Scorpion Sunset (35 page)

‘You haven't lost your sense of humour.'

‘I've needed it since I left England. Your Arabic is good.' He took a seat on the divan next to Michael.

‘So is yours.'

‘I've been speaking it longer and had more practice than you.'

Ibn Shalan and Mitkhal rose and went to the doorway.

‘You don't have to leave,' Hasan protested.

‘We will return shortly,' Mitkhal followed Shalan out.

Michael smiled at his brother. ‘I've thought about you often since Georgie and I saw you walk onto that boat in Basra wharf. As has Georgie. You do know that we saw you?'

‘I knew. I hoped that both of you would understand why I chose to remain an Arab.'

‘Your injuries? The Turks did that to you?'

‘They tortured me.'

There was a tone in Hasan's voice that warned Michael not to enquire further. ‘Was that your wife and children on the boat with you?'

‘Yes. And Mitkhal's wife and son.'

‘The twin girls …'

‘Are mine and as beautiful as my wife, Furja. I will introduce you to them and my baby son later, but first …'

‘You want to explain to me why Ibn Shalan needs all the guns he can lay his hands on.'

‘The reason is simple. A question of survival of the tribe.'

‘Your tribe will fight anyone who threatens you.'

‘Exactly.'

‘Turk, Germans, Bakhtairi Khans, and …' Michael hesitated, ‘the Allies including the British.'

‘You know what will happen when the Turks leave this land. Once the British take Baghdad – and they will, the Turks will return to Turkey to lick their wounds …'

‘And you and your fellow tribesmen will turn the guns on the British?'

‘Only if the British refuse to leave and train their guns on us. It is our land, Michael. We have a God-given right to govern it as we chose without interference from any foreign power, no matter how well intentioned. And contrary to British patriotic belief, the British are not, and never have been, anything other than self-seeking and self-serving. They are here to fill English coffers, not to free the Arabs from their Ottoman yoke.'

Michael couldn't stop looking at his brother. The one-handed, one-eyed, battle-scarred Arab next to him was not Harry, but he was a shell of what Harry had once been. At that moment he suddenly realised that Harry was as dead to him as if he really had been buried out in the desert by the Turks.

‘You don't agree, Michael?'

‘I agree, but …'

‘You have joined Cox's tribe of British officers and, for all your sympathy with the Arabs and our cause, if it comes to war between us you will fight for your British paymasters and kill Arabs.'

‘I would never pull a gun on you or fight against you.'

‘And my tribe?' When Michael didn't answer, Hasan said, ‘There may come a time when you have to do just that, Michael.'

‘War correspondents don't fight.'

‘They fight with the most dangerous weapon the world has ever invented. The pen.' Hasan gave Michael a lopsided grin that was so familiar it tore at his heartstrings. ‘Do you know what the British plans for Mesopotamia are when they oust the Turks?'

‘I've heard rumours that the country will be handed over to the Indian Office.'

‘That's not what we've heard.'

‘It's too far from Westminster for the British government to rule,' Michael observed.

‘On that we agree.'

‘So what do you think will happen to Mesopotamia?' Michael pressed.

‘There are many Arabs of many tribes fighting with the British, not just here in Iraq but elsewhere in the Middle East. Some of those Arabs have the ambition to rule, even over those who are not of their blood or their tribe.'

‘You think the British will install an Arab puppet overlord?'

‘I think they will listen to people who know nothing of our lands, like Lawrence. Possibly they will even name whoever they decide should reign over us “king”. That notion hasn't occurred to you?'

‘It has now.'

Ibn Shalan and Mitkhal returned and stood in the doorway.

‘You will try to get us the things we asked for?' Hasan questioned Michael.

‘I will try. Meet me early tomorrow, Mitkhal, in Abdul's. We'll visit HQ together.'

‘I will be there.'

‘And now, come, meet my wife.' Hasan rose. ‘If you return with Georgie tomorrow evening you must bring Kalla.'

‘You know about Kalla?' Michael asked.

‘You would be surprised by how much Hasan knows about you, Michael. You and his British family are often his thoughts,' Mitkhal revealed.

Turkish Prisoner of War Camp

December 1916

John was tired but restless and beset by remorse. He couldn't stop thinking about the incident with Rebeka. He made a round of all his patients – twice – although most of them were sleeping and he could do nothing for them. Then he checked all the supply cupboards and made an inventory of the stocks of drugs and dressings. When he'd finished those he looked over the patient charts that he'd taught Mrs Gulbenkian and Rebeka to update.

The guilt he felt at kissing Rebeka burned painful overwhelming, and all the more bitter because he could recall in graphic detail the injuries she'd suffered after being raped by the Turks.

He was standing in the kitchen debating what to do next when he heard a knock on the front door. Greening, who was on night duty reached it before he did.

Grace was outside with two Indian sepoy orderlies. Behind them, parked on the garden with absolutely no consideration for the plants several of the officers had spent hours tending, was a mule cart.

‘Apologies, Major Mason, for disturbing you at this late hour. The colonel's compliments, sir. A cart of six sick men has just arrived, sent on from another POW camp. The men inside it are in bad shape.'

‘Do you and your orderlies need help to get them in here, Grace?'

‘More muscle wouldn't go amiss, sir. The men cannot walk unaided.'

‘I'll wake Baker and Jones.' Greening stepped back into the hall.

‘Tell them to clear the six-bedded ward we keep for quarantine cases. The two fever patients in there have almost recovered and can be moved into the main ward. We need to keep these men separate until we can be sure they're not incubating anything.'

‘Yes, sir.'

John lifted an oil lamp from a niche in the hall, held it high and walked out to the back of the cart with Grace. The drivers had climbed down and were standing smoking and talking to a guard who'd accompanied them from the gate.

‘One of the sick is Major Crabbe, sir,' Grace warned John. ‘He looks in particularly bad shape.'

John lowered the tailgate and stepped up into the cart. All the men were painfully thin, half naked, and all had open sores on their bodies. But only Crabbe was unconscious. If Grace hadn't told him that Crabbe was in the cart he would never have recognised his friend. As it was, he did so purely by process of elimination. The other five men were years younger than Crabbe, and they all had haunted expressions in their eyes that belied those years.

John ran his hands over Crabbe's forehead and face. His skin was cold, clammy; his breathing shallow and laboured.

John looked up and saw Williams and Jones running from the building. ‘Get a stretcher and take Major Crabbe into the examination room.' Williams ran back inside.

‘Sergeant Greening and I have prepared the quarantine ward. It's ready, sir.'

‘Thank you, Dira, I knew I could rely on you to turn up even when you're off duty. See these five men settled in ward and make them comfortable. No food other than tea and thin gruel until I say otherwise. Too much nourishment too soon could rupture their stomachs. I'll be in to examine them as soon as I've seen to Major Crabbe.'

One of the men screamed in agony as Jones helped him from the back of the cart.

‘Sorry, sir,' he apologised, his eyes bright with tears. ‘It's my back, sir.' He stepped into the pool of light in the doorway and John saw the unmistakeable marks of a whiplash on his naked back. It had stripped the skin down to the muscle in several places.

‘Who did this to you?' John demanded furiously.

‘Turks, sir. They beat everyone in the camp, beat the Major to a pulp, more than once. Captain Vincent tried to stop them, sir, but it was sport to them. Will we be beaten here?'

‘Not if I or the other officers can help it, Private.' John fingered the deep wide cuts on the man's back. They were raw, infected, and running with pus. He shouted in Turkish at the driver and the guard who'd accompanied him.

Both men turned to him and shrugged. ‘The guards in the camp at Bagtsche did it. Nothing to do with us,' the driver retorted.

John didn't trust himself to reply to them. ‘Grace, get an escort and insist these men are kept locked up here until morning. I want them taken to the commandant.'

The guard who'd been on duty at the gate approached John. ‘As they said to you, these guards are from another camp, Major Mason. They are not under our jurisdiction. We have no control over them and cannot keep them here against their will.'

‘It's not in any Turkish guard's jurisdiction, or remit, to whip prisoners to the point of death,' John remonstrated.

‘Prisoners will be punished if they refuse to obey orders or cooperate with their guards.'

‘Punished by being whipped to death?'

‘You don't know what that man did to be whipped.'

‘I will take a deposition from him, attesting to his crime – if he committed one. I will also make a full and comprehensive account of his injuries.'

‘You won't be able to send it anywhere,' the guard taunted.

‘Not immediately, perhaps,' John met the guard's steady gaze. ‘But the war won't last forever and when it ends I will make sure that you and your ilk will face justice.'

The man stepped forward. So did John. They stood facing another in silence until Williams interrupted.

‘We're about to move Major Crabbe, sir.'

John turned on his heel and followed Greening and Williams who'd lifted Crabbe on to the stretcher inside the building.

‘Rebeka, what are you doing here?' John asked when he entered the room they used as an operating theatre, to find her gowned and masked and scrubbing down the table.

‘Mrs Gulbenkian and I were woken by the noise of people walking up and down the stairs,' she lied, as neither of them had fallen asleep. ‘Sergeant Greening told us that more patients had arrived from another camp and you needed to operate on one so we offered to help. Mrs Gulbenkian is cleaning and dressing the injuries of the men in the quarantine ward. Sergeant Greening is washing the patient who needs surgery, so I thought I'd prepare this room.'

‘Thank you. It's good of you both to give up your sleep.' He reached for an apron and mask.

Rebeka took the chloroform apparatus from the box it was stored in. Greening and Dira carried Crabbe in on a stretcher and placed him on the table.

John studied Crabbe as Dira prepared to administer chloroform. It hadn't been easy to control his temper when he'd seen the damage the Turks had inflicted on his friend and it was harder still to keep his temper when he had to start operating.

‘Major Crabbe is ready, sir.'

‘Thank you, Dira.' John reached for a scalpel, opened Crabbe's chest, spread his ribs, and set to work. Slowly, painstakingly, he began to remove bone splinters from Crabbe's punctured lungs. He worked carefully and in silence, acutely aware of Dira administering chloroform, Rebeka monitoring and sterilising the instruments as he used them, but most of all of Crabbe, lying wounded and helpless on the table.

After an hour's steady work, he made one final check before removing the clamps he'd used to spread Crabbe's ribs and stitching up his chest. He placed the last stitch, and monitored his pulse.

‘Major Crabbe is strong, sir, he will survive,' Dira reassured.

‘I hope you're right, Dira. I've done all I can.'

‘It is in God's hands now, sir. Where would you like us to take him?'

‘The examination room please, Dira, in case I need my instruments.'

‘I'll get help to carry him there.'

Rebeka untied her apron and veil, removed her mask, and dropped them into the linen bin.

‘Would you like tea, sir?'

‘If it's not too much trouble, Rebeka.'

‘No trouble, sir. I'll see if the orderlies, patients, or Mrs Gulbenkian want any as well.'

John stripped off his surgical clothes and left for the bathroom. He washed his hands and face in cold water and checked his watch. Four thirty. Another hour and half and he would have been up for twenty-four hours.

He went into the quarantine ward. Mrs Gulbenkian was sitting next to the bed of one young man, holding his hand.

‘They just want to sleep, sir.'

‘You gave them the painkillers I prescribed?'

‘And fed and cleaned them, sir.' Greening came in with two cups of tea and handed Mrs Gulbenkian one. ‘Rebeka's just made tea, sir. Yours is in the kitchen. If you don't mind me saying so, sir, after you drink it you should get some rest.'

‘I will, but not until after Major Crabbe's regained consciousness.'

‘I'll come and get you when he does, sir.' Greening hesitated. ‘The major will make it, sir.'

‘He might, provided infection doesn't set in. But if wishes can make things happen, he'll be dancing around here tomorrow.'

John looked in on Dira and Crabbe before going to the kitchen. Rebeka had made tea and toast. She handed him a plate and mug.

‘Dira says Major Crabbe's breathing is getting stronger.'

‘It's still too early to give a prognosis.' John sank down on a chair. ‘We have a full hospital again and from what the colonel said a few days ago we may soon have even more patients.' He looked up at her. ‘Rebeka, about what happened …'