by John Harris
‘Oh, my God,’ Lack said.
‘…and in Khalit foreign agents are using the British military presence to destroy an established régime.’ There was a long pause and Pentecost found he was holding his breath. ‘If called upon, we cannot let our old friends down. We have been looking into the matter in the light of the Sultan’s claim and a responsible Minister will be sent out at once to see what can be done.’
There was a long silence and Beebe saw Pentecost draw a quick breath. Despite the cautious words of diplomacy, they had it at last. They were staying.
‘Talks are continuing with Khaliti Ministers’ – the speaker was winding up now and, though there was more to come, they were no longer interested – ‘and a senior British Minister will be flying out immediately to meet the men on the spot to see how the British presence in Khalit can be made acceptable to the Khaliti people until the present situation changes…’
They heard him out, not speaking, their faces grave, then, as Chestnut switched off, Lack lit a cigarette, flinging the match away furiously.
‘That,’ Pentecost said in a flat, calm voice, ‘appears to be that.’
Beebe had never been a soldier but he felt he had sufficient experience of roughing it to know what men were made of. He had carried his trade to Alaska and the wilds of Canada, to the Amazon and India and Indo-China, all the corners of the world where American trade and American know-how had found its way, and he suddenly felt desperately sorry for these three young men.
‘What’ll you do?’ he asked. ‘If you stay, I mean.’
Pentecost lifted his head and as his eyes met the American’s he gave him a small private smile that seemed to be full of quiet personal jest. ‘Do, Mr Beebe?’ he said. ‘We shall exercise our calling. We shall fight to the death.’
As he left, Beebe stared after him, suspecting sarcasm. No one said anything and he turned to Lack, wondering if he’d heard correctly. ‘He doesn’t mean that, does he?’
Lack stared at the door and then at Beebe so that the American realised that Pentecost was as much an enigma to the others as he was to him.
‘God knows,’ Lack said. ‘Probably.’
Four
1
No matter how the situation had been phrased, no matter how much concern was caused in Westminster by the circumstances which had been forced on them, nobody was deluded. The British were staying. And, as if it were a warning, the first explosion of anger occurred in Khaswe within twenty-four hours of the Prime Minister’s speech.
During the day someone stole the Union Jack from the flag-pole outside the British Information Centre and hoisted a dead cat in its place. No one saw it happen – or so they claimed – and the police swore that they knew nothing, and during the evening the window collapsed as a brick shattered the glass. The crowd tore the interior to shreds and within ten minutes the market was on fire and the place was given up to murder, robbery and arson. Half a dozen British-owned cars were burning in the streets, a British soldier had been shot in the back on the Wad, and three policemen, attempting to disperse a mob near the Ministry of Justice, had been seriously beaten up.
As the Saladin armoured vehicles appeared on the streets and the narrow alleys began to echo to the wail of police sirens, in the bizarre palace on the headland the Sultan nervously discussed the situation with Rasaul Pasha.
‘The Defence Force has brought in half a dozen youths, sir,’ Rasaul was saying.
‘Children,’ the Sultan growled. ‘It’s not the boys and girls from the university I want. It’s the agitators. The agents. The people who put the ideas into their heads. The Havrists, the Istiqlal Brotherhood.’
Rasaul sighed. ‘Sir, these men rarely find their way into the streets. They’re zealots, not seedy little terrorists.’
The Sultan irritatedly tapped a report on his desk. ‘This is the fifteenth incident today,’ he said.
Rasaul shrugged. ‘It’s the treaty, sir,’ he said. ‘The people aren’t happy about it. We’re walking a tightrope.’
The Sultan stared through the window, hearing the shifting noises of the city beyond the Palace gardens. Out there, down the narrow, odorous alleys of the old city, scattered with vegetable refuse and the droppings of donkeys and redolent with the smell of charcoal and mint tea, men had started to plot against him, he knew. He turned slowly, his shoes scraping on the bright Moroccan tile-work that covered the floor.
‘Of course we’re walking a tightrope,’ he said sharply. ‘But what do you suggest? That I go aboard my yacht and head for the South of France like Farouk and a few more and live off my savings dallying with women?’
Rasaul said nothing. Privately he thought it was a good idea. The Sultan was noted for his virility and his interest in young women.
‘I’m well aware that there are those in Khalit who’re anxious to see me go,’ Tafas went on. ‘But I don’t intend to go. They’ll only throw in their lot with Cairo, which wants merely to carry on the war with the Jews. I don’t believe in that. I believe in peace!’
Rasaul knew perfectly well that the last thing the Sultan was concerned with was Middle East peace. He was concerned with his own safety and his own revenues, and Rasaul almost had it in him to feel sorry for the British who found themselves in such an unenviable position. If they had gone back on the treaty Tafas was invoking they would have been the object of scorn and derision from their enemies. By standing by it, they were allowing other enemies to raise a storm of fury.
‘There are other factors, sir,’ he said patiently. ‘Our liabilities are in the region of three hundred and fifty million dollars and our assets can’t be realised in the open market. There’s been pressure throughout the whole area to withdraw funds. The banks are uncertain and people are moving their accounts – even the bordel women from the Khaliba area. And when they think of leaving we should look to our affairs.’
Tafas frowned. Alongside his income from olives, fruit, almonds, saffron, mint and minerals, he drew a discreet revenue from hemp and prostitution. ‘I expect the evacuation of British troops to be halted,’ he growled stubbornly.
Rasaul decided he was completely out of touch. Sultans, khalifs and kings were no longer currency under the onrush of new ideas.
‘It will be, sir,’ he pointed out ‘In Khaswe. But the British Government’s offer of support will never include the frontier. We have a time bomb under us just waiting to be lit.’
Tafas frowned and Rasaul went on. He was no more honest than any other of the Sultan’s Ministers and had long since decided it might be a good idea to develop some illness which would necessitate going to his country estate until he could see which way the wind was blowing. When the British left – as they would have to eventually – and the Sultan had disappeared, the people who would inevitably take over would be bound to start looking round for someone with experience to do their work for them, and, having seen his plans wrecked, he was trying to salvage what he could. For once the British Government’s interests ran parallel with his own.
‘The frontier has only remained quiet for so long,’ he pointed out, ‘because the northern tribes have been expecting that we shall have to give up the Toweida Plain. If the British stay, we shall be in trouble on two fronts – here in Khaswe and in the north. The British are prepared to look after us only as far as a line running east and west through Dhafran to Umrah and Aba el Zereibat.’
The Sultan jerked his hand irritatedly. ‘We can hold the frontier with ease,’ he was saying. ‘Khowiba. Umrah. Hahdhdhah. Afarja. Aba el Zereibat. All of them. As for the tribes holding the Dharwa passes – the Shukri, the Khadari, the Jezowi, and the Muleimat – we’ll worry about them when they make a move. At the moment they’re still taking my subsidies.’
‘And what about the evacuation of Hahdhdhah, Umrah and Zereibat?’ Rasaul asked. ‘These were ordered on your instructions and the instructions still stand. Only you can cancel them.’
Tafas gave him a sharp look and Rasaul knew he was still hesitat
ing to do anything definite about invoking the treaty in case it should be the final step which would lose him the north. The day’s violence had shaken him and he was wavering again.
‘Does General Cozzens feel he has the situation here under control?’ Tafas asked.
‘I’m seeing him shortly,’ Rasaul said. ‘He’s giving a small party.’
‘Will the Bishop of Harwick be there?’
‘I hear so, sir.’
‘We should declare him and his friends persona non grata.’
Rasaul’s expression didn’t change. ‘It would be difficult,’ he said coldly. ‘The British set great store by their clericals. A newspaperman or two, perhaps. Even a politician. But not a bishop. He’s supposed to be a man of peace.’
‘He’s stirred up more trouble in his time than a Holy Man declaring a jehad. Perhaps we might arrange for a bomb to be thrown through his window. We could always blame the National Front.’ For a moment the Sultan looked hopeful then he sighed. ‘What a pity I’m only joking, Rasaul,’ he said. ‘I think I’d better ask General Cozzens’ advice, after all.’
Rasaul’s mouth twisted. He’ll never remember, he thought. He never did. The Sultan’s memory was as legendary as his havering.
‘What about the press, sir?’ he asked.
‘What about them?’
‘They are asking for an interview.’
Tafas’ shoulders hunched doggedly. ‘I’ll talk to them later,’ he said. ‘For the moment, I expect they know how to look after themselves.’
2
He was right, and at that moment they were crowded into one of the private bars of the Intercontinental Hotel, waiting for General Cozzens to wind up the little talk that the switch of policy at the Palace had made necessary.
They had been badgering his staff for some time now, demanding to know what was happening, and his conference was an attempt to explain. He wasn’t succeeding very well because it was impossible to explain something he didn’t yet know himself, and the Khaliti Command, unable to pin the Sultan down to anything, was lying low and offering neither help nor press conferences. The press had turned up en masse, the foreigners making sour cracks at the British, all a little edgy and excited because they knew that trouble was brewing, and angry because that morning they’d been in the way of the troops and been rounded up on Cozzens’ orders and marched to safety. Some of them were even feeling spiteful and were after Cozzens’ blood.
There were men – and women – representing the sharp American magazines that so caught the urgent spirit of the States, crisp, bloody-minded, sparing with words but cramming everything into blunt square paragraphs that pulled no punches when it came to criticism. There were the French writers and the slick photographers of Paris-Match determined to get a few of the gory pictures that they put across so well. And all the crowd from London – the Express, the Telegraph and The Times, and all the agency boys, to say nothing of the television teams. The situation was made for disaster and they were anxious to show a few pictures of smoking motor cars and motionless figures sprawled across the pavement for the delectation of the British public with their before-dinner gins.
Alec Gloag regarded them with a jaundiced eye. He’d more than once posed a small boy with a petrol bomb when it wasn’t possible to get close to the in-fighting, more than once helped to stir up a crowd for his own purposes and to titillate his public, and could always write a commentary to go with it that was nicely tinged with sarcasm. There was no one better at it than he was.
He had already talked to the Bishop of Harwick and his companion in indignation, Forester Hobbins, professional protesters both of them, always concerned with someone else’s agony at the other side of the world when it always seemed to Gloag that there were plenty of agonies in England that could use their names.
‘Britain has no right to keep its troops in this part of the world,’ the Bishop had said in the interview Gloag had taped.
‘These people are entitled to work out their own salvation without any help from us.’ Hobbins’ attitude had been even more unequivocal. ‘I wouldn’t lift a finger to save a single British soldier. They have no right to be here and they should protest.’
Gloag had listened to them sourly. A fat lot of good it was asking a British soldier to protest, he thought. Soldiers didn’t have that right and most of them, he noticed, curiously didn’t have much time for the Hobbinses of this world, who, while coming to watch with triumph their departure from the squalid little settlements they had protected with their flesh and blood, didn’t hesitate to demand VIP treatment.
Gloag could still remember how the Bishop had refused to walk a hundred yards from the aeroplane that had brought him to Khalit, to the ferry that would carry him across the harbour, and could still recall the bitter expression on the face of the major who had had to give up his car for him. Privately Gloag thought it was because the Bishop, since the attempt on the life of the Pope, had realised that even churchmen were no longer immune to murder, and suspected there might be assassins hidden in the crowd.
Despite the fact that he’d photographed thousands of demonstrations and thousands of protesters, amateur and professional, Gloag had little admiration for them. It was no longer a brave thing to protest. Once, a man who had the courage to stand up and shout against authority had been on his own and likely to be rushed off to prison. Nowadays, protesting had become a national sport and there were so many of them at it, it no longer required much courage. Gloag was disillusioned even with his own brand of disillusionment.
Cozzens’ little lecture was coming to an end now. It hadn’t achieved much. It was only stating what the Prime Minister had already stated – that the Government had been forced by Sultan Tafas into second thoughts about Khalit – and the newspapermen were at him now, crucifying him as they hurled questions at him.
‘If British troops stay here in Khalit,’ he was being asked by a big Frenchman who spoke perfect English, ‘by what right would that be?’
‘By right of the treaty signed originally in 1860—’
‘Over a century ago!’ someone shouted.
‘—recreated after the First World War’ – Cozzens struggled on to the end – ‘and recreated again in 1940. That is the right.’
‘What about the Khaliti who might have your men pushing them around?’
‘What about my men who are going to have to endure a bit of pushing round themselves?’ Cozzens snapped back with a show of spirit that Gloag privately applauded.
He got to his feet while the journalists about him were drawing their breath for the next attack.
‘What about the outposts at Khowiba, Umrah, Hahdhdhah, Aba el Zereibat and Afarja?’ he asked. ‘They are, I understand, surrounded by Hejri and Deleimi warriors who consider they are on their soil.’
The bastard knew his stuff, Cozzens thought bitterly. ‘What is the question?’ he asked aloud.
‘I understand they contain British troops.’
‘Not British troops. Khaliti troops.’
‘Officered by men from the British Army. What about them?’
Cozzens drew a deep breath. ‘My information is still that all British officers are to be returned to the coast,’ he said. ‘The outposts will be brought in first. That order has never been rescinded.’
‘And the Khaliti troops?’
‘According to my information, they are to be brought in also. Umrah, Hahdhdhah and Zereibat are being closed down to shorten the Sultan’s lines. Later, I understand, they will be reopened.’
‘That’ll be the day,’ someone at the back said.
‘What’s your view, sir?’ Gloag persisted.
Cozzens frowned. ‘I’m not in a position to offer a view,’ he said. ‘The frontier’s the Sultan’s problem. I can give no opinion on something I know nothing about.’ And something I’m never likely to learn about either, he thought bitterly. The Sultan had never been in the habit of telling him much even if he remembered. ‘I command in Khaswe. The Kha
liti army, at present commanded by Brigadier Wintle, at Dhafran, controls the frontiers.’
‘And if the Hejri decided not to trust the Sultan?’
Cozzens sighed, hating the job he had to do. ‘The officers in command at Hahdhdhah, Umrah and Aba el Zereibat,’ he said, ‘have already received their instructions. I have received no orders contrary to those I already hold, and have received no signal that I am likely to receive such orders. The evacuation south of the northern garrisons will therefore, I imagine, continue as originally planned.’
Gloag almost pitied Cozzens. He was playing him like a fish on a line. ‘My information,’ he went on, ‘is that Aziz el Beidawi himself is up near Hahdhdhah with most of his men.’
‘If that’s your information, I’d like to know where you got it,’ Cozzens snapped back. Sometimes the bloody newspaper and television people had more money to spend on information than the army itself! ‘In any case,’ he ended, ‘I have every confidence in the officer in command.’
Gloag ignored his burst of anger. He had been about to point out that confidence didn’t count for much when there were a hundred of the enemy to every one of you, but he suddenly lost patience and sat down. In his cynical way, he could keep it up for hours if necessary, but he was growing bored. He glanced across at his cameraman who held up a thumb to indicate that he not only had General Cozzens answering questions but he also had Alec Gloag asking them, which, to viewers in England, was probably much more important. While they had never heard of General Cozzens. and couldn’t care less what sort of show he put up, the performance of Alec Gloag was a matter of great moment to the elderly ladies who followed his programme in Bath, Cheltenham and Tunbridge Wells.
As another of the Americans got to his feet with the scrape of a chair, Gloag wondered how best to set about his programme. He had plenty of shots of burning cars and shattered shop fronts in Khaswe, and some good footage of youngsters running from the police. He had the Bishop of Harwick with the breeze blowing his thinning hair about his eyes and Hobbins holding forth on the moral courage that was so lacking in the Government It was still incomplete, though. Having got the British public aware of the garrison at Hahdhdhah, they’d be watching for what happened to them – as if they were watching Watford in a cup-tie against Chelsea – asking themselves if the lost cause was going to come off, and he found himself wondering if he could somehow get permission to go up to Hahdhdhah before it was too late and, if so, if he could get a promise from Aziz el Beidawi, in return for some footage of film, of a safe passage back. He wondered, in fact, what Aziz was thinking about it all, and what the situation was at that moment at Hahdhdhah. He’d heard they were still playing football with the natives.
