“Now stop looking at me with your mouth open, lieutenant, and help me save the last of this breed and bring them to England where they belong, and can be bred, and will be looked after, and get them out of the hands of your Mr. Talal. Mis-ter Ta-lal, oh yes. You know, for a farthing, I would simply seize the lot as military necessity, but those fops in the War Office would have my head, and Whitehall would be upset — present company excepted, Cyril — and there’d be hell to pay. Now go and buy me these ponies, like a good chap, Ferkin, and don’t come back without them.” He considered. “Splendid, eh? They’re not splendid, lieutenant, they’re priceless. Now go and get me a price.”
V
Were Abraham Talal’s horses for sale? In theory, everything Talal owned was for sale. He was, if nothing else, a merchant. But he had not become the principal merchant of Mombasa simply because he bought and sold — everyone on the coast did that, and had for centuries. His secret was the same kind of intelligence we in J Group were in the business of collecting. His methods may have been different, but he clearly spent a great deal of time and money staying informed.
Thus, only a month before the Bletchley Park crew’s arrival in Mombasa, Talal had acquired the Lotus Hotel, which was to remain fully occupied by British personnel throughout the war; it was the only second-class hotel on the island with toilet facilities for each room. Whether it was how much to expand production at his cement works at Ndega, or how much to bid on military-construction contracts that would utilize the same cement, he made it his business to know. His dozens of managers — Hindus on the coast, Europeans of one sort or another in the uplands — reported to him regularly with a flood of information.
Making sense of it must have been a challenge, in perhaps the same way as we code-breakers faced a torrent of Japanese ciphers that remained meaningless without the all-important key. In our situation we were unable to ask further questions; Talal was not so limited. Against the Indian stereotype, he was generous in compensating his staff, who knew they were being spoiled and wished this to continue. Spread throughout the country, they were adept at laying their hands on the right information or the person who could get it. Politically, Talal was equally well-connected. It was said he was generous here as well. Certainly he seemed to have a direct line to HQ East Africa Command. Just as certainly, the vice admiral knew it.
This must have been galling to Braithwaite, who could not have been unaware that inviting A.S. Talal for dinner might have gone a long way toward smoothing the path for His Majesty’s Forces on the coast. But vice admirals apparently did not deign to sup with merchants, Indian merchants especially, and Jews so much the less. Sending me out to deal with Abraham must therefore have seemed only proper to Lord Braithwaite.
But to Talal the indirect approach was something between annoyance and insult, not least because little that went on in the CO’s vicinity remained unknown to him: after all, Braithwaite was ensconced in Talal’s primary residence, which His Majesty’s forces had more or less commandeered for the duration of the war. Of course the house came with Talal’s servants, who must have been a principal conduit of intelligence, though it puzzled me that Talal was aware of matters somewhat too sophisticated for mere Shirazi domestics to pick up. Perhaps some of these servants were more clever than they let on.
We were riding on the beach at Jumba la Mtwana, having been ferried to the mainland from Talal’s private dock in Mombasa, the horses apparently accustomed to this form of transportation. I was on a lovely piebald mare named Rajshree, my host on Mewar, a skewbald stallion with ears as long as my jodhpurs. I had told Abraham I had no riding clothes. That morning a superb set of boots, britches, and jersey, along with a black-velvet-covered helmet, was delivered to my quarters at the school — all my size, even my taste.
Rajshree was easy in the reins, responsive to the slightest signal, and loved to run on the packed sand, small waves spilling over and wetting her unshod hooves in what seemed to be adoration. I had not had such fun on horseback since riding at home on the ranch with David, of whom I had heard nothing since his plane had disappeared four months earlier. I can’t say this was not on my mind as Rajshree swept over the sand in a curious gait halfway between a gallop and a canter, so smooth there was almost no vertical motion — Abraham was later to describe this to me as the ravaal, a movement unique to Marwaris — and I stuck to the high-canted cavalry saddle as though glued. We dismounted at a grove of coconut palms, where servants were waiting with lunch.
“Abraham, you do live well,” I said.
“I consider it compensation.”
“Against?”
“Against the moment when I do not.”
“I should think you would accept the inevitability.”
“Oh, I do,” he said. “My Hindu friends see things differently, but for me there is only this life.”
“And for your Hindu wife?”
He was washing his hands in a copper bowl that had been set up on a bamboo tripod by the table, stopped quite sharply, then resumed. I had just gone through the same wash-up. A servant handed him a dry cloth. “Your intelligence is as good as mine,” he said. “Lieutenant.”
“I had to know.”
He nodded as he cleaned salt spray from his roseate spectacles with the cloth. “Precisely. What is it you don’t know that I can tell you?” He forced a smile. “Joan.”
“I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”
“I am not embarrassed. Merely surprised.”
“Surprised?”
“That you would care, one way or the other.”
It was time for me to force a smile. “You can’t think very highly of me, Abraham, if you think I wouldn’t.”
“Perhaps I was being hopeful,” he said. “Would you like to eat, or are you too angry?”
“Never too angry to eat,” I said. “And not really angry at all. Disappointed, perhaps.”
“Disillusioned?”
“Canadians have no illusions.”
“Because they have no dreams?”
“Because we have no past,” I said. “We’re all fresh, new in the world. So we’re perfectly happy with what we’ve got. Like children with a new toy. Or a new friend.”
“I’d like to be your friend, Joan. May I be your friend?”
“If I may have some curry,” I said, “I’ll give it thought.”
He snapped the fingers of his left hand. A servant brought a silver dish, and from it deftly placed a serving spoon of curried fish, delicately flavored with cardamom and turmeric, on my china plate. Early on, I was never served meat in Abraham’s presence. Perhaps his intelligence agents had already told him to avoid anything that might contravene my sensitivities, but a diet heavy in fish was — I was to learn — only natural for him: my sensitivities were his as well. He himself never ate pork, never shellfish, and the lamb or beef that showed up for dinner Friday evenings, when I began staying the weekend, was miraculously kosher, sent packed in ice by a Jewish butcher in Nairobi on the overnight train that chugged into Mombasa every morning at 8 AM. The Lunatic Line, they called it, because of the hairpin turns that sent it hurtling down from the highlands. For Abraham Talal it must have been anything but. It allowed him the sanity of a Sabbath meal. “I do have a wife, Hindu, yes, and three children. Daughters. I will show you photos if you like. Very pretty girls, eight, ten, and twelve years of age. Charming girls. Good students. I expect they will be educated at university in England. Would you recommend Cambridge or Oxford?”