A Blind Man's War

by David Fiddimore

  ‘Ask you what?’ I bent and kissed her brow. I sensed one of my tender moments coming on; this is where I usually fucked up.

  ‘What’s a nice American girl like me doing in a joint like this?’

  ‘No.’

  She paused. I had captured her attention. That was interesting. I cupped one of her breasts in my hand and stroked it with the ball of my thumb. That was interesting too.

  ‘What do you mean by no, Charlie?’

  ‘No, I’m not going to ask you that. I don’t want to know. I’ll make up a reason for myself.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Maybe you ran away from a circus.’ I already felt like having her again, but couldn’t remember having agreed a rate. Sometimes it pays to be direct. ‘How much shall I leave you in the morning?’

  ‘As much as you like – it will be my tip. David told me to take care of you, so he’ll do the paying. He’s a honey, isn’t he?’ Someone else had used the word honey about men recently, but the thought eluded me.

  As the sky began to clear we fell to talking again. I asked, ‘Can I take you for breakfast somewhere, when we get up?’

  ‘What?’ She sounded sleepy; like a diver ascending from a deep dive. I feel like that myself from time to time.

  ‘Is there anywhere safe nearby, where I can take you to breakfast later?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’d like to see what you look like in daylight. Nothing special.’

  She kept me hanging on a string for at least thirty seconds. I started Humphrey Lyttleton in my head, doing ‘Bad Penny Blues’. Then she said, ‘OK, Charlie. I’d like that. We gonna grab a couple of hours first?’

  I rolled on my back and slid an arm under her neck. It seemed to me that in a very few seconds she was snoring softly. I was probably smiling. I wondered where Tobin was – in a room somewhere near me, or in his flat. I hoped that he was smiling too.

  I don’t know why it occurred to me then, but I realized that not only did I not owe him any money, but that he had a sizeable amount of mine from three years past. So at least I had some spending money, and didn’t have to rely on Watson. That probably made me smile even more. I slept.

  When Pat picked me up I was sitting on the steps in the courtyard of Tony’s place smoking a pipe. A lot of my best memories are tagged by pipe smoke – you may have noticed that. After I’ve had a good time I sit down with a pipe, and seal it into my memory. He must have asked me what time I was due on duty, or checked independently, because I only had a half-shift commencing at 1300, and he delivered me on the nose.

  As I checked into the office the female policeman who’d been on my flight was leaving. She was munching a Spam sandwich, and gave me a quick guilty look.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’ve been eating Spam for ten years too, and still can’t get enough. It’s crazy.’ She paused, as if undecided whether to reply, then gave me a cheeky little smile.

  ‘It’s the salt in it, I think . . . your body just demands it all the time.’ Then she was past me and gone. She had a nice low-pitched voice; I wondered who she’d dropped in to see.

  De Whitt looked up and grimaced as I flapped my security pass at the goon on the door, and walked into our cool blue world.

  ‘We were looking for you earlier, Charlie. The Orthodoxies got into someone difficult and we thought you could help.’

  ‘Sorry, morning off.’

  ‘Granted, but if you know you’re going to be off base it would help if you could let us know. We panic these days when we can’t find someone.’ What I thought was going to be a bollocking had turned into a hint and a gentle reproof. He had been genuinely worried.

  ‘I was with Pat Tobin,’ I told him. ‘He was showing me the ropes.’

  ‘Try not to worry us too often. Leave a note on your desk, OK?’

  ‘OK, boss. Sorry.’ That time I meant it. I had been away from the action too long, and had forgotten some of the rules. If Watson found out I’d never hear the end of it. A small light started to flash above my booth – it meant that a scheduled listening watch had started: it wouldn’t be long before the Ibn Saud express was back on the rails. I smiled at de Whitt, and nodded to the light; it would go off as I switched my sets on. I told him, ‘They’re playing my tune.’

  He nodded. Maybe both of us had learned something.

  It was as I tuned the 108s that I remembered Stephanie. I probably grinned again. Then I remembered that Alison bunked at the same hotel between flights. There was no doubt about it: I was going to have some explaining to do. To somebody.

  A few days later I sat at a table in David Yassine’s shaded garden with Alison. Playing mothers and fathers didn’t really suit us. We had his fine coffee in a tall brass pot. Alison played Ma, and poured it into exquisite porcelain cups – as fine as glass. Another stewardess in mufti sat on the raised edge of an ornamental fountain, trailing her fingers in the water. This water baby wore a silky thing like a sari, and the fabric flowed over the contours of her body. Her skin was as pale as milk, and her short hair as black as a shoe brush. A couple of bulbul birds piped musically in the small trees, although at the time I didn’t know what they were.

  ‘That’s Laika,’ Alison told me. ‘The men go mad for her. A man at every airport – literally. Blood will be spilt over her one day.’

  ‘Laika? What’s it mean?’

  ‘Her mother was Russian, so is her name. Ronnie – he’s the second pilot – says it would be a good name for a dog as long as it was a female. Only he doesn’t use that word.’

  ‘That’s rather unkind.’

  ‘Plain people can be rather unkind about beautiful ones – haven’t you noticed?’ At least she smiled. But there had been a tremor in her voice: something was up.

  She looked away, stirred a heaped spoonful of coarse white sugar into her coffee, and had a sip. Then she gave a little secret smile, but I think that was for the coffee, not me. Out of the blue she said, ‘I was just turned sixteen when I first saw you, and from that moment I wanted to make love with you. It was the first thing I thought of when I saw your pinched, underfed little face.’

  ‘And I was twenty-three, and not long back from Europe.’ Then I lied. ‘If it helps, that was what came into my mind too. I wanted your clothes off.’

  ‘You told me there were rules about that sort of thing.’

  ‘There were, when you were sixteen. Now you’re old enough to make up your own rules.’

  She shook her head and smiled ruefully.

  I looked around the garden, taking my time. Anything other than look at the beautiful woman across the table from me. I had a very empty feeling in the pit of my stomach; the sort of feeling you have when a distinct possibility becomes a definite impossibility. Alison had been unfinished business for nine years. Now she was finished business; two ships that just failed to pass in the night . . . and it had made her as sad as me.

  I smiled at her, hoping that it didn’t look like too much of a death’s head grimace.

  ‘I’ll look you up again in another nine years. You’ll only be thirty-four.’

  She pursed her lips. Shook her head. She didn’t want to meet my eye either. She never made the same mistake twice, did she? I indicated Laika, and tried to lighten the air of doom that suddenly seemed to have enveloped us.

  ‘Think she’s more my type?’

  All Alison did was stand up, shake her head again and walk inside. Laika turned on cue and smiled at me, but I was distracted by another woman sliding into Alison’s seat whilst it was still warm.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘My name’s Stephanie. You can call me Steve.’

  ‘I had a friend called that, not so long ago.’

  ‘Still have. Did I just miss something?’

  ‘No. I did. Twice, with nine years in between. Would you be surprised to learn I’ve been very stupid?’

  ‘Why don’t you tell old Stevie about it?’

  I felt all the tension flowing out of me. Laika was playing with
the water again. I said, ‘Can I tell you upstairs? I have a pocket full of money, and nothing to do with it except give it to you.’

  ‘David was right.’

  She stood again, and stretched. Her jeans and shirt stuck to her like a second skin.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘He said you were my kind.’

  ‘What kind is that?’

  ‘The complicated and uncommonly generous kind.’

  By then we were climbing the stairs to her room. Yassine passed us halfway up, gave us a beaming smile and observed, ‘This time you pay, OK, Charlie? The other night was just a welcome-back present.’

  ‘Of course, David.’

  ‘Unless you wanna come in with me on the business? Twenny per cent. Then the girls come for free – just like the Blue Kettle?’

  ‘I’ll think about it, OK?’

  Steve hooked her arm through mine, and whispered, ‘Wrong actually. A girl from America never comes for free.’

  I liked the pun, and told her, ‘I know. I learned that a couple of months ago. I’ll tell you about it one day.’

  Chapter Ten

  On His Blindness

  The next time I woke up in my hut Pete was standing near one of the windows smoking a narrow cheroot. His old pack was on one of the beds, and he looked immaculate, as usual, in a tropical civvy suit.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ I told him. ‘I thought I’d locked the door.’

  ‘You had. I picked it. Can I stay for a couple of days?’

  ‘I don’t see why not, if it’s OK with the RAF.’

  ‘Is OK. They see me as an old boy. You English are big on the old boy thing, aren’t you?’ He hadn’t expected an answer.

  ‘What are you doing over here?’

  ‘Some deals. Since the Greeks started to have a go at you half the wide boys in Europe turned up to make their deals here.’

  ‘Why here?’

  ‘Police got their hands full of terrorists, haven’t they? No time to bother the rest.’

  It made sense. Of a kind. I yawned, and asked him, ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Past six. You better get up. There’s something going on. Jeeps dashing around.’

  Pat clattered up the step half an hour later. He and Pete gave each other the eye.

  ‘Pat, Pete,’ I told them, and, ‘Pete, Pat.’

  ‘We met,’ Tobin said. ‘About a year ago. I think it was in Dresden.’

  ‘Yes. Nice to see you again.’ Pete.

  ‘You gonna be around long?’

  ‘Few days.’

  ‘Maybe we can catch a drink?’

  They had been talking as if I wasn’t there. All I was wondering was how they had both managed to meet up in the Soviet Zone last year. Pat turned back to me anyway. He said, ‘We got a little job on. How long before you can be ready to move?’

  ‘I’m ready now.’

  ‘Good, let’s go.’

  There was a Land Rover outside the door. Captain Collins was in the passenger seat. The back seats had been modified so that one turned in to face the vehicle within arm’s reach of an old 1155/4 aircraft radio rig, which appeared to have had an aircraft compass and a D/F loop bracketed on top. Pat sent me back for my side arm and old flying jacket. He had a sheepskin-lined jerkin that must have once graced a shepherd, and Collins had a duffle coat. Between us we looked like refugees from Popski’s Private Army. If you don’t know what that was you’d better ask one of the old guys.

  From behind the wheel Pat told me, ‘It’s gonna be chilly when we get high. Get the radio fired up, will ya? We’re goin’ to need it.’

  ‘We lost an AOP a couple of hours ago,’ Collins said. ‘It was over the Troodos at first light.’

  An AOP was a little Auster Army Observation plane – flown by the Army Air Corps. The RAF tended to be a bit snotty about the AAC, but generally speaking they were fine pilots. The Auster had a high wing, and a single engine in front of the pilot. The pilot and his observer/radio operator had glass all around them, giving them a fine view of the surrounding land, and what was on or in it. The army used them as artillery spotters, and to deliver essentials to patrols out in the field. Old Man Halton had a civilian version of his very own. They also flew around with loudspeakers telling the insurgents not to be such naughty little boys: I don’t know who thought that one up. I had nothing against the type yet. Nothing I could put my finger on.

  My radios came in quickly. They had their own power source – two big glass accumulator batteries, which looked as if they took a charge from the car’s engine. I was curious as to where the compass fitted in. I didn’t have to ask. It fitted in as soon as I made a sweep. As the circular aerial above the radios moved round, the compass needle swung with it: a makeshift radio repeating compass.

  ‘Kinda neat, isn’t it? Remember your pal Nansen back in Egypt?’ Yes, I did. Oliver was an RAF photographer who was killed when a Gloster Meteor went in somewhere over the Sinai Desert. I’d shared a tent with him for a while.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He built it. We kept it because the wing commander always knew it would come in handy. We’ve used it a few times in the last coupla months.’

  We were rolling now – out to the roundabout, and turn left: heading for Nicosia. No traffic on the road. One of the good things about the Land Rover was its high windscreen – the Indians were unlikely to catch us with the wire-across-the-road-at-neck-height trick. We had to shout to make ourselves heard by each other. When I asked, ‘Tell me what happened to the Auster,’ Collins leaned back and shouted.

  ‘Nobody’s sure. They were reccying some of the tracks that go in and out of the trees on the mountainsides. The goons move their stores around at last and first light, on the backs of mules. The mules get spooked by the sound of a low-flying aircraft, and sometimes break cover. It tells us which paths are active.’

  ‘So, what happened?’

  ‘They went off the air.’

  ‘Any last messages?’

  Collins consulted one of those small policeman’s notebooks held shut by a piece of elastic. Then he shouted back at me, ‘The observer broke into a routine check-in with, quote, Christ, they’re shooting at us, unquote.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘The pilot’s voice about thirty seconds later: Stall, stall!’ After that there was nothing . . . just the automatic positioning signal, until the control room lost that too.’

  ‘If the observer knew they were being fired on, it must have been because they were being struck by bullets – it would be too noisy up there to hear small-arms fire from the ground.’

  ‘Worked that out for ourselves, Charlie,’ Pat butted in. ‘Hang on.’

  The road was empty. Miles of dusty tarmac. We hit a chicken outside an isolated farmhouse west beyond the northern outskirts of Nicosia, and for a moment we drove through a feather storm. The sun was out, and low behind us. The feathers danced in clouds of reds and browns. One settled by the radio. I picked it up before it blew away, and placed it in my pocket. Don’t know why: just one of those irrational things. We slowed down when we overtook a small purposeful convoy head and tailed by a couple of Dingo armoured cars sporting Brens, and nervous-looking gunners. There was another Land Rover of MPs, and a one-tonner with a canvas-skinned wagon bed. You could get half a dozen squaddies and their kit in there. Pat slotted us in to head the convoy. I’d driven in convoy in Egypt three years ago, so I knew the form – if it was going to be attacked the enemy always went for the first or last vehicle. I was now in the first, and didn’t like it. Bollocks.

  We stopped in an olive grove in the foothills of the Troodos mountains an hour and a half later. We had been delayed by a puncture to the other Land Rover, and the need to change its wheel. Stopping in olive groves for a brew-up is something that the British Army has become very good at over the years. The sun was up, and it was getting hot. I left my jacket in the wagon, reflecting that in Britain people were beginning to pay good money for winter holidays in places a
s warm as this. Maybe Cyprus had a future when we all packed up and fucked off home . . . Billy Butlin could buy it.

  I split a tin of cold baked beans with Pat. Collins went into conclave with his military policemen and a lieutenant who had climbed stiffly over the tailboard of the covered lorry. Tobin said, ‘Don’t let the sun fool you – it’s goin’ to be bleedin’ cold if we have to go up into the bleedin’ mountains.’

  ‘I’m familiar with mountains, Pat. Watson sent me into Kurdistan a few years ago, didn’t he? It was freezing cold at nights there too. Do you know if the positioner from the aircraft just faded, or was it cut off suddenly?’

  ‘No. Is that important?’

  ‘Could be. Can you find out?’ He finished the beans, and threw the can away. We Brits travel around the world leaving our rubbish behind us; no wonder we aren’t all that popular. He asked, ‘Weren’t you shot in Turkey?’

  ‘You know I was.’

  ‘Still hurt?’

  ‘Only in the cold.’ He could take that how he liked. Sometimes I limped quite badly, but it wasn’t something I discussed freely.

  We split. Pat wandered over to the back of the lorry, and chatted to the guys inside. He was probably trying to sell them something. He must have drifted past Collins at some point, because the big man pulled me aside before we mounted up and asked, ‘Why did you want to know if the signal faded, or was cut short?’

  ‘If it only faded it means they could still be alive – drained batteries. If it was cut off it’s more likely that the set was smashed up, and them with it.’

  ‘It faded,’ he told me. ‘That’s why you’re here. Don’t worry. I’ll hurry things along now.’ If it faded there was a chance the radio was still pumping out a weakening signal. If they could get me near enough, I might be able to pick it up . . . and if Nansen’s compass worked we had a chance of finding them. Not much of one, but one of the good things about the Brown Jobs is that they’re the world’s last great graspers at straws.