A week after the original test the first bulk supplies of anti-bacteria were poured into the sea at ten points on the Azaran coast, carefully selected after a study of tidal currents. The effect was noticeable within twelve hours.
Fleming, who had been allowed to go with Dawnay to the coast, stood at the edge of the water, where the desert sloped down to make long golden beaches, and watched fascinated as the great nitrogen bubbles came bursting to the surface of the waves. Even the storminess of the sea could not hide them, and in his lungs he could feel a tingling freshness of regenerated air.
He and Dawnay drove back on the third day. 'Now we must try to smuggle out some of the stuff with Neilson,' she said. 'This is all very fine, but it's merely local, and as you see, the weather remains quite unaffected by such a minor activity.'
'No hope of Intel sending it?' Fleming peered through a windscreen opaque from a sudden downpour of hail and storm rain.
'Not a chance,' Dawnay replied. 'They won't release it to anyone except on their own terms. And what those terms are they haven't yet said. But I can imagine.' Her words were drowned in a scream of wind which made the car shudder.
'The weather's worse,' she said, and there was a streak of alarm in her voice. 'I wonder if we're doing right, after all.
You see what's happening, John?'
He nodded, leaning forward to see the blurred image of the road. 'We're treating the sea around here and nowhere else. Millions of cubic feet of nitrogen are being released. It's building up a cone of high pressure in a localised zone; everywhere else the pressure's dam' nigh a vacuum, and the original bacteria will be sucking in the nitrogen as fast as we can pump it out. We'll never win this way, all we'll do is breed hurricanes.'
'God, how futile and helpless it all makes one feel,' muttered Dawnay.
For an hour Fleming drove on in silence, concentrating on keeping the car going in a land which was just a kaleidoscope of rain, mud, and wind.
Some ten miles from Baleb the wind dropped, though the rain continued. The air was abnormally clear, giving an illusion that objects were nearer than in fact they were.
'Look at that!' Fleming jerked his head towards the mountains along the horizon.
They stood out sharp and clear, lighter in colour than the purplish black clouds swirling above the crests. And right above them rose an immense spiral of greyish cloud, the top mushrooming and changing shape all the time.
'Tornado centre,' said Dawnay. 'We're in the calm area around it. Let's hope to God it doesn't move this way.'
'That funnel is right over Abu's village, I think,' muttered Fleming. 'His family must be getting it badly, unless they saw the clouds building up and got to the caves where Neilson is.'
But only Lemka had reached the cave when the tornado struck. She had clambered up the mountain with her daily basket of food for Neilson. He refused to let her go back when he noticed the abnormal calm and saw the clouds racing together towards the south.
At first Lemka protested. Her mother and the baby would be terrified by the storm. Besides, Yusel had promised to come with information about getting Neilson out with some contraband bacteria. But when the full fury of the tornado drove them into the recess of the cave she subsided into frightened silence.
'He'll be all right, and your family,' Neilson insisted with a cheerfulness he did not feel.
But things were not all right with any of them. Yusel had arrived at Abu's house shortly after Lemka had left with the food for Neilson. He had intended to set out earlier, hoping to accompany his sister because he had some good news for the American: he could smuggle a message to London the next day.
In his excitement he had not been very careful about his trip. He had not seen, through the rain and sandstorms, a car following a mile behind his.
Consequently he was absolutely unprepared when the door of Abu's house burst open and Kaufman pushed in with a couple of soldiers. Without orders, the soldiers pinioned Yusel and soon had him gagged and trussed in a chair, his arms and legs tied to it with rope.
While Lemka's mother cringed against the wall, holding the baby, Kaufman began methodically slapping Yusel's face with the back of his hand. The blows were not unduly severe, but they were relentlessly repeated, first on one side of the head, then on the other. Yusel grew dizzy, then half-conscious.
Kaufman stepped back, breathing heavily. The look on the old woman's eyes above her veil made him uneasy. There had been people many years before who had looked like that - people who had perhaps cringed a little but whose spirit had still defied him. 'Take the old woman and the child out of here,' he growled.
As soon as a soldier had pushed the woman and baby into the kitchen Kaufman ungagged Yusel. 'Now for some sense from you,' he said, giving him another slap across the face to restore his senses. 'I'm a reasonable man and I do not like to use force, but you must realise the unpleasant things which could happen. They won't if you answer a simple question.
Who have you brought into the country?'
Yusel looked up at him with glazed eyes. He gulped and hesitated; Kaufman hit him again. Yusel's brain reeled. His head slumped forward and began to lose consciousness. One of the guards revived him with a small, painful jab with a bayonet and Kaufman repeated his question.
'Professor Neilson,' Yusel muttered.
Kaufman drew in his breath sharply. 'Neilson!'
'The father,' mumbled Yusel. 'The father of the young scientist...'
Kaufman closed his eyes in relief. For a split second he had had a vision of a ghost. 'Why have you brought him?' he snarled. 'Where is he?'
Yusel sat silent. He watched Kaufman's hands clench into fists and slowly rise to shoulder height. He bent his head in shame and fear. 'He's in a cave above the temple,' he whispered.
'More,' ordered Kaufman.
Once he started talking, Yusel found it easy to go on.
When he faltered Kaufman hit him again or a soldier prodded him with his bayonet, until they had the whole story.
Kaufman grunted with satisfaction and turned to the soldiers. 'One of you take him down to the car. Keep him tied up. And you' - he turned to the second guard - 'come with me. We'll get this American.'
He walked outside, accompanied by the soldier. It was still calm, but there was a weird humming sound to the right, its note dropping steadily into a roar of wind. Eager to get to his quarry, Kaufman did no more than glance towards the spiralling mass of blackness sweeping along the distant mountain crests at the far end of the range.
The tornado hit them when they were within sight of the temple. Half drowned by an avalanche of water, unable to stand erect in the wind, they slithered forwards to the slight shelter the great fallen marble columns provided. And there they both lay shivering and in mortal fear, until the storm passed as abruptly as it had started.
'We'll get back,' panted Kaufman, 'before another storm.
See if our comrade and the prisoner are still all right. I will go and see what's happened to the old woman and the child.'
He had some vague idea of holding them as hostages, but when he got back to the village the house no longer existed.
the flat stone roof had shifted in the wind and brought the walls down. Kaufman looked through the gaping hole where the window had been. He turned away abruptly: the crushed body of a woman was not a pleasant sight ....
He found the soldier tinkering with the car. Water had got on the ignition leads and it was half an hour before they got the engine started. Yusel lay gagged and bound at the back. Kaufman spent the time standing around, looking up at the temple, then at the ruined house which was the tomb of the old woman and presumably the child. His mind was filled with fear and, though he would not let himself admit it, something like remorse.
The engine of the car coughed to life and began to run smoothly, Kaufman got in beside the driver. 'As fast as you can go,' he ordered, 'before another storm catches us out in the desert. And drive straight to the residence of
