other words, if I land up in the gutter with a bullet through the head, I’m just another corpse?’
‘Exactly.’ He stood up briskly and adjusted his panama. ‘But I’ve really talked for quite long enough and the governor’s laid on an MTB to run me back to Athens in half an hour. So what’s it to be? A little action and passion or another fifteen years of this?’
He gestured around the cell with his cane. I said, ‘Do I really have a choice?’
‘Sensible lad.’ He smiled broadly and rapped on the door. ‘We’d better get moving then.’
‘What, now?’
‘I brought a signed release paper with me from Athens.’
‘You were that certain?’
He shrugged. ‘Let’s say it seemed more than likely that you’d see things my way.’
The key turned in the lock and the door opened, the sergeant saluted formally and stood to one side.
The Brigadier started forward and I said, ‘Just one thing.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You did say Royal Corps of Transport?’
He smiled beautifully. ‘A most essential part of the Service, my dear Simon. I should have thought you would have recognized that. Now come along. We really are going to cut it most awfully fine for the RAF plane I’ve laid on from Athens.’
So it was Simon now? He moved out into the corridor and the sergeant stood waiting patiently as I glanced around the cell. The prospect was not exactly bright, but after all, anything was better than this.
He called my name impatiently once more from halfway up the stairs, I moved out and the door clanged shut behind me.
Meyer
I first met Julius Meyer in one of the smaller of the Trucial Oman States in June, 1966. A place called Rubat, which boasted a sultan, one port town and around forty thousand square miles of very unattractive desert which was inhabited by what are usually referred to in military circles as dissident tribesmen.
The whole place had little to commend it except its oil, which did mean that besides the sultan’s three Rolls-Royces, two Mercedes and one Cadillac, our American friends not being so popular in the area that year, he could also afford a Chief of Police and I was glad of the work, however temporary the political situation made it look.
I was called up to the palace in a hurry one afternoon by the sultan’s chief minister, Hamal, who also happened to be his nephew. The whole thing was something of a surprise as it was the sort of place where nobody made a move during the heat of the day.
When I went into his office, I found him seated at his desk opposite Meyer. I never did know Meyer’s age for he was one of those men who looked a permanent sixty.
Hamal said, ‘Ah, Major Vaughan, this is Mr Julius Meyer.’
‘Mr Meyer,’ I said politely.
‘You will arrest him immediately and hold him in close confinement at central police headquarters until you hear from me.’
Meyer peered short-sightedly at me through steel-rimmed spectacles. With his shock of untidy grey hair, the fraying collar, the shabby linen suit, he looked more like an unsuccessful musician than anything else. It was much later when I discovered that all these things were supposed to make him look poor, which he certainly was not.
‘What’s the charge?’ I asked.
‘Import of arms without a licence. I’ll give you the details later. Now get him out of here. I’ve got work to do.’
On the way to town in the jeep, Meyer wiped sweat from his face ceaselessly. ‘A terrible, terrible thing all this deceit in life, my friend,’ he said at one point. ‘I mean, it’s really getting to the stage where one can’t trust anybody.’
‘Would you by any chance be referring to our respected Chief Minister?’ I asked him.
He became extremely agitated, flapping his arms up and down like some great shabby white bird. ‘I came in from Djibouti this morning with five thousand MI carbines, all in excellent condition, perfect goods. Fifty Bren guns, twenty thousand rounds of ammunition, all to his order.’
‘What happened?’
‘You know what happened. He refuses to pay, has me arrested.’ He glanced at me furtively, tried to smile and failed miserably. ‘This charge. What happens if he can make it stick? What’s the penalty?’
‘This was a British colony for years so they favour hanging. The Sultan likes to put on a public show in the main square, just to encourage the others.’
‘My God!’ He groaned in anguish. ‘From now on, I use an agent, I swear it.’
Which, in other circumstances, would have made me laugh out loud.
I had Meyer locked up, as per instructions, then went to my office and gave the whole business very careful thought which, knowing my Hamal, took all of five minutes.
Having reached the inescapable conclusion that there was something very rotten indeed in the state of Rubat, I left the office and drove down to the waterfront where I checked that our brand new fifty-foot diesel police launch was ready for sea, tanks full.
The bank, unfortunately, was closed, so I went immediately to my rather pleasant little house on the edge of town and recovered from the corner of the garden by the cistern, the steel cash box containing five thousand dollars mad money put by for a rainy day. As I started back to town, there was a rattle of machine-gun fire from the general direction of the palace, which was comforting, if only because it proved that my judgement was still unimpaired, Rubat, the heat and the atmosphere of general decay notwithstanding.
I called in at police headquarters on my way down to the harbour and discovered, without any particular sense of surprise, that there wasn’t a man left in the place except Meyer, whom I found standing at the window of his cell listening to the sound of small arms fire when I unlocked the door.
He turned immediately and there was a certain relief on his face when he saw who it was. ‘Hamal?’ he enquired.
‘He never was one to let the grass grow under his feet,’ I said. ‘Comes of having been a prefect at Winchester. You don’t look too good. I suggest a long sea voyage.’
He almost fell over himself in his eagerness to get past me through the door.
* * *
As we moved out of harbour, a column of black smoke ascended into the hot afternoon air from the palace. Standing beside me in the wheelhouse, Meyer shook his head and sighed.
‘We live in an uncertain world, my friend.’ And then, dismissing
