The Doomed Oasis

6. Fort Jebel al-Akhbar

We turned then and followed a zig-zag track that climbed by crumbling outcrops, and below us the town came to life, the sound of voices, the glimmer of lights. A shot stabbed the night, but it wasn’t directed at anything in particular and we were close under the fort before the pursuit got under way. We could see them clear on the moonlight slope below us, zig-zagging up the path by which we had come. There were about a dozen of them, climbing in single file and moving fast with the agility of mountain goats.

The fort tower hung on the lip of the cliff above us, a white stone keep crumbling to decay, and where the track doubled back through a narrow defile in the rocks, David posted Hamid to guard our rear. ‘I hope to God we find Salim there,’ he panted. The path had steepened so that we climbed with our hands as well as our feet, rocks slipping away from under us. And then we reached the walls and the track led through a narrow opening.

We were inside the outer defences then, an open space of half an acre or more that occupied all the top of the hill. The walls had originally been about twenty feet high with a firing step round the inside, but they were now in a bad state of repair and there were few places where they were higher than ten feet. They were horse-shoe shaped, the two ends finishing abruptly at the cliff edge, the tower between them. There was no sign of the camels.

‘Damn the old fool! He should have been here by now.’ David’s sudden uneasiness made me wonder whether perhaps Salim had taken the opportunity to desert us. But when I suggested this, he shook his head. ‘Why do you think I sent Ali with him? That boy knew what those camels meant to us. No, something has happened to them.’

A shot ripped the silence apart. Hamid had opened fire on our pursuers and the sound of it echoed back from the naked rock faces that surrounded us. A scatter of shots sounded from lower down the slope and a bullet hit the wall close by us with a soft thud.

‘Wait for me here. I’m going to see what’s happened.’ David ran quickly across the open courtyard of the fort and out through the main gate on the north side, and when he was gone, I climbed to the broken top of the wall and threw myself down beside bin Suleiman. From this vantage point we commanded the final approach to the fort.

Perched high on the edge of the sheer cliff face, I could see right down into the town of Hadd. The market square, where we’d mined the third well, was clearly visible, a white rectangle with people moving about or standing in little groups. It was not more than a thousand feet away, an easy rifle shot. And the wells outside the walls; I could see them, too. I began to understand then why David had been so sure these damaged wells would stay out of action.

Immediately below was the defile. I could see Hamid stretched out on top of one of the rock shoulders. His rifle gleamed as he raised it to his shoulder. A stab of flame, the crack of the shot, and then silence again. On the slope beyond there was now no sign of pursuit. The men who had started to follow us were pinned down amongst the rocks. It was an incredible position, impossible to take from that side so long as it was defended by men who knew how to shoot.

A bullet whined low over my head and I ducked automatically, poking my rifle forward and searching the steep slope beyond the defile. But there was nothing to fire at. The night was still and without movement.

We remained in that position for two solid hours whilst the stars moved sedately round the sky and all away to our right the desert stretched its white expanse. The sense of isolation, of a long wait for ultimate death, gradually took hold of me. It had a strange effect, a throw-back, I think, to the mood that had filled me as we lay pinned down like rats on the slopes of Monte Cassino … a mood compounded of fear and the desire to survive that expressed itself in the need to kill, so that when a figure moved on the slope below me, my whole being was concentrated in my trigger finger, and as he stumbled and fell my only feeling was one of elation, a deep, trembling satisfaction.

A little after three the first glimmer of dawn brought the mountains into sharp relief. A small wind whispered among the stones and it was quite chill. It was the time of night when the body is at the lowest ebb and I began to worry about David, and about our rear. By now men from the village below could surely have circled Jebel al-Akhbar to climb by the camel track to the main gate. I called to bin Suleiman and made a motion with my hand to indicate what I was going to do, and then I abandoned my position and started on a tour of the walls.

The result was encouraging. They were built on sheer rock slopes. Only on the north side was there any means of reaching the fort. There the camel track climbed steeply from the desert below to enter by the only gateway. Old palm tree timbers sagged from rusted iron hinges. This was the way attack must come if it were to succeed. Bastion towers flanked the gate on either side and from the top of one of them I could see down the whole length of the track. It was empty. So, too, were the slopes of the hill. There was no cover and nowhere could I see any sign of David or the camels.

I was turning away when my eye caught a movement on the white floor of the desert below; four shapes moving slowly, their shadows more sharply defined than the shapes themselves. They were camels moving towards the bottom of the track, and as they turned to start the climb, I made out the figure of a solitary rider on the leading camel.

I lay down then on the broken stone top of the bastion and pushed the safety catch of my rifle forward. Our camels had numbered six and with David there should have been three riders. They came on very slowly whilst the grey of dawn overlaid the moonlight and the whiteness faded out of the desert.

As the light improved and they came nearer, I saw the body of a man lying slumped over the saddle of the second camel. Skin bags bulging with water confirmed that the beasts were ours and soon after that I was able to recognize David. I met him as he rode in through the broken gateway. He didn’t say anything as he dismounted, but his face looked grey. ‘What happened?’ I asked.

Those shots we heard … they rode straight into a party of the Emir’s men camped outside the town.’ He asked me then whether they’d tried to rush us yet.

‘No,’ I said. ‘They’re still pinned down less than a third of the way up the slope.’

‘Good. Give me a hand, will you.’ He led the second camel to the foot of the tower and got it couched. The body tied with cord across its back was Ali’s. ‘He’s badly hurt.’ We laid him gently on the ground. He moaned softly, barely conscious. He’d a ghastly wound in the chest. I’d seen the effect of a soft-nosed Bedouin bullet on the metal of a Land-Rover; now I was seeing its effect on human flesh and the sight appalled me. He’d a knife wound in the shoulder, too, and he’d lost a lot of blood; the dark, broad-lipped, girlish face had taken on a sickly pallor.

David stood for a moment, staring down at him. ‘Poor kid,’ he murmured. ‘I found him lying in a pool of blood by the ashes of their camp fire. I suppose they thought he was dead. Salim’s body was close beside him. They’d slit his throat.’ His voice shook. The murdering, dung-eating bastards! Why did they have to do it? There were at least twenty of them there, twenty of them against an old man and a boy.’ Apparently he’d found the camp deserted, our four camels wandering loose. They must have been disturbed by the sound of the explosions,’ he said. ‘Otherwise they wouldn’t have left the camels. They only took one. It was the other that led me to their camp; it was I

wandering around on three legs, bellowing with pain. I had to finish it off.’ He gave a quick, angry shrug as though wanting to dismiss the whole thing from his mind. ‘Well, let’s get him up into the tower. He can’t lie here.’

He got the camel to its feet and stood it close by the wall of the tower. Standing on its back he was just able to reach the hole halfway up the tower’s side. He scrambled in and from the dark interior produced a crude ladder made of palm wood. We dragged the boy up and laid him on the dirt floor and David plugged and bound the wounds again, using his headcloth which he tore in strips. ‘A bloody lousy piece of luck,’ he said. ‘I’d planned to get you away before daylight. With Salim to guide you, you’d have been in Buraimi tomorrow, in Sharjah by the next day. I’d got it all planned. Now … ‘ He shrugged. ‘We’ll have to do some fresh thinking.’

It was daylight now. It came filtering into the interior of the tower through the entrance hole and through four narrow slits in the thick walls. They were firing embrasures and they reminded me of the turret room I’d occupied in Saraifa. But the view was vastly different. Two of them looked out east and west, each covering an arm of the walls. The other two, close together, faced south; they looked straight down on to Hadd itself.

‘Well, that’s all I can do for him.’ David got to his feet. ‘You stay here. I must have a word with Hamid and bin Suleiman. And then we must deal with the camels.’

He left me sitting by one of the embrasures and I had time to think then. The excitement of the action that had sustained me so far was gone now. The future stared me in the face and I began to be afraid of it. However impregnable the fort’s position, there were still only four of us, and right there below me was that Arab town teeming with life and utterly hostile. I could see men clustered thick in the open square and some of them were armed. It could only be a matter of time.

They had already started work on the well inside the walls. Men were being lowered into it and every now and then a bundle of stones and rubble was handed up. The sun was rising behind the mountains. The sky was crimson and all the desert flushed the colour of a rose. It looked very beautiful, so serene in the clear morning air, and the mountains standing like cut-outs painted purple.

It was just after the sun had lipped the mountain tops that David climbed back into the tower. They’ve started work on that well in the square, haven’t they?’

I nodded. The little square was teeming like an ant-hill.

‘What are they — townspeople or the Emir’s bodyguard?’ He had his rifle with him and he came straight over to where I was squatting on the floor beside the embrasure.

‘Both,’ I said. The men working on the well were mostly stripped to the waist. But standing about, watching them, were a number of armed men, their bodies strapped about with cartridges, a band of brass that glinted in the sun; their rifles, untrammelled with silver, had the dull gleam of modern weapons.

He pushed past me, kneeling in the embrasure, steadying himself with his elbows on the sill as he brought the rifle to his shoulder and fired. The sound of the shot was very loud in that dim, confined place. ‘That’s one of them that won’t go murdering old men and boys again.’ He was trembling slightly as he sat back on his heels.

The crowd in the square was scattering. A little knot gathered in one corner, and then that, too, melted away and the square was suddenly empty. ‘An occasional shot like that and they’ll learn to leave it alone. In a day or two they’ll begin to understand what it’s like to have the sources of water cut off, the wells dry.’ He got up and set his gun against the wall. ‘Not that they’ll die of thirst. They’re better off than the people we saw in Saraifa.’ He went back down the ladder and left me staring at the empty rectangle of the sun-drenched square, littered with the baulks of timber they’d brought in to shore up the inner walls of the well. Behind me the wounded boy moaned restlessly, muttering words I couldn’t understand, and when I went to him, I found his dark eyes wide open and staring, his skin dry and parched. I gave him some water and then David called to me.

He and Hamid had started unloading the camels. Bin Suleiman kept watch from the eastern wall. We worked fast, but the sun was high above the mountains before we’d humped all the stores and the last of the water skins up into the tower. ‘What about the camels?’ I asked as we lifted the saddles from their backs. It was already blisteringly hot, the bare rock acting as a fire-brick and throwing back the sun’s heat. There was no vestige of vegetation inside the fort for them to feed on.

‘I’ll keep one for you. The other three will have to be slaughtered.’

They were fine beasts in the prime of life and in beautiful condition. But when I started to remonstrate, he cut me short. ‘What did you imagine we were going to do with them? We’ve no other meat.’ He stared at me angrily. ‘Even the Bedou, who love camels a damn’ sight more than I do, don’t hesitate to kill them when they’re short of food. And we’re going to be short of everything before we’re through.’

I stood and stared at him. Without camels, he’d have no means of retreat. He’d be trapped here …

‘Do you reckon you could get through to Buraimi on your own?’

I hesitated. But I knew now there was no alternative for me — only death here on this pitiless hilltop. ‘I could try.’

‘Good. We’ll keep the one you’ve been riding then and get you away tonight as soon as it’s dark.’

Immediately after we’d breakfasted, bin Suleiman butchered the three camels, slitting their throats and letting the blood drain into a tin bowl. The carcases were then disembowelled and the meat cut into strips and hung to dry in the sun. Flies buzzed and the place smelt of blood, and yet it didn’t seem unnatural. Sand and rock and the blazing sky, that boy lying in the dim interior of the tower, his breath gurgling in his throat and blood seeping on to the floor, and below us an Arab town ruled by a man consumed by a murderous greed. Death didn’t seem so hateful when life itself was so cruel.

Action followed hard upon my thoughts. Hamid, from his lookout post on the very top of the tower, called down to us; men were circling the hill to the north. From the walls we watched them climb by the camel track. They were well spaced out, their guns ready in their hands. Others were coming up by the zig-zag path direct from Hadd. Lying prone on the blistering stones, we waited, holding our fire. The stillness seemed to break their nerve, for they began shooting at a range of almost three hundred yards.

The attack when it came was a senseless, ill-directed affair, men clawing their way up the last steep rock ascent to the walls without any supporting fire. We caught them in the open, unprotected, and the attack petered out almost before it had begun. They went back down the sides of the hill, taking their wounded with them and not leaving even a single sniper to harass us from the shelter of the rocks. ‘It won’t be as easy as that next time they come.’ David’s eyes had a cold, dead look, untouched by the light of battle that I’d glimpsed for a moment on bin Suleiman’s broad animal face.

We had used, I suppose, no more than two or three dozen rounds, but it was sufficient to make David anxious about his ammunition. Whilst the two Wahiba kept watch, David and I lowered the ladder through a hole in the mud floor of the tower and climbed down into the black rubble-filled pit below. It was slow work, searching in the dark, for we’d nothing but our hands to dig with and after so long David wasn’t at all certain where he had buried the boxes. We must have been down there at least an hour, and all the time we were scrabbling at the rubble with our hands, AH lay delirious on the floor above. Twice Hamid’s rifle cracked as he carried out David’s orders and kept the wells in Hadd clear of people. Those sounds and the darkness and the feeling that at any moment we might be overwhelmed through lack of ammunition gave a sense of desperate urgency to our work.

Finally we found the boxes and hauled them through the hole to the floor above — more than a thousand rounds of ammunition and two dozen grenades. We’d barely got the boxes open when Hamid reported a Land-Rover leaving the palace. We watched it from the embrasures, blaring its horn as it snaked through Hadd’s crooked alleys and out through the main gates of the town. It headed south toward Saraifa and David let it go, not firing a shot. ‘The sooner Sheikh Abdullah is informed of the situation here,’ he said, ‘the sooner his raiding force will leave Saraifa in peace.’ His eyes were shining now, for this was what he’d intended. That little puff of dust trailing across the desert was the visual proof of the success of his plan.

‘But what happens,’ I said, ‘when Sheikh Abdullah attacks us here with all his forces?’

He smiled, a flash of white teeth in the dark, lean face. ‘We’re not short of ammunition now.’

‘But we’re short of men. There are only four of us. How many do you think Sheikh Abdullah musters?’ I thought it was time he faced up to the situation.

‘It’s not numbers that count,’ he answered tersely. ‘Not up here. Whoever built this fort designed it to be held by a handful of men.’ And he added, ‘We’re bloody good shots, you see. Hamid and bin Suleiman, they’re like all Bedou; they’ve had guns in their hands since they were kids. And me, I learned to shoot out hunting with Khalid.’ He was almost grinning then. ‘I tell you, man, I can hit a gazelle running with a rifle bullet — and a gazelle’s a bloody sight smaller than a man. Anyway,’ he added, ‘no call for you to worry. With any luck we’ll get you away under cover of darkness tonight.’

‘And what about you?’ I asked. ‘You’ve no camels now.’

‘No.’ He stared at me, a strange, sad look in his eyes.

And then he gave a little shrug. There comes a moment in every man’s life, I suppose, when his destiny catches up with him.’

Again I was conscious of his strange choice of words, the sense of fatalism. ‘If you don’t get out… if you stay here until Sheikh Abdullah’s men have surrounded you … ‘ What could I say to make him see sense? ‘You’ll die here,’ I told him bluntly.

‘Probably.’

We stood there, staring at each other, and I knew there was nothing I could say that would make him change his mind. He didn’t care. He was filled with a burning sense of mission. It showed in his eyes and I was reminded of the word Sue had used to describe his mood — the word ‘dedicated’. All the misdirected energy that had involved him in gang warfare in Cardiff docks; now it had found an outlet, a purpose, something he believed in. Death meant nothing. ‘What about Hamid and bin Suleiman?’ I asked. ‘Will they fight with you to the end?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They’ve a blood feud on their hands and they want to kill.’

There was nothing more to be said then. ‘If I reach Buraimi and get through to the coast, I’ll inform the authorities of the situation at once.’

‘Of course.’ He said it with a bitter little smile so that I was afraid he’d read my thoughts and knew I was thinking that help would arrive too late. But then he said, ‘It’s no good talking to the authorities, you know. They won’t do anything. Much better give the story to the newspapers. I wouldn’t like to die without anybody knowing what I’d tried to do.’ Again that bitter little smile, and then he turned away. ‘Better get some sleep now. You’ve a long journey and you’ll need to be fresh for it.’

But sleep wasn’t easy. The only place where there was any shade was the tower, and there Ali’s agony of mind and body was a thin thread of sound piercing each moment of unconsciousness so that I dreamed I was listening to David’s death throes, at times to my own. He died as the sun sank — a brief rattle in the throat and silence. And at that same moment David scrambled in by the entrance hole to announce that there were vehicles coming from the direction of Saraifa.

‘I think Ali is dead,’ I said.

He bent over the boy and then nodded. ‘I should have put him out of his misery,’ he said. ‘Without a doctor, he hadn’t a hope, poor kid.’

From the embrasures we watched a trailer of dust moving in from the desert … three open Land-Rovers packed with men, a machine-gun mounted in the back of each vehicle. David called down to Hamid who was cooking rice over a fire and he grabbed his gun and climbed the outer wall to lie prone beside bin Suleiman. David motioned me to the other embrasure. ‘Don’t fire till I do. And remember, every man you hit is one less for us to deal with later.’ He had dropped to his knees, his rifle ready in the slit of the embrasure.

The three Land-Rovers reached the main gates and there they halted, stopped by the crowd of people who swarmed round them, all pointing and gesticulating towards us. An Arab askari in the leading Land-Rover swung his machine-gun and a long burst ripped the sunset stillness. Bullets splattered against the base of the tower. The guns of the other two Land-Rovers followed suit — a sound like ripping calico. Several rifles were let off.

It was a demonstration designed to restore morale. My hand trembled as I set the sights of my rifle to 500. And then David fired and I was conscious of nothing but my finger on the trigger and the third Land-Rover fastened like a toy to the V of my sights. The smell of cordite singed my nostrils. Fire blossomed like a yellow flower against the dun of desert sand. Men scattered. Some fell. And in a moment there was nothing to shoot at.

One Land-Rover in flames, the other two deserted; some bodies lying in the dust. Tracer bullets exploded like fireworks from the back of the burning vehicles, and almost immediately a second Land-Rover caught fire as the petrol tank went up. ‘I’m afraid they won’t give us an opportunity like that again.’ David sat back on his haunches and cleared his gun. ‘It will be night attacks from now on.’

Hadd was deserted now. Not a soul to be seen anywhere, the alleyways and the square empty. The Emir’s green flag hung limp above the palace; nothing stirred. Hamid went back to his cooking. The sun set and the excitement of the action ebbed away, leaving a sense of nervous exhaustion. ‘You’d better leave as soon as it’s dark,’ David said. Dusk had fallen and we were feeding in relays. He began to brief me on the route to follow, and listening to his instructions, the lonely desolate miles of desert stretched out ahead. The embers of the fire were warm. The dark shapes of the surrounding walls gave a sense of security. I was loath to go and yet I knew the security of those walls false, the embers probably the last fire for which they would have fuel.

He gave me dates and a bottle filled with water, sufficient to take me to the first well, and then began to saddle the camel. ‘You’ll be seeing Sue?’

I nodded.

‘Give her my love; tell her I’ll be thinking of her and of a day we spent on the Gower. She’ll know what I mean.’

‘She thinks you’re dead,’ I reminded him.

‘Well, tell her I’m not — not yet, anyway.’ And he laughed and slung the heavy blanket over the wooden saddle.

Ten minutes and I’d have been away. Just ten minutes, that was all I needed. But then the sound of a rifle cut the stillness of the night and a man screamed and went on screaming — a thin, high-pitched sound that had in it all that anyone could ever know of pain. Bin Suleiman shouted a warning from the east-facing wall and David let go the camel and raced to meet the attack. ‘Get out now,’ he called to me over his shoulder. ‘Get out before it’s too late.’ He called something to Hamid who was posted on the far side of the fort by the main entrance gate and then the darkness had swallowed him. A stab of flame showed high up on the wall and the echo of the shot cut through the man’s screams as though it had severed his vocal cords. A sudden silence followed, an unnatural stillness.

The camel, startled by the noise, had fled into the night. I found him close under the wall of the tower. Bewildered and obstinate, the wretched beast refused to move, and by the time I had coaxed him to the main gate it was too late. Firing had broken out all round us. A figure appeared at my side, gripped my arm and shouted something in Arabic. It was Hamid and he gestured towards the tower. Rocks thundered against the wooden timbers of the gate we had barricaded that afternoon. Hamid fired, working the bolt of his rifle furiously, the noise of his shots beating against my eardrums.

And then he was gone, running for the tower. I let the camel go and followed him, my gun clutched in my hands. Bin Suleiman was at the ladder ahead of me. David followed close behind as I flung myself through the hole and into the darkness beyond. As soon as we were all inside, we drew the ladder up. Bullets splattered the wall — the soft, dull thud of lead, the whine of ricochets. ‘Didn’t expect them to attack so soon,’ David panted.

We heard the wood splinter as they broke down the gate. They were inside the walls then, vague shadows in the starlight, and we fired down on them from the embrasures. The shouts, the screams, the din of firing … it went on for about ten minutes, and then suddenly they were gone and the inside of the fort was empty save for half a dozen robed figures lying still or dragging themselves laboriously towards the shelter of the walls.

From the top of those walls our attackers kept up a steady fire. Bullets whistled in through the entrance hole so often that the slap of lead on the opposite wall became a commonplace. They caused us no inconvenience for they struck one particular spot only and the convex curve of the wall prevented them from ricocheting. We kept a watch at one of the embrasures, but did not bother to return their fire. ‘Let them waste their ammunition,’ David said. ‘Our turn will come when the moon rises.’

Once they misinterpreted our silence and left their positions along the outer walls. We waited until they were in the open, and as they hesitated, considering how to reach the entrance hole, we caught them in a withering fire. Our eyes, accustomed to the darkness of the tower’s interior, picked them out with ease in the starlight. Very few got back to the safety of the walls or out through the gateway. And when the moon rose about an hour later, we climbed the ladder to the very top of the tower and from there we were able to pick them off as they lay exposed along the tops of the walls.

Below us Hadd lay white and clearly visible. There was great activity round all the wells. David fired one shot. That was all. The people scattered, activity ceased and in an instant the whole town appeared deserted again.

We took it in turns to sleep then, but there was no further attack and sunrise found us in command of the whole area of the fort. With no cover from which they could command our position, the Hadd forces had retired. We took the guns and ammunition from the dead and dragged the bodies outside the walls. Nobody fired on us. The hilltop was ours and the sun beat down and the rock walls became too hot to touch. We buried AH and retired to the shade of the tower. The camel that was to have carried me to Buraimi had disappeared. There was nothing for me to do but resign myself to the inevitable.

‘How long do you think you can hold out here?’ I asked.

‘Until our water’s gone,’ David answered. ‘Or until we run out of ammunition.’

‘And Hadd?’ I asked. ‘How desperate will they become?’

He shrugged. ‘There’s a well in the Emir’s palace, and they can always evacuate the town and camp out in the date gardens. There’s plenty of water there. It’s more a question of the Emir’s pride. He can’t afford to sit on his arse and do nothing.’

And each night we’d be a little wearier, the hours of vigilance more deadly. I closed my eyes. The heat was suffocating, the floor on which we lay as hard as iron. Sleep was impossible. The flies crawled over my face and my eyeballs felt gritty against the closed lids. The hours dragged slowly by. We’d nothing to do but lie there and keep watch in turns.

Shortly after midday a cloud of dust moved in from the desert — men on camels riding towards Hadd from the south. It was Sheikh Abdullah’s main force. They halted well beyond range of our rifles and the smoke of their cooking fires plumed up into the still air. There were more than a hundred of them, and at dusk they broke up into small groups and moved off to encircle our hill. They seemed well organized and under a central command.

It was that and the fact that they were mounted on camels that decided me. I went to where David was standing by one of the embrasures. ‘I’m going to try and get out tonight,’ I told him. ‘Whilst it’s dark, I’ll get out on to the hillside and lie up and wait for a chance to take one of their camels.’ And I added, ‘Why don’t you do the same? A quick sortie. It’s better than dying here like a rat in a trap.’

‘No.’ The words came sharp and hard and violent. His eyes burned in their shadowed sockets, staring at me angrily as though I’d tried to tempt him. ‘To be caught running away — that isn’t what I want. And they’d give me a cruel death. This way … ‘ Again I was conscious of that sense of mission blazing in his eyes. This way I’ll write a page of desert history that old men will tell their sons, and I’ll teach the people of Hadd a lesson they’ll never forget.’ And then in a quieter, less dramatic voice: Think you can make it, on your own?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But it’s dark and there’s bound to be a certain amount of chaos when they put in their attack.’

He nodded. ‘Okay, it’s worth trying. But they’re Bedou. They’ve eyes like cats and they know the desert. And remember, the moon rises in four hours’ time. If you’re not away by then … ‘ He left it at that and stood for a moment, watching me, as I gathered together the few things I needed — a canvas bandolier of ammunition, my rifle, the water bottle, a twist of rag containing a few dates and some pieces of dried meat. My matches and my last packet of cigarettes I left with him and also something I’d become very attached to — a little silver medallion of St Christopher given me by a mission boy in Tanganyika after I’d saved his life. ‘You’re travelling a longer road than I am,’ I said.

Ten minutes later I was saying goodbye to him by the splintered timbers of the main gate. When I told him I’d get help to him somehow, he laughed. It was a quiet, carefree, strangely assured sound. ‘Don’t worry about me. Think about yourself.’ He gripped my hand. ‘Good luck, sir! And thank you. You’ve been a very big factor in my life — a man I could always trust.’ For a moment I saw his eyes, pale in the starlight, and bright now with the nervous tension that comes before a battle. And then with a quick last pressure of the hand, a muttered ‘God be with you,’ he pushed me gently out on to the camel track.

Behind me the timbers creaked as he closed the gate. I heard the two palm trunks with which we’d shored it up from the inside thud into position.

I started down the track then and in an instant the walls had vanished, merged with the dark shapes of the surrounding rocks. Black night engulfed me and I left the track, feeling my way down the slope, my feet stumbling amongst loose scree and broken rocks.

High overhead a thin film of cirrus cloud hid the stars. It was this that saved me, for I was lying out in the open not two hundred paces from them as they climbed to take up their positions on the north side of the fort. I kept my face down and my body glued tight to the rock against which I lay. My rifle, clutched ready in my hand, was covered by my cloak so that no gleam of metal showed, and the two grenades David had given me dug into my groin as I waited, tense and expectant, for the moment of discovery.

And then they were past and the scuff of their sandalled feet faded on the slope above me.

I lifted my head then, but all I could see was the dark hillside in my immediate vicinity. No sign of the men who had passed, no shadows moving on the edge of the darkness. I slid to my feet, found the track and went quickly down the hill. And at the bottom I walked straight into a camel. I don’t know which of us was the more surprised. It had been left to graze and it stood with a tuft of withered herb hanging from its rubbery lips, staring at me in astonishment.

There were other camels; they seemed to be all round me, humped shapes in the dark, champing and belching. I seized the head rope of the one facing me, forced it down, and stepping on to its neck the way the Arabs did, I found myself sprawled across its back as it started into motion with a bellow of fear and rage. There was a guttural Arab cry. A shot rang out, the bullet whining close over my head. But the only thing I cared about at that moment was whether I could hang on, for the brute had gone straight into a gallop.

If it hadn’t still been saddled I should undoubtedly have come off, but the saddle gave me something to hold on to, and after a while the crazy motion slowed and I was able to get my feet astride and by means of the head rope obtain some control. And when I finally brought the animal to a halt, there was no sound of pursuit. There was no sound of any sort. That wild, swaying gallop seemed to have carried me right out into a void.

And then, behind me, the sound of shots, carrying clear and hard on the still night air. The rip and blatter of a machine-gun. Twisting round in my saddle I saw the firefly flicker of the attackers’ guns high up on the black bulk of Jebel al-Akhbar. Distant shouts and cries came to me faintly. More firing, and the sharper crack of small explosions. Three of them. Grenades by the sound of it, The cries faded, the fire slackened. Suddenly there was no longer any sound and I was alone again, riding across an endless dark plain, haunted by the thought of David, wondering what had happened.

The silence and the sense of space were overwhelming now; particularly when the curtain of cirrus moved away and the stars were uncovered. Then I could see the desert stretching away from me in every direction and I felt as lost as any solitary mariner floating alone in an empty sea. Far behind me the Jebel al-Akhbar lifted its dark shape above the desert’s rim, for all the world like an island, and all around me were small petrified waves, an undulating dunescape that seemed to disappear into infinity.

In the darkness, without any stars to guide me, I had trusted to luck and let the camel have its head. Now I saw it had carried me westward — towards the big dunes of the Empty Quarter and Whitaker’s lonely camp. I kept going, not changing my direction. It was a dangerous decision. I knew that. I’d only the one bottle of water and there were no wells where I was heading, no caravan routes to guide me, nothing but empty desert. My decision was based on the fact that Whitaker’s camp was much nearer than Buraimi — and after all he was the boy’s father.

I had two chances — that was all — our own camel tracks and the tracks of Whitaker’s trucks. If I missed both of these, or if they had become obliterated by windblown sand, then I knew I’d never get out of the desert alive. I rode through the night without a stop, guiding myself as best I could by the stars, and when the dawn came, I turned so that the rising sun was behind my right shoulder. If my navigation was right, then I had placed myself to the south of the line between Jebel al-Akhbar and Whitaker’s camp. Some time during the morning my new course should intersect the tracks made by our camels three nights back.

It was the first time I had ridden in the desert alone. The solitude was immense, the emptiness overpowering. The heat, too — it came at me in waves, so that time had no meaning. It seared my eyes and beat against the membranes of my brain. I drank sparingly from the water bottle, rinsing the tepid liquid round my mouth. A wind sprang up and small grains of sand were lifted from the gravel floor and flung in my face, a fine-ground dust that clogged nose and throat and made the simple act of swallowing an agony without any saliva. To look the desert in the face, searching for our old tracks, was like pricking needles into my eyes.

By midday I’d finished the water and still no sign of our tracks. I was trembling then, but not with the heat. I had reached the Sands and the dunes were growing bigger like an ocean’s swell building up against the continental shelf. Dune followed dune and the sense of space, the feeling that this petrified world of sand went on and on without end, appalled me.

A dirty scum formed in my mouth as I rode and my tongue became a swollen, leathery mass. The camel’s pace was slow and reluctant. We had passed no vegetation, no sign of anything growing, and as the sun slanted to the west fear took hold of me, for I knew I was headed into a desert that was four hundred miles across. Memory plagued me with the vision of a stream I knew in the Black Mountains of Wales where the water ran over rocks brown with peat and fell tinkling to a cool translucent pool. The sun sank into a purple haze, and the sense of space, with the dark shadowed dune crests stretched out in endless ridges ahead of me, was more terrifying than the close confinement that produces claustrophobia.

And then a chance turn of the head, a sudden glance, and there it was; a diagonal line ruled faintly across the back of a dune away to my left. I stared at it through slitted, grit-swollen eyes, afraid I was imagining it. But it was real enough — a single, scuffed-up thread scored by the feet of camels and half-obliterated by sand. In the hard gravel at the foot of the dune I counted the tracks of six camels. I had actually crossed the line of our three day old march without knowing it. If the sun had been higher I should never have seen that faint shadow line. I should have ridden on to certain death. I realized then why David had insisted on my making for Buraimi. I had been very fortunate indeed.

I headed into the sunset then, following the tracks, knowing they would lead me to Whitaker’s camp. The camel seemed to know it, too, for its pace quickened.

The sun set and darkness came. I camped at the foot of a dune, not daring to go on for fear of losing the faint, intermittent line of those tracks. The desert lost its warmth immediately. I ate a few dates, but my mouth was too dry and sore to chew on the meat. Tired though I was, I couldn’t sleep. The moon rose just before the dawn and I went on. The tracks became more difficult to follow; at times I lost them and had to cast about until I came upon them again. A wind was blowing and the sifting sand was covering them moment by moment. The sun rose and it was suddenly very hot.

Long before I reached Whitaker’s camp, the sound of the drilling rig was borne to me on the wind. The steady hum of machinery was utterly incongruous in that empty, desolate world. One of his Bedouin guards brought me into the camp and as I slid exhausted from my camel, I saw Whitaker himself coming towards me from the rig.

I must have passed out then, for the next I knew I was lying in his tent and he was bending over me, holding a mug of water to my cracked lips. The water was warm, but its wetness cleaned my mouth, eased the swollen dryness of my tongue, and as I began to swallow, I suddenly wanted to go on drinking and drinking for my body was all dried up. But he took the mug away. ‘Are you alone?’ he asked. And when I nodded, he said, ‘What happened? Is he dead?’

I sat up, staring at him. Something in the way he’d said it … But his face was in shadow and I thought I must have imagined it. ‘He was alive when I left him.’

I

‘I see. So he’s still up there.’ And he added, ‘He’d made his gesture. He’d carried out a successful attack on the wells. Why couldn’t he leave it at that?’

I started to explain about David’s determination to keep the wells from being repaired, but he cut me short. ‘I know all about that. I got the news from Hadd yesterday. My chap said the streets of Hadd were deserted and no man dared venture out of his house for fear of being fired at. He also said that the inhabitants had made a daylight attack on the fort and had been driven off by heavy fire.’

‘There were just the four of us,’ I said. And I told him how Salim had been killed at the outset and Ali fatally wounded.

‘And he’s alone up there now with just Hamid and his brother, bin Suleiman?’ He was silent for a moment, and then he said, ‘I gather the Emir sent to Saraifa for Sheikh Abdullah. Had his forces arrived before you left?’ And when I nodded, he said, ‘What happened? Were you there when they attacked the fort?’

‘No.’ And I explained how I’d got out just before the attack started. ‘I don’t know what happened. But if David did manage to beat off that attack, there’ll be others, or else they’ll just snipe at him from the rocks until they’ve worn him down or his water runs out.’

‘So he’s got himself trapped.’ And then almost irritably: “What’s wrong with the boy? Does he want to die?’

‘He will,’ I said angrily, ‘if you don’t get help to him somehow.’

‘I’ve done what I can. Yousif was just back from Sharjah and I sent him straight off with letters to Colonel George who commands the Trucial Oman Scouts and to Gorde. It’s up to the authorities now. Fortunately, I don’t think the Emir has any idea yet who it is holding that fort.’

It was something at least that he’d notified the authorities, and I lay back exhausted. He gave me some more water and then left me, saying he’d arrange for some food to be brought. When it came, it was a half-cold dish of rice and camel meat. I ate it slowly, feeling my strength beginning to return, and then I slept. I hadn’t intended to sleep, but the food and the heat in the tent … I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

I woke to the sound of voices speaking in English. It was almost three in the afternoon. The camp was strangely quiet. The drilling rig had stopped. I peered out of the tent An Army officer in khaki shirt and shorts and a peaked cap was standing talking to Whitaker. There was an RAF officer there, too, and resting on the gravel beside the silent rig was a helicopter.

Whitaker saw me as I came out of the tent and called me over. This is Colonel George of the TOS.’ He was a short, thick-set man, bouncing with energy, of a type that a Frenchman in Zanzibar had once described to me as a typical officer of the bled. Small, protruding eyes stared at me curiously from beneath the peaked cap. ‘I was in Buraimi when I got Whitaker’s message. The RAF had loaned me a helicopter so I thought I’d fly down and see what it was all about.’ His words were sharp and crisp. ‘Understand young Whitaker’s alive and that he’s playing merry hell with our aggressive little Emir. Correct?’

I didn’t answer, for I was staring past him to a strange figure walking towards us from the rig- a short, fat figure in a powder-blue tropical suit that was now crumpled and dirty and sweat-stained. ‘Ruffini!’ I called.

He came almost running. ‘Mister Grant!’ He seized hold of my hand. I think he would have liked to embrace me, he seemed so pathetically glad to see somebody he knew. ”Ow are you? I ‘ave been so concerned for you. When you don’t return with Gorde, I am asking questions, making a damn nuisance of myself, and nobody tell me nothing.’

‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.

‘What is a newspaper man ever doing? Looking for a story. I go to Buraimi, by invitation of the sheikh and an Italian oil man who is there also. Then this gentleman is sent by the British authorities to remove me. They don’t wish for Ruffini to be in Buraimi or anywhere else in the desert. So I am under arrest.’

‘No question of arrest,’ Colonel George snapped. ‘I’ve explained to you … ‘

But Ruffini wasn’t listening. ‘I tell you once before, signore,’ he said to me, still holding on to my hand, ‘I think you are sitting on the story I want. Now I talk to some of the Bedouin ‘ere and I know it is true. What is this boy doing? They say you are with him in that fort, that you come from Hadd this morning.’

I could have wished it had been a British journalist. But that wasn’t so important as the fact that chance had put me in touch with the outside world. Ruffini might be prevented from filing his copy immediately, but the knowledge that sooner or later David’s story would become known might stir the authorities to action.

But when I suggested this to Colonel George, he shook his head. ‘I don’t think you quite understand the official view.’ We were back in the tent then and I’d been talking and answering questions for more than an hour. The TOS, he said, had been reinforced with Regular Army units some time back and had been standing by for more than a month, ready to move at short notice. The attack on Saraifa and the battle at the Mahdah falaj was just the sort of trouble their Intelligence had expected and as soon as he’d received the news he’d given the order to prepare to move. It was two nights ago. He’d everything lined up, the convoy spread out round the perimeter of Sharjah airfield and everybody ready to go. And then the Foreign Office clamped down, the Political Resident called the whole thing off.

‘But why?’ I asked.

‘Why? Because of Cairo, Saudi, the Americans, the United Nations, world opinion.’ Cairo Radio, he said, had first referred to the Hadd-Saraifa border dispute two weeks back. There were reports from Riyadh that Saudi intended to raise the matter at the next meeting of UNO.

The Political Resident came under the Foreign Office, and to the Foreign Office this wasn’t just a local problem, but a small facet in the pattern of world diplomacy. Until that moment I had seen the attack upon Saraifa as it appeared to David, a personal matter; now I was being forced to stand back mentally and look at the situation as a whole, from the viewpoint of authority.

Twenty-four hours,’ Colonel George said. ‘That’s all we needed. In twenty-four hours we could have put paid to the Emir’s little game and saved a hell of a lot of lives. I know we’ve no treaty obligation so far as Saraifa is concerned, but it lies within the British sphere of influence and we’ve certainly a moral obligation to protect them against this sort of thing.’ He shrugged. ‘Well, there it is. I’m just a soldier, not a politician.’ He glanced at his watch and then at the RAF pilot officer. ‘Time we were moving, eh?’ Outside the tent, he turned to Whitaker. ‘That boy of yours. He’s going to get himself killed if somebody doesn’t do something.’ The protruding eyeballs stared. ‘You’ve been out here a long time. Colonel. Couldn’t you see the Emir; talk to your son? You must have considerable influence still.’

‘A little. But not with my son it seems.’ Whitaker was clearly disconcerted. ‘He’s acting contrary to my advice — contrary to my express orders, in fact.’ He hesitated. ‘Of course, if the Political Resident authorized me to negotiate a settlement of the Hadd-Saraifa border dispute, I have some influence with the Emir. But,’ he added, ‘a just settlement for Saraifa would almost certainly require the backing of British military forces.’

‘That’s out of the question at the moment.’

‘Then … ‘ Whitaker gave an awkward little shrug.

Colonel George grunted, a small, peremptory sound. ‘Pity! That boy’s got a lot of guts and he’s going to die.’ He started towards the helicopter, but then he stopped and faced Whitaker again. ‘I’ve heard stories about you … And if half of what I’ve heard is true, your son’s doing just the sort of thing you’d have done yourself in your younger days, eh?’ He paused, and then in a harder voice: ‘I’ll tell you something, Whitaker; if that boy holds out for a week, he’ll go down in desert history, his name remembered long after yours is forgotten.’ He stared at him hard for a moment and then marched off across the gravel towards the helicopter. ‘Sorry I can’t give you a lift out, Grant. No room. We’ve got to deliver this wop journalist to Sharjah. But I’ve got one of my Company commanders with a wireless truck up at Buraimi. I propose to send him down to patrol Hadd’s northern border and keep tabs on the situation. I’ll tell him to pick you up if you like. Name’s Berry. Sound chap. Understands the Bedou. That do you?’

I nodded, and behind me Whitaker said, ‘You might tell him to keep an eye out for my two vehicles. My fuel tanker and the supply truck should have been in two days ago.’

The rotor blades of the helicopter began to turn. Ruffini gripped my hand. ‘A rivederla. I see the story of this David Whitaker reaches London. Don’t worry. We have an arrangement with one of your newspapers.’ He was sweating already as he ducked into the oven-heat of the fuselage.

Colonel George paused in the open door. ‘Want to give me a message for his sister? I could send it straight down to the hospital. She’d get it this evening.’

I hesitated. ‘Just tell her he’s alive. That’s all she needs to know at the moment.’

‘I should have thought something more personal was called for.’ He stared at me, playfully tapping my arm. ‘Probably you don’t realize it, but she’s been raising hell on your account. As soon as she knew you were missing, she came straight down to Sharjah. She caught that oil chap, Gorde, just as he was boarding his plane and the story is she tore him off such a strip for abandoning you that he dropped his stick and took off without it. Since then she’s been badgering the life out of me. I’ll be damn’ glad to be able to tell her you’re safe. Well?’ He cocked his eyebrow at me and grinned. ‘I’ll give her your love — will that do?’ And without waiting for a reply he got into the helicopter and slammed the door.

Whitaker and I watched it take off, a mechanical dragonfly whirring in the clean, bright air. I turned then, conscious of the quickened beat of my pulse, the sudden desire to be alone. It was strangely heart-warming to know that somebody had been concerned about whether I got back safely or not. I walked to the steep, shadowed edge of the dunes and lay there, longing for a cigarette. The drill, so useless now without its fuel, stood like a toy, dwarfed by the dunes, the Arab crew lying about, listless with nothing to do. Whitaker had gone to his tent. The shadows lengthened and I wondered what was happening on that hill-top forty miles to the east. Was David still alive?

The answer came next day, just after Whitaker’s two trucks had pulled in and the noise of their arrival had woken me from the first long, uninterrupted sleep I had enjoyed in well over a week. Everything was confusion, stores being unloaded, the rig started up, when a bullet-scarred Land-Rover appeared, flying the Emir’s green flag. Out of it stepped a big, portly man with very black features under a large turban. ‘The Emir’s secretary,’ Whitaker said and went forward to greet him. A bodyguard of four askari sat silent in the back of the vehicle; wild-eyed men with greasy locks hanging to their shoulders, who fingered their weapons nervously.

Whitaker took the secretary to his tent and they remained there over an hour, talking over tinned fruit and coffee. Finally the man left, but before getting into the Land-Rover, he made a long, angry speech, a harangue that was clearly intended for the whole camp.

‘What did he want?’ I asked as the dust of his departure finally settled and the men returned to their jobs.

‘If I don’t go at once to Hadd and get David out of that fort, the Emir will hold me responsible.’ Whitaker’s face was very pale, his whole body trembling. “Allah akhbar!’ he muttered. ‘Why did the idiot have to choose this moment, when I’d talked the Emir into agreement and had obtained the financial backing I needed? Why now?’

‘He’s still alive then?’

He turned his eye on me, a fixed, glassy look. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He’s alive. The night you left him, he beat back the attack, captured a prisoner and sent him to the Emir next day with a message. It announced who he was and the terms on which he’d vacate the fort and leave them free to repair the wells.’ The terms required the Emir to declare publicly that he accepted the present borders between Hadd and Saraifa for all time, and this declaration was to be supported by a signed document to the same effect, lodged with the United Nations. David also demanded an escort of the Trucial Oman Scouts to see him and his men safely out of Hadd territory.’

But it wasn’t the terms that upset Whitaker. It was the fact that David had disclosed his identity. ‘Did he have to involve me?’ he demanded angrily, staring towards the rig.

‘I don’t suppose he meant to involve you,’ I said. ‘You’re involved by the simple fact that you’re his father.’

‘His father!’ He turned on me. ‘I took a servant girl,’ he said harshly. ‘A moment in time, a passing need — but that was all. It ended there and I made provision for her.’

‘You can’t buy immunity from your actions.’

He ignored that. Twenty years, and the moment catches up with me and I’m faced with the brat; a raw, undisciplined boy with a vicious background.’ He glared at me. ‘And you sent him out here.’

‘He’d have come in any case,’ I said. ‘Once he knew you were his father.’ I was angry myself then. ‘I don’t think you realize what a shock it was to him to learn that he was illegitimate — to discover that his mother had been deserted in childbirth.’

‘She’d no claim on me,’ he said quickly. ‘And even if she had, it doesn’t justify his coming out here with some idea at the back of his mind that he was going to kill me. Did you know about that? I had it all out of him shortly after he arrived — that and his criminal background and how he was wanted by the police for causing the death of that man Thomas.’ And he added, ‘I should have sent him packing. I should have realized the boy was bent on destroying me, on ruining all my plans.’

‘You know that’s not true,’ I said.

‘Then why did he pretend he was dead when he wasn’t? And now, when the truth of my theory is within my grasp, when the thing I’ve been searching for all my life is here, he gets me involved in this stupid, useless demonstration of his.’ He was sweating and there were little flecks of white at the corners of his mouth.

‘What he’s doing,’ I said, ‘he’s doing because he’s accepted the things you believed in; he made your world his own, Saraifa his home. And the background you complain of is the reason he’s doing it so successfully. He’s got the Emir to withdraw his forces from Saraifa. Now is the time surely when your influence … ‘

‘My influence? What influence do you think I have now? Men have been killed and that’s something only blood can wipe out.’ And he added, staring into the distance, ‘If I’d gone with the Emir’s secretary, I’d have been held hostage for David’s submission — his life or mine. And when next the Emir sends an emissary, he’ll come in force. That was made very plain.’

He put his hand up to his head, covering his eye as though to shut out the desert and concentrate on what was in his mind. ‘It’s madness,’ he breathed. ‘Madness. He can’t achieve anything … ‘

‘How do you know?’ I demanded angrily. ‘Ruffini has the whole story now and … ‘

That Italian?’ He let his hand fall, staring at me in surprise. ‘How can he affect the situation? The authorities aren’t going to take any notice of him.’ He said it as though to convince himself, and then in a voice so hoarse it seemed to be torn out of him: ‘He’ll die up there and that’ll be the end of it.’ The look on his face was quite frightening. He turned and walked slowly to his tent. I didn’t see him again that evening, and the next day his manner was still very strange. We hardly exchanged a word and I was glad when Captain Berry arrived.

Looking back on it, I suppose I should have tried to understand his predicament. He hadn’t enough men to get David out by force and he was probably right in saying the situation had gone beyond the reach of his influence with the Emir. What I didn’t realize was that I was seeing a man in the grip of events, forced to a re-assessment of his whole life and the values by which he had lived — and being driven half out of his mind in the process.

It was late afternoon when Berry got in. A lean, bony-looking Scot with fair hair and a face that was almost brick-red in the slanting sun, he brought a breath of sanity into that sultry camp, for he was from outside and not emotionally involved in what was happening forty miles to the east. He had a message for me from Colonel George picked up on his radio that morning. ‘I’m to tell you that your Italian friend got his story out in time and that you’re not to worry. Everything possible is being done. The Colonel has been ordered to Bahrain to report to the Political Resident in person. Oh, and he said a Nurse Thomas sent you her love and is glad to know you’re safe. Okay?’

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. For the moment I could think of nothing but that message from Sue. Captain Berry was speaking to Whitaker, something about his son showing what one determined and resolute man could achieve. He was one of those soldiers that believe action is the solution to everything. ‘You must be very proud of him, sir.’ Colonel Whitaker’s face was without expression, but a nerve flickered along the line of his jaw and he turned away.

Berry watched him for a moment, a puzzled look on his face. ‘That’s a man I’ve always wanted to meet,’ he said.

‘But I’m surprised he left this to his son. After what’s happened in Saraifa, I should have thought he’d have been busy raising the desert tribes. It would have solved our difficulty if he had. We might be allowed to support a desert rising against the Emir.’

‘I take it,’ I said, ‘you’ll be leaving at once.’ It wasn’t only that I wanted to know what had happened since I’d left Jebel al-Akhbar. I wanted to get away from that camp.

But he told me it was out of the question. They’d been driving for over twenty hours. Both the wireless truck and the Land-Rover had to be serviced, the men needed sleep. He had a wireless operator with him and five levies of the TOS under a corporal. ‘Leave at first light. Makes no difference, I’m afraid,’ he added, seeing my impatience. ‘I can’t help Colonel Whitaker’s son. Mine’s only a watching brief. Anyway, it’s no good bashing these dunes in the dark.’

He’d brought spare kit for me so that I had the luxury of a camp bed that night. And in the morning I was able to discard my Arab clothes, which by then were very filthy, and put on clean khaki shirt and shorts. We breakfasted on bully-beef and tinned peaches, washed down with a brew of strong tea, and then we left.

Colonel Whitaker was there to see us go and as he said goodbye to me he gave me instructions that were to have considerable significance later: ‘If anything happens to me, Grant, I leave you to look after my affairs. I think you know enough about me now to understand what I want done if they find oil here.’ We drove off then and I remember thinking he looked a very lonely figure standing there with the clutter of the rig behind him. We went north, taking the shortest route across Hadd territory and driving fast. Keeping to the flat gravel stretches between the dunes, we were clear of Hadd’s northern border by ten-thirty. We turned east then, and the going became much slower, for we were crossing the lines of the dunes.

At set times we stopped to make radio contact with TOS HQ. The only news of any importance was that Colonel George, before he left for Bahrain and therefore presumably acting on his own initiative, had ordered Berry’s Company south into the desert for exercises.

Shortly after midday the dunes began to get smaller and in an area where it had rained quite recently we came upon the black tents of a Bedouin encampment, and there were camels browsing on untidy bushes of abal. Berry stopped and spoke with some of the men. ‘Well, your chap was alive yesterday,’ he said as we drove on. ‘I thought they were Al Bu Shamis, but they were of the Awamir and they came up past Jebel al-Akhbar yesterday. They say they heard intermittent firing. They also told me that the people of Saraifa are beginning to return to the oasis, that two falajes are running again and Khalid’s half-brother, Mahommed, is calling men to arms.’

It was the first indication I had that what David had done had not been done in vain.

Soon after that we became bogged down for several hours in an area of small dunes so confused that it looked like a petrified tidal race. As a result we didn’t sight Jebel al-Akhbar until late afternoon. We stopped at sunset. The hill looked deceptively close in the clear still air, the colours of the rock almost mauve, the sky behind quite green. ‘It’s about six miles away,’ Berry said, handing me his glasses. I could see the fort quite distinctly then, the tower in silhouette against the fantastic sky. Nothing moved there. No sign of life.

I was tired after the long drive and I felt depressed. Darkness fell. We had our food and after the meal Berry disappeared into the back of the truck. He wanted to hear the BBC News. It kept him in touch, he said; but what he meant was that it brought home nearer and made the desert seem less remote.

Nature’s needs took me into the desert and when he called to me I didn’t hear what it was he shouted, but only caught the excitement in his voice. Back at the truck I found him seated with the earphones pressed tight against his head. ‘It was in the summary,’ he said. And then after a while, ‘Your chap’s made the headlines apparently. A big story in one of the papers this morning.’ He removed the earphones and switched off. ‘They even got his name right and the name of the fort… And the Foreign Secretary is to be asked a question about it in the House tonight.’ He rolled his long body over the tailboard and stood beside me. ‘Funny thing,’ he said. ‘If it had been a soldier up there on the Jebel al-Akhbar, they’d have taken it for granted, or more probably somebody would have raised hell because the fellow had disobeyed orders. But because he’s a civilian … ‘ He gave a quick, derisive laugh. ‘Not that it makes any difference. One newspaper story and a question in the House won’t change my orders. We’ll be left to sit here and watch him die. That is if he isn’t dead already.’

We’d heard no sound since we’d gone into camp. The night was deathly still, not a breath of air. And Berry made it plain to me that he couldn’t go any nearer. His orders were to stay in Trucial territory and in front of us stretched the invisible barrier of the Hadd border. ‘You can be certain we’re under observation. If I cross that border the political repercussions would be endless. As it is my Colonel’s sticking his neck out sending me down here on his own authority.’

We stayed up late to listen to the last news summary from home. The item we were waiting for came towards the end. Questioned in the House this evening about reports that a British civilian, David Whitaker, with two Arabs, was holding the fort of Jebel al-Akhbar in the Arabian Emirate of Hadd, the Foreign Secretary said that the newspaper report emanated from a foreign source and was almost certainly without foundation. He added that he was having enquiries made … Cairo Radio this evening accused Britain of concentrating a large force on the Hadd border, including armoured cars and artillery …

‘Armoured cars and artillery!’ Berry snapped the receiver off. ‘Why the hell do they repeat that sort of nonsense?’ Like most soldiers who know what the situation is on the spot it made him contemptuous of the organs of publicity. ‘And you heard what the Foreign Secretary said. It’s all going to be hushed up. Oil and politics; it’s always the same out here in the Middle East. For the sake of peace and quiet a petty tyrant is going to be allowed to get away with murder.’ He jumped out of the truck and stood staring a moment towards the Jebel al-Akhbar. Finally he gave a little shrug. ‘Care for a drink? I’ve got a little Scotch left.’

I shook my head. I was wondering whether any of the other papers would take the story up, and if so, whether they’d make enough of it to stir up public opinion. Only public opinion could force the Government to accept its responsibility for Saraifa and take action; and without that David’s sacrifice became pointless. ‘I think I’ll turn in now,’ I said. ‘I’m still very tired.’

I slept like the dead that night and in the morning it wasn’t the sun that woke me, but Berry shaking my arm. ‘Somebody’s still in the fort. I heard shots just after dawn — very faint, but definitely rifle fire. I’ve reported it to HQ.’

I scrambled up, sweaty from lying in my sleeping bag in the blazing sun, but ‘even through the glasses there was nothing to be seen, just the Jebel al-Akhbar shimmering in a heat haze. Berry glanced at his watch. ‘You might like to listen to what the newspapers are saying back home.’

We went into the back of the truck and switched on the radio. It was an overseas service of the BBC with a round-up of news and opinions from the national press. I don’t know what I expected — what Berry expected. A few references, perhaps a leader. Instead, every newspaper had taken up the story. For almost ten minutes the thin voice of the announcer came to me through the earphones, speaking as though from another world, and giving variations on the theme of the story I had told Ruffini. David was headline news. One I particularly remember:

BORSTAL BOY HOLDS FORT FOR FOREIGN OFFICE. And another popular paper was quoted as attacking the Foreign Secretary for trying to hoodwink the public.

But the press reaction seemed to have made no impression on the official attitude. The only indication of increased interest was that radio contact with TOS HQ was every hour now on the hour. Colonel George, we learned, was back in Sharjah. Ruffini was still there. Berry’s Company was in a position ten miles west of Buraimi and about a hundred miles to the north of us. The day dragged on. The sun rose until the sky was a burnished bowl, a throbbing ache to the eyes, and the desert sand beneath our feet as hot as the lid of a stove. Several times we heard the distant sound of shots, but though we took it in turns to keep watch through the glasses, we saw no movement.

We dozed between watches, ate snacks out of tins, and waited. Water was rationed and we became thirsty. Boredom set in. We listened to the BBC, but David was no longer in the news. Time was running out for him and my presence here seemed to serve no purpose. Those occasional, intermittent shots didn’t tell me whether he was alive or dead; they only indicated that the fort was still held. Repeatedly I tried to persuade Berry to move forward and recce under cover of darkness. But he was absolutely adamant. ‘I cross that border with British military vehicles and God knows where it would end.’

By the end of the day we were beginning to get on each other’s nerves. The truth was that nothing would have pleased Berry more than to be allowed to call up his Company and go in and settle the whole business. In his quiet Scots way he was so tensed-up over the situation that the battle would have been a welcome relief. Instead of which he was tied down within sight of the Emir’s stronghold in the company of a man who was becoming more and more irritable at the delay.

It wasn’t that I didn’t understand his difficulty. If he acted on his own initiative he might plunge the whole of Arabia into war, involve his own country and certainly ruin his career. It was a diplomatic tightrope that I couldn’t possibly expect him to walk. But understanding his difficulty didn’t help me to bear the inaction. To have to sit there, doing nothing, whilst six miles away that boy was dying by inches … The heat and frustration, it nearly drove me mad.

I suppose it was the strain of the past fortnight. Berry gave me salt tablets, a large whisky and sent me to bed at dusk. At midnight he woke me to say we’d be moving at first light. The Colonel finally got Bahrain to agree to my making an attempt to get him out alive. I’m to try and arrange an audience with the Emir in the morning.’

‘And suppose he refuses to see you?’ I asked.

‘He won’t. What’s more he’ll accept my offer to mediate.’

‘You seem very confident.’

‘I am. I’m offering him a way out that’ll save his face. If we do what the men of his bodyguard have failed to do and get young Whitaker out of the fort, then the Emir at least gets credit for being cunning. That’s something to set against the laughter of the Bedou round their desert camp fires. I take it you’d like to come with me?’

‘Of course.’

He hesitated. ‘I think I’d better make it clear that I could be wrong about the Emir. He hasn’t a particularly savoury reputation and if he did decide to turn nasty… ‘He gave a little shrug. ‘So long as you understand the position.’

Six hours later we were on the move, motoring across the flat, stony plain with the Jebel al-Akhbar growing bigger every minute until it towered above us, a grey, sugar-loaf mass against the rising sun. A Union Jack fluttered from the Land-Rover’s bonnet. There were just the two of us and Berry’s driver, Ismail, a tall, dark-skinned man, very neat in his khaki uniform and coloured TOS headcloth. No sound reached us above the noise of the engine. I could see no sign of movement on the hill above us.

We rounded the shoulder of Jebel al-Akhbar by a dusty track and there suddenly was Hadd, yellow now in the sunshine with the Emir’s green flag hanging limp above the palace and the town silent and strangely empty with the tower I had known so well perched above it on the lip of the limestone cliffs. We passed a camp of the Emir’s men. Smoke spiralled blue from their cooking fires in the still morning air and they watched us curiously, wild, lank-haired men, their bodies strapped around with cartridges, their rifles slung across their shoulders. Several were wounded, the blood caked black on their bandages.

The well outside the town was as we had left it that night, the wall destroyed by the explosion and nothing done to repair it. We entered Hadd by the main gate. The streets were empty, the little square deserted. Baulks of palm timber still lay where they had been thrown down in panic beside the damaged well. ‘Looks as though the population has moved out into the date gardens,’ Berry said. ‘Three men and they’ve stopped the life of this whole town dead. It’s incredible.’

But looking up it wasn’t quite so incredible. That tower hung right over the town. All the way to the gates of the palace we could see it perched there above us. The narrowness of the streets was no protection; it looked right down into them.

Berry’s appreciation of the Emir’s situation proved correct. After keeping us waiting for over an hour, he received us in a small room off one of the palace rooftops. There were armchairs in the Western style and a table on which stood an expensive German camera and some models of tanks and armoured cars. The walls were hung with finely silvered guns and pictures of the Emir driving through Hadd in a glossy American car.

The man himself was small and wiry, with a face that somehow managed to combine craftiness with great dignity; it was a long, rather cruel face, its length emphasized by the big nose and the little pointed beard glistening black with oil. His eyes were heavily made-up with kohl. Sheikh Abdullah was there and several other notables, including the Emir’s secretary, and though I couldn’t follow what was said, I was conscious of the atmosphere, which was distinctly hostile.

The audience lasted a long time, with the Emir insisting at first that Berry storm the fort with his own troops, take David prisoner, and have him shot. When he refused, the Emir launched into a harangue that was so violent that the spittle actually flew from his lips.

‘I thought for a moment,’ Berry said afterwards, ‘that we were for it.’ Threatening us, however, didn’t solve the Emir’s problem, which was that he was being made to look a fool before his own people and all the desert world. After a long argument he finally agreed that if we were able to persuade the defenders to evacuate the fort they would be allowed to go unmolested.

We waited whilst Sheikh Abduallah gave one of his men orders to climb the slopes of Jebel al-Akhbar under a white flag and announce a cease-fire. Berry had guessed that there were snipers posted among the rocks below the fort walls and he was taking no chances. ‘The extraordinary thing is,’ he said as we hurried out of the palace, ‘that they’re convinced there are at least a dozen men up there in the fort.’

We drove back through the silent town, out past the deserted wells and the askari encampment, and took the dusty track that led round the shoulder of the hill. We left the Land-Rover at the foot of the camel track on the north side and started up on foot. The sun was high now and the heat throbbed back from the bare, scorched rock, beating up through the soles of our shoes. For a time the fort was lost behind ridges, but as we climbed higher the walls gradually came into view. There was no sign of Sheikh Abdullah’s snipers, no movement on the hilltop. The air was very still, the silence and the heat appalling. It was just over five days since I had come down this very track in the dark. Five days — just over one hundred and thirty hours to be exact, and under constant attack … It didn’t seem possible that David, or any of them, could still be alive. And yet Hadd was deserted and the Emir had agreed to Berry’s terms. We climbed fast, hoping for the best — fearing the worst. They must be out of water by now, wounded probably, perhaps only one of them left alive.

The timbers of the main gate sagged open, splintered by the rocks that lay at the foot of the two crumbling bastions. As we climbed the last steep rise, the tower appeared, framed in the gateway, pale yellow in the sun with the shadowed opening halfway up yawning like a mouth agape. No sign of life. No sound. I called out. ‘David! It’s George Grant!’ The rocks echoed back his name and nothing stirred. ‘David!’

And then unbelievably, he answered — a hollow, croaking sound from the interior of the tower. ‘I have Captain Berry of the Trucial Oman Scouts with me.’ My throat was parched, my voice hoarse. ‘The Emir offers you a safe conduct.’ Even as I said it I wondered, the stillness and the heat beating at my nerves. Concealed amongst the rocks below us were men with rifles. How did we know they wouldn’t open fire on us? The hairs at the back of my neck crawled; treachery seemed to hang in the hot air and even as David told us to come in through the open gateway, I knew we shouldn’t have trusted the Emir.

The open expanse of the fort’s interior was a shambles. There were the remains of fires, the tattered remnants of camels’ carcases — those things I remembered. But now there were bodies of Arabs, too, lying where they had fallen, unburied and rotting, buzzing with flies. I counted nine of them; the place smelt of death, was littered with the debris of attacks beaten back. And the sun — the cauterizing, sterilizing sun — blazed down.

Something moved in the black mouth of the tower and the rickety ladder was thrust out of it. It fell the last few feet to the ground and David appeared, climbing stiffly and very slowly down it. At the bottom he paused as though to gather his strength together, and then he turned and faced us, standing very stiffly erect, a blood-stained strip of cloth round his right forearm and blood showing in a black patch below his left shoulder.

Berry took a tentative step forward. ‘We’ve just seen the Emir. If you leave with us now, he’s agreed to allow you to cross the border into Trucial territory unmolested.’

‘And you believed him?’ David started to move towards us, but then he stopped. He was swaying slightly, too weak to walk.

‘He’s ordered a cease-fire.’

He nodded slowly. ‘That’s true. I heard the order given. A man came up by the path from Hadd a little while back. He carried a white flag. But then he disappeared; went to earth amongst the rocks.’ His voice was thin and very weak. ‘I don’t trust the bastards,’ he added, coming towards us very slowly.

Close-to he looked ghastly. His eyes had gone quite yellow, the skin of his face yellow, too, and all the flesh fined away so that the cheeks were sunken, the bones staring. His body seemed smaller, dried up and shrivelled. He looked about half his normal size, completely desiccated. The death’s head face, the yellow, burning eyes, the croaking voice … I thought he couldn’t last much longer and I pleaded with him to take his chance. But he was like a man in a trance. ‘Have the authorities decided to act? Will they support Saraifa?’ And when we told him No, all he said was, ‘They will. They will. If I hold out long enough, they’ll be forced to act.’ The eyes fastened on me. ‘Why didn’t you go to Sharjah? Why come here? This isn’t what I wanted.’ His voice sounded desperately tired, utterly dispirited. ‘Didn’t you understand? I wanted the world to know. If people at home don’t know what I’m trying to do The people at home do know,’ I said, and I told him about Ruffini and how the story had been taken up by the national press and a question asked in the House. His eyes lit up, his whole bearing suddenly changed. ‘Wonderful!’ he breathed. ‘Wonderful!’ He was standing erect now, his head up, his voice much stronger. ‘Time,’ he said. ‘Time and a little luck. That’s all I need now.’

Time is against you,’ Berry said. ‘This is your last chance to get out of here alive.’

‘Is it?’ The dry, cracked lips produced a twisted smile. ‘Do you really believe the Emir would let us get out of here alive — particularly when they see how few we are? He’d lose too much face. Anyway I’m not going. I’ll stay here till I die unless the Emir agrees to my terms or the authorities make some move to safeguard Saraifa.’

‘Surely to God you’ve done enough,’ I said, and gave him the rumour we’d heard about the two falajes running again at Saraifa and the people returning to the oasis. Berry, more practical, said, ‘How much water have you got left?’

‘Not much. But it’s cooler inside the tower. We’re drinking very little.’

‘And your two men?’ Berry asked. ‘Are they alive?’

‘Yes, they’re still alive. Hamid’s very weak — a bullet through the shoulder and a splinter of rock from a ricochet in the back. Bin Suleiman’s leg is smashed. But they’ll both last as long as the water.’

‘So you won’t leave with us?’

‘No.’

Berry nodded, accepting his decision as final. He seemed to understand David’s attitude and he didn’t attempt to reason with him. Instead, he unstrapped his web belt, slipping his water bottle from it. ‘It’s not much,’ he said, holding it out. ‘But one day could make the difference. I’ll report your decision by radio to HQ as soon as I get back to my wireless truck.’

David took the water bottle and though there couldn’t possibly be any moisture left in that emaciated, dried-up hull of a body, his eyes glistened for a moment. ‘Thanks,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll remember.’ His thin hands were gripped tight round the bottle. ‘One more day,’ he breathed.

‘You’ll have that — I promise.’ He wasn’t looking at Berry or at me. He was looking upwards to the burning vault of the sky … a pact with God. And on this barren, burned-rock hilltop where the air was heavy with the stink of rotting bodies, it would be an Old Testament God. ‘One more day,’ he whispered again in that croaking voice, and at that moment a rifle cracked.

The thud of the bullet, the scream of pain, the clatter of a gun barrel on rock — it was all on the instant and I turned to see the body of an Arab writhing on the eastern wall. It reached the edge, paused and then fell, and as it pitched, screaming, on its face, a second shot rang out.

The screams thinned to silence. The body on the ground arched, a series of violent jerks; something sounded in the throat and after that it lay still. I glanced at Berry. He hadn’t moved. Nor had David. The click of metal on stone drew my eye to the top of the tower. The glint of a rifle, a thin wisp of smoke. Everything was still again; it was difficult to believe that in that instant a man had died.

‘You see! That’s all the treacherous bastard’s safe-conduct is worth.’ David gave a dry little laugh. ‘You’d better get out of here whilst you still can.’

Berry hesitated, and then he nodded. He reached into his pocket and produced some field dressings and a small first-aid kit. ‘Had an idea these might be required.’ He handed them over and then drew himself up and gave David a formal, parade-ground salute. ‘Good luck!’ he said, and turned quickly.

David looked at the first-aid tin and the dressings, his eyes quite blank, his face suddenly fallen-in, the flesh tight on the bones of the skull. I could only guess what he was thinking. A few more days and if he hadn’t been killed by a bullet, he’d be dead of thirst. He looked up. This is goodbye, sir.’ He held out his hand. ‘Tell my father, will you, that I hope it’s a bloody good well… but if he lets the Emir get his hands on one penny of the royalties I’ll haunt him to the grave and beyond.’

His skin was dry, the bones of the hand like an old man’s bones. I stared at him, not knowing what to say, for I was sure I wouldn’t see him again. He was so damned young to die — and like this, in cold blood with his eyes open, trading life for the sake of a gesture. And yet, like Berry, I didn’t try and argue with him. ‘Goodbye,’ I said, and turned quickly before my eyes betrayed me.

At the gateway I paused and looked back. He hadn’t moved. He was still standing there, quite alone and swaying slightly, all his muscles slack with weariness. We stared at each other for a second and then I went out through the gateway, and I knew if the Emir attacked again that night, it would be the end. ‘What a waste!’ I said to Berry, stumbling almost blindly down the track.

He looked at me. ‘I don’t agree.’ His voice was hard and there was a ring to it as though I’d struck a chord deep down. ‘If there weren’t men like David Whitaker … ‘ He shrugged. ‘It’s a big question, isn’t it? Why we’re born; what we do with our lives.’ And he added after a pause, ‘I’d like to think, given his circumstances, that I’d behave the same way.’ He had loosened his pistol holster and his eyes searched the rocks as we hurried back down the track. But we saw nobody and the only sound was the heat throbbing at our temples. The Land-Rover was still there with Ismail standing beside it. Treachery had gone back to its lair and high up over the fort the black speck of some carrion bird planed on the still air.

Berry had seen it, too, and as we drove off, he said, ‘I give him four days. In four days I reckon he’ll be dead of thirst.’

‘He’s weak,’ I said. ‘They’ve only got to make a determined attack now.’

But Berry shook his head. ‘So long as there’s one man left in that tower capable of firing a rifle or tossing a grenade they’ll never take it, and Sheikh Abdullah knows it now. Only artillery or mortars could blast them out. I couldn’t understand, even from your description, how three men could hold a fort against a hundred tribesmen, but now that I’ve seen the place … ‘ He was staring back at it over his shoulder. ‘I am only surprised that a civilian should have appreciated the military possibilities of it.’

‘He was a gang leader in Cardiff docks before he came out to join his father in Saraifa,’ I said.

He laughed. ‘Well, I suppose that’s as good a training as any.’ And after that we drove in silence.

When we got back to the wireless truck, Berry found a message ordering him to return to Sharjah immediately. ‘But why?’ I said. ‘You’re not on Hadd territory.’

‘They’ve got cold feet over the situation by the sound of it. My Company’s been ordered back, too.’ He stood staring towards Jebel al-Akhbar and there was an obstinate look on his face. ‘I’ve given orders that we move at dawn and I’ve notified HQ that I’m held here the night with a damaged spring on the wireless truck. Twelve hours isn’t much, but you never know. The situation could alter.’

By this simple stratagem we were still there on the border when the slanting sun showed a cloud of dust moving across the desert from the direction of Hadd. Through the glasses we counted thirty-two camels, and the riders were all armed. Berry ordered his corporal to issue additional ammunition and personally sited both the Bren guns on a low ridge. But the raiding force kept to Hadd territory, heading due west towards the Sands. ‘Their objective must be Whitaker’s camp,’ Berry said. ‘There’s nothing else out there.’ But he made no move to follow them. ‘Colonel Whitaker will have to look after himself.’

I thought of the lone figure we’d left standing with the clutter of that drilling rig behind him. This was what he had feared, the emissary returning in force. Whitaker would go with them this time. He’d have no alternative. I wondered what would happen when he met the Emir. Would he agree to go up to the fort? And if he did, how would David react?

But that was all in the future. I watched the dust cloud until it disappeared below the rim of the horizon and then I fetched my briefcase and settled down to write a report. It was finished by the time the sun had set and darkness closing in. I gave it to Berry and he agreed to have his wireless operator transmit it to Sharjah at the next contact with HQ. The report was a long one, for it covered David’s situation, our visit to the fort and the treacherous attempt on his life, and I addressed it to Ruffini. We were both civilians and I thought there was just a chance that it might be passed across to him before anyone in authority stopped it.

‘If he’s still there,’ Berry said. The thing was sent now and we were sitting in the truck waiting for the BBC news. More questions in the House, and the Opposition had attacked the Government for refusing to grant newspaper correspondents visas for any Arabian territory except Bahrain. They were accused of trying to hush up an ugly situation.

And then, in the morning, when we picked up the BBC newspaper round-up I was staggered to find that virtually the whole national press had carried a story obviously based on the report I had sent to Ruffini. Somehow he had got it through uncensored and the result was a fantastic perversion of the facts, so colourful, so written up as to be almost unrecognizable from the sad spectacle we had witnessed; and yet it was all there, the heroic quality of David’s stand magnified a thousand-fold to give jaded townspeople the best breakfast-table reading for weeks. And the story had spread from the front pages right through to the leader columns, an angry, outraged demand for Government action.

And when the last editorial flag had been waved by the BBC announcer and the last exhortation of the Government to act immediately had been read. Berry and I looked at each other in astonishment. I think we were both of us quite dazed by the violence of the reaction at home. It was only twelve hours since Berry’s wireless operator had laboriously tapped out in Morse my long report and in that short time David’s situation had been put before the highest tribunal in the land — the British public. Moreover, something had obviously roused the press to anger — the secretive attitude of Whitehall presumably. As one paper put it: Up to a late hour last night, despite a barrage of phone calls, nobody in authority appeared to be in a position to confirm or positively deny the story. The only comment was: ‘We regard the source as highly unreliable.’ This is either stupendous arrogance, or stupendous ignorance. We suspect both and we demand that the Foreign Secretary take immediate action. The country is deeply disturbed. On the strength of that Berry cancelled his orders to move, and within half an hour his action was confirmed. Colonel George, acting on a hunch that political decisions would now have to be reversed, and entirely on his own initiative I gathered later, had already turned Berry’s Company round and ordered it to drive with all possible speed to the Hadd border. ‘I’m to wait here until they arrive,’ Berry said. ‘By then the Colonel hopes to be here himself to take command.’

‘How long before they get here?’ I asked.

‘If they keep going without being stopped in the dunes they’ll arrive sometime after midnight, I imagine.’ He started to go back to the wireless truck, but then he stopped. ‘It might interest you to know that Signer Ruffini was appointed Reuter’s Correspondent with the full knowledge of the Political Resident yesterday afternoon. But for that very odd appointment I imagine your report would have been passed to Bahrain. In which case I’ve no doubt it would now be rotting in some pigeon-hole in the Residency instead of making the world’s headlines.’

The official attitude was obvious. By agreeing to Reuter’s request — perhaps even instigating it — they could justify their refusal to grant visas to correspondents by saying that the press already had coverage from an accredited agency correspondent, and that the very man from whom the story had originated. No doubt they took the view that as a foreigner Ruffini would be more amenable to control than a British correspondent and therefore unlikely to cause them further embarrassment. It was a little ironical that in their hurry to appoint him they had given me almost direct and immediate access to the whole of the British press.

‘I am to tell you,’ Berry added with a thin smile, ‘that no further messages for Ruffini will be accepted through military channels. A matter of bolting the door after the horse has gone.’

‘What about that raiding party headed for Whitaker’s camp?’ I said. I hadn’t mentioned it in my report to Ruffini the previous night. ‘Somebody ought to be told.’

‘Already done,’ he said. ‘It won’t be passed on to Ruffini. but the PRPG will be notified and so will Sir Philip Gorde. He’s in Sharjah now.’

So that was that, and nothing to do now but wait. The day passed slowly. No sound from the direction of Jebel al-Akhbar. Not a single shot all day. The hill seemed suddenly dead. The heat was very bad. The wireless operator was on constant watch on the headquarters waveband. We switched only once to the BBC news. A Foreign Office spokesman had stated that whilst there was no official news, there was reason to believe that press reports were substantially correct and that a young Englishman had instigated some sort of guerilla activity against the Emir of Hadd. The whole matter was under urgent review. There were rumours of reinforcements standing by in readiness to be flown to Bahrain and two destroyers had left Aden, steaming north along the Arabian coast. Cairo Radio had stepped up its propaganda offensive.

Late in the afternoon I was woken from a stifling sleep in the shadow of the W/T truck with the news that the Hadd raiding force was returning. ‘And there’s been no sound from the fort at all.’ Berry passed me the glasses as I stood with slitted eyes gazing at a dust cloud right in the path of the sun. Thirty-three of them now,’ he said. The dust made it difficult, but as they passed to the south of us and I could see them more distinctly, I confirmed his count. They must have been travelling all night and moving very fast.’ The figures flickered indistinctly in the heat. The Emir will have picked up the Arab news,’ he added. ‘He’ll know he hasn’t much time. Had Whitaker a radio, do you know?’

‘I don’t think so.’

Then he probably doesn’t know what’s happening at home — that the Government’s being forced to take action. Oh well,’ he added, ‘if he goes up to the fort and his son’s still alive. Colonel Whitaker will learn from him what we were able to tell him yesterday. It might make some difference.’

I thought of that scene; father and son facing each other in the shambles of that fort. Watching the Emir’s force move past us, men and camels all lifted bodily off the ground by a mirage and turned into strange, distorted shapes by the heat rising from that sea of sand, I felt once again the cruelty of this desert world. It was so hard, so empty, so casual of human life — a crucible to transmute the flesh to skin and bone, the mind to something as distorted as those shapes dancing in a mirage. I had a premonition of disaster then; but not, I think, of tragedy — certainly not a tragedy quite so grim.

I watched them until they disappeared beyond the shoulder of Jebel al-Akhbar, and shortly afterwards the sun set. One more night. But there was still no news, no certainty of action. ‘Better turn in and get some sleep,’ Berry suggested. ‘I haven’t even got an ETA from the Colonel yet.’

‘Will we move in the morning, do you think? David can’t last out much longer.’ And in the morning he might be faced with his father’s desperate situation. ‘For God’s sake! It’s got to be tomorrow.’

‘You’d better pray then,’ he snapped back irritably. ‘For only God and the Foreign Office know what action will be taken and when.’ And he added angrily, ‘I don’t even know whether the Colonel’s order to my Company has been officially confirmed.’

I took his advice then and went to my camp bed. But sleep was out of the question. The night was hot and very still, the stars bright. Time dragged and I dozed, to be jerked awake by the distant sound of engines. It was 0155 hours and Berry’s Company was motoring in, dark shapes moving in convoy across the desert without lights. An officer reported all present and correct, but warned that the only orders he’d received were to wait for the Colonel and not to cross the border.

Orders whispered in the night, the dark trucks spewing men out on to the sand; the area of our camp was suddenly full of movement, an ant-heap settling to sleep, and a voice at my elbow said, “Ullo Mister Grant. Is Ruffini.’ His pudgy hand gripped my arm, patted my shoulder, words tumbled out of him. They had rushed him up to this Company to get him out of the way. He’d been made fabulous offers by several newspapers. ‘I am lucky, eh — lucky to be a journalist and out ‘ere at this minute?’ But I think he was a little scared. He was certainly lonely. His knowledge of the Arabs was based on Mussolini’s shortlived empire.

A bare two hours’ sleep and then the dawn breaking … Another day, and the ant-heap stirred and came to life, little groups of men forming and re-forming, an ever-changing pattern against the blistering yellow of sand and gravel. And standing there on the rim of the desert to the south-east, the Jebel al-Akhbar — black at first against the rising sun, but soon dun-coloured and bare. No sound, no movement to be seen through the glasses. And the desert all around us, that was empty and silent, too.

And then that solitary shot. We were sitting under a canvas awning, rigged from the side of the headquarters truck, and drinking tea. We all heard it, a sharp, faint sound from the direction of Jebel al-Akhbar. But when we looked through the glasses, there was nothing to see, and there was no further sound; just that one isolated shot. The time was 1034.

We had no reason to regard it as any different from the other shots we had heard, though afterwards we realized the sound had been slighter. We settled down again and finished our tea, an island of men camped in a void, waiting whilst the sun climbed the brassy sky and the oven-lid of the day’s heat clamped down on us, stifling all talk.

Only Ruffini was active, trotting sweating from one to the other of us, tirelessly questioning, endlessly scribbling, staring through creased-up eyes at the Jebel al-Akhbar, and then finally badgering Berry until he had given orders for his copy to be transmitted over the radio to Sharjah.

And then, just before midday, the dead stillness of the desert torn apart by the buzz-saw sound of a helicopter. It came sidling in from the north, a strange aerial insect painted for desert war, and in the instant of its settling the whole camp was suddenly changed to a single organism full of purpose. With Ruffini I stood apart on the edge of this ordered turmoil and watched the man responsible for it, surrounded by his officers, standing with his legs straddled, head thrown back — a man conscious of the dramatic quality of the moment.

Ruffini noticed it, too. ‘El Colonello — ‘e is going to war.’

But my attention had shifted from Colonel George. Coming towards me from the helicopter was the squat, battered figure of Philip Gorde. ‘Grant.’ He was leaning heavily on his stick as he faced me. ‘Where’s Charles Whitaker? What’s happened to him?’ And when I told him what we feared, he said, ‘Christ Almighty man, couldn’t you do something?’ But then he shrugged. ‘No, of course not. Bloody politicians!’ he growled. ‘Always too late making up their minds. Hope we’re in time, that’s all.’ He was staring at me out of his bloodshot eyes. ‘I gather he’d moved his rig up to the border. He’d started to drill, had he?’

‘Yes.’

‘I wish I’d known that earlier.’ He looked tired, his face liverish. ‘Not that I could have done anything to help him,’ he added heavily. ‘It’s a hell of a situation. And that boy of his a bloody little hero. Doesn’t he realize what he’s doing to his father — or doesn’t he care? God!’ He was jabbing at the ground with his stick. ‘Well, we’ll just have to hope we get there in time,’ he said again and he stumped off to talk to Colonel George.

The cluster of officers was breaking up now; voices shouting orders, men running, the whirr of starter- motors, the roar of engines, a Land-Rover disappearing in a cloud of dust.

‘Ah, there you are, Grant.’ The Colonel, neat and dapper, cool almost in the torrid heat, came towards me. ‘The boy’s still alive, I gather.’

‘There was a shot fired … ‘

‘So Berry tells me. We’ll just have to hope for the best. I’m sending a small force up to take over the fort. The rest of the outfit will move direct on Hadd. Berry’s gone ahead to make contact with the Emir. You and Ruffini can ride in the headquarters truck.’

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.

You know this man? the Emir demanded. And when Colonel George nodded, the Emir explained that Haj Whitaker had that morning agreed to go up to the fort and reason with his son. What had happened up there he did not say. He merely gestured to the body. This man’s son has murdered my people. You say it is not murder. Look now at that which lies before you and tell me — is that murder? Colonel George sat there, his eyes hard, his face set. He had no answer. ‘His own father!’ His voice was shocked and he made no attempt to challenge the Emir’s version of what had happened.

‘You can’t be sure,’ I said.

It was Gorde who answered. ‘Do you think it would have occurred to him to have the body flung at our feet like that if Charles had been killed by one of his men?’ He was staring down at the bloody figure lying in the dust, his hands clenched. Then he looked up at the Emir and demanded to know where the body had been found, and when the Emir replied that his men had picked it up at the foot of the cliffs directly below the tower, he nodded his head slowly. As far as he was concerned that settled it.

It was very hot there in the sun, yet a cold shiver ran through me. I was remembering the solitary shot we’d heard that morning, and into my mind came Mrs Thomas’s words — It was never Dafydd that was going to die. Colonel George was the first to recover. Ignoring the body, he dealt with the terms on which the fort would be evacuated and his forces withdrawn. And when the Emir finally agreed, he made the pre-arranged signal to his troops waiting on the Jebel al-Akhbar and withdrew his force into the desert, taking Whitaker’s body with him.

Back at our old encampment we found the helicopter gone and one of the trucks belonging to the Jebel al-Akhbar detachment already returned. After interviewing the driver, Colonel George announced, ‘David Whitaker is apparently still alive. The helicopter’s gone up to bring him out.’ He said it flatly, and behind me I heard Gorde murmur, ‘God help him! He’d have been better dead.’

The helicopter took off from the fort, and when it landed they carried David to the shade of the headquarters truck awning. When I saw him, I thought for a moment it was all over. His face was relaxed, the eyes closed; the flesh, tight-drawn, was bloodless. It was a death’s head, all skull and bone, and the skin like parchment. But then the eyes flicked open and he saw me. The cracked lips smiled and he tried to say something, but no words came. He was too dried-up to speak. The eyes closed again and he went into a coma.

The helicopter had also brought bin Suleiman out. He was badly wounded and very weak but he was alive. Only Hamid was dead. They brought his body down and buried it beside Colonel Whitaker’s within sight of the Jebel al-Akhbar. Gorde stood with bared head and hard, frozen eyes as they laid his old friend to rest in his shallow desert grave, and Ruffini was there, sitting on the ground, his pencil moving steadily across the pages of the notebook held against his knee.

The burial over, I went to talk to him. I wanted to try and persuade him to soft-pedal the fatal news. I was thinking of Sue rather than David. The boy was a hero and the newspapers avid for news. And now the world was going to be told that he’d killed his father. I was probably the only person who could justify it, who understood the provocation. The public’s reaction would be one of revulsion. Sue would be torn to bits, her life made a hell. I touched Ruffini on the shoulder. ‘About Colonel Whitaker,’ I said.

He paused, his face creased against the sun’s glare as he glanced up at me. ‘We talk about him later,’ he said. And he added, ‘It is fantastic, the most fantastic story I ever write. There is this boy David, who by ‘imself has forced the British Government to take action. And now this man they ‘ave just buried — his father who is a great figure in the desert, a sort of … ‘ He clicked his fingers, searching for a name. ‘It doesn’t matter. What matter is that he is dead, killed by a stupid tyrant, a sort of Arabian condottiere, in a lousy little mud town in the desert.’

‘You mean you think the Emir … ‘ I checked, staring down at him.

‘And for what?’ he demanded, his mind concentrated on assembling the English phrases he wanted. ‘He kill him to blacken his son’s name, a ridiculous attempt to destroy this heroic young man. It is a tragedy, a great tragedy. And with the death of Colonel Whitaker, it is the end of an epoch in the desert, the last great Englishman in Arabia … ‘ He bent his head, his pencil flying again.

I stared at him in astonishment. He’d been there. He’d understood what the Emir had said. And he didn’t believe him. His story would accuse the Emir of Colonel Whitaker’s murder, and because he was the only journalist here, the press would carry his version. I could only hope that the authorities would leave it at that.

Colonel George took that story with him when he left shortly afterwards in the helicopter. He also took David, and because of that Gorde was left to travel by Land-Rover. I was standing beside him as the helicopter took off. He turned to me and I can still remember the rasp in his voice as he said, ‘If that little bastard of Whitaker’s lives, you’ll have a lot to answer for.’

‘How do you mean?’ My mouth felt suddenly dry.

‘You sent him out here, knowing he’d killed a man, knowing he was a self-dramatizing little gangster. Fellows like that don’t change, and patricide is something every society abominates. He’s a hero now. But when the public learns the truth … ‘ He stared at me, his eyes cold and hard. ‘Charles Whitaker was a man in a thousand, probably the greatest Englishman who ever made the desert his home. I’ve known him since I first came out to Arabia, and you can rest assured I’ll see to it that the truth is known.’ He turned abruptly, without giving me a chance to say anything, and I watched him as he limped across to where Berry was organizing his convoy.

Colonel George had placed a Land-Rover at Gorde’s disposal and he left immediately, so that I had no opportunity to talk to him. And when I finally reached Sharjah, he was on his way back to England and it was already too late. David had been placed under arrest and an official statement had been issued to the press.