A Blind Man's War

by David Fiddimore

  I will be honest, and tell you that I’ve had more demanding jobs than that. I had a comfortable chair, as much iced water as I could drink, and sat in an air-conditioned room, whilst the PBI outside were sweating their bollocks off in the sun, chasing teenaged terrorists around the island. At midday an orderly brought round lunches for us.

  Prince or King – I wasn’t sure which – Ibn Saud had three radio stations, and we listened into every bloody word. Not many people know that. The call sign for his Jedda office was HZJ, Riyadh HZN, and the tricky one, which is why I was there, was on his personal train which criss-crossed the country like a taxi driver on double time – HZAC. It was the one they were having particular difficulty keeping up with.

  In the RAF in 1944 I monitored individual aircraft that could move at 250 knots, and change height and elevation at the same time. If I couldn’t hang on to a signal from a bloody train it was time I got out the pipe and slippers. But the train was also why they’d stuck me next to the aerial room. The aerial array for our radios was in a big guarded aerial field out on the plain miles away, and the knack was, as soon as the Saudi signals began to fade or break up, to nip next door to the aerial room – which looked like a sophisticated telephone switchboard – and get the operators to switch my sets from aerial to aerial until I had him again. Cat-and-mouse stuff. His people were very good, but from my memory the Jerry night-fighter operators were better. At the end of the shift I was tired and stiff; good chair or no good chair. As I stretched, yawned and handed my first record flimsies to de Whitt I asked him, ‘Where are they read?’

  ‘Downstairs, I think – maybe some are sent through to the intelligence team at Wayne’s Keep. Ours not to reason why. You can’t decode them, I suppose? Sight-read them, or something freakish like that?’

  ‘Of course not. Gobbledegook. They’ll eventually break it down to strategic Arabic. I don’t even know which are the coughs, and which are the spits. Why?’

  ‘If you could, I’d probably have to lock you up at night.’ He was grinning, but I think he meant it. One of the spots on his face had come to a livid yellow head during the day, and was ready to erupt. It hypnotized me.

  Pat was waiting for me outside. I told him, ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy in there mentioned something about “downstairs”.’

  ‘HQ Comms. Twice the size of your place. Two floors down an’ cut into solid rock round the back. People like you and me don’t get invited.’ Maybe that was where the obsession with burying offices began. ‘OK, was it?’ he demanded. ‘The boss is bound to ask me.’

  ‘Fine. No problems so far. Why doesn’t he ask me himself ?’

  ‘I don’t think ’e wants to see you – not in a literal sense, that is.’

  ‘Has he come over all enigmatic again?’

  ‘’E has a new secretary bird, an’ the guys in the car pool think he’s trying to impress her by keeping his distance from the rest of us.’

  ‘I suppose it will get him off our backs. I’m thirsty, Pat, so get a bloody move on if you don’t mind.’

  Pat sniffed, and said, ‘You’re beginning to sound like a bleedin’ officer again. It didn’t take long, did it?’ Maybe he was right.

  Ten minutes later, when we were halfway to Famagusta he asked me, ‘Lunch?’

  ‘Spam sandwiches, lashings of mustard. NAAFI tea.’

  ‘Told you.’

  Famagusta is an old walled city – so’s Nicosia come to that. That’s two of the things the army doesn’t tell you about Cyprus. You drive through the usual suburban sprawl until you come up against enormous walls and defensive gateways. It’s as if the crusaders or the Templars are still only a breath away. I looked up at the walls and expected to see a soldier in steel armour on top. Once the Champ was through the gateway we plunged into a medieval city, but Pat seemed to know where he was going. From time to time a local would raise a hand to him, and give a quick smile of recognition. I guessed that we were moving inside Pat’s personal fiefdom.

  And another thing, Collins had been right: the men had a much better class of moustache. If my face had still done hair – and it never did once it had been burned in that air crash – I would have grown one myself. Tobin threaded us down a narrow old lane, and made a sharp right turn into a walled, flagged courtyard which fronted a big old residentia. The sign on the wall outside was a Turkish word about four feet long, but someone had painted the word ‘Tony’s’ untidily in black paint across the end of it.

  Steep, wide stone steps climbed to a porticoed door large enough to have occasioned envy in Whitehall. The man who stood at the top of them was grossly overweight, and wore a gleaming white dishdash and a red fez. He was smiling a smile which cut his face in half, and holding his arms open; Pat was grinning like a dervish.

  When I reached the top of the steps I was hugged. I hate being hugged, but it’s something that happens all the time when you are as small as me.

  He said, ‘Charlie.’

  And I said, ‘David. Pat told me you’d become a banker.’

  David Yassine.

  ‘Only when I was in Egypt.’ In Beirut, where he had been born, he was a club owner, with premises along the Corniche. He had a spice business in Istanbul, and in Germany . . . well, he was my partner in the Leihhaus, and the Klapperschlange club with Bozey, but I’ve said it before – that’s another story.

  ‘You are well then?’

  ‘Very. I have two more children, both boys.’

  ‘Is this your place?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What about that dancing girl I liked? Mariam?’

  ‘Pouff! She married a German weightlifter, and went to America. Hollywood. Los Angeles. She wants to be in the pictures. I hope she ends up sweeping floors in a brothel.’ But he was smiling, and I knew he had a soft spot for her. Mariam had had some nice soft spots if I came to think about it. ‘Come in, Charlie. Come in. I need someone to manage this place when I am away – maybe I sell you a share.’

  ‘Who’s Tony?’

  ‘I am. Me. Anthony. My middle name is for the saint. Didn’t I tell you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We can always call it Charlie’s Place.’

  Yassine did business at breakneck speed, as if his world was going to end tomorrow. It never failed to seduce me.

  An hour later I remembered why we were there. Sitting in a private walled garden, beneath a fig tree, with three empty beer bottles in front of each of us I told him, ‘I came here to meet a woman. An air stewardess with Eagle.’

  Yassine’s face always telegraphed his emotions. He suddenly looked as if his favourite wife had died in childbirth. Desolation invaded him.

  ‘Alas, she has gone. They checked out this morning.’ Then he smiled. ‘But she left you this.’

  He had picked up an envelope as we passed the reception desk, and had been fingering it ever since. I didn’t mind his sweat marks: he had once given me a name and address that had saved my life. Inside the envelope was a cheap postcard of the ruins at Salamis. I turned it over. The card bore my name, and the imprint of a pair of lips. Nothing else. When I bent over it I could just smell the lipstick. It smelt its colour – a deep pastel pink. That was interesting: I had received a similar card when I had been in Egypt three years earlier, but had never identified the correspondent. I still had it, and would compare them when I got home.

  I pulled a sad face, and showed the card to Yassine and Pat. David leaned across the small table between us, and placed his hand over mine. ‘She trusted me with a message for you. Verbal. Do you wish to hear it?’

  Pat rolled his eyes to the sky, but I said, ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘She wants me to tell you that she never makes the same mistake twice, and she thinks that you shouldn’t either. Do you know what she means?’

  ‘I think so, David,’

  ‘Good. She will be back in a week, maybe less. You will be a little more familiar with our beautiful island by then.’ Then he switched tracks on us. ‘Will you be st
aying tonight? I have a fine cook, and new girls.’

  Yassine left us to talk and drink as the food was being prepared. It became cooler in the garden, even a little chill. I asked Pat, ‘Why didn’t you tell me that Yassine was in town?’

  ‘I didn’t want to worry you.’

  I left it for a minute, and finished another beer before I told him, ‘The next time I get a business enterprise going I think I’ll offer you part of it.’

  ‘Why, Charlie?’

  ‘I like your style. I like the way you anticipate me.’

  He smiled, and shook his head.

  ‘Thank you, Charlie, and when the time comes I’ll think about it . . . but don’t be offended if I turn you down. I might have bigger plans.’

  Soon after that we went in and joined Yassine at the bar. There were two belly dancers. David always knew where to get the best dancers.

  It was three days before Watson had me in. His little mind games didn’t bother me because, in truth, he had rather a little mind . . . it was like playing chess with an ungifted child. He telegraphed his moves miles ahead, but the trouble was that he always had the big battalions on his side, so he usually won.

  ‘Settling in, Charles?’ Charles?

  ‘Yes, sir. No problem, sir.’

  ‘Sit down.’

  ‘Yessir. At attention or at ease, sir?’

  ‘Stop being a prat, Charlie.’

  ‘Then don’t treat me like one, sir.’

  ‘Are you going to tag sir onto every damned thing you say?’

  ‘It’s what you wanted, sir. If I don’t, you’ll sling me in the cooler again, sir.’

  ‘Then damned well stop it. It’s unnatural – coming from you, that is.’

  ‘That’s what I think too.’

  I pulled out a chair, and slouched opposite him across the desk. I knew that would get to him. He had two small piles of message flimsies in front of him. I was reminded of my interviews in the FO, and sensed a rocket coming on. He asked me, ‘You know what these are, but do you know why they’re sitting on my desk?’

  ‘Spontaneous reproduction? I have no way of knowing.’

  ‘Why are you always a smart-arse when I am preparing to be nice to you? You always have to spoil it.’

  ‘I know. Bad breeding. Sorry, what are they for?’

  ‘To show you, that’s what. The big heap on the left is your intercepts for the last three days. The small one, on the right, is what your predecessors, between them, achieved in three weeks. Every time the Saudis flipped the signal they lost it and peed their shorts. You didn’t – you followed them, and picked them up again. For all the radio users out there, you are, in some ways, a very worrying little man. Her Majesty will be very pleased you’re on our side.’

  ‘I still don’t see your point . . .’ I sulked.

  ‘The point is, Charlie, that whenever you bellyache and ask me what you’re doing out here, I’m going to wave these two piles of sheets under your nose, and tell you that you’re doing rather well, and that the Boss Class is very pleased with you.’

  ‘I got away from you in order to get away from the Boss Class. I hate it.’

  ‘I know. That’s why I’m really enjoying having you back under my command.’

  ‘You’re a sadist.’

  ‘Stop moaning, and get us a couple of drinks from the cupboard. I’m sure you remember which one.’

  There was an unlabelled quart bottle of greasy-looking clear stuff in his drinks cupboard. He had me pour two half-tumblers’ full, and had me sip one. It was like paint stripper; I probably pulled a face. Then he topped up each glass with cold water, and the mixed fluids went cloudy. I tried it again, and fell in love. Liquid aniseed balls. Probably the most refreshing pick-me-up I’d ever come across.

  ‘Ouzo,’ he told me. ‘Greek stuff. Bloody marvellous, isn’t it? We’ll have to sort out this bloody island without getting rid of all the Greeks – it would be a tragedy if I lost my source of this.’

  I had to get him back on track. He hadn’t called me in to say thank you, and give me a drink.

  ‘What else did you have in mind for me, boss? There’s always a something else, and your last one almost killed me.’

  ‘Nothin’ much.’ He sniffed, and squinted at me through his drink. ‘I don’t know why you’re bothered. Remember the Canal Zone? Piece of piss.’

  Of course I remembered the bleeding Canal Zone. As well as getting shot on an unscheduled trip to Turkey, I had nearly been killed by a yellow fever jab in Port Said, and stalked by a lion . . . and he’d sent me on several desert patrols with the Brown Jobs, earwigging radio traffic from both the Israelis and the Egyptians. It had been uncomfortable and dangerous. Not at all like being in the Boy Scouts. And I didn’t even get a proficiency badge for it.

  ‘Yes.’ A cautious yes. ‘Of course.’ A cautious of course.

  ‘How about some of the same? A bit of this and a bit of that?’

  ‘With the Brown Jobs?’

  ‘Yes, if they ask.’

  ‘Do they ask?’

  ‘Sometimes. In your case they’re bound to – word has already got about.’

  ‘What kind of word?’

  ‘They’re saying we have a wizard W/Op on the books. Wizard W/Op – that’s not bad. Is it?’

  ‘Do you really expect me to go chasing all over the island with the army, listening in for something that helps them deal with their terrorists?’

  After a long pause he said, ‘Not often, and not officially . . . but yes.’ Bollocks. ‘Anything else on your mind?’

  ‘I heard you had a new girl. I rather liked the old one, but we’ll let that pass – what’s the new one like?’

  He looked over my shoulder at the door in his shed which concealed his assistant’s office. It was ajar. I’d always suspected that it was where the real work was done. Watson called out, ‘I know that you’re listening, cow. Come out and meet Charlie. He wants to see you,’ and an Amazon walked into the room.

  Pat blagged his way past the lieutenant at lunchtime, and flopped into the seat alongside me. I held up my hand to silence him because I was into a signal from Riyadh, and didn’t want to miss a digit. They signed off about three minutes later.

  By the way the sending speed went up I guessed they’d switched from doing strategic positions in the Middle East, to running a book on the Miss World contest. A tall blonde Swede was odds on to win.

  I’d met guys like Pat before. I’d met Pat before, come to that, but he had reinvented himself since then, and had come out with more influence – what they call wasta in the Arab-speaking countries. He was still only a corporal, but a corporal who seemed to be able to go anywhere, and no one actually knew what he did, except run the motor pool. He almost certainly didn’t have the clearance for the radio room, but no one was going to challenge him; probably half the guys around me owed him money. I wondered how much de Whitt was into him for – he looked suddenly nervous when Pat strolled in.

  I was dry. I got us both a half-pint of water from the cooler, and when I sat down asked him, ‘Why didn’t you warn me about Watson’s new monster?’

  ‘I wanted to surprise you. Neat, ain’t she?’

  ‘Neat? She looks as if Aveling Barford thought her up during a slack period.’ I was being cruel again. Aveling Barford was a company which made road rollers and caterpillar tractors – like Blaw-Knox or Massey Ferguson.

  ‘I think she’s kinda neat. Gonna take her out at the weekend.’

  ‘Don’t go near the zoo – they’ll never let her out again.’

  ‘There used to be a zoo,’ he said wistfully, ‘but all the animals were Greek, so I think the Turks let them out and shot them.’

  ‘Where will you take her?’

  ‘A few places in Famagusta still safe, if you know whose palm to grease – then back to my place and knickers off.’

  ‘You got to be joking!’

  ‘I told you, I think she’s kinda neat. I called her Tarzan the first time I met
her, an’ she smiled. I knew she liked me for not duckin’ the issue.’

  ‘She smiled at me too. I think she thought I was a snack.’ But I was interested in spite of myself. ‘You said my place. Where do you billet, Pat?’

  ‘I got a room to myself in the motor pool – used to be the orderly room – but I meant my flat. I got a nice flat in Famagusta, round the corner from Tony’s place.’

  I reminded myself to remember that.

  ‘What did you want, anyway? Carrying another message from our master?’

  ‘Nothin’ like that. Jest wanted half an hour under the AC, and a glass of cool water. You got it easy in here.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I was thinking of going over to Yassine’s place again tonight. Wanna come?’

  ‘Yes, please. When?’

  ‘Stay put an’ I’ll pick you up.’

  As he got up to leave I asked him a question that had been hovering since he’d shown up.

  ‘Is there anyone out here who doesn’t owe you money?’

  He gave me his sunny smile.

  ‘You, Charlie, but I’m working on it.’

  Halfway through the evening David Yassine put a large plate of stuffed vine leaves on the table. It wasn’t the first time I’d come across the dish, but I’ve always loved it. I can take you to a small seafront café in Kuwait City where they serve it for breakfast with a Lebanese platter: you’ll never forget it.

  David’s dancing girls were never hired for possessing the Middle Eastern standard dancing figure. They were young, hungry and slim. He picked them for their dancing ability, not their rolling figures. Spend an hour watching them at work, and your brain is lost for a fortnight. One of them reminded me of Mariam, and after too many beers and Yassine’s best bootleg brandy, that made me feel unbearably sad. OK, so I’m just making an excuse: it was why I woke up in the small hours alongside her. I couldn’t remember having had much conversation with her before we went skin diving.

  She asked, ‘What’s your name, sailor?’

  ‘Charlie. What’s yours?’

  ‘Stephanie – Steve.’ She left my side, went to the window and drew back the blinds. It was still dark outside. I lay on my side, and counted the stars I could see. Eleven. I thought one of them was Sirius: it was low down in the South and very bright. Twinkle, twinkle, little star. Stephanie came back to bed, cuddled in to me, and said, ‘Go on. Why don’t you ask me?’