by Desmond Cory
4
Fedora sat on the back seat of the jeep, peering about him. The dusk was now deep, and only a sliver of a Moor’s moon hung in the great sky; the jeep moved, seemingly slowly, through a phantasmagoric world of black shadows and grey lights, the beam of its headlights cutting a clean swathe of reality through the surrounding vaguenesses. That beam wavered as the jeep jolted in the sandy ruts, settled down again as they passed a smoother patch; brown-painted huts sprang into sudden existence, walking soldiers, tufty bunches of withering scrub; all shone in the yellow light for an instant, then disappeared. Noise had gone from the world, was lost in the soft purring of the engine; nothing lived but chiaroscuro, light and shade, shadow and furtive movement on the outermost fringes of view.
“This is about the damned oddest Secret Establishment I’ve ever seen,” observed Fedora.
“Why do you say that?”
“No sentries. No barbed wire. No notices. It looks like the ordinary sort of hell-hole of a training camp to me.”
“That’s what it’s supposed to look like,” explained Emerald. “In fact, that’s what it is. Our particular branch of devilry doesn’t take up much room; and the rest of the dump is an honest-to-goodness reme training centre. But we’ve got barbed wire and sentries where required—never fear … No notices, though. Only the ordinary kind. Out of Bounds - Regimental Depot, Ayrshire Lowlanders - Military Not Admitted - all that sort of thing. It’s worked pretty well, so far.”
“And how long have you been here?”
“Special Establishment, you mean? Oh, about three years. But we built it up very slowly; one little thing at a time. The reme centre is a good cover - we can bring in more or less what we like in the way of equipment without exciting too much attention. One or two items, of course, we had to be careful about … Still, on the whole we believe this is one of the few places that really have escaped the Kremlin’s God-like omniscience. And a good job, too.”
“I can see why you’re worried about O’Brien.”
“Um?”
“Having maybe been mixed up with Soviet espionage in Persia.”
“Yes. But actually, you know, it’s nothing to do with that at all.” The jeep swung to the left, heading up a side-lane. “I hope I can tell you all about it one day, Johnny. If it wasn’t so serious, it would be funny; very funny.”
Emerald showed no inclination to laugh, all the same. He remained silent, while the driver eased on the brakes and brought the jeep to a gritty halt outside a big two-storied building distinguished by a verandah. Light came from the ground-floor windows; light, and the sound of a radiogram playing an early Glenn Miller number. Beneath the beat of the music was a faint hum of masculine conversation.
“Here we are, then. This is the bar. I reckon we stand in need.”
Johnny followed Emerald up the shallow steps and through the front door. Inside was a large room with a well-polished wooden floor, dotted with nondescript though comfortable armchairs and occasional tables; most of these were occupied by the military and by the military’s tankards of beer. Emerald, glancing round him and acknowledging greetings as he walked, made his way to the bar counter; his manner suggested that of Lord Curzon entering Victoria Station. Three R.A.F. officers were seated at the bar, and one of them Johnny immediately recognised.
“Well, well,” said Revie. “The marooned one himself. And all nicely done up in a sling, I see.”
“That’s right,” said Johnny.
“Jolly good. How are you feeling, actually?”
“I’m feeling fine,” said Johnny.
Emerald smacked Revie lightly on the back. “Of course. You two have already met. Old friends, in fact.”
“Well, I don’t suppose he’s quite as glad to see me as he was this morning. But I won’t hold that against him. What are you drinking, Fedora?”
“Thank you. Something large and pretty wet.”
“A can of beer, for instance? Right. And what about you, Jimmy?”
“What d’you mean, what about me? You know dam’ well what I drink. Johnny, you don’t know these other gentlemen, do you? Allow me to present, Squadron-Leader Bailey, Flight-Lieutenant Cave. This ’ere is Mr. Fedora, an old ally of mine.”
Bailey was tall, dark, saturnine. Cave was short and very fair, with a heavy head that seemed too large for his body. Cave was very slightly drunk; Bailey extremely sober. “You must have had a bad time this morning,” he said. “I heard all about it, and they’re beastly things, those dust-storms. I got nearly caught in one a few months ago, so I know what I’m talking about.”
Johnny, accepting the huge tankard thrust into his hands by Revie, prepared himself for an hour or so of innocent relaxation, i.e. boredom. “It happened like this …” began Bailey.
Some fifteen minutes later, Johnny was beginning to wonder if Bailey was really as sober as he had, at first sight, appeared. Certainly, his speech remained clear and unhesitant; he stood erectly at the side of the bar, and his eyes focused effortlessly on the objects which they sought. Effortlessly, yes, but with a peculiar intensity; they seemed to examine each object with fanatical interest, and then to abandon it as useless, as not being in fact the object of their search. It was almost as though Bailey were under the influence of some exotic and little-known drug; some Arabian opiate lending, for a short while, a strange hypersensitivity of vision … Johnny was not, after all, being bored. On the contrary, his interest was roused so keenly that he paid very scant attention to the remarks thrown in from time to time by his other companions; and it was not until Revie began to cap Bailey’s last anecdote with another, somewhat more ribald, story that Johnny realised that Revie, too, betrayed exactly the same symptoms in a much less evident form. Less evident, but much more readily recognisable; it was that same kind of nervousness that both Johnny and O’Brien had originally noticed in him, and which Johnny had since detected in Jimmy Emerald, a nervousness compound of suppressed excitement and anticipation and fear. They were all in it; all partaking of something of that sense of high strain and endeavour …
Johnny looked pensively at Cave, the only one of the quartet to seem comparatively free from complexes. He was conscious of a rapidly growing curiosity and, at the same time, of an imperative urge to mind his own business. Whatever it was that so deeply implicated Bailey and Revie and Emerald was no concern of Fedora’s … except in so far as O’Brien was participant in it … It seemed a very odd state of affairs, and not particularly healthy …
He was able suddenly to remember when he had come across a similar group of men. In the Southern United States, before the war, when he had been only a boy. But he could recall clearly enough those four men sitting in the corner of the store; their faces and the impalpable atmosphere surrounding them. They had been truck-drivers, driving from Dallas to the oil country; and what they drove was nitro-glycerine.
“… But it’s not too bad a climate,” said Bailey. “Nice and bright and sunny. I’m going to retire here when the big bang comes along - rent myself a clean little cave or something—”
“Eh?” said Cave, looking up.
“—and go happily back to a Neolithic economy.”
“Oh. Them’s harsh words.”
… People were laughing too much, thought Johnny. Nobody was very drunk, yet; except possibly Cave. Nobody was being very witty. But people were laughing too much, all the same; sharing some huge private joke of which they were permanently conscious. Perhaps, from the undertones of this conversation, he might be able to assess something of … well, of something that he had no great desire to know, anyway …
“I beg your pardon?” he said.
Bailey was watching him with his blue, over-intent eyes. “I was just saying that you must be a bit of a wild man yourself. Professional hunter, I understood someone to say.”
“Oh yes. I’ve been shooting around a bit.”
“Well - there you are. Just the sort of fellow to have around. Would you care to join our tribe, while the join
ing’s good?”
“I don’t know that he’d be so handy with a flint axe,” said Revie pessimistically.
“Well, surely the principle’s the same. Killing things—”
“There won’t be any principles in my cave.”
“Women,” said Cave vehemently. “Ought to enlist some women. Won’t be much of a life without any women, for God’s sake.”
There was a pause. “One sees what you mean,” said Revie.
“’Scuse me,” said Cave, standing up. “Sick,” he added, as an afterthought. “Bye-bye.” He went out, lurching heavily from side to side. Johnny, looking round him, was surprised to see that Emerald had already disappeared.
“Where’s Jimmy got to?”
“Oh, just to check on things,” said Revie vaguely. “He’ll be back in no time. And if not, who cares? Have another beer, Fedora.”
“Busy fellow, our Jimmy,” said Bailey.
“Works hard for his wages.”
“Don’t we all? I suppose he’s still in pursuit of the other wild man.”
This remark was addressed to Johnny, who was puzzled by it. “What other wild man?”
“From the woods. Your friend. What’s his name? Oh, Cody.”
“Oh, Cody,” said Johnny. The door closed behind Cave with a faint creak of its hinges; there was another short pause.
“A bit of a mystery man, this Cody.” Bailey swallowed beer and grimaced reflectively. “One of us, isn’t he?”
“How do you mean, one of us?”
“A flier.”
“Oh yes, he’s a flier. How did you know?”
“I didn’t. Don here guessed that he might be.”
“One can often tell,” said Revie gruffly. “Or guess. I don’t mean any Sherlock Holmes stuff, either, and I don’t know what it is - but there’s usually something. Goodish pilot, too, I should say.”
Johnny nodded. “I believe he is.”
“How did you two get together?” asked Bailey.
“Oh, the usual way. He was driving up north from Kenya, and I went along for the ride.”
“So he comes from Kenya?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Oh, nothing. Pretty long ride.”
“Long and bumpy.”
Bailey solemnly directed the barman to replenish Fedora’s tankard. “No wonder you’re thirsty, then. But does one detect a certain reticence in your attitude?”
“A which?”
“… About this Cody fellow.”
“Maybe. I’m rather feeling my way about here, as yet. I don’t want to open my mouth too wide while Jimmy’s not here to stop me.”
“Ah, the admirable Emerald. He renders us dumb as oysters. Not even the dreaded Ogpu exerts a grasp so tenacious. Whenever he draws near … Tell me, am I drivelling, Donald?”
“You are, rather, old man.”
“I suspected as much. No, Fedora; we are genuinely interested in the mysterious Mr. Cody. Our interests are, to some degree, bound up with his’n Donald’s rather more than mine - but I confess to a fleeting interest, also. Is Jimmy going to apprehend the blighter?”
“Such is his intention,” said Fedora cautiously.
“Before he gets to Tripoli?”
“So we trust.”
“God, he’d better,” said Revie with unexpected intensity. “God, he’d better.”
The force of Revie’s exclamation sliced like a razor through the veil of airy persiflage obscuring the conversation. Johnny and Bailey both looked at him: Johnny open-eyed, Bailey warningly and tensely. In that moment of stillness, the door opened and shut: Emerald had returned.
Later, much later, he and Johnny stood silently in the strengthening night; in the shade of the office hut; leaning against the darkened wall and smoking cigarettes.
The moon was still no more than a narrow segment, pale and high in the sky; yet it stained the long stretches of sand with brightness, made mysteries of the low huts that lay around and enchantresses of the clustered palm-fronds above. The tops of the trees, tall and distant, moved gently to and fro; Johnny could feel on one cheek the breath of the slow desert wind, fanned into near-coolness by breezes from the nearby Mediterranean. His cigarette-end glowed between his fingers like a speck of bright rust in the air.
Raising his head, he saw thin veils of cloud stretched wanly over the sky and, in the gaps, the great constellations of African stars: Cassiopeia, Orion, Taurus, the humming Pleaides: as he watched, the Great Bear swung slowly out from behind a wispy screen of cloud, bright, refulgent, staring passionlessly down at him. Johnny drew on his cigarette and felt the warmth of the burning tobacco strike companionably against the palm of his hand.
“I’ll miss these nights,” he said, “back in Europe.”
Emerald nodded, invisibly. “They’re pleasant, this time of the year. Beautiful. And very peaceful.”
“They seem so incredibly near.”
“The stars?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, don’t they? You feel you could put out your hand and touch them. And then, suddenly, they’re farther than ever before.”
“They’re far enough.”
“I suppose we’ll get up there one day. In centuries to come. It seems funny to think of it, but …” Emerald leaned forward to stare at the moon; his cheeks and chin gleamed in the pallid light, as a turning fish shines in the depths of the sea. “We’ll reach them one day,” he said. “There’ll be room for expansion there all right.”
“D’you suppose there’s anything living there?”
“Where?”
“Well … on the moon.”
“No,” said Emerald. “No.”
“Nor do I. The earth’s good enough for me.”
“Yes. For me, too.” Emerald’s face withdrew again into the darkness. “But not for some people.”
Fedora thought in silence for a moment.
“We were talking about that,” he said, “in the bar back there, while you were gone. That fellow Bailey reckons we’re all going back to the Stone Age; he’s going to find himself a cave and we’re all going along to join his tribe. Care to join us?”
“Sounds a good idea.” Emerald’s tone suggested that he was taking this proposition seriously. “Nice chap, Bailey.”
“Nice chap. Yes.”
“What else did you talk about?”
“… About O’Brien.”
“Oh yes?”
“We decided he should come along, too.”
“On the theory that it takes all sorts …?”
“I wouldn’t know about the theory. They seemed pretty interested in O’Brien, Bailey and Revie both.”
“We lead a pretty dull life here. Devoid of incident, you know. So, at any rate, O’Brien’s something of a diversion.”
“Well, they seemed to be anxious that you should get hold of him. Anything else you’d like to know?”
“Like to know?” Emerald’s voice was mildly startled. “Like to know about what?”
“About our conversation … Come off it, Jimmy. None of your never-let-the-right-hand-know stuff. I don’t mind playing the kid to your private tiger, but I’m not going to pretend I’m completely clueless about it.” Johnny’s cigarette-end arched abruptly through the moonlight, hit the sand in a shower of sparks. “Let’s have it straight or not at all.”
“Well,” said Emerald. “… Well.”
He moved uneasily, a movement of arms and shoulders that lost all precision in the shadows. Finally, he drew on his cigarette and sent it spinning through the air to smoulder palely beside Johnny’s.
“What do you suppose is going on here, anyway?”
“I don’t know,” said Johnny.
“Honestly? Or just being coy?”
“No. I can’t even guess.”
“Still, you’re going to be able to guess before long. A bright young fellow like you shouldn’t have much trouble. And that’s the hell of it … I have to decide whether to kick you out of here tomorrow morning, or to k
eep you around and see if I can use you … It’s tricky.”
“Use me in what way?”
“Like you said. A kid for the tiger. You see, you’re a stranger here, Johnny; we don’t see many strangers. People will talk to you. They shouldn’t, of course, but the fact is that those boys, Bailey and Revie … they’re getting to a stage when they’ll talk, anyway. They’re good men, the very best. It’s just that nerves are getting a bit strung too tight … and after what happened today …”
“Bailey said something about his interests being bound up with O’Brien’s. What did he mean by that?”
“He meant,” said Emerald pensively, “that unless we can find O’Brien tonight, his chances of staying alive go down by something like forty per cent. And Revie’s by more like sixty. They’re just not good insurance risks, those boys. That’s all there is to it.”
“Unless we can find him tonight?”
“Well, or tomorrow. If it takes longer … it may help Bailey, but not Don Revie. As for O’Brien himself … I’m afraid he’s a dead ’un, anyway.”
“ What?”
“The sooner we get him, the longer he’ll have. But it won’t be very long, anyway.
“But why?”
“Because of something that happened this morning. Mind you - he’s almost certainly due to be hanged anyway, when the police catch up with him. I suppose that makes a difference.”
“But look here,” said Johnny, whose tongue was feeling more than normally dry.
“What is it?”
“Am I all right?”
“… Eh?”
“I’m all right … I suppose?”
Emerald chuckled, not unpleasantly. “You’re right as rain, you are. Nothing to worry about. Apart from your arm, that is.”
“I’m very glad to hear it,” said Johnny sincerely.
“Yes, I’ll really have to have another chat with Mr. Mitchell.”
Over in the shade of the palm-trees someone was walking to and fro. Johnny could see from time to time a black, a jet-black shadow, moving irresolutely, awkwardly, over the smooth, hard sand. The wind brought to him, half-smothered, the sound of a distant cough; it seemed to be half a sob. Johnny wondered who it was.
