The Mule on the Minaret (67 page)

‘This may prove useful evidence,' he said. ‘We'll take this with us.' There was so little to ransack in so small a house that they were quickly satisfied that nothing was concealed.

‘En route,' said Forester.

There was no click of handcuffs. They drove, the three of them and the two policemen, in the office car. Hassun was handed over to the police and Reid and Forester went upstairs.

‘I suppose,' said Reid, ‘that all I didn't understand was the usual rigmarole warning about “anything you say will be taken down and may be used in evidence against you”?'

‘Exactly the way it is in Sexton Blake.'

‘Now what?' asked Reid.

‘Let him cool his heels in jail and let him think. In three days' time we'll have a talk with him.'

‘And continue to leave his friends at liberty?'

‘I'd rather wait and see if they react in any way.'

Forester gave Reid a careful briefing before the interview.

‘We'll conduct this in English. He speaks perfectly good English. And with English he'll feel in a foreign country. That'll intimidate him. Moreover, you'll understand what's going on.' Forester explained his plan of campaign. ‘It is my belief that sooner or later he will incriminate himself. I don't know where. I don't know how. It may take place in the first interview. It may take place in the seventeenth. We are in no hurry. I want to move very slowly. I aim to recapitulate step by step the story as we see it. I will go over it with an elaboration that you will find ineffably dull. I want you to sit at my side. I want you to have arranged before you the maximum possible number of various files. The layman is terrified
of files. They are, in his eyes, the pathway to the judgement seat. I shall refer to you quite often. I shall rely on you to consult your files with deliberation; then announce your discovery in a firm, clear voice. You can rely on me to conduct proceedings with the appropriate air of assurance. Sooner or later, in my opinion, he will make a slip.'

With seven files in front of him and at his side, Reid watched and listened while Forester conducted the examination. Nothing could have been more informal and relaxed. Hassun was invited to sit down. He was offered a cigarette.

‘Put yourself at your ease,' said Forester, ‘and I must apologize from the very start for the discomfort to which you have been subjected. In wartime certain of the safeguards of civilized living have to be relegated to abeyance. The law of Habeas Corpus, for example. We have to fight our enemies with the same weapons that they use. You will, as a historian, agree with me that one of the tragedies of international warfare is that we tend to become the very thing we fight. We go to war in defence of Freedom; and we can only defeat the enemies of Freedom by ourselves curtailing our own rights. I know that you understand that; and that you will make allowances for the rough treatment that you have received at our hands. This is wartime after all. And you have unfortunately placed yourself in a rather awkward situation in view of the fact that Iraq has been at war with the Axis powers since January 1943. I will go over the story step by step. Colonel Reid will prompt me if I make a slip. As you see, he has the necessary files at his disposal. I am an old man. I cannot be expected to remember everything. Let us start now at the beginning. In March 1943. Have you got the exact date, Colonel Reid?'

Reid turned the pages of a file slowly, paused, studied a page, then read out: ‘March 23, 1943.'

‘Exactly. Thank you, Colonel. On that date, March 23,1943, we learnt that a wireless transmitter set was being sent from the Germans in Ankara to one of their agents in Baghdad. We did not then know who that agent was. We took steps to discover who that agent was. That agent was to join the Taurus Express at Mosul.'

He went over the operation slowly, in minute detail; frequently turning to Reid for corroboration. ‘Isn't that so, Colonel Reid?' or ‘Can you verify that date, Colonel Reid?'

He handed Hassun a sheet of paper and a pencil.

‘It will be simpler,' he explained, ‘if you do not interrupt until
I have finished my deposition. Will you take notes of anything that occurs to you? And then, when I have ended, you can raise those points one by one.'

It took him over an hour to reach the train journey from Mosul to Baghdad. ‘Colonel Reid was on that train. He saw you get off the train. You were carrying a small black suitcase. I suggest to you that the suitcase which we took from your house three days ago is the suitcase you were carrying that day. Colonel Reid tells me that he did not see you carrying that suitcase when you got on to the train at Mosul. Is that true, Colonel Reid?'

‘Yes, that is true. I did not see Doctor Hassun carrying that suitcase when he got on to the train at Mosul.'

‘It is our contention, Doctor Hassun, that you found this black suitcase in your compartment when you boarded the train at Mosul, that it had been placed in your compartment by an agent whom you did not know and whom in fact you have never met. It is our contention that that suitcase contained a wireless transmitter set. We have examined the suitcase carefully and we have satisfied ourselves that it is not a type of suitcase that can be easily obtained here in Baghdad. We have, however, learnt that this type of suitcase is in general supply in Turkey. It is made in Czechoslovakia and Turkey can conduct trade with Czechoslovakia whereas Iraq cannot. We shall later on ask you how you obtained possession of that suitcase if you did not, as we contend that you did, acquire it on the Taurus Express on the night of May the fifteenth 1943. No, please do not interrupt, Doctor Hassun. You will have plenty of time later on to correct me if I am misinformed on any point.'

Hassun was shifting uncomfortably. Reid could see that Forester's technique of not allowing him to speak was working on his nerves. He was becoming restive. At the start he had worn an air of indifference. He had made no notes upon the sheet of paper. But in the last half hour he had begun to scribble. He asked for another sheet of paper; mainly so that he should have something to do, Reid felt. He himself was beginning to feel the tension. His chair was not very comfortable; a draught blew under the ill-fitting door. These Arab houses were not adapted to the few cold winter weeks. He was getting very bored. The interview had been going on for two hours. It seemed to be making no progress whatsoever. Reid, who was used to the methods of the lecture room, where he was concerned with the firm making of his points and the retention of his listener's interest, found the performance insupportable. No
one had the right to be such a bore. And the most exasperating feature of it all was that he could not permit his own attention to wander. Every few minutes Forester would be turning to him to corroborate some point.

‘I think you have, Colonel Reid, the testimony of your field security sergeant who accompanied the prisoner on the train. Will you read it, please?'

Or again: ‘Now I think, Colonel Reid, that you have there the receipt for the sleeping car in which the prisoner travelled down from Mosul. Can you tell me its number, please?'

And Reid would shuffle through the papers until he found the pertinent document. Minute after minute, quarter after quarter, on and on it went. Reid was beginning to feel hungry. He knew very well that Forester, the policeman, was trying to weigh Hassun down with the weight of evidence, with the appearance of evidence, with this avalanche of papers; on and on it went.

Forester was now explaining the methods of censorship that he had adopted. ‘We watch every means of communication, air, mail, road, train, telephone. We learn how you spend your days, we learn what your interests, what your hobbies are. We learn who your friends are: and who the friends of your friends are: the ramifications of this experiment are endless. Colonel Reid has one highly efficient, well trained officer who is occupied with nothing else. Colonel Reid, will you show us the files that that officer has assembled?'

Reid lifted up three bulky files.

‘Those files,' Forester went on, ‘are filled. They are well filled as you can judge, with specimens of intercepted correspondence. And they contain only that part of the correspondence that seemed significant. They are only a part of what we have examined.'

On and on it went. They had been here for three hours now. There was a strain upon his bladder, yet he did not dare to disturb the atmosphere. He supposed he could hold on for another hour; but his patience was fretted to the limits of self control. The strain on his nerves was greater than that upon his bladder. On and on it went.

Forester was now retailing the number of suspects he had had under observation. ‘It is over seventy. Colonel Reid can give us the exact number.'

‘Seventy-three.'

‘Seventy-three; that is, you will concede, a substantial number.
Each suspect has involved us in a separate investigation. It has taken time. It has taken a great deal of time. That is why you have been allowed to remain at liberty so long. It is nearly six months since you made that trip to Mosul. There was no hurry. We spread our net wide. We are now drawing it in close. We knew which ones to let loose and which to keep. We have narrowed down our suspects from that long list of seventy-three, down to just five names. The five names we really need. It has involved us in many hours of work, but it has been worth it; it has been well worth it. We have got the men we want.'

On and on and on. Must he elaborate, must he over-elaborate every point? He would drive a class to sleep in twenty minutes. On and on and on.

‘Five names. But they are names that matter. There is yourself first. The ringleader. There is your colleague, Professor Jamal. There is the captain in the Iraqi army, Baroud el Baghdadi. There is your colleague, Shabibi. There is...'

But Forester was never to reach that fourth name. Hassun was on his feet. He had pounded with his fist upon the table. ‘No, no, no,' he shouted. ‘Not Shabibi, no, not him. Nothing to do with it. No, nothing.'

He stood, his breath coming quickly; his hands clenched. At last his reserve had cracked. Forester had made his point.

Silence followed the explosion. A silence that Forester prolonged. ‘Nothing to do with what?' he asked, very quietly.

‘With all of this. The names, the censorship, the wireless set; Shabibi was not in that.'

‘And the others were? I see.'

There was a pause. Then Forester said, again very quietly: ‘Now please, Doctor Hassun, please sit down. We will accept what you say about your colleague. I had my doubts about him myself, but I let myself be overruled by Colonel Reid; the military are so suspicious; but we have made some progress. We have established the fact that the wireless set does or did exist, and that apart from my mistake about Professor Shabibi, our general estimate of the situation is accurate. We shall make swifter progress now. And I think, Professor, that we will ask you to tell us in your own way, quietly, how all of this came to happen. I have been talking too long, too much; I must give you a chance to talk. But first we would like, all of us perhaps, a little interval; and then a cup of coffee. Shall we meet here again in ten minutes' time?

The atmosphere was now completely changed. There was a sense of relaxation; like rival footballers talking it all over after the match. Forester acted like a host: ‘Now let's start at the very beginning. Tell us how you came to be mixed up in all of this.'

It had started, so Hassun told him, before the war; through Grobba. He had been anti-British. The British were arrogant and offensive. They were also, he had believed, decadent. Germany represented the new idea. He had liked Grobba. He had hoped that Germany would win the war. He had hoped that Rashid Ali would set up a new pro-German administration in which Germany instead of Britain would provide technical advisors to the Iraqi ministries. It was a great disappointment to him when the British won the campaign and restored the Prince Regent. It was during the last hours of the short German occupation of Baghdad that he had been contacted by the Germans.

‘Were you contacted by Grobba himself?' Forester inquired.

‘No, by a German officer on the General Staff.'

‘How did he come to hear of you?'

‘From an Iraqi student in Ankara. One of my old pupils. Before the campaign, someone in the German Embassy collected a list of Iraqis who would be sympathetic to the Germans. I was on the list.'

‘Do you know who else was on that list?'

‘No.'

‘Did you know Grobba personally?'

‘I had met him once or twice. I do not think he would have remembered me.'

‘How did this German contact you?'

‘Through a messenger, sent to the college. Everything was in very great confusion. The Germans were going out; the British hadn't arrived. Jewish shops were being burnt. Jews were being killed. Everything had to be done in a hurry.'

‘What did this German say to you?'

‘He explained that this return of the British was only temporary; that Germany was certain to win the war; that this was a local reverse; not to be taken seriously. The Germans would soon return. In the meantime they would want to be able to receive first-hand information as to what was happening in Baghdad. They wanted to establish wireless communication with Baghdad. They asked if I would accept a set if they sent one down and operate it on their behalf.'

He had explained to the Germans, Hassun said, that he was not a technician, that he would not know how to manipulate the set. ‘But you surely have a friend who could. You must have some friend in the Iraqi Army who is trained in wireless.' In the end they had agreed that he would try to recruit a small group who would assist him. Then as soon as they could manage, the Germans would send down a wireless transmitter by the Taurus Express. ‘How were you going to know when the set was ready to be sent down?'

‘They would send me a postcard from Turkey saying: “I hope Aunt Marian is well.” '