“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.”
“And where will we be on the Amalia? Which of these windows will we see from?”
“I’m afraid there’s no regular passenger accommodation on any of our ships, but there’s a saloon, where the officers mess, Just there. The Amalia’s saloon has portholes. She’s not quite the same.” I made another attempt to steer the conversation into a more useful path. “I daresay Captain Touzani will try to make your party comfortable.”
“Touzani? Is he Italian?”
“Tunisian.”
“Oh.” That did not please him. Tunisia tends to be lukewarm in the Palestinian cause.
“Is he loyal, this Captain Touzani?”
“If you mean will he obey orders, yes, I think he will. Providing, of course, that they do not endanger the ship.” This was more like it, I thought. “And, naturally, providing that the orders he gets from me are clear and practical.”
“You will give him the orders personally?”
“Oh yes, Comrade Salah. When I have them.” I tried to pursue the advantage. “There is additional information that I will also have to have very soon.”
“Have to have?”
“I shall want the names of the passengers to be carried. By law these must be entered on the ship’s muster roll That is the list of all on board when she sails.”
He decided to make a joke of it. “I can tell you one name — Salah Yassin.”
I smiled dutifully. “And no doubt Ahmad and Musa will be on the list, too?”
“Those old men! No. They are good fighters and loyal certainly. For guard duties there are none better. But on operations we must have the younger men, the front-fighters. Why is it that this ship has two propellers and the others, not much smaller, have only one each?”
We were back to the models again. It was with difficulty that I persuaded him downstairs to dinner, and even then he kept on about ships. The different ways of measuring tonnage had to be explained. Teresa helped by asking sillier questions than his, but the going was heavy. He drank brandy.
The backgammon later was torture.
He played a reckless “Arabian” game and nothing else. He was out to slaughter me every time or die in the attempt. Mostly, he died. Backgammon is a very difficult game to lose intentionally without letting your opponent know that you are trying to lose. He sees the dice you throw. You can’t keep on making gross errors. With an all-or-nothing player like Ghaled you don’t have to play even reasonably well to defeat him. You just make the conventional, flat-footed “back” moves and nine times out of ten he defeats himself. That was what Ghaled did, though naturally he couldn’t see it. It was the fault of the dice, then of my good luck, and, finally and inevitably, of my lack of imagination, of dash.
“You are too cautious. You play like a businessman.”
“You force me onto the defensive, Comrade Salah.”
“You must not allow yourself to be forced. You must hit out, reply in kind.”
Play his game, in fact, and lose.
“Yes, Comrade Salah.”
By playing so wildly that he was obliged for once to do the obvious, I managed to lose two games in a row, but even that didn’t please him.
“If you were a front-fighter,” he nagged, “you would soon learn when to attack and when to hold your fire, when to assault and when to ambush.”
He had had quite a lot to drink by then, much more, probably, than he was used to in one evening, and the effects were showing.
I gave some noncommittal reply and he glared at me. The suspicion that I had let him win those last two games was beginning to surface now. Someone had to be punished. He used Teresa to start with.
“You do not comment, Miss Malandra.” The “Miss” was a sneer. “Would you not like, perhaps, to be a front-fighter, as some of the Zionist women are? Do you have no ambition to imitate them?”
Teresa replied coolly. “I have no particular wish to imitate anyone, Comrade Salah.”
“Then-perhaps we can change your mind. Perhaps when you see what the Zionist women can do you will think differently.”
He had reached for his briefcase and was plucking clumsily at the zipper. My guess that he carried a gun there had been right, but it was not the only thing in the briefcase. When at last he got it open I saw that it contained papers and a leather wallet as well — it was the wallet he thrust at Teresa.
“Look and see for yourself. You, too, Comrade Michael. See what the Zionist women can do.”
From what I saw during the next few minutes, and from later reading of Lewis Prescott’s description, I am fairly certain that the photographs Ghaled showed us were the ones he produced at the Prescott interview. In other words, the same photographs shown to Mr. Prescott as evidence of Druse commando atrocities were shown to Teresa and me as evidence of atrocities committed by Israeli women.