literature, and not the detailed language of the petroleum-extraction manuals. It was for basics.
'Ana af-ham.' I understand.
'Ureed mutarjem.' I want an interpreter.
The class catered for workers from every section of the Shaybah complex, was always full. Each time she read out the Arabic phrase, there followed a choir of voices struggling with the English translation.
'Mish mushkila.' No problem.
'Wayn al-funduq?' Where is the hotel?
In any other week she would have enjoyed the class for its enthusiasm. She did not think that any of them, as she spoke the Arabic and they replied in English, had realized that her heart was not with them, her concentration was gone. The class drifted towards the door with a cacophony of conversation and scraped chairs. One of the last to leave, gathering up the photocopied sheets she gave them for private study, was the head of Security. She was wiping clean her blackboard.
She called his name. She asked, please, if he could stay a moment.
The room cleared.
'Yes, Miss Bethany?'
She hesitated, then blurted, 'There is something I do not understand.'
'If I can be of help.'
She felt stupid. She should have backed off – but she never did. It was not her way. She tried to master a fraudulent casualness in her question. 'Someone told me that the Rub' al Khali around us is a place of danger. Is that true?'
He glanced down at his watch, as if unwilling to be delayed. 'True, and you know that. Extreme heat, dehydration, remoteness, it is very harsh.'
'Sorry, I don't explain myself – danger because of the people who move in the Sands.'
'False.' Again his eye slipped to his watch and a puzzled frown settled over his eyes. 'In your language you call it the Empty Quarter.
That is what it is. Only the Bedouin are there. An old culture of trading has given them the knowledge of the Sands. They can survive there, nobody else. The Bedouin are not thieves, they have a tradition of kindness and generosity. I know you go into the Sands, Miss Bethany, when you search for the meteorites, and you should be fearful of the conditions of nature, but not of criminals. Only the Bedouin are there, no other man can survive such a place. A stranger who tries to walk in the Sands, he condemns himself – he is dead.'
Thank you.' She dropped her head.
He lightened. 'Now, I understand… You have heard, Miss Bethany, the rumours – what they would gossip about in a camel market – of terrorists in the Sands. No, no. Those people are in Riyadh, Jedda and Ad Dammam, not in the desert. They would die there. Excuse me, please.'
She was left in the emptied room.
She wiped out the last lines on her blackboard. Min wayn intal and shu-ismak? She smeared out the chalked words.
Where are you from? Who are you?
In the boxes are the Stinger missiles. Do you know about the Stinger missiles?' Hosni was laid across the neck of his camel and his voice was a reedy, frail whisper.
Caleb crouched in his saddle to hear him. 'Once I saw one, but not close.'
'They are old. We do not know whether they are affected by the age. But they are important.'
They moved in a tightened knot, man close to man, camel brushing against camel, and he smelt the sweat on the guide and the boy, on the Egyptian and himself, the foul breath panted by the camels.
His knee bumped against a box's edge on the flank of a pack bull.
'I saw one when we tried to hold a line beyond Kabul, but the bombers were too high,' Caleb said. 'It was not fired.'
'The Stinger turned the war for us against the Soviets. The Soviets had a great fear of them.' Hosni coughed, tried to spit, as if the old memory of an enemy required it.
'I was never taught to fire one.'
'We bring them across the desert, deliver them, then they will be moved on, taken to where there is a target… but we do not know whether they will operate. Tommy opened the boxes, and there were manuals inside. They were written for Americans and Tommy could not read American.'
'Should we leave them behind?' Caleb had changed the order of the march. He expected to be listened to. 'Will the weight of them kill the camels?'
'You are the Outsider to us. I am told to escort you. I am told to bring you to the heart of the family. I do not know where you have come from, who you were. I do not ask. Two are already lost, but four remain. If I ask whether you can read the American manual of the Stinger, then you tell me something of yourself. My ignorance is your protection.'
'I am asking you, is their weight worth the life of the camels, do they slow us? What is more important? You and me or the Stingers?'
He knew the answer, expected to be told what he knew. 'Tell me.'
He did not know what the pale, watering eyes saw, but they speared at him and the voice grew in its pitch. 'I think you show ignorance. Perhaps it is only the Stingers, if they work, that will get us, you and me, through to those who wait for us.'
'The next time we stop, I will open a box, take the manual…'
'And read it?'
'… and read it. I will, because of my importance,' Caleb said.
For a moment, Hosni struggled to rise in his saddle, but the pinions held him. Caleb saw the man who had fought the Soviets, who had given his life to the struggle of the Emir General, saw the controlled anger.
'I warn you, ignorance you will learn from – vanity will destroy you. With vanity comes arrogance, with arrogance comes failure…
Imagine. Caravans move, columns of men move, mule trains move.
Men struggle not only through this desert but through mountains, through passes, through streets and through the alleyways of souks, they come from the doorways of mosques and from the entrances to caves. You are only one man. Do you believe the organization of the Emir General depends on one man, whose past gives him importance? We are many. A hundred men move – some will be slopped, some captured, some will be killed – and they will be replaced by another thousand. In an engine, you are one tooth in one cog. I ask of you, never again show me your vanity,'
Caleb flinched. The boy close behind him would have heard the attack, and the guide in front. It was as if he had been struck. He felt small, a pygmy dwarfed by this needle-thin old man whose hand he had kissed in love.
'The next time we stop I will read the manual.'
A dozen men and women sat in two lines, divided by computers.
Two lines of six, facing each other, separated by the screens and keyboards.
The raindrops, from their run between the car park and the Libtary entrance, were on the shoulders of Lovejoy's coat and the waxed waterproof loaned to the American. The skies outside were ashen and the forecast was for rain all day, then an unsettled week no clear blue skies on the horizon.
He spoke quietly to the chief librarian. He'd telephoned her in the morning and been told at what time the Internet class was scheduled to finish. He didn't do tourist trips. They'd stayed in a hotel just outside the centre of Wolverhampton, gone early to bed because the American seemed exhausted from his overnight flight. Over breakfast Lovejoy had made his calls, which had culminated in a less than frank conversation with the chief librarian. This was the first step. He had not taken the American for a drive round the sights of Wolverhampton, but had killed time in the hotel lobby. The first step always made Michael Lovejoy nervous, and his justification for going to the Library had been brief and terse.
The Library was three miles south-west of Wolverhampton, nine miles north-east of the Birmingham city plazas. After eight phone calls, Lovejoy had spoken to the chief librarian and had heard what he wanted. She was a middle-aged woman who introduced herself as Aggie, who was careful in her appearance and had the brightness of enthusiasm. To her, Lovejoy was a lecturer from the University of Birmingham. The American, a complication to the cover story, was not introduced, had been told not to speak, just smile.
