the station in Bayazid half a dozen more poured out of the building, surrounding us.
‘My God, they’re going to lock me up for the night.’ All day Hugh had behaved with the most admirable calmness. Now for the first time he showed signs of strain.
‘Malheureusement,’ said the Interpreter, turning to Wanda and myself and showing a set of broken yellow teeth, ‘M. Carless doit rester ici mais VOUS, VOUS êtes libre.’
‘I don’t need a policeman,’ Hugh said. I had never seen him so angry. ‘You have my word. I shan’t run away.’
‘You are not arrested yet. It is to protect you from incidents. Perhaps people will be angry.’
With a policeman outside the inn shooing away the passers-by, the three of us ate rice and kebab and some very odd vegetables and drank a whole bottle of raki. We were famished, having eaten nothing since the previous night.
At the next table was a medical officer in battledress. He was an Armenian and had the facility with languages of his race. ‘My name is Niki,’ he said. After dinner we sat with him on the roof under a rusty-looking moon. ‘This is a town of no-women,’ he said, pointing at the soldiery milling in the street below. ‘Look, there are thousands of them. They are all becoming mad because there is nothing here for them – or for me,’ he added more practically.
‘This is your country?’
‘This was my country. There is no Armenia any more. All those shops’ – pointing at the shop fronts now shuttered and barred – ‘Armenian – dead, dead, all dead. Tomorrow they will decide whether you will be tried or not,’ he went on to Hugh. ‘If you need me I will come. I think it is better that you should not be tried. I have heard that there is a German from Tehran here, a lorry driver who has cut off a child’s foot with his lorry. He has been three months awaiting a trial. They keep him without trousers so that he shall not escape.’
Next morning all three of us took pains with our appearance. The internal arrangements at the inn were so loathsome that I shared a kerosene tin of water with Hugh and shaved on the roof, the cynosure of the entire population who were out in force. Wanda, debarred from public appearance, was condemned to the inside. As a final touch our shoes were cleaned by a boot-black who refused to charge. I was impressed but not Hugh.
‘I don’t suppose they charge anything at the Old Bailey.’ Nothing could shake his invincible gloom.
At nine o’clock, sweltering in our best clothes, we presented ourselves at the Courthouse and joined a queue of malefactors.
After a short wait we were called. The room was simple, whitewashed, with half a dozen chairs and a desk for the Prosecutor. On it was a telephone at which we looked lovingly. Behind the Prosecutor lurked his evil genius, the Interpreter.
The Prosecutor began to speak. It was obvious that one way or the other he had made his mind up. He was, he said, interested only in Justice and Justice would be done. It was unfortunate for M. Carless that he did not possess a Diplomatic Visa for Turkey otherwise it would be difficult to detain him. We now knew that Hugh was doomed. But, he went on, as his visa only applied to Iran, he proposed to ask for proceedings to be stayed for a week while he consulted the authorities in Ankara.
‘Malheureusement, c’est pas possible pour M. Carless,’ said the Interpreter winding up with relish, ‘mais vous êtes libre d’aller en Iran.’
For two hours we argued; when Hugh flagged I intervened; then Wanda took up the struggle; arguments shot backwards and forwards across the room like tennis balls: about diplomatic immunity, children languishing in Europe without their mother, ships and planes missed, expeditions ruined, the absence of witnesses.
‘Several beatings were given yesterday for the discouragement of false witnesses and their evidence is inadmissible,’ said the Prosecutor, but he was remote, immovable.
‘Malheureusement vous devez rester ici sept jours pour qu’arrive une réponse à notre telegramme,’ said the Interpreter in his repulsive French.
‘Monsieur le Procureur a envoyé une telegramme?’
‘Pas encore,’ replied the Interpreter, leering triumphantly. I had never seen him look happier.
We implored Hugh to send a telegram to Ankara. He was adamant but he did agree to send for Niki, the Armenian doctor. It was not easy to find an un-named Armenian M.O. in a garrison town but he arrived in an hour, by jeep, round and fat but to us a knight in armour. The Interpreter was banished and Niki began translating sentence by sentence, English to Turkish, Turkish to English. Hugh spoke of N.A.T.O. and there was a flicker of interest, of how the two countries had fought together on the same side in Korea, of the great qualities of the Turkish Nation, of the political capital that the Russians would make when the news became known, that such a situation would not happen in England. Finally, Hugh said he wanted to send a telegram. We knew what agony this decision cost him.
‘It is extremely difficult. There is no direct communication. We shall first have to send to Erzerum.’
‘Then send it to Erzerum.’
‘It will take three days. You still wish?’
‘Yes, I wish.’
Hugh wrote the telegram. It looked terrible on paper. I began to understand why he had been so reluctant to send it.
‘Detained Bayazid en route Tehran awaiting formulation of charge killing civilian stop Diplomatic visa applicable Iran only.’
Niki translated it into Turkish; holding the message, the Prosecutor left the room. After a few minutes he returned with a heavily moustached clerk in shirt-sleeves. For more than ten minutes he dictated with great fluency. It was a long document. When it was finished Niki read it aloud. It gave an account of the entire affair and expressed Hugh’s complete innocence.
The last stamp was affixed; the Prosecutor clapped his hands, coffee was brought in.
It all happened so quickly that it was difficult to believe that it was all over.
‘But what made him change his mind?’ It was an incredible volte-face.
‘The Public Prosecutor asks me to say,’ said Niki, ‘that it is because M. Carless was gentlemanly in this thing, because you were all gentlemanly,’ bowing to Wanda, ‘that he has decided not to proceed with it.’
CHAPTER SIX Airing in a Closed Carriage
In Tehran Wanda left us to return to Europe.
On 30 June, eleven days from Istanbul, Hugh and I reached Meshed, the capital of the province of Khurasan, in north-east Persia, and drove through streets just dark to the British Consulate-General, abandoned since Mussadiq’s coup and the breaking off of diplomatic relations in 1953.
After a long wait at the garden gate we were admitted by an old, grey-bearded sepoy of the Hazarah Pioneers. He had a Mongolian face and was dressed in clean khaki drill with buttons polished. Here we were entertained kindly by the Hindu caretaker.
The
