by Len Deighton
‘They’re fighting a war, Harry. They’re playing for keeps. You take the gloves off, and they’ll hit you with an iron bar.’
‘They wouldn’t even give me the guy’s name.’
‘Security, Harry. They always have the drop on us. No one’s going to take our side if it comes to a showdown.’
‘I guess you’re right,’ said Harry.
‘I am,’ said Chips.
‘It was something about machine guns: Berettas. Did you hear what the little guy was saying outside the door?’
‘I heard. The whole landscape is littered with small arms. If the Gyppos start collecting them together, they could make a lot of trouble.’
‘I guess so.’
‘No story in Siwa,’ said Chips reflectively.
‘That’s what I was thinking,’ said Harry. ‘You know something? I’d say those guys we saw at supper last night were in some kind of racket.’
‘You didn’t say that to the security people?’
‘Of course not,’ said Harry.
‘No, of course not. If you’d mentioned those two we’d be in close arrest for conspiracy, or something before the fact. Or something.’
‘Those guys weren’t press reporters,’ said Harry.
‘Did you only just figure that one out?’
‘You knew all along?’
‘No, but afterwards – once I started thinking about them – I knew they weren’t newspapermen.’
‘How could you be so sure?’
‘Look, Harry,’ said Chips. ‘Perhaps I don’t know every last one of the press reporters in this part of the world. There are probably a few phonies and a couple of stringers and a roomful of freeloaders that I’ve never met. But one thing I am damn sure about: all those guys know me, know my name. When I say my name is Chips O’Grady to a newspaperman, they know me. Right?’
‘I see,’ said Harry.
‘I mean, they don’t stare into space and yawn. They gawk at me and say to themselves, So that’s the drunken bastard I’ve heard all the stories about.’
‘So who were those sons of guns?’
‘Crooks of some kind. Deserters, probably.’
‘And something to do with the Berettas?’
‘Just back from the Siwa Oasis and trying to persuade us not to go that way. It would be quite a coincidence if they were not,’ said Chips.
‘Gunrunners. I wish I’d taken a closer look at them and that truck of theirs. We missed a story,’ said Harry.
‘I should have asked them about buying a Leica,’ said Chips.
15
This was a different world. In this strip of desert where the war was being fought, the men were different. Their clothes were different, their speech was different, the looks on their faces and the way they moved, all these things were different to the way it was in the rear areas.
Wartime Cairo was infested with criminal gangs, so that the authorities were overwhelmed. For Toby Wallingford and his band of deserters, wholesale theft had become their normal way of life. And yet, perversely, most of them preferred being here. They were seldom heard to say so. All of them persistently told each other that Wally must be mad to bring them up to the sharp end while they could have been getting rich stealing army supplies and spending their money on nightclubs, booze and women.
The front-line area was a soldier’s world where Arabs and locals of any kind were only occasionally seen. And yet the appearance of the fighting soldiers was in no way martial; they looked more like vagabonds. Their clothing was stained and torn, their faces weatherbeaten, and their eyes always moving. And, like vagabonds, everyone seemed to be wearing every garment he possessed. Even in the heat of noon, men and officers alike were bundled up in overcoats worn over jackets and sweaters. Wearing such things was the most convenient way of carrying them.
Wallingford’s two trucks were marked with the insignia of the Independent Desert Teams. Wallingford had invented that secret unit, and yet it was no more exotic than many of the official ones, like Popski’s Private Army. As they drove past a sentry, he looked at them with no more than casual interest. They were entering one of the ‘boxes’ that the generals had decreed as part of the new defensive strategy. Behind barbed wire and trench-line forts, artillery and infantry and, in this case, the armoured cars waited for Rommel’s next move. Vast minefields had been laid to connect these boxes, and thus form a long defensive front.
In this box there were armoured cars and tents and a few ramshackle huts that had been built by an Italian desert survey team, long before the war. From a distance there was little to see, for this army had been in the desert long enough to learn that digging in could be the difference between life and death. The armoured cars and other vehicles were sitting in dug-out depressions in the hard sand, and tents had been erected in the lee of them. Here and there, shelters had been improvised from such things as captured Italian ground-sheets, pieces of corrugated iron, and wooden crates. Everything was covered in camouflaged netting, the shadows of which made hard patterns on the sandy earth.
‘Watch your pockets! It’s Wally the sailor!’ shouted an officer in a leather jerkin and battered peaked cap.
Wallingford waved and stopped the truck. ‘Hello, Piggy,’ he said. He navigated his way around from school chum to school chum. It wasn’t difficult; there were plenty of them.
‘Where are you off to this time?’ Lieutenant Piggy Copeland had a pleasing smile, a sunburned nose and forehead, and a grotesque haircut that had left him bald in places while several large tufts of hair stuck out at the back of his head.
‘It’s beginning to warm up, isn’t it? We’re pushing on along the track as soon as it’s dark,’ said Wallingford. He jumped down from his seat and, in a schoolboy gesture, stooped and grabbed a handful of soft sand.
‘And you want something to eat? How many of you?’ The sweat dripped from Piggy’s face. He wiped the perspiration from his brow with a side of his hand.
‘Me and fifteen ORs,’ Wallingford let the sand trickle through his fingers.
Piggy said nothing. He’d seen other men arrive and want to touch the desert sand. But men who lived here and fought here didn’t do that. Piggy had had enough sand to last him for the rest of his life.
Piggy walked round and looked at the two lorries with their Snake badge stencilled on the tailgates. Like most other young officers, he would have liked a chance to serve in one of these swashbuckling little outfits that were springing up everywhere. He envied Wallingford his good luck. ‘Send your rankers over to the mess tent. There will be plenty left from lunch. We’re damned short of drinking water, as always, but there’s tons of food.’
‘Did you hear that, sergeant?’ Wallingford asked Percy. ‘Get the mechanics to check the wagons and have them both filled up. Get the jerry cans filled too. The rest of the men can get something to eat and maybe steal some shut-eye. If you need me, just shout. I won’t wander far away.’
‘Yes, sir!’ Percy delivered a stiff and perfect salute, which Wallingford returned with a flick of his fingers. The two men exchanged looks. Percy knew how dangerous it was for Wallingford’s gang of deserters to mix with real soldiers. It would take only one foolish outburst to reveal what they really were. But with Percy overseeing events, such a disaster was less likely. The prewar year that Percy had spent in England, writing a university thesis, had given him a sound insight into the English, the sort of insight only outsiders knew.
‘And get some netting over our vehicles,’ called Wallingford. ‘You’re at the sharp end now.’
Wallingford watched Percy muster his men and move off. Then he turned to his old school friend and smiled. The jeopardy of this little adventure gave him a tingle of pleasure: if only Piggy knew his secrets! That would make him sit up.
‘Where are you heading, Wally?’
‘You know I can’t tell you that, Piggy.’
‘Some kind of raid?’
Wallingford gave a hoarse snort. ‘With fifteen other ran
ks and me? What a thought.’
‘Virtually no one west of here but Huns,’ Piggy warned. ‘There are miles and miles of minefields on our left. They stretch all the way to where the Free French are holding Bir Hacheim. I’ve never been that far south. An Indian outfit has moved up and taken position on our right – Sikhs; bloody good night-fighting infantry, Wally. But the night before last they sent a patrol out there hoping to get a prisoner, and only one Sikh came back.’
‘Sounds bad,’ said Wally.
‘When the Hun is so determined not to be observed, it usually means he’s up to something.’
‘I brought you a case of Johnny Walker, Piggy. That should help you forget your troubles. You said the CO liked Johnny Walker.’
‘I’m afraid we lost the old man,’ said Piggy. ‘Two weeks back. His driver ran into an old unmarked minefield. What with the mines the Eye-ties and then the Hun have put down, plus what we put down when we first came this way, it’s nigh on impossible to keep track of where they are. You’d better have a good look at the map before you go. Even then you might run into trouble. Have you got a mine detector?’
‘You’re a cheerful sod, Piggy. Just like when we were at school.’
‘Yes, that’s why I’ve stayed alive,’ said Piggy.
‘So who’s got the CO’s hat?’
‘The adjutant took over until he got a septic tooth. Then Captain Anderson became senior.’
‘That farmer’s boy?’
‘Steady on, Wally.’ He paused. ‘Of course, no one knows if Andy will be confirmed.’
‘He was a sergeant only last year, didn’t you say?’
‘Things move fast out here, Wally. You should know that, with lieutenant commander’s rings on your shoulders. Hello, here’s Andy coming now. No more farmer’s-boy jokes, Wally. Andy has become damned touchy just lately.’
‘I’ll not upset him,’ said Wally, amused by his friend’s anxiety. ‘I need his help, don’t I?’
A tall officer had emerged from the low profile of a tent. He was brandishing a walking cane, which he needed since banging his knee getting out of a burning car. Wallingford remembered him from his previous trip and didn’t like him.
Captain Andy Anderson sauntered over to them. He wasn’t friendly. He’d been in the tent with the wireless man, trying to pick up the BBC news bulletin. Reception was aways poor in daytime, and he’d heard little but static and crackle. Now his puglike face was set in a scowl as he said, ‘So you’re back again, Wallingford. Where did you anchor your ship? Off to win the bloody war, are you?’ He did nothing to modify his rough Yorkshire accent. He smoothed his hair with the flat of his hand. His haircut, although not as bad as Piggy’s, was chopped like stairs at the back of his head, where the barber had been unable to trim it properly.
To save his friend from having to respond to Andy’s rudeness, Piggy changed the subject. He’d seen Wallingford studying their haircuts. Now he said, ‘We had a fellow who’d been a professional barber on one of the Cunard liners. He had his barber’s instruments with him when he brewed. No one can cut hair properly with shears.’ He laughed.
Wallingford laughed too, but Andy didn’t join in. The presence together of these two friends did not give him any pleasure.
‘Just a milk run,’ said Wallingford modestly. He accepted the hostility that many officers showed towards irregular formations, especially one commanded by a naval officer.
‘The Hun has come to a stop at present,’ said Piggy in another effort to promote a friendlier atmosphere. ‘He seems to be digging in all along the front. It’s just as well; we’re not in good shape to counter another strong push.’
Andy brought his cane up like a golf club. Then he swung it round expertly, to hit a small stone that bounced away into the scrub. Without looking at them, he said, ‘Rommel will have another go before the hot weather starts. He’ll stake every bean he’s got on getting to Tobruk. He needs those harbour cranes to bring in his tanks, eighty-eights, and ammunition. Without a port close to his fighting front, he’s always going to be on short rations, hand to mouth.’
‘How close is the Hun?’ asked Wallingford. ‘Do you think he’ll push this way?’
‘No. Work it out for yourself,’ said Andy. ‘Rommel has got to go by the shortest route: that means the coastal road. He’s moving all his good stuff to the north. Even when he attacks us, there won’t be much happening this far south. He’s thin on the ground, and pulled well back, with just a few guns to discourage us from finding out his dispositions.’
‘Wally needs to know what’s out in front of us; he’s pressing on tonight. He’s going out along the trigh,’ said Piggy, who couldn’t hide his admiration. ‘I invited him to eat.’
At first Andy made no response. Then he looked at his watch and said, ‘Let’s go have a beverage.’ The three men started walking over to the tent the officers used as a mess. ‘Sun’s over the yardarm,’ said Andy. ‘Have I got the dark-blue terminology right, Wallingford?’
‘Spot on,’ said Wallingford.
Piggy said, ‘Wally brought a case of Johnny Walker for the old man.’
‘The old man’s had it,’ said Andy, with that fierceness that men sometimes use to conceal their true feelings. ‘He copped a packet trying to stage a one-man rescue of headquarters company.’
‘Your Hun has a remarkable aptitude for placing his guns,’ said Piggy, as casually as he could. ‘He digs them in damned deep, and sites them with such care that you can’t see the buggers until an eighty-eight comes whistling past your earhole. Even then you can’t see the buggers.’
‘You said the colonel went into a minefield,’ said Wallingford.
‘He was dead by that time,’ said Andy categorically. The colonel’s armoured car had burned for a long time, and Andy did not want to think about what might have happened if the crew were not already dead. ‘His driver too, probably. His car had shed a wheel and was going round in circles. It was his burning car that got all their attention; that’s why we got away.’
‘Where do you want your crate of whisky?’ Wallingford asked.
Andy didn’t answer.
As they reached the tent, Piggy lifted the flap for them to enter. The sun shining through the canvas flooded the tent’s interior with green light, rippling and dappled like the clear water of an aquarium. At the end of the tent stood five folding chairs and some ration boxes that were placed to be used as footstools, or as places to put drinks. A long folding table was positioned where there was maximum headroom. It was covered with a checkered tablecloth and set with cutlery and glasses and some bottles of captured Italian wine that had gone a little cloudy with the heat. Their deceased colonel had always been very keen to preserve the niceties of dining in the mess, no matter what rigours the environment provided.
‘Set an extra place, corporal,’ Piggy called to a man who was closely studying a large unlabelled can. ‘What filth are you giving us for lunch?’
‘I don’t know what’s in this tin, sir,’ said the soldier. ‘I think it’s either bully beef or bacon rashers.’
‘Unlabelled tins,’ said Andy. ‘Yes, we have a Standing Order from GHQ Middle East about that. To discover the contents of an unlabelled tin, corporal, you open it and look inside.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said the corporal mournfully. He’d heard the joke before.
‘And bring us three bloody big whiskies.’
The plates and place settings were only halfway along the table. Wallingford was about to remark upon this when he realised that the regiment had suffered heavier casualties than anyone was keen to talk about.
‘I’d better send someone with you for the first half mile or so,’ Andy told Wallingford, as if regretting his hostility. ‘The trigh is not so easy to follow now we’ve fought across it. In some places you’ll never find your way without help. We’ll get you half a mile along the main track. After that you’re on your own.’
Wallingford nodded. It was a decision. He judged it better not
to say thank you.
The ever-worrying Piggy said, ‘Take care, Wally. The Huns may be thin on the ground out there, but their gunners have the track zeroed in. If they hear anything moving along there, they have only to press the button and they’ll blow you to buggery.’
‘That will be something to think about while I’m tootling along in the soft sand,’ said Wallingford flippantly.
‘I’m just trying to warn you,’ said Piggy.
‘Yes, you’re a good type, Porkers. I appreciate it.’ Piggy had been Wallingford’s junior at school. Although there was less than two years’ difference in their ages, their time at school had defined the relationship between them in indelible terms.
The drinks arrived in silver-plated mugs. Wallingford said, ‘Cheers.’
‘Cheers,’ said the other two men dourly and drank their whisky without relish, as if it were medicine.
‘It’s nothing you could do on foot?’ Piggy asked.
‘Our party tonight? No, it’s nothing we could do on foot, old boy.’
‘You’d get through more easily on foot. Those trucks make a lot of noise at night.’
‘More than in the daytime?’
‘You know what I mean, Wallingford.’
A whistle was blowing short blasts from somewhere nearby. ‘Air raid,’ explained Piggy and went on drinking, studiously avoiding any sign of concern.
Wallingford went to the tent flap and stooped to push his head outside. Now he could hear the engines of some distant plane. Drink still in hand, Piggy joined him. ‘He comes over about this time every day,’ Piggy said.
There was too much haze for the plane to be clearly seen, but the noise of its engines increased as it turned in a lazy circle to come back towards them again.
‘Recce plane,’ said Piggy. ‘They are building up a photo-mosaic ready for their push.’
As he finished the sentence there were half a dozen loud explosions from a couple of miles to their left as the ‘photo plane’ let fly with a stick of bombs.
Both men ducked their heads instinctively. They resumed the upright posture and Piggy smiled sheepishly.
