A Good Clean Fight

by Derek Robinson

  “Lead on,” he said. He smoothed out the symbols as if he had solved a piece of algebra, and stood up. “Captain Rinkart!” he shouted.

  The sergeant showed them the hole, low down on the tanker. It was about the size of a thumbnail and it was blocked by a metal plug. “Bullet,” the sergeant explained. “Ricochet, I expect, sir.”

  “It’s not leaking,” Major Jakowski said, and felt foolish because the remark sounded like a complaint. He thumped the side of the tanker with his fist.

  “Beg pardon sir, but it only leaks when it moves. When the truck moves, that is, sir. That’s how I spotted it. Driver brought it up here so we could issue the ration, I saw the dribble coming out. Truck stopped, dribble stopped.”

  Jakowski straightened up. “I don’t believe it,” he told Rinkart. “It’s a conspiracy.” That was meant as a joke, but nobody smiled.

  “Water is very heavy,” Rinkart said. “The truck hits a bump, it sloshes about, the tank distorts, the bullet doesn’t fill the hole, we lose another mugful.”

  “And nobody noticed.”

  “It’s the dust, sir,” the sergeant explained.

  “Get it repaired,” Jakowski said. He walked away. “Five pfennigs-worth of ammunition fired by some scrofulous Arab,” he said. “Makes you sick, doesn’t it?” He was beckoning to the other officers.

  “We still have the other two water-tankers, Major,” said Rinkart.

  “That’s like saying we still have two-thirds of a chance of finding the enemy.” Jakowski waited until Captain Lessing and the two lieutenants joined him and told them what had happened. “Right, assume you’re in command,” he said to Lessing. “Assume I trod on a mine like that poor bastard we just buried. What’s your plan?” Inexplicably, he yawned.

  “That depends on what your original orders were, sir. I mean, what is the object of the operation? Unless I know that—”

  “Yes, sure, agreed. Our immediate object is to get through the Jalo Gap, into the wide open spaces where there are no hiding places and where we stand an excellent chance of intercepting an incoming patrol of British raiders.”

  “In that case, sir, I’d send the water-tanker to Jalo Oasis and get it repaired and refilled.”

  “Which will take how long?”

  “A day. Day and a half.”

  Jakowski grunted. It was the right answer, but he still didn’t like it. “I see,” he said. “Meanwhile this force sits on its fat backside, eats, drinks and plays cards for a day and a half.”

  One of the lieutenants got in fast. “Not necessarily, sir. The force can move south and rendezvous with the water-tanker at a prearranged map reference.”

  “Do it,” Jakowski told Lessing. “Did you find those Luftwaffe compasses? Good. Make sure every truck has one. Now let’s get out of here, this place bores me.”

  As he walked to the head of the column, men everywhere were moving and shouting, truck doors were slamming, motors roaring, black exhaust smoke gusting. The action made him feel better. As long as the column kept moving he felt strong and confident. When it stopped, things went wrong. Men died. Water got lost. The trick was to keep moving.

  * * *

  Paul Schramm looked like a thoughtful, patient man and half of him was. He spent hours and days studying intelligence reports, and he had an endless appetite for detail. Lampard’s was not the only SAS patrol operating in the desert—far from it—and Schramm had files on them all; but he took a greedy interest in Lampard. Within twenty-four hours of the patrol’s return to Cairo, Schramm knew about it. In due course he knew about Mrs. Waterman and Mrs. Elizabeth Challis, too. He even knew that Lampard had probably not used a condom.

  “Interesting,” he said to Oberstleutnant Hoffmann. “Significant, even.”

  They were in the station commander’s office at Barce aerodrome.

  “I don’t see why,” Hoffmann said. “I’d sooner know the caliber of his guns than the size of his weapon.”

  “I’m interested in his character. Perhaps his lack of character.”

  “You think he’ll come back here, don’t you?”

  “I know he’ll come back here.”

  “There are plenty of other airfields. Berka, Mersa Brega, Antelat, Slonta, Derna, Martuba. Dozens of them.”

  “He wants his revenge. I made a fool of him, didn’t I? He’ll be back, because he can’t resist it. Not in his character.”

  Hoffmann strolled over to the window and watched a pair of Messerschmitt 109s sprint side by side until their tails lifted and almost at once they were flying, the dust trails collapsing behind them, wheels retracting; the raw, tearing racket fading to a soft thunder as the fighters made height. He grunted with envy. “I’d give a year’s pay to fly one of those. Once a month they let me take up a Storch, just to keep my flying pay, and once a year, if I’m lucky, some Heinkel pilot lets me have a feel of the controls. But it’s not the same.”

  “I know,” Schramm said. He had heard it before.

  “They say a 109 is too precious to risk on a crumbling ruin like me. They’re saving them all for the next shove.”

  “I know that, too. In fact I told you.”

  “So you did . . .” Hoffmann turned away from the window. “What else have your ten thousand busy spies been able to tell you?”

  “They say Takoradi has turned into a gold mine.”

  “They’re probably right.” Hoffmann thought about it. “But what good are spies if you can’t use their information?”

  “It’s infuriating,” Schramm said. “If only we could plant bombs in the enemy’s Hurricanes the way they plant bombs in our 109s.”

  “You would need very long arms indeed.”

  Schramm got his crutches and went back to his intelligence reports. There was nothing new so he reread the old stuff. When he had exhausted that, he sat and stared at the telephone, wishing someone would call him. This was the other half of Paul Schramm. With no work to do, he had a very low tolerance of boredom. Eventually he grew thoroughly irritated with himself and clumped along the corridor to see the station doctor. “I wondered whether you might want to take a look at my desert sores,” he said. All the cuts and scrapes he had collected during his escape across the Jebel had become infected and needed regular painting with gentian violet.

  “I checked them this morning,” the doctor said. “Do they hurt?”

  “No.” Schramm hung on his crutches and searched the room for entertainment or distraction.

  “I know what you need, Paul,” the doctor said. “You need a second opinion.”

  “No, I don’t. There’s nothing wrong with me.”

  “There’s something wrong with me, though. I’m sick and tired of your ugly face.” He scribbled something. “I’ll make an appointment. Believe me, you’ll be amazed by the results. Now go away.”

  * * *

  Lester did his best with what little he could find.

  The Chicago News got some smart professional stories about American bombers hammering Axis bases deep inside Libya, full of good detail regarding waist-gunners shouting “Three o’clock high!” while German fighters came plunging from the sun and oily plumes of smoke surged into the blue skies as the bombs found their targets. Lester worked hard, but with the Doolittle raid hitting Tokyo for the first time, while Japan conquered Burma, he knew his stuff would be lucky to make page five.

  He kept in touch with his sources and spent much of his time with Ralph Malplacket, partly because he enjoyed his company and partly because he thought it might pay dividends. The son of an English lord who had the ear of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and here he was prowling around Cairo looking like a rich refugee from a Sydney Greenstreet movie. There must be a story in him.

  They usually met at Groppi’s for iced coffee or tea at mid-morning. Groppi’s was the coolest, cleanest teashop and bar in Cairo, probably in the Middle East; and when they came back from the desert most officers took several luxurious baths and then went to Groppi’s for ice cream or cockt
ails. Sometimes Malplacket recognized old friends, or the sons of old friends, and a conversation developed. It was never very successful. He wanted an account of life in the desert; they asked about horse-racing at Ascot and salmon-fishing in Scotland. “Hasn’t changed,” he would say. “Much the same as ever.” What they craved, of course, were images of lush turf and of roaring, foaming, peattinted rivers: the things they had dreamed of as they squinted into the painful glare that bounced off the desert or suffered the sandy dust that blew into every corner and opening of the body. “Now tell me about your war,” he would say eagerly. “You have had a thrilling time, I hope?”

  The desert warriors, tanned as dark as teak, found the idea amusing. “Not exactly thrilling,” one of them said. “Thrilling isn’t the word that first springs to mind.”

  “Tedious,” suggested another officer. “Also grubby.”

  “It’s empty, you see,” the first officer said. “There’s nothing out there. Terribly difficult to be thrilled by a lot of empty nothing. When you’ve captured it, what have you got?”

  “Sod-all,” the second officer said. “That’s an Arabic phrase which means my camel has farted.”

  “Camel farts are pretty exciting events in the desert,” the first officer said. “People talk about them for days on end. That’s because there’s bugger-all else to talk about.”

  “Bugger-all,” the second officer said. “That’s an Arabic phrase meaning two dead Italians and half a million flies.”

  Lester and Malplacket had lunch at the Union-International Hotel, which was rich with high-ranking officers. “The gabardine swine,” Lester said gloomily.

  “I say, that’s rather good,” Malplacket told him. “Did you just think of it?”

  Lester considered lying and decided against it. “Old Cairo joke,” he said. “Why don’t they fight the war right here? Look at all the fascists you could kill.”

  “That’s a bit strong.” Malplacket glanced about the room. “I mean, take Boy Duff-Mannering, over there in the corner. He’s not a fascist. He’s all in favor of restoring the Holy Roman Empire. Told me so himself.”

  “Let’s order,” Lester said. “So I have something to throw up.”

  They ordered chilled cucumber soup, followed by curried shrimp with salad and a bottle of Bordeaux blanc on ice. After that they had trifle. “Trifle is one of the old country’s great gifts to the Empire,” Malplacket said. “You can judge a colony by the quality of its trifle.”

  “The British Empire’s a racket.” Lester felt better with good food inside him.

  “Tell me,” Malplacket said, “have you always been a war correspondent?”

  “Sure. I covered baseball, football, hockey, tossing the beanbag; it’s all war. I covered the conventions, Republican and Democrat both, and believe me that is war to the death. The only thing I’ve covered that turns out not to be war is this war. Right now this war is out to lunch.”

  “Not entirely,” Malplacket said. “The old-boy network has come up trumps. I have made several promising appointments.”

  They drove across Cairo in the big Buick with the top down, to a Victorian house standing in its own grounds. Royal Marine sentries scrutinized their papers. “The colonel is expecting me,” Malplacket said.

  They were escorted to his office. Maps and photographs littered his desk. He was tall and languid, with a handshake that brought tears to Lester’s eyes. “Glad to meet you,” Lester said. “I’m a special representative to the Governor of Arizona, who of course is one of President Roosevelt’s right-hand men.”

  “Ah,” said the colonel.

  “Philip and I are cousins,” Malplacket told Lester. “He’s in charge of all the Commandos in these parts, and if anybody can get us on one of their raids, he can.”

  “Second cousins,” the colonel said. He had a pure, dry, Scots accent. “And I do not control the Commandos. Even if I did, I wouldn’t send either of you on one of their raids because the odds are ten to one that you would be killed, and that would be a blow to the State of Arizona.”

  “Sure would,” Lester said. He knew from the colonel’s tone that the meeting was as good as over.

  “Nevertheless,” Malplacket said, “could you not release a sliver of information about the startling achievements of your Commandos?”

  “What startling achievements?” the colonel asked.

  “If I knew that, Philip, I wouldn’t have to ask,” Malplacket said. “Now please don’t be tiresome. It’s far too hot.”

  The colonel looked up and watched the ceiling-fan rotate like an old, tired windmill. He said, “We did have a corporal who saved an Arab from drowning in the Canal.” He turned, found his reading-glasses, put them on, looked over the top at Malplacket. “But he was a very small Arab,” he said, “and probably not startling enough for your purposes.”

  Back in the Buick, Lester said: “He wouldn’t tell us the time of day if he had a dozen watches and a two-bell alarm clock.”

  “Philip always was a selfish boy. Never shared his gobstoppers. Do you really know the Governor of Arizona?”

  “Never met him. Neither has anybody else. Sounded good, though, didn’t it?” He flexed his fingers. “Guys who try to bust your hand make me mad.” He leaned on the horn and blew a bunch of donkeys aside.

  Their next stop was an office block off Ramses Street in the New City.

  “I’m Senator Mackenzie of Illinois,” Lester said to a sentry before Malplacket could speak, “and we have an appointment with . . . Who are we seeing, Sir Ralph?”

  “Admiral Blackett.”

  “Blackett, right.” Lester gave the car keys to the sentry. “Make sure it doesn’t get scratched, won’t you.”

  As they entered the building, Malplacket said softly, “I wish you’d cut out these impersonations. They’re not necessary, you know.”

  “Scared?”

  “Not a bit.” Malplacket rebelled at the way Lester was taking charge.

  “Breathe deeply. Smile.”

  “I’ll tell you what. I’ll stay down here. You go up and interview him, Senator.”

  “No, no. The admiral will have tea waiting for us.” Lester steered him toward the lift. “Your Royal Navy makes great tea, so I’m told.”

  They were not offered tea; in fact a civilian secretary had to get the admiral out of a meeting. He was stocky, pink-faced and cheerful; he was unimpressed by Senator Mackenzie; and he could give them exactly three minutes.

  “We too are in a tearing hurry,” Malplacket said. “How is my godson, by the way?”

  “James is fine, and that’s twenty seconds you’ve wasted. Come on, Ralph. What the devil d’you want?”

  Malplacket explained his mission to Cairo. “Blanchtower feels the Navy’s not getting the kudos it deserves.”

  Blackett was grimly amused. “Oh, yes? For what exploit in particular?”

  “Your Small Boat Section, for instance. Very cloak-and-dagger, so I’m told, and just—”

  “Never heard of them.”

  Malplacket was taken aback. “I understand they use little ships and sneak behind enemy—”

  “Ships or boats?”

  “Um . . . Does it matter, frightfully?”

  “It does in the Royal Navy. A ship is not a boat. A ship is a large sailing vessel with three or more square-rigged masts, or by extension from that, a vessel of some appreciable size that is propelled by engines so that it may navigate across the high seas. That is a ship. A boat is not a ship. A boat is a small vessel propelled by oars or paddles, perhaps sails or a motor, but not fit for the high seas. That is a boat.” Blackett was enjoying this. “It might help you to appreciate the distinction if you remember that a ship can carry a boat, but a boat can never carry a ship. There is a sub-definition by which a ‘ship’ means a ship’s crew, but I don’t suppose that’s what you had in mind.”

  “No.”

  “It’s probably much the same in the US Navy, Senator,” Blackett said, so that their American g
uest should not feel excluded.

  “Exactly,” Lester said. “Word for word.”

  “Getting back to the heart of the matter,” Malplacket said, “Small Boat Section or Small Ship Section: which have you got?”

  “Neither,” Blackett told him. “Not in the Royal Navy. And that’s three minutes. Goodbye.” He shook hands. The civilian secretary took them downstairs.

  “See what I mean?” Lester said. He took the car keys from the sentry. “This war is out to lunch.”

  “He was lying,” Malplacket said brusquely. “I always thought my godson was a dishonest little brute; it’s obviously an inherited quality. He’s at Oxford now, writing bogus poetry and walking with a limp to look like Byron.”

  “Since we’re not getting anywhere,” Lester said, “you might as well drive.” They got in.

  “The little blighter’s malingering. I shall cable Blanchtower and have young Blackett conscripted into the Pioneer Corps at once, it will do him the world of good.” Malplacket drove straight across a stop sign. A gharri swerved and hit a roadside fruit stall.

  “Smart work,” Lester said. “You just caused an accident.”

  “This entire city is an accident. All I did was make it more interesting.”

  They drove past Ezbekiya Gardens. “Are those zinnias?” Lester asked. “My wife was always trying to grow zinnias.”

  “Those are chrysanthemums,” Malplacket said.

  “Horseshit,” Lester said.

  “No, I think you’ll find that on the rosebeds,” Malplacket said.

  “Listen, I know chrysanthemums. I covered chrysanthemums, for God’s sake. They’re very big in Chicago. I can do five hundred words on chrysanthemums at the drop of a hat.”

  Malplacket took his hat off and dropped it in Lester’s lap. “Go,” he said.

  Lester put on the hat. “I only write for money.”

  He slumped in his seat. High above, kites slid along air currents, waiting for something to die. Cairo’s Sanitation Department. Always on duty, never on strike, a credit to the city. Maybe there was a piece for the paper in that. Anyway, why weren’t these stinking birds out in the desert? That’s where the real work had to be done. No ambition. Henry Lester couldn’t understand people without ambition. Even birds.