Flyaway

'Look,' said Byrne. The Kaouar.'

Stretching across the horizon was a well of mountains, blue-hazed with distance. 'Bilma?'

'Bilma,' tie said with satisfaction.

Half a day later I could see welcome tints of green, the first sight of vegetation since leaving Fachi, and soon I could distinguish individual date palms. Byrne hastened ahead to talk to Mokhtar, then came back. 'We won't go into Bilma -not yet,' he said. 'Kissack might be there and so we have to go in carefully. We'll stop at the salt workings at Kalala.'

Kalala proved to be a plain with heaps of soil thrown up from the salt workings. There were many men and more camels as several other caravans were in residence. Our camels were unloaded of their cargo and Byrne pointed out the sights. He indicated the group of men around Mokhtar. 'More Tuareg from the Air. I guess they'll be going back tomorrow. They look ready.' He swung around. Those guys, there, are Kanuri up from Chad. Salt is the most important substance in Africa. If the animals don't get it they go sick. The Kanuri from Chad are cattlemen, so they need salt. So are the Hausa from around Kano in Nigeria.'

'How long has this been going on?'

'I wouldn't know. A thousand years – maybe more. You stay here, Max; see that Paul doesn't wander. I'm going into Bilma to borrow a truck – I want to retrieve the Toyota. Also to see if Kissack is here.'

'Be careful.'

'I'm just another Targui,' he said. 'The veil is useful.'

He went away and I collected Billson and we went to look at the salt workings. Billson had improved a lot Although a long camel ride is not popularly regarded as being a rest cure, there is no doubt that it is when compared to running up and down sand dunes. Mokhtar had provided an ointment of which Byrne approved, and the angry inflammation around Paul's wound had receded.

Paul had improved in spirit, too, and for a man who normally kept a sulky silence he became quite chatty. Maybe the desert had something to do with it.

Looking down at the salt pans was like viewing a less salubrious section of Dante's Inferno. Salt-bearing earth was dug from pits and thrown into evaporating pans where an impure salt was deposited on the surface as the water evaporated under the hot sun. This, laboriously scraped away, was packed into moulds and shaped into pillars about three feet high.

Paul said suddenly, 'You know, it's the first time that bit of the Bible has made sense – about Lot's wife being turned into a pillar of salt. I've never understood about a pillar of salt until now.'

I thought of the caravan trails across the Sahara and wondered if salt from Bilma had found its way to ancient Israel. It was improbable – the Dead Sea was saltier than other seas – but the method of manufacture was probably old.

We went back to the caravan and rested. The camels were resting, too, and some of them were lying flat on their sides after they had been unloaded. I had never seen camels do that 1 was studying one of them when Mokhtar passed. He saw my interest and struggled for words. After a lot of thought he came out with 'Fatigue – tres fatigue.'

I nodded. If I'd walked for a month, sixteen hours a day, I'd be bloody tired, too. But Mokhtar had walked and he looked as fresh as a daisy. The camel's ribs were showing through its hide. I said, 'It's thin – meagre' I patted my own flank, and repeated, 'Maigre.'

Mokhtar said something in Tamachek which I couldn't understand. Seeing my incomprehension, he took the camel's halter and brought it to its feet. He beckoned, so I followed him as he led the camel about a quarter of a mile to a stone trough which was being laboriously filled with water from a well.

The camel dipped its head and drank. It drank for ten minutes without stopping and filled out before my eyes. It must have drunk more than twenty gallons of water and when it had finished it was as plump and well-conditioned a beast as I'd seen.

Byrne did not come back until mid-morning of the next day, but he came in the Toyota. Apart from the smashed windscreen it looked no different than before it had been shot up, but then, it had looked battered to begin with. A few holes were neither here nor there, and a difference that makes no difference is no difference.

Billson and I were well rested – a good night's sleep does make a difference – but for the first time Byrne looked weary. I said, 'You need sleep.'

He nodded. 'I'll rest this afternoon and sleep tonight, but we have something to do first. Get in.'

I climbed into the Toyota and Byrne let out the clutch. As we drove away a breeze swept through the cab. 'It's going to be draughty from now on,' I said. 'Where are we going?'

To waylay a gang of tourists,' he said to my surprise. 'How's your German?'

'Adequate – no more.'

'Maybe it'll do. Kissack's in Bilma. He took Bailly to what passes for a hospital and spun a yarn about an auto accident to explain Bailly's foot. It passed because there's no doctor. Bailly is being flown out tomorrow.'

'He could hardly report being assaulted – not after what he did to us. But why don't we report to the police?'

'And how would we explain you? You're in Niger illegally.' Byrne shook his head decisively. 'Hell, we'd be tied, up for months, with or without you. Besides, I'd like to settle with Kissack myself and in my own way.'

'So where do German tourists come in?'

'It struck me that Kissack doesn't know about you.'

I thought about that and found it was probably true. I hadn't told anyone in England where I was going. As far as anyone knew I was sunning myself in Jamaica, as Charlie Malleson had suggested, instead of doing the same in an improbable place like Bilma. And even though I had been close enough to Kissack to touch him he only knew me as an anonymous Targui. The only times he had seen me were in the Hotel de l'Air and over the sights of a rifle in the Tenere.

Byrne said, 'I want to put you next to Kissack. Find out what he's doing.'

'But the German tourists?'

'I was talking to a Tenere guide, a Targui I know called Rhossi. He says there's a German crowd coming in from the north and they should be hitting Bilma this afternoon – he's going to take them across the Tenere. It's a government regulation that all tour groups must have a guide in the Tenere.'

I wasn't surprised. 'So?'

There aren't many Europeans in Bilma so you can't just walk in to chat with Kissack. The local law would spot you and want to see your papers. But if you arrive with a gang of Germans you can merge into the background. I'm going to drop you about five miles out of Bilma and you can bum a lift.'

It would work. Any party of Europeans would give a lone European hitch-hiker a lift for a few miles. 'What do I tell them?'

'Hell, tell them anything you like. No. There's some rock carvings about seven miles out just off the road. Tell them that you walked out of Bilma to look at them, but now you're tired and you'd appreciate a lift back.' He thought for a moment. 'You'd better see the carvings.'

So we went to look at rock carvings up the rough track north of Bilma. I suppose they were more engravings than carvings, cut into the vertical sides of rocks but not too deeply. The subjects were interesting; there were many cattle with spreading horns, a rider on a horse which was unmistakably a stallion though the rider was depicted as a mere stick figure, and, surprisingly, an elephant drawn with a fluent line which Picasso would have been proud of.

'An elephant?'

'Why not?' asked Byrne. 'Where do you suppose Hannibal got the elephants to cross the Alps?'

That question had never troubled me.

Byrne said, 'The North African elephant went extinct about two thousand years ago. I've seen skeletons, though. They were midgets – about half the size of an Indian elephant.'

I looked at the barren waste around us; there wasn't enough vegetation to support a half-sized rabbit. I looked back at the engraving. 'How old?'

'Maybe three thousand years. Not as old as the paintings in the Tassili.' He pointed to a series of marks – crosses, circles, squares and dots. 'That's more recent; it's Tifinagh, the written form of Tamachek.'

'What does it say?'

'I wouldn't know; I can't read it.' He smiled. 'Probably something like 'I love Lucy', or 'Kilroy was here'. You'd