I thought for a moment, and then said, ‘I think your father left his family in very safe hands.’ That seemed to please him. So I took a chance, and asked, ‘What else did you find in the plane?’
His face fell. ‘Ah; so you want that as well. I’m sorry, I should have mentioned it. They are up on the roof. Why don’t you come with me?’
I followed him up an outside staircase. Hudd was just coming back; I risked a quick thumbs up to him as I passed. There were a couple of small servants’ rooms on the flat roof. I wondered if the eunuch lived there. Alongside them a brown skin awning had been rigged, beneath which were two seats from the Stirling each fitted into a wooden frame . . . and its radios and batteries.
‘Just my little vanity,’ he explained. ‘Sometimes I listen to music with one of the wives. I heard some of the London Olympics, relayed from Cyprus, and, last year, a Test match. I get a signal when the weather is clear. I will have them brought down.’
I laughed. When I stopped I said, ‘No. They’re yours. Consider them part payment from my government in recompense for the mayhem we’ve caused here.’
‘Thank you, Charlie, but that is also interesting.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it means, I think, that you are looking for something else which has been taken.’
I hadn’t handled that terribly well, had I? Hudd would kill me when he found out.
‘Maybe I am. But if I told you what it was, I’d have to kill you.’ I smiled to take the sting from it.
‘My women would literally skin you alive.’ He wasn’t fazed. ‘You must never cross a Kurdish woman, Charlie: devils incarnate.’
‘I’ll remember that.’
‘We removed nothing else, Charlie. Maybe the Jews or the French did. I will ask. Our family Frenchman may tell us, if the women ask him.’ There it was again; that little shudder inside.
When I told Hudd, I asked him, ‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’
‘The good news: it’s too nice a morning for the other.
‘He’s going to lend us a couple of pack mules and a couple of tribesmen to get the coins out of here . . .’
‘. . . and the bad news?’
‘He knows we’re looking for something else, but not what.’
That stopped him for a minute. I tried a Josephine Baker number in my head. It was ‘After I say I’m sorry’.
Hudd eventually sighed, ‘How’d that happen?’
‘I was asking him questions: I was clumsy. Sorry.’ Another pause. I finished the song.
Hudd shrugged. ‘It happens. I’ve made mistakes like that. What else did they get from the plane?’
‘Radios, batteries, the seats . . . miles of electrical cabling, and the bloody machine guns of course. I didn’t ask about the other, but I think he’s truly intrigued. He thinks that the Israelis or the French must have had something away.’
‘What did you say about the other stuff?’
‘I told him to keep them. That’s when he offered me transport and free passage out of here.’
‘What goes around comes around,’ Hudd grinned. ‘Well done, Charlie.’ He’d stolen my bloody line, hadn’t he?
We left the next day. The three wooden boxes were loaded on two donkeys, with enough blankets and supplies to get us across near a hundred miles of hill and dale. Not your friendly English hill and dale, but the unforgiving Kurdish variety. Mountain passes, dried-up river beds, and vegetation that wanted to rip your legs off. Van and his people turned out to see us go. Hudd had taken another forty coins from the boxes and handed them round, shaking hands with each person who received one. It was like he was handing out medals. I gave them Hudd’s man’s small pack and first-aid kit. They responded by whooping it up again, and shooting holes in the sky. Van gave me a hug, and called me brother . . . I think they were just glad of some company for a couple of days. The tribesmen he had picked to accompany us stood by the animals.
Van told me, ‘These are my cousins; good men. They cannot betray you.’
‘I know. I wouldn’t expect any friend of yours to betray us.’
‘You don’t understand, Charlie . . . they cannot betray you.’ He muttered something to our two companions, who both grinned at me and opened their mouths. They had no teeth. And no tongues. Someone had been a bit too handy with a knife. Just the same as Levy’s man, Chig – what had these people got against tongues? At least we wouldn’t be plagued by their whistling on the trip. Van said goodbye, and led his people back inside their fortress. The hard silver wooden door was closed. They weren’t the types to watch us out of sight. I liked that.
Chapter Twenty
Over the hills and far away
It was me that did the whistling. I couldn’t get that old school tune ‘Over the hills and far away’ out of my head. Hudd told me to shut up a couple of times. I didn’t pay much attention to him, but when our guides looked nervous and signed me to pipe down I complied. I worked out then that we’d moved onto some other bugger’s patch. These tribal leaders were like little local warlords, and we had to avoid them for three days. That meant no fires and cold porridge, until we came down the valleys and into the town.
It was called Van, of course. Everything around here
