‘You’re not going to answer my question?’
‘Religion is too deep for me. I prefer riding a bike.’
The priest laughed and took a sip from his own bottle. He seemed tired.
‘Come on, Ms Otero; don’t be angry with me for not having to do the donkey work now. You don’t think that all these squares showed up by magic, do you?’
The quadrants began two hundred feet from the tents. The other members of the expedition were spread out over the surface of the canyon, each one with his own step, wait, whistle, step. Andrea had reached the end of her section and took a step to the right, turned 180 degrees, and then began walking again, her back to the priest.
‘And there I was, trying to find the two of you… So this is what you and the doc were up to all night.’
‘There were other people there too, so you needn’t worry.’
‘What do you mean by that, Father?’
Fowler didn’t say anything. For a long while there was only the rhythm of step, wait, whistle, step.
‘How did you know?’ said Andrea anxiously.
‘I suspected it. Now I know.’
‘Fuck.’
‘I’m sorry for having invaded your privacy, Ms Otero.’
‘The hell you are,’ Andrea said and bit her fist. ‘I’d kill for a smoke.’
‘What’s stopping you?’
‘Professor Forrester told me that it interferes with the instruments.’
‘You know something, Ms Otero? For someone who acts like she’s on top of everything you’re pretty naive. Tobacco smoke doesn’t affect the magnetic field of the Earth. At least, not according to my sources.’
‘The old bastard.’
Andrea dug around in her pockets then lit a cigarette.
‘Are you going to tell Doc, Father?’
‘Harel is intelligent, much more so than I am. And she’s Jewish. She doesn’t need advice from an old priest.’
‘Do I?’
‘Well, you’re Catholic, right?’
‘I lost confidence in your outfit fourteen years ago, Father.’
‘Which one? Military or clerical?’
‘Both. My parents really screwed me up.’
‘All parents do that. Isn’t that how life begins?’
Andrea turned her head and managed to see him out of the corner of her eye.
‘So we have something in common.’
‘You can’t imagine. Why were you searching for us last night, Andrea?’
The reporter looked around before answering. The nearest human being was David Pappas, locked into his harness a hundred feet away. A blast of hot wind gusted from the entrance to the canyon, forming beautiful whirlpools of sand at Andrea’s feet.
‘Yesterday, when we were at the entrance to the canyon, I climbed up that enormous dune on foot. At the top I began taking shots with my telephoto lens and I saw a man.’
‘Where?’ Fowler blurted out.
‘On top of the cliff behind you. I only saw him for a second. He was wearing light brown clothes. I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t know if it had something to do with the person who tried to kill me on the
Fowler squinted and ran his hand over his bald head, taking a deep breath. His face looked troubled.
‘Ms Otero, this expedition is extremely dangerous and its success depends on secrecy. If anyone knew the truth about why we’re here.…’
‘They’d throw us out?’
‘They’d kill us all.’
‘Oh.’
Andrea lifted her gaze, acutely aware of how isolated the place was and how trapped they would be if someone broke through Dekker’s thin line of sentries.
‘I need to speak to Albert immediately,’ Fowler said.
‘I thought you said you couldn’t use your satellite telephone here? That Dekker had a frequency scanner?’
The priest simply looked at her.
‘Oh, shit. Not again,’ Andrea said.
‘We’ll do it tonight.’
32
AL MUDAWWARA DESERT, JORDAN
The tall man was named O and he was crying. He had to get away from the other men. He didn’t want them to see him showing his feelings, much less talk about it. And it would have been very dangerous to reveal why he was crying.
It was really because of the girl. She had reminded him too much of his own daughter. He had hated having to kill her. Killing Tahir had been simple, a relief, in fact. He had to admit that he’d even enjoyed playing with him – giving him a preview of hell, but here on earth.
The girl was another story. She was only sixteen years old.
And yet, D and W had agreed with him: the mission was too important. Not only were the lives of the other brothers crowded in the cave at stake, but all of Dar Al-Islam. The mother and daughter knew too much. There could be no exceptions.
‘Meaningless shitty war,’ he said.
‘So you’re talking to yourself now?’
It was W, who had come crawling over. He didn’t like running risks and always talked in whispers, even inside the cave.
‘I was praying.’
‘We have to go back into the hole. They might see us.’
‘There’s only one sentry on the western wall, and he has no direct line of vision over here. Don’t worry.’
‘What if he changes position? They have night-vision goggles.’
‘I said don’t worry. The big black one is on duty. He smokes the whole time and the light from the cigarette stops him seeing anything,’ O said, annoyed that he had to talk when he had wanted to enjoy the silence.
‘Let’s go back inside the cave. We’ll play chess.’
