Operation Scheherazade
by Sinbad
Chapter 6
Ricky realised he was expected not to tell anyone about the meeting with Mr Farquharson. Of course he swore Chris to secrecy, and then told him everything that the fat man in SIS had told him, but he didn't have secrets from Chris and couldn't think of not telling him. And as the boarding school term dragged on interminably the memory of the experience began to fade for Ricky as other matters took precedence.
His father returned to Jordan after the war died down, and Ricky got an airletter from him two weeks later. He said the house felt funny with just him in it, and Ricky cried as he read the letter, he cried for his Dad and he cried for his old home and his friends and his carefree life in Jordan. Of course boarding school boys don't cry, so it was not unusual to walk in to the toilet block of one of the boarding houses when the post had just been distributed, and hear sniffling behind the closed doors of several cubicles. Ricky sat in one to read his father's letter.
There were events taking place in Jordan that Roger Taylor couldn't put in his letter to his son. Events he knew nothing about, but which nonetheless would have a devastating effect on him and Ricky.
A young man, maybe five foot eight and slightly built, blond hair swept back into a pony tail and with a wispy moustache and goatee beard, blue eyes that had a tendency to un-nerve people caught in their gaze and a triangular face ending in a small determined chin, watched a house and made his plans.
It was this same man who intercepted a young woman at lunch time the next day as she made her way across a car park. A young woman would could be described as petite, with a round alabaster face and dark eyes, chestnut brown hair worn straight and framing her face page-boy-like. A woman who could be described as pretty in a quirky way, but not beautiful. Smiling and ingratiating, he engaged her in conversation, and the tension that showed in her posture when he accosted her gradually relaxed and she smiled back at him, then giggled. And the two walked together across the car park to the Land Rover parked in the shade of a tree, and stood talking before the woman climbed into the driver's seat and turned a broad smile to him before closing the door. He stood and waved as she drove off.
And he was there again at the same time the next day. And this time he got into the Land Rover with her. And they drove off together.
Three more days consecutively he met her in the car park at lunchtime, the hottest part of the day. And each day they drove off together in the Land Rover, her in the driver's seat, him as passenger. Where did they go? Down from the hilltop car park to the valley where the bustle of the souk added to the noise of the traffic, the sounding of horns. They left the car and walked through the market with its colourful stalls, and beyond the souk to a little pavement café where they sat and enjoyed strong, sweet, black coffee in tiny cups with no handles. As soon as either one of them put their empty cup back in its saucer, the waiter appeared and refilled it. And kept refilling it until the cup was replaced in the saucer upside down, the recognised sign that no refill was required.
What did they find to talk about on these lunchtime trysts? Who knows? The man each time guided her to a table away from other patrons, where they could talk without being overheard. On their second visit the café was very busy and there were no isolated tables available. It didn't put them off, they just sat at the table next to the one occupied by a couple of comfortable ladies who were taking a break from their shopping. Bags surrounded them and they were talking rapidly together.
The two visitors were soon, as before, deep in conversation, and didn't notice one of the ladies from the neighbouring table get up and leave, when her companion had not finished her coffee. This lady, then sat within easy hearing of the two young people, sipping coffee quietly. Could she understand English? Most educated Jordanians speak English but she was a woman and might not have had the benefit of such education. So we'll never know if she understood what was said between them.
The conversation was certainly surprising, coming from an apparently courting couple. It was political, seditious and radical. The young man was doing his best to enthuse his friend about the evils of imperialism and the wisdom of armed struggle against it. About the shameful history of meddling by western powers in the internal affairs of the Arab world and about the wicked support given by those powers to the expansionist ambitions of the Zionists in Israel. And about the stupidity of the Arab authorities who had believed the weasel words of the western powers when they had promised fair and impartial dealings between the Arabs and the Israelis. How Britain and latterly the USA had promised great things and then reneged on their promises, again and again. He was very persuasive. Did he succeed in his persuasion? We have only the adoring expression on his companion's face to go on, as he spoke and she listened. That and the kiss they shared across the table.
Half-term arrived and the boys got to go home for four whole days. Chris was picked up by his father from school and went home to their new house near Guildford. Ricky went on the train across the country to his mother's new home. The break was a gloomy affair for Ricky. He was very pleased to see his mother, but she had taken a job at a local library, which meant he was left on his own in the daytime for the first two days. None of his friends lived near and there seemed to be very few children in the village, and nothing for children to do. It was a big anti-climax.
On the third day of the holiday, the Saturday, his mother took him to the seaside on the bus and he enjoyed clambering around on the rocks and peering into rock pools. He slipped several times and ended up with wet feet in wet shoes. On the way home, Shirley broke the news to her son that his parents' marriage was over. Roger had returned to Jordan and Shirley would not be joining him, she would be staying in England. Ricky felt like he'd been hit by a sledgehammer. He sat on the prickly velour bus seat, stunned, trying to take it in, and as the reality of it dawned on him tears welled up and ran down his face. At twelve, he was not able to analyse his feelings, but he had built his sense of security around his parents and his home. They were the unchangeable things in his young life, and he was able to face change elsewhere because he was firmly rooted at home. Now his home had been taken away from him and replaced with the cold harsh world of boarding school, and shortly afterwards his parents were to stop being a team. He felt that his world had ended.
Shirley hugged him to her, close to tears herself, but unable to offer any reassurance that would make it easier for Ricky to cope with. And Ricky, eventually, after crying quietly into her bosom for some minutes, looked up at her through bloodshot eyes and asked
“Are you going to marry someone else, now?”
Shirley gave an involuntary nervous giggle and replied “No, darling, no I'm not. Daddy and I will still be married for five years before we can get divorced. And you can't get married again until you've got divorced from your first marriage. Anyway there isn't anyone else I want to marry.”
Ricky pondered this for a while. “So why aren't you going to live together if you are still going to be married?”
Shirley had been expecting a question like this, of course, and had an answer ready, but now somehow it seemed inadequate. It was all she had, though. “Your Dad and I have just grown apart, darling. We still love each other but in a different way now, and we don't feel we belong together any more like we used to. I guess people change even after they've finished growing up, and we've both changed with time, and we're neither of us the people we were when we got married. But, Ricky, listen to me carefully, both Daddy and I still love you exactly the same as ever. That will never change. And our separating has nothing to do with you. You are the reason we stayed together as long as we did. You hear me?”
Ricky, still looking up at his mother from her bosom with a tear-stained face, just nodded dumbly.
The final day of the holiday was painful. Ricky didn't want to go back to school but they both knew Shirley had to take him to the station and put him on the train and wave him off. They both cried as they gradually lost sight of each other and the train picked up speed. Ricky loved train journeys but the journey back to school was like a march to the scaffold for him. He was very homesick, more than he had been at the beginning of term, perhaps because he no longer had the newness of everything to distract him. And he cried himself to sleep for the first few nights of the second half of term.
It was natural that in his misery, Ricky set his heart on the end of term. He counted off the days, willing the time to pass quicker until the term ended. He was to fly out to Jordan to visit his father and it would be the first time he had flown alone. So he was very excited about it. Chris, of course, would be holidaying at his new home in Surrey and was less excited about the forthcoming holiday.
The two boys were wandering together one Saturday afternoon. On Saturdays, after sports, or if they weren't involved in sports, they had the rest of the afternoon until teatime free. And Chris and Ricky walked down to the town to look around the shops. It felt very liberating to walk out of the school gates and to go shopping like any 'normal' shoppers. In their school uniform they were instantly identifiable, of course, and some shopkeepers kept a wary eye on them, or even just made it clear they weren't welcome. Boys from the school on the hill were not always well behaved in town.
They found the bookshop and spent a happy half hour browsing there. And the proprietor tolerated them and even smiled benignly at them when they walked in. Did they look at the worthy, educational volumes that might help them with their schoolwork? No, they headed straight for the Tintin comic books. And why wouldn't they? Boarding School is not a paradise of education, where you drink in the pearls of wisdom dropped by the learned professors who teach there. Despite what the glossy brochures say, it's not like that. No, it's a purgatory, a hellish place to be endured as best you can until you are finally freed at the end. And you do what you have to, to survive it. Ricky and Chris were doing what they had to, and at least they had each other as support.
While in the bookshop they noticed a man with a slightly shifty look about him enter. Chris pointed him out to Ricky and they watched him surreptitiously. It is highly likely, of course, that the man was perfectly well aware the boys were watching him, but they thought they did so undetected. He was giving every indication of being completely uninterested in them, but he was also looking distinctly uninterested in the books he was ostensibly looking at. Even at their young age the two boys could see that the man wasn't browsing the bookshelves like a shopper. Each book he took from a shelf he flicked through at an even pace, apparently not finding any one page arresting enough to look more closely at. And having done so he put it back and picked up another – but another on an unrelated subject. They both thought this behaviour odd and a bit creepy. It didn't bother them but they noticed that the man didn't leave while they were in the shop.
Having exhausted the delights of the bookshop they thanked the shopkeeper and left. A little further along the road was a toyshop with a model railway running in the window. It was irresistible and they didn't try – they went straight in. The shop was an Aladdin's Cave – shelves upon shelves of model railway parts and other toys. The boys wandered happily, letting out little whoops and shrieks as they came across particularly desirable items. Absorbed in their investigation, they rounded a shelving unit and Chris bumped into the back of a man in a grey trenchcoat.
“Whoops, I'm so sorry, sir.” - and the two boys began to back away and head off down another aisle, when Ricky suddenly stopped and gripped Chris's forearm tightly.
“Look, Chris! It's him!”
And sure enough, as he turned they recognised the creepy man from the bookshop, apparently up to the same sort of thing in the toyshop.
The boys froze for a moment in horror as the man took a step towards them. Then they turned to each other, looked each other in the eye and shared an almost imperceptible nod, then continued turning towards the shop doorway and ran for it. Luckily a customer entered the shop just as they reached the door and they tore out of the door before it closed on its damped self-closing mechanism. They ran down the pavement and turned down an alleyway between Woolworths and St Andrews Church. They ran as fast as their legs would carry them, boosted by fear. They didn't look back or they would have seen that the man in the trenchcoat wasn't close behind. He had started to follow them out of the shop and tried to push past another customer who was attempting to open the door to leave the shop, laden with multiple bags of shopping. They were taking some time and the creepy man tried to push past, but another customer, a big burly man, stood in his way and told him with a lot of swearing to wait his turn. So by the time he escaped from the toyshop the boys were nowhere to be seen.
They were in fact at the end of the alleyway they'd run down, which turned out to be a dead end, just an access road to the back of Woolworths. Bounded by high walls and a tall fence at the edge of the churchyard, there was no way out except back the way they had come. So the boys hesitantly began making their way back, and rounded the corner just as their pursuer happened to walk past the end of the alleyway. Their hearts sank to their boots and they began looking around for an escape route. Chris was considering the possibility of scaling the fence and jumping down into the churchyard, when the man loomed over them, his over six foot height exaggerated by his long trenchcoat and the homburg hat he wore.
He would have been in his early forties, dark hair under the hat, greying a little at the temples, a rugged square-jawed face with wrinkles and suntan showing time spent in a hot climate. He was remarkably tall but very thin. Stick-like, even.
“Hello, Richard Taylor, I think?” he asked, and a twisted smile creased his face.