What Might Have Happened Part 18

"Now, we wait."

"For the sub?" Lawrence asked. Haseldon ducked his head, and Lawrence waited, testing.

Had the man been warned not to confide totally in Lawrence? Who had warned him of that, in any case? In Wellington's words, this was an infamous army, each officer keeping secrets, and no trust anywhere.

The night dragged on as they waited for the rhythmic splashes, camouflaged in the persistent rain, of the commandos' arrival. From time to time, Haseldon stared at Lawrence, then at his maps.

"Was it like this?" he finally blurted, "when you took Aqaba?"

"Much drier," Lawrence observed, and a grin spread across the younger man's taut face. "We had the desert to cross, and we knew that the guns were fixed to face seaward. That much could put our minds at rest. ..." And curiously, that much was true. "What may have made it easier, though, was that all we faced were some Turks and nameless Germans. Not Rommel."

The younger man gave a quick, relieved sigh. "Waiting's the hardest part," he admitted.

"Waiting for the trains to come was always the worst. You always wanted to push the plunger and explode the track long before it was safe to. Sometimes we did. Usually, we lost those-"

A sharp hiss brought both men around, their hands s.n.a.t.c.hing for sidearms. Three men waded out of the water, and Haseldon started forward. Lawrence found himself tensing, ready to leap forward should there prove to be yet another betrayal . . . but it was all right; they were shaking hands. In the dampness, Lawrence heard names: Keyes, a major, and the men under his command, Campbell and Terry. Haseldon guided them toward what soggy hospitality he could offer, and Lawrence faded imperceptibly among the Berbers.

At midnight, Major Keyes and his team headed for the Prefettura. Haseldon started out of hiding but "Get back!" Keyes gestured. Then he strode forward and pounded on the front door, demanding admission in German, pushing past the sentry.

Two shots were fired, and the house in the cypress grove went dark.

Lawrence reached Haseldon's side just as a burst of fire exploded, filling one room with light as if it were a stage on which a man, mortally wounded, fell, and another staggered. Just in time, Lawrence caught Haseldon's arm.

"Ours?" Haseldon whispered hoa.r.s.ely.

"Either way, you can't help them," Lawrence warned him. Haseldon was younger, stronger than Lawrence; if he wanted to break free, he was going to, unless . . . surrept.i.tiously, Lawrence drew his sidearm.

"The man who fell. He wasn't wearing a German uniform. They may be dead, dying-"

"Just you hope that they are," Lawrence told him, holding his eyes, which were white and staring in the dark. Not so heroic now, is it, watching men die for your schemes? If the man wanted to play desert hero, that was one lesson he'd better learn tonight. "That was the worst part. We didn't want to leave our wounded for the Turks, but sometimes- Shh! Who's coming?"

A dark blotch wavered toward them, and Lawrence snapped the safety off his weapon and readied it-until Haseldon forced the barrel of his pistol down.

"Wie geht's?" he called.

"Terry!" The commando's voice shook. "The major's dead. Campbell's down . . . the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds had guards there . . . but not Rommel ... he never stays here, I heard."

It was exhaustion, not judgment, in the fugitive's eyes, but Haseldon flinched.

"They say Rommel's near Gambut at Ain Gazala."

Haseldon pounded his fist into his palm. "G.o.d, I could kill myself! We've got to get the b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"

"He can't stay here," Lawrence muttered, careful to keep his voice down so Terry couldn't hear him. Memories of old retreats came to his aid. "Get him away from here. They had to have some plans for getting the team out. What were they?"

"Right," Haseldon nodded sharply. "Hitler's got standing orders to shoot commandos on sight." He gestured, detaching five Berbers who surrounded Terry and, despite his protests, bore him away. "Take him back to Gyrene, and keep him safe till pickup," he ordered.

Haseldon sank onto the ground, and Lawrence divided his attention between him and the Prefettura. He had played decoy before. What if an old, weary native straggled by to gain information? Given that a raid on the place had just occurred, he'd be lucky if he weren't shot, that's what, he told himself acerbically. For the first time in his campaigns in a Muslim world, he wished for a flask of brandy; Haseldon looked as if he could use it.

"We should leave, too," he hinted, but the man sat, all but unstrung. His courage was all of the quick, gallant kind; eager to act, but equally swift to despair. Rommel was said to be of that sort, too.

Haseldon nodded, and they rose. Seconds later, though, the renewed downpour forced them to huddle into what shelter they could contrive. "The roads will be washed out," Haseldon muttered through chattering teeth. "The wadis will be flooded."

"Maybe he'll drown," Lawrence soothed him.

"We've got to do something!" "We will." Fraud that he was, he knew how to fill his voice-even in a whisper-with conviction. He would inspire, would use this man too to bring him to Rommel. And then what?

He knew now what his own role must be. Somehow he must reach Rommel; must get close enough-no, he did not think that the P.M. meant to turn him into an a.s.sa.s.sin. This attempt might draw the German out of his lair just long enough for Lawrence to catch his attention. That would be the moment of supreme risk: catch the general's attention, avoid being shot, and then, somehow, convince him ... of what?

G.o.d only knew; and these days, G.o.d wasn't speaking to one Thomas Edward Lawrence. Let it go for now, came the voice of instinct within him that he had learned years ago to trust. Wait with the trees, the bodies, the Germans.

The rain poured down like the Nile from its mountain cataracts, and Lawrence hunched over, trying hard not to think.

Dawn came, then night, which they spent huddling in Haseldon's mean shelter well away from Beda Littoria, then another dawn. Carefully chosen men crept back and forth. The last one came at a run, nearly tripping over himself, almost incoherent with his news. Rommel was sending his own chaplain to conduct the services for three Germans and the dead English major.

"Rommel won't come," Haseldon mourned. "He's got a war to fight."

"So do we, man," said Lawrence. "And the first thing is to live to fight it. That chaplain won't come all by himself. Let's move!"

To the West lay only the sh.o.r.e. Safety lay in Egypt; but between them and Egypt were Tobruk and Operation Crusader. Time after time, they dodged the trucks and tanks that crawled like rats up and down the escarpments, crept past smoking rubble, lay flat as aircraft, English or German, flew overhead. Their supplies ran out, but-"Stealing from the dead ..." protested Haseldon.

"Would you rather starve with your work undone?" demanded Lawrence, and forced himself to open the first pack he found.

Lawrence had been hunted before; had lived with a price on his head. But never before had he fully understood what it was like to flee too lightly equipped and armed to do anything but cower as the armies raged by. Their retreat stretched out, seemed endless, compared with what now seemed the effortless progresses by truck or beast. Haseldon's grimy face had long since fined down; his blue eyes looked like sky piercing through a skull's eyesockets. He was being remade in this retreat, forged into a man stronger and madder than anyone would wish for him. Knowing what it felt like, Lawrence would stand G.o.dfather to that second birth. He doubted that it-or he-would live much longer, unless more luck than he deserved rode with them.

Their luck held all the way to Sidi Omar, on the Egyptian border.

"Down!" The ground shook. Overhead, sh.e.l.ls burst, staining the afternoon sky with flame and smoke.

"Look!" Haseldon pointed at a lean-to, set up behind an army truck. Painted on the truck's side was a red cross. "That's one of ours," he whispered. "Our truck; our field hospital. Thank G.o.d." He let his head fall into his hands.

In whose hands? Lawrence refused to ask. He glanced at the armored vehicles. "Do we go in?"

"Let's investigate."

Crouching low to the ground, Lawrence dodged around the smoking carca.s.s of a tank. Old scars and surgeries screamed pain at him, but he ignored them. A blow thrust him to the ground. He writhed around to grapple with his attacker. It was Haseldon, his face and body twisting as a bullet hit him. Swearing hopelessly in Arabic, Lawrence wadded up his headcloth and thrust it against the wounded man's side, where it turned red and sodden far too rapidly. Now it did not matter who controlled that field hospital.

"Bear up, lad," Lawrence whispered. Before he could remember that he was old, sick, and half-crazed, and that he hated to be touched, he swung Haseldon's arm over his shoulder and started across the field toward the wretched hospital. The bursts of light, the shaking of the ground as each sh.e.l.l exploded-all faded from his consciousness; his horizons narrowed to the next step, the step after that.

The command to stop came in German and was reinforced with a warning shot and men in his path, barring his way to the surgery7. Speaking or looking up might be fatal. He eased Haseldon to the ground.

"That one's done for." The soldiers spoke over his head. Lawrence turned Haseldon's face away, afraid that its pallor would betray them both.

"Just as well. Those Berbers are treacherous little beasts."

"Still, if the English are wasting supplies, we should ..."

"You can't disturb the surgeons now. They're operating on Colonel Stephan of the Fifth Panzer."

There was a murmur of dismay. "When was he brought in?"

"Around noon. He's got a bad chest wound. Shrapnel. The General wanted the English surgeon, this Major Aird, to put a pressure dressing on it, so Colonel Stephan could be flown out.

But the doctor insisted on operating, said Stephan would die if he didn't."

Someone shouted an order in harsh German from the lean-to.

"They want the armored cars to pull back?" the soldier standing nearby demanded. "So the noise won't disrupt the surgery? Maybe we could put up little curtains to make the operating room more gemutlich, too."

"Schweig; they're operating on one of ours. Tenderhearted, those English."

"What about the natives there?"

"Let them wait. Thev're worthless."

The roar of engines as the armored cars withdrew made Lawrence shudder. He had hoped that playing the role of fugitive, aiding a wounded tribesman, might win him help from the English surgeons. But clearly the Germans were not going to let him get near the surgery. They were just going to let Haseldon die here, weren't they? And why? Because he wasn't one of theirs.

Lawrence thought of the photos he carried, then of Tafas. "The best of you brings me the most Turkish dead," he had said then. Atrocious: the stiffened bodies in the desert; the bled-out bodies in the grave pits; the sight of a man who had admired him dying in his arms. As flies to wanton boys are we to the G.o.ds, the line ran through his head. They kill us for their sport.

Fingers struggled toward his, and he grasped Haseldon's hand as firmly as he might. "Sorry,"

came a faint whisper.

"No one could have done better," Lawrence replied, "and I'll remember." He heard Haseldon struggle for breath, and drew him closer, holding the dying man's head up until it lolled back, and Lawrence knew that he was dead.

The ground had stopped shaking. Now only the tramp of booted feet, not bombsh.e.l.ls, made Lawrence tense. A crowd of Panzer officers was leaving the tent.

"We'll return again tomorrow on our way back into Egypt," one of them told the bloodstained man who accompanied them out of the operating room. Last of all, as if in defiance of protocol, was a general, not too tall, somewhat stocky, wearing an Iron Star and a blue order, Pour le Merite, at his throat.

Lawrence knew that face from his pictures, from the waking nightmare that his life had long been. He waited until all the others had pa.s.sed. Then, in an undertone, he called, "Heir General Rommel!"

Unsnapping the catch of his holster, Rommel strode toward him. Lawrence took a deep breath and raised his head, and Rommel halted. His hand went up, and his mouth opened and closed on Lawrence's name.

"So, do ghosts now fight alongside the quick and the dead?" Rommel asked, elaborately sarcastic, in his heavily accented Swabian German. "A fraud, of course."

"I am quite what I seem to be," Lawrence stated in the carefully cultivated German of the Oxford scholar he had once been.

Rommel gestured with distaste at Haseldon's body, half-sprawled over Lawrence's knees. "So I see."

Lawrence grimaced and straightened Haseldon's body on the ground. Any moment now, Rommel would shout for guards to take him away, if he didn't just draw his Luger and kill Lawrence himself. "Apparently, your a.s.sa.s.sins had never heard of German efficiency. I survived."

Rommel stared down at Haseldon, and Lawrence followed his glance, saw the glazed stare of filming blue eyes, and shut them with a convulsive motion of one bloodstained hand. He had a sudden impulse to pour dirt over the dead man's face. "He was under my command," Lawrence said. "I'd be grateful if he had a decent burial."

Rommel snapped his fingers for the guards to take the body away. "And you, too?"

"Before or after I give you Prime Minister Churchill's message? I'd appreciate a safe-conduct out of here."

"You have my word on it. I would have been disappointed if the English had sunk to using the notorious Lawrence as an a.s.sa.s.sin or a spy." He glanced around, as if he could see an English regiment about to attack and rescue Lawrence.

"I'm quite alone, I promise you."

"You're dead! Men don't disappear for five years, have funeral sermons preached over them, then appear in the middle of a war-"

Lawrence laughed softly. "Herr General, you are not the only soldier known for being unpredictable. Would you not use your death-or a lie about it-to help your country?"

"What a.s.surances do I have that you are not a lie?" Already, Rommel was beckoning Lawrence toward "Mammut," as if he preferred to debrief a spy in private. A junior officer hurried up, waving a message.

"This is war the way the ancient Teutons used to fight it. I don't even know at this moment whether the Afrika Korps is on the attack or not!" Rommel cursed.

His mood had shifted from the ironic whimsicality of a moment ago. Lawrence knew there was not much time. Operation Crusader was keeping Rommel on the run with its very unpredictability.

"Well?" he snapped at Lawrence.

Moving slowly, keeping his hands in view at all times, Lawrence took off his weapons belt. "My word of honor," he said.

Rommel raised an eyebrow, and part of Lawrence agreed with him. "The word," he went on, hating the theatricality of his words, "of a man who rode with Allenby into Jerusalem at the head of the first Christian army to take it since the Crusades."

Rommel laughed, a sound resembling the bark of a fox. "Crusade! Not precisely my favorite word," he said.

Lawrence shrugged. "Soldiers can only do what they can. We too must follow our orders, no matter how they tie our hands or short us on supplies."

"The Russian front! G.o.d only knows how sick I am of the d.a.m.ned Russian front! They want Cairo, Alexandria ... I could give them all Egypt, but not one man, not one penny for Africa, but that it's begrudged-"

"And sent to Russia?" Lawrence asked. "Germany has some magnificent strategic minds; but Russia? Napoleon foundered there. Do you think that your Fiihrer can succeed where Napoleon failed?"

"Is this what your Churchill sent you to do?" Rommel snapped. "To test my loyalty to the Fiihrer? My oath holds."

"You sound like one of Charlemagne's paladins, off to fight the Moors."

Rommel bowed slightly, in pleased acknowledgment. "I do not think that this is the same kind of war, do you?" Lawrence continued. "Or even the type of war we fought in '17."

"The war is the war. I follow orders."

But Rommel's answer sounded automatic. If he lost interest now, it could cost Lawrence his life. And if Rommel chose to reveal who had visited him, it could cost Churchill- and England-even more.

"You do more than follow orders," Lawrence said. "You serve your country. We are two of a kind, you know. I was silenced for more than five years, until England had a use for me once more. You . . . you are kept short of men and equipment, praised, but not truly given the honors due you-"

"Let me tell you, Colonel, if this is an attempt to subvert me, it is a very crude one-"

"I didn't cross a battlefield to try anything that stupid," Lawrence snapped.

"What did you come to do?"

"To ask you questions. You say you took an oath to Hitler. Well enough. Oaths should not be broken. What about your oath to Germany?

"Look at this war. Look at how you've been treated. In the name of G.o.d, look at the man you call the Fuhrer and the people he's surrounded himself with. These are the men who are going to build your new Empire, your thousand-year Reich. Do you think they can do it? Can you honestly say of Hitler, 'This is the man who will rule like a Charlemagne or Barbarossa'?"

"Clearly, you want me to say, 'No, I can't.' You may proceed. But make it quick. I'm getting bored."