by Michael Oren
My first assignment, though, to the Falklands, ended in disgrace—or worse for us British, indiscretion. The details, involving a bronzed Gibraltarian, are relevant only in that certain pro-Argentines began accusing me of doing to him what Her Majesty’s Government had long done to the archipelago. Hushing up was in order and Whitehall shushed me off to Darja on the other side of the globe, there to serve as a lowly Second Secretary. Pity I wasn’t working for the French. For the same offense, the Quai d’Orsay would have made me Ministre Extraordinaire in Rome.
My apparent stature, then, related neither to my height nor girth—the latter regrettably superior to the first—rather to that air of English gentry that presumably impresses the natives. My diverse talents, on the other hand, hinted at unique insights into Darjan politics, such as they were, not attained by the usual route of hosting local sheikhs on the embassy veranda and sipping the melted crayons they called coffee. No, my secret was to insinuate myself into the population itself and see the world through their inflamed and understandably cynical eyes.
* * * * *
British diplomatic documents, unlike those of other foreign services, leave a wide right margin in which the officials who read them can comment. Though rarely legible, these scribblings typically recommend further review or actions such as “Urgently convey to the PM” or “This calls for a peremptory response.” Yet, except for the occasional “ho-hum” and “why, why must I endure this?” our Darja dispatches stayed blank.
I remark on this, silently, while noticing that the South Asian student, contrary to his reticent demeanor, has struck up a conversation with Flannel Lady. The old geezer, meanwhile, has found something that’s making him cry. Tears stream down his veined and wine-stained nose and drip onto the crinkly registers. As for the pretty boys, they suddenly seem less interested in teasing one another than, for some reason, taunting me. Winking, simpering, sensing, perhaps, that they possess what this lumpish ex-civil servant will never regain. Truth is, though, I’m beyond derision. My only concern is reading on.
June 15, 1980
To: The Permanent Under-Secretary
From: Embassy, Darja
Local sources have reported to me regarding the recent disquiet. The rebels retain the high ground and insist on ridding the island of all foreign influence. They appear to enjoy significant popular support which is, no doubt, incited by Moscow. The U.S. position remains, nevertheless, unclear. As previously communicated, my American colleague professes full support for Her Majesty’s Government’s position. Yet evidence exists of efforts to replace our Protectorate with a sovereign nation-state, democratic, and firmly allied with Washington.
I await your instructions.
Sir Nigel Ringwald (Ambassador)
Those local sources were, once again, me. Now one might think that a pale, plump Caucasian in sweated khakis might stick out in a developing society such as Darja’s. Fact was, though, nobody stuck out because everybody was different. From the descendants of shipwrecked African slaves to disoriented seamen who believed they’d landed in Madagascar, the inhabitants were not merely mixed but jumbled. Indians, Arabs, Sixties’ hippies too stoned to reach their ashrams—Darja had them all and they all had nothing. The only thing they were “developing” was glaucoma.
Yet I adored them. Admired their kaleidoscopic ethnicity, their thorough dedication to torpor. Rarely bothering to fan themselves, they were the last to be stoked by the USSR or any other power. A quiet people—calling to prayer, the lone muezzin was routinely pelted with trash—seemingly incapable of hate. Hating required exertion.
But not so love. However listless, the Darjans returned my affection, gossiping with me in their Arabic and Hindi lingo, sharing their spare meals of rice and pulverized hermit crabs. There was love around the driftwood fires where I’d sit listening to their tales of Somalian pirates and Mormon missionaries desperate for anyone to convert. And love atop the rag-stuffed mattress which I often shared with Mutassif.
Sleek, lissome-limbed, his hair a soft black profusion of curls. Not yet nineteen and already the head of his family, the caretaker of innumerable siblings, the provider for his widowed mother who spent much of her day searching for his lucrative match. All of which was why we kept our profile low, though I scarcely minded. It was enough just to look into those eyes like emarche puddles and the teeth, dazzling against mocha skin.
“You are a good man, Allah Istar,” he’d smile at me. “Good and fat!”
“And you, Mutassif, are better and thin.”
He spooned me some crabby rice and poked me playfully in the gut. “And I shall make you fatter still. Fat enough to sink this island.”
I chewed and swallowed and tried not to weep. Imagine the gratitude of a man who, though over thirty, had never really been accepted, much less loved, and without a thought to my rank or station. Without judgment or even pity.
Late afternoons, when the temperature dropped low enough to be measured, we strolled along the dilapidated docks of that deep-water port long forgotten by our navy. The random holiday ship still stopped by, its passengers peering over the rail while lithe African boys dove for pearls. They emerged from the surf, bodies glistening like licorice, and sold their gems for fortunes. We laughed, Mutassif and I, for the island had no pearls, only seeded Japanese fakes. The entire world, outside of our own, was a sham.
In that fuck-it-all spirit, we sometimes followed “Wild Bill” Coulson on his insidious missions around Darja. Why “Wild” I had no idea, perhaps an impetuous moment cheerleading for Princeton, though he did show a penchant for mayhem. Keeping a safe distance—roughly a third of the island—we kept sight of the freckled neck that shone under the brim of his Panama. That was how I witnessed, among the copse of wilted eucalyptus and burnt-out scrub, behind the “Nashionel Park” sign, Coulson liaising with his Soviet counterpart, Kabashkin.
The Russian was half Coulson’s size and buoy-shaped, the owner of a single Stalin-grey suit. The two of them conferred in the copse for an hour, at least, the American tossing pebbles at the few birds seeking shade there, Kabashkin studying his shoes. I wondered out loud what in hell’s name could two old Cold Warriors be jabbering about in 1980—disco music, defections? But Mutassif merely elbowed me in the flank, as he frequently did, and chided, “Do not be worried so, Allah Istar. There are no secrets in Darja.”
And there weren’t. Mutassif knew the smuggler who provided vodka to the Russians as well as his brother, a whiskey-runner for the Yanks. They confirmed what I already knew: that both legations were vying for the allegiance of Razi, promising to make him, respectively, premier and president. But the next bit of intelligence shocked me. Seems the superpowers had agreed to fight it out for Darja fair-and-square, once they ousted Great Britain.
I paused only to visit a third brother, our supplier of black-market gin, before hightailing it back to the embassy. There I found Sir Nigel, as usual, alone in his office, shades drawn, a fan revolving ineffectually overhead.
The somberness burst, though, when I smacked the bottle onto his desk and delivered the astonishing news. His Excellency’s expressions, alternating between downcast and sour, rarely registered agitation. Merely, staring at my gift as if it was his mother’s urn, he muttered, “I must cable this development at once.”
“Cable?” I gasped. “Humbly, I submit, sir, we have no time for cables. We must act.”
He glowered at me with a face drawn by sorrow and drink, a person who, like me, had spent much of his life hiding a truth—in his case, a Hebrew heritage—and despairing of love. “Act?” he asked absently. “How?”
“By going to see the Sultan. And if that doesn’t work…”
As if hauled by a heavy-duty crane, his eyes lifted to mine. “And if that doesn’t work?”
“Razi.”
The matte teletype paper muted the gravity of its contents. Pursuant to my previous transmission, I have confirmed the nature of U.S. and Soviet intentions regarding this island’s sta
tus, I am today making a formal démarche to the monarch.
Again, I have to suppress a chuckle. Sir Nigel wasn’t démarching anywhere except the bottom of that bottle. While he remained in the gin and gloom, his trusted Second Secretary braved the furnace of Darja’s streets to reach the palace.
Of course, to the dwellers in sand, an abandoned RAF hanger might indeed appear palatial. This one, moreover, was adorned with several anemic palms and a crescent drive of crushed crab shells. Inside, there were Persian rugs and divans as befitting any minor Oriental despot, and potted plants whose contents were solidly frozen. Yes, frozen, for the one indulgence of Sultan Abd al-Rahman Qaboos II—courtesy of British taxpayers—was an air conditioner that he kept at maximum blast. It made most supplicants shiver in his presence, for they were otherwise under-awed. Physically, constitutionally, Qaboos lived up to his name as the end of a long-outdated train.
“Second Secretary Costhwaite, to what do we owe this honor?” Stretched out on an ottoman that doubled as his throne, the sultan scarcely shifted.
I affected the bow taught me in diplomacy school and cursed myself for forgetting to wear a coat. Not so Qaboos. His arraignment featured winter garb that would have marked him a skier if not for the lavender turban on his head. “A matter of state, Your Highness,” I replied through chattering teeth. “We believe that foreign powers are plotting to pry Darja out of Britain’s orbit.” I did not even own a coat.
Predictably, the sultan grunted. “Pry? Pray with what, a toothpick?”
Though well past middle age, perhaps because of the temperature or lack of it, he remained youthful. A smooth if receding chin, a skeptically creased forehead, and eyelids weighted as if with ice. “You are referring to your colleagues, Kabashkin and Coulson, I assume. From the first I could get weaponry, from the second, free elections. Why be pried by them when you have given me all this.” A gloved hand swept across the hanger with its retinue of three sleepy wazirs, bearded and berobed, behind him. “That and this flawless accent.”
His English was, in fact, posher than mine, the product of an Eton education long beyond my family’s means. So expert were we once at ennobling our subjects’ deference.
“Whatever they are offering, Your Highness, I assure you our dominion will more than match.”
Another grunt, this one echoed by the wazirs, chorus-like. “And I assure you, Mr. Secretary, we could not care less. Darja wishes only to remain overlooked. The world is kindest to those it forgets.”
The soundness of this wisdom might have been debated if my mind hadn’t numbed. “I am gladdened by your response, Highness, and will submit it at once to my superiors.”
“Do that, Costhwaite, by all means do. And please give my regards to Sir Nigel.” With a twirl of his gloved fingers, the sultan signaled his court to snicker. “My warmest regards.”
Outside, the sun hit me like a homicidal batsman, and I staggered half-concussed through a throng of ragged petitioners until I finally reunited with Mutassif.
“He said…he said,” I stammered through lips transformed, in seconds, from frostbitten to fried.
“He could not care less.”
“How did you know that?”
With his dark warm hands, Mutassif massaged feeling into mine. “How many times have I told you, Allah Istar,” he beamed. “There are no secrets in Darja.”
* * * * *
This was news to Sir Nigel, unfortunately, who reacted to it with more than his usual moroseness. “Seems we have no choice.”
“Seems, indeed.”
He bent behind his desk to the safe which I always assumed contained his emergency stock of Sapphire. How surprised was I to see, when the ambassador returned to his usual stoop, thick bundles of cash that he proceeded to stuff into a canvas bag? “Take this to him, appeal to his self-interest. Hearts and minds will likely follow.” And how shocked when he once again dipped down and surfaced with an object that, when placed even gingerly on the desk, thundered. “And in case they don’t.”
I accepted the bag and uncertainly lifted the pistol.
“And for God’s sake be careful with that thing, Costhwaite. It’s loaded.”
* * * * *
That conversation took place on July 2, the day that Sir Nigel informed the Foreign Office of high-level representations to the Sultan and discreet contacts with irregular elements. Reading these communiqués, some future researcher might envision an ambassador in tails clicking his heels and a trench-coated agent slipping through shadows. The reality, of course, was far more prosaic: a cheaply-clad diplomat at first freezing and now awash in sweat as he huffed up Darja’s only hill.
I, too, was breathing hard at the reading table where the too-cool graduate students mistook my panting for something else and meanly mimicked it. Elsewhere, East and West were defiantly meeting as the Indian boy and Saxon girl lost all interest in their files and solely studied one another. The old man, though no longer crying, flipped angrily through the stubs as if one of them were missing. I understood his frustration over the fudging of facts and memory. Such was the text which spoke of certain inducements proffered at a select location to the rebel—his name, alone, was true—Razi.
* * * * *
Never much for the playing fields, much less for mountain scaling, I was wheezing halfway to the top. Clutched to my chest, the cash bag, I imagined, kept my heart inside. The revolver, meanwhile, an old Webley that may or may not have had a safety, slipped down the back of my pants. Fear of it hitting the ground and going off was one of the reasons I rejected Mutassif’s pleas to come along. That, and the possibility that, however incongruously for Darja, this Razi man was serious.
Just how serious was imparted to me just short of the summit, when the otherwise comatose air suddenly sprung alive. “Bloody hell,” I shouted, realizing that a bullet had whizzed by my ear. “Don’t shoot!” I begged and begged again in every local dialect. “Don’t shoot! I only want to talk!”
“We only want to buy you off,” I should have said, but saw soon enough that Razi could not be purchased. He could not even be rented, this former greengrocer who once hawked turnips in the souq, and clearly, he did not want to talk.
He stood, rather, at the mouth of the cave, a strapping man not yet thirty, dressed in a white shalwar kameez and a strip of linen wrapped revolutionary-style around his head. His face was as beautiful as Mutassif’s yet also ruggedly handsome, unshaven, intelligent, intent. I would have relished staring at it, except for the Kalashnikov still smoking and aimed at my gut.
“I know what you want, Englishman,” he began in the usual patois, “and I am not interested.”
I tried to straighten my back, struggled not to gasp. “Are you sure? We could call this a first instalment.”
The muzzle of his rifle nodded up and down, not in agreement. “Take your money, your evil ways, and leave our nation now.”
I had heard Darja described in many ways, most of them scatological, but never as a nation. But who was I to argue with an automatic rifle? My only desire was to get off that hill, out of range, and back to Mutassif. “What do you say I just leave this here and you think about it?” I laid the bag on the sand. “There’s a lifetime there of turnip-selling.”
The muzzle nodded again, “Yes, yes,” meaning “No, and I’ll blow your brains out.”
“Okay. Very well. I’m leaving.” I retrieved the bag, frustrated about having to lug it all the way down.
“And Englishman,” Razi laughed at me when I turned. “Take the gun out of your backside. You might just shoot off your balls.”
* * * * *
The sun had already set by the time I returned to the embassy ,but the sky was pinkish bright. A crowd roiled outside, big, greasy men who were clearly non-Darjans, probably imports from some coast, and carrying torches. And not British torches, either, with batteries, but native torches on fire that they shared with the building. Thirty years later, I read about what was happening inside:
Sit
uation urgent, the cable cried. Legation under attack, apparently by foreign elements. Position no longer tenable. Recommend Operation Bailout.
* * * * *
“Bailout…” I mutter audibly enough for one of my tablemates to note, though thankfully none of them does. The Sahib and the Saxon are too deeply engaged with one another, and the Fair Youths have finally lost interest in mocking me. Even the pensioner seems indifferent, his forehead laid flat on a file into which he intermittently snores. The only response comes in my document’s margins which, for once, are crammed with notes.
“Bailout, yes, at once,” the first reads, followed by, “The PM must be briefed. The First Sea Lord instructed.” And finally, “Send in the Royal Marines.”
There is no description of what occurred next. Nor could I begin to explain how a jellied pencil-pusher, not known for his pluck, managed to make his way to the rear entrance and reach Sir Nigel’s office. Dismal at the best of times, the room was now smoke stuffed, and the ambassador, whose face often recalled a half-burnt funeral candle, sat in a puddle of his own dejection.
“Come, sir, there’s no time,” I urged him and succeeded in extracting him from behind his desk. There was no need to rescue the staff, all three of whom had fled, or to burn his papers, of importance to no one. The cash would have to remain with me as would the pistol, still wedged between my buttocks. Hugging the bag with one hand and the scruff of Sir Nigel’s neck with the other, I led us both out through the flames and the throng.
But not before I noticed, hanging back from the mob, a pair of familiar figures. The two of them, one stick-thin and the other rotund, stood in the shadows like an ominous number 10. Coulson and Kabashkin. The demonstration, the destruction—suddenly, I understood.