Quest Page 7

  The sun over the Arabian Sea rose like a single red wound splitting the dark waters from the sky. It would be a scorcher of a day, but it was always a scorcher of a day even though nights could approach freezing. Rawson read the message and then stuffed it under his hat.

  The radio operator waited half an hour by the Japanese watch he had been given by the sultan himself, then went to the bridge.

  “Captain Rawson is not messaging London,” said the operator.

  “He will not leave the cabin door,” said the commander.

  “But it is urgent. He is to contact London immediately about his return. It is an order. It is a secret order. It is a top secret urgent message.”

  “Captain Rawson does what he does,” said the commander, and so another tale of the handsome Captain Rawson made its way to the palace in Banai even before Harry Rawson returned there, how Captain Rawson received a message from his government but ignored it in favor of serving his friend the sultan, how he waited in front of the cabin door with the gun until they were docked and the sultan’s women came to claim the girl inside. By this uninterrupted act of visible presence in front of the girl’s cabin door, he had publicly assured that whatever virginity the girl had brought from India was delivered to the sultan certifiably intact. And this was added to the tale of what he had already done to protect the girl in India itself from those who sought to capture her and ultimately steal the sultan’s throne, to bring down Banai, to change everything everyone had known for so long.

  All of these tales reached the throne in Banai along with the fact that Captain Rawson’s orderly had packed his bags and all his belongings. Captain Rawson was leaving.

  “I’ll change that,” said Sultan Abdul Al Haj Al Hadir. “They are not taking my Harry away from me.”

  Hadir, thirty-five, no older than Harry, was so certain this was all a mistake that he took the prize Harry had protected for him before even calling the British ambassador.

  She had skin as light as heavily creamed coffee and smooth as soft duck down. Her breasts were buds, her limbs were willing. She was the best of all worlds, most assuredly a virgin, and trained to please a man. This one might please him so much over the years, he might marry her. She would of course become a Muslim immediately. He would not keep a Hindu in his palace.

  That young girls were bought in India and brought to the Arabian Peninsula was not new. It had been going on since the Hadir family had taken control of the port, centuries before. What was new was that revolutionary elements from Banai had joined with revolutionary elements from India in a plan to seize the girl and, they hoped, use her to embarrass both India and the Sultanate of Banai.

  But no one had counted on the sultan’s Harry Rawson, and Abdul Al Haj Al Hadir was almost as interested in hearing Harry’s version of what had happened as he was in taking first pleasure with the girl. Of course, Harry was British. One could never get the really good details from him. But with enough good Scotch whiskey and enough good time, his majesty Abdul Al Haj Al Hadir, sultan of Banai, would coax enough details out of an evening’s meal to make it worthwhile. The problem with the British was not modesty. It was that they had no poetry in their souls, Hadir believed. They could not listen to the beauty of a story for the beauty itself. Words for them were like microscopes, thought best when precisely accurate.

  It had been a hard two years at Sandhurst for Abdul Al Haj Al Hadir, but there he had met his friend Harry and insisted he be the one assigned as British Army representative in Banai, Harry, who always knew where the best whores were, the best whiskey, and most of all the safe places to enjoy these things. Harry, the stunning shot with a pistol, who arranged with his own skill for the prince to pass marksmanship. Harry, who on every field maneuver was at the head of the class. Harry, the best adviser a ruler could have. He was not going to give him up.

  But when Captain Rawson appeared for dinner at the palace, he was not in evening clothes but in a plain summer suit, with regimental tie from the regiment he had been assigned to but never served in, the Royal Argyle Sutherlanders.

  “Harry, what is the matter?”

  “I’m leaving, sir, within two hours.”

  “No. No. That will never be,” said the sultan, extending an arm to the pillow beside him. The table was barely a foot off the floor, and a Waterford decanter of what the sultan knew was Harry’s favorite whiskey sat on the table with two Waterford tumblers. There would be food later, hours later. But now there was drinking. That a citizen in this Muslim land could be flogged for doing what the sultan and Harry were going to do did not matter. Alcohol was all right in the palace, not the public streets.

  The sultan gave the proper stipends to the mullahs, consulted them on what was said and done officially, and virtually gave them the lives of the citizens, provided he retained the palace, the armed forces, and foreign affairs. It was an arrangement heartily endorsed by his British friends.

  He himself poured a drink for Harry and half filled a glass for himself. He did not like servants pouring his whiskey. It seemed to rob it of its English flavor.

  “Harry, you’re not going and that’s that. I will break relations with Her Majesty’s government. I will sever them. This is an act of an unfriendly power. Finish your drink.”

  “I am afraid I must go, Your Majesty. I am a British subject.”

  The sultan angrily hit the pillow next to him. Harry lowered himself to the table.

  “What would be so important as to risk losing our friendship?”

  “I don’t know yet, Your Majesty.”

  “So this is the end, Harry?”

  “For now, perhaps,” said Rawson. The winds off the Arabian Sea, softened by the sun, met the cold night desert air here in this room open in a vast circle. It was a pleasant place and time, surrounded by so much discomfort. He could smell the flowers imported from Africa and made to bloom by skilled German hands in the sultan’s gardens. The whiskey lingered on his tongue. Ten years here were over, ten years of unrest, intrigue, and dangerous political and religious winds blowing outside this kingdom on the rest of the Arabian peninsula. His Majesty had survived. A friend of Britain had survived. A port on the route to an India Britain no longer controlled was still available for British warships, and now oil was that much more secure. Of course, Britain now had her own North Sea oil. But Harry Rawson had done his duty, not bearing a pike for Henry VIII as his ancestors had done, but doing what was assigned, what was expected of him. And he had done it well, even if it required a variation of pimping on behalf of the United Kingdom.

  “Harry, tell me about it. They say you actually stopped an attack using a knife. Just a knife.”

  “A rather exceptional situation. I didn’t run at machine guns with it, you know.” He saw the sultan finish his tumbler of whiskey and pour himself another.

  “But how you used it. You must tell me if it was true.”

  “Bit of a botch, sir. The revolutionaries had gotten into the car with your lovely prize. She had panicked, thinking the leader was you, and began to perform some acts.”

  “She was not touched by him?” asked Hadir with alarm.

  “No. You were the first, as far as my custody went. I made sure of that.”

  “I heard you stayed in front of her door all trip.”

  “It was important to you she was a virgin. I assume now that is a condition that you have altered.”

  “Harry,” said Hadir, grinning and slapping the back of his friend.

  “Your enemy happened to be exposed at the time. If I used a gun, I think we would have had a gun battle. I used a knife, explaining to him that his cohorts might get my life, but I would take his manhood with me. Funny thing about that sort of thing, Your Majesty. Some men would rather give up their lives than that. He cooperated, and here we all are, another day in the reign of Abdul Al Haj Al Hadir.”

  “I would have loved to have served with you at Waterloo or Dieppe, or Balaclava. Or Hastings. I would have made a good general, don’t
you think, Harry?”

  “A great one or a dead one, Your Majesty.”

  “You see what I like about you, Harry, is that you are honest in your way. You can tell me I am too rash, and yet you yourself will use a simple pocketknife.”

  “We both learned at the old place that you fight wars with what you have, not what you think you should have.”

  “We should sweep across the desert and into Europe and you should come down from your island empire and meet us in one grand battle for the ages,” said Hadir. He finished his drink and emptied the decanter into his glass, while reaching into a drawer set into the table for another bottle of Laphroaig, a strong malt whiskey he had developed a taste for in England.

  “We will humble the Jews and you will break the French.”

  “That will not happen. You will never sweep out of the Arabian Peninsula again, and we will never leave our island.”

  “We have oil, we have Islam,” said Hadir. He looked into his glass. “We have the souls of warriors. We should destroy the Jews. They have humiliated us.”

  “This might be their time. I don’t know. Your time has passed. When an empire is gone, it never returns. Each people has a time on stage, and when it is gone, it is gone. It never comes back.” England was gone, too. Banai would never be needed again for a fueling stop on the way to India. The whole relationship between Britain and Banai was the appendix of British foreign policy, a vestigial organ.

  “If you have the will, Harry. If you have the memory of what you were, then you know in your mind what you have to be again.”

  “No, friend,” said Harry Rawson. The sultan was spilling his Laphroaig now. It would not be long before he would go to sleep on the pillows, and Harry would leave, and the servants would clean up the bottles and put His Majesty to bed.

  “Support your premise. I demand it,” said Hadir.

  “Look at the Mongols. There wasn’t an army that could stand against them. How many did they kill in Baghdad alone? They took Asia, much of the Arab world, and were on their way into Europe when Kublai Khan died. Now look at them. They ride around on horses in an area that is a dot on the map. The Romans conquered Europe, and they are a city with a second-rate sewer system. Where are the Hittites? Where are the Persians? And what about the Spanish empire?”

  “It will happen to all Europeans too,” said Hadir angrily.

  “Of course. And when it does, we will never rise again. When it is over, it is over.”

  “Why?”

  “That I do not know. But it is up to the Americans and Russians now, and their time will go also.”

  “You must know why, Harry. You’re so damned smart. Why, Harry?”

  Rawson straightened out His Majesty’s glass. It would not be long now. It was a good question, and he didn’t have an answer. In a few moments the sultan would be talking about dying at the head of his troops storming Jerusalem. Of course that would mean leaving his capital unguarded, something he would never do. Perhaps it was internal treachery that tore the Arab empire apart almost as soon as it was formed. But then where was the treachery of the Mongols? Perhaps it was life. Everything that was born died. And yet the same peoples still lived. Same genetics. Same race. Same language and culture. What was it about the passing of empires that made it so they never came back?

  “If you believe that Britain is done for, why the hell, why the hell, Harry, do you do any damned thing to keep Banai a healthy friend of Britain? Answer me that. Answer it. That’s an order. I’ll cut off your tongue if you don’t tell me.” The sultan laughed. “I would never harm you, my friend.”

  “One doesn’t choose the time one is born in; one only chooses how one will live it. Do you understand, Your Majesty?”

  “No,” said the sultan happily. “Not a bloody word. Let me die at the gates of Jerusalem.” He was weaving and laughing. His father had said the same thing to cheering crowds and other visiting Arab dignitaries. His one great wish was to pray at Al Aksa mosque before he died. No one ever mentioned that he had never bothered to go there when Jordan controlled it.

  The problem with Israel was not Jerusalem; it wasn’t even Palestine, much less the Palestinians. The problem was that that little country, run by people they had considered of no warrior account, reminded every Arab of what the Arabs had been and no longer were. It stopped their revered poets in the very first stanzas about the prowess of their tribes, the strength of their weapons, the courage of their men.

  The sultan leaned forward on the table and went to sleep and Harry Rawson left to catch his plane. Before he was out of the main palace, a cousin to the prince, commander of the Banai Navy, presented Harry with a jeweled dagger in thanks for his service.

  At the embassy, Rawson hurriedly gave his final report. Rawson had the sort of British good looks popularized more by actors than by British men. He had sharp features and a longish nose, with haughty blue eyes and soft blondish hair. He was over six feet and did not allow fat to collect on his well exercised body. He could have served in a Guards regiment if national service had not required him to be a pimp among other things.

  The ambassador said, “This is rather hurried, Captain. What’s your assessment of Abdul Al Haj Al Hadir?”

  “Better start grooming a successor. He’s got a drinking problem,” said Rawson.

  “You’re his friend. Couldn’t you warn him? Couldn’t you stop him? I know he’s a sultan, Captain, but you are there to advise. And he has trusted you ever since Sandhurst.”

  “It’s not that he’s sultan. It’s that he’s a bloody alcoholic.”

  “Well, tell him then.”

  “You’re serious about that?”

  “Bloody right, Captain.”

  “You don’t tell that to an alcoholic. They wouldn’t be alcoholics if advice worked.”

  “So what are we supposed to do now that you’re leaving us in the lurch?”

  “Find his successor.”

  “Who?”

  “Stay cozy with his brothers and his cousins and whichever one successfully stabs him in the back first, present your credentials and wax on a bit about our historic friendship.”

  “That’s rather cold, Captain, even for intelligence,” said the ambassador.

  “We’re supposed to be, you know,” said Rawson, flashing a quick smile. But he had lied. He had warned Hadir about his drinking several times. The last time, the sultan had slapped him in the face, and because he was drunk, forgotten it the next morning.

  London was suitably damp and suitably cold and suitably home. Every return to London meant a visit to the family tailor, the family bootmaker, and some time with the family. Usually a dinner. But Father was at the country place, and Mother was in Italy. Had been for the last year, according to his father’s secretary. And Rawson had an urgent order to report to an apartment in Belgravia for his instructions. So family was out.

  Belgravia, an exclusive area in the heart of London, near Victoria Station, still maintained a residue of blue and orange flowers tough enough to survive an English autumn in the many little block-sized parks around which the Georgian homes had been built. There were many small streets, alleys, and mews. The French Embassy was here. The Danish Embassy was here. Harrod’s was nearby.

  On Chapel Street, near Grosvenor Place, a short trot from Buckingham Palace Gardens, Rawson found the address his unit chief had given him. It was a Georgian townhouse with a stucco ground floor and red-brick upper floors. A slender balcony girdled the second floor.

  A butler answered the ringing bell.

  “I am Captain Rawson. Here for Sir Anthony Witt-Dawlings,” said Rawson.

  He was taken to a sitting room in the rear of the narrow townhouse, where pale curtains were drawn over ceiling-high windows, letting in only light. Crossed swords were mounted above a white painted hearth. The room smelled stale somehow, cared for but not lived in.

  Anthony Witt-Dawlings entered the room quietly, shutting the door behind him. He was shorter than Rawson, his b
ody surrendering decently to a sixty-year-old paunch. He looked like he had just witnessed his first execution.

  He wore a small campaign ribbon Rawson could not place. He introduced himself, including the ribbon on his lapel. He asked what Rawson knew about the situation.

  “Your name and the address,” said Rawson.

  “They didn’t tell you this was for the Queen?”

  “No. They said it was urgent. They did not say it was for the Queen.”

  “Good. I am the Queen’s secretary. I was quite a few years ahead of you at Eton. Didn’t choose Sandhurst, though. Missed the war, but saw some action later at Suez. Seventh Hereford. I have been with Her Majesty for thirty years.”

  Rawson nodded.

  “I asked your people for a man who was discreet above all, calculating, daring if necessary, and knew his way around.”

  “Around what?” asked Rawson.

  “Around the world, Captain. In all levels. Can you deal with criminals while maintaining the highest integrity? Can you be trusted with millions? Can you operate totally on your own without waiting for someone to give you an order, without needing people to make judgments for you? That’s what Her Majesty asked for. Have we gotten that man?”

  “I would imagine I am about as good as any,” said Rawson.

  “Could you search for something forever until you found it?”

  “Would depend on that something, wouldn’t it?” asked Rawson.

  “A treasure, a piece of England,” said Witt-Dawlings.

  “Possibly—I certainly have done worse,” said Rawson.

  Sir Anthony left the large fireplace and approached the young captain. Rawson still had not been invited to sit.