Jimgrim and Allah's Peace (Spy Thriller). Talbot Mundy

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       Talbot Mundy

      Jimgrim and Allah's Peace

      (Spy Thriller)

      Published by

      Books

      - Advanced Digital Solutions & High-Quality eBook Formatting -

       [email protected]

      2018 OK Publishing

      ISBN 978-80-272-4855-1

      Table of Contents

       CHAPTER ONE. “LOOK FOR A MAN NAMED GRIM.”

       CHAPTER TWO. “NO OBJECTION. ONLY A STIPULATION.”

       CHAPTER THREE. “DO WHATEVER THE LEADER OF THE ESCORT TELLS YOU.”

       CHAPTER FOUR. “I AM WILLING TO USE ALL MEANS—ALL METHODS.”

       CHAPTER FIVE. “D’YOU MIND IF I USE YOU?”

       CHAPTER SIX. “THAT MAN WILL REPAY STUDY.”

       CHAPTER SEVEN. “WHO GIVES ORDERS TO ME?”

       CHAPTER EIGHT. “HE WILL SAY NEXT THAT IT WAS HE WHO SET THE STARS IN THE SKY OVER EL-KERAK, AND MAKES THE MOON RISE!”

       CHAPTER NINE. “FEET DOWNWARDS, TOO AFRAID TO YELL!”—

       CHAPTER TEN. “MONEY DOESN’T WEIGH MUCH!”

       CHAPTER ELEVEN. “AND THE REST OF THE ACTS OF AHAZIAH—”

       CHAPTER TWELVE. “YOU KNOW YOU’LL GET SCUPPERED IF YOU’RE FOUND OUT!”

       CHAPTER THIRTEEN. “YOU MAY NOW BE UNSAFE AND AN OUTLAW AND ENJOY YOURSELF!”

       CHAPTER FOURTEEN. “WINDY BELLIES WITHOUT HEARTS IN THEM.”

       CHAPTER FIFTEEN. “I’LL HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT!”

       CHAPTER SIXTEEN. “THE ENEMY IS NEARLY ALWAYS USEFUL IF YOU LEAVE HIM FREE TO MAKE MISTAKES.”

       CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. “POOR OLD SCHARNHOFF’S IN THE SOUP.”

       CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. “BUT WE’RE READY FOR THEM.”

       CHAPTER NINETEEN. “DEAD OR ALIVE, SAHIB.”

       CHAPTER TWENTY. “ALL MEN ARE EQUAL IN THE DARK.”

       FOOTNOTES

      To Jimgrim:

      whose real name, rank and military distinctions,

      I promissed never to make public

      CHAPTER ONE.

       “LOOK FOR A MAN NAMED GRIM.”

       Table of Contents

      There is a beautiful belief that journalists may do exactly as they please, and whenever they please. Pleasure with violet eyes was in Chicago. My passport describes me as a journalist. My employer said: “Go to Jerusalem.” I went, that was in 1920.

      I had been there a couple of times before the World War, when the Turks were in full control. So I knew about the bedbugs and the stench of the citadel moat; the pre-war price of camels; enough Arabic to misunderstand it when spoken fluently, and enough of the Old Testament and the Koran to guess at Arabian motives, which are important, whereas words are usually such stuff as lies are made of.

      El Kudz, as Arabs call Jerusalem, is, from a certain distance, as they also call it, shellabi kabir. Extremely beautiful. Beautiful upon a mountain. El Kudz means The City, and in a certain sense it is that, to unnumbered millions of people. Ludicrous, uproarious, dignified, pious, sinful, naively confidential, secretive, altruistic, realistic. Hoary-ancient and ultra-modern. Very, very proud of its name Jerusalem, which means City of Peace. Full to the brim with the malice of certainly fifty religions, fifty races, and five hundred thousand curious political chicaneries disguised as plans to save our souls from hell and fill some fellow’s purse. The jails are full.

      “Look for a man named Grim,” said my employer. “James Schuyler Grim, American, aged thirty-four or so. I’ve heard he knows the ropes.”

      The ropes, when I was in Jerusalem before the war, were principally used for hanging people at the Jaffa Gate, after they had been well beaten on the soles of their feet to compel them to tell where their money was hidden. The Turks entirely understood the arts of suppression and extortion, which they defined as government. The British, on the other hand, subject their normal human impulse to be greedy, and their educated craving to be gentlemanly white man’s burden-bearers, to a process of compromise. Perhaps that isn’t government. But it works. They even carry compromise to the point of not hanging even their critics if they can possibly avoid doing it. They had not yet, but they were about to receive a brand-new mandate from a brand-new League of Nations, awkwardly qualified by Mr. Balfour’s post-Armistice promise to the Zionists to give the country to the Jews, and by a war-time promise, in which the French had joined, to create an Arab kingdom for the Arabs.

      So there was lots of compromising being done, and hell to pay, with no one paying, except, of course, the guests in the hotels, at New York prices. The Zionist Jews were arriving in droves. The Arabs, who owned most of the land, were threatening to cut all the Jews’ throats as soon as they could first get all their money. Feisal, a descendant of the Prophet, who had fought gloriously against the Turks, was romantically getting ready in Damascus to be crowned King of Syria. The French, who pride themselves on being realistic, were getting ready to go after Feisal with bayonets and poison-gas, as they eventually did.

      In Jerusalem the Bolsheviks, astonishingly credulous of “secret” news from Moscow, and skeptical of every one’s opinion but their own, were bolsheviking Marxian Utopia beneath a screen of such arrogant innocence that even the streetcorner police constables suspected them. And Mustapha Kemal, in Anatolia, was rumoured to be preparing a holy war. It was known as a Ghazi in those days. He had not yet scrapped religion. He was contemplating, so said rumour, a genuine old-fashioned moslem jihad, with modern trimmings.

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