by Colin Smith
They carried his body under the net and placed it behind a cairn of the flimsy War Office issue four-gallon petrol tins with their weeping seams. Then they staggered out to the Fiat a can in each hand and twice repeated the journey, stacking it with the orange juice in the back for they were conscious that a dust cloud down the road grew bigger and closer every trip they made and they must be off. There would be plenty of quite places where they could stop and fill their tank.
Before they left the Templer went into the cab of the Fiat and dashed back with something that he placed closed to the pile of petrol cans concealing the corporal where a miasma of excited flies already indicated the prospect of fresh decay. Three minutes down the road they heard, since they were listening for it, a faint whumph. A wispy spiral of black smoke began to rise from the direction of the fuel dump. Soon it became a pulsating column of black smoke. “It looks to me,” said the Templer, “as if there could be a very bad fire back there.”
Lang was driving and the German spent the next twenty minutes happily making up a supply of small bombs from the remaining plastic explosive and detonators. He only looked up when the insistent ringing of a bell became apparent. A bright red Egyptian fire engine went by in the opposite direction, its crew wearing brass crested helmets and unbuttoned blue tunics over dirty white vests. In the front passenger seat sat the fireman bell ringer whose burnished masterpiece was suspended on a frame before him. “You don’t suppose,” said the Templer with his lopsided grin, “that somebody might have been smoking near a petrol dump?”
Lang managed a smile but he was fretting that he had forgotten to pick up the rifle of the man he had killed. In his organisation you never passed up an opportunity to acquire arms and, at the very least, it might have become a useful part of their costume.
***
By road the port of Alexandria, Egypt’s ancient gateway to the Mediterranean, is about four hundred miles away from Jerusalem. The rail stop at El Alamein is another sixty miles west along the coast. Calderwell was using his little Austin 6 convertible and the Assistant Super had insisted he take a driver. “Otherwise you’ll end up driving under a tank transporter with the amount of sleep you’ve had lately.” The hard pressed motor pool had come up with a tall youngster with crinkly black hair and thick eyebrows named Fraser on the understanding that Fraser be returned promptly and in good condition in the first lift that could be arranged as soon as the inspector felt rested enough to drive himself about.
Calderwell had heard about Fraser. He had come to Palestine at the outbreak of war as a territorial in one of the Yeomanry regiments. Bored with garrison duties he had answered a call for volunteers for the Palestinian police, a decision he deeply regretted for his old regiment had since been mechanised and was now part of a tank brigade up at El Alamein.
Fraser drove badly but with enormous verve. Sprints of suicidal overtaking were interspersed with frequent changes of gear and double-declutching. At the beginning they the left roof of Calderwell’s Austin up but it let in so much dust they thought they might choke less if they rolled it back and allowed themselves the pleasure of the slipstream. Neither of them had the proper sort of aviator style sand goggles of the kind Rommel was often depicted wearing. Instead, they both wore - as did many of the rear echelon drivers along that route - the Home Front’s smoke goggles, cheap Perspex issued by the million to auxiliary firemen and air raid precaution wardens and adored by child cyclists playing speedway riders on bomb sites. The elastic band that attached the goggles to their heads also kept their berets in place.
Calderwell was an indifferent driver himself and quite fatalistic about Fraser’s darting in and out of traffic, the near head-on collisions with oncoming tank transporters so high off the ground he seriously doubted whether their drivers would even notice the crunch. Up until the Rafah border crossing he dozed a good part of the way, head down on his chest, sometimes waking when the outraged bleat of a horn was particularly prolonged, closing his eyes as he heard Fraser scream, “Learn to drive you silly bastard!”
Occasionally, they talked. “Hear you’re trying to get back into the army?” said Calderwell.
“I wouldn’t mind.”
“Why did you leave in the first place?”
“Boredom, I suppose. Well, that was part of it.” Fraser paused to change gear. “Actually. I was trying to get a commission but there was one officer who kept blocking me. I don’t know whether you know what Yeomanry regiments are like, last bloody preserve of the fucking fox hunting squirarchy.”
“They haven’t changed then. I was in the Warwickshire Yeomanry in the last lot. Charged at Huj.”
He looked across and saw his moment of glory against the Austrian artillery meant nothing to Fraser. His forehead was creased; his black beetle brows knitted together and when he spoke again it seemed more to himself. “Had just as good an education as some of them. If it hadn’t been for the war I might have gone to university. But I didn’t go to the right bloody school did I? Grammar school boys don’t count even if they do know which end a horse shits out of.”
Calderwell made what was intended to be a sympathetic grunt though he found it very hard to imagine Fraser as an officer, certainly not in a Yeomanry regiment. Service Corps perhaps if they were pushed. Most of the officers he remembered had style as well as guts. Hardly any of them had survived the charge at Huj. They had lead from the front and, yes, one did blow a hunting horn but that wasn’t the reason why they followed him.
They went by the smouldering ruins of the petrol dump north of Zagazig where the scorched and exploded cans were still being doused by the fire brigade. Soldiers searching for the cremated corporal, their bare legs grey with ash, had uncovered a boot that appeared to have something in it. Twenty miles up a good straight road they came to the barrage town of Zifta. Here they saw the debris hurtling down the Damietta branch of the Nile which, swollen with the rains of Ethiopia, was heading full spate for the sea, brimming its banks and fertilising the delta soil in the process. And here they at last caught up with Hare and his Direction Finding teams who were brewing up by the side of the road, waiting for the Military Police to shepherd an artillery regiment towing twenty-five pounder howitzers through the town before they were allowed to proceed.
Jerusalem had got a wireless message through to Hare so Calderwell was not unexpected. “Do you really think they’re bolting for Rommel?” he asked. “Surely Cairo would be easier?”
“You may be right,” said Calderwell who was not feeling half as confident as he had done in Jerusalem. “But he’s a bluffer, thinks he’s Jack the Lad.” (And he’s not the only one, he thought. He’d done so well. It wasn’t his fault they’d got away. Why hadn’t he rested on his laurels? Why had he set himself up to make a to make a total bloody prat of himself?) “Thinks a bit of cheek will get him anywhere,” he continued, half answering his own question. “And it bloody well has up to now.”
“I know, he’s run circles around us,” admitted Hare happily. After all, nobody could deny his DF teams had done their bit. It was the infantry who had let them down in Jerusalem and if you asked him it was mainly because the men hadn’t been briefed properly. “I suppose the other one, the Jew, is still with him?”
“I don’t think Lang’s got much choice. He who rides a tiger dare not dismount,” said Calderwell rather surprising himself. It was an expression the old India hands in the force came up with. It seemed to fit Lang’s plight exactly.
“So you think they might come up on air again?”
“They might. They’re travelling with it. If they see anything interesting they might be tempted to come up on air again.”
“Well,” said Hare, “I’ll do my best but once we’re with this divisional HQ I think our work is going to be cut out listening to Jerry formations down the road without trawling for something that might not even be there. When we get to Alexandria I’m picking up my German speaking Poles from the transit camp at Mustapha barracks there and then I have to report to this
HQ up at Burg el Arab.”
“Is that where the airfield is?”
“Yes.”
Calderwell sighed and, despite himself, Hare discovered he was beginning to feel sorry for him. Dust and fatigue had left his eyes red rimmed. His face was drawn. He seemed unsure of himself, as if he was to blame for things going so horribly wrong. And yet if it hadn’t have been for Calderwell spotting the parachute silk in the first place, finding the cigarettes with the signal plan on the paper, they would never have come close to catching them at all. “Look,” he said. “Given half a chance I’ll give it my best shot. OK?”
“Thanks,” said Calderwell.
An MP sergeant came over and said to Hare, “Ready when you are sir.” The last of the gunners’ twenty-five pounders had gone through.
Calderwell started to go towards his own car and then he turned back to Hare. “You know,” he said. “We could be just behind the buggers.”
23 - A Discussion
“Tell me,” asked the Templer whose turn it was to drive. “Under what circumstances would you shoot me?”
“I don’t understand,” said Lang who was watching the scruffy outskirts of Alexandria go by while the inhabitants of its cracked, flat-roofed houses stared back. Both sides had had plenty of time to examine the other since for the last twenty minutes they had been stuck in a traffic jam and rarely got out of first gear.
“Of course you do. My capture is the last thing your people want. Dead men tell no tales. The British would have a field day blackening the name of radical Zionism with your association with us.”
“You’re talking nonsense,” said Lang. “Nobody would believe them.” He was observing an Arab youth on a bicycle who had drawn alongside and was puckering his mouth in what he first took to be an obscene proposition. Then the youth put two fingers to his lips and drew them away in a smoking motion and he realised he was begging for cigarettes. Lang turned his head away and looked at the Templer. “But it might even the score a bit.”
“What would?”
“A Jew killing a Nazi.”
“Don’t tell me you really believe all this nonsense about death camps in Poland and massacres in Russia?”
“Let’s say I believe the German National Socialist Workers’ Party makes life uncomfortable for us.”
“It’s not the Germans who are making life uncomfortable for you in Palestine and nor would they.”
“But wouldn’t your friend the Mufti object if you sent all the Jews in Europe to Eretz Israel?”
“We could live with that. Besides, the Arabs have a lot of territory. Palestine is not so much.”
“It’s a lot for the Palestinian Arabs. It’s their home too. They know no other.”
The Templer was a bit surprised at this. It was quite true of course but he never expected to hear it from Lang. “I thought you hated the Arabs?”
“Perhaps once I tried to hate them - it is so much easier if you hate your enemies. After Acre jail I found this much harder.”
“You told us the Jewish and Arab prisoners were segregated most of the time.”
“Yes, when you were trying to make up your mind whether I was or wasn’t part of a cunning British operation to infiltrate the Sicherheitsdienst I told you that and it was true. I also told you how some of the warders gave me an unofficial flogging after I hit one of them. But I didn’t tell you everything.”
“What did you leave out?”
“They weren’t content with that. They left me tied down, bloody and half naked in that cell and invited the Arab trustee prisoners to “look after me”. It was obvious what they had in mind. Most of the trustees had not been with a woman for years and were no longer missing them. But in prison a common enemy breaks barriers down. They treated me like one of their own, patched me up as best they could and carried me back to the Jewish wing. They also made sure the Chief Prison Officer got to hear about it and at least one of the warders involved found himself dishonourably discharged and on the next boat home. With any luck it was torpedoed. So no, I don’t hate the Arabs. I wish I did. It would be easier.”
“You didn’t hesitate to kill that boy.”
“I could see you were hesitating and I knew it had to be done and the longer we left it the harder it would get. If the boy had been allowed to live we would have all have been in danger. I also suspected that you did not have the stomach for it. Forgive me for saying so, but perhaps it’s something that comes with age. In theory, you might applaud the deaths of thousands, even millions but when it comes to killing an unarmed young soldier you would rather not.”
“I was resigned to shooting the driver,” the Templer said evenly. “But once that girl came along we couldn’t do it. I believe we bought more time letting him live. If his body had been discovered they would have known our route.”
“As it happens it has worked out well,” Lang conceded. “And it is not a pleasant thing killing.” He was thinking of the look of incredulity on the face of that corporal at the petrol dump; the man was almost old enough to be his father.
“You didn’t want to kill the girl,” said the Templer.
“Jews don’t kill Jews unless they are outright traitors. Palestine Police, that sort of trash. We killed Detective Constable Soffiof while he walked the main street of Rehovoth with his wife and child.”
“You did that?”
“No. I would have done but I was in Athens with you.”
But the Templer was not prepared to let the matter rest for Lang had touched a nerve. “I have killed in battle,” he said. This was true though for all the mayhem he seen when the century was young, and for all the tales he had told Jessica and others, he could only be absolutely certain of two and they had both been in kill or be killed situations. He suspected that many infantry soldiers could never be entirely sure if any of their bullets or grenades had fatally found their mark and were content to leave it at that.
Lang, however, was not. “Ah battle,” he said. “Technology makes it easy for squeamish modern man to kill. In most cases it offers the same distance that the abattoir and butcher’s counter provide between the live animal and the meat on urban man’s plate. Have you ever used a bayonet?”
“Yes.”
After that they drove on in silence for some time, the Templer occasionally sneaking sideways glances at Lang who, when he considered the matter, had come closer to answering his original question than he had expected.
***
Even towards the end of the day, even in the shade of the date palms, the Humber was hot to touch. Dahoum had spotted its shadow first, the stillness of its outline contrasting with that of the fronds whose earthly image drifted slowly back and forth to a faint breath of air. Behind him military traffic bound for Khan Yunnis droned by but nobody took any notice of a Bedouin boy and a couple of camels.
At first he brought his animals to within about ten feet of the vehicle and stood there silently watching it for the ways of the Inglizi were strange and it was possible that somebody was in there sleeping or committing the exciting sin of Onan. As a test, he had picked up a small pebble and tossed it against the car in an underarm throw. It made a small clattering noise. Nothing stirred. He threw another, harder and overarm this time. Still nothing.
When he got to the car and put his hand, a big hand for a twelve-year-old-boy, on the driver’s door, the metal was almost too warm to touch. The window was down. Dahoum poked his head inside and examined the gloomy interior. It appeared to be empty though it was possible people were hiding behind in the back. He looked again, keeping his head in longer this time. Front and back the only living creatures were the flies that were so much part of Dahoum’s life he hardly noticed them. Once again he removed his head.
Then an extraordinary thought came to him. He put his hand on the door handle and pulled it upwards. It was stuck. He got both hands to it and pulled upwards. It remained stuck. As he took his hands away he pushed downwards and the door clicked open. Dahoum had never been in
a motor vehicle in his life. Nobody in his family had, not even his father or, as far as he knew, any of his uncles though they had done many great things such as cut the heads off Turks. Gingerly he slid in behind the steering wheel and put both hands on it. He turned it this way and that and felt something move beneath him. He wondered what else you had to do to make this machine do your bidding, to make its roaring noise start? While he was wondering his forearm caught the horn control and gave out a blast that had Dahoum sitting dry-mouthed, frozen in terror.
Then he worked out what had caused it and did it again, and again, and again. Dahoum had not had so much fun since the day one of his uncle’s tents caught fire. He was Sheikh Dahoum, king of the road, driving the infidel rabble before him like Saladin on his charger. Or was it Saladin on his chariot? He wasn’t quite sure? He spent some time trying to play his favourite camel racing song but, alas, the instrument did not possess the required delicacy.
It was at this point that a large red face appeared at the window. The face and the red-topped hat above it were a perfect match.
“Enjoying ourselves are we?” inquired the military policeman, not that Dahoum understood a word. And even if he had there would have been no chance to reply because suddenly their ears was full of the most awful banshee wail as if he had disturbed some dreadful Djinn lurking in the secret innards of the beast. The MP opened the boot.
***
When they got to the Corniche and saw the striped deck chairs Fraser turned to Calderwell and said, “I don’t believe it. Bloody sunbathers.”
Even before that there was plenty of evidence that Alexandria was having difficulty adjusting to the idea that even in a heavy tank the war was not much more than a two hour drive away. French named pavement cafés were crowded with off duty rear echelon troops and civilians, the latter mostly Greek now that the Italians had all been interned. There were lines outside the cinemas where the main features were often old French films , the preferred language of most of the city’s bourgeoisie.