The Enduring Flame

by Nigel Tranter

Genres: Action & Adventure

Synopsis

Angus Guthrie, Scottish sailor and undercover oil-prospector, gets more than he bargained for when he agrees to accompany an archaeological expedition into the forbidden heart of the Arabian desert. The group must overcome the suspicions and superstitions of a region untouched by the modern age and unwilling to bow down to it. In the end they turn to a group of outlaws, and in doing so become outlaws themselves. Above all, they must face the gruelling challange of the desert as they traverse a sea of burning sand in search of the legendary lost city of Wabar and the mysterious Enduring Flame of Duweila. 'One of Scotland's most prolific and respected writers' The Times

Release date: January 31, 2013

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 255

Sample

FROM the barren lava slope, all duns and ochres, some two hundred feet up the extinct volcano of Jebel Shamsan, above the glittering deep cobalt plain of the sea, Angus Guthrie watched the TransArab Sherif drop anchor just within the roadstead of Aden’s Inner Harbour. Narrowing his eyes against the glare of the fierce sun, he considered her lengthy bulk, riding fairly high out of the water, swing gently round with the tide. At 18,000 tons she was the largest vessel in the Bay. She was just over a mile away, but the air was so still that he had clearly heard the rattle and splash of her anchor chain, and even a faint shouting from her towering white midships bridge. That would be Big Bill O’Brien, for a bet, First Officer, his opposite number on this sister-ship of his own Emir, bull-like in voice as he was in everything else. Almost Angus imagined that he could see the great bulk of the man. But that would be fancy; the heat-waves contorted everything. He noted, however, that they had rigged up an awning over the tiny deck-space aft, a thing that he had never seen done before on one of the TransArabian Oil Company’s tankers. The Company was being very thoughtful for its special passengers, apparently.

The man jerked his head, to shake the sweat out of his eyes. Though it was ten minutes since he had climbed up here, he still was panting slightly. Yet he was in good physical condition, and only a fortnight before had been climbing Ben Lawers in his own native Scotland. And it was not really hot, as Aden reckoned heat—a mere 85 degrees in the shade. Only, he was not in the shade. This bare baked lava both threw back and magnified the rays of the torrid Arabian sun, and seemed to suck any moisture there might be out of the air—and out of the human body. Anybody else in Aden almost certainly would have called him crazy to have climbed up even this far from Barrack Hill in mid-afternoon; and probably they would have been right. But that was the way that he had felt—restless, ill at ease, lacking the acceptance and quiescence that this cauldron of a place demanded.

Though he had been awaiting the arrival of that tanker out there, the sight of it brought him no satisfaction. Already lighters and bum-boats were heading out towards her. There would not be any avoidable delay over disembarking the passengers and their gear, if he knew Captain Pedersen—for the schedule of tankers loading at the oil-wharves up at Bahrein and Kuweit was very carefully worked out and had to be strictly adhered to, as Guthrie himself, who ought to have been at Bahrein now, on the Emir, was only too well aware. This call at Aden would rank as a nuisance.

Perhaps the people to be put ashore would be expecting himself to be coming out on one of those bum-boats to greet them. It would seem the obvious thing to do. But De Vroot had been quite specific about that, back in London. He was not to risk letting himself be seen by any of the Company’s servants. He must not be recognised. Nothing must connect him, in these archaeologists’ minds, with the TransArabian Oil Company.

That was what Angus Guthrie did not like about this business—one of the things. This secrecy, this flying under a false flag. He understood the reason for it, well enough, of course—De Vroot had made that entirely clear. But that did not make it any easier, any pleasanter, for him. He was a sailor, not an oil-prospector—and certainly not a sort of spy.

The man’s frown, therefore, as he stared out at the ship, was not wholly caused by the sun’s glare. He wondered how much stuff they would be unloading into the lighters. If he was going to be in charge of transportation hereafter, that was going to be important. He hadn’t a clue as to what sorts and quantities of gear an archaeological expedition might conceive to be necessary—but he had some idea of the conditions over which it would have to be carried, and the facilities for transport that would be available. That was why De Vroot had chosen him for the job. He was prepared for the worst. Three lighters were now making for the tanker, amongst the inevitable shower of small stuff—though that might merely represent initiative on the part of the Somali lightermen.

When, presently, Angus saw what could be only a laden jeep swung outboard on one of the tanker’s derricks, he nodded grimly therefore. Here it came—just what he had been afraid of. Well, it probably meant that he was going to start off by being unpopular with the rest of the expedition. Should that break his heart?

Sourly he watched six jeeps being disembarked into the waiting lighter. And that was the measure of his disquiet—for Angus Guthrie was not a sour man at all. Nor would he have admitted to being moody, emotional, or excitable—as befitted a Scot, and a master mariner into the bargain. In his early thirties, he was in fact basically what he looked—a cheerful, fresh-faced, stocky man, with perhaps a stronger jaw-line than some, but on the other hand with a crinkling round the grey eyes and a certain creasing at the corners of the firm mouth that bespoke a readiness to smile, not to take the world or himself too seriously. Which made his present state of mind the more abnormal—and significant.

All six jeeps were out now. But thereafter only one or two netfuls of baggage came out of the small after-hold. No more motor vehicles or other heavy goods apparently. Rather grudgingly the watcher had to admit to himself that it might have been worse. However, he would wait and see. . . .

Angus turned to move downhill, as the lighter began to swing away from the Sherif. Only the one tender, evidently, had been needed. For some reason that he would have found difficulty in explaining, he decided against meeting the newcomers down at the pier. He knew that they had reserved accommodation at the Hotel Britannia. He would repair thither from his more modest establishment further along The Crescent later on, after the evening meal, and introduce himself. That would be soon enough.

This reluctance to meet these archaeologists was strange—for had he not been waiting for them here for the best part of a week, since flying out from London? The fact was, of course, that he was not used to being a sham, a fraud. Nor did he relish putting his fraudulence to the test. Not that Mr. Charles-Blasted-De Vroot, or his fellow-directors of the TransArabian, called the task they had foisted upon him anything like that, of course. Far from it. Legitimate business investigation. On-the-spot preliminary research. A necessary field observation. Those were phrases De Vroot had used. He’d even indicated that Guthrie would be doing a service to the country, to poor old downtrodden Britain—that his acceptance of the mission was in the nature of a patriotic duty. Not that Angus had had much choice as to acceptance. It was that or his job, obviously. Take on this assignment, and the Company would be very grateful . . . and there were three new tankers building, to one of which a favoured First Officer might just aspire as skipper. Or refuse . . . and see what happened.

They had been very smooth, of course, very flattering—and as a firm they were not noted for cosseting their employees. They had agreed that it was a delicate and responsible job, and that he was their only man suitable for the task, for its rather special requirements. It demanded a seaman, used to handling small craft, knowledgeable of the grim South Arabian coastline, yet with experience of travel in the desert interior, and a knowledge of Arabic language and customs. He had all these requirements—and certainly he did not know of any other of their people who had. His objection, that one of their oil-prospecting staff would be better, had been waved aside; none of these were seamen, navigators. And that was essential. He did not need to know much about oil-prospecting; a couple of days with the firm’s retired chief surveyor up in Edinburgh had taught him all that he required to know in that respect. His experiences in the Arabian desert during the war had clinched the matter.

Angus had been astonished to learn how much his directors knew about him. They had found out that he had been based here at Aden for two years during the war. That while serving as First Lieutenant on the destroyer escort of an aircraft carrier he had taken part in an expedition into the great Arabian desert, to rescue the pilot of a crashed plane. And that when the leader of the expedition had caught a Beduin bullet, and had had to be buried in the burning sands, he had taken over and managed to bring the remnants of the expedition, plus the crashed flier, more or less safely back to the coast. No doubt it was the D.S.C. which he had collected out of that affair, unusual in being earned by a sailor on dry, exceedingly dry, land, that had enabled De Vroot to find out all this.

So now he was for the desert and the unwelcoming Beduin again. Not here, not in the hinterland of the Aden Protectorates, but away, hundreds of miles further to the east, along that ghastly South Arabian coast, in the independent sultanate of Duweila. The TransArabian Company had its eyes upon Duweila. It believed that there might be oil there. There was oil in most parts of the Arabian peninsula, of course, in greater or lesser quantities. But not all of it was sufficient, or near enough to the surface, to be commercially workable. But De Vroot had something to go on, as far as Duweila was concerned. Just over a year before, a Pakistani aircraft from Karachi had got into trouble over the Arabian Sea and had taken the shortest route for the Bahrein Airfield on the Persian Gulf. He had failed to make it, and had crash-landed in the middle of Duweila. And Duweila was forbidden territory, a holy state—in the Name of the Prophet. No aircraft were permitted to fly over it, no white men to explore it, certainly no oil-prospectors to exploit it. The Sultan was a sort of super-Imam, religious leader as well as temporal ruler, and the remoteness of his desert state enabled him to preserve its inviolacy. Other planes had crashed over his territory—and their pilots had never been heard of again. But, presumably because this Pakistani flier was a fellow-Moslem, he had managed to get out, eventually—though not without difficulty. And he claimed to have seen unmistakable signs of oil.

There had been approaches to His Highness the Sultan-Imam of Duweila after that, of course. By various people—for the TransArabian Company were not the only ones to be interested. The Americans had been particularly urgent. But the Sultan was adamant—and his people likewise, apparently. No oil-development was wanted, no prospectors would be permitted to enter sacred Duweila, no defilement of holy ground would be allowed. That was final. Money meant nothing, for already, evidently, the Sultan was rich beyond the dreams of avarice.

And then Professor Glynn Edwardes’ archaeological expedition had obtained a permit to enter the country. The Sultan wanted something, relative apparently to the religious background of his hereditary Imamship, that only archaeologists could find for him. And the Professor wanted to find some buried city or other. How it had been worked, nobody knew—but De Vroot had discovered that Edwardes was going to lead a small expedition into Duweila. And had promptly decided to insert into it somebody who would recognise and plot traces of natural oil when he saw it.

It had not been easy to arrange—for the Professor had had to guarantee that no oil-men, or other exploiters, should come with him. In fact, the personnel of his expedition had to be drastically limited, just as the time allowed for its stay was limited. Therefore the oil company must not seem to come into it at all. But through a highly respectable intermediary, and by the greasing of many palms—and anonymous contributions to the far from adequate funds of the expedition, the thing had been worked. The intermediary had found that the Professor was looking for a transport officer, especially to handle the sea-going part of the affair, which, since there were no ports on the Duweila coast, was going to be of the first importance. The intermediary knew just the man, he said. Leave it to him.

Just that man, leaving Steamer Point on his left below him, now headed down over the bare lava, diagonally making for the narrow scimitar of white flat-roofed buildings wedged between the blue water and the harsh naked hillside that was the modern town of Aden. Beyond this toe-hold, beyond the brief Aden peninsula itself, only ten miles away the forbidding ramparts of Arabia frowned down on them for as far as eye could see on either side, a soaring barrier of black mountains, barren, sterile, inimical—Arabia Felix, Happy Arabia, so inadvertently misnamed by Ptolemy in one of history’s richest ironies. Guthrie indulged himself in a little irony of his own, as he made his way down. A sense of irony might well be the saving of him, from now on, he decided.

Before he reached his small hotel, the TransArab Sherif had puffed a single gout of smoke from the squat black-and-orange funnel at her stern and was swinging round in a wide arc for the Outer Harbour and the Arabian Sea. At least there would be no problem over dodging shore-coming members of the ship’s company.

Later, in the breathless blue night that was only theoretically cooler than the brazen day, his khaki shorts, open-necked shirt and sweat-rag exchanged for suitably laundered whites, Angus Guthrie presented himself at the large Hotel Britannia. On the way, he had gone round by the Lighter Wharf, and risked the suspicions of two tarbushed Somali policemen, to glance over what they importantly stood guard upon—six businesslike and efficiently loaded jeeps, roped and covered and drawn up in a tight phalanx under the naked hanging wharfside electric bulbs. There were no flanking piles of baggage nor impedimenta. Not entirely unimpressed, he nodded to the constables, and sauntered on.

At the hotel bar he had little difficulty in picking out the group of four new arrivals talking to a tired desiccated-looking man whom Angus knew to be Deputy Secretary of the Legislative Council. Buying a drink for himself at the other end of the bar, he retired quietly to a table at the back of the room, nodding only distantly to other patrons. He had deliberately avoided making more than the most superficial contacts with the European colony—though normally he was not an unsociable man. His business had been done amongst the negro Somalis of the port.

The four strangers, though obviously the newcomers from the Sherif, were not just what he had looked to see. His mind had conjured up a different picture of archaeologists—elderly probably, bespectacled, vaguely withered. These people, however, looked entirely normal, much younger than he had expected, and with nothing academic or other-worldly about them. There was one, certainly, who looked a bit older than his companions, and who presumably was the Professor—plumpish, a little bald, mildly pink and cherubic. The other three were not remarkable in any way, just ordinary fit-looking youngish men, one of them big, even husky.

When Holman, the Deputy Secretary, presently moved away from the group, shrugging thin and slightly bent shoulders, Angus gave them a few moments, and then, taking his drink with him, got up and strolled over.

“’Evening,” he said. “My name’s Guthrie.” He addressed the plump man, especially. “You’ll be Professor Glyn Edwardes, from Cambridge?”

“Eh? Well, no—I’m Elder. . . .”

“Ah! Guthrie! I’m Edwardes. Delighted to meet you, Commander. We were wondering how we’d get in touch with you.” Angus turned to find that it was the big husky fellow who was speaking. “This is a pleasure. Here is Collier—our epigrapher. And Townley. He’s the photographer. And, of course, Elder. Tom calls himself an archaeological architect—but we sometimes wonder!”

They shook hands. And undoubtedly the Professor’s was quite the firmest and strongest of the handgrips. Angus eyed him keenly—and was as pleased as he was surprised at what he saw. At close range it could be seen that the man was not quite so young as he looked. There was grey in the shock of unruly hair, crows’-feet at the corners of his very blue eyes, and the set of the face was such as only years, experience and authority can produce. He might have been a young forty-five. But he remained essentially a vigorous boyish character, powerfully built and with nothing of the lecture-room evident about him.

“I would never have taken you for a professor,” Angus declared, some of his cherished reserve surprised out of him. “None of you, in fact, look typical antiquarians to me! But possibly my education’s at fault. You had a good trip out, I hope?”

“Very nice, thanks. An oil company very decently ferried us out free. Extraordinarily kind. It’s been damned hot since we got into these parts, though. I don’t remember it as bad as this in Egypt.” And he mopped a perspiring brow.

“You are an Egyptologist, Professor? Used to desert conditions?” That was quick.

“No. Not really. I’ve been in Cairo once or twice, though. I was a sort of domesticated Desert Rat during the war—safely gone to ground at Corps H.Q. most of the time, Commander.”

“M’mmm. Look—sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t know where you got this Commander business. Nor a half one. I never got beyond Lieutenant—and that was a long time ago. Plain Mister, if you please. A pity—but there it is.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon. Dalziel must have let his belief in you pre-date your promotion, shall we say? He couldn’t have recommended you more highly, anyway, Commander or not.”

“Dalziel . . .?”

“Yes, Sir Torquil, you know.”

“Oh. Ah . . . of course.” Guthrie had almost made his first blob. He had no idea who Sir Torquil Dalziel might be. But presumably this was De Vroot’s high-sounding intermediary. The Company must have hired an expensive stooge. And presumably he had been making a little more of Angus Guthrie than there was. “H’mmm. We, er, pronounce it Dee-ell in Scotland, usually,” he said.

“I was afraid you must be another dam’ Scotsman,” Edwardes groaned, “to account for Sir Torquil’s enthusiasm. However, I suppose we’ll have to put up with you now we’ve got you!” He grinned. “Have a drink.”

“I, er, wouldn’t like you to have any misconceptions about me,” Angus said carefully. “Flying under false colours, or anything like that!”

“My good man, your sterling seafaring honesty stares out of your keen grey eyes,” Dr. Elder assured. “Whisky it will be, I imagine?”

“Cheers. Here’s to our new transport officer.”

“Thanks. I think I may need it, too!” Angus responded.

“You sound grave, not to say ominous, Guthrie?” Townley, the youngest of the quartet, put in. “Don’t say you’re another pessimist, like that man Holman?”

“Mr. Holman was just being typically governmental and cautious, I think,” Edwardes suggested cheerfully.

“He was full of head-shakings and forebodings about sharp-shooting Beduin, hostile sheiks, the wild and woolly wilderness, and all that. Beau Geste stuff,” Townley went on. “Sounded to me about forty years out of date.”

“He went so far as to hint that if we had been heading for one of the Aden Protectorate states the Legislative Council wouldn’t have given us permission to enter,” Collier put in. He had something of a transatlantic drawl, and sported a crew-cut. “Just as well this Duweila’s independent, I guess. These local big-shots got no authority to stop us going there.”

“No,” Angus agreed slowly. “But, mind you, I hope you’re not all happily convinced that this expedition of yours is just going to be a picnic in the sands, for all that! Holman may have been piling it on a bit, but conditions in these Arab states can be . . . difficult. You know what has been going on in the Yemen.”

“You’re not suggesting that we’re really to go in fear of our lives . . .!”

“Shut up, Peter,” the Professor intervened easily. “We recognise that it will be no picnic, of course, Guthrie,” he went on, soberly. “We’re prepared for a considerable degree of roughing it—and even the possibility of a little danger. We’ve made our plans with all that in view. Had you any particular difficulties in mind?”

“Well . . .” Angus cocked an eyebrow at the big man. Irony wasn’t going to be of so much use to him, after all. He was not going to enjoy upsetting these people, especially this unprofessorial Edwardes. “Those jeeps that you’ve brought, for instance. Nice handy things, economically loaded, and no nonsense. But . . . I’m afraid they won’t be of much use to you. I’ve never been actually in Duweila, of course—but if it’s anything like the adjoining Hadhramaut states, its just not jeep terrain. I’m sorry. . . .”

“I’ve roamed the Western Desert in one of those things. I’ve climbed in and out of wadis . . .”

“I’ve been half-way up the Rockies in one,” Collier, the Canadian asserted.

“I’ve been on film safari in the African bush in jeeps,” Townley the photographer declared. “I’ve done everything but fly in one. . . .”

“We’ve all had a fair amount of field experience, one way or another,” the Professor pointed out mildly. “And we all have quite a lot of faith in jeeps. With their four-wheel drive and these heavy-duty tyres, they can go most places. We don’t expect much in the way of roads. . . .”

“Good!” Angus said. “I’m glad of that. All that’s needed, then, is for you to drive your jeeps on one wheel, and you ought to have little difficulty! Except for the petrol, that is. My recollection of them is that you’re lucky to get twenty miles to the gallon. Unless you’re loaded up with nothing but extra petrol, I don’t see you getting very far. I don’t suppose you’ll come across a gallon in all Duweila.”

“Is it as bad as all that?” Edwardes frowned. “The Sultan seemed a very civilised individual. One would have thought . . .”

“We’ll just have to make dumps of the stuff, then, of our own. Work it in relays from the boat. That’s had to be done before now,” Townley interposed.

“Why not drop it from the air? Parachute containers . . .?”

“No—I’m afraid aircraft are out,” the Professor said definitely. “I had to give an undertaking about that. They’ve rather a lot of religious scruples in Duweila. No planes. But surely the distances involved aren’t so enormous as all that, Guthrie? I don’t know just how far the sultanate runs into the central Arabian desert, but I imagine that the part we’re interested in, around the city of Duweila itself and the Wadi Amtar, is not more than two hundred miles inland.”

“As the crow flies, perhaps not,” Angus commented, grimly. “But if it’s similar to Mahra and Q’ati and Dhufar, its neighbours, you can multiply that ground travel by four at least. Much of it by donkey tracks on lava mountains and up the faces of sandstone cliffs. Because Arabia’s described as mainly desert, folk think that it’s flat. It’s not.”

“Ummm.” There was a moment of silence. Then Edwardes shrugged great shoulders. “We’ll have to be prepared to jettison the jeeps, then—that’s all,” he acceded. “In which case, we’ll just have to hire alternative means of transport—mules, or horses, or even carriers, if need be. Which will be a pity—especially with the time-schedule we’ll have to work to—but it won’t sink us. Anything else worrying you, Guthrie, apart from the jeeps?”

“Well . . . my trouble is, I don’t know just what it’s all about. I have only the sketchiest idea of what you mean to do. Without more information, I’m not in a position to say just what the difficulties will be. . . .”

“Of course. That’s understandable. And I wouldn’t like you to get the notion that we’ve come out here entirely green, without having tried to get every bit of information that’s available. The trouble is, the place is so very much a closed book—which is what makes our quest all the more exciti. . .