The next shout came from behind Elisa. It was a sign that Juan no longer represented a mere negative.
‘I ask what is the strength of our movement!’
He came straight out of the power plant across the no man’s land, followed by his supporters. They were no longer partisans; they were delegates.
‘I will answer your question, friend,’ he said. ‘The strength of our movement in the West is double the million for which Anton has asked. In the East it is every man who knows a dozen others with whom he can talk freely.’
The more irreconcilable of the colonists closed immediately round Elisa—for it was, after all, only twenty minutes since Juan had tried to kill her. This defensive movement gave her the chance to recreate the dividing line.
‘Leave them alone! she cried sharply, as if she were genuinely afraid that her own people would resort to force.
She turned away, leaving behind her only an odd dozen of the colonists, for whom the pleasure of argument with their opponents was irresistible. To that extent her authority was weakened. It didn’t matter so long as Czoldy in far-off Paris was undisturbed.
The ruthlessness of Juan and his party, whatever its motives, was to most of the colonists an unforgivable outrage upon the peace of Kasr-el-Sittat; and Elisa’s tacit sentence of excommunication effectively countered the attack. The rebels were limited to their positions. They could submit to public opinion or defeat themselves by impatience.
We had only gained the now useless allegiance of Phil Grynes. He showed himself a typical policeman by grasping his opportunity when it was too late. As the colonists eddied about us, he whispered to me that he had changed his mind, that he had not realized before how fundamental was the difference between Elisa and Anton Tabas. I fear I was somewhat short with him. His hesitation had nearly cost Elisa’s life and mine. I told him that he should be a little surer of his damned conscience.
Tabas, who had overheard my raised voice, rebuked me with the same sternness that he used to Elisa.
‘Are you so firm a Christian, Eric, that you believe in the unchanging victory of God? I tell you that the race between good and evil is unending.’
I did not resent his severity, for I knew that I was wrong. I was far more annoyed at the lightheartedness of Oliver Poss.
‘My dear sir,’ he remarked—‘or should I say your reverence?—I yield to none in my respect for a good piece of fulmination. But if you’re going to bring up angelic races let us not forget that the 1.30 at Amberson Park damn near ended in a photo-finish.’
2
Discussion there might be, but the bodies of Gisorius and the electrician still lay on the table in Osterling’s office, while Elisa’s indignant friends preserved the peace for them; and Juan’s partisans in the power plant still kept a cigarette alight for the instant ignition of a fuse. There was no agreement to observe the status quo. It imposed itself. Elisa and Osterling dared not attack the plant and the explosives store, the two points that Juan must hold at any cost. As for Juan, he had learned his lesson. He knew now that nothing but a massacre would give him control of the wireless room.
The night came down over Kasr-el-Sittat, and the lights went on all over the colony. Juan could afford to be generous, for he still held our German wireless operator. The common-room and the dining-hall lived again, but like an ant-heap with the top cut off lived with an unnatural activity.
We had all forgotten that we inhabited any other country than Kasr-el-Sittat, for to us it was a country in itself. Even I, during those last thirty-six hours, had become a typical European, occupying myself so intensely with a closed circle that I forgot the existence of the natives. Yet the local labourers of Kasr-el-Sittat were all round the colony in their huts and villages, and they had ears and tongues; being Syrian, they also had plenty of imagination. The story as Ashkar heard it must have surpassed the very wildest of the rumours that broke out from Kasr-el-Sittat in the days of God and his wives.
After midnight, when the colony had settled into a hill silence, I awoke suddenly from a few hours of exhausted sleep. Some hunted part of me must have been listening for any unfamiliar noise. It was the splashing of horses through the distant ford that I had heard, and as I opened my eyes and listened I heard a volley of curses when Ashkar discovered that the water was deeper than he had any right to expect. I put on my coat and shoes—which were all I had taken off—and went out into the hall. Poss was sitting at the table with a case of papers open in front of him, engaged on the accounts of his complex trafficking. He yawned generously and said that he was sitting up in case Osterling again had nothing to strike matches on. I was surprised and grateful. I told him that he could now confidently go to bed as the police had arrived. His immediate response was to lock up his papers with a speed and neatness born of long experience.
At Kasr-el-Sittat there was only a night breeze, but in the upper air convoys of clouds rolled and wallowed from sea to desert past the station of the half moon. In an interval of light I saw Ashkar, a sergeant and six troopers halted near the gate, and obviously puzzled by the lack of any disturbance. A few colonists stood by in the shadows. They were being evasive as any villagers. One of them, who actually taught at the colony’s language courses, pretended that he didn’t understand Ashkar’s excellent French. They were, of course, on most delicate ground. They had never before dealt with, or even seen the civil power of the land.
Ashkar praised God for the beholding of me, and entirely forgot his proper calm—chiefly, I think, because he had put on his best boots and breeches to impress the Europeans of Kasr-el-Sittat, and was suffering from all the annoyance of a poor man at getting them soaked in the ford.
‘What is the truth of all this foolishness?’ he exploded. ‘A battle last night? Guns, bombs and parachutes? Or is it all because some father of forty thousand whores chose the middle of the night to kill a pig?’
‘God curse the father of him!’ I echoed piously, playing for time.
‘And you? What are you doing here? Come—tell me all! And it shall go no further.’
Then I remembered that I had let him go from our last meeting still under the impression that I was some sort of agent of the British Government.
‘There are two men dead,’ I answered, ‘and you must do your duty.’
‘Murdered?’
‘That is for you to judge. I am only a visitor.’
He took the hint.
‘Then I will not come to you till I must. But tell me this. How am I to proceed?’
‘As you would in a Christian village.’
‘Who is the headman?’
‘A woman. Elisa Cantemir. They will have told her of your arrival, and she will come to you here.’
Then I saw what I must do. The outline of the scheme and of its consequences was plain; and as I thought of those consequences and shuddered away from them, the details too presented themselves to my unwilling mind. I and I alone could ensure our peaceful possession of the wireless room on condition that I no longer kept up my weak pretence of neutrality—which Juan and even Osterling respected for Elisa’s sake—and struck at her boldly and openly.
There is no hope that I can ever forgive myself, and least of all for the words that I now said. They have been said too often of Elisa before, and I put myself deliberately in the class of those who had uttered them.
‘Hold her for interrogation till dawn.’
Deliberately. It was conscious abandonment for ever of my happiness and self-respect. My life, when I was blindly inspired to give it, was a far easier surrender, and I understood at last Elisa’s wisdom and even kindliness in demanding that I should die for her. But she and Tabas, continually holding and withholding their spiritual purposes were both too complex for me. In some obscure way, clothing no doubt my reluctance in a convenient mysticism, I saw myself as representing a humanity that had rejected my blood sacrifice and cried out to me to perform my simple duty.
‘Get the man Osterl
ing,’ I told Ashkar, ‘and keep him with Cantemir. You will also have to detain and question Juan Villaneda, but do it this way. Send your sergeant to the office’—and I explained to him where it was—‘to clear out the public and make an examination of the bodies. When I come with Juan Villaneda and another Englishman, tell him to arrest the lot of us and put us for safe keeping in the inner room which I will show him. He should not finish his job, or let us out till daylight. And do not say you have seen me.’
Ashkar hesitated, more to memorize my advice than to question it—for what I asked was a reasonable routine—and then agreed. I vanished into the shadows of the garage and strode up the hill. Between the houses I saw a flicker of white as Elisa went down to the destruction of her work and soul.
Juan’s people let me into the power plant unwillingly, for he was asleep. He sat up, swaying his body in time with the thump of the Diesel, as if the influence of that industrial lullaby had not yet ceased to control his dreams. He did not hide his weariness and impatience, evidently considering that I had come with some too subtle message or proposal, which, at the moment, would be beyond his power to analyse and answer. When I told him that Grynes was now with us, he cursed both me and him.
I didn’t stop to explain my behaviour. It wasn’t worth the trouble; nor, since his attempt on Elisa, did I care any longer what he thought of me. He was not a friend; he was a necessary ally. I reported Ashkar’s arrival and what I intended to do. I must have had an air of assurance that was decisive. He produced without question all the code-books and copies of messages that he had taken from Osterling’s office.
‘Elisa is not a fool, friend,’ he said. ‘She will know after this that it was you.’
Was he testing me? Or was his admiration of her so profound that, like Osterling, he could not strike without considering the effect on her?
I answered shortly that of course she would know. He understood, and stretched out a hand which I avoided. For a good revolutionary he was too swift to recognize pain.
‘Have you decided what you want to say to Czoldy?’ I asked him.
He replied that he had, but wished me to correct his English. The primary code was from English into numerals.
His draft message was unconvincing, a lot of details about a change of policy which Osterling might conceivably have written—we had sone copies of his directives—but which were utterly unlike the incisive style of Elisa or Gisorius. They, I felt sure, would have stuck to facts in any crisis, and trusted to Czoldy to take action on them.
‘Who will decypher at the other end?’ I asked.
‘Normally the Paris leader. But we can make Czoldy himself decypher.’
There was a certain mathematical combination which the Secretariat used for communications between themselves. If we headed our message URGENT AND PERSONAL FOR SIX—which was Czoldy’s number—and then switched to the private code, the message could not be read in the Paris headquarters and would be delivered to him personally.
The list of numbers and names was the only document which Juan did not offer to show me, nor had I any desire to see it.
We agreed at last on this:
Bitterly regret missing boxes Coriolanos analysed by police laboratories London and Moscow and your connection traced. Recommend you take immediate steps for safety yourself and FitzErnest and advise us if possible to-night.
If it entered Czoldy’s head that the personal code was compromised, the mention of Coriolanos and the name of FitzErnest (which was not in the code-book and had to be spelt out) should carry conviction. Not even Juan, and certainly not the leaders of the party abroad knew anything of those cigars.
Juan, indeed, objected to my message on the grounds that the whole affair of the Coriolanos was only intelligent conjecture and that I might be wrong. I snapped at him that if wrong I were, we could all thank God and go home to bed.
We found Phil Grynes with Tabas. Both of them were awake. The room gave an impression of peace as if they had sat together contentedly in a long silence. I asked Grynes again if he had any objection to transmitting whatever we gave him, for I did not want to be let down at the last minute. He promised that he would, and added apologetically to Tabas that he supposed action was a necessary illusion.
‘To him we are all the same!’ Juan exclaimed impatiently.
‘Do you complain of that, you who have committed murder?’ Tabas answered. ‘But to Philip you are not the same, nor should be. I give him only this guidance: among men who claim to serve their fellows, learn to distinguish those who love from those who wish to lead.’
That was the nearest approach to practical politics I ever heard from Tabas. His words could profitably be written up in a polling booth. Certainly they cleared away any lingering doubts that Grynes might have had, and he came with us gladly. He was even excited. A return to the world of necessary illusion, so long as he could go there with a clear conscience, must have been a bit of a holiday for him.
At the office Ashkar’s sergeant was duly spinning out his job. Measuring the floor. Packing exhibits. Description of corpse, orifices and angles. He must have read an occasional detective story, for I swear that none of this had ever entered into his routine. Normal procedure in a case of murder was merely to take signed statements with the help of a riding-switch, and sign the witness’s name for him.
One of the troopers was inside, helping his sergeant and calling for God to admire. The other stood savagely on guard at the door with a carbine and fixed bayonet. Elisa’s garrison had been turned out, and were waiting indecisively on the path. I explained to them that Juan had come to give himself up to the police and be questioned. They let him pass, for they had no reason to be suspicious of Grynes and myself. They knew that since we both spoke Arabic we were obvious choices to deal with the local gendarmerie. The cyphers and code books which I carried, hidden among papers, in a cardboard folder under my arm gave me an appearance of legal authority.
The sergeant put on a convincing show of being a stupid and unfuriated Arab. He struck the air before our faces, waved his pistol at us and drove us from wall to wall, whispering when his back was to the window:
‘My father, in which room is it your will that I should put you?’
He snatched carbine and bayonet from his trooper at the door, foaming a little at the mouth for good measure, and drove us through the two doors into the wireless room.
We had ten minutes to go till 2.45, which Grynes employed in familiarizing himself still further with the transmitter. He got in touch with Istanbul without difficulty; they informed us at once that, in view of the interrupted message of the night before, Paris was standing by to receive it direct from us if conditions were good enough. For a moment I couldn’t give their phrase ‘the night before’ a meaning. It seemed to me that weeks had passed since Gisorius sat at the instrument and sent his URGENT FOR CZOLDY.
We waited while Phil Grynes tapped and listened, tapped and listened, and fiddled with the dials. Without the fan it grew hot and stuffy in that little room. We passed through all the conditions of sweat, from the first fat cold beads of excitement to flush after flush of moisture so that our hands stuck to the pages of cyphers.
Paris, said Grynes, was receiving him well enough to try. I passed him the sheet of figures. Juan and I sat in silence. The men in Paris who listened anxiously to the incoming dots and dashes were so vivid a reality that I dared not speak lest Czoldy should hear me.
I knew enough Morse to recognize that several groups of numerals were going out over and over again. Reception was poor, and Grynes was compelled to repeat various parts of the message. He felt our impatience, and kept it in check by looking over his shoulder from time to time with a cheerful grin.
At last he lifted his earphones and said:
‘Addressee has made arrangements for immediate delivery. They want to know if they should stand by after the usual time in case he wishes to reply.’
I answered that they should
; and asked Juan how far the Paris headquarters were from the district of the Etoile where Czoldy was fairly sure to be staying.
‘Man! He won’t be at his hotel’, Juan declared with absolute certainty, ‘but somewhere nearby. Give him an hour, not more. And not less, because he has to decypher and cypher.’
We tried to go out for a breath of air, but were driven back with insults. Ashkar had well trained his men in literal and unquestioning obedience—and they put into it all the enthusiasm of the Arab for working himself into a rage, especially if pretended. The waiting colonists pressed closer to the door, and the light fell on their faces. I could see that they were shocked at this brutal treatment of Juan Villaneda, even though they were Elisa’s men. I was afraid they might rush the sentry, and shouted to them as we were hustled back that they should keep calm till the captain of gendarmerie arrived. As there was now no sound of transmission to be heard, we wedged the two doors open. The draught through the ventilators cooled the room.
Our message sent, I was overcome by the doubt which Juan had put into my mind. Suppose Elisa and the Secretariat were not plotting war at all, but merely planning to take advantage of it when it came? Then all these heroics were completely misconceived. It seemed to me possible that I should find myself a mere, futile, petty intriguer against Elisa.
To comfort myself with some vision of the future, I asked Juan if he had any general message ready. He replied that he had, and that as soon as he was securely in control of Kasr-el-Sittat he would call in all the leaders abroad for a party conference. He wanted Tabas to remain till then.
‘He won’t,’ replied Phil Grynes. ‘He says we have no more to teach each other.’
I played on Grynes’ devoted care for his master, and pointed out that at Kasr-el-Sittat he had absolute liberty and three square meals a day.
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