At first Hugo thought it was a mirage. Then, as it came closer, he saw it was a boat, and heard the beat of its engine.
‘Better get our heads down,’ said Hugo. They seem to be searching the shore line.’
The boat crept closer. It was a big diesel-powered craft towing a smaller one. Someone was standing up in the bows, raking the shore with a pair of field-glasses.
‘Good God!’ said Hugo. ‘It’s Charlie!’ He jumped to his feet and ran down to the water’s edge. As the boat swung towards them they saw that it was, indeed, Charlie Wandyke.
‘We picked up your boat on the way down last night,’ said Charlie. ‘In fact, we nearly ran it down. I knew it was yours, you’d left a lot of your stuff in it. And I was fairly certain you were holed up somewhere on shore, so when I’d dumped my folk on the other side, I bribed the crew with a bottle of Scotch to come back and look for you.’
The crew of two grinned. Hugo said, ‘I don’t know how to thank you.’
‘No thanks needed. Those Hammuz tribesmen are bad medicine in dry land, but they haven’t got a navy yet. The boy doesn’t look in very good nick. We ought to get him to a doctor.’
‘And fast,’ said Tammy.
They were heading out for the Ducks. Hussein was wrapped in blankets on the floor of the boat. He was muttering in a feverish doze and Tammy was squatting beside him. They had strapped his broken arm across his body, and she was holding him to prevent him turning on to it as the boat rolled.
‘We’ll put the islands between us and the mainland, and run straight down to Oman. The Scouts have got a headquarters camp at Bulair, on the coast. There’ll be a doctor there.’
‘Have you any idea what’s going on?’
‘Not a clue. There were one or two fires in Mohara when we went past last night, but they were out when we came back this morning. I guess it was looting and the police got it back under control.’
‘If that’s right,’ said Hugo, ‘and I think it must be, it means that we’re holding the town and they’re holding the Palace. If you could land me, somewhere on the coast, south of the town, I could probably get in without a lot of difficulty.’
‘You’ve been lucky once,’ said Charlie. ‘Why take chances?’
‘You don’t seem to realise,’ said Hugo, ‘that I’ve got a job to do. I’ve made a bloody mess of it so far, but that doesn’t mean I’ve got to stop trying.’
‘Up to you. Speaking personally, I’d give them two or three days to cut each other’s throats, and get it out of their systems. But then I’m just a coward. Could you manage something to eat?’
‘I ought to be hungry,’ said Hugo. ‘But somehow I’m not. I think it was all those dates. I could manage a drink of something.’
‘Hot coffee?’
‘Oh boy!’ said Tammy. ‘Did I hear someone say coffee?’
It was close to midnight. They had put Hussein and Tammy ashore at Bulair, and made their way back, along the coast. After a number of anxious conferences with his crew Charlie had dropped anchor some way out from the shore.
‘We can’t take her in much closer,’ he said. ‘They tell me the bottom shelves very gradually here. You could swim and paddle ashore quite easily. Or if you want to save yourself from a ducking, take your own boat. Put the sail up and the night breeze will take you in.’
‘For a non-sailor,’ said Hugo, ‘you seem to know a good deal about this sort of thing.’
‘I’ve moved around a good deal. It’s the job. You pick things up. Talking of which, have you got a gun?’
‘I had one, but I left it behind in the flat. It didn’t seem appropriate to take it on a picnic.’
‘That’s the thing about guns. You only need them when you think you aren’t going to. I’d better lend you this one. Look after it, won’t you. I’ve had it a long time.’
It was a Luger. Hugo handled it lovingly before slipping it inside his shirt.
‘Eight shots in the clip,’ said Charlie, ‘and one up the spout, but the safety catch is on. Remember to push it off before you try to kill anyone with it.’
There’s nothing you can tell me about a Luger,’ said Hugo. ‘It’s my favourite weapon. I can’t tell you how many foreigners I’ve finished off with one.’
Charlie helped him to hoist the small sail on his boat and pushed him off in the direction of the shore. Hugo caught a last glimpse of the redoubtable metallurgist, outlined against the night sky, upright in the stern of the dhow. Then the wind filled the sail, the boat heeled over, and he was carried briskly towards the shore.
The boat grounded and Hugo stepped over the side into two feet of water. Charlie had said, ‘Don’t try to anchor the boat. Lower the sail and let it go. When the tide sets it’ll float out, and I’ll probably be able to pick it up again. If I can’t, it doesn’t matter.’
As Hugo was plodding up the beach the sense of familiarity became stronger. A solitary rock, jutting out of the sea on his right, the line of the hummocks which marked the inland limit of the beach. He realised that he had landed, by chance, at the exact spot on which he had spent a peaceful day sun bathing. Nine days ago. It seemed a lot longer than that.
It was a stroke of luck, because now that he knew where he was he could set a fairly accurate course. He was planning to move directly inland until he could see the southernmost outskirts of Mohara, then to make his way round, keeping on the fringe of the town, until he struck the police fort. If the resistance was being organised, that would be the heart of it.
It was only when he started to walk that he realised how tired he was. Apart from a short doze that morning, he had had no sleep for nearly forty-eight hours. Nor had they been restful hours. Oddly, it was the least dramatic episodes which came back to him most vividly. Not the horrors of the Palace, but Tammy brushing the flies off Hussein’s face, and the dog sniffing doubtfully at the Brekkibrix, and Hussein saying, ‘The smell will not be good.’ At this point he fell into a hole in the sand and realised that he had been walking for some time in his sleep.
He pulled himself together, and tried to get his bearings. The clouds, which had been hiding the moon and the stars, were shredding away and there was no problem about direction. The difficulty was distance. He had no idea how far he had come.
He looked at his watch. He had been walking, or stumbling, for half an hour, and in that loose sand could not have covered much more than a mile. In normal times he should, by now, have had guidance from the lights of Mohara, but he imagined that it had become a city of the dead, with windows tightly shuttered and lights burning low.
He plodded on. Fatigue, and the intermittent appearances of the moon from behind the clouds, were combining to make his eyes play tricks. At one moment he was in the middle of a wide empty stretch of desert. At the next, a long row of buildings had sprung up, away to his right. As he turned his head, the buildings slid away too.
He said, ‘Bloody mirage. I shall be seeing visions soon. The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea all which it inherit shall dissolve, and like this insubstantial pageant, faded—’
On the word ‘faded’ he tripped over a wire, a bell started ringing in the distance, and a blaze of white light enveloped him.
The shock cleared his head. He realised that he was on the edge of the airfield, and that a truck was coming towards him, fast. There was no point in running. He was held by the lights, transfixed in that wide open space.
He recognised the police uniforms as the men tumbled out of the truck and ran towards him. The first to arrive was Sergeant Youssuf. The Sergeant grinned, and said, ‘Good to see you, Mr. Greest. We’ve been watching you for ten minutes, wondering who you were.’
‘I’m Father Christmas,’ said Hugo. ‘I lost my reindeers, that’s why I had to walk. I was just planning to thumb a lift from the Queen of the Fairies when you came along.’
Sergeant Youssuf looked at him blankly, and then said ‘Jump in.’ They bowled back, their wheels humming along the tarmac air-strip. All the lights had gone out again, as suddenly as they had come on.
In the airport control room he found Martin Cowcroft and with him, somewhat to his surprise, Sayyed Nawaf.
Cowcroft said, ‘You look as if you’ve had a rough passage. We were very glad to hear you’d brought Prince Hussein back with you. We’re going to need that young man.’
‘How do you know?’
‘We’ve got a line through to Bulair. That’s why we weren’t surprised to see you. In fact there’s a patrol out looking for you now.’
‘If you’re in touch with Oman, I suppose the Scouts could help you.’
‘They could. And if things had got bad enough, I expect they would, orders or no orders. But we don’t need them.’
‘Then the rebels are beaten?’
‘They’re not finished yet. But they’re on the run. The real hero was Sayyed Nawaf.’
Nawaf smiled politely, and said, ‘It was nothing. I was carrying out my master’s orders. My late master’s, I should say.’
‘He went straight off to Bahrain,’ said Cowcroft, ‘pulled every string in creation, and got that first plane-load of arms diverted straight through to here. It had hardly touched down before he had it on its way again. He came back with it. At the first sign of trouble we took control of the airport, and we got the arms unloaded and distributed in time to give those bastards a bloody nose. They never got any lodgement in the town. The few who did get in, didn’t leave again. Today they’ve been sulking round outside and we’ve been hammering them with our mortars. Today we’re going out to mop them up. The only real centre of resistance is the Palace. We shall have to blast them out of that somehow. It may be a bit expensive, but once we’ve got the Palace back, the war’s over.’
‘I can show you a cheap way in,’ said Hugo. ‘If you’re not fussy about smells.’
‘What do you mean?’
Hugo explained what he meant. Cowcroft said, ‘It sounds all right. Can you explain how we find the place? Can we get there without being spotted?’
There’s no need for me to explain it, because I’m coming with you. And since I managed to get out with a girl and a one-armed boy, I suppose a few able-bodied men ought to be able to get in again.’
Cowcroft considered the matter. He said, ‘Just before sun-up will be best. We don’t want to start the fight until it’s light. Night fighting’s too messy, particularly with inexperienced troops. We’ll go in at half-past five. I’ll lay on an opening bombardment for six o’clock. We’ll make it as noisy as possible. All the mortars and small arms, and they’ve got one pack-howitzer they’re just dying to use. I hope they know how to handle it.’
Hugo looked at his watch. It was half-past one. He said, ‘Wake me at four o’clock.’
‘I believe there’s a camp bed in the manager’s office.’
‘I don’t need a bed,’ said Hugo. ‘Six foot of floor and a blanket will do nicely.’
The moment after he had shut his eyes someone was shaking him by the arm. It was Sergeant Youssuf, and he had a mug of coffee in one hand. He was still grinning. The prospect of fighting seemed to affect him that way.
‘Fifteen minutes, we start,’ he said.
Hugo gulped the coffee down somehow. His stomach felt most peculiar; but more from his odd diet of the last three days than from apprehension. In fact, as the three trucks, each with six policemen in them, rolled out of Mohara and up the coast road, his feelings were close to exhilaration. A light mist had crept inland from the saltings and had hidden the stars. The moon was down, and he could sense the approach of dawn.
‘And gentlemen in England now abed,’ said Hugo softly.
‘Wassat?’ said Cowcroft, who was driving the leading truck, with Hugo in the passenger seat beside him.
‘Nothing.’
‘We had patrols out during the night. They reported all clear as far as the Hammuz fork. In fact, they may have abandoned the Palace, and gone scuttling back into their hills.’
‘I hope not,’ said Hugo.
Cowcroft looked at him out of the corners of his eyes and said, ‘I hope not too. I want them where I can see them. Dr. Kassim particularly.’
‘You think he’s leading them now?’
‘He’s the only one with any guts. Alid’s a creep.’
They bowled on in silence for a time. They were past the side-road to Hammuz now, and the mist was thinning. Apart from the beat of the engines and the humming of their tyres on the wet tarmac the silence was uncanny.
‘There’s a house on the right somewhere here,’ said Hugo. ‘A big white one with red tiles and a wall round it. We could leave the trucks there and go on foot.’
‘I know the one you mean,’ said Cowcroft. ‘It belongs to Ahmed Tuli, the banker.’
‘Then the Tuli Bank is one I’m not patronising,’ said Hugo.
‘Not if he’s capable of leaving a dog tied up, to die of thirst.’
‘Arabs don’t think about animals the way we do,’ said Cowcroft. He made a signal, and the trucks behind closed up, and followed them down the track to the Tuli house.
‘Get them backed, ready to scarper if we have to,’ said Cowcroft. ‘We’ll leave a driver with each. The rest come with us. And get a move on.’
He looked up at the sky, which was now definitely whiter.
‘It’ll be all right,’ said Hugo. ‘We can keep out of sight of the Palace most of the way. We may have to crawl the last bit.’
The mist, which was still hanging round in the hollows, helped them. When Hugo lifted off the grating, Cowcroft crawled up beside him and peered down in horror.
‘Do you mean we’ve got to go down that?’
‘Right.’
‘But it’s a drain.’
‘I came up it, you can go down it.’
‘You might have warned me. I wouldn’t have worn this uniform.’
‘Roll your trousers up above your knees.’
‘You mean—?’
‘Above
your knees,’ said Hugo firmly.
It was easier, because Cowcroft had brought a torch, which they were able to use once they were safely inside the tunnel. The disadvantage was that the torch light showed up the small creatures of the abyss which Hugo had only imagined.
‘Christ!’ said Cowcroft. ‘How long does this go on? And stop that bloody noise.’