by John Harris
‘The rotten bastards,’ Minto said as the evening broadcast finished. ‘They’re trying to s-s-stop us leaving.’
‘Those statements don’t apply to us,’ Lack decided in his self-important know-all way. ‘We’ve already said we’re leaving. They must mean withdrawals from other places.’
Minto considered the words they’d heard then he frowned and burst out again. ‘There aren’t any other b-bloody places,’ he said. ‘We’ve already left them all.’
As though to reassure them, however, a date was fixed on the normal link-up with Khaswe that very night – twelve weeks later on the twenty-first of the month – and, as if to consolidate the fact, they received a signal which seemed to indicate that their very last duty would be to provide an escort for an American oil expert who was arriving to give the Toweida Plain a final once-over before it was too late.
‘Let’s hope he brings some booze,’ Lack said.
3
They were not disappointed. Luke Beebe turned out to be a dark, hairy, good-humoured man who believed in making sure of his own comfort. He didn’t particularly want to be in Hahdhdhah because in his bones he felt that the situation in Khalit was dangerous, but he was paid to be there and since he had no choice, he felt he might as well make himself at home.
‘Beebe,’ he introduced himself as he climbed from the lorry in the courtyard of the fort. ‘Lucas Eugene Beebe. Luke for short.’
Pentecost offered his hand. ‘Pentecost,’ he said. ‘Silly name. Most of the chaps call me Billy.’
‘OK – Billy.’ Beebe felt vaguely flattered. He was a man of working-class birth and he knew about Pentecost. He’d heard in Dhafran that he was upper crust and he knew that upper-crust Britishers still had strange ideas about discouraging familiarity till you’d known them for years. He’d even heard a funny story of a British nobleman who didn’t learn the first name of his mistress till he sued her for the return of the jewels she claimed he’d given her.
He stared round him, slapping the dust from his clothes, and lit a cigarette. The sun was glaringly bright and seemed to slam back at him in violent blows that were almost physical as it was reflected from the whitewashed walls. In one corner of the courtyard he could see a British sergeant with mad eyes screaming at a bunch of Toweida Levies in some unintelligible tongue and in another a grizzled Khaliti zaid ticking off items on a list on a clipboard he held in his hand. The heat was so intense it seemed to dry the sweat on his face.
‘Some joint,’ he observed.
‘You can say that again,’ Lack commented. ‘And if our cup of happiness weren’t already soured by it, we’re running out of booze.’
Beebe grinned. ‘Good job I brought plenty with me,’ he said.
He sent his driver to bring his valise and produced a bottle of whisky, and Lack led him triumphantly across to the mess.
‘First scotch we’ve seen for some time” he pointed out.
Beebe raised his glass. ‘All we need now are a few dames. What do we do about women?’
‘We indent for ’em,’ Lack grinned. ‘If we’re turned down by Stores, we live off the country.’
Pentecost was speaking now. ‘You’re looking for oil, Mr Beebe,’ he said, more as a statement than a question, and Lack grinned. Everyone in Khalit knew of Sultan Tafas’ hopes. His income came from the export of dates, olives, canned fruit, mint, saffron and a few assorted minerals, and it was common knowledge that he still hoped to implement it with the discovery of oil. He had had French and American geologists in every corner of his Sultanate for months in a frantic attempt to salve his tottering fortunes before it was too late.
‘That’s it,’ Beebe was saying. ‘Oil. And as soon as I’ve looked, I’m off.’
Where to, he wasn’t sure. He liked travel and a hint of danger, so long as it never went beyond a hint, but he’d always managed to avoid trouble before, though he’d almost been caught once or twice, as he’d lingered too long in Algeria, Aden and Jordan. By this time, however, he’d begun to suspect his delays had been deliberate because it was in his character to be a contrary last-minute man.
‘I’d advise you to make a start on your programme straight away, Mr Beebe,’ Pentecost advised. ‘We leave in twelve weeks’ time. On the twenty-first of the month, to be exact.’
Beebe shrugged. ‘It’s a job that can’t be rushed.’
‘Still,’ Lack said, ‘toot sweet would be a good idea. The tooter the sweeter, in fact. When they finally get Tafas to fix his cross on the old document, those Khaliti staff johnnies in Khaswe’ll probably send us a signal saying “Tomorrow at dawn, boys.”’
It took Beebe a moment or two to decipher this speech. When he did he looked at Pentecost.
‘What’d happen if he didn’t sign in the end?’ he asked.
‘Trouble,’ Pentecost said blandly.
‘What sort of trouble?’
‘Border war, shouldn’t wonder.’ Pentecost sounded too nonchalant about it to be true.
‘A shooting war?’
‘You’ve got it,’ Lack said cheerfully, not believing for a minute a word he said. ‘A shooting war.’
Beebe ignored him and studied Pentecost. He intrigued Beebe with his apparent youth. He hardly looked old enough to know how to use a gun.
‘What’ll you do?’ he asked.
‘Stop ’em,’ Pentecost said.
‘Here?’
‘Here.’
‘Like John Wayne at the Alamo.’
Pentecost nodded gravely. ‘Exactly like John Wayne at the Alamo.’
Beebe grinned. ‘You couldn’t do it,’ he said. ‘There are only three hundred of you – give or take a few. Aziz has thousands, they tell me.’
Pentecost didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘We’ve got thick walls between us,’ he pointed out. ‘If we played it close to the chest, we might be a hard nut to crack. What about you? If it did come to the crunch, I mean. What would you do about it?’
‘I’m an American citizen,’ Beebe said at once, as though it were the solution to any and every problem.
Pentecost seemed unimpressed. ‘Aziz’s reims, alas, might not worry about the distinction,’ he said.
Beebe’s reply summed up his attitude, the attitude of the whole American nation.
‘Aziz isn’t going to throw me out,’ he said firmly. ‘No goddam gook tells me when to leave.’
4
Beebe settled down quickly among them, though his transatlantic sense of humour grated a little at times. He didn’t seem to think much of their chances and considered it amusing to remind them of the fact.
Watched by a scout car and a lorry-load of Dharwas, he and his foreman, an Iraqi geologist from Abadan, set to work on the stony plain, digging holes with picks and filling them with small cylinders of explosive which they detonated by wires connected to instruments in their truck a hundred yards away, throwing up showers of dust and filling the plain with a series of thuds that made the air expand and contract.
‘You look like a couple of hens searching for food,’ Minto said from the scout car.
‘We explode the canisters,’ Beebe informed him, ‘and read the result on the gravimeter. It gives the difference in gravitational force resulting from variations in the densities of the rock layers beneath the surface. The sound wave reflects on the formations below and tells you if there’s oil down there.’
‘And is there oil down there?’
Beebe gave a slow grin. ‘Not a goddam drop,’ he said.
Lack began to tick off the days, watching the political situation like a hawk and listening eagerly all the time to the commentators broadcasting from London.
Because British bases abroad had become an anachronism – something that no longer belonged in a world where nuclear bombs existed – the government in London was becoming embarrassed by Tafas’ havering. No one wanted another Suez or another Aden situation and they were eager to be quit of the place, but the treaty rights said quite clearly that if Tafas requested a British pre
sence in Khalit then they had to stay. It was something they had been trying to avoid bringing to light for years.
‘There’s one thing,’ Minto said as Chestnut switched off. ‘This is the last place we’ve got. If we withdraw any further we’ll be s-soldiering on Clapham Common.’
‘I’m all for soldiering on Clapham Common,’ Lack said firmly. ‘At least there’d be women there. Not like this place. All a woman needs to be a success in Khalit is a cocktail dress and a pair of tits. We’ll be going all right.’
Despite his bounce, however, he was still a little nervous. But all the signals that came in seemed to confirm their departure. Dhafran knew the frontier could not be held and though Tafas still hadn’t signed anything there were instructions about their route, instructions about what to take and instructions about what to leave behind. Even instructions about the exact time of departure.
‘Twelve hundred hours,’ Pentecost pointed out ‘Right in the heat of the day.’
‘We can always start a bit early,’ Lack suggested. ‘Tom Jeffreys at Aba el Zereibat won’t wait till midday, I bet. He’s overdue for leave and I’ve heard his wife’s romping around with a blue bod from the Air Force.’
Then, two nights later, four weeks after the departure of the boy with the broken leg, the line of Hejri horsemen appeared once more in the first light of the morning. They had waited between the ragged piles of rocks in front of the fortress, invisible in the darkness until the first glow of the sun touching the mountain tops to the north had picked out their black robes and showed them as a shadowy broken necklace across the violet background of the foothills.
‘They’re here again, sir,’ Sergeant Fox said as he roused Pentecost from sleep.
Beebe, who had heard of the strange meeting between Pentecost and Aziz and hadn’t really believed it, turned up out of curiosity to see what it was all about. Pentecost was already by the gate with Lack and Minto.
‘How many of ’em out there?’ he was asking.
‘Not many,’ Lack said. ‘It’s not the ones you can see who matter, though. It’s the bastards you can’t see.’
Pentecost seemed undisturbed. As he lowered his binoculars to glance at the hills, Beebe studied him. Pentecost fascinated him. He was the arch-type of British officer he’d thought had died out with the First World War – with his book of verse, his fragile manner, his precious way of speaking and his use of outdated slang.
He seemed a little nervous and Beebe gazed into the growing light to where he could just see a green banner and the faint broken line of waiting figures. Their very stillness had an alarming effect and he decided once again that he was glad he was American.
Aziz met Pentecost as before, on foot and with his rifle-butt foremost, but this time he was wearing a long curved scimitar at his waist. The blade alone was all of a metre in length and curved like a sickle, and, Pentecost guessed, sharp and heavy enough in the hands of a strong man to cleave an enemy from crown to navel in one stroke. He decided it was some sign of authority and that Aziz wore it because he had come to talk terms.
‘Your son is well, Lord Aziz?’ he asked.
Aziz nodded gravely. ‘My son is well again, Bin T’Khass,’ he said. ‘His leg is mending and with help he walks.’
‘Tell him it is wiser to remain on his own side of the hills in future,’ Pentecost said gravely. ‘He is too young to spy for Aziz el Beidawi.’
Aziz’s frown deepened. ‘He did not spy for Aziz,’ he said. ‘He spied for Thawab abu Tegeiga, his cousin, who is a hothead and would have swallowed your fort weeks ago if Aziz had allowed him.’
Pentecost had heard of Thawab abu Tegeiga. The little information he received told him that Aziz’s rule over the Khusar nations was not undisputed. Thawab, leader of the Deleimi nation, claimed that Aziz was growing old and that his methods were out of date, and he was reputed to have men behind him who understood radio and the use of explosives.
‘He would be unwise to try,’ he pointed out.
Aziz was watching him carefully. ‘We could wipe your fort from the face of the earth,’ he said. He spat into the dust then drew his foot across the spittle so that it was erased. ‘So!’
‘The words of Aziz break stones,’ Pentecost said calmly. ‘But Aziz boasts, nevertheless. I know he boasts. And Aziz knows he boasts because he has German glasses that tell him that the fort at Hahdhdhah now is not the fort at Hahdhdhah of a few weeks ago.’
Aziz stared at him, then he grinned. ‘Aziz boasts,’ he admitted.
‘And since the English are due to leave before long, it would be foolish for Aziz to risk the lives of his young men.’
Aziz paused. ‘You have heard this?’ he asked quickly.
‘I have heard it. In messages from Khaswe.’
‘I have heard this too,’ Aziz said. ‘We have radios at Addowara. And Egyptian instructors who inform us of world politics.’
‘And when the English leave,’ Pentecost went on, ‘the Toweida Levies must leave also. They will not stay without us. We shall take them with us to Dhafran, south to the Dharwa Mountains.’
‘It is good. We will wait.’
Aziz hesitated a moment then he unbuckled the great scimitar from his waist, weighed it in his hands for a moment, and held it out, resting across his palms, towards Pentecost.
‘Aziz trusts thee, Bin T’Khass,’ he said. ‘Here is a token of his trust, and of gratitude that thou didst not choose to imprison a boy with a broken leg who is too young to understand death.’
‘Is this for me, Aziz?’
‘I have carried this sword since I was a young man. I carried it in the clean and honourable days before we used grenades and mortars. I part with it willingly, to show my great love for Bin T’Khass.’
Love, Pentecost thought wildly. With a face like that!
He wondered hurriedly what he could offer in return. Then he remembered the monogrammed cigarette case that had been given to him as a wedding gift by his wife and he fished it from his pocket and held it out, laying it across both palms in the way that Aziz held the sword.
‘I am no great leader like Aziz el Beidawi,’ he said, searching out all the flowery phrases he could find. ‘I have no warrior tribes like the Zihouni falling before me and hiding their eyes when I approach. I am a paid soldier and a poor man. This is all I have to offer. I have carried it many years.’ He paused then plunged into what he considered a good, honest-to-God lie and left it standing on its own sturdy legs for Aziz’s inspection. ‘Before me it belonged to my father, whose name I bear. Another paid soldier but an honest man.’
‘Did he, too, not look like a great warrior?’
Pentecost thought of the stumpy stiff-legged old man, recently dead, whose independent spirit had prevented him rising to any dizzy heights in the army he had loved. He had closed his eyes for the last time still puzzled by the effeminate slightness of his only son and the apparent indifference to duty in the younger generation, and had gone to his grave still failing to appreciate that patriotism had a different meaning these days and that duty was not set within narrow national boundaries. Yes, Pentecost thought, the old man had looked like a warrior, and he’d have enjoyed being lumped with Montgomery, Alexander and Wavell.
‘He looked like a great warrior,’ he said. ‘He was a great warrior.’
Aziz was pushing forward the scimitar now and they exchanged the gifts shyly. Then Aziz stepped back, his face grave.
‘Go in peace, Bin T’Khass,’ he said.
‘Peace to thee also, Lord Aziz.’
Together they turned their backs on each other and marched towards their own men, Aziz straight and lean and wearing dignity like a cloak, Pentecost unhappily aware of his short stature and trying to make light of it because he was still carrying the heavy jewelled scimitar in both hands before him and he felt rather stupid, and top-heavy enough to be unsure of his steps.
Minto and Lack were waiting just inside the gates, with Beebe. ‘What the hell’s that?’ Lack said,
staring at the weapon in Pentecost’s hands.
‘It’s a scimitar.’
‘Did the old josser give it you?’
Pentecost nodded and he saw Fox’s look of approval.
Beebe’s jaw had dropped. ‘Say, that’s quite a souvenir,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t mind that hanging over my mantelpiece when I get home. Wouldn’t want to sell it, would you?’
Pentecost’s look almost shrivelled him. He was warmed by a stupid sense of pride. People didn’t collect battle trophies these days but somehow he felt that this vast scimitar would bear pride of place in his household for ever.
5
That was only the beginning. Following the scimitar there were more exchanges of gifts, Aziz’s horsemen always appearing in their ragged line as the sun began to lift beyond the hills to throw its light across the Toweida Plain.
A strange kind of rapport had grown up between the haggard old warrior and the smooth-faced young man not long out of school, a friendship that permitted them to make wry jokes about each other and about the fighting qualities of their men. From time to time Aziz asked the date of departure, and Pentecost was able to reassure him that all the necessary signals had arrived and that plans had gone ahead much faster than anyone had expected for the run-down of Khalit as a British base. All it now required was the Sultan’s signature and the necessary final word from the Khaliti Government.
‘They are the elected representatives of the nation,’ he explained carefully. ‘As in Britain, they speak for the people.’
‘They do not speak for the northern people,’ Aziz snapped.
Pentecost shrugged and Aziz went on with a grin. ‘Hejri men do not need elections,’ he said. ‘A leader not strong enough to hold his place at the head of his tribe would be replaced by one who was.’
