The Doomed Oasis (42 page)

A bare two hours' sleep and then the dawn breaking … Another day, and the ant heap stirred and came to life, little groups of men forming and re-forming, an ever-changing pattern against the blistering yellow of sand and gravel. And standing there on the rim of the desert to the southeast, the Jebel al-Akhbar—black at first against the rising sun, but soon dun-coloured and bare. No sound, no movement to be seen through the glasses. And the desert all around us—that was empty and silent, too.

And then that solitary shot. We were sitting under a canvas awning, rigged from the side of the headquarters truck, and drinking tea. We all heard it, a sharp, faint sound from the direction of Jebel al-Akhbar. But when we looked through the glasses there was nothing to see, and there was no further sound; just that one isolated shot. The time was 10.34.

We had no reason to regard it as any different from the other shots we had heard, though afterwards we realized the sound had been slighter. We settled down again and finished our tea, an island of men camped in a void, waiting whilst the sun climbed the brassy sky and the oven lid of the day's heat clamped down on us, stifling all talk.

Only Ruffini was active, trotting sweating from one to the other of us, tirelessly questioning, endlessly scribbling, staring through creased-up eyes at the Jebel al-Akhbar, and then finally badgering Berry until he had given orders for his copy to be transmitted over the radio to Sharjah.

And then, just before midday, the dead stillness of the desert was torn apart by the buzz-saw sound of a helicopter. It came sidling in from the north, a strange aerial insect painted for desert war, and in the instant of its settling the whole camp was suddenly changed to a single organism full of purpose. With Ruffini I stood apart on the edge of this ordered turmoil and watched the man responsible for it, surrounded by his officers, standing with legs straddled, head thrown back—a man conscious of the dramatic quality of the moment.

Ruffini noticed it, too. “
Il
Colonello
—'e is going to war.”

But my attention had shifted from Colonel George. Coming towards me from the helicopter was the squat, battered figure of Philip Gorde. “Grant.” He was leaning heavily on his stick as he faced me. “Where's Charles Whitaker? What's happened to him?” And when I told him what we feared, he said: “Christ Almighty, man, couldn't you do something?” But then he shrugged. “No, of course not. Bloody politicians!” he growled. “Always too late making up their minds. Hope we're in time, that's all.” He was staring at me out of his bloodshot eyes. “I gather he'd moved his rig up to the border. He'd started to drill, had he?”

“Yes.”

“I wish I'd known that earlier.” He looked tired, his face liverish. “Not that I could have done anything to help him,” he added heavily. “It's a hell of a situation. And that boy of his a bloody little hero. Doesn't he realize what he's doing to his father—or doesn't he care? God!” He was jabbing at the ground with his stick. “Well, we'll just have to hope we get there in time,” he said again, and he stumped off to talk to Colonel George.

The cluster of officers was breaking up now; voices shouting orders, men running, the whir of starter motors, the roar of engines, a Land Rover disappearing in a cloud of dust.

“Ah, there you are, Grant.” The Colonel, neat and dapper, cool almost in the torrid heat, came towards me. “The boy's still alive, I gather.”

“There was a shot fired.…”

“So Berry tells me. We'll just have to hope for the best. I'm sending a small force up to take over the fort. The rest of the outfit will move direct on Hadd. Berry's gone ahead to make contact with the Emir. You and Ruffini can ride in the headquarters truck.”

The column was lining up now, and ten minutes later we were on the move. “If 'e is still alive, it is a great story, eh?” Ruffini said. “You think 'e is still alive?”

“How the hell do I know?” But Berry had given him four days. I was pinning my hopes to that.

“Well, it don't matter—alive or dead, 'e is a hero. And this is the biggest story I am ever writing.”

That was all Ruffini saw in it—a newspaper story, nothing more. And Gorde hating David because I hadn't had time to explain his motives. I felt suddenly sad, depressed by the thought that David's action would be misunderstood. How could you explain to men like Gorde what Khalid's death had meant to him, how he'd felt when he'd seen the people of Saraifa forced to leave the oasis?

Half an hour later the column halted. We were close under the Jebel al-Akhbar. Time passed and nothing happened. The wait seemed endless. And then suddenly the Colonel's Land Rover came roaring down the column. He had Gorde in the seat beside him. “Jump in,” he called to me. “Ruffini, too. The Emir has agreed to meet me at the first well.” He was in a mood of boyish elation, a reaction from nervous tension. The column was moving again now and several vehicles had swung away and were headed for the camel track on the north side of Jebel al-Akhbar.

We reached the head of the column just as it breasted the shoulder of the Jebel. There once more was Hadd, jammed against the limestone cliffs, with the Emir's palace flying the limp green flag and the fort stark against the sky above it. “Hell!” Colonel George signalled his driver to stop, and Berry's Land Rover drew up alongside. The column ground to a halt behind us. “I don't like it,” the Colonel said. “Too quiet.”

Between us and the crumbling walls of Hadd there wasn't a living soul: no sign of Sheikh Abdullah's askari, no vestige of the camp we'd seen two days before. Even up by the date-gardens nothing moved. All the Wadi Hadd al-Akhbar, as far as the eye could strain through the glare and the mirages, was empty of human life.

“The blighter's up to something. What do you think, Berry?”

“I think we'd better be prepared for trouble, sir. I told you I didn't like the speed with which he saw me, the crafty look in his eye.”

The Colonel nodded. “Go ahead, then.”

The orders were signalled and the column fanned out across the level gravel plain, whilst we drove straight to the first well. Behind us the Bedouin Scouts leapt from their trucks and spread out over the sand—mortars and machine guns, ammunition. And not a shot fired at us. We sat in the Land Rover, roasting by the shattered parapet of the well, and the tension mounted with the uncanny silence. Nothing stirred anywhere.

A full hour the Emir kept us waiting there in the blazing sun. He judged it nicely. A little longer and Colonel George's patience would have been exhausted. And then at last life stirred in the mud-dun town, a scattering of figures moving towards us across the flat, shelved expanse of gravel that lay between the well and the walls: old men and children—not an armed man amongst them. “He's going to play the injured innocent,” Gorde whispered in my ear.

The old men and the children had closed around us. Some had empty drinking bowls, others goats' skins; they whined and begged for water as they had been told to do.

“My heart bleeds.” Gorde snorted with contempt. “Ah, here he comes.”

Through the arched entrance to the town came a figure riding a white camel, riding absolutely alone—not a single retainer. “He's clever,” the Colonel muttered. “There isn't a desert ruler who wouldn't have regarded this as an occasion to parade his full power. And to ride a camel when he's got an almost brand-new Cadillac …” His eyes were fixed with a puzzled frown on the solitary figure, on the slow, stately gait of that lone camel. He turned abruptly to Gorde. “What's he got up his sleeve? Something. That Cadillac was a present from Saudi. He'd surely want to flaunt that in our faces.”

Gorde didn't say anything, and we sat and waited. The crowd fell back, the clamouring ceased. The Emir rode his camel through them, and, sitting there in the Land Rover, I realized suddenly why he hadn't used his Cadillac. With set face and without any gesture of greeting, he rode his beast right up to us, and when he finally halted it, the supercilious head was right over us, the rubbery lips white with foam, dripping saliva on the Colonel's beret. The Emir himself towered above us, godlike against the burning sky.

It was extraordinarily effective. The man was simply dressed in spotless robes and looked much bigger, the features more impressive, the curve of the nose more marked.

He waited in silence for Colonel George to greet him. Instead the Colonel barked an order and his driver backed the Land Rover, turning it so that the bonnet faced the Emir. But it was no good. Patiently, without expression, the camel moved, resumed the same dominating position.

And then the Emir began to speak. It was an address that lasted almost a quarter of an hour. The manner of delivery was cold and restrained, but underlying the restraint was the hate that filled the man. It was there in the thin, vibrant tone of his voice, in the black gaze of his eyes, in every gesture—a bitter fury of hatred. And that bloody camel, slavering over my head, seemed the very embodiment of his master's mood.

Gorde whispered the gist of the Emir's speech to me. It followed a familiar pattern. It ignored entirely the unprovoked attack on Saraifa, the cruel intention behind the blocking of the
falajes
, the murderous slaughter of men driven to desperate action to save life and home. Instead, it dwelt at length on Hadd's territorial claims. These the Emir based on a particular period in Hadd's history, a period that went back more than five hundred years. He conveniently brushed aside all that had happened in the area since that time. He attacked the oil companies for sucking Arabia's lifeblood. The spittle flew from his mouth as he called them “
Nasrani
thieves, jackals of the West, imperialist bloodsuckers.” He ignored the fact that without the companies the oil would have remained beneath the sands, that the wealth of Arabia depended on them, that the very arms he'd been given had been bought with the royalties they paid. And in attacking the oil companies, he also attacked Britain and America. Imperialist murderers! he called us.

“He's coming to the point now,” Gorde muttered. The camel belched, a deep, rumbling sound that blew a fleck of froth from its lips into my lap. The Emir leaned forward, the dark, cruel face bending down towards us.
Murderers!
he screamed. I thought he was going to spit in our faces.

“Start the engine,” Colonel George ordered the driver. “I'm not standing for any more of this.” He said something to the Emir. The man smiled. That smile—it was curiously excited.
I
call you murderers because you come here armed to protect a murderer
. He gestured with his hands, pointing towards the fort. And when Colonel George tried to explain David's motives, the rough justice of his action in depriving Hadd of water, the Emir silenced him.
You do not think it is murder when an Arab man is killed. What do you say if he is the murderer of a white man
—
one of yourselves?

He turned, raising his body in the saddle, shouting and signalling with his hand. A closed Land Rover emerged from Hadd. The crowd, which had drawn in a tight circle round us, scattered before it, and as it roared past us a figure in Arab clothes was thrust out of the back of it, a limp rag of a figure, battered and covered in blood.

It hit the sand beside us, rolled over once, and then lay sprawled face upwards in an undignified heap; and as the cloud of dust settled, I saw what it was that lay there: the dead body of Colonel Whitaker.

He had been shot in the face, and his head was badly battered, his arms broken. His clothes were black with blood. Flies settled in a swarm, and I felt suddenly sick.

You know this man?
the Emir demanded. And when Colonel George nodded, the Emir explained that
Haj
Whitaker had that morning agreed to go up to the fort and reason with his son. What had happened up there he did not say. He merely gestured to the body.
This man's son has murdered my people. You say it is not murder. Look now at that which lies before you and tell me
—
is that murder?

Colonel George sat there, his eyes hard, his face set. He had no answer. “His own father!” His voice was shocked, and he made no attempt to challenge the Emir's version of what had happened.

“You can't be sure,” I said.

It was Gorde who answered. “Do you think it would have occurred to him to have the body flung at our feet like that if Charles had been killed by one of his men?” He was staring down at the bloody figure lying in the dust, his hands clenched. Then he looked up at the Emir and demanded to know where the body had been found, and when the Emir replied that his men had picked it up at the foot of the cliffs directly below the tower, he nodded his head slowly. As far as he was concerned, that settled it.

It was very hot there in the sun, yet a cold shiver ran through me. I was remembering the solitary shot we'd heard that morning, and into my mind came Mrs. Thomas's words:
It was never Dafydd that was going to die
.

Colonel George was the first to recover. Ignoring the body, he dealt with the terms on which the fort would be evacuated and his forces withdrawn. And when the Emir finally agreed, he made the prearranged signal to his troops waiting on the Jebel al-Akhbar and withdrew his force into the desert, taking Whitaker's body with him.

Back at our old encampment we found the helicopter gone and one of the trucks belonging to the Jebel al-Akhbar detachment already returned. After interviewing the driver, Colonel George announced: “David Whitaker is apparently still alive. The helicopter's gone up to bring him out.” He said it flatly, and behind me I heard Gorde murmur: “God help him! He'd have been better dead.”

The helicopter took off from the fort, and when it landed they carried David to the shade of the headquarters-truck awning. When I saw him, I thought for a moment it was all over. His face was relaxed, the eyes closed; the flesh, tight-drawn, was bloodless. It was a death's head, all skull and bone, and the skin like parchment. But then the eyes flicked open and he saw me. The cracked lips smiled and he tried to say something, but no words came. He was too dried up to speak. The eyes closed again and he went into a coma.