Free The Levanter by Eric Ambler Page A

those postgraduate years in the United States, but he performed them all with impressive ease. Teresa believes that he has a natural talent for self-advertisement of which he is only dimly aware, and that he works almost entirely by instinct. She may be right.
    It was quite fascinating to watch him in action. On the day we took possession of the disused soap factory, a decrepit and rat-infested structure then, Dr. Hawa suddenly appeared flourishing a large rolled-up blueprint - of what I never discovered - and, attended by photographers and journalists, proceeded to tour the premises. The photographs, which later appeared in the newspapers, of Dr. Hawa pointing dramatically at the blueprint, and the accompanying stories extolling the dynamic yetmodest personality of the Director of Industrial Development were most effective. He could make an occasion out of the most trivial happening. The arrival of a new piece of machinery, the rigging of a power line, the pouring of concrete for a workshop floor - if there was anything at all going on that could be photographed, Dr. Hawa was there; and, when the photographs appeared, not only was he always in the foreground, but also quite obviously in direct charge of the operations. He had a way of pointing at something whenever he asked a question, and of keeping his head well back as he did so, that made it look all the time as if he were issuing orders. And, of course, before long ours were not the only such fish he had to fry. All the extravagant publicity given to our pilot projects had led several of the former temporizers to conclude, mistakenly, that I had been coining money while they had slept, and to leap hastily onto the cooperative bandwagon. Some of these ventures, notably a glass works, a galvanized-wire mill, and a bottling plant producing an odd-tasting local imitation of Pepsi-Cola, were successful, and, of course, Dr. Hawa got the credit.
    In 1968, when all industry in Syria was nationalized, occasions for self-advertisement became even easier for him to contrive. His official position as development expert enabled him to poke his nose into practically anything, and be photographed doing so. The only opposition to his methods came from the Russians, who had their own ideas about the way the publicity for Soviet aid projects should be handled. Deference, not direction, was what they expected from Dr. Hawa; they flourished their own blueprints. He conceded these defeats gracefully; he was as adaptable as he was ingenious. On the radio, and, later, on television he was astonishingly effective; very simple and very direct, an apolitical public servant, dedicated to the new, but respectful of the old, whose only thought was for the betterment of the people.
    Nobody, then, was surprised when, with the announcement that the Department of Industrial Development was to be upgraded and to become a Ministry, came the news that the newly created ministerial portfolio had been offered to and accepted by Dr. Hawa. That he succeeded in retaining it for so long, even through the turmoils and upheavals of the late sixties, was due to a combination of circumstances.
    As an appendage of the more potent ministries of Finance and Commerce and with little political or financial muscle of its own, Dr. Hawa’s Ministry could never provide the kind of operational base camp sought after by senior dissidents and would be coup-makers. It controlled no deployable forces, armed or unarmed, and was outside the inner power sector of government. Its function had been defined by Hawa himself as essentially catalytic - a phrase of which he became increasingly fond as time went by - and the image which he projected of himself was that of the super-efficient specialist quietly doing his own job as only he knew how, and with eyesfor nobody else’s.
    Never once did he attempt to display himself as a potential leader. He must have been tempted at times. Men with his vanity, ambition, and peculiar abilities