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Doom’s Caravan
Geoffrey Household
Pass out beneath, O Caravan, Doom’s Caravan, Death’s Caravan.
I had not told ye, fools, so much, save that I heard your singing-man.
JAMES ELROY FLECKER, “Gates of Damascus”
Chapter One
THE DESERTER
NO, LIKE YOU, I cannot claim ever to have caught a spy. Not officially anyway. And it depends on what you mean by caught. I could never tie the case up in a neat packet and pass it upstairs, for all the time there was at least one court martial hanging over me. You were in it too, though quite innocently. Do you remember sending me a signal about Abdullah el Bessam’s cushion and how he doted on it? Well, without that I should not be here now.
The Middle East was a closed world at the end of 1941, in which everyone employed on Intelligence duties knew something of everyone else. We had thrown the Italians out of Libya and Abyssinia. We had occupied Persia and put down the rebellion of Rashid Ali el Gailani in Iraq. Then we had fought the Vichy French in the Lebanon and Syria, sent their army and administrators back to France and handed over the government to the Free French. All those private wars gave us room to move, but we were still a besieged garrison in which it was vital to keep the enemy agent outside the walls.
Security—it’s the opposite of detective work. There the crime exists and a mass of detail leads you to the criminal. In Security one hardly ever starts with a crime; one goes on collecting objectless bits of information until they fall into a pattern. At least that was all which was expected of you and me—plus carrying out any dirty jobs for I (b)* which had to be kept secret, like the investigation of a friend and colleague.
Did you ever have to do that? Yes, fortunately rare but all in the day’s work. And our reports were often final for better or worse, though in this case, the case of Oliver Enwin, there was no sort of finality. The answer—the true answer—was never known to anyone but me, and that just by an accident of posting.
Before Enwin’s character began to obsess me I thought that he lacked any inner strength. He was good at his job, like so many of those expatriate civilians who had been picked up from obscure hotel rooms in Cairo or Alexandria and given purpose and identity by the Army. I was inclined to distrust them. It was a sign of conceit, of the ultra-conservative English opinion, still prevalent in the nineteen-thirties, that if you had to find a man for a responsible position without much evidence of his integrity, you had better choose one tempered by our deliberately imperial type of education. Shallow thinking. I myself had worked my passage out of that category many years before.
Oliver Enwin, according to his personal file, had come out to Egypt as a minor assistant on an archaeological dig which found nothing beyond a collection of pagan Arab statuettes—about as primitive to civilised Romans as to ourselves but no doubt of interest to the professional. He then joined the British Council: an organisation of semi-intellectual misfits which taught English Literature and Language in the half-world of the Middle East. It always seemed to me a waste of time and money. Again conceit. I doubt if it did much good to the boys and girls whose only ambition was to write English good enough for commercial clerkships, but the teachers obtained insight into the languages and traditions of their customers which soldiers and diplomatists could not.
Besides fluent Arabic, Enwin had French, Italian and enough Greek to chatter his way through lunch in the hideous and respectable homes of the small business men whose overfed children he introduced to the daffodils of Wordsworth and Shakespeare—to one an indecisive British Council sort of blossom and to the other the flower of courage. Aspects of himself though he would not have seen it. He was neutral, too, in appearance, for he belonged to that pre-Celtic Mediterranean race so common in the west of England, with dark, straight hair, brown eyes and a complexion like the most delicate leather—altogether a handsome young man of middle height, who had in him more of the dignity of the Arab than the animation of the Latin.
A rough sketch. It tells you more of the limitations of an amateur British officer than it does of Oliver Enwin. He could be anything to anyone. ‘Wet’ was an adjective I used to hear applied to him, but to me he was more like wet clay with a will moulding it—a very obscure will.
In 1939 he offered himself to the Army and was taken on as an interpreter and translator by Security Intelligence Middle East. There he showed impressive industry, working night and day at his Arabic until it became so good that he could switch without effort between the classical language of the desert and Egyptian. Military Intelligence was not going to waste such material. He was put into uniform, trained—so far as we had the time and facilities to train anybody in those early days of the fortress of the Middle East—and in 1941 was Assistant Defence Security Officer at Nazareth.
By now you may have forgotten what that post involved. The A.D.S.O. within his own district was the eyes and ears of Security. He had money to pay agents and a fairly free hand in choosing them. His advice was taken if he was a good man; if he was too good a man he ran some risk of character assassination. That was why no accusations against a Defence Security Officer were readily believed. You’ll agree that it’s hard to run a security organisation without assuming that your key men are above suspicion; otherwise there is little time to get on with the real business of putting the fear of death or internment into enemy agents.
The choice of men—since we had only the Middle East to draw on—was sometimes odd. An officer of outstanding honesty and conventional character hadn’t a hope against Arabs and Zionists at the top of their form, let alone the German consuls at Antioch and Alexandretta. One needed a man with cunning and languages and a devious mind. He had, of course, to be unbribable and unlikely to set up his girl friend as a trusted agent and pay her rent out of the secret funds; or, if he did do this—and it was not unheard of—he had to persuade his boss that the game was worth it. The perfect A.D.S.O. was a first-class crook with an immaculate sense of honour.
I liked Enwin. Besides meeting him at security conferences, I used now and then to call at his office, usually asking for information from his files. He was direct, though inclined to be patronising. Either he would give me what I wanted without humming and hawing, plus his own impression of the reality behind the verbiage of a security report, or he would warn me that I was trespassing on private property and had better call off my hounds forthwith and stop them yapping.
Now, what happened when a man such as Enwin went wrong? First, one didn’t believe it. The proverb that there is no smoke without flame has no validity for men who live in smoke. But suppose the flame simply could not be ignored? Who investigated?
Civil Police? Well, one would try to pick their brains and use their files without giving away the reason for such sudden curiosity. The Special Investigation Branch of the Military Police? God help us all, no! That steam roller would flatten all the evidence and produce it as paper—neat, unanswerable and almost certainly wrong. You could safely prosecute on it, but you could also be certain that the main half of the story was for ever hidden under the mud.
No, the man who descended into the pit with an inadequate torch and little secret briefing to tell him where to put his feet was the Field Security Officer—our lowly form of security life scattered about between the Nile and the Caspian at the beck and call of all Intelligence, military or civil. We had no axe to grind, no money to pay agents and could be sacrificed—decently and by way of promotion—if anything
went wrong. On the other hand each of us commanded thirteen men with inquisitive minds, an assortment of languages and thirteen motorcycles.
So when Captain Oliver Enwin vanished without trace I was ordered by Jeremy Fanshawe, the chief of Military Intelligence in Palestine, to cover up the mess and find a clue to his whereabouts. I was to take over his office temporarily—accounts, lists of agents, private correspondence, everything.
I said that after such a humiliation he could never go back to Nazareth.
‘Why not? So far as the world is concerned you are taking over for a few days because he has been rushed to hospital.’
‘What with?’
‘Worms.’
I do not think Jeremy had given a thought to the disease. The single syllable exploded from him like a laugh. That was typical. Nothing was to be taken too seriously except work. His manner always suggested that the officers of Defence Security and Field Security were members of a very exclusive club and a law to ourselves. Spy-catching, intrigue-busting—well, a gentleman would not choose such a profession, but we should all be back in civilised London after ten years or so, if we were lucky, and meanwhile should look on the frequently comic side of our activities.
I have no doubt that I said that I was utterly incapable of spotting a hole in anybody’s books.
‘I don’t think that’s the trouble, but do your best.’
‘I’ve got a corporal who used to be an accountant. Can I take him with me?’
‘If he can keep his mouth shut, yes.’
‘What about the keys of the safe?’
‘That’s utterly damnable. He left them with Boutagy.’
Boutagy was Enwin’s civilian clerk. He was a Lebanese, therefore probably corrupt; recommended by the police, therefore likely to report to them matters which were not their business; a Christian, so quite certain to weigh the scales against any Moslem. I could understand Jeremy’s horror. To leave the keys of the safe with Boutagy seemed to him a worse crime than vanishing.
He was quite wrong. Boutagy was my own limited kind of man, and I admired him and laughed at him. He was honest as the day, fatherly towards Enwin, and he had that curious devotion to the British which one used to find along the coasts of the eastern Mediterranean. God knows where it came from. Generations of traders whose word was as good as their bond? Consuls who dared to stand up to Turkish pashas? It’s gone now. The tourists have seen to that. But then it still existed. To Boutagy and his like we were the ethical nation of the world and our honesty of purpose was unquestionable, however tortuous its day-to-day expression. The French were nowhere. The Americans were missionaries. It often seemed to me that Boutagy was the unthinking Victorian patriot, and Enwin the more typical Levantine.
So I was reasonably certain that even persuasion by the Gestapo could not have made Boutagy open that safe when he only held the keys in trust. I also thought it likely that he knew all the secrets it contained already. But I didn’t say so. Boutagy was outside the club, though earning his living within it like a waiter.
‘What am I to look for?’
‘Go through the lot and take as long as you like.’
‘He’ll never speak to me again.’
‘If there’s anything wrong, he won’t have to. If there’s nothing wrong, he would rather it was you than anyone else.’
He added that I was an amoral nihilist, always finding excuses.
‘Is there any investigation going on which could tempt somebody to remove him?’
‘Not so far as I know, but one can’t rule it out. The case might not have got to the stage when it was worth reporting.’
That was true enough. Even my own insignificant office files were full of plots, libellous rumours and beautiful spies, none of which had I any intention of reporting unless or until I had further confirmation. But meanwhile one of these stories might prove to be deadly accurate and known to be in my possession.
‘And if I turn up dirt?’
‘We’ll keep it in the family. If a man is unfit for defence security he can go and censor Arab correspondence or something.’
‘Always assuming that he is not a security risk himself.’
‘Not a trace of fascism, communism, Zionism, T. E. Lawrence or anything else! He’s not a homosexual. He drinks about half as much as you do. Unless his file is hopelessly wrong somewhere, Oliver is fighting the war with a simple heart and very unsimple gifts.’
‘He came out to Egypt two and a half years ago. Is that enough for a man to think and speak in Arabic as well as Oliver?’
‘I suppose it’s due to his affection for them—and very hard work of course.’
I replied that I spoke several European languages and, going by my own experience, I did not think he could master a Semitic speech and its dialects in the time.
‘What are you suggesting?’
‘That his file is hopelessly wrong somewhere. Out here we have to accept so much of what a man says about himself. One can’t cable M.I.5 for a report on every clerk.’
‘He’s not working for any kind of enemy.’
‘Can I take that for granted?’
‘You can take nothing for granted.’
I was accustomed to ruthless searches through the privacies of the suspect; but Oliver Enwin was a close colleague equal to me in rank, far superior in responsibilities. I did not feel up to the job of tearing apart all his intimate and official life. I could never forget that we were all cut off from home with no chance of returning till the war was won or lost. Most of us felt the solidarity of exiles and always tried to see ourselves in the other fellow’s place at courts martial and other festivals of public stoning. What haunted me was a premonition that I would not be able to see myself in his place at all. Put it this way! You don’t mind turning over a stone when you know what is likely to be underneath; but in a hot alien land you shrink from disturbing some fantastic and innocent form of life, to be squashed in brutal panic or picked up with unreasoning disgust.
My orders were to drive straight to Nazareth. I paid no attention to them and called first at my section. I had a good excuse: that I did not want to telephone from Enwin’s office and arouse excited speculation. But the truth was that I always gave my first loyalty to my little command. The cheerful presence of my chaps—those of them who were not out in the hills or down at the ports—made the billet the only home I had. I returned to it exactly as a business man will find time to call on his wife before taking an urgent and unexpected trip.
I handed over current affairs to Sergeant-Major Limpsfield. He was our professional adviser and nursemaid, without any special gifts for Security—beyond unbreakable discretion—appointed for his familiarity with the paper work of the Army and his lovable character. Quality of leadership is the correct term. Lovable is not a military word.
He had been a gamekeeper till his employer went bust in the Depression. Then, insistent on an outdoor life, he had enlisted in the Greys. When their horses were at long last taken away, he applied to join Field Security rather than submit to a future of nuts, bolts and the racket of engines. His choice was a tribute to our propaganda which made the service appear more romantic than it was. So what he got was an office job, compensated by swift promotion from Corporal of Horse to Sergeant-Major.
I told Limpsfield that I was taking the section truck, that I did not want it known where I was and that he should say I was up at Headquarters on a job for Colonel Fanshawe.
‘Better not take the truck, sir. There’s only room for one car in Captain Enwin’s garage, and no unit anywhere near which can look after ours.’
Nanny was right as usual. If a vehicle was not locked up or under guard, a party of small boys, provided with spanners by Arab motor dealers, shot out of the alleys like rats and stole every movable part within ten minutes.
‘There’s the spare motorcycle. I’ll see that it�
�s in order straightaway.’
‘You leave it alone! Last time you got at the throttle and it wouldn’t do more than forty.’
‘That is more than enough on these roads, sir.’
‘And get Corporal Zappa in from the frontier and tell him to report to me at Captain Enwin’s office. He was an accountant, wasn’t he?’
‘Well, yes—of a sort.’
He gave me his sidelong, pheasant-eyed look which suggested that I might ask further questions if I wished, but I let it go. There was no time for a chat and, anyway, Limpsfield disapproved of Zappa whereas I liked him.
I reached Nazareth just after sunset. The smells of Arab cooking, always more appealing in the dusk than the heat of midday, drifted through the white streets of the Latin Quarter and spiced the dust which just stirred on the evening breeze. The Security Office, once the home of some quiet Italian carver of images interned for the duration of the war, inevitably but probably unjustly, was in a lane which ran parallel to the main street. It was not at first sight a place for secrets since one had only to idle at the corner to see all the comings and goings. But that did not matter. There is no possible privacy in a small Arab town; wherever you put your centre of mysteries, it takes less than five minutes for the news of any interesting visitor to reach the principal café. Secrecy lies in the astonishing collection of rumours and speculation which conceal truth more efficiently than silence. I have never been able to decide whether Arabs believe anything or nothing. The fact is that they do not give common sense enough time to operate.
Boutagy opened the heavy wooden door, and I wheeled the motorcycle into a wide passage between the two lower rooms. He told me that he was glad to see me and not someone else, which pleased me though I was well aware that he would have had an equally polite greeting for any officer who arrived to take responsibility off his shoulders. I replied that it was unnecessary to send anyone at all since his loyalty was so well known. Compliments completed, he said that I must be thirsty after my long ride and he would fetch the whisky from Captain Enwin’s flat upstairs. Whisky. The nectar of empire. I should have allowed him to make the proper gesture. But I felt far from imperial and reminded him that Oliver always had a bottle of white wine lowered into the tiled well in the courtyard.
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