Doom's Caravan

by Geoffrey Household

  She answered that at least they would be taking an interest in her. Fifteen-love for Mummy’s darling Val. I told myself to remember duty. Oh, no! Not to cool relations down, but to warm them up. I am by nature the world’s worst actor. I can only play a part—and then, if I say so myself, highly convincingly—after reminding myself that it is in the cause of I (b), His Majesty and Land of Hope and Glory.

  So she had no more cause for complaint, and what with the grub and the white wine the atmosphere became reasonably gallant. When we got to the coffee and had hunted down on the bar shelves a dust-gathering bottle of her favourite sticky liqueur, I mentioned that I had been on the road she told me about and wanted to ask her about her informant—so far as she felt at liberty to give me a hint.

  ‘Yes, I thought that was coming,’ she said.

  ‘I saw him, you know, quite close to.’

  Her face returned to its usual lack of any expression.

  ‘A hawk-nosed chap on a roan half Arab. He was riding up from your place.’

  ‘No, not from us.’

  ‘Where from then?’

  ‘I don’t know. That wasn’t the man who told me to pass on the message.’

  ‘You’re sure you have never seen him? Slight build. Very oriental, rather distinguished features.’

  ‘I might have done. I don’t know. I wish I’d spoken to an ordinary British officer who wouldn’t ask questions.’

  She had told the truth all right; she did not know the rider. But why did she now want to leave it open and why the agitation?

  ‘I won’t ask any more, Valerie,’ I said. ‘It isn’t important. But your chap should look out for the man I described. He’s armed and dangerous.’

  ‘Oh, thank you!’

  Three such simple little words, yet opening up more than you would ever get with rubber truncheons.

  ‘Surely he doesn’t travel that road alone?’

  ‘Yes. Always.’

  ‘I wonder if you could tell me how he is dressed, so that I can see no one interferes with him.’

  ‘As a Syrian. The white thing they wear.’

  As a Syrian. Then he wasn’t. French? English?

  ‘Shall I warn him?’ she asked.

  ‘No, leave it to me. I think I know who it must be.’

  Secret visits to Valerie. Warm affection between them. Passing on information of interest, yet disguising himself as an Arab and impressing it on her that she must not give away his name. Identity a wild guess, but very probable. Presumably he had persuaded her that he was employed on some very secret mission.

  ‘Will you ask him a question for me?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘His people want to know if Noah 3 has left Mount Ararat.’

  She repeated this nonsense precisely and seriously.

  ‘When could you let me know the answer? It’s very urgent.’

  ‘Come up and see us on Wednesday.’

  I hated myself for trapping foolish virgins and possibly bringing old friends to court martial and disgrace. But you’ll agree that I could have no mercy. If this Syrian was Oliver Enwin, he had to be arrested at once. I could not remotely guess what his relations were with the rider and Khalid; but something more than any racket of the gendarmerie was at stake.

  I drove Valerie back to Sir and handed her over to Ahmed. It was an easier journey than the first. I was treated as a friend of the family, God help me! She even turned round in the saddle and blew me half a kiss. That last sticky liqueur, no doubt.

  Back at the office, I looked at my diary. It was a Tuesday night that Limpsfield and I had been on the Hermel track. She was going to speak with her informant on Tuesday. If they had regular meetings, that Arab who had lit his fire above the valley in the small hours of Wednesday morning could very well have been Valerie’s Syrian who wasn’t one. When did they see each other, day or night? Well, it looked as if the visitor had been waiting for daylight to go on his way and he was not far from the valley. Another indication that meetings were after dark was the fact that Mrs. Ronson-Bolbec did not know of his existence.

  The unpleasant job had to be carried out discreetly by my own section. I could not expect help. With a very strong case I might have been allowed the support of the Beirut section, but I had not got a strong case. I knew what I (b) would say: arsing about with his Ronson-Bolbecs again and showing off to that girl by pretending that the missing A.D.S.O. Nazareth runs drugs with a bandit. Proof: a pair of yellow socks, a horse box and a crooked gendarme. Crap!

  It seemed very unlikely that Valerie’s boy-friend would stage a Romeo act under the windows of the house. Even if she somehow managed to fix her mother, Ahmed and the servants would be bound to know. I did not feel equal to forecasting what the girl would do after she had said good-night to Mummy and shut her door, but I could make a fair guess at what she would not. She would not go tripping and cursing among the reed fences and water channels of the valley, and she would not scramble up the hillside and get tied up in the dark among thorns and ticks. She would stick to d’Aulnoy’s gravelled approach road and the meeting place could well be at the top of the ridge above the house. Her Syrian could easily make his way there if he had reconnoitred a route in daylight, sliding down into the valley at its uninhabited end and avoiding the hamlet.

  I took Limpsfield, Holloway, Sergeant Wilson and Corporal Flowers. The last two were silent, reliable fellows who were not at their best in towns and ports, but could be sent out alone on detachment to a village of cannibals and come back with a signed menu. We rode through Sir in the dusk, where I told the Headman that we were going up to dine with the Englishwomen and should be back late. We left our machines at the ford and walked the rest of the way.

  I posted Limpsfield and Holloway at the bottom of the gravelled road with orders not to show themselves, to detain quietly any Arab who was not obviously a local peasant and to let any woman pass. Wilson and Flowers were at the far end of the valley and ordered to listen out for anyone crossing the cultivated land and starting to climb the hillside. I myself very quietly took position on the crest of the ridge. If nothing whatever happened—which was almost always the case in security checks at night—they were all to report to me at one-thirty.

  It was a warm night for February, and the moon was up at eleven. The faint candles and lamps in the hamlet were nearly all out at ten. I could not see the lights in the house which was heavily curtained, but the air was so still that I distinctly heard a servant locking up. I was standing against and half under some tall, evergreen shrub where I could not possibly be detected unless somebody touched me. The moonlit stretch of made road was clear enough to spot any moving figure, but I could not see over the ridge towards Sir.

  The rendez-vous was down that slope, well-chosen. No human being was there in miles of empty hills to see male and female. But low voices carried far between the stars and the dark, friendly earth—though it was not, strictly speaking, human speech which I heard. I crept nearer very cautiously. I would rather have been anywhere else, but I had to find out whether Oliver Enwin was one of the pair and, if he was, to remain near enough to detain him when he left.

  They were in a little dip between grey rocks. Valerie must have approached it from the north, or she would have heard us. I could not tell at that time how she dealt with Mother and Ahmed. A plea of headache? One of her moods? How does your cat get out?

  It took me a most unwilling, unavoidable minute or two to be sure that it was indeed Oliver Enwin, for he had grown a neat, black beard. I need not go in to what I was compelled to watch. I’m telling you facts you don’t know. Copulation does not, I hope, come under that head, and detailed description is unnecessary except for the incompetent or the incapable. So far as I can see, there must be the devil of a lot of them about, all demanding a ringside commentary, stroke by stroke. Wonk! The champion’s down—slowly slowly, but h
e’s definitely down. And now, while we wait for the next round, let me introduce you lucky public to our luscious stewed eels from the foam-sparkling shores of Aphrodite’s island!

  Well, all that’s relevant is that—in my snap judgment—she had not been long at the game and was in the first, fine, careless rapture. It was now understandable how she managed to endure the boredom of life up there in the valley. That poor girl’s virginity had been set up as a monstrous idol quite long enough, and to go on listening to Mummy saying her prayers to it must have been exasperating. I’m not surprised that she was moody.

  I watched her take the road down the hill. As she passed me, she threw her arms wide in a sudden, winged gesture which might have meant freedom or despairing impatience or simply reaching to drag the image of her lover from the nothing of the night. Oliver remained where he was, huddled in his kaftan, perfectly still, his head nearly on his knees, a grey block of memory and misery without a shape or a future. He did not even see or hear me till I was standing over him.

  I told him that it was all up and that I was sorry. He looked at me for a moment in which, I suppose, he saw the whole chain of circumstance as a framed, complete picture. He seemed to accept the position and simply replied:

  ‘Oh, it’s you. Yes, she told me about you.’

  ‘She never gave you away. I played a dirty trick on her.’

  ‘I wondered who the hell you thought I was. Noah Number 3! It sounded just like M.I.6 sneaking into a security office for a bit of help and not telling us enough. How long have you been here?’

  ‘I moved away. I’m afraid the beard delayed me.’

  ‘This will break her to pieces.’

  ‘It might be some time before she knows the worst. And I shan’t talk.’

  ‘What did Palestine think when I vanished?’

  ‘They weren’t betting on anything.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘The same. Do you want to tell me?’

  ‘Yes, badly. But you won’t believe it.’

  ‘Try it on the dog, and see if it stands up.’

  ‘You haven’t got a drink, I suppose?’

  I offered my flask with the left hand, keeping my right side away from him. Wet they called him. But I was taking no risk of a snatch at my holster.

  ‘Thank you. I’ll start with Nazareth.’

  ‘It was going on before that?’

  ‘What you’d call disloyalty? No, not before that. I meant…just try living in Nazareth! It gets you down, even if you aren’t really a believing Christian. I’m not. But anywhere else it wouldn’t have been such a ghastly crisis of conscience.’

  To a security man the facts of his story were simple enough, but his complex reaction was incredible. To a plain, honest soldier I think it might be the other way round. The facts would appear fantastic, and Enwin’s reaction to them not only possible but likely.

  It all began with a bit of top secret information from Baghdad. An Iraqi, called Youssef Mokaddem, who had been heavily implicated in Rashid Ali’s rebellion of the previous summer and was known to have worked with the Germans, had been identified by one of our security agents, had tried to shoot it out and was killed. That did not suit our policy at all, which was one of mild internment and conciliation all round. And so, as this happened in the dusk of the bare hills east of Mosul and there were no witnesses, his body was discreetly disposed of that same night.

  Oliver was then playing around with one of those futile investigations which can never lead anywhere useful unless you have a local agent whose cover and iron nerve are both unbreakable. So he decided to take the identity of Mokaddem, providing himself with papers to prove it. He was twice run in by the Palestine Police outside Safad; but Youssef Mokaddem naturally did not appear on any Black List, and he was not detained. It never occurred to anyone that he was the A.D.S.O. Nazareth with a false toothbrush moustache. How should it? As likely as being the Commander-in-Chief!

  What he had started almost as a hobby developed beyond all expectations. The enemy was reorganising the routes from Turkey to Egypt which had been put out of action by the defeat of the Vichy French. He found himself on the edge of local cells which were prepared to hide any accredited German agent and pass him on.

  The bogus Youssef Mokaddem managed to get the trust and affection of a Sheikh of the Bedouin in Lower Galilee—Oliver refused to tell me his name—who hated us like hell. That was rare among the Bedouin. They generally liked the British and tolerated the Jews. But this pious old aristocrat had lost a son and a brother in the Arab rebellion of 1936 and looked forward to the arrival of German armoured divisions who would at last hand out what we deserved. He had the charm, the courtesy and the deep, simple faith in God of the old-fashioned Arab, as well as the cunning of a clever man faced by the onrush of a civilisation he could not understand. He knew of the reputation of Youssef Mokaddem, but it took days of exclamatory talk before he would trust the stranger—backing away, coming forward, threatening, boasting like some magnificent male animal being gradually tamed. What finally got him eating out of the hand was a forged letter from Rashid Ali, who was safely in Rome. Then he demanded that Oliver should take with him the solemn oath of blood brotherhood that neither would ever betray the other.

  That was it. A pair of fighting men, both devout Moslems—Oliver could easily play that one—were united in the same cause. The supposed Youssef Mokaddem was guided to the carefully hidden cache of weapons. He expected to find a dozen old British Army rifles. He was shown a small arsenal of first-class French and German arms and told that he could take his pick for himself and his men whenever a general rising was ordered. And, far more important, he was invited to meet a real German passing under the cover name of Hadji. They did not particularly like the Germans, Oliver said, but the result of the Blitzkrieg, smashing in days the French and British, meant that they were admired as superhuman Tamerlanes.

  Oliver went back to his office to write out a full report for Jeremy Fanshawe, ready to be taken up next day to Jerusalem. When he was half way through, he found that he could not betray his sheikh. The oath he had taken absolutely prohibited it.

  I said that I couldn’t see it was binding at all, that it was all part of the web of deception.

  ‘But it’s a point of honour,’ he answered. ‘Can you or can’t you trust the solemn word of another human being. Unless you can, there isn’t any society at all.’

  Remembering his remark about Nazareth, I objected that honour was a pagan virtue and that Christ had never said a word about it.

  ‘The duty to God.’

  ‘What about the duty to Caesar?’

  ‘That’s why I bolted, you see.’

  ‘You could have kept quiet, burned the file and done nothing.’

  ‘I did burn the file. But I couldn’t bear myself. Everything had to go. Valerie had to go.’

  The key to his behaviour was that the blazing fool had never reported what was going on. Instead of keeping Jeremy informed week by week, he had the irresponsible ambition of handing in his report, complete and all tied up, with nothing left for I (b) to do but carry out the arrests.

  What he told me was that he did not want a word to reach the Palestine Police. The office staff of the police was necessarily composed of Jews and Arabs with divided loyalties, and the leaks were quite appalling. That may have counted. But what he really dreamed of was rapid promotion and a decoration to impress Mrs. Ronson-Bolbec. I didn’t ask him to admit it.

  Resignation might have helped to dispel his intolerable sense of guilt. But one can’t resign in wartime. He might have got near it if he had had some tough, regimental colonel as a boss whom he could beg for God’s sake to let him out of counter-espionage—the kind who would ask few questions, hesitating to intrude on his privacy. Jeremy, however, was not that type. He would dig into Oliver like a tender-hearted bishop into an errant priest, infini
tely sympathetic and praising his work. And in the end he would have had Oliver in tears confessing that he had let an enemy agent go free because he couldn’t break a ridiculous Moslem oath given to an old traitor who had probably broken his own word just as often as a feudal baron.

  Whether he confessed or whether he didn’t, he could not face himself and the rest of us. So he took the hardest way out and became a deserter. I suppose for him it was the easiest. I can give you a parallel—a much loved company commander with all the military virtues. He borrowed from the mess fund and could not pay the money back. When there was an Inquiry he too bolted without a hope of getting away, just like a rabbit. Oliver at least knew he had a chance.

  I repeat his story as if I knew then and there, in that solitude of rock and thorn, that it was true. I did not. I reserved judgment. The narrative was disjointed and full of holes, and he kept bringing in Nazareth which could have been an easy cloak for treachery. So I pressed my questions. When and how had he changed from A.D.S.O. to Youssef Mokaddem and back again? How had he assured that he was never followed?

  He answered the lot with convincing details. He had changed into Arab clothes in a hidden den on the slopes of Mount Tabor and put over them the gown of a Franciscan monk, the Franciscans being the guardians of many of the holy places and free to move around on unaccountable holy business. He then dropped and concealed the gown before approaching the Bedouin tents. His return to his Nazareth office followed the same process in reverse.