by Harold Lamb
I. Three Names
II. The Bronze Horse
III. The Monastery
IV. The Intruders
V. Death and the Colony
VI. The People of the North
VII. Washington
About Harold Lamb
Christmas Eve in 1946 fell on a Tuesday, and a rainy Tuesday at that. As the afternoon drew toward its end and closing time approached, the distant clicking of typewriters grew noticeably fainter within the offices of the Division of Eastern Affairs in the antiquated building that sheltered the Department of State.
In one of the largest offices, fitted with a usable fireplace and rugs that slipped on the floor, Armistead Marly worked late. The silence around him suggested that fellow members of the Division had departed homeward without disturbing him. For Marly was an important man with a sense of formality—not the sort of man who would appreciate a "Merry Christmas" shouted through the door. Slight, his body erect at the desk, he shuffled through sheaves of papers with seeming impatience, his mild blue eyes intent.
At times he laid aside a memorandum or a penciled note. All of these were unusual because they dealt with tribes and mountains in western Asia; but all of them seemed to touch some memory in him. You might say that he was collecting bits of all that was unusual in the sheaves of reports.
So he happened on the three names.
They were not in themselves at all unusual, and probably no one else had linked them together for any reason. Marly put the first two together for the reason that they had been reported missing from Baghdad for the last five months—both being reported by British C.I..C.I.
One, at least, was vaguely familiar. Sir Clement Bigsby K.C.I.E., F.R.G.S., et cetera, corresponding member of the French Academy et cetera. Decorated in last World War: led pursuit of German agent Vasstan from Afghanistan to China; resigned his commission as brigadier general to devote his life to study; author of monographs on the linguistic affinities of Kurdish. . . .
Yes, Marly remembered reading Clement Bigsby's Desert Trails of Ancient Asia.
Now it seemed that he was missing from his bungalow in the mountains beyond Baghdad.
The second name, Miss Michal Thorne, had no such notation. She had left Baghdad, the British believed, to look for a certain garden in the mountains.
The third was hidden in a routine report of the American Legation at Baghdad. Captain Jacob S. Ide, on terminal leave from the Cairo detachment of G-2, USAFIME [United States Armed Forces in the Middle East] had not reappeared in Baghdad after his departure on a trip to the mountains in the interior in August. He had been seen to leave the railroad at Kirkuk after being warned by British authority not to proceed toward the mountains.
This portion of the earth, within western Asia, Marly knew to be full of displaced persons—Poles, Slavs, Jews, even Russians—homeless or seeking their homes, driftwood stranded there by the war. They were forever disappearing in one direction or another. But these three names were those of a British orientalist, an American officer, and an unknown woman. They would hardly vanish from official sight like refugees seeking a sanctuary.
The door opened and his personal secretary, a mild woman with an understanding of his moods, appeared. Beside the door she deposited a small canvas pouch of the type carried abroad by government mail couriers and a much smaller receipt book.
This done she hesitated, and Armistead Marly nodded. "I'm waiting for him. You can go." In afterthought he said "Merry Christmas."
Methodically, he noted down the three names on a scratch pad. For them he had no responsibility, and there was nothing to connect them together except the odd circumstance that they had been lost to sight in the same mountain region for several months. Putting a paper clip on the three notations about them, he added this to his small pile of gleanings.
Although he heard nothing, he was aware when the door opened again. A man of large frame stood in the office, stooping, blinking as if drowsy, with the mingled alertness and fatigue characteristic of night drivers. Picking up the pouch, the newcomer examined the lock, took out the key, and then thumbed through the leaves of the receipt book.
This done, he placed the key carefully on a ring he drew from the chain at his belt, and for the first time glanced inquiringly at the man behind the desk. "Anything else, Mr. Marly?" he asked. In voice and manner he seemed to be nothing but a middle-aged messenger. But Marly knew him to be one of a group of nameless men who served on the other side of the earth as the eyes of the United States. Once afield, this courier who journeyed by air between legations and embassies might disappear for a while, to turn up elsewhere without explanation. He did not have to explain his goings or his comings; only at times he broke his silence to hold talks with ambassadors and key men like Armistead Marly. This was a time when the United States needed eyes in obscure regions that were out of the spotlight of routine news gatherers, whether of the press or the government itself.
"A little," Marly observed, "for your bedtime reading."
The pouch, he knew, held nothing more important than some foreign trade statistics the Department of Commerce was forever publishing. But the memoranda Marly had been collecting might give the pseudo-messenger new and unusual bearings on the territory he would visit. Presumably, if he was taking off in bad weather on Christmas Eve, he was in a hurry. Marly felt a faint irritation because he himself would not know the man's destination.
The pouch was marked for Cairo; yet anyone bound for the interior of western Asia would be apt to go in by way of Cairo.
Instead of pocketing the notes, the messenger ran through them as another man might sort out a deck of cards, except that he asked some apparently irrelevant questions which Marly answered promptly. Once he stopped and pointed to a name. "Is he still missing?"
The name was that of Jacob Ide. Marly nodded. "Yes—up to a week ago." And he felt that he could ask a question of his own. "You know him?"
The messenger displayed no interest. "I have seen him in Cairo. He reads obscure books, and you might call him a dreamer."
"That hardly explains his absence."
Still occupied with the three names, the courier smiled. "I can tell you why he left Cairo. He went to look for bronze horses—horses with wings." The voice of the messenger had changed. "I wish I knew if he found them, and where."
Marly laughed. "Trojan horses?"
"No, real ones."
On the scratch pad Marly scribbled absently against the three names he had written down—a writer of books, a dreamer, a woman who wanted a flower garden. There was nothing enlightening in that, except a certain quality of the unusual that all three seemed to possess. Folding the memoranda, the messenger placed them in his breast pocket and held out his hand.
"Good luck!" said Marly sincerely.
He watched the other, shambling a little, go out the door with the pouch. In some way the departure of this unnamed man into the storm had lightened the pressure of heavy responsibility on the statesman during an international crisis.
Waiting a moment before leaving, Marly went to a window. In the darkness of a rain gust, the lines of people hurrying home from offices scattered under the street lights, dodged into doorways, or opened newspapers over their heads and ran for streetcars and taxis. In this flight the crowd lost semblance as the fugitives sought shelter. A wind that bent branches of trees tore at the flimsy newspapers and raincoats, driving a spray of water over the gleaming asphalt of the street.
Sensitive to impressions, Marly felt for an instant as if the solid pillared building in which he waited had stirred and was drifting itself, formless and viscous, before the anger of the elements.
It was only an impression, born of fatigue. Before turning off
the light at his desk he tore, from force of habit, the scribbled page from his scratch pad and crumpled it into the wastebasket. He had more pressing problems on his mind than that of three names which had formed an elusive pattern.
As he remembered it—and he often thought back over all that took place during those hours—nothing unusual happened on Jacob Ide's last evening in Cairo, unless it might have been the soldier at Shepheard's steps.
It was a Friday, the second of August. At dusk the heat of the day still lay on the crowded streets. Overhead the sunset glare filled the sky without penetrating the dimness of the streets, as if far above the earth a searchlight had been turned on. There were few lights as yet in the buildings because on a Friday most of the shops were closed in the teeming, heterogeneous city that clung to the banks of a silent river.
In the shaft of light from the open door of a cafe a small girl danced solemnly, alone, holding to the edges of her dress, to the strident music of an Egyptian radio within. Jacob Ide observed her as he noticed everything in the shadows he passed. He moved on unhurriedly, partly because he disliked to hurry, partly because he was lame. By keeping to a slow step and using his cane, he appeared to walk as other men did.
The dancing urchin glimpsed only an American officer, surprisingly alone and carrying a book in his free hand. She felt his eyes upon her, and danced on. Those eyes seemed pleased, although the wide, sensitive lips did not smile. The bones showed too strongly in the lean head, as in a medieval statue, giving the impression of cold and quiet and meditation. Jacob Ide had his Dutch ancestry to thank for that, as for his silence and stubbornness and way of walking alone.
That evening he was saying good-by not to friends—of whom he had very few—but to the places he had known during his stay of more than four years in the G-2 section at Cairo headquarters. The others of the section had left long since while he remained to assemble scattered files and perform the last caretaking duties. He had volunteered to stay on for that. He had known these streets of Cairo during the tense nights of blackouts, when fugitive Italians wandered like ghosts in the Qattara depression and Sherman tanks had rolled in from Heliopolis to meet the Afrika Korps. His job had been, for most of those four years, to rewrite at his desk in the Sharia Lazoghli the reports that came in from sources in the field and from the British, who gleaned information from every corner of the Middle East theater. Before the war Jacob Ide had been a rewrite man on foreign news, with the New York Transcript, and he had a way of remembering what passed under his eyes. He also read unusual books. He was thirty-nine years of age.
He had become accustomed to working at desks, where his outlook had been through a window. His wanderings at night had been an escape into a world of his own imagining.
Now that his terminal leave had begun and he could go where he wished, he found that he did not want to leave Cairo with its world of the night that was more real to him than the routine of the days. It was an odd feeling, as if he were waiting for something that had escaped his notice—as if the ghost of war still lingered in the dark alleys.
His wandering that night took him past familiar landmarks—a small mosque set back in its garden of flamboyant trees, an abandoned fountain of the Mamluk time where the dark figures of veiled women clustered, along the riverbank where the curved sails of dhows moved against the stars. From a cafe table under an awning a young Egyptian in a European suit called out to him excitedly: "Captain Ide! Did you hear? There was a riot in Alex today."
"Hullo, Allouba," Jacob greeted him.
Beside the youth who reported for one of the newspapers sat his father, an old man, incredibly frail, sipping coffee. The father wore a fez and liked to be called Pasha. They both looked grieved when they learned that the American was leaving.
"How can I stay?" Jacob argued, smiling. "The war was over some time ago."
"Alors," replied the father in his precise voice, "ce n'est pas la fin de la guerre." Then he explained for the Americans like the Captain Ide the war was over, that was true; but not for the peoples of the East.
Jacob bade him look out at the river. "Your river has peace," he observed.
The Pasha considered, and agreed. But the Nile, he retorted, was Egyptian, and important to no foreigners. On the other hand, the Suez Canal, built by foreigners, was not at peace. And the seaport of Alexandria, made long ago by conquerors who had come to Egypt, was not at peace. Nor was the desert of Libya, which foreigners had invaded.
"And when," demanded Allouba, "will the foreign armies leave us, as you are doing?"
"Soon, I hope," said Jacob.
They insisted that he drink a last cup of coffee with them, and they rose to shake hands with him. With him they had seen the colossus of war pass by their land; they believed that this American officer who limped was going home to security in the United States, while they waited, uncertain, for what would happen before they could resume their own lives.
From the river Jacob pursued his course down the Boulak past the lighted fruit stands and the sherbet sellers he knew so well. So it happened that he met the soldier. Perhaps the meeting with the soldier was unusual, yet it could not have been called inexplicable. For the native soldier was standing alone, on the lower steps of Shepheard's veranda, watching the groups of foreigners that passed steadily in and out of that ancient hotel. The wide brim of his hat was turned up on one side and bore a small white plume; the rest of his uniform was like British battle dress, and Jacob identified him at a glance as one of the native Levies. He might have been waiting there for some officer, or he might have been watching the gay crowd that packed the veranda in the hour before dinner. He was young and spare in body, and for the moment he seemed to be enjoying himself.
This veranda raised above the crowds in the street, was like a stage set in the late Victorian period where white-robed Sudanese, emerging from the ancient doorway, slipped through the rings of sitters at the tables to serve drinks. Upon this lighted stage, enjoying the first coolness of the night, sat the foreigners who really dominated Egypt.
At one table Jacob recognized a congressman from home who was visiting Cairo for three days on the investigation of the sale of military property at Payne Field. His voice boomed over the modulated chatter around him as if he meant to be heard. . ."all our installations must be. . .to take it up at top levels. . .the facts about this flea-bitten country. . ."
An incisive British voice cut through the booming. "Those Americans!"
A woman's low laugh answered. Jacob glanced up through the grilled railing at a gleam of chestnut hair and a fragile figure in white organdie flanked by British officers at the table above him. "Vivre avec chacun, de chacun faire compte!' She sang the words almost insolently, keeping time with her head.
"To live with each one, to take account of everyone," the officer cried. "That's Joachim du Bellay, on a bet—but centuries old, my dear."
The woman seemed nervous and somehow defiant. "But aren't we all centuries old?"
Jacob moved on, with a surge of unreasonable anger at the Britishers and their lady who could be amused at sight of a noisy American party. The congressman and his cronies—oil men, salesmen, trade experts, loud-voiced, complaining of heat and delay, careless of who might hear them, were job holders, concerned with prices and time and contracts. They made a tight ring together, carrying invisible brief cases, yet sharing no common impulse between them. These Americans lacked the cohesion that bound together the other groups of foreigners, British, French, or Russian. They lacked, Jacob thought, a sense of mission, now that the war had ended—if it had ended.
Still, they were newcomers here, exploring the sights of Cairo with the fresh curiosity of children confronted with the Thousand and One Nights. The British had been at home here ever since their trading ships had first come in, and they had made themselves comfortable by training the people of the East to serve them.
At the same time Jacob admitted to himself honestly that these same Britishers spent their lives h
ere, spoke the languages, and tried to deal, however ineffectively, with ignorance and famine.
He was passing the steps where the soldier and servants waited when a taxi drew up and two civilians and a girl climbed out, hailing him cheerfully.
"Jake Ide!"
"Old Jake still in harness!"
Two of them Jacob knew. Tom Drouthen had been in G-4 at Cairo, and Diana Erlinger, who matched her red hair well with a dark green dress, was one of the secretaries at the legation. After his discharge Drouthen had returned to Cairo as liaison man for on oil company at a comfortable salary. It made Jacob feel awkward to be still in uniform. In immaculate gabardine and white shirt, Drouthen had changed into another personality. Although he suggested that Jacob join them at cocktails, he did not urge it. Looking at the book Jacob carried, he muttered, "Aristotle!"
"Jake Ide knows all the archaeological answers," Diana put in brightly to the third, a visitor. By her manner Jacob knew the stranger must be important. He proved to be the representative of a shipping combination. He had a question to ask.
"Is it true or not true, Captain Ide, that the Great Pyramid—I sweated up it today—was oriented to the stars, and built to foretell human fate?"
"It was built for a coffin for the Pharaoh Khufru."
"There!" chimed Diana, her glance straying to the tables above her. "We'll miss you, Jake, and not just because you're so stimulating for a girl to look at."
Jacob grunted.
"You're starting home tomorrow, aren't you?"
"Not home."
"Wherever, then? You're not under the sacred seal of secrecy now, are you?"
"No."
Diana laughed. "Well then. Don't you really know?"
Jacob shook his head, wishing they would say good-by and have it over with.
"You ought to be something in the State Department now."
Another desk. Moodily, Jacob tried to think of an amusing answer and failed.
"Try communications," suggested Drouthen, glancing at his watch. "What about TWA? There's sugar being passed out that way if you——"