I did four days on the trot, and then Watson called me into his shed at the end of a shift. He was in another of those unnerving grateful moods, and said, ‘Thank you, Charlie, well done,’ before I’d even closed the door on the veranda behind me. Second thank you in a week. Maybe he was going soft on me.
‘Thank you for what, sir?’
‘The last signal you intercepted – thirty-five seconds’ worth, if I remember. The intelligence people have come back to say that it told them a tank division was moving up to the border. Fancy a snifter?’
‘Which border? Haven’t they got several?’
‘Nobody knows, apparently. I sometimes wonder if intelligence is as intelligent as we give it credit for, but they’re pleased with us anyway. Cheers.’
Two hefty straight-sided glasses of ouzo, topped off with water and ice. Just what the butler ordered. He flapped one hand vertically up and down. It was a signal to me to sit. Watson speared me with a glance across the top of his glass.
‘Want to go flying again?’
‘No, sir. Too dangerous.’
‘Good-oh, knew you’d be up for it. Cheers.’ We cheered again.
I asked him, ‘What is it this time?’
‘One of the army’s funny little Austers, like that one you found in the Troodos a couple of weeks ago. Pretty aircraft.’
‘Doing what? I’m not going treasure hunting again. People shoot at you when you’re treasure hunting.’ Three years earlier he’d sent me into the mountains of Kurdistan looking for a military aircraft full of money. It’s not a bad story, but it has a sad ending – I should try it some time if I was you. Watson wagged a long finger: I was forgetting the sirs again, and that made him unreasonably touchy.
‘Officially you’ll be flying an RX 108 up a few thousand feet to see if the extra height gives you better range with a trailing aerial. We’re not sure that when our Middle Eastern neighbours go quiet that they’re actually quiet. Maybe it’s atmospherics – one of the bods at Cambridge thinks that sandstorms out over the desert shut down our long-range listening capacity.’
Why didn’t these buggers ever listen to what they were told? I sighed, and shook my head.
‘They just stop broadcasting, sir, believe me. I can recognize the difference between bad signals and reception, and a complete absence of them. Sometimes they just don’t talk . . . usually on Fridays and Saturdays, when they’re mostly talking to their God instead. Or maybe they simply get into a huff with each other.’
‘You know that, Charlie, and I know that. Unfortunately the dumb scientific class that now runs our world doesn’t . . . so they want it proved to them. That’s where you come in.’
‘You said, ‘Officially . . . that officially we were flying one of the radios higher than the aerial array. I take it there’s an unofficial angle to this jaunt as well.’
‘Yes. You’ll fly a Cook’s Tour around the island afterwards, sweeping for EOKA signals – can you believe that they still don’t know how many sets the opposition has out there, or where they are?’
‘Will they shoot at us?’
‘I shouldn’t be surprised – especially if you get too close.’
‘Bugger.’ I held my glass out for a refill. It was always best to take advantage of the wing commander when he was in a drinking mood. ‘What’s in it for me?’
‘Hidden glory, and the satisfaction of knowing you’ve served your country.’ Then he belched. I didn’t respond, but I expect my face said it all. Watson grinned a foxy grin and continued, ‘What if I gave you another couple of days off first? That do?’
I raised my newly charged glass to him.
‘That’s more like it . . . sir.’
If you think about it we’d probably both got to more or less where we wanted to be. I asked him, ‘I take it somebody does monitor my targets when I’m not there.’
‘Course they do. Didn’t we tell you?’
‘Yes, but I wasn’t sure I believed it. Who?’
‘That’s for me to know, and you to speculate. Don’t ask awkward questions, Charlie. Weren’t you told that as well?’
I had been, of course, but my nose was bothering me. Watson knew that, and smiled like an angel on a thunder box. He wasn’t going to bloody tell me.
‘What the fuck do you call that?’
Pat was showing me some transport. After all, what else do you do when you’ve been given an unexpected day off, and everyone you know is working? He said I could go off for a stooge as long as I kept my wits about me, and a pistol within reach, and offered me a vehicle to get around in. When we got down to the MT section he showed me an old one-and-a-half-tonner which looked as if it had been in more battles than Field Marshal Montgomery. It just so happened I’d driven it before; in Egypt. It was Watson’s favourite transport, and I’m sure he dragged it around the world with him.
‘Mr Watson’s little Bedford. Nice old bus.’ He gave it a hefty thump on its front wing to prove its worth, and I tried to ignore the heavy flakes of rust which fell out of the wheel wells and onto the concrete floor.
‘I expected a car.’
‘I’ve only got one – a Humber Hawk, an’ that’s out. Mr Watson’s gone visiting.’
‘What about the Land Rover, and your Austin Champ?’
‘Sorry, Charlie. We need the Land Rover, and the bloody Champ’s in the workshop again. It’s gotta Rolls-Royce engine which is exac’ly no bleedin’ good. I bet Rolls is ashamed of what Austin done to it.’
‘So I get to ponce around in a 1940s land crab?’
‘You could always stay
