‘Cheers, sir, and thank you for the drink. Didn’t I use to run a transport company myself before you got hold of me?’
‘It was only an air-freight mob, Charlie. Doesn’t count. You probably saved the company by volunteering to leave it, and rejoin the colours.’
‘I didn’t volunteer, sir. I am a pressed man, and we both know it.’
‘I think you’ll find you did, old son. I think you’ll find your statutory retention as a reservist ran out about three months before you came to see me, and begged me to take you back. No one could have forced you to come, so you must have volunteered.’
‘Christ.’
‘Don’t swear, Charlie. Daisy can hear you, and she don’t like blasphemy. It’s not my fault if you don’t keep a note of important dates in your diary. If I had been you, I should have known when I could turn down the PM’s kind invitation to go flying again. The thing to do is settle down, and make the best of it.’
‘What about M’smith?’
‘I found him. He was cooling his whatsits in a military prison in Germany.’
I was in an old swivelling wooden office chair, so it was easy to turn and look at M’smith, who frowned before he smiled.
‘What did you do, Hector?’
Watson answered for him.
‘A rather clumsy fraud in the Paymaster General’s Office. M’smith comes from a long line of successful forgers and clumsy fraudsters. A family should always stick with what they’re good at, don’t you think?’
‘Weren’t you even in the RAF?’ I asked Hector.
He shook his head, and told me, ‘Nor are you, Charlie. None of us are. Haven’t you worked that one out yet?’ I probably had but I wanted to ignore it.
‘OK. I know you can navigate. What else do you do?’
Watson jumped in for him again. He probably thought I wouldn’t understand unless it was said in small words. ‘Creative accounting for my military radio spares store, and he’s very good at recognizing funny money, if ever I’m lucky enough to lay my hands on any . . .’
‘. . . and what am I, in your private circus?’
‘You’re the gold prospector . . . and, before you start whining all over again, I’m going to send you to see an officer who works out of Fayid. He can give you the briefing now that your security clearance has come through. Although, if you’ve half a brain, you’ll have it all worked out for yourself by the time you get there.’
‘Where, sir?’
‘The Officers’ Club on the Great Bitter Lake. He’s expecting you for lunch; they do a good lunch there.’ He waved a chitty at me. Watson had chitties for everything. He probably signed off one each time he went to the bog. A chitty for a shitty: that’s not bad. ‘Requisition one of those horrible beige Standards, and drive down right now. M’smith will give you directions.’
‘Did my security clearance take a long time, sir?’
‘Far longer than anyone else’s that I’ve heard of. Even M’smith here was done in a fortnight, and he’s a criminal. Yours has taken seven times as long as that – and even then it was touch and go. You’ve packed an awful lot of dubious characters into a very short life, haven’t you, Charlie?’ There is this well-known phrase about the pot and the kettle, isn’t there?
‘If I failed it, would you have had to send me home?’
‘No . . . Either shot you, or tossed you into jail until it’s all over. Wouldn’t have risked you telling anyone.’
‘Until what is over, sir?’
‘What you’ll be told about in an hour’s time. Mr Levy is the man you’re looking for. Captain Levy that is. Can’t mistake him; he wears dark glasses you can’t see through. Enjoy your lunch.’ When I didn’t move fast enough, he waved his hand at me like a man warding off flies, and said, ‘Run along now.’
It’s not like me to try to have the last word, but I tried . . . and bloody failed, as usual. I popped my head back inside the door from outside, and told him, ‘By the way sir; there’s a lion inside the compound. I saw it in Ismailia, and I think it’s following me around.’
‘No lions in Egypt, Charlie.’
‘That’s what people keep telling me.’
‘Big lion, is it?’
‘It is, as a matter of fact. Why?’
‘I saw a James Stewart film once – Harvey. He was followed around by an animal in it: invisible giant rabbit as far as I remember. Perhaps you’ve got a touch of the same thing.’
I’d met Major James Stewart once; in Paris in 1945. In fact he’d got me out of a bit of a jam. But this wasn’t the time to bring it up.
The road went ever on and on. That reminded me of something – The Seven Pillars of Wisdom perhaps. Half the guys you saw carrying books around for effect had that one. It was required reading for the desert warrior, which is how we all saw ourselves, of course. Another Lawrence of Arabia effect had been the proliferation of motorbikes, and endless motorcycle trials events in the desert. I blamed Lawrence for all of it, and none of our witless born-again motorcyclists seemed to recall that the only thing a motorcycle had done for the saviour of Arabia (and, incidentally, the architect of every problem we’ve had there ever since) was to kill him.
Maybe that’s where all the new wooden crosses in the cemeteries actually came from.
I was passed by two motorcycle dispatch riders on the road down to Fayid, and hoped they’d learned to keep their heads down. I overtook a couple of small convoys trundling along at a snail’s pace, waved past by their armed escort. The only vehicles I met on the road in either direction were
