‘Why the hell would Vernon go to all that trouble to keep in touch?’
‘I don’t know. He sounded worried — said he couldn’t afford to lose you.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Dakin said not to, that’s all. Said you wouldn’t take kindly to being treated like a schoolboy.’
Taha slumped suddenly and recovered himself. His eyelids were flickering. ‘What is it?’ Bes demanded.
‘Just sleepy,’ Taha slurred.
‘It has been a tiring day,’ Churchill said. ‘Do you need to know any more, George?’
‘I damn well do,’ Sterling said. ‘I don’t believe a word of it.’ He was amazed to hear the words come out sluggishly, as if he were drunk.
Bes was staring at him. A small grin played around Churchill’s mouth. ‘You look tired, George,’ he said.
Sterling suddenly felt very tired. His limbs had gone limp and his head was swimming, just as it had done during the previous night. ‘This is a farrago of lies,’ he said, but found the words came out in a slur. His eyes were closing of their own accord and he fought to keep them open. The moon suddenly seemed blinding. He closed his eyes for what seemed like a second, then pushed his eyelids up physically and saw that Taha had fallen asleep on the ground next to the fire, and that Churchill had somehow taken the little hunter’s rifle off him and was covering him with it. Bes looked flushed, and Sterling knew he’d missed some exchange, but could not imagine how.
‘Whatever you believe, George,’ Churchill said, ‘it doesn’t matter now. You see, I laced the tea water with a Mickey Finn when I refilled the kettle. Billy is out for the count, and you will be too any minute. I think I can take care of our little non-tea-drinker here. I’ve already sent my message, anyway, and there’s an aircraft on its way from Layoune to pick us up right now. It will be here by first light, but you won’t see it because the stuff I gave you lasts twenty-four hours, and by then we’ll be back in Layoune.’
‘You bastard,’ Sterling slurred.
‘Oh I really don’t think so, George,’ Churchill said in English, but only Bes the hunter was awake to hear it, and he didn’t understand.
9
The first thing Sterling heard was the sound of the sea, and he wondered how the sea could be here in the desert. When he opened his eyes, he was not in the desert, but in a bedroom with sunlight streaming through an open window. The smell and the sound of the sea came from beyond it, and he had the impulse to get up and look out. But the bed he lay in was too comfortable. The sheets were crisp and fresh. He was no longer wearing his dust-caked clothes, but a clean white nightshirt. His body had been scrubbed and his face shaved, and a proper dressing put on his head-wound. The room was large, almost luxurious, with Persian rugs and baroque armchairs. Eric Churchill was sitting in one of the armchairs reading a newspaper, wearing half-moon glasses that Sterling hadn’t seen before. A bone-china tea set stood on the table beside him. He was dressed in a white shirt and cream-coloured slacks, his tentlike brows knitted in concentration. For a moment, Sterling had the uncanny feeling that Sir Winston Churchill was sitting in the room with him.
Sterling pushed himself up on an elbow, and found that he had a splitting headache. Churchill looked round, saw him, and put the paper down. His trusty kitbag was at his feet, Sterling saw, and he wondered if his Smith & Wesson was inside it.
‘Where’s Billy?’ Sterling groaned
Churchill shifted an upright chair to the bottom of Sterling’s double bed and sat down. ‘George,’ he said earnestly. ‘I’m glad you’re back in the land of the living. I got a bit worried that I’d overdone it with the Mickey Finn. I’m hardly an expert at this kind of stuff. How do you feel?’
Sterling scowled. ‘Who did this,’ he demanded, pointing to the dressing on his head. ‘I mean, how did I get like this — clean and shaved?’
‘I did it,’ Churchill said. ‘With some help from the staff. It’s all right, George, I had six younger brothers and sisters, I’m used to looking after people. I explained to the people here that you’d had an accident out in the Blue and I’d had to give you a sedative. They were really helpful when they heard the story about you and Billy.’
‘You lying swine, Eric ...’
Churchill made the familiar pacifying gesture with his hands. ‘It’s not what you think, George,’ he said. ‘I’m still on your side, always have been. You’re in the Hotel Majestique in Layoune, and you are signed in as a private citizen. I squared it all with the immigration people, and told them the story about how we’d found Billy — leaving out certain details, of course. Said we’d blundered across the border. You can leave when you want. Billy’s asleep in the next room with a bellboy watching him, and I’ll be checking on him any minute.’
‘Why did you do it?’ Sterling said.
‘The Mickey Finn? Had to, George. I played it by ear for a bit, till I realized there was no way on earth young Billy was going to come with us — surely you realized that? It was either dope him or jump him and clobber him and, you have to admit, he’s a pretty tough customer. Then we’d have had to tie him up and drag him here, and I didn’t think you’d take kindly to that. Was I right?’
‘Of course you were right, but I’d never have agreed to either option. Is that why you doped me too?’
‘I did consider telling you I’d got the stuff with me, but I reckoned you’d put the kibosh on it, yes, and then we’d be in a quandary, so I kept quiet and just took it into my own hands. It would have been difficult to add the drug to the tea without doping you too, and I thought, anyway, it’d probably be easier without your objections.’
‘It was a barbiturate, wasn’t it? Barbital or phenobarbital — they’re the only ones that knock you out for twenty-four hours.’
‘Phenobarbital. Only, as I said, I wasn’t too sure about the dose.’
‘You were playing with fire, you bloody fool. You could have given us an overdose — killed us both. What about the little fellow? He didn’t drink any tea. Did you shoot him or what?’
Churchill snickered. ‘George,’ he said, ‘what do you think I am? I just tied him up, made sure he’d have to do a short walk before he got to his weapon, and left him free with two camels and plenty of food and water when the aircraft came in.’
‘You’re a bastard, Eric.’
Churchill’s face crumpled. ‘I was hoping you’d see it my way, George. I’m a professional, and I don’t jump in with my eyes shut. All right, I kept the wireless quiet. But it got us here, so it did its job. When we were in Casablanca I made arrangements with a charter air company here in Layoune to pick us up on my signal. They arrived at first light yesterday morning in a Fokker Friendship. While you and the boy were out cold, I got busy laying out a do-it-yourself landing strip. I thought I’d done pretty well, actually.’
Sterling sneered. ‘Pretty well? Eric, if it was so easy to get an aircraft to pick us up, why the hell did we risk our lives crossing the damned Zrouft by camel? And what about Hamdu and the others? You are damned well responsible for what happened to them!’
Churchill removed his glasses and looked at Sterling with compassion, as if talking to a half-wit. ‘We’d never have found Billy if we’d gone in by air, you know that, not even if we’d spotted Rose of Cimarron which, given the way it was covered in sand, we probably wouldn’t have done. As it was, we ran across him by pure and unadulterated kismet, George. The deaths of Hamdu and the other boys were kismet, too. There was nothing I could have done to prevent it.’
‘Christ,’ Sterling said.
‘Of course, when we started I didn’t know any more than you did that Billy was alive, but I did consider what he might be like if he was, after seven years in the Blue. You see, I know what it’s like — the pressure to adapt to a new culture. Billy may have spent fourteen years in our world, but then he had a traumatic shock — dropped suddenly into a totally different world from on high just at the time when he was in transit from boyhood to manhood
. It must have been like going through adolescence on the moon. He’s had an experience so powerful that we can’t even begin to imagine it. It’s as if he was living in another dimension. You’ve seen the way he refuses even to try to speak English although he obviously understands it? He’s no longer Billy, George. He’s someone else: Living with the nomads for seven years has penetrated his soul — he’ll never be the same again. Sorry to say it, George, but, despite your scientific training, I don’t think you anticipated that.’
‘Maybe, but you still had no right to dope us.’
‘Without it the mission would have been a failure.’
‘The mission? Jesus Christ, Eric. Billy was just getting used to the idea that he had a father after seven years. He had a right to decide what he wanted, and so do I. You can’t just go around slipping people barbiturates and carting them off without even consulting them.’
Churchill looked peeved, as if he’d expected gratitude. ‘It got the job done,’ he said. ‘And that’s what counts.’
Sterling shook his head despairingly. ‘If you really think that’s all that counts, you’re a bigger fool than I thought.’
Churchill looked away, apparently stung. ‘Have it your own way,’ he growled sullenly. ‘I expected a little resistance, but I thought you’d see the light when I presented it as a fait accompli. If I hadn’t done it, we’d all of us be out there in the Blue. We’d have been lucky to get out alive.’
‘Lucky to be ...’ Sterling stopped suddenly, and threw the bedclothes back. He stood up, facing Churchill. Apart from the headache, he felt surprisingly sound. He squared up to the big man menacingly. Churchill was taken aback. Sterling seemed suddenly dominating and powerful, just as he had that day in the desert when he had gone back for Hamdu.
‘You damn hypocrite, Eric,’ he spat. ‘Billy ... Taha ... said those bandits had been looking for us. How did they know we were coming, eh? It can only have been that bloody wireless of yours. You were reporting our movements all the way, and whoever you were reporting to sent a reception committee. Who was it, Eric?’
Churchill scratched his nose with a long finger. He glanced up at Sterling, and for a split second Sterling saw something wary and dangerous in the face. He recalled vividly how Hamdu had been convinced that Churchill had tried to kill him at Ain Effet, and how Billy had said he didn’t trust the man. Then it was gone, and the pugnacious but benevolent bulldog face was back.
‘As far as I know, I was transmitting messages to Vernon Dakin,’ he said, ‘who was worried sick that his brilliant partner was going to leave his bleached bones in the desert. You may know better, but I don’t believe he’s bosom pals with any Arab bandits. Look, I’ve risked my life more than once on this trip, George. I did the job you asked me to do, even if I didn’t do it the way you wanted, but actually right now I don’t give a damn. There’s a ship leaving for Spain in a few days. I’m going to be on it. Why don’t you just take Billy home before he gets hurt any more?’
Churchill’s indignation didn’t convince Sterling. The man was an actor and poseur from start to finish, with his Churchillian speeches and his ‘minor branch of the family’ routine. He’d started off as a circus performer and he hadn’t changed, Sterling thought. It was just one act after another.
‘I wasn’t born yesterday, Eric,’ Sterling said. ‘It’s more than just Billy. First Corrigan wants to come out here with me, then he’s murdered, possibly by the mafia, possibly in revenge for having cheated them years ago when he was in Casablanca. Rose of Cimarron wasn’t flying stores for the French military and she wasn’t going to Zagora. You say she might have been going to pick something up rather than deliver it — something Craven had dumped in the desert previously. You admit you knew Craven a little better than the “I’ve heard the name” you told me originally. And by great coincidence, you yourself happen to have been in Casablanca in nineteen forty-five. Meanwhile, we almost get our throats cut by bandits who apparently knew we were on our way, and to cap it all you are sending reports out secretly by wireless. Eric, I may not be a military type nor Sherlock bloody Holmes, but I’m not a moron. There’s something more to this than Billy, and there has been from the start. What is it?’
The big man shrugged his round shoulders massively. ‘Blowed if I know, George,’ he said. ‘You’re the scientist. You compute the probabilities.’
‘All right,’ Sterling said. ‘This is connected in some way with those vehicles that were driven into the quicksands in forty-five. And the blond chap Taha said they pulled out of the well. You didn’t seem to want to talk about it, but the man had a scar like the one I saw on the so-called “police inspector” at Corrigan’s flat.’
Churchill did a raspberry. ‘Pooh,’ he chuckled. ‘Scars are legion, George. It was only hearsay, anyway, and it might not even be accurate.’
‘It’s too much of a coincidence.’
‘You were tired, George. In the desert things seem different. You forget there’s a big world beyond the sand. Everything starts getting connected with everything else.’
‘You know more than you’ve let on, I’m sure about that.’
Churchill paused. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I do know a bit more — not much, mind. I told you that when I was in Casablanca in forty-five I was investigating links between the mafia and the Allied military. Well, I heard things about Craven and the shower he worked for, Atlantic Air Transport. They were as bent as they come, and I’d swear Craven was in it up to the hilt. I could never prove it, but my guess was that they were siphoning off contraband —maybe guns or drugs — from the mafia and storing them out in the Blue. I got so far in my investigations, then I was warned off by my brigadier. When I objected, I was handed my bowler hat. That made me very peeved — you see I was a substantive captain, and could have gone higher. I was good at my job. I knew I’d never have got in among the old boys’ club if it hadn’t been for the war, but I was in and I wanted to stay in afterwards. Could have been a brig by now. But they gave me the boot and I’ve never forgiven them. When you offered me the chance to come out here again, I admit I was wary at first. But then I saw that I might get a chance to get my own back — at least morally.’
‘On whom?’
‘I don’t know. Only, put it like this: there was somebody quite well up in the British military establishment who didn’t want anyone breathing down Craven’s neck. He was the blue-eyed boy, the celebrated war hero. It was probably a crazy idea, but I thought I could kill two birds with one stone. Only I’m none the wiser, really. At least you have Billy back, and I reckon you ought to get him out of here as quickly as you can ... What’s that, for God’s sake ...?’
The furious battering on the door made them both start, and a moment later the door crashed open and a dark-haired man stormed into the room. He was followed by another in a bellhop uniform, who was vainly trying to restrain him. For a moment Sterling didn’t recognize the man. His hair had been cut coarsely, and he was dressed in clothes that, though new, were far too big, and flapped scarecrow-like on his arms and legs. The man was barefooted and his hands and feet were gnarled and calloused by years of contact with the earth. He looked forlorn and ridiculous in the clothes, his eyes rolling so wildly that for a moment Sterling took him for an escaped lunatic. Then his face fell, as he realized it was Taha.
The bellhop was a robust black man and he had his arms around Taha’s waist now. The youth wrenched his hands back, twisting the fingers until the man howled in agony. ‘Take your wet slave hands off me!’ he screamed in Arabic. ‘How dare you touch me, son of a dog? I am of the People of the Clouds!’
The bellhop staggered back, moaning, bent double and clutching his fingers. ‘This man is mad!’ he shouted, eyes bulging. ‘Mad!’ He stepped back into the corridor outside, and Taha slammed the door after him. He turned to face Churchill, hate written all over him, and tugged at his shorn hair. ‘Pig and the son of a pig!’ he spat. ‘Who gave you the right to cut my hair? The hair is the mark of a ma
n. It may not be cut.’
He advanced on Churchill and, despite the fact that the big Englishman had a foot on him and was probably twice his weight, Churchill stepped back, eyeing his kitbag.
‘Laysh inta shilta ar-ruh haqqi?’ Taha demanded. ‘Why did you take my spirit? Where are my weapons? No warrior must be without his weapons, not even for a moment. Where are they?’
‘I left them with the little fellow,’ Churchill stammered. ‘Out in the desert. You won’t need them here, Billy. This is Layoune.’
‘Fool,’ Taha said, advancing. ‘You think the Ulad al-Mizna have no enemies in Layoune? I should have left you to the Ulad Delim. I have told you that there is no Billy. Billy was. Taha is.’
Churchill bent suddenly and whipped his pistol out of his kitbag with remarkable speed, but Taha moved with the quickness of a cobra, grabbing the muzzle of the weapon and sending Churchill crashing back over the low table. It gave under his weight and the china tea service leapt into the air, hitting him in his face. The teapot and cup smashed and Churchill howled as the hot tea spilled over him. When he sat up he found himself looking down the barrel of his own weapon. He lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender and grinned sheepishly.
Sterling couldn’t help himself. He rocked with laughter. ‘It’s what you deserve, Eric,’ he said.
‘You’re probably right,’ Churchill said, heaving himself up. ‘Anyway, it’s not loaded.’
Sterling shook his head at Taha. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘put it down. I’m sorry for what has happened. It was not my plan, but maybe it’s for the best. This man meant well.’
He put out his hand for the weapon. Taha blinked at him and let it drop, but did not give it back. He fumbled with the unfamiliar locking-catch and finally got it open. There were no rounds in the chamber. He gave Churchill a glance of derision and offered it back to him, handle first. ‘To draw a weapon on a warrior of the Reguibat is to invite death,’ he growled. ‘I advise you never to try it again unless you wish to kill me.’
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