The Key to Rebecca - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ken Follett is one of the world’s best-loved authors, selling more than 160 million copies of his thirty books. Follett’s first bestseller was Eye of the Needle, a spy story set in the Second World War. 

In 1989 The Pillars of the Earth was published, and has since become the author’s most successful novel. It reached number one on bestseller lists around the world and was an Oprah’s Book Club pick.
 
Its sequels, World Without End and A Column of Fire, proved equally popular, and the Kingsbridge series has sold 38 million copies worldwide.
 
Follett lives in Hertfordshire, England, with his wife Barbara. Between them they have five children, six grandchildren, and three Labradors. 

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

PART ONE - TO BRUK

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

PART TWO - MERSA MATRUH

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

PART THREE - ALAM HALFA

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Praise for Ken Follett and his bestselling novels

“Follett is a master.”

—Time

“An artist of compelling talents.”

—The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Ken Follett can hold his own with the best.”

—The Indianapolis Star

“Masterful. . . . Plot and counterplot, treachery, cunning, and killing . . . keep you on the edge every moment.”

—The Associated Press

“Razor-sharp . . . harrowing . . . a cleverly crafted, easily read novel.”

—The Dallas Times Herald

“Follett’s great strength is his female characters—they are smart, strong, independent, and when they love a man, by golly, he knows the game is up.”

—People

“An absolutely terrific thriller, so pulse pounding, so ingenious in its plotting, and so frighteningly realistic that you simply cannot stop reading.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Can Follett write. . . ? He outclasses his competitors.”

—Newsday

ALSO BY KEN FOLLETT

The Modigliani Scandal
Paper Money
Eye of the Needle
Triple
The Key to Rebecca
The Man from St. Petersburg
On Wings of Eagles
Lie Down with Lions
The Pillars of the Earth
Night over Water
A Dangerous Fortune
A Place Called Freedom
The Third Twin
The Hammer of Eden
Code to Zero
Jackdaws

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First New American Library Trade Paperback Printing, February 2002

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PUBLISHER’S NOTE

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ISBN: 9781101042656

TO ROBIN MCGIBBON

“Our spy in Cairo is the greatest hero of them all.”

—Erwin Rommel, September 1942

(Quoted by Anthony Cave Brown in Bodyguard of Lies)

PART ONE

TO BRUK

1

THE LAST CAMEL COLLAPSED AT NOON.

It was the five-year-old white bull he had bought in Gialo, the youngest and strongest of the three beasts, and the least ill-tempered: he liked the animal as much as a man could like a camel, which is to say that he hated it only a little.

They climbed the leeward side of a small hill, man and camel planting big clumsy feet in the inconstant sand, and at the top they stopped. They looked ahead, seeing nothing but another hillock to climb, and after that a thousand more, and it was as if the camel despaired at the thought. Its forelegs folded, then its rear went down, and it couched on top of the hill like a monument, staring across the empty desert with the indifference of the dying.

The man hauled on its nose rope. Its head came forward and its neck stretched out, but it would not get up. The man went behind and kicked its hindquarters as hard as he could, three or four times. Finally he took out a razor-sharp curved Bedouin knife with a narrow point and stabbed the camel’s rump. Blood flowed from the wound but the camel did not even look around.

The man understood what was happening. The very tissues of the animal’s body, starved of nourishment, had simply stopped working, like a machine that has run out of fuel. He had seen camels collapse like this on the outskirts of an oasis, surrounded by life-giving foliage which they ignored, lacking the energy to eat.

There were two more tricks he might have tried. One was to pour water into its nostrils until it began to drown; the other to light a fire under its hindquarters. He could not spare the water for one nor the firewood for the other, and besides neither method had a great chance of success.

It was time to stop, anyway. The sun was high and fierce. The long Saharan summer was beginning, and the midday temperature would reach 110 degrees in the shade.

Without unloading the camel, the man opened one of his bags and took out his tent. He looked around again, automatically: there was no shade or shelter in sight—one place was as bad as another. He pitched his tent beside the dying camel, there on top of the hillock.

He sat cross-legged in the open end of the tent to make his tea. He scraped level a small square of sand, arranged a few precious dry twigs in a pyramid and lit the fire. When the kettle boiled he made tea in the nomad fashion, pouring it from the pot into the cup, adding sugar, then returning it to the pot to infuse again, several times over. The resulting brew, very strong and rather treacly, was...