‘Tell me more,’ I said. ‘You can give me no details and no instructions. Obviously you can give me no help if I come to grief.’
He nodded. ‘You would be beyond the pale.’
‘You give me a free hand.’
‘Absolutely. You can have what money you like, and you can get what help you like. You can follow any plan you fancy, and go anywhere you think fruitful. We can give no directions.’ ‘One last question. You say it is important. Tell me just how important.’
‘It is life and death,’ he said solemnly. ‘I can put it no higher and no lower. Once we know what is the menace we can meet it. As long as we are in the dark it works unchecked and we may be too late. The war must be won or lost in Europe. Yes; but if the East blazes up, our effort will be distracted from Europe and the great _coup may fail. The stakes are no less than victory and defeat, Hannay.’
I got out of my chair and walked to the window. It was a difficult moment in my life. I was happy in my soldiering; above all, happy in the company of my brother officers. I was asked to go off into the enemy’s lands on a quest for which I believed I was manifestly unfitted - a business of lonely days and nights, of nerve-racking strain, of deadly peril shrouding me like a garment. Looking out on the bleak weather I shivered. It was too grim a business, too inhuman for flesh and blood. But Sir Walter had called it a matter of life and death, and I had told him that I was out to serve my country. He could not give me orders, but was I not under orders - higher orders than my Brigadier’s? I thought myself incompetent, but cleverer men than me thought me competent, or at least competent enough for a sporting chance. I knew in my soul that if I declined I should never be quite at peace in the world again. And yet Sir Walter had called the scheme madness, and said that he himself would never have accepted.
How does one make a great decision? I swear that when I turned round to speak I meant to refuse. But my answer was Yes, and I had crossed the Rubicon. My voice sounded cracked and far away.
Sir Walter shook hands with me and his eyes blinked a little.
‘I may be sending you to your death, Hannay - Good God, what a damned task-mistress duty is! - If so, I shall be haunted with regrets, but you will never repent. Have no fear of that. You have chosen the roughest road, but it goes straight to the hill-tops.’
He handed me the half-sheet of note-paper. On it were written three words - ‘_Kasredin’, ’cancer’, and ’v. _I.’
‘That is the only clue we possess,’ he said. ‘I cannot construe it, but I can tell you the story. We have had our agents working in Persia and Mesopotamia for years - mostly young officers of the Indian Army. They carry their lives in their hands, and now and then one disappears, and the sewers of Baghdad might tell a tale. But they find out many things, and they count the game worth the candle. They have told us of the star rising in the West, but they could give us no details. All but one - the best of them. He had been working between Mosul and the Persian frontier as a muleteer, and had been south into the Bakhtiari hills. He found out something, but his enemies knew that he knew and he was pursued. Three months ago, just before Kut, he staggered into Delamain’s camp with ten bullet holes in him and a knife slash on his forehead. He mumbled his name, but beyond that and the fact that there was a Something coming from the West he told them nothing. He died in ten minutes. They found this paper on him, and since he cried out the word “Kasredin” in his last moments, it must have had something to do with his quest. It is for you to find out if it has any meaning.’
I folded it up and placed it in my pocket-book.
‘What a great fellow! What was his name?’ I asked.
Sir Walter did not answer at once. He was looking out of the window. ‘His name,’ he said at last, ‘was Harry Bullivant. He was my son. God rest his brave soul!’
CHAPTER TWO The Gathering of the Missionaries
I wrote out a wire to Sandy, asking him to come up by the two-fifteen train and meet me at my flat.
‘I have chosen my colleague,’ I said.
‘Billy Arbuthnot’s boy? His father was at Harrow with me. I know the fellow - Harry used to bring him down to fish - tallish, with a lean, high-boned face and a pair of brown eyes like a pretty girl’s. I know his record, too. There’s a good deal about him in this office. He rode through Yemen, which no white man ever did before. The Arabs let him pass, for they thought him stark mad and argued that the hand of Allah was heavy enough on him without their efforts. He’s blood-brother to every kind of Albanian bandit. Also he used to take a hand in Turkish politics, and got a huge reputation. Some Englishman was once complaining to old Mahmoud Shevkat about the scarcity of statesmen in Western Europe, and Mahmoud broke in with, “Have you not the Honourable Arbuthnot?” You say he’s in your battalion. I was wondering what had become of him, for we tried to get hold of him here, but he had left no address. Ludovick Arbuthnot - yes, that’s the man. Buried deep in the commissioned ranks of the New Army? Well, we’ll get him out pretty quick!’
‘I knew he had knocked about the East, but I didn’t know he was that kind of swell. Sandy’s not the chap to buck about himself.’
‘He wouldn’t,’ said Sir Walter. ‘He had always a more than Oriental reticence. I’ve got another colleague for you, if you like him.’
He looked at his watch. ‘You can get to the Savoy Grill Room in five minutes in a taxi-cab. Go in from the Strand, turn to your left, and you will see in the alcove on the right-hand side a table with one large American gentleman sitting at it. They know him there, so he will have the table to himself. I want you to go and sit down beside him. Say you come from me. His name is Mr John Scantlebury Blenkiron, now a citizen of Boston, Mass., but born and raised in Indiana. Put this envelope in your pocket, but don’t read its contents till you have talked to him. I want you to form your own opinion about Mr Blenkiron.’ I went out of the Foreign Office in as muddled a frame of mind as any diplomatist who ever left its portals. I was most desperately depressed. To begin with, I was in a complete funk. I had always thought I was about as brave as the average man, but there’s courage and courage, and mine was certainly not the impassive kind. Stick me down in a trench and I could stand being shot at as well as most people, and my blood could get hot if it were given a chance. But I think I had too much imagination. I couldn’t shake off the beastly forecasts that kept crowding my mind.
In about a fortnight, I calculated, I would be dead. Shot as a spy - a rotten sort of ending! At the moment I was quite safe, looking for a taxi in the middle of Whitehall, but the sweat broke on my forehead. I felt as I had felt in my adventure before the war. But this was far worse, for it was more cold-blooded and premeditated, and I didn’t seem to have even a sporting chance. I watched the figures in khaki passing on the pavement, and thought what a nice safe prospect they had compared to mine. Yes, even if next week they were in the Hohenzollern, or the Hairpin trench at the Quarries, or that ugly angle at Hooge. I wondered why I had not been happier that morning before I got that infernal wire. Suddenly all the trivialities of English life seemed to me inexpressibly dear and terribly far away. I was very angry with Bullivant, till I remembered how fair he had been. My fate was my own choosing.
When I was hunting the Black Stone the interest of the problem had helped to keep me going. But now I could see no problem. My mind had nothing to work on but three words of gibberish on a sheet of paper and a mystery of which Sir Walter had been convinced, but to which he couldn’t give a name. It was like the story I had read of Saint Teresa setting off at the age of ten with her small brother to convert the Moors. I sat huddled in the taxi with my chin on my breast, wishing that I had lost a leg at Loos and been comfortably tucked away for the rest of the war.