For Kingdom and Country (20 page)

‘What a pathetic sight,’ he sneered. ‘Do any of these Johnny fellows know how to fight?’

Lock sighed. ‘Still here, Smith?’

‘You told me to observe, Lock. And that is what I am doing, observing the Turk to be no match for the might of the British army. I shall inform my uncle of the very same as soon as I see him.’

Lock shook his head slowly. ‘Yes, you go on thinking that, underestimating them at your peril.’

‘I’ve seen nothing to say otherwise,’ sniffed Bingham-Smith. ‘An old man wondering about in a daze clutching the Union flag like he’s leading the church parade for the Boy Scouts, and a crying child distraught that his friends have run off and left him all alone. Is that it, I ask? Is that all they have to offer? Pah, this war will be over by—’

‘Christmas?’ Lock said. ‘They said that
last
Christmas.’

‘I don’t care what you say, Lock. Uncle and General Townshend will be delighted with the news.’

‘Your uncle may be a 24-carat fool, Smith, but the general will scoff at your assessment.’

Bingham-Smith straightened his tunic and sniffed. ‘To coin one of your less vulgar expressions, Lock, “bugger off”.’

‘
Touché
, Smith.
Touché
.’

Lock turned his attention back to the artillery officer. He placed a hand on the Turk’s shoulder and said softly, ‘
Yüzbaşi
, I need to know about the German. Herr Wassmuss. Or perhaps there is a Binbaşi Feyzi here?
’

The artillery officer sniffed and looked up at Lock. He wiped his face and forced a strained smile.

‘
German? Yes, he was here until
…’ He paused, frowning, ‘…
until the shelling started. I cannot be certain
.’

Lock felt his wound itch in anticipation. ‘
Can you describe him?
’

The artillery officer seemed to go off into a trance again, eyes looking past Lock’s shoulder.

‘
Yüzbaşi
?
’

But the officer just shook his head. ‘
I
…’

He dropped his chin and started to sob again.

Lock glanced over his shoulder to the eastern doorway. It yawned back at him.

‘Captain Lock, sir.’ It was Elsworth. He was calling down from the roof.

Lock craned his neck to see the young sharpshooter’s head and shoulders peering through a hole in the ceiling.

‘What is it, Alfred?’

‘You’d better come and see for yourself, sir.’

‘Bugger it,’ Lock said under his breath.

‘Smith, can I trust you not to shoot these two if I leave you alone?’

Bingham-Smith’s lip curled up. ‘I think not, Lock. I shall be accompanying you up to the roof … to observe.’

At that moment the fall of footsteps made both men turn to the eastern doorway. It was Harrington-Brown. He was alone.

‘Lieutenant?’ Lock said.

Harrington-Brown removed his topi, scratched at the tightly cropped curly hair underneath, and gave a nod to Bingham-Smith. ‘Reporting back. Captain.’

‘I’m the captain in charge here, Lieutenant. Don’t you forget that,’ Lock said.

Harrington-Brown gave an almost undetectable sniff of contempt and looked to Lock.

‘Well?’

‘All men stationed as you ordered. And … er …’ he glanced at Bingham-Smith again and the two men shared a barely disguised smirk, ‘there’s nothing to report. No sign of the enemy. Just a load of abandoned equipment. Rifles, helmets, packs, that sort of thing. There’s an empty medical station, too. Plenty of supplies, and empty beds. With linen. D’you know that I even found a kitchen with food on the boil. It’s as if the bloody Johnnies have just vanished into thin air.’ He clicked his fingers for effect and said, ‘Poof! Just like that,’ then grinned. But the smile never reached his eyes.

‘Well,’ Lock said, ‘as you are here, I want you to keep an eye on these two officers.’

Harrington-Brown looked from the naval officer to the artillery officer.

‘Very well, Captain.’

Lock nodded. ‘If you’re coming, Smith, come,’ he said, picking his way through the rubble and over to the staircase.

Up on the roof, over in a corner on the eastern side, lay a Turkish soldier. Only he wasn’t any ordinary soldier from what Lock could see. His face, hands and arms were painted green and he was wearing a green uniform, not khaki, but a green the colour of the reeds in the surrounding marsh and of the leaves of the nearby date palms. He was a sniper. And apart from a bandage wrapped around his head, the sniper appeared uninjured. But his eyes told a different story. They stared back up at Lock, Elsworth and Bingham-Smith, searching their faces vainly for pity. But Lock felt no pity for this Turkish sniper.

‘Weapon?’ Lock said.

‘None, sir. Not even a penknife.’

‘Strange. He’s clearly from a gun-nest hidden in a tree judging by his camouflage. But how in the hell did he come to be up on this roof?’

Lock scanned the area. The nearest foliage to them was a cluster of date palms that ran along the western bank of the Tigris, just to the east of the roof. But those trees were a good 500 yards away.

‘Well, whatever the answer, he’s of no threat to us now,’ Lock said. ‘Go fetch a stretcher from that medical station Lieutenant Harrington-Brown found and have one of the sepoys help you get him back downstairs.’

‘Why not just put the fellow out of his misery, Lock?’ Bingham-Smith said.

Elsworth hesitated.

‘Because, Smith,’ Lock said, ‘we’re not barbarians—’

‘I beg to differ. In the case of certain individuals.’

Lock ignored the jibe. ‘We’ll make him comfortable downstairs, out of the sun, and leave him for our M. O.s from the hospital ships to deal with. They’re following the regatta, picking up and patching up as many of the wounded as they can.’

‘Bloody waste of time. I’d say he’s a goner. Look at the back of his head.’

Lock leant in closer. He hadn’t noticed initially, but from where Bingham-Smith had been standing it was hard to miss. The back of the Turk’s bandage was dark with blood. Already blowflies were crawling over the sticky mess.

‘Give him some water, Alfred, and stay with him,’ Lock said. ‘It won’t be long. Make him as comfortable as you can.’

Elsworth nodded. He shouldered his rifle and unhooked his water canteen from his Sam Browne belt. He knelt down beside the Turk sniper and uncorking the canteen, held it up to the Turk’s mouth.

‘Easy, easy, Johnny,’ Elsworth said. The Turk gulped the water down thirstily.

Lock made his way back to the staircase, with Bingham-Smith at his heels.

‘You’re soft, Lock. Soft and sentimental. Which, I must say, I find rather amusing,’ Bingham-Smith smirked.

Lock wondered if Bingham-Smith would break his neck if he shoved him down the stairs. He sighed and peered down through the shell-damaged roof into the vast, debris-strewn room below. He suddenly pulled up. The
liva amiral
was still in his chair but had dozed off with his book resting on his belly, and in front of the dormant Krupp field gun sat the young artillery officer. Only he wasn’t alone. Harrington-Brown was standing over him, finger out, pointing and prodding. If Lock were a betting man, he’d say that the lieutenant was haranguing the Turkish captain. Momentarily losing sight of the pair as he passed through the ceiling to descend the stairs, Lock emerged back on the ground floor only to find the room as he had left it earlier, with both Turk officers sat alone. Harrington-Brown was
once again over by the threshold of the eastern doorway.

The
liva amiral
was snoring softly, his belly rising and falling like a great bellows, while the young artillery officer sat staring ahead. Only he looked scared now, rather than distraught, all the colour having drained from his face.

‘
Yüzbaşi
’ Lock said, striding over to the young Turk officer. ‘
Is there a mobile base of operations hereabouts? Perhaps on one of the Turk steamers?
’

The artillery officer’s eyes snapped to Lock’s, then flicked over to where Harrington-Brown was standing, before returning to meet Lock’s gaze. He shook his head.

From up on the roof the soft, plaintive notes of Elsworth’s mouth organ drifted down as the young sharpshooter started playing a gentle, sentimental tune. Then his voice began to softly sing,

‘
Come, Yüzbaşi, I know about the boats. We have good intelligence
,’ Lock said. ‘
I just don’t know which one
.’

Again the young Turk officer’s eyes were drawn like magnets in the direction of Harrington-Brown. Lock deliberately took a step to the right, blocking the lieutenant from view.

‘
Is it the Mosul, Yüzbaşi?
’

The artillery officer looked blankly back up at Lock.

‘
Or the Marmaris?
’

The Turk officer’s chestnut brown eyes widened momentarily, then he averted his gaze altogether.

Lock had his answer. He turned away from the young officer and, ignoring the watching Harrington-Brown, walked over to where Elsworth had left his haversack at the foot of the stairs. He pulled out the cardboard folder of papers the
liva amiral
had with him on the tiny sand island, and strode out of the main entrance and into the hazy sunshine.

Lock leant heavily against the baking wall, pulled off his slouch hat and wiped his brow. He fished out his Woodbines and sat down. So there was a German here, he thought, striking a match against the rough brick wall behind him. The
liva amiral
had said that he was given the file to look after by the German officer from the
Marmaris
, and now this young artillery officer was talking of a German officer. But was it Wassmuss? Lock put the lit match to the cigarette between his lips and frowned. Most of the Turkish divisions had German officers ‘advising’, but Lock had a gut feeling that this one was Wassmuss. It had to be. Hadn’t it? He exhaled and cursed.

‘I should have shot you dead the first time I saw you,’ Lock said to himself. ‘Well, I won’t hesitate next time.’

Lock smoked in silence, trying to empty his mind. His eyes were heavy, but he resisted the urge to doze. What he needed was a good cup of coffee. He shuffled himself into a more comfortable position and unfastened the string-bound cardboard folder.

There must be something within these pages, Lock thought, something that you want me to see? Is that it? Are you toying with me, Herr Wassmuss? I wonder …

Lock slowly picked through the papers. There were pages and pages of tedious quartermaster lists, details of equipment, food stuffs, arms, as well as sentry rotas and memos relating to water ration quotas. He came to a circuit diagram of the mine network.

‘Now this would have been useful before I’d disconnected the switch,’
Lock smiled to himself, ‘but at least it will help to locate them further should the
liva amiral
prove untrustworthy.’

A thought suddenly struck him. He didn’t want to take the risk of Bingham-Smith seeing this document. It would just give him the perfect justification for taking the
liva amiral
with him back to the
Espiegle
as he’d wanted to do in the first place. That would scupper Lock’s plan of getting to the
Shaitan
and the
Lewis Pelly
, and so away from Godwinson and Townshend’s grasp.

‘I think not,’ Lock muttered, folding the document up and stuffing it in his inside pocket.

The next document he came to was a map of the various redoubts along the Tigris. Interesting, but again obsolete now, for the British had already passed through and taken control of the majority of the Turkish defences. Then Lock froze, his cigarette held in his fingertips, halfway towards his mouth. The paper he had just turned to was at first glance nothing more than another list. There were German, Turkish, Arabic, Russian, British and even a couple of Indian names typed there, and next to each one was a monetary value in German marks and the name of a city or town. Lock presumed this was where the person on the list was located. But as he read down, his eyes suddenly came to a halt at a familiar name.