‘What for, Oliver?’
‘I can sell it, you dummy . . . worth a bloody mint over here.’
I wasn’t empty-handed when I climbed wearily back into the aircraft. Four large sacks of spices I’d bargained for at the Spice Bazaar followed me on to it. The smell wasn’t all that bad, but the cops complained. Cops always seem to be able to find something to complain about, don’t they?
M’smith asked me, ‘What are those for?’
‘A place in Berlin I’m involved with. Someone over there told me that you could ask what you wanted for spices in Germany – although that was a couple of years ago. It may not be as good now.’
‘How will you get them there?’
I was tempted to use that phrase they’d taught me about Egypt, but said instead, ‘I haven’t worked that one out yet.’
After Istanbul, Tehran was a cinch. It was in the most Westernized Arab country I’d been near yet, even if their prime minister was well known for telling ours where to get off. The Aussies disappeared for twenty-four hours, and when they came back they were in high spirits. That meant they’d shafted someone. I got round to asking the skipper his name.
He told me, ‘Hudd.’ When I put the same question to the copilot he replied, ‘Hudd’s man.’
I’d ask Nancy about that later. M’smith sniggered. Hudd’s man looked at him, and he stopped sniggering. I would have done the same.
Because our take-off was put back nine hours until a local sandstorm blew itself out, I had a beer alone with Hudd at the airport bar. We’d rigged tarps over the engines in a high wind, and were experiencing that odd high that men get from achieving a difficult task successfully together. Wrestling twenty feet of old tarpaulin into a Force 8 just about comes under that description. He blew the froth from a large glass of beer, then passed it back to the barman for a top-up.
When the barman had moved away he said from out of nowhere, ‘They’ve handed you a shit of a job, haven’t they?’
‘How did you guess that?’
‘I didn’t. I heard you sucking your breath in the first time we banked over that old aircraft down in Turkey.’ He must have heard me over his head set.
‘Why did you think it was me?’
‘Oh, I always know.’
‘. . . anyway, the answer is that I don’t really know yet. I last saw that aircraft on the ground in England in1944 – just before it was stolen by its crew. Later I was accused of helping them to get away. It can’t be coincidence that you just happened to fly me over it, can it?’
Hudd laughed. Then he asked, ‘They can’t seriously want it back, can they? It will be fuck-all use if it’s been standing out there for nearly ten years.’ He took a huge swig at his beer, and emptied half the glass.
‘You know the War Office . . . it has a memory like an elephant. What are you doing out here anyway? You don’t look like the bus-driver type to me.’
‘You heard of Operation Ajax?’
‘No.’
‘Good. Forget I said it then.’
‘What is it?’
He shook his head, but after a pause said, ‘Ike wants to lose a prime minister an’ make a new friend. We’re gonna help him.’
‘Why?’
‘Where you bin these last coupla years, son? This Persian bastard nationalized the oil over here, an’ wants to sell it to the Reds.’
‘And we’re going to kill him for that?’
‘. . . would if I was asked to, but no . . . jest gonna convince his Arab brothers to choose another prime minister. The guy left in charge will be like a king, and he’ll love us for it.’
‘How do you persuade a people to replace their government?’ He didn’t answer. He looked away and smiled.
I told him, ‘I used to know a girl who went out with Ike whenever he was back in Britain. They used to go up to some Scottish castle, and dance the night away with eightsome reels or something.’
‘Why are you telling me?’
‘Because she’s an Aussie too.’
‘So was Ned Kelly, but I don’t see no reason to boast about it.’ This was as close to polite as he got. He was telling me to shut up, and get another round in. Or maybe he was trying to tell me something else altogether: you just don’t know with maneaters.
That night, as we were taking off into the twilight, the centre of Tehran exploded with riots. Over the ’phones I heard one of the Hudds whistling ‘When Johnny comes marching home again’, and then ‘Waltzing Matilda’. I’m glad someone was happy.
We staggered out of the aircraft in the early hours, and I had nothing in my mind other than getting a shower and falling on my bed. The shower block was dark – the bloody lights had blown again – and to cap it all the last bastards through there had forgotten to run the pump to refill the shower cistern. It was as empty as a Mother Superior’s dreams. Something flat and dark and long moved along the floor in one of the stalls, so I decided to pass up on that as well. Bollocks. My bed was still there, and I dropped onto it fully clothed. Nancy was already snoring.
I awoke looking at a calendar tacked high on one of the tent posts with a drawing pin. There was a pink lady pictured above the grid of dates. Not that dreadful Pink Lady cocktail our infantile thirty-year-olds are drinking these days, but a painting of a cheerful pink lady without her clothes. Her nipples looked like strawberries. She was advertising the capabilities of a company named Ralph W Folk, from Milton, Wisconsin.
I yawned, and asked Nancy, ‘Where did you get that?’
‘I bought her from a man in the souk in Istanbul. Ten bob. I
