244 | John W. Warner IV Come night, they stopped. Bernie pulled out his compact sextant to get an exact position. He penned notes in his Abercrombie and Fitch leather notebook. Know where we are? asked Bea. Scribbling ensued. Mmm, pretty close. Did you notice something in Yasuj today by binocular? She adjusted her small lantern. Just the mosque. Incredibly fetching for a small town. Ornate in the extreme. Expensive. Youve read a lot about T.E. Lawrence. He knew the Arab people and was accepted as one of them. She longed for a potent French cigarette. Yes, he was a spy like us in 1914, the Palestine Exploration Fund, an archeologist too. Hed been to Petra in Trans-Jordan, knew some of the deep secrets of the ancient world, and was amazed at the many rock cut caves and ruins he found. I think he knew the boffins were lying to us about history. Walked all over Syria as a young man, and was obsessed with the Crusades and Knights Templar. A free-thinking romantic. Like you and me? She smiled. Also the patron saint of Hermetic and Arab wisdom in my sticky-page book. He had an innate sense of his destiny as a desert fighter and hero against the Johnnyturks; he manifested it so, and was known as the man with the gold, since he and his Arabs stole so much from them. Must have been a desert chap in a former life, or had many lifetimes out here. Cut the spine of the Turks rail lines, guerilla tactics with the Bedouins, quite handy with Gelignite and Rolls-Royce armored carsoh, he loved those alright. All our fighting tactics in the Middle East are credited to him. His unique talent was finding the right people with special skills that could get an impossible job done. It was his turn to smile. Similar to yours truly? She bumped hips. Hardly. But its a sad legacy that we Brits let the Arabs down at the end of the war. No Arab independent nation to be had, only English and Frenchy colonies, an aged policy that fed well of British bigotry. Hope it wont happen again, but I fear it may. Lawrence was then on seen as an embarrassment, a dangerous thinker. Sound familiar? Secret politics destroyed him, the brass hats victorious as ever. Poppy told me all that, his stint in Egypt was as indecorously horrid as mine, worse even; Poppy and