The Dongola Script

By Larry Johns

The story begins in Saudi Arabia and moves to Dubai, where the truth finally emerges, and the fate of the archaeologists slowly becomes apparent. But the facts serve only to lead Ryderbeit further and further away from the truth. Friend becomes enemy, and enemy becomes friend, as the story unfolds beneath the white-hot sun. But truth is always stranger than fiction, as Ryderbeit discovers to his cost.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Larry Johns
• Release date: Apr 12, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310069123

Larry Johns

Born and raised in Cornwall, Larry Johns has earned a living as a soldier, an artist, a jazz musician, a music lecturer and a writer, circumnavigating the world in these professions many times. He learned the mechanics of his original trade with the Staff Band of the Royal Engineers and at Kneller Hall School of Music. Moving directly to London, he occupied the lead alto saxophone chair with several big bands, whilst jazzing at many nightspots; most notably ; The "100 Club", Oxford Street; the "Allnighter", Soho and "The Bull's Head" at Barnes. At these and other venues he blew jazz shoulder-to-shoulder with Vic Ash, Harry Klein, Brian Dee, Joe Temperley. One of his enduring memories of those heady be-bob days is of swapping "fours" with the legendary vibraphonist Vic Feldman immediately prior to his moving to the U.S. to join the Woody Herman Orchestra. During this period he also played repiano clarinet with an embryonic London Symphonietta and several smaller classical combinations. Latterly, he was one of Charlie Katz's "session men", performing on numerous "hit" (and "not-so-hit") recordings of the day. Later, he worked directly for several recording companies: Decca, H.M.V., Major-Minor, Philips etc. holding the "Artists and Repertoire" position with most. With Mercury records, he fronted various stage bands on promotional tours across Europe and the Far East, working alongside rising stars of the recording world, Phil Coulter and Mike Leander. On the demise of viable big band work worldwide, Larry - along with many of his contemporaries - joined "Geraldo's Navy", and would cross the Atlantic many times - on both "Queens" - haunting the New York jazz scene...For many years to come, during "dry" periods, he would utilise this "jewel" of an employment facility, both for the pocket and for the heart. His seascapes are sold around the world. When not writing, painting, performing or travelling, he teaches art and woodwind privately in Cornwall. For more details visit his website at: www.holler-it.com

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THE DONGOLA SCRIPT

Larry Johns

First published in hardback by Robert Hale Books

Copyright © Larry Johns 1981.

The right of Larry Johns to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Contents:

ONE: A Command from Sturrock

TWO: Codeword DECALOGUE

THREE: The Fixer

FOUR: Hagstrom and Friend?

FIVE: Homework

SIX: A Writing of Some Import

SEVEN: A Street Incident

EIGHT: A Single Shot

NINE: The Girl’s Story

TEN: Waring blunders

ELEVEN: First Blood

TWELVE: Up the Creek

THIRTEEN: About Face

FOURTEEN: Bahadurrian’s Colours!

FIFTEEN: Final Revelations

Endpiece

Other Books:

About…

A Time to Die

ONE: A Command from Sturrock

‘You’ve got a telegram .’

Latimer tossed the yellow envelope onto the table in front of me, only narrowly missing the dish of marmalade, and continued his search for the butter that the knock on the door had interrupted. Doris was out and we were fending for ourselves.

‘You’ve probably got your wish,’ added Latimer, his head poked inside the ancient sideboard.

I grunted. I doubted it. Burgess was not the sort to accept requests for transfers. He wasn’t even the sort to give such requests any more than a cursory glance before he tossed it into the waste-paper basket. I knew this before I’d sent it in. But I sent it anyway. I’d had it up to the proverbial with Burgess’s assassination squad. Latimer was in the same frame of mind. But Latimer lacks my sense of fair play. He’ll go on rubbing people out until some bod gives him a taste of his own medicine. Him and E.L. have some sort of love-hate relationship going for them. I did, too. Once.

Not any more. I wanted out. The Prague fiasco had shot me. Mentally as well as bodily. That’s why me and Latimer were on rest-and-recuperation in the St. Mary’s safe house. That’s one of the Scilly Isles. Bloody apt, if you ask me. And isolated, too. Which was fine. Except that, for a thousand reasons—none of which I could fathom—the place didn’t have a phone. There was just this guy who delivered the occasional telegram when the big brass decided that enough was enough on the R. and R. front.

Latimer wasn’t on the Prague deal with me. He’d been up to his ears in death somewhere else. God knows where. But he was as shot as I was. Except that, as I’ve said, he wasn’t ready to throw in the towel yet. Give it time.

The telegram contained a single word: Palette. In layman’s language that means: come home, all is forgiven. In my case, though, I guess it meant: Get your arse up here. Fast!

Latimer gave up his search for the butter and he came back and sat at the table. He smeared the marmalade onto the dry toast and held his hand out for the telegram. I passed it over. He read it then let it fall to the table. Then he said: ‘I don’t think it’s connected.’

‘To what?’

‘Your transfer.’

I didn’t either. I’m good at my job, despite the fact that I’ve gone off it. But I’m not twit enough to run away with the notion that Burgess is going to foam at the mouth and give me an instant recall just because I send him a whingeing letter.

Latimer nodded down at the telegram. ‘That’s not from Burgess. That’s from the colonel.’

Just so’s you’ll know who he was referring to I’ll tell you that the colonel is Colonel George Sturrock. And Sturrock is Burgess’s boss. And that makes him my boss, once removed. The colonel was on the Prague job with me. He was no bloody help then, and I had the .feeling that he was going to be even less help now, that is as far as the transfer was concerned.

Latimer went on: ‘There’s a mainland flight from Tresco this evening.’

I nodded. ‘I hope it enjoys itself.’

Latimer grinned humourlessly. ‘You’re not going?’

The thought had crossed my mind. But only for an instant. If the recall was indeed from the colonel then there might be something else in the wind aside from a directive to skewer some poor bleeder who never did anyone any harm. That’s not the way it happens, of course. But I was looking at the world through jaundiced eyes, remember. Actually I’ve only ever killed baddies. Real baddies, that is. The sort of baddy who’ll eat up a good guy for breakfast and not even burp. I’m not defending my job, you understand, I’m only hinting at the level of it. And my decision to take the mail boat to Penzance as opposed to the plane was nothing more than a momentary fit of pique.

Latimer walked down to the dock with me. There were no goodbyes. Just a nod or two. The mail boat chugged out of the break-water at twelve-thirty precisely, no more than an hour late off the mark. When we finally tied up in Penzance it was six o’clock next morning, and a watery sun was struggling to rise to the occasion. I made my way to the station and got the nine o’clock train up to Newquay. Two hours later I was on the flight to Heathrow.

London bores me rigid. I have a flat there but I don’t get to use it very often, which bothers me not at all. It’s only a pokey little two-roomed thing in a back street off the Brompton Road. I took a taxi there from the airport and showered, shaved, and shoved on a change of clothes. I also had half a glass of breakfast. I left a note for the cleaning lady just to say that I’d been, then I took another cab over to St. James’s Park.

E.L., as such, has no official designation. We work, in a loose sort of way, out of a department that shows upon the books as: I.F.2/42b. The colonel, for reasons of his own, bundles the whole thing together under the title of Room 1044 - ten-forty-four. It’s my guess that he calls it that because that’s where it all started. Room 1044 in the War Office, back in World War Two. The colonel is that old. So is Burgess. I am not. The building overlooks the passport office in Petty France. The sign over the door reads: CONSULATE SECTION - IMMIGRATION. Burgess was not at home. His secretary, an evil-looking party who never had a sense of humour in any case, directed me on up to Sturrock’s office on the third floor. I sat in Sturrock’s outer office for a few minutes, until his secretary - same description - saw fit to use her intercom to tell him I was there.

Sturrock looked about the same as the last time I’d seen him. That had been on the flight back from Prague. Except that now he was sober. Perhaps his hair was a shade or two greyer, but that was it.

‘On no account are we to be disturbed for the next hour,’ he said into his intercom. Then he turned to me. ‘Well, young Ryderbeit. Are we well rested?’

That’s something I haven’t told you, isn’t it? My name. It’s as Sturrock pronounced it. RyderBATE. Jackson Ryderbeit. Jackie to my friends, though I have been called worse.

I grunted deferentially at Sturrock’s kind enquiry after the state of my health. My grunts are fairly non-committal things and you’ve got to get up early in the morning to pin them down. But the colonel seemed to get it right. He nodded, smiling. Then he came right out with it.

‘I understand that you want a transfer.‘

For reasons that I’ve already explained that was the last thing I’d been expecting Sturrock to say. Not to put too fine a point on it I was perplexed. And I obviously looked it. Sturrock dipped a hand into his pocket and took out his silver cigarette case and held it out to me. I took one with a brief nod, still trying to get some kind of a reaction together. When we were both alight and puffing Sturrock waved the case vaguely in the air.

‘Nonsense!’ he said. ‘You were tired. That’s all. I’m right, am I not?’

It took another few moments, but I finally got it together. I said: ‘I’m past all that hero stuff, Colonel. Too long in the tooth.’

Sturrock was still grinning. ‘You do yourself an in justice, Ryderbeit. I know. I was with you, remember?’

Typical. Bloody typical! The Prague thing is the only job that, to my knowledge, he’s ever been on. Actually in the field, I mean. And he only opted into that one because he got a sudden attack of the shiny-pants from too much sitting down. I’ve been out in the cold for the best part of six years. And that is one helluva long time for an E.L. field man.

I shrugged. ‘It’s cumulative, Colonel.’

The grin slackened slightly. ‘Your staying power is not in question. Never has been. And as long as I’m sitting behind this desk it never will be.’

He couldn’t have underlined his rejection of my request any firmer if he’d jabbed me in the eye with a toasting fork. He rose to his feet.

‘However, that is not why you are here.‘ He walked over to the window and gazed out of it for a spell. At length, and without turning from the window, he said:

‘How closely have you been following events in the Middle East?’

I had to be truthful. Besides which I could feel a petulant mood coming on. ‘I haven’t been following them at all, Colonel.’

Sturrock nodded to himself as if he had been expecting no other answer, then he turned.

‘All to the good. The media have got hold of the wrong end of the stick, in any case.’

Marvellous, isn’t it? Both Sturrock and Burgess are blessed with the facility for turning a negative, stone walling statement into something positive. Only when it suits them, of course. And I knew that I would have to watch my words from then on. Sturrock might have dismissed my transfer request as unimportant, but I sure as hell hadn’t.

At this stage I may as well point out that the only reason my request had been for a transfer as opposed to a complete heave-ho was that no one has ever resigned from E.L. and lived to tell the tale. E.L. is for life, or until the brass decide that you would be better suited elsewhere. I’d requested a transfer in the hope that someone, somewhere, might have been harbouring suited-elsewhere thoughts and not realized it. A vain hope, to be sure, but one that I thought had to be pursued.

Sturrock returned to the desk, unlocked a drawer and took out a sheet of paper. The last thing I wanted was to appear interested, so I fiddled idly with a handy paperclip. The paper floated across the desk and landed centimetres from the clip. I couldn’t help but glance at it.

What caught my immediate attention was the post-box red DESTROY stamp. My experience in the business has taught me that pieces of paper with that stamped on them should only be seen by two people: the person who penned it, and the man who was supposed to receive the information. The latter should then do just what the stamp dictates. He should destroy it. He sure as hell should not show it to an itinerant field man whose one desire is to show the world just what the word itinerant really means. I flipped the paper over onto its face.

‘Colonel,’ I said, ‘About my transfer…I wouldn’t say no to a desk job. I can type fairly quick and - ‘

‘No transfer, Ryderbeit!’ snapped Sturrock. Then, after a brief pause: ‘At least, not yet awhile.’

‘You mean,‘ I said, ‘that there is a possibility?’

‘Anything is possible in this business, Ryderbeit. You should know that by now. And after the way you handled Prague I would be prepared to discuss your future.’

His slight emphasis on the word would escaped me at the moment.

Then I remembered what he’d said about my staying power. ‘But you said…’

He cut in, ‘I said that your stamina is not, and will not be, questioned. There is a difference. And if you handle this next assignment as efficiently as you handled Prague I’d say that your chances at getting what you want will be doubled.’

I said: ‘I’ll keep you to that, Colonel.’

Sturrock shrugged hugely. ‘This is a heartless business, Ryderbeit, as you well know. But there is no good reason why we should resort to the methods of our adversaries. I know your record. And I know how long you have been doing your job. The effect of which, as you rightly pointed out, cannot help but be a cumulative drain on a man’s faculties. Yes, Ryderbeit, at the completion of this assignment we will talk most seriously about that transfer. Now I want you to read, and inwardly digest, the report in front of you.’

I fell like Nelson. A lamb to the slaughter. I know that now, but I certainly did not know it then. The only thought in my mind as I lifted that paper was one centred around the looming possibility that just over the horizon my demob papers were waiting for me. Free and clear, hair intact. Maybe not free of the service, but definitely free of the E.L. killing ground. It was something worth waiting a while longer for.

TWO: Codeword DECALOGUE

It turned out that the paper was actually a photostat copy of an original report. Only the D stamp was fresh. And the text had been reclassified down to my level by the simple expedient of someone having blanked out several of the key words on the original before it had gone through the machine. This had a soothing effect on my system, because bitter experience has taught me that the degree of job-danger has always kept pace with the level of the information handed me.

The report read:

"Despite the employment of your