After lunch the identity card had only to be mentioned to be given free of charge. This, as Prayle knew, was mere politeness. He kept the conversation on its level of beautiful altruism, and before leaving produced a fiver “for local charities.” The Muhktar unobtrusively pocketed the first identity card and made out another in the name of George Nadim Salibah—a poor orphan, he explained, who had emigrated to America ten years earlier and had never been heard of since. The document was proof against any ordinary bureaucratic inquiries. Fouad would have a real identity as good as his own.
Travelling back to Jerusalem, Prayle resisted the temptation to find out why the bus driver was wearing bicycle clips round the calves of his riding breeches, and devoted himself to a series of mental pictures representing his future acts. He enjoyed the excitement of being once more, as in peacetime, an individual pursuing his own path through a disapproving society, but he had no right to take any avoidable risk. The police, he had observed, were still taking an interest in Armande’s street.
Armande, poor unsupported child, had plenty of trouble coming to her anyway. If on the top of this trafficking in arms she was caught hiding fugitives, she’d be wanting false identity cards for her own use. As for himself, the least punishment that could be handed out would be transfer to some awful station of heat and boredom on the Red Sea. It was scandalous for Security to protect a man wanted by the police—unless, of course, Security wanted him. Well, he did need a talk with Fouad. That was a loophole. The army at bottom was humane. Give it an excuse that could possibly be believed, and it always did its best to believe it.
When the bus stopped at the Jaffa Gate, the chain of pictures—Prayle complacently described them as a chain of reasoning—was complete. He dived into the bazaar of the Old City and bought the black outer garment and thin, black veil of a respectable and old-fashioned Moslem woman. Then he reconnoitred the hillside at the end of Armande’s street, and found a pit among the rocks, full of filth and rubbish, where he could change out of sight of the houses. He disturbed Captain Fairfather’s Sunday evening leisure to demand the loan of the section truck to take him to the recruiting depot at Sarafand, where, he said, he wanted to interrogate a witness; and when Fairfather let him go, at midnight, with permission to use the truck, a lot of unwanted drinks and a lecture on the contradictory aspects of Jewish womanhood in bed and in politics, Prayle telephoned Armande, woke her up, and told her not to go to the office in the morning. He then went to bed himself, full of admiration for his own swift and efficient staff work.
At nine next morning he emerged from the hollow among the rocks as an Arab woman, carrying his hat and boots in a basket under a neat white cloth. Half an hour’s patient waiting was necessary before he spotted the plain-clothes man who was watching Armande’s street, and had him where he wanted him—at the far end of the street and about to stroll back. It was essential that the man should see him enter Armande’s block, but not too closely. Prayle shrunk his height so far as he could, hobbling along with bent knees and imitating the gait of a worn village woman with the usual varicose legs. He turned into the house when the watcher was looking straight at him from a distance of two hundred yards.
He rang Armande’s bell.
“Any rags, bones or bottles today, mum?”
His cockney accent did not get a laugh. Armande smiled, wan and puzzled. Her slim, tense body had no life in it. Hell, thought Prayle, my little ship’s in harbour again!
“Just slipping Fouad into something loose,” he said, “and then we’re off.”
Fouad was not easily recognisable. His moustache had gone, and his hair was a dirty golden-brown. Prayle dressed him in the female clothing and veil, and himself returned to his uniform. He gave Fouad an exhibition of the gait with which he had entered the house, and warned him to imitate it until he was clear of the immediate quarter.
“Walk out of town by the Jaffa Road,” he told him. “I’ll pass you in a truck and pick you up in about half an hour.”
Fouad said an emotional good-bye to Armande, his halting French made more incoherent than ever by tears of gratitude She took his hand, gently smiling, but untouched by the femininely Arab outburst as if she herself had been some just and grimly masculine administrator. Prayle was astonished at her lack of warmth. What had happened to her since the day before yesterday? Never had been so evident that detachment of which Loujon spoke. The only explanation was that she just died and departed into a hell of her own when things went wrong. That in his experience was a common trick of sensitive men. Possibly it was equally common among women. But what the devil had gone wrong?
He looked out of the window. The plain-clothes man was talking to a shopkeeper halfway up the street.
“Now, Fouad!” he ordered. “Hobble! Let that man see you come out! Don’t forget the basket with your clothes in it! Imshi!”
Fouad again seized Armande’s hands, and then dashed down the stairs.
“I’ll follow him in a few minutes,” said Prayle, “and then come back and see you tonight.”
“I can tell you now.” Armande spoke with such a cold regret that it was obvious to him she was hurting even herself. “My department, whatever it is, will explain the whole thing to your security chiefs. I’m sorry. It’s so discourteous to tell you nothing. But Wadiah’s arms were a matter of High Policy.”
“Why are you so upset about it?” he asked.
“I am not.”
“Then what’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Mrs. Herne, do you believe everything Abu Tisein tells you?”
“You said I could trust him,” she answered, seeing that he knew of some recent connection between them.
“I never told you to take his orders. Who did tell you?”
“I never said I took them. I don’t want to discuss the subject, Sergeant Prayle. The whole thing will be settled, and I want to forget it.”
“Give me a hint. Did British troops collect Wadiah’s arms?”
“I hope to God they did not,” she answered bitterly. “I hope the French themselves collected them. And there’s your hint, and I am not going to say any more. What are you doing with Fouad?”
“Enlisting him. Private Nadim Salibah of the Palestine Buffs.”
“And you won’t be caught? Are you sure?”
“Keeping my fingers crossed.”
He went out on to the roof and saw Fouad in the distance, well away from the police and stepping boldly. Fouad’s slight build made a presentable woman of him; he was unlikely to attract attention.
“The worst is over,” Prayle said.
“I am so grateful. You’ve been an angel, a guardian angel. And I stand here like a stuffed owl,” she cried with a flash of spirit, “while you take such risks for me, and gratitude is just another ache that I can’t satisfy. I mustn’t answer your questions. I can’t say a word of what you have done. May I even pay what you’ve spent on Fouad without it seeming an insult?”
“You’ll need it more than you do now.”
“Why should I? I can earn my own living.”
“Just old mother Prayle foretelling the future in a pool of owl tears. I must go now, Mrs. Herne, and pick up Fouad.”
“Good luck, and—and bless you!”
“For your own sake,” he persisted, “tell me the story.”
“I’d tell you so gladly for your sake,” she replied. “But I’m not allowed to. Don’t think too hardly of me.”
Prayle hurried back to the Field Security office, thanking God for Fouad. If that damned, sympathetic murderer had never existed, his visit to Jerusalem would have ended, just as he had feared, in a straight rebuff from Armande. Well, he had got it; but it was no collision of their prides and their tastes, driving them irrevocably apart. It was merely a straight line, a reluctant line, among the complex curves of their relationship.
The truck was waiting outside the office. He jumped in alongside Fairfather’s batman driver, and told him to go to Saraf
and. Just outside Jerusalem, where the road began to sweep downwards along the hillside, the truck overtook Fouad.
“Let’s give the old girl a lift,” Prayle suggested.
“O.K. Sergeant, but she won’t take it,” the driver answered.
“Very heavy basket. Let’s see.”
Fouad climbed into the back without a word. Fifteen miles further on, in the wooded gorge of Bab el Waad, Prayle stopped the truck and, to the driver’s shocked surprise, led Fouad off into the plantations. There he gave him his papers and a sketch of the birthplace and past life of George Nadim Salibah.
“No thanks needed,” he said. “Sheikh Wadiah helps us. We help him, and you too. Didn’t you help our soldiers when they came to Beit Chabab?”
Prayle’s shot in the dark was successful.
“Yes, moussié,” Fouad answered. “I guide them.”
“Did they speak English?”
“Yes, moussié, but not like Englishman.”
“You don’t understand it, do you?”
“I hear plenty English. English say urra ovva urra ovva. Very slow. Always angry. These men not speak like English.”
“How do you know?”
“Just as I know you not Frenchman. French say pang pang pang, very fast. You speak French, but you say urra ovva urra ovva, not pang pang pang.”
“The hell I do!” said Prayle, rather annoyed. “What did they look like? Dark or fair?”
“Dark, moussié, but not so dark as Arab.”
“Did Sheikh Wadiah notice anything?”
“No. He talk only with major and speak all the time. Much welcome.”
“No idea what they were?”
“No, moussié. Not English. Not French. I not know what you send. Great country. Many allies. Me too British soldier now. Very proud.”
“That’s fine, Fouad,” said Prayle kindly. “And when it wears off, just remember Madame Armande.”
The driver stared when he saw Prayle return from the woods with a man. Then he grinned. This was real secret service stuff. It was the first time in all his driving for Field Security that anything dramatic had happened.
“Keep it under your hat, chum,” said Sergeant Prayle. “Now off we go to Sarafand!”
He saw Private George Nadim Salibah duly sworn, and whispered to the sergeant who took charge of him a mysterious and quite incomprehensible story of the new recruit’s services to Intelligence. Salibah’s prestige was firmly established, and Sergeant Prayle was invited to lunch at the mess.
Back in Jerusalem, Prayle gave his whole attention to the investigation in hand. He had solved the problem of Wadiah’s private arsenal, but not the problem of convincing his superiors. It was obvious that Abu Tisein had used Armande to acquire Wadiah’s machine guns for the National Home and that a party of Jews in British uniform had boldly collected them. Proof, however, was lamentably short unless Armande herself spoke out.
Her hint about the French did not make sense. The French never had those arms. Montagne’s indignation had been too real. It looked as if Abu Tisein had already started to lay down a smoke screen. Guy Furney’s judgment would never be smothered by it, but Furney was already on his way to Abyssinia, and his successor, Major Rains, was reputed to see no further than the inside of a file. Nobody except Captain Fairfather, who knew both Armande and Abu Tisein, would easily believe that she thought and still thought she was working for her own country. And Fairfather cut no ice in the Lebanon.
“The skipper got any hobbies?” he asked Sergeant MacKinnon.
“Aye, women!” answered the sergeant with relish. “And whusky! And wor-r-rk! But he doesna’ take them seriously. And just when I hae him trained to a decent routine of one or the other, he must start some daft doin’s to amuse himself.”
“Does he look after the chaps?”
“I will not say he cares for our pheesical condition as well as an officer of the Black Watch,” said MacKinnon, “but there’s no lie he wouldna’ tell for any of us.”
This testimonial reassured Sergeant Prayle that Fairfather was, at any rate, more than an amiable eccentric. He decided to report to him, by easy stages, as much as he knew.
“Well, did you have any luck with Mrs. Herne?” asked Fairfather as soon as he entered the office.
“Yes and no, sir.”
“What did she say?”
“That she wouldn’t discuss the matter.”
“Bitch,” pronounced Fairfather thoughtfully.
“Mentally, sir.”
“God forbid that I should apply so coarse a word to her mere enjoyment of womanhood! I meant her mind. Like Tobias’s dog, it seduces but does not perform. What else did she say?”
“That the master would deal with my inquiry upstairs.”
“Does she believe that, or is the master just wasting time?”
“Both,” said Prayle. “There’s a lot of innocence in that little noggin.”
“Innocent? Armande Herne?” asked Fairfather sceptically. “A pretentious, sophisticated … well but, good Lord, you might be right! Who is the master upstairs? Got any line?”
“Old Joab, sir.”
“Do you want a commission, Sergeant Prayle?”
“Baton in the knapsack.”
“Well, you’ll have to be a damned sight clearer for your men than you are for me. Who’s Joab?”
“Abu Tisein.”
Prayle told him of Abu Tisein’s connection with Armande, and of the mysterious collection of the arms. He left out any mention of Fouad’s adventures, merely describing him as reliable informant.
“Joab, yes,” said the captain. “It touched him off nicely. I just wonder whether he is doing his Joab stuff or his Lawrence stuff.”
Fairfather leaned back in his chair, and relit his pipe.
“By the way,” he asked, “when did you know that all arms in the Lebanon were to be collected by the French?”
“Captain Wyne did not know till they started to collect.”
“Then there’s a good chance that David Nachmias didn’t know either. That makes a difference, you see. I can’t imagine Abu Tisein doing anything so foolish that he would be caught out. But if he never dreamed that anyone would bother Wadiah for arms, the plan looked dead safe. It was a thousand to one against Wadiah ever having to produce that receipt. Why should he? He might frame it and hang it in his parlour some day, when the whole affair was too old for investigation; but that’s all. If the French hadn’t suddenly started to collect arms, we should never have heard a word of Abu Tisein’s intrigue and we should never have guessed that he used Armande.”
“She never knew,” Prayle insisted.
“Possibly. On the other hand, she’s inclined to take a line of her own, you know.”
“Can we get David Nachmias for impersonation of the military?”
“Not a hope!” said Fairfather, obviously relishing the subtlety of Abu Tisein’s crime. “Your poor old Wadiah handed over his arms to what he thought was a party of British troops. Who were they? They might be French, Syrians, Cypriots, anything in battle dress. You’ve no proof that they were Jews. And if we accused the Jewish Agency, they would quite certainly reply that the troops were British and that we were trying to frame them. My dear Prayle, it was a very clever coup!”
“But don’t these people care whether they are suspected or not?”
“Not a bit, so long as there’s no legal proof. The Agency falls for arms like lesser men for wine and women. Time and again they risk their whole reputation. But when you remember the massacres at Hebron and Haifa and Safad and half a dozen small colonies, it isn’t surprising that the Jewish Agency prefers to have a rifle in every house rather than a division of British troops thirty miles away. I should myself.
“It’s all a question of values, Prayle. They would rather increase their own little force than retain the trust of the British. And then, to make matters worse, whenever they are fairly and squarely caught in an arms scandal, they put up one of their long-haired ho
t-air merchants to encourage the extremists and to tell us we are anti-Semites.
“Good God, if the Jews were one-tenth as clever as we think they are, they could be sure of Palestine merely by playing on the idealism of the British and flattering our profound conviction that we always do God’s will!”
“Sergeant Prayle, I too am a Zionist, and I weep for Zion like Jeremiah. There’s a fine, splendid spirit in the making of this country. Never mind their national socialism—only a rather ruthless government of gangsters could make the desert flower as they have done. Under the surface is real joy and idealism and utter self-sacrifice. And all this glorious, interesting experiment is in danger, just because a people who can be incredibly cunning over trifles like arms cannot learn to be cunning in statecraft.”
“You should come and take a Syrian section for a holiday, sir,” said Prayle.
“Not me! You take security seriously up there. Palestine is restful. All we can do is to watch and report, and nobody pays the slightest attention to what we say. After all, they have heard it before.”
“I meant a simple life with the plain, dishonest Arab.”
“Well, there are hundreds of people who understand him better than I do. But sometimes I think that nobody in this country understands the European Jew. You see, our governors have had no chance of learning. They are trained in the Sudan or West Africa or the Malay States. They know how to handle the brown-skinned agriculturist with patience and justice. But that knowledge doesn’t make them understanding administrators of Palestine. They should spend a year in a Polish ghetto—if there are any left—learning the influence of atheism on the tribal structure of the Jews, and another year on the East Side of New York studying family life and political mythology.
“And the Jews are completely ignorant of us. Most of these immigrants were brought up under czarist or communist or Polish or Rumanian governments, and they simply can’t understand our ways. They won’t believe that there isn’t any secret police more sinister than you and me. And never will they believe that so far from our government being a bunch of able, treacherous intriguers, the only people who have any views on Palestine at all are the harmless, honest District Commissioners (whom, incidentally, they generally like) and a few muddleheaded old boys in the Colonial Office who try hard to be fair to both sides at the expense of all imperial interests.”
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