After saying good-bye to Biddy—kissing her hand regretfully, as much as to say that her daughter and I were still just friends and not satisfactorily good ones—I rode back to Tripoli in a state of suppressed fury and told the Sergeant-Major to send me in Davila just as soon as he crossed the threshold. I then sat down to write my weekly reports to Ninth Army: rumours, Ruad caiques, taxi-drivers, port security, liaison with the French, grain shortages and other stock items.
When Davila returned in the evening, I asked him whether he did or did not have any control whatever over that pestilential, bug-ridden pension behind the billet.
‘Complete, sir. She’s most co-operative.’
‘Then what the hell is a broken down, Palestinian travel agent doing there without my knowledge?’
‘Well, sir, he asked me if there would be any objection to him knocking on her door, and as I knew she had a room free…’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Well, sir, we haven’t seen you for the last week.’
‘And stop saying “well, sir” so bloody often! How did he make himself known to you and where did you meet him?’
‘Hanging around outside Police Headquarters. He knew exactly what orders you had given me and told me to get on with it.’
‘But you don’t speak Arabic and I don’t think he’d like to be heard speaking English.’
‘He started in pidgin French, and we finally got together in Greek.’
Just like Oliver! Making himself even more of a mystery than he was! Anyway it disgusted me that the language of Sophocles and Plato should be the daily chatter of black marketeers from Smyrna to Cairo. I must have snapped something of the sort at Davila because I remember him replying that we carried on our own dirty business in the divine speech of Racine and Flaubert.
That restored my equanimity. We never knew what would come out of our Field Security sergeants. At that early period in the war you might easily find yourself commanding a Fellow of All Souls or a junior partner in Rothschilds.
‘And I am afraid I have some distressing news for you, sir. It is quite certain. Perhaps you would prefer to hear it from the sergeant-major?’
‘If you mean that Miss Ronson-Bolbec has been down to see him, I’m well aware of it and not distressed at all. Does anyone know besides you and Limpsfield?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Well, keep it that way! And it might be a good idea to leave some sort of ladder under our side of the wall where it could be noticed by the curious. What name is he using?’
‘Youssef Mokaddem.’
‘He is to meet me where we last saw each other at eleven a.m. tomorrow. You can shove that message into Chinese or Choctaw so long as the old girl gives it to him tonight.’
Oliver kept me waiting. When he arrived, he pointed out that buses were unreliable and I should remember it when making appointments. I was in no mood to accept his estimate of his own importance. I told him that he was risking his cover for the sake of a bed to make love on and that it was nonsense to say he was protecting me. Ahmed and Moustofi Khan were already convinced that my only interest in d’Aulnoy’s valley was Valerie. He could be suspected, I said, of choosing that pension just to be in close touch with me.
‘I could be—if there were anything to connect me with the Damascus money-changer. But there is not.’
‘Boutagy may recognise you.’
‘I shall be careful that he never sees me face to face. In any case he will believe anything I choose to tell him.’
It looked as if my secret agent had turned sour on me, so I became as polite as if he were really an Arab living on his nerves and deserving a bit more danger money. I thanked him for his timely note and gave him the whole story of my lunch with Moustofi Khan and the night before last outside the farmhouse.
‘So your Yellow Socks is Hadji!’
‘What do you know of him—beyond what your sheikh said?’
‘He is the link with German Intelligence. Speaks faultless Arabic and English and can pass anywhere. Just look at the lovely, authentic touch of those socks!’
‘How does he get here?’
‘Directly from Turkey, I should think. At one time the enemy ring passed him on through Persia to Mosul. But now you’ve got their chief agents on the run.’
The ‘you’ instead of ‘we’ sounded odd. I supposed that it had become a mental discipline to disassociate himself from the British. One unguarded ‘we’ in the wrong company could have been the end of him.
‘Any line on the Colonel?’
He was silent for a moment, and then burst out impatiently:
‘Don’t you realise what you have found? It’s the headquarters. And your colonel is the military adviser to the command in Syria.’
‘Who’s the commander?’
‘Almost certainly Rashid Ali, waiting in Italy. He would be quite incompetent without a first-class soldier at his side.’
‘And Moustofi Khan?’
‘Commander east of the Tigris—or at any rate in the Persian mountains.’
‘You are sure of all this?’
‘Yes. With what you have added, all my bits and pieces fall into place. Abdullah el Bessam is—what shall we say?—Financial Secretary. Hadji at present is Director of Military Intelligence. But every army is the same. They’ll put in some ignorant soldier as his boss when the fighting starts.’
I asked him how he had managed to penetrate the organisation as far as he had.
‘Because, in your ridiculous military terms, I as Youssef Mokaddem was Deputy Assistant Paymaster in Damascus. I know the names of the small fry and they have talked to me. The chain of command—I knew some of that too, except for the tops. And there’s still one missing: the political chief above Rashid Ali and Moustofi Khan. The Mufti of Jerusalem, perhaps, but it’s a dam’ fool choice.’
‘Can you give me the lot on paper?’
‘I will not. Youssef Mokaddem is now dead for good. I had to help you. I told you I was working for you and no one else. But now it’s finished. Finished!’
I still did not quite understand. I reminded him that I was a plain Field Security officer who could not possibly expose the organisation without expert evidence. I could report the probable presence of two Germans, and that was all.
‘No! I don’t approve of any of you. I have now to send these men to their death. I won’t! I have been alone long enough to know my own mind. I renounce violence absolutely.’
‘Why the hell did you join the Army in the first place?’
‘I made a mistake.’
God, what a mess! But the complexities of Oliver Enwin were at last plain to me. In following Valerie to Cairo he had shown nothing more than the determined persistence of a tomcat. Yes, I know that’s a hard judgment, but let’s leave it to the poets to measure the spiritual content of such devotion. On the outbreak of war what else could he do but make a choice which Valerie and her mother would approve, throwing himself into counter-espionage with all his obstinacy and his unique gift for languages and intrigue?
So far, not very original. But then, after Nazareth, he could no longer accept the obligations of war. I hesitate to call him a pacifist. There is no clear-cut name for the man who refuses to kill his fellow human beings just because he is ordered to do so by his government and is willing to use unlimited violence when ordered by himself.
Take me, for example. What made me join the Army, foaming at the mouth, at the time of Munich? Utter hatred of Hitler who was destroying the peaceful Europe I so loved, and shamelessly exhibiting himself as a man without shame or sense by his treatment of the Jews. And what about all the pacifists of my generation who fought like devils for the Spanish Republic? Oh, I grant you the religious pacifist who will resist nothing, however evil, by force! But Oliver was not one of those. By and large his engine was of conventional d
esign, but he preferred, intellectually, to let it run in neutral.
I did not attempt to explain him to himself. What could I get but angry denials?
‘You believe that these people are justified in plotting to stab us in the back?’ I asked.
‘I have no opinion. They are patriots—as I’m not and you are.’
‘But you would be welcomed back. You’re safe at last. Come down with me today to Cairo or wherever you like!’
‘No! I follow my conscience. It’s not so hard as the first time.’
I told him that I, too, must follow my conscience. If he did nothing with the information he had, he made himself an enemy agent and I should put him under arrest.’
‘And you’ll stand the consequences?’
‘Willingly. I shall explain frankly that I felt sympathy for you, but that now there is no question what my duty is.’
‘You propose to put me on the back of your motor bike?’
As usual he had gone to the heart of the matter. The one place you cannot put an unwilling prisoner is the back of a motor bike. I could only march him down the road with a gun—which he knew I wouldn’t use—stuck against his ribs. This I would have done if there had been the slightest chance of a British or French military vehicle passing along the road to Sir. The alternative was to knock him out and tie him up to a tree while I fetched the truck; but I hadn’t any rope. So there we stood, alone in a patch of scrub, a security officer and a traitor, and the security officer could not think of one damn thing to do about it.
I showed my helplessness by trying again to argue with him. The leaders, I said, were only collaborating with the enemy for their own advantage. What was their long term object?
‘Unity and independence of all Moslem lands.’
‘We have offered it, so far as it’s in our power.’
‘But they no longer believe you can win, or that you would keep your word if you did.’
‘They prefer to believe Hitler?’
‘They are fascinated by him. For the fanatic he is the enemy of the Jews. For the simple he has lots of those oily instruments of death which you all love, and better ones. And what is wrong with Moustofi Khan’s ambition for a federated Islam?’
‘What’s wrong is that they would be worse off under Gauleiter Moustofi with German advisers than under the Arab kings with British advisers. And how about Palestine?’
‘The Jews will be protected as they were under the Turks.’
True or false? It’s what all the pro-Arabs said. Zionism was never one of Oliver’s personal enthusiasms as it was mine—so far as duty to my country permitted.
The difference between us was too great for argument, and it was no good ranting like a recruiting officer. So I started on Valerie, threatening to tell her the truth.
‘She would not believe you. And she wouldn’t care much. Not now.’
His blasted complacence infuriated me. I had no right to shoot to kill, but I realised that I had no longer any objection to seeing him out of action and moaning with pain.
‘If you make a move, Oliver, I shall put a bullet through your hand,’ I said. ‘That will fix you. You can’t earn any sort of living. You will have to go to hospital and there will be a Military Policeman by your bedside.’
Very plausible. He was not sure I wouldn’t. I was not sure myself. The good, old excuse of trying to escape would wash.
I made him take off his coat and clasp hands behind head as I ran over his body. I confiscated all his papers in the name of Youssef Mokaddem together with his wallet. He had a serviceable mixture of money in it: Palestine pounds, Lebanese and Syrian piastres, Iraqi dinars.
‘If you steal that from me, I may have to get money where I can,’ he said. ‘And I prefer to accept no favours from either side.’
I gave it back. Disgraceful weakness. But I believed what he asserted and it seemed to me that he could only be tempted over the edge if he were starving. I wanted him to have time to think—or told myself so. I was obsessed and disarmed by this man who had been a friend and a colleague.
Then I warned him that I was going straight back to clear out his room at the pension and that if I ever saw him again I should arrest him as the deserter, Captain Oliver Enwin.
I roared back to Tripoli trying to understand how and why he had won, and what he had reckoned I would do after such a confession. I came to the conclusion that he didn’t care. My report had thrown him into the same state of chewing his own tail as when he had run from Nazareth. He had to declare himself, to stand up and be counted, and he refused to do so. Meanwhile his streak of cunning and his knowledge of my character had made him reasonably sure that he could again put off decision.
Together with Davila I searched his room. At any rate there was no doubt whose side the old girl who ran the place was on. She had chosen Davila Bey’s protection and she stuck to it. She tip-toed about in her greasy carpet slippers and made sure that none of her pensioners saw us come in or go out.
The bare room held no personal possessions at all beyond soap, razor and tooth-brush in a sponge bag and Oliver’s shabby suit-case containing everything he was not wearing: clean shirt, extra pair of trousers, a gaudy pull-over, a spare head-cloth, a tie and some badly printed business cards of the one-man travel agency. What a life, self-sufficient and dispossessed like that of a wandering dervish! It was no wonder that his dialogue with himself in that pitiable room had ended in renunciation of all except Valerie. Apart from his dealings with me, he had no male companions but traitors and the poor.
We cut the suit-case apart in the hope of finding papers. There was nothing. It was certain that he had a cache somewhere with his money-changer’s clothes and perhaps a file of names and contacts which he could not afford to forget. I thought at first that I had no chance of finding it, for it might be in Damascus or buried at Byblos or Tel Ayub. But of course not! Why go to such trouble when he had a safe deposit with which his close connection was unknown. I was prepared to bet that his few really important possessions were with Valerie.
So off again to Biddy and her dear daughter, cursing d’Aulnoy for not having run a telephone line up to his villa though I would not have dared to use it if he had. You know how one dashes for results to the exclusion of all else when possessed by an imperative—fine for money-making whizz-kids but not for the business of exposing enemy agents or launching your own into the fog. It’s essential to go slowly—so slowly that your hunches will stand up to being expressed on paper, step by step and paragraph by paragraph. Yet I refused to waste a minute. I was reaching a state of excitability which would have justified any distrust felt by I (b). My one-track mind could not even think of a good excuse for the visit—nothing better than telling Biddy that it was about time for another tête à tête in Tripoli.
I caught Valerie dressed for riding and on the point of going down to the pension for a late and energetic siesta. Since her pretext had been a pretended call on me, she was not pleased. She was short with her mother and stamped round the house on unnecessary tasks. I was stuck with Biddy, who told me at great length that I must not pay too much attention to the moods of young girls, implying that it would be all right on the night. Then I was cornered by Ahmed who wanted me to back up the application of some relative of his for work in an army camp. All hollow as hell. He was just indulging in the fruitless Arab habit of interminable talk in order to weigh the other person up. Among themselves it may work. I don’t know.
I had to capture Valerie on the run before I could get a word in to tell her that I had a disappointment for her. Oliver had been suddenly called away for an indefinite period and had asked me to break it gently to her and to collect a bag or parcel or something.
‘I’ll fetch it,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I should have guessed you came with a message from him.’
The girl deserved so much more from life than she seemed l
ikely to get. She could still be courteous when hit hard. That surprised me as much as the sense of humour which I had only recently discovered in her. I accused myself of being merciless to my pair of lovers—though God knows they were lucky to be in the power of an amoral nihilist always according to Jeremy, finding excuses.
She returned in ten minutes with a bag—one of those old-fashioned things with the handle at the top. I had the impression that she had been crying, but could not be sure. She must have had a lot of practice in concealing tears.
‘When did Oliver give it to you?’
‘When he decided to stay in Tripoli. He gave me the ticket and asked me to pick up a bag from the consigne at the station.’
Back at the office I broke open the lock of the bag. There was not much in it: his Syrian clothes, a photograph of Valerie taken long ago in Aldershot, a Damascus telephone directory and what looked like sheets of accounts in Arabic. I called in Boutagy, hoping that at last I had some documentary evidence. He disappointed me at once. The sheets ruled in red and blue were not accounts at all, he said; they were poetry, written in an ultra-decorative script with which he had some trouble. He could not place the writer or his date, but told me it was good stuff. Some phrases of his stolid and halting translation sounded vaguely familiar, and I felt pretty certain that they contained a code to be read in conjunction with the telephone book.
This directory, in Arabic and French, was more interesting—filthy, covered with smudges and dirty finger marks, and looking as if it had been pinched from a telephone box in a slum. I came to the conclusion that some of the smudges could be deliberate, knowing Oliver’s methods, and were some kind of reminder. If so, not even a practised code-breaker could make much of the markings. The whole object of a code is to communicate with somebody else, whereas Oliver was communicating with himself.
Still frustrated. Shouldn’t I have taken the whole story up to I (b) as it was? Well, it was far from coherent, and I could no longer leave out of it Khalid and my failure to hand over Oliver Enwin. So to compensate for my crimes it had to be twice as convincing as any other report. Khalid, you say, could be explained. Oh, could he? In a country at peace I know no one licensed to kill except surgeons.
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