The Levanter (25 page)

I didn’t give the matter any more thought then. Barlev had said that it would have been surprising if Ghaled had not had a few Katyushas. It was no concern of mine where they were going; or so I thought in my innocence. I did, however, bear the Mercedes diesel truck in mind. That, too, was a pity.

“What about Ghaled?” Teresa asked. “And reporting to Issa. They know you’re back.”

I made up my mind. “Tell Issa that there will be no more night work.”

“Just that?”

“No. Tell him also to convey a social invitation to our master.”

“Do we really have to?”

“Yes. I've got to get him off his own ground and onto ours. Dinner and backgammon the day after tomorrow, or, if that doesn’t suit him, any other evening he chooses.”

“When will I be going to Rome?”

“That’s why we’re asking him to dinner - to see if we can find out.”

The following morning I drove to Latakia and saw our agent there.

His name was Mourad, Gamil Mourad, and if I speak of him in the past tense it is because he has recently severed all connection with the Agence Howell.

A shipping agent like Mourad is rarely the employee of a single company; generally he is in business on his own account, finding cargoes for and serving the interests of several owners, and handling all the paperwork involved with discharging and loading: cargo manifests, bills of lading, insurance, and so on. He is a sort of traffic manager.

I don’t blame Mourad for disowning us. I didn’t level with the old man and he has grounds for complaint; although, to be frank, I never knew a time when he did not complain. He was the complaining kind; it was his way of doing business. My father thought highly of him.

He was very fat, suffered from bronchial catarrh, and always carried in his right hand a large bandanna square. This he used as a fly-whisk, a fan, and an expander of gestures as well as a handkerchief.

When I saw him he was still brooding over the rearrangement of schedules which had followed the, for him, extraordinary delay of
Amalia
in Tripoli.

He made downward flapping motions with the bandanna to signify his displeasure.

“I did not realize,” he wheezed, “that those Libyans had become so difficult.”

By “difficult” he meant “more than reasonably venal.”

“Now that they have oil,” I said, “they all expect to become rich.”

“Oil! Ah yes.” In Syria, the only Arab country with no oil of its own, you can blame almost any commercial misfortune on oil. “But such petty harassment is new.”

It was not only new but had also proved extremely expensive to me personally. I had had to employ a man I knew to be a crook as intermediary and pay him five hundred dollars of my own money; this in addition to the Libyan bribes. He would keep his mouth shut for the time being because I had promised him further similar commissions, and because he would still be trying to figure out why I was sabotaging my own ships; but eventually he would talk. Even if he were not wholly believed, his tale would leave a certain smell in the air.

“This delay has cost us money,” Mourad persisted.

“Perhaps this will make up for it. Here.” I gave him a list of the shipments I would be making from the cooperatives in the
Amalia.
They were substantial.

He shook his head over the list. “Is this all?”

“What have you got for her?”

“A hundred tons or so of scrap iron-briquettes. She will be half-empty.”

He never described a ship as being half-full; unless loaded to the gunwales she was always half-empty.

“She will also have passengers.”

“Passengers!”

If I had said chimpanzees he could not have been more astounded.

“That’s right For Alex. Four of them.”

“Paying deck passengers?”

“Deck passengers, of course.” As there was no passenger accommodation on the
Amalia
they couldn’t be anything else. “As to whether they will be paying or not, I don’t know.”

He was looking at me oddly and I don’t wonder. “Mr. Howell, this is a new departure.”

“As you well know, Mr. Mourad, we have become steadily more involved here with government business.”

“Yes, yes.” It was a wheezed lament for the Agence Howell’s lost virginity.

“And that this involvement has brought us many business advantages.”

“Many, you think? I would say a few, only a few.”

“Few or many, advantages have sooner or later to be paid for.”

“Ah!” Doom-laden.

“Having received certain favours we must expect that we will sometimes be asked to repay them.’’

“That is always the trouble.”

“And in ways that we ourselves cannot choose, Mr. Mourad. We are not consulted, we are told, instructed.”

“By whom?”

“In this case an agency of the government of which few approve. It is a branch of the security service.’’

He hawked loudly and raised his right hand to his lips. Phlegm neatly disposed of, he slightly rearranged the folds of the bandanna.

“ISS, you mean?” No ‘Certain Quarters’ nonsense, no beating about the bush for Mr. Mourad.

“I’m afraid so.”

“Who are these passengers?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Why must they go by ship to Alex?”

‘’I think we should not ask that question, Mr. Mourad. It is possible that Captain Touzani may be given certain orders. There may be a rendezvous with another vessel off Haifa, something of that kind.”

“You are willing to tolerate this sort of thing?”

“It has been made plain that I have to.”

“Touzani may have other views.”

“I will speak to Touzani.”

“No doubt.” He brooded for a moment. “Your father had a somewhat similar situation to deal with in ‘46.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, very similar it was. He dealt with it.”

“How?”

“He knew the right man to go to in the military administration.”

“Which military administration?’’

The British, of course. The French had gone. Are you too young to remember? Perhaps. Well, British or French, whoever ruled the roost, your father always knew the right man to go to and the right things to say. He would never tolerate interference. He knew whom to pay and how much, and he would always get his way. He had a high-handed way with politicos. Troubles were brushed aside.”

It might have been my mother speaking. I was tempted to point out that times had changed, that the “right man” in this case was Colonel Shikla, and that anyone in my position attempting to high-hand him would have to be out of his mind; but then I would have had to explain about Ghaled and other things, and frightening old Mourad would not have helped. He might have started fumbling things because he was scared. As long as he did as I told him without fuss, I didn’t care if he thought me a weakling.

“I prefer to handle this in
my own way, Mr. Mourad.”

He floated his bandanna horizontally in a brief gesture, as though drawing a line under a column of figures. He had given his advice and it had been rejected, unwisely rejected in his opinion, but so be it.

‘’I shall want the names of these passengers, Mr. Howell, for
Amalia’s
muster roll.”

“You shall have them, Mr. Mourad.”

We spoke of other things for a few minutes and drank some more coffee. Then I went back to Damascus.

Teresa had had a reply from Ghaled.

“He will come tomorrow night at eight.”

“What about transport?”

“He assumes that we will pick him up in the car, I think. I said that I would let Issa know.”

“Do you mind fetching him? I want to be alone with him for a while when he gets here. When you’ve put the car away give us half an hour by ourselves.”

“All right.”

“Offer to pick him up at seven thirty at the works. When you speak to Issa tell him to pass on the news also that
Amalia
may be docking a day early, on the twenty-sixth.”

“Is she docking early?”

“Not as far as I know. I just want him thinking that she may be. And I want the map put back on the office wall.”

“Have we still got it?”

“We must have.”

The wall map I was talking about was a big one covering the eastern Mediterranean and most of the Middle East, and had been specially drawn to display the Agence Howell organization. All the places where we had offices and main agencies were ringed in blue, and the principal tracks used by Howell ships were drawn in red. It was quite an elaborate affair. I had it taken down only because, one evening some months earlier, Dr. Hawa had made a nasty crack about it. Looking at the map he had commented acidly that Syria still seemed to be part of “the Howell empire.” Was that how I saw it? He had called me Emperor Michael once or twice after that.

So the map had been put away.

But now I had a use for it.

One of the things most clearly marked on it was the main shipping lane between Latakia and Alexandria.

I had not expected to enjoy entertaining Ghaled, but I had not been prepared for quite such a ghastly evening. It was humiliating, too. Although I planned everything very carefully - and, I thought, rather artfully - I got what I wanted from him not because I was clever, but because he chose to give it.

I received him with full ceremony in the big room which opened onto a courtyard of its own. There was a fountain in the courtyard, and it was very cool and pleasant.

That evening was the first time I had seen him in “civilian” clothing; that is, without his khaki bush shirt He had put on a white shirt for the occasion, with tie, and was carrying a tatty-looking briefcase, the kind without a handle that the French call a
serviette.
I assumed at first that this was a prop carried to make him look respectable in the city, but when he refused to let the servant take it, and I had had a closer look, I realized that he was using it to conceal a gun. Even on territory that could be presumed friendly he was taking no chances.

I gave him a champagne cocktail with plenty of brandy in it, which he drank thirstily as if it were water. I gave him a cigar and lit it for him. He sat back in his chair and looked around. Though he was clearly impressed he seemed perfectly at ease. That suited me. I wanted him relaxed and in as expansive a mood as possible. All the stiffness was going to be on my side. I continued to address him respectfully as Comrade Salah, and fussed a little. As soon as he had finished his first cocktail I immediately gave him another in a fresh glass. Then I suggested that he might like to inspect the rest of the villa.

He agreed, indulgently, with a soggy little quip about viewing my “capitalist decadence’’. I invited him to bring his drink. He thus had a cigar and a drink in his hands. I thought that he was going to leave his briefcase behind, but, though he hesitated for an instant, he ended by taking it with him.

The object of the exercise, from my point of view, was to get him to the office; but I took it slowly, lingering over things that took his fancy - he was pleased to let me know that he knew a Feraghan carpet when he saw one - and drawing him into giving opinions. When, at last, I took him along the passage leading to the office suite I murmured an apology.

“Only offices here, I am afraid, Comrade Salah. Nothing of interest.” I opened one half of a pair of double doors to prove it.

“Nothing of interest in Comrade Howell’s office?’’

It was exactly the sort of reaction I had counted upon. Immediately, I opened the other door and switched on all the lights.

The map was staring him in the face. It covered practically the entire wall, a splendid mass of bright colours all bristling with little yellow and green flags.

He had started toward it, heading straight for the Latakia-Cyprus area, and what I had hoped would develop into a revealing little illustrated chat about his plans for the
Amalia Howell;
he was almost within touching distance of the map, and then, maddeningly, he suddenly turned away.

He had seen the ship models.

They had been one of my father’s few extravagances. This thing of his for scale models had started soon after he had bought the
Pallas Howell.

Pallas
was the first ship of over 1,500 tons owned by the Agence Howell. She was also the first to have a modern funnel. The narrow stovepipes of the older ships had always been painted black; but, with the acquisition of the
Pallas
, named after my mother, Father had decided that we must have a “company” funnel like the big lines. He had designed it himself: yellow with a black “boot-top” and a big dark green H on the yellow ground. Below the H, and seeming from a distance to underline it, was a transliteration in Arabic characters of the name Howell.

When he saw the
Pallas
newly painted, he had ordered a scale model made for his office. By the time he died there were eight Howell ship models, three in his office and the rest in the board room, all in big glass cases on mahogany stands. They were made by a firm in England and cost a great deal of money, but my father said that they impressed visitors and were good for business. Although there may have been some truth in that, it was only an excuse really; he just liked them. And why not? They are soothing things to look at. There in the Damascus office I had three of the original eight:
Pallas, Artemis,
and
Melinda.

They fascinated Ghaled. I tried to steer him back to the map, but it was no use. He put his glass and the briefcase down on my desk and returned to the models. Then he began to ask questions.

What was this and what was that? And then: “Which is the
Amalia?
”

“We haven’t a model of the
Amalia,
Comrade Salah. I can show you a picture of her if you like.’’

But he was only interested in models. “Is the
Amalia
like any of these?”

“Very like the
Artemis.
That’s this one. She’s a three-island ship, too.”

“Three-island?”

“Well, that’s what they’re sometimes called. You see she has these big well-decks fore and aft. They have a comparatively low freeboard, so that when the ship is hull-down on the horizon, all you see are the bow and stern sections and the bridge superstructure sticking up. From a distance they look like three little islands.”