‘Jesus wept!’ Churchill exclaimed. Then he said in Arabic, ‘But who were these Christians — Spanish? Who?’
‘They were afrang and afrang are all the same.’
‘So what happened after that?’ Sterling asked.
‘When all were dead except for the two, the injured one wrapped his leg in cotton, and then they threw all the dead bodies into the quicksand. They removed weapons and tins from four of the chariots and pushed them in too — this one here was the last one, and for some reason they couldn’t get it in. Perhaps their strength failed them, and it was stuck, so they just left it. They cleared up everything on the sand — not a trace remained. Even the bloodstains were covered. Then they got in the last remaining chariot and went back on their tracks. Barra followed them for a while until they got onto the stony desert, the serir, then they headed north towards the Maghreb — Morocco — too fast for him to follow. He never saw them again.’
Churchill and Sterling were staring at him. ‘But are you certain of this?’ Churchill asked.
‘I did not see it with my own eyes,’ Bes said. ‘But Barra had no reason to lie. Indeed, among my people lying is a great sin. Did I not say the ways of the Christians are strange beyond fathoming?’
Churchill shifted position, easing his body further into the limited shade. He looked at the little man inquisitively. ‘Did he notice how these men were dressed?’ he asked.
Bes scratched his onion of a nose and blinked. ‘He said they were wearing clothes the colour of sand,’ he said. ‘All the same clothes, with head-dresses similar to the ones the hook-noses wear, but not black. All the same sand colour.’
Churchill nodded. ‘Khaki drill,’ he said to Sterling in English. ‘They must have been military, at least.’
Sterling said in Arabic, ‘Couldn’t your friend have found out where these er ... chariots came from? I mean, he could have followed the original tracks back to the source. After all, there must have been more to the story.’
‘Aha,’ Bes smiled. ‘He certainly would have done, but there had been a terrible irifi blowing for a week before that day, so all trace of where they had come from had vanished.’
The water in the kettle had boiled, and Taha was setting glasses out on his small brass tray. He poured out a glass, tasted it, then poured it back. Then he carefully doled out three glasses, offering one first to Bes, who refused. ‘We Nemadi drink no tea,’ he said.
‘I had forgotten,’ Taha said, offering the glasses to Churchill and Sterling, who took them gratefully.
Taha took the last glass and slurped the tea experimentally. ‘I have heard this story before,’ he said. ‘But there is a little more to add.’
Churchill balanced the tea glass in his large palm and looked out at the heat-devils steaming in the distance, then back at Taha. ‘Oh?’ he said. ‘What?’
‘A caravan of iron chariots was seen by nomads of the Tekna some days earlier,’ he said. ‘Crossing the border from the Maghreb — Morocco. The Tekna are a people who live in that region. They told my father ...’
Sterling swallowed hard at the word ‘father’ and fought back a comment, but Taha seemed not to have noticed any discrepancy.
‘They told my father that these chariots were being driven by Christians — two in each lorry. There were no small chariots with them.’
Churchill scratched his head, puzzled, but evidently deeply interested. ‘So we’ve got a convoy of ten trucks coming down from Morocco, manned by twenty men,’ he growled. ‘And some days later we’ve got the same trucks — probably — being pushed into the quicksand, but by now there are only fifteen men and another six vehicles, this time Jeeps. We’ve gained six vehicles and lost five men.’
Sterling put his tea glass back on the brass tray, and Taha refilled it. He lifted it pensively to his lips, but did not drink. ‘More, surely,’ he said. ‘The maths doesn’t add up. Unless they found the Jeeps abandoned in the desert, there’d have been at least one driver for each Jeep. That means a minimum of ten had vanished by the time they got here, but probably more still because the Jeeps would have had gunners as well as drivers. The probability is at least fifteen.’
‘Whatever the case,’ Churchill said, ‘only two survived.’
‘No,’ Taha said. ‘There was another.’
He filled a second glass for Churchill, who lifted it, his eyes squinting in the sun.
‘That is what the Tekna said,’ Taha went on. ‘At about the same time as the hunter saw the Christians here, another Christian was found in a well, far away in the Reg al-Harra.’
‘In a well?’ Churchill said. ‘I don’t believe it!’
‘As God is my witness. It was a very deep well. The Christian had been fleeing enemies and had jumped in the well. He hid there for two days and then he was pulled out by the Tekna. God had preserved him. At first they believed he was a jinni, and they wanted to kill him, but he spoke some of the language of the desert folk, and he persuaded them to let him live. He stayed with them a while, and they were wondering what to do with him when an iron bird arrived and picked him up.’
Churchill’s eyes were narrowed now. ‘Did these people say anything about this Christian?’ he asked. ‘Where was he from? What did he look like?’
‘They said that he was a tall man, very, very tall, and that his hair was yellow, like the sand of Wadi ad-Dheheb.’
‘Blond?’ Churchill murmured. ‘Hardly Spanish.’
‘Why not?’ Sterling said. ‘Blond Spaniards are not that uncommon.’
‘And there was another thing,’ Taha added. ‘He had a scar — here, like this.’ He pointed to the centre of his tanned right cheek, then drew the shape of a ‘V’ in the sand.
Sterling swallowed hard and caught Churchill’s eye.
‘But that sounds like—’
‘We must go,’ Taha said suddenly, glancing at the sun.
*
The afternoon was another gruelling march through an unearthly stillness, where the only movement was the play of heat along the margins of their vision. While Bes chose the way, Taha brought up the rear, constantly checking to see if there were raiders behind them.
‘Don’t fear,’ the little hunter told him. ‘The Delim do not know how to get through the Umm al-Khof. If they try they will all be lost.’
‘God is all-knowing,’ Taha said. ‘But it is not impossible that one of them knows the way. A nomad only needs to see the path once — I shall never forget it now.’
They were heading directly towards the tree on the horizon, but to Sterling its size kept fluctuating: now larger, now smaller. Sterling was fascinated by the illusion, just as he had been by those on the Zrouft, and he occupied himself in trying on and rejecting successive theories to explain it. He told himself that in fact there was no objective tree, only the way the tree appeared to the observer, and that depended on his speed.
No matter how he tried to occupy his mind, though, his thoughts returned constantly to Billy. In a sense the problem was precisely the same as that of the fluctuating tree: Billy kept on appearing in Taha’s expressions and actions, then receding into the distance to be replaced by the stranger Sterling did not know. Like the tree, there was no objective Billy, only his son’s reflection on himself and the other people around him.
At last the tree was no more than a stone’s throw away, and the sun was a billiard ball rolling along the sleeve of the day. The heat-devils along the horizon had been replaced by a pink glow, outlining purple shadows, and above the sky had lost its polish, its blue radiance now fading to onyx and jade.
The last sparklers of the sun were strobing the sky by the time they reached the tree. Up close it was an unimpressive white-spined acacia of moderate size, its branches hacked about for firewood. Churchill and Sterling were exhausted and flung themselves down in the sand. Beyond the slight rise on which the acacia stood, the landscape changed abruptly. Gone was the featureless plain, and in its place were brakes of acacia and tamarisk, low skirts of dune
s, cragged ridges and a network of wadis.
Bes couched the camel he’d been leading. ‘Thanks be to the Great God,’ he growled. ‘We have crossed the Umm al-Khof. It is behind us now.’
‘The praise be to God,’ Taha intoned.
He hobbled the camels while Bes picked up deadfall, took a handful of straw from one of the saddlebags and struck a light with his dagger blade against a flint. Soon the fire was smoking.
‘My work is done,’ he said. ‘I will spend the night with you here, but I shall be gone with tomorrow’s sun.’
‘It is as God wills,’ Taha commented. He caught Sterling’s eye. ‘I can find my way back to the camp of my people from here.’
Sterling was about to say something, when Churchill laid a big hand on his knee.
Taha set up the tea things once more, and Churchill took a tin of antibiotic powder from his kitbag and applied it to Sterling’s head-wound with gauze. ‘I’m glad you have something worthwhile in that bag,’ Sterling said. ‘It almost cost you your life.’
‘I doubt it,’ Churchill beamed. ‘Like young Bi— I mean Taha, said, they weren’t shooting at us, not really. I guessed that at the time. They had Garand rifles, did you see that? M-ones — brand new, state-of-the-art semi-autos. Even if they weren’t good shots they could have brought us down by sustained fire.’
‘Why the hell didn’t they? ... Ouch! Careful with that stuff!’
‘Sorry, old boy. I don’t know. Your guess is as good as mine.’
It was dark but the moon was out, and the desert glowed pale in the moonlight. Flames licked up between the three stones of the hearth, on which Taha had set the kettle. As Churchill took his place by the fire, he tripped and stumbled, putting out a size eleven foot to steady himself and upsetting the kettle. Water spilled, the flames sizzled and died.
‘Stupid of me!’ Churchill growled. ‘Sorry! I’m so clumsy. Let me refill the kettle. No, no, I insist. It was my fault.’
He picked the hot kettle up gingerly, dropped it, cursed, and picked it up again, then carried it over to where the water-skins were hanging from the saddles in the shadows. The camels were munching grain contentedly nearby, their heads oddly truncated by their nosebags.
A moment later Churchill returned with the full kettle and Taha set it on the fire.
There was silence for a moment, but for the rhythmic grind of camels’ jaws.
Churchill cleared his throat. ‘Taha,’ he began. ‘I need to ask you some things about the iron bird, you know, Rose of Cimarron, and the day you came here ...’
Bes glared at him. ‘If you are starting this crazy talk again, I’m going,’ he said snippily. ‘There’s a gazelle track over there that I’m going to look at — maybe I can bag one for breakfast.’ He rose and faded quickly into the shadows.
‘Tea!’ Taha called after him. Then he stopped himself. ‘Oh, I forgot ...’
‘How can he follow a track in the dark?’ Churchill asked.
Taha shrugged. ‘There is moonlight. The Nemadi have eyes like eagles and ears like fennecs.’
He made no attempt to follow up Churchill’s earlier statement, and Churchill didn’t repeat it. When the water was boiling he made tea, offering glasses to Churchill and Sterling. Churchill waved his plump hand. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You drink. I have an appointment with nature.’
He rose heavily, picked up his kitbag, and tramped off into the moonlight.
Taha’s eyes followed him. ‘What does he need in that bag?’ he asked in Arabic.
Sterling heard suspicion in his voice. Wallahi mani khaabar. I don’t know,’ he said. ‘He always takes it when he answers the call of nature.’
Taha’s eyes switched back to Sterling reluctantly. Sterling sipped tea.
‘You have known him a long time?’ Taha asked.
‘No,’ Sterling said. ‘He’s a detective who finds lost people. I employed him to help me find you.’ He hesitated. ‘It’s just wonderful to find you alive, but I hadn’t really expected that you would be so ...’
‘You thought somehow I was still a child? Still the Billy you knew?’
Sterling put his glass back on the tray. Taha made to fill it, but Sterling put his hand over the top. Taha looked at him in surprise. ‘You must,’ he said. ‘You must drink three.’
Sterling took his hand away. ‘So much to learn,’ he said.
Taha filled his glass, then poured one for himself. He sipped it. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I am glad you are here, and I know God has ordained it for a reason. But it’s difficult. You must give me time ...’
‘I know. I’m sorry too.’
‘I wanted to ask,’ Taha said, putting his empty glass down. ‘I was wondering ...’
‘Yes?’
‘Where is Mother?’
Sterling smiled awkwardly. ‘Well ...’ he began, but he was cut short by a hoarse shout from out of the darkness.
‘Bes!’ Taha cried, lunging for his rifle. He grabbed it and rushed into the night, Sterling after him. After only a few minutes they almost ran into the giant form of Eric Churchill, towering over the diminutive Bes, and saw that Bes was holding him at gunpoint. The big Englishman, at least twice Bes’s height and weight, was looking around him shiftily, embarrassed and angry, his hands up in the air. The little hunter was growling at him. ‘He’s up to no good,’ he said. ‘I don’t trust this one.’
He pointed a broad finger at the ground, and Sterling gasped. On the desert floor was a wireless transmitter. Sterling recognized it from his wartime days as a ‘biscuit set’, a lightweight wireless small enough to fit into a Huntley & Palmer’s biscuit tin. In fact, there was a battered biscuit tin next to the set, together with a morse key attached to it on a wire, and an unspooled antenna laid out on the surface. Sterling knelt down and examined the equipment.
‘What the hell is this, Eric?’ he demanded. ‘I’m damn sure you weren’t listening to the BBC.’
Churchill beamed, but not convincingly this time. ‘I can explain, George,’ he said in English. ‘Just call this little sod off.’
Sterling stood up awkwardly. ‘I think you’d better explain before I call him off,’ he said in Arabic.
Taha nodded. ‘I never trusted you,’ he said to Churchill. ‘Hand over the pistol you’re carrying.’
Sterling looked at hint in surprise. ‘He lost the pistol in the fight with the Delim,’ he said.
‘No,’ Taha said. ‘He picked it up when we were running away, and he has been wearing it secretly under his coat. Perhaps he thought I wouldn’t notice.’
Churchill made an exasperated sigh and slipped the pistol from its holster, handing it to Sterling. ‘Watch you don’t shoot yourself in the foot,’ he said.
Sterling ignored the sneer. ‘You’ve been lying,’ he said. ‘Hamdu and the boys were right. That’s where you disappeared to every night when we were in the Zrouft. It wasn’t a queasy tummy — you were sending a message to someone on this. What is this about, Eric? Who are you talking to? Why?’
‘All right, George,’ Churchill said. ‘Maybe I haven’t told you the entire truth. But call the dwarf off and I’ll explain.’
‘Walk back to camp,’ Sterling said in Arabic, so that the others could understand.
Bes nodded. ‘Walk slowly,’ he snapped. ‘Don’t try anything, because I am a very good shot.’
Sterling picked up the biscuit transmitter and packed it into its tin. He stuffed it back into the kitbag, and they made a solemn procession towards the fire.
*
It was a different Churchill, a shade haughtier and more arrogant, a shade less jolly, that Sterling saw in the light of the fire.
‘So much for your fine speeches,’ he said, still speaking Arabic. ‘You’ve been working behind my back ever since we started.’
‘Treachery is the most disgraceful of all sins,’ Taha said.
‘Gif!’ Churchill said. ‘Now hold your horses, boy. I have shaved the truth a bit fine, maybe, but believe me I have always had you
r dad’s interests at heart.’
‘What do you mean?’ Sterling demanded. ‘How can you have when you kept this wireless a secret? Who have you been talking to, Eric?’
The big man shrugged. Taha noted that he did not seem too concerned about his predicament, as if he knew something they didn’t. It worried him. So did the unaccustomed feeling of acute drowsiness that was seeping through him.
‘Spill,’ Sterling said.
‘All right,’ Churchill drawled. ‘Remember the night we met at Kew? The same day you found Corrigan dead?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘All right. Well, after I got home, I phoned Vernon Dakin, the man who gave you my name. It was just insurance, George. I wanted to be certain you were on the up and up — the thing about the police worried me silly. Dakin vouched for you all right, but he asked me if there was any way I could keep in touch when we were out here. Well, I’d trained as a TG op in the war, and I happened to have this biscuit set that was still in working order. I suggested the idea to Dakin and he jumped at it. Had a pal who was a wireless ham, he said, and he knew a bit about wireless, too, having been in the Tanks, so we set up frequencies.’
‘That’s shit, Eric. A biscuit set doesn’t have the range to transmit to Britain from here.’
‘No, but we arranged a series of relays through Layoune, Casablanca, Tangiers and Lisbon.’
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