‘But that isn’t what’s pissed you off, sir?’
‘No. If you must know, someone with more bars on his shoulders than common sense has suggested I use an intelligence source to find out what’s been happening to all this kit that’s being whipped off the Brown Jobs. He wants to impress them with our intelligence-gathering capabilities, and go one up on their CO . . . but I didn’t join up to become a bloody policeman.’
‘Ours not to reason why, sir. Couldn’t Yassine give us a hint?’ It wasn’t the first time I’d acknowledged that we had, in the Fat Man, a genuinely mutual acquaintance. I was interested to see his reaction. He gave none at all.
‘He could if I knew where the beggar was. He’s not answering the phone in the Kettle, and his staff just say he’s out.’
‘I could go up there and find out?’
‘Yes, Charlie, you could . . . but whenever you actually volunteer for something, I begin to get the willies. Let me think about it. What did you want anyway? There must be another reason for you presenting yourself so reasonably turned out for once.’
‘Can I sit down, sir?’
‘If you must.’ Then he bawled at her open door, ‘Dais-ee: two mugs of tea, please.’
Her response was to laugh, and then I heard her moving about. At least things had improved at the business end of the department.
‘If this unit isn’t completely in the RAF, sir, despite your original assurances, then I presume that we don’t always have to play by RAF rules . . .’
‘Granted. That’s why you have to do what I ask you, or end up in pokey. Continue.’
‘In that case the same regulations about correspondence and telephone calls, which govern the hundreds of other poor sods lying around in tents out there, don’t necessarily apply to me?’
‘I follow you, Charlie, but I don’t follow you. I don’t see what you’re driving at, so bloody get on with it.’
‘Sorry, sir. It’s just a long-winded way of asking if I can come back here when you are having your afternoon siesta, and make a few phone calls without the War Office listening in. I thought your green telephone must be worth something.’
‘Why didn’t you say so in the first place? No, of course you can’t. Who d’ye want to call anyway?’
‘My kids first, because I miss them . . . then my office back home to find out what’s going on . . . also to a friend to ask what’s happening to my dad, and another to a business partner in Germany.’
‘And why should I say yes?’
‘Because after I have discharged those duties, I can give my full attention to whatever madcap scheme you’ve dragged me out here for, sir . . . and incidentally, after one of those calls, it wouldn’t surprise me to then be able to tell you where our Fat Man is. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’
‘They bloody warned me about you, didn’t they? Insub-bloody-ordinate all the bloody way,’ he grumbled.
‘I take it that’s a yes then, sir?’
‘Of course it is. Where’s that bloody woman with the char?’
Daisy walked in on cue. Her KD skirt and blouse had been freshly laundered, and she looked . . . well, radiant. I was glad that it was working out for someone. She brought three mugs: one for herself.
‘The doctor has told the Wing Commander to stop drinking,’ she said, as if Watson wasn’t there. Her old fondness for him was in her eyes again. ‘He has gout in his right big toe. We’re told that gout has a tendency to make people very ill-tempered, but I won’t stand for that.’
‘You told me he wasn’t much of a drinker,’ I told her.
‘She lied.’ That was Watson. ‘I’m a drouth. It’s having to put up with people like you which drives me to it. Now finish your tea, and bugger off.’
Before I went Daisy informed me, ‘All of your uniform requisition has arrived now, Charlie. I’ve been passing it on to Mr Tobin for secure storage. Was that all right?’
‘That was fine. I’ll pop round and see him while I’m here.’
I found Tobin in our largest permanent shed. He had the wheels off our Land-Rover. His boss begrudged letting him away even for five minutes in the middle of his work. I don’t know what the others were doing: the place looked three quarters empty to me.
‘Where are all our bloody radio spares?’
‘Most of them are out in the blue, sir.’
‘Waiting for their buyers to pick them up?’
He put on a great injured face, ‘Mr Bassett, you’ve got a suspicious mind.’
He waited until we were out of earshot of anyone else before he reached into his shirt pocket, and produced what looked like a Post Office savings book with a blue RAF cover. It had my name printed onto a line on the top, and RAF Canal Zone and Arab Co-operative Bank. I had a surplus balance of fifty-eight quid already.
I asked him, ‘What bank is this?’
‘Mine sir. It operates inside any camp in the Canal Zone. I’ve taken the liberty of selling your surplus kit, sir, and crediting your account – hope you don’t mind.’
I smiled because it was too bleeding late if I did.
‘Of course not. What do you pay on deposits if I have any spare cash?’
‘Four per cent sir. I follow the official bank rate.’
‘. . . and can I draw out cash in local tender?’
‘Of course, sir. Do you need any now?’
‘No. It’s just good to know. What I do need is a clean shirt to take out into the blue.’
‘Take an old, soft one, sir: no sharp creases to wear yer skin away.’
Money or tailoring: Tobin, I thought, was your complete professional. I probably no longer had any new shirts anyway.
Daisy was out sitting on the step of Watson’s veranda with a glass of cold water that afternoon. I could see it was cold from the moist cloudiness on the outside of the glass.
I paused, and asked, ‘How do you get it so cold?’
‘We have a fridge. It works overtime. I see the alert must has been lifted. We’re either Red-Amber, or back to Amber again.’
‘How do you know?’
‘An Egyptian cobbler followed you up the road, pushing his cart. Didn’t you see him?’
‘Yes. Why didn’t I work that out?’
‘Because I’m a woman. Would you like a glass of water?’ If she came on with cracks like that I’d soon go off her again.
‘Yes, please. The boss said I could make a few phone calls.’
I didn’t lie to them. I told them I hadn’t written because I hadn’t had the time, but would attend to that as soon as I could. Dieter wanted to know about crossing the Med in a corvette, and Carlo wanted to know about the desert. I told him about camels and shite-hawks, and that I’d met both his mother and his grandmother. He showed absolutely no curiosity about them, and I didn’t quite know what to make of that. Something else to ask Susan about maybe. Both of the boys wanted Arab headdresses.
Elaine told me that business had picked up. Old Man Halton had come back with some WD contracts in his pocket, and was bidding for an Army trooper run between Malta and the Canal Zone. Apparently they wanted old Avro Yorks for the job, and we had a horrible one of those currently under-employed. We called it Dorothy, after that dreadful child in The Wizard of Oz – God bless her, and all who sailed in her. The next thing Elaine said was, Have you written back to me yet? The next again was, Do you still love me? I had never said I did in the first place, but from two thousand and something miles away does it matter? Would you like me to knit you woolly socks and gloves or maybe a balaclava – the way we did for the troops in the war? This is fucking Egypt, Elaine, not the Crimea in winter. Even the snakes are so hot they can’t be bothered to bite anyone.
‘Have you seen snakes, Charlie?’
‘Two . . . and a lion.’
‘I didn’t think that there were any lions in Egypt. Where did it come from?’
‘I don’t know. It’s a mystery.’ There, I was saying it myself.
My old man had been arreste
d again. This time it had happened in Scotland, where the police are less forgiving, and he was still nursing his bruises from the encounter. I got this from Dolly, who was still looking out for him.
I asked her, ‘What did he do this time?’
‘There’s a Territorial Army camp site just outside Campbeltown. He painted something on the road outside.’
‘What?’
‘Redcoats go home. Then he chained himself to a lamp post. The police weren’t terribly amused.’
‘Is he going a bit odd?’
‘Not as odd as his son. I miss you so much, Charlie, and I never thought I would.’
‘I miss you, too. I dream of that beautiful mole in the middle of your back . . .’
There was one of the pregnant pauses which often happen in conversations between Dolly and me. Then she said flatly, ‘I don’t have a mole on my back,’ and hung up. I said sorry to an empty telephone.
Sod it!
Bozey told me that business – both Halton’s and ours – was brisk. I liked that word. Then we talked about David Yassine. When I put the phone down it was warm from my hand, and from my ear.
I walked into Daisy’s closet to find another glass of water. She was asleep with her ankles up on the edge of the desk. An electric fan standing on a cabinet stirred the air around us. Her skirt had slipped back, and I could just see her stocking tops. My dilemma was that if I tried to pull it up over her knees, and she woke up, she’d think I was trying to get my hand up her skirt – so I moved quietly out again.
As I did so she spoke, without opening her eyes, ‘It’s OK, Charlie. Panic over.’
‘Good,’ I told her. ‘Go back to sleep. I’ll close the door on the snib behind me, and no one will come in.’
I reckoned I had a couple of days, and then I’d be back out in the blue.
It was the old torch-shone-in-my-face job. Someone came clumsily through the tent flap, and shone a light on me.
Nansen moaned, ‘Whoever you are, fuck off. It’s sleepy time Down South.’
Watson corrected him with, ‘It’s sleepy time, sir, and you’re on a charge for being disrespectful to rank. See me tomorrow.’ To me he said, ‘Get some more clothes on, Charlie, we’ve got a job. I’ll wait for you outside.’ Then he turned back to Nancy and said, ‘. . . and start sleeping with some shorts on, or you’ll be on another bloody charge for being a bloody unnatural: you look disgusting.’ I was still tucking my shirt in when I went outside.
Watson observed, ‘I don’t know why you put up with him.’
‘Haven’t we had this conversation before, sir?’
‘No. You must have imagined it.’
It was cooler than I’d reckoned, so I ducked inside for a jacket, and while I did so a vehicle drew up. It was an anonymous-looking 1-tonner, driven by Pat Tobin. He handed me the keys, gave us a sloppy salute, and made off for the darkness. I hoped the lion wouldn’t get him. While Watson got behind the wheel, I climbed up into the other side – I should have made plain that it wasn’t only an anonymous-looking vehicle, but a very old one. In the 1940s the military had a strange preference for vehicles that stood eighteen feet off the ground: you needed crampons to climb into some of them.
He drove out of the main gate, did a left and a right, and headed for the Suez road. He was a surprisingly fluid driver; much better than me. He belched, and told me, ‘I always liked this old Bedford.’
‘Is it ours, sir?’
‘Pat says it is. That’s good enough for me. Why don’t you ask me what this is all about?’
‘What’s this all about, sir . . . or did the fancy for a moonlit drive just come on you suddenly?’
‘Bloody funny, aren’t you? This afternoon you told me that Yassine was in Suez and gave me a probable address, didn’t you? I looked it up, and we’re going to see if we can find him.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the wogs down there have stolen a Comet tank; fully armed and ready for dancing. If someone doesn’t do something about it there’s going to be a bloody war on.’
‘Or a police action at the very least. I think those were the words you used, sir.’
‘Told you before, Charlie; stop being bloody funny – not in the mood for it. I checked with the MPs and the address you had is in the Arab quarter.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means that there are two loaded .38 service revolvers, and a Stirling and two magazines, under your very seat. If you have a god, pray to him now that we don’t need to use them.’
‘Why us?’
‘Why not?’
There was an early bit of moon – I hadn’t been kidding him about that. The air whined in through a couple of tears in the canvas roof. To our left out on the Great Bitter Lake, a tugging little wind lifted small waves that sparkled in the moonlight. Billions of stars, of course – I’ve never seen starry nights like the starry nights in Egypt. They would have driven Van Gogh mad. Hang on a mo, he was half mad in the first place, wasn’t he? From time to time I saw a flash of white as the sail of a Gyppo fishing boat caught the light. It would have been a wonderful drive if I hadn’t been sitting on a small arsenal of things to kill people with.
We dropped further south every minute, passing Fayid and Abyad on our right and RAF Fanara on the left. Watson didn’t speak much; occasionally he whistled, but it was stuff from shows – hardly my scene. At RAF Kasfareet you could see the aircraft lined up like toys – Vampires, and a few tired old Hastings transports. If you had parked up aircraft like that in the war, someone would have dropped out of a cloud and destroyed the lot in one low pass; but these were different times. We hit a shite-hawk feeding on a road kill somewhere south of Geneifa – I reckoned that made the score British armed services two, Egyptian wildlife nil – and trundled past Hodgson’s Camp into the suburbs of Suez before dawn. I’d even managed an hour’s kip along the way.
A wooden barrier across two oil drums and six MPs with side arms means stop in anybody’s language. They had two of those brand-new Land-Rovers at a checkpoint. I know what Pat Tobin had said about his, but they looked a bit flimsy to me.
The sergeant in charge saluted Watson and asked, ‘Wing Commander Watson sir?’
Watson yawned before he replied, ‘Yes and Pilot Officer Bassett C. That’s Bassett with two esses and two tees. Make sure you get the spelling right if all we get out of this is a couple of grave slabs.’
The sergeant visibly relaxed, ‘It won’t come to that, sir. The address you are interested in is on the very edge of the Arab quarter – quite classy actually – we won’t need to venture in far. Are you allowed to tell me what this is about?’
‘ ’fraid not, Sergeant. The buggers don’t even tell me half the time!’
‘Very good, sir, but a word of caution if you don’t mind.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Things are a bit tense at present. We’re getting a lot of pilfering by the wogs, and High Command is pretty fed up.’
‘Thank you. We’ll bear that in mind. What sort of things are they stealing?’
The copper looked round to make sure none of his team was earwigging. He leaned into the cab and whispered, ‘You won’t believe this, gentlemen, but they stole a battle tank, all thirty tons of it.’
‘You’re right,’ Watson told him, ‘I don’t believe it. Shall we get on? My man is going to sleep here.’
I don’t know why it is, but I’ve always found that having a boss who’s a good liar is quite reassuring. Maybe that’s one of the qualifications for becoming a boss in the first place. Either that or they teach you it in Bosses’ School.
The address I had for Yassine was a villa in a wide, short cul-de-sac. If this was the Arab quarter, then I wanted to be a Suez Arab, not a pretend British airman living in a tent in the middle of a sandpit. The houses, behind high mudbrick walls, were big and airy, and had large cultivated gardens with specimen trees, and exotic flowers. In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree . . . that’s C
oleridge, for the ignorant among you. I wondered how far we were from Xanadu. That brought to mind a soldier I’d once met who had hidden behind a poet’s gravestone while a tip-and-run Messerschmitt machine-gunned him for fun. It’s funny, the thoughts that run through your head when you’re shit scared.
The idea was that we’d be accompanied by a Land-Rover and three men; they would remain with our truck, at the end of the road and out of sight, in a small open park. They were supposed to come in and get us if they heard gunfire. I’d heard better plans, but for the moment my mind would not come up with one.
One of the MPs confided in me, ‘Not your usual wog houses, are they, sir? Most of them live in things made of dirt: they can fling them up in minutes.’ He was being a bit hard, but I knew what he meant.
‘What were these places?’
‘Suez Canal Company villas, before the French pushed off. They look out over Port Tewfik and the Gulf. Really pretty. One of them used to be a nice brothel before that Free Church bloke got all iffy, and made us close it down.’
The Free Church bloke was a well-known brigadier who’d done some terribly brave things in the war, went mad and then found religion. He had been a pain in the arse wherever he’d served ever since. That last sentence contains a clue as to what eventually happened to him, and why he was dishonourably discharged in the end. You can’t get away from the puns, even when you try.
Watson and I walked up the shadowy lane until we reached an old door set in a brick wall. The door looked far older than the wall itself. We had both strapped on revolvers, and I carried the Stirling. I didn’t actually want to, but I couldn’t leave it in the Bedford, and I wanted Watson with it even less. There was an Arab script for the number 5 – khumsa – above the door . . . and an iron bell-pull like a Victorian water closet.
‘What’s your plan?’ I whispered. I thought we could dispense with the sir and master under the imperative of stress.
Silent War Page 28