‘If I hadn’t been shot I’d have found it,’ he said. ‘The plane, I mean. I was within a few miles of it.’ He drove his fist into the sand. ‘And now I’m going in the opposite direction,’ he said exasperatedly.
‘You’re wrong,’ I said flatly. ‘That crashed aircraft in Koudia is French. Byrne knows all about it. Ask him. You
went at that in the way you go about everything—at half-cock. Will you, for once in your life, for God’s sake, stop and think before you take action? You’ve been nothing but a packet of trouble ever since you left Franklin.’
I didn’t wait for an answer but got up and left him and, for once, I didn’t confide my findings to Byrne. This bit really had nothing to do with him; he knew nothing of England or of London and could contribute nothing.
I walked out of camp a couple of hundred yards and sat down to think about it. I believed Billson—that was the devil of it. I had told him that he was as transparent as glass, and it was true. Which brought me to McGovern.
I thought about that pillar of British industry for a long time and got precisely nowhere.
And so we travelled south.
At the Algerian border post Mokhtar guided Billson on foot around it while Byrne and I went through. There were more
fiches
to fill in—in triplicate, but we didn’t get the full treatment we had had at the police post outside Tammanrasset. We went on and waited for Billson in the no-man’s-land between the Algerian post and Fort Flatters in Niger, then it was my turn to walk, and Mokhtar took me on a long and circuitous route around the fort. If the two border posts compared notes, which Byrne doubted they would, then two men would have gone through both.
When Mokhtar and I rejoined the truck beyond Fort Flatters Byrne seemed considerably more cheerful. I was footsore and leg-stretched and was glad to ease myself down creakily into the seat next to him. As he let out the clutch he said gaily, ‘Nice to be home.’
We were eighty miles into Niger when we camped that night and the country hadn’t changed enough to justify Byrne’s cheeriness, but thereafter it became better. There was more vegetation—thorn trees, it’s true—but there was also more grass as we penetrated the mountains, and I saw my first running water, a brook about a foot across. According to Byrne, we had left the desert but, as I have
said, these things are relative and this was still a wilderness to the untutored eye.
‘The Aïr is an intrusion of the Sahel into the desert,’ said Byrne.
‘You’ve lost me,’ I said. ‘What’s the Sahel?’
‘The savannah land between the desert and the forest in the south. It’s a geographer’s word. Once they called it the Sudan but when the British pulled out they left a state called the Sudan so the geographers had to find another word because they didn’t want to mix geography and politics. They came up with Sahel.’
‘Doesn’t look much different from desert.’
‘It’s different,’ said Byrne positively. ‘These uplands get as much as six inches of rain a year.’
‘That’s a lot?’
‘A hell of a lot more than Tam,’ he said. ‘There’ve been periods of up to ten years when it hasn’t rained there at all.’
We stopped at a small village called Iferouane which must have been important in the Aïr because it had an airstrip. Although the people here were Tuareg there was a more settled look about them. ‘Still nomadic,’ said Byrne. ‘But there’s more feed around here, so they don’t have to move as far or as often.’
There were more animals to be seen, herds of camels, sheep and goats, with a few hump-backed cattle. The Tuareg seemed to be less formal here than in the north and some of the faces I saw were decidedly Negroid. I mentioned that to Byrne, and he shook his head. ‘Those people are either Haratin or slaves.’
‘Slaves!’
‘Sure. The Tuareg used to go raiding across the Niger Bend to bring back slaves.’
‘Is there still slavery?’
‘Theoretically—no. But I wouldn’t bet on it. A few years ago a British novelist bought a slave in Timbouctou just to
prove that it could be done. Then he set the man free which was a damnfool thing to do.’ He saw my frown. ‘He had no land, so he couldn’t grow anything; he had no money so he couldn’t buy anything—so what was the poor bastard to do? He went back to his old master.’
‘But slavery!’
‘Don’t get the wrong idea,’ said Byrne. ‘It’s not what you think and they don’t do too badly.’ He smiled. ‘No whips, or anything like that. Here, in the Aïr, they grow millet and cultivate the date palms on a share-cropping basis. Theoretically they get a fifth of the crop but a smart guy can get as much as half.’
Byrne seemed well-known and popular in Iferouane. He talked gravely with the village elders, chaffed the young women, and distributed sweets and other largesse among the children. We stayed there a day, then pushed on south over rougher country until we arrived at Timia and Byrne’s home.
Ever since we had left Fort Flatters, Billson had avoided me. He couldn’t help being close in the truck but he didn’t talk and, out of the truck, he kept away from me. I suppose I had not hidden my contempt of him and, naturally enough, he didn’t like it. I had penetrated his thick skin and wounded whatever
amour propre
he had, so he resented me. I noticed that he talked a lot with Byrne during this time and that Byrne appeared to show interest in what he was saying. But Byrne said nothing to me at the time.
Byrne was un Tuareg enough to have built himself a small house on the slopes of what passed for a pleasantly-wooded valley in the Aïr. The Tuareg in the area lived, not in leather tents as they did in the desert to the north, but in reed huts, cleverly made with dismountable panels so that they could be collapsed for loading on the back of a pack camel. But Byrne had built a house—a minimal house, it is true, with not much in the way of walls—but a house with rooms. A permanent dwelling and, as such, foreign to the Tuareg.
We arrived there late and in darkness and I didn’t see much that night because we ate and slept almost immediately. But next morning, Byrne showed me around his kingdom. Close by there was something which, had it been permanent, would have been called a village and Byrne talked to a man whom he told me was Hamiada, Mokhtar’s brother. Hamiada was tall, even for a Targui, and his skin, what little I could see of it above his veil, was almost as white as my own.
Byrne said to me, ‘Most of the herd’s grazing out towards Telouess—about twenty kilometres away. I’m going out there tomorrow. Like to come?’
‘I’d like that,’ I said. ‘But what about Billson?’ Billson was not with us; when we had left that morning he was still asleep.
Byrne looked troubled. ‘I want to talk to you about him—but later. Now I want to show you something.’
Hamiada had gone away but he returned a few minutes later leading a camel. It was one of the biggest beasts I had seen and looked to be about ten feet high at the hump, although it could hardly have been that. It was of a colour I had never seen before, a peculiar smokey-grey. Byrne said, ‘This is my beauty—the cream of my herd. Her name is Yendjelan.’
He spoke with such obvious pride that I felt I had to echo it even though I was no expert on the finer points of camel-breeding. ‘She’s a very fine animal,’ I said. ‘A racing camel?’
He chuckled. ‘There’s no such thing. She’s a Mehari—a riding camel.’
‘I thought they raced.’
‘Camels don’t run—not unless they’re urged. And if they run too far they drop dead. Fragile animals. When you come with me tomorrow you’ll be riding one. Not Yendjelan, though; she’s mine.’
Yendjelan looked at me in the supercilious way of a camel, and her lip curled. She thought as much of the idea of me riding a camel as I did.
We looked at some more of Byrne’s herd, the few that were browsing close by. As I watched them chewing up branches of acacia, three-inch thorns included, I wondered how in hell you controlled a camel. Their mouths would be as hard as iron.
We accepted Hamiada’s hospitality—cold roast kid, bread and camel milk. Byrne said abruptly, ‘About Billson.’
‘Yes.’
‘What was your intention?’
I sighed. ‘I don’t quite know. I thought if we could get him further south into Nigeria, then I could get him on to a plane back to England.’
Byrne nodded. ‘Yes, south to Kano, a plane from there to Lagos, and so home.’ He paused, chewing thoughtfully like one of his own camels. ‘I don’t know if that would be such a good thing.’
‘Why not?’
‘The guy’s unstable enough as it is. He’s come out here and made a bust of it so far. If he goes home now he knows he’ll never be able to come back, and that might knock him off his perch entirely. He could end up in a looney-bin. I don’t know that I’d like that. Would you?’
I thought of the biblical bit about being one’s brother’s keeper. Also the Chinese bit to the effect that if you save a man’s life you are responsible for him until he dies. Also the Sinbad bit about the Old Man of the Sea. ‘What’s he to you?’ I asked.
Byrne shrugged. ‘Not much. Something to Hesther, though.’
I wondered, not for the first time, about the exact relationship between Byrne and Hesther Raulier. She’d said she’d never married but that did not necessarily mean much
between a man and a woman. I said, ‘What are you suggesting? That we indulge him in his fantasies?’
‘Fantasies? Oh, sure, they’re fantasies as far as Billson is concerned. I mean, it’s fantastic for Billson to suppose that he could come out here and find that airplane unaided. But, as far as the plane itself is concerned, I’ve been talking to him and what he says makes a weird kind of sense.’
‘You mean he’s talked you into believing that the plane’s still here?’
‘Must be,’ said Byrne simply. ‘It was never found.’
‘Not necessarily so,’ I said. ‘Not if Billson did defraud the insurance company.’
‘I thought Hesther had talked you out of that way of thinking.’
‘Maybe—but for Christ’s sake, the Sahara is a bloody big place. Where the hell would we start?’
Byrne drained a bowl of camel milk. ‘Billson really studied that last flight of his father. He’s got all the details at his fingertips. For instance, he knew that when his old man took off from Algiers he intended to fly a great circle course for Kano.’ He chuckled. ‘I borrowed your map and traced that course. It’s been a few years since I had to do spherical trigonometry but I managed.’
‘And what conclusion did you come to?’
‘Okay; the distance is 2800 kilometres—about 1500 nautical miles, which is the unit he’d work in for navigational purposes. It would take him over the Ahaggar about 150 kilometres east of Tam. It would take him right over here, and smack bang over Agadez. Paul wasn’t all that crazy when he went to look at an airplane in the Ahaggar. ‘Course he should have checked with someone first—me, for instance—but the idea was good.’
‘Where is all this leading?’
Byrne said, ‘All the planes in that race took the great circle course because a great circle is the shortest distance between
two points on the earth’s surface. Now, Agadez lies
exactly
on that course and so it made a good aiming point. Furthermore, it was a condition of that leg of the race that the planes had to fly low over Agadez—it was a sort of checkpoint. Every plane except two buzzed Agadez and was identified. One of the planes that wasn’t seen at Agadez was Billson’s.’
‘And the other?’
‘Some Italian who got a mite lost. But he arrived in Kano, anyway.’
‘Maybe Peter Billson had weather trouble,’ I said. ‘Forced down.’
‘He was forced down all right,’ agreed Byrne. ‘But not by weather. Paul has checked that out; got meteorological data for the time of flight. He’s been real thorough about this investigation. The weather was good—no sandstorms.’
‘Obsessionally thorough.’
‘Yeah,’ said Byrne. ‘But thorough all the same. Now, when Peter Billson went down it would be likely to be to the north of Agadez, and one thing’s for sure—it wasn’t in the Aïr. There are too many people around here and the plane would have been found. The same applies anywhere north of the Ahaggar. If it went down there it would have been found by some Chaamba bedouin.’
‘So that leaves the Ahaggar and you’re certain it’s not there. You’re talking yourself into a corner.’
He said, ‘When the French were getting ready to blow that atom bomb at Arak they lost three planes in the Ahaggar. I’ve told you about one of them. They gave the Ahaggar a real going-over, both from the air and on the ground. They found three planes which was all they expected to find. I’m pretty sure that if Billson’s plane had been there the French would have found it.’
‘Perhaps they did,’ I said. ‘And didn’t bother to mention it.’
Byrne disagreed. ‘It would have made big news. You don’t suppose Billson was the only record-breaking airman lost in the Sahara, do you? There was a guy called Lancaster went down in 1933 south of Reggan in the Tanezrouft. He wasn’t found until 1962 and it made the headlines.’
I worked it out. ‘Twenty-nine years.’
‘He was still with the plane, and he left a diary,’ said Byrne. ‘It made bad reading. Paul knows all about Lancaster; he
knows
how long a crashed plane can remain undetected here. That’s why he thinks he can still find his father.’
‘This place where Lancaster crashed—where is it?’
‘In the Tanezrouft, about 200 kilometres south of Reggan. It’s hell country—
reg,
that’s gravel plain for as far and farther than you can see. I know a bit of what happened to Lancaster because I read about it back in ‘62 and Paul has refreshed my memory. Lancaster was flying a light plane and put down at Reggan to refuel. He took off, got into a sandstorm and lost direction; he flew
east
damn near as far as In Salah before he put down at Aoulef to find out where he was. He’d intended to fly to Gao on the Niger Bend and that was due south, but he’d used up too much fuel so he went back to Reggan. He left next day and after a while his engine quit. So he crashed.’
‘Didn’t they search for him?’
‘Sure they did—by air and ground. I don’t know how good their air search was back in 1933, but they did their best. Trouble was they were looking mostly in the wrong place, towards Gao. Anyway, he had two gallons of water and no more, because he had an air-cooled engine. He died eight days later, and was found twenty-nine years later. That’s the story of Lancaster.’
‘Who found him?’
‘A routine French patrol working out of Bidon Cinq. What the hell they were doing in the Tanezrouft I don’t know. Probably on a vehicle-testing kick—I can think of no other reason for going into that hell hole.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘You’ve made a point. So Peter Billson and his plane can still be in the desert. Are you proposing that we go look for it in this place—the Tanezrouft?’
‘Not goddamn likely,’ said Byrne. ‘I think it possible that Billson went off course. When he disappeared there was a search but, just like Lancaster, he wasn’t found because they weren’t looking in the right place.’
‘And you know the right place, I suppose.’
‘No, but think of this. Lancaster’s plane was found by the French. For all we know it might have been seen much earlier by, say, some Hartani or even a Targui. But why would they want to report it? It would mean nothing to them. Don’t forget, this plane crashed only three years after the final battle between the French and the Tuareg when the French got the upper hand at last. The Tuareg felt they didn’t owe the French a goddamn thing. Sure, if they’d found Lancaster alive they’d have brought him out, but they wouldn’t care much about a dead guy in a dead plane.’