt,” said Hagen.
    I had been looking for a way