‘I’ve got an office next door to mine. I’d be happy for you to use it. The alternative would be to work from your own flat, but you might find this more convenient.’
‘It’s very kind of you,’ said Hugo. ‘I’d been wondering just how I was going to work. I think this would be a very convenient place.’
Safe, too. High walls, barbed wire and armed sentries had suddenly become important.
‘We’ve got good communications here. Anything important, we wireless it to the oil company in Bahrain on a private wavelength and they very kindly send it on for us. There’s a land line, too. But that’s apt to get blown down, or rooted up. Letters go by airmail. But as we’re not on a scheduled route that’s apt to be uncertain.’
It was a nice room. It had a table, and several chairs and an air-conditioner which worked a good deal better than the one in his bedroom. The table had been thoughtfully furnished with a clean blotter, a quantity of paper and a pen-set marked, ‘With the compliments of B.O.A.C.’ It occurred to Hugo, not for the first time, but now more forcibly than ever, that he had not the faintest idea of what his job was supposed to be.
As though reading his thoughts, Cowcroft said, ‘There’s one priority just at this moment.
Get those arms out here.
And instructors, if you can. But the arms are more important. These chaps live with rifles. It won’t take them long to learn about machine pistols and mortars.’
Hugo said, ‘It’s Thursday today, April 20th. If the boat’s up to schedule it’s loading the vehicles at Bari now. It’s due in Beirut on the 24th. Colonel Rex is out there now.’
‘He’s your partner?’
Hugo nearly said, ‘Yes’ and then reflected that the word had awkward connotations. He said, ‘He’s the man who’s helping with the buying and transport.’
‘In that case,’ said Cowcroft, ‘I suggest that your first message to him need only consist of one word. Dedigitate.’
Hugo went home to lunch, driving his own car and meeting no traffic blocks. The streets seemed almost deserted. The heat was formidable, but not over-powering. That would come later, in July and August, with the maximum humidity which made the Gulf, in high summer, one of the least tolerable places on God’s earth.
His cook had prepared a meal of stewed chicken, figs and rice which Hugo ate with little appetite. He then turned on the air-conditioner full-belt, until it sounded like a power boat at the climax of an exciting race, took off most of his clothes, pulled a sheet over himself, and slept surprisingly well.
When he woke up, it was dusk. Apart from a dry mouth and a faint after-taste of figs, he felt surprisingly fit. He remembered this phenomenon from his time with Professor Van der Hoetzen. As long as you could actually sleep in the afternoon you could defeat the hot weather. He got up, had a shower, the water coming out tepid from the cold tap, put on a clean shirt, and wondered how he was going to spend the evening.
At this point his door bell rang, and Hugo walked down the small front hall to open the door. In the few seconds which it took him to reach the door, a complete sequence recorded itself in his mind. The Tiger, alone in his apartment in Hawaii (Saigon, Hong Kong, Berlin, Ankara, Mayfair, Bangkok). A ring on the door bell. He goes to open it. The foot pushed into the door. The heavy character outside. This is a gun, see. Make a wrong move and you’re dead, see. So take it easy.
Hugo opened the door. Outside, looking cool, relaxed and happy, was Tammy.
‘Say you’re glad to see me,’ she said.
‘I’m glad to see you,’ said Hugo, took both her outstretched hands in his and, since she seemed to expect it, kissed her gravely, first on the right cheek, then on the left. Tammy growled and said, ‘That’s what you do to all your girls.’
‘It’s in my contract,” said Hugo. ‘At the beginning of the script I kiss them in a fatherly manner. At the end, once, warmly, not passionately, but more in the manner of a brother greeting his sister after a long absence.’
‘Boy, would that be worth waiting for. I’ve come to invite you to a party. A house-warming, sort of. We’ve taken over the next block.’
She led the way downstairs, along the pavement, and up a precisely similar flight of stars next door. The equivalent of what would have been Hugo’s front door stood hospitably open, and he could hear the sound of music. There were two men in the room. Bob Ringbolt switched off the record-player and said, ‘Good to see you, Hugo. Let me introduce you. Bill Birnie, otherwise known as the Bulldog.’ This was a man with an elastic face and the build of a weight-lifter, who grinned amiably. If he’d had a tail, Hugo felt sure he would have wagged it.
‘Let’s have a drink,’ said Ringbolt. ‘We can offer rye, on or off the rocks, gin and tonic, or brandy and ginger ale.’ Hugo said, ‘You’re better equipped than I am. In my flat the choice is orangeade or tea. I’ll have the rye, if I may.’
‘We’ve been here a week, now. And we’re beginning to find out the local form. There’s a character with one eye who has a store opposite the boat jetty. He’s called Moharram – that’s roughly what it sounds like. He’ll get you anything you want from slave girls to pink champagne.”
‘I must look him up,’ said Hugo. ‘Cheers!’
‘To our special relationship,’ said Tammy with an alley-cat grin, and sat down beside him on the sofa.
‘What do you make of the set-up here, Hugo,’ said Bob, ‘or haven’t you had time to size it up?’
‘It’s like a story out of the Arabian Nights,’ said Hugo. The wise and benevolent Ruler, his wicked brother who wants his throne, and nasty Uncle Abanazar, dropping poison into the brother’s ear.’
‘Abanazar? You mean Dr. Kassim.’
‘Is he really a doctor?’ said Tammy.
‘He’s a doctor of zoology of Beirut University and a professional killer.’
‘I must get to know him better,’ said Tammy. ‘I just adore killers.’
Bob said, ‘My guess is that he’s Sheik Hammuz’s boyfriend. I’d wager he’s a raving old queer. When Moharram was talking about him, he called him – I can’t give you the word in Arabic – it means, “half-and-half” and it’s about the most insulting thing you can say about a man.’
‘All the same,’ added Bob. That’s all they’re waiting for. To see who wins.’
You too, perhaps, thought Hugo.
More drinks were brought. He noticed that Birnie seemed to have disappeared. Tammy’s bare arm was pressed lightly against him. He could feel the warmth of it through the sleeve of his shirt. She was saying, ‘It’s a funny thing how people get ideas about each other. When I was a girl—’
‘What are you now?’ said Bob.
‘You can keep out of this. I was talking to Hugo. When I was a girl, I used to think all Englishmen wore stick-up collars and striped pants and talked like they’d got hot potatoes in their mouths. All right, that was silly. But English people are just as silly about us. My kid sister Toni’s at South-Western. An English friends of hers said, “I suppose you do nothing there but take drugs and join in campus riots.” Actually she’s reading theology.’
It was whilst he was enjoying his third drink that Birnie came back. He sat down on a chair in front of them, and joined in the conversation. He wasn’t naturally a conversationalist, and the effort was apparent.
Hugo dragged his eyes away from the attractive curve of Tammy’s neck, and took a quick look around.
Now Bob had disappeared. The bulk of Birnie was blocking his view on that side, and he hadn’t noticed him go.
A natural explanation occurred to him.
He said to Tammy, ‘If you’ll excuse me mentioning it, do you keep in this place what we should call a lavatory, and you, I understand, refer to as a john?’
‘Only low-class people call it that. And it’s through that door at the end of the passage. Birnie will show you.’
‘I can find it,’ said Hugo. He moved quickly enough to forestall Bill, and was in the passage before they could protest. There were two doors on the right. He opened the first one quietly and looked in.
The room was a bedroom. There was a packing-case at the foot of the bed, and on it was an apparatus in an odd-shaped container with dials and lights on the front. A month earlier he would not have recognised it, but his knowledge of army equipment had now been considerably enlarged. It was a No. 19 transmitter-receiver wireless set.
Bob was wearing a head-set and had his back to him.
Hugo closed the door as quietly as he had opened it.
Friday, being the Muslim Sunday, was an off day. Hugo woke late, chased away the lingering taste of rye whisky with a cup of coffee, cut himself a packet of sandwiches and put the rest of the milk and coffee into a Thermos flask. Then he got out the Humber, and drove along the water-front, heading south.
The road started as a metalled highway but deteriorated quickly into a rough but motorable track. About ten miles south of Mohara a concrete post stood sentinel on either side of the track. Hugo gathered, from the inscriptions on them, that they marked the frontier between Umran and Oman. There was nothing else. The formalities of frontier posts and customs had evidently not yet reached this remote corner of the globe.
A mile further on Hugo found what he wanted.
The track dipped towards the shore and below it there was a stretch of empty white sand. He left the car on the last piece of hard and walked down on to the beach. There he found a hummock against which he could rest his back, spread a big towel, took off his clothes, and oiled himself all over. Then he lay on his back, roasting gently in the moderate oven of the April sunshine.
Half an hour of this would be as much as his body could stand. Half an hour of relaxed thought was what he badly needed. The last days had been so busy that he had lived, mentally, from hand to mouth.
Could it really have been as little as ten days ago when he had stood beside Colonel Rex, in the freezing mist, in London Docks, watching the last of the big crates being opened up, inspected by the two duffel-coated government inspectors, nailed down, tagged, and swung into the hold of the
S.S. Lombardia?
It seemed a life-time ago, in a different world. The briefings with different departments of the Foreign Office. A visit to his dentist. The buying and packing of tropical kit and the despatch into the blue of two heavy trunks which he had a feeling he would never see again. The telephone call from Sam, announcing that he had been offered the lead in the first out-of-London tour of a successful West End thriller. Turning down the offer. A second visit to his dentist.
Then there had been the very curious visit, after dark, to Queen Anne’s Gate, when he had been admitted to one house and walked, by communicating doors, into the house next to it. There he had been received by a grey-haired, red-faced man with the look of a captain in the Royal Navy, who had given him a string of complicated instructions which had meant nothing to him at all.
He had never discovered the man’s name.
Hugo rolled over to expose more of his left-hand side to the sun.
Even though he had been in Umran for scarcely thirty-six hours, certain facts had become apparent to him.
The most important was that no one, in the Foreign Office or the other curious departments which he had visited, had any real idea of what was going on.
Cowcroft could have told them. Why hadn’t he? On the other hand, why should he? He was not employed by the British Government. He was, like Hugo, a servant of the Ruler.
‘All the same,’ said Hugo to a large white bird with a red beak and a knowing yellow eye which was perched on a flat stone near him, ‘I think they ought to know, don’t you?’
The bird winked at him, rose with a casual flip of his wings, and glided out to sea.
In the middle distance shimmering in the heat haze, he could see the line of the islands which were called the Ducks. The northern one, the Mother Duck, was certainly large enough to have some sort of gun-emplacement built on it and a heavy gun mounted. But would this be enough to block the mouth of the Gulf? Hugo doubted it.
Little though he knew of modern armaments, he did not believe that a gun, even a large gun, mounted on the Mother Duck could seriously inconvenience an oil tanker creeping down the coast of Iran, more than thirty miles away, and hidden, as now, in the haze. The only things which could effectively dominate that outlet were a battleship or a squadron of dive-bombers. A single aircraft carrier could do the job most economically. But the Ruler, wealthy though he now appeared to be, could hardly be in the market for an aircraft carrier.
He thought he would have a bathe.
The water was tepid, and he had to walk a long way out before it was up to his shoulders.
It was six o’clock and the sun was beginning to throw long shadows down the sand before Hugo re-inserted his salted and sun-reddened body into its clothes, made his way to his car and drove slowly back towards Mohara.
He was in the outskirts of the town when the police car came rocketing out of a side road, spotted him and jerked to a halt with a squeal of badly adjusted brakes.
Hugo recognised the Sergeant who had been with them on the previous day. He seemed to be excited about something.
‘Slowly,’ said Hugo. ‘Speak slowly.’
The palace. He gathered the word palace.
‘I am wanted at the Palace?’
‘Quickly,’ said the Sergeant.
Hugo drove along the northern road as fast as his Humber would go, which was not very fast. The police Land Rover kept up with him easily.
There was a road-block at the last turning before the Palace, but the Sergeant shouted something and the heavy pole was swung aside They sped on and turned into the gateway.
Cowcroft was standing in the inner entrance. He said, ‘Where the hell have you been?’
‘Bathing.’
‘When you go out, do you mind letting someone know where you are? I’ve had half the police force looking for you.’
‘I’m sorry. Has something happened?’
‘Yes,’ said Cowcroft. He turned on his heel and Hugo followed him across the courtyard. There was a raised verandah which flanked the main entrance to the Palace and something was lying on it, covered by a white sheet. For a bad moment, Hugo thought it might be the Ruler, but when the sheet was twitched aside he realised that it was a stranger. A bearded face looked up at him. The lips were drawn back in the grimace of sudden death. The middle of the body was black with blood.