Clare handed him a few coins across the wire. The old man bowed his head slightly as he accepted them. Clare nodded at the big black thing on the back of the animal. It was a human being dressed in a voluminous black garment. Dark eyes stared back at me from a narrow slit at face level . . . ‘You have a new wife?’
‘No, she’s just a woman. I bought her from the Bedou last week. You will not like her: she isn’t obedient yet.’ Then he spread his hands and offered, ‘But, just for you . . . five piastres for the whole camp. I collect her tomorrow.’
‘No thanks, Abdul . . . you break her in first, and we’ll see you next trip.’
‘She’s a Nubian. Very beautiful. Queen of Sheba.’
‘You told me that last time, and she was probably as old as my grandmother and very bad-tempered.’
The Arab cackled, and then he smiled. No one could refuse a man with a smile like that. His smile was as trustworthy as that of the Jesus you see in pictures in the Children’s Illustrated Bible.
‘This one is different.’
‘Thank you for the eggs.’ There was no mistaking the finality in Clare’s voice. The Arab shrugged, smiled and they salaamed each other all over again. It went on a bit. Then he led the donkey away the same way he had come. When they were fifty yards away the person in the black bag turned to look at us; I felt her eyes on me.
Clare said, ‘She might have been a young Nubian after all. What a pity.’
‘How do you know?’ That was me: always asking the bleeding questions.
‘No ordinary Arab woman would have looked back.’
‘I met a Navy cook in Port Said. He called all Arabs Ali because he said it was easier than trying to remember their names. Do you call them all Abdul?’
Clare looked momentarily thrown. He said, ‘No . . . That is Abdul. I’ve known him well over a year.’
‘How did he know we were here?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘And where are his hens?’
‘I don’t know. All I know is that one moment you’re out in the middle of fuck-all, with a hundred empty miles in any direction, and the next moment there’s a cloud of flies, followed by an Arab riding up to you offering you eggs.’
‘How do they do that?’
‘I don’t know that either. It’s very mysterious.’
‘That’s what a Navy bloke told me.’
Clare grinned, ‘Then it must be true, mustn’t it?’ He looked around at the others, and barked, ‘Hasn’t anyone got the char on yet?’ I was amused to see how quickly they moved, although there were a couple of downcast faces among them.
‘Was that really a young girl he was offering us?’
‘Told you already: who knows?’ I made the Sten safe; his eyes followed my hand movements. As I did that he said, ‘Well done, Mr Bassett. You can come out with us again.’
The woman in black could so easily have been a man with a hidden machine gun, of course, and that’s exactly what we didn’t say. The other thing we didn’t say was that if a man with a donkey could track us into the middle of nowhere, then every other bugger out here probably knew where we were, as well. It induced a curiously vulnerable state of mind.
When we stopped for a quick mid-morning brew-up I was standing between Clare and Trigger near the stove. I asked them, ‘That Abdul. Do you think he’s a spy?’
Clare looked amused. He said, ‘No, Charlie; he’s an egg salesman – that’s his job,’ and he threw the lees of his tea on the hot sand, where it sizzled for a second before it disappeared. Time to mount up. As we walked back to the K5 I recalled that he had said Charlie. Maybe I’d just joined the Army.
I didn’t draw a stag when we had our midday rest stop, because I had one of Watson’s radio sweeps to perform. I got two different signals somewhere out to the northwest, but they weren’t talking to each other. I copied their clumsy Morse into a small notebook Watson had given me. It was supposed to live locked in a hidden compartment under the floor of the truck.
Clare came in while I was homing in on the second, and he listened in one earphone. I showed him what I’d written down: as far as I was concerned it was gibberish, but, strangely, it didn’t look like any code form I’d seen before either. Almost immediately I found a voice transmission, but I only caught the last minute. The language sounded high-pitched with some guttural sounds thrown in for good measure. When it died, Clare leaned forward to my pad and marked an extra four word spacers in places I wouldn’t have recognized.
I asked, ‘What was it?’
‘Yiddish.’
‘What were they talking about?’
‘Us, probably.’ That put a bit of a different complexion on it. So I decided to miss my call in – which I was entitled to do – and run it at the fall-back time in the evening. I don’t know why. When I informed Clare of my decision he nodded in approval before he turned away. As we set off again Trigger handed me a beige cotton ski-cap with a big peak; I’d already seen most of the other guys wearing them. They had come out after the first brew stop after the Bitter Lake. It had a diamond-shaped cloth badge sitting above a cloth eagle carrying a swastika.
‘What’s this?’ I asked him.
‘Best desert hat ever made; so say thank you. It will never let you down.’
‘Thank you
