Rommel ruft Kairo (1959)

North Africa during the Second World War. In April 1942, in order to bring the British to their knees militarily and capture Tobruk, the northern Libyan fortress held by the English, Abwehr chief Canaris sends two men to Generaloberst Rommel, commander of the Afrika Korps. They are Hungarian Captain Count Almásy and German Captain Eppler. The two are to carry out a daring plan that will take them right across the Egyptian desert. Rommel wants detailed information about the strength of the British forces and their bases in Tobruk and the Egyptian hinterland, so he orders the two officers and a few helpers to make their way behind enemy lines to Asyut on the Nile. With five vehicles, several radio operators, and technical support personnel, Almásy and Eppler set out on their perilous reconnaissance journey across the Libyan-Egyptian desert. Meanwhile, the British military administration, based at Cairo’s Semiramis Hotel and headed by Colonel Robertson, has been alerted to the five German vehicles by photographs taken by a British reconnaissance aircraft. Together with his officer, Lieutenant Kay Morrison, Robertson puzzles over what these strange five dots in the desert might mean. When Robertson learns that Count Almásy, whom he knows to be at Rommel’s headquarters, has been missing for several days, he becomes suspicious. But neither he nor his adjutant Amis can figure out why the Germans would send a convoy without tanks or other military vehicles toward southern Egypt. Meanwhile, the desert travelers run into their first difficulties. During a road-clearing explosion, flying rocks hit and badly damaged the water tank in one of the five vehicles. One of the thirsty men then begins to lose his mind in a sandstorm and waves his revolver around in a panic. Meanwhile, Robertson and Kay sip one drink after another in the desert in front of the Pyramids of Giza. After the sandstorm, the Germans continue with four vehicles; one car has been left behind with a seized engine. To make matters worse, the waterhole Almásy discovered twelve years earlier as a member of an expedition has now dried up. The situation for Rommel’s men grows increasingly desperate. To get the water they urgently need, Count Almásy decides to take a detour into the mountains. There, the Hungarian indeed finds the water supplies laid out by the British. The men split up at an oasis. Almásy returns to Rommel. Captain Eppler, who has been given a French identity, and his radio operator Sandy, traveling under an American identity, stumble upon a British training camp. Its unsuspecting commander sends the two on to Asyut. Meanwhile, Robertson suspects that the Germans intend to place an agent in the southern Nile Valley who will then travel to Cairo. The colonel consequently orders all trains to the capital to be placed under strict surveillance. With the help of their young local assistant, Achmed, Eppler and Sandy reach Cairo safely and send their first radio message to Rommel from their hideout at the Pensione Roma. Eppler uses his stay by the Nile to rekindle his former relationship with his lover, Amina, an Egyptian dancer who knows him as Hussein. They spend a night of love on her houseboat. The following day, Eppler makes contact with a spiritual leader of the anti-British Egyptians and asks him to urge the Egyptians to rise up against their British occupiers at last. The leader promises to do so if Rommel captures Tobruk. Eppler then goes to the men’s tailor Sharaoui to have a British uniform made to measure. Wearing it, the German strolls unnoticed into the British headquarters. There he learns about the leave ban imposed on New Zealand soldiers and the arrival of Australian units from Sudan—all important information for Generaloberst Rommel. Colonel Robertson, however, has not been idle. He and his men intercept the radio code of the previously unknown secret transmitter and begin closing in on Eppler and Sandy’s hideout. The ensuing raid results only in the arrest, witnessed by Eppler, of a completely innocent Italian man… Through his houseboat neighbor, British Major Smith, Eppler—who has fully assumed the role of an Egyptian named Gaffa Bey—makes contact with the Abwehr officer Robertson and his subordinate Kay Morrison, who quickly falls for his charm. The two go on a romantic outing to the pyramids. Meanwhile, Count Almásy has returned to Rommel and, in recognition of the success of Operation Condor, is promoted to major. Rommel makes it clear to Almásy that he urgently needs details about Tobruk’s fortifications in order to capture the city. Eppler is therefore briefed again in Cairo and told to penetrate the British inner sanctum. Passing himself off as Major MacDougall, newly arrived from London, Eppler manages to gain access to the map room at headquarters. There he photographs the plans they want and sends them on to Rommel. Rommel then attacks Tobruk and captures the city. The British become mildly panicked for the first time, and Robertson begins burning several secret documents. Meanwhile, the dancer Amina is jealous because she has seen Eppler on very familiar terms with Kay Morrison. In the meantime, the British army has captured the two radio operators in the desert during a counterattack. They had been receiving Eppler’s transmissions, and the British take from them the codebook concealed inside the novel Rebecca. Almásy then advises Rommel to break off radio contact with Eppler so as not to endanger him in the field. When Amina obtains even more important plans for her lover from Major Smith’s possession, Eppler can no longer send them to Rommel’s headquarters, because contact with him has by now been cut for security reasons. Smith, suspecting that Amina has made him betray his own country, grabs a jeep and drives it into the desert in a suicidal act, where minefields have been laid everywhere. He is blown to pieces. Shortly afterward, Kay visits Eppler, alias Gaffa Bey, to say goodbye. As part of the first evacuation measures, she is being transferred to Baghdad. She sees the novel Rebecca at Eppler’s place. Now she begins to understand what is going on and realizes that Hussein must be the long-sought German spy. Desperate, Kay tries to inform her superior, Robertson, of her suspicions by telephone, but he cannot be reached because he is out. Events now come to a head. Rommel’s deputy, Lüdinghausen, orders that Eppler’s “isolation” finally be ended so that radio communication with Cairo can resume. Radio operator Sandy seizes the opportunity to transmit immediately the sensitive information from Major Smith’s briefcase. Neither man realizes, however, that the British intelligence chief Robertson has long been driving all over Cairo in a direction-finding vehicle with his specialists, trying to track down the two spies. As soon as the transmission ends, British soldiers surround the houseboat with Eppler and Sandy aboard. Sandy shoots himself, while Eppler allows himself to be captured. Colonel Robertson tells him that the British plans Sandy transmitted had long since been changed, and that Robertson waited so long to move in so that Sandy would transmit the worthless information to Rommel’s headquarters. When Robertson returns to his headquarters, Kay Morrison is already waiting for him. She explains that Rebecca is the Germans’ codebook and that she has since deciphered it. She offers her superior a deal: her findings in exchange for the life of Gaffa Bey, alias Hussein, alias Captain Eppler. Robertson promises to discuss it with Prime Minister Churchill. In the corridor of headquarters, Eppler and Kay have one last, silent encounter.