1939

Zeppelins over England-3

“... He wants to meet you – at the usual place. Friday at 09.00.” The phone clicked dead.

Rishaan wondered what that was all about, and as he went downstairs he wondered if he would have to tell his grandfather. Would he be angry that he had gone up to the attic?

“Grandfather, did you know that there’s a telephone in the attic?”

“Oh, er, yes, er, never use the bugger – did you find the raquette à neige?”

“It rang and I answered it.”

“What? The snowshoes?”

“Don’t be silly Grandfather, you know what I mean!”

“What did she say?”

“How do you know it was a she?”

“Just tell me, what did she say?”

“A secret for a secret--why do you have a telephone in the attic?”

Rishaan’s grandfather sighed. “When I was a young soldier in the British Army I got friendly with an officer. We would go off on adventures and we saved each other"s lives a few times. Anyway, he returned to London and got involved with politics. He was very successful as well, sometimes high up in the cabinet, making decisions about war. However, as always in politics, sometimes you are out, and my friend would then find it very difficult to get information, information that would help him get back into an office of power. Information like how well the army was doing abroad. Information that was useful to him but potentially dangerous if it got in the wrong hands.

“So we made a pact. I would supply him with information, if he would protect me and help me get the right postings in the army. To help me get information to him, he eventually had a secret telephone with a direct line installed in the attic. He would ask me to find out information and get me a posting were the action was. That’s why I was in the Middle East a lot. Your grandmother used to give and take messages when I was away.”

The sergeant major sighed again, as if blaming himself.

“After that I returned to London. I never left the house after that. I never heard the phone ring again, forgot all about it. What did the woman say?”

“She said, ‘He wants to meet you – at the usual place. Next Friday at 09.00.’”

His grandfather went silent and stared out of the window. It was unusual for him to say nothing. Rishaan knew that this was serious.

“What does it mean?” he asked, but the sergeant major kept quiet. Rishaan knew it was useless to keep asking. The sergeant major was now far away, in the past, in some foreign land. After what seemed like a long time, the sergeant major looked at Rishaan. He seemed surprised to see Rishaan, as he had forgotten Rishaan was there. He stroked his mustache thoughtfully.

“You will have to go,” the sergeant major concluded. He did not seem to like asking Rishaan to do this, but he had thought about it and there was no other option.

“Go where?” asked Rishaan.

“To Egypt, my boy-Alexandria and to Cleopatra’s needle! But it will be our secret; don’t tell your parents. Just go there and meet the man, explain to him that an old war wound has kept me from coming but that you are trustworthy as a messenger. Tell him--tell him that if he hadn’t had a Mauser at Omdurman, he wouldn’t be standing there now.”

“What does that mean?”

“Let him explain.”

“But how can I get to Egypt by tomorrow, and without my parents finding out?”

“Ha – that’s easy – just let Egypt come to you!”

Rishaan was confused but exhilarated. He felt a rush of excitement about this secret adventure, and if he knew the sergeant major at all, it was something very precarious and secret.

“What do I have to do?” he asked. The sergeant major explained to Rishaan that on the banks of the Thames there stood Cleopatra’s needle, an ancient obelisk, imported from Egypt.

“Just get the message. The art of being a good spy is to listen, not to talk. And the man you will be meeting is a good talker. In fact, you might have trouble trying to get him to stop.” With this, the sergeant major laughed at his own joke.

“You said a secret for a secret. What is your secret, Rishaan?” said the sergeant major.

“My father is taking me on a work trip tomorrow. Something to do with an invention the British want to show to the Americans. I"ll let you know more when I see you again.”

“Excellent,” said the sergeant major.

The next day, Rishaan went on the trip with his father. He had been waiting for this day for a long time. This winter of 1939 was one of the coldest in living memory: snow covered the whole of Europe and rivers froze. However, Rishaan did not mind - he loved extreme weather. He was excited; he did not often get to see his father at work. Rishaan knew he worked for the American Embassy as “a diplomat” but he was secretive about what it was he actually did. He knew his father was from a rich family so he did not really have to work. His father was a quiet man but seemed troubled lately about the problems that were mounting in Europe. Rishaan suspected that his father was a secret agent, even though he could never get his father to admit it. Rishaan wondered about telling his father about the meeting he would be having on Friday, but decided against it. His grandfather had sworn him to secrecy, but even so, his loyalties were to his parents.

Rishaan was proud that his father was American and his mother was English. Sometimes he felt that he did not belong anywhere, that he was missing something other children had--a homeland. He thought he missed some sort of roots to a location, to a tribe. Despite this, this feeling of being different, he also felt he had something special.

Rishaan had discovered a secret about his father. His father communicated through his pipe. His father had the inclination to examine and clean his pipe whenever he was unhappy about something. If his father scratched behind his ear with the stem of his pipe, then he was thinking of a plan to make something work, like tuning the radio to get a German station. If he scratched his forehead then he was thinking of a good reason not to do something, like going to a fancy dress ball. If he scratched the bridge of his nose then he was about to tell a joke. If he rattled the stem of his pipe between his teeth, then he was about to suggest something that was a lot of fun, like going on a trip abroad. His father could never understand why he always lost at poker.

Rishaan’s father never lit his pipe whenever Rishaan was around, as Rishaan had been very sick when he was a child in Africa. However, the pipe was always perched in his father"s hand whenever he was not actively smoking it. Today he just chewed on his unlit pipe and, from the warmth of the first class carriage, watched the people on the platform bustle around.

Rishaan wondered why his father was taking him along on the trip. He supposed that his mother had made his father take him on the excursion. She was always complaining that he did not do enough with his son. Rishaan did not mind. He was thrilled about the trip and glad that he had such an important father.

“They say that if there is a war you will not be allowed smoke a pipe,” said Rishaan.

“Now why is that, Kit?” said his father. His father always called him Kit, except when he was in trouble, and then it was back to being Rishaan.

“Well, they say that the Germans will send over planes at night that will drop bombs and the spies on the ground will gather near important buildings and smoke pipes so that the pilots will see them in a blackout.”

“You mean the spies will stand in the form of an arrow pointing at something that needs to be bombed, and then sneakily smoke pipes?”

“That’s what I heard or at least something like that,” said Rishaan, not sure if his father was making fun.

“Well, then I shall have to do my utmost to stop a war in Europe!” said Rishaan’s father.

“You could smoke your pipe upside down,” suggested Rishaan. Rishaan’s father looked at him curiously, and then pulled out his pouch of tobacco. He pressed the tobacco down tightly in the bowl, lit it, then turned the pipe upside down and smoked. The tobacco stayed in the pipe.

“Ingenious,” he contemplated. “Strange though, it tastes slightly different, upside-down smoke. Problem solved, let the wars begin!”

Rishaan laughed, but started coughing at the smoke, so his father quickly extinguished his pipe. Rishaan hated it that his father could not smoke when he was there. Maybe that was why he did not see much of him. Rishaan thought that his father looked angry because he had to put out his pipe. His father was indeed angry, but angry with himself. When Rishaan was sick, with a tropical disease called cholera, his father had sat next to his bed and smoked his pipe to keep the mosquitoes away, but the smoke had only made Rishaan worse. Although his parents had never talked about it, he had nearly died from the disease.

Rishaan felt a little jolt as the train began to move. The steam plume from the engine almost filled the whole station and covered the carriages. As the train gathered more speed and pulled away from its own cloud of steam, Rishaan watched the disappearing city as they slowly traveled to the outskirts of pre-war London. Little did he know that many of the buildings he saw steaming by would be damaged or destroyed in the next few years.

Rishaan could see the children playing in the streets, many in ragged clothes. There was a market where people bought cheap vegetables and a flimsy merry-go-round where children stood by, hoping they might get a free ride. There was an old woman, sheltered from the cold by several layers of rags. She was dragging a broken bag weighed down with wood and was having great difficulty with her burden. Nobody stopped to help her. She quickly disappeared into the distance as the train forged onward to the countryside. Rishaan took a photograph of the industrial London landscape.

As the train gathered speed, the city changed into countryside and the gray buildings gradually disappeared. Instead, snow-covered hills started to surge and roll past. Their blinding whiteness reminded Rishaan of the hills and dunes in the Sudan. He remembered being on a train with his father on their way to Khartoum. A group of local bandits had chased the train. His father thought they were Mahdists, a Muslim group, but he was not sure. When they started shooting at the train Rishaan’s father looked concerned, but Rishaan thought it was great fun. The bandits had no chance of catching the train and their bullets seemed ineffectual. It was something special when his father pulled out a revolver from his attaché bag. He did not know his father even had a g*n, let alone carried one with him.

“Do you remember those bandits in the Sudan?” he asked his father, and his father laughed.