Spoils of War, page 18
Sandhurst itself was a village of prosperous Home Counties proportions and Green Lane was exactly what you would expect of it, narrow and leafy and lined with cosy period houses. Among them, the address of Colonel A.D. Thorpe was a bit of an oddity, a small, detached bungalow of pale yellow brick, only a few years old, standing in a garden not yet mature enough to have any character. Walking up the flagstoned path, however, Jack could see that considerable work had gone into edging the lawn, weeding the borders and shaping the low griselinia hedge, suggesting that the owner was not lacking in energy.
There was a notice tacked to the front door, crudely hand-printed on a square of cardboard. It said, mystifyingly, vegetables, and had an arrow pointing to the right.
Jack rang the bell and heard it echo through the house. He waited a minute and rang it again, but by now he was sure no-one was going to answer. He stepped away and was about to follow the direction of the mysterious sign when a man appeared around the corner of the bungalow, a rather wild-looking man with a lined, weather-beaten face and unkempt grey hair. He wore an Aran sweater with holes in the elbows, and a pair of frayed corduroy trousers tucked into Wellington boots. The boots, the trousers and his hands were caked in mud. He carried a garden fork which he brandished at Jack in a vaguely threatening way.
‘You were supposed to be here this morning,’ he called.
‘I’m sorry . . .?’ Jack began nervously.
‘So I should think. Why can’t you people stick to your arrangements? I take it you have at least brought my Rotovator?’
The tone of sternness was a little diminished by the man’s lilting West Country accent. Jack said: ‘I think there’s some confusion here. I’m looking for a Major, or possibly a Colonel, David Thorpe.’
‘Lieutenant-Colonel. No confusion. I rose one rank on retirement.’
‘What I meant was that you must be mixing me up with someone else. I’m Jack Rushton, and your name was given to me by a former fellow-officer of yours. I apologize for turning up without notice. I’ve tried to phone you twice today.’
The unlikely figure of Colonel Thorpe had moved closer. He was studying Jack suspiciously in the evening light, and now he glanced towards the front gate and saw the waiting taxi. He relaxed and gave a chuckle.
‘My mistake.’ He stepped forward, offered his hand and then remembered the mud and withdrew it. He laughed again, this time with a mischievous awareness of his visitor’s own embarrassment. He knew that Jack had taken him, in those clothes and with that strong accent, for a gardener or a casual workman.
‘I’ve been expecting a Rotovator to be delivered. A tilling machine, that is. Nobody ever turns up when they say they will these days. And you wouldn’t have got me on the phone because I’m mostly out of doors at this time of year. I went into the organic vegetable business when I retired,’ he explained, pointing to the cardboard notice, ‘only the local council won’t let me put up a proper sign. Who do you say sent you?’
‘A chap called Reg Kilmartin. Used to be with you in the Royal Green Jackets.’ Colonel Thorpe frowned as he tried to recall the name, and Jack hurried on. ‘He was my business partner until recently. He thought you might be able to tell me something about a man who was once a student at the Staff College.’
‘The Green Jackets, eh? That was a long time ago.’ Thorpe was still struggling to remember Reg Kilmartin. He glanced up at the fading light. ‘I’m planting out some lettuce seedlings and I’ve got to finish before dark. Come round the back.’
Jack followed him down a path at the side of the house. Its modest front garden had been deceptive; a narrow strip of ground to the rear opened out on a much wider one running about eighty yards to the wooden boundary fence. Almost all of it was under intensive cultivation. Two long greenhouses occupied one side of the land; the rest was either planted or being made ready for planting. Rich crops of spinach, broccoli, cabbages, leeks and cauliflowers stood in military-straight rows; likewise newly dug potato and onion drills, and lengths of wire mesh set up to support peas and beans. There wasn’t a weed in sight.
‘You look after all this yourself?’ Jack asked.
‘My wife used to help me but she died last year.’ Thorpe waved a hand as though to ward off any offer of sympathy. ‘It’s an acre and a half; anyone should be able to make a living from that. We built this house when I retired, and bought what used to be a paddock over there. Once we were established we started getting customers from miles around. Got shops and restaurants buying regularly from me now.
‘Not many overheads to this if you plan it properly. Nothing wasted, everything recycled. No weedkillers or chemical fertilizers, just good vegetable compost and manure from cows that haven’t been fed on animal protein. The soil will repay you if you respect it. No, I’m not one of those New Age types,’ Thorpe said with a grin, ‘burying quartz crystals by the full moon and all that, but I’m afraid I may have become a bit of a sage. This was something I’d always wanted to do. I’m a son of the soil, from Dorset farming stock.’
He led Jack to a newly dug and raked bed beside the greenhouses. Jamming the fork in the ground, he knelt beside a tray of seedlings and began scooping holes for them with a trowel, setting each one in place and packing the rich tilth around its roots. He seemed to have absorbed himself so instantly in the task that Jack hesitated to speak again.
Eventually, he said: ‘You’ll have to pardon my ignorance. What exactly do people go to do at Camberley?’
‘They don’t just go there,’ Thorpe said sternly. ‘It’s a privilege offered to a few outstanding officers who are considered to have top-brass potential. They go through an intellectually rigorous course in a variety of disciplines. Strategy, planning, logistics and other subjects. Not everyone gets through the course. Those who do get three magic letters after their names: PSC, Passed Staff College. Known in the trade as Practically Second to Christ.’
He looked up and chuckled once more, not wanting to be taken too seriously. ‘The subject I taught was guerrilla warfare, theory and practice. Saw it at firsthand in Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus, Aden. As for the theory, nobody’s ever stated it better than Sun Tzu. He was a Chinese general in the fifth century bc. Another sage. The man who said every battle was won before it was fought. Who first said: Know your enemy. Where he’s weak, attack him. Where he’s strong, avoid him. The basis of all good strategy, really. Who’s this fellow you want to talk about?’ Thorpe asked abruptly.
‘He’s an Iraqi. He was at Camberley in nineteen eighty, and apparently he passed out with honours. He was a captain at the time, called Ibrahim Jalloul.’
Jack couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw a momentary wariness in the colonel’s eyes. He said: ‘I’ve got a photograph of him, taken while he was here, if that’s any help.’
He took out the group picture that Major Al-Shaheb had given him. He showed it to Thorpe, pointing to the ringed head in the second row. The colonel studied it briefly, his expression revealing nothing now, before turning back to his lettuces.
‘Where did you get that?’ he said.
‘I was given it in Kuwait, together with some details about his background. I’m looking for more.’
‘Nineteen eighty, eh? That was the year the first Gulf War broke out. We had quite a few chaps from the Middle East in the college at the time,’ Thorpe said vaguely, ‘under various military assistance agreements. Iraqis, Turks. Even some Iranians, but they stopped coming because our government had put their money on Saddam Hussein against the Ayatollah. Never thought that was a good idea myself, but that’s bound to seem the wisdom of hindsight.’ He turned and gave Jack a meaningful look. ‘If I happen to remember Ibrahim Jalloul, I would need to know exactly why you were interested in him.’
He had repeated the name with a casual fluency that made Jack feel almost certain it was familiar to him. Perhaps he had been talking to give himself time to think.
‘Jalloul is a colonel now, in Iraqi Military Intelligence. At least he was, until last August. He disappeared in Kuwait, leaving a rather complicated financial tangle behind him. I’ve been asked to try to find him.’
‘Disappeared? How?’
‘Just vanished.’ Jack wasn’t going to tell the whole story without an offer of something in return.
‘And what are you, Rushton? Some sort of private detective?’
‘Not exactly. I’m a business consultant. I’m working on behalf of a man who did a deal with Jalloul. There’s no question of any legal action being taken against him; in fact, it would probably be to his advantage to settle this mess.’
‘And you came to me just on the off-chance that I might have known him?’ Thorpe said dubiously.
‘Yes. If you do remember him, I’d be grateful for anything you can tell me that might suggest where he’s gone. In confidence, of course.’
Thorpe had finished pricking out the seedlings. He got to his feet, picked up a water hose and began gently spraying the plants. Glancing at Jack again, he seemed to be weighing him up, considering whether he was to be trusted. Finally, he said: ‘How much do you actually know about Jalloul? As a person, I mean.’
‘Hardly anything, really.’
‘And do you realize that I’m still subject to the Official Secrets Act?’
‘No, I didn’t. Does it matter?’
‘It’s binding for life. Nonsensical, perhaps, but there it is.’ He paused. ‘I can’t see that it’ll make any difference now. I’ll tell you what I can, provided I have your word that my name is kept strictly out of it. Whether it’ll be of any use to you is another matter. There’s an aspect to this that may still be sensitive, which is why I mentioned the Official Secrets Act.’
‘I can promise you absolute confidentiality,’ Jack said.
‘Good. I did recognize that photograph, and I have a particular reason for remembering Ibrahim Jalloul. He got himself into a bit of a mess here as well, you see. But satisfy my curiosity on one point first. You say he’s disappeared. Do you know what’s become of his wife?’
‘Wife?’ Jack said blankly.
‘Didn’t you know he was married?’
‘No. Oh, yes, as a matter of fact . . .’
‘As I recall from my time in Aden, Arabs are almost always married by their mid-twenties. In fact, anyone who isn’t is considered a bit peculiar.’
That was true, Jack reflected. He remembered a passing reference that Al-Shaheb had made to a wife whose position might have helped Jalloul’s career. In a patriarchal society it was not something that any man would want to emphasize.
‘In his case,’ Thorpe said, ‘it was rather more complicated. When I refer to his wife, I don’t necessarily know who I’m talking about. There were two women in his life at the time, you see: one Iraqi, one French. I know they don’t practise polygamy in Iraq, at least among Jalloul’s class, so if he is married now it would have to be to one or the other.’ Seeing the bewildered look on Jack’s face, he grinned: then he glanced up at the gathering darkness. ‘I’m going to have to start at the beginning, I see. I’m finished out here anyway. Time to offer you a drink, I think.’
17
The yellow-brick bungalow, unprepossessing from the outside, revealed an interior that was surprisingly warm and welcoming, with a strong accent on wood. The shining teak floors, mahogany wall panels and bookshelves made it like a scaled-down version of a much grander house. Jack had asked the taxi driver to wait a bit longer, and while Colonel Thorpe went to change from his work clothes he sat in a drawing room cluttered with what he supposed were the scavengings of the soldier’s travels. A silk-cushioned sofa and chairs made of Indian cane were grouped around the fireplace, overlooked by a display of African tribal masks. A big ebony chest supported a tray of beaten Arab brass holding bottles and decanters. On the floor in one corner a small stuffed crocodile peered from behind a Chinese lacquered screen.
When Thorpe rejoined him he was wearing a green cashmere pullover, cavalry twill trousers and brogues. He had washed off the mud and slicked down his wild grey hair, and looked presentable almost to the point of elegance. He lit the fire that was prepared in the grate, poured whisky for them both and sat facing Jack across the hearth.
‘I have no idea where you might find Jalloul,’ he said, ‘but I’ll tell you what I know of the period he spent at the Staff College. I want to emphasize that my role was purely peripheral, that I was just called in to give my advice about him. Or, rather, about the mess that I mentioned.
‘He arrived in June of nineteen eighty on a six-month course. It was pretty intensive, and there was hardly any leave apart from weekends. The officers from foreign armies – those from poorer or more distant countries, at least – rarely got a chance to pay a visit home. They could feel a bit lost, thrown back on each other’s company; Jalloul, I remember, struck up quite a close friendship with a fellow from the Turkish army.
‘We did have arrangements for trying to give them a bit of social life. We’d organize parties and sightseeing trips to London, and those of us with families living nearby would ask them home for an evening or to spend a weekend.
‘It was on one of those weekends, quite early in his stay, that Jalloul met this French girl, Nadine – I forget the surname. She was an au pair, living with the family of a major called Ralph Purchase over at Farnborough, and Jalloul and his Turkish friend were invited to stay there. Well, Jalloul and the girl fell for each other. Instantly and heavily. The attraction was understandable. They were both rather fish out of water in this country, probably both a bit lonely. She was a pretty girl, perhaps the first European woman he’d ever got to know. As for him, he had that sort of innocent charm that Arabs can have. He also wasn’t strongly religious, and he was actually quite westernized in his thinking.
‘This was more than infatuation, or at least it quickly became more. They weren’t children. He was twenty-nine or thirty, she was about twenty-three. They fell seriously in love and they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together. There was just one small obstacle: Jalloul had a wife in Baghdad. He’d been married for three years.’
‘Did Nadine know about the wife?’ Jack asked.
‘Oh, yes. He was completely honest with her. Technically there was nothing to stop him getting a divorce and remarrying: that’s easily done in Arab countries, as you know. The difficulty was that he came from a poor family and his wife, apparently, was from a rich and quite powerful one. I believe they were well in with the people around Saddam Hussein. If he’d gone back and announced that he was ditching her for some Western slut . . . well, it would have been disastrous. It would have meant the end of his army career. He would also have dishonoured his wife’s family, and that might be positively dangerous. They hadn’t fully accepted him anyway, since he was a Shi’a Muslim and they were Sunnis. It wasn’t impossible that he’d be arrested, accused of some political crime, perhaps executed. They have a word out there for that sort of patronage.’
‘Wasta,’ said Jack.
‘That’s it. Jalloul was willing to face his responsibilities, but he couldn’t take Nadine back to Iraq and neither could he stay here. Then things got even more complicated.’
Night had fully fallen and Thorpe stood up to close the curtains. Before sitting down again he replenished their drinks.
‘Nadine went home to visit her family that September. They were country people from somewhere in the Franche-Comté region, I believe. While she was there she went to see the family doctor, who confirmed what she’d begun to suspect. She was pregnant. She thought about the implications, and when she came back here she told Jalloul what she’d decided. She was going to keep the baby, regardless of what happened to them. She wasn’t putting pressure on him; she was just one of those women who love children and find the idea of abortion abhorrent.
‘This left him with the choice of going back to Iraq, resuming his career and giving up Nadine and the child, or finding some way of staying with her in Europe. But neither of them had any money to speak of. He had no way of earning a living and no right of residence. He could acquire French citizenship by marrying her, perhaps, but he’d need to get a divorce first, and to do that he’d have to return to Iraq anyway. He even confided in his friend from Turkey – don’t remember his name either – and asked what the chances were of settling there.
‘He was running out of time anyway. Iraq had just gone to war with Iran, and he thought he might be recalled to regular service. At that point he threw himself on the mercy of the British Army.
‘He asked for a meeting with our commandant, told him the whole story and made an odd request. He wanted to know if he’d be allowed to stay here as a political refugee, on the grounds that he’d face persecution if he returned home. Well, the CO was a bit taken aback, but he promised to make an informal enquiry to the Home Office. He was told that any such request would be turned down flat: Jalloul’s problem was personal, not political, they said, and he couldn’t possibly qualify for refugee status.
‘When he heard this he came up with another idea: even more bizarre on the face of it. If he couldn’t have Nadine now he was prepared to wait, bide his time, make some plan to provide for their future. Now we’re at the sensitive bit I mentioned. His idea was this: he would go back to Iraq, he’d rejoin his unit . . . and become a spy.’
Thorpe leaned back in his chair, smiling at Jack’s astonishment. ‘Yes, he was willing to provide our intelligence services with secret military information from Iraq in exchange for money paid into a foreign bank account. He had it all worked out. He’d do it for a fixed period, say three or four years, and then he’d find some way of getting a divorce and slip out of the country. He’d talked it over with Nadine and she was willing to go back to France, have her baby and wait for him.’
