by Len Deighton
The paved road followed the coast and the railway line. Now and again they passed supply dumps that stretched for miles. Sometimes signs pointed to a hospital or a repair workshop. Some of the signs were bogus ones, put there to deceive. Then evidence of human activity grew less. For miles at a time they saw no traffic on the road. The desert stretched away to the south of them, but it was not the rolling sand dunes depicted in the movies: it was hard sun-baked earth and ochre-coloured rock. El Daba came up. Chips pointed it out and told Harry that it was celebrated in a British soldiers’ song. What did the soldiers sing? Some obscenities about Farouk seated on a camel, eating bacon sandwiches and the wind blowing up his backside. Chips could not recall the exact words but El Daba always brought the song to mind because, in keeping with the chorus, El Daba did seem to have a permanent sandstorm blowing across it. Maybe that was why the British had chosen it as a place to establish a transit camp for war correspondents.
The entrance was in a corrugated-steel Nissen hut that had been erected on a concrete base, a luxury building by desert standards. The guard was a soldier sitting on an oil drum smoking a cigarette. He waved them in. ALL VISITORS MUST REPORT TO THE DUTY OFFICER said a sign on the door. The only other vehicle in the compound where they parked was a big AEC Matador, a canvas-sided truck complete with jerry cans marked WATER and PETROL, bedding rolls, and bundled netting for camouflage.
Inside the hut they found an office where the sergeant in charge of the transit accommodation was playing darts and drinking tea with a clerk.
‘That’s okay. The duty officer will have to look at your accreditation and then we’ll sort you out,’ said the sergeant. ‘If you want a meal, my lads will take care of you.’ He put his darts down on the desk and phoned the duty officer. This was an elderly warrant officer, who had to be found in his billet and who, despite the early evening hour, arrived in a camel-hair dressing gown and smelled of whisky.
The paperwork done and their car filled with petrol, they went in to eat. The room contained a stove, a counter, some chairs and tables. ‘Spam and egg and peas.’
‘Sounds delicious,’ said Harry.
Harry had made sure that the back of his Ford was crammed with supplies. There was tea and coffee, canned bacon rashers, canned beans and a sack of rice. But such things were better kept for emergencies, or for trading for favours with front-line units. So it was Spam, egg, and peas.
The processed ham was fried and the egg was of the reconstituted powdered variety that a skilful cook can make into a semblance of scrambled fresh egg. This cook was not so skilled. The peas were canned and came in a thick greenish-yellow blob. There was hot tea too, of course. ‘No wonder your British army depends upon tea,’ said Harry watching as the meal was being prepared for them.
The only other visitors in sight were two men dressed in the heavy khaki battle dress that was needed on winter nights in the desert. They were both clean and tidy, with tanned faces and war correspondent badges on their shoulder straps. The younger one was a muscular fellow in his middle twenties. He had the sort of square-ended moustache that many of the British officers affected out here: squared and trimmed short almost to the skin. At his side he had two cameras in leather cases and a bigger case that probably contained lenses, film and accessories. The second man was older: thin, dyspeptic and unwelcoming. He had wavy hair coloured red, the shade that ladies’ hairdressers call titian.
They were drinking tea from tin mugs. The younger one was finishing his meal by eating slices of heavy brown fruit cake that, judging by its shape and texture, had come from a can. His chewing revealed that one of his front teeth was missing: it gave him the look of a street urchin.
Harry sat down at their table, offered them cigarettes, and gave them one of his big smiles. ‘Harry Wechsler,’ he said by way of introduction. ‘And this is Chips O’Grady. We’re heading west.’
‘Mogg,’ said the younger of the two men. ‘Tommy Mogg.’ The other man – who’d been lost in his own thoughts – looked at his partner in disapproval and did not introduce himself.
Chips went to the counter and waited while the soldier put the food onto plates and poured out tea.
Harry Wechsler spread a map across the table and asked the two men questions about the places he stabbed a finger at. ‘Siwa Oasis. What kind of a place is that?’
The two men – photographer and writer – had been to Siwa Oasis. They said it was two days’ journey southwards into the Sahara.
‘What’s to see at Siwa?’ said Harry as Chips put the food down in front of him. ‘Thanks, Chips.’
Chips paid no attention to the others. He sat down with his food and started eating.
‘I’m just asking these guys: what’s with this Siwa Oasis?’ said Harry and began picking at the Spam and egg.
Tommy Mogg, the younger man, answered. It was typically so, thought Harry. The photographer was always strong enough to lug his gear around and always more friendly to other correspondents. The writers, older, more experienced, and suspicious, were always fearful that they were giving away their stock in trade. ‘The story we heard was that it’s the base for the Long Range Desert Group.’
‘Who are they?’ said Harry.
The young man looked at his partner. ‘One of these “private armies” who make long trips into the desert far south of where the Eye-ties have any front-line units.’
‘Did you get pictures?’
‘We got bugger all. Just a few wogs. I got some pictures of the palm trees and a wrecked tank.’
‘What did the army say?’
‘We went without a conducting officer.’
Harry laughed. ‘This man’s army doesn’t like any display of initiative, especially from newspapermen. They probably made sure the cupboard was bare.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Are you staying here?’ said Harry. They nodded. ‘What’s it like?’
‘It’s okay,’ said the younger man. ‘Tents. Showers. Hot water. Booze. It’s okay.’
‘Tents?’
Seeing the look on his face, the photographer grinned. ‘You’re lucky to get a tent. Until last month you were expected to tuck up in your own bedroll and go to sleep under the stars.’
‘I think we’ll keep going.’ Harry pushed away his uneaten meal and lit a cigarette. ‘Spam, is that all you ever eat in the desert?’
‘You’ll get used to it,’ said the photographer. ‘The Arabs don’t eat pork, see. So they don’t pinch it.’ So saying, he reached across, speared Harry’s Spam on his fork, and put it on his own plate.
Chips O’Grady contributed little to the conversation. He let Harry Wechsler talk to the two men. Harry liked talking to strangers. He called it research. Chips ate his Spam and used a piece of bread to wipe the final traces of egg from his plate but even Chips left the peas. Then he went back for more tea and got slices of the fruit cake for himself and Harry. He understood why Harry Wechsler took it for granted that Chips would wait on him, like some sort of body servant, but it made him feel a fool. In this country, servants were natives. He wished he could find some way of getting that simple fact into Harry’s brain.
Harry Wechsler put his feet up on a dining chair, smoked his cigarette, and studied the map. ‘No, we’ll press on along the coast,’ he said. ‘We got all the pictures of Arabs we need for the time being.’
The photographer smiled politely and said good night. The two men had an early start in the morning.
Once they were back in the Ford, Harry Wechsler changed his mind. ‘How long would it take us to mosey down to this Siwa Oasis, Chips? Ever been there?’
‘I’ve been there. That was back before the fighting started. It was as near to the Italian frontier as you could get. It’s right on the wire.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s a long drive. I wouldn’t want to try any of the unmarked camel tracks. They start off looking very nice at this end, but you get fifty miles into the desert and they peter out.’
‘So?’
; ‘We should head south after we get to Mersa Matruh. That’s a better way.’
‘Can you do it?’
‘Not in one go. Not unless you spelled me on the driving. Even then we couldn’t do it overnight. It’s the best part of two hundred miles after we turn south.’
‘Those guys,’ said Harry. ‘I wouldn’t trust those guys an inch.’
‘The newspaper people? They were all right.’
‘All right? Are you kidding? I think they found a story down there in the desert. Something they don’t want us to get on to.’
Chips was surprised by this idea. ‘Why do you think that?’
‘I’ve always had this instinct about people, Chips. My mother was the same way. I have this unfailing instinct about people. Those guys were trying to put us off. You saw the way the older one clammed up?’
‘I don’t think so, Harry. They were just tired.’
‘I can tell tired from cunning. I’ve been in this game a long time. I got where I am by knowing what makes people tick. There’s a story down in that oasis or I’m a Chinaman.’
‘There will be nowhere to sleep,’ Chips warned him, having concluded that comfort figured largely in all of Harry Wechsler’s decisions.
‘Get lost! Do you think I’m some kind of cream puff?’
‘Whatever you say.’
‘We’ll see which of us will be yelling for Mom.’
‘I didn’t mean anything, Harry. I just thought I should tell you that we might have to spend the night in the car.’ He stole a glance at his chief.
‘Okay, okay.’
‘You don’t want to see if we can get an army okay for the trip down there?’
‘And waste time prising more of these “officers of the day” out of their boudoirs?’
Chips nodded. He knew he was going to hear a lot more about the warrant officer who had arrived in his camel-hair dressing gown. He’d seen the incredulous look on Harry’s face.
‘Why would we need their okay?’
Chips was going to tell him all kinds of reasons, from the possibility of stumbling into newly laid minefields, to the chance of being shot up by friendly fighter planes. But he decided that this was not the moment.
‘We’ve got cans and cans of gas.’ Harry looked at his watch. ‘Two hours each at the wheel: starting now. Right?’
‘Even so, I’m not sure we can get to Siwa by morning, Harry.’
‘Give it a try, buddy. You’re not with one of your dozy Limey news outfits now. Give it the good old American try.’
‘Sure, Harry, sure.’
The drive down to Siwa was nothing less than spectacular. The track lead across the hard sand of the so-called Libyan Plateau. In the moonlight it was white and crisp for as far as they could see. At first they were leaving a long grey plume of dust behind them, so Chips drove off the usual route. Keeping a hundred yards or so to one side of it he found his own way across the desert. There he put his foot down and, despite the weight of the tents and supplies that Harry had insisted were necessary, the station wagon kept up a steady fifty or more miles an hour. Now and again they saw army trucks keeping to the prescribed route and trailing clouds of white dust.
Only once did Harry show any sign of having second thoughts about this long detour, hundreds of miles into the Sahara. Even then he wanted only a little reassurance. ‘Would they have gone to such trouble to say there was nothing there, if there was really nothing?’
‘I don’t know, Harry.’
‘Ask yourself,’ said Harry testily.
‘You mean if Harry Wechsler had been down to Siwa and found nothing, he would have gone around telling everyone to go there?’
‘Don’t be a smart-ass,’ said Harry irritably. Then he thought about it and laughed. ‘Maybe I would at that,’ he said, and laughed again.
Siwa is a major oasis, deep in the desert and on the northern edge of the ever-moving Great Sand Sea. Anyone continuing south from here must face hundreds and hundreds of miles of uncertain, shifting sand and many days without water.
At Siwa, rocky valleys form a shallow depression and provide the access to the little lakes that are the waters of the oasis. The famous pink rocks give shelter to groups of date palms, which the tribes say grow the most delicious dates known anywhere in the whole Sahara region.
Harry Wechsler and Chips O’Grady were completely exhausted when they arrived, early in the morning. There was no one in sight. They drove past the seemingly empty mud-hut villages and parked before some concrete buildings where peeling notices in English and Arabic read KEEP OUT. ARMY PROPERTY. DANGER. A smaller notice in red and white said, You are now in a malaria region. Take precautions!
Dutifully Harry reached for his smart canvas satchel, found his quinine tablets, and took two. He swallowed them without water, gulping noisily as he did it. ‘Take your tablets, Chips.’
‘I’m okay. Mosquitoes don’t seem to like the flavour of my blood.’
‘Maybe that was because your blood was largely alcohol. Now maybe they’ll find a taste for it.’
‘I’ll be okay, Harry.’
‘If you’re thinking of managing without your salary, okay. But just as long as you’re working for me, you do things my way. That means you stay off the booze and take your malaria tablets and your salt tablets every day.’ He shook out two more tablets for him.
Chips threw two tablets into the back of his throat, swallowed and smiled. He wondered how long he would be able to endure Harry Wechsler without the consolation of a little whisky now and again.
‘What kind of place is this?’ Harry pointed to the ancient single-storey huts.
‘Gyppo army. This was one of their bases when they manned the frontier. Not here any more.’
‘I guess we’ve got to very near the old frontier here? The wire, you call it: right?’
‘We’re right on it.’ He pointed to a space between two outcrops. ‘If we follow the old track that leads west, we’ll come to the wire.’
‘Can we get through?’
‘We can give it the old American try.’
‘Attaboy!’
As they drove west they saw evidence of the dangers that the Great Sand Sea offered. Not more than fifty yards off the marked path, two big ten-ton trucks had been abandoned. The sand was almost covering their wheels and there was no chance that any sort of machinery could winch them out now. Not many people, on foot, camel or motor, risked the journey southward. The local tribes – the Siwans and Senussis – were convinced that it was a region of evil from which few travellers returned.
And yet men of the Long Range Desert Group dared the shifting sands. They made journeys so far into the distance they had to be refuelled by rendezvous with aircraft. That was a story that Harry Wechsler would like to tell, but the British were secretive. They were determined that the enemy wouldn’t discover anything about how and when and where the LRDG patrols operated.
‘There’s the wire!’ said Chips. He stopped the car and turned off the ignition. As the engine was silenced, the whine of the wind was suddenly very loud.
‘Chips, old pal, that’s quite a sight!’
The border defences, which Mussolini had decreed should run along the frontier between his African empire and Egypt, was nothing less than a river of barbed wire. It was supported on steel stakes, each one bedded in concrete, to make a barrier extending about three metres. Intricate and forbidding, it flowed uninterrupted for four hundred miles or more across the rolling sands. Harry got out of the car and began framing the scene from different positions using the L-shapes of stretched thumbs and forefingers. ‘Get the camera, Chips.’
When Harry had got one general photographic view of the scene, Chips drove along the edge of the barrier until Harry had chosen a sandy mound from which to get better photographs. Then there was a photo with the Ford station wagon in the foreground, and two pictures of Harry with a foot on the running board. As they were standing there in the early morning sun, they heard the sound of air
craft. There were three of them, twin-engined bombers, very high and heading due east. Harry tried to get a picture of the planes in the sky, but he was too late and they were too far away.
‘Oh well. They would have been just fly specks, I suppose. We would need a really big telephoto to get anything worth using. Maybe you’re right about me having a Leica. We’ll chase that one up.’ He pointed to the wire barrier. ‘Are there any gaps in this stuff?’
‘Let’s find out,’ said Chips. He was very tired. All he wanted was to sleep, but Harry Wechsler seemed to go on forever. ‘What gives you all that energy?’ he asked, once they were back in the car and crawling forward, looking for a way across the frontier.
‘Money,’ said Harry without hesitation. ‘Do you know how many readers I have?’
‘Yes, you told me.’
‘Is that a gap in the wire?’
He was pointing to a place where the sand had drifted to cover the tops of the steel stakes. ‘Drive over the sandy place there,’ said Harry.
‘You know what will happen if a tyre runs onto one of those buried steel stakes?’
‘Yeah. You’ll have to change the wheel.’
‘We could lose the sump.’
‘We could lose the war. Get going.’
Chips didn’t like it. The Ford was a heavy vehicle. The reinforced chassis and all the luggage made it heavier still. Apart from the danger from the steel stakes, there was the chance of getting stuck in a patch of soft sand. But Chips did as he was told, and when they reached the other side Harry was pleased with himself. ‘We’re in Libya. We did it! Where do we go from here?’ He looked around him. He’d never felt so far from civilisation in all his life.
There was a track across the desert that Chips said must lead to Al Jaghbub, the corresponding oasis on the Italian side of the Libyan border. Harry produced his compass and then went well away from the car to be sure the metal had no effect upon the needle. Once he’d taken a compass reading and compared the maps, they started to crawl forward, looking for trail markings. Once they’d left Siwa out of sight behind them, they were in the open desert and there was no sign of life. There were no signs of birds, or rats, or snakes: every living thing seemed to be hiding from the sun.