The Baghdad Railway Club (22 page)

I had many dreams – dozens of them, but the principal one concerned a nest of mosquitoes in the corner of the carriage. In the dream, one of the Engineers explained that mosquitoes did not as a general rule go in for nest-building, but this particular lot had decided to club together. Later, in what may or may not have been a dream, I saw through the carriage window facing opposite to the camp a lavender-coloured sky containing three stars and a crescent moon. The cigarette packet of Shepherd was assembling itself, but no man in a fez and no woman in a red dress came wandering into view to complete it. I looked away, looked back again, and this time it seemed reasonably certain that I was awake. Beyond the window, an exchange had now occurred. The crescent moon remained, but there were a million stars instead of four, and in place of the imaginary vision of the walking couple there was a single walking man in khaki, and‚ as if to prove that he had somehow evolved from a cigarette packet he himself was smoking. He was about a quarter of a mile off. I ought not to have been able to make him out at that distance, and the reason I could was because of the dawn.

I rose from the couch, stepped down from the carriage. Even after I’d walked twenty-five yards, I still wasn’t sure I was on the ground, but I was making towards the smoking figure. This dawn, I realised, came with complications, namely a constant swirling of hot sand. I had to keep my hand over my eyes, and I would periodically tip it, in order to see – so the world came in flashes. The smoking figure did better than me, for even though he too staggered somewhat, he had a cloth about his neck that he now put over his head: a keffiyah. It was Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd that I was following: a thin and small, bow-legged figure. He had the ready-for-anything look of a jockey. He wore his gun of course, and his haversack, but that evidently contained little if anything.

He was making towards a long, low object that seemed to lie near the source of the swirling. This was the branching railway line, and Shepherd was approaching the three wagons sitting upon it, as I had somehow known he would be without quite being able to say why – and it was this knowledge that had made me rise from the couch. I turned about with my hand over my eye. I lifted my hand. Another man approached – another staggerer. He wore a sun helmet, and walked leaning forwards with his hand upon it. Findlay.

The wind whined as it swirled the sand. It
sounded
like a cold wind just as the waters of the Tigris
looked
cold but it, and they, were not. Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd had now arrived at the wagons. He gave a half glance back, and I dived for the protection of a gravel ridge – the kind of thing that I might once, before coming to the desert, have named as a dune. I did not believe I had been seen. I looked over my shoulder, and Findlay had also gone to ground, doubtless for the same reason. I peered forward again. Shepherd had gone between the bogies, beneath the rearmost wagon. In there was darkness; I couldn’t see what he was about. Presently, he re-emerged and stood upright. He began walking towards where I lay. He looked no different. But wait a minute. His haversack was
not
the same. It had hung more or less limp before. It now contained some new article.

Shepherd now stood ten feet away from me. I had my gun pointed at him. I could not help noticing that the train behind him seemed to have tilted to about thirty degrees. It held on to the track very well, considering.

I said, ‘Throw down your gun, sir.’ He took the Colt from its holster – pitched it away. ‘What are you thinking of, Jim?’ he said, as if really curious.

‘You know, sir,’ I said.

He said, ‘Shall I show you what’s in the bag?’

Whether I blacked out or not I can’t say, but a minute later he had jewellery in his hands: a tangle of gold, emeralds, rubies. I heard a footfall.

‘Here comes a murderer, Jim,’ said Shepherd.

I whisked around, Findlay was removing his revolver. He was now aiming it at me‚ but I let fly with a bullet and his piece went spinning out of his hand – not quite what I’d intended (I did not quite
know
what I had intended), but it had come out all right. Beyond Findlay, I saw a particular illumination: a gap in the whirling, and it held numerous Arabs on horses. They then disappeared. I motioned Findlay towards Shepherd. The major and the lieutenant colonel were now opposite to me.

‘I will face you down!’ I called over the storm to both of them. I was judge and jury, albeit with malaria.

Shepherd said, ‘May I put these down?’, meaning the jewels. I eyed him. ‘Of course, I will be delivering them to the Corps HQ,’ he said.

‘Nonsense,’ said Findlay.

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you everything, Jim,’ Shepherd said, setting down the jewels. ‘I’ve been let in on an extraordinary adventure, and I wanted to follow it through in my own way.’

‘The Turkish officer,’ I said. ‘The bimbashi. He
did
offer you treasure.’

‘Not at the station,’ said Shepherd. ‘He said there would be gems to be found. They would be attached to the underside of the rearmost wagons of the abandoned trains in this territory.’

The wind rose and he had to shout louder, but there was now a lesser quantity of sand in the skies. Or rather the colour of the storm had changed: it was becoming golden.

‘A system of exchange would be set up,’ said Shepherd. ‘Jewels for military information. At the last train, a week ago, I found some rubies. In return, I left a document about the disposition of our forces and future plans. Naturally, it was one long lie from beginning to end. I saw the chance to make a great score. Well, to throw the Turks off. I about doubled the size of our force in the city for one thing . . . It was all lies, as I say.’

‘And so is this,’ said Findlay. ‘You will be on a charge yourself, by the way, Stringer, if you don’t put that damned gun down.’

It seemed to me that,
in extremis
and removed from the presence of Miss Bailey, Findlay was reverting to type: an upper-class man, irritated at the situation in which he found himself.

‘I gave the first haul into the safe keeping of Brigadier General Barnes,’ said Shepherd.

‘Hogwash,’ said Findlay.

‘Of course,’ said Shepherd, ‘they weren’t real. They were paste, and I’m pretty sure these are too.’ He indicated the jewels at his feet.

I turned towards Findlay, and my gun wavered that way too.

I said, ‘You took the photograph.’

‘There was a connection,’ he began, ‘I have no idea of the details of it – an
association
– between Mrs Bailey and Captain Boyd. It was Mrs Bailey’s business alone. I felt that she was entitled to her privacy. I need hardly mention that Mrs Bailey did
not
kill Captain Boyd.’

‘No,’ said Shepherd with a half smile, ‘she did not. But you did.’

The sun was rising fast on us, and I could hear a new sound: a distant singing.

‘Oh, do come off it,’ said Findlay.

‘Why are you here?’ I asked Findlay.

‘To keep cases on
him
.’

‘Why?’ I said again.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘He killed Boyd. Boyd had seen him take a Turkish bribe. He’s just taken another one.’

Shepherd said, ‘You adore Mrs Harriet Bailey. You are in love with her. Unfortunately for you so was Boyd, and probably she with him. He had met her in Basrah, as you knew quite well. When he came up to Baghdad, he telegraphed to her repeatedly – Jarvis told me. He had a run-in with Ferry of the telegraph office about sending wires of a personal nature. Boyd wouldn’t leave her alone. You arranged to meet him at the station. I don’t know what happened, but it ended by you killing him. You knew he had this idea about me – that he considered me a traitor. He misinterpreted what he saw at the station on the night the town fell. I suppose I can’t blame him for that. As a result, you thought I’d be blamed for his murder.’

‘All nonsense,’ said Findlay. ‘I only learnt of his theory about you – well, it’s more than a theory isn’t it? I only learnt that late on Saturday night when Jarvis told me.’

‘You took the photograph off Jarvis,’ Shepherd said. ‘You knew that it might ultimately help make a case against you. I don’t know what you told the fellow when you forced him to give it over – what sort of pressure you put him under. He was overstrained in any case.’

Findlay was about to reply, but in that instant, it seemed to me that I had at long last cottoned on.

‘No,’ I said to Shepherd, ‘Jarvis
gave
him the photograph.’

‘Of course he damn well gave me it,’ said Findlay.

‘I don’t know
exactly
why,’ I said to Shepherd. ‘But he felt guilty about something to do with Boyd. I believe he had helped you, and that’s why he shot himself.’

The desert revolved once again, bringing the Arabs into clear view – all these natives coming up with the sun. Unfortunately, Shepherd now had a second gun in his hand. He was like a magician. Where the hell did they keep coming from? It was another Colt, but this one a much handsomer piece. It must have been Captain Boyd’s of course, and it had been in Shepherd’s haversack. So it was the Webley against the Colt: one pull on the trigger of the Webley and I would do for him, whereas he would have to cock the hammer of the Colt.

With a half smile, this he now smoothly did, so that we became evenly matched.

‘My dear Jim,’ he said, blushing.

The shot came. I reeled away and in the instant of falling I saw that one rider from the crowd of Arabs was approaching fast, evidently bringing important news from the rising sun. But whatever news was too late for me, for I was spinning, spinning away into blackness and the end of Mesopotamia.

In the railway police office at York station, I opened my eyes. The thin fire in the grate was much the same as when I’d last looked at it. Therefore I hadn’t been out for more than a few minutes. As for the letter before me, that was exactly the same. To the man recovering from malaria, the mystery is not so much his own drowsiness as how anyone at all can keep awake for an entire day – not to mention the question of why they would
want
to. I read over the letter again.

It must have been sent to the War Office by the diplomatic bag, which is to say via the man Lennon – at a price no doubt, but evidently one affordable to Jarvis. (I supposed that Lennon’s rates were variable according to the customer’s rank.) It had then been forwarded to me at the police office by the ordinary mail, courtesy of Lennon’s brother and partner in crime if crime it was. The envelope was date-stamped May 30th, which was the day he and I had had our conversation about Kut. We’d gone soon afterwards to see Boyd’s Arab servant, Farhan, and it must have been after that encounter that Jarvis had written and posted.

The letter had come two days before in a package together with
The City of the Khalifs
(somewhat battered) and a sizeable brooch or pendant tightly wrapped about with newspaper, and consisting of three large green stones, each about the diameter of a shilling, surrounded by a larger quantity of smaller red ones, each about the diameter of a farthing. A glittering tassel hung down from it. I had immediately telephoned Manners at the War Office, and read over the letter. With his say-so, I had taken the brooch or pendant (rewrapped in its paper) into the best York jeweller, Pearson and Sons, in St Helen’s Square. Rather to my disappointment – because I’d been hoping to cause an immediate stir by handing over the thing – old Mr Pearson had said he was too busy to look at the brooch just then. I was to call back later in the week.

I knew the letter practically off by heart now. It was not quite clear on whether Shepherd had invited Boyd to the station or the other way around, or whose choice the station might have been. Shepherd might have chosen it, meaning to show Boyd the remaining Berlin–Baghdad railway medallions, and to fob him off with that tale. Then again Boyd might have chosen it, since he regarded it as a safe meeting place, as proved by the fact that he’d been planning to meet me there.

Boyd, it was becoming clear to me, must have influenced the allocation of Jarvis to me as batman. It would have been a way of opening up a channel of communication between us without our having to meet directly after that proposed first rendezvous.

Repocketing the letter, my thoughts turned to Jarvis himself. He had gone through the charade of playing detective when he knew the culprit all along. That might have brought him near to doing the deed promised in his letter – and he would have felt
obliged
to do it once having written and despatched the letter. The last straw had been the business over the photograph; the attempt to incriminate an innocent man. In the aftermath of the attack on the Railway Club – when giving over the photograph – Jarvis had told Findlay what Shepherd had done, and it was evidently to keep tabs on Shepherd – to catch him in the act of going under the Turkish trains to leave the data and collect the treasure – that Findlay had gone on the trip to Samarrah.

Beyond the window an express had pulled in.

I had the police office to myself, and I was cold, hence the fire I had lit, even though it was July. Baghdad had got into my blood, in more than one sense. Yet I had been away for no more than twelve weeks, and ten of those had been spent travelling, and five in the packed army hospital behind the cavalry barracks. I had never smoked the narghile, never been to the bazaar. On the other hand I had also never been shot. Much to my shame it had been a faint that had keeled me over when Shepherd had pointed the Colt single-action at me. I blamed my malarial condition.

The stationary express was somehow making the sound of a rainstorm.

I began to think of my five days in Baghdad military hospital. Existing on a diet of quinine and bad dreams, I had slept in a sort of dark cave, for my cot had been surrounded by a thicket of mosquito nets – three of them. It had been a case, as I had confusedly told the gentlemen of the Royal Army Medical Corps (apparently many times), of ‘bolting the stable door after the horse had locked’. Yet I had kept parting the curtains, in hopes of letting in a draught. How I had longed for coolness, yet now I was contemplating walking out to the driver of that northbound express and asking him for a few lumps of good anthracite to get a blaze started in the police-office grate which held only screwed-up six-month-old pages from the
Yorkshire Evening Press
.

Towards the end of my stay in the hospital, Ahmad had visited me with ginger biscuits, two sticks of chocolate, and a quantity of raisins. I’d told him I was feeling better. He’d said, ‘I prayed for you so what do you expect?’ I’d said, ‘Thank you,’ and he’d said, ‘Now you pray for me. Goodbye.’

It broke in on me that this express train fuming away must be the one the Chief had said he was going to meet. He was expecting a special visitor and this was somehow related to ‘a real treat’ that was in store for me. Knowing the Chief, that might mean any number of things not normally counted as treats. For instance, a trip to the Police Court to see some bad lad sent down for a few years’ hard.

I stood up and put on my suit-coat, still thinking of the Baghdad hospital. Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd was still in there. He’d taken an Arab bullet, but according to Manners he would recover fully from his wounds. He would then be taken from the hospital and be shot again, this time by the British Army as a murderer and traitor. Naturally, there would be a court martial first. The treasure he’d taken was being held as evidence. (He’d disclosed its whereabouts to the investigators. He’d simply stowed it in a trunk in his quarters, but not the one whose lid I had myself lifted. I thought it typical of Shepherd to have been so reckless in his choice of hiding place.)

No treasure had been lodged with Brigadier General Barnes.

The documents that Shepherd had admitted to leaving under the first train – the one carrying the motor launches – had been looked for and not found, having fallen into Turkish hands. The second lot of documents – the ones left by Shepherd under the train carrying the crated aeroplane – had been discovered, and all I knew of these was that they had been scrawled in French, and that they would be part of the body of evidence against Shepherd.

The express was still fuming away outside. They must be changing the engine. I heard a footfall, and the door opened. It was the Chief.

‘Hey!’ he said, ‘follow me.’

I might be a British Army captain and an intelligence agent of sorts, but this was still how he commanded me. I followed the Chief, who was lighting a cigar as he walked, towards the First Class end of the train, and there, stepping down from the farthest carriage, was Manners of the War Office.

‘Is this the special guest?’ I called ahead to the Chief.

‘Try to sound a bit more enthusiastic,’ he said, half turning around.

I had only recently been speaking to Manners on the phone, and I’d sent him two full reports of the events of my Baghdad investigation. The novelty was beginning to wear off the man. I had not forgiven him for furnishing me with such a bloody daft cipher, and it had seemed that on my return I had given him a sight more data than he had given me. For instance, I couldn’t get out of him whether Captain Ferry of the Residency telegraph office was suspected of any corruption. But I did not believe so. Ferry guessed I had been sent to Baghdad on a secret job, hence his asking whether I was sending to Manners. But I believed he had not told anyone else – and indeed that my secret role had
remained
secret, except in so far as I had deliberately given it away to Lennon of the Residency post room, a man I had trusted at the time and still trusted in recollection.

Captain Bob Ferry was not corrupt. He was if anything too moral. He had visited Boyd and given him a rating for his repeated attempts to send to Miss Bailey when she was down in Basrah. Word of this had no doubt leaked out (the British force in Baghdad being a sort of round-the-clock rumour factory), and had reached the ears of Shepherd, who had then tried to paint Boyd as a man who’d come to grief because of his connection with Miss Bailey.

I
supposed
that was how it had worked, anyhow.

Manners had also failed to fill me in on what had happened after I’d keeled over in the desert. I believed I had come to very soon after, but memory loss was known to be a symptom of malaria, and it appeared that it had been so in my case.

On top of these grievances, Manners’s tone of amusement also went against him. And he certainly seemed to find York station
highly
amusing, as he stood waiting for us with the train finally drawing away behind him. Whisking off his bowler, thus shamelessly revealing the entirety of his long, shining head, he said, ‘Lunch, gentlemen?’

Well, it had apparently all been pre-arranged with the Chief, and we wheeled about and headed for platform seven, on which stood a side entrance to the Station Hotel.

‘I believe the new offensive has begun brilliantly,’ said Manners as we entered the hotel.

‘Has it bollocks,’ said the Chief. (In London, the Chief had been rather quelled by Manners, but here he was on his own turf.)

‘You think it’s propaganda, Saul?’

‘If you read it in the paper,’ said the Chief, ‘then it’s propaganda. Or is it something you know in an official capacity?’

‘Unfortunately not,’ Manners said cheerfully. His amusement at the world was out in the open now, whereas in London it had been kept somewhat it check.

The York Station Hotel was a red-padded, silent world, but the war had made a few intrusions. A sign on the reception desk, which we were now passing in front of, read, ‘Guests are reminded to close their room curtains at or before 8.30 p.m.’ Manners had stopped at the desk, where he was now buying postcards of York. ‘I always do this when I come to a new town,’ he said. ‘It saves me walking around the place.’ He seemed to be in holiday mood.