For Kingdom and Country (11 page)

The others watched in mild amusement as the sergeant major made his way along the gangplank, shaking his head and muttering under his breath.

‘Right,’ Lock said. ‘Follow our dearly beloved sergeant major. Make your way up to the roof deck and settle down. I’ll be along in a while.’

Lock headed to the stern with the dog, its claws clip-clipping over the wooden deck, darting about around his heels. It wasn’t as deserted at the rear of the steamer as Lock had hoped, but there was enough space along the guard rail overlooking the slats of the vast wooden stern wheel for him to be alone with his thoughts. Standing nearby were a couple of lanky sepoys from the 22nd Punjabis. They were having a heated debate in their native tongue that involved lots of gesticulating and banging of the guard rail. But one icy glare from Lock was all it took for the two Indians to shuffle away, and before long Lock had the guard rail properly to himself.

When the steamer finally got underway, pulling out of Ashar to begin its five-hour journey northwards up the Shatt al-Arab to the furthest point of the British lines, the chugga-shoosh chugga-shoosh of the stern wheel turning in the water soon brought a hypnotic feel to the voyage. It would, under different circumstances, be a very sedentary way to travel, Lock imagined, letting his mind drift while watching the choppy wake fade off into the hazy distance.

The floods were more evident in the land they passed through now, and as far as the eye could see, the water stretched. It was broken up only by occasional oases of palm trees that were clustered together in little copses or belts. Here and there the flat-roofed, mud-brick Arab villages jutted up. They were built on the slightly higher ground and looked like islands adrift in a vast ocean of milky water. It was as insane a place to wage war as it had been between Basra and Shaiba. The land was totally submerged, which made it impossible for a proper mobile army to function. Even horses would find the going near-impossible. Their destination was only forty miles or so upriver, but against the current and under the stifling, thick and oppressive heat, even the
Mejidieh
seemed to struggle, panting and wheezing with the effort.

Lock stood, hands resting on the guard rail, and stared out at the choppy wake. Amy suddenly pushed her way into his thoughts. He frowned and patted his pockets, suddenly remembering her gift. Taking the package out, he tore off the string and the brown paper, tossing them to the wind. In his hand was a plain wooden box, about twelve inches long by four inches wide and two inches deep. A miniature coffin? he thought with a wry smile. It had brass hinges and a brass clasp. He opened it up

Inside, resting on a deep-red velvet lining, was a beautifully crafted dagger of fine, polished steel, with a smooth carved handle in ivory. Lock lifted the knife out and ran his thumb lightly across the edge of the blade.
It sliced into the skin of his thumb like a thumbnail pierces an overripe peach. He sucked the tiny cut and smiled, holding the blade up to let its edges catch in the sunlight.

‘Beautiful,’ he muttered. Then he peered a little closer. Engraved along the flat edge was the simple legend,
For Kingdom and Country
.

Lock smiled again and slowly shook his head.

‘You couldn’t even put your name. Silly, stupid, beautiful girl.’

He put the blade back in its box, put it away in his pocket, and fished out a pack of Woodbines. He selected a cigarette, struck a match against the pitted iron of the guard rail, and put the flame to the tip. As he exhaled slowly, the light breeze churned up from the stern wheel blew the smoke back into his face. His eyes smarted and he waved his hand in front of his nose to dissipate the fog cloud.

Fog cloud … Early morning mist … He frowned, remembering the fat Swiss oilman’s words in the prison cell back in Basra.

‘Who, who says I assassinated this … Süleyman Askerî?’ Lock had demanded.

Grössburger had blinked back at him and replied, ‘The witness.
Binbaşi
Feyzi.’

‘Jesus,’ Lock said. ‘I remember you now.’

He grinned to himself as he recalled standing on the west bank of the Shatt al-Arab near to the unmanned southern gate of Basra, listening for Wassmuss’s invasion party and how he had suddenly caught sight, through the early morning mist hanging over the water, of a lone bellum loaded with a Turk raiding party. And standing at its bow, a Turk officer in a white summer uniform. Lock had called out to him in Turkish, had asked if he was Herr Wassmuss, and the Turk officer had replied, ‘
No, I am Erkan Feyzi of the Imperial Ottoman Army
.’ But the voice was unmistakable, and Lock knew that the officer was Wassmuss in disguise.

‘You shifty bastard,’ Lock said softly. ‘Well, all right then, if you want to play it that way, then so be it.’

A blast from the steamer’s horn made the dog start and begin to yap. Lock turned his head upriver. It appeared as if they were nearing their destination at last. He took a final drag on his cigarette, tossed the remainder over the side, then turned away from the guard rail to go in search of his platoon.

Qurna was a town of some 5,000 inhabitants, situated on the left bank of the Tigris. It was some forty-five miles north-west of Basra, at the end of the Shatt al-Arab, sited at the junction of the Tigris and the former channel of the Euphrates. The British had made camp here on one of the narrow spits of dry land. It was late afternoon now, but the sun was still unbearably hot and, as the
Mejidieh
rounded the bend of the Shatt and headed towards the docks, Lock found himself staring out at a most unusual spectacle, that of what appeared to be a whole brigade practising manoeuvres in boats.

‘Crikey, sir, it’s just like Cowes week.’

Elsworth, along with Singh, Underhill and the rest of Green Platoon, had joined Lock at the guard rail on the port side of the roof deck, and the young sharpshooter wasn’t alone at being agog at the strange scene before him.

Lock had never been to the Isle of Wight, but he knew of it, and Elsworth was certainly right in that the amount and range of vessels certainly did make the gathering look like some regatta.

‘Townshend’s Regatta,’ Lock muttered.

‘Sahib?’ Singh said.

‘Oh, nothing, Sid. Quite a sight, isn’t it?’

The big Indian bobbed his head in agreement.

‘Only I don’t think this is for pleasure,’ Lock said.

‘I very much am doubting it, sahib.’

They all fell back into a kind of captivated silence, along with most of the troops aboard the steamer, and watched the various companies getting to grips with their amphibious activities. Lock was familiar with the vessel that was most prolific amongst this floating army, the native bellum. They were the flat-bottomed, gondola-like boats that were generally poled along, rather like punting on the Thames. The bellum was narrow, around three-foot wide and twenty-foot long, with a small platform at each end. But they were sturdy, well-balanced and could carry ten men and their kit and ammunition. There were also kalaks in use, another traditional vessel of Mesopotamia, but one that was generally used for downstream transportation. They were rafts of timber supported on inflated goatskins. But, despite being able to carry loads of up to thirty-five tons, and Lock could see a number with mounted guns on board, one bullet striking the goatskin and the whole lot would become unstable and more than likely topple its load into the Tigris.

Lock’s attention was distracted from the floating spectacle by a sudden acrid waft of burning metal. Over to the far side of the docks, in an atmosphere of arc lights, sparks and molten solder, he could make out the engineers and sappers working hard at what appeared to be modifying and adding armour of some kind to the river craft. Most of the bellums were being fitted or already had attached, he now noticed, steel plates to protect them from enemy rifle fire. Obviously the sheet metal was in short supply, though, because Lock could also see that many of the boats had armour improvised from mats and dried dates. He shook his head. How the hell that would protect from shrapnel and bullets he couldn’t imagine, remembering what it was like back in Barjisiyah Woods when the Turk machine guns opened fire on them and the trees all around were shredded into so many thousands of matchsticks.

‘Bloody fools,’ Lock said.

His eye wandered up the quay to the naval flotilla. There were three armed launches there, the
Shaitan
, the
Lewis Pelly
, and the
Miner
, all basically small tugboats with armoured shields, as well as two naval horse-boats, both carrying 4.7 guns, a paddle steamer, the RIM
Lawrence
, with a 4-4-inch gun, three sloops, the HMS
Clio
, the HMS
Odin
and the familiar HMS
Espiegle
. Lock had spent time aboard that vessel when Major Ross had managed to secure passage on her when they were racing from Mohammerah to Basra ahead of Wassmuss’s invasion force. It gave Lock a warm feeling to know that its captain, the red-whiskered Hayes-Sadler, would be providing invaluable naval support to this ragtag armada. There were also two more steamers already docked, the
Blosse Lynch
and the imaginatively named
P.1.
They were similar to the
Mejidieh
, and would, no doubt, be acting as troop transports.

The
Mejidieh
began to slow, and Lock spotted a familiar figure standing alone on a horseshoe inlet down at the point of land where the Shatt flowed into the Euphrates. As the steamer continued to chug towards the docks, Lock watched the figure until it was lost from sight. The
Mejidieh
slowed, drifting closer and closer towards land. Shouts came up from the quayside, tie ropes were thrown out, and the steamer moved into its designated berth before coming to a complete stop. There was more calling and shouting from below as the steamer’s mooring ropes were secured, then the gangplank grumbled and creaked as it was slowly lowered. A great toot exploded from the ship’s whistle signalling their arrival.

‘All right, lads, let’s go say hello to our new home,’ Lock said, shouldering his haversack. He pushed his way through the throng of troops towards the gangplank, and joined the file slowly disembarking.

The docks were noisy, smelly and uncomfortable to be in such was the stifling heat, the clatter of diesel engines, the shout of dockhands and
NCOs and the miasma of flies. Already Lock could feel his shirt sticking to him like a second skin. The heat radiating up from the dusty, hard baked earth underfoot was suffocating and the flies were insufferable. No matter how many times he waved them off, another cloud quickly descended, trying to get into his eyes, his mouth, his nose. Lock led the men southwards in the direction of the horseshoe inlet where he had spied the familiar figure standing by the water’s edge.

On they marched, passing boats of all sizes and forms, strung together along the quayside, until they came to a rickety wooden pier. This was crammed with crates, and at its far end a wooden hoist was busy unloading more supplies from a shallow barge docked below.

Lock glanced across the water to the eastern bank. It was lined with mud-brick and wooden constructed stores above which ran a string of telegraph wires. He followed their line that ran unbroken and all the way northwards, upriver, disappearing into the hazy distance. Lock wasn’t surprised at them being here, for he knew well enough the time, money and effort that the Ottoman Empire had spent on a vast communication network. After all, he was involved in its very construction for a number of years prior to the war. He had been working as a civil engineer for the
Société Ottomane des Téléphones
before Major Ross came along and recruited him into British Intelligence’s White Tabs unit. He was just surprised that the lines hadn’t been cut down or blown up by now.

Lock looked towards the south and could see the docks were coming to an end. He waved his hand irritably in front of his face again, and wiped the sweat from his eyes.

‘This way,’ he called over his shoulder. Singh, Underhill and the others followed his lead as he picked his way across a scrubby wasteland at the end of which was a number of bellums lined up in dry dock. They came to the bank. This ran down to the small horseshoe inlet that looked out across the waters to where the three rivers met.

Major Ross was standing at the water’s edge observing, through a pair of binoculars, the training session out on the river. Lock could see, as he got closer, that the troops nearest to the major out on the water were in fact part of the Mendip Light Infantry. They were all practising in bellums and gufas in the deeper waters of the Euphrates to the south-west of the main town, at a point where a large creek headed back up north. Lock recalled from his map that it led to the tiny settlement of Nikarat.

‘Well, we’ve found the rest of our regiment,’ Lock said.

‘Jesus, would you look at these fanti idiots,’ Underhill smirked, dropping his haversack, and standing, arms folded, with a huge grin across his face.

The rest of the platoon gathered around and stood watching the training exercise unfold, a murmur of amused conversation quickly bouncing around between them.

‘Wait here. I’ll go talk to the major,’ Lock said, and made his way down the muddy bank.

Ross glanced up as Lock came alongside and gave him a pained grimace.

‘That bad?’ Lock said.

‘Bloody awful, laddie. You’d think they’d never seen a boat before. Didn’t any of them take a sweetheart out for a row on a pleasure lake?’

Lock couldn’t argue with the major. Everywhere his eye fell, the men of the Mendips were poling and rowing and paddling in the most haphazard, uncoordinated way, while red-faced NCOs standing thigh-deep in the water looked on in exasperated frustration.

‘Don’t stir it like it’s a bowl of bloody soup!’ shouted one sergeant to his hapless platoon aboard one of the bellums.

‘You there! Stop laughing! Stop, I say!’

Lock recognised that voice. It was Bingham-Smith and he looked as
red-faced and as exasperated as the rest of the junior officers. He was a little away from the main body of men, just inside the mouth of the creek, trying to direct a team in the art of mastering the gufa.

The gufa was a vessel totally different to the bellum in every way. It resembled a flattened ball of woven reeds covered with pitch, and there was a hole of varying sizes from five to ten feet across at the top in which passengers and freight were put. To propel the thing along one had to paddle, first on one side, and then on the other, rather like steering a canoe. Two or three experienced men can make a good old progress with it, as Lock had seen for himself back in Basra, watching the local Arabs ferrying everything from wooden crates to sacks of grain and even live, bleating sheep across the Shatt al-Arab. However, a novice – and the major was right, for every man here seemed to have not the faintest idea of how to treat a vessel on water – could do little more than make the thing spin around on its own axis. Not only did this make the occupants dizzy, but it also invariably led to frustration then exasperation, which turned then into fits of giggles and then, more often than not, uncontrollable laughter. Matters and progress were naturally made worse by the watching, cheering and goading off-duty Tommies and sepoys that were lining the banks of the rivers.

If Lock didn’t know that death and the enemy were only a few miles further north, he would be led to believe that this gathering of men was all part of some elaborate water festival. It was as ridiculous as it was hilarious and pathetic.

‘I’d ask you not to laugh, laddie,’ Ross said. ‘This is serious. These men need to master these tubs. And quickly.’

‘Don’t slap the water!’ Bingham-Smith screamed shrilly.

Suddenly there was a terrific whine as a bullet ricocheted off of the armour-plated bellum nearest to the creek’s edge. There was a pause as everyone nearby seemed to freeze. There followed the distinctive crack of
a rifle shot and the muddy ground at Ross’s feet spat up splattering his boots with dirty water.

‘Sniper!’ Lock shouted, as he grabbed Ross and flung himself and the major to the ground.

Pandemonium broke out as the watching troops scattered and the NCOs screamed at their men to take cover.

‘Jildi! Jildi!’

‘Toot sweet, lads!’

‘Iggry! Iggry!’

The men in the boats threw themselves into the water.

A third shot cracked and whined overhead.

‘Where’s it coming from?’ Ross said, wiping mud from his face, eyes darting about left and right. He remained lying flat.

‘Somewhere behind us, up the creek,’ Lock said. He turned on his side and shouted up the bank. ‘Elsworth, can you see anything?’

‘Not from here, sir,’ the young sharpshooter called back. ‘Too many trees for cover. But the shots came from the western bank.’

Lock’s men had taken cover behind a number of bellums that were up out of the water, in the process of having the armour plating attached.

A stillness had fallen across the water now, with all the troops involved in the amphibious exercise deathly silent, heads down, peering out from their various hiding places for any sign of movement in the undergrowth further up the creek.

‘Sir, crawl slowly down into the water. Better cover,’ Lock said, and he began to worm his way into the river, belly down. The major followed close behind.

‘How many do you think, Lock?’ Ross said, scooping mud from the lenses of his binoculars before pressing them to his eyes.

Only their heads were visible above the surface now, but Lock knew that they were still horribly exposed.

‘Two, maybe more.’

‘Pity we’re not practising with live ammunition in those field guns,’ Ross said, jutting his chin in the direction of the heavy artillery mounted on the kalak rafts.

‘Hang on!’ Lock said. ‘What the hell …? Pass me your glasses, sir.’

He was keeping an eye on the western bank of the creek and had been distracted by movement in the water on the opposite side. Ross handed Lock the binoculars. Lock adjusted the focus until he could clearly see Bingham-Smith wading out into the water and scrambling into the gufa he’d been trying to train his men to use. There were now six of them crouched down in the boat. There was a tremendous amount of splashing as the vessel began to rotate and the men started to paddle towards the snipers’ side of the creek.

Bingham-Smith’s distinctive accent carried on the warm breeze as he shouted, ‘Faster! Faster!’

‘Jesus, what an idiot!’ Lock muttered.

The gufa bobbed along, then suddenly began to spin like a top. Lock could see the men inside desperately trying to steady the boat and stop its rotation. Bingham-Smith was gesticulating wildly, but before long the gufa was caught in the current and began to bob back the way it had come and then bounce back down the eastern bank towards the mouth of the river.

‘No, no! The other way!’ Bingham-Smith screamed.

A glint of light on the western bank caught Lock’s eye. He could see a rifle barrel protruding from the reeds near to the water’s edge. But the sniper didn’t open fire.

‘Is that laughter?’ Ross said.

Lock strained his ears and grinned. ‘I believe it is.’