‘Already done,’ he said. ‘It won’t be passed on to Ruffini. but the PRPG will be notified and so will Sir Philip Gorde. He’s in Sharjah now.’
So that was that, and nothing to do now but wait. The day passed slowly. No sound from the direction of Jebel al-Akhbar. Not a single shot all day. The hill seemed suddenly dead. The heat was very bad. The wireless operator was on constant watch on the headquarters waveband. We switched only once to the BBC news. A Foreign Office spokesman had stated that whilst there was no official news, there was reason to believe that press reports were substantially correct and that a young Englishman had instigated some sort of guerilla activity against the Emir of Hadd. The whole matter was under urgent review. There were rumours of reinforcements standing by in readiness to be flown to Bahrain and two destroyers had left Aden, steaming north along the Arabian coast. Cairo Radio had stepped up its propaganda offensive.
Late in the afternoon I was woken from a stifling sleep in the shadow of the W/T truck with the news that the Hadd raiding force was returning. ‘And there’s been no sound from the fort at all.’ Berry passed me the glasses as I stood with slitted eyes gazing at a dust cloud right in the path of the sun. Thirty-three of them now,’ he said. The dust made it difficult, but as they passed to the south of us and I could see them more distinctly, I confirmed his count. They must have been travelling all night and moving very fast.’ The figures flickered indistinctly in the heat. The Emir will have picked up the Arab news,’ he added. ‘He’ll know he hasn’t much time. Had Whitaker a radio, do you know?’
‘I don’t think so.’
Then he probably doesn’t know what’s happening at home — that the Government’s being forced to take action. Oh well,’ he added, ‘if he goes up to the fort and his son’s still alive. Colonel Whitaker will learn from him what we were able to tell him yesterday. It might make some difference.’
I thought of that scene; father and son facing each other in the shambles of that fort. Watching the Emir’s force move past us, men and camels all lifted bodily off the ground by a mirage and turned into strange, distorted shapes by the heat rising from that sea of sand, I felt once again the cruelty of this desert world. It was so hard, so empty, so casual of human life — a crucible to transmute the flesh to skin and bone, the mind to something as distorted as those shapes dancing in a mirage. I had a premonition of disaster then; but not, I think, of tragedy — certainly not a tragedy quite so grim.
I watched them until they disappeared beyond the shoulder of Jebel al-Akhbar, and shortly afterwards the sun set. One more night. But there was still no news, no certainty of action. ‘Better turn in and get some sleep,’ Berry suggested. ‘I haven’t even got an ETA from the Colonel yet.’
‘Will we move in the morning, do you think? David can’t last out much longer.’ And in the morning he might be faced with his father’s desperate situation. ‘For God’s sake! It’s got to be tomorrow.’
‘You’d better pray then,’ he snapped back irritably. ‘For only God and the Foreign Office know what action will be taken and when.’ And he added angrily, ‘I don’t even know whether the Colonel’s order to my Company has been officially confirmed.’
I took his advice then and went to my camp bed. But sleep was out of the question. The night was hot and very still, the stars bright. Time dragged and I dozed, to be jerked awake by the distant sound of engines. It was 0155 hours and Berry’s Company was motoring in, dark shapes moving in convoy across the desert without lights. An officer reported all present and correct, but warned that the only orders he’d received were to wait for the Colonel and not to cross the border.
Orders whispered in the night, the dark trucks spewing men out on to the sand; the area of our camp was suddenly full of movement, an ant-heap settling to sleep, and a voice at my elbow said, “Ullo Mister Grant. Is Ruffini.’ His pudgy hand gripped my arm, patted my shoulder, words tumbled out of him. They had rushed him up to this Company to get him out of the way. He’d been made fabulous offers by several newspapers. ‘I am lucky, eh — lucky to be a journalist and out ‘ere at this minute?’ But I think he was a little scared. He was certainly lonely. His knowledge of the Arabs was based on Mussolini’s shortlived empire.
A bare two hours’ sleep and then the dawn breaking … Another day, and the ant-heap stirred and came to life, little groups of men forming and re-forming, an ever-changing pattern against the blistering yellow of sand and gravel. And standing there on the rim of the desert to the south-east, the Jebel al-Akhbar — black at first against the rising sun, but soon dun-coloured and bare. No sound, no movement to be seen through the glasses. And the desert all around us, that was empty and silent, too.
And then that solitary shot. We were sitting under a canvas awning, rigged from the side of the headquarters truck, and drinking tea. We all heard it, a sharp, faint sound from the direction of Jebel al-Akhbar. But when we looked through the glasses, there was nothing to see, and there was no further sound; just that one isolated shot. The time was 1034.
We had no reason to regard it as any different from the other shots we had heard, though afterwards we realized the sound had been slighter. We settled down again and finished our tea, an island of men camped in a void, waiting whilst the sun climbed the brassy sky and the oven-lid of the day’s heat clamped down on us, stifling all talk.
Only Ruffini was active, trotting sweating from one to the other of us, tirelessly questioning, endlessly scribbling, staring through creased-up eyes at the Jebel al-Akhbar, and then finally badgering Berry until he had given orders for his copy to be transmitted over the radio to Sharjah.
And then, just before midday, the dead stillness of the desert torn apart by the buzz-saw sound of a helicopter. It came sidling in from the north, a strange aerial insect painted for desert war, and in the instant of its settling the whole camp was suddenly changed to a single organism full of purpose. With Ruffini I stood apart on the edge of this ordered turmoil and watched the man responsible for it, surrounded by his officers, standing with his legs straddled, head thrown back — a man conscious of the dramatic quality of the moment.
Ruffini noticed it, too. ‘El Colonello — ‘e is going to war.’
But my attention had shifted from Colonel George. Coming towards me from the helicopter was the squat, battered figure of Philip Gorde. ‘Grant.’ He was leaning heavily on his stick as he faced me. ‘Where’s Charles Whitaker? What’s happened to him?’ And when I told him what we feared, he said, ‘Christ Almighty man, couldn’t you do something?’ But then he shrugged. ‘No, of course not. Bloody politicians!’ he growled. ‘Always too late making up their minds. Hope we’re in time, that’s all.’ He was staring at me out of his bloodshot eyes. ‘I gather he’d moved his rig up to the border. He’d started to drill, had he?’
‘Yes.’
‘I wish I’d known that earlier.’ He looked tired, his face liverish. ‘Not that I could have done anything to help him,’ he added heavily. ‘It’s a hell of a situation. And that boy of his a bloody little hero. Doesn’t he realize what he’s doing to his father — or doesn’t he care? God!’ He was jabbing at the ground with his stick. ‘Well, we’ll just have to hope we get there in time,’ he said again and he stumped off to talk to Colonel George.
The cluster of officers was breaking up now; voices shouting orders, men running, the whirr of starter- motors, the roar of engines, a Land-Rover disappearing in a cloud of dust.
‘Ah, there you are, Grant.’ The Colonel, neat and dapper, cool almost in the torrid heat, came towards me. ‘The boy’s still alive, I gather.’
‘There was a shot fired … ‘
‘So Berry tells me. We’ll just have to hope for the best. I’m sending a small force up to take over the fort. The rest of the outfit will move direct on Hadd. Berry’s gone ahead to make contact with the Emir. You and Ruffini can ride in the headquarters truck.’