Kantara lay stunned in the dawn light. There were fresh wounds in the desert-coloured buildings along the waterfront. But they no longer had any significance; they were wounds in a corpse.
The pink morsels of cloud in the sky faded and for a while the light was milky fresh. A saline breeze drifted in from the sea, moving the surface of the idle water separating sleeping snipers and gunners.
But soon the latent heat, the stagnation and the inevitability of the next bout of shelling asserted themselves. The breeze wandered on towards the Bitter Lakes. The air acquired an oily texture, the ripples on the Canal spent themselves. Doom settled like poisoned gas.
Bartlett, Ralston and Raquel sat in a dusty room, cushioned outside by sandbags, in the United Nations observation post on the waterfront. A large blue and white UN flag hung outside; the tower on one side of the building had been holed precisely by a shell; the wall on the other side was pitted with small craters like Gruyère cheese.
Behind the UN post the Israelis had dug into bunkers reinforced with railroad tracks. The UN post was currently occupied by three Irishmen, a Mexican, a Finn and an Italian. An Irishman handed Bartlett a mug of coffee and said: ‘We get it every bloody time. The Gyppos reckon it’s because the Israelis always put a tank next door to us.’ He handed a mug to Raquel. ‘How’s my mate by the way?’
‘He’ll be all right,’ Raquel said. ‘He’s been treated at a field hospital. Then he’ll be taken to hospital in Tel Aviv.’
‘What was it all about anyway?’ the Irishman said.
Bartlett looked at Ralston and Raquel.’It’s a long story,’ he said. He still hadn’t told Raquel the truth. He was sorry in a way that he had been forced to tell Ralston: it was high time they both experienced a little bewilderment.
The Irishman nodded and pushed his blue baseball cap with its white badge on to the back of his head. He wore a blue silk scarf knotted at the neck of his shirt; the words Field Service were printed on his shirtsleeve. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘It’s always the bloody same. Everyone shooting at us when all we’re supposed to be doing is stop the bastards from shooting each other.’
Raquel declined the challenge. If it had been tea, Bartlett thought, she would have read defeat in the leaves. He immediately felt sorry for her. The Irishman looked disappointed.
Nearby someone fired a rifle.
Ralston said: ‘Them or us?’
‘Them,’ the Irishman said. ‘If you mean the Gyppos. A sniper with a Semyonov rifle. Stick your bloody head up around here and they knock it off for you.’ He stubbed his cigarette in an ashtray made from a shell case. ‘Last night a shell fell on top of the billet where we’re staying.’
No one spoke.
‘Well, I’d best be off,’ the Irishman said. ‘You’ll be leaving here soon?’
They nodded.
‘Lucky bastards,’ he said. ‘But I’m thinking that you’ll be having some explaining to do first.’
Ralston said: ‘I’m thinking there’s some explaining to be done around here.’
Raquel sat on the edge of a camp bed smoking and sipping her coffee without enthusiasm. Her face was tired and dirty, her hand cut and blistered from the shell splinter. Bartlett regretted his own perversity; but she shouldn’t have tried to hand him over to Israeli troops. He sat beside her. ‘There’s something you should know,’ he said. He put his arm round her.
She examined the smoke from her cigarette. ‘It doesn’t matter. I failed. You were very brave, Thomas. But Yamani’s got the map. That’s all that matters. That’s all I wanted, that’s all Ralston wanted.’ She looked at Ralston and frowned. ‘Although he does not seem to be very worried.’
Ralston shrugged theatrically.
Bartlett sighed. ‘It was like this,’ he said. ‘After the First World War various surveys were carried out. The German did have the task of finding out whether there was any possibility of drilling for oil in certain areas. And I did find his bones – and his maps. One map in particular. But the fact of the matter is that his findings with regard to oil were negative.’
Raquel regarded him with disbelief. ‘Negative?’
‘Yes, negative. There is no oil in the areas that he prospected. He had his own system of annotating maps. Every cross on that map means there was no oil.’ He paused. ‘I knew about the system. It never occurred to me that anyone would think the crosses meant anything else.’
Raquel appealed to Ralston. ‘Is this true?’
‘That’s what the guy says.’
A sniper fired again across the Canal and the bullet ricocheted past the window.
Bartlett said: ‘It’s all quite logical when you think about it. Apart from the banks of the Gulf of Suez no one’s done much about the Sinai since the First World War and it didn’t seem likely that anyone was going to do anything about it. Not when I found that map anyway. The map was just a leaf of negative history as far as I was concerned. One or two people know about it. Geologists and ordnance surveyors and suchlike. But no one was really bothered. Least of all me. Although I did think it would be of interest over here. Just interest – nothing more. Because as far as I was concerned it merely showed where there wasn’t any oil. Anyway you know what happened …’
‘You told your wife,’ she said.
‘Correct. A chance remark about map and oil. I suppose she wanted to impress her Arab boyfriend.’ He smiled cautiously at Ralston. ‘And the Americans, of course. Anyway she got it all wrong.’
Raquel rounded on him. ‘Then why did you let me make a fool of myself?’ Her face was animated with anger.
‘I didn’t,’ Bartlett said. ‘For most of the time I haven’t known what you were all after. Why should I? The maps were of no value as far as I was concerned. Then I realised it must be the maps you wanted. But I still couldn’t work out why. By this time an element of perversity had entered the whole thing. Ralston tried to get my briefcase from the Dan Hotel by trickery, an Arab stole it, Yosevitz tried to kill me and you, Raquel, didn’t play it straight with me. Not even …’
‘Not even what?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ He had been going to say, Not even when you were pretending you loved me.
Raquel said: ‘I still don’t understand.’ She was sitting cross-legged at one end of the bed, her face puzzled and angry. ‘Why did you continue this play-acting when you knew it was oil we were after and you also knew the map was worthless?’
‘Three reasons,’ Bartlett said. He was enjoying his role; but it was, after all, his turn. ‘One – I wanted to see it through. Two – I wanted to be on the winning side.’
Raquel frowned. ‘What was the point of being on the winning side if the maps were of no use anyway?’
‘That,’ Bartlett said, ‘is where the third reason comes in.’
The door opened and the Irishman came in with a jug of fresh coffee which looked like a tankard of stout in his meaty hand. ‘One dead and one injured last night,’ he said.
Raquel said: ‘Israelis?’
He nodded.
Her eyes moistened.
The Irishman poured coffee and went out shaking his head.
Raquel said: ‘What is this third reason?’
Bartlett said: ‘If you think about it you’ll discover that you have won. You and Ralston. The whole object of the exercise was to know what areas of the Sinai should be kept and what should be handed over in any negotiations at any level. Right?’
‘Right,’ Ralston said.
‘And the Russians and the Arabs now think that they’ve got the key to the oil potential of parts of the Sinai. Right?’
‘Right,’ Raquel said.
‘Then it rather looks to me,’ Bartlett said, ‘as if both Israel and the United States are in a pretty handy bargaining position.’
Ralston grinned. ‘You’ve certainly had me fooled,’ he said. ‘In fact we’re probably in a better bargaining position than we would have been if we knew where the oil was. We can still make the play. When the Soviets and the Arabs find that we’re offering to give up territory in which they think there’s oil they’ll jump at it. And we’ll have the – the prestige – of making the offer.’
Bartlett said: ‘Who’s we?’
Ralston looked speculatively at Raquel. ‘The Americans or the Israelis. Both perhaps. I’m sure that can be hammered out.’
‘And now,’ Bartlett said, ‘I’d like to get on with what I came here to do. If we can make it, I’d like to get back to Tel Aviv to deliver my paper this afternoon.’
Ralston said: ‘I guess we can make it all right. But there’s just one thing.’
‘What’s that?’ Bartlett said.
‘Could you please forget all about the oil potential of the Sinai when you give this lecture?’
‘It will be a pleasure,’ Bartlett said.
Raquel said: ‘Thank you, Thomas.’ She scowled at him and smiled at him at the same time.
So it was all over, Bartlett thought. Back to geology.
Ralston drove. Raquel sat beside him with Bartlett in the back of the Jeep. The day was expanding with heat. It seemed to Bartlett that you could smell desert sunshine just as you could smell coffee or Gauloise. The sky was glazed with heat and the sea was jostling with shoals of sunlight.
Bartlett said: ‘Right, I’ve answered your questions. How about you answering some?’
Raquel glanced round.
Bartlett said: ‘No, you, Ralston. How did you get to Kantara?’
Ralston said: ‘You forget that I’m supposed to be a journalist. I came with the other newspapermen covering the exchange of Arabs across the Canal. And then – well, I just stayed.’
Raquel looked at him suspiciously. ‘And the United Nations like you so much they took you on a night tour of the town?’
‘Not quite,’ Ralston said. ‘Before I left Jerusalem I got one of our guys who shall be nameless to get in touch with the UN at Kantara. It was pretty obvious that Yosevitz would contact the Arabs and tell them to pick you up at Kantara. So we told the UN that our radio monitors had reason to believe that Arab commandos were operating from a base somewhere on the outskirts of Kantara. The rest was easy. The UN boys got a fix on the radio that Yamani was operating to get his instructions. Then I dropped in on the United Nations after the party of journalists had disappeared and identified myself as the American communication guy responsible for monitoring the Arab radio.’
‘But you’re not,’ Raquel said.
‘No,’ Ralston said, ‘I’m not.’
Bartlett said: ‘So you and one Irishman came along in a Jeep to clear up a nest of Egyptian commandos?’
‘Not quite,’ Ralston said. ‘My only reason for being in Kantara was to get that map. So I suggested a reconnaissance tour in the area where they got the fix to get the lay of the land. The UN only sent one guy along because they knew the commandos wouldn’t give themselves away by opening up on a UN Jeep.’
‘Why didn’t you come by yourself?’ Bartlett said.
‘Because they wouldn’t let me.’ He waved at a couple of Arab children standing on the roadside. ‘It’s a pity about the Irishman. But he’ll live. I reckon you can get export Guinness in Tel Aviv.’
A couple of Bedouins and a line of camels materialised between two sand dunes. The sun grew hotter, the long waves tasted the hot beach with apathetic interest.
Bartlett looked at his watch. They would just about make it back to Jerusalem in time for his address.
Then the torpor of the desert overcame him and he half-slept, head jerking and mouth open, as the Jeep sped towards the Eternal City. Such was his fatigue that he hardly heard the big guns as they opened up once again across the water-filled trench called the Suez Canal.