by Peter Corris
Jean-Luc Famechon was an Algerian. 'Black and white on both sides,' he explained to Bright and Marsha as they sat around the hotel pool. 'Like a chessboard.' He smiled, showing perfect teeth. He was a smooth brown colour, compactly built and modish in modified dreadlocks and one gold earring.
'Famechon.' Bright said. 'We've got a fighter by that name back home. He was world featherweight champion in the '60s.'
Jean-Luc nodded. 'We are distantly related. But I am no fighter.'
Marsha sipped her tonic water. She sat with her back to the pool. 'What exactly are you, Jean-Luc?'
'Everything you need, Madame—director, producer, cameraman, sound man, editor . . .'
'You can't do camera and sound at the same time,' Bright said.
'I have done it, believe me. But no, I have a small, highly trained crew.'
Marsha said, 'How small?'
'One man.'
'McKinnon, you cheap bastard,' Bright muttered.'
'What, Mr Bright? I beg your pardon.'
Bright felt his mood unaccountably lighten. He was in a four-star hotel in Morocco, a long jump from a two-bedroom flat in Coogee. The sun was shining and he was drinking Heineken beer. He had a beautiful woman with him and was spending someone's else's money. They were going into the biggest desert in the world after a terrific story. He signalled to the waiter. 'Let's all have another drink. It's Vic and Marsha, Jean-Luc. Let's make this job fun!'
Jean-Luc displayed his documents—clearances to enter and leave Morocco, Algeria and Libya for the purposes of filming, insurance cover on equipment including a helicopter, charter arrangements for the chopper, currency exchange permits. Bright worked his way through them, guessing at the French, defeated by the Arabic.
'I don't see anything here about Mauritania or Mali,' he said. 'We want to go south not east.'
Jean-Luc shrugged. 'We may stray a little. It will not matter. Most of the officials will not look at the documents properly. They just want to see something. The ones that do look can be persuaded not to look again, if you understand me.'
'Carry cash,' Marsha said, 'not credit cards.'
Jean-Luc's teeth flashed. 'Precisely. If you will give me your passports and some money I will get them endorsed. I am afraid that's the way things will be on this job, Vic. Everything will be step one, plus step two, money. But we will get the job done and that's the main thing, is it not?'
'Sure,' Bright said. 'Have you ever been to Timbuktu?'
'Many times. Westerners are fascinated by it. I worked on a movie there once. A disaster. But money is all that has ever mattered in Timbuktu—gold in ancient times, then salt and slaves. Nothing has changed.'
Marsha stood. 'I'll get the passports and then I'll have a rest. I'm still not feeling . . .'
Jean-Luc half-rose. His smooth features were puckered by concern and Bright realised that he was not as young as he had first thought. Smiling, he looked twenty, frowning closer to forty, so it was probably somewhere in between. 'You are unwell, Marsha? I'm sorry. I hoped we could leave—'
'I'll be fine,' Marsha said. 'We can go tonight if you want.'
'No, no. Not tonight.' Jean-Luc sat down and drank the rest of his beer. 'My guess is that she drank some water.'
'Right,' Bright said. 'She was swimming in the pool here.'
'Unwise. But she is well enough to travel?'
'Yes. Tell me, Jean-Luc, do you know of a place by the name of Wadi Djoul?'
'No, Vic. But if you want to go there we will find it.'
Bright and Marsha spent the next ten days in a whirl of sand, dust and noise. Jean-Luc and Claude, his assistant, drew up schedules according to the names and map references supplied by Bright, conferred with N'Daw, the Senegalese helicopter pilot, and rushed through a series of take-offs, flights and landings that threatened to put them into a kind of permanent jet lag. They flew sometimes by night, sometimes by day. They slept in huts, tents and, uncomfortably, in the helicopter. The machine was an ex-U.S. Navy Huey which whined and clattered in adverse conditions but kept going. N'Daw, according to Jean-Luc, personally knew every nut and bolt in it and could play it like a piano.
Like most newcomers to the Sahara, Bright was surprised to find that it was not the endless sea of sand he expected. True the ergs, the dunes, where they occurred were terrifying mountains of sand that appeared to move like quicksilver. He heard the strange singing noises they made at night and was awed to stand in a hollow and see them blotting out much of the blue sky. But a greater proportion of the landscape was rocky plain and plateau, thinly covered in places by a parched scrub but more often completely bare. Broken stone stretched to the horizon as if the country had been pounded by a huge hammer. By day nothing appeared to move on it, but at night they could hear the noises of the desert animals—whisperings, flutterings and sudden sharp shrieks. Hyenas howled piercingly out in the shadows.
The Huey flew low over emptinesses that made the eyes ache for any sort of feature. Marsha returned trembling from one short expedition she made across the dunes. For an instant she had lost her sense of direction and panic had gripped her. The fear arose from something more than losing contact with her companions.
'You look around,' she told Vic, 'and you can see forever in all directions and there's nothing man-made. Nothing! I hadn't realised how dependent I was on wood and bricks and machinery for my sanity.'
Bright agreed. 'I'm going to say something like: You think the country's got man licked out here. But then you see those little groups of people with their camels out in the middle of nowhere, and you come into a village and you realise man's still in the race. Just.'
They filmed at the salt mines in Ijdil, where the caravans used to assemble and load—up to 12,000 camels, each loaded with 400 pounds of salt—for the thousand-mile-plus haul to the Niger and Timbuktu. At Taghazi and Taodina—huge palm-fringed oases with marketplaces surrounded by collections of huts and tents that straggled away to the edge of the desert—they filmed broken-down corrals and decayed paved squares where the slaves had been penned on their long trek to the coast. The slaves from the centre of the continent, traded by the Africans to the Arabs, had died by the hundreds of thousands. Some caravans lost 90 per cent of their complement. There were no burials. Jean-Luc filmed collections of bones, said by the Arabs to be those of slaves and slave drivers, scattered along the caravan route.
Bright parted with money at an alarming rate, peeling off notes to pay for water, food, fuel and to grease the palms of officials who questioned their bona fides. He also paid for information. At the desert settlements, wadis and camp sites where the Crafts had stopped, Jean-Luc patiently questioned the residents about the expedition. Sometimes he got a shake of the head, sometimes a pointing of the finger at a tree or a building, sometimes excitement and gesticulation. They filmed huts and waterholes said to have been used by the Crafts.
Bright kept his computer charged from the helicopter's battery and every night tapped away at the keyboard, recording impressions, reported conversations and notes for his commentary to accompany the film. He asked Jean-Luc to tape his conversations with the desert dwellers, but they often refused to speak in the presence of the machine.
After one such occasion, Bright opened a new file and carefully transcribed Jean-Luc's version of the conversation he had held with a grizzled veteran of the trading routes. When he finished he popped the tops of two beer cans and handed one to the Algerian. 'What impression of the Crafts do you get from these blokes, Jean-Luc?'
Jean-Luc lit a cigarette. 'Nothing much about the younger brother. Quiet. The older brother was a hard man they say. Very hard on the men and the animals.'
'Cruel?'
'By our standards, yes, very cruel. Not by theirs. They respected him. He wasn't easy on himself either.'
At a Craft camp site north of Arawan, a windswept rocky hollow with a trickling spring and surrounded by high dunes, an old man produced a much-mended and decrepit bentwood chair. He swore several Isla
mic oaths that the chair had been abandoned by the expedition.
'He says Mr Craft sat on this chair at night and smoked his pipe,' Jean-Luc said.
'Which Mr Craft?' Marsha asked. She listened closely to the Arabic and was picking up a little. She fancied she might be able to tell if Jean-Luc was turning negatives into positives. So far, she thought, he hadn't.
'He says there was only one Mr Craft and that this was his chair. The leg broke and it was left here.'
'Ask him if he knew Omar Oufkir, the Berber,' Bright said.
Jean-Luc asked. The old man shook his head.
Bright paused in his note-making. 'How many camels?'
The old man spoke.
'Twenty,' Marsha said triumphantly. Jean-Luc smiled at her and nodded.
'There should be thirty-odd,' Bright said. 'Craft says they started out with thirty-six, remember? They lost a few along the way but they shouldn't have been down to twenty by this stage.'
'Basil Craft didn't smoke,' Marsha said. 'He hated it. Said it rotted the lungs and brain.'
Bright nodded. 'Basil wasn't here. He took about ten camels and went off somewhere else.'
'There's nothing about that in the book,' Marsha said.
The old Arab watched uncomprehendingly as the strangers tossed words at each other. He held up the chair and spoke beseechingly to Jean-Luc.
The Algerian shrugged and turned to Bright. 'He wants to know if you wish to buy the chair.'
'Tell him you'll take a picture of it and we'll pay him.'
'He won't understand. He'll suspect you of cheating him.'
Bright pulled out his wallet. 'Okay, okay, we'll buy the bloody chair.'
Marsha said, 'Vic. Don't be a beast. It's a lovely chair.'
Bright burst out laughing and passed notes to Jean-Luc, who began to haggle with the old Arab.
'God, I'd love a bath,' Marsha said. They'd been washing in carefully measured amounts of water since leaving Morocco. None of their stopping points had piped water and Jean-Luc warned them that the locals would be gravely offended if they attempted to bathe in the oases or springs.
'Two days to Timbuktu, N'Daw tells me,' Bright said. 'Three at the most.'
Jean-Luc had paid the old Arab and now had possession of the chair. He sat it on the hard, cracked earth where it listed crazily to one side. 'Got it cheap,' he said. He handed some notes back to Bright. 'Also I asked about Wadi Djoul, the way you said.'
Bright had insisted that this question be put at every stopping place, to every informant. So far there had been no response.
'And?' Bright said.
'He says it's very near here. Back a few kilometres and to the west.'
11
N'Daw plotted a course, although his discussions with Jean-Luc seemed to involve mostly head-shaking.
'What's the trouble?' Bright asked the Algerian.
'The Arabs say it's a military base. People are kept at a distance. N'Daw doesn't want to get too close. But there's no mention of a military base on the maps. Something's out there, but we don't know what. How important is this?'
'Very important. Tell N'Daw to use his judgment. I have to get a look but it mightn't have to be low or close.'
'He'll be relieved. Later this afternoon would be best for winds and light.'
Following an unvarying procedure, N'Daw left a detailed account of the expected direction and length of their journey with the most responsible-seeming person he could find in the settlement. This arrangement always cost Bright money but he was happy to outlay it. The thought of coming down in the desert without making provision for a search had no appeal. In this case N'Daw's choice fell on a Tuareg, the leader of a small travelling tribe, who drove the hardest bargain so far. He insisted on cash and a wide selection of goods—tobacco, salt, oil and other provisions from the village store. The tribe planned to remain in camp for several days to rest their camels and the pilot was assured that, in the event of a mishap, a search party would be swiftly dispatched.
'Isn't he worried about the rumours?' Vic asked Jean-Luc.
Jean-Luc spoke in rapid Tamachek to the tall, rail-thin Tuareg who wore the two blue veils and carried a rifle wherever he went. The Tuareg spat in the dust and snarled a reply.
'He says he is afraid of nothing living and certainly not afraid of rumours,' Jean-Luc said.
'Would you ask him if he knows of a man named Sheik Youssef ben Adra.'
Jean-Luc asked. The Tuareg snarled again and stalked off.
'He says he does not talk about men of honour to infidels.'
A sandstorm blew out of the desert just before the planned time for take-off. The Tuaregs herded their camels into a tight pattern and hunkered down in their tents. Activity in the village came to a halt. The wind howled and the stinging sand swirled around the film makers' hut and flapped the tarpaulins the pilot had pulled over the helicopter. Bright swore and brewed coffee on the primus.
'Don't worry,' Jean-Luc said. 'These storms are common here. I've seen them before. They do not last.'
'How long?' Marsha said.
'An hour, no more.'
Two hours later the storm ceased as quickly as it had begun. N'Daw undertook a painstaking and slow inspection of the machine before agreeing to make the flight. Bright scratched at the sand in his hair which had grown long and wild during the trip. He hadn't shaved for three days.
'You're going native, love,' Marsha said.
The Huey took off at 5 p.m. Jean-Luc fiddled with the film equipment as the helicopter banked to the west. Claude, as usual, smoked Gauloises and said nothing. The sky was clear and the sand had swept the arid landscape clean. From a hundred feet up the main road in the district, a hard-baked dirt track running north and south, seemed to have been almost obliterated by the sand. At ground level it would be faint but clear and would reappear as lighter winds moved over the earth's surface and the sparse motor and animal traffic made its mark.
After several minutes flying Bright pointed down at the road. He had to shout above the noise of the engine. Doing this for ten days had made him hoarse. 'Look, there's a side road going west. Looks like it gets a bit of work.'
Jean-Luc nodded. 'The country is rising towards that line of hills. It would be pretty rough down there. Those are thorn trees. They can kill you.'
'Come on,' Bright said.
'It's true. The thorns are long and hard. People have fallen against them and died.
'Killer trees,' Marsh said. 'Great stuff, Vic. Write it down. Maybe we can get a picture of one.'
Bright was jerked back to thoughts of Basil Craft. The camels couldn't have travelled through the thorns and the road looked new. So Craft, if he came here, must have taken some other route. The Huey banked.
'What's he doing?' Bright said. His strained voice croaked in his dry throat.
Jean-Luc went forward, conferred with N'Daw and then scrambled back across the lashed-down spare fuel and water tanks. 'He says he doesn't want to suddenly appear over the side of a hill without knowing what's on the other side. He also says there's an old camel trail down there in this direction. I can't make it out but he swears he can.'
Bright and Marsha peered down through the slipstream. 'I can see it,' Marsha said. 'I think.'
The helicopter swung north and approached the low end of the line of hills. Straining his eyes, Bright could see a faint change in the colour of the earth between the edge of the thorn forest and the foothills. He was excited. If this was the right place, the Wadi Djoul Abdullah Hamil had intended him to find, he expected to learn something here.
Following the track, they skirted the northern edge of the hills which turned out to curve around to the east. N'Daw took the helicopter high and began a slow banking turn towards the natural basin enclosed by the hills. Jean-Luc switched on the camera and adjusted the lenses. Bright checked his harness and leaned forward towards the half-open hatch to get the best possible view. On the other side of the hills the landscape had been of the kind that had op
pressed Marsha—nothing man-made. On this side everything appeared to be man-made. The basin seemed to be an oilfield. The huge, dark derricks reared and plunged and thick black pipes criss-crossed the area like writhing snakes. Great grey metal bubbles which Bright recognised as storage tanks for natural gas rose above the bare, scraped surface. Roofs winked in the late afternoon sun and trucks grinding along roads sent up clouds of fine dust.
On the far side of the basin, beyond the wadi—a wide steep-sided channel carrying no water—the hills appeared to have been sliced through to permit a road to run off into the far distance. Buildings had been erected in the hills themselves, cut into the hillsides and cantilevered off the steep slopes.
'Jesus,' Bright bellowed. 'This is a big operation. You ever hear of an oilfield in this part of the world, Jean-Luc?'
Claude stripped plastic from a fresh cassette. The Algerian was filming, bracing himself against the fuel tanks. He shook his head. 'We need to go lower.'
'No we don't,' Marsha shouted. 'Look over there.'
Two white helicopters rose from the hillside shadows, perhaps five kilometres away. They soared into the sky smoothly and hovered before making directly for the Huey. The old navy helicopter shuddered as N'Daw threw it into a wrenching turn. The motor screamed as the rotors grabbed air and the pilot fought for control. The film makers were silent. Their eyes were fixed on the sleek white aircraft that were closing the distance effortlessly, one flying slightly above the other like a pair of hawks.
'N'Daw's the best,' Jean-Luc said. 'He's flown in every war in Africa and never got a scratch . . . well, not many scratches. They won't get us.'
Claude nodded and lit another Gauloise. His hands were shaking.
Marsha gritted her teeth as the white helicopters closed the gap. The Huey was racing towards the hills by the most direct route. N'Daw went into a kind of modified dive and swooped across the tops of the hills. Bright could see the fracture lines in the rocks and feel the heat of the baked earth rising up to meet them. They roared across the tops of the thorn trees and out over the open country towards the road. The white copters crossed the hills and then abandoned the chase. They flew high, contemptuous-seeming, and soared off back the way they had come.
