There was no cause for it, Jake knew that. He could not believe she
was fool enough or so naive as to walk into the obvious web that
Gareth was weaving she was Jake's woman. What they had done together,
their loving was so wonderful, so completely once in a lifetime, that
it was not possible she could turn aside to anyone else.
Yet between Vicky and Gareth there was the laughter and the shared
jokes. Sometimes he had seen them together, standing on a rock
-promontory above the camp or walking in the grove of camel-thorn
trees, leaning towards each other as they talked. Once or twice they
had both been absent from the camp at the same time for as long as a
complete morning. But it meant nothing, he knew that.
Sure, she liked Gareth Swales. He could understand that.
He liked Gareth also more than liked, he realized. It was,
rather, a deep comradely feeling of affection. You could not but be
drawn by his fine looks, his mocking sense of the ridiculous, and the
deep certainty that below that polished exterior and the overplayed
role of the foppish rogue was a different, a real person.
'Yeah. 'Jake sardonically grinned in the darkness, steering the car
south and east around the sky glow that marked the Italian
fortifications at the Wells. 'I love the guy. I don't trust him,
but
I love him just as long as he keeps the hell away from my woman.'
Gareth stooped out of the turret at that moment and tapped his
shoulder.
'There is a ravine ahead and to the left. It should do,' he said,
and Jake swung towards it and halted again.
'It's deep enough, 'he gave his opinion.
'And we should be able to see across to the ridge and cover all the
ground to the east once the sun comes up.' Gareth pointed to the glow
of the Italian searchlights and then swept his arm widely across the
open desert beyond.
'That looks like where they hold their fun and games every day.
We should get a grandstand view from here. We'd better get under cover
now.' They intended to spend the whole of that day observing the
activity of the Italian squadron, pulling out again under cover of
darkness, so Jake reversed Priscilla gingerly down the steep slope of
the ravine, backing and filling carefully, until she was in a hull-down
position below the bank with just the top of her turret exposed but
facing back towards the west with her front wheels at a point in the
bank which she could climb handily, if a quick start and a fast escape
were necessary.
He switched off the engine, and the two of them armed themselves with
machetes and wandered about in the open, hacking down the small wiry
desert brush and then piling it over the exposed turret, until from a
hundred yards it blended into the desert landscape.
Jake spilled gasoline from one of the spare cans into a bucket of sand,
then placed the bucket in the bottom of the ravine and put a match to
it. They crouched over the primitive stove, warming themselves against
the desert chill, while the coffee brewed. They were silent, thawing
