‘Did you have to bring me along?’ asked Jambit.
‘Nabulus insisted,’ replied Bastian. ‘Come on, we haven’t got long,’ and he disappeared over the edge.
Jambit peered over and was relieved to see Bastian holding onto a rope tethered to the cliff face.
‘Just watch me, and do exactly the same,’ he said.
Some ropes along the cliff were within touching distance, others could only be reached by swinging towards them. There were thirty-five in all, and the final rope was much longer, dropping to the beach. Jambit fell the last few feet exhausted but the sand cushioned his fall.
Instructors were now barking in their faces. ‘Into the water! Shark swim!’
Out to sea in a rowing boat someone was throwing several chunks of bloodied zebra meat into the waves from a bucket and shark fins soon appeared above the water.
‘Try and make it to the other boat,’ said the instructor. ‘No time limit but I wouldn’t dawdle if I were you.’
Bastian and Jambit threw off their shirts and sandals and dived into the warm blue ocean. They made it to the boat and hauled themselves inside ahead of two grey sharks hungry for more flesh. They rested for a while before rowing back to the beach.
‘Okay you two, take the path back up the cliff and through the dunes. It’s signposted.’
There were no congratulations.
‘Hey, there’s no need to rush,’ shouted someone before laughing.
They had a few scrapes, mainly elbows and knees, as they scrambled to the top, but nothing serious and the wind was back in their sails. They followed the sign that pointed them over the dunes to the cart-boot sale.
‘You know, Bastian, you were right, this is fun,’ shouted Jambit over the hill.
But Bastian was up to his knees in quicksand and sinking fast.
‘Get me out,’ he screamed.
‘How?’
‘I don’t know, it’s a new part of the course.’
Jambit could see the carts parked ahead beside the instructors and quickly ran towards them.
‘They can’t help,’ shouted Bastian after him.
But it wasn’t their manpower he was after. Jambit untied a rope and released two horses from a cart before leading one towards the quicksand. Only Bastian’s head and arms were visible and he threw the rope towards him, the third time he caught it with one hand and then held it with both.
‘Hold on,’ said Jambit, and the horse pulled Bastian free with its hooves slipping several times on the ground.
Over the next hill was an awful sound, a distressed whinnying, and they ran to look. All they could do was stand at the side as the horse was sucked into the bog. Their last sight was the fear in its eyes, the head looking much larger pressed against the ground.
‘That’s coming out of your next bounty,’ said an instructor to Jambit. ‘Both of you take a shower at the office and get back here pronto.’
The office was a one floor shack with outdoor showers. They washed with their clothes on and let the sun dry them down.
‘What’s the deal?’ whispered Jambit, looking at the parked carts packed with all manner of junk from Dig Day and third hand shops.
Other goods had been handed in by retirees heading for Scotland or confiscated after a neighbour’s tipoff. There were seven carts in all with three instructors patrolling between them, each holding a clipboard.
‘Looks like your typical village cart-boot sale, doesn’t it,’ said one of the instructors. ‘Only this time there’s even more contraband and banned goods. In fact, there are ten such items.’
‘Have we got to find them all?’ asked Jambit.
‘Not just that. Any item that isn’t subversive brought to that desk over there means you fail the test.’
He pointed to an old battered Jacobian bureau that once sat in the front of an antiques shop before they were all closed.
‘And then what?’ asked Jambit.
‘We let God decide if you pass or fail.’
‘That doesn’t sound so bad,’ said Jambit, making the sign of the cross.
The instructor went to the desk and returned with a small cage covered with a cloth. Smiling he unveiled the contents.
‘Meet God,’ he said of the scorpion inside.
‘Oh,’ said Jambit as a whistle was blown.
‘Fifteen minutes,’ someone shouted.
‘And if one of you fails you both do.’
Bastian sighed and looked at Jambit.
‘Look at those carts, but don’t put anything on the desk until I’ve checked it,’ he said.
* * *
With the desktop full, the heat wasn’t the only thing making them sweat.
‘Well, well, what do we have here?’ asked a commissar.
Bastian gulped, most commissars were borderline nihilists; they couldn’t see the point of your existence. He was wearing a white string vest and pantaloons. His head was protected from the heat by a white turban that made him look much taller than the minimum entry height of six foot. He was in the Fakir’s Division that practised stoicism by sleeping on a bed of rough edged pebbles and charmed king cobras for sport. And they used LSD to expand their consciousness.
The barefoot commissar went through the items one by one with his eyes afire. He touched them with disgust, not because they were incorrect but rather they belonged to an age of selfishness, greed and vanity. The first item, a plastic carrier bag, was flapping in the breeze and he pinned it to the desk with a swift stab of his dagger. There was then a personalised number plate, an old chequebook that had been accidentally left from the banned list but its double-barrelled surname had not, and a casino gambling chip. Several magazines loosely tied with string counted as one item and included celebrity lifestyles, fitted kitchens, and a Bangkok tourist brochure. Jambit had mistakenly left the magazine devoted to sewing and knitting with the others before Bastian’s timely interruption. It was purposely placed to catch out those unfamiliar with the small print in Party Leaflet 4A: all magazines are to be recycled except those containing knitting patterns.
The final items were a pet dog’s waistcoat, a collector’s stamp album, the rolled up accounting diploma found inside a suit jacket, one bone-china mug
