by Gavin Scott
“Ah, Forrester,” he said, “I saw your name in the papers in connection with the demon Narak.”
“I trust the publicity has been good for business,” said Forrester.
“It hasn’t hurt,” said Watkins.
“People have been coming in all the time,” Oggy piped up, “wanting to know about Sumerian magic. So I just say Revelations five to nine.”
Watkins gave Oggy a sharp look. “The Book of Revelation has nothing to do with Sumerian magic, Oggy,” he said.
“Not according to Mrs. Palmer,” said Oggy.
“Mrs. Palmer?” said Forrester. “She comes in here too?”
Watkins was about to speak, but Oggy jumped in.
“Oh, yes. She had a big argument with Mr. Crowley.”
“I told you there’s a power struggle going on in the world of the occult,” said Watkins. “She’s the leader of the anti-Crowley faction.”
“And Narak’s the object of power they’ve been struggling over?”
“Narak and the seals,” said Watkins, guardedly.
“And is this where Mr. Smith comes in?”
“Smith is a fantasy figure,” said Watkins. “Crowley just uses him to scare people. And all that D-Day nonsense was pure fabrication.”
“What D-Day nonsense?”
“Oh, he claimed that the Allies had dropped Smith into occupied France just before D-Day to murder German generals.”
Suddenly Forrester was listening hard.
“He said he came up the stairs of them French palaces, in his big boots, clump, clump, clump,” said Oggy. “He didn’t need no machine gun, he just wrapped his arms round them and squeezed them till they were dead.”
Forrester was suddenly very still: he too had been sent on such a mission just before the D-Day landings, and it was not a mission he wanted to remember. He saw the blast as the grenades landed in the midst of the party in the grounds of the chateau, felt the buck of the machine gun in his hands as he went in afterwards, mowing down as many German staff officers as he could find.
He could well imagine the man with the burlap sack over his head being sent on just such a mission.
* * *
From a telephone box in St. Martin’s Lane, Forrester telephoned Colonel Archibald MacLean at the War Office, the man who had sent him on that mission, gave him what information he had about “Mr. Smith” and asked him what he could find out. MacLean was wary, and simply said he would look at the records, but Forrester knew, from the changed tone of MacLean’s voice when he mentioned Smith’s ability to crush someone to death, that he had hit a nerve.
He then went back to Scotland Yard and reported this and his conversation with Angela Shearer to Roy Bell, but the detective did not seem particularly excited by the news of the messenger delivering the wrong files. “These nervy types are always in a tizz about something,” he said. “Getting the wrong mail delivery is exactly the sort of thing I would expect Templar to have got his knickers in a twist about.”
“His wife seemed to think he believed something untoward was going on.”
“Something untoward is always going on in the FO,” said Bell. “Look, Forrester, I don’t want to seem uninterested, but I’ve spent more time than I really want to trying to get anything out of that bunch of public school prefects. If you’ve got an in with them feel free to try yourself – just keep me abreast.”
If Forrester was honest with himself he had to admit he was also reluctant to go back to King Charles Street: he felt he had barely got away with what could be regarded as an outrageous piece of lese-majesty, and didn’t want to poke the hornet’s nest again. Also, he didn’t want anyone asking any questions about the Citroën, now being restored to its former glory at Oxford Continental Models.
He compromised by writing a note to Lanchester describing what Angela Shearer had told him and speculating that Templar had incurred the wrath of a colleague when he had stumbled upon something as a result of the misdirected mail delivery. He suggested that the mailroom clerks be questioned about any incident of the sort shortly before Templar’s death.
He did not hold out much hope of success: it was highly unlikely anyone in the mailroom would voluntarily admit to a cock-up which could have cost a promising official his life.
* * *
He was not surprised that Lanchester did not even reply to his note, because the capture of the Exodus, far from putting the lid on the illegal immigration of the Jews to Palestine, turned out to be just the beginning of the worst public relations disaster the Foreign Office had ever known. A disaster which could only be ascribed to Ernest Bevin’s obstinacy. And, what seemed to Forrester to be his growing vindictiveness against the Jews.
Most of those who had been caught trying to get into Palestine illegally since the end of the war were taken to the island of Cyprus and incarcerated in arid, desolate camps, which was bad enough. But Ernest Bevin decided the refugees from the Exodus should be made an example of. Instead of transporting them the relatively short distance from Haifa to Cyprus, he had them forced aboard three merchant vessels whose decks were covered in wire netting to prevent them jumping overboard.
And taken back to France.
It was a gesture of calculated cruelty, intended to teach other would-be immigrants a lesson. It backfired spectacularly for two reasons, the first of which was that international journalists had seen the refugees being taken ashore at gunpoint in Haifa and had heard the horrific stories of their experiences during the Holocaust.
The second reason was that when the prison ships arrived in France and the refugees were ordered to disembark, they refused to do so. They said that they would literally rather die than return to Europe.
Conditions were so crowded aboard the ships the British were certain the Jews could not hold out. The heat was tremendous and there were just six latrines for hundreds of people on each ship. Mothers with babies had to stay in the stifling atmosphere below decks most of the time because there was not enough room up above. Those who did come on deck, in strict rotation, looked out through the wire netting and shouted defiance at the British.
They sewed a Nazi swastika to a Union Jack and held it up for the world’s press to see. The press swarmed around the prison ships in small boats, and sent pictures of the suffering and defiance around the world.
Still Ernest Bevin insisted the ships stay there, sweltering, off the coast of France, convinced he could break the will of the refugees.
During this time, remembering the children and the young women in the chateau near Sète, Forrester came to despise a man he had once hero-worshipped. As the ordeal went on, day after day, he knew Bevin was destroying the last shreds of Britain’s moral authority in the Middle East, dragging his country down to his own level of blinkered bitterness. And then he went lower still.
Finally accepting that the refugees could not be cowed into going ashore in France, he ordered the prison ships to take them back to Germany. To the country which had just tried to exterminate them.
In Hamburg British troops used high pressure hoses to force the refugees, including mothers clutching their babies, off the ships, before forcing them back behind the barbed wire from which they had escaped months before. Now they looked out through that wire as Germans who had tormented them strolled past as free men and women.
And they swore to themselves that whatever it took, they would find their way back to the Promised Land, and make it a homeland that would never be taken from them.
* * *
In need of distraction from the unfolding news, Forrester was glad to join Ken Harrison in the Lamb and Flag. As he walked in he saw Tolkien and Jack Lewis, apparently in deep discussion about events in their respective imaginary worlds. Tolkien nodded cordially enough to him as he entered, though perhaps with a certain caution. Perhaps he felt slightly nervous, Forrester thought, of an academic who had so signally thinned the ranks of his fellow Norse scholars.
Jack Lewis himself looked both diminished and sa
d. His wartime fame as the nation’s chief Christian apologist through his books and broadcasts on the BBC had caused much jealousy among his Oxford colleagues. In addition to that there were rumours that the older woman with whom he had been living for many years was becoming demanding and querulous, while his beloved brother, who was also part of the household, was sinking into alcoholism. It was not surprising, Forrester thought, that Lewis had begun to create a fantasy world of his own into which he could retreat. Or that he was putting so much effort into encouraging Tolkien to finish his much-delayed sequel to The Hobbit. Magic was so much easier than real life.
Harrison had two pints ready for them at a corner table, and was obviously well pleased with himself.
“Fascinating chap, your Edward St. John Townsend.”
“Your researches have proved fruitful?”
“Very much so. I’ve consulted Who’s Who, the Dictionary of National Biography, and the publisher’s blurbs in all his books.”
“Well done. What did you find out?”
“He was the eldest son of the Bishop of Exeter,” said Harrison. “Born 1898, educated at Eton, read oriental languages at Cambridge and in 1923 was sent out to Iraq as an assistant to a woman called Gertrude Bell.”
“Ah, Gertrude Bell,” said Forrester. “A formidable woman. She knew every sheikh and bandit from Basra to Damascus. Spied for Churchill and recruited T. E. Lawrence, which led to the whole Lawrence of Arabia business.”
“My sources said she was the one who came up with the idea of turning the captured Turkish provinces in Mesopotamia into a new country,” said Harrison.
“She did, and got Lawrence’s pal Faisal installed as king. That’s how Iraq got started.”
“Well young Townsend was sent out to help her advise the new king,” said Harrison. “Reading between the lines, he and Gertrude seem to have become pretty good pals.”
Forrester nodded – he could easily imagine the lonely, middle-aged woman feeling a tendresse for the young English scholar who had been sent to work with her.
“Gertrude did a lot of archaeology in her spare time, and Townsend got into the habit of going out with her on expeditions,” said Harrison. “That was when he learned Akkadian and began his translations. Later on, when Gertrude set up her museum of Iraqi archaeology, she made him one of the trustees.”
“Before committing suicide,” said Forrester. Gertrude Bell’s life had been full of adventure, achievement and significance, but she had lost two of the men she loved tragically young and had never found anyone to replace them. In 1926, as King Faisal found his feet and Gertrude felt her role in guiding the destiny of Iraq ebbing away, she had taken an overdose of sleeping pills and died, aged fifty-seven.
“I get the impression Townsend was pretty cut up about this,” said Harrison, “and sort of rode away into the desert after she died.”
Rather as Gertrude Bell herself had, many years before, thought Forrester, when her first lover succumbed to fever in Persia. And it seemed that for Townsend, as for Bell, this grief-stricken odyssey had been a crucial turning point.
“He travelled on his own to all the places she’d been to and visited all the sheikhs and kings and princes she’d got to know, with the idea of writing a biography. As a result of which he met everybody of influence in the region, became something of an expert on Middle Eastern affairs in his own right and was appointed oil adviser to the government of Saudi Arabia.”
“Did he finish the Gertrude Bell biography?”
“He did, backed several archaeological expeditions of his own and started publishing his translations of ancient Sumerian texts, which made him something of a literary celebrity whenever he came back to England.”
Forrester thought about the party at which Angela Shearer described having met both Townsend and Aleister Crowley. “Any hints of a connection to the occult?” he asked.
“None I’ve come across,” said Harrison. “In recent years he’s been concentrating on this business of oil concessions in Saudi Arabia.”
“Do we know where he is now?”
“No, but I’ve written to his publishers asking to be put in touch with him. I didn’t mention Templar of course; I gave the impression it was a scholarly enquiry.”
“Well done. Another pint?”
“I think I could manage another,” said Harrison.
* * *
There was some discussion at High Table that night about the Exodus affair, with Stephenson defending Ernest Bevin’s unwavering approach to the question of illegal Jewish immigration and Gordon Clark saying it was not only morally repugnant but extremely foolish if the Jews were going to get their homeland as soon as the British left Palestine.
“Not necessarily,” said the Master. “UNSCOP has yet to make its decision.”
“Remind me who Unscop is,” said Roland Bitteridge, “I find it hard to keep up with all the new players on the world stage.”
“UNSCOP is the committee set up by the United Nations Organisation to decide on the future of Palestine, Professor Bitteridge,” said Stephenson, patiently. “They’ve been all over the Middle East and are at present in Geneva to write their final report.”
“I gather what they saw in Haifa has inclined them to favour the Jews,” said Alan Norton.
“I’m sure that was only a temporary effect, Bursar,” said Stephenson smoothly. “I’m assured that they are a very level-headed group, who know what trouble would follow from infuriating the Arabs, not just in Palestine, but in the entire region.”
“I hear the Jews have been smuggling arms as well as people into Palestine,” said another fellow, “to be ready for the fight.”
“They have no hope,” said Norton. “We’ve sold the Arab states enough weapons to snuff out a dozen would-be Jewish homelands.”
“I thought there was an arms embargo,” said Gordon Clark.
“There is,” said Norton, “but oddly enough it doesn’t apply to existing contracts, which are of course exclusively between ourselves and the Arabs.”
“Which is why I hope that UNSCOP puts paid to the idea of trying to turn Palestine into a Jewish state,” said Stephenson. “I say this as someone who wishes the Jews well – I don’t want to see them destroyed in a second Holocaust.”
Forrester said nothing: not because he wanted to avoid a fight, but because he was preoccupied with the image of Sir Edward St. John Townsend, KBE, looking down on that dig at Tel Madir where the goat-headed figure of Narak had been unearthed for the first time. What had been going through Townsend’s head at that moment? Had he too seen it as an object of power, something to discuss with Aleister Crowley when he was next in England? And what had he thought when war broke out and the American archaeologists had spirited the thing back to America? He was still deep in thought when High Table was over and he was returning to his rooms across the quadrangle, so the appearance of Piggot out of the darkness startled him.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, Dr. Forrester,” he said, “but there’s an urgent message for you.”
“From whom?”
“From a Mr. Eban. He wants you to telephone him in Geneva.”
* * *
Forrester began trying to put a call through to Geneva that night, but it was not until the next morning he was able to get through to Aubrey Eban.
“Thank you very much for getting in touch, Duncan.” Eban’s voice, when the connection was finally established, was faint. “I wish to ask for your help.”
“What can I do, Aubrey?” said Forrester.
“I would rather not tell you over the telephone, but if you agree to come to Geneva, I think you could help avert a very unfortunate outcome.”
“Aubrey, I’ve only recently got back from the States. I can’t just swan off again, I have academic obligations here.”
“Doesn’t term end next week?”
“Yes, but—”
“I will have someone from the Agency bring you air tickets to Geneva, together with a note. When you re
ad the note, I think you will want to help us. Please consider it, Duncan. Please consider it very seriously.”
And with that Eban hung up.
* * *
Forrester was sitting on one of the benches in the churchyard of St. Mary the Virgin when Robert Glastonbury came to join him.
“You look contemplative,” said the clergyman.
“I am contemplative,” said Forrester. “I’m wondering whether I should go to Switzerland.” And he explained about the call from Aubrey Eban.
“I’m not sure I see the dilemma. A friend has asked you for help. Knowing you, the answer is simple.”
“I’ve already intervened in this question of a Jewish homeland,” said Forrester. “And I’m not sure that I didn’t cause much more suffering than I averted.” He told Glastonbury what had happened at Sète.
“Ah,” said Glastonbury, “the law of unintended consequences.”
“Exactly,” said Forrester. “And now it’s clear that if the United Nations awards the Jews a homeland in Palestine, they will probably be massacred by the surrounding Arab states, with arms provided by us.”
“And you have been asked by a Jewish friend to go to Geneva, where this decision is effectively being made.”
“I have. He presumably wants me there because he thinks I can prevent outside forces interfering with UNSCOP’s decision, which it seems highly improbable I’d be able to. On the other hand, what happened at Sète was fairly improbable, so the question really is, should I go?”
Glastonbury sighed. “I ought to be able to advise you simply by asking the question ‘What would Jesus do?’ but I’m not sure that would be very helpful.”
“Worth a try, perhaps,” said Forrester. “I’ve certainly lost confidence in my own judgment about what’s the right thing.”
Glastonbury considered. “Jesus was of course a Jew,” he said, “and on the face of it he would have wanted the Jewish state to continue to exist. On the other hand, he preached the impending coming of the Kingdom of God, when all things would change.”
“Does it ever bother you that that prediction was so wildly inaccurate? I mean, how could the Son of God have got his facts so utterly wrong? About something as basic as the second coming, which one would have thought was his special area of expertise.”
