Doom's Caravan

by Geoffrey Household

  There was no sign of life, so I walked down and opened the door. The interior, lit only by slit windows high up in the wall, was at first very dark; but when my eyes had grown accustomed I found plenty of signs of recent occupation. The floor of earth and dung turned to dust showed hoof marks. There were fresh horse droppings, fresh hay in a manger and footprints—one set being neat, small and very probably made by Moustofi Khan. A competent policeman could have filled his notebook with a mass of revealing detail, but that was beyond me. I was content to find the signs of traffic and of two heavy cases which had been set down in the dust. I knew they were heavy because it had taken a man at each end to lift them.

  It was now dusk and time to leave, for there was nowhere to hide inside that extensive, barn-like substructure. The arches still holding up the floor of the former living quarters offered corners of shadow, but not enough when one could not know where torch or lantern was likely to be. I shut the door behind me and looked for a safe place, not far away, from which to keep watch. On one side of the house was the ridge, which I didn’t like; it was such an obvious post for a sentry who could command the Hermel road in daylight, and in the dark at least spot movement on the path. On the other side was a gentle slope where the cultivated land had gone back to thorn, fig and sage. There I lay down, quite close to the track and some fifty yards from the farmhouse.

  As the light faded away, so did the edge of my confidence. All the same, I stuck to my opinion that if Moustofi Khan had guests there was a good chance that they were bound for d’Aulnoy’s valley. If you had asked me why not tomorrow or the day after or any day—more likely since Moustofi Khan was not expected home—I could only have answered that they were waiting for him to come home, so why not tonight? The fact remained that I was on the spot and another night I wouldn’t be, so that even if the odds were four to one against me they were worth accepting.

  At any rate I thought so up to midnight. After that I wondered what the hell a respectable Field Security officer was up to, pretending to be Robin Hood and subjecting himself to a foodless night in the open. The emptiness was silent, except for the stars singing, the scufflings of rats or some other small nocturnal beasts and the howl of jackals higher up the track. A deer on the ridge opposite made me jump into life and listen eagerly until I was sure what was cantering. That was proof that I should be woken up by the approach of horses, so I seriously tried to go to sleep. Quite hopeless. Ants crawled up my trousers, and when I did doze off for a moment I woke up with a start deciding that the ants were scorpions. There was nothing for it but to stroll back and forth on the path. I was cold, since I had dressed for the sun of early summer, and I had lost all faith in my impulsive deductions from inadequate knowledge of Persian menus.

  About two in the morning I did at last hear horses. I popped back into my hole among the bushes and hugged my patch of sandy soil, now shivering more from excitement than cold. I became more aware of stern reality: that I had put myself in a position where anyone still wanting to get rid of me could manage it for the price of admission and without any awkward consequences. I wished that I had the illusory comfort of my .45, but one cannot carry a heavy army revolver when lunching with a distinguished friend in plain clothes.

  Three horses stopped at the farmhouse. I could see no more than moving blocks of darkness, but had the impression that one of the riders was pointing out the advantages of its position. Another of them must have shown curiosity, for the beam of a flashlight picked out the door and all three led their horses into the house.

  God knows I don’t look for trouble! I shy away from the embarrassment of being caught eavesdropping, let alone stumbling over fallen rubble with bullets kicking up the dust behind. It did seem futile, however, to continue to lie on my belly scratching at mere ants when a quick dash would take me to one of the slits at the side of the house.

  I made no noticeable noise and finished up flat against the wall with the bottom of a lancet close to my ear. Inside the house all three were speaking German. That was my first close contact with the enemy—a feeling not unlike that of a boy when he discovers that all his information about the erogenous zones of the female has proved delightfully correct. In the base areas one began to think after a while that Germans only existed in newspapers.

  I could see the light wavering about inside; when it was turned away from me I stood on tiptoe and looked in. I was astonished to see a patrol of the gendarmerie wearing hats and cloaks. But of course! Deserted though the hills were, travellers on the Hermel track must occasionally have been noticed by herdsmen who would take their presence as natural and avoid them from a sense of guilt or nomad shyness if the outline of the riders was that of the gendarmerie. When Limpsfield and I were watching Moustofi Khan it had never occurred to either of us that his horseman’s cloak was a regulation issue, for neither of us had seen the gendarmerie on night patrol and were only familiar with the daytime uniform. Presumably Moustofi Khan had carried the képi in his saddlebag to be put on at need.

  The three were moving about inside the house, so I could not hear all they said. Moustofi Khan’s companions were both German. One of them was addressed as Colonel. To judge by his accent and style he was a professional soldier of good family. The other was more cosmopolitan—by which I mean that his German was correct but spoken in a harsh, rather monotonous voice which suggested that he had used other languages as often as his own. Moustofi Khan called him by his nom de guerre: Hadji. That was the name of the agent whom Oliver’s sheikh intended him to meet. I kept on trying to get a glimpse of him, bobbing up and down like a twittering jack-in-the-box. When they lit a lantern and at last I had a clear view, I found that he answered very well to Holloway’s description of Yellow Socks.

  It was only disjointed stuff that I overheard. The Colonel asked how safe it was to use the farmhouse but did not say for what. Moustofi Khan answered that he wouldn’t recommend it except in an emergency; fellahin and herdsmen sometimes took shelter there, especially in winter.

  ‘And this lunch guest of yours knows nothing about it?’ Hadji asked.

  ‘No. He has only once been in the village. It’s the daughter he is after.’

  I could not hear the next question and only scraps of the reply. I think that they were telling Hadji just what I had often said to Oliver: that he was too self-confident. German or British, these chaps tended to be intoxicated by their own cleverness. Grasshoppers were mentioned. Moustofi Khan reminded him that anyone coming up to d’Aulnoy’s valley through Sir drew attention to himself, that Magnat naturally kept a check on visitors and that Ahmed could not always head him off.

  ‘You are sure the security police were looking for me that night?’ Hadji asked.

  ‘Unless he thought the girl had a lover,’ Moustofi Khan replied.

  Fascinating to get a glimpse of the other side of the hill! That I was after Valerie’s secret lover was correct. That I had any useful report on Yellow Socks was quite wrong.

  The Colonel said contemptuously that I sounded to him like typical Gestapo, and started further discussion. From what I could piece together it looked as if Ahmed and Khalid had arranged the attempt on my life and that Moustofi Khan had been away and unable to stop what he considered a bit of unthinking, hysterical Arab violence. Khalid had believed me to be hot on the trail of Yellow Socks. The valley and the Hermel track did not enter into it at all.

  The most disagreeable remark I heard was from Hadji:

  ‘But he was ill for two days after Khalid disappeared.’

  Moustofi Khan dismissed that one.

  ‘Nothing in it. Diarrhoea. I asked at the hotel.’

  So my dear little laundress had passed the word round. She had nothing to go on but what I told her and the fact that she had seen me faint on my way back from the lavatory. It was she who hauled me back to bed. Luckily all my bruises were under pyjamas.

  They were still discussing Khalid
as they tightened their girths and prepared to be on their way. They must have argued out the pros and cons several times before, but I suppose the fact that they had shared their lunch with a security officer started it up again. It was the complete disappearance of the horse which reassured them. The accusation of attempted rape was true. Lieutenant Khalid had spent a packet in bribes to keep it quiet, and even so was in continual danger of blackmail and a blood feud. It was damned folly, the Colonel said, and added a few remarks about women in time of war—typically Teutonic but I fear I agreed with him. I gathered that if Khalid had not already been with the Prophet in Paradise he would go there quickly as soon as this gang caught up with him.

  My curiosity had kept me pinned to the slit window until it was too late to cross the path into cover. I was also concentrating intensely to make sense of discontinuous talk and had not noticed that a bright half moon had risen behind me, white-washing the grey stones of the farmhouse. I tiptoed back a few paces and stepped into an enamelled piss-pot which fortunately dissolved into flakes of rust with little noise. But Moustofi Khan heard it, ran round the corner of the house and shot a beam from his torch along the wall and up to the ridge. By that time I was lying down in the shadowed angle at the base of the building behind a thistle which at least broke my outline. If the beam had been a foot lower there would have been another field for ever England around those parts.

  They rode away and my world withdrew very thankfully into silence. As there was no more point in staying where I was, I took advantage of the moonlight to return to the fig tree where Gunn had left me by the side of the road. It made an excellent leafy den with dry earth underneath and no ants. There I slept on and off for eight hours, and soon after eleven saw my truck coming up the road with Limpsfield driving, and four chaps and the section tommy-gun in the back. Gunn must have romanticised both our lunch and as much as he knew of my intentions.

  Oliver’s presence with me in the village had inhibited my knack of brooding over my surroundings and listening to whatever they had to say. His dictum that security meant people was not half so impressive when one remembered that he had little eye for country. Nothing suspicious? But where could a stranger possibly stay in a tiny village which was frequently visited by Biddy Ronson-Bolbec and might be inspected at any moment by Magnat or me or, say, liaison officers siting a Turkish camp? They would never have dared to leave it entirely to Khalid to give sufficient warning.

  The next day I visited Magnat as soon as his office was open and asked him if he knew where d’Aulnoy had got his stone for building and repairs. On the spot, Magnat said. There were outcrops of stone everywhere. Perhaps I had noticed them while motorcycling over the hills in the dark?

  I had indeed; but I had not noticed any quarry or any cut surface showing unweathered stone. The quarry could not be out in the wilds; it had to be very near or alongside one of the estate roads, all of which I knew.

  I told you, I think, that I had thought Yasser’s greetings unnecessarily loud when he ushered us into his house. Well, his voice was meant to carry and to warn. There had to be accommodation for as many as three strangers; in that wide open, primitive hamlet there was none. The quarry had to be visible; it was not. So where was it? The answer stuck out a mile, with none of my usual conjectures about it. It was covered over, of course, by stout timbers with either one of the tanks on top or a good thickness of earth, and only to be discovered by interrogation of the villagers which would have to be ruthless to overcome their devoted fidelity to d’Aulnoy.

  My guess was that d’Aulnoy had disguised his quarry during the two months between the suppression of Rashid Ali’s revolt and the surrender of the Vichy troops. That meant that he had prepared it beforehand as a secret base for pro-German activities or possibly a safe hiding-place for enemy agents on the run. The evidence ought to justify a well-planned raid on the village, and I could keep Oliver Enwin and Khalid right out of my report.

  There were still snags, however. I had not actually seen this quarry room, though I was sure of it. And it might be empty and innocent, for I could not give a date when Hadji and the Colonel were certain to be there. It should be possible with Biddy’s aid to bag Moustofi Khan, but if he was alone he was certain to have a first-class story: for example, that he had long suspected the hide-out and that, if it hadn’t been for the clumsiness of Field Security, he would have had a German agent on toast the following week. Then there was Ahmed, Magnat’s blue-eyed boy, who could be trusted to rehearse the villagers in a common story.

  I may have been wrong. I (b) might have taken my word and acted like lightning. Jeremy Fanshawe knew very well that I did not see spies under my bed and he would probably have gone ahead on my say-so. But Ninth Army were prejudiced. Was it likely that enemy agents would operate under the eyes of a distinguished army widow with a lot of bloody cousins busy losing the war in Whitehall? And as for her angelic daughter with her thighs apparently frosted together by the ice of memsahibs, wasn’t she just the perfect motive for a half-baked security officer to pretend he was a romantic fellow catching villains on her doorstep? The more I considered d’Aulnoy’s selection of them as wartime tenants, the more I saw how effective his inspiration was.

  Yes, the package was not yet firmly tied up, as you or any former security officer must admit. But I had the man to do it: Youssef Mokaddem. He need never mention his old Galilee sheikh and could sum up, all the same, the essential links between Hadji, the Colonel, Moustofi Khan, Abdullah el Bessam and the whole enemy ring. I only knew the ultimate objective: to accept German control of the Middle East, which would be inexperienced enough to give full scope to the ambitions of men like Moustofi Khan.

  But what was the good of all that? I was little better than a Baptist preacher who screams that there’s a communist plot every time his local market runs out of onions. The preacher might unexpectedly be right, as I was, but an Intelligence Staff needs detailed proof before demanding a company of infantry for a brutal knock-about turn with Lebanese peasants who had to be kept sweet and docile at any reasonable cost.

  There was no easy way of getting hold of Youssef Mokaddem except through Valerie. I have already mentioned his exasperating habit of assuming that his superior knowledge entitled him to give orders. If he did not get in touch with me, I had not the remotest idea where he was or under what name he was pretending to flog funk-holes to Egyptians.

  So, after talking to Magnat, I left at once for the Ronson-Bolbecs. I could not waste an hour if there were to be any chance of netting Hitler’s men of business while they were still in the valley. I had to let Biddy fool away time chatting about dear Oliver. She said that she was surprised at the change in his appearance and character since he joined the Navy; that he seemed more certain of himself and that she hoped he would find a nice English girl in Malta. Typical! I doubt if at that time there was any marriage market in Malta. But she still could not get hold of the fact that a desperate war was in progress.

  After all that, she left me alone with Valerie, showing signs of the interested mother. I think she so liked the prospect of a son-in-law who could be her father confessor that she tended to forget I was too old for Valerie and unlikely to inherit a deer park.

  We strolled to a quiet corner under the apple trees, where the enigmatic little bitch had the impertinence to ask me:

  ‘Aren’t you going to propose this time?’

  ‘My interests are strictly dishonourable,’ I said. ‘But as your mother cannot possibly see us and we are in full view of Ahmed’s pantry window I suggest you give me a passionate kiss.’

  Her back view while doing so must have been delicious and convincing. On the active front she stuck her tongue out at me and had to take what was coming to her.

  ‘Now, listen, my girl! Where’s that man of yours?’

  ‘Don’t you know?’

  ‘I do not know. When I last saw him he was about to teach camel-drivers to dance
the hornpipe.’

  ‘But he’s living just behind your men. We can sometimes hear what they think of you,’ she giggled.

  There was a disreputable pension in the street behind the billet, separated from our yard by some outbuildings and a wall. We naturally kept a very close eye on the reformed Metuali whore who ran the place, and she reported to us all her visitors and their business in exchange for guaranteed freedom from police blackmail and a small subvention of ration jam and cans of beef. I could not see how the devil Oliver had established himself there.

  ‘You have—er—called on him?’ I asked, absurdly embarrassed by my own question.

  It was the effect of those pure and exquisite eyes in the oval face. Even after all that enthusiasm on the hillside I still had difficulty in visualising Valerie Ronson-Bolbec being tumbled on an old iron bed in a back street of Tripoli. A fair Madonna, Moustofi Khan had called her. But the Madonna didn’t give a damn how much I knew. She was in a daze of being pleased with herself, and that was that.

  ‘Only twice,’ she answered demurely.

  ‘And there is supposed to be a back way into the billet?’

  ‘Yes. That’s why Oliver chose it.’

  Marvellous! Whichever of Ahmed’s minor agents kept an eye on her movements—and I could bet there was one—must have thought discipline in a Field Security billet even looser than it was and assumed that I had a camp bed in the office, telling Boutagy and Limpsfield to run away and play whenever my popsy climbed over the wall. Perfectly in keeping with local expectations and for any Levantine police officer all in the day’s work! I don’t know about the Gestapo.

  ‘Where did you leave your horse?’

  ‘In Captain Magnat’s yard, while I went shopping.’

  Since she was picking up the mail, that was reasonable enough; but two or three hours was a lot of time to spend in the almost empty shops of Tripoli, and Magnat might think so, too.