“But if we’re separated -”
“I’ll find you if I can. If I can’t, you’ll have to make your own way back to our lines. Don’t wait for me or go looking for me.”
Chetwode’s face was as easy to read as a page of print. Some of the sentences read: “One doesn’t abandon a comrade.” “You can count on me, old chap, to the death.” Or something equally trite. Ramses sighed and offered another cliché. “One of us has to get back with the information we’ve collected. We know we’re laying our lives on the line; that is part of the job.”
Chetwode’s tight lips parted. “Oh. Yes, that’s right. You can count on me, old chap -”
“Good. One more thing. Hand over that pistol.”
Ramses had every intention of searching him if he denied carrying a weapon, but the young fool didn’t even try to bluster it out. His hand flew to his waist.
“What if we have to shoot it out?” he demanded.
“If it comes to that, we’ll have a hundred men shooting back at us. Hand it over, or I’ll leave you behind.”
Chetwode looked from his stern face to his clenched fist and got the point. Slowly and reluctantly he unbuckled the belt fastened round his waist under his shirt and gave it and the holster to Ramses.
Ramses removed the shells and added the empty gun to the pile of abandoned clothing, which he covered with a few loose stones. “Now shut up and watch where you’re going.”
The boy wouldn’t shut up. He’d memorized the directions that Ramses had ignored, since he didn’t need them, and kept up a breathless, whispered monologue: “Keep to the north until the mosque bears 132; bearing 266 till we come to the edge of a bog… is this… Oh, hell.”
Ramses hauled him out. “One more word and I’ll sink you back into the muck. We’re within a hundred feet of the Turkish trenches. Don’t open your mouth again until I tell you you may.”
“Sorry.” He closed his mouth and nodded vigorously. The starlight reflected in his eyes.
Ramses turned and led them along the edge of the bog. The boy followed so close he kept treading on Ramses’s heels. I shouldn’t have allowed this, Ramses thought in silent fury. Goddamn Murray and Cartright and the rest of them; the kid’s doing his best, but I would spot him a mile away, even if he were standing still with his face hidden. It was that “Lords of Creation” look, shoulders stiff and jaw squared – drilled into them from childhood, and almost impossible to eradicate.
The Turks had ringed the city round with trenches and breastworks. An intricate network of cactus hedges provided an additional defense. The series of ridges that ran from Gaza eastward to Beersheba were also fortified, but they had no trouble getting through. The defenders knew no attack was imminent; reconnaissance planes would have warned them of such preparations, even if they had not had busy little spies reporting back to Turkish HQ. The area between Gaza and Khan Yunus was peaceful. People came and went, tilling the fields, carrying produce to the British encampments, engaging in all the mercantile activities that spring up when new customers are available. It would have been impossible to keep tabs on all of them.
Once over the ridge, Ramses led his companion in a wide circle that brought them to a guard post just as the sun was rising. Chetwode had protested; he wanted to crawl romantically through the barbed wire and the cactus hedges.
“It’s too hard on one’s clothes,” Ramses said shortly. He had learned from experience – and from that master thief, his uncle – that the best way of getting into a place where you weren’t supposed to be was to walk boldly up and demand entrance. He had supplied himself with a convincing story – a sick, aged mother awaiting him, enough money to arouse cupidity without arousing suspicion, and a few bags of a substance he expected would serve better than money. Hashish wasn’t hard to come by in Turkish areas, but the best varieties were expensive.
The noncommissioned officer in charge of the post didn’t believe the pathetic story about the dying mother. Ramses had not expected he would; they then proceeded to the next stage of negotiation, which left him without a certain percentage of his money and his merchandise. It wasn’t an outrageously high percentage; the NCO knew that if his victim started howling protests, it would have brought an officer to investigate – and demand his share.
Ramses had been in Gaza only once, in the summer of 1912, but he knew the place fairly well; he’d spent several days wandering around, enjoying the amenities of the suk and admiring the fine old mosques and making a brief, informal survey of the ancient remains, since he knew his father would expect one. There weren’t many. For almost four thousand years the area between the Sinai and the Euphrates had been fought over, conquered and reconquered, destroyed and rebuilt. Egyptians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Saracens, and Crusaders had occupied Gaza in turn. It had been one of the five cities of the Philistines, the site of the great temple of Dagon, pulled down by Samson in his last and mightiest feat. (He’d got that information from his mother; his father didn’t give much credence to anything in Scripture unless it could be confirmed by archaeological sources.) The most recent conquest had been by the Ottoman Sultan, Selim the First, in the sixteenth century; in revenge for the city’s stubborn resistance he had let his troops sack and destroy a large part of it. However, by 1912 Gaza had become a prosperous town with almost forty thousand inhabitants. The population had spilled out beyond the walls, to north and south and east; the central city, raised on the accumulated debris of various levels of destruction, contained the administrative and commercial buildings, as well as the homes of wealthier citizens.
On the hill that rose from the center of the upper town stood the Great Mosque, formerly a Christian church built in the twelfth century. He had spent an enjoyable afternoon admiring the carvings and the magnificent gray marble columns. It was now being used as a powder magazine.
So much for the Great Mosque, Ramses thought. So much for the other architectural treasures of Gaza – the little church of St. Porphyry, an exquisite example of early Christian architecture, the beautiful ancient mosque of Hashim, even the remains of the old walls and their seven gates. Modern weapons were much more efficient than the older variety. One well-placed shell and the Great Mosque, with its delicate octagonal minaret, would be gone.
And so would hundreds, maybe thousands, of people.
The suk appeared to be as prosperous as ever, with stalls selling everything from handmade lace and the fine black pottery of the region to a variety of mouthwatering fruits and nuts and vegetables, whose discarded rinds and husks littered the ground. Ramses found a popular café, squatted genteelly, and ordered mint tea. The habitués were an inquisitive lot; they put him through a merciless but friendly interrogation, not leaving off until they had determined his name, place of origin, business, and ancestry, and had commiserated with him on the condition of his poor young brother. “He has blue eyes,” said one observant man.
“His mother was Circassian,” Ramses explained. “My father’s favorite, until she died giving birth to him. My mother…”
It did not take long for Ramses to establish his bona fides as a seller of desirable merchandise. The town was full of men in uniform, strutting through the street with the arrogance of Europeans among natives. The most loquacious of their newfound friends, a middle-aged man with only one eye and a stump where his right hand had been, had a few pungent epithets for the Germans. “But,” he added, “they are no worse than the Turks. God curse this war! Whoever wins we will be the losers. If Gaza is defended, our homes and livelihoods will be destroyed.”