by Alec Waugh
‘When he assures you that he knows exactly what is in it instruct him to burn it in your presence. When the paper is burnt, ensure that not a cinder of it remains. When you are satisfied stretch out your hand, say “Congratulations, Gustave, and good luck.”
‘You will then have set on for him immediate transport by the Taurus Express to Ankara. Signal to Ankara and Istanbul the expected time of his arrival. He will be travelling, of course, in mufti. If his clothes do not seem appropriate to a Major on the General Staff, get a suit laid on for him at once. You could buy a length of R.A.F. uniform material and have a “civvie” suit made out of it almost overnight. Those boys work fast when their palms are greased.
‘I do not fancy that this mission will take very long. Within six days, at the most, you should have your adjutant back with you. But it will not be for long. That’s not the kind of work that he’s best fitted for. As you suggested, two or three months ago, what you want is a regular officer, promoted from the ranks, who knows his way about Army orders and allowances, maintenance of vehicles and all that kind of thing. I don’t think Gustave will be away a week; and the sooner you can contrive to send him back to us, the better it will be for all of us. Give Gustave time for the handing over and then switch him over.
‘Once again, good luck, old boy. I wish we were working on this game together. It’s terrific; the works!’
Reid read the letter over, shrugged, then walked on to the balcony. If this wasn’t cloak-and-dagger stuff, what was?
Gustave’s door was open. He tapped on it and went in. He got the impression that Gustave, from the angle at which he was sitting and the way his right knee was pressed against his desk, had been reading a novel inside a drawer which he had closed as his Colonel had come in. Reid smiled. Poor old Gustave; he wasn’t made for paper work. Well, he hadn’t got much more of it.
Reid held out the envelope. ‘Your orders at last,’ he said. ‘Congratulations.’
He watched Gustave read the letter; he watched his expression change as he read the letter. Gustave looked eager, buoyant, excited. Gustave raised his head; he was grinning; with a broad wide grin that showed all his gleaming teeth.
‘Have you got it clear?’ Reid asked.
‘I have.’
‘Better read it again.’
From the speed with which he re-read it, it could not have been very long.
‘Are you ready to burn it now?’
‘I’ve a good memory.’
‘Have you got a match?’
‘I’ve got a lighter. I’ll start the conflagration.’
As the sheet of paper shrivelled, Reid remembered how so few weeks ago now he had burnt Johnson’s letter. If Johnson had not had to write that letter, Gustave would not be in this room now.
‘There was a covering letter,’ Reid explained. He told Gustave what was in it. ‘Have you got any mufti here?’ he asked.
‘Plenty. I wore it most of the time in Alexandria.’
‘Then in that case you can make it your job as adjutant to book yourself a ticket to Ankara. It’ll be your last job as adjutant.’
‘I suppose it will be.’
‘We’ll be sorry to lose you here, but I imagine this new kind of work is more in your line than checking up on lodging, fuel and light allowances.’
‘I’d say it was.’
‘I hope you are happy about this’; Reid had a sudden qualm of responsibility. ‘I don’t know what this job is,’ he said, ‘but it’s not an order. You don’t have to go unless you want. It’s something you volunteer for.’
‘I had that explained to me in Beirut.’
‘Then there’s nothing for me to do except wish you the best of luck.’
There was a train running two days later. On the night before they gave Gustave a good-bye dinner.
‘It’s not really a good-bye dinner,’ Reid explained in his good luck speech. ‘Because we shall be seeing him back here the week after next; but we are seeing the last of him as adjutant. He’s leaving on a mission; I don’t know what it’s all about. I don’t want to know what it’s about. But knowing our good friend, Gustave, I can assume that it must be devious. If it wasn’t devious, why should they have chosen Gustave? I’ve known him longer than you have. I travelled out in the same ship with him, and I almost saw too much of him. He has few secrets from me. Devious is the adjective for Beirut. And Gustave was the right man for Beirut. I don’t know why they ever moved him from there, except that I’ve noticed that the Army makes a practice of posting a temporary officer to the kind of work for which, by taste and training, he is most unfitted, and for which no civilian employer would think of using him. I hope they have found him some really devious work to do in Ankara; but I suspect they haven’t. It is something honourable and straightforward; for which they have presumed that with his open, grinning countenance he is temperamentally suited. You and I know how wrong they are. I hope that he will not get into too much mischief. I hope that the damage he does there to the war effort will not be irreparable.’
It was a facetious speech. Gustave’s reply was even more facetious. He was a little drunk, his face was glistening. Yes, he said, he was going on a mission. He wished that he could take them into his confidence. But under section 5, paragraph 2B of the Army Act he was precluded from such action. He had also testified to having read the Official Secrets Act. They would not therefore expect him to tell them in exact detail what he planned to do; but they knew as well as he did that laws were made to be bent where they could not be broken. And this he could tell them; that he was going on the kind of mission with which they had all been familiar in school days. How often had they not on Sunday evenings subscribed their pennies to missions for the Fiji Islanders? That was the kind of mission on which he was going—to convert the heathen. ‘You would have expected,’ he said, ‘that one of the officers in the Chaplain’s department would have been more suitable for such a posting, but the mission on which I am being sent would not, I am afraid, appeal to the Lord Bishop of the Diocese and those ordained ministers who serve under him. It is not my hope to lead our Turkish Brethren into the Arms of Mother Church, but to redeem them in the eyes of Islam; to bring them back to the sacred teachings of Allah’s prophet; to cajole them back on to the road from which they strayed during the powerful but mistaken leadership of Mustapha Kemel. It is the belief of our higher command, not only in Cairo but in London and in Washington, that the restoration in Turkey of the true faith would be a secret weapon driven at the heart of the misguided Führer. Why the higher command should believe that, I do not know; they move in a mysterious way their wonders to perform. It is not for us to question what they, in their infinite wisdom, have decided; the wisdom that passeth man’s understanding. Ours not to reason why. I go on my sacred and secret mission to lead back our deluded Brethren into the pure ways of that great, that supreme sultan, Abdul the Damned. How I propose to do it, I may not under the Official Secrets Act divulge, but I go with a clear conscience to rescue the Turks from heresy: to restore the harem and the fez.’
The speech went very well. Gustave’s high spirits were contagious. He was so pleased himself that the others could not help being happy for his sake. ‘It’ll be my turn next,’ each one of them was thinking. Reid, as he laughed and clapped, wondered what on earth it was that Farrar had found for this engaging clown to do. He remembered Mallet’s warning. But there was nothing that he could do about it.
Gustave appeared at breakfast next morning in a light, fawncoloured Cairene suit. He looked very smart and very Levantine. He did not look like a British officer on leave. Perhaps that was why he was being sent to Ankara. Gustave’s head was heavy, but he was still clearly in the highest spirits. He had no qualms about his mission. But Reid could not restrain a feeling of foreboding as he waved him good-bye from his balcony. What on earth could they have found for him to do? He thought of writing a personal note to Farrar, then thought better of it. He sent an official signal: Operation Gustave launched.
> There was a tap upon his door. ‘I think that this will make you smile, sir.’ The Captain in charge of censorship handed him a sheet of paper at the foot of which was the imprint of purplish red lipstick. ‘What on earth is this?’ he asked.
‘Some bint in Cairo.’
He stared. The lips had been pressed so firmly on the paper that you could see not only the full shape of the mouth, but the little minute grooves of skin into which the lipstick had not penetrated. She had certainly kissed this paper as though she meant it. He stared. Then started. The handwriting was familiar. The script he had seen scrawled so often on memoranda in that Beirut office; the handwriting that he had so longed to see during his weeks in Deraa and had not seen there. He read the letter:
‘My dear, this is in frantic haste. I have been posted back to London. I leave in three days’ time, so it’s no good your trying to get that leave in Alexandria. I am disappointed. I’ll write. Fondly.’
There was no signature, simply the imprint of her lips.
‘Who was this written to?’ he asked.
‘A captain in the Iraqi army.’
‘How did his mail come under censorship?’
‘Through the wireless set, sir. He was one of the friends of that captain who was in the Fattuwa.’
‘Have you got anything on him?’
‘I haven’t checked, sir, yet.’
‘You might then, will you? No, I tell you what. Let me see his file. I shall have to talk to Forester about this. One has to be careful dealing with Iraqi officers.’ He handed back the letter. The Captain chuckled. ‘I thought you’d be amused, sir.’
‘I am, exceptionally.’
‘I wonder who she is.’
‘It looks like an English handwriting.’
‘Whoever she is, I’d say he was on to a good job.’
‘I’d say so.’
The file on this fortunate campaigner was not a long one. From it Reid learnt that Shawkat al Maslawi had been born in Mosul in January 1915. His father was a rich merchant, with family links in Istanbul and Damascus. His father had made a great deal of money during the famine of 1918. Shawkat had been educated at the Baghdad University and shortly before the war had been granted a cadetship to Sandhurst. He had passed out well and returned to Iraq in 1940 to take up a commission in the Iraqi army. His regiment had been engaged in the Rashid Ali revolt; and he had conducted himself with credit. As a result, he had been sent to Haifa for a short course at the staff college. ‘That’s how he met Diana,’ Reid thought. He was a very promising young officer. He did not appear to have any political affiliations. He was a keen polo player, which explained his friendship with Captain Jansell. There did not seem to be anything wrong with him. He took the file down to Forester.
‘Do you know anything about an Iraqi captain called Shawkat al Maslawi?’
‘Everyone in Baghdad knows Shawkat.’
‘You would not expect him to be a subversive influence?’
‘The last person that I should.’
‘I’m beginning to feel that this censorship game is getting out of hand. It is taking up a great deal of time and we are getting nowhere.’
‘That is what every policeman feels about his files. He sits and waits and accumulates stray facts, then suddenly he sees it plain. It is as I told you like a jig-saw puzzle.’
‘That’s all very well for a policeman who stays in one spot for several years, whose office continues when he retires, who is leaving a legacy to his successors. Our Centre is a wartime product. It’ll fold up when the war ends or else it will be merged with another Centre. I want to leave everything in a tidy state. Besides, there’s another thing I don’t much like,’ said Reid, ‘and that’s this building up of files about innocent people. They may fall into the hands of security officers who don’t understand why the names were entered in the first place. They’ll think that there’s something wrong with them; why else should they be on record. Would you like to have your name on one of our registers? I wouldn’t.’
‘A policeman can’t let himself be influenced by humanitarian considerations.’
‘Aren’t we fighting this war to save humanity?’
‘I can’t think why we are fighting it. But I see that you’ve set your heart on winding up this gang. I’m not going to hinder you. I get bored too, sitting in this office day after day.’
Reid was not bored, but he was feeling restless, as Stallard had prophesied he would; if Middle East had become a backwater, how much more so had Paiforce. He had to do something soon to justify his existence here. One of the Colonels in the British military mission to the Iraqi army was a friend of Reid’s. He was a polo player. When they next met, Reid brought up the subject of Iraqi officers who played polo. The name of Shawkat soon drifted into the conversation. He appeared to be an excellent player. On the following Sunday Reid went to a race meeting. He did not find it difficult to have Shawkat pointed out to him. Shawkat was slim, graceful, of medium height; he had smooth, catlike movements. Every muscle seemed under control. He was not very dark. He would have been very good looking had not his nose been marked by the scar of a Baghdad boil. He had very white and even teeth. He laughed a lot. Reid felt that he would like him.
Reid had read once that there were two entirely different forms of masculine response to the men to whom a woman that you loved or were in love with was attracted. It might be that she would be attracted in him by the same characteristics by which she had been in you, in that case you would feel a kinship with the man. You were the same kind of person. The fact that the same woman had loved you both was a bond between you. On the other hand, she might be attracted to a man who was the very opposite of you; drawn by the very characteristics in him that you lacked and whose deficiency in you had made her seek a change. He had not given her more or better of the things that you had given her; he had given her the things that she had missed in you; things that it was not possible for you to give. That man you would loathe with a hatred that only violence could assuage. He might have felt in that way about the French naval officer—the ‘sawn-off job’—who had succeeded him; to whom she had turned on the rebound, wanting someone as different as possible from himself. He might have longed for vitriol to throw in that man’s face. But Shawkat could have been his friend. It was ridiculous that men like Shawkat should have their names on a police record.
Gustave returned thirteen days after he had left. He was in a quiet mood; he looked less Levantine; it had been grey and cold and wet in Ankara; he had lost some of the becoming tan that he had acquired on the Gezira golf course. He had lost a little weight too. It did not suit him.
‘How did it go?’ Reid asked.
‘Fine, everything went fine.’
‘A complete success, as far as you know?’
‘Have you heard anything to suggest it hadn’t?’
The question was put quietly, almost belligerently. As though he had gone suddenly on the defensive.
‘We’ve heard nothing here,’ said Reid.
‘You haven’t? No, of course you haven’t. It was only Monday.’
He said it as though he were talking to himself. As he spoke, he lifted his left hand across his face, covering the left hand side of his mouth. It was a new trick. Reid, looking at him closely, noticed that he had lost two teeth, one in the upper jaw to the left side of his mouth, the other in the lower jaw more to the centre.
‘I see you’ve had dentist trouble,’ Reid remarked.
Gustave flushed. ‘I walked into a door in the blackout and knocked out two teeth.’
‘What a very curious accident.’
‘What do you mean, curious?’
The belligerent self defensive tone had come back into his voice.
‘I should have thought that when you hit that door, the teeth you damaged would be one above the other,’ Reid explained. He would have also expected there to be signs of a bruising or cutting on the lip. There were not though.
‘Damned fool thing th
at blackout,’ Gustave grumbled. ‘Can’t think why they need one. Who do they imagine is going to start bombing them?’
At dinner that night, Gustave ordered wine for the whole mess. He was in the highest spirits; but Reid noticed that he was not sipping at his wine, but drinking it in fast, long gulps. He also kept moving his hand up to his mouth.
‘Tell us about the bints in Ankara,’ the young officer in censorship was asking.
‘Now that’s a very big question,’ Gustave answered. ‘First of all, ye must ken. . . .’
Two weeks later, the Beirut summary concluded with the paragraph: ‘Our deception operation was carried out with complete success. We feel that it has made a definite contribution to the success of our war effort in this area.’
In a further appendix, Reid supposed, there would be a description of the exact nature of that operation. He would give a lot to read it. He was himself at work again on his bi-weekly summary. He wished he himself had something as dramatic to report. Farrar’s report did not make him jealous, but it made him restless. He felt the need for action. It was high time he had Hassun under lock and key. He wanted to round off that campaign. He did not want to have to read Shawkat’s letters to Diana or hers to him. That afternoon he sent off a signal asking Cairo’s permission to start action. The permission came back at once.
Chapter Ten
Hassun lived in North Baghdad, in a detached two-storeyed house. It was built of the traditional mud coloured bricks. It was indistinguishable from its neighbours. Reid and Forester made an afternoon reconnaissance. It would be an easy house to surround. ‘Not that he’ll try to escape,’ said Forester. ‘We aren’t arresting Public Enemy No. 1. No sawn-off shot-gun business.’
They made their plans for the next day. The school holidays had not yet begun. Hassun’s last class ended at half past four. He invariably went straight home. Two policemen would watch the house. As soon as Hassun returned, one of them would ride on his bicycle to the nearest police post where Reid and Forester would be waiting. The police post was only five minutes’ drive away. ‘It’ll work out very simply,’ Forester assured him.