by John Harris
‘Good God!’ I said.
I indicated the silent figure on top of the spoil-mound. ‘Do you think that’s why he’s watching us?’
‘Could be.’
‘Or do you think it’s because they’re waiting for us to make some sort of move?’
He glanced up at the silent silhouette. ‘The bastards are watching for something,’ he said.
It grew hotter as the sun rose higher and the floor of the Depression began to heave in waves as the air shimmered, and the cliffs at the far end kept fading then shooting forward in a mirage.
I had thought Crabourne’s group might not work in the heat, particularly in view of what had happened, but there was no sign of a halt. Our party ate its lunch early, but we kept very much to ourselves because Crabourne obviously resented us as he had from the very beginning, and clearly considered we’d brought with us all the trouble he was suffering from now.
The atmosphere in the tent was heavy, muffled with suspicion and alertness, and it seemed to stick out a mile that there were things that were not being brought out into the light. The discussion on what we should do now that we had lost the map was not acrimonious but it was certainly not friendly, with Leach surly in his corner of the tent, Nimmo noisy and indignant, and Houston artificially flippant in an acid, unreal way. Morena could barely conceal his contempt for them all.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘What the hell can we do?’ Nimmo growled. ‘We haven’t got the bearings.’
Houston grinned, his eyes sharp and watchful. ‘I suggest we get the old jeep out,’ he said. ‘Check the guns, and attack from the flank.’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake!’
Houston’s smile vanished at once. ‘Well, somebody pinched the map, didn’t they?’ he said angrily. ‘It’ll be us next.’
In the end we decided in desperation to explore the Depression in the Land Rover, pooling memories and hoping that someone would remember some feature of the land. It was a hopeless move from the start, but there seemed to be no alternative, and, having come all this way, none of us wanted to go back without making a try.
We climbed into the Land Rover, Morena driving, me alongside him and the other three in the back, Leach perched up on the side, his big behind hanging over the edge, his eyes screwed up in the glare of the sunshine. Morena drove slowly along the track through the Depression, among the stretches of stony hardtop where the loose rock glittered with flecks of mica and dried-out crystals of salt, while camel-humps of blown dry sand spread a riddle of heat waves in the dead hot silence.
Morena and I, as the two who had not been on the patrol into the Depression, attended to the driving and the watching of the track, while the others did the talking, but they all seemed confused or unwilling, and we got nowhere.
‘That looks like it,’ Houston said, gesturing at the cliffs.
‘Can’t be,’ Leach growled sullenly. ‘We never came as far as this.’
‘It had a sort of column like that, all the same,’ Houston said brightly, speaking with a strange brittle glibness that was manifestly false as he pointed at a buttress of limestone which threw jetty shadows across the cliff face.
But it wasn’t the place we were seeking, as I’d known it wouldn’t be, and we followed the Depression for miles towards Qahait, until the Land Rover was covered with dust and it was ground into our faces like masks. In the end we stopped the vehicle and the three in the back got out to stretch their legs. Nobody said anything and suspicion was clearly in the air. Everyone was withdrawn and solitary, Leach off on his own, staring up the Depression, apparently indifferent to what we were doing, and Houston and Nimmo, well apart, their brows down, constantly giving each other watchful glances.
Morena and I sat in the Land Rover waiting for them to return, both of us puzzled and angry.
‘I don’t get it,’ Morena said softly. ‘I don’t think those three bastards want to find it. Not now, anyway. Not while we’re with ’em.’
None of them had anything to say as they climbed back into the Land Rover, but I noticed there were a few odd glances among them, as though the distrust that had touched me and Morena had touched them, too.
Nobody spoke as Morena started the engine and my mind was full of misgivings, then Houston’s voice came, sharp and acid and ugly, and as full of artificial good humour as it was possible to be.
‘Oh, well,’ he said. ‘We can always go back and make way with Crabourne’s cousin. Twenty smackers that our honour-able and gallant captain lays her first. Any takers?’
I had begun to detest him by this time and was just on the point of turning round to him when Nimmo spoke.
Whatever it was that they had shared had been thrust aside abruptly at Houston’s words, and Nimmo reached up his hand and jerked the frayed head-dress over Houston’s eyes, so that he looked like some cartoon Arab out of a television programme.
‘Listen, you bloody dehydrated Lawrence of Arabia,’ he said quietly. ‘You just make one more remark like that and I’ll personally take you apart.’
‘Well, Christ’ – Houston was still too full of bounce to hear the menace in his voice – ‘you don’t think Nature gave her a backside like that just to sit on, do you?’
‘Shut up!’
Houston stared at Nimmo for a long moment and Morena waited with the engine idling, his eyes mild, obviously enjoying himself.
‘Yes,’ Houston’s eyes dropped. ‘All right.’
Nobody said any more and in a stony awkward silence we drove slowly back towards the camp. As we turned the Land Rover round, I saw a small moving figure on the spoil-mound. I nudged Morena and indicated it without saying anything, and his eyes narrowed.
‘The bastards are determined not to miss us,’ he said.
Nobody moved very far during the afternoon, and there still seemed to he a sort of wary watchfulness about the camp.
A slight breeze had got up and somehow it managed to reach even the bowl of the Depression, so that you could hear the rustle of the sand against the tent, the gritty whispering of millions of tiny paws scratching away at the canvas, but by evening it had died away again and the place seemed touched with evil. There were a few disconnected noises, curiously muffled by distance and the walls of the Depression – the murmur of voices from the Arab compound, and the splash of water, and the stomachic grumble of a camel. It had been a spectacular sunset and now the moon was up, remote in the black dome that shimmered with mysterious light from half a million unknown worlds. The silence – the utter soundlessness – seemed to come from the deep spaces to the stars.
To avoid further incidents, we’d decided that we should split the nights up into three three-hour watches, with two men remaining undisturbed each night. I took the first watch until midnight, with Leach following to 3 a.m., and Houston from three until six. After 6 a.m. we didn’t expect trouble.
I sat on a box outside the tent, smoking, feeling the air grow cooler. For some time I heard Nimmo’s transistor faintly beating out pop music, then Leach’s sour growl stopped it abruptly and I saw the light in the tent go out. I walked around for a while, between the tent and the vehicles, and could see the yellow lights in Crabourne’s camp and the faint glimmer of oil lamps among the Arab tents, and I wondered if the look-out was still squatting up there on the spoil-mound.
There were a lot of things in my mind. Suddenly I had no trust in the others and the whole operation seemed to fall apart because of that. The whole be-all and end-all of the journey for me had been to rediscover something of what we’d missed after leaving the desert, and without that absolute trust we’d always had in each other, the very thing I was hoping to find had disappeared before I’d even started looking for it. The grandeur had not come just from the desert alone.
The moon was shedding a cold light over the Depression and the great empty plain beyond seemed to stretch its barren emptiness to the end of the world. I felt minute and afraid, then I pulled myself toget
her abruptly. Every man with any imagination who’d fought in the desert had felt this same desolation and you had to be careful not to infect yourself with the fear it bred all too easily.
At midnight I called Leach. He was wide-awake, a fact which surprised me, because normally he went out like a light and slept like a log. He grunted and went outside and I rolled myself in my blanket, but I found I couldn’t sleep for thinking. There were too many ‘whys’ there in the darkness with me.
From time to time I heard Leach moving around outside, then after a while I noticed he’d moved way and hadn’t returned. I lay listening for what seemed hours, but I didn’t hear him. I wasn’t even sure what I was listening for, but I wasn’t surprised when I heard someone in the tent sit up slowly. I didn’t move and as I heard shufflings I guessed he was climbing out of his blanket and putting on his boots.
After a while, through the slits of half-opened eyes I saw the tent flap move and a black figure against the pale sky. By its size it seemed to be Nimmo.
I lay for a while, wondering what to do and half-expecting Houston to follow him. I was rather surprised when he didn’t, and, in the end, I decided that whatever the other two were up to it didn’t include him, and that he really was as much asleep as he appeared to be. Finally, I climbed out of my blanket and pulled on my boots, and placed my hand quietly over Morena’s mouth. I felt a small start as he came to consciousness.
‘Quiet,’ I whispered. ‘Outside. Bring your boots.’
The moon was dripping its icy light across the Depression so that we could see the shape of Crabourne’s huts and the line of sagging tents in front of the stark serrations of the cliffs.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ Morena whispered.
‘I don’t know, but I’ve got a shrewd idea it doesn’t concern you and me, Wop. Nimmo’s out there somewhere with Leach.’
He didn’t waste time with questions and we walked quietly away from the camp, past the silent mess hut in Crabourne’s compound and the dark shape of the Arab tents, and it crossed my mind that if Ghad Ahmed was as interested in us as he seemed to be the look-out might at that moment be waking him, too.
A camel grunted and we caught the strong ammonia stink of the animals above the clinging burnt-dung and charcoal smell of the camp, then we were walking slowly up the Depression with the limestone buttresses sharp in the starlight.
As we came to the patch of rocks, I led Morena in among them and warned him to be quiet.
‘What the hell are we up to?’ he asked, and I could see his good-humoured face was blank with bewilderment.
We moved through the rocks for a while, then as we stopped I heard the chink of stones from somewhere on our left. At first I thought it was Nimmo or Leach, but as we sank down behind a flat piece of shale, I saw Nimmo in front. He was quite recognisable even in the poor light and seemed to be crouching.
‘Just in front,’ I said softly.
Morena raised himself gently, then he turned and stared at me, bewilderment on his face.
‘It’s Nimmo,’ he whispered. ‘He’s watching someone.’
‘Leach, I expect.’
‘He’s supposed to be on guard.’
‘It seems he isn’t. And if Nimmo is watching Leach that means Leach is in front of him. So what was the cause of those stones clinking over on our left a second or two ago?’
Morena’s face came round to me, pale in the faint light.
‘Ghad Ahmed,’ he said.
I nodded and his eyebrows rose. ‘What are we going to do about him?’
‘Nothing at the moment. Let’s concentrate on one thing at a time.’
We raised ourselves gently. Nimmo was just ahead of us still, crouching as we were, and beyond him I could see the limestone wall of the Depression and, faintly, the shape of two buttresses of rock. Ahead, out of sight somewhere, was the cave with the pear-shaped entrance.
Briefly, in a whisper, I told Morena of seeing Leach there and how Phil Garvey had seen Nimmo.
‘I think there’s something in that cave,’ I said. ‘Or near it.’
‘What we’ve come for?’
‘It looks like it.’
Morena’s expression changed and his brows came down. ‘They said they hadn’t been able to recognise it,’ he breathed. ‘I bet the bastards are intending to fish it out themselves and nip off without us.’
I could tell from the sound of his voice that it wasn’t just the thought of losing what lay hidden in the cave that was worrying him so much as the disappointment of finding that the trust he’d put in his old comrades had been misplaced.
We watched Nimmo move slowly round the rock where he was crouching. From his manner it was clear he had no more desire to be seen than we had, and it came as something of a relief to realise that the opposition was at least split among themselves. A lot was suddenly explained to me, a lot of incidents and a lot of the atmosphere of suspicion and secrecy and distrust that had been worrying me.
I nodded to Morena and we moved on until we could see Nimmo again, and then the pale blur of Leach’s bulky frame against the shadows. He appeared to be standing, staring towards the cliff face, then we saw him turn, apparently listening, and drop out of sight.
‘He’s seen Nimmo,’ I said.
We listened for a while, then, sharp across the silence, we heard the clatter of stones and a cry.
‘Come on,’ I said.
They were at it hammer and tongs when we arrived, clutching each other and rolling over and over in the dust. There was already blood on Nimmo’s face, black-bright in the light of the moon, but Leach was panting heavily with a middle-aged man’s lack of steam, and in spite of his extra strength he wouldn’t have been able to keep it up much longer.
As we came up to them, Nimmo broke free and stood up, grabbing for a lump of rock, and I took a swing at him without thinking. He went down like a log, and I saw the dust puff out as he hit the ground. Morena stuck out a foot as Leach jumped up and dived for him, and Leach went down also, with a yelp of pain as his knee struck one of the projecting spurs of shale.
It seemed to stop them dead. Nimmo sat up, holding his jaw where I’d hit him, and Leach dragged himself upright, moaning with pain from his injured knee, and it was only then that I looked round and saw Houston standing among the rocks behind us and knew that he’d wakened and found the tent empty and got up to join the party.
‘It might be a bloody good idea,’ I said, ‘if somebody told us what this is all about.’
There’d been a time when I’d been faintly scared of Leach. He’d always been an uncertain number during the war and, as he was so big, I’d been a little in awe of him because of his sudden moods and sullen tempers. But now he was just a big fat middle-aged man and I was tougher with the toughness of experience.
‘The bastard was following me,’ he growled.
Nimmo paused before answering. ‘He was supposed to be on guard,’ he said. ‘What the hell is he doing here if he’s supposed to be on guard?’
‘What did you think he was doing?’ I asked.
‘I think he knows where that bloody stuff we’re after’s hidden and he was looking for it.’
Leach began to shout. ‘I saw somebody scouting round the tent,’ he yelled. ‘I followed him!’
‘Well, it might interest you to know you missed him,’ I said. ‘Because he was watching you both. And probably us as well.’
There was silence for a moment as the fact sank in.
‘What were you looking for, Tiny?’ I asked.
Leach’s heavy face lowered and what I’d been expecting for some time came out. ‘You’re not the bloody officer any more,’ he growled.
‘The bastard was looking for the treasure,’ Nimmo said again.
‘And you were making sure he didn’t find it on his own,’ I replied. I turned to Houston. ‘And you were afraid of being left out in the cold, eh? Is that treasure we’re after round here somewhere?’
‘I don’t know,’ Nimmo sai
d quickly. ‘I wasn’t here. I wasn’t even born.’
‘And I was waiting by the wire,’ I pointed out. ‘And Wop was at the top of the Depression.’ I turned to Houston and Leach. ‘That seems to leave you two,’ I said. ‘Was this the place?’
Houston’s eyes flickered to Leach’s as though they’d talked the thing over secretly and his reply came slowly and with a marked reluctance. ‘Looks a bit like it,’ he agreed. ‘But then, on the other hand, it looks different.’
‘Memory has a habit of playing tricks,’ I agreed. ‘That’s something I’ve found out, too. You were never a pretty bunch, but it seems you were even less pretty than I thought.’
Nobody spoke and I could see Morena watching the three of them carefully. I let what I’d said sink in before I went on and when I spoke again I couldn’t keep the disgust from my voice.
‘I’m beginning to think,’ I said, ‘that that bowl I was shown in London didn’t come from here at all.’
Morena’s face turned quickly towards me and I could see the surprise in his expression.
‘I expect,’ I went on ‘that it was picked up cheap in the East End. But not too cheap because it had to look good enough to put it across me and Morena, me for my map references and Wop to see that nothing broke down on the way. But it wasn’t a set of gold ornaments you were after, was it?’
Morena looked blank again.
‘That was a good story,’ I went on bitterly. ‘And I might have gone on believing it if it hadn’t been for Ghad Ahmed. Because I’ll bet a year’s wages it isn’t gold ornaments he’s interested in.’
‘What the hell is he interested in, then?’ Morena’s words burst out of him in an explosion of anger.
‘What he’s been looking for, for years,’ I said. ‘What he came here for with Crabourne. What he’s been digging for all the time he’s been clearing soil for them. What he’s been watching us for, ever since we arrived – from the top of that mound, so that he could see where we went.’
Morena’s eyes flickered round the others. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘What?’
‘What he considers belongs to him,’ I said. ‘The same thing as this lovely lot consider belongs to them – that chest the Paymaster was carrying. Crabourne was right all the time. There isn’t any treasure. There never was.’
