‘There – down there. Like a small dark cross on the ground.’
As we lost height towards it I could see it quite clearly. But it wasn’t a dark cross: it was an aircraft. A bigger, blacker aircraft than the thing I was sitting in. It was a four-engined bomber type, from the war half the world had just been engaged in; parked neatly on a flat grassy plateau as if it had grown there. Oliver was also snapping away with his hand-held cameras for all he was worth.
M’smith peered over my shoulder and asked, ‘What the fuck’s that doing down there? I didn’t think that the Turks had anything that big.’
They didn’t. It was a big black bastard of a Stirling bomber, and I knew in my heart I had seen her before. A rage as black as her peeling flanks rose in me. Now I knew what I had been called up for, and for once I couldn’t wait to see Watson again . . . and then get my hands around his treacherous fucking throat.
I had to wait as it turned out, because our lord and master had been called away. I didn’t find that out until the morning after we had returned from our flying four-day scheme, introducing Turkey and Iran to the best the RAF could offer. That meant trying to drink the clubs dry in Istanbul and Tehran.
Istanbul was my sort of place: poky small bars where the coffee was so sweet you could stand your spoon up in it, and bazaars you could get lost in. I had never thought of Constantinople as one of the great walled cities of the world, but it is. Our Aussie flew us on a circuit of the massive walls, before putting us down at a very rudimentary airport where the Varsity was promptly surrounded by policemen in dark outfits and dark red fezes: they looked like a Toy Town army. The purpose of the Turkish police was to stop the locals making off with essential pieces from the outside of our transport. The purpose of our own two policemen was to prevent the Turkish cops getting inside the aircraft and stripping it bare. If we had left it unattended we would probably have found it for sale in component parts in the Grand Bazaar the very next day. The Turks are the greatest thieves in the world.
‘Who looks after our two guys?’ M’smith asked, as we stepped down into a temperature like a Sussex spring. ‘They have to eat, and all that.’
‘I do,’ answered a world-weary-looking young man from the front of one of the police jeeps. He wore a crumpled linen suit and a battered panama. When he took it off his prematurely thinned hair clung to his pink scalp like seaweed. He handed me a card. It was as crumpled as his suit. Why do these ambassadorial types all have to dress like something from a Graham Greene book? ‘Lance Love; British Embassy. I’ll make sure that your men are accommodated. If you’d like to do the Customs thing in that small building over there, I’ll give you a lift into your hotel. I’ve booked you for two nights, OK?’
Oliver gave him a grotesque come-on con of a smile, and said, ‘Lance? Nice name . . .’
Love blushed. Men who’ve cultivated world-weary should be told not to blush. Our pilot looked from one to the other and said, ‘Why don’t you two fairies just fuck off, and leave us to find our own way around?’ I don’t think there was an insult intended. The words just flowed in a very conversational tone.
Nansen turned on him. ‘Oh no, dear; couldn’t do that. You’ll need someone to protect you from all these naughty Turks. Didn’t anyone tell you?’
The Aussie grimaced. He may have bunched a fist. I thought we might be in for an interesting evening.
The next day I had a hangover. We all did. The flight crew looked like wounded bears. M’smith had heard that the best way to cure a hangover was a Turkish massage. Nancy, who knew better, cautioned us against it, which sort of made our minds up.
In a massage joint that looked like the inside of a synagogue, my small and naked body was covered in a soapy, oily concoction, and flipped around on a marble slab as if I was a piece of fish. Then the fat Ottoman doing the flipping stood on me and dug his feet in. His toes burrowed into my back like moles, and I knew what poor old HMS Victory must have felt like when the Death Watch Beetle started on her. After that I felt too ill, and was in too much pain from the massage, to protest. I just wanted to die.
I left the place an hour later with every joint in my body dislocated, every muscle pounded into useless jelly and with no feeling in my fingers and toes. Maybe they had been playfully wrenched off by the monster appointed to me. Chastened, we headed for the nearest bar, smelling like poofs. When I looked around it, every other patron seemed in the same state as me and pouring light beers down their throats as if the world was about to end. The lesson I learned there was that if you want to own a really successful bar, open one as near to a massage parlour as you bloody well can.
I didn’t get the trots, but M’smith did. I gave him my stuff. He took the linctus, but gave me a funny look and handed back the ointment.
Nansen grabbed it, ‘I’ll have that
