Flyaway

conquered whatever terrors he had of Lash and Kissack. He was heavily asleep. The kilometres and miles flowed away beneath our wheels and still the view was unchanged. At one time I said, 'This must be the biggest plain in the desert.'

'Hell, no!' Byrne said. 'That's the Tanezrouft – about as big as France. Makes this look like a postage stamp. It'll be changing in a while – for the worse.'

And it did. First there were isolated barchan dunes, yellow crescents against the black gravel, then bigger patches of sand which Byrne avoided. Finally there was more sand than gravel and he couldn't avoid it. He said conversationally, 'In desert driving this is what separates the men from the boys. This is fech-fech – remember what I told you about it?'

I remembered the macabre tale of the big truck breaking through. 'Now you tell me!'

He turned his head and grinned. 'It's okay if you keep up your speed – sort of skim along the surface. Trouble might come if you slow down. I'm betting that those goons of Lash's don't know that.'

'You knew it was here?'

'Yeah. I was stuck here myself once about twenty years back. There's usually fech-fech here at this time of year.'

I said, 'It looks like ordinary sand to me.'

'Different colour. And if you look back you'll see we're not kicking up as much dust. One things for certain – we don't stop to find out for sure.'

Presently, after about an hour, he changed direction and soon after came to a stop. He climbed again on to the top of the cab and looked around, and when he got back he was grinning. 'Not a sign of them. Mr Lash might have helped us back at Seguedine but I don't think we should help him now. We join the main track to Djanet over there. That's Balise Berliet 21. Know what Djanet means?'

'I don't even know what Balise Berliet 21 means.'

'The Berliet Motor Company tested their heavy trucks out here and signposted the desert. And Djanet is Arabic for Paradise.'

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Paradise was built partly on the desert floor and partly on a rocky hillside and provided more amenities than most oasis towns. The hotel was spartan but clean and better than most; bedroom accommodation was in zeribas, grass huts with the walls hung with gaily-coloured blankets, and there were showers which actually worked. As I sponged myself down I reflected that Byrne had been right – the desert is a clean place and a man doesn't stink. This was the first shower I'd had in nearly a month.

Byrne had left the Toyota in the hotel compound and had gone looking for his informant, the putative lucky winner of ten camels. He came back some time later with two Tuareg whom he introduced as Atitel and his son, Hami. 'Have you got those photocopies of the Northrop?'

'Sure.' I dug into my bag and gave them to him.

He unfolded them. 'Where did you get these?'

'The Science Museum in London – they're from Jane's All the World's Aircraft, 1935 edition.'

He spread the photocopies on the table and began to interrogate Atitel, pointing frequently to the photograph of the Northrop 'Gamma'. This particular specimen must have been one of the first aircraft to be used by Trans- World Airlines because the TWA emblem was on the fuselage near the tail. It was a stylishly designed plane, long and sleek, with the cockpit set far back near the tail. It had, of course, been designed in the days when aircraft had cockpits and not flight decks, and it had a non-retracting undercarriage with the struts and wheels enclosed in streamlined casings. The caption described it as a freight and mail-carrying monoplane.

At last Byrne straightened. 'This could be it. He says there's a metal bird of the Kel Ehendeset up on the Tassili about three days' march in from Tamrit.'

'How far is that, and what the devil is a Kel whosit?'

'Maybe seventy kilometres. The Kel Ehendeset are you and me – anyone who knows about machines.' He turned to Atitel and they talked briefly, then he said, 'He says the Kel Ehendeset have power over the angeloussen – the angels -and it's the angeloussen who make the trucks move and lift the airplanes.'

'Sounds logical. If it's three days' march then it's about six hours by angeloussen power.'

Byrne looked at me disgustedly as though I ought to know better. 'We won't get the Toyota on to the plateau. When we go we walk.' He tapped the photograph. 'Atitel seems pretty certain that the wreck on the Tassili is just like this. He insists there are no engine nacelles on the wings and that the fuselage is cylindrical up front just like in the picture. That's the big radial engine there.'

Then it may be Billson's?'

'Could be.' Byrne shook his head. 'But the Tuareg don't go much for pictures – like all Moslems. Against their religion, so they have no experience of pictures. I've known a guy hang a picture on the wall of his tent in imitation of what he's seen Europeans do in their houses. It was something he'd cut out of a magazine because he liked it. He'd put it upside-down.' He smiled. 'It was a picture of a square-rigger in full sail, but he'd never seen a ship or even t he goddamn sea, so all it made was a pretty pattern which maybe looked just as well upside-down.' . 'But if Atitel has seen a plane, then he should be able to compare it with a picture.'

'I wouldn't bet my life on it, but I suppose we'll have to take the chance. We didn't come all this way for nothing.'

'When do we start?'

He began to dicker with Atitel and a lot of palavering went on with Hami putting in his tuppence-worth from time to time. It was fifteen minutes before Byrne said, 'He says he can't start until Late tomorrow or, maybe, early the day after. He's got to round up some donkeys that have strayed. The plane is about fifty kilometres from Tamrit – that's on the edge of the plateau at the top. We won't be doing much more than fifteen kilometres a day up there so it means taking water for at least a week, preferably ten days. That means baggage animals and more donkeys than he can lay his hands on right now.'

He turned back to Atitel and money changed hands. When the Tuareg had gone I said, 'That money was Algerian.'

Byrne looked at me in surprise. 'Yeah; because we're in Algeria.'

'When did that happen?'

He grinned. 'Remember the detour we took to lose Lash? Well, it took around the border posts, too. You're okay, Max; you're legal in Algeria.'

'But Billson may not be.'

He grunted. 'Relax. There's a hell of a lot of desert between here and Tarn; the word may not have filtered through.' He held up the photocopies. 'Mind if I hang on to these? I have some figuring to do.' I nodded. 'Where's Paul?'

'Still in the shower.'

He laughed. 'I told you a guy could drown in the desert.' Then he sat at the table, took out his stub of pencil and began making calculations on the back of. one of the photocopies, referring constantly to the specifications of the Northrop 'Gamma'.

We didn't start next day or even the day after, but the day after that. Byrne grumbled ferociously. 'Sometimes these people give me a pain in the ass.'

I grinned. 'I thought you were one of them – a proper Targui.'

'Yeah; but I revert to type at times. I'm thinking of Lash and Kissack. I don't know how badly they were sanded in, but it won't take them forever to get out. I want to get clear before they get here.'

'What makes you think they'll come to Djanet?'

'Only place they can get gas.'

But it gave me the chance of unwinding and relaxing after the heavy pounding in the Toyota. And I slept in a bed for the first time since leaving Algiers – the hotel mattress wasn't much harder than the sand I'd become accustomed to. And we all had a few welcome beers.

On the third day after arrival we drove out of Djanet in the Toyota and we still hadn't seen Lash. I said,