down south. She waves goodbye and they get the best of both worlds.'
'This is not my day for riddles,' said Mann. 'Give it to me.'
'They will leave the road,' I said. 'Whatever they are going to do isn't going to be done at the poolside of some government hotel. They are going to drive off into the desert. And if she is 'as bright as I think she is, they will leave the road at night.'
'And that's why Bekuv came north to meet us driving that GAZ,' said Mann. 'It was such a conspicuous vehicle — that's the only GAZ I've seen in the whole of Algeria — he took it so that, before meeting with us, he could detour out into the desert and bury whatever it is they are going to collect.'
'It's too big to bury,' I said. 'I've told you that,'
'If you're right,' said Percy, 'we're going to need a Land-rover too.
'Yes,' I said.
'Or a big truck,' Percy said. 'A lightly loaded truck is as desertworthy as a Landrover.'
Mann turned to Percy and prodded him in the chest with a nicotine-stained forefinger. 'I want to follow them across that desert wherever they go,' Mann said. 'You fix it so that we can travel across the sand, wadis, rocks — any damn where.'
Chapter Twenty-three
Men become mesmerized by the desert, just as others become obsessed with the sea; not because of any fondness for sand or water, but because oceans and deserts are the best places to observe the magical effect of ever-changing daylight. Small ridges, flattened by the high sun, become jagged mountains when the sunlight falls across them, and their shadows, pale gold at noontime, become black bottomless pools.
The sun was high by the time we reached the desert. A man could stand in his own shadow, should he want to brave the heat of noon. Not many did. No goats, no camels, not even snakes or scorpions move at that time of day. Just mad dogs, Englishmen and Major Mann of the C.I.A.
Through the car's ventilator there came a constant rain of fine sand. I closed the vent and opened the window — the wind blew hot. I closed it again. Percy mopped his brow. Ahead of us the road shimmered in the heat. The sky was not blue; it was a hazy white, like the distant sand. There was no horizon. The glaring sunlight conjured up great lakes which disappeared only a moment before we plunged into them.
The road south is built along the edge of a sand sea as large as England. The dunes were like scaly, brown, prehistoric monsters, slumbering in the heat and breathing the puffs of sand that twisted off their peaks. And across the road writhed more sand, phantom snakes of it that hissed at the underside of the car as we sliced through them. In places the drifting sand settled on the road, making ramps that were difficult to see. We all had our seat- belts as tight as they would go but they didn't prevent us striking the roof or window when our suspension hit a big one.
'It will only need one slightly bigger than that,' I said after one particularly violent bump from a sand-ridge, 'to write us off.'
'Patrols clear them every week or so, at this time of year,' said Percy. 'It's worth a gamble while the wind stays where it is.'
'And is the wind staying where it is?'
He lifted a hand off the wheel for long enough to show me the smudge of duststorm that he had been watching. 'She's coming to meet us, I think,' he said.
'Jesus,' said Mann, 'that's all I need.' We watched it without speaking, until Mann said, 'Is that a village ahead, or an oasis?'
'Neither,' said Percy.
'Stop anyway,' said Mann. 'It's time for a leak.'
What had looked like trees were a dozen thorn-bushes, strung out in such a way as to suggest that they marked an underground watercourse, if only you dug deep enough. There was an old Renault there too, stripped of everything so that only the steel shell remained. The outside was polished shiny by the windblown sand, and the inside was sooty. It would make a convenient place for travellers to build a fire. I looked inside and found some burned chunks of rubber tyre — the nomad's fuel — and some broken bottles, the pieces scoured and white. There was a screwed-up cigarette packet there too. I picked it up and flattened it — Kool Mentholated Filter Longs, the cigarettes that Red Bancroft smoked. I threw it away again, but I knew I was still not free of her.
'A leak, I said! Not a shit, shower, shave, shampoo and set.' It was Mann treating us to a favourite sample of his army witticisms as he stood by the car door, tapping his fingers impatiently. 'And I'm driving,' he said as I got in.
'Very well,' said Percy. 'We're not in a hurry.'
I stretched out hi the back and dozed. Now and again there was a sudden jolt that rocketed me up to the car roof. The sun dropped and went yellow and then gold. The sky turned mauve and the dunes seemed to arch their backs as they spread their shadows. There were no flies on the windscreen now, and the air was dry and the temperature cooled enough to make it worth opening the window. The sand hissed at us and our registration plates were by now raw metal, with no letters or numbers visible, it was the mark or cars that went deep into the desert and in the villages people noted us.
I slept fitfully, awakened sometimes by oncoming vehicles that forced us off the track, and at other times by falling weightless through terrible dreams. The sun dropped out of sight and there was only the tunnel that our headlights bored through the limitless night.
'My fellow will be waiting,' said Percy. His voice was cold and distant in the manner that all men's voices assume at night. 'He'll have camels — if we need them.'
'Not for me,' said Mann. 'I'm trying to give them up.' He laughed loudly, but Percy didn't join in. Soon after that I must have gone to sleep.
'You can put both the U.S.A. and China into the continent of Africa and still have room to rattle them about,' said Percy Dempsey. He was driving.
'I know some people in Vermont who wouldn't like that,' said Mann.
Dempsey gave a perfunctory laugh. Ahead of us the road stretched as straight as a ruler into the heat haze. Only the occasional drifts of sand made Dempsey moderate the speed. 'A convoy… parked, by the look of it.' Dempsey's eyes seemed myopic and watery when he was reading the newspaper, or one of his favourite Simenons, but here in the desert his eyesight was acute and he could interpret smudges on the horizon long before Mann or I could see them. 'Not trucks… buses,' he added. 'Too early for a brew-up.'
The gargantuan trailer-trucks rolled south to Timbuktu in convoy, enough drivers in each rig to eat and sleep in relays. When they did stop, it was usually for only as long as it took to boil water for the very strong and very sweet infusion of mint tea that the desert Arab needs even more than sleep. But as we got nearer I saw that Percy was correct. These were the same giant chassis, the wheels as high as a man, but they were buses — fitted with chromium trim, and dark-tinted window-glass, and their coachwork bore the name and address of a German tourist agency. A small orange tent by the side of the track was marked with a sign 'Damen', but there was no similar facility for the men, most of whom were arranging themselves into a group for a photo.
'Don't stop,' said Mann.
'Might have to,' said Percy. 'If they are in trouble and we pass by without helping, there will be hell to pay.' He slowed as we passed the two buses until a middle-aged.man in a white dust-coat waved us on with a gesture to show that all was well.
'A sign of the times,' said Percy. 'English kids come on these treks in ancient Bedford army lorries.'
It was the better part of an hour before we reached the map reference where Percy's man awaited us. It was ferociously hot as we got out of the car to inspect the place where the Bekuvs' Landrover had left the track and headed west across the open desert. The tyre tracks were still visible in the soft sand but there was a substratum of hard baked ground that in places had cracked to make pans — depressions — that were sometimes half a mile wide.
We transferred to the waiting Landrover, and Percy's man continued south with our rented car. It was better that it should pass the next police-point on time. The movements of Percy's Arab and this battered Landrover would
