Hammond Innes - The Doomed Oasis

‘A little. But not with my son it seems.’ Whitaker was clearly disconcerted. ‘He’s acting contrary to my advice — contrary to my express orders, in fact.’ He hesitated. ‘Of course, if the Political Resident authorized me to negotiate a settlement of the Hadd-Saraifa border dispute, I have some influence with the Emir. But,’ he added, ‘a just settlement for Saraifa would almost certainly require the backing of British military forces.’

‘That’s out of the question at the moment.’

‘Then … ‘ Whitaker gave an awkward little shrug.

Colonel George grunted, a small, peremptory sound. ‘Pity! That boy’s got a lot of guts and he’s going to die.’ He started towards the helicopter, but then he stopped and faced Whitaker again. ‘I’ve heard stories about you … And if half of what I’ve heard is true, your son’s doing just the sort of thing you’d have done yourself in your younger days, eh?’ He paused, and then in a harder voice: ‘I’ll tell you something, Whitaker; if that boy holds out for a week, he’ll go down in desert history, his name remembered long after yours is forgotten.’ He stared at him hard for a moment and then marched off across the gravel towards the helicopter. ‘Sorry I can’t give you a lift out, Grant. No room. We’ve got to deliver this wop journalist to Sharjah. But I’ve got one of my Company commanders with a wireless truck up at Buraimi. I propose to send him down to patrol Hadd’s northern border and keep tabs on the situation. I’ll tell him to pick you up if you like. Name’s Berry. Sound chap. Understands the Bedou. That do you?’

I nodded, and behind me Whitaker said, ‘You might tell him to keep an eye out for my two vehicles. My fuel tanker and the supply truck should have been in two days ago.’

The rotor blades of the helicopter began to turn. Ruffini gripped my hand. ‘A rivederla. I see the story of this David Whitaker reaches London. Don’t worry. We have an arrangement with one of your newspapers.’ He was sweating already as he ducked into the oven-heat of the fuselage.

Colonel George paused in the open door. ‘Want to give me a message for his sister? I could send it straight down to the hospital. She’d get it this evening.’

I hesitated. ‘Just tell her he’s alive. That’s all she needs to know at the moment.’

‘I should have thought something more personal was called for.’ He stared at me, playfully tapping my arm. ‘Probably you don’t realize it, but she’s been raising hell on your account. As soon as she knew you were missing, she came straight down to Sharjah. She caught that oil chap, Gorde, just as he was boarding his plane and the story is she tore him off such a strip for abandoning you that he dropped his stick and took off without it. Since then she’s been badgering the life out of me. I’ll be damn’ glad to be able to tell her you’re safe. Well?’ He cocked his eyebrow at me and grinned. ‘I’ll give her your love — will that do?’ And without waiting for a reply he got into the helicopter and slammed the door.

Whitaker and I watched it take off, a mechanical dragonfly whirring in the clean, bright air. I turned then, conscious of the quickened beat of my pulse, the sudden desire to be alone. It was strangely heart-warming to know that somebody had been concerned about whether I got back safely or not. I walked to the steep, shadowed edge of the dunes and lay there, longing for a cigarette. The drill, so useless now without its fuel, stood like a toy, dwarfed by the dunes, the Arab crew lying about, listless with nothing to do. Whitaker had gone to his tent. The shadows lengthened and I wondered what was happening on that hill-top forty miles to the east. Was David still alive?

The answer came next day, just after Whitaker’s two trucks had pulled in and the noise of their arrival had woken me from the first long, uninterrupted sleep I had enjoyed in well over a week. Everything was confusion, stores being unloaded, the rig started up, when a bullet-scarred Land-Rover appeared, flying the Emir’s green flag. Out of it stepped a big, portly man with very black features under a large turban. ‘The Emir’s secretary,’ Whitaker said and went forward to greet him. A bodyguard of four askari sat silent in the back of the vehicle; wild-eyed men with greasy locks hanging to their shoulders, who fingered their weapons nervously.

Whitaker took the secretary to his tent and they remained there over an hour, talking over tinned fruit and coffee. Finally the man left, but before getting into the Land-Rover, he made a long, angry speech, a harangue that was clearly intended for the whole camp.

‘What did he want?’ I asked as the dust of his departure finally settled and the men returned to their jobs.

‘If I don’t go at once to Hadd and get David out of that fort, the Emir will hold me responsible.’ Whitaker’s face was very pale, his whole body trembling. “Allah akhbar!’ he muttered. ‘Why did the idiot have to choose this moment, when I’d talked the Emir into agreement and had obtained the financial backing I needed? Why now?’

‘He’s still alive then?’

He turned his eye on me, a fixed, glassy look. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He’s alive. The night you left him, he beat back the attack, captured a prisoner and sent him to the Emir next day with a message. It announced who he was and the terms on which he’d vacate the fort and leave them free to repair the wells.’ The terms required the Emir to declare publicly that he accepted the present borders between Hadd and Saraifa for all time, and this declaration was to be supported by a signed document to the same effect, lodged with the United Nations. David also demanded an escort of the Trucial Oman Scouts to see him and his men safely out of Hadd territory.’

But it wasn’t the terms that upset Whitaker. It was the fact that David had disclosed his identity. ‘Did he have to involve me?’ he demanded angrily, staring towards the rig.

‘I don’t suppose he meant to involve you,’ I said. ‘You’re involved by the simple fact that you’re his father.’

‘His father!’ He turned on me. ‘I took a servant girl,’ he said harshly. ‘A moment in time, a passing need — but that was all. It ended there and I made provision for her.’

‘You can’t buy immunity from your actions.’

He ignored that. Twenty years, and the moment catches up with me and I’m faced with the brat; a raw, undisciplined boy with a vicious background.’ He glared at me. ‘And you sent him out here.’

‘He’d have come in any case,’ I said. ‘Once he knew you were his father.’ I was angry myself then. ‘I don’t think you realize what a shock it was to him to learn that he was illegitimate — to discover that his mother had been deserted in childbirth.’

‘She’d no claim on me,’ he said quickly. ‘And even if she had, it doesn’t justify his coming out here with some idea at the back of his mind that he was going to kill me. Did you know about that? I had it all out of him shortly after he arrived — that and his criminal background and how he was wanted by the police for causing the death of that man Thomas.’ And he added, ‘I should have sent him packing. I should have realized the boy was bent on destroying me, on ruining all my plans.’

‘You know that’s not true,’ I said.

‘Then why did he pretend he was dead when he wasn’t? And now, when the truth of my theory is within my grasp, when the thing I’ve been searching for all my life is here, he gets me involved in this stupid, useless demonstration of his.’ He was sweating and there were little flecks of white at the corners of his mouth.

‘What he’s doing,’ I said, ‘he’s doing because he’s accepted the things you believed in; he made your world his own, Saraifa his home. And the background you complain of is the reason he’s doing it so successfully. He’s got the Emir to withdraw his forces from Saraifa. Now is the time surely when your influence … ‘