Arabesque (16 page)

“Why should I? I can earn my own living.”

“Just old mother Prayle foretelling the future in a pool of owl tears. I must go now, Mrs. Herne, and pick up Fouad.”

“Good luck, and—and bless you!”

“For your own sake,” he persisted, “tell me the story.”

“I’d tell you so gladly for your sake,” she replied. “But I’m not allowed to. Don’t think too hardly of me.”

Prayle hurried back to the Field Security office, thanking God for Fouad. If that damned, sympathetic murderer had never existed, his visit to Jerusalem would have ended, just as he had feared,
in a straight rebuff from Armande. Well, he had got it; but it was no collision of their prides and their tastes, driving them irrevocably apart. It was merely a straight line, a reluctant line,
among the complex curves of their relationship.

The truck was waiting outside the office. He jumped in alongside Fairfather’s batman driver, and told him to go to Sarafand. Just outside Jerusalem, where the road began to sweep downwards
along the hillside, the truck overtook Fouad.

“Let’s give the old girl a lift,” Prayle suggested.

“O.K. Sergeant, but she won’t take it,” the driver answered.

“Very heavy basket. Let’s see.”

Fouad climbed into the back without a word. Fifteen miles further on, in the wooded gorge of Bab el Waad, Prayle stopped the truck and, to the driver’s shocked surprise, led Fouad off into
the plantations. There he gave him his papers and a sketch of the birthplace and past life of George Nadim Salibah.

“No thanks needed,” he said. “Sheikh Wadiah helps us. We help him, and you too. Didn’t you help our soldiers when they came to Beit Chabab?”

Prayle’s shot in the dark was successful.

“Yes,
moussi
é
,
” Fouad answered. “I guide them.”

“Did they speak English?”

“Yes,
moussi
é
,
but not like Englishman.”

“You don’t understand it, do you?”

“I hear plenty English. English say
urra ovva urra ovva.
Very slow. Always angry. These men not speak like English.”

“How do you know?”

“Just as I know you not Frenchman. French say
pang pang pang,
very fast. You speak French, but you say
urra ovva urra ovva,
not
pang pang pang.
”

“The hell I do!” said Prayle, rather annoyed. “What did they look like? Dark or fair?”

“Dark,
moussi
é
,
but not so dark as Arab.”

“Did Sheikh Wadiah notice anything?”

“No. He talk only with major and speak all the time. Much welcome.”

“No idea what they were?”

“No,
moussi
é
.
Not English. Not French. I not know what you send. Great country. Many allies. Me too British soldier now. Very proud.”

“That’s fine, Fouad,” said Prayle kindly. “And when it wears off, just remember Madame Armande.”

The driver stared when he saw Prayle return from the woods with a man. Then he grinned. This was real secret service stuff. It was the first time in all his driving for Field Security that
anything dramatic had happened.

“Keep it under your hat, chum,” said Sergeant Prayle. “Now off we go to Sarafand!”

He saw Private George Nadim Salibah duly sworn, and whispered to the sergeant who took charge of him a mysterious and quite incomprehensible story of the new recruit’s services to
Intelligence. Salibah’s prestige was firmly established, and Sergeant Prayle was invited to lunch at the mess.

Back in Jerusalem, Prayle gave his whole attention to the investigation in hand. He had solved the problem of Wadiah’s private arsenal, but not the problem of convincing his superiors. It
was obvious that Abu Tisein had used Armande to acquire Wadiah’s machine guns for the National Home and that a party of Jews in British uniform had boldly collected them. Proof, however, was
lamentably short unless Armande herself spoke out.

Her hint about the French did not make sense. The French never had those arms. Montagne’s indignation had been too real. It looked as if Abu Tisein had already started to lay down a smoke
screen. Guy Furney’s judgment would never be smothered by it, but Furney was already on his way to Abyssinia, and his successor, Major Rains, was reputed to see no further than the inside of
a file. Nobody except Captain Fairfather, who knew both Armande and Abu Tisein, would easily believe that she thought and still thought she was working for her own country. And Fairfather cut no
ice in the Lebanon.

“The skipper got any hobbies?” he asked Sergeant MacKinnon.

“Aye, women!” answered the sergeant with relish. “And whusky! And wor-r-rk! But he doesna’ take them seriously. And just when I hae him trained to a decent routine of one
or the other, he must start some daft doin’s to amuse himself.”

“Does he look after the chaps?”

“I will not say he cares for our pheesical condition as well as an officer of the Black Watch,” said MacKinnon, “but there’s no lie he wouldna’ tell for any of
us.”

This testimonial reassured Sergeant Prayle that Fairfather was, at any rate, more than an amiable eccentric. He decided to report to him, by easy stages, as much as he knew.

“Well, did you have any luck with Mrs. Herne?” asked Fairfather as soon as he entered the office.

“Yes and no, sir.”

“What did she say?”

“That she wouldn’t discuss the matter.”

“Bitch,” pronounced Fairfather thoughtfully.

“Mentally, sir.”

“God forbid that I should apply so coarse a word to her mere enjoyment of womanhood! I meant her mind. Like Tobias’s dog, it seduces but does not perform. What else did she
say?”

“That the master would deal with my inquiry upstairs.”

“Does she believe that, or is the master just wasting time?”

“Both,” said Prayle. “There’s a lot of innocence in that little noggin.”

“Innocent? Armande Herne?” asked Fairfather sceptically. “A pretentious, sophisticated … well but, good Lord, you might be right! Who is the master upstairs? Got any
line?”

“Old Joab, sir.”

“Do you want a commission, Sergeant Prayle?”

“Baton in the knapsack.”

“Well, you’ll have to be a damned sight clearer for your men than you are for me. Who’s Joab?”

“Abu Tisein.”

Prayle told him of Abu Tisein’s connection with Armande, and of the mysterious collection of the arms. He left out any mention of Fouad’s adventures, merely describing him as
reliable informant.

“Joab, yes,” said the captain. “It touched him off nicely. I just wonder whether he is doing his Joab stuff or his Lawrence stuff.”

Fairfather leaned back in his chair, and relit his pipe.

“By the way,” he asked, “when did you know that all arms in the Lebanon were to be collected by the French?”

“Captain Wyne did not know till they started to collect.”

“Then there’s a good chance that David Nachmias didn’t know either. That makes a difference, you see. I can’t imagine Abu Tisein doing anything so foolish that he would
be caught out. But if he never dreamed that anyone would bother Wadiah for arms, the plan looked dead safe. It was a thousand to one against Wadiah ever having to produce that receipt. Why should
he? He might frame it and hang it in his parlour some day, when the whole affair was too old for investigation; but that’s all. If the French hadn’t suddenly started to collect arms, we
should never have heard a word of Abu Tisein’s intrigue and we should never have guessed that he used Armande.”

“She never knew,” Prayle insisted.

“Possibly. On the other hand, she’s inclined to take a line of her own, you know.”

“Can we get David Nachmias for impersonation of the military?”

“Not a hope!” said Fairfather, obviously relishing the subtlety of Abu Tisein’s crime. “Your poor old Wadiah handed over his arms to what he thought was a party of
British troops. Who were they? They might be French, Syrians, Cypriots, anything in battle dress. You’ve no proof that they were Jews. And if we accused the Jewish Agency, they would quite
certainly reply that the troops were British and that we were trying to frame them. My dear Prayle, it was a very clever coup!”

“But don’t these people care whether they are suspected or not?”

“Not a bit, so long as there’s no legal proof. The Agency falls for arms like lesser men for wine and women. Time and again they risk their whole reputation. But when you remember
the massacres at Hebron and Haifa and Safad and half a dozen small colonies, it isn’t surprising that the Jewish Agency prefers to have a rifle in every house rather than a division of
British troops thirty miles away. I should myself.

“It’s all a question of values, Prayle. They would rather increase their own little force than retain the trust of the British. And then, to make matters worse, whenever they are
fairly and squarely caught in an arms scandal, they put up one of their long-haired hot-air merchants to encourage the extremists and to tell us we are anti-Semites.

“Good God, if the Jews were one-tenth as clever as we think they are, they could be sure of Palestine merely by playing on the idealism of the British and flattering our profound
conviction that we always do God’s will!”

“Sergeant Prayle, I too am a Zionist, and I weep for Zion like Jeremiah. There’s a fine, splendid spirit in the making of this country. Never mind their national socialism—only
a rather ruthless government of gangsters could make the desert flower as they have done. Under the surface is real joy and idealism and utter self-sacrifice. And all this glorious, interesting
experiment is in danger, just because a people who can be incredibly cunning over trifles like arms cannot learn to be cunning in statecraft.”

“You should come and take a Syrian section for a holiday, sir,” said Prayle.

“Not me! You take security seriously up there. Palestine is restful. All we can do is to watch and report, and nobody pays the slightest attention to what we say. After all, they have
heard it before.”

“I meant a simple life with the plain, dishonest Arab.”

“Well, there are hundreds of people who understand him better than I do. But sometimes I think that nobody in this country understands the European Jew. You see, our governors have had no
chance of learning. They are trained in the Sudan or West Africa or the Malay States. They know how to handle the brown-skinned agriculturist with patience and justice. But that knowledge
doesn’t make them understanding administrators of Palestine. They should spend a year in a Polish ghetto—if there are any left—learning the influence of atheism on the tribal
structure of the Jews, and another year on the East Side of New York studying family life and political mythology.

“And the Jews are completely ignorant of us. Most of these immigrants were brought up under czarist or communist or Polish or Rumanian governments, and they simply can’t understand
our ways. They won’t believe that there isn’t any secret police more sinister than you and me. And never will they believe that so far from our government being a bunch of able,
treacherous intriguers, the only people who have any views on Palestine at all are the harmless, honest District Commissioners (whom, incidentally, they generally like) and a few muddleheaded old
boys in the Colonial Office who try hard to be fair to both sides at the expense of all imperial interests.”

“Gratitude?” Prayle asked. “No gratitude? After all, we put them in Palestine, and we have just beaten the Arabs for them.”

“My dear Sergeant, they don’t see it that way. We punished the Arabs so severely that they won’t dare move unless Rommel crosses the frontier. Then, when we had smashed their
rebellion, we gave them half what they asked for. That was brilliant—sword in one hand, bread in the other—and of course a true Palestinian like David Nachmias appreciates it. But do
you suppose the new immigrants do? No, God help them, they think we gave in to rebellion!

“Gratitude? Gratitude is a flower that only grows in a courtly, kindly, settled environment. Gratitude means that you, the recipient, believe that a kindness was disinterested,
unnecessary, offered for the sake of love or abstract morality. Now, that is what a Jew finds it very hard to believe of a Gentile. He believes it, of course, of his own folk, for, as I need hardly
tell you, Sergeant, the only people who really practise Christianity towards each other are—with the exception, as elsewhere, of their politicians—the Jews. You remind me, Prayle, or
possibly I remind myself …”

Sergeant MacKinnon knocked, and put his head through the door.

“If ye’ve finished with Sergeant Prayle, sir, he’ll be wanting his tea.”

“Ah, yes. Tea, of course,” said Captain Fairfather regretfully. “Well, Sergeant Prayle, let me know if I can help at all. About once a year we are not so futile as we seem. Are
you all right for money?”

“Conditions in Lombard Street very stringent, sir.”

“Right oh! We’ll give you a casual for anything you want.”

As he left the office, Prayle doubted whether even once a year Captain Fairfather was not futile. It was pretty evident that he did not intend to forsake his fascinated contemplation of
Palestine for the hard, perhaps impossible, task of bringing military justice to bear on David Nachmias. Armande would thus remain under suspicion.

He could not suppress the fact that she had admitted some knowledge of the disappearance of the arms, and then who was going to believe that she had not, for money or misplaced enthusiasm,
worked for the Zionists? All he could do was to present the straight evidence in his report and to stress his opinion of her innocence.

Sergeant Prayle prided himself upon his business method. He had observed and regretted that his clear verbal communications were not easily understood by any but personal friends; he was
therefore the more resolved that any written reports of his should be exact, coherent and compelling. After tea, he provided himself with squared paper and plain foolscap, and settled down in a
quiet corner of the billet to write a straightforward account of Armande and Abu Tisein. He laid on the table a fountain pen, a blue pencil, a red pencil and a slide rule. He enjoyed all office
gadgets; they were an aid to clear thought, and pleasant to manipulate.