‘Mr Bassett, is it?’
‘Yes. That’s right.’
‘I’ve been asked to tell you to wait for your transport, sir. It’s a little late. There was a pipe bomb on the road – it backed up the traffic.’
‘Any idea how long it will be?’
‘Any minute now, I should expect, sir.’
He ushered his charges onto the bus, and I watched that disappear as well. I was left alone with an aircraft that the terrorists probably wanted to blow up. I felt lonely there under its wing – which was the only proper shade I could find. The military, of course, runs on military time, which isn’t the same as yours and mine. My transport didn’t appear for another half-hour, and then I saw an Austin Champ barrelling towards me from the far side of the airfield in a cloud of dust. The driver either spun it sideways with a flourish as he stopped, or had lost it completely on a patch of oil-soaked tarmac and didn’t want me to notice. His face and visible hair were dusty, and under his black beret he wore goggles. He pulled them up, and grinned. Patrick Tobin. Pat. Our jack-of-all-trades and black-market king from Egypt three years ago.
‘Hello, Pat.’
‘Wotcha, Mr Bassett. Sorry I’m late.’
‘Bugger off, Pat. I’m not going to work with you lot again.’
‘Mr Watson’s compliments, sir. You remember the wing commander?’ Yes, I remembered the drink-sodden bastard. Only too well.
The last time I’d worked for Watson he’d fooled me into thinking I’d been called up – recalled to the colours as a reservist. He must have known he couldn’t work that trick again, so he’d lured me in as a civvy. I might have guessed. I said, ‘Bugger the lot of you!’
‘Hop in, sir. I know a nice safe little bar on the way. Time to introduce you to Keo.’
‘Keo?’
‘K-E-O. The local beer. Smashing stuff and so cheap they’re almost giving it away. Much better than that make-believe Stella they served in the Zone.’
Suez was the last time our paths had crossed.
‘I passed through Cyprus on the way there in ’53,’ I told him. ‘The Stella I drank here was pretty good if my memory is still OK.’
‘Just wait until you’ve a couple of glasses of Keo inside you, sir – life will look much better then.’
I slung my kitbag into the back, and dropped my old flying jacket on top of it. In for a penny. I asked, ‘Where are we going, Pat?’
‘Out on the plain, just this side o’ Famagusta.’
‘And the natives don’t like us?’ I asked that because a reminder of my time in Egypt was right in front of us – a narrow vertical steel girder rising six feet from the jeep’s front fender: high enough to break any wire strung across the roads to decapitate the unwary.
‘Some does and some doesn’t, but soon we’ll have enough troops here to deal with anything the Greeks can chuck at us. Had you heard we was pulling all our people out of Egypt, and the UN is going in?’
‘Yes. I always thought the Gyppoes would win eventually.’
‘Cyprus is almost full to bursting with squaddies on their way back home already.’
‘Then what do they need me for?’
I didn’t need to be sensitive to recognize that he ignored my question completely.
We’d reached a side gate at the airport. It was guarded by two Royal Engineers, two Cyprus Police officers, and two other policemen in faded KDs. They were Brits.
‘From the Met,’ Pat explained. ‘They’re training the Cypriot police how to be policemen, and how to look after our boys.’
‘Isn’t that where we went wrong in Suez? We trained their policemen to take over, and they bloody did. They showed us the fucking door.’
He didn’t answer that – that was twice. He just gunned the Champ down a narrow road not much better than a dirt track. It ran parallel to the airport chain-link and barbed-wire fence. From time to time we passed the burned-out shells of cars. Two, I noticed, were riddled with bullet holes. I asked him, ‘Ours or theirs?’
‘Theirs probably. If they’re challenged on this road at night, and fail to stop, we make the assumption they are terrorists, sir, let fly at them. Better safe than sorry . . . And to answer your question about why they need you back – I would hazard a guess that you have some sort of special skill, sir.’
‘We want you to listen to people, of course, Charlie. Eight hours on, sixteen off. Five-day weeks, but back to back – then four days off. Piece of piss.’ Piece of piss was Wing Commander Watson’s favourite phrase. Whenever he used it anyone who worked for him became very afraid.
‘Every time you sit me down in front of a radio, Mr Watson, I end up out on my own somewhere with people shooting at me. It’s not fair.’
‘And very good you are at it as well. Being shot at is your special skill.’
I had called him Mr Watson deliberately to remind myself that I was a civvy. The expression on his face said he hadn’t liked it. Three years earlier I would have called him sir, or boss. He added, ‘I forgot that you bellyached all the time.’
‘I don’t.’
‘And argued. You can call me sir, by the way – nothing’s changed that much.’
‘I shan’t. I’m a civvy.’
Watson looked up at Pat Tobin who was standing at ease just inside the door. He was wearing a side arm. Why hadn’t I noticed that before?
‘Toss him in the cooler, Pat. Maybe I’ll see him again in the
