The Kittyhawk coughed, started, lost interest, died.
“Why?” Barton asked.
Skull finished reading a sentence and looked up reluctantly. He took a long time to find Barton. He pushed his spectacles up his nose and frowned. “Oh, you wouldn’t be interested,” he said, and turned back to the diary.
“Yes I bloody would,” Barton said.
Skull sighed, and turned back a page. “Let’s see… Here it is. Fanny, through sheer determination, has become the perfect fighter leader.”
They waited. “Is that it?” Prescott asked.
“What? Oh no, there’s more. He doesn’t care who he kills. If he can’t find an enemy he invents one. To defend decency and freedom he has become a thoroughly unscrupulous bastard. If he couldn’t fly for us I’m sure he’d be perfectly happy in the Luftwaffe.”
“Bollocks,” Barton said.
“Pinky had some funny ideas,” Prescott said. “I remember—”
“Utter bollocks!” Barton said. “Crap, turds and bollocks! It’s all pure bollocks.”
“Of course it’s just one man’s opinion,” Skull said. “I’m sure if you were to ask the rest of the squadron…” He broke off, and shook his head. “What am I saying?” he murmured.
“He can write what he likes,” Barton growled, “it’s bollocks from start to finish.”
“Anything there about me?” Hooper asked.
“As it happens, yes, I did come across a remark.” Skull searched the pages. “Just a line: Hooper is a typical American. He believes God invented the gun, and vice versa. Quite terse.”
“God did invent the gun,” Hooper said. “America is God’s own country and the gun is God’s own weapon. It says so in the Bible.”
“Bollocks,” Barton said doggedly.
“Well, if it doesn’t, it ought to.”
“What’s wrong with those kites?” Barton stood up and glared at them. “Come on, Hick. I want to get weaving.” He and Hooper walked toward the aircraft.
“Let’s have a look at that,” Prescott said.
“Oh… it’s awfully tedious,” Skull said. “Not worth the effort.”
“Didn’t sound tedious to me.”
“And classified, strictly speaking. Top secret. I’d better lock it up.”
Prescott, who was tall and muscular, took the diary from him. He skimmed through it. After a couple of minutes he said, “Where’s all that stuff about Fanny?”
“Nowhere. I invented it. And the bit about Hick, too. Quite good, wasn’t it, for the spur of the moment?”
“Look.” Prescott tossed the diary back to him. “I like Fanny. I respect him. I don’t go much on this sort of practical joke.”
“No joke,” Skull said. “Deadly serious. I meant every word.”
Prescott was shocked and offended. “You honestly think Fanny would fly for the Luftwaffe?” he demanded. “That’s insane.”
“Of course it’s insane. Fanny forgot which side he’s on long ago. There aren’t any sides in his war. There’s just the desert and the enemy. He doesn’t want to win, for God’s sake. He wants to fly and fight forever. This desert is fighter pilots’ heaven.”
“Not much of a heaven for Pinky Dalgleish.” Prescott was still angry.
“That’s the pity of it,” Skull said. “You can’t have a Fanny Barton without a Pinky Dalgleish. Don’t tell him I said so. He’ll hit you.”
The Arabs had learned a new word: jip. They were proud of it, and when George the Greek showed no enthusiasm they were disappointed. One of them drew a picture in the sand. It was a box on wheels. “Jip,” the man said.
“Oh, jeep” George said. The Arab nodded wisely and held up three fingers. “Jip-jip-jip,” he said, and much more.
George got the message. There were three jeeps somewhere in the Jebel and these jeeps would carry him home to his friends. Until this could be arranged he must be patient. The idea of walking home was out. Too many Germans in the area.
This he believed, for he saw German patrols almost every day. Once, he even sold some eggs to a foot-patrol that came by at the end of the afternoon, looking very weary. They treated him exactly like the other Arabs. When he tried his few words of Arabic on them, they shrugged or looked away. The soldier who gave him sugar for the eggs, snapped “Imshi!” when the deal was done. Literally it meant “fast” or “speedy”; there was a British fighter ace in the desert called “Imshi” Mason. But every Allied soldier used “Imshi!” to mean “Get out!” or “Buzz off!” George was amused to hear it from a German in the Jebel, but he did not smile. He imshied.
It was late in the morning and he was sitting on a rock, picking the last flaking traces of dead scabs off his ribs, when a German truck came round a bend and drove up to the camp. It was in no great hurry, and the troops who got out of it took their time assembling the dozen or so Arabs. No force was used; indeed the soldiers were quite courteous. They merely pointed where they wanted everyone to go, which was into the big tent. There was just enough room for them all to sit in a semi-circle, facing the door.
After a while a young German officer came and stood in the entrance. He looked to be about twenty-three. He had freckles. George noticed this because he hadn’t seen any freckled men until he left Greece. Freckles usually went with very fair skin. He wondered how this man survived the desert sun.
The man appeared to be waiting. He said nothing and did nothing. He just stood, looking calm and pleasant, and waited.
The tent got hot. It would be hot in any case, of course, with the sun almost directly overhead, but now the body-heat from a dozen people pushed the temperature even higher.
This was no great problem for the Arabs. They never allowed heat to disturb them. They accepted it, suffered it passively, survived it. George had learned the trick. He simply sat and let time pass. If the flies could tolerate it so could he.
The officer stood and waited. Occasionally he shifted his weight from one leg to another. George looked at the officer’s boots until they gently went out of focus. It was a restful way to do nothing.
Ten minutes passed. Or it could have been twenty. Or thirty. Nobody moved. The flies made the rounds of hands and feet and faces. Flies were eternal optimists. They landed on ears or eyelids or lips or nostrils as if they were the first explorers and hidden treasure awaited them. Then they flew away. They never learned, and they never gave up.
George became drowsy. Falling asleep might be dangerous, he warned himself, but it was impossible not to be drowsy in this bakehouse atmosphere. For some reason a memory surfaced in his sluggish mind. It was Billy Stewart, back in LG 181, sitting in the sun outside his tent, motionless, watching the flies. Billy could sit like a statue and watch and watch and watch until suddenly… clap. He never missed. Good old Billy. George brushed the flies off his lips. The officer straightened up. “Hier ist der Mann” he said.
A soldier came in, took George by the arm and helped him up. His legs were stiff and he wobbled a bit as he was led out. “You are a spy,” the officer said in English. “An English spy.” George pretended not to understand. “You are not an Arab,” the officer said. “An Arab never does this.” He brushed his fingers across his lips. “The flies gave you away,” he said.
As they put him in the truck he looked back and saw the serious little Arab girl standing by the tent. Nobody else had come out. George raised his hands and created something that only she could recognize: an imaginary cat’s-cradle. She nodded. It didn’t mean anything. It was just something they shared.