“They’re right to be scared,” said Polkes. “If you hadn’t agreed to spy on them we might have tried to assassinate them. And then blame it on the Arabs. We’ve done that before. Very possibly the Grand Mufti might have a similar idea about blaming something on us. You should be careful, Bernie.”

“I’ve offered to buy a gun in Cairo’s underworld,” I said. “And offered them my services as a bodyguard.”

“Do you know where to buy a gun?”

“No. I was rather hoping I might borrow that Webley you’re carrying.”

“No problem,” said Polkes. “I can always get another.” He took off his jacket, unbuckled the shoulder holster, and handed over his rig. The Webley felt as heavy as an encyclopedia and almost as unwieldy. “It’s a top-break double-action forty-five,” he explained. “If you do have to shoot it, just remember two things. One, it’s got a kick like a mule. And two, it’s got a bit of history attached to it, if you know what I mean. So make sure you throw it in the Nile, if you can. One more thing. Be careful.”

“You already told me that.”

“I mean it. These are the bastards who murdered Lewis Andrews, the acting high commissioner of Galilee.”

“I thought that was your lot.”

Polkes grinned. “Not this time. We’re in Cairo now. Cairo is not Jaffa. The British tread more carefully here. Haj Amin won’t hesitate to kill all three of you if he thinks you might make a deal with us, so even if you don’t like what he says, pretend you do. These people are crazy. Religious fanatics.”

“So are you, aren’t you?”

“No, we’re just fanatics. There’s a difference. We don’t expect God to be pleased if we blow someone’s head off. They do. That’s what makes them crazy.”

The meeting took place in the vast suite Eichmann had reserved for himself at the National Hotel.

Shorter by a head than any man in the room, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem wore a white turban and a long black cassock. He was a man quite without humor and had an air of self-importance that was doubtless helped by the fawning way his followers behaved around him. Most curious to me was the realization of how much he looked like Eichmann. Eichmann with a graying beard, perhaps. Maybe that explained why they got on so well.

Haj Amin was accompanied by five men wearing dun-colored tropical suits and the tarboosh, which is the Egyptian version of the fez. His interpreter was a man with a gray Hitler-style mustache, a double chin, and an assassin’s eyes. He carried a thick carved walking stick, and like the other Arabs—with the exception of Haj Amin himself—he was wearing a shoulder holster.