Operation Scheherazade
by Sinbad
Chapter 21
At the government Rest House at Ma'an a bedraggled group pulled open the door and slid along a bench seat behind a table in the cool hushed atmosphere. Roger spotted the only visible staff member and went and asked him for a telephone, at the same time ordering Pepsi and pitta bread sandwiches for the boys. Arab pitta bread is not quite the same as Greek pitta bread – it is round rather than oval, and the hollow space made by slicing one in half is sufficient to hold a lot of salad, salami, chicken, whatever. Roger banked on teenaged appetites and ordered them two each.
There was apparently no public telephone and he had to use his best powers of persuasion and his smattering of Arabic to supplement the manager's English to get the use of the telephone in the Manager's office.
He phoned the Ambassador. He didn't know who he should report the story to, but he was sure the Ambassador would. So he told Fielding everything and the other man's surprise was palpable even over the telephone. You don't get to be the British Ambassador in an unstable region without being good in a crisis. Fielding noted the key points, writing as he listened. He missed nothing. He only asked one question:
“Did you notice anything about the helicopter – what type, colour, lettering?”
Roger had hardly looked at the helicopter. He called Ricky, who'd been the only other one with binoculars.
“Ricky, did you notice what kind of helicopter it was, or what colour and what markings it had?”
Ricky shook his head. He was about to call out 'No' when Roly took over.
“I did. It was a Bell 47G.”
He ran across the cafe room and into the office.
“Let me tell them?”
Roger handed the telephone over with a smirk.
“This is Roland Fielding. The helicopter was a Bell 47G, the Agusta one, built in Italy, with the open tail boom and the Turbomeca engine. It was the two seater variant, white side panels and I didn't see any markings on it at all.”
Roger looked his amazement. Roly listened to the voice on the other end for a moment and then giggled. “I didn't know it was you – Hi, Dad!”
He listened a little more and then passed the phone back to Roger. “He wants to speak to you again.”
Roger took the phone.
“So your son is an aviation enthusiast? That's quite a boy you've got there!”
After a few further exchanges Roger hung up the phone and thanked the manager, leaving five dinars by the phone.
Something Roland had said on the phone came back into his mind. The helicopter – it was a two-seater. There wouldn't have been room for Maureen. So Camel never intended to take her with her. How deluded Maureen must have been and what a devastating disillusionment. No wonder there was a tussle by the altar.
Why did Camel choose to meet her helicopter in Petra? Why travel all the way to Petra? If she thought that hiring a taxi to a well known tourist destination would attract less attention, she had been mistaken. It is a location with plenty of places to land a chopper, and well away from any centre of population where a helicopter flying overhead would arouse comment. And, Roger realised, it might not have been her choice – presumably Kamille worked for some organisation. And there would be a boss somewhere who would make the big decisions. Maybe he would never know.
He wondered why Camel had taken Maureen with her as far as Petra. As a hostage in case she was cornered? Maybe. And what had Maureen meant by her final words – 'I thought he cared for me'?
Through all his compassionate sorrow for Maureen, he found the passion he had felt for her melting away until he could see it for what it was, an infatuation. And he promised himself that he wouldn't fall into that trap again. For Ricky's sake at least.
He rejoined the boys who were now eating ravenously. Ricky didn't manage all of his second sandwich so Roger took his left-overs and ate them. They bundled back into the car. Roger took one of the jerry cans from its mounting on the front of the vehicle and emptied its contents into the fuel tank, since they wouldn't find a fuel station open and he wasn't sure they had enough to last the journey home. And they set off on their long trip homewards.
Night falls quickly in Jordan; there's no long drawn out period of dusk when there is light to see by. There's daylight, and within half an hour there's full darkness – and that time had arrived. Roger switched his headlights on and pondered their options. A five hour trip home overnight, three boys in the back physically and mentally exhausted, and himself as the driver already on his last legs. It was clear to him that another night in the hunting lodge that he and Ricky had used in the summer would be advisable. He hoped there would be enough blankets to go around, since the temperatures in the desert drop really low at night.
He found the wooden lodge building and inside he found the pressure lantern that he'd used four months previously. He set the boys to making beds up on the bed frames around the room. He thought it best they all stay in the main room rather than using the side rooms and told them to sleep fully clothed. So they took their shoes off and curled up under their blankets and it was only Roger who was conscious long enough to turn the lamp out.
The next morning they were all hungry but there was nothing to eat, they'd eaten all of Mohammed's provisions the previous day. So they piled back into the car with empty stomachs and made best time back to Amman. They drove straight to the Residency where Mrs Fielding was waiting for them. She hugged Roly and shook hands with each of the others and waved them in to a lounge room. In no time at all she had mustered up bowls of soup, followed by roast chicken and rice. And she phoned the Embassy and before they'd finished eating, Mr Fielding arrived with a Superintendent of Police, who took statements from each of them.
Apparently Maureen's body had been found and the forensics team had confirmed that death was caused by a blow to the side of the head with a blunt instrument, most probably the bloodied rock that Roland had found. She had been taken back to Amman and the Embassy were arranging to have her body shipped to England for burial, according to the wishes of her family.
Camel hadn't been traced. The only helicopter matching Roland's description known to have landed at any helipad attached to an airport in the Arab world had held two occupants, but both the pilot and his passenger had been male.
Roger took his two charges home and they slept the rest of the day. And the following day they began packing for their flight back to England since the holiday was coming to an end and term was due to start. Mr Fielding changed the booking of Roly's flight so that he could fly with them, and the two men found themselves standing on the observation deck at the airport waving goodbye together.
Maybe it was a co-incidence, but while the plane was in the air, Mr Cholmondeley Farquharson, Lord Beaulieu, sat at his large Hepplewhite desk in a large wood-panelled room in a large elegant Georgian building in the large capital city of the country whose security he worked to maintain, and gazed thoughtfully at a file opened in front of him. He reached for his gold Parker fountain pen and added a few lines of comment to the bottom of a typed page. He read what he had written, made a change to a word, and signed and dated the entry.
So, he thought. Kamille Blumfeld may be something he had never considered: she may be a man. All her terrorist activity conducted while masquerading as a woman, and then returning to the guise of a man, he could escape justice by dint of not matching the description of the person the security services would be looking for. Brilliant. And it will have come in handy with poor Maureen. She had fallen head over heals with the man she got to know and, impressionable and naïve, had believed his propaganda. And he must have let her into the secret of his cross-dressing persona. And she'd gone along with it in the euphoria of some promise or other the cad had made to her. What would that be, he wondered? Retirement to the country? Life of privilege in the South of Spain? Who knows, and it hardly matters now.
Then he closed the file and settled his large bulk back into his large swivel chair and sighed. The label on the front of the file read 'Operation Scheherazade'.