A Blind Man's War

by David Fiddimore

  The AOP – or rather, its weary radio – spoke to me a couple of hours later, halfway up a mountain in the Troodos the army called Mount Menelaus on account it was shaped like a king’s head; crown and all. The signal was weak – but that was obviously a battery problem, wasn’t it? I read the compass bearing off against the strongest signal to Collins as we came to a point where a forest track split. He drew a line on his chart. All I could see was a mixture of pine trees. Some short, with a thick canopy. Some high and lofty, like cypresses or cedars of Lebanon, climbing in lines underneath steep ridges. Even though I was cold and my leg ached from its old bullet wound, the sky was a brilliant blue and the low sun hurt my eyes. I needed sunshades – something to ask Pat about when we got away.

  After that, it was my job to hold on to the signal as the track climbed and twisted. The whole thing reminded me of Shangri-La, without beautiful people playing the extras. The air was thinner: I hadn’t expected that. Pat was breathing through his nose. Even the vehicles didn’t like it, crawling from rise to rise in first. The moment I heard a genuine dip in the signal I shouted, ‘Stop. Stop here.’

  Pat stopped the Land Rover, and Collins rose in his seat to wave down those following: they were spread out over a couple of hundred yards, and took minutes to get up with us. Collins asked me, ‘Here?’ He stared around. Like me he could see nothing that had once been an aircraft.

  ‘Near enough, Captain. This is as firm as your signal gets.’

  ‘How far?’

  ‘Can’t tell you. Not far. Their batteries are going flat.’ He looked at me as if hoping for a suggestion. Didn’t get one, and made up his own mind. I could get along with officers like him. He had a dozen men excluding me and Pat, and the gunners on the Dingoes. He left the four of us with the wagon train, and deployed the others in a circle around us – then he had them walk away, into the scrub and the trees. The rock underfoot was grey and crumbly; I reckoned we’d be lucky to get away without a busted ankle or two. We soon lost sight of them, but could hear them from time to time, moving away from us in a widening circle. And the occasional curse as someone went down over a hidden obstacle. Pat pointed out to the captain that he and I could provide another two pairs of eyes, but Collins smiled back, and said, ‘No, thank you, lads. You’ve done what you were brought up here for. Just stay here, and mind your box of tricks for the next time.’ He must have seen the doubt in our eyes, because he swung back and added, ‘You’ve done what you’re good at, now let us do what we’re good at – army business.’ Then he sat on the lorry’s running board, and waited for contact.

  It took about twenty minutes, and then a yellow flare popped low into the sky down the slope from where we’d parked up. Collins got to his feet, dropped the cigarette he had been smoking and said, ‘Come on,’ to me. When Pat made to move he was waved back.

  ‘I know the radios,’ I told Pat. ‘He’ll need me for the diagnosis.’

  It took less than ten minutes for Collins to lead me to the wreck. Neither of us bust an ankle. The Auster was tipped up on its nose at the edge of a steeply inclined clearing, making it appear to stand almost upright to the sky – its tail like a signpost to nowhere. There was a strong smell of aviation spirit, but it hadn’t burned. The Dingo driver who had found it was just about to light a fag he had dangling in his mouth, when I yelled at him. The Auster’s fuel had soaked into the very ground he was standing on. I think I scared him. Collins dragged him away, and delivered a tasty few words out of my earshot. The poor guy, having found what we were all looking for, had expected to be hailed a hero: instead Collins’s tirade left him white and shaking. The captain crossed to me again, and we went over to the aircraft to look in through the opened cabin door.

  The Auster didn’t look too bad except for a dozen bullet holes: two through the engine cowling had done the damage. The observer curled up behind the seats didn’t look too bad either. Not bad for a dead man, that is. His head was at a very odd angle to his fuselage, and a small trickle of blood had fallen from one ear, and dried in a thread. Collins sniffed.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Broke his neck in the crash – what a pity. It was a very survivable impact in every other way. After all, the pilot seems to have got away.’ I wasn’t exactly sure of that: the front windscreen panels had caved in, and some recent dark smears on the cowling could have also been his blood. I was half inclined to think we might find him in the woods some yards ahead. While I was talking I leaned in to switch off the observer’s radios. It seemed an oddly religious thing to do – completing his last duty for him. The radio man’s final prayer.

  Collins had obviously been only half listening to me, because he asked, ‘What was that again?’

  ‘I said the pilot might still be around here somewhere . . .’

  ‘Yes. I wonder what happened to the woman.’

  Bollocks. What woman? They hadn’t told me about her yet.

  Then some bastard took a shot at us. The bullet kicked up the ground a yard away. I quickly whipped around the plane, putting it between me and where I presumed the shooter was. Another shot. That flat crack from a British Lee Enfield .303. It hit the airframe somewhere. The rudder swung aimlessly as the aircraft swayed. Then another. At Collins that time, I guessed. He still hadn’t moved. I looked around the Auster. The big captain had drawn his .45, and was facing the great tree under which the Dingo driver was crouching. He crooked his left arm up, and balanced the big pistol in its angle, aiming up into the tree’s canopy. Bat Masterson or Wyatt Earp. I was impressed that he seemed to have all the time in the world – great gun-fighters do, I’m told. He fired once, and a small man tumbled immediately from the tree, preceded by his rifle.

  Unfortunately the Dingo driver had been sheltering underneath, and it hit him. It obviously wasn’t his day.

  Collins beckoned me out.

  ‘It’s OK. I got him. They left someone staking out the plane.’

  I followed him across the clearing. Shouts in English closed in on us.

  The man who had shot at us wasn’t a man. He was a boy, and he was already dead. Collins’s bullet had taken him through the chest. It was a small chest, and there were bits missing. A hole big enough to put my fist in. His eyes were open. He looked surprised.

  ‘How old, do you think?’ Collins asked me.

  ‘Maybe fourteen.’

  ‘Poor little sod.’ Then he sighed, and said, ‘They don’t give me nightmares any more, you know. They used to.’

  Just as the other soldiers filed into the clearing the driver struggled to his feet. They’d done this before: they fanned out, and kept to the edges.

  The driver was cradling one arm with his other hand. Collins seemed to notice that immediately.

  ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘Rifle fell on me, sir. Don’t think it’s broken, sir.’

  Collins sighed again. He was good at it. Then he used his big voice.

  ‘You just stood in a puddle of petrol, and fired off a flare; then you tried to light a fag in the same place. Then you stood under a tree with a terrorist in it, who, for his own reasons, chose to shoot at me instead of you. Finally he drops a rifle on you, and still you get away with it. You know what you are, don’t you, son?’

  A few knowing faces of the other squaddies were wearing smirks by now. The driver looked properly crestfallen, and went for it.

  ‘A bleeding idiot, sir?’

  ‘That too . . . but no, son. What you are is bloody lucky, and I like having lucky men around me. Consider asking for a temporary transfer to my troop when we get back.’

  ‘Seriously, sir?’

  ‘Very seriously. I could use a lucky driver.’

  ‘Yessir.’

  ‘What were you saying before we were interrupted, Mr Collins?’ I asked.

  ‘Something about wondering where the bint had got to. The girl.’

  ‘Which girl? I think I missed something.’

  ‘The one they were giving a ride to �
�� the observer’s girlfriend. I think they were trying to impress her.’

  I considered my options. I didn’t have any.

  ‘We’re stuck up here for a bit then, aren’t we?’

  ‘I’m afraid we are. Better make the best of it.’

  ‘Any idea how long for?’

  ‘Until they organize a couple of patrols. The rest of the day at least, OK?’

  ‘It has to be, doesn’t it?’

  What I was thinking was, I hope this isn’t the day that the Saudis invade a friendly neighbour without me. When I ran that scene in my head I decided it was very unlikely: I’d heard nothing but good of them before I arrived in Cyprus.

  We pulled back to the vehicles – Collins had them reversed under the cover of the trees – taking the two bodies with us. They were laid side by side in the bed of the lorry, and covered by ground sheets. I shared a cigarette with the young lieutenant, and asked him, ‘Is it always like this?’

  ‘Not all of the time. Periods of absolute normality, sometimes for weeks at a time. Then all hell breaks loose for a couple of days. It’s an odd way to live.’

  ‘I was in bombers during the war. It could be the same – bombing Dresden one night, and dining at the Troc the next. Sometimes it was like dreaming.’

  ‘Working out which is the dream, and which isn’t. That’s the way to get through it. I’m Warboys, by the way, Tony.’ The same as Yassine’s hotel, and why had I thought of Dresden, not the twenty other places in Germany I’d flown over by night? Bloody Pete, of course.

  ‘I’m Charlie Bassett.’

  ‘I know. You’re supposed to be hot stuff with a radio.’ I let that pass. We all have reputations we didn’t earn. Most of them are bad; so be thankful for small mercies.

  When Collins called him over I followed. My nose always got the better of me.

  Warboys asked, ‘Sir?’

  ‘Fancy a scout around, Tony? See if you can pick up which way they went, and if the pilot and passenger were with them?’

  ‘Didn’t know about the passenger, sir.’

  ‘Well, you do now.’ Collins sounded moody. ‘Some girl they were trying to impress. Daughter of a navy commander, I’m told, and a bit of a troublemaker.’

  ‘Shall I go with him?’ I offered. Warboys seemed an all right type to me. I didn’t like the idea of him trailing a terrorist gang on his own. But Collins only grinned at me.

  ‘No, I need you to ride the radios. Stop bloody volunteering for things – you’re old enough to know better. You’ve nothing to prove. Let the youngsters get on with the bad stuff – it’s what they’re here for.’

  Warboys explained, ‘My old man has an estate in the Borders, and I’ve been stalking since I was a kiddy. So thanks for the offer, but you’d probably only get in the way. No offence.’

  ‘None taken. I just get bored quickly – short attention span.’

  Lying of course. The truth was that sitting about waiting for some gunman to fire on me was certain to give me the willies. I’d fought my wars from moving platforms. I hated the idea of stooging around until some Greek thought I was a tasty target.

  ‘They also serve who only stand and wait,’ Collins said portentously. ‘Today that means the rest of us.’ John Milton, ‘On His Blindness’, if you didn’t know it. The soldiers and the MPs seemed to melt into the tree belt around us, and settle down. Warboys tossed me his cap as he left. He had tied a light khaki cloth around his head Arab fashion: it fell over his shoulders. I know I’ve said it before, but Lawrence of sodding Arabia has a lot to answer for. Collins sat down, and leaned against a tree adjacent to our radio vehicle. I sat alongside him.

  I was suddenly cold, drew my jacket around me, and filled a pipe.

  ‘Permission to smoke?’ I asked.

  ‘Sure. I couldn’t stop these blighters smoking to save their lives.’

  ‘Not worried about the terrorists coming back, and smelling us out?’

  ‘No. If they were going to make a scrap of it they would have left more than that boy behind.’ Despite what he had said I could sense that it had troubled him.

  I said, ‘It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have known.’

  ‘Is that what I have to tell the priest on Sunday?’

  ‘Are you a Catholic?’

  ‘I am, as it happens.’ That wasn’t going to make it any easier.

  ‘OK, Captain. Let’s pass the time by you telling me about being a Catholic, while I sit and worry silently about Mr Warboys.’

  That brought a smile to his lips I hadn’t looked for. He gave me a very old-fashioned look.

  ‘I shouldn’t bother. Tony’s murdered his way from one end of this island to the other. He’s a homicidal maniac. The Cyps – particularly the GCs – are terrified of him. They think he has the supernatural power of invisibility. Some even think he can change his shape into that of a big cat, and pass unseen.’ I worked out that GCs meant Greek Cypriots. The Turks, I presumed, would be the TCs.

  ‘So I don’t have to worry about him?’

  ‘Only if you see him crawling towards you with his knife in his teeth.’

  There didn’t seem to be anything else to say. Even though I was cold the sun was shining through the trees casting a dappled shade on us. The leaves of the brittle oaks were rustled by a choppy little breeze that periodically silenced the insects. This was a deceptively beautiful place; hell probably will be as well. I wondered where Pat had got to – maybe he was fleecing a couple of MPs with a pack of playing cards.

  Warboys came in dirty and thirsty mid-afternoon. He was carrying a woman’s cotton dress which had been torn, but there was no blood or dirt on it. He’d identified two hill farms, a monastery and a hamlet in the general direction a small group of people had appeared to travel, and marked them precisely on Collins’s map. I examined the dress myself, and for a moment held it up to my face. The scent it still carried spoke of jasmine. A gentle purple.

  I said the obvious – my speciality.

  ‘No blood, and it’s still clean.’

  ‘Looks like they tore it off her to see what they’d got. No sign of the pilot. Maybe they didn’t get him.’

  ‘What do you know about the girl?’ I asked Collins.

  ‘Flirted with the enlisted men. Had a Greek boyfriend, but threw him over for a Turk. Trouble on legs, my people told me.’

  ‘She’s bitten off more than we can chew this time,’ Warboys observed. Then he asked, ‘Drink for a thirsty soldier, or have you lot swigged it?’

  Twenty minutes later we heard the 7th Cavalry grinding up the slope in small lorries and armoured cars. Collins stood up and stretched, and his men began to come out of the trees. In the Land Rover, as we drove down through the foothills looking for the road to Nic, Collins repeated, ‘Flirted with the enlisted men . . . Christ, she’s sixteen years old. What did they expect – bringing her out here?’ It was then I realized he was on her side after all.

  We left them at Wayne’s Keep, and on the road back it was warm enough for me to shuck my jacket. I retuned the radio and we got that intermittent signal from Radio Luxembourg. We listened to Dan Dare fighting the Treens, and then Eartha Kitt was singing that her heart belonged to Daddy. It quietened us for a few minutes.

  Chapter Eleven

  Murder Mile

  As I went off duty for my first long weekend I asked de Whitt, ‘Who covers my targets when I’m not here?’

  ‘Someone comes in. They’re not as good as you, but we’ve scheduled your watches against the previous frequency of the Saudi exchanges, and again, they don’t do much at night or on holy days. Between the two of you, you get most of it. If you knew how much an improvement this is on before, you’d know why we were so pleased to see you.’ He was so open and sincere it was hard not to like him, but I did try.

  ‘Who is it? Anyone I know?’

  ‘No, and you don’t need to. What are you going to do with your days off?’

  ‘I thought I’d drive over to Nicosia if I c
ould find some transport. Then maybe Famagusta again. There are some ruins just north of the city – someone told me they were quite spectacular.’ The someone had been Alison. She had been going to take me there, but somehow that had got lost in the storm.

  ‘Salamis, yes – well worth a gander . . . and if you fancy a swim we have three bathing beaches with a guard with a Sten at the ends of each, just to be on the safe side.’

  ‘Probably the best beaches on the island?’

  ‘Yes, just about – now I come to think about it.’

  ‘And the Cypriots aren’t allowed to use them, I assume?’

  ‘That’s right. Why d’ye ask?’

  ‘Because it was that sort of thing that got us tossed out of Egypt. We never learn.’

  ‘You’d rather be getting shot at, I suppose?’

  ‘No, I’d rather be back in Blighty, sitting outside a pub in the sunshine sipping a decent pint of bitter looking down the dress of a farmer’s daughter.’ I asked him, ‘Do you want me to wait for my relief?’

  ‘No, neither the twain shall meet – master’s orders. Anyway, your man’s outside with your carriage – been waiting ten minutes already. Have a good weekend.’ He beamed his sunny smile, and turned his attention to the papers on his desk. He smiled at them as well. I knew it then – another halfwit.

  Pat Tobin ferried me back to my hut, where I had a quick shave and shower and changed into a clean, pressed set of KDs care of the invisible laundry service. Pete’s things were still neatly stacked at the end of his bunk – we’d met for supper once. He hadn’t told me what sort of deal he was doing over here, and I hadn’t asked. He’d tell me if the time came. Pat came back for me half an hour later, similarly spruced. The bastards didn’t actually think I was going to lock myself up in Fort Watson for four days, did they? We headed for Famagusta.

  We left his transport in Yassine’s yard, and headed for a café bar a block away. Pat stopped half a dozen times on the way to glad-hand, or exchange jokes with, locals he knew. All men.

  ‘These are Turks, I take it?’ I asked him.