Eastern Approaches by Fitzroy MacLean Read Free Book Online Page A

on the Persian frontier. The expedition, who had travelled by ship from Baku, had found much to interest them in southern Azerbaijan. The climate was subtropical and the flora exotic and luxuriant, while the fauna, it appeared, actually included tigers. The inhabitants, the writer added, were a little backward, but coming on nicely.
    Lenkoran might be (and probably was) unhygienic; it might even be dangerous; but no one could tell me that it was not full of interest or that it could not be reached by sea from Baku. Triumphantly waving my copy of the
Bakinski Rabochi
or
Baku Worker
, I burst once more into the Intourist Office. This might not be Central Asia, but it was on the way there and sounded as if it was well worth having a look at.
    But the little Armenian knew where his duty lay. No, he said, there were no boats. There had been boats, perhaps, but at present there were none and in any case, when there were boats, they were always full. Nor could you go to Lenkoran by land; there was no railway and no road, nothing but a great howling wilderness. Besides, when you got there it was unhealthy and unsafe, and of no interest whatever.
    ‘But what,’ I said, ‘about the tigers?’
    ‘Tigers, perhaps,’ he replied pityingly, ‘but no culture.’
    I was clearly barking up the wrong tree. I left the office and strolled aimlessly down to the harbour. There, a mixed crowd of Tartars and Russians were loading ships or standing about and talking. Others queued up for what seemed to be steamer tickets. I attached myself to the nearest queue, which was mainly composed of Tartars, wild, swarthy, unkempt-looking fellows in shaggy fur hats and tight-fitting skull-caps, who jabbered to each other gutturally in their own language.
    For an hour or two nothing happened. Then the window of theticket office snapped open and we started to move slowly forward. Eventually I reached the front. ‘Where to?’ said the pudding-faced woman behind the grating. ‘Lenkoran,’ I said wondering what her reaction would be. ‘Three roubles,’ she said giving me a ticket. ‘What time does the boat sail?’ I asked, hoping she would not notice my foreign accent. ‘In half an hour,’ she said.
    There was no time to be lost. Making my way back to the hotel, I extracted my passport from a reluctant management by means of a subterfuge, shouldered my kitbag and, running back to the docks, pushed my way through the crowd and on board the S.S.
Centrosoyus
, a bare minute before the gangway was taken up.

Chapter IV
Trial Trip
    I N spite of her modern-sounding name the
Centrosoyus
was a survival of the old regime, having been built on the Volga in the ‘eighties. Every inch of the very limited deck-space was taken up by closely packed Tartar families who with their bedding and their chickens were already settling down for the night. A dense cloud of flies accompanied us as we steamed slowly out of Baku harbour. After a copious but singularly unappetizing meal the non-Tartar passengers and the crew settled down for the night on the benches of the saloon. Preferring the deck, I managed, after much stumbling about in the dark, to find a vacant corner between two Tartars, where, using my kitbag as a pillow, I disposed myself to sleep.
    We reached our destination an hour or two after sunrise. The scene, as we neared the shore, contrasted sharply with the barren red hills round Baku and the even more barren steppe to the south of it. Orchards and tea plantations grew almost down to the water’s edge. Behind them, in the distance, rose a line of blue mountains. A few red-tiled roofs jutted out from among the vivid green of the trees. There were no signs of anything that could be called a town.
    High-prowed Tartar boats put out to meet the ship, which lay at some distance from the shore. Soon, after some preliminary bargaining, they were ferrying backwards and forwards, loaded to the gunwale with shouting, struggling humanity. To my dismay I found, that, in