Hammond Innes - The Doomed Oasis

Through the arched entrance to the town came a figure riding a white camel, riding absolutely alone — not a single retainer. ‘He’s clever,’ the Colonel muttered. ‘There isn’t a desert ruler who wouldn’t have regarded this as an occasion to parade his full power. And to ride a camel when he’s got an almost brand new Cadillac … ‘ His eyes were fixed with a puzzled frown on the solitary figure, on the slow, stately gait of that lone camel. He turned abruptly to Gorde. ‘What’s he got up his sleeve? Something. That Cadillac was a present from Saudi. He’d surely want to flaunt that in our faces.’

Gorde didn’t say anything and we sat and waited. The crowd fell back, the clamouring ceased. The Emir rode his camel through them and sitting there in the Land-Rover I realized suddenly why he hadn’t used his Cadillac. With set face and without any gesture of greeting, he rode his beast right up to us, and when he finally halted it, the supercilious head was right over us, the rubbery lips white with foam, dripping saliva on the Colonel’s beret. The Emir himself towered above us, godlike against the burning sky.

It was extraordinarily effective. The man was simply dressed in spotless robes and looked much bigger, the features more impressive, the curve of the nose more marked.

He waited in silence for Colonel George to greet him. Instead the Colonel barked an order and his driver backed the Land-Rover, turning it so that the bonnet faced the Emir. But it was no good. Patiently, without expression, the camel moved, resumed the same dominating position.

And then the Emir began to speak. It was an address that lasted almost a quarter of an hour. The manner of delivery was cold and restrained, but underlying the restraint was the hate that filled the man. It was there in the thin, vibrant tone of his voice, in the black gaze of his eyes, in every gesture — a bitter fury of hatred. And that bloody camel, slavering over my head, seemed the very embodiment of his master’s mood.

Gorde whispered the gist of the Emir’s speech to me. It followed a familiar pattern. It ignored entirely the unprovoked attack on Saraifa, the cruel intention behind the blocking of the falajes, the murderous slaughter of men driven to desperate action to save life and home. Instead, it dwelt at length on Hadd’s territorial claims. These the Emir based on a particular period in Hadd’s history, a period that went back more than five hundred years. He conveniently brushed aside all that had happened in the area since that time. He attacked the oil companies for sucking Arabia’s life blood. The spittle flew from his mouth, as he called them ‘Nasrani thieves, jackals of the West, Imperialist bloodsuckers.’ He ignored the fact that without the companies the oil would have remained beneath the sands, that the wealth of Arabia depended on them, that the very arms he’d been given had been bought with the royalties they paid. And in attacking the oil companies, he also attacked Britain and America. Imperialist murderers! he called us.

‘He’s coming to the point now,’ Gorde muttered. The camel belched, a deep rumbling sound, that blew a fleck of froth from its lips into my lap. The Emir leaned forward, the dark, cruel face bending down towards us. ‘Murderers!’ he screamed. I thought he was going to spit in our faces.

‘Start the engine,’ Colonel George ordered his driver. ‘I’m not standing for any more of this.’ He said something to the Emir. The man smiled. That smile — it was curiously excited. I call you murderers because you come here armed to protect a murderer. He gestured with his hands, pointing towards the fort. And when Colonel George tried to explain David’s motives, the rough justice of his action in depriving the Hadd of water, the Emir silenced him. You do not think it is murder when an Arab man is killed. What do you say if he is the murderer of a white man — one of yourselves? He turned, raising his body in the saddle, shouting and signalling with his hand. A closed Land-Rover emerged from Hadd. The crowd, which had drawn in a tight circle round us, scattered before it, and as it roared past us a figure in Arab clothes was thrust out of the back of it, a limp rag of a figure, battered and covered in blood.

It hit the sand beside us, rolled over once and then lay sprawled face upwards in an undignified heap; and as the cloud of dust settled, I saw what it was that lay there … The dead body of Colonel Whitaker.

He had been shot in the face and his head was badly battered, his arms broken. His clothes were black with blood. Flies settled in a swarm and I felt suddenly sick.

You know this man? the Emir demanded. And when Colonel George nodded, the Emir explained that Haj Whitaker had that morning agreed to go up to the fort and reason with his son. What had happened up there he did not say. He merely gestured to the body. This man’s son has murdered my people. You say it is not murder. Look now at that which lies before you and tell me — is that murder? Colonel George sat there, his eyes hard, his face set. He had no answer. ‘His own father!’ His voice was shocked and he made no attempt to challenge the Emir’s version of what had happened.

‘You can’t be sure,’ I said.

It was Gorde who answered. ‘Do you think it would have occurred to him to have the body flung at our feet like that if Charles had been killed by one of his men?’ He was staring down at the bloody figure lying in the dust, his hands clenched. Then he looked up at the Emir and demanded to know where the body had been found, and when the Emir replied that his men had picked it up at the foot of the cliffs directly below the tower, he nodded his head slowly. As far as he was concerned that settled it.

It was very hot there in the sun, yet a cold shiver ran through me. I was remembering the solitary shot we’d heard that morning, and into my mind came Mrs Thomas’s words — It was never Dafydd that was going to die. Colonel George was the first to recover. Ignoring the body, he dealt with the terms on which the fort would be evacuated and his forces withdrawn. And when the Emir finally agreed, he made the pre-arranged signal to his troops waiting on the Jebel al-Akhbar and withdrew his force into the desert, taking Whitaker’s body with him.

Back at our old encampment we found the helicopter gone and one of the trucks belonging to the Jebel al-Akhbar detachment already returned. After interviewing the driver, Colonel George announced, ‘David Whitaker is apparently still alive. The helicopter’s gone up to bring him out.’ He said it flatly, and behind me I heard Gorde murmur, ‘God help him! He’d have been better dead.’

The helicopter took off from the fort, and when it landed they carried David to the shade of the headquarters truck awning. When I saw him, I thought for a moment it was all over. His face was relaxed, the eyes closed; the flesh, tight-drawn, was bloodless. It was a death’s head, all skull and bone, and the skin like parchment. But then the eyes flicked open and he saw me. The cracked lips smiled and he tried to say something, but no words came. He was too dried-up to speak. The eyes closed again and he went into a coma.

The helicopter had also brought bin Suleiman out. He was badly wounded and very weak but he was alive. Only Hamid was dead. They brought his body down and buried it beside Colonel Whitaker’s within sight of the Jebel al-Akhbar. Gorde stood with bared head and hard, frozen eyes as they laid his old friend to rest in his shallow desert grave, and Ruffini was there, sitting on the ground, his pencil moving steadily across the pages of the notebook held against his knee.

The burial over, I went to talk to him. I wanted to try and persuade him to soft-pedal the fatal news. I was thinking of Sue rather than David. The boy was a hero and the newspapers avid for news. And now the world was going to be told that he’d killed his father. I was probably the only person who could justify it, who understood the provocation. The public’s reaction would be one of revulsion. Sue would be torn to bits, her life made a hell. I touched Ruffini on the shoulder. ‘About Colonel Whitaker,’ I said.