by John Harris
Aziz glared. ‘I have spent all my life attacking Toweida forts,’ he snapped. ‘There will be no need of artillery!’
Again he knew his motives were suspect. Artillery was too impersonal and always at the back of his mind was the knowledge that he owed a life. And it had become a life for which he found he still held a strange affection.
Thawab had risen to his feet, tall in the glow of the flames. ‘Thou wilt delay until it is too late!’ he snapped. ‘The English will bring a column of soldiers.’
‘Thawab has announced that the passes are held!’
‘Very well.’ Thawab backed down unwillingly before the force of Aziz’s character and the hold he still had over the Khusar tribes. ‘But let there be one sign of relief, Aziz, and the guns will come down from the north. Modern battles are not won with rifles.’
Aziz’s expression didn’t alter. ‘It is agreed, and may the hand of Allah be seen in it. For the time being, I will ride to the fortress to correct Thawab’s mistake over the white officer.’
‘Perhaps you will even apologise?’ Thawab sneered.
‘Yes,’ Aziz snapped, his head up, his eyes flashing. ‘I shall tell Bin T’Khass that this was the work of a fanatic and that from now on we shall conduct our war as if we were civilised. Perhaps then the Toweidas might think more eagerly about surrendering.’
4
‘You’re going out there?’ Beebe said. ‘After what happened to Lack?’
Pentecost sighed. ‘I’m going out, Mr Beebe,’ he said.
‘I think you’re nuts, son!’
Pentecost eyed him mildly. ‘Perhaps I am, Mr Beebe,’ he said. ‘But if talking to Aziz can save a few lives, then it’s worth the risk.’
As he stepped outside and the gate was closed again, Beebe stared at Fox. Despite his resentment, despite his contempt for Pentecost’s posturings, his admiration couldn’t be denied.
‘That’s quite a guy you see when you look close,’ he said unwillingly.
‘I could have told you that,’ Fox said coldly. ‘Long since.’
Aziz was waiting where he always waited, but this time there was no sign of a banner or a ceremonial bodyguard.
‘Bin T’Khass,’ he said as Pentecost stopped in front of him.
‘Aziz el Beidawi! I come in sorrow and in great anger. My friend did not die in honourable battle. He was murdered by your torturers.’
‘Not my torturers, Bin T’Khass,’ Aziz said slowly. ‘They are Thawab’s fanatics, and I come in grief that such a thing has happened. Death should be a poet’s conception – clean, in battle, not obscene mutilation like this. While I live it shall not happen again.’
Pentecost nodded. ‘So be it,’ he said. ‘Let us conduct ourselves like warriors.’
For a moment there was silence. Aziz had delivered his apology – and Pentecost knew what it had cost the proud old brigand – had made it clear that Lack’s murder was an isolated incident which would not be repeated.
‘I grieve also—’ Aziz spoke suddenly, breaking into Pentecost’s thoughts ‘—I grieve also that Bin T’Khass and Aziz, both honourable men, should thus find themselves at each other’s throats.’
‘I also, Aziz.’
‘And that Bin T’Khass goes back on his word and holds Hahdhdhah after promising it to me.’
Pentecost paused, searching for words. ‘The men in Khaswe played us both false, Aziz,’ he explained slowly. ‘They did not tell us the truth. But I am a soldier and must obey.’
‘There is no solution, Bin T’Khass?’ The words came like a cry of anguish. Aziz was well aware what his insistence on talking to Pentecost cost him in the way of the loyalty of his men and he was in need of reassurance.
Pentecost shook his head. ‘There is no solution, Aziz,’ he said. ‘I cannot leave my post. That also would not be honourable.’
Aziz’s eyes were troubled. ‘I see that. We are both committed. I to my people. You to your honour.’
The conversation was stilted and awkward as Aziz tried to grasp at the old habit of things, at the warm conversations they had had before. But things were different now. They were on opposite sides and Pentecost was holding himself stiffly aloof, and while it made the old man’s heart ache that they should be so cut off from one another, it also gave him pride in his friend that he should behave so correctly. There was no enmity between them, only a strange sort of respect.
‘How will it all end?’ he asked.
Pentecost’s face remained expressionless. ‘As it began,’ he said. ‘I shall be still in Hahdhdhah and Aziz will still be outside.’
Aziz responded with a thin smile. ‘Thou speakest bravely, Bin T’Khass,’ he said. ‘But I think that Aziz will be in Hahdhdhah and Bin T’Khass will be on his way to the coast. Thou canst not hold out for ever, and no relief column will get through the Fajir Pass. The Khaliti agents from Khaswe have been among the Jezowi and the Shukri and the Khadari tribes, and the passes of the Fajir and the Ridwha are closed. Only the Muleimat remain faithful to the Sultan.’
Pentecost didn’t allow his face to change at the news, and Aziz was silent for a moment, regarding him sadly.
‘If no relief came, Bin T’Khass,’ he asked, ‘wouldst thou accept defeat?’
‘Defeat can be honourable enough, Aziz. I do not believe in dying unnecessarily. If hope faded, then I should surrender.’
Aziz smiled. ‘If thou were to accept surrender, Bin T’Khass, it would be an honourable surrender. In the West, are not honourably defeated soldiers allowed to march from the field of battle bearing their weapons and carrying their flag?’
Pentecost smiled. Aziz had old-fashioned ideas. ‘This is how it was, Aziz,’ he agreed. ‘Nowadays things are different. Men pass into captivity.’
Aziz frowned. ‘I would allow thee, Bin T’Khass,’ he said earnestly, ‘to march out with thy flag and thy sword.’
Pentecost smiled again. ‘Perhaps it will be not necessary, Aziz,’ he said. ‘Perhaps the relief will come first.’
Aziz’s face changed. ‘There will be no relief,’ he said sharply, knowing he couldn’t afford to allow a relief. His hope now was to send emissaries to the Muleimat to bring them round to the same side as the Jezowi and the Shukri and the Khadari. With the pass at Tasha closed, too, there would be no way over the mountains from Dhafran; and, with no hope, Pentecost could accept defeat and he, Aziz, could spare his life.
‘I have no wish to see thee die, Bin T’Khass,’ he said.
‘Nor I thee, Aziz.’
‘Thou dost not blame me for the murder?’
‘Not now, Aziz. But I shall not fight less because of this.’
‘Nor I, Bin T’Khass.’
Pentecost stepped back. ‘God go with thee, Aziz,’ he said.
Aziz’s old eyes flickered. ‘And with thee, my son.’
The strange interview over, Pentecost walked slowly back to the fortress, while Aziz moved to where he had tethered his horse. From his position above the gate, Beebe saw the slight figure returning, its wide shorts flapping in the breeze that lifted the dust. A few heads rose from the sangar but there was no shooting.
‘What did the bastard say?’ he asked as Pentecost appeared through the gate.
Pentecost frowned. ‘He let slip that the Khadari and the Shukri and the Jezowi have joined them and that the Ridwha and Fajir passes are now closed.’
‘Is that what he came for – to gloat?’
‘No.’ Pentecost was silent for a moment. ‘He wanted us to know that what happened to Lack was none of his doing. He said he wants to conduct his war in a civilised manner.’
‘Civilised!’ Beebe snorted. ‘With atrocities like that!’
Pentecost shrugged. ‘All war’s an atrocity, Mr Beebe,’ he said.
Eight
1
His mind filled with irritation, Brigadier Wintle stared across his desk at Alec Gloag.
The commentator stood before him almost like a soldier on a charge, but he showed none of the anxiet
y of a Toweida Levy in the same position. Covered with dust and unshaven, he stared back at Wintle, briskly defending what he’d done.
‘I don’t care if you’re the chairman of the governors of the BBC,’ Wintle was saying. ‘I don’t care if you’re God Almighty himself even. You and your cameraman shouldn’t be here and I can’t do with you here.’ He paused and his eyes gleamed. ‘All the same, I’ll say this: You’ve got guts. It takes courage to come up to this neck of the woods just now.’
Gloag nodded at the compliment. ‘You can’t send me back,’ he said. ‘I represent a major television network.’
Wintle’s mood changed again – abruptly. ‘And I represent the Sultan! And this is Khalit not England! I can do anything I damn’ well like – even with you!’
Gloag wondered if with Wintle he’d guessed wrong in heading north, then he noticed that Wintle was studying him thoughtfully. He had placed his hands on the desk and was leaning forward.
‘Mr Gloag—’ he regarded Gloag shrewdly and drew a deep breath – ‘since you are here, I’m not going to send you back. You can interview whom you like. I’ll even lay it on. But this is my military district and, by God, you don’t say one word that could jeopardise the chances of those people in Hahdhdhah.’
‘If you put a ban on me,’ Gloag replied, ‘it could ruin my story.’
‘If your story’s likely to harm Pentecost,’ Wintle said without hesitation, ‘then I’ll be happy to ruin your story – you, too! I hope you understand that. No matter how important you are. The great British public doesn’t agree with its sons being butchered to make a Roman holiday for television stars.’
Gloag glared at Wintle. He wasn’t used to being told what to do. ‘No story of mine’s likely to harm Major Pentecost,’ he pointed out.
Wintle’s eyes glittered. ‘It might be fair, I think,’ he observed, ‘to say that it hasn’t always been your practice not to harm people.’
‘No.’ Gloag had to agree. ‘If I feel there’s an injustice I’ll trap fingers and enjoy it. But it seems to me Pentecost’s been put in a hell of a position, and the public ought to be told. I’m not afraid of the Government or what they say.’
‘Neither am I,’ Wintle said. ‘Which is why I had to seek employment with Sultan Tafas.’
Gloag inclined his head again in acknowledgement. ‘The difference, though,’ he pointed out, ‘is that you don’t have the ear of the public. I do. And when it thinks it’s being done brown its indignation can bring down Ministers.’
Wintle smiled and it suddenly dawned on Gloag that behind his offer to help there was a collateral somewhere. He waited, wondering what it was, and Wintle went on slowly.
‘This is one story you’re going to tell with care, Mr Gloag,’ he said. ‘I hope nevertheless that you’ll make a great deal of it so that it’ll be known in England just what’s resulted from this decision to hang on to Khalit.’
Gloag waited, knowing more was coming and guessing what it was.
Wintle was watching him closely. ‘If what seems sense to me is done and the British Government gets out of Khalit,’ he went on, ‘then Tafas is finished and I’ll be out of a job, so you can take it from me that what I’m saying doesn’t contain any attempt at self-preservation. You’ll already know that one of my officers was killed by the bomb that blew in the front of the mess here and that two of my British sergeants lost their lives, to say nothing of several Khaliti soldiers. Are you following me?’
‘I’m way ahead of you, Brigadier.’
‘I’m glad,’ Wintle said, ‘because I’ve just also learned that a British officer up at Hahdhdhah has been murdered.’
Gloag frowned. ‘I heard their radio was cut off.’
‘So it is. But I’m in touch with a few inspired sources. A Khaliti mule driver from the village there, as a matter of fact. He was thankful to be shot of the place. It’s full of Hejris and he was scared they’d find out he was accepting pay from me. The officer was captured and tortured to death. His name, for your information, was Captain George Gould Lack.’
Gloag made a note of the name and waited for Wintle to continue. ‘I’m not going to tell you exactly what was done to him,’ Wintle went on. ‘It would serve no useful purpose and would only distress his next of kin. I hope you’ll play that part of it down.’
Gloag’s head lifted. ‘I can’t omit it.’
‘But you needn’t go into details,’ Wintle snapped. ‘At the same time as he was captured by the tribesmen, sixteen of his men were also cut down. They panicked and ran. That’s how good the Toweidas are, Mr Gloag.’
‘Am I allowed to say that, Brigadier?’
Wintle nodded. ‘I hope you will. The people at home need to know. The Government in England got caught with a hot potato. There’s such a thing sometimes as being too bloody honest and this is one of the times. They should have repudiated the treaty and be damned to their reputation. There isn’t a man in Khalit who’s reliable just now. I’ve even warned Tafas of his Ministers. Because of this I doubt if anyone, from the General in Khaswe up to Pentecost in Hahdhdhah, sees the sense in staying on the border. Captain Jeffreys lost thirty-five men deserted on his way to Dhafran. Howard lost twenty-seven. All Toweidas. The Toweidas are ethnically Hejris and the whole northern plain is Hejri country. Is all this of any use to you, Mr Gloag?’
Gloag looked at the hard thin face of the soldier and nodded. There was a great deal of bitterness in Wintle’s eyes and for the first time Gloag began to see why.
‘We have been told to hold this northern border, Mr Gloag,’ Wintle went on. ‘But with trouble in Khaswe we don’t have the men to do it. How do you work that one out?’
‘I don’t, Brigadier.’ Gloag paused. ‘Will there be a relief column?’
Wintle paused. ‘At the moment,’ he said carefully, ‘I have enough trouble here. Especially as I’ve now been told that the Dharwa tribes have thrown in their lot with the Khusar people. That leaves only one pass to the north open – the Tasha.’
‘Shall you use it?’
‘Eventually, please God!’ Wintle spoke with a simple faith that impressed Gloag.
‘What about the relief then, Brigadier?’ Gloag was aware that he was becoming more involved than he wished.
‘That’s the interesting part,’ Wintle said. ‘The British Government’s rightly claiming that disputed frontiers are no part of their treaty with the Sultan, and that therefore they’re not responsible for Hahdhdhah. The Sultan naturally takes the opposite view and claims that if the British Government is staying in Khalit, it should stay in the whole of Khalit. Including Hahdhdhah. He therefore says that since his own troops are tied down by the troubles in Khaswe, it’s the British Government’s duty to relieve Hahdhdhah. Which makes nobody responsible. I hope you have that clear.’
Gloag drew a deep breath. Wintle, like Charlotte Pentecost, wanted the power of television behind him – and for the same reason. Gloag’s crusade was growing bigger by the hour.
2
Khaswe was worse now than it had ever been. Despite the soldiers standing on every corner, despite the sandbagged entrances to government offices, military headquarters and hotels, the city was virtually at a standstill.
Although the place was crawling with troops, a police officer had been murdered not far from the palace the night before and the road to the airport had been mined. The previous day even Group Captain Southey, the air officer commanding the small RAF unit at Carmel airstrip, had very nearly lost his life. A mine had killed a hurrying Khaliti businessman who had been foolish enough to pass his car just at the crucial moment.
It was at the city airport, however, that the rebels had scored their biggest success. A bomb in the control tower had destroyed all the radar and talk-down systems and now nothing could land until they were repaired. Khaswe was virtually cut off from the rest of the world because the surf outside had always made shipping difficult and no one had travelled by sea for years.
Sultan Tafas considered
the situation bitterly. He had an uneasy feeling that things were slipping from his grasp. Up near the Dharwa Hills two village headmen had had their throats slit for allowing their young men to be used for road construction by the troops at Dhafran, and further north, the Khadari tribe, to whom he had been paying subsidies for years, had overnight gone over to the Hejris and declared for their traditional enemies to the east, the Jezowi and the Shukri. Between them they had closed two of the passes to the Toweida Plain, and now Rasaul, his Minister for the Interior, had resigned with a feigned illness. The Sultan guessed that he was just waiting in the wings until he felt it was safe to reappear – either at the Sultan’s side, with the country well under control again and British soldiers guarding everything; or in his place, with the British gone. Either way he would be on the winning side. And certainly he would be alive. Which was something.
Despite his age, however, Tafas was far from lacking in courage. He looked up at the man standing at the other side of his desk. Brigadier Yani was a short sturdy handsome man, British-trained and commander of the Khaliti air force, whom Tafas had persuaded to step into Rasaul’s shoes.
‘With Rasaul gone,’ Tafas said, ‘can we trust the police?’
Yani hesitated then he shook his head. ‘No,’ he said frankly. ‘We can’t. Their ranks have been infiltrated by Havrists and National Front men.’
Tafas sighed. He had been bombarded with angry communications from England – from every civilised country in the world, in fact – and by furious messages from Cozzens. On the Sultan’s orders, not a single press interview had been arranged by the Khaliti command and Cozzens was growing tired of bearing the brunt of the journalists’ anger. He was also insisting that something should be done about giving up the Toweida Plain and releasing Pentecost and his men, but the Sultan hadn’t the slightest intention of giving way. No final report had yet been received from the American oil expert he’d sent up there, and of all the places in Khalit where oil might be found, the Toweida Plain was the only one where he might have hoped for success.