Leon Uris (44 page)

“I’ll tell you what. I’ll go ninety a week for the right place. You, Mr. Sira, make the deal for me. Anything you can get it for, under ninety, goes into your pocket plus another five a week.”

“You must be prepared to pay in advance.”

“Afraid not. We’ll pay half a week in advance and the balance at the end of each week.”

Hamdoon Sira was standing before a cask of gold. Only Allah knew what else he could provide these men. If only all the English were as forthright as Mr. Goodwood. He jotted the name of Farouk el Farouk. “I’ll have the hotel limousine brought around for you.”

Chester ripped the fifty-pound note in two and gave a half to Mr. Sira. “The rest when you close the deal.”

The bell tower clock tolled eight-thirty, which meant it was seven-thirty. As dusk fell, the calls of the muezzins floated from the minaret tops. Rory and Johnny were on the verge of panic envisioning the dear innocent face of Chester lying in a slimy, cobblestoned gutter with his ears and tongue missing.

Bong…clang…burrrrr…bong…
tolled the bells.

“Ah Jaysus! Chester! Johnny, it’s Chester!”

“You dirty little sonofabitch, where have you been? We’ve been going crazy!”

“Ought to break your fuckin’ neck, that’s wot!”

Chester sighed. “I almost found us a place.”

“Almost, what do you mean, almost!”

Chester recounted the day, up to the meeting with Farouk el Farouk.

“He had a real obscure office on the second floor of a building on Sheik el Bustan. Pleasant fellow. I cut through the red tape and laid out our purpose and requirements.”

“Including the women?” Johnny wanted to know.

“Including the women,” Chester assured him.

“Ah, good lad.”

“There’s some villas in the Zamalek. Most of his regular clients got caught in Switzerland or otherwise by the war. The pommy officers haven’t got the money or are too cheap to take them off his hands. At first he didn’t even want to show them to me.”

“What happened?”

“We got into a backgammon game. You know, he had centuries of tradition behind him. When I had him down over two hundred I told him I’d call it even if he showed me one of the villas,”

“How was it?”

“Arabian nights…Scheherazade…on the Nile…open courtyard with a fountain, big balcony overlooking the river, numerous arched rooms built around the center square. It was in our budget with a case of whiskey and two cases of beer a week thrown in.”

“I’ll kill for it!” Tarbox cried.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have told you about it, guys. I think if it was up to Farouk, he’d go for it…but he can’t sell police protection to enlisted men in such thick officers’ country, and secondly, if the British command got wind of it, they’d close him down.”

“I don’t want to hear any more!” Rory snapped.

“Jesus, the dirty bastards.”

“And we’re supposed to fight a fucking war with these guys!”

“Unless,” Chester said, “and this is clear crazy—”

“Unless what?”

“Unless we got somebody of the rank of colonel or above to sign the paper, and he means an in-person colonel…no forgeries.”

Cairo jumped back to life around them once again.

There was no aspect of soldiering minuscule enough to be overlooked in the basic training that ensued at Camp Anzac. Eager young broadbacks from down under, many of whom had envisioned themselves in the thunder of a cavalry charge, were rudely introduced to the fundamentals of soldiering.

Basic training brought them to a point of physical hardness, to where they could drill in unison, salute their pommies with proper pomp, prepare themselves, their weapons, and their quarters for white-glove inspection, become intimate with their rifles, and fire them accurately.

No battalion was going to be snappier, shine brighter, shoot straighter, follow regulations better, or exercise harder than Major Christopher Hubble’s.

His group quickly earned the reputation as one where survival till the end of the day was considered a personal triumph. He demanded of his officers that they not spare the sweat box, an upright coffin with two small air holes, for the man who did not salute sharply enough or have the corners of his bedding tucked immaculately. Aloof from his men, the major seemed to thrive on their loathing of him.

Once the basic training was completed, Jeremy breathed a sigh of relief. While the other battalions would now con
vert to infantry, artillery, engineers, and other support units of a brigade and division, the Seventh Light Horse could get on with its special training on mules.

No specialized course could be established for them because they did not have a guiding manual and could not complete the manual until certain experts arrived. Moreover, there was no packing equipment and, mostly…there were no mules.

While the four-man gaffer squad struggled with writing the manual and awaited the vet and packer to complete it, Major Hubble put his men into infantry training.

Llewelyn Brodhead was a marching general. No Anzac unit outmarched the Seventh Light Horse. They sprinted the short marches with light combat packs; they marched full-speed with field packs; they force-marched in full strength up to fifty miles over the sands. They marched in boot-top-covering, ankle-deep-sucking sand, dehydrating and blistering and getting double vision from the brutal sun, only to then be pelted and blinded by slicing sandstorms.

They crawled through sand, through and under barbed wire, with live gunfire, keeping bellies and asses flat. They attacked with grenades and mortars over the dunes.

Night marches in the sudden chill of the desert turned into night patrols. Either they were ambushed or they ambushed others. They stormed through defenses at fixed bayonets in games real enough to tell them that exhaustion can be blessed, if a mental fog enshrouds them, so long as they do not drop out of formation. The gunfire and explosions were tight enough around them to let them realize the fears of combat.

Those big Aussie and New Zealand beef-and-mutton eaters no longer poked fun at the scrawny limeys in the English units who knew the ways of Soldiering.

When they weren’t marching or participating in battle exercises, they dug trenches and latrines and trimmed up
their areas. Throughout the Anzac Corps, many officers were lax and allowed the soldiers to use Terriers to do a lot of the cleanup work.

Major Hubble forbade the use of Terriers by his men Major Hubble’s punishments were double that of the rest of the corps. Major Hubble’s battalion area was impeccable.

Even the stoutest Aussie desert rat buckled under the Egyptian sun, and what the sun didn’t get, the sand did. Sand, sand, sand, sand. Clean the tent and it was filled with sand again in minutes. Sand in the mess kits. Sand in their teeth and hair. Sand in their clothing, up their rectums.

Yes, they would become good troops, given enough time. But as tough as they were, the Anzacs had a flaw. Almost all of them had come from rural settings free from exposure to the bacterias of urban “civilization.” For the first time in their lives they were in total close quarters with crowds of humanity: crammed aboard troop ships, packed in the narrow streets of Cairo, at Camp Anzac. Their immune systems had not been built to handle the onslaught of typhoid and dysentery, stomach parasites, and killer influenza A third of them were down at all times from illness.

Respite meant leave in Cairo, and soon venereal disease added to the infirmities.

Cairo had centuries of experience in swaying to the whims of the conqueror, occupier, and tourist. They all wanted the same thing—bargains, booze, and women…preferably the illusion of a virgin. The soldier boys at the bottom of the ranks were young men. Nearly all of them were short on experience and felt they had to have a notch or two of girl-o in their belts to make memories before battle and to know they had joined the ranks of real men.

Cairo was having a reverse effect. The situation went from bad to rotten. Tempers grew shorter. The men, particularly of the Seventh Light Horse, returned lo camp in a state of agitation, after which Major Hubble drilled it out of them.

As for Rory lad, his dream of that oasis—that Champs
Elysée apartment—was blown away with the desert sands.

In a compound close to battalion headquarters, there was a large stable with indoor riding rings that was in decent condition and mostly unused, except to house polo ponies for the ranking officers. Jeremy talked Chris into allowing him to have the building and supplying him with laborers to convert it into housing and office space for his gaffers. Each man had a private sleeping cubicle and a small office. Most activity centered around a conference room, which was a feet-on-the-desk, nonmilitary, friendly spot.

Christopher did not like the gaffers’ privileged setup or their independence. He considered himself a top-notch officer and justified special treatment to the squad. A fine officer knew when to yield slightly…particularly when the gains would more than offset his “largesse.” If Major Hubble learned one thing, it was that Jeremy’s squad was the make-or-break of the battalion’s unique commission. So long as they were out of sight and Chris did not have to buck heads with his brother, he yielded here and there.

One of the indoor riding rings had a grandstand that could hold two hundred men, or about a fourth of the battalion, at one time. In planning ahead, this would become a rotating classroom.

In Pig Island, a conference room walled with charts, the lieutenant and his three gaffers went as far as they could go on writing a workable mule manual, but the battalion desperately needed the expertise of the key men, a chief packer and a veterinarian.

Rory reckoned these missing chapters should be written substituting horses for mules. After all, the skeletons were the same and there were a whole range of similarities between the two animals. It stood to shorten the finishing time of the manual simply by replacing mules for horses and making whatever corrections were required.

The three gaffers awaited the arrival of the veterinarian in pig Island with more than usual anticipation.

Rory had met only one Jew in his life, a nondescript general merchant in Christchurch who was generally well liked for his generosity in extending credit to prospectors and folks who had had a bad season.

Chester knew of two or three Jews in Hong Kong bankers and money people. Actually he did not really know them, but had met them.

Johnny Tarbox did not know if he knew any Jews. He had seen some in his travels as a Royal Marine and actually suspected a member of his platoon was one.

Lieutenant Jeremy had known a few Jews here and there and found them to be decent sorts if treated decently.

They had a number of discussions and sought information about the Jews and everything they came up with was slimy…unsavory…crooked…and altogether enough to make one very uneasy.

They were trying to look at the person behind Lieutenant Jeremy when he entered Pig Island. Rory was first to see an accordion among the man’s possessions, which he took to be a positive sign. He was a good-sized fellow, rough-hewn. Obviously he did physical work, which belied the rumor to the contrary.

“Lads,” Jeremy said, “this gentleman is our vet, assigned to us on detached duty from the Zion Mule Corps. We’ve been chatting for the past hour and I know he’s going to fit right in with the gaffer squad. Mordechai Pearlman…right to left, meet Serjeant Major Johnny Tarbox, First Serjeant Rory Landers, and Private Chester Goodwood.”

Behind a wild beard came a split-tooth smile and a handshake capable of breaking bricks.

“Well, lads,” Jeremy said to the three who gawked, “take care of our man here and show him the ropes. Now, let’s get cracking on rewriting the chapters on ills, ails, and sanitation.”

When Jeremy departed the awkward silence continued.

“Well now, Doctor, how’s your English, sir?” Johnny ventured.

“Fine, how’s yours?” Pearlman answered.

That helped.

“I have not been knighted so I am not a sir, and my doctor’s diploma is somewhere in Minsk and not accredited by the British Army. Matter of fact, I’m not even a member of the army. I am an attached specialist…however…I know mules like you know women, Tarbox.”

That loosened things up. “Now that’s saying a mouthful,” Johnny said, beaming.

Quiet again.

“So, maybe we better be talking
tocklus,
” Pearlman said. “You are thinking, what is this Jew. No?”

“Aw, you know, we were sort of wondering, never having met anyone of your religious persuasion person-to-person,” Johnny said.

“Sure, we’re curious,” Rory said. “Like, New Zealand isn’t in the middle of Moscow.”

“I think I like all of you,” Pearlman said, “and I think you will all like me. I come filled with peace and love. Good?”

“Good.”

“Good.”

“Goodo.”

“But no Jew jokes, good? Who of you beat the Australian heavyweight?”

“Guilty,” Rory said.

“After I softened him up,” Johnny added.

“No doubt you can also beat me up. But let me say and guarantee you, absolutely, with saber in my hand, I can Peel you into delicate slices, so thin, like smoked salmon. And I think we should understand this—”

“Because you’ve taken enough shit,” Johnny finished his sentence. “Take off your worries and stand at ease, you’re among cobbers.”

“Cobblers? You are shoemakers?”

“We’ve a small squad. It’s us and the Lieutenant, and you’re most welcome here.”

Pearlman’s bear hug on Johnny clanged. Chester was all but crushed by it. Rory feinted a couple of punches and embraced him.

Everyone sighed in relief a number of times and then broke into laughter.

“So, what do we call you? Doctor?”

“They call me Modi back in Palestine.”

“Modi?”

“Modi, short for Mordechai.”

“Modi, aye, that’s a fine name, indeed.”

Late into the night the lads were praising Allah for Modi’s arrival. Not only had he given the corrections on “Ills, Ails, and Sanitation,” but he had edited the entire manual.

“You boys have done a fantastic job, working in the dark like this,” Modi complimented.

“I want to tell you, the Brit manual might as well have been written in Russian,” Chester said. “I bent my mind trying to translate it—untwist it, that is.”

“This is just what’s needed. Very simple. And you tell me everyone in the battalion is a horseman.”

“That’s right.”

“Very, very many things the same. But mainly, the men are comfortable around a big animal…. That will cut out weeks and weeks of mule feeling out the soldier and soldier feeling out the mule.”

Mordechai Pearlman’s mind leapt ahead. He had been told bluntly by Lieutenant Jeremy that the sand was running through the clock a lot faster than they wanted it to.

“You have classroom, I saw.”

They walked over to the ring where the stadium seats had been built. One company at a time for each lecture. Four lectures a day. Give me a month, he thought. Thank God they know horses.

“Each company should have given men with special
veterinary training. They will be used the same way you use medics. We have an aid station. We have them on the trail with mule trains.”

“I’ll talk to the Lieutenant tomorrow,” Johnny said.

“I want to pick these boys myself,” Modi asserted. “I train them, they’ll be great.”

Jesus! They’d come upon a work monster. They returned to Pig Island and kept going on the manual for four hours after the midnight oil was burned out. Modi stretched and produced a bottle of vodka.

“I know it’s not regulations, but I’m unregulated,” Modi said. “Besides, it’s the last bottle of Russian vodka in Palestine and I think we should finish it.”

Rory locked them in and Mordechai Pearlman opened wide his accordion and introduced them to the first of his repertoire of Russian-Yiddish-Hebrew-Arabic-and-Greek songs. It was a golden kind of moment. They were dead tired and tipsy, and Modi’s voice was filled with passion and soul. Not even knowing what the words meant, one could be brought to tears. Jesus!

“Got a wife, Modi?”

“What makes you think?”

“You’re an old fart, like Johnny. Past thirty.”

“Past forty,” Modi answered, “almost fifty. No, no wife.”

Modi turned over the vodka bottle and grimaced. Empty. “Only thing good to come out of Russia,” he said setting the bottle aside.

“Did I hear once that Jews don’t drink?” Johnny asked.

“They don’t,” Modi answered, “so I have to drink for all of them that don’t drink.” He scratched his beard in thought. “We’re all comrades, right?”

They agreed.

“I have something to tell you three men. It is something the rest of the battalion is not to know until combat. Obviously we will rotate our mule trains so each animal same and rests the same number of hours. It
appears we will be working very tough terrain, and if we develop a static front we will have very little room to maneuver.
Fahrstaht?
Understand?”

“Aye.”

“We will have no room…no pasture to rehabilitate an injured animal and rest him up till he can return to the trains. Any animal too sick or lame, who can’t go back to duty in two or three days, is to be destroyed. New mules will be fed in to us.”

Rory fell back in his chair and closed his eyes.