Orkhan Pasha turned away from the window with a shrug. He closed the shutters. ‘We have some planes,’ he told me, ‘but nowhere suitable for them to land and take off. That was why your idea appealed so much to us.’ He made an elegant lifting motion with both hands. ‘A man who carries his own machine on his back, who can rise into the air and come down again at will, like a bird, is exactly what we need. Certainly he can drop bombs and observe troop movements, but he can do much more. He can invade garrisons, occupy whole towns from within.’ His eyes became dreamy. I suspected he rolled hashish into his tobacco.
Çerkes Ethem had no scruples about financial questions. ‘How much would it cost to equip, say, a thousand men in this way?’
‘If you had your own factory?’
‘They could be made in secret. In parts. Let’s say in the workshops of Scutari.’
‘You’ll see from this note here. I’d guess, if we placed a bulk order for the engines, that we’d get them for about fifteen sovereigns apiece. Then there are the propellers, the wings. All must be made by skilled engineers and from specific kinds of wood. Another fifteen pounds, if produced in quantity. Say thirty sovereigns each.’
Çerkes Ethem began to scowl to himself. Orkhan Pasha let his chair drop forward. He dabbed at his eyebrow, removing a droplet of sweat. He looked almost desperately at his comrade, virtually willing him to speak and was then hugely relieved when the bandit said, ‘Thirty thousand in gold. Cheaper than a conventional plane. They cost about a thousand each.’ He pulled back his kaftan and drew a little, tasselled bag from his cummerbund. ‘There’s enough for four planes already!’ He shook with amusement. ‘The Greeks will give us more. And if they won’t, surely the Armenians will take pity on us.’ He winked at me. ‘This will get your factories going. We’ll let you have the rest shortly and we’ll make sure, incidentally, that you don’t betray us, Christian. The supply line will be easy enough. We’ll take the planes in boats up to Eregli, then bring them overland on mules. But first I suppose we’ll have to see one of your machines demonstrated.’
‘Naturally a prototype will have to be developed.’ I picked up the money. ‘But I would guess we could do that fairly quickly.’
Orkhan Pasha placed a hand on my shoulder. He was smiling. ‘And we shall want to see you fly it. Yourself.’ He uttered a soft, well-bred laugh which acted as a suitable complement to Ethem’s snorts and roars and which, on another level, was infinitely more threatening. ‘Then we’ll know how much faith you have in yourself.’
I resented their mistrust. ‘Enough to fly my first machine. I’m sure I’ve enough to test the next. Where can I begin? Have you machine shops here?’
Orkhan touched the tips of his fingers to his forehead. ‘My friend, I believe you. There are a few repair sheds. But it would not be good to work in Ankara. Çerkes Ethem will take you to a better place.’
I subsided, realising this plot was to be kept secret from their so-called President. My anger had clouded my judgment. Now I was to be dragged even deeper into the Anatolian interior.
Çerkes Ethem put his unshaven face next to mine. ‘You can even help us raise the money. That is as it should be, eh, Christian?’
He was to play variations on this moral irony (or what he perceived as one) for at least a further week. Three miserable days later, as my pony limped over a rocky mountain track, I was convinced I had become lost forever. The trousers of my suit had worn through, my overcoat had holes in three places, my hat was virtually useless, my shirt and underwear were crawling with vermin. My shoes had fallen apart and had been wrapped with rags and strips of leather so I probably resembled a very unsuccessful bandit, a leper or a wretched Hassidic rabbi. I was plunged in gloom. The gold Ethem had initially given me was tucked into my belt. When the bazhi-bazouk rode back to the end of the column from time to time he continued to remain, in his own way, extremely friendly. I was mounted on their oldest beast, behind the supply waggon. Ethem clearly enjoyed my misery. ‘Christian, this will give you all the more incentive to build yourself a flying machine!’
No one else called me ‘Christian’ (or occasionally ‘Infidel’). I think he had a romantic notion of himself, like so many bandits, as a hero of popular fiction. His men, of course, loved him for it, probably quite as much as they would have loved Douglas Fairbanks or Rudolph Valentino had they ever had the opportunity to visit the cinema. Ethem had all the grand gestures, the flowery language, the bravado, the way of pulling at his white stallion’s reins to make it come to a swift, sliding stop. I do not believe he could read, but I was certain someone had once entertained him with the same boys’ adventure tales I had enjoyed in my childhood. His larger-than-life manner, however, almost certainly kept up the morale of his men, who were prepared to suffer any hardship or peril for him. It was easy to see why so many preferred him to the rather dour Kemal Pasha, with his notoriously long-winded sermons, his strict morality and his tendency to consider obscure political consequences. I believe Ethem was conscious of the impression he had made on his men and played it up, courting them with displays of humour and daring as another might court a woman.
For this purpose, too, I was an ideal butt for his wit. His frequent calling upon Allah to save the poor infidel, his characterising me as the very symbol of decadent city life, gave his simple-minded brutes hours of amusement. For my own part I was glad to be presently useful to his ambitions. While I remained so, I did not have to fear for my safety. He continued, nonetheless, to keep me mystified about our destination and even became reluctant to let me know which day of the week it was. I began to suspect that he had no set plan at all, but was wandering the countryside in the hope of discovering something he needed. Twice he left me in the company of the women and carts, taking his men off towards a nearby village. He returned exhilarated while behind him the object of his destruction gave off tremendous volumes of black smoke. ‘I have just financed five new flying machines!’ he announced the first time and, the second: ‘Three more planes. Christian.’
The villages were described by him either as ‘pro-Greek’ or merely ‘Armenian’. This was sufficient justification for his attacks. I suspected they were neither. Again I found myself wondering if it was to be my fate always to be the slave of some brigand. Attila was said to have kept philosophers about him for his own entertainment. But I used the time to advantage. My day-to-day knowledge of Turkish improved slightly, though most of Ethem’s men were to say the least laconic. But it had become possible for me to utter more than a simple Agim or Susadim when I was hungry or thirsty, and stand a fair chance of my more complicated notions being understood. And I began to make it clear to Ethem that time was running out. It was not cost-effective to drag me around with him on his raids like this.
When for the third time the bandit rode off towards a town he was away longer than usual. I could hear shots and what seemed to be artillery fire: a full-scale battle, in fact. Once or twice, men returned in a hurry to drag boxes of fresh ammunition up onto their horses and gallop back over the hill. Ethem had evidently grown ambitious and was attacking a more difficult position. Then, some two hours after the firing subsided, several bandits came riding back to the carts hell-for-leather. One of them dismounted and ran to bring a horse to me, ordering me into the saddle. Rather reluctantly I complied, clinging to the bridle and the mane as the horse galloped off with the others over swampy, yellow ground. I felt sick, certain I must fall, but it was not long before we reached a good-sized town, with several well defined streets, tall buildings, a railway station and a telegraph. Half its buildings were already in ruins, presumably from previous battles, and many more were just beginning to burn. There were corpses everywhere. This time I barely held back my urge to vomit.