The column was lining up now and ten minutes later we were on the move. ‘If he is still alive, it is a great story, eh?’ Ruffini said. ‘You think he is still alive?’
‘How the hell do I know?’ But Berry had given him four days. I was pinning my hopes to that.
‘Well, it don’t matter — alive or dead he is a hero. And this is the biggest story I am ever writing.’
That was all Ruffini saw in it — a newspaper story, nothing more. And Gorde hating David because I hadn’t had time to explain his motives. I felt suddenly sad, depressed by the thought that David’s action would be misunderstood. How could you explain to men like Gorde what Khalid’s death had meant to him, how he’d felt when he’d seen the people of Saraifa forced to leave the oasis?
Half an hour later the column halted. We were close under the Jebel al-Akhbar. Time passed and nothing happened. The wait seemed endless. And then suddenly the Colonel’s Land-Rover came roaring down the column. He had Gorde in the seat beside him. ‘Jump in,’ he called to me. ‘Ruffini, too. The Emir has agreed to meet me at the first well.’ He was in a mood of boyish elation, a reaction from nervous tension. The column was moving again now and several vehicles had swung away and were headed for the camel track on the north side of Jebel al-Akhbar.
We reached the head of the column just as it breasted the shoulder of the Jebel. There once more was Hadd, jammed against the limestone cliffs, with the Emir’s palace flying the limp green flag and the fort stark against the sky above it. ‘Hell!’ Colonel George signalled his driver to stop and Berry’s Land-Rover drew up alongside. The column ground to a halt behind us. ‘I don’t like it,’ the Colonel said. Too quiet.’
Between us and the crumbling walls of Hadd there wasn’t a living soul; no sign of Sheikh Abdullah’s askaris, no vestige of the camp we’d seen two days before. Even up by the date gardens nothing moved. AH the Wadi Hadd al-Akhbar, as far as the eye could strain through the glare and the mirages, was empty of human life.
The blighter’s up to something. What do you think, Berry?’
‘I think we’d better be prepared for trouble, sir. I told you I didn’t like the speed with which he saw me, the crafty look in his eye.’
The Colonel nodded. ‘Go ahead then.’
The orders were signalled and the column fanned out across the level gravel plain, whilst we drove straight to the first well. Behind us the Bedouin Scouts leapt from their trucks and spread out over the sand — mortars and machine-guns, ammunition. And not a shot fired at us. We sat in the Land-Rover, roasting by the shattered parapet of the well, and the tension mounted with the uncanny silence. Nothing stirred anywhere.
A full hour the Emir kept us waiting there in the blazing sun. He judged it nicely. A little longer and Colonel George’s patience would have been exhausted. And then at last life stirred in the mud-dun town, a scattering of figures moving towards us across the flat, shelved expanse of gravel that lay between the well and the walls; old men and children — not an armed man amongst them. ‘He’s going to play the injured innocent,’ Gorde whispered in my ear.
The old men and the children had closed around us. Some had empty drinking bowls, others goats’ skins; they whined and begged for water as they had been told to do. ‘My heart bleeds,’ Gorde snorted with contempt. ‘Ah, here he comes.’
Through the arched entrance to the town came a figure riding a white camel, riding absolutely alone — not a single retainer. ‘He’s clever,’ the Colonel muttered. ‘There isn’t a desert ruler who wouldn’t have regarded this as an occasion to parade his full power. And to ride a camel when he’s got an almost brand new Cadillac … ‘ His eyes were fixed with a puzzled frown on the solitary figure, on the slow, stately gait of that lone camel. He turned abruptly to Gorde. ‘What’s he got up his sleeve? Something. That Cadillac was a present from Saudi. He’d surely want to flaunt that in our faces.’
Gorde didn’t say anything and we sat and waited. The crowd fell back, the clamouring ceased. The Emir rode his camel through them and sitting there in the Land-Rover I realized suddenly why he hadn’t used his Cadillac. With set face and without any gesture of greeting, he rode his beast right up to us, and when he finally halted it, the supercilious head was right over us, the rubbery lips white with foam, dripping saliva on the Colonel’s beret. The Emir himself towered above us, godlike against the burning sky.
It was extraordinarily effective. The man was simply dressed in spotless robes and looked much bigger, the features more impressive, the curve of the nose more marked.
He waited in silence for Colonel George to greet him. Instead the Colonel barked an order and his driver backed the Land-Rover, turning it so that the bonnet faced the Emir. But it was no good. Patiently, without expression, the camel moved, resumed the same dominating position.
And then the Emir began to speak. It was an address that lasted almost a quarter of an hour. The manner of delivery was cold and restrained, but underlying the restraint was the hate that filled the man. It was there in the thin, vibrant tone of his voice, in the black gaze of his eyes, in every gesture — a bitter fury of hatred. And that bloody camel, slavering over my head, seemed the very embodiment of his master’s mood.
Gorde whispered the gist of the Emir’s speech to me. It followed a familiar pattern. It ignored entirely the unprovoked attack on Saraifa, the cruel intention behind the blocking of the falajes, the murderous slaughter of men driven to desperate action to save life and home. Instead, it dwelt at length on Hadd’s territorial claims. These the Emir based on a particular period in Hadd’s history, a period that went back more than five hundred years. He conveniently brushed aside all that had happened in the area since that time. He attacked the oil companies for sucking Arabia’s life blood. The spittle flew from his mouth, as he called them ‘Nasrani thieves, jackals of the West, Imperialist bloodsuckers.’ He ignored the fact that without the companies the oil would have remained beneath the sands, that the wealth of Arabia depended on them, that the very arms he’d been given had been bought with the royalties they paid. And in attacking the oil companies, he also attacked Britain and America. Imperialist murderers! he called us.
‘He’s coming to the point now,’ Gorde muttered. The camel belched, a deep rumbling sound, that blew a fleck of froth from its lips into my lap. The Emir leaned forward, the dark, cruel face bending down towards us. ‘Murderers!’ he screamed. I thought he was going to spit in our faces.
‘Start the engine,’ Colonel George ordered his driver. ‘I’m not standing for any more of this.’ He said something to the Emir. The man smiled. That smile — it was curiously excited. I call you murderers because you come here armed to protect a murderer. He gestured with his hands, pointing towards the fort. And when Colonel George tried to explain David’s motives, the rough justice of his action in depriving the Hadd of water, the Emir silenced him. You do not think it is murder when an Arab man is killed. What do you say if he is the murderer of a white man — one of yourselves? He turned, raising his body in the saddle, shouting and signalling with his hand. A closed Land-Rover emerged from Hadd. The crowd, which had drawn in a tight circle round us, scattered before it, and as it roared past us a figure in Arab clothes was thrust out of the back of it, a limp rag of a figure, battered and covered in blood.
It hit the sand beside us, rolled over once and then lay sprawled face upwards in an undignified heap; and as the cloud of dust settled, I saw what it was that lay there … The dead body of Colonel Whitaker.
He had been shot in the face and his head was badly battered, his arms broken. His clothes were black with blood. Flies settled in a swarm and I felt suddenly sick.