Land of Marvels

by Unsworth, Barry

  “Well, by chance really. I was due to leave for Mesopotamia anyway. I know Arabic, and I know this region well. It seemed a good idea, you know, to pick up any papers you might have as I was passing by.”

  “Are you working for Lord Rampling?”

  “Good heavens, no. I am a military man. I have specialized in cartography, and I have been detailed to carry out surveys and make contour maps of the region between the Belikh and the Khabur, preliminary to a major irrigation project to be carried out under Sir William Wilcox. You will have heard of him, no doubt.”

  “The engineer, yes.”

  “That’s a very mild way of putting it. He is an international authority.”

  “Well, I don’t know much about irrigation.”

  “The Wise Men come from the West now, you know. Once they came from the East, now they come from the West. I am quoting Sir William when I say that.”

  “Meaning he is one of the Wise Men?”

  “Yes, so he is. And among the nations Britain is foremost in irrigation technology. We lead the world. In the absence of a report the letter authorizes me to take whatever notes you have so far accumulated.”

  Elliott made no immediate reply to this. Like most tricksters he was distrustful, and a certain suspicion had entered his mind while Manning was quoting the words of the wise Sir William. He had the definite impression that the major was acting a part and that he was not—unlike himself—a very good actor. The attempt at a friendly, easy manner had not succeeded. Of course, this did not necessarily mean that he was up to something; such attempts on the major’s part would probably never be successful, whatever the circumstances, perpetually defeated in advance by the stiff movements of shoulders and head, the occasional nervous twitch of the face. All the same, there were things here that didn’t quite add up. Manning seemed to want him to believe that picking up the papers was a casual matter, something he had been asked to do in passing, as a convenience, in the course of other business. If that was so, why the haste, why this visit rather unconventionally late on the first evening of the major’s arrival?

  “A little more Scotch?” he said.

  “Just a drop. It’s very good. Malt, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, that’s right. Twelve years old. I see you know something about whiskey.” Could the major be a fake? He was almost too good to be true, but that might be the reason he had been chosen. Like a double bluff . . . Could he be working for some other oil interests? The d’Arcy Group, for example, or Shell, or the newly formed French combine, the CFP. In that case, it would make good sense for them to try to get whatever information they could; it would save them time, put them a step ahead. “Perhaps I’d better see the letter,” he said. “Not that I doubt your word, of course, but Rampling has placed a great deal of trust in me, not only in my capacity but in my prudence.”

  “Of course.”

  The wax seal had an official imprint; Rampling’s sprawling signature lay below a clear and explicit authorization of the bearer to take possession of all written records so far made. Nothing obviously wrong with the letter, but there wouldn’t be, would there? How could he know whether it was genuine? Easy enough to stick a bit of red wax on the flap. That stamp would be lying about on the desks of a hundred offices in Whitehall. He had no specimen of Rampling’s signature. His contract was with the Turkish Petroleum Company; Rampling’s name appeared nowhere on it.

  “I must keep possession of the letter,” Manning said, holding out his hand for it, “until such time as the notes are handed over. The notes would suffice. In the absence of an interim report, I mean. They would help us to form a picture of the progress you have made to date.” Notes, reports, it didn’t really matter. His orders referred only to written records; once he had those, he would shoot Elliott, and that would be that, he could leave with a sense of duty done. No sign of guilt or confusion on the fellow’s face, a hardened scoundrel if ever there was one.

  “How can I make the report if I haven’t got the notes?” Elliott said. “In any case, the notes by themselves would be of no use to anyone, they are only comprehensible to me. I use my own system of personal symbols. For the sake of security, you know. It’s a kind of code. It wouldn’t do for these papers to fall into the wrong hands, would it?”

  “No, certainly not. How much time would you need? To get them into shape, I mean.”

  Elliott narrowed his eyes with an appearance of considering. “Well,” he said, “to tell you the truth, there have been some important indications recently, just in the last few days, in fact, but I can’t commit myself to a definite opinion without further checking. Then I would have to make a full summary of all the findings in the form of a written report, incorporating the maps and sketches I have made. I should say it will be a week at least before I am in a position to hand anything over.”

  “I see, yes.”

  Manning said nothing further for a while but stared down at his glass with a slightly frowning expression. In certain ways he was not the right choice for an assignment of this sort. He was too emotional, for one thing. And he had a rigid cast of mind that made him easily thrown out by the unexpected. He had not foreseen this present setback, and there was no provision for it in his orders. He had envisaged it as a cut-and-dried transaction: Convinced by the letter, Elliott would hand over his papers without demur; then, in the course of the next day or two, there would be an opportunity to follow him out to some lonely place, preferably at a time when he was busily occupied and therefore not on the lookout, and shoot him, making it look like the work of some trigger-happy Bedouin tribesman. He was an army Grade A marksman, and he was confident that in open ground with an unrestricted view he could kill Elliott with a single shot at four hundred yards. Now there was this complication. But it sounded as if the American was onto something. It was a patriotic duty to make sure that any information of value got back to the mother country. He could keep a close watch on this treacherous geologist, make sure no approaches were made to him by a third party. “All right then,” he said. “There’s no great hurry. I have a roving commission. I can afford to wait a few days.”

  “I sure am glad to hear you say that.”

  On this, Manning finished his drink, patted his mustache with a handkerchief he kept in the sleeve of his shirt, and stood up to take his leave with the best he could manage in the way of a smile.

  For quite some time after his departure, Elliott remained where he was, standing motionless in the middle of the room. A new and more disquieting thought had struck him even as the door closed on the major. Supposing the letter was genuine, after all. In that case, what could it mean to be asking him for notes and reports at such an early stage? No previous mention had been made of any such requirements. It came back to his mind, but in a different light now, that attempt on Manning’s part at an offhand manner, falsified by the haste and urgency he had not been accomplished enough to conceal. Had they got on to him somehow? He knew he had been watched in London, watched and followed. But he thought he had thrown pursuit off for long enough to call at the German Embassy undetected. Perhaps he had been mistaken in this . . .

  If so, his whole security, in fact his best chance of staying alive, lay in keeping possession of the papers; he was glad now that he had spoken of recent important developments, not yet written up. Until they were satisfied that they knew what he knew, however much or little it was, and had the evidence in their hands, he was safe enough. After that they would want to stop him talking, make sure he did not pass anything on to the Germans. The stakes were too high; they would not want to take chances. In fact he had never had any intention of passing on anything of value either to the Germans or to the British. All the capital he possessed and all he had been able to borrow was invested in the Chester Group, an American combine very interested in exploiting deposits of oil in Mesopotamia. He was acting for them; it was to them that he would make his report. This had been agreed before he had left the United States for London.

&nb
sp; The major would have his orders. A bonehead, but his finger would be steady enough on the trigger. “I can shoot too,” he said aloud, very softly. The major would not realize he suspected anything. With the advantage of surprise he would have a good chance of putting a bullet into Manning before Manning put one into him. Or perhaps the major would arrange an alibi, bribe some local tribesman, make it seem like a casual murder in the course of a casual robbery, the sort of thing that happened here from time to time. He thought not, however. Manning would regard killing him as a patriotic duty; he would want to keep things in his own hands.

  In the meantime what to do with the notes and sketches he had made already? He would keep his door locked and the window, which also gave onto the courtyard, secured. This would strengthen the impression in Manning’s mind, if he made an attempt to enter the room and search, that the papers were valuable.

  But the fastenings of the window were flimsy, and his bedside drawer, in which the papers were kept, had no lock. He would not keep them here; he would take them to Edith and ask her to keep them for him. He would say he was afraid of robbery by rival interests. He would say that Manning was in the pay of the Russians and that they were dangerous people. He would hint that his own life was in danger, not seeming too much afraid, of course, so as to stand the test of heroism in her eyes. He would swear her to secrecy. She was given to notions of high enterprise. She would jump at this sort of romantic involvement. She would swallow it wholesale if he pitched it up enough. Besides, it was partly true . . .

  ______

  The shaft went straight down, and it was deep. They had to widen the mouth considerably and dig two lateral trenches, one on either side, so as to convey away more easily the filling of earth and stone chips. On the fourth day of digging, the deeper of these trenches, which sloped down to a depth of twelve feet, revealed the crown of a brick vault. Since they had started digging from a point lower down, they were already below the level of the palace apartments, but there was so far no trace of fire. They did not attempt to clear the roof from above for fear of damage, but continued down the shaft, the work becoming slower and more laborious as they went lower. Roughly eight feet farther down they came upon what Somerville had wanted so much to find that he had hardly dared to hope for it, the beginning of a stone stairway projecting outward from the vertical line of the shaft in the direction of the vaulted ceiling, roughly the height of a man below this. There was no doubt in his mind now. It was a vaulted tomb of traditional construction; the stairs would lead to an anteroom.

  The deeper of the trenches had to be enlarged further, made into a pit, so as to give access to the head of the steps, which were heaped over with rubble. On the afternoon of the day when the first two steps were uncovered, Somerville and Palmer together, both in a state of considerable elation, were directing this work of enlargement, which it was thought would take some further days, and Jehar was watching both men from a point carefully chosen, about fifty yards away. He was waiting for a suitable moment.

  Since first setting eyes on Ninanna he had been constantly surprised by his ability to wait. Before that he had always lived in the present moment, his lusts and rages and his need to survive always directed at what was there before him, as opportunity or necessity. Even now he had no real sense of the future as a progression in time, a sequence of days during which people aged and changed. The future he waited for was an improved state of being, a sort of readjustment of the present, no more than a step from the railway yards at Jerablus and the watchful and miserly uncle to the wondrous land of Deir ez-Zor, immediate prosperity in the river trade, and unrestricted enjoyment of Ninanna’s beauties.

  He brought the same spirit of patience to his dealings with the Englishman. The idea that had possessed his mind almost to the exclusion of all else since that night in the bar when he had related the story of the two Armenian conscripts, he had not gone running to the khwaja with it at the first opportunity, brilliant as it was. No, he had watched and waited for the right moment.

  It came now. He had known about the discovery of the tomb shaft; the work of excavating it was already under way when he arrived. He had known when they had uncovered the section of brick vaulting, but still he had waited. Now, today, they had come upon the beginnings of a stairway, leading down. There could only be one reason for steps under the ground: They led to a burial place. It was there that the treasure would lie; soon now the khwaja would be feasting his eyes on it.

  Somerville was alone when he saw Jehar approach, Palmer having gone some distance off to take measurements, and he was lost still in the discoveries they had made that day. Stone steps, a vaulted chamber—it gave every sign of being the entrance to a royal tomb.

  “Yes, what is it?” he said. He spoke sharply, reluctant to leave this elation of discovery for the ugly shapes of danger and doubt he knew from experience this messenger would bring. Jehar was a carrier of anguish and a vendor of it.

  “Lord, I have come from the track of the railway. It is getting close, they have reached the village of Arattu. The people say that within one week they will reach Ras el-Ain.”

  He paused a moment, then said, “They will come through this way, they will smash the tell.” He drove the fist of his right hand into the palm of his left to make a smacking sound of impact. “Much crushing and damage,” he said, “many ancient and valuable things all smashed up. Also, the people here, below us here, they will start soon, maybe in two or three days, to transport the rails and sleepers and links they have been storing in their sheds here, to the railhead at Arattu and to some other places. The purpose of this is to avoid delays in continuing the line. This I have been told by very trustworthy people, whose word cannot for one single moment be doubted.”

  For some moments Somerville regarded the man before him without speaking. He did not believe this last statement, did not believe, in fact, that Jehar numbered any trustworthy people among his acquaintance. It had been the flourish of the habitual liar, the sort of bravura that would always give Jehar away and that he would never be able to resist. But that the Germans below would start moving materials to the railhead very soon, any day now, was entirely probable, certain, in fact. A sudden weariness descended on him, replacing the elation of earlier. Only a few short weeks had elapsed since he had appointed Jehar as his messenger on the scant qualifications of speaking some German and having worked on the railway in the mountains of Anatolia. But it seemed a lifetime now that he had been anguished by the news Jehar brought him and by the very sight of his face, with its light eyes and straight brows and fiercely serious expression—a fanatical face, but with an unsettling innocence in it too . . . “Well,” he said, “we’ll have to hope for the best. I’m tired of paying you to bring me bad news. I’ve had enough of it. In fact we can consider our agreement at an end from this hour forth.”

  Jehar drew a breath. His moment had come. “No,” he said, “Jehar brings you good news this time, news of the best. He brings you no less than the solution to this problem of the railway. I, in my time of working on the line in Turkey, became very familiar with dynamite.”

  “Did you indeed?” Jehar’s face wore a look he had never seen on it before, an expression of great happiness, almost of beatitude. It came to Somerville that he might be under the influence of hashish. “Dynamite, eh?”

  “It is true, please believe me. I used it every single day. The Germans, they have dynamite in a shed below us here. I have watched, I have seen it. It is used to make gravel for the bed of the track. This shed is kept locked, but a lock can be broken. I also have experience of breaking locks.”

  “Are you actually proposing to steal their dynamite? Apart from being a crime, what good would it do? I can only think that you are joking.”

  “Lord, the joke will be against them. We will blow up their sheds before they can start transporting the rails. We will use their own dynamite to do it, that is a good joke, no? It will be much better than blowing up the track. The line cannot proc
eed without these materials. It will take them weeks to replace them, as many weeks as it took to bring them here. If you will promise Jehar one hundred gold pounds, he will do this for you, he will save your treasure. You have but to say the word, and it is done.”

  13.

  Somerville could never afterward recollect the exact words with which he had rejected this outrageous proposal; he knew only that they had been angry and emphatic. The proposal itself, on the other hand, remained in his mind with total clarity: all the circumstances of it; Jehar’s words and the eagerness with which he had uttered them; the look of joy his face had worn. All this remained vividly present to him in the time that followed, as he supervised the work of clearing the steps that were now seen to give access to a vaulted chamber.

  It was during this period too that further visitors arrived, unexpected and unannounced, all on the same day, first a Swedish couple, man and wife, who smilingly introduced themselves as seekers after truth and were members of the Society for Biblical Research, which had links all over the world, they said. They were always grateful, as they also said, for the generous hospitality they had invariably found on their travels. They had come from Abu Kemal on the Euphrates, where there was a Swedish mission house. Then, some hours later, a Swiss journalist arrived. He had been commissioned to write an article about Mesopotamian archaeology and in particular about the men and women engaged in it, the successors to the great figures of the mid-nineteenth century, Botta, Layard, Rassam. He was hoping, he said, to interview Somerville and anyone else who cared to talk to him at Tell Erdek. He had a camera, and he was proposing to include photographs in his article—photographs of the people and the places.

  It was thus a strange and ill-assorted company that sat down to dinner that evening, the newcomers in their different ways adding to the incongruities already existing, the Swedish couple effusive in manner and frequently exchanging smiles, the softly spoken, gentle-mannered Swiss waiting patiently for the time when Somerville, who grew more and more secretive as his discoveries promised to be important, would grant him an interview. A certain atmosphere of constraint hung over the table, with the major seeming more stiff and bristling even than usual, Elliott silent and preoccupied, Somerville prey to a temptation still unadmitted, Edith absorbed in thoughts of how appearances could deceive: Who could have ever suspected that Major Manning, such a perfect type of British army officer, as she had thought, could be in the pay of a foreign power and working against the interests of his own country, was little better than a spy, in fact. And the Russians, of all people, so backward and savage.