War Clouds Gather

by Peter Watt

  George stopped pacing. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he chided himself. ‘That’s blackfella superstition.’ But the fear persisted and George decided that Tom Duffy was a threat. George didn’t like threats, and sometimes extreme measures were necessary to eliminate them.

  *

  Donald Macintosh sat in his mother’s small but sunlit art studio gazing around at her paintings hanging on the wall. He was a regular visitor to his mother’s harbourside apartment, but had not told his father this; he wanted to keep the peace with the man he feared most.

  The apartment had been purchased by Louise from her father’s estate, which had allowed her to be independent of her husband’s income. This had enraged George – he could no longer control her by pulling the purse strings. With her newfound financial freedom Louise had defied social convention by separating from her husband. She did not seem to care that she had been snubbed by polite Sydney society; she had a new circle of friends, and seemed very content away from the confines, and cruelties, of life with Sir George.

  Louise was a woman in her early forties who had not lost the beauty of her youth. Her skin was as smooth as when she was sixteen and her hair did not show the beginnings of her middle years; only her waistline had thickened a little. Donald thought she seemed happy, and he was glad. As he waited for his mother to bring them a tray of tea and biscuits, Donald’s eye caught a new portrait of a man in his middle age. ‘Who is that?’ he asked when Louise stepped back into the studio.

  Louise followed her son’s gaze to the painting.

  ‘That is a remarkable man,’ she replied, taking her own cup of tea and seating herself in a cane chair. ‘Major Sean Duffy. He was a war hero and is the lawyer who also handles the conditions of your grandfather’s estate.’

  ‘So that is Sean Duffy,’ Donald said with a hint of animosity. ‘Father says that he is a troublemaker. A crippled papist out to destroy us.’

  Louise raised her eyebrows. ‘That does not surprise me,’ she sighed. ‘Major Duffy is a fine and honourable man whose singular role in the family is to carry out the wishes of your grandfather. Major Duffy served with him on the Western Front and lost his legs there.’

  ‘You must have had recent contact with this Duffy fellow. This portrait is new, I think,’ Donald said.

  Louise sipped her tea and placed the cup on a small cane table by her chair. ‘I had almost completed the painting just before Sean travelled overseas with your cousin, David,’ she said. ‘I hope to one day have David sit for a session. I know his portrait would be highly valued by Major Duffy. He has been like a father to David since the death of your Uncle Alexander.’

  ‘So you know this David Macintosh as well,’ Donald said and found that he was angry that his mother had not revealed this to him before.

  ‘Yes, he is a fine young man like you,’ she replied. ‘I think that you would like him if you ever met him. His mother Giselle was my closest friend. We went to school together and she kept in contact when she went to live at Glen View.’

  Agitated, Donald put down his tea and stood up to walk over to the painting. He stared hard at the face looking back at him. He could see that the man was not unattractive, and a terrible thought flashed through his mind. Was this the face of the lover his father blamed for Louise leaving the family home?

  ‘Your sister does not come to visit me,’ Louise said, cutting short Donald’s disturbing thoughts.

  ‘I am sorry for that, Mother,’ Donald said, turning away from the portrait. ‘Her last year of schooling leaves her little time for social affairs.’

  ‘You know that is not true,’ Louise replied. ‘She hates me for leaving your father.’

  Donald knew that his mother was right, but he wished to shield her from any pain. He loved his mother but had been able to adjust to the domestic situation that unfolded years earlier when his mother had packed up and driven away to take up residence miles from his father. George had immediately declared to his children that she did love them but preferred to be with her lover. But over the years that Donald had skipped school to secretly visit Louise, he had never seen any sign of another man in the apartment. However, he had learned of his father’s infidelities. ‘I am sure that she will visit for Christmas,’ Donald said lamely. ‘I know that I will.’

  Louise stood up and walked over to her son, wrapping her arms around him. ‘You will always be my little boy,’ she said gently. ‘I know that your father expects you to inherit his enterprises when he is gone, but you are you, and I know that one day you will follow your heart and do what you believe is right.’

  Donald was stiff in his mother’s embrace. ‘Mother, I am not a little boy,’ he said, gently disengaging himself. ‘Father needs me in the business – and I know my duty to the family.’

  ‘But is it what you really want?’ Louise persisted, stepping back to look into her son’s eyes. ‘I know about your indiscretions. I know you are unhappy in your current role in the company’s affairs. What is it that you really want to do?’

  For a moment his mother’s words touched a deep part of his soul, but Donald dared not express his innermost desires. Family and duty echoed in his head. Concepts drilled in by his stern father, whom Donald both loved and feared.

  ‘What I want is not important,’ Donald replied. ‘Maybe Sarah should have been born a man,’ he continued with a bitter smile. ‘It is she who dreams of taking control of the family’s affairs.’

  ‘Sarah is very much like her father,’ Louise said. ‘I think that you take after my side of the family.’

  The two faced each other and in his mother’s words Donald realised many things about himself. He was not like his father, and he had to admit to himself that he did not want to follow in his footsteps. He was lost in a rich world of money and privilege and could see no way out.

  10

  Night approached along with low scudding clouds and a chilling wind. Matthew Duffy put on more clothes under his old leather flying jacket and used siphoned fuel to light a fire in the sand. It was not a big fire and when he applied some old oily rags it gave off a small black cloud that was immediately dissipated by the wind. At least he had a good supply of flares should any searchers be in the area.

  Huddled beside his fire near the downed aircraft, Matthew rubbed his hands together to increase the circulation. The sun was on the horizon behind the clouds and it was then that Matthew looked up to see the party of men mounted on camels about a mile away. He counted at least two dozen as they sat back watching him. Matthew reached for the rifle beside him and felt its cold assurance. His experience living in the British-controlled lands of Iraq warned him that the locals were generally not sympathetic to the occupiers of their country, or else were bandits interested in what they could loot.

  Matthew slid back the bolt and chambered a round of the high-velocity .303 ammunition. He slipped the sights to five hundred yards and propped himself against the wheel strut, taking careful aim at the men mounted on their camels. Matthew had selected the range as he knew any further would be a waste of time; he would have to allow them to come to him before his shots had any accuracy. Matthew’s teeth chattered, and not just with cold. If they were hostile, his chance of survival was very remote. But the men out on the flat plain turned and moved away, disappearing below the horizon.

  Matthew lowered his rifle in relief. All he could do now was wait, and pray. Pray that he was already missed and someone would start a search for him.

  That night Matthew dozed fitfully inside the aircraft. He woke with a start at every little sound, snatching at the revolver by his hand. It was always possible that the men on camels might decide to launch a night attack on him. They didn’t, though, and when he finally dragged himself out from under a pile of blankets he peered through the window to see a light cold drizzle of rain and an empty horizon.

  *

  ‘He’s not returned and I haven’t heard anything on the radio,’ Cyril said anxiously.

  Tyrone McKee stood puff
ing on a large cigar, his brow furrowed with worry. ‘Nothing from the oil crew up north?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Cyril replied.

  ‘I heard they had a bad sandstorm north of here,’ Tyrone said. ‘You think he might have gone down in it?’

  Cyril shook his head. ‘The skipper is too good a flyer to get caught by a sandstorm,’ he said. ‘He would have looked for somewhere to put the crate down and wait out the storm. According to my calculations,’ Cyril continued, unfolding a map of the region north of Basra, ‘Miss Hatfield and her party of Germans have a strip made up near their dig site.’ He traced his finger along a pencilled-in flight route Matthew would have taken to reach the oil well. ‘He could have put down there to sit out the storm.’

  ‘Do they have a radio?’ Tyrone asked, leaning over to look at the map.

  ‘Not that I know of,’ Cyril answered. ‘But I bet the skipper would have landed there.’

  Tyrone was a good pilot but understood how easy it was to miss a landmark in the huge expanse of rugged desert. ‘He told me that if anything happened I was to seek out a Pom major by the name of Wilkes,’ Tyrone said with a frown. ‘Think I should head off to army HQ and find him?’

  ‘A good idea,’ Cyril said. ‘He could get onto the RAF to fly out and search for the Ford. If we don’t find the skipper, you and I are out of a job.’

  But neither man was really concerned about losing their employment; it was their friend they were worried about.

  *

  ‘The Royal Air Force has just established a base at Habbanijah . . . here,’ Major Guy Wilkes said, pointing his swagger stick at a point on the wall map in his office. ‘It’s equipped with Westland Wapitis.’

  ‘I know them,’ Tyrone replied, fixing the RAF squadron’s location in his mind. The base was about fifty miles west of Baghdad on the Euphrates River. ‘The Royal Australian Air Force have them as well. A mate of mine in the RAAF let me take one for a spin. Good crate.’

  ‘I presume as a civilian your flight was not authorised,’ Guy said with a wry smile.

  ‘Yeah, well, there was a bit of trouble after that,’ Tyrone said with a guilty expression on his face. ‘Would your RAF chappies put up a couple of aircraft to search for Captain Duffy?’

  Guy Wilkes tapped his swagger stick against the side of his trouser leg and stared at the map. ‘You said that the line between here and here is the most likely route he took,’ he said, tracing a line from Basra heading north.

  ‘I know that the RAF have the job of patrolling the oil lines, and the one between the Kirkuk oil fields and Rutbah Wells,’ Tyrone said. ‘The skipper’s route is not far from there.’

  ‘Yes, well, the flyboys of the RAF think they can do the army’s job of patrolling the trade routes and keeping the sheikhs in line, so they can now earn their pay looking for Captain Duffy,’ Guy said. London had decided the land was too vast for army patrols to counter violent outbreaks among the tribesmen of Persia and so had deployed the RAF to react to reported incidents. The two-seater Westland was armed with a Vickers machine gun in the nose and a Lewis machine gun mounted on a Scarff ring for the observer. It could also carry up to five hundred and eighty pounds of bombs. Rebellious villagers would have leaflets dropped over them, warning that they should evacuate their village because of its anti-British activities. The village would be flattened with bombs on the next visit by the British planes. The army had its armoured cars but the bombers proved to be most effective in their role as pacifiers of rebellious tribesmen.

  ‘I will send a telegram to our HQ in Baghdad outlining the co-operation of our RAF brothers in searching for Captain Duffy’s downed aircraft. I will keep you up to date on any progress,’ he said and Tyrone thanked him.

  When Tyrone drove back to the company airstrip outside Basra he felt a terrible guilt for not flying with Matthew on the assignment. But he had met a British nurse and she had proved to be more of a distraction then he had imagined.

  *

  It was mid-afternoon when Matthew became aware that the men on the camels had returned, but this time they had doubled their numbers. Matthew, however, had not wasted the day. He had set about utilising the many sticks of gelignite he had located in the supplies intended for the oil field. It had taken all morning to lay out the explosives with their wires leading back to the shallow trench under the aircraft; then, satisfied with his improvised minefield, he had retreated to the aircraft to wait.

  Oh for a Vickers machine gun, Matthew thought, watching the men on camels moving into a skirmish formation to attack him. Saul Rosenblum, you old bastard, why aren’t you here beside me today? So many times he had faced death and walked away, but the numbers were just too great for him to get out of this one.

  Matthew placed the clips of .303 ammunition beside him and slipped into the shallow trench he had managed to scrape from the rock-hard earth. He had piled up as many large stones as he could as protection and laid out the electrically operated plunger beside him in the trench. He lay on his stomach with the rifle propped on a stone. A drizzle of rain began to fall and Matthew shivered uncontrollably – a combination of the bitter chill and nerves. Five hundred yards, Matthew calculated the group of camel mounted tribesmen had advanced. He checked his rifle sights and reminded himself to re-adjust them for the range when the attack began otherwise he would fire high. Already the war party of around fifty men had divided, with one half riding away to a flank. It will be a two-pronged attack, Matthew thought, and was surprised to see that only half of the large party had commenced to move towards him. They may have done so out of confidence.

  Matthew took a breath and slowly released it, pleased to see that his hands had stopped shaking. He squeezed the trigger and the rifle slammed into his shoulder. One of the attackers pitched from the saddle of his camel and hit the rocky plain. Matthew quickly swung the sights on another rider as he pulled back the bolt, ejecting the spent cartridge case, and chambered a fresh round. The camels had been whipped into a trot and they came at him fast. Four hundred yards. Matthew slipped down the rear sight adjustment, fired again and watched as another rider was ripped from his saddle. Two hundred and fifty yards was the critical range.

  Matthew continued firing, recharging the rifle with a fresh magazine, and the riders kept falling to his deadly aim. When he saw the bulk of the tribesmen were in his killing ground, Matthew reached across to the electronic plunger and made a short prayer the cold had not interfered with the wiring to the explosives. His prayer was answered when the ground before him erupted, tossing men and beasts into the air. The attack had been broken up and the few survivors still in the saddle wheeled their mounts around, retreating for the safety of the second party around half a mile away. They left behind them disembowelled camels thrashing about in agony and a few men attempting to rise from the ground. Matthew’s rifle picked off each stunned survivor, leaving none alive. Then he turned his rifle on the badly wounded camels and put them out of their pain. The only sound now was the ringing in Matthew’s ears.

  The second party of tribesmen on the horizon were clearly stunned by the unexpectedly deadly welcome they had received. They would not be so confident in the future.

  Matthew had used the only ace he had, and he knew that when the enemy rallied they would overwhelm him easily. When Matthew reached for his revolver he decided that he would keep the last bullet for himself; he knew what these fierce tribesmen did to unfortunate prisoners. He knew that only a miracle could save him now and he waited with bated breath for the start of the next attack. But the hostile tribesmen did not attack again that day and disappeared below the horizon.

  That night he sat with his rifle cradled in his arms. The darkness was like a smothering blanket as light rain continued to fall and the Australian flyer fought off the need to sleep. He found his thoughts drifting to Diane and her possible betrayal of him. This thought alone caused Matthew to feel despair. How could she set him up to be killed after all he had done for her? Matthew found him
self cursing his feelings for the woman, and his rage against the betrayal helped keep him awake. But despite his efforts, sleep crept out of the dark and took him into her arms.

  With a start, Matthew awoke just before dawn. The light rain had stopped but the wind was knife-sharp, cutting through his clothing with an icy blade. When Matthew pushed himself into a sitting position he peered out the window to see that the plain was empty of tribesmen. He hoped that perhaps the cold had forced them back to their camps.

  Matthew had a small primus stove and went about lighting it to prepare a hot meal. At least he had food and water for a long siege, and enough blankets. His supply of ammunition was his main concern. Just how long could he hold out?

  *

  Tyrone had opted to travel to Baghdad on the train and the jolting trip took him a day. When he reached the city he made his way to the British military HQ and introduced himself to a British air liaison officer.

  ‘We received Major Wilkes’s telegram,’ the British officer said. ‘But I’m afraid the weather yesterday was too ghastly to put any of our aircraft up. It seems we have a freakish cold front carrying snow in to the hills.’

  Tyrone controlled his frustration with the thought that the weather had indeed been atrocious and even he would have had second thoughts about going up. ‘What about today?’ he asked, and the British officer reached for a sheaf of meteorological papers, perusing them with an expression of concern.

  ‘I think we can take off this morning but another front is coming through,’ he said. ‘The planes will have to return before mid-afternoon to avoid the front.’

  ‘That’s better than nothing,’ Tyrone said, extending his hand in gratitude.

  *

  It was midday, according to Matthew’s watch, and he sat up in the cockpit, which gave him the best view of the terrain around him. He fiddled with the radio, dismantling the front panel to see if he could fix it. But when the panel came off he could see that the internal workings had been sabotaged. Wires were cut and a valve smashed.