BETWEEN THE HINDU CREMATORIUM AND THE INFECTIOUS-DISEASES HOSPITAL, Sergeants Mess was partially hidden by a stand of coconut palms and a large sign that seemed to have been imported directly from Trafalgar Square:

 

LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS

AND WILL RESULT IN

SEVERE DISCIPLINARY ACTION.

By order: Braithwaite, CO,

East Africa Command (Kilindini).

 

Just beneath the sign was a smaller version in Swahili, which I had been cramming since first we got word of J Group’s transfer from Bletchley Park, home of His Majesty’s Inter-Branch Cipher Command. With the fall of Singapore, the beginning of attacks on Ceylon, and India in line to be the next target of a seemingly unstoppable Japanese onslaught, one hundred fifty naval vessels of the Eastern Fleet had left the East to find shelter in and around Mombasa under the command of Vice Admiral Sir Hoddings Lord Braithwaite CBE, one of a raft of aristocrats who had become, by dint of birth and the exigencies of war, senior officers in His Majesty’s service.

Lord Braithwaite may have been a bit of a stickler for what we in the Royal Canadian Air Force, from which I was on loan, called EBBU—Every Button Buttoned Up!—but when he had steamed into Kilindini Harbour aboard his flagship, HMS Warspite, and felt for himself the tremendous wet heat of Mombasa, he did have the good sense to revise previous orders and permit tropical kit: sleeves rolled to a regulation one inch above the elbow, knee-length trousers, calf-height cotton stockings, and one pair of dark glasses—or clip-ons for those who already wore spectacles.

The joke in Kilindini was that any spies in the vicinity would hardly have broken a sweat to identify the boffins from Bletchley Park: we were the ones wearing the clip-ons. Aside from a Dutchman named van Oost, who was so athletic he climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro two weeks after we set up in Kenya—I quit a thousand feet from the summit: as in code-breaking, the last steps in mountain climbing are the most difficult—we tended to look precisely what we were. With the exception of our group CO, who was a career officer, our ranking major, who had been something or other in CID, and Bailey, a sergeant like myself who had been in one of those spectral prewar cipher agencies, most of us were a mixed bag of prematurely balding, ill-at-ease types, quite a few with rather bad skin. It was as if the entire teaching staff of an English public school had been redeployed to East Africa. As the single Canadian, I was arguably odd man out, except that—along with Jenny Singleton and Amanda Hobbes, our company clerks—I could hardly claim the privilege.

The sudden appearance of women caused two problems, one immediate: as we clambered down the gangway of AMC Alaunia, wolf-whistles, accompanied by certain clearly understood gestures, could be heard from the deck of HMS Royal Sovereign docked alongside. Neither Singleton nor Hobbes seemed to know how to react; both were on the plain side, and this may have been the first time they were exposed to the undifferentiated lust of massed males. Perhaps less homely, I had been through it before.

The second problem was housing, which eventually solved the first.

It appeared no one had given the slightest thought to where to billet a collection of mathematicians. Tents were out of the question: although our brains were fit, many of us were past service age or otherwise frail. Our commanding officer, Paymaster Col. Moseley, who knew his way around a regiment, immediately paid a visit to HQ, where it was determined we should put up at a small hotel, the Lotus, and the next week move both our working and sleeping quarters to Allidina Visram School, an Indian boys’ academy about a mile up the coast.

There remained the problem of security, both because of the presence of women—aside from a contingent of nurses, East Africa Command was almost entirely male—and because of our work. Though Bletchley Park, where we had undergone training, was sealed tighter than Downing Street, our quarters in Mombasa were wide open. In the end a detachment of the King’s African Rifles was dispatched, the result of which was not so much to keep others out as to lock us in. Our days in the duty room were dedicated to monitoring Japanese wireless transmissions in the Indian Ocean, our nights spent mostly in a curry-scented prison where all the beds were three-quarter size and all the bathrooms held rather low-hung urinals, both something of a hazard for the taller men.

This was the least of it. Our duty room was full of flying creatures, from gnats and mosquitoes to a dependency of bats that lived in the rafters and preyed on a madrassa of praying mantises, each as long as a hand. For variety, the occasional snake slithered in to escape the heat, and a troupe of aggressive spider monkeys infested the grounds outside. Boredom was endemic. We quickly burned through most of the reading matter in the school library—there is only so much one can do with The Hardy Boys’ Missing Chums and Hopalong Cassidy’s Rustler Round-Up. With most of our working hours spent listening through earphones to wireless broadcasts, few of us had much patience for tuning in to the rare bit of music that reached us, weather permitting, from Nairobi. The work was demanding, often exciting when we made a breakthrough, but our leisure hours were no fun at all.

That is why when I received word to report to Vice Admiral Lord Braithwaite’s residence the next day for high tea, I was as much delighted as I was terrified: both my uniforms were a sight. Singleton generously lent me her new skirt, and Hobbes did what she could with my hair, which had not been cut for a month and hung about my ears like a shapeless dirty-blonde mop. It simply was not made to stand up to the tropical heat, so heavy with humidity we often found it necessary to change our undies twice a day.

What was this high-tea business about? Neither my immediate superior, Lt. Fahnstock, nor our commanding officer, Col. Moseley, had a clue—or so they pretended.

 

 

II

 

Compared with our billet at the Indian boys’ school, and the functional squalor of Sergeants Mess, to say nothing of the inadequately ventilated room we worked in eleven hours each day—one of our crew, Lammings, who had grown up in East London, likened it to a sweatshop, with mathematicians in lieu of Cockney sewing-machine operators—anything decent for tea would have been a godsend. Lord Braithwaite’s official residence was more than decent. It was spectacular, a breathtaking white-marble cross between a stately home and a tea pavilion.

Apparently that is what it had been: the stately home of a principal tea grower, an Indian of some sort who had volunteered its use to His Majesty’s Forces. After innumerable entry halls and foyers, each leading into the next like a series of Chinese boxes, I was escorted through a set of double doors that opened to reveal the stage-set drama of a veranda looking out over Kilindini Harbour, a table set for three, and two very different gentlemen standing by the alabaster balustrade and conversing so closely they might have been hatching a plot.

The adjutant who had taken me this far, quite dashing in that vacant way of the British landed gentry, turned silently on his heel just as we passed through the carved teak doors, and disappeared.

Lord Braithwaite was a massive figure in khaki whose gray mustache covered a good quarter of his pink face. The other gentleman seemed by comparison even frailer than he actually was. Balding, and wearing the kind of pince-nez that university dons liked to affect so that they might stare over them and dress you down for some horrid academic fault, he was attired in seriously out-of-date civilian clothes, including a cravat, something rarely seen in the steam room that was Mombasa. As though a bell had rung, both looked up abruptly.

“And you are, eh, sergeant, is it?”

I snapped a salute and held it. “Ferrin, sir. Sergeant, Royal Canadian Air Force, late of Bletchley Park, seconded to His Majesty’s Navy, Kilindini. Sir!”

“Very good, Ferkin,” Braithwaite said, smiling graciously under the broad whiskers that plumed out over his yellow, rather crooked teeth. He returned my sharp salute with something like a wave; he seemed almost to be scratching his head. Behind him the sun descended toward the horizon and mainland Kenya—the residence was situated on a spit of land jutting west into the harbor like a thumb surrounded on three sides by water. In the gardens sloping to the sea, its bright blue-green now tinged with gold, Royal Marine sentries in full dress paced like clockwork figurines. On either side, guard towers framed the view. “Needn’t be so all-fired military, must we? Come and have a drink, sergeant. And do say hello to Mr. Albright. What are you these days, Cyril? Political adviser, what? Africa walla, that kind of thing.”

“Political adviser, sir, if you wish,” Albright said. Next to Braithwaite’s energetic beefiness, he looked the very image of academic inutility, his suit, drab brown or olive or gray, hanging on him like a shroud. “So nice to meet you, sergeant. Canadian, you say.” It was not a question. “Good people, the Canadians. The Frenchies amongst you can be a bit difficult, though. You’re not...?”

“No, sir,” I said. “From Alberta, really. Very few French there.”

“I’m told you’re something of an mswahili, is that true, sergeant?”

“Trying to learn it, sir. Out of a book. I’ve been practicing on the streets.”

“Siku hiyo alikuja afisa mmoja Mzungu.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Albright. I don’t—”

“On that day a European officer came.”

“I meant to say—I did more-or-less understand the phrase—but wouldn’t it be sajini, sir? I’m not an officer.”

“Do they drink champagne at high tea in Alberta, Ferkin?” the vice admiral asked. He held out a flute already filled—I don’t think I had seen a glass so delicate in my life. “Do relax, sergeant. Come and have a drink, a bit of smoked salmon. You do eat smoked salmon, don’t you?”—he did not wait for a reply—“or there’s some of this goose-liver paste. With the Jerries in France, a bit hard to come by these days.”

“Unakula nyama ya nguruwe?” Albright asked.

“No, sir.” I said. “I don’t eat pork. But goose is fine.” Fine? After the unidentifiable meat of Sergeants Mess, it was paradise.

“That you are, in fact, of a certain persuasion—Myahudi?”

“I am, sir. But I don’t quite understand—”

“The vice admiral thought you might not be comfortable with victuals that would place you in a sticky spot.”

“What do your people do?” Braithwaite said. “If you don’t mind my asking, Ferkin.”

Now I was thoroughly confused. Was he talking of my people, or my people? Never mind. I was to answer. “My father is a rancher, sir. Mum teaches. Mathematics, sir.”

“Brothers, sisters?”

“No sisters, sir. One brother. RCAF. Missing over Burma, sir.”

“Very sorry to hear,” Braithwaite said, clearly not. “Know something of horses, do you?”

“I’m sorry, sir?”

“Horses,” Albright jumped in, seeking to clarify by translating into a language I barely understood. “You know, farasi.”

“I grew up on a horse.” Consciously I omitted the sir. Instead I turned to the vice admiral, himself turned away to peer out over the bay. The lights of Mombasa were just coming on—how different from England, where under threat of German air raids the night brought only darkness and fear. “Vice Admiral Braithwaite, sir,” I said to his back. “I’m a bit confused. I’m RCAF on loan to His Majesty’s Navy for the purpose of assisting in code-breaking operations under supervision of Bletchley Park. I am a mathematician. I have no idea what my religion and, and... horses have to do with my work. Should I be offended, sir?”

That was the closest I could get to a complaint. There were two other Jews in our group—why was I being singled out? Was it because I was Canadian? That made no sense. And the horse business... I watched Braithwaite turn slowly to face me, his lips pursed beneath his mustache as though in consideration of some great question of naval strategy upon whose outcome hung the fate of the Empire.

“Sergeant, effective immediately, I am promoting you flight lieutenant. As such, you are hereby attached indirectly to my staff. You will be my principal adviser on matters equine and Judaic. As of tomorrow morning, I want you to begin work on securing for me a number of horses.”

“I’m a code-breaker, sir.”

“Code-breaker, horse-breaker, all the same, what. As I say, you will help me to secure at least two horses. If possible, seven.”

I could not stop myself. “Jewish horses, sir?”

Albright looked down at me over his pince-nez and tapped the champagne flute in his hand as though it were a school bell. “Not Jewish horses, Ferrin,” he said with a mixture of kindness and exasperation. “Horses from a Jew.”

This left me no more enlightened. “Sir, I’m afraid I—”

“Afraid?” Braithwaite snorted, at once avuncular and all-powerful, as though he had adopted an orphan whom he would protect, but only so long as she behaved. “I don’t know about you, Ferkin, but I do get a bit peckish at this hour, and would so like to eat. Mr. Albright hardly ever appears hungry, expected from a vegetarian—I believe they teach them that at Oxford, from which he’s come to educate me on the native scene—but I’ll wager you could do with a change from Sergeants Mess.”

“Yes, sir. I think so, sir.”

“So there’s nothing to be of afraid of, really, is there? Now, come and sit, and we’ll tell you all about it.” He smiled more deeply as I stepped toward the table set with silver and china and Irish linen, all marked with the admiral’s crest. “Jewish horses. Very good, wouldn’t you say, Cyril? Imagine the circumcision. Jewish horses, indeed.”

 

 

III

 

The owner of said Jewish horses, and of much of Mombasa, was one A.S. Talal, also proprietor of Talal General Stores, the Selfridges of Kenya, with large branches here and in Nairobi and smaller outlets in Kisumu and Nakura; Talal Transport, the principal bus company—one traveled to Nairobi by rail, but TT was the virtual monopoly within the main towns; and Talal Brewers, producers of Green Tiger Lager, Black Circle Stout, and a line of non-alcoholic beverages including, under license from Schweppes, bottled waters, fruit juices, and an intensely sweet potion called Ken-Kola that was popular with His Majesty’s Forces because it could be readily fermented. Startled newcomers to Mombasa often took cover from the sound of Ken-Kola bottles exploding in the night.

Talal was clearly profiting from the military invasion. Officers smoked his Kilimanjaro-brand cigarettes—packaged to look like Players—while other ranks tended to roll their own from the locally grown Royal Virginia Estates Blend, also Talal’s. When uniforms wore out (women’s excepted—I had mine made up by a local dressmaker) as they did with amazing rapidity in the moist climate, off-the-peg replacements were available from cloth woven by Talal Mills and sewn by Talal Tailors Ltd. The ferries that moved in the harbor were Talal’s, the plantations of coconut in the lowlands and, of conspicuous value, tea in the highlands were Talal’s, and—I was given to understand—the same individual had at one time played a significant role in the business of betting, which was the nonwhites’ chief hobby, followed closely by adultery and alcohol. (Among the European residents the order of preference was said to be reversed.)

If I had thought this louche background made A.S. Talal seem vaguely romantic, like an American gangster who had, as they said in Edward G. Robinson movies, gone legit, I could not have been farther off-base. Like most successful Indians in Africa, A.S. Talal was hard-headed and narrowly focused. He may also have been the most off-putting man I had ever met.

This was not because he had mangled features or missing limbs. For an Indian, his skin was lighter than most, his features almost European—though his nose was quite large and as hooked as any in a Nazi propaganda poster—and his manner of dress and personal hygiene more than acceptable. It was his ego, which could have swallowed up Lord Braithwaite’s and Cyril Albright’s together. What I found repellent was not his appearance but his attitude.

“A flight lieutenant?” he said to me on first sight, pronouncing it the way the Brits did, left-tenant. “I should have thought wing commander at least. Young lady, would you mind terribly going back to your superiors and coming back a colonel, or a general? We’ve got four generals in Mombasa these days. Surely Braithwaite can spare just one?”

I wasn’t sure how to take this, or if the taut glare on his smooth, unlined face was its natural condition. “I’m certain that can be arranged, Mr. Talal,” I said, with the intention of not backing off. “But you wouldn’t want the admiral to raise someone in rank merely to impress you. I had heard you were shrewder than that.”

Now he looked at me in a different way. His jaw relaxed a bit, and behind his thick frameless lenses that were darkened into some sort of deep rose I could just make out a light, a glint perhaps.

“What is your mission, flight lieutenant?”

“It was explained to me as liaison, sir.”

“You can drop the ‘sir,’ young lady.”

“You may drop the ‘young lady,’ sir.”

He smiled. “And if I drop her, will she break?”

We were in his office, a room about three times the size of the duty room at Allidina Visram School, and rather more tidy. For one thing, no flies or bats. Talal’s desk was a large Indo-Biedermeier affair of what appeared to be ebony, rather intricately and deeply carved on the legs—it might have started out in life as a dining table—with brass repoussé on the surface protected by glass. From my angle, in the single chair opposite, purposely designed to be somewhat lower than his, the relief appeared to be a tableau of ganeshas, the elephant-headed gods of success, figures as complex and detailed as those in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. But in the Vatican one looked up in order to feel the grandeur of the heavenly host and the insignificance of man. Here Talal looked down, the gods encased in glass at his fingertips.

“I am hardly that fragile, Mr. Talal.”

“I expect not, if Braithwaite sent you.”

A long moment ensued. Talal’s large table before me, I decided to lay my cards, such as they were, upon it. “The vice admiral has heard you are in possession of something he desires.”

“Mombasa?”

“The vice admiral already has that.”

“Only superficially,” Talal said. “It’s a tricky place.”

“Mombasa is under military rule, sir.”

“My dear, for a thousand years Mombasa has been under military rule—of the Galla, the Zimba, the Swahili, the Omani many times, the Dutch, the Turks, the Portuguese any number of times, the Swahili yet again, and now the British. But Mombasa does not succumb. To govern here is one thing, to rule another.”

“Nevertheless, Mr. Talal—”

“Would you like to see my stables now, flight lieutenant, or would you prefer to discuss these matters in the abstract?”

He must have seen the surprise I quickly covered with a smile. How did he know? “If you wish, sir.”

“Please do call me Abraham.”

It would be a week before I could bring myself to that. “I would be honored to see what it would please you to show, Mr. Talal.”

He snorted, then carefully removed his glasses and, with a handkerchief so white it glowed, slowly and methodically cleaned the lenses. His eyes were large, and of a shade that made the brilliant azure of the harbor seem muddled and gray. I had never seen an Indian with blue eyes before and must have stared. He replaced the spectacles and stood.

“Ferrin,” he said. “Ferrin. What sort of name is that?”

“Canadian, sir.”

“Come now, flight lieutenant. There is no such thing as a Canadian name. Beyond the poor Eskimos and Aleuts, Red Indians and so on, all Canadians are immigrants. What sort of Canadian are you?”

“My family emigrated from Russia before the turn of the century.”

“Orthodox, then? Where the priests marry? Long beards? Those big black hats?” He was toying with me.

“Jewish Canadian,” I said.

He raised his head, as though to look at me from another angle. “Ahhhh...” He stretched out the sound until it seemed to be less a recognition than a sigh. “Send a Jew to deal with a Jew. Very clever man, your Braithwaite. But hardly subtle. Not subtle at all.”

As I accompanied Talal, who was a bit shorter than I—his trunk was somewhat too long for his legs—out of the office and down steps leading to grounds as manicured as my nails had been in another life, I realized finally that what was so off-putting about the man was also, to me at least, so attractive. He was smarter than those around him, knew it, and wanted you to know it too, not so much to impress but to get this awkward bit of business out of the way. On the gravel path to his stables, I discovered I didn’t care. Smart was what I liked. It had always been what I liked. If that had to be wrapped in ego, it was a small price. I found I rather liked Abraham Talal.

 

 

IV

 

After moving up so abruptly in rank I was no longer permitted to continue dining at Sergeants Mess, and missed it. No merit had attended my promotion to the dining room of the Imperial Hotel: I didn’t belong.

The unease was general, but only at first. My former superior, Charlie Fahnstock, a rather stout and dour fellow who had grown up in Kenya before studying statistics at the London School of Economics—to His Majesty’s Forces, statistics was close enough to mathematics—introduced me into my new setting. Like most of the Bletchley Park crew, I was protective of Charlie: he was hardly, as the code-breakers liked to rhyme, a “deft-tenant,” and probably should not have been in the armed forces at all; he had no leadership abilities whatsoever. But he did speak Swahili—and he meant well.

“G-gentlemen,” he said with the stammer that young men of good family affected in those days, “th-this is Ferrin. Newly c-c-atapulted from the sergeantry to the off-off-officerial c-class. Unlike y-yours truly, c-clearly a case of m-m-merit.” Exhausted by his expedition into public speaking, he fell upon his seafood bisque as though he had not eaten for days.

After this, the others were quite welcoming. The prospect of sex might have had something to do with it: officers were discouraged from social intercourse with other ranks and, unlike in Nairobi, there were few unattached European women on the coast. After a few minutes, it was quite as though I had been an officer forever.

Certainly the African servants could not have known otherwise: our waiter trotted off to the kitchen for a replacement when he noticed I did not touch my soup. Though as a Jewish family in Alberta we had not been particularly rigid regarding the dietary laws, neither shellfish nor pork had ever appeared in our kitchen, and the very idea of eating them turned my stomach.

“Don’t fancy the bisque, Ferrin?” The speaker was a terribly good-looking young squadron leader named Trent-Smith—he could not have been more than twenty-two.

“Allergic to shellfish, I’m afraid,” I said, smiling.

“Damn shame,” he said. “It’s not the best thing about the local fodder, it’s the only good thing. I haven’t had a decent chop in months.”

Had he been compelled to eat at Sergeants Mess, poor Trent-Smith might have felt better. I was not so blasé. Officers Mess at Kilindini was at the level of the prewar Savoy in London—I had dined there with my visiting parents when I was at Cambridge—or the Ritz-Carlton in Montreal, where my dear lost brother had once treated me to an expensive spread. One could get used to Officers Mess: real butter on the table, salad so crisp it crackled, starched linen, servants so well-trained one hardly finished one’s plate before it was smoothly replaced with the next, and somehow or other no flies. Probably they were all at Sergeants Mess.

At the evening meal, just as I was seated, the brisk adjutant, who had shown me to the veranda only days before and abruptly vanished, now reappeared. “Vice Admiral Lord Braithwaite requests your presence at table,” he said. “Lieutenant.”

Every eye in the vast hall was upon me as I followed him, threading my way through the sea of ensigns and lieutenants, a lake of captains and majors, a puddle of colonels and commanders, and a sprinkling of brigadiers and rear admirals until, by windows overlooking the harbor—Braithwaite seemed to prefer a clear avenue of escape—I found myself at a table once again set for three. I saluted.

“Do sit, Ferkin,” Braithwaite said. He had an enormous prawn in his right hand, with which he tossed off what passed for a salute. “Improvement on Sergeants Mess, what?”

“Yes, your lordship.” He continued to work on the prawn. “Shikamoo, Mr. Albright.” It was the way one greeted an elder—I had just learned this refinement. “Always good to see you.”

Unlike the vice admiral’s, his plate was untouched: on one side, three slices of tomato; on the other, a bed of lettuce. I had the feeling Albright rarely ate, like some reptile who waited patiently in ambush to swallow something bigger than himself. “Marahaba,” he said, speaking as an elder. “Hupendi samakigamba? It is my understanding you don’t care for shellfish.”

“We share that.”

“At least Albright has a decent reason, Ferkin.”

“Allergic, actually,” the civilian said. “Animal protein. It makes me ill.”

I nearly laughed: so my excuse actually made sense in the real world.

“You know, Ferkin,” the vice admiral grunted cheerily, wiping his gray mustache with a linen napkin bearing his crest, “your religion has got you people into quite a mess, hasn’t it?”

“My religion, sir?”

“Chinjo la wayahudi.”

“I don’t know the first word, Mr. Albright.”

“Massacre, chinjo. Plural, machinjo.”

“Bloody foolishness, holding onto these rituals. Cuts you off from the mass of men. I daresay you people wouldn’t be in the state you’re in, Nahzees and all that, were it not for the fact you do keep yourselves apart.”

“I was at school with a Jewish fellow,” Albright said, as though mining the past. “Gold something.”

An African servant came up just in the nick of time—I don’t know where the conversation might have led—with a plate of curried chicken, green salad, and, for some reason, a little tent of six leaning gherkins. Clearly the plate had been put together especially for me.

“I’ve seen the horses, sir,” I said brightly, not waiting to be asked—anything to get the vice admiral and his civilian flunky off their talk of crustaceans and Nahzees. Another moment and I might have said something. If Braithwaite wanted to send me back to Sergeants Mess—where no one ever noticed what I ate or did not eat or, if they did, had the courtesy not to comment—so much the better.

“You have?”

“Yes, sir. They’re splendid.”

“Splendid,” Braithwaite said, his mustache once again surrounding a prawn. “Or merely unusual?”

I popped a gherkin into my mouth. The remaining five tumbled into a ragged pile on the plate. “Both, sir.” I chewed on the gherkin—nothing had tasted so delicious since I’d left home—while Braithwaite gnawed on a fresh prawn with what I supposed was impatience.

Albright broke the silence. “Come, come, lieutenant, there’s a war on. We haven’t got ages.”

“Very well,” I said, once again avoiding direct response. Instead I turned physically to the vice admiral. “There are seven—two stallions, the rest mares. There may be more but that is all I saw. They are Marwari, sir. I suppose you know that.”

Braithwaite picked up his glass, South African hock, the chilled green bottle shining in a silver ice bucket glistening with rivulets of sweat. He swallowed down a considerable amount. “Yes, Marwari. Tell me what I don’t know.”

It occurred to me to tell him that he did not know I felt closer to Abraham Talal than ever I could to his lordship, but I dared not. “Just over fifteen hands, the stallions, the mares about fourteen. As you are probably aware, the breed is distinguished for its long, pointed ears that taper gracefully and turn in toward each other as if in conversation. Looked at head-on, they form a lyre shape. From the side the head is long and aquiline, straight as this table, sir, with large flaring nostrils and gentle lips.”

“Go on.”

“They are a beautiful horse, sir. Straight back, strong vertical limbs. Extremely tough hooves. A farrier’s nightmare—they run unshod. Mr. Talal was kind enough to explain—”

“Kind enough, my left foot,” Braithwaite said suddenly, so loudly that officers several tables away looked up. “The man is keen on selling his livestock. Kind enough, indeed. He’s playing at this damned... eastern game. Arabs, Jews, Indians—an infernal bad habit is all it is. Lieutenant, I am more than familiar with the Marwari strain, at least from books. There are, unfortunately, very few of them these days outside of books, what with the coming of motor transport and our policy of defanging the maharajas. Before the Great War you might find any odd Indian ruler with a small cavalry, 200-500 horses, sometimes a 1000. But there are precious few now. Frankly, I think the damned Indians ate them. Regardless, our Mr. Talal certainly has the only purebred Marwaris in Africa. For all I know, he has the only purebred Marwaris anywhere.

“Now stop looking at me with your mouth open, lieutenant, and help me save the last of this breed and bring them to England where they belong, and can be bred, and will be looked after, and get them out of the hands of your Mr. Talal. Mis-ter Ta-lal, oh yes. You know, for a farthing, I would simply seize the lot as military necessity, but those fops in the War Office would have my head, and Whitehall would be upset—present company excepted, Cyril—and there’d be hell to pay. Now go and buy me these ponies, like a good chap, Ferkin, and don’t come back without them.” He considered. “Splendid, eh? They’re not splendid, lieutenant, they’re priceless. Now go and get me a price.”

 

 

V

 

Were Abraham Talal’s horses for sale? In theory, everything Talal owned was for sale. He was, if nothing else, a merchant. But he had not become the principal merchant of Mombasa simply because he bought and sold—everyone on the coast did that, and had for centuries. His secret was the same kind of intelligence we in J Group were in the business of collecting. His methods may have been different, but he clearly spent a great deal of time and money staying informed.

Thus, only a month before the Bletchley Park crew’s arrival in Mombasa, Talal had acquired the Lotus Hotel, which was to remain fully occupied by British personnel throughout the war; it was the only second-class hotel on the island with toilet facilities for each room. Whether it was how much to expand production at his cement works at Ndega, or how much to bid on military-construction contracts that would utilize the same cement, he made it his business to know. His dozens of managers—Hindus on the coast, Europeans of one sort or another in the uplands—reported to him regularly with a flood of information.

Making sense of it must have been a challenge, in perhaps the same way as we code-breakers faced a torrent of Japanese ciphers that remained meaningless without the all-important key. In our situation we were unable to ask further questions; Talal was not so limited. Against the Indian stereotype, he was generous in compensating his staff, who knew they were being spoiled and wished this to continue. Spread throughout the country, they were adept at laying their hands on the right information or the person who could get it. Politically, Talal was equally well-connected. It was said he was generous here as well. Certainly he seemed to have a direct line to HQ East Africa Command. Just as certainly, the vice admiral knew it.

This must have been galling to Braithwaite, who could not have been unaware that inviting A.S. Talal for dinner might have gone a long way toward smoothing the path for His Majesty’s Forces on the coast. But vice admirals apparently did not deign to sup with merchants, Indian merchants especially, and Jews so much the less. Sending me out to deal with Abraham must therefore have seemed only proper to Lord Braithwaite.

But to Talal the indirect approach was something between annoyance and insult, not least because little that went on in the CO’s vicinity remained unknown to him: after all, Braithwaite was ensconced in Talal’s primary residence, which His Majesty’s forces had more or less commandeered for the duration of the war. Of course the house came with Talal’s servants, who must have been a principal conduit of intelligence, though it puzzled me that Talal was aware of matters somewhat too sophisticated for mere Shirazi domestics to pick up. Perhaps some of these servants were more clever than they let on.

We were riding on the beach at Jumba la Mtwana, having been ferried to the mainland from Talal’s private dock in Mombasa, the horses apparently accustomed to this form of transportation. I was on a lovely piebald mare named Rajshree, my host on Mewar, a skewbald stallion with ears as long as my jodhpurs. I had told Abraham I had no riding clothes. That morning a superb set of boots, britches, and jersey, along with a black-velvet-covered helmet, was delivered to my quarters at the school—all my size, even my taste.

Rajshree was easy in the reins, responsive to the slightest signal, and loved to run on the packed sand, small waves spilling over and wetting her unshod hooves in what seemed to be adoration. I had not had such fun on horseback since riding at home on the ranch with David, of whom I had heard nothing since his plane had disappeared four months earlier. I can’t say this was not on my mind as Rajshree swept over the sand in a curious gait halfway between a gallop and a canter, so smooth there was almost no vertical motion—Abraham was later to describe this to me as the ravaal, a movement unique to Marwaris—and I stuck to the high-canted cavalry saddle as though glued. We dismounted at a grove of coconut palms, where servants were waiting with lunch.

“Abraham, you do live well,” I said.

“I consider it compensation.”

“Against?”

“Against the moment when I do not.”

“I should think you would accept the inevitability.”

“Oh, I do,” he said. “My Hindu friends see things differently, but for me there is only this life.”

“And for your Hindu wife?”

He was washing his hands in a copper bowl that had been set up on a bamboo tripod by the table, stopped quite sharply, then resumed. I had just gone through the same wash-up. A servant handed him a dry cloth. “Your intelligence is as good as mine,” he said. “Lieutenant.”

“I had to know.”

He nodded as he cleaned salt spray from his roseate spectacles with the cloth. “Precisely. What is it you don’t know that I can tell you?” He forced a smile. “Joan.”

“I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

“I am not embarrassed. Merely surprised.”

“Surprised?”

“That you would care, one way or the other.”

It was time for me to force a smile. “You can’t think very highly of me, Abraham, if you think I wouldn’t.”

“Perhaps I was being hopeful,” he said. “Would you like to eat, or are you too angry?”

“Never too angry to eat,” I said. “And not really angry at all. Disappointed, perhaps.”

“Disillusioned?”

“Canadians have no illusions.”

“Because they have no dreams?”

“Because we have no past,” I said. “We’re all fresh, new in the world. So we’re perfectly happy with what we’ve got. Like children with a new toy. Or a new friend.”

“I’d like to be your friend, Joan. May I be your friend?”

“If I may have some curry,” I said, “I’ll give it thought.”

He snapped the fingers of his left hand. A servant brought a silver dish, and from it deftly placed a serving spoon of curried fish, delicately flavored with cardamom and turmeric, on my china plate. Early on, I was never served meat in Abraham’s presence. Perhaps his intelligence agents had already told him to avoid anything that might contravene my sensitivities, but a diet heavy in fish was—I was to learn—only natural for him: my sensitivities were his as well. He himself never ate pork, never shellfish, and the lamb or beef that showed up for dinner Friday evenings, when I began staying the weekend, was miraculously kosher, sent packed in ice by a Jewish butcher in Nairobi on the overnight train that chugged into Mombasa every morning at 8 AM. The Lunatic Line, they called it, because of the hairpin turns that sent it hurtling down from the highlands. For Abraham Talal it must have been anything but. It allowed him the sanity of a Sabbath meal. “I do have a wife, Hindu, yes, and three children. Daughters. I will show you photos if you like. Very pretty girls, eight, ten, and twelve years of age. Charming girls. Good students. I expect they will be educated at university in England. Would you recommend Cambridge or Oxford?”

“I was at—”

“Cambridge,” he said. “I know.”

“What don’t you know?”

“Whether Oxford or—”

“Cambridge for the sciences, I think. Are they scientific, your daughters?”

“Rather too early to tell, I’m afraid. Did you enjoy—”

“Cambridge?”

“Science, maths, that sort of thing?”

“Since I was a child,” I said. “As I grew older, math specifically. Most girls don’t tend that way, or aren’t encouraged.”

“I shall encourage my girls in that direction, if they wish,” he said. “If you wish.”

“My parents did, actually. Sent me off to McGill, and then I went up to Cambridge.”

“You could be at Cambridge now.”

“When the war came I volunteered for the Royal Canadian Air Force.”

“You can say RCAF.”

“RCAF. My brother had already joined up.”

“It must be very difficult for you.”

“You needn’t say it like that. He’s missing is all. Missing flyers come back all the time. He’s an outdoorsman, tough as nails, and extremely adaptive. I wouldn’t be surprised if he is walking out of Burma as we speak.” Did I really believe this? It was what I told myself every night when my head hit the hard pillow at Allidina Visram School. If anyone could survive that kind of ordeal, it was David. But perhaps I told myself this because I was unsure I could survive my own ordeal if it were otherwise. “He rode a bicycle once from Calgary to Montreal to visit me. Took three months. twenty-two hundred miles.” I was truly embarrassed now. There was no comparing this to bailing out over Burma and walking out alive, if he could walk. It was a foolish thing to say, a foolish, girlish, hero-worshippingly hopeful thing to say. My face flushed.

Abraham reached across the table and took my hands in his. They were surprisingly soft—not like a woman’s but like a child’s. For a moment I was ill at ease. Mine were large and bony by comparison, the hands of a rancher’s daughter. And then, as though in preparation for some fate I could not know but suspected, my hands relaxed in his as he began to speak.

“You will no doubt think badly of me,” he said. “And if so, you must have all the facts. Better to know than to guess. Joan, I am a man who has made my choices and... I live with them. When I came out to Kenya in ’29 I can’t say I had nothing, but close. One-hundred-twenty pounds sterling, letters of introduction to persons in the Indian community in Nairobi and in Mombasa. My father had died the year before—”

“I’m sorry.”

“That was thirteen years ago,” he said gently. “And father was 81. We’re long-lived, the Talals. He was a livestock dealer in Rajasthan, as his father had been, and his. Horses, cattle, sheep, goats. Even chickens sometimes. Never pigs, of course. And camel. Many, many camel. And elephant. In father’s time Rajasthan, the Rajput states then, was more or less cut off from the world. The maharajas retained their independence from the central government, an independence that would diminish over the years as the British, in their clever way, bought off the nobility. “Our specialty was the Marwari. We supplied the cavalry mounts for all of Rajasthan and the Northern Frontier, a desert country but a good business. When my father was a young man, the Maharaja of Jhaipur kept three thousand men under arms, most on horseback. These were the same cavalry, the same type of men, the same type of horse, that had turned back the Moghul invaders, man and horse leaving the field only victorious or dead. Our stud held hundreds of mares, dozens of stallions of the best type. Black and white, brown and white, silver, chestnut. All well-conformed to the Marwari standard, long ears meeting in an arch, aquiline nose, the large nostrils, the same body type you see here, thin coats like silk, big eyes, straight legs, unslanted shoulders, hooves like steel. You are seeing them now, but I am told today that in India there are few pure Marwari left.

“Joan, when this war is over, the British will find themselves with mountains of tanks, continents of warships, fields upon fields of decommissioned warplanes. They will be sold for scrap. No one needs armament when there is no war. So it was with the Marwari. The maharajas did not require horses beyond a few for ceremonies, and the British cavalry preferred larger animals, less hot-blooded, hunter-jumpers, fox-hunt horses, not racing horses, not war horses. They brought over Walers from Australia, capable of carrying heavier loads. Our Indian horsemen are lighter, and were lightly equipped. The Marwari are fast, meant for the desert—notice their legs are almost perpendicular to the ground, which makes them fast on sand, as you have seen. They can pull them out of soft earth more quickly than—am I boring you?”

I looked at him. “Never.”

“It’s not often I can talk of this.”

“How often?” I asked.

“Never,” he said.

“Then don’t be shy.”

A laugh exploded from his face, and he seemed as young and innocent as the hands that held mine. “I am not shy,” he said. “I am... unaccustomed. It is not my habit to—what is it you North Americans say? I was a great reader of Jack London as a boy—‘spill my gut’?” He seemed to relax now. The servants, ever hovering, had gone to groom the horses they had tethered, unsaddled, in the coconut grove, the only sounds their movement, an occasional whinny, and the gentle surf. “Joan, we had the patent, as you might say, on the Marwari horse. For two hundred years we Talals of Jhaipur sold only mares and geldings. The stallions remained ours. And then, suddenly, the way battleships and fighter planes and submarines will be worthless after this war, our treasure was worthless—there were no more wars. The maharajas having been pacified, their cavalry was merely an expense. The Marwari had become a thing of the past. I selected the best stock, the rest...”

“You needn’t say it.”

“And with them came here.” His eyes wandered, as though to a past I could not share. “The Indian community in Kenya is a community of traders, merchants. Perhaps as an Indian and a Jew I may say I was as bred for this as the Marwari were bred for war. The people here welcomed me. They knew my family, my father, his father. Sikh, Jain, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jew—whatever it was that caused strife amongst us in India melted away here. There was enough for all. The Africans—even the Shirazi on the coast who have been traders for a thousand years—were no match. The whites rarely wished to dirty their hands. In time I became... what I am.”

“And married.”

“Perhaps I should have brought a Jewish wife from Calcutta, the custom of my family because we were the only Jews in Jhaipur, in all of Rajasthan. Or sought a Jewish bride from the European community in Nairobi. That way my daughters would be Jews, and I would not be the end of my line, like my horses. But in those days, even more than now, crossing the color barrier was not lightly done, and I did not feel I had to beg for anyone’s hand. Soon enough, as young men do, I fell in love.” He shrugged. “And that is the story of my life, Joan. Full of quirks, perhaps, but not unusual, not at base.” He paused. A wave broke, the wind picked up. “Until now.”

 

 

VI

 

That night I attended the weekly concert beneath the walls of Fort Jesus, the Portuguese outpost that had stood here since the 16th century. Attendance was hardly mandatory. The only ones constrained to listen were those within the walls: having kept its enemies out for four hundred years, Fort Jesus now kept them in. It had become a brig.

How quaint it must seem now, but during the war, with so little certain—London itself was under almost nightly air attack—it was oddly comforting to sit on blankets on the sandy ground while an augmented phonograph played Tommy Dorsey and Artie Shaw. The heat had broken, a steady breeze came from the dhow harbor, and the ever-present mosquitoes, which the Bletchley Park crew had designated the Kenyan national bird, must finally have succumbed to our home-brewed repellent of three parts diesel fuel, one part each lime juice and coconut oil. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. The mix was volatile: Jenny and Mandy, our clerks, experimented with adding perfumes, but what started out as lavender might during the course of an evening distill itself into something akin to burning tires, and an innocent sandalwood, widely available in the Arab shops—it probably came from Persia as in ancient times, via Oman across the water—became pungently musky, strongly suggestive of the scent that blossoms with exercise, or fear, or intimacy.

Not that we girls needed scent to inspire interest. Hardly beauties, the clerks had the pick of every enlisted man in coastal East Africa, and since being promoted I had found myself in the same kind of high demand among my fellow officers—not so much a compliment as a bother. Now, while the Andrews Sisters swung out “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B,” another voice broke through. It was a rich baritone, full of that languid timbre cultivated by Englishmen of a certain background.

It was Trent-Smith, the young squadron leader at whose table I had dined the first day in Officers Mess. “Fancy Patti, Maxene and LaVerne, do you?” he said, sitting himself down next to me like a fresh wine glass inserted at an already crowded table. He had all but forced his way between myself and a bulky naval captain with a sharply etched David-Nivenesque mustache. “Just for the moment, old stick,” he said, not waiting for permission, and turned back to me. “It’s queer how we’ve colonized Africa only to have African music colonize us.”

“The Andrews Sisters are white,” I said.

“Their music isn’t. Don’t get me wrong. I do love jazz. But I hear they’re drinking an awful lot of Coca-Cola in England these days.”

“We Canadians are used to it,” I said. “We’re the 49th state.”

“Rather do like the Yanks,” he said. “Individually. Massed, they are a bit much. But we are flying their planes, dropping their bombs. Hard to dislike them for it. Not impossible, but hard. Bite the hand and all that.”

The Americans had been in the war for three months by now, and even in East Africa we were beginning to feel their presence. Since January, we shared our results on the Japanese codes with Washington, and as we cracked one cipher after another it was in everyone’s mind that the Americans would be able to do quite a lot more than the Royal Navy with the fruits of our labor. For one thing, they had submarines and were building more every day. My work on J8, the secondary code of the Japanese commercial fleet, especially the tankers, was coming along, but I felt I should be doing more; the other significant ciphers—J2, J3 and J6—had already been broken. But code-breaking is as much a function of time as anything else, and since my elevation to the officer corps I was frequently called away on liaison duties, a good deal of which, I admit, were of my own making.

If my job was to get close to Abraham Talal... very well then, I would do so. We dined together nightly, toured the Arab shops on Dika Street together, and went on long rides along the coast. On today’s trek we had gone inland to visit the site of an abandoned city where, as if by pre-arrangement, Abraham was able to sift in the ruins and come up with a shard of porcelain. “Ming,” he said. “These people were first-class merchants. You’ll find Persian bits as well and, if we search long enough, Venetian coin. Hard to believe, but at one time this was a center of commerce.” Whatever had compelled the inhabitants to flee—raids by Galla horsemen from the north, by Zimba cannibals from the inland forests, possibly a final attack by the Portuguese, perhaps lack of water—whatever the cause, there was now a finality about the place that was, even in the hot wet, chilling. Mombasa itself had been three-times destroyed and three-times rebuilt. Here the inhabitants had decamped never to return, leaving behind their pots, sticks of furniture, cloth, even pets: while our horses grazed nearby, Abraham casually pointed out the brittle skeleton of what could only have been a dog.

“Nothing lasts, does it?” he said. It was not a question, but a statement of fact.

I chose to hear it differently. “It can. Rather depends on will. Look at Mombasa.”

“Yes,” Abraham said, removing his roseate lenses so that I could see his eyes, somewhat bloodshot from the dust of the inland ride. “But Mombasa is only Mombasa. It’s never been Rome or London or New York. It’s lasted because no one ever demanded much of it. Nothing was ever created here. It’s just trade. A lot of it, but just trade.”

“Are you there, Ferrin?” It was Trent-Smith. “You seem miles away.”

“Just caught up in the music,” I lied.

He leaned close. “Do you think we could meet after the concert? I know a place.”

For an Englishman Trent-Smith was refreshingly direct. Perhaps it was the war, or the American influence, or maybe he had simply discovered that it worked. “I’m afraid my heart is... otherwise engaged,” I said.

He smiled broadly, a young man’s confidence radiating out like the sun’s last beams through the purple clouds behind the fort. “Ferrin, I hope you won’t be offended,” he whispered. “But, as they say in SoHo, I wasn’t aspiring that high.”

 

 

VII

 

I might have slapped him; perhaps I should have. But the secret was out. It was difficult keeping secrets in Mombasa. The Bletchley Park contingent knew that I did not normally return to Allidina Visram School until just before dawn, when Abraham’s Shirazi driver would take me back through the narrow streets below the balconied houses and along the deserted ring road, then past the dozing sentries of the King’s African Rifles. Weekends I was hardly ever around, and though I took care to show up at the weekly concert or the odd birthday party, the school was merely where I worked, however sleepily. There were probably jokes—“liaison” had two meanings, after all—and I suffered the occasional wink, but mostly it was all fetid inference: Trent-Smith was hardly the only one to proposition me, merely the boldest. A European woman who slept with an Indian was fair game. Abraham must have known, of course, as he knew everything.

“I don’t think the vice admiral is happy,” he said one Friday evening at dinner. “One would think he has better things to think about than my horses.”

“You shouldn’t judge him,” I said. “He’s just a man.”

“Perhaps, but a powerful one. You know what the Shirazi say: there is no such thing as a small enemy. How much more so when it is a large one. He seems compelled to covet what is mine.”

“He thinks you an inadequate guardian of the Marwari.”

“I am their only guardian, Joan. He will merely wish to display them at horse shows, like circus beasts. You know, I was never a nationalist, but it is possible to understand a Mohandas Gandhi. The British are an inferior race who have seized power and abuse it, endlessly and without shame. I am so glad they will be brought down after this war.”

“Brought down? You mean, if the Axis—”

“If the Axis win or the Allies. Having saved the English from the Germans, the Americans will not let them have back what they once stole. These are vast markets. The Americans will want them. Once geared up for war, they will need to produce for peace. I am not a vengeful man, but if Perfidious Albion were to take a bashing, I would not shed a tear.”

He had just made the traditional blessing on the wine, chanting the brief prayer in an unusual sing-song that would have puzzled my parents, for it reflected a Jewish tradition that was alien to them. Salting two pieces torn from a yellow loaf heady with turmeric, he passed the plate to me. As we chewed, only the two of us at one end of his long dining table on the terrace overlooking the old town and the dhows in the harbor shining like triangles of light, he brought up what we had been avoiding since the day we had met.

“Joan darling...”

The servants came in, bearing trays of food: vegetable samosas, nyama choma of lamb on a bed of pilau, and boiled collard greens, sukuma wiki. It was hard to know what his Shirazis thought of this, for on the rare occasions when Abraham’s wife came out with the girls, they served her as well. Discrete they were, of course, but bribable. Everyone in Africa was bribable. And not stupid: just as Abraham knew everything that went on in his universe, it was inconceivable that Mrs. Talal did not know what went on in hers. Hindu or Muslim, Christian or Jew, no woman could bear to know that her husband had taken another. Nor could I bear to be that other. The servants withdrew. It would be easier for us both if I spoke first. “It’s not a good situation, is it?”

“We’re about to spoil a Sabbath meal, aren’t we?”

“I told you, I’m never too angry to eat.”

“Too hurt, then?”

“I’m a rancher’s daughter. I don’t hurt easily. And you needn’t worry. I make it a point not to cry.”

“Will you mind if I do?”

Despite myself, I let go a hard look. I’d wanted more self-control than that. “I’d be surprised if you did, Abraham, whether about the decline of Albion or the decline of us. We’ve had our fun. Let’s leave it at that.”

At this, his face drained of color, then as suddenly flushed. “That is unnecessary and untrue, Joan. If I could, I would divorce. You know that.”

“You mean, if you could without repercussions.”

“My wife is a good woman. She does not deserve to be abandoned. The children do not need the shame.”

“Nor do I, Abraham,” I said.

“You deserve better than this, my Joan.”

“I deserve nothing more than a lift home,” I said. “Will you summon your driver, or shall I call a cab?”

 

 

VIII

 

Two weeks later I broke J8. Maybe I could have done it earlier and, theoretically at least, caused the war to end that much sooner. Maybe not. All I know is that I was again working hard and long and with renewed intensity; perhaps I got lucky. There was also much to be learned from the others’ progress, so that when the eureka moment arrived I hardly felt triumph, but merely relief. Somewhere in the Indian Ocean or in the Pacific, an American submarine or warplane would soon be bearing down on a Japanese tanker or a freighter carrying ammunition or food for the imperial troops in their island fortresses, or perhaps the very troops themselves. My work would have been part of that, as much so as if I’d pressed the button that released the torpedo or dropped the bomb. I often dreamed of it, colorful melodramatic dreams in which the horror my work had unleashed lived alongside, thrived alongside, the self-satisfaction of success.

“Good show on the ciphers, Ferrin!”

Vice Admiral Lord Braithwaite had finally gotten my name straight. He was grinning, the full ruin of his English dentistry leaping out at me. I thought he might clap my back. “You’re being mentioned in dispatches, are you aware?”

“Col. Moseley was good enough to let me know. My job, sir.”

“Nonsense. You boffins have turned out a delightful surprise. It’s hardly a secret I didn’t think any of this would amount to a hill of—Cyril?”

“Maharagwe,” Albright said.

“Maharagwe, beans, maharagwe,” Braithwaite said, as if he were a boy at school. “Mr. Albright is teaching me useful Swahili, Ferrin. After the war I may come back here, buy a farm. Don’t like the coast much. Entirely too hot. But in the highlands, tea, a few cows, maharagwe, that sort of thing. India’s done. People won’t work. Politicized.”

“I’m told, Lord Braithwaite, that the British presence in Kenya may be somewhat reduced after the war.” I have no idea why I said that. It was as if I were intent on bringing Abraham into the conversation, as though I had absorbed part of him in me—and was now compelled to get him out. “Nationalism, sir.”

“Nonsense, Ferrin. The Union Jack will never be struck in East Africa. It may not be fashionable to say so, but your native Kenyan is no...” He looked again to Albright.

“Mzungu.”

“Yes, of course. I know that one. Mzungu, wazungu. Without us wazungu they’ll come a cropper, and they know it.” His tone now changed. “Tell me about my horses, Ferrin.”

For some reason, what I was about to say gave me a peculiar kind of physical pleasure, the kind that might be difficult to describe in mixed company. I had been rehearsing my response for days now. I delivered the verdict slowly, spacing out the words. “Your horses, sir, belong to Mr. Talal.”

“I know that.”

“And he is not giving them up.”

“Of course he is, Ferrin. It’s just price.”

“I don’t think so, sir.”

“Price, price, price.”

“No, your lordship,” I said. “No. No. No.”

“Don’t be cheeky with me, lieutenant. What’s a fair price? I don’t need them all. One stallion, one mare. It’s not the world, is it?”

“You don’t have the money, sir.”

“I have as much as I require.”

“Lord Braithwaite, whatever your offer, it will be refused,” I said. “Mr. Talal does not wish to sell to you, or to anyone else. That is conclusive. Consequently, if it pleases your lordship, I should like to request reassignment.”

“It doesn’t. You may not.”

“Sir, I—”

“I don’t care what you request, Ferrin. This isn’t the bloody RCAF. You’ll stand your watch until relieved.”

“Sir, I am mjamzito.”

“What?”

“Mjamzito,” I repeated. “Your lordship.”

“What is that? Cyril, what is this girl saying?”

A vacuum opened up in the room, a balloon of silence that grew and grew until finally Albright popped it, as though with a pin. But it was not a pin. It was his tone. “Vice admiral, the lieutenant is saying...”

In whatever language, the phrase had almost certainly never been spoken by a lieutenant to a flag officer of the Royal Navy, and certainly not in Swahili. It took a moment, a long one. Braithwaite looked from Albright to me, then back to Albright, then back to me. Beneath his luxuriant mustache the vice admiral pursed his thin lips, then walked resolutely behind his desk and, heavily, sat. Finally he spoke. “Extraordinary.”

“Not really, sir,” I said.

“How?”

“The usual way, sir.”

“I mean to say, Lieutenant Ferrin, by whom?”

“Your lordship, I’d rather not say.”

“One of my officers? I must know.”

“No, sir. Not one of your officers.”

Braithwaite’s eyes now widened in horror. “Not an officer? Other ranks?”

“I’d rather not say, sir.”

“You’ll bloody well say if I order you to, Ferrin. I order you to. What is the name of this man? Are you aware that intimate relations with other ranks is contrary to—” He stopped. “It isn’t other ranks, is it?”

“No, sir.”

“Oh my God,” Braithwaite said. “Albright?”

“Gombezeka, sir.”

“Speak English!”

“Reprehensible, sir.”

“I know that, Cyril. Of course it is. The question is, what must be done about it?”

“It is a military affair, sir,” Albright said.

“It is a military-civilian affair, Cyril. And I do believe that is the right word—affair. Is it not, Ferrin?”

“It’s over, sir.”

“Jolly good,” Braithwaite said. “Of course it’s over. You’re over, Ferrin. I shall have you out of here when your tour is done. I’m ashamed of having you on my staff. Even were I Canadian I would be ashamed. When is your tour done?”

“In six months’ time, sir.”

“Time enough for court martial.”

“On what charges, sir?” I asked. For some reason I was no longer afraid. What could Vice Admiral Sir Hoddings Lord Braithwaite CBE do to me that Abraham had not?

“I don’t care what charges, lieutenant. There will be charges. Fraternizing with the enemy, for one thing.”

“Mr. Talal is not the enemy, sir.” I don’t know where I got the nerve. “He is a British subject.”

“Fraternizing with a British subject then. Fraternizing with someone. Dereliction of duty. Refusing to obey an order. Absence from post without leave. Don’t you worry, Ferrin. Charges there will be if I have personally to rewrite the Admiralty Code.”

“Begging your lordship’s pardon,” Albright said in his quiet way. “You were quite right, sir. There are certain delicate civilian aspects to this matter.”

“Go on.”

“Firstly, we have the question of timing. There are specific, ah, biological manifestations—”

“I’ll be showing, sir.”

“Indeed, your lordship. So it might be best, to avoid embarrassment all around, for Lieutenant Ferrin to return to the RCAF for reassignment. Her work here is, I understand, done.” Albright looked at me oddly, his face almost softening. Later I would understand. “Work done rather well, by all accounts, wouldn’t you agree, sir?”

“I am no longer concerned with ciphers,” Braithwaite said. Then, in another tone: “What am I not understanding here? You said firstly.”

“This is a conservative society, your lordship. It’s bad enough when we have white members of the military engaging in uhusinano wa ngono... sexual relations, as it were—”

“As it were?” Braithwaite exploded. “Cyril, the girl is pregnant!”

“Yes, of course, sir. But when it is a European woman and a non-white person, a Muhindi—”

“Would that not be Seti, in this case, Mr. Albright?” I said.

Albright reflected. “Yes, of course, lieutenant. Seti indeed.” He beamed as though I were his student and had caught him out. As if I were his success.

The vice admiral clearly had had enough. “What are you people going on about?”

“Muhindi, sir,” I said. “It’s broadly Indian, Hindu to be precise, though Mr. Talal is not in fact a—”

“Talal be damned,” Braithwaite said. “This is not about Talal, or his infernal horses. It is, it is—what is it about, Cyril? Be so good as to cease your dithering. Come out with it!”

“Seti designates a wealthy Indian, sir,” Albright said. “Lieutenant Ferrin has put her finger right on it. The Indian community would be extremely upset. A.S. Talal is a pillar of that community and, as I say, it is a conservative community. We rather need their cooperation. They would be—”

“Ubabaifu,” I said. “Upset, sir.”

“How uba-whatever?”

“Over the short term, unpleasantly sticky, your lordship. Perhaps worse, over time the political situation—”

“What political situation? Do we have a political situation in Kenya on which I’ve not been briefed?”

“Not so much in Kenya just at the moment, sir. But the Indian community here maintains strong ties with the sub-continent. As you know, there are currents in India—”

“Cyril, are you telling me that something which happens between two persons in the middle of the night—good Lord, I hope it was in the middle of the night—can possibly inspire rebellion in an entire country? That is patently absurd.”

Albright seemed to grow taller. He was, after all, a don. And this was his field. “Vice admiral, stranger things have happened. Just at the moment the Indian community, which supplies us with almost all our requirements for food, lodging, tropical clothing, even beer—a good deal of this is in the hands of the very Mr. Talal who—”

“I know who Mr. Talal is, Cyril. I also know I have the power to commandeer all the food and lodging and beer—even beer—we require. Have you forgotten I am God here? I’ll have him thrown in Fort Jesus before you can say—what is that word for beans?”

“Maharagwe, sir.”

“Maharagwe, then. And I’ll have his horses in the bargain.”

Albright coughed gently. “No, sir. I don’t think that will do anything but upset the Indian community, which does control commerce in Kenya, in East Africa in fact. This is not a situation which calls for main strength. It calls, sir, for tact.”

“I am a vice admiral in His Majesty’s Navy, Cyril. We are in a war. What will not be sold us, I will take.”

Albright grew taller still, and instead of approaching Braithwaite’s desk stepped backward and away, as though to distance himself not only from the vice admiral but from his thinking. “Your lordship, should you choose to punish Lieutenant Ferrin for what can only be considered a human failure, and I think an understandable one in wartime especially, I shall report to the Foreign Office that you are a bumbler and a brute, and if you should go so far as to place in jeopardy British interests by undermining our already sensitive relations with the Indian community of East Africa by pursuing a punitive policy toward one or more of that community for what I can only think of as personal reasons, I shall resign my post forthwith and go directly to Downing Street, with which I have excellent relations, and—should that fail—to the press. You may govern here, vice admiral, but you do not rule. Those days, sir, are over.”

 

 

IX

 

Montreal was mild that winter, mild for Montreal, but sub-Arctic compared with the coolest nights in Kilindini, even on Abraham’s dhow, when he would wrap his jacket around my shoulders as the wind whipped the normally placid waters of the harbor into miniature whitecaps crisp and pale as meringue.

My teaching schedule was light and spread out over four days in the mornings—the head of the Faculty of Mathematics had been my professor as an undergraduate, and was accommodating in the extreme, perhaps also because most of the good male teachers were called up—and I had a Québécoise nanny who came in those days until 2 PM, so that even when a student kept me after class I was able to walk from the campus to our flat on Prince Albert Street and still have time for lunch before she left.

I was not the only one of the old Bletchley Park contingent who had moved on. By the time the baby came, my former colleagues had been redistributed, redeployed, scattered. The tide of war had turned. Some were removed back to Bletchley Park as our code-breaking activities were more and more integrated with the Americans’. Some followed the return of the Eastern Fleet to the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, where listening stations were again established in Ceylon and China. I was receiving kind, chatty notes from places I had never been.

Though Amanda Hobbes never wrote, apparently not having forgiven me for my indiscretions on the wrong side of the color line, through Jenny Singleton I learned that Trent-Jones, that beautiful brash boy, had been killed, shot down by a Japanese destroyer in the Indian Ocean; that van Oost, the Dutchman who had climbed Kilimanjaro in the first weeks, had put a bullet through his head for no reason anyone knew; that poor stuttering Charlie Fahnstock had been promoted to major; and that to the surprise of all Vice Admiral Lord Braithwaite had proved himself a master strategist, outwitting and outgunning the Japanese in the South China Sea. This last I knew. The Canadian papers were calling him “a second Nelson.”

Beyond these notes from friends, all franked by the military and rubber-stamped PASSED BY CENSOR, were two civilian envelopes. The first came when I was still in London, having been transferred back to RCAF headquarters in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where it was decided, in view of my condition, that I should be honorably discharged as a casualty. As such, I may have been the only pregnant officer to be awarded the War Medal, Class B—wounded.

“Dearest Joan,” it began,

 

I would not write and make a bad situation all the more painful but for the fact that I have news that will please you.

According to my contacts, which I view as authoritative, your brother, Group Capt. David Levy Ferrin, RCAF, is currently a prisoner of war, held by the Japanese in a work camp in Thailand, quite near Bangkok. My information is that he is, given the circumstances, in reasonably good health. If your brother is indeed as strong a specimen as you believe, and his walking out of Burma goes quite a long way to vouchsafe this, there is every chance he will survive the war to be reunited eventually with you and with your family.

You may contact him through the Red Cross according to the particulars on the enclosed page. Though the Japanese are not particularly gracious regarding information on the status of prisoners, they will allow packages, not least because they are having a devil of a time feeding themselves, to say nothing of their POWs.

I hope you are well, and that you will forgive me for contacting you, but I thought you would like to know. Please do not feel you must respond. I remain,

Your good friend,

Abraham Talal

 

At once I made up a package—tinned fish, chocolate, tea, soap, toothbrush and toothpowder, razor blades, and—it was close to Passover—a box of matzah, which I found in a shop in the East End, hoping the Japanese might not grab that, either because it was clearly some sort of religious item or because they simply might not recognize it for the bread it was.

The Red Cross itself was not terribly helpful, merely confirming after some time what had been in Abraham’s note. But they did provide a channel for me to send parcels every week while I remained in England, and when I returned to Canada. Of course I never heard from David—the Japanese were uncivilized in that regard—and then after several months the Red Cross admitted they had lost track of him altogether. All over Asia the Japanese were in retreat, and they marched their prisoners with them. Many times it was to tear at me that my success in breaking J8 and thus helping to defeat the Japanese may also have contributed to David’s death. After the war, I learned he had stumbled, sick with malaria and gangrene, on a forced march, and been shot.

The second letter carried no return address, but like the first bore civilian stamps and a Mombasa postmark. I received it in Montreal, one month before the birth.

 

My dear Miss Ferrin,

You may remember me. I was political adviser to Vice Admiral Lord Braithwaite during his tenure as CO East Africa Command here in Mombasa, which the military called Kilindini Station and which, as you may know, is all but abandoned, the war having moved on.

As have you.

I understand from a certain source that you are safely back in Canada, and gainfully employed (which is rather more than I can say for myself—I long for the day I am back at Oxford!). Furthermore I understand that you are well along in your pregnancy, and I trust that this too is proceeding well.

I hope you will forgive me therefore for my impertinence in suggesting that should the occasion arise, you may wish to contact a person in Montreal with regard to arranging for a certain ceremony which in Swahili is called tohara (alternatively: jando). As I doubt you have reason to keep up your study of this language in Canada, I should say the best translation would be “bris.”

As I never married, and thus have no children (I’m so sorry if this may seem a backhanded insult; I mean no harm), I have no direct experience of arranging a circumcision. Certainly I did not arrange my own.

It is just that I feel a certain paternal pleasure in knowing, especially with the news from Europe, that another little Jew will shortly be coming into the world. Or perhaps it is that because my own life has been compromised—to speak boldly, it has been a lie—I would like to think I have been helpful in setting the child on a better path.

Please find on the enclosed sheet the name of a reliable rabbi and the name of the rabbi in London who suggested him.

I hope you will forgive me for not having been honest with you in Mombasa, but I’m afraid my life has been lived in a different time, under different circumstances.

Please then accept my warmest regards for yourself and the child. Mazel tov!

Your friend,

Cyril Albright

 

P.S. If it is a girl, you may wish to contact the same rabbi. I believe it is the tradition to name a girl child in the synagogue, but I am unaware of how this is done. If your child is indeed a girl, I trust she will be as brave and forthright as her mother, whom I will admire until my dying day.

 

David Abraham Ferrin was born on an unseasonably warm November afternoon in Montreal, and in accordance with Jewish law was circumcised eight days later by the rabbi suggested by Cyril Albright. My university colleagues assumed the David Ferrin I sometimes mentioned was my husband, dead in the war—society, even the raffish society of Montreal academia, in those days frowned on unwed mothers. I never lied; they inferred. My own mum and dad, changed irrevocably since the death of their only son, tired now and worn, deduced that Abraham was the father’s name, and convinced themselves that he too was a casualty of war. I let them all think what they would. I should have liked to name my baby David Cyril. But the Jewish tradition is to name a child for the dead.