AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"Is it Andrew hay-hay-Hale?"
"Yes."
"Are you alone?"
"Yes."
"Ah, g-good. I've only got enough l-l-liquor for two m-men to get properly d-drunk tonight, while w-we w-wait for dawn. The road to dog-dog-Dogubayezit would be impossible at n-night, t-trust me."
Hale heard footsteps swishing laterally across the grass then, and a moment later the bomb shelter door was pulled open, spilling lamplight out across the wet grass.
"D-d-do step in, my b-boy-you m-must be f-fruh-freezing."
Hale saw a figure in Kurd jacket and trousers crouch to step into the shelter, but he caught a glimpse of the face, and it was Philby's pouchy, humorous eyes that glanced back at him.
Hale shoved the gun back into its holster and hurried out of the cold night into the glowing shelter.
The bomb shelter wasn't tall enough to stand up in, and Philby was already sitting cross-legged against the corrugated steel wall at the back, with the paraffin lantern by his right elbow on a low shelf. A tan woolen Army blanket had been spread over the five-foot width of the floor, and Hale sat down on it after he had pulled the door closed behind him and pushed the bolt through the hasp.
Several more blankets were folded and stacked on a shelf under the curved-over metal ceiling; Hale reached up and pulled one down, and then tugged off the soaked Kurdish vest and wrapped himself snugly in the dry wool. The rain was coming down harder now outside, drumming on the steel roof over his head.
He leaned back against the bolted door, but even at this opposite end of the shelter he was only six feet away from Philby's knees.
Philby was smiling as he twisted a cork into a nearly full bottle of Macallan Scotch and then rolled it across the floor toward Hale. Hale's numb fingers managed to grab it, but he used his teeth to pull out the cork and spit it onto the blanket by his boots. He tilted the bottle up, and the cold golden liquor seemed to boom like an organ chord in his chest, spreading heat and blessed looseness through his cramped muscles. Dried blood, he noticed now, spotted his knuckles and the backs of his hands. He lowered the bottle to take a breath, then lifted it again for another solid swallow, impatient for the sense of forgiveness he knew was alcohol's to bestow.
"Are all y-your SAS men d-dead?" Philby asked.
Hale wondered how Philby knew that an SAS patrol had been involved. "I thought the SAS was disbanded after the war," he whispered, exhaling richly volatile Scotch fumes.
"Like the SOE." Philby sighed, and recited, almost to himself, "'When as a lion's whelp shall to himself unknown, without seeking find, and be embraced by a piece of tender air; and when from a stately cedar shall be lopped branches, which being dead many years, shall after revive, be jointed to the old stock, and freshly grow; then shall the posthumous end their miseries, Britain be fortunate, and flourish in peace and plenty.'" For a moment he was glaring furiously at Hale. "'Read, and declare the meaning.'"
Hale blinked at him in genuine bewilderment, careful to show no response to the word declare.
Philby hooded his eyes in a smile. "Sorry-Shakespeare, the prominent B-British playwright-Cymbeline, Act Five. Do you th-think that didn't...b-b-bother me, as a child? 'A lion's whelp,' 'without seeking find'? What were you all d-d-doing up there? I am the Head of Station in T-T-Turkey. First a commotion on the So-So-Soviet border down by Sadarak, and th-then a thousand rounds of ammunition f-fired off in the ha-ha-Ahora G-Gorge!" He was still smiling, but Hale had blinked the exhausted blurriness out of his eyes, and he thought Philby looked desolated, as if by some enormous disappointment.
"I-heard it," said Hale. "I drove around up there, but I wasn't able to find out what was going on. Shooting, evidently, as you say." He wondered what Philby would say when he got a look at the bullet-riddled jeep.
For the first time it occurred to him that his career, SIS or SOE, was probably over, after the disaster this operation had been. He took another sip of the Scotch, and then his hands had loosened up enough for him to shove the cork into the bottle and roll it back to Philby.
Philby opened his mouth to speak, then appeared to think better of it. "'A lion's whelp,'" he said again, catching the bottle and uncorking it for a liberal swallow. "My f-father is Harry St. John f-f-Philby-have you h-heard of him?"
Author of The Empty Quarter, thought Hale. "Noted Arabist, I believe."
"Who was your ff-f-father?"
"A Catholic priest, according to the village gossip."
Philby nodded owlishly at him. "Have you ever h-heard of Rudyard Kipling?"
Hale sighed. "He wrote a book called Kim. I have read it."
"Ah! Well, my f-father gave me that n-nickname, because I reminded him of the b-b-boy in that very book. I was b-born in Ambala-that's in-in-in India , Andrew!-in 1912. I spoke H-Hindi before I learned hig-ig-English. When and where were you born?"
" 1922, in Chipping Campden, in the Cotswolds."
"Or possibly in polly-p-p-Palestine, as your SIS records c-claim. Were you khh-chriss-baptized in the J-Jordan River? My f-father t-took me along with him on a t-t-trip to collect s-samples of Jordan w-water, the year after your b-birth."
"I certainly don't recall."
