Treachery on the Nile: A New Michael Vaux Novel

By Roger Croft

Former newsman and occasional MI6 agent Michael Vaux has survived an assassination attempt and plans on a long period of rehabilitation.
But the spymasters at Vauxhall Cross, the London HQ of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, have learned of a military plot to overthrow the pro-West regime of Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
Intelligence sources have warned Britain that a small clique of rebel officers plan to finalize their plans for a coup d’état aboard a pleasure craft heading up the Nile to Aswan.
London and Washington have supported military strongman Field Marshal Abdel al-Sisi’s regime since he overthrew democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi in 2003. Britain decides to thwart the coup attempt by stealth rather than force and orders the SIS into action.
MI6’s Department B3 is ordered to do what it takes to sabotage the rebels’ aims. And the top brass decide that Michael Vaux, known for his long experience in the region, is the man for the job.
Vaux, who is still recovering from the attempt on his life, is told that he is being sent on a ‘recuperative’ Nile cruise to his favorite part of the world. They calculate that his renowned interest in the Mideast will be stirred by the presence of a military contingent among his fellow passengers on the pleasure cruise.
By social contact and shipboard friendships, his MI6 agent runners consider it inevitable that he will learn more about the timing and details of the planned putsch so that it can be aborted by any means necessary.
Vaux employs his social wiles to get to the bottom of the conspiracy but discovers that all is not what it seems abord the Levantine Goddess.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Mar 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9781665739351

Roger Croft

ROGER CROFT is a former journalist whose reports and feature articles have appeared in numerous publications including The Economist, Sunday Telegraph and Toronto Star. In Cairo, Egypt, he freelanced as a foreign correspondent and wrote editorials for The Egyptian Gazette.

Book preview

Praise for Roger Croft

The Algerian Hoax

A taut, engrossing tale about spies and their dangerous webs of duplicity.

[Kirkus Reviews]

The plot is layered with spies, terrorists and not knowing whom to trust. Croft keeps the pace moving in this thriller despite the laid-back persona of the main character.

[Publishers Weekly]

First rate, a finely polished amalgam of conspiracies and intrigue.

[City Book Review]

Croft’s crisp, gripping prose, immaculate research and pitch-perfect pacing bring an immediacy not only to ‘Operation Mascara’ but also to the Syrian conflict…Croft excels in capturing the essence of various places, be it the glittering baroque Notre Dame basilica overlooking the yacht-crammed Old Port of Marseille, or London’s streets washed by a steady warm drizzle…a horde of non-stop surprises keep readers guessing.

[The Prairie Book Review]

Warehouse of Souls

…a solidly-constructed page-turner with an ending that will surprise readers…Croft’s characters are carefully crafted with flaws and redeeming features. Fans of the genre will love Michael Vaux.

[Kirkus Reviews].

A page-turner with an ending that comes as a complete surprise.

[Publishers Weekly].

The Maghreb Conspiracy

Croft’s interest in regional politics here plays second fiddle to the tangled web of communications between secret agents, some of whom are playing a double or even a triple game.

The book paints an unflattering picture of Morocco’s monarchy, the militant Islamists trying to overthrow it and the Americans supporting it…an easy and enjoyable read.

[India Straughton, Daily Star, Beirut]

Croft’s style of writing is perfectly matched to the rhythm of a good spy novel… he moves along at a good, solid pace.

[San Francisco Book Review]

TREACHERY

ON THE NILE

A New Michael Vaux Novel

ROGER CROFT

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Copyright © 2023 Roger Croft.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by

any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system

without the written permission of the author except in the case

of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and

incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or

are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons

living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Archway Publishing

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.archwaypublishing.com

844-669-3957

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or

links contained in this book may have changed since publication and

may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those

of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher,

and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are

models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6657-3936-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-3937-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-3935-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023903305

Archway Publishing rev. date: 04/19/2023

Contents

Praise for Roger Croft

Other Books by Roger Croft

Author’s Note

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Notes

TO JOHN JOHNSON AND GEORDIE ROSE

WHO HAVE HELPED FAR MORE THAN THEY KNOW

Other Books by Roger Croft

The Wayward Spy

Operation Saladin

The Maghreb Conspiracy

Warehouse of Souls

The Algerian Hoax

Bent Triangle

Nonfiction

Swindle!

Author’s Note

C onstruction of Egypt’s first nuclear power plant at El Dabaa on the Mediterranean coast, some 120 miles west of Alexandria, began in July, 2022.

Princes in this case

Do hate the traitor, though love the

treason.

Tragedy of Cleopatra

Samuel Daniel 1562-1619

Chapter 1

SHRODELLS HOSPITAL

HERTFORDSHIRE

ENGLAND

EARLY 2016

‘I t’s a miracle,’ he insisted.

Dr. Douglas Malley shrugged and smiled widely. ‘Not really. You were lucky, yes. Your lungs were punctured but not fatally. When we got you into the emergency ward your heart was still beating and that was key. We knew then that you had a 95 per cent chance of surviving.’

Michael Vaux, former journalist and one-time secret agent, sipped on his iced-water, then raised the glass to offer a chaste toast. ‘Here’s to you, doctor. I owe you my life.’

‘The emergency team were the heroes, not me. By share luck the bullets missed your aorta—otherwise you’d have been dead as a duck. Also, your assailant—if she had been a foot or so closer, that would have been it. As it was, two bullets were embedded in the chest wall and another struck a rib.’

Dr. Malley, in his forties, overweight, with thick black hair and a shaggy moustache, had been sitting on the side of the hospital bed as he took Vaux’s pulse, monitoring it against his gold wrist watch. He got up with a slight sigh, stuffed the stethoscope in the side pocket of his white coat and thrust his arm out to shake Vaux’s proffered hand.

‘So when do I get out of here, doctor?’

‘This coming weekend, I think. Get your beautiful lady friend to pick you up and treat you gently for a month or two. You’ll need a lot of pampering and tender loving care for a few weeks yet.’

What Vaux called his idyllic reunion with Anne came just a few weeks after Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service [SIS] finally exonerated him from charges of treachery and spying for an ‘unfriendly power’.

A sub rosa court of inquiry had come to the shattering conclusion that MI6’s usually canny and cautious team of spy catchers had been misled and misinformed by a group of in-house incompetents who had been inspired and encouraged by persistent pressure from Mossad and other external sources whose motives were well-intentioned but rooted in prejudice and professional jealousies.

Within a few days of his retirement, Anne had been given permission to return to the U.K. from her arranged assignment in Berlin [to keep her out of the loop while the plan to entrap Vaux got underway] and Vaux, who had suspected she had found a younger lover, was walking on air at the prospect of their reunion.

But the long-awaited, romantic tryst came to a shattering, violent end when Alena Hussein, Vaux’s former lover and exposed triple agent, shot him at point-blank range on the porch of his rambling bungalow in Watford Heath.

Anne, in the kitchen stirring scrambled eggs for breakfast while Vaux went to open the front door, had heard a female voice and a short conversation; then an ominous thud as Vaux collapsed on the tiled floor. She rushed to the hallway, saw blood pouring from Vaux’s chest and in her shock and denial never heard the roar of the engine as Hussein’s rented Ford Fiesta sped away, headed for London Heathrow airport.

Vaux is now comfortably installed in a newly-built glass conservatory which in his enforced absence has replaced the open flagstone terrace on which he had spent so many sunset evenings, his sole companion a glass of tawny Cutty Sark scotch on the marble-topped bistro table, accompanied perhaps by a paperback novel, background music supplied by Stan Getz and Charlie Parker.

‘I rather liked it the way it was,’ said Vaux.

‘But darling, you are convalescing—and come the autumn, you’ll appreciate the warmth of the place,’ said Anne in defense of her decision to plow ahead with several domestic innovations while Vaux was safely confined to the hospital’s recovery room.

Vaux grunted a reluctant capitulation.

* * *

At about the same time as Vaux munched on a cucumber sandwich, trying to decide whether he liked the closed-in terrace that had replaced the familiar patio, Sir Gerald Formby, the newly installed head of Department B3, a sub-section of MI6’s Mideast and North Africa desk, contemplated whether to call Vaux with his latest proposition.

He sought the advice of his new deputy, the young Patrick Thursfield, a former medieval history scholar who by some odd accident of fate had landed up in the higher echelons of the U.K.’s Secret Intelligence Service.

‘So, what do you think?’ asked Sir Gerald, as he noted Thursfield’s inappropriate brown tweed suit.

Thursfield removed his newly-acquired horn-rimmed glasses and decided to clean them with the end of his university tie. ‘About what exactly, sir?’

‘Good God, man, my idea! —to get Vaux on a convalescent trip down the Nile—coincidentally on the same boat on which, according to our sources, the conspirators are to meet and plan their bloody coup d’etat.’

When Thursfield read the first draft of Formby’s memorandum he had put it in the pending tray. It was too early to pass judgment and he would wait to see whether any of his colleagues thought the plan sensible or feasible. He would go with the flow. If his two years assigned to Department B3 had taught him anything, it was not to commit himself to any strategy or maneuver too early in the game.

In short, it was essential, if his career was to flourish, to see which way the wind was blowing. His recent regrettable experience in Operation Mascara, in which he was called upon to spy on Vaux, then suspected of being a double agent, had taught him to navigate Whitehall’s corridors of power with extreme caution.

Sir Gerald, in his mid-fifties, had an instinctive suspicion about younger colleagues, especially graduates from what used to be called the provincial universities.

‘What did they teach you at Manchester? To prevaricate is shrewd? To hedge your bets will get you to the top? Come on man— tell me what you think of my little scheme?’

‘Well, Sir. I think it could work. The biggest obstacle, as I see it, is Michael Vaux’s probable reluctance to take you up on the offer.’

‘What the hell are you talking about? He’s convalescing. An offer from us to finance a restful, leisurely trip up the Nile would surely be welcome. Bear in mind his love for that part of the world, his Lawrence of Arabia-like fondness for the Arabs and all that sort of thing.’

Thursfield looked skeptical. ‘But would it be credible? After all he’s put us through, why would we be so generous to someone who just a few months ago we suspected of being a double agent?’

‘Compensation, my dear boy! Or recompense if you like, for all the hell we put him through. Confirmation that we are genuinely sorry for the fiasco of Operation Mascara, that we deeply regret ever suspecting him of playing both sides against the middle’

‘But I thought he was amply compensated in money terms for all that,’ protested Thursfield.

‘Well, that was partly to dissuade him from suing the collective arses off us— but it was also a generous gesture to keep him quiet and happy in his retirement. Our offer to pay for a cruise up the Nile would be the icing on the cake, as it were.’

Thursfield nodded to signify his tentative agreement with Formby’s grand plan.

The red secure phone emitted two short buzzes. Formby picked up the receiver with a coordinated gesture of hand and head that signaled to Thursfield that their talk had ended and he should now leave.

‘Hello Doug! How’s things?’

Sir Gerald had recognized the voice of Doug Bradford, current head of MI6’s Mideast and North Africa desk, the man who had acquiesced [reluctantly, he had insisted, post-fiasco] in the complex plan to expose Michael Vaux as a long-time mole in their midst.

‘Just wondered whether you have any second thoughts about our plan re Vaux,’ said Bradford.

‘Not at all, old boy. In fact, I’ve just informed Thursfield about our little scheme to get him back in from the cold.’

Bradford was familiar with Formby’s tiresome habit of using hackneyed phrases conceived by espionage fiction writers. But he chose not to demur.

‘Good stuff. Does Vaux know the full story?’

‘He doesn’t know anything yet. I’m about to invite him to lunch. Tell him what our mission is and then see if he’ll bite. Don’t see why he wouldn’t, but you never know. Maybe he’s thinking: Fuck you lot—after what you put me through, I’m finished with queen and country.’

‘But of course, you’re not going to tell him anything that would let the cat out of the bag. We want him to think we’re doing this out of the generosity of our hearts—compensation for all the trouble we caused him and the terrible outcome—’

‘Which we should have prevented, I might add,’ said Formby, ruefully.

‘Yes, well there’s plenty of guilt to go around,’ said Bradford.

Formby, who had refused to join the cabal who suspected Vaux of being a double agent, did not feel inclined to be swept up in Bradford’s interpretation of recent events.

‘I might remind you, Doug, that I was never a member of the witch-hunting team that brought about the Vaux fiasco. I tended to support my predecessor’s view that the charges against Vaux were trumped-up hogwash.’

‘Ah yes, old Sir Nigel. He never quite came round to buying the official story. How and where is he enjoying his retirement, by the way?’

‘In Sussex. Deadheading his roses, I assume.’

Bradford’s phone call had persuaded Thursfield to hover in front of Formby’s desk, suspecting that as a key player in the ploy to reinstate Vaux, he might be needed to contribute to a three-way conversation.

But Formby suddenly hung up and again indicated that his deputy was dismissed. Thursfield duly retreated to his small cubicle in the shabby Gower Street office suite ostensibly occupied by Acme Global Consultants Ltd.

Now alone, Sir Gerald picked up and reread the sheet of A4 paper that a courier had delivered in a sealed official Foreign Office envelope at 9 a.m. that morning.

TOP SECRET/Decrypt

Security code: MENA-GYPC

Source: TUT

Reliable informant indicates planning underway to effect coup to overthrow Al-Sisi regime. Discontented clique of junior officers to finalize strategy at a confab aboard a Nile pleasure craft under the guise of a short break to get away from Cairo’s enervating summer heat. Principal actors unknown except for source.

Await response.

Tut 5/17

Chapter 2

CAIRO, EGYPT

S econd Lieutenant Zaki Khalid, awakened from a deep sleep by the tinny shrill of the ancient alarm clock beside his narrow bed, jumped up with regimental zeal for another challenging day. Ali, his bedmate and younger brother, spread his legs under the top sheet to enjoy the luxury of an undisturbed lie-in.

Under the cold shower, Khalid, tall and slim, in his early-twenties, cursed the doubts and misgivings that had haunted him since his immediate superior, Major Taha Himeidi, had begun to exclude him from the usual 10 a.m. ‘strategy’ briefings with a handful of fellow senior officers.

True, the meetings usually degenerated into social gossip about their superiors and their newly acquired mistresses; even so, Zaki felt mildly resentful at being excluded from the briefing sessions whose declared purpose was ‘to map out current military priorities and discuss possible policy changes’.

Yesterday, Himeidi had suddenly asked him to leave the building. ‘Go for a coffee to your usual haunt—Groppi’s isn’t it?’ Zaki felt that it was more an order than a friendly suggestion. He was told to return at noon.

Zaki had also discovered from Himeidi’s young secretary Anippe, that similar consultations had recently been held in the office until late at night. He had never been invited. When he asked Anippe how many people had attended these discreet meetings, she had answered vaguely: ‘Usually about six, sometimes more.’

He looked at his reflection in the small oval mirror above the stained, cracked wash basin. His curly hair, short and very black, never needed much attention. He wondered again whether he would look better, more military, with a small moustache but again deferred any decision for another day.

He dressed quickly as his thoughts came back to those mysterious, secret meetings. After all, he was essentially Major Himeidi’s aide de camp, and if he was to perform his duties efficiently, he should be privy to everything that affected his senior’s command and duties.

But what really agonized him were his suspicions that history could be repeating itself. The Military Academy had drummed into all prospective officers the recent history of a proud and ancient nation. He was well aware that the great revolution of 1957, led by a cabal of junior army officers, was a watershed in the life and times of his people.

Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser’s ascendancy marked the end of Britain’s colonial dominance of Egypt and sparked the Suez war whose outcome sealed the end of foreign domination.

Egypt, with U.S. connivance, won the war against the old colonial powers—Britain and France. The