by W E Johns
Ginger said no more.
The Beechcraft climbed higher into the blue dome overhead as the air, already feeling the heat of the sun, began to rock her.
Presently Biggles said: “You realized who that was with von Stalhein?”
“I was wondering... if it was....”
“From Lindsay’s description it was Pantenelli and Festwolder. It looks as if he was right when he said they’d have to do their own dirty work, and get cracking with it, too.”
“We’ve got their machine, anyway,” said Ginger comfortingly.
* * *
1 Headquarters of the German Secret Service.
2 Common term used to describe the dividing line between capitalist western countries and the Communist Eastern European countries, 1948-1989.
CHAPTER XII
THE VALLEY OF THE TARTARS
FOR five hours the aircraft bumped its way through sun-tortured air over the oldest civilized lands on earth; lands where history fades into the dim past, where civilizations have come and gone leaving only a few carved stones to show they ever existed; lands where every mile had its Biblical associations, where every trail had echoed in turn to the tramp of marching armies, Assyrian, Persian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and, in later years, Turkish, British, French, German and Arab; the lands where Moses and his weary followers had sought the Promised Land.
Milk and honey there may have been then, but today for the most part these are lands of waterless deserts, vast expanses of sterile earth, of sand, volcanic ash and hard-baked pebbly clay, sometimes flat, sometimes rolling in long hideous dunes, where the only thing that can endure the flaying of the merciless sun is the everlasting camel-thorn. Sometimes the sand gleams like gold dust. Sometimes even the bed-rock has been torn apart by the convulsions of long-forgotten storms. And there are places where sinister black stains show where the core of the earth has burst through its crust to form the bitumen wells that supplied the mortar for the walls of ancient Babylon thousands of years before the word cement was coined.
The sky is the colour of burnished steel.
Between it and the shimmering wastes below the aircraft fought its way, sometimes rising and falling on invisible hundred-foot waves of thin, tormented air.
At first, with the blue Mediterranean to the north and Sinai to the south, the flying had not been such hard work, but by the time they had crossed Palestine, with Transjordan and the Great Syrian Desert ahead, the sun had climbed high, and pilotage in a light machine was anything but pleasant. Over Iraq Biggles had no difficulty in picking up the pipe-line which, running as straight as a railway with guard-houses at intervals, took them to the Tigris. Still the pipe-line ran on, but as soon as the oil derricks of Kirkuk came into sight (the Biblical Place of the Burning Fiery Furnace) Biggles turned north towards the final objective.
To the north and east now the horizon was cut into a serrated chaos by the thousand peaks of Kurdistan—still the home of untamed tribes, untouched, unchanged by the advance of Western Civilization. Which of the mountains was Gelia Dagh, wondered Ginger, who was watching the falling petrol gauge with some anxiety. One thing was certain. They couldn’t get back without a fresh supply of fuel. Biggles was, he knew, breaking the first rule of desert travel, which is never to go beyond ‘the point of no return.’ That is to say, beyond the endurance range of the vehicle, whether it be surface craft or aircraft. Apparently he was determined to go on, trusting to finding petrol and oil available at the Valley of the Tartars. It was a reasonable assumption, always supposing that they did not fail to locate the place. In that event they hadn’t a hope of getting out alive, for they had none of the emergency facilities which were provided for service machines at the time of R.A.F. occupation—radio that could pinpoint their position to armoured cars stationed at strategic points.
They were, in fact, some time in finding the particular valley they sought, but after losing height and circling for a while it was the old castle, its crumbling battlements silhouetted for a moment against the sky, that gave them its position. An orange-coloured piece of material was presently put out by the people there, but by that time wheel marks in the sandy ground, which could not be obliterated or camouflaged except by natural dust storms, had revealed the actual landing area.
Five minutes later the Beechcraft’s wheels were running in the grooves. After the machine had run to a standstill Biggles taxied on to where some men were sitting under an awning near a line of dilapidated-looking tents and a long wooden hutment.
Nothing about the place came up to Ginger’s expectations. He had expected something like a proper service station. From what he had seen of the surrounding country he knew that the landscape could be nothing but an arid, dusty, barren scene of hopeless desolation, a waste of rock and sand, fit only to be the abode of snakes and scorpions; and in this he was not mistaken. It could hardly be otherwise, he reflected. Fertile places are occupied, and the secret squadron, by its nature, had to be far from possible observers. The wild hillmen, out of touch with the rest of the world, hardly counted as human beings. How the pilots bore the solitude and lack of amenities he could not imagine. However, he was to learn in due course.
The castle, the only feature in sight, was an imposing building. Standing like a giant defying time on a spur of rock he quailed at the thought of the plight of the wretched slaves responsible for its construction; for no voluntary labour would have undertaken such a task in such a place. Who had ordered the building of it he did not know, and could not imagine. He had seen similar castles farther south; but those had been built by the Crusaders, near the caravan routes. This was out of the world. Three aircraft, more or less covered by ragged khaki dust-sheets, stood in the shade of a nearby escarpment.
There were about a dozen men sitting about waiting for the Beechcraft to switch off. Not one got up to offer a greeting. They were, perhaps, too bored, or too tired, thought Ginger. Their appearance certainly supported that view, for a more scruffy-looking lot of white men he had never seen. Shorts and open-necked shirts, the worse for wear and none too clean, was the common dress. Ginger had half expected to find the garrison in uniforms. Two or three of the men had half-grown beards, and these doubtful adornments, with long hair in need of cutting, did nothing to improve their appearance. None of the men had shaved for days; and if there is one thing more dilatory-looking than long hair it is an unshaven chin. One thing was plain. Something was radically wrong at the air headquarters of the Committee of Three, and discipline, if ever there had been any, had gone by the board.
Said a bearded man, sitting on an oil-drum, as Biggles and Ginger moved into the shade of the awning: “Where are the cigarettes?”
Biggles, naturally, looked a bit puzzled. “Cigarettes?”
The man frowned. “Didn’t you bring any?”
“Only what I have in my case.”
“Where’s Leffers? He was to bring a stock.”
“If you’re waiting for Leffers to bring a supply you’ll wait a long time.”
“How so?”
“He’s dead.”
This piece of information caused a stir; and consternation, although this obviously was not so much sympathy for the dead man as his failure to produce cigarettes, which were evidently in short supply. There was some swearing.
“He didn’t say anything to me about cigarettes,” volunteered Biggles. Which was perfectly true.
“What happened?” he was asked.
“He was shot by someone in the Continentale, in Alex. I saw him at the club.”
“Klein, Voss, now Leffers,” muttered a disreputable-looking youth. “What’s Klutz playing at, leaving us in the cart like this?”
“Klutz isn’t playing at anything. He was shot at the same time as Leffers.”
“How come you to know all this?”
“We’d just flown in from Algiers and were in the hotel at the time. We heard the shooting, and seeing what had happened pushed off before the police arrived. We’d met Leffers by
appointment at the club. Those were our orders. He told us to meet him at the airport at six. That’s all he told us, except about this place. Knowing what had happened we came on alone. What else were we to do? We couldn’t go back to Algiers and we daren’t stay in Alex.”
“What about the other man—the feller who’s to take Klein’s place?”
“Leffers didn’t say anything to me about that. Would you like me to go back and fetch him?”
There was some sarcastic laughter.
“What’s the joke?” asked Biggles.
“We’re out of petrol,” was the staggering reply. In fact we’re out of everything except bully and biscuits,” added the speaker bitterly.
“Why not do something about it?” suggested Biggles. “I imagine you’ve got radio. Why not put an S.O.S. through to Alex.?”
“We had radio but it don’t work any more. Klein put it out of action to stop us bleating.”
The story that was now unfolded caused Ginger no great surprise. It was in fact a sequence of natural consequences. In the first place the members of the secret squadron were men of doubtful, if not bad, character. Rebels by nature, it would not take much to upset them. Secondly, there was the soul-destroying location of the airfield with a climate few white men could endure for long without special equipment and amenities.
For a while everything had run on oiled wheels. Klein, with his two trusted lieutenants, Voss and Leffers, had maintained discipline and organized a steady supply of stores—the most important of which, in a nervy, thirsty climate, had been beer and cigarettes. But then Klein’s own nerves had broken down and he had taken to drink. In such a situation things had gone quickly from bad to worse. Klein had quarrelled with Voss and Leffers. The men grumbled, saying that Klein was keeping the beer and cigarettes for himself. Morale had crumbled. Klein had taken the output valve from the radio to prevent any of his men from complaining to Alexandria when his back was turned. He carried it in his pocket. He was never sober. He was drunk when he had got into his machine to do a bombing job that had been ordered. That was why he had flown into the hill. The output valve had gone west with him. Voss had flown to Alexandria to report to Klutz, get a new machine and fresh recruits. He hadn’t come back. Then Leffers had gone. Now he, too, had been killed. The disgruntled men in the Valley of the Tartars, having faith in Klutz’s efficiency, had sat waiting for him to put things right. Now Klutz was dead. Someone suggested that Raban, who was a smart guy, might do something. They knew Raban, from which it appeared that they were deserters from the Foreign Legion.
Ginger could have told them that Raban’s activities had also ended. It was clear to him that the squadron was in a bad way. Lindsay, and to some extent themselves, had already struck the Valley a blow that might prove mortal. Its one hope of survival was von Stalhein, who was a disciplinarian, and efficient. The same man might be responsible for their own non-survival should he arrive on the scene while they were there, he reflected ruefully. And without petrol they looked like staying there. The great redeeming factor of the situation was the radio being out of action.
The men were still grumbling about what had happened, most of them blaming Klein. From their conversation Ginger made it out that there were three pilots. The rest were mechanics or camp assistants. They were of mixed nationality, but all spoke either English or French, which they would have learned in the Legion.
“Blaming Klein won’t help now,” Biggles pointed out. “As you’ve probably realized, we’re new. We were promised something a bit different from this.”
“There may be a row about you taking that plane,” said a man. “It’s one of those the Committee keep for their own use.”
“I wasn’t to know that. What do you mean by one of the Committee’s machines? Have they others?”
“How do you suppose they get stores and heavy stuff out to us?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“They keep a Douglas D.C.31 at Alex. for the job.” explained another man. “Feller named Liebnitz flies it. He’s in Alex. now, loading up—that’s if he ain’t been bumped off, too. He was to bring petrol for the next job.”
“What’s the idea of keeping you so short of petrol?” asked Biggles.
There was more cynical laughter. Said a man: “Don’t be such a sucker. If there was plenty of petrol left lying loose somebody might go for a ride and not come back. I would, for one. Sitting here day after day, frying like an egg in a pan.”
“We’ve had a thirsty trip,” remarked Biggles. “How do we go for water?”
“There’s plenty of that—but who wants to drink water in a place like this?”
Biggles shrugged. “We shall have to drink something or shrivel in this heat.”
“There’s a well in the castle.”
“I see.” said Biggles. “What are you fellows going to do?”
Nobody knew. At all events, nobody answered.
“Sitting here waiting for something that may never come isn’t my idea of fun.”
“Okay, wise guy,” growled a big, unshaven fellow. “You think of something if you’re so smart.”
“Somebody will have to go to Alex., and get this mess straightened out.”
“How?”
“I wasn’t thinking of walking,” answered Biggles evenly. “Isn’t there an oilfield somewhere near here?”
One of the men laughed harshly. “You don’t dig petrol out of the ground, pal. You get crude oil. They haven’t struck it yet, anyhow. They’re still drilling. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing here.”
“I see. Where do you reckon is the nearest place we could get petrol?”
The men looked at each other and agreed it would be Mosul, in Northern Iraq.
“That’s about two hundred miles from here,” said Biggles.
“How are you going to get two hundred miles?”
“Well, I’ve a little petrol left in my tanks and I imagine the tanks of the machines I see over there aren’t bone dry. Put it all together, and with what I have left I could go to Mosul. Even if I couldn’t top up there I could get a message through to Alex.”
“That’s an idea,” said someone. “I’ve had about enough of sitting here sweating. Our pay’s overdue. The next thing we’ll hear is there ain’t going to be any more.”
Ginger wondered why the men hadn’t thought of Biggles’s suggestion themselves, but he gathered from the conversation that followed that not only were their three machines military types, which would be hard to explain in Mosul or anywhere else, but as a result of their several sorties they might be identified. It wouldn’t be safe to land them anywhere except in their remote retreat. It was generally agreed, however, that the Beechcraft, being a civil type, might get away with it. It was too late to start for Mosul that day—or it would be by the time any remaining petrol had been transferred to the Beechcraft—so Biggles said if they’d do that he’d go in the morning. Meantime, somebody pointed out, the Douglas plane might arrive with Klein’s successor—and some beer.
Ginger hoped fervently that it would not.
Now that there was something to do, the atmosphere of pessimistic resignation gave way to a less depressing mood all round. Biggles parted with most of his cigarettes. “Where do we sleep?” he asked.
“You can please yourself whether you sleep in a tent and get sandfly fever or doss down in the castle with the snakes, scorpions and mosquitoes,” he was told.
Biggles said they would go to the castle. It should be cooler than a tent. “What about grub?” he asked.
“There’s plenty of bully and biscuits in the wooden hut. Help yourself.” he was informed.
Collecting their kit from the Beechcraft they walked on to the hut, a prefabricated structure that had evidently been flown out and assembled on the spot. Nobody went with them. The door stood wide open.
Biggles took one step over the threshold and then stopped, staring at the litter inside. It was plain that this one weatherproof building was the general st
ore, workshop and armoury. Broken packing-cases lay around. Tools were flung anyhow on a bench. Spare parts, oil and petrol drums were piled in heaps. Some small bombs, explosive and incendiary, lay in a corner. But what delighted Ginger were some weapons, rifles and pistols, that hung at all angles, on nails, on the walls, over more broken packing-cases, this time of ammunition.
“Just take a good look,” invited Biggles grimly. “And I’ve heard fellows in the services wondering why discipline is necessary! This is what happens when there isn’t any—when a bunch of men are left to themselves. It’s nobody’s job to do anything, so everybody does nothing. Is anybody watching us?”
“No.”
“Then we’ll have a couple of Lugers and some ammunition. Imagine it. Even in a place like this these fools haven’t the wit to post a guard. I know what’ll happen here one day. I can only marvel that it hasn’t happened before.”
“What?’
“I’ll tell you presently. We mustn’t be too long. Grab a gun. We’ll take some rations, too.”
Presently, heavily laden, they walked on towards the castle, a matter of only a few hundred yards away.
“A pretty rotten lot,” was Ginger’s verdict of their new comrades.
“Rotten maybe, but dangerous,” replied Biggles. “When we arrived they were about ripe for mutiny. I suspect some of them would have pushed off had they anywhere to go, and any way of getting there. What they may not realize is—and I’m pretty sure I’m right in this—they’ll never get out. The Committee will see to that. The old saying, dead men can’t talk, is still true. That could be one of the reasons why this place was chosen for a hide-out. All the surviving members of the Committee have to do is withhold petrol—when it suits them—and these poor fools have had it. There’s no walking home from the Valley of the Tartars.”
“That goes for us.”
“I realized that before I landed. I must admit I was a bit shaken when they said there was no petrol. I relied on there being plenty here, so we could fly out when it suited us. That’s why I’ve put forward this scheme of going to Mosul. I shan’t come back, of course. I’ve seen all I want to see here. Some of these fellows will rat on each other when they’re questioned by the police, to save their own skins. They always do. So the whole racket will be exposed. There’s only one snag now to get over.”