Hammond Innes - The Doomed Oasis

Long before I reached Whitaker’s camp, the sound of the drilling rig was borne to me on the wind. The steady hum of machinery was utterly incongruous in that empty, desolate world. One of his Bedouin guards brought me into the camp and as I slid exhausted from my camel, I saw Whitaker himself coming towards me from the rig.

I must have passed out then, for the next I knew I was lying in his tent and he was bending over me, holding a mug of water to my cracked lips. The water was warm, but its wetness cleaned my mouth, eased the swollen dryness of my tongue, and as I began to swallow, I suddenly wanted to go on drinking and drinking for my body was all dried up. But he took the mug away. ‘Are you alone?’ he asked. And when I nodded, he said, ‘What happened? Is he dead?’

I sat up, staring at him. Something in the way he’d said it … But his face was in shadow and I thought I must have imagined it. ‘He was alive when I left him.’

I

‘I see. So he’s still up there.’ And he added, ‘He’d made his gesture. He’d carried out a successful attack on the wells. Why couldn’t he leave it at that?’

I started to explain about David’s determination to keep the wells from being repaired, but he cut me short. ‘I know all about that. I got the news from Hadd yesterday. My chap said the streets of Hadd were deserted and no man dared venture out of his house for fear of being fired at. He also said that the inhabitants had made a daylight attack on the fort and had been driven off by heavy fire.’

‘There were just the four of us,’ I said. And I told him how Salim had been killed at the outset and Ali fatally wounded.

‘And he’s alone up there now with just Hamid and his brother, bin Suleiman?’ He was silent for a moment, and then he said, ‘I gather the Emir sent to Saraifa for Sheikh Abdullah. Had his forces arrived before you left?’ And when I nodded, he said, ‘What happened? Were you there when they attacked the fort?’

‘No.’ And I explained how I’d got out just before the attack started. ‘I don’t know what happened. But if David did manage to beat off that attack, there’ll be others, or else they’ll just snipe at him from the rocks until they’ve worn him down or his water runs out.’

‘So he’s got himself trapped.’ And then almost irritably: “What’s wrong with the boy? Does he want to die?’

‘He will,’ I said angrily, ‘if you don’t get help to him somehow.’

‘I’ve done what I can. Yousif was just back from Sharjah and I sent him straight off with letters to Colonel George who commands the Trucial Oman Scouts and to Gorde. It’s up to the authorities now. Fortunately, I don’t think the Emir has any idea yet who it is holding that fort.’

It was something at least that he’d notified the authorities, and I lay back exhausted. He gave me some more water and then left me, saying he’d arrange for some food to be brought. When it came, it was a half-cold dish of rice and camel meat. I ate it slowly, feeling my strength beginning to return, and then I slept. I hadn’t intended to sleep, but the food and the heat in the tent … I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

I woke to the sound of voices speaking in English. It was almost three in the afternoon. The camp was strangely quiet. The drilling rig had stopped. I peered out of the tent An Army officer in khaki shirt and shorts and a peaked cap was standing talking to Whitaker. There was an RAF officer there, too, and resting on the gravel beside the silent rig was a helicopter.

Whitaker saw me as I came out of the tent and called me over. This is Colonel George of the TOS.’ He was a short, thick-set man, bouncing with energy, of a type that a Frenchman in Zanzibar had once described to me as a typical officer of the bled. Small, protruding eyes stared at me curiously from beneath the peaked cap. ‘I was in Buraimi when I got Whitaker’s message. The RAF had loaned me a helicopter so I thought I’d fly down and see what it was all about.’ His words were sharp and crisp. ‘Understand young Whitaker’s alive and that he’s playing merry hell with our aggressive little Emir. Correct?’

I didn’t answer, for I was staring past him to a strange figure walking towards us from the rig- a short, fat figure in a powder-blue tropical suit that was now crumpled and dirty and sweat-stained. ‘Ruffini!’ I called.

He came almost running. ‘Mister Grant!’ He seized hold of my hand. I think he would have liked to embrace me, he seemed so pathetically glad to see somebody he knew. ”Ow are you? I ‘ave been so concerned for you. When you don’t return with Gorde, I am asking questions, making a damn nuisance of myself, and nobody tell me nothing.’

‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.

‘What is a newspaper man ever doing? Looking for a story. I go to Buraimi, by invitation of the sheikh and an Italian oil man who is there also. Then this gentleman is sent by the British authorities to remove me. They don’t wish for Ruffini to be in Buraimi or anywhere else in the desert. So I am under arrest.’

‘No question of arrest,’ Colonel George snapped. ‘I’ve explained to you … ‘

But Ruffini wasn’t listening. ‘I tell you once before, signore,’ he said to me, still holding on to my hand, ‘I think you are sitting on the story I want. Now I talk to some of the Bedouin ‘ere and I know it is true. What is this boy doing? They say you are with him in that fort, that you come from Hadd this morning.’

I could have wished it had been a British journalist. But that wasn’t so important as the fact that chance had put me in touch with the outside world. Ruffini might be prevented from filing his copy immediately, but the knowledge that sooner or later David’s story would become known might stir the authorities to action.

But when I suggested this to Colonel George, he shook his head. ‘I don’t think you quite understand the official view.’ We were back in the tent then and I’d been talking and answering questions for more than an hour. The TOS, he said, had been reinforced with Regular Army units some time back and had been standing by for more than a month, ready to move at short notice. The attack on Saraifa and the battle at the Mahdah falaj was just the sort of trouble their Intelligence had expected and as soon as he’d received the news he’d given the order to prepare to move. It was two nights ago. He’d everything lined up, the convoy spread out round the perimeter of Sharjah airfield and everybody ready to go. And then the Foreign Office clamped down, the Political Resident called the whole thing off.

‘But why?’ I asked.

‘Why? Because of Cairo, Saudi, the Americans, the United Nations, world opinion.’ Cairo Radio, he said, had first referred to the Hadd-Saraifa border dispute two weeks back. There were reports from Riyadh that Saudi intended to raise the matter at the next meeting of UNO.

The Political Resident came under the Foreign Office, and to the Foreign Office this wasn’t just a local problem, but a small facet in the pattern of world diplomacy. Until that moment I had seen the attack upon Saraifa as it appeared to David, a personal matter; now I was being forced to stand back mentally and look at the situation as a whole, from the viewpoint of authority.

Twenty-four hours,’ Colonel George said. ‘That’s all we needed. In twenty-four hours we could have put paid to the Emir’s little game and saved a hell of a lot of lives. I know we’ve no treaty obligation so far as Saraifa is concerned, but it lies within the British sphere of influence and we’ve certainly a moral obligation to protect them against this sort of thing.’ He shrugged. ‘Well, there it is. I’m just a soldier, not a politician.’ He glanced at his watch and then at the RAF pilot officer. ‘Time we were moving, eh?’ Outside the tent, he turned to Whitaker. ‘That boy of yours. He’s going to get himself killed if somebody doesn’t do something.’ The protruding eyeballs stared. ‘You’ve been out here a long time. Colonel. Couldn’t you see the Emir; talk to your son? You must have considerable influence still.’