Rules of the Game

 

 

Prologue

 

1993 Yemen 

 

The old Bush portable radio crackled tinnily into life; the tight upper-class vowels of the male BBC World reporter waking her. 

 

“Armies of the former north and south, which have failed to integrate, gather on the former frontier as relations between southern and northern leaders deteriorate.” 

 

She shifted and moved closer to Hugh, kicking off the white cotton sheet, feeling her sticky sweat dry tacky and salty in the heat. He stirred, and reached out for her hand, placing it on his hardness.  As she touched him he pushed against her, a gentle and insistent rhythm against her skin.  She sighed, and pushed back, a gentle dance learned long ago.  Urgent breathing and he was astride her, pushing and determined, until she climaxed, arching her body towards him.

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The reputed home of the fabled Queen of Sheba, the country of Yemen is at the main crossroads of Africa, the Middle East and Asia.  Important from early times, as a trading post, because of its fortuitous placing on the globe as a convenient place for ships to put in on the ancient spice routes. 

 

The Romans called this fertile and wealthy country Arabia Felix. To the North of this happy country was the fairly barren Arabia Deserta, sandy dunes and rocky outcrops, underneath which lay undiscovered its brown gold as sweet and sticky oil. The South was rich with trading and access to the sea and foreign gold and treasure.  Together with its opposite neighbour Somalia it was a favourite for pirates and still is.  

 

A romantic and foreign place, it still maintains much of its tribal character and old ways. Foreigners are not trusted, and tribes remain loyal to their leaders who settle local disputes swiftly at the end of a knife or gun. Yemen was once part of the wide Ottoman Empire and the Turkish influence is there still.  But others have been and gone along the way, including the British, who found it difficult to rule a motley crew of tribesmen who failed to understand the British way of doing things, the ‘proper’ way, tried and tested, of dealing with the locals.

 

To say the British were unloved in Yemen would be an understatement.  In the 1960’s the army’s behaviour had been little short of the actions of terrorists. Women and children had been slaughtered randomly. Randomly is perhaps too strong and emotional a word, but negligently will do instead. It was not one of the Empire’s finest hours. A conquering army can only rule with the co-operation of the local indigent population, and that takes skill and diplomacy, with a little force on top.  A little fear of reprisals perhaps.  And the need for a short memory. A War may be short but the memory of it will be long.

 

It might be said that the British in Yemen failed on all accounts, the locals are no friends of the British and local memories are long.  First-hand accounts are disturbing to read. Reginald Lingham recounts how the tribesmen were controlled in One Soldier's Wars.

“If a village or a Sultan caused any trouble, leaflets were dropped, from aircraft warning them they would be bombed and at what time, if they didn't hand in hostages to prove their good behaviour in the future.  If this instruction was not complied with they were bombed.  They were ordered to move everybody plus their livestock out of the village, and at the precise time the village would be bombed into oblivion.  This was found to be an excellent, fast, cheap, and cost effective way of controlling a large number of people spread out over a large almost inaccessible area of land.”

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This is all very well and sporting; the problem was the villagers couldn’t read, neither English, nor Arabic.  Still, that was some time ago, and Governments hope that things get forgotten. 

Kate was nervous and couldn’t think why.  She had gone over the reports again and again.  There was something missing, but what? She had to find it.  Good intelligence was negligible. 

She gulped down water from the cooler, letting it slide down her sticky body and stepped under the shower, shivering slightly with the chill, soaping herself luxuriously; Hugh watching her as he shaved. The smell of roses was in the air.

 

‘I’m going down South today to check out your report of trouble’, he said, twisting his mouth around as he shaved and spoke at the same time.

‘Be careful’, she responded.  ‘There’s a lot of trouble and I don’t want you in it.’ 

 

‘Ah, you know me, try to avoid it if I can’, he winked at her.

‘I’m serious’, she warned. ‘Things are a bit dicey right now’.

The intelligence transcripts were muddled, could they be faking them?  What was really going on out there, on the Saudi border, almost impossible to guess.  She needed a Lawrence of Arabia, and even he switched sides.  Still, working out here was useful if she ever needed to be a translator if all else failed..  She was sure that something big was about to happen, but where, she had no clue.  She would go through the cables again and see what she could find.

 

 ‘Kate, dear Kate, all brains and no common sense.  I will be careful.  I love you.  Don’t worry.’

 

‘Hugh’,

‘Ssh, I promise I will just take a look at it, nothing else, and report back Ma’am.  Under orders, Ma’am’. 

He bowed, in a friendly mocking way and saluted her, his superior officer.

Hugh wondered how much Kate really knew about the regular British soldiers’ misgivings about the current containment policy. 

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In the 1960’s, Captain R.A.B. Hamilton of No. 8 Squadron said:

“The Air Staff would work in the closest contact with the political officer. It was my task, equipped with a portable wireless set, to camp as close to the scene of operations as I considered possible, so as to facilitate the surrender of the tribe and to reduce the extent of the operations to a minimum, Two, and one-day warnings were dropped on the tribe, followed by an hour's warning before the first attack, so that women and children could be taken to a place of safety and every effort was made to inflict losses to property rather than lives.

The concept of "proscription" bombing meant that once the leaflets had been dropped, all humans and livestock were legitimate targets within the proscribed area, but care was taken to exclude women and children”.

Inevitably there was collateral damage. 1000 tonne bombs will do that, and smash anything and everything in their way. Women, children, Imams.  Sometimes they notice faces, faces of soldiers.  British soldiers.  Shepherds watching; and not just sheep.  The locals were learning, names and people, and Honor remained important above all. It was important to remember.

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Kate stood on her toes to kiss Hugh goodbye.  She waved him out of the compound and turned, and as she turned she heard the click. She recognized it at once, and froze. He tried the engine again, but she knew it would not start, ever again.  A good place to fix explosives is in the engine, attached to the starter motor. If there are explosives it won’t start, it will just click, one second, two. 

 

Then she was running towards the car as fast as she could but the force of the explosion threw her back.  It saved her life.  ‘No, Nooo!’ someone somewhere was screaming.