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First published in Great Britain by 22 Books/Bloomsbury Publishing plc 1994
Copyright © Bloomsbury Publishing plc 1994
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2016
Cover Photographs © www.piciubrothers.altervista.org (main image); Shutterstock.com (textures)
Shaun Clarke asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authorâs imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008155063
Ebook Edition © November 2015 ISBN: 9780008155070
Version: 2015-10-29
The port of Aden is located on a peninsula enclosing the eastern side of Bandar at-Tawahi, Adenâs harbour. It is bounded to the west and north-west by Yemen, to the north by the great desert known as the Rubâ al-Khali, the Empty Quarter, to the east by Oman, and to the south by the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. Though a centre of trade since the days of antiquity, and mentioned in the Bible, the city in 1964 looked less than appealing.
Standing beside his wife, Miriam, on the deck of the P & O liner Himalaya, Norman Blakely, emigrating to Australia from Winchester, where he had taught ancient history at the renowned public school, realized he had known all these facts since his own school days. He certainly recognized the features he had often read about, yet he felt a certain disappointment at what he was seeing, not least the surprising modernity of the place.
Even from this distance, beyond the many rowing boats and motor launches dotted about the mud-coloured waters of the harbour, Aden was no more than an untidy sprawl of white-painted stone tower buildings and warehouses surrounded by an ugly clutter of jibs and cranes, immense oil tanks and huge lights raised high on steel gantries â all hemmed in on two sides by the promontories of Jebel Shamsan (Aden) and Jebel Ihsan (Little Aden). Both of these short necks of bleached volcanic rock thrust out from, and were dominated by, an equally unattractive maritime mountain range that varied from 1000 to 2000 feet and was constantly shadowed by depressing grey clouds.
Rising up the lower slopes of the mountains behind the town, about a mile beyond it, was a roughly triangular maze of low, white-painted buildings, which Norman assumed was the old commercial centre known as the Crater. What he did not know â even though he and the other passengers had received a leaflet gently warning them of the âoccasionalâ dangers of Aden â is that it was the home of the most dangerous anti-British terrorists in that troublesome country.
âIf the townâs as depressing as it looks from here,â Norman said to Miriam, âweâll take a taxi up to the Crater. Itâs almost certainly less commercialized than Aden proper â and hopefully more like the real thing.â
âThat leaflet said not to wander too far from the port area,â Miriam reminded him.
âThe authorities always exaggerate these situations for their own reasons,â Norman said with conviction. âIn this instance, they doubtless want us to remain in the port area because thatâs where all the duty-free goods are sold. They just want to make money. Such goods arenât sold up in the Crater, so thatâs where weâll go.â
Trade in a particular kind of duty-free goods was already taking place in the water below them, where the âbum boatsâ were packed tightly together by the hull of their ship and stacked high with a colourful collection of souvenirs and other cheap merchandise piled high in wooden crates and cardboard boxes. On offer were âhand-tooledâ â in fact, mass-produced â leather purses and wallets; cartons of Senior Service, Players, Woodbine and Camel cigarettes; Zenith 8Ã30 binoculars, sold in sealed boxes, many of which were fake and did not work; 35mm SLR cameras; transistor radios; counterfeit Rolex wristwatches; and even cartons of Colgate toothpaste. The goods were being sold by shrieking, gesticulating Arabs dressed in a colourful variety of garments, from English shirts and trousers to sarongs and turbans, though all wore thongs about their legs.