The Baghdad Railway Club(12)

Quinn had pointed out that Shepherd had sent his letter only three days after the fall of Baghdad, meaning to indicate, I supposed, that I ought to be flattered at being in the thoughts of a lieutenant colonel during what must have been what Quinn called ‘a pretty hectic time’. Quinn was perfectly happy to let me go if I was so minded.

At first I’d been silent, annoyed at the Chief for opening the letter, and revolving a hundred questions. Then I’d begun quizzing the Chief. Since he had opened my letter, I’d felt he owed me some answers. But he hadn’t seen it like that, and as London approached, and the rain beyond the carriage windows came on in earnest, I’d settled into a mood that was a queer combination of sulk and stirring excitement.

‘This is Mr Manners’s office,’ the Scout said, knocking, and his patriotic front cracked a bit when he added, ‘I don’t mind saying . . . he’s had some queer blokes in here today.’

The shout came from within: ‘Enter!’

Whereas Henderson-Richards, back in 1911, had had hair practically on his collar, this bloke had none at all, and, his head being so long, he could have done with some. On the strength of his name, I’d expected him to have some manners, which he didn’t really. He just indicated a chair for me and another for the Chief, before saying to me: ‘Now you’re off to Baghdad. How did that come about?’

No preamble about whether I wanted to go to Baghdad or not (although I’d decided immediately on seeing the letter that I did want to). No apology on behalf of the Chief for opening the letter; no mention of how the Chief must have telephoned or telegraphed to him or some other department to reveal the detail of it. No explanation of what the letter had signified to the Chief, or how and why it had any bearing on my presence in this office.

Even so, I gave Manners my account of the meeting at the Midland Grand, ending by saying, ‘I believe Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd must have decided to take me on there and then, knowing the job he had in hand.’

‘Yes,’ Manners said when I’d finished. ‘Well, let nobody say the British Army officer is incapable of improvisation. Tell me, Captain Stringer, what do you think it was that the lieutenant colonel saw in you?’

‘I suppose he felt I’d talked sense about the railway logistics of the Western Front.’

‘Mmm,’ said Manners.

On his desk was a red pasteboard folder and a buff envelope. I looked at this stationery for a while, and he watched me doing so. Presently, he said, ‘There is no blinking the fact that we believe Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd to be in league with the enemy.’

‘Which enemy?’ I said.

Now Manners evidently did not think this a clever question – and I could tell the Chief was embarrassed at it, by the way he suddenly crossed his legs, which left him sitting in a position to which he was not at all suited.

‘Captain Stringer,’ said Manners, ‘it might be as well for you to know in advance of your departure for Mesopotamia that the gentry we are fighting over there are the Turks. Have you got that straight? The Turks.’

‘But the Germans as well?’ I said.

‘The occupiers of Baghdad were Turkish, I don’t think there’s any room for doubt on that score. It was the Turks that we banished from the city; it is the Turks who may attempt to reclaim it, and it is the Turks who are occupying the territories to the north and west of Baghdad. Certainly, there are German officers on the Turkish Army Staff – but not many, and their role is advisory rather than executive.’

‘And the Arabs?’

‘The Arabs?’ he said.

You’d have thought they were completely out of account.

‘It’s their country, after all.’

‘I see you are an expert on the region. There is Arab soldiery in the Turkish Army, and there is a cadre of Arab officers. The loyalty of these men to their Turkish masters may be doubted. The position of the Arab citizenry of Baghdad, incidentally, is that they welcome us as liberators . . .’

I nodded.

‘For now,’ he added. ‘As of this week.’

He pushed the red pasteboard folder my way. It held my itinerary and passports for travelling east.

Shepherd had seemed to stick up for the Turks at the Railway Club meeting; he had certainly been partial to Turkish cigarettes, and he’d seemed quite thick with the Eastern cigarette-and-coffee man of the Midland Grand, but I could not believe he was a traitor. He’d seemed such a thoroughly decent sort. My thoughts raced in a circus as I leafed through the documents, one of many imponderables being: where did the Chief fit in? How had he heard of the suspicions against Shepherd?