The Lost Army of Cambyses (59 page)

man to the next, sizing up his chances. There was

a brief painful silence, the calm before the storm,

and then, suddenly, raucous laughter.

'The cigarette, you idiot! Don't you want a

light?'

It took a second for Khalifa to register what

they meant, and then the air whooshed from his

lungs in a deep sigh of relief. He lifted a hand and

touched the cigarette in his mouth.

'That's what a night in the desert does to you,'

he said, laughing with the others. 'Turns your

mind.'

The man flicked a lighter and held out the

flame. Khalifa leaned forward and puffed the

cigarette into life.

'The sooner we get out of this god-forsaken

place the better,' he said.

Murmurs of agreement.

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He took a couple more puffs, nodded a farewell

and started away again. This time no-one called

him back. He was through.

The eastern horizon was definitely greying now.

Khalifa crossed the valley and climbed to the top of

the next dune, the huge rock rearing monstrously to

his left, silent and immutable, a pivot on whose

point the entire sky seemed to balance. At the

summit he passed between two lookouts, neither of

whom paid him any attention, and gazed down at

the chaotic scene below – the crater, the tents, the

camels, the piles of boxes and artefacts. Droves of

black-robed figures were moving to and fro, most

of them packing and loading crates, although a

small group was working within the crater itself,

wading among the tangled corpses, doing something

with lengths of cable. There was a large man in a

white shirt standing above them, supervising their

work. Dravic, he guessed.

He gazed down at them for a few moments and

then turned his attention back towards the camp,

just in time to see a fair-haired woman disappear-

ing into a tent right in the centre. He noted its

position, between a row of fuel drums and a pyra-

mid of straw bales, and then started down the

slope. As he did so an amplified voice drifted up

from beneath:
'Allah u akbar! Allah u akbar!'

The call to dawn prayers. He quickened his

descent, pulling the scarf back up across his face.

A tide of men streamed through the camp and out

onto a flat area of sand to the south of it, where

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they lined up in rows, facing east. Sayf al-Tha'r

moved with them, but turned aside on the edge of

the camp and stepped into a tent with an antenna

jutting above it. A man rose as he entered, but Sayf

al-Tha'r waved him back to his seat in front of

heavy radio apparatus.

'The helicopters?'

The man handed him a piece of paper. 'Just

taken off.'

'No problems?'

'None. They'll be here in under an hour.'

'And the guards? Nothing?'

The man shook his head.

'Keep me informed,' said Sayf al-Tha'r and

stepped out of the tent again.

The tide of men was thinning now as the last

stragglers hurried towards the prayer area, leaving

the camp deserted. The lookouts had remained in

position, but they too were facing east, heads

bowed. He gazed up at them, black hummocks

strung out along the dune-tops like a line of

vultures, and then turned and made his way

back through the camp. The sound of prayer

wafted through the air like a breeze.

He reached his own tent and threw back the

flap. As he bent to step inside he stopped suddenly,

shoulders tense. Slowly he stood and turned, eyes

darting to left and right. He came forward half a

step, eyes probing the shadowy labyrinth of

canvas and equipment, but there was nothing and

after a moment he shook his head, turned and dis-

appeared inside, the canvas flap dropping down

behind him.

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NEAR THE LIBYAN BORDER

The helicopters flew low, hugging the desert,

twenty of them, like a flock of carrion birds

sweeping over the sands. One was slightly ahead

of the others and those behind followed its every

movement, rising and falling as it rose and fell,

swinging to left and right, a perfectly choreographed

dance of flight. They were large machines, heavy,

their lumpen bodies somehow at odds with the

grace of their movement. In their cockpits human

forms could just be made out. They rushed on

ahead of the dawn, slicing through the silence as

the sky slowly turned to red.

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40

T H E WESTERN DESERT

Khalifa remained hidden among a jumble of oil

drums until the camp had emptied completely. He

then made his way swiftly through the twisting

avenues of equipment and tents, searching for the

one into which the girl had disappeared. He

reckoned he had fifteen minutes, twenty at the

outside.

From above the layout of the camp had seemed

perfectly clear. Now, at ground level, it wasn't so

easy to orientate himself. Everything looked the

same and the landmarks he had noted a few

moments before – the row of fuel drums, the stack

of straw bales – were nowhere to be seen. He put

his head through a couple of doorways, thinking

they might be the ones, but there was nothing

inside and he was just beginning to get desperate

when he emerged from behind a teetering wall of

crates and saw ahead of him, beside a heap of

bales, the tent he was looking for. He grunted with

relief and, hurrying forward, drew back its flap

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and leaned in, machine-gun held ready in front of

him.

It wasn't necessary, for the guard he'd been

expecting wasn't there. Neither, however, was the

girl. Instead, kneeling with his back to the door,

was a solitary figure, his forehead pressed to the

floor. Khalifa made to step back, realizing he'd

again got the wrong tent, but something stopped

him. He couldn't see the man's face, nor even

much of his shape beneath his costume of black

robes. Somehow, however, he knew. It was Sayf al-

Tha'r. He raised his gun, finger ready to squeeze

the trigger.

If the kneeling figure noticed the policeman, he

gave no indication, but continued with his

prayers, oblivious to the presence behind him.

Khalifa's finger tightened on the trigger, squeezing

the metal tongue back until it was just a twitch

away from firing. From this distance there was no

way he could miss. The tent's interior seemed to

echo with the beating of his heart.

The man straightened, stood, recited, knelt

again. One twitch of the finger, thought Khalifa,

that's all it would take. One twitch and the figure

in front of him would be dead. He thought of Ali

and raised the muzzle slightly, aiming it at the base

of the man's head. He drew a deep breath, bit his

lip, then lowered the weapon again, eased his

finger off the trigger and stepped backwards and

out of the tent.

For a moment he stared at the worn canvas flap,

a strangely hollow feeling in the pit of his

stomach. He could only have been looking at the

man for a few seconds, but in that time the sky

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suddenly seemed to have become much lighter,

dawn sweeping swiftly in from the east like a

wave. They'd be finishing prayers soon. He turned

and hurried off through the camp.

'I wonder how Joey is,' mumbled Tara.

She was sitting on the tent floor, hugging her

knees, rocking back and forth. Daniel lay beside her,

drumming his fingers on the ground, occasionally

lifting his arm to look at his watch.

'Who's Joey?' he asked.

'Our black-necked cobra. At the zoo. He's not

been well.'

'I would have thought you'd have had enough

of cobras to last you a lifetime.'

She shrugged. 'I never particularly liked him,

but then . . . you know . . . when you think you'll

never see him again . . . I hope Alexandra's kept

up with his antibiotics. And taken his rock out. He

had a skin disease, you see. Was rubbing himself

up against it. Damaging the scales.'

She was rambling, talking for the sake of talk-

ing, as if by making conversation she could

somehow put off the moment when they would be

taken outside and . . . what? Shot? Beheaded?

Stabbed? She looked at their guard. Not the boy

Mehmet any more, an older man. She pictured

him holding a gun to her head and firing; the

sound, the feel, the explosion of blood, her blood.

She began wringing her hands.

'What the hell was it with you and snakes any-

way?' muttered Daniel, struggling into a sitting

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position. 'I never understood the attraction.'

Tara smiled ruefully. 'In a funny way it was Dad

who got me interested in them. He hated them,

you see. It was the one chink in his armour. Made

me feel like I had some sort of power over him. I

remember some students once hid a rubber one in

his bag and when he opened it . . .'

Her voice trailed off, as if she realized there was

no point finishing the story because neither of

them was going to laugh. There was a long, heavy

silence.

'What about you?' she asked eventually, desper-

ate to keep the conversation going. 'You've never

told me why you became an archaeologist.'

'God knows. I've never really thought about it.'

Daniel was fiddling with the lace of his boot. 'I've

just always loved digging, I guess. I remember

before my parents died, when we lived in Paris, we

had a garden and I used to dig these holes at the

bottom of it, looking for buried treasure. Huge

holes, deep, like craters. Dad said if I wasn't care-

ful I'd end up in Australia. That's where it started,

I suppose. And then I was given a book with

pictures of the Tutankhamun treasures, and some-

how the digging and Egypt . . .'

The tent flap was drawn back and a guard

stepped in, his scarf wrapped close around his face

against the dawn chill. The guard on the floor

started getting to his feet. As he did so, the new

arrival brought the metal butt of his machine-gun

down hard on the side of the man's head. He

slumped backwards, unconscious. Daniel leaped

to his feet, Tara beside him. Khalifa pulled the