The Accidental Spy

by Jacqueline George

  “Of course I know where is the tannery. Every time the wind is coming from there I’m reminded, believe me. And when it comes from the other way, the noise from your drilling rig is impossible.”

  “It’s not mine or it’d be making even more noise. Anyway, it’s the tannery I’m talking about. The army camp behind it. Danka says there’s a couple of Russians working there.”

  “I tell you, I am not surprised. Before the Government has bought so much equipment from Russia. All the Army radios and electronics. Planes as well. Everything. All original from Russia. So I suppose that Russians are the best to maintain it. But I think the Russian Government had finished with Tabriz.”

  “True. But these are private Russians. Working for themselves, I guess. Neo-capitalists. One of them is a professor. I wonder how much they’re being paid.”

  “I am sure that it is not much. You can get Russian engineers for nothing now, but I hear they are not much good.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. They’re just products of their system. MacAllans are getting a bunch of good people out in Siberia. We have doctors and teachers out there just driving trucks. Some of them want to work their way out of the mess they’re in. Once they’ve learnt English and how to be a bit responsible for their own work, they’re not stupid. I’m surprised that some of them found their way here though.”

  “It’s money, Virgin. Money can make you do anything, especially if you don’t have any. But I am surprised too. I wonder if we’ll see a lot more of them. The Government would like that. Their nurses must be even cheaper than Polish ones.”

  “Come on, Joe. Don’t tell me you want to try Russian girls as well.”

  “To tell you the truth, no. I have tried before and they were, well, not so good. They were really fat, believe me, and they did not like to wash too much. No, I am happy with what I have.” He gave his girl another squeeze. “For the moment anyway.”

  “Joe, you ought to settle down with one of these girls. At your age you should stop playing around.”

  “Why? I tell you, I have been married three times. All good women, but they turned out impossible. Now I always say, it is time I stopped marrying my cooks. They can come, and as long as they make me happy, they can stay. And when they go, there is always another one.”

  “Hash Cash wants your money!” shouted a voice in their ears. It Hilary’s Husband (know in real life as Dave Clinton), Hash Cash, collecting five dinars a head from all the men to cover beer, paint, food, anything else that the Hash needed to keep functioning. Joe and The Virgin reached for their wallets.

  “Jesus, Dave, you must have enough to retire to South America by now,” said The Virgin handing over the five dinars.

  Hilary’s Husband took his job seriously. “I’m going to order some special tee-shirts for the eight hundredth run. I’ll soon have enough money.”

  “How much have you got?”

  Before he could reply shouts of “Charge your glasses, charge your glasses!” were raised around the room. The ceremonies were about to start and the men crowded around the beer urn to fill their plastic cups.

  It took a deft hand to control the Hash, and Noddy had the touch. In just a few minutes he had everyone standing around him in an expectant half-circle. The Master of Music had lined up his choir to one side, and this week’s Hares were standing sheepishly in the centre. Noddy climbed up onto a chair. He raised a straight arm in a Nazi salute and shouted at the top of his voice, “Welcome to De Jonges! Sieg heil!” Everyone knew that Dutch men loved to be mistaken for Germans. “Sieg heil!” roared the Hash in reply.

  “So what did we think of that weak-kneed excuse for a trail?”

  “Rubbish!” “Fit for pansies!” “I never saw any paint!” “Waste of effort!”

  “I thought so. And I would have been happy to give the Hares a glass of this excellent amber nectar. Instead they can retire to a corner and think of a song to sing us in a minute. Master of Music, serenade them off stage! After three!”

  “Three!” shouted the Master of Music and everyone started to sing.

  Here’s to the Hasher, he’s a blue.

  He’s a bastard through and through.

  He’s a bastard, so they say.

  And he’ll never get to Heaven in a long, long way.

  Drink it Down, Down, Down,

  Down, Down, Down, Down,

  The ritual was under way. Hashers were called out into the centre and forced to drink a cup of beer for offences such as providing beer or food for the Bash, short-cutting the run, getting a hair-cut, fondling their partners before the run, anything that took Noddy’s fancy. The choir sang out the Hash song at the top of their voices. The victims stood with their cups in hand until the song reached the words ‘Down, Down, Down,’ and then gulped their beer down if they could, or up-ended their glass over their heads if they could not.

  The Virgin had long ago stopped marvelling at the strangeness of it all. He had hashed in several countries over the years, and they all had the same childish spirit. Perhaps it was necessary for up-tight northerners to let their hair down once a week and behave like a bunch of school-boys. He had noticed that the more confined the location and the further removed from home, the more frantic became the partying. Tabriz was a culture and country apart, and the Hash here was even stranger than normal.

  The ceremony ended with Rubberdy being nominated as ‘Hash Shit’ for the week, because he had forgotten to bring the twenty litres of beer he had promised. He drank his down-down wearing a toilet seat about his neck, and he would have to wear it for next week’s run as well. “On-on!” shouted Noddy and business closed for the week.

  They started to queue for the best food in Sabah - Thai cooking from De Jonge’s camp. The exquisite fiery flavours even made the beer taste good. The Virgin squeezed half-way onto Danka’s chair and started on his food. Danka had already finished and was smoking.

  “Virgin, this food is too pikantny. Too hot. I cannot eat.”

  “Poor girl. This is ambrosia - food of the Gods. I could eat like this every day. Perhaps I’ll go and live in Thailand when I grow up.”

  “I am sure is very bad for your intestine. This chilli is toxic for humans.”

  “It’s very good for you. Lots of vitamins and it helps with your slimming.”

  “It helps because I cannot eat, that’s why. What do you do for Christmas?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll go to church to the English Mass and then back with the Filipinos.”

  “Good. I will come also. First is the Polish Mass, but I have duty and cannot go. So you take me from the hospital, I change quickly and we go to the English Mass. It will be different. And then we go to the Filipinos. And then to tannery and visit my friends. They will having a big party.”

  The Virgin thought about that. It was not that he objected to being organised; it was just that turning up at the Filipino flats trailing Danka would put Evelina in a bad mood. Never mind. The tannery would be more fun than the Filipino party anyway. He would drop in on Evelina during the week by way of making amends.

  He found himself next to Rubberdy in the queue for second helpings. “Hash Shit again, Rubberdy?”

  “Yes. I think Noddy has it reserved for me. I ought to carve my name on that toilet seat. He had a couple of other offences lined up even if I hadn’t forgotten the beer.”

  “Oh yeah? What have you been up to? Playing with little boys or something?”

  “No. He somehow heard I’d been down on the beach with my cart.” Rubberdy was famous in Sabah for his plan to walk down to the desert oil-fields across the desert. He had started to build himself a small two-wheeled cart rather like a miniature pony trap to carry his water and supplies. As it developed, he took it to the beach for proving trials.

  “How’s it going? You got it right yet?”

  “I’m getting there. I put fifty litres of water in it this time and it still seemed to move reasonably easily. There’s something you could help me with,
though. I’ve just been pulling it along by the shafts but I think that’s going to be too tiring for a long trip. I started some blisters just going five klicks along the beach and back. I’m thinking about some kind of harness belt that I could wear. At least that would leave my hands free. Your guys in the desert have some kind of safety climbing belt I could steal? You know, one of the wide canvas things that workmen use up scaffolding or telegraph poles.”

  “You’re really serious about this, aren’t you?”

  “Certainly am. You’ve got to do something in a place like this or people will stop believing in eccentric Englishmen.”

  “But that must be four hundred klicks across the desert!”

  “Sure. Most of it’s a hard surface though. I’m hoping for forty klicks a day there. And there’s some sabkha not far away, twenty klicks from here, and more a hundred and seventy klicks later. That’s a big one, about forty-five klicks wide where I’ll cross it. They should both go pretty fast. You know, you could probably drive a regular car most of the way, if it wasn’t for the rocky bits and the sabkha. It’s just the last fifty klicks that are a bit soft and you’d need four wheel drive. Once I get there, I can always dump the cart and make a dash for it.”

  “Rubberdy, you’ve been out in the sun too long. You’re nuts.”

  Rubberdy grinned. “Certainly am. But how about the safety belt - can you help there?”

  “Why not? You work for TAMCO, so I’ll requisition one and put it down to client entertainment expenses. Though I guess it’s going to be more entertaining for everyone else than for you.”

  “Thanks, Virgin. I’ll let you put a company sticker on my cart, if you like.”

  “So we’ll recognise it when some-one finds it in the middle of the desert two hundred years from now? I’ll think about it. Anyway, I’ve got to go down to the desert next week. I’ll see if I can pick the belt up then.”

  With everyone well fed and half-full of strong beer, the party started to swing. The stereo system was wound up and a disco compilation put on. The Polish girls started to drag their men onto their feet to dance. The trailer floor bounced under the load of leaping hashers so that even the wallflowers felt the beat. The Virgin looked at his watch. Coming up to ten o’clock. Just about pumpkin time for some-one who had to be up at six o’clock next morning for a long day’s work. Not that Danka saw it that way. She would happily dance all night and go to work like a zombie next day.

  “Virgin, you are too serious. You must stay and dance! Come on. I will keep you here.” In the end, only Wanda rode back into town with him. She had duty next day and would have to be up even earlier than The Virgin to catch the hospital transport.

  As they jolted back along the mud track towards the main road she took the chance to confirm some gossip. “Virgin, you like Danka?”

  “Er - yes. She’s OK, I suppose.”

  “I mean, she is your girl-friend?”

  “Girl-friend? No. Definitely not.”

  “Ah. She is saying that she stays in your house.”

  “Well, yes. But only once and she didn’t sleep in my bed.”

  “Really? She sleep by herself?”

  “Er, not exactly, no. But you’ll have to ask her about that.”

  Wanda stored away the information and started to probe further. “So. You have girl-friend, Virgin?”

  A good question. He knew that whatever he said would be common knowledge by the end of tomorrow. Perhaps now was the time to admit to Elena. “Well, I do have a friend in London.”

  “Really? Virgin, all Filipino nurses will be jealous!”

  “All of them? I don’t have any special girl friend there, let alone all of them.”

  “Yes. All of them. They very like you. I am surprised you don’t come with some of them to Hash.”

  That was the problem of course. Some of them. A group of Filipino nurses might agree to come, but only in a group and only with some Filipino men to escort them. Splitting the girls up was next to impossible. He was pondering the old problem as he drove through the night when a strange thing occurred to him. He suddenly realised that he no longer cared. Girls just did not seem to be that important any more.

  - 14 -

  The road to the desert was familiar as well as tedious. For the first eighty klicks south of Sabah it followed the coast. Where the beaches and sand dunes turned west along the bottom of the Gulf of Almadi it came to a giant roundabout. Most of the traffic took the main highway west along the North African coast. Oil-field traffic carried on south into the desert on the Cape Town Road. The Great Man had built the highway to carry the light of his Green Revolution down into Africa. In a famous speech he had foreseen the day when Tabrizi revolutionaries would solve the problems of black Africa and reach Cape Town itself. The Virgin supposed it was Arabic words from that speech that were inlaid into the concrete monolith in the centre of the roundabout.

  Leaving the empty coastal highway behind, the road reached into a desert that was even emptier. The vast divided highway struck forcefully across a gently rolling landscape. Low heather-like scrub rapidly petered out and soon there was nothing but bare sandy emptiness. Nothing and no one lived here. Sometimes there were camels, usually dead beside the road, but apart from them there was no interruption before the village of Blida far, far to the south.

  A fact of the desert is that nothing changes and nothing decays. Throw a bottle from a truck window and you can send your grandchildren out to pick it up in fifty years time. Along the roadside lay the debris of all the years since it had been constructed. Old truck tyres were the most prominent; tins and bottles the most common. Beside them twisted wrecks of cars that had lost arguments with trucks or simply driven off the road. And sometimes the trucks themselves, chassis contorted into impossible shapes when their heavy momentum came to a slamming halt. A few years in the desert and the steel had a dull black gloss from the sandblasting ghiblis. Over many years it would be completely worn away. Perhaps fifty years for the thin body panelling and hundreds for the load-bearing beams and running gear.

  The Virgin’s destination was Lima-7, the MacAllans’ main desert base. South on the Cape Town Road two hundred and thirty-seven klicks, skirting the western end of the Al Ha’il Depression, to a double stacked oil-drum painted gray and black. This lonely monument marked the point the MacAllans’ track left the highway and struck out fifty-six klicks across the desert. The road got longer each time The Virgin travelled it but he did not let it frustrate him. At least driving the empty road was easy and the only danger that of falling asleep. He just put his mind in neutral and let the car count the klicks.

  The Virgin did a lot of his thinking on these long drives. Sales projects, budgets, analyses, all became clearer after a trip to the desert. Now work had been driven from his mind by other events. He did not know exactly why, but he knew the Russians were an important part of what was going on. They must be replacing the murdered Palestinian doctor, so the chances were that at some stage they would be confronted with his container of solvent. You had to assume they would want to take samples, to test its contents. But then, you would have to assume that someone would be taking samples anyway. What exactly were Standford’s plans at that point? If the container caught fire on arrival, that would be fine. No one would ever be sure what had gone up in the flames. Things would not look so good if samples were taken before the accident. Then everyone would know that Tabriz had been cheated and the finger would point straight at The Virgin. He was sure Major Jamal would not just accept a bland statement of ignorance from him, and Captain Zella would relish pulling out his fingernails. He flexed his hands on the steering wheel. While he still could.

  He always enjoyed reaching the double drum and turning onto the gravel of the open desert. It felt good to drive freely where ever you liked, eating up the klicks and rolling up and down the low hills. In December the desert was clear and sunny, but with a cold wind. The drive into Lima-7 was easy; a carefully marked road with black oil dru
ms standing like tree stumps at half-klick intervals. All the same, he set his mileometer to zero as he bounced off the road. Take all the precautions every time and you would probably never need them. The drill required that you knew the compass bearing and distance of your destination. If you had driven more than 110% of the distance to your target and not found it, it meant you were totally lost. Then you had to stop and wait for someone to find you.

  The desert here was smooth and undulating. Soft sand in some of the hollows but as long as you did not stop, an ordinary car could cope with it. A maze of vehicle tracks of all ages wound in all directions. No hope of salvation by following them if you got lost. You could end up anywhere, so MacAllans people were meant to stick closely to the oil drums and not take short cuts. It always seemed a shame to The Virgin to cruise in so much dramatic wilderness and yet to cling to the ugly traces of man. He drove well to the side of the drum line, keeping them just in sight on the horizon. Even here there were signs of previous travellers. No matter where you stopped you would not have to walk more than a few hundred metres to find a scrap of blown paper or an old sardine tin. All the rubbish thrown away since the Tabrizi oil-fields had started work still lay on the desert surface somewhere.

  The Virgin counted the kilometres. Twenty-seven klicks out and he came to a way crossing, where one trend of vehicle tracks crossed another. In daylight there was no danger of taking off along the wrong line of drums, but you had to watch out for deep wheel ruts crossing your path. When the sun was strong over-head they cast no shadow and he might run across them at high speed. That was a good way to roll the car. At about thirty-five klicks from the Cape Town Road he might see the smoke coming from the refinery flare, but on a windy day like this he had to wait until he saw Lima-7 itself. That happened when he came over a slight scarp at forty-three klicks.

  Lima-7 was suddenly there in front of him. A distant island of trees on the desert horizon. The orange of the refinery flare flickered up behind them and the plume of black smoke was rushed away by the wind. He felt hungry but he was too late for lunch. He would be hungry all afternoon in the safety meeting he was attending. Perhaps that would keep him awake. The yard gateway had its barrier open, the gaffir enjoying an afternoon nap in his cabin. Even the hustle of the international oil-field could not keep him from his siesta.