Hammond Innes - The Doomed Oasis

‘The falajes?’ I asked, and he nodded. ‘Entwhistle said there used to be around a hundred of them.’

‘Yes. We’ve traced them from aerial photographs.’

‘Your son was very much concerned about-’

‘Oh yes, concerned…. But he lacked patience. He was like a young bull. No subtlety. No subtlety at all.’ And he added, ‘What’s been done tonight can be quickly repaired. There’s an open well every mile or so along the length of the underground channel of the falaj. They’ve blocked one of these wells with sand and stone. It can be unblocked almost as quickly. But the old falajes -’ He shook his head. The wells are fallen in, the underground channels collapsed. Restoring them is a lengthy and costly business. Sheikh Makhmud has managed to restore just one in the fourteen years he’s been Sheikh of Saraifa. It took two years and cost more than twenty thousand pounds. If Saraifa is to survive-’ He gave a little shrug. ‘We need a dozen new falajes, not one.’

‘And only oil will pay for them?’

He nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘David took the same view,’ I said. That’s why he was prospecting on the Hadd border.’ And I added, ‘What happened, Colonel Whitaker? What happened to your son?’

He turned and looked at me. ‘You think I should know?’

‘I’ve come a long way,’ I said, ‘in the certainty that you must know.’

His eyebrows lifted, the single eye stared at me, not blinking. The certainty?’

‘Yes,’ I said. The certainty.’ And I added, ‘He was on loan to you at the time he disappeared. It was the seismological truck you purchased in Basra last June that he left abandoned on the side of a dune twenty miles inside the borders of Saudi Arabia. And just before he disappeared, you visited the Emir of Hadd. You must know what happened.’

‘Well, I don’t.’ He said it flatly and it was difficult not to accept it.

Then why did you visit Hadd?’

‘Who else could do it?’ And he added, ‘David was on the Hadd border against my orders, against Sheikh Makhmud’s orders, too. Somebody had to try and convince the Emir there wasn’t any oil there.’

‘Because the border’s in dispute?’

‘Yes. There’s been trouble there ever since the Company was first granted a concession to prospect in Saraifa. As you probably know, Saraifa is an independent sheikhdom. Unlike the Trucial States, it’s not even in treaty relation with the British Crown, though it’s generally considered to be a part of the British sphere of influence. Hadd is different again. It’s independent in theory and in fact, and during the last few years it has strengthened its ties with Arab countries. Some years back we were finally driven to sending troops in, to keep the peace, and they occupied the fort of Jebel al-Akhbar overlooking the town of Hadd. But we couldn’t do that now. It would be much too dangerous.’ He hesitated, and then he added, The risk would only be justified if vital interests of our own were involved.’

‘What sort of vital interests?’ I asked. But I knew the answer before he gave it.

‘Oil,’ he said. ‘From a Western point of view — as you’d know if you’d been out here any length of time — everything in Arabia comes back to oil.’

‘Your son’s death, too?’ I asked. He looked at me, but didn’t say anything. ‘When did you first hear he was missing?’

Towards the end of February.’

‘Could you give me a date?’

He frowned and for a moment I thought he wasn’t going to answer that. But then he said, ‘I can’t be certain. Your calendar doesn’t mean very much to us out here in the desert. But by the moon it would be about the beginning of the last week in February.’

Almost a week before the abandoned truck had been found by the Bedouin, more than three weeks before his disappearance had been reported to the Company. ‘You didn’t notify Erkhard.’

‘No.’

‘Why not? David was in the Company’s employ, even if he was on loan to you.’

He didn’t say anything. He seemed suddenly to have withdrawn inside himself. I think perhaps he was waiting for my next question, knowing it was coming. ‘The truck was discovered abandoned on February twenty-eight,’ I said. ‘Yet you say you knew he was missing almost a week before that. How did you know?’

There was a long pause. At length he said, ‘Some askari were despatched from Saraifa. When they reached his camp they found it deserted, not a soul there; the truck and the Land-Rover had gone, too.’

‘Askari?’

‘Yes. Members of Sheikh Makhmud’s bodyguard. Their orders were to arrest him and bring him back to Saraifa.’

‘Alive?’

‘Of course.’ He stared at me angrily. ‘What other instructions do you imagine they would be given? They were despatched by Sheikh Makhmud — at my request. That was immediately after my return from Hadd.’ And he added, ‘It was done for his own good — and because it was necessary. The Emir was in a very dangerous mood.’

So that was how it had been. ‘And you didn’t want Erkhard to know that he’d been operating on the Hadd border?’

‘I didn’t want Erkhard to know and I didn’t want the political boys to know. As I’ve said, David was there against my express orders. God Almighty!’ he breathed. The impatience of youth. They want the moon for breakfast and the sun for lunch.’ He leaned on the parapet, staring down to the white sand below. ‘I blame myself,’ he said quietly. ‘I should have packed him off back to Cardiff.

Instead, I let him stay. More, I tried to think of him as my son, as God’s gift from my loins, a prodigal given back into my hands.’ He shook his head. ‘I should have known it wouldn’t work.’

He paused there and I didn’t say anything for I felt his isolation here might trap him into some self-revelation if I didn’t try to force it. He looked at me again, the desert lines deep-etched by the moon, a long, sad, solitary face. ‘As you know, I’m a Moslem. I wanted him to become a Mahommedan, too. I wanted him to make the desert his home and to carry on where I left off in due course.’ He sighed softly. ‘I forgot the boy was already nineteen, and only half mine … and that half as obstinate as the devil.’ He smiled. In that harsh face it was a smile of extraordinary tenderness. ‘I turned him into a Christian instead.’ He said it with bitterness, adding, ‘In the end I think he came to hate me.’

‘Why?’

The question was out before I could stop myself and I saw him freeze and close up on me. ‘People get at cross-purposes, you know.’ His tone was casual now. ‘It’s one of the sad things about human relationships. But there…. No point in talking about it now. The boy’s dead, and that’s that.’

‘You can’t be sure of that,’ I said.

He stared at me, his eye blazing in the darkness. ‘What do you mean? I had all the chaps I could spare out looking for him. Khalid was searching too, and Makhmud had men hunting for him all over Saraifa. The only place we never thought of searching was west into the Empty Quarter.’ And he said, with gentleness, softly to himself: ‘The desert is like the sea. No man can disappear into it for two months and come out alive.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘He’s dead. But if you haven’t discovered what happened to him, what do you think happened to him?’

His eye looked into mine. ‘Have you ever been frightened?’

‘Yes, once,’ I said. ‘In Tanganyika.’

He nodded. ‘Then you’ll understand me when I say no man knows how he’ll react to fear until he’s faced with it. Especially when he’s alone. And David was alone. His Arab crew had deserted him. We found that out later. They panicked.’