Doom's Caravan

by Geoffrey Household

  ‘What about shining a light?’

  ‘Be careful. But there is seldom anyone in the gardens at night. The place is supposed to be haunted.’

  ‘Can I bring in any kind of transport through the gate?’

  ‘No. You had better take Boutagy and a donkey, both of you dressed as fellahin. He’ll talk you out of trouble, if possible. But it’s all pointless. How on earth are you going to get into the village with a load of explosives?’

  I said I didn’t intend to, and that my plans were still too fluid to be defined in words. That was true. There could really be no picture until my collection of visual images had gone into the cutting room.

  Oliver pushed the boat back along the wall without a splash and landed me at the steps. It seemed unlikely that I would see him again. When the rebellion broke, there was small chance of any way out for him. He would be put against a wall by one side or the other. My own fate would be that of the few troops in the town. No surrender or run like hell, according to the circumstances.

  Early next morning I called Limpsfield and Boutagy into the office and told them that I had reliable information of the whereabouts of a stock of explosives collected by saboteurs for future use.

  ‘Well, sir, that would be a feather in our cap!’ Limpsfield exclaimed, delighted to find the section back in honest business.

  ‘It would, sergeant-major. But I want them myself. And with Boutagy’s help I’m going to try to bring some back to the billet.’

  Limpsfield’s ‘yessir’ was the least enthusiastic I ever heard. But Boutagy put on his face for Danger and squared his chin. You never saw such a ham actor as Boutagy defending the Empire. But he wasn’t. At bottom he was a Christian Arab warrior, single-minded as his ancestors.

  I gave him some money and asked him to visit a market on the outskirts and bring back two second-hand peasant outfits—lice to be avoided but eggs permissible as we should not wear them long. He was also to hire a donkey for a day and stable it somewhere quiet and not too far off where we could pick it up at midnight. Ropes and stout sacks for panniers would be required as well.

  I then went down to El Mina by the tram. Standing on the platform I could see more of the market gardens beyond the wall than I had ever noticed from truck or motorcycle. There was no doubt which gate Oliver meant, and there was a possible cistern to the left of it. But I had envisaged fairly open cultivated land. It was nothing of the sort. There were bamboo hedges, closely planted fruit trees and irrigation channels; so that it was going to be difficult at night to tell a path from a dried up onion bed.

  Boutagy and I left soon after eleven, lying down under ground sheets in the back of the truck to avoid any curious eyes. Limpsfield dropped us off in the yard of some Christian friend of Boutagy’s, who he swore was as reliable as himself. We then drove the donkey, which seemed a willing beast—very different from a Moslem donkey, Boutagy assured me—down into the broad avenue and on. We never could get the road entirely to ourselves, but passers-by were few. However, there was nothing odd in a couple of fellahin coming down from the hills to be early at El Mina market. We were spoken to twice. Once I did not have to enter the short conversation; on the other occasion I made mooing noises and pointed to my mouth, keeping my tongue well down.

  Access to the gardens was easy enough. Boutagy shuffled on with the donkey while I waited till no one was in sight, lifted the gate off its hinges and slipped through. When I heard the little hooves trotting back I opened the gate, and he was inside without a break in the rhythm of the footfalls.

  Eighty yards straight on, and we came to the turning to the left—a well-worn track with a rush hedge on one side. There seemed no room for doubt, but the blasted thing ended at an irrigation channel. Back again, then two paths which weren’t, and a purposeful turning to the left at well over a hundred and twenty yards from the gate. Oliver’s judgment of distance showed that he had never shot or played golf. This was certainly the lane which he meant, but he had never mentioned the number of obscure openings leading off it. The main track curved away to some considerable building. The building turned out to be the boundary wall.

  There was no way of following the wall back to the gate, so we retraced our steps, took a fix on the Pole Star and started an obstacle race on a course more or less at right angles to the wall. I have never felt more frustrated and incompetent. That garden was haunted all right—by the spirit of a mirror-imaged, one-eyed lunatic who had put on his baggy breeches back to front. After at least an hour of defying him I tripped over a pipe and fell full length into the mud where it had been leaking. The pipe led us to a cistern about where it ought to be.

  There Boutagy and the donkey remained while I cast around for the threshing-floor, fell over the pipe again and told it what I thought of it far too loudly. However, the ground this time was stony, and it occurred to what intelligence I had left that the pipe might not be the same. It did not lead back to any obvious well, but it had a path alongside well worn by hooves. For want of anything better we followed it and came to a second cistern. The starlight showed a vague open space nearby; in the middle of this was a threshing-floor with a pole in the centre of the circle. The pole was set into a round section of tree trunk which was loose in his socket.

  We lifted it out. Underneath was a small, circular, brick chamber, just high enough to stand up in. It did not hold anything like sufficient explosive to blow the Ras Shaqqa tunnel. They must have had another cache somewhere else or drawn recently on this lot, leaving a clear space—which was all to the good since I could examine what there was at leisure. Most of it had been stolen from Australian sappers and some from naval stores, so that all the stock was marked in English.

  I broke open cases of gelignite and handed eighty one-pound sticks up to Boutagy, followed by two boxes of electric detonators, two reels of flex and an exploder. The exploder clarified my mind remarkably. I saw that I was going to need two of them—one which I hoped to use at a safe distance and another which would be on the spot in case I had no chance of escaping. I reminded myself that I wouldn’t know a thing. All the same a hundred years hence, as my Nanny used to say.

  By the time we had stowed this little lot in the sacks and roped them on each side of the donkey—except for the boxes of detonators which I carried in my loose breeches—it was light enough to see paths and distinguish what was wall and what was bamboo. A fine old mess we had made of somebody’s allotment. One just had to hope that the owners of plots knew nothing of the additions to the threshing-floor and that Oliver’s guerrillas would not need more explosives from store in the course of the next two days.

  The first tram clattered past. We put back pole and socket and made for the gate, Boutagy prodding that amiable donkey into a brisk trot. It was no good waiting. We had to go out confidently and at once as if we owned the place. There were people on the other side of the avenue, but they paid no attention to us and our rush-covered load. I could even replace the gate on its hinges.

  We were now, to the eyes of the passers-by, peasants from the coast bound for Tripoli market with vegetables, but we cut our journey as short as possible, for anything could happen—a policeman finding fault with us and demanding a small bribe or some impatient buyer lifting the rushes to see what we had for sale. So we turned straight into the yard of the billet with Boutagy singing out the Arabic for Early Melons. If we were seen, it did not greatly matter; it would be assumed that the far from secret agents of Security had been engaged on something as futile and mysterious as usual.

  When we carried our cargo into my office I was astonished to notice the extreme respect with which the section regarded it. To convince them that they were unlikely to be blown up in their beds—or rather their straw palliasses on the hard floor—I put on gloves, made a little model of a donkey from the plastic and put a match to it. A spectacular shoot of flame, of course, but nothing more. I had seen it done by my instructor—rathe
r to my alarm since he was far from sober at the time.

  My plan, as I am sure you must have guessed, was to lay enough charges in that derelict farmhouse to blow the place to bits along with everyone in it. Thanks to Magnat, I could make it probable that several of the leaders would be there at the same time. But when I could not possibly know.

  My men were not trained scouts who could watch the farmhouse night after night. They needed water, rations and transport, and more patience than could be expected of them; their presence was sure to be detected. I could have posted a couple of reliable fellows high up on the Hermel track, but two insoluble problems remained. They could not tell me who were in the party—I did not want to waste good gelignite on half a dozen of the rank and file—and they could not get news of any movement back in time for me to reach the farmhouse by way of Homs. Walkie-talkies were rare at that period of the war. I had never heard of them and could not have laid my hands on one if I had.

  Another alternative was to watch the Hermel track myself and to follow up on foot any movement out of the valley. I didn’t think much of that. The German colonel would surely post a rearguard or sentries, and my chance of getting through them to the farmhouse was slim. There was absolutely nothing for it but to accompany the party myself. I thought I saw a way to do it, though at some risk to Biddy’s life as well as my own.

  The sooner the charges were laid, the better; so I loaded the sacks on to the truck that evening, together with pick, spade, rake and broom. Then I called the whole section together informally and told them that I might be sacked and court-martialled for exceeding my powers. Any of them whom I required to help me would receive his orders in writing, which he should carefully preserve for his own protection, and he was at perfect liberty to refuse to obey. Wilson, the senior sergeant, replied for the lot. He was far too complimentary and probably insubordinate. Limpsfield, speaking for himself, said he wasn’t a bloody cashier who wanted a ‘Sign, please’, and that he looked forward to finishing the job which we both had started.

  The sergeant-major, Holloway, Gunn and I started early so that we could work through the heat of the day when it was unlikely that anyone would be about on those baked foothills shimmering in the sun. When we arrived at the fig tree we quickly deposited our cargo under its cover, and I sent Gunn off with orders to come back in four hours if the coast was clear. I went on ahead to reconnoitre the farmhouse and, finding it deserted, signalled from the high ground that the two should come on with the load. Limpsfield worked with me while Holloway lay down on top of the ridge to give us warning of any approach from either side.

  The first task was to find a site for the exploder, near enough to the farmhouse to be reached if anyone had the chance, far enough away to avoid—failing bad luck—the fallout of stone and timber. Since I could not dig a channel for the wire across the Hermel track, I chose a slight fold in the ground, on the same side as the house and about seventy yards up the valley, full of the dead stalks of some vegetation which had flourished in spring. To the casual eye in half light it would appear a fairly open and level patch of nothing, but in fact the fold was deep enough to hold a man. Limpsfield lay down in it with stalks pushed into the netting of his steel helmet and I could not see him in broad daylight. That settled, we scraped out a shallow channel for the wire and led it into the farmhouse by a crack in the west wall.

  I had started to dig holes for the charges when Holloway came dashing down from the ridge to tell us that there were three horsemen cutting across the open country from the direction of the Homs-Baalbek road. Evidently we were not the only ones to take advantage of the emptiness of the country in the midday heat. We cleared out hastily with our tools and materials and took refuge in the bushes on the other side of the track. Five minutes later they passed us without stopping at the farmhouse. It was unlikely that they would have spotted my holes, quickly and loosely covered in, but the half-empty drum of wire below the crack in the wall was only obscured by an armful of hay.

  One of the riders I knew, for I had seen him in d’Aulnoy’s village. No doubt he was acting as guide. The other two were well-dressed Syrians, probably from the north, both men in their late thirties with an air of authority about them.

  ‘Gathering of the clans, sir?’ Limpsfield asked when they had passed.

  ‘Or headquarters conference for brigade commanders up.’

  It occurred to me that if the two were the local leaders they looked, they could not get back to their commands for at least a day and a half. Not much to go on, but a slight indication that we still had time.

  I returned to my holes and pressed the charges up against the footings of the four arches holding up the top storey—which itself contained several tons of material, collapsed or in place. We dug channels in the dusty earth a good foot deep so that no weight on top could break the wire, and I then connected and inserted the detonators. By the time we had gone over the ground with rake and broom there was not a sign of the wrath to come. It was a good professional job, checked and rechecked, and I could only hope that I had made no stupid mistake. I had nearly made one beauty already. Taking Limpsfield back to the exploder to make quite sure again that he knew how to press down the handle, I forgot to disconnect it till the last second.

  The second emergency exploder was under a pile of brick and rubble close to the door. I rebuilt this so that a weary officer sitting down on the pile could pass his wrist between two bricks and, very reluctantly, press down. In the circumstances no timing device or booby trap was of any value at all, and the less I complicated the wiring, the better.

  I doubted whether I could or should involve my section in this operation. However, before we left I settled with Limpsfield the positions for his men if any means ever turned up of getting them there at the right time. He himself was to lie up in cover by the external exploder. Holloway would be posted in the ant-ridden scrub a little above the farmhouse on the other side of the track, and Wilson and Flowers higher up the valley, well tucked away but within call. Boutagy, who might very well be needed, was to remain with them but, as a non-combatant, must stay right out of any action.

  Home again with a clear conscience. The rest I had to leave in the hands of the God of Battles whom I could reasonably expect to show some interest in this operation so near to the familiar ground of the Promised Land. One could not know at the time that the General Staff upstairs were proposing to postpone Armageddon in favour of Stalingrad and El Alamein.

  Then I took my courage in both hands and called Magnat, who always worked late in his office. Why courage? Well, because this, to my way of thinking, was the point of no return. Any damn fool could wire a farmhouse and wait for a goat to tread on the handle of the exploder ten years hence.

  I told Magnat that I was desolated to find after discreet enquiries that he had been perfectly right and that Khalid was in the hands of Security Intelligence Middle East. He had been in a Cairo hospital for four months recovering from a head wound and coma, and was now fit for interrogation which, I understood, had just begun. Magnat’s inquiry could therefore be closed, and, so far as we were concerned, we didn’t care if he told his men that we had got Khalid. To make my information sound even more authentic I said that I had been asked to present the apologies of Security Intelligence and that an officer would call on him with a full report of the interrogation.

  He congratulated me on my honesty and the inter-allied loyalty of my service. It was the only occasion, I think, when such congratulations were not deserved.

  Then I made out Limpsfield’s orders. When I had finished a first draft I rewrote it, for in trying to visualise the picture up in the valley and the picture down in the billet it occurred to me that there was after all a remote chance that Limpsfield could know when the farmhouse was likely to be occupied. If there were a move out of the valley, every horse in the place would be needed for transport of staff, papers, arms, the transmitter and anything else
which should not be left behind in the quarry room. This meant that the two horses permanently stabled at Sir would be brought up to the valley.

  I called in the invaluable Davila and asked him if he could imagine any secret, sure way of communication with Sir. He thought it could be managed. One of his regular informants was a clerk in police headquarters, a Greek Orthodox Christian and therefore very unlikely to be mixed up in Moslem plots. The clerk had mentioned that a member of his clan was one of the few Christians in Sir. Boutagy confirmed this. He had met the man on his visit to Sir which Oliver called clumsy—as it was.

  We then worked out one of the typical and complicated scenarios of the Levant. A boy friend of Valerie’s wished to go up and see her but could not ride a motorcycle. I, as her well-known and accepted lover, did not want him there but could not say so. I therefore thought up the trick of arranging for him to visit Sir when there were no horses available to take him on to the valley. If that should happen, this Christian in Sir was to telephone his clansman, the clerk, who would pass on the news to Davila. It would be best if he did not mention horses. I left it to Davila to arrange some simple code word.

  So far as I remember, my final orders to Limpsfield went something like this:

  1. At 14.00 hrs. I shall leave Tripoli for an indefinite stay with Mrs. Ronson-Bolbec.

  2. If I fail to return within four days, Sergeant-Major Limpsfield will proceed to I (b), Ninth Army, and will deliver in person my written report which will explain my reasons for independent action.