‘What’s your plan?’ I whispered. I thought we could dispense with the sir and master under the imperative of stress.
‘Ring the bloody bell, you fool; what do you expect?’
What I expected, or rather hoped for, was the arrival of the 7th Cavalry if the Indians went on the warpath. I didn’t say that; I tugged on the ironwork and was rewarded with a jangling loud enough to bring back Lazarus.
Watson frowned. ‘Enough, Charlie.’
A dog barked, and then another. They were at least a quarter of a mile away. The bell jangled away to a sullen silence. Nothing: then more nothing. I liked more nothing. Then a door banged somewhere close, and after a minute the door in front of us was opened by a yawning seven-year-old boy.
In English he asked us, ‘Yes?’
I asked him, ‘Is your Master in?’
‘My Master?’
‘Is Mister David Yassine here?’
‘I will look,’ and, before I had time to intrude a friendly foot, he had shut the door in my face and bolted it. I felt very stupid standing there. Dawn was beginning to show.
‘Well done, Charlie.’ Bloody Watson.
‘You weren’t exactly much help either, sir.’
‘What was I supposed to do,’ he growled, ‘. . . pull a gun on a kid?’
That was one of the odd things, now I come to think about it. The child had shown no distress at finding a couple of fully armed Englishmen on his doorstep before dawn . . . he looked merely a little irritated.
Before we had taken the decision to heave the door in ourselves, Yassine opened it. In his sleeping robe he looked even fatter. The difference between the daytime djellaba and the thing they sleep in is that the latter has short sleeves. Men wearing them look like the seedy old transvestites you see at the Henley Regatta Ball . . . and before you ask, the answer is yes; go and look for yourself: the place is full of them.
He pulled us quickly through the door as if he was ashamed to be seen with us. That can’t have been too far from the truth.
What he said was, ‘I suppose you want breakfast.’
Watson replied, ‘. . . and a thirty-ton Comet tank, please.’
‘That too, that too . . .’ Yassine smiled, and turned his back on us. He waved his arms like a market trader in a bazaar. ‘I’m sure we’ll come to an arrangement. Do you mind if I leave you in the kitchen whilst I go and dress? I should, in courtesy, offer you the dining room, but I gain the impression that this is an unofficial visit.’
By then we were inside Yassine’s seaside residence. The kitchen was large and hot, and I immediately felt sleepy. Watson noticed, and cautioned me.
‘Bloody well stay awake, Charlie; this cove is as slippery as a fish.’ I could have agreed My new partner is as slippery as a fish, but it wasn’t the right time to bring that up.
‘Don’t worry, boss.’
‘But I do, that’s the problem.’
Yassine came back dressed like an Arab, and brought a plump, pretty, middle-aged woman with him. He didn’t introduce her properly; he just pointed and said, ‘Wife.’
Minutes later Mariam slipped down the stairs, wearing a blue silky robe that clung to all of the right places.
I asked Yassine, ‘Your daughter perhaps?’
‘No, of course not. Occasional concubine. She gets a few days away from the lustful clients at the Blue Kettle.’
‘And you’re not lustful of course?’
‘. . . only on Christ’s birthday, and at Easter – I am a good Christian. Didn’t I tell you that?’
Before I could answer Mariam wriggled the fingers of one hand at me and said, ‘Hello, Charlie.’
Watson gave me a look, but kept his trap shut. There’d be some questions to fend off later.
To begin with we sat at the table and drank coffee, and watched Yassine drink water. Then he watched us eat fried eggs as he picked at a little fruit. The women retired as soon as the food was before us.
I said, ‘We didn’t know how to contact you, David . . .’
‘Are you your brother’s keeper?’
‘Stop pissing me about, and tell us about the tank.’
‘Its new owners will be pleased that at last you have missed it, and that someone has come to ask for it back. They were getting worried.’
‘What are they worried about?’
‘What to do next. They don’t know what to do with it, now that they have it. Acquisition is one thing: disposal another. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing – only a few boys.’
‘And nothing to do with you I suppose?’ Watson had shaken himself into life at last. I shouldn’t have judged him; at least I’d slept for an hour in the truck.
‘Nothing at all, Mr Watson. But I heard what happened, and am willing to act as the go-between – your agent, or an honest broker.’ He used the words with irony and relish.
‘Is it damaged?’
‘Not as far as I know. Tanks are difficult to damage.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Exactly where your driver left it: at the end of a street of our poor native houses.’
‘No, it isn’t. The driver was merely moving it to the repair shop. He says he left the hatches open to ventilate it, that terrorists climbed in, drugged him with chloroform, and when he came to, he was outside the Land Forces HQ with a headache and no tank.’
‘His recollection is very flawed. The drug must have damaged his memory.’
‘What’s your version?’ I asked him.
‘Not mine: the boys who found it abandoned.’ I nodded for him to continue: I wasn’t going to argue until I’d heard it all. ‘Your driver stopped the vehicle outside the house of a well-known beauty, and cannot have believed his luck when she called him inside. When he came out an hour later his tank had completely vanished without a sound. Like the Indian
