The Mule on the Minaret (52 page)

‘Ah, come now, sir. That isn't fair. How could I have guessed she was a high-up's wife?'

‘She didn't look it?'

‘I'll say she didn't. And I don't mind betting that she hadn't been it long.'

The train was due to reach Baghdad at seven. It was on time, Reid learnt. He had been awake since daybreak. His companion, who had not returned from the dining-car until he had himself curled up in his bedding roll, was still asleep. It was a brisk, clear morning and the sun glittered on the golden domes of Kahdimain. The agent's compartment was only two carriages away. From his window he would be able to watch the entire drama. There was no need for him to get on the platform. ‘The entire drama.' But probably it would seem far more dramatic in the
report that he would be writing in his cell-like office, than it would here on the platform.

The train's pace diminished. The scattered mud houses became more frequent; imperceptibly a village became a suburb, which became a town. The carriages were now level with the platform. The train was scarcely moving. He saw Frisky's door swing open, saw Frisky jump out on to the platform, to stand with his back to the train, his eyes searching the waiting-room as though he were expecting to be met. He did not once look behind him. He appeared to have judged exactly how long it would take the agent's coach to reach him. All down the train, doors were flying open. The door behind Frisky remained closed. The platform was beginning to empty before it opened. A man of medium height stepped out. He was wearing a black coat and a Sidara hat. He was carrying a small black suitcase. For a moment he was standing beside Frisky. Then he moved slowly towards the waiting-rooms. No one came out to join him. Frisky did not move. He stood as though he were still expecting some one. Then he moved away, at an angle from the man whose name on the Pullman porter's list had been entered as Majid Semal. Reid turned to watch Majid walk towards the exit. His walk was leisurely and unconcerned. No one came to welcome him. He was enveloped by the crowd. No one detached himself from the crowd. ‘I was right,' thought Reid. ‘Nothing could have been less dramatic.'

The office car was waiting for him. In ten minutes, he was at the mess. He had already shaved and he went straight in to breakfast. The Colonel had finished his eggs and was consolidating his powers with toast and marmalade. The Colonel raised his eyebrows interrogatively. Reid nodded. And in return the Colonel gave him a congratulatory nod, then said: ‘I've a message for you, Prof. Judge Forsyth wants you for golf this afternoon. You can? I thought you could.'

Reid was not hungry. He was too excited to be hungry. ‘No, no eggs,' he said. ‘Some coffee and some toast.' Besides, he was anxious to see if there was any mail for him. An answer from Jenks was overdue or at least he felt it was. He had been away two days. He went to his office before unpacking. There was a small pile of letters. Nothing, though, from Jenks. Nothing from Rachel, either. He wondered if she had decided not to write to him, till the case was over. That seemed incredible. There was so much
they had to write about; about their boys, about the house, about their joint responsibilities. A marriage, even if it ceased to be a love affair, remained a business partnership. Or did it suddenly cease to be that, when a marriage broke?

There was a letter from his elder son. Had she told the boys, he wondered. And there was a letter from his father. How shaky his handwriting had become. This would be a blow to him. He hoped Rachel had said nothing to his father. Why should she have? Why worry him? It would all come to nothing. Surely it would all come to nothing. He had been so certain of that when he had written to Jenks. But now he was less certain. This silence had lasted for a month too long.

It was eight o'clock. The clerks were filing into their offices. He put his letters in a drawer. Time for them later on. He crossed to the main filing-room. ‘Anything of importance come?' he asked.

‘One thing, yes, sir, from Beirut.'

‘Good, I'll take it with me.'

He was in a mood for work; for the impersonality of work. He would have to wait at least an hour before any news reached him from the detective. The detective was a member of the Iraqi police. The Centre's and British relations generally with the Iraqi police were excellent. An Englishman, a career policeman called Forester, had been seconded to the C.I.D. division. It was through Forester that the Centre maintained contact with the Police Force. Forester had supplied the detective who had followed the agent from the station. Reid knew that Forester would telephone as soon as he had received the detective's report. There was plenty of time to spare before that happened. He looked at the cover of the file that the staff sergeant had brought him. It was headed: Aziz. It was a little time since he had had news of Aziz. He began to read with a quickened interest. The letter was addressed to the Istanbul office.

‘We are puzzled as to what is happening to Aziz. Three weeks running he went to the restaurant, but no one contacted him. He has not been to the restaurant since. We wonder whether the Germans have lost interest in Aziz, or whether they have found another channel of communication. We do not see how they could have done this, but if they have, we do not see how we are going to find out. We have asked Chessman but he has no information. He has simply not been given any newspapers to bring through. We are worried at the possibility that a channel of communication
is in existence of which we are unaware. This is a considerable danger to security. We ourselves are in touch with Aziz, both socially and through Fadhil. He listens to Fadhil's records, and occasionally obtains records from Fadhil. But now that correspondence with Aziz's Turkish friend has been discontinued, there is no contact for us with Turkey through Aziz. It is in fact a highly ridiculous situation. Every month or so, we provide Aziz with a series of questions, the answers to which are supplied by the British Council. In return for this, Aziz is supplied with gramophone records.

‘Aziz occasionally visits the Centre's flat here in Beirut. We are supposed to be one of his sources of information. At one time, we talked rather openly to see how quick he was at putting two and two together. We do not do that any more. He seems unchanged. If he is at all changed, it is only through his air of being more relaxed. He was ill at ease originally, possibly because we were foreigners; and he had not met many English then. But he certainly does not seem to have anything on his mind. We are in a difficult position because we must not let him suspect that we suspect him.

‘We are in fact feeling that this particular operation, which promised so hopefully, has somewhere along the line gone wrong. We are afraid that we have a liability on our hands. We shall be most grateful if you can give us any clue as to what is happening. If you are unable to, and we are left in the dark, we shall, we feel, have to take steps to liquidate this liability.'

Reid raised his eyebrows as he read. Everything seemed to be happening at once. Rachel asking for a divorce, the wireless set and now Aziz in trouble. Over the balcony, the Colonel shouted, ‘Prof.' He picked up the Aziz file and took it with him. ‘Well, how's our Sherlock Holmes?' the Colonel said.

Reid made his report. The Colonel nodded as he listened. ‘That sounds all right; provided our friend with his black suitcase hasn't vanished in those back streets.'

‘We shall know in half an hour, sir.'

‘Exactly. That's the soldier's point of view. Launch your attack, and wait in your dugout. There's nothing you can do.'

Reid handed over the Aziz file. ‘Have you read this, sir?'

‘Yes.'

‘What did you make of it?'

‘There isn't any need for us to make anything. It's not our
pigeon. It's Beirut's and Istanbul's. We are only being kept in the picture.'

‘I can't help feeling some responsibility. I began this operation.'

‘I know you did. But that's the Army. With each new job you start afresh. Think how a colonel feels when he's posted to another unit on the eve of an attack he's planned. His men are his men no longer. Their fates are in another's hands. It isn't pretty. But he has to forget that and concentrate on the job in hand.'

‘What do you think Farrar will do, sir?'

‘What would you do in Farrar's position?'

‘Farrar and I are very different people.'

‘I know you are, that's why I'm asking. What would you do?'

‘I suppose I'd cut my losses, call the whole thing off.'

‘And leave that channel open?'

‘No, sir. I'd take Aziz up to the interrogation centre. Those French boys can be tough. I think that he'd break down.'

‘That's one way, certainly. I'm not saying that it's not the best, but I fancy that Master Nigel has something more dramatic up his sleeve.'

The telephone rang. The Colonel answered it. ‘Yes, yes, I see. It's for you, Prof.' He handed the receiver over. ‘It's from Forester.'

Forester's voice was high and harsh; the voice of a man who smoked too much.

‘Reid, is that you? When can you come down here?'

‘I can come right away.'

‘Excellent. I'll be expecting you.'

‘How did it go?'

‘Well; better than well. I'll see you.'

An excitement that was new to him shot along Reid's nerves.

‘He says it's gone all right, sir.'

‘Congratulations. I'll be on tiptoes, waiting. Leave me that file though, by the way.'

On his way down the balcony, Reid checked. There was something he had forgotten. Johnson's door stood open and he went in. ‘Can I have twenty dinars, please, on secret funds?'

‘Certainly, certainly, all the cash you want.' He counted out four notes. Then handed Reid a slip of paper on which was written: Dinars twenty, and the date. Reid signed the receipt. ‘It's really worth it this time,' he told Johnson.

‘It's not for me to question you.'

Johnson made an entry in his ledger, then lit a match and burnt the slip of paper.

The C.I.D. office lay in Rashid street on the north of the Maude Bridge. It was two-storied, like the majority of Baghdad houses. Reid always enjoyed his visits there. It was a ‘real' place. He would have found it hard to explain exactly what he meant by the word ‘real.' The Ritz was real, but so was a slovenly tavern on a river, or a congested side street in the slums. Each had grown spontaneously to meet a human need. Each was itself. So many places, like so many people, were not themselves. They were meretricious or contrived or simply down and out, sotted with inertia. The C.I.D. with its rickety balconies and stairways, its crowded hallway, its noise and bustle, its general shabbiness was itself and vibrant.

Forester's office was tucked away upstairs. It would have seemed a comfortably sized office if it had not been filled with books and files and a series of collections of old newspapers. ‘Always keep a few old newspapers around,' Forester would say. ‘They refresh your memory very usefully; crimes go back a long way. Suppose you're interrogating a man about something that happened in July 1938. It's not a bad idea before you see him to find out what was happening in Baghdad that month. What films were showing. What distinguished visitor was being met by whom, what the gossip was: not important international headline news; little local tit-bits, the kind of things that people remember when they forget when a Prime Minister was murdered. If you bring in a few of those little reminiscences, you'll often disconcert some one you're cross-examining. You say: “July the 20th. I remember that day rather well. They were showing Leslie Howard's ‘Romeo and Juliet' at the Rashid Cinema.” It startles him. He thinks if you remember that, you can remember anything. He's rattled and he makes a slip. He's so anxious not to give anything away that he tells a lie. Always keep a paper of some kind for every single week.'

Forester had been in Baghdad now for a dozen years and each of those years had its separate stack of papers. Forester was himself very small and wizened, only a few inches over five feet tall. The skin of his face was brown and wrinkled like a walnut. He had kept his hair, and his hair had kept its colour. It was impossible to guess his age; he might have been forty; he might have been over sixty. He always wore brown suits. Reid was not sure
what a marmoset looked like, but the word marmoset suited him. He often sat in his chair with one foot curled under him.

He jumped to his feet as Reid came in. His movements were somehow like an animal's, abrupt yet rhythmic. He clapped his hands. ‘Good news,' he said. ‘Good news.'

‘So your man followed him all right?'

‘There was no need for him to follow him. He recognized him; had known him all his life. He waved his hand at him. What luck; sometimes one has more luck than one deserves. No need for the least deception. We've got him where we want him.'

‘Who is he?'

‘A schoolmaster.'

‘Is his name Majid?'

‘It is not: Mulla Hassun.'

‘Where does he teach?'

‘In one of the Kuttabs in North Baghdad.'

‘Is he well off?'

‘He's not badly off.'

‘Would you say he was doing this for money?'

‘That's what we are hoping to find out.'

‘How are you proposing to find out?'

‘Through the usual methods.'

‘The usual methods?'

‘Now surely, Major, you know what the usual methods are?'

‘When I lectured on Shakespearean history, I would say: “You all know Henry V's reasons for declaring war on France” but as I couldn't be sure that they all knew them, I proceeded to outline what they were. I could, if I were put to it, write an essay on the usual methods, but I'd probably make a number of inessential points and leave out two or three that really mattered, so that as I have to report back to my Colonel, I would like to be able to tell him exactly what your methods are.'