The Mule on the Minaret (53 page)

Forester chuckled. ‘I see. I see. You want me to do your homework for you. Well, it's very simple. We draw a net. We find out all we can about Hassun. My man will be very helpful there.'

‘By the way, I've brought a present for your man.'

Reid handed across an envelope that contained the twenty dinars. ‘Thank you very much. He'll be most grateful. As I said, my man can tell us a good deal about Mulla Hassun. We can find out who his friends are. We'll find out who the friends of those friends are. We can impose censorship. If there are telephones,
we can have them monitored. We will try to build up a picture of Hassun's life. He is not in on this alone. We must find out how he came to contact the Germans. We must find out who is his contact with the Germans. We must find out if they contacted him or if he contacted them. And first of all the question “Why?” Is it for money? I suspect it isn't. An Iraqi student in Ankara who gets in money troubles will undertake an espionage commission to get himself out of trouble, and it is not difficult for the Germans to discover which Iraqi students are in trouble. That kind of fellow is obvious and vulnerable. It's different for someone like Mulla Hassun, who's living here in Baghdad, occupying a position of respect. If he were in financial difficulties, he'd have other means of raising funds. A man like that wouldn't start on a campaign like this unless he were anti-British or pro-German or both. And there's this point too, we must remember; the German Consul here before the war, Grobba, was very efficient and very popular. He had a great many friends. He came back here for those few days of the Rashid Ali rebellion. He had a list of his friends and that list is now in the hands of German Intelligence. We don't know who he saw during those few days. He may have seen Hassun. He certainly will have seen friends of Hassun. I think we can assume that Hassun acted out of conviction. There's a great deal that we may discover here.'

‘It will take us a long time to discover it.'

‘It will take rather more than a long time.'

‘This is wartime; ought we to put pressure on? Can we put pressure on?'

Forester shook his head. ‘Police work is a slow, slow job. You must be beginning to realize that by now. So much of it is office work. It is a question of files, remembering what is in those files, of comparing notes, of suddenly putting two and two together. Being patient oneself and remembering that criminals get impatient too. They show themselves in the open. This present inquiry will involve a lot of work, we shall be watching not only Hassun but Hassun's friends and the friends of Hassun's friends. Ninety-five per cent of that work will be wasted work. We shall be checking on people who are completely innocent. But we have to do it because we have to see Hassun's life in the round. We have to know all about it. So much of a man's life is submerged; his family may not be aware of a most significant section of it; a part of it that appears trivial but isn't. I was once tracking a Londoner
whose whole life had appeared above board. He was so busy that I thought I knew how every minute of his time was spent. Then quite by chance I learnt that as a young man he had gone on a cricket tour. He was not particularly good at the game. He went as a twelfth man and played occasionally. Thirty years later no one would have associated him with cricket, but the other members used to play in the evening a game of four-handed chess which one of them claimed to have invented. He took a great fancy to it. He went on playing it ever after, with three other men, one night a month. That was the key to a considerable subversive group. We've got to find Hassun's equivalent for four-handed chess. It will take time.'

‘But you believe it's worth it?'

‘It's one of the most worthwhile things that have come into this office since I've been sitting here.'

‘You are sure we were wise to let the set stay with the boys; you don't think we should have rounded them up when we had the chance? Caught them red-handed and then grilled them?'

‘And let the big fish escape? No, no. We are better as we are. And do you seriously think that these boys can really find out anything the Germans want to know? What access to information have they?'

‘That's not an argument I could put up. Think of all the men who are drawing fat salaries organizing campaigns against careless talk, pretending that there's a spy beneath every table. Ninetenths of G.H.Q. would be horrified if they learnt what we had done or hadn't done.'

‘What does your Colonel say?'

‘He believes in giving his officers a free hand.'

‘Then you're all right.'

Mallet had told Reid to report on his return. Reid found him alone. ‘How does the field lie?' Mallet asked. He listened without interrupting, nodding from time to time. ‘And Forester's satisfied?' he asked at length.

‘Thoroughly.'

‘I hope that we shall be able to persuade the big brass that we are. You know how well it would read in an Intelligence summary in London: “Our Baghdad section captured an enemy agent with a wireless transmitter in his possession. Under cross-examination, the agent betrayed a number of his accomplices and we can claim
to have eliminated a very dangerous group of subversive elements.” '

‘Isn't there something in
Macbeth
about “we have scotched the beast, not killed it”?'

The Colonel laughed. ‘I'm not saying that you are not right. I'm telling you how it's going to strike the men whose promotions depend on their presenting effective progress reports. By the way, rising out of that, have you begun to prepare your talk for the Controller's Conference in Beirut?'

‘I haven't yet, sir. It's still six weeks off.'

‘I know it is. But it's going to be a critical conference for this Centre. It needs careful planning. I'd like to have a quiet talk with you. What day have you free next week for dinner?'

‘Any day except Tuesday. I'm Duty Officer on Tuesday.'

‘Then let's make it Wednesday. Are you a member of the British Club?'

‘Yes.'

‘Then let's go there first for drinks. Shall we leave here at seven?'

The British Club was in a small, one-storey building, east of Rashid Street, a short distance from the South Gate. It was run by civilians; it contained a bar, a billiard-room, a card-room. It served no food. It was exclusively a men's club, though once a month there was a dinner dance. A few senior officers from G.H.Q. were made honorary members. The two main shipping firms had not raised the price of whisky to their private customers and to the clubs. Whisky cost four dinars a bottle in the bazaars, but it was sold to friends at one dinar two-fifty fils. Military members were, however, limited to six glasses a week. ‘How does your whisky ration stand?' Mallet asked.

‘I haven't touched it yet?'

‘Good, then we can each work on our own. Let's see if there's any one in the annexe.'

The annexe was a narrow strip of a room off the card-room; six feet across with only enough space for a row of six armchairs down each side. The walls were decorated with small black and white caricatures of members. It was cosy and often when he wanted to be alone, Reid would consume the half of his week's ration here. It was empty this evening.

‘My father told me when I was young,' Mallet started, ‘that you should never bring up a serious matter till you had reached
the port stage. That may be very sound advice if you've designs on a young woman, or if you are trying to get a client's signature to a dubious contract, but I don't think it's a good idea when two serious citizens have something serious to discuss. Let's get our shop over first, and then relax over a bottle at the Sinbad. I want to tell you why the Beirut conference will be critical and crucial for this Centre. I'm hoping that by the end of it, I shall arrange for a transfer to M.E.F.'

It came as a complete surprise to Reid. Mallet had run the Centre since Military Intelligence had been merged with Air Force Intelligence in Baghdad after the Rashid Ali coup. That was a long time ago. Reid had thought of the Centre as the apple of the Colonel's eye. The Colonel had been awarded the O.B.E. in the New Year's Honours' List. Reid had fancied that he would want to carry on with his job till the war was over. ‘That's a surprise to me and a shock,' he said.

Mallet shrugged. ‘I've been here two years. I'm possibly getting stale. I hope I'm not. But I may be. That isn't the real point, however. I'm saying this to you in strictest confidence. You are the only person here that I can talk to. We're not quite contemporaries; but we were raised in the same stable, as the others weren't—except old Johnson and, well, old Johnson, you know what I mean. My point is this: the Army's my career. I've got to consider my own interests. I'll be retiring after the war. There'll be nothing in the Army for a man of my age who hasn't commanded a battalion in the field. And the higher my rank now, the higher my pension will be; also the better chance of getting a directorate or two in the city. If I can finish up as a Brigadier with the war substantive rank of Lieutenant Colonel, it will be a considerable help to me. That's why I want to go to Cairo. There is no chance of promotion here. There is going to be a downgrading of appointments. I shouldn't be surprised if Paiforce didn't cease to be an independent command, and we came under M.E.F. I've got to be near a lift that's going up. If I play my cards carefully in Beirut, I think I can swing a transfer. But that doesn't mean that I'm leaving you fellows in the lurch. I've built up this Centre and I want to ensure that it will continue to operate in the same spirit and with the same efficiency it has up to now, to the best of my ability. In my opinion, you are the man to run it.'

It was an even greater surprise to Reid than the Colonel's announcement of his transfer. ‘But surely Maurice is senior to me?'

Maurice Spencer, a flying ace from the First War, was a Squadron Leader in charge of the Political Section of the Centre. He had been stationed in Iraq for several years. The Colonel nodded. ‘On paper, yes, and though seniority does not count for much in a show like ours, and though a Major's the equivalent of a Squadron Leader, it would cause awkwardness if you were put over him. I'm planning to take him to Cairo and put him up a ring. That would suit him all right.'

‘I get on perfectly well with Maurice. I'd be quite happy working under him.'

‘I know you are. I know you would. But you are the man to run our show, not he. You can combine the political and the espionage side in a way that Maurice couldn't. He's not up in the espionage side. But you are up on the political side—in fact with your training you're even sounder politically than you are in the cloak-and-dagger business, which is new to you.

‘When I founded this Centre, I saw it as a two-barrelled gun: we were in danger of a German attack through the Caucasus so we had to have a sound counter-espionage organization, but we had also only recently survived a revolution. The country was full of malcontents. If our forces here were to play their proper part in the Middle East theatre, there could not be political disturbance in back areas; so I started the political branch under Maurice. The claims of the two branches might be in conflict with one another and I should be there at the top to adjudicate. That's why I want you to take my place. You are in a position to adjudicate.

‘In point of fact, that's what you have done already over this wireless transmitter. There were counter-espionage claims and there were internal security claims: you decided that the claims of internal security were the more ponderable. I'm not saying you were right. I'm not saying that you were wrong. You reached a cross roads. You decided on the road that you thought should be taken and you took it. That's all that you can do at a cross roads. The important thing is that you were qualified to make that decision. You had both groups of facts at your disposal. I don't think that Maurice would have been in a position to do that. He would not have got the cloak-and-dagger point of view. And I believe that a great many similar cross roads lie ahead of us here in Paiforce. There's no longer any danger in a military sense. German troops aren't going to pour down through the Caucasus. They are being forced back everywhere on to their bases: yet Paiforce is
still important. It is the gateway of aid to Russia. There are the oil fields of Kirkuk and the refinery at Abadan. Ours is probably the most important back area in the war. We must see that that area is not disturbed. I'm only repeating to you what you already know. But I'm leading up to the points I want you to consider making in your speech at the Controller's Conference. You are a good speaker; you made an effective speech in Cairo last year. I was delighted when I heard that you were coming to this Centre. You were the very man I wanted. And I want now to be able after this Beirut Conference to convince the Controller that you are the man to run this Centre. I'm thinking both of my own interests and the Centre's. I want the Centre to continue to flourish. It will, I know, under your leadership. And I want to get to Cairo. They won't let me go there unless they are convinced that this Centre is in first-class hands. Your speech should clinch the issue.'

‘What shall I say in this speech?'

‘Pretty much what you said to me when you gave your reasons for preferring those agents to keep the set. Explain how the situation is different in Iraq from what it is in the Lebanon. Explain why we want to keep Iraq the way it is; with the Royal Family that owes its presence here to British influence and to men like Nuri who are convinced that Iraq's prosperity depends on a close alliance with Great Britain. But I don't need to dictate your speech to you. You are much better than I am at that kind of thing. If I outline the general strategy, I can leave the tactical side of it to you.'

‘I see what you mean.'

‘Fine; and now we've got our shop behind us and can relax. Let's have a fourth whisky. Then we can go over to the Sinbad.'