Flyaway

into a cash economy -1 had seen very little money changing hands – but even on a barter basis Byrne would be rich by desert standards.

Next day Byrne and I went to Agadez, Paul staying behind on Byrne's insistence. 'I don't want you seen in Agadez,' he said. 'You'd stand out like the Tree of Tenere. You spend the day here – and stay put. Understand?'

Paul understood. It wasn't what Byrne said, it was the way he said it that drove it home into Paul's skull.

As we drove away Byrne said, 'And Hamiada will see that he stays put.' There was a touch of amusement in his voice.

I said, 'What was that you said about a tree?'

'The Tree of Tenere?' He pointed east. It's out there. Only tree I've ever heard of being put on the maps. It's on your map – take a look.'

So I did, and there it was – L'Arbre du Tenere, about a hundred and sixty miles north-east of Agadez in the Erg du Tenere, an area marked yellow on the map – the colour of sand. 'Why should a tree be marked?'

'There's not another tree in any direction for about fifty kilometres,' said Byrne. 'It's the most isolated tree in the world. Even so, a fool French truck driver ran into it back in 1960. It's old – been there for hundreds of years. There's a well there, but the water's not too good.'

So the map indicated – eau tres mauvaise a 40 m.

It was a little over a hundred miles to Agadez over roughish country. Even though we were able to pick up speed over the last forty miles of reasonable track it took us five hours, averaging twenty miles an hour for the whole trip.

Agadez seemed a prosperous little town by Saharan standards. It even had a mosque, something I had not seen in Tarn. We parked the truck outside the Hotel de 1'Air and went inside to have a beer, then Byrne went to the bank to have his leaflets printed. Before he left he said, 'You might like to do some shopping; it's better here than in Tarn. Got any money?'

It occurred to me that Byrne was laying out considerable sums during our travels and he would need recompense. I dug out my wallet and checked it. I had the equivalent of about a hundred pounds in Algerian currency, another four hundred in travellers' cheques and a small case stuffed with credit cards.

Byrne looked at my offerings and said, 'None of that is much use here. You give anyone a strange piece of paper or a bit of plastic and he'll laugh at you.' He produced a small wad of local currency. 'Here. Don't worry, I'll bill you when you leave, and you can settle it with Hesther in Algiers.'

And I had to make do with that.

I walked along the dusty street and found that American influence had even penetrated as far as Agadez – there was a supermarket! Not that an American would have recognized it as such but it was passable, although the stock of European-style clothing was limited. I bought a pair of Levi's and a couple of shirts and stocked up with two cartons of English cigarettes. Then I blinked at an array of Scotch whisky, not so much in astonishment that it was there at all but at the price, which was two-thirds the London price. I bought two bottles.

I took my booty and stowed it in the Toyota, then had another beer in the hotel while waiting for Byrne. When he came back we took the Toyota to a filling station to refuel and there, standing next to the pumps, was a giraffe.

I stared at it incredulously. 'For God's sake! What the hell…'

The giraffe bent its neck and looked down at us with mild eyes. 'What's the matter?' asked Byrne. 'Haven't you seen a giraffe before?'

'Not at a filling station.'

Byrne didn't seem in the least surprised. 'I'll be a little while here. This is where we start the distribution of our message.'

I nodded wordlessly and watched the giraffe amble away up the main street of Agadez. As Byrne opened the door I said, 'Hang on. Satisfy my curiosity.'

'What about?'

I pointed 'That bloody giraffe.'

'Oh, that. It's from the zoo. They let it out every morning, and it goes back every night to feed.'

'Oh!' Well, it was an explanation.

We arrived back at Byrne's place in the Air the next day, having camped on the way. I was getting to like those nightly camps. The peace was incredible and there was nothing more arduous to think about than the best place to make the fire and the best place to sleep after testing the wind direction. It was a long way from the busy – and now meaningless -activities of Stafford Security Consultants Ltd.

At that particular camp I offered Byrne a scotch, but he shook his head. 'I don't touch the hard stuff, just have the occasional beer.'

I said, 'I can't get over the fact that it's cheaper than in England.'

'No tax on it,' he said. 'In England you need a lot of money to build essentials like Concorde airplanes so your taxes are high.' His tone was sardonic. 'Out here who needs it?' He picked up the bottle. 'This stuff is brought up from Nigeria, mostly for the tourist trade. Same with the cigarettes. Might even have come up on the back of a camel.'

The vhisky tasted good, but after the first I found I didn't want another. I said, 'The most incredible thing today was that bloody giraffe.'

'Civilized people hereabouts,' said Byrne. 'Don't like to i keep things in cages. Same with camels.'

'What do you mean?'

'Well, a Tuareg-trained camel is worth more than one i trained by an Arab, all other things being equal. A Targui is kinder about it and the camel responds. Real nice people.'

Looking up at the stars that night I thought a lot about that.

After that nothing very much happened except that I got a new suit of clothes and learned how to ride a camel, and the two were connected. Byrne was going out to inspect his herd, and when I arrived for my camel-riding lesson in jeans he shook his head solemnly. 'I don't think so,' he said. 'I really don't think so.'

And so I dressed like a Targui – loose, baggy trousers in black cotton cloth fitting tight around the ankles, a white gandoura, the Tuareg gown, and another blue gandoura on top of that. There was a djellaba too, to be worn in cold weather or at night. Literally topping it off was the chech, twenty feet of black cotton, about eighteen inches wide, which Byrne painstakingly showed me how to arrange.

When I was dressed in all my finery I felt a bit of a fool and very self-conscious, but that wore off quickly because no one else took any notice except Billson and I didn't give a damn for his opinion. He wouldn't change his clothing nor ride a camel; I think he had slightly Empire notions about 'going native'.

A camel, I found, is not steered from the mouth like a horse. Once in the saddle, the Tuareg saddle with its armchair back and high cross-shaped pommel, you put your bare feet on the animal's neck and guide it by rubbing one side or the other. Being on a camel when it rises to its feet is the nearest thing to being in an earthquake and quite alarming until one gets used to it.

Byrne, Hamiada and I set out with two pack camels for the grazing grounds near Telouess and were going to be away for over a week, Byrne commenting that he could not reasonably expect any reaction from his leaflet campaign for at least a fortnight. He had arranged with the owner of the filling station for the distribution of the leaflets in packets of 500 to the twenty most important oases south of the Atlas mountains.

– 'And it'll take that time to bring Paul up to the mark,' he said. 'Because one thing is certain – if we find that airplane it's going to be in some of the lousiest country you've ever seen, else the French would have found it years ago.'

What Billson did while we were away I don't know. I never found out and I didn't ask.

Looking back, I think those days spent wandering in the Air was the most idyllic time of my life. The pace was slow, geared to the stride of a camel, and the land was wide and empty. One fell into an easy rhythm, governed not by the needs of other men but by the passage of the sun across the sky, the empty belly, the natural requirements of the beast one was riding.

We found Byrne's herd and he looked at the animals and found their condition good. They were looked after by a family of Tuareg headed by a man called Radbane. 'These people are of the Kel Ilbakan,' said Byrne. 'A vassal tribe from south of Agadez. They graze their stock here in the winter and help me with mine.'

We accepted Radbane's hospitality and stayed at his camp for two days, and then struck west, skirting the