The Mule on the Minaret (61 page)

Six weeks. So that was to be all the time it was.

‘Farrar's letter didn't tell me very much.' he said to Gustave. ‘Have you any idea yourself why you've been sent here?'

‘I gather it's some kind of mission.'

‘And they think that you'll be more effective in this mission if you can say you've been here a month or so as a major?'

‘That's the idea.'

‘In that case then, they've probably warned you about this. You must be most careful not to suggest in any way that you are not here for keeps. Ask a lot of questions about Baghdad. Act the newcomer trying to find out all he can. Grumble a bit if you like, say “I don't see how I'm going to stand this for three years.” Complain about the lack of girls. That should be a sound line in your case. Oh, and about that room of yours. That's a good grumbling point. Say what a smell there is from that Arab farmyard underneath your window; have you noticed how they plaster their walls with dung? Like rounds of bread? That's what they use as fuel. Say how it stinks. And I'll do my best to get you a better room. Have you got the idea?'

‘O.K. I've got it, Prof. Sorry, I mean sir.'

‘Then in that case I'll show you the kind of thing that you'll be doing. It's difficult not having a proper handing over, but I know pretty well what Johnson was about.'

Johnson had always seemed to be fully occupied, but now, as he explained what an adjutant's duties were, Reid did begin to wonder how Johnson had managed to fill his time. There seemed very little for Gustave to take over. ‘It doesn't sound a lot,' Reid said. ‘It's the kind of job that you make for yourself. There are day-to-day things that crop up. V.I.P.s to be met. Cars to be laid on. Railway tickets booked. The phrase “Generally keep an eyes on things” covers quite a lot.'

‘I guess I'll manage. It looks the kind of job that runs itself.'

‘Exactly.' But to himself he wondered just how much damage could be done within six weeks by a not very competent young man who took his responsibilities so cavalierly. At lunch Reid could not fail to be impressed by the verve with which Gustave was entering into the role of the displaced person.

‘When I was honoured with the King's commission,' he was saying, ‘I was informed that I must never in the mess talk shop, discuss religion or mention a lady's name. But to talk about women, that surely is another matter. Surely I am entitled to ask whether there is any truth in the sad rumour current currently in Cairo that there is in Baghdad no channel of communication between the serving officer and the local
bint.'

He had, Reid noted, abandoned his P. G. Wodehouse vocabulary for an elaborate phraseology that might have passed for wit fifty years earlier in the days of ‘the mashers.' He had seen examples of it in old numbers of
Punch;
really, Gustave was a clown. He could not imagine on what kind of mission he could serve any useful purpose. Yet he was glad to have him here. Once again he was struck by the contrast in terms of health between Gustave and his fellow-officers. They all looked so tired. He so fresh. Probably a Baghdad summer was a greater strain than any of them recognized.

A week later the Beirut summary arrived with an appendix with a very limited distribution list that Reid would not have seen before he was head of the Centre. Since he had taken over from Mallet, he had realized how much material had passed above his
head. The Intelligence rule that you were only told as much as you needed to carry out the work immediately to hand, certainly increased the prestige and authority of the senior officer. A major would hesitate to criticize the conclusions reached by the Colonel because those conclusions might be based on information which the major lacked. And after all, the regimental commander did not necessarily know the battle strategy of the G.O.C. The Colonel might be ordered to capture a certain hill. He did not know if that hill was a main objective or a feint to divert the enemy's attention. If the Colonel were told that the attack was merely a feint, he would conduct it half-heartedly, and the attack would defeat its purpose. There was a sound basis for this doctrine. ‘Theirs not to reason why.' Yet at the same time in Intelligence one did sometimes get a baffling sense of working in the dark. This present appendix was a case in point. ‘We are approaching,' it said, ‘a decisive moment in our deception campaign. We hope to go into action very shortly and to launch the final assault within six weeks. We hope to make use at last of Aziz.'

Within six weeks. That was the time that Farrar had set for Gustave's stay with the Centre. It was in terms clearly of that operation that Gustave was required to have spent six weeks in Baghdad with the rank of major before he left upon his mission. And Aziz was a part of this operation too. He remembered what Mallet had said at dinner in Damascus. ‘Those two are cooking up something devilish, and as far as Farrar is concerned, it's partly directed against you.' Reid had a chill sense of evil omen.

On the same morning, the same appendix reached Istanbul. It was one of the documents that Sedgwick kept in his small cabinet in the corner, but on this occasion he handed it to Eve. ‘Now doesn't this make you jealous? Just when you are going, the drama starts. You'll miss it by ten days.'

‘Is it going to happen here?'

He nodded.

‘But it doesn't say so in the summary.'

‘I saw quite a little of Master Nigel during that conference in Beirut. We found we had a lot in common. This is a joint operation.'

The same sense of evil omen that had chilled Reid now made Eve want to flinch. But she managed to contrive a laugh. ‘The
annoying thing is that I shall never know what this particular piece of mischief is. If I were to see you after the war, you'd plead the Official Secrets Act.'

‘I might make an exception in your case.'

‘I'll never forgive you if you don't.'

‘He didn't guess, he can't have guessed,' she thought. ‘But I bet he showed me that appendix just to see how I'd take it. He's never shown me one before.' She was trembling as she sat before her typewriter. ‘My nerves are going. It's high time I left,' she thought. She closed her eyes. In four weeks she would be away; out of it all; starting a new life. Probably not seeing again a single person she had known here. So she argued with herself; but all the time that chill sense of doom oppressed her. ‘What were they planning to do with Aziz? What was there that they could do with him? What had he really done?' Yet even as she asked herself those questions, she knew that she knew the answers. There were so many traps that they could lay for him. And he had done a lot—or at least what he had done could be made to look a lot. She knew how ruthless the high-ups in this game were. They forgot that they were dealing with human beings. To them, Aziz was a file; just as to a General at G.H.Q. the Dorset Regiment was not 1,000 men but a flag upon a map. When a spy had ceased to be of use, he might still be made to serve a purpose by handing over his dossier to the enemy; and thereby sending up the stock of a more valuable double agent. That had been often done. They had a lot on Aziz. And it was because of her they had so much. She had baited the trap. It was to see her that he had come up to Istanbul; that he had become involved so deeply. Hadn't she gloried in that involvement? She had seen it as a symbol of her possession of him; she had tied him with one thong after another. It was her fault. It was three parts her fault.

She opened the shorthand notebook in which she had taken down a couple of letters for Sedgwick. She put a sheet of paper inside the machine. But her hands were trembling and her fingers mishit the keys. It was no good. She had to pull herself together. She stared at the keyboard, trying to recover her self-control, trying to think herself back into sanity. ‘There's no need to lose your head,' she told herself. ‘There's no danger. Aziz is going to Alexandria. He'll be out of reach of Farrar and of Sedgwick. He won't be coming back to Istanbul for many months, and by the time he does, the situation will be different. Farrar will have new
irons in the fire. He said ‘Six weeks.' Aziz is only a part of his all-in programme; a cog in it. They can manage without Aziz very well. If Aziz isn't there when they want him, they'll write him off as a bad debt and when the war is over, or long before the war is over for that matter, he will be able to return here and pick up his old life. The I.S.L.O. will be inoperative. The Germans will have gone back to what is left of Germany; there'll be no equivalent in Beirut for Farrar's organization. There'll be something of course in Baghdad. But Baghdad isn't concerned with this operation, as far as I can see.' She had got, she decided, to stop Aziz coming through in September. That shouldn't be difficult. She could write him a good-bye letter, telling him that she'd been ordered back to England. She'd meant to do that anyhow. She'd send it a little earlier. That was the only difference. She would send it now.

She pulled out the official letter paper from the typewriter and slipped in an ordinary sheet.

‘Dear Aziz, [she started].

‘This is tragic news, but I am having to go back to England right away...'

She made a two-sided message of it. She signed it: ‘Tenderly Imshallah E.'

‘That's that,' she thought. ‘That should have settled it.' But two days later, she received a postcard at her flat. It gave the date: August 18. It was the signal they had fixed.

The green light was showing over Sedgwick's door. She knocked, listened for the ‘come in,' and turned the handle. ‘I hope that you won't think this is a very frivolous request,' she said, ‘but it seems ridiculous that I should be going back to England without having once seen Ankara. I've been through it in a train. But I've never stepped outside the station. If I could spend three days there, Francis, I'd be very grateful.'

‘That seems a very legitimate request. When would you like to go?'

‘I'm leaving on August the 28th. I'd like to have my last week to say good-bye to everyone. If I could go down on the 16th, perhaps, and get back on the 20th.'

‘I've no objection. Find out if there's a plane that you can hitch a ride on. We can make it a liaison visit so that you'll have no expenses. And our friends there should be able to put you up. But don't be back later than the 23rd. I'm planning a good-bye party for you.'

She then wrote a letter to Martin Ransom.

‘It's only five months since you went away, but it's beginning to seem a lot, lot longer. And me, I'm being posted back to England at the end of the month. I would like to see you before I go and in point of fact I'm coming down to Ankara for three days for what is called a liaison visit. Is there any chance of seeing you? I do hope so. As you know we have a branch in Ankara. They're finding a billet for me.'

Martin would tell her if there was any justification for her fears. She could trust Martin. She could not have confided in Sedgwick.

There was a service plane with a vacant seat in it, flying down on the 15th. She could arrange her return trip there, they told her. There was always the Taurus, if she couldn't hop a plane. ‘I'd like to go on the Taurus once,' she said to Sedgwick.

There was a car waiting for her at the airport. Secretaries got so bored sitting in their offices that they welcomed any chance to get away from them. A young woman of whom she had heard but whom she had never met had made the trip out. ‘There's a spare bed in my flat,' she said. ‘You'll be surprised when you see it; or perhaps you won't be surprised. Perhaps it's what you are used to.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘The place is full of roses. You have an attentive beau.'

The place was indeed full of roses. A dozen of them, red and yellow; the note accompanying them said:

‘I'm thrilled at your being here. Tonight I'm, alas, busy; but I'm taking my day off tomorrow. I'll give you a Cook's tour. Will call for you at 10.'

It was a clear, bright day; warm with an early chill in the air that warned of the approach of autumn. He was wearing a light fawn coloured suit. She had half forgotten how elegant he was; half forgotten, too, how welcoming his smile could be; how charming could be that diplomat's capacity to make you feel that nobody existed in the world except yourself. ‘You've given yourself just the right time to see it all,' he said. ‘There isn't much to see. We'll do the old town first. It's very typical.'

Typical in that it was built upon a hill; a cluster of narrow streets, with stout stone walls; in which you would notice now and again a piece of stone with a Roman inscription on it, often upside down.
A citadel crowned the cluster. From its walls you could see the new town with its long empty streets running into the countryside. ‘Ankara was very important once,' he told her. ‘On the trade route to the East. Then it became neglected. Atatürk planned it as a city of 150,000. I've an idea he underplanned it.'

The rounded hill facing the citadel was covered with wooden huts. ‘They call them night built shacks,' he told her. ‘If you can get the whole thing run up during the night, and with a roof on top, you can't be turned out by the city surveyor.' The houses of the old town were tiled, with balconies. Ankara stone had a touch of rosemadder. It gave a pastel effect to the whole.

‘I told you that there wasn't much to see,' he said.

‘It's a change from Istanbul.'

‘At least it's that.'

They leant against the ramparts looking over the gently undulating landscape. It was very bare. ‘Isn't it very bleak in winter here?' she asked.

‘It's very bleak.'

Every one was taken to the dam, he told her. ‘They finished it just before the war. It provides half the water for the city.' Ten miles from the city, it was set out like a park. Pines scented the air. Below the barrage was a charming oblong flower garden. There were restaurants and cafés. They drank a long cool orangeade. ‘They go in for picnics here. There's a very pleasant place about fifty miles away. We can lunch there. That'll give you time for a siesta. Then we can dine at Karpiç's. Everybody dines at Karpiç's.'