Hammond Innes - The Doomed Oasis

‘Yes, I’m alive — just.’ His dark face was cracked in a boyish grin. ‘Christ!’ he said. ‘It never occurred to me you’d come out here to look for me. Hell of a bloody journey. How did you know where I was?’ But I suppose he saw I was exhausted, for he added quickly, ‘Come up to the camp. You can stretch out and I’ll have Ali brew some coffee.’ He called to two men who had materialized out of the weird glare and were hovering on the edge of visibility. ‘My companions,’ he said.

They came forward warily, like dogs suspicious of a new scent, and they both had service rifles gripped in their hands. The elder he introduced as Hamid; a big man with long hair to his shoulders, bearded and impressive like a prophet. The other was little more than a boy, his face full-lipped and smooth, almost a girl’s face, and he moved with the same natural grace. His name was Ali bin Maktum.

‘Now let’s have coffee and we’ll talk.’ David took my arm and led me to where the ground was higher and tattered pieces of black Bedou cloth had been erected as windbreaks, stretched on the bleached wood of camel thorn over holes they had scraped in the soft limestone. ‘Faddal!’ It was said with Bedou courtesy, but with an ironical little smile touching the corners of his mouth.

He sent Hamid off to look to our camels, and whilst the boy Ali brewed coffee over a desert fire of sand and petrol, he sat beside me talking hard about the heat and the humidity and the loneliness he had been suffering in this godforsaken place. I let him run on, for I was tired and he needed to talk. He was desperate for the company of his own kind. He’d been there six weeks and in that time Khalid had made the journey twice to bring them food and water. ‘I wouldn’t trust anyone else. They might have talked.’ He was tracing patterns in the sand then, his head bent, shadowed by the headcloth. Flies buzzed in the sudden silence. ‘Why are you here?’ His voice came taut with the anxiety of a question too long delayed. ‘Who told you where to find me — Khalid?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Khalid.’ And I added, ‘There’s a lot to tell you.’

He misunderstood me, for his head came up, his eyes bright with sudden excitement.’ It’s all right then, is it? You saw Sir Philip Gorde and he signed that concession agreement I typed out?’ The words came breathless, his eyes alight with hope. But the hope faded as he saw my face. ‘You did see Sir Philip, didn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I gave him the envelope.’

‘Well then

‘He didn’t sign the agreement.’

The effect of my words was to knock all the youth right out of him. His face looked suddenly old and strained, lines showed so that he seemed more like his father, and his shoulders sagged. ‘So it didn’t work.’ He said it flatly as though he hadn’t the spirit left for any display of emotion, and I realized that all the weeks he’d been waiting here alone he’d been buoyed up by this one hope. ‘I thought if I disappeared completely, so completely that everyone thought I was dead … They did think I was dead, didn’t they?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Everyone, including your father, presumed you were dead.’ And I added, a little irritably because I was so tired, ‘You’ve caused a lot of people a great deal of trouble; and your mother and sister a lot of needless grief.’

I thought for a moment he hadn’t heard me. But then he said, ‘Yes, indeed, I realize that. But Sue at least would understand.’ His face softened. ‘How is she? Did you see her?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I saw her.’ And that, too, seemed a long time ago now. ‘I don’t think she ever quite accepted the idea that you were dead. Nor did your mother or that girl in Bahrain.’

‘Tessa?’ The lines of strain were momentarily smoothed out. ‘You saw her, too?’ He seemed surprised, and he added, ‘I’m sorry, I’m afraid I’ve put you to a great deal of trouble.’ He was staring down at the sand patterns between his feet. Abruptly he rubbed them out. ‘I was so convinced it was the only way. I had to get past Erkhard somehow. I thought if I could get my report to Sir Philip Gorde. He was the one man … ‘ His voice faded. And then, still talking to himself: ‘But I couldn’t just send it to him. It had to be done in some way that would enable him to override the political objections. I thought all the publicity connected with my disappearance … I’d planned it all very carefully. I had a lucky break, too. That night I visited Captain Griffiths on the Emerald Isle, there was an agency correspondent in transit to India stopping the night at the Fort in Sharjah. I saw him, told him the whole story — my background, how I’d escaped from Borstal and got myself out to Arabia, everything. I thought a story like that… ‘ He darted a quick glance at me. ‘Didn’t he print it?’

‘After you were reported missing, when the search had failed and you were presumed dead.’

‘Yes, I made him promise he wouldn’t use it unless something happened to me. But didn’t it have any effect?’

‘It seemed to cause quite a stir in the Foreign Office.’

‘But what about the Company?’

‘It put the shares up,’ I said, trying to lighten it for him.

‘Hell! is that all?’ He gave a bitter little laugh. ‘And I’ve been sitting here … waiting, hoping … ‘ His shoulders had sagged again and he stared out into the throbbing glare, his eyes narrowed angrily. ‘All these weeks, wasted-utterly wasted.’ His voice was bleak. He looked weary — weary and depressed beyond words. ‘I suppose you think now I’ve behaved like a fool — disappearing like that, pretending I was dead? But please try and understand.’ He was leaning towards me, his face young and defenceless, his voice urgent now. ‘I was on my own and I knew there wasn’t any oil where my father was drilling. I ran a check survey without his knowledge; it was an anticline all right, but badly faulted. It couldn’t hold any oil.’ His voice had dropped to weariness again. He’d been over all this many times in his mind. ‘I don’t know whether he was kidding himself or trying to cheat the Company or just doing it to get his own back on Erkhard. But I wanted the Company to drill on my locations, not his. I wanted oil. I wanted it for Saraifa and I wanted it to be the real thing.’

‘Your father wanted it, too,’ I said gently. ‘And he, too. was convinced there was oil where you did your survey.’

That’s not true. He refused to believe me. Told me I was inexperienced, that I’d no business to be on that border and forbade me ever to go near it again.’

‘I think,’ I said, ‘you’d better listen to what I have to tell you.’

The coffee was ready then and I waited until Ali had poured it for us from the battered silver pot. It was Mocha coffee, bitter and wonderfully refreshing, and as I sipped the scalding liquid I told him the whole story of my journey and all that had happened. Once whilst I was telling it, he said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.’ And later, when I came to the point where Gorde had left me with Entwhistle and we’d been fired on, he apologized again. ‘I’m afraid you’ve had a hell of a time, sir, and all my fault.’ That ‘sir’ took me back, for it still didn’t come easily from him.

But it was my account of that first interview with his father that really shook him. When I had explained to him what his father had been trying to do, he was appalled. ‘But Christ! Why didn’t he tell me? I’d no idea. None at all. And when Khalid told me he’d been to see the Emir of Hadd … ‘ He stared at me, his face fine-drawn, his voice trembling as he repeated, ‘Why the hell didn’t he tell me what he was trying to do?’