Stewart, Angus (35 page)

They had descended finally into the flat expanse of the pre-Saharan
jol
,
the stony desert. The horizon was as flat as it could ever have appeared from the deck of any ship. In fact it perceptibly curved. And now, even more acutely than when among the chaos of rock, and by an even more frightening inversion of accepted perspectives, a man's role was dramatically, almost totally reduced against the barrenness of that mighty landscape. Jay found himself looking to the pain of his hands at they clutched the white-hot wheel concentrated upon it as for evidence of his own continuance.

'Will he ever stop?' Brown's voice came after a gargle of water. It sounded slurred.

'God knows.' Jay reached for the tin flask again and wet his lips with the hot contents. 'Presumably we have to arrive somewhere.'

Brown was peering through the opened windscreen. They were following a barely discernible track. The nobly engineered French road had been left far behind with the descent from the mountain pass. 'Any idea where we are?'

'Just angling south-east into the Sahara at sixty,' Jay said. He had little energy for talk.

'More vultures.' Brown had produced a pair of field-glasses.

'Great.'

'Tents! And what look like tanks!' Brown's voice came excitedly. 'And they're pulling up. For some sort of checkpoint by the look of it.'

'I've not yet forgotten our last one,' Jay said. 'You've still not told me how you twigged Gurney's death—his murder—in advance. Why you were scared. It obviously has something to do with agent Brown's solo seizure of the Ghana government—or Smith's in Salisbury . . .'

'That must wait till I retire. Or the woman has you locked up for breaching O.S.A. through idle, never mind erroneous speculation, dear boy.'

'Bugger the Official Secrets Act,' Jay said. 'Pass the water.' He took pleasure in slamming the Land Rover to a halt behind the jeep. For verve it equalled Abdslem.

A ridiculous spectacle confronted them. In the midst of a navigable expanse that stretched from horizon to horizon two steel-helmeted Moroccan soldiers were manning a brightly painted swivel pole which spanned the barely identifiable track. The captain waved a bunch of papers imperiously. Then they sped on through the raised barrier; though a yard or two's detour to either right or left could have saved the soldier hefting his weight on the pole. They passed the military encampment Brown had spotted through his field-glasses to starboard.

'Venal considerations apart, how
does
one regard the lightweight heroes we
can't
rescue?' Brown asked suddenly.

'One tries to remember there have been grimmer things in these people's history, and in the last fifteen years at that, than child sapper groups,' Jay said 'I suppose,' he added, after a time.

'It seems a frightful waste.'

'What war isn't? Maybe the danger's exaggerated anyway.'

'You didn't think so when you came tearing down here.'

'Just shut up on philosophy,' Jay said irritably. 'Or until you've explained Dan.'

They traversed more confusing intersections in the dust: rutted tracks that disappeared nowhere, over the four horizons. The sun was climbing into its zenith. Jay wiped grime from his mouth with his bare forearm. The perspiration had ceased to trickle down from his brow behind his sun-glasses. The track was viciously bumpy. Still, sixty was imperative to keep the jeep in sight.

'Stupid bloody place for a war,' Jay said.

They passed pickets of camel cavalry: the kneeling, hobbled beasts munching mindlessly from bales of fodder, scarcely green. A pair of over-zealous sentries fired shots over their heads. For fun, presumably.

'To think Manolito wants to see the Sahara,' Brown said.

Jay looked quickly at the whisky flask Brown once more raised to his lip. 'You're crazy to drink that stuff out here,' he said simply.

'I'm fighting,' Brown said, with an unexpected seriousness. 'Fighting something off, I think. All morning . . . it's been as if I were being shadowed . . . by some
confrontation
.'
He shrugged, brightening. 'Samsara is tiresome.'

Jay smiled. 'Assuredly! It was good of you to come with me on this hellish escapade. You needn't have done that.'

'No.' Brown sounded uncertain.

From somewhere in the limitless wastes there now came the intermittent roll of thunder: artillery.

'A kasbah,' Brown said, directing his field-glasses ahead.

Jay smeared his choked face again. 'Maybe we've arrived.'

Evidently they had. A rough mud castle, with tapering, truncated towers, crenellated battlements, and slit windows, altogether crudely solid as a child's drawing, loomed up ahead. Nearby, an abandoned forbear crumbled back into the rose and ochre earth from which it had once been laboriously raised, looking exactly what it was: a forgotten edifice of sand.

Now the jeep had wheeled about in front of the current kasbah, and was careering back towards them beneath a pillar of dust.

'Perhaps he's spotted its dead men manning the wall,' said Brown. 'He's smart'

The jeep drew up alongside their slowing Land Rover. Abdslem pushed Rommel-style goggles up on to his peaked cap. 'All  wait here, please,' he commanded. Then he
and Lom set out to walk the few hundred yards distance remaining to the gate of the fort.

'The intrepid ones won't risk kidnap and murder of the tender Christians,' Brown commented. 'Did you by any chance think to bring sun-tan lotion?'

'No,' Jay said, shortly.

Brown unearthed a plastic mug and
balanced it, together with the tin cap of the water bottle, on the folded windscreen. 'Larger one's for you,' he said, magnanimously. 'In the most limitless stronghold of Islam, with the infidels slaughtering each other on all sides with the modern derivatives of Madani El Glaoui's fatal Krupp cannon, the Christian blamelessly prepares his atrocious tipple.' He uncorked the Johnnie Walker. 'See what I mean,' he added, as the ramble of a
renewed artillery barrage reached them from a great distance.

Half-heartedly Jay smiled. It was a tense, sweltering wait.

Brown slopped whisky into the two receptacles. 'Interesting to see how much evaporates,' he remarked. 'A propitiation of the gods.' He took what was now only the folded sheet of paper from his shirt pocket, and studied it once more. Then he focussed the glasses again on the dark gateway of the fort and exclaimed suddenly: 'He's got him, you know! Achmed's with him!'

'I knew he would,' Jay said quietly. '
'Lham do lillah
!'

'Thank God indeed!' Brown agreed: he reached for the tin cap and held it aloft.

'Okay,' Jay smiled, taking the plastic mug. 'So what's your celebration?'

'Voilà
!'
Brown announced; and now handed him the flimsy sheet of paper.

' "Seven C three-eight"; Jay read aloud. 'What's that?'

'That is me,' said Brown.

' "Papers filing definitive as requested",' Jay finished. A quick glance assured him that Achmed was indeed now emerging from the dark
mouth
of the fort, together with Lom and Abdslem. 'So?' He looked questioningly at Brown.

'It means,' Brown intoned solemnly over the thimble-like measure, 'that Nashib is now legitimate. Some twenty-five months ago I married the girl. The records are all correct in Somerset House, and show just that'

Stupidly Jay continued to stare at him. Naima,' he stammered out eventually.

'Even so.'

'You mean you've somehow cooked it?' Jay was incredulous. 'Like Manolo's passport?'

'Pretty much.'

'But . . . that's ridiculous!'

'Isn't all this?' Brown indicated the scene around them. Just perceptibly he was beginning to look uncomfortable; as though Jay were unnecessarily spoiling his party. 'You sod!' Jay said, still half unbelieving. 'You bloody little sod!'

But other things were now happening about them.

'Two hours earlier than promised, you see!' Abdslem was saying at his elbow.

'Hallo, Fus,' Jay said,' scarcely focussing upon the boy. Two soldiers, he saw, were pitching a tent. A spirit stove was being pumped into life: its flame invisible against the scorching sand.

'Now we will all have tea,' Abdslem said.

To Jay this seemed the ultimate inanity. 'Hallo, Fus,' he said again.

'Yesterday he had his first ride in an aeroplane,' said Abdslem.

'Oh? . . . Oh, good.' Jay smuggled to regain his bearings.

Achmed grinned happily at himself and Caroline. Yet it was evident that in the short time that had elapsed since his release it was the captain who had really become his hero. About this Jay felt well content. Vacantly he wondered whether the boy realised anything of his intended fate. Tea in the Sahara proved a bizarre refection. Abdslem handed round the perennial sticky glasses. There were almond cakes. Lom took some photographs, surreptitiously as ever. Elaborately, Jay praised and thanked the captain. He dared not look at Brown.

Once more a move was ordered. Lom had indignantly declared himself perfectly fit. His dipping of the little crescent shaped cakes in the
majoun
jar perhaps helped his resolution. Abdslem would escort them only as far as a confusing intersection of tracks. By the early hours of darkness they could he in Marrakesh. Marrakesh! Jay thought. If it proved too far, there was a village where
they might stop, Abdslem explained.

And so they encaravanned once more. Achmed didn't want to be separated from the captain. Jay still drove in the rear, with only Brown for passenger. But he neither tackled nor spoke to him at all. If they were to escape that burning hell before dementia set in, every ounce of energy and concentration, he felt, must he conserved.

As he had promised, Abdslem drew up where the track forked, amid deep ruts. Caroline now climbed aboard the Land Rover; and Brown took over the wheel. She asked about passes for the checkpoint.

Abdslem shook his head. 'Not need any papers for this road.' It was best, he went on, that the boy remain temporarily with himself and Lom. Documents could be more officially cleared; and he would promise to ship Achmed safely back to Tangier. He clearly would, Jay could see; and as Achmed himself favoured the idea, that was the end of the matter. Then, unexpectedly, Abdslem invited Jay also to stay: he could see something of the war, if he liked, and travel back with the boy.

Jay made summary of Achmed's contented relationship with the captain, his own need to get back to Naima, and, more particularly, for an early show-down with Brown. It was beginning to occur to him that if Brown couldn't be persuaded to earn an equally magical divorce by virtue of whatever he was proposing to do in Black Africa, then he, Jay, must in
no uncertain manner threaten to blow the gaff to newspapers beyond the jurisdiction of D-notices, or perhaps more effectively kidnap Manolo and post weekly packages of his fingers and toes . . . anything.

He shook his head. Abdslem shrugged, looked a moment into his eyes as they shook hands. Caroline's was a rather gushing leave-taking of the captain. She got in to the back of the Land Rover, and Brown engaged gear.

Achmed, Abdslem and Lom now stood to watch their departure. Achmed grinned broadly and waved. Lom remained stolid, in his floppy hat an absurdly incongruous, somehow domestic figure in that cruel landscape. It was a pity, Abdslem was thinking, about the rather silly, pretty girl tourist who had become involved with Brown.

They had gone perhaps seventy yards when Caroline commanded Brown to stop.

'Back up,' she said. 'Don't turn. I want to go back a minute.'

Disconcerted, Jay saw a tear slipped down beneath her sun-glasses. Then they reached the standing figures, Caroline got out, looked a moment at the Arab, then took him about the neck in an impulsive embrace.

'Women!' Brown said incredulously, watching in the driving minor. 'And him of all people!'

But Jay saw something else. Abdslem's delighted laugh was curiously changing. It was startled, agonized, then slack. Slipping down he made no sound. At the last moment he pitched forward on his face, and Jay could see that Manolo's flick-knife was buried very deeply in his back.

First to react was Achmed. He gave a piteous yelp of terror and bolted. After many seconds during which he was totally stunned Jay somehow left the Land Rover and caught up with him. Insanely, mechanically Lom was taking photographs. Now Brown climbed dazed from the driver's that. 'Get him in the jeep,' Caroline kept repeating. 'Get the knife out,' she said to Brown.

Brown was capable of nothing, let alone that. Jay retched when he looked at the blood welling in regular spurts from the hideous wound. Achmed stared at the knife, fascinated.

'Get this man into the jeep before someone comes along and we're all killed!' Caroline ground out. With superhuman strength she had pulled the knife from the Arab's back herself, and flung it into the Land Rover. '
Now move
!'
The last words were almost an hysterical scream. They stared at her. Then, like a sleep-walker, Brown began some motions of obedience. Jay joined him. It was actual vomit he choked back now. He thought he sensed Lom's cold lens near his face. But more madness simply would not register.

Somehow they had heaved the Arab's bleeding body into the jeep. Caroline was already in the driving seat. She swept in a tight arc about their Land Rover: drew up on the deeply rutted track immediately in front of it.

'That stone,' she said to Brown, gesturing.

Scarcely knowing how, never mind why they obeyed her, the jeep was in low gear, the accelerator weighted. Its wheels locked in the ruts, it bore its dead passenger away, bumpily along the track up which they had themselves driven, then reversed . . . when? . . . nightmare hours ago. The jeep got scarcely fifty yards beyond the point where Caroline had commanded Brown to stop. The explosion was devastating. When the fountain of earth and dust subsided there was no wreckage larger than the size of a crumpled petrol can.

Jay spat out grit He wrenched off his shirt. mopped the vomit from his chest, and flung the fouled garment away. A second later he had flung himself far more violently at Achmed. Even so, Manolo's knife came within inches of carrying off Caroline too. Having disarmed the boy, Jay hurled the hideous, sticky object away with all his strength. 'You shouldn't have done that.' Caroline watched the arc of the knife.