by Adam Hall
‘Oui, l’Auberge Yasmina.’
‘Ca ne repond pas.’
‘Insistez un peu.’
‘Mais it ne sonne meme pas, m’sieur.’
‘Pourquoi par?’
‘Eh b’en, it est en derangement. Je vais -‘
‘Vous etes certaine?’
‘Absolument. Je vais le signaler. Je regrette, m’sieur.’
I hung up.
The cabin was stifling.
There was still the odd flash, the after-image of his headlights: the retinae kept registering the glare. My hands weren’t perfectly steady yet: when you do something like that the organism thinks more about the consequences after you’ve done it than before, because the tension has gone and there’s time for nightmares.
Disregard.
Outside the cabin the terrace of the Oasis Bar was crowded, mostly with oil-men in transit to and from Petrocombine’s South 4 camp. Light from amber lanterns threw shadows from the trellis screens and the tendrils of tropical creepers; a Malouf Tunisien from overhead speakers was half-drowned by the voices of the drillers; three young prostitutes were going the rounds, formally shaking hands.
Check. Double-check. Negative.
Because I didn’t like the thing about the telephone not working at the Auberge Yasmina: she’d said it didn’t even ring. It’s not terribly comfortable to lose communication with your base two hours before a jump-off. It doesn’t steady the hands. It was essential that Loman should know about the 404 in case we needed local smoke out: there’d be a police enquiry because the accident had been fatal and someone might have seen a Mercedes 220 on the South 4 highway about the time there’d been a glow in the ravine. We don’t like police enquiries because it means a lot of questions and it can hold things up.
Bloody thing didn’t even ring and I didn’t have any means of knowing if it were just a routine breakdown, the heat buckling a conduit, a rat nibbling the cables, or if someone had cut the lines before they’d gone in for Loman and the girl with a sub-machine-gun. No means of knowing, at this moment, whether the mission was still viable or whether in the arabesque room beneath the gilded dome of the Auberge Yasmina it had been blown to hell.
The whole town had become a red sector: the whole of Kaifra, not just the Yasmina and the Royal Sahara and the Oasis Bar. Because they wouldn’t just throw some flowers over that burnt-out wreck in the ravine: they were professionals and they had my dossier and they’d know I wouldn’t neutralize a tag unless I were running close to some kind of deadline.
I left the cabin and went through the terrace and out to the Mercedes and checked and got negative and noted the trip and took the road north-east to Garaa Tebout and drove for seven kilometres until I came to the pile of stones.
He broke a pack of Gauloises and lit up. ‘Excuse me, do you -‘
‘No.’
‘I am trying to give it up, you know?’
‘You won’t do it that way.’
He laughed and squinted at me through the smoke, a small wiry close-knit man with a hooked nose and stubble and weathered skin, his eyes permanently narrowed against glare even here in the starlight.
A Renault stood on the far side of the redjem and he led me across to it and turned on the interior lamps, getting a torch from the glove-pocket. A map was already spread on the rear seat, the same Sheet NH-32 of the Hassi Messaoud area that Loman had briefed me with.
‘We shall take off an hour late. There was a, delay because of the work - they have to make hinges on the front edge of the cockpit hood, you know? And they have to make the trappe underneath so I can drop the supplies.’
‘We takeoff at 24.00 hours?’
‘C’est Va.’ He clicked the torch on. ‘You know the Sahara?’
‘I know the desert.’
‘Okay, c’est la meme chose. Alors - these red marks are the drilling camps in our area: Petrocombine South 4, South 5 and South 6, the Anglo-Beige Roches Brunes A, B and Roches Vertes I and II. The circle here is around the platinum-prospecting complex set up by the Algerians, okay? These we shall use for our bearings.’ He looked up at me. ‘Of course nothing is certain, you know? It will depend on the winds. If they are right, I can drop you from the plane, but if they are wrong we must come back and I take you out by the airplane - you were told of this?’
‘Yes.’
But not precisely. On the second run through the briefing at the Yasmina the subject had only been touched on: Loman knew there were quite enough doubts in my mind without adding to them. He’d just said that Chirac was “confident.”
‘Maybe I can do it, comprenez? But only maybe. The winds here are very strange, with freak upcurrents from this range here and dead pockets to the south-east; also the air is cooling very quick after sundown, which is bad. The desert is different from other places, mon ami. You know how I learned about the air over this region? From watching the vultures - they are planeurs, the vultures, and they smell out the winds. I have watched them. Now I do like them.’
Ash fell and he blew it off the map.
‘What are the chances, Chirac?’
‘Hein?’ He flattened his hand, rocking it. ‘I cannot say easily. Maybe it is better than fifty-fifty, about that. We will know when we slip the cable and start smelling for the winds, like those birds.’
He moved the torch again. ‘These blue marks show the three beacons of the Philips radio relay network that crosses the area where we will go. They carry red warning lamps so we use them too, for our bearings. The drilling-rigs also have lamps at night - there are more airstrips than oases in this region, because everyone looks for the black gold, you see? For the oil. So we have enough landmarks, I think. After we will slip the cable it is different, a little, because then we are alone and we have to make a straight line south-west of the radio tower here. There is nothing else we shall see after this tower.’ He shrugged with his hands. ‘But maybe it is okay, we will find the winds that we will need.’
I looked at the pattern he’d traced with his torch.
‘You mean you’re making the final run-in from this tower by dead reckoning?’
‘It is the only way, you see. There are not any more landmarks. But I know the terrain quite well - I fly the geologists all the time and we make aerial survey.’
‘Are you familiar with the actual target?’
‘Hein? Sure I am. It’s this outcrop here at 8°3’ by 30°4’, n’est ce pas?’
Note: Loman hadn’t told him about the aeroplane.
‘Yes’
‘I do not know the actual rocks, of course - they’re very small, and we won’t see them anyway in the darkness. But our target is ninety-seven kilometres south-west of the Philips tower, so we have a fix.’
‘What’s your airspeed going to be?’
‘Maybe a hundred, but no more than that, because I must keep the angle of glide at two degrees, or we will not make the distance.’
Fifty-eight minutes for the whole trip, tower to target.
‘Will you want me to compute your mean airspeed?’
He laughed and dropped ash on the map again. ‘How did you know? I will lend you my Sony.’
He chain-lit another Gauloise, his eagle’s face squeezed into a frown over the glow.
‘You normally use a pack a minute, Chirac?’
He looked up at me quickly and started to laugh again and then let it go because I obviously knew the score and he didn’t think it was worth trying to make it sound funny.
‘You know how much I am getting for this trip, mon ami?’ He stamped the butt into the sand. ‘A hundred thousand francs in cash, if I can drop you from the planeur successfully. And insurance in the amount of five hundred thousand - that’s half a million new francs, okay? If I don’t get back, my family will be comfortable for quite a few years.’ He looked away, thinking for a couple of seconds about what he was saying. He was the kind of man who would keep a photograph of his wife and children on him wherever he went, the gloss of the surface dulling and
the corners curling until its very shabbiness told not of neglect but of constancy. ‘Anyway I try to get back, hein? I am not a fool.’
‘How far,’ I said, ‘will you push it?’
He raised the palms of his hands. ‘Listen to me, please. It is nice money, okay, but you know what they say - you can’t take it with you. So I will not push it too far, you un’erstand? When I tell you what they pay me, it is just telling you how much is the risk, when they will pay me so high for a few hours’ work.’ He blew out smoke. ‘In a way it is easier for you, my friend, if I can drop you right on the target - because then they will know where you are, and where to find you. But when I turn back for Kaifra, the nearest oasis, I might lose the wind, you see, and I can come down anywhere on the sand, anywhere at all, maybe halfway, that’s eighty kilometres from you and from Kaifra - from anywhere, and you know what that means? It means the same as if I have come down in the sea, eighty kilometres from the nearest shore, and try to swim there, you un’erstand?’
Carefully I said: ‘But you’ll be carrying flares.’
‘No.’ He squinted at me through the smoke. ‘No, mon ami, I will not be carrying flares. That is in the contract too, as well as the half-million-franc insurance. If I go down on the sand, I will make no signals to bring people near to your target. I must not do that - I must try to walk out by myself. And like I say, they will be comfortable for a few years.’
A point of light showed in the distance and I watched it.
‘And I will keep to my contract,’ he said, apparently wanting me to know what kind of a man he was. ‘Listen to me, after the Algerian affair I was a mercenary for certain people who I will not mention, some private armies, you know? And I fought like hell, I earned what they pay me. Also I have been forced down in the desert sometimes when there are sandstorms or the motor gives out, so I know what it feels like when you think your life is going, when you have to think about what it is better to do - to shoot yourself or let the thirst send you mad. Oh yes, I have done this. So I know I can keep to my contract if that happens.’ He tapped me slowly on the arm. ‘The thing is, whatever happens, to remain a man. Do you not think so? Only in such a way can you die in peace.’
They were the lights of a truck coming south from Garaa Tebout. I could hear it now.
‘Of course,’ I said.
‘You do not think so?’
‘Well, actually I’m a bit wary of last thoughts - it can spoil your concentration when you’re trying to duck. Would you say it’s normal for a truck to be coming south on this road about this hour?’
‘Hein?’ He frowned into the distance. ‘Oh sure. The airfield at Garaa Tebout takes bigger planes than Kaifra.’ He dragged smoke in and it began fluttering out on his breath as he talked. ‘Anyway, we shall try to come back, you and I, from the desert.’
‘Yes, fine. Can you douse these lights a minute?’
‘Okay.’
He leaned over and turned them off, the torch as well, and I sensed him watching me in the gloom.
‘You are expecting some trouble?’
‘Not really.’
It was just that the redjem wasn’t much good as visual cover: a long time ago it had marked a crossing in the paths of herdsmen, and near it there was the ruin of a gypsum and mudbrick shelter; this area had once been grazing land for sheep, I supposed, before the wind from the desert had smothered it with sand. Chirac had put his Renault on the far side of the shelter but there hadn’t been room for the 220 and it wasn’t concealed from the road.
It wasn’t instinct alone that made me want the lights off: we were a hundred and fifty minutes from takeoff and. London was sending us panic directives and the base phone was dead and this whole region was a red sector and all Chirac could do was add up his life insurance and if there’d ever been a time when I didn’t mind being seen making rdv contact along a lonely road it wasn’t now.
His face turned silver and our shadows lifted and swung under the roof of the Renault as the light came flooding from the road.
Heavy diesel. Canvas sides: PETROCOMBINE S-5.
Fine sand falling as the dark came down.
‘That is a bum outfit, you know? They don’t pay so good and the air-conditioning is always en panne, you should hear the drillers talk about that!’ He turned the lamps on again. ‘When I quit mercenary work I fly mostly for the big American companies here, looking for oil. That is how I come to know the desert, every square kilometre from Oran to Ghadamis, and that is why they chose me, your associates. You want an aviator who knows the Sahara, you send for Chirac.’
He dropped the butt of his Gauloise and heeled it out.
‘I start giving it up now, hein?’ Without changing his tone he said: ‘You are looking for oil in that place?’
‘That’s right.’
He laughed amiably.
‘You will be there for maybe three days?’
‘Maybe.’
He’d been told how much water he’d have to take on board.
‘That is not long, if you are careful.’ He drew the map off the seat and folded it. ‘I will brief you on the actual flight when we rendezvous with the pilot of the airplane. Is there anything you would like to know right now?’
‘Just one thing: where can I get a gun?’
‘Hein? You don’t have one?’
‘No.’
He leaned into the Renault and slid the map into the glove pocket, slamming it shut and reaching underneath.
‘You can borrow this, mon ami.’
I took it and found it heavy, a couple of pounds or more, a Colt Official Police .38 six-shot with a six-inch barrel and chequered grips.
‘When do you want it back?’
‘When you come back from the desert.’
The twin dark lines were drawn finely across the firmament from Andromeda through Cygnus to Vega, then they struck into the black cloud of palm-leaves above my head.
The night was soundless.
Diffused light glowed against the cupolas on the far side of the trees but I couldn’t be sure where it came from. On this side there was nothing and I moved again, disturbing the flight of insects below the rotting leaves and moving on as far as the wall, looking up.
There was no need to examine their whole length, but only those sections where they could be reached easily and cut. The hall was unlit and when I passed inside I waited for the blind man’s voice but he wasn’t here: that was certain because he would have challenged me.
I used the pen-torch and found the junction-board with the connections exposed and thick with dust, the knurled knobs green with oxidization, one of them missing and the wire held with a paper-clip. I cleaned the end and the thread of the terminal and reconnected it. Mais it ne sonne meme pas, m’sieur, it est en derangement. You don’t say.
A sound and I held still and counted a hundred seconds but it didn’t come again, one of those unpleasant sounds that had no particular feature so that you had to identify it according to your fancy: contracting timber or a door in the draught or a distant shot.
A group of wires ran horizontally and then upwards, ending in a hole where loose plaster was plugged. I crossed in the dark to the stairs and used the torch and saw the right ones, tracing them higher and stopping to listen and climbing again until I came to the top floor. They hadn’t been cut.
She was pointing the bloody thing at me and I said don’t do that and she put it down and I shut the door.
- Hi pry Q Quaker dation minim -Hold on, Embassy.
‘All right,’ I told her.
Repeat please from ‘big flash’.
Hi pry Q Quaker dation minim lady point ops one hundred proxy point all red vigil out. Do you want to reply?
She looked at me and I said: ‘Tell them to stop bellyaching.’
Please send: Understumble point willing relay. Tango out.
She cut the switch and stopped the tape and pushed her hair back from her face: it was like an oven in here and she looked beat.
‘Where’s Loman?’
‘At the hotel.’
‘The Royal Sahara?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘He wanted to talk to you, but the phone doesn’t work.’
‘Try it now.’
Acetone on the air, been doing her nails.
The venetian blind was still down and they’d put the base transceiver on the other side of the room where it couldn’t be seen from any of the windows even if they weren’t covered. ‘Jen’ veux pas de numero. On etait en panne ici, mais maintenant ca marche.’
I played the tape back to catch the first bit they’d sent but it was only another hurry directive: I’d never known London get so hysterical, what the hell did they think we were doing all this time if it wasn’t trying to get me to the destination with the minimum delay?
I gave her Chirac’s .38 and she nearly dropped it because compared with her own it weighed a ton.
‘Have you had any small-arms training?’
‘No. There wasn’t time to -‘
‘D’you know what the phrase means, “to stop a man”?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘It means to stop him coming towards you. If a man were running towards you and you fired that gun of yours at him he’d just keep on coming, and unless you’d hit him in the brain or the heart there’d be time for him to kill you or smash up the radio, or both. But if you use this one you’ll stop him short, and at the range from here to the doorway you’d actually throw him back.’
‘I see.’
God, it was awful: the thing was nearly bigger than she was.
‘Hold it with both hands if you want to, and be ready for the recoil and the noise. Safety-catch here, load like this, fire, the usual thing, all right?’
‘Yes.’
‘It gives you six shots, and don’t forget to count’
‘All right.’
‘Have you got enough drinking-water here?’
‘Yes.’
‘Salt tablets?’
‘Yes.’
I went over to the telephone and picked it up and listened for bugs, all red vigil yes but we knew that, although I suppose it was encouraging to know also that Control was obviously monitoring the opposition’s movements rather closely. Say that for London: they were warning us that the heat was on down here before we’d had time to report it.
