‘So that’s your plan. It’s prosaic but very simple: I like that. We are going to escape on a bus. Why do buses always make me think of Piccadilly Circus?’
I was lying back on my bed talking to the dark. The room was warm – the stove chimney climbed up one corner – I was full, and I’d even had a bottle of beer to round the meal off: Weir made his own, and had told us earlier:
‘Not strictly supposed to – but the Muslim administration turns a blind eye to Europeans as long as we are still useful to them. Owner of the flour mill, for example, is a very devout man, but about twice a week he will call in and ask me for a glass or two of “medicine” for his bad chest, and I send him reeling home a few hours later. He always leaves a sack of best flour. He’s also the chairman of the local tribal council, so I never have a problem with labour for rebuilding the church after it has been burned down.’
I’d smiled. ‘That sounds like an interesting arrangement.’
‘It is: you can always come to interesting arrangements with God.’
Now Hudd replied to me, ‘You couldn’t be more wrong if you tried.’
‘I’m not riding four hundred miles on a donkey, Hudd.’
‘You’ll do whatever I tell you to do. I do the logistics; you’re only the brains of the outfit.’ That made me laugh. Somehow I was laughing more frequently and more easily these days. I wondered if it was anything to do with Şiwan’s tobacco.
‘How old do you think Alan is?’ I asked.
‘Fifty. Fifty-five maybe?’
‘Bit of an old goat, isn’t he? Arzu can’t be twenty yet.’
‘Ask me again when you’re fifty yourself, Charlie. You may see things differently then.’
I’d got my pipe going and a nice fug up. Hudd didn’t complain this time. It wouldn’t have occurred to me back in the Fifties to have asked anyone if they objected.
‘When are we leaving here, Hudd?’
‘As soon as I find out what those Israelis are up to, and if they got the paper money; I haven’t forgotten it ya’ know. If they were up on that plateau a coupla weeks ago they could still be about. I don’t know if they got the dosh, but I want to be able to tell your Mr Watson one way or the other. Can you send him a signal from here?’
‘I can try. There may not be anyone listening now he knows it’s a cock-up.’
‘OK. Try: tell him where we are, and that we’re still looking for the dollars . . . and use your bloody code book.’
‘Yes, master.’
‘. . . and cut out the sarcasm.’
‘Yes, master.’ He threw a carpet-covered cushion at me.
Watson responded immediately. After that there were gaps in the transmission while we decoded between separate bursts. He surprised me by asking after our welfare first. Warm, fed and safe as we’ve been in days I sent him. He came back with Take no chances: not worth another loss. He couldn’t bring himself to signal Not worth another death – we British can be oddly squeamish at times; I’m sure you’ve noticed. Or maybe Watson had a soft side after all. I told him where we were, and how we were fixed, and that I’d stick to my broadcasting schedule the next day. I signed off.
‘He must be sleeping alongside the radio,’ I told Hudd. ‘He’s worried about us.’
‘Not as much as I am.’
‘How are you going to find the Israelis?’
‘How big is this town, Charlie? Two hundred houses? Three?’
‘What does that mean?’
‘All we have to do is stick around long enough, and I think they’ll find us.’
‘Oh.’ I wasn’t sure that I liked that.
The smell of the smoke from the stove lingered in the room. It wasn’t unlike the smell of peats burning I’d come across in the west of Scotland a few years earlier.
I was sleepy when I asked, ‘What do they burn in the stove, Hudd? It smells sweet . . . just like peat.’
‘Camel and horse dung. They dry it out in long barns in the summer, an’ it lasts all winter.’
Kurds with turds, I thought. That was even better.
In the morning we discussed our problem. The difficulty was that if either of us wandered around on his own we would be taking a big chance. On the other hand, both of us sallying forth together would leave our boxes unguarded, and that wasn’t such a good idea either. We tossed for it. I got to stay at home while Hudd did our first recce. Neither of us was happy about it, but it was the best option. He could have gone out with Weir, but that would only draw attention to the minister, and ultimately us. Despite what he had said before, Hudd wanted to keep our presence at Weir’s house as discreet as possible.
I waved him off like a wifey waving her husband off to work. I cleaned and checked my small pistol, and then read one of Weir’s books. It was Trouble Shooter by an American named Louis L’Amour. Weir had an amazing collection of Westerns propped up between two massive Bibles. There’s a message in there somewhere. Arzu flip-flopped in and out on bare feet from time to time: tidying, dusting, moving from room to room. Every time she passed near I got a whiff of her scent, stopped thinking about my book, and began thinking of other things; and she knew it. Maybe I should buy myself a camera, and try out Nancy’s lines. Alan Weir walked through on one occasion speaking aloud – he was composing his next sermon in his head. He wore an amused smile. The day dragged on, and after our days up in the hills it was like being in prison. I even looked forward to Hudd’s ugly old mug reappearing.
When it
