The Baghdad Railway Club (4 page)

He pushed the red pasteboard folder my way. It held my itinerary and passports for travelling east.

Shepherd
had
seemed to stick up for the Turks at the Railway Club meeting; he had certainly been partial to Turkish cigarettes, and he’d seemed quite thick with the Eastern cigarette-and-coffee man of the Midland Grand, but I could not believe he was a traitor. He’d seemed such a thoroughly decent sort. My thoughts raced in a circus as I leafed through the documents, one of many imponderables being: where did the Chief fit in? How had
he
heard of the suspicions against Shepherd?

Manners was speaking again.

‘The essential data is as follows. Expeditionary Force “D” of the British Indian Army – which is to say, General Maude – took control of the city of Baghdad some six weeks ago – on the night of March 11th to be exact. Maude’s army advanced on the city by the left and right banks of the River Tigris. In the van of the forces of the left or the west bank was a unit of infantry under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Shep—’

‘But hold on a minute,’ I said, ‘what was he doing in the fighting? Wouldn’t he have been just travelling in the rear to take up his job on the staff?’

‘Do feel free to interrupt me with questions, Captain Stringer. Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd got himself attached to the unit as a supernumerary. Perhaps he found the idea of steaming up to Baghdad in the rear to be rather a bore. Or perhaps he had some other scheme in mind.’

‘How did he get himself attached?’

‘He knew the commanding officer of the unit, a man called Blake.’

‘How did he know him?’

‘How does anyone know anyone? He met him at a party in London – for all I know at the Midland Grand Hotel. They met again in Basrah, prior to the advance. Anyhow, in the push for the railway station, the unit came under fire and Blake was killed. Shepherd then took command of the unit. He was the only white man left . . . I see you are frowning.’

I was.

‘There are entirely British units within the British Indian Army,’ Manners ran on, ‘and entirely Indian ones. But in most cases the men are Indian, the officers British. The unit we are concerned with was Indian except for Blake and Shepherd.’

I nodded.

‘Now the picture is confused. It was dawn – the light uncertain, a sandstorm rising. Communications were, so to speak, “in the air”, and the forward patrol on the left bank was rather a jumble. But it seems that its chief elements came from the unit Shepherd was with, and a machine-gun company, the 185th. As these units pressed on, the enemy fell back on the Baghdad railway station, which lies on the outskirts of the town. For days, the Turks had been sending men, armaments and stores from there to Samarrah and points north. The last train to leave the station departed at about four o’clock in the morning on March 12th, and it carried both materiel and men – the last of the Turks put to flight. What concerns us here in this department is that immediately before the departure of that train, a parley occurred within the station between Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd and a Turkish bimbashi.’

‘What’s a bimbashi?’

‘A major, let us say.’

‘What language would this have been conducted in?’

‘Almost certainly French. The Turks speak their own version of Arabic, but any well-born Turk speaks French, and we know Shepherd is fluent in it.’

Another score chalked up to his name. He had seemed a remarkably modest man, considering.

‘Was Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd taking the Turkish surrender?’ I said.

‘Receiving the chap’s pistol and sword you mean?’

Evidently, I was wrong.

‘Don’t you think it would have been for General Maude to take the surrender?’ said Manners. ‘And for somebody higher than a major to give it? The Turks did not in any case surrender the city of Baghdad, but merely fled from it. Our concern, however, is that Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd
did
take something from the Turkish officer, and that the Turkish officer was given something in return.’

‘What?’

‘A certain amount of . . .
treasure
.’

Manners eyed me levelly.

‘What form did this treasure take?’ I enquired.

‘We believe gold coins, possibly other articles as well.’

‘A large quantity?’

‘We think so. What was the quantity in
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You’ve never read the story?’ He seemed to be quite staggered.

I had in fact gone with the wife and children to see a
film
of the story at the Electric Theatre in York, and it had been very prettily hand-tinted but completely baffling as to plot.

‘. . .
An amount large enough to be weighed
,’ said Manners in a heavy sort of way that told me he must be quoting.

‘And what did the Turk get in return?’ I asked.

‘Perhaps his own freedom for one thing; permission for that last train to depart – and it is believed that certain undertakings may have been made on both sides.’

‘Undertakings of what nature?’

‘Of an unknown nature.’

‘How do you know Shepherd took this treasure and made these undertakings?’

Manners said, ‘Any information touching on this affair might be dangerous, both to you and others. I’m sorry if I appear to be obtuse, but there’s no point in telling you the little I know at this stage. You’ll find out more from a Captain Boyd who is out there, and who is known to this office.’

(An intelligence man on the side, most likely – I knew there to be a good sprinkling of those in the officer class.)

I asked, ‘Was Boyd on the spot at the time? Did he see what went on?’

Manners made a slight head movement, which I took to mean ‘Yes’. I further reasoned that the man Boyd must have been with the machine-gun company – the 185th – since there were only Indians left in the infantry unit. (Unless of course he actually
was
Indian.
Could
you have an Indian called Boyd?)

‘This fellow Boyd,’ I said. ‘How did he get into touch with you? By telegraph, I suppose. Or did he telephone? Can you telephone from Baghdad?’

‘At a pinch, but it’s a great performance, involving about half the telephonists in India. No, Boyd wrote to us.’

‘He wrote you . . . a
letter
?’

Manners looked at me for a long time before responding: ‘You know what they say, Captain Stringer: “as safe as the mail”. And Boyd’s letter was particularly safe, since he sent it via the diplomatic bag.’

‘But it wouldn’t be any
quicker
that way. It takes nearly four weeks to get a letter from Baghdad,’ I said, thinking of the letter sent to Quinn in France by Shepherd.

‘General Maude himself communicates mainly by post with London,’ said Manners.

‘But that means he must take weeks to get his orders?’

‘Slow and steady wins the race, Captain Stringer.’

And at this, I finally realised the truth about Manners: he was
humorous
.

‘I still don’t see why Boyd didn’t send a wire,’ I said.

Manners sighed, and looked to the Chief: ‘A regular terrier this man, Weatherill. In the first place,’ he continued, turning back to me, ‘he did wire. The day after the fall of Baghdad, he reported to us that he had an urgent and important matter to mention, and that he required a confidential channel of communication. Without any reiteration of his message, we replied by wire to the effect that he should seek direction from a certain other officer out there.’

‘A more senior one?’

Manners blanked the question with a slight look of pain, continuing: ‘After speaking with this other officer, Boyd set down his concerns on paper in greater detail – although still not so very great.’

‘And he sent them to you in a letter.’

‘Which we received on April 15th. Mr Henderson-Richards of this department had sight of the letter. Four days later, he happened to be at York station – his mother has a place in the country nearby – when he bumped into Chief Inspector Weatherill here, who is of course a trusted man, known to this office. The two fell to gossiping.’

‘
Exchanging intelligence
,’ growled the Chief, and Manners, for the first time, actually grinned.

‘The name of Shepherd in Baghdad was mentioned to the Chief Inspector,’ said Manners, ‘who only a few moments before had by an unfortunate accident – which in fact was very
fortunate
– read the letter indicating the job offer to you from Shepherd.’

Manners now slid the buff envelope towards me.

‘Open it,’ he said.

‘Is it the letter from this Captain Boyd?’

‘No, although it arises from his letter. It was written for you by one of my superiors, and it relays to you an arrangement made with Boyd.’

Inside was a typed note, headed – ridiculously to my mind – ‘Top Secret’. It went on in peremptory fashion: ‘Captain Stringer to rendezvous with Captain Boyd outside the
Salon de Thé
(restaurant) at Baghdad railway station at 11 p.m. on Thursday May 24th. Stringer to observe, “It is closed.” Boyd to reply, “The coffee houses by the bridge of boats will do you very well if you don’t mind the walk.”’

So I had a little under a month to get to Baghdad.

I handed back the note. Since this arrangement must have been made in the few days since I came into the picture, it must have been made between the Intelligence office and Boyd via telegram. I asked if this was the case and Manners (with the greatest reluctance) nodded. I said, ‘How secure were those wires?’, for there must have been two: one proposing the arrangement, and one confirming.

Manners said, ‘You need have no anxiety on that score. Boyd did not know the military codes, so his telegrams were sent, as we say, “clear” – that is in plain English – but you were not named in the wires, and nor was the rendezvous point named. In his
letter
to us, Boyd had already nominated that particular spot as “safe place” – the station being some way out of town – in which to confide his anxieties should we wish to assign a man to the case. A return to the station would also allow him to show exactly what he’d seen on the night in question.’

‘So the telegrams were to the effect X will meet you at Y place?’

‘You’ve caught on splendidly,’ said Manners, who now stood up, walked over to his fire, and dropped the note detailing the arrangement on the low flames. Since it was on the very flimsiest paper, it disappeared immediately.

‘By the way, I trust you committed that to memory,’ he said, with the hint of a returning smile. ‘Boyd’s a good chap – he’ll put you in the picture. You’ll take your place in Shepherd’s office. You’ll gather evidence and you’ll report back.’

‘And the aim is to bring Shepherd to book.’

‘Or put him in the clear,’ said Manners. ‘We’ll settle for either. But there is another aim equally important, and that is the uncovering of the treasure, and the securing of same for His Majesty’s Government.’

I’d forgotten about the treasure.

‘You will spend a month in Baghdad.’

‘Not very long,’ I said, and I knew I sounded relieved, which in fact I was.

‘At the end of that period, you will be recalled as a matter of urgency to your unit in France.’

All of this raised so many questions that, in the end, I didn’t ask any.

‘Can I press on you the need for absolute discretion?’ Manners said. ‘Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd is a popular man and highly rated by the command. There would be a scandal in Baghdad if it was found he was being investigated, and that would sap morale badly. Discretion must be
absolute
. Have you packed yet?’

‘I’ve only just found out I’m going.’

‘You won’t be needing a top-coat. I recommend mosquito cream, quinine, malaria tablets and a well-oiled service revolver.’ He offered his hand. ‘Enjoy yourself out there. Give my regards to Captain Boyd, and we have a message for him from his lady wife . . .’

‘Which is?’ I said, scowling rather.

‘Oh, just that she loves him, and will he please
write
to her?’

Manners had now walked over to the door, and was holding it open for me and the Chief.

‘Hold on a minute,’ I said, ‘how do I get in touch with you before the month’s up?’

‘Ah yes,’ said Manners, and he leant into the corridor and called, ‘Boy!’

On our third day of sailing up the River Tigris, I resolved to step from under the tarpaulin overhanging the aft deck of the small British Naval gunboat,
Mantis
, and to remain in the open for some time. I had been told to acclimatise to the sun. Stretched out on a long deckchair some way beyond the tarp was a fellow called Dixon. He was reading a magazine called
The Wide World
, and he had been reading exactly the same magazine in exactly the same spot the day before. He was already acclimatised.

Under the tarp, I tried to predict the heat, but when I stepped into it my prediction was as usual exceeded by an amazing amount. Into the dazzling white sky overhead flew ragged gouts of smoke from the oil-fired engines of the
Mantis
.

Oil-fired . . .

From the quay at Basrah, at the head of the Shat-al-Arab waterway, the refineries of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company had been pointed out to me, but they were only so many low, white drums wavering in the heat haze on the other side of the water, like something burning in white flames. They seemed hardly there at all, and yet ten thousand men of the British and the British Indian Army were in Basrah on their account. Another forty thousand were in Baghdad. There were in addition garrisons posted along the five hundred miles of river connecting those two spots. In short, the hundred and fifty soldiers and thirty crew aboard the
Mantis
were not in any imminent danger of attack – not from Brother Turk anyhow. He’d been driven north of Baghdad by the forces of General Maude. And if any
Arab
tribes encountered on our way might be thinking of having a crack at us . . . Well, they would have the six-inch gun on the foredeck to reckon with, not to mention the machine guns on swivel stands.

On the
Shobak Castle
, the government-controlled liner that had carried me from Southampton to Port Said, then to the Persian Gulf via the Suez Canal and the Red Sea . . . that three-week voyage had not been quite so relaxed an affair. The tub was well worth a torpedo, and in the Med there’d been half a dozen crew on deck with binoculars at all times.

But on the
Mantis
, opera glasses for sightseeing rather than binoculars were the order of the day. On either bank of the Tigris, green wheat grew under the burning sky, but the river being
below
the wheat, I could not make out the desert that I knew lay beyond. Occasionally, I would glimpse the roof of a reed hut or the top of a stone-built building like a windmill without sails, and these, I believed, were to do with the control of the irrigation canals – and the system evidently
worked
, for everything was besieged by the wheat.

The man Dixon took
The Wide World
and laid it over his face. He had an easy time of it, being batman to an amiable major called Hartley. Both were old for serving men, being somewhere around the early fifties. Hartley hadn’t seen much in the way of action, but he was a brainy sort, who knew all the angles on Mesopotamia.

I would listen to him of an evening, as we all sat holding our drinks and smoking in the cramped and sweltering mess. His main topic was the Arab Revolt. Apparently this was already under way in the Ottoman territories of Syria and the Hejaz, and the War Office was all in favour of it. At least,
some
parts of it were – the parts allied to the British Intelligence Bureau in Cairo, where the plan for stirring up the Arabs had been hatched by some ‘fiercely clever’ young British agents. (Hartley said ‘fiercely’ in a very fierce way, spraying half his drink over me.) These British agents – the Arabists – were now bent on extending the revolt to Mesopotamia, which Hartley always called ‘Mespot’. Not all the Arabs were keen on it, however. A few were pro-Turk, and some – perhaps the majority – just ‘generally incredibly bloody-minded and indifferent’.

India
. . . now India was not at
all
keen. Lord Chelmsford, Viceroy of India, was at loggerheads with his governors in London. He had supplied most of the troops by which Maude had taken Baghdad, and what he wanted in return was the Arabian Peninsula as a sub-colony of India. He argued further that a Mohammedan revolt so close to home might inflame those of that persuasion under Indian rule. The loyalty of Indian troops might come into question. Yet it had to be admitted these were mostly Hindu, whereas fully one-quarter of the Turkish army was Arab.

The Turks tried to play the Moslem card as a means of keeping their Arabs on side. Well, the Turks
were
Moslem after all – they had that going for them. But an Arab revolt would trump that card, and spell the final collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It was just about possible, Hartley suggested, over what might easily have been his fifth whisky, and his third cigar, and in response to a question from me, to imagine how a fellow might feel some sympathy for Brother Turk, as for an acquaintance down on his luck, his picturesque empire crumbling daily, practically forced, by fear of the horrible Russians, to get into bed with the even more horrible Germans. In fact, he’d heard there were a good many in the British government who were pro-Turk, and they argued the strategic benefits of suing for peace with the Turks, but mainly they were romantic types, who appreciated the exotic East. Turcophiles – that was the word for those fellows.

It was a five-day cruise from Basrah to Baghdad, I had been told by the first mate, and our present slow rate of progress meant I would arrive there on the 24th, the very day of my night-time rendezvous with Captain Boyd. We were against the current, and only making eight knots or so.

From the aft deck, I watched strange-coloured small birds skimming over the fields, fluttering their wings quickly, then ceasing to flutter and swooping low, as though in a faint from the heat, but they would always recover, and ascend again. One bird swerved off its course and came out over the river, making directly towards me, and I saw that it was
not
a bird but some giant species of dragonfly – and dragonflies could bite, especially Mesopotamian ones.

I went back under the tarpaulin, but the thing did not stop me baking, and there was the oil smell into the bargain, so I turned in at a hatchway, and retreated to my cabin, where an overhead electrical fan revolved at what I had been told – but which I did not believe – was three hundred revolutions per minute. It was not enough, anyhow.

I lay on my bunk in my undershirt, and lit a cigarette, watching what happened to the smoke when it tangled with the blades of the fan. On the table beside my bunk lay an envelope containing a cash advance of twenty pounds, a quantity of Indian rupees and Turkish lira (all or any of which could apparently be tried on the merchants of Baghdad with some hope of success), together with two copies of my letter of engagement as Assistant to Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd, who was designated a Political Officer (Railways) at the Corps HQ in Baghdad. The letter was not from Shepherd himself even though my recruitment was all his doing, but from the assistant to a Brigadier General Barnes, on behalf of Sir Percy Cox, who was the Chief Political Officer. There was a telegram on the table as well. It had been handed to me at Port Said, and came from the Deputy Chief of Staff at Corps HQ in Baghdad. It informed me that a Private Stanley Jarvis of the North Yorkshire Regiment (one of the British units of the Anglo-Indian force) had been seconded to me as batman. I would be sharing him, so to speak, for he was also one of the motor-car drivers attached to the Corps HQ. He would meet me on the quayside in Baghdad, and escort me to the HQ, which was evidently located in the Hotel Grande Bretagne, which I rather liked the sound of. All of the foregoing was, so to speak, the official side of things.

But there was a
second
envelope on the table, and this one bothered me. It had been brought into Manners’s room at the War Office by the boy scout and its contents struck me as nonsensical, and dangerously so. I considered looking them over again, but in the end decided it was just too bloody hot.

I put out my cigarette, tried to sleep, and gave it up after five minutes. The fan had started to rattle and shake. I stared at it, wondering . . . is it actually unscrewing itself? I could not imagine Baghdad railway station. I could not imagine myself slinking into it at close on midnight, and I could conjure no mental image of the man Boyd, witness to the treachery of Shepherd.

On the
Mantis
, I was out from under the tarpaulin, for the sun was now setting, slowly crashing down into the desert that came and went between the orange trees to which the wheat had given way. The air was hot and soft – not unbearable. We had passed Kut, the scene of Townshend’s reversal of the year before, and Maude’s recent victory. It looked the place for a reversal all right – a desert compound of blockhouses with no colour in it, but plenty of mangy dogs wandering about.

At this point, with Baghdad approaching, both banks of the river seemed to be used as pleasure grounds. An Arab, fishing with a trident spear, frowned as we went past. The wake from our boat was not helping his cause. Arab men, holding hands (I’d been warned they would do that), wandered between the trees, or lay against them and smoked. Sometimes the smokers called out to the Arabs on our boat, of which there were a dozen or so, most employed to help with the horses we were taking up. They all stuck together, and were now standing at the midships, repeatedly shouting one word that I understood:

‘Ingilhiz!’

And the Arabs on the bank and the Arabs on the boat would have a good laugh about that. They seemed very easy-going about having their country taken over by foreigners, and just as well too. I supposed they were used to it.

Reed huts were coming into view, and mud houses – long low buildings, bunker-like. I saw a mule tied to a windlass and drawing up a skin of water. A small boy, crouched on the river bank, waited for the water, but the moment he saw me, he stood, and addressed me in Arabic. He appeared to be asking a question, and one that required a quick response. I waved to him, and called out, ‘Salaam alaikum!’ which meant ‘Peace be upon you’, and at which he called out something else I didn’t understand. It was impossible to say whether he was being friendly or not. As far as he was concerned, he’d asked me a perfectly normal question that required a perfectly normal answer . . . Or was the machine gun three feet away from me a consideration in the matter? As he retreated from my vision, the kid fell to talking to his mule. He didn’t seem to appreciate that he lived in a strange world that was almost entirely orangey-brown, what with the oranges on the trees, the faded orange of the long shirt he wore, and the great sunset going on behind him.

. . . But now, on a kind of river-beach, stood a group of Arab women in faded
blue
. I had been told the name of the outfit that covered almost the entire face as well as the body, but couldn’t recall it. Did they wear that rig all the time, being extreme in their faith? Or had they put it on especially, knowing that a boat-load of infidels would be coming along? From what I’d seen so far, most Arab women settled for headscarves, and lots of them. I waved at the party to see whether anything would happen. Nothing did, except that three of the women sat down on the sandy bank, and started what looked like a happy conversation.

Baghdad began to come and go, according to the curves of the river: palm trees with high domes and the pointed towers – minarets – above. The bunkers began to grow into proper brick buildings, and the river became dirty. I saw a floating plank, broken off a crate and stamped with the word ‘Leeds’. We had seemed to be approaching the one bridge that traversed the wide river – a bridge of boats, with tethered black barges supporting a walkway – but now we were turning into the bank. All about me on the
Mantis
, a great bustle was starting up – a clattering of boots going up and down gangways, shouted orders, and the blare of the whistle by which our captain was making our presence felt in the great city. These blasts echoed off the high buildings on the right or eastern bank. They were like so many music halls – albeit somewhat run-down-looking – with domes, arches, or castellated tops, and strange-shaped windows with balconies and verandas overhanging the river. On the western bank, the buildings were lower, and seemed overwhelmed by palm trees.

I read the words on the warehouses on the eastern side: ‘Lynch, Import Export’; a giant signboard built up over a warehouse read ‘Hanbury’s’, and then, stacked still higher above it, a kind of pyramid of smaller boards reading ‘Oranges’, ‘Onions’, ‘Coffee’, ‘Cigarettes’. Another sign read ‘British and Foreign Bible Society’, and I thought: Well, this is definitely the
foreign
end of the operation. I wondered whether these signs had been kept in place throughout the war (the British in Baghdad had been allowed safe passage out of the city by the Turks at the start of the show) or whether they’d recently been refixed.

The river was packed with Arabs in circular boats in a range of sizes. They would stand up in these craft, which had no bow, keel or rudder, and were paddled by a man holding a long oar. They made a fantastical sight – as though the entire town had taken to the water in so many upturned pork-pie hats – and I knew, looking at them, that all bets were off in this place. It was too weird; anything could happen at any moment.

We were now lurching and turning in the river, causing the Arabs in their smaller boats to paddle faster to get clear of us, shouting out – not angrily, but as though to encourage our steersman into the dock.

I pushed along the gangway, against the general flow of men, and collected my pack from my cabin. The gangplanks were coming down. The quay was between two of the music-hall palaces, one of which might have been the Hotel Grande Bretagne, Corps HQ. Waiting on the quay were half a dozen mules, two motor lorries throbbing, a couple of dozen Indian soldiers (tiny fellows – sepoys, they were called), some Arab stevedores in long blue shirts. Another vessel was being unloaded alongside us. Under circling gulls, a derrick was taking bales off it while the Arab dockers chanted, ‘Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah’.