The Doomed Oasis

by Hammond Innes

  I wondered whether she still possessed that album full of press-cuttings. I would like to have looked through it and also through the letters from her son, but I couldn’t face the thought of going back to the house. I returned the file to its place and wrote to Susan advising her to make the journey to Bahrain and see Erkhard. Nothing can be done, it appears, at this end, I told her. Erkhard seems to be the only man who has the authority to order the search to be resumed. Two days later the news of David’s death was in The Times, a rather guarded account it seemed to me. It was clearly based on a Company handout, but it did include a brief description by one of the RAF pilots who had flown the search.

  Flight-Lieutenant Hill described the truck as similar to those used by oil companies for seismological work, though no company markings showed on either bonnet or sides. It was halfway up the side of a big sand dune as though it had stalled or bogged down in an effort to surmount this obstacle. It was hardly surprising, he said, that he had flown several times over the area without seeing it; high winds - the local shamal - had piled the sand up on one side of it. He had only sighted the truck because the sun was low and it was casting a shadow.

  It was less a news story than a short article and most of it was about Colonel Whitaker - that strange, half-Arab figure, so prominent in the search for Gulf oil during the past twenty years. It was ‘From Our Own Correspondent’, and I had a vague sense as I read it that there was something behind the piece, something that he was not in a position to reveal but that was nevertheless there for those who could read between the lines. Such phrases as: The fascination of this man who has maintained his theory about oil in the face of persistent failure; and Whether he is another Holmes or not, whether the oil company he served for so long will live to regret his departure, only time will tell. Finally there was this: It appears there is some foundation for the rumour that his son, though employed by GODCO, was on loan to him for some private purpose, presumably connected with prospecting for oil. The suggestion that David have been on loan to his father at the time of his disappearance did nothing to allay the uneasiness that had resulted from my visit to Mrs Thomas. And then the following morning Captain Griffiths walked into my office and I knew for certain that there was something more to the boy’s death than the Company had so far revealed.

  Griffiths had docked at first light and was still in uniform, having come straight from his ship. ‘I promised to deliver this personally into your hands.’ He put a fat envelope down on the desk in front of me. ‘Personally, you understand. He wouldn’t risk it through the post.’

  ‘Who’s it from?’ I asked. But the address was handwritten, the writing familiar. I knew it was from David before he answered my question. ‘Young Whitaker,’ he said and sat himself down in the chair opposite my desk.

  I was too startled to say anything for a moment, for the boy had been alive when he’d handed this to Griffiths. I picked it up, staring at the address as though that would give me some clue as to what was inside. ‘When did he give you this?’

  ‘Well now—’ He frowned. ‘It was Sharjah and we were anchored about a mile off—’

  ‘Yes, but what was the date?’

  ‘It’s the date I’m trying to remember, man.’ His little beard bristled. ‘Without my log I can’t be sure. But we left Basra on January twenty-third and we called at Kuwait, Bahrain, Doha, Abu Dhabi and Dubai before we anchored off Sharjah; it would be about the middle of the first week in February.’

  And David had been reported missing on February 28. Griffiths must have been one of the last people he saw before he went out into the desert - perhaps one of the last of his own race to see him alive. ‘Still the same offices, I see.’ Griffiths had pulled his pipe out and was busy filling it. He didn’t know the boy was dead.

  ‘The trouble is the clients don’t pay their bills,’ I said and slit the packet open. The old rogue had never settled my account, though he’d admitted that Whitaker had made him a present of fifty quid for getting the boy out to Arabia. Inside was a hand-written letter folded around another envelope that had GODCO. BAHRAIN, printed on the flap. Across the front of it he had typed: DAVID WHITAKER - TO BE OPENED ONLY IN THE EVENT OF MY DEATH.

  Those words - they came as a shock. I stared at them, wondering how he could possibly have known he was going to die. Or was it just a coincidence?

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Griffiths asked. ‘What’s he been up to?’

  I suppose he thought he was in some sort of legal trouble. ‘You haven’t seen The Times then?’

  ‘Of course not. I only got in this morning. Why?’

  ‘David Whitaker is dead,’ I said. And I told him about the truck they’d found abandoned and the description of it given in The Times. ‘You must have been one of the last people to see him alive.’

  ‘I see.’ His acceptance of it might have surprised me. except that my mind was still on that envelope. ‘It’s almost uncanny,’ I murmured.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Your coming here, with this.’ I turned the envelope round so that he could see what was typed across it. ‘He must have had some sort of a premonition—’

  Griffiths nodded his head slowly. ‘That explains it.’ And he added, ‘May his soul rest in peace, the poor devil.’ He said it quietly, with reverence, as though he were on the deck of his ship and consigning the boy’s body to the deep.

  ‘Explains what?’ I asked him.

  ‘The circumstances—’ He hesitated. ‘Very strange they were.’ And then he looked at me, his gaze very direct. ‘I don’t think you quite understand, Mr Grant. That boy risked his life on a filthy night with a shamal blowing to get that packet to me without anyone knowing.’

  ‘Risked his life?’ I was reading through the covering letter, only half listening to him.

  ‘Yes indeed, for he came off in one of those fisherman’s dugouts and just an Arab boy with him. It was a damned foolhardy thing to do. There was a wicked sea running. He needed a lawyer, he said, somebody he could trust.’

  ‘Why? Did he say why he needed a lawyer?’

  ‘No.’ Griffiths shook his head. ‘No, he didn’t say why, and it’s something I’ve been asking myself ever since I put that envelope away in the ship’s safe. What would a young geophysicist want with a lawyer out there in the middle of Arabia?’

  I finished reading the letter and then I put it down on the desk. Griffiths was lighting his pipe, his head cocked on one side. ‘Well, he’s dead now, you say.’ He was eyeing the unopened envelope the way a thrush eyes a worm.

  ‘Perhaps you’d tell me just what happened?’ I suggested.

  ‘Well—’ He hesitated, his eyes still on the envelope. ‘It was night, you see. We had finished unloading and the deck lights had been switched off about an hour when one of my Arab crew reports a dugout alongside and a white man in it called Thomas asking for me. Well, I couldn’t recall his name, how should I? I have so many passengers; they come and go along the coast - oilmen, Locust Control, Levy officers, Air Force personnel, Government officials. How should I remember his name, even if he was another Welshman? It was four years since he’d used it anyway. And then he came stumbling into my cabin and I recognized him at once of course.’

  I thought he was going to stop there, but after a moment’s silence he went on: ‘Only the previous voyage I’d had him on board as a passenger, from Bahrain down to Dubai. He’d changed a great deal in those six months; all the vitality of youth seemed to have been whipped out of him, his skin burned almost black by the sun and the hard, angular bones of the face showing through. But it was the eyes, man. They weren’t the eyes of a youngster any more; they were the eyes of a man who’d looked the world in the face and been badly frightened by it.’

  ‘Who was he afraid of?’ I was thinking of the father then.

  ‘I didn’t say he was afraid of anybody.’

  ‘Did he talk to you at all - about himself?’

  ‘Oh yes, indeed. He was talking all the time. To be
honest, Mr Grant, I thought he might be going round the bend. Some of them do that you know … the heat and the sand, and it’s lonely work—’

  ‘Yes, but what did he say?’

  ‘Nothing very much. Nothing that I can remember, that is. He was talking very fast, you see, the words tumbling over themselves - about his job and where he’d been.’

  ‘And where had he been? Had he been to Saraifa?’

  But Griffiths shook his head. ‘I can’t remember,’ he said. ‘I don’t think he mentioned Saraifa. It was talk for the sake of talking, you know - for the sake of hearing the sound of his own voice and having somebody listen to it. He’d been in some wild places, I think, and mostly on his own, with nobody with him but Arabs.’

  I asked about the packet then. ‘Did he talk about that at all?’

  ‘No. He sat at my desk and wrote that covering letter. And when he’d finished it, he borrowed an envelope from me, sealed the whole thing up and asked me to put it in my safe and deliver it to you personally the moment I docked.’

  ‘Didn’t you ask him why it was so urgent?’

  ‘Of course I did. I was damned curious about the whole thing. But his manner was so odd—’

  ‘He didn’t say anything about it being political dynamite then?’

  ‘Political dynamite?’ Griffiths’s bushy eyebrows lifted. ‘No, he didn’t say anything like that.’ A wary look had come into his eyes. ‘Is that what he says in that letter?’

  I nodded. ‘Where’s Colonel Whitaker now? Can you tell me that?’

  But he didn’t know for certain. ‘Probably in Saraifa,’ he said. ‘Why?’ His tone was suddenly cautious as though he were a witness under cross-examination, and since I had no intention of telling him the reason for my interest in Whitaker, I asked him about the previous voyage when he’d had David on board as a passenger. ‘Was he going to join his father, do you know?’

  But he couldn’t even tell me that. ‘All he said was that he was going down into the Rub al Khali.’ He took out his watch and glanced at it. ‘It was a hell of a time to be going down into the Empty Quarter,’ he added as though glad to escape into generalities. ‘That time of the year the sand is hot enough to burn the tyres off a truck and the soles off your boots.’

  ‘It was summer?’

  He nodded. ‘Early July it would have been.’

  And that was the month I’d received the shipping agent’s account. ‘Did you have a seismological truck on board?’

  ‘Yes.’ He stared at me curiously, surprised that I should know about it. ‘It was deck cargo and we shipped it down to Muscat. I remember that because we had a devil of a job getting it ashore; had to lash four of the local boats together and bridge them with planks.’

  ‘You don’t think it could be the same truck - the one that was found abandoned?’

  But of course he couldn’t tell me that.

  ‘Did you know he was on loan to his father? Did he say anything about that?’

  He shook his head and got to his feet.

  ‘Did he talk about his father at all?’

  ‘No, he didn’t mention him.’ He said it flatly as though to discourage any further questions. ‘I must be going now, Mr Grant. Just docked - a lot of things to see to, you know.’

  I was reluctant to let him go. ‘One more question, Captain Griffiths.’ I was standing facing him then. ‘You said once that you heard all the gossip out there. Have you heard any rumours about Saraifa?’

  ‘Rumours?’

  That Colonel Whitaker is prospecting for oil there.’

  He started to say something, but then he seemed to think better of it and shook his head. ‘A man like that, you never know what’s true and what isn’t. And Saraifa is a long way from the coast. A trouble spot, too.’ He glanced uneasily at his watch again.

  I read him The Times Correspondent’s report, the paragraph about David being on loan to his father. But all he said was, The Whitaker Theory. It crops up whenever anybody writes about that man.’ And then he was moving towards the door. ‘Well, I’ve done what I promised, and that’s that.’ He held out his hand. ‘Sad about David Whitaker, very sad. Good boy - lots of character.’ He shook my hand briefly, cast a quick glance at the envelope still lying unopened on my desk and then went to the door. His last words to me as I saw him out were: ‘It’s a tricky business - oil. Lot of money involved; politics, too. And if he was operating anywhere near the Hadd-Saraifa border … Well, you’d understand if you’d ever been out there.’ He said it in a fatherly way as though he were giving me some sound advice.

  I was reluctant to let him go. That little Welsh sea captain was stuffed full of all the gossip of the Gulf if I could only have wrung it out of him. But I don’t think he wanted to talk and anyway I was anxious to find out what that envelope contained. The covering letter had given me no real indication.

  You helped me once long ago. Now I’m asking you to help me again. He mentioned the envelope then and asked me to put it in a safe place and only open it in the event of his death. You ‘re the only man I feel I can trust with a thing like this. And he added, I should warn you that it’s political dynamite, and if anybody knew it was in your possession it might lead to trouble. He concluded with apologies for bothering me with his affairs, and then these words: Thank you again for helping me to a life that has suited me and that I have enjoyed. It was signed: Yours gratefully - David. I read it through again standing at my desk, and there was no escaping the significance of those final words. For some reason he had believed he was going to die. Had he been ill, suffering from some terrible disease? But that didn’t fit Griffiths’s description of him. Nervous, wrought up, even frightened - yes; but not ill. And why the secrecy anyway?

  I picked up the envelope and slit it open. Inside was a typewritten letter, his Will, and two envelopes - one addressed to Sir Philip Gorde at the London Office of GODCO, the other marked: LOCATION AND SKETCH MAP. Location of what? But it wasn’t difficult to guess, for what else but the discovery of oil could be described as political dynamite in the deserts of Arabia?

  The letter didn’t say so in so many words, but it made it pretty clear. And because it gives some indication of his frame of mind - and also because it formed the basis of my subsequent actions - I give it here in full. It was dated December 29 of the previous year and above the date he had typed - Somewhere in the Sheikhdom of Saraifa: Dear Mr Grant,

  The time has come to put my affairs into the hands of somebody I know and can trust. I am working here on an old survey. It was carried out a long time ago and the man who did it is dead now. If my own results confirm his report - and I shall know very shortly - I shall try and catch Captain Griffiths at Sharjah when the Emerald Isle stops there about the end of next month. I cannot explain to you why it is necessary. All I can say is that this is a forbidden zone and that I am working against time and without authority. Everything is against me - almost like it was when I came to you last. I’ve always been a bit of a rebel at heart. But outside of the pack, you’re on your own. And whatever happens to me, I’m determined that Saraifa shall have the benefit of my efforts. The oasis fights a losing battle with the desert. Without money it is doomed. And I spent six of the happiest months of my life there.

  When you read this I shall be dead. Please then take the following action: Contact Sir Philip Gorde. who is on the board of directors of GODCO, and give him the envelope I have addressed to him. It contains a document which is correctly-phrased and is a copy of other concession agreements. It will also contain my survey report, but without the locations. The locations will be contained in a separate envelope, together with additional copies of my survey report. This envelope is only to be handed over after Sir Philip Gorde has signed the concession agreement and legally bound the Company, to your satisfaction, to drill four test wells at the locations indicated. (The four had been written in ink, presumably later.) In the event that Sir Philip Gorde refuses to sign, then you will please take whatever action you think
best in the interests of Saraifa. Khalid, the Sheikh’s son, knows what I am doing and you will find he fully understands what is at stake so far as the oasis is concerned. It is essential that somehow you get the concession taken up. Saraifa needs oil desperately and if you succeed you will not find Khalid lacking in appreciation, or Sheikh Makhmud for that matter. You may, of course, make what use you can of the circumstances of my death, my parentage and my past to achieve publicity and so attract the interest of other oil companies.

  Enclosed also is my Will. I have appointed you my Executor and after making the necessary arrangements with my bank in Bahrain, you will please draw on the account for fees and expenses. Please understand that I would not again involve you in my affairs if I were not desperate. In the event of my death I have instructed my sister to contact you immediately.

  David Whitaker

  It was an unusual communication for a solicitor to receive, most unusual; and reading it through again I was struck by the fact that he made no mention of his father. In the whole of that document there wasn’t one reference to Colonel Whitaker. Everything is against me. There were other phrases, too. I was greatly disturbed about the whole thing, particularly as I knew that Whitaker was engaged in an operation that must run counter to the interests of the company he had served and which David was serving at the time of his death.