Saeed Pasha sighed. He was prejudiced against Americans. Mind you, he wasn’t that fond of the English either. The Germans and the French, now you knew where you were with them. The first were brutal, the second devious. He had the blood of both in his veins.
“This place,” said the General. “You know where you are now?”
“No, I’m sorry . . . I don’t.”
“They came up that track . . .” Koenig Pasha pointed to a strip of road. “Wearing rags that had once been uniforms, their bare feet soled with tar from the desert road. Many of them were younger than your granddaughter.”
He’d been briefed too. On the woman’s background and tastes, which were both predictably American.
The Senator knew what Koenig Pasha was talking about now. “What did you do?” she asked; though he could tell she wasn’t really sure she wanted to know.
“What could we do? We killed them. We gunned them down in their thousands as they shambled towards us. All the amulets in the world couldn’t hold back our bullets, despite what the enemy had been told. They carried ancient Kalashnikovs, spare magazines duct-taped together, pangas blunt with overuse, Martini Henrys . . .” The General stopped. “ Martini Henrys. British revolvers taken by the Dinka, the barrels and cylinders drilled out to take current ammunition. It was a bloodbath.”
He could see it still in front of his eyes. A hot morning in early summer with the Nile only just on the rise. The mercury hitting 110F. No rain for six weeks.
Ten thousand strong they advanced up the desert highway with limp banners aloft in the hot and breezeless air. The dust from those in front had turned to khaki the ragged clothes of the ranks behind. Now, all that many of them had by way of uniform was a red ribbon tied to one of their upper arms. Behind them, at the rear, marched their officers, five hundred veterans of a ruthless campaign fought in the deserts around Meroe and the foothills of Abyssinia. They carried laser-sighted rifles, mortars and portable rocket launchers. Most wore lightweight body armour, air-conditioned helmets, earbeads and throat mikes. Men and women alike, their hair was cropped short and their eyes hard with satisfaction at how easily Al Qahirah had fallen.
Major Koenig Bey, as he was then, had three hundred men left from his regiment. Some had died but more had deserted in the face of assurances that to oppose this Ragged Army was to oppose the absolute will of God. In vain the local Mufti had insisted in proclamation after proclamation that this was untrue. The Sublime Porte, His Imperial Majesty Mehmet VII, in his role as religious leader of the Osmali empire issued an edict stigmatizing the Mahdi. No one paid any attention.
Winning was left to a twenty-eight-year-old sapper, a half-Egyptian, half-German who had reached regimental rank solely because every other officer had resigned, deserted or was already dead.
This was a man whose first action on arriving at his new HQ in a farmhouse overlooking the desert road was to send for a flame-thrower, have the pressure tank converted to take emulsion and order that the walls, floor and ceiling be sprayed white. While teenage officers advised by elder NCOs set up gun encampments and mortar pits, Major Koenig oversaw first the removal of all furniture from the downstairs of the farmhouse, then the removal of its two cheap overhead striplights and the light switches. Only then was the converted flame-thrower used to redecorate the rooms to suit the major’s taste.
Back in went a table and chairs, the overhead strips and a potbellied charcoal stove that the major took everywhere, for when he wanted fresh bread or coffee.
People might mutter but not when he was within earshot. And besides, the major knew exactly what he was doing as he stood in the middle of the redecorated room and told his officers not to bother setting up charts.
They were outnumbered and outgunned. All they had on their side was their command of a hilltop. That and strategy. And in the end Major Saeed Koenig Bey won by retreating. Though first he shot his favourite brother through the head for refusing to follow an order.
Amil was young, handsome and the undisputed favourite of both his parents in the way that only youngest sons can be. Bizarrely, despite their difference in age, Major Koenig adored him.
With the Ragged Army marching uphill, into the fire of the major’s machine guns and with every death being recorded by CNN drones hung high enough overhead to be out of rifle shot, Major Koenig ordered a retreat.
“Why?” Amil’s question had been simple.
Because we’re being filmed. Because we’re turning ourselves into murderers. Because I won’t order the deaths of a thousand twelve-year-olds who think that dirty feathers and dry twigs in a totem bag can stop bullets and that paradise waits with open gates for those who die, and see nothing contradictory in those two beliefs.
All of these would have been honest answers. But his senior sergeant and the other NCOs were watching the major, their uncertainty as to the wisdom of his order curdling to doubt. And orders were orders, that was what he’d been taught. The rules of engagement demanded it.
“Because I say so . . .”
“But we command the hill.”
“Not any longer.”
Amil opened his mouth to protest and bit back the words as his brother pulled a Luger from his belt.
“We retreat now. Understand?” Major Koenig glanced round his command group, which comprised a couple of hardened NCOs and a dozen subalterns so young they hadn’t yet had time to grow a first moustache. The Ragged Army advancing up the hill was forgotten momentarily. The crack of return fire from his own men outside the farmhouse gone from the major’s mind.
“We pull back to the crossroads and stop.”
“Sir,” his senior sergeant had raised a hand.
“You have a problem, Sergeant?” Words sharper than flint and cold as ice. Disdain, derision, mounting disbelief that any NCO might dare question an order. All of those and more were in the five words.
The senior NCO swallowed a smile. He was old enough to know the voice of his old commander, the major’s father, a ruthless bastard but a highly efficient one. As commanding officers went he was good, but the sergeant wouldn’t have wanted the man for his father.
“No, sir. Absolutely not, sir.” He snapped out a salute like the rawest, most frightened recruit and swung on his heels, the other NCOs straightening up, reassured now the decision had been made.
And there matters would have ended if Amil hadn’t insisted on taking a step forward to object. The rest had gone down in legend. Muttered by the General’s enemies as proof of his ruthlessness and spoken openly by his friends as proof of the same. Amil died with a mocking smile on his face and a bullet between the eyes from his brother’s gun.
Major Koenig left the body where it dropped.
By the time the major returned to the farmhouse that evening, walking under a white flag of truce, Amil’s body had been carried away and dumped with others in a pit dug into the terraces by a thin girl on a tractor. He came alone, unarmed, and stood silent and uncomplaining as rough hands searched him before letting him inside.
The ground floor of the farmhouse was crowded with the cream of the Ragged Army’s generals, their own uniforms anything but that. Some of the junior officers wore battledress stripped from UN observers but most had uniforms cut and sewn by local tailors along the way.
A few were imported, bought via middlemen from military tailors in Algiers, Berlin or Stambul. Two officers were even dressed in the uniform of Major Koenig’s regiment. One had, until that afternoon, been his aide de camp and the other the major had thought dead. Certainly the man had never returned from the morning’s reconnaissance.