‘There doesn’t seem much to administer. People are thin on the ground out there.’
‘If you go there you’ll find out why,’ she said. ‘Are you thinking of going after him?’
‘The idea has crossed my mind,’ I admitted. ‘Which makes me as crazy as he is, I suppose.’
‘Not really. You should find him easy enough. Getting to Tammanrasset is no problem—there are a couple of flights a week.’
‘If I can fly that does make it easier.’
She nodded. ‘Then all you have to do is to wait in Tammanrasset until he shows up. If he’s in the Ahaggar and wants more gas there’s no place he can get it except Tam.’ She considered for a moment. ‘Of course, if you want to chase
after him, that’s different. You’d need a guide. Luke Byrne is usually in Tam at this time of year—he might fancy the job.’
‘Who’s he?’
She laughed. ‘Another crazy man. It would tickle his fancy to go looking for a lunatic.’ She lit an after-dinner cigar. ‘If you’re going to Tam you’ll need a permit. If you try to get one yourself it’ll take two weeks—I can get you one in two days. What will you do when you find Paul Billson?’
I shrugged. ‘Persuade him to go back to England if I can.’
‘You’ll find it hard cutting through that obsession.’
‘His sister might stand a better chance, and she said she’d come out. Would you help her, as you’re helping me?’
‘Sure.’
‘What do you believe?’ I asked. ‘Is Peter Billson’s body out there somewhere?’
‘Sure it is—what’s left of it. I know what you mean; I read about that South African son-of-a-bitch who said he’d seen Peter in Durban. I’ve often wondered how big a bribe the bastard took. I’ll tell you this, Max; Peter Billson wasn’t an angel, not by a long way, but he was honest about money. And Helen was the next thing to an angel and no one’s going to tell me that she perjured herself for half a million bucks. It just wasn’t their style.’
She sighed. ‘Let’s quit talking about it now, shall we? It’s not been my practice to look too deeply into the past, and I’m not ready to start now.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I’d better go.’
‘Hell, no!’ she said. ‘Stick around and have some more brandy and I’ll match you for dirty stories.’
‘All right,’ I said obligingly, and told her the limerick about the Bishop of Chichester who made all the saints in their niches stir.
I didn’t see Hesther again at that time, but she certainly had some pull because I was ready to leave in a day and a half
complete with permit and a seat booked on the plane at her expense delivered to my hotel by her Arab chauffeur. In a covering note she wrote:
I hope you don’t mind about the plane ticket; it’s just that I’d like to do my bit towards the memory of P.B. If you do find that idiot, Paul, club him on the head, put him in a sack and ship him back to Algiers.
I wired Luke Byrne and he’ll be expecting you. You’ll find him at the Hotel Tin Hinan. Give him my regards.
I don’t know if it means anything but someone else is looking for Paul—a man called Kissack. I don’t know anything about him because he blew town before I could check on him.
Best of luck, and come back for another visit.
I didn’t know, what to expect of Tammanrasset but it was certainly different from Algiers. From the air it was a scattering of houses set in a mist of green at the foot of barren hills. Transport from the airstrip was by truck along an asphalted road which led between tall, square pillars which were the entrance to the town. They looked like the decor for a fifth-rate B-movie about the Foreign Legion.
I called it a town, but it would be more appropriate to call it a village. Be that as it may, it was the metropolis of the Ahaggar. The main street was wide, shaded by acacia trees, and bordered by single-storey houses apparently made of dried mud which looked as though they’d wash away in a half-way decent shower of rain. The truck driver blared his horn to clear a path through the pedestrians, tall men dressed in blue and white who thronged the centre of the street as though the internal combustion engine hadn’t been invented.
The truck drew up outside the Hotel Tin Hinan where there was a tree-shaded courtyard filled with spindly metal tables and chairs at which people sat drinking. From a loudspeaker above the hotel entrance came the nasal wail of an Eastern singer. I went inside into a dusty hall and waited until someone noticed me. There was no reception desk.
Presently I was noticed. A dapper man in none too clean whites asked in massacred French what he could do for me. I said, ‘There should be a reservation. My name is Stafford.’
His eyebrows lifted. ‘Ah, M’sieur Stafford! M’sieur Byrne awaits you.’ He steered me to the door and pointed.
‘Voilà!’
I stared at the man sitting at the table. He was dressed in a long blue robe and a white turban and he looked like nobody who could be called Byrne. I turned back to the receptionist only to find that he had gone back into the hotel, so I walked over to the table and said hesitantly, ‘Mr Byrne?’
The man hesitated with a glass of beer half way to his lips and then set it down. ‘Yes,’ he said, and turned to face me. Under shaggy white eyebrows blue eyes stared out of a deeply tanned face which was thin to the point of emaciation so that the nose jutted out like a beak. Beneath the nose was a wide mouth with thin lips firmly compressed. I could not see his chin because a fold of his turban had somehow become wrapped about his neck, but his cheeks were bearded with white hair. He looked like Moses and twice as old.
I said, ‘My name is Stafford.’
‘Sit down, Mr Stafford. Have a beer?’ He spoke in English with an American accent which, under the circumstances, was incongruous.
As I sat down he beckoned to a waiter.
‘Deux bières.’
He turned back to me. ‘Hesther told me about you. She said you might need help.’
‘I might. I’m looking for a man.’
‘So? Most men look for women.’
‘His name is Billson. He’s around here somewhere.’
‘Billson,’ Byrne repeated thoughtfully. ‘Why do you want him?’
‘I don’t know that I do,’ I said. ‘But his sister does. He’s looking for a crashed aeroplane. Are there any of those about here?’
‘A couple.’
‘This one crashed over forty years ago.’
Byrne’s expression didn’t change. ‘None as old as that.’ The waiter came back and put down two bottles of lager and two glasses; Byrne nodded at him briefly and he went away. It seemed that Byrne had a line of credit at the Hotel Tin Hinan.
I poured the beer. ‘I’m told the Ahaggar is a big place—very mountainous. A wrecked plane may not have been found.’
‘It would be,’ said Byrne.
‘But, surely, with the thin population…’
‘It would be found.’ Byrne was positive. ‘How did Billson get here? By air?’
‘He has a Land-Rover.’
‘How long has he been here?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. A week—maybe two.’
Byrne stared into the street without moving his eyes and was silent for some time. I leaned back in the chair and let him think it over. This was a man I found hard to assess because I had no notion of the springs which moved him. He was as alien to me as any of the men dressed like him who strolled in the street, in spite of the fact that he spoke English.
Presently he asked, ‘How well do you know Hesther Raulier?’
‘Hardly at all. I met her only two days ago.’
‘She likes you,’ he said. ‘Got a bag?’
I jerked my thumb in the direction of the hotel entrance. ‘In there.’
‘Leave it lay—we’ll pick it up later. I’m camped just outside Tam; let’s take a walk.’ He arose and did something complicated with his head cloth, making quite a production of it. When he had finished his face was hidden, and the cloth left only a slit at eye-level through which he looked.
We left the hotel and walked along the main street of Tammanrasset in a direction away from the airstrip. Byrne was a tall man, yet no taller than any of the other men who, similarly dressed, walked languidly in the street. It was I who was the incongruous figure in that place.
‘Do you always dress like an Arab?’ I asked.
‘Not if I can help it. I don’t like Arabs.’
I stared at him because his answer was incomprehensible. ‘But…’
He bent his head and said, with some amusement, ‘You have a lot to learn, Stafford. These guys aren’t Arab, they’re Imazighen—Tuareg, if you prefer.’
Byrne’s camp was about two miles outside the village. It consisted of three large leather tents set in a semi-circle, their backs to the wind. The sand in front of them had been swept smooth and, to one side, a small fire crackled, setting off detonations like miniature fireworks. In the middle distance camels browsed.
As we approached, a man who had been squatting next to the fire stood up. ‘That’s Mokhtar,’ said Byrne. ‘He’ll look after you while I’m away.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘To snoop around. But first you tell me more about Billson.’
Byrne strode over to the fire and the two men had a brief conversation. Mokhtar was another tall man who wore the veil. Byrne beckoned me to join him in the middle tent where we sat on soft rugs. The inner walls of the tent were made of reeds.
‘Right; why does Billson want to find a forty-year-old crash?’
‘It killed his father,’ I said, and related the story.
I had just finished when Mokhtar laid a brass tray before Byrne; on it was a spouted pot and two brass cups. ‘You like mint tea?’ asked Byrne.
‘Never had any.’
‘It’s not bad.’ He poured liquid and handed a cup to me. ‘Would you say Billson was right in the head?’
‘No, I wouldn’t. He’s obsessed.’
‘That’s what I figured.’ He drank from his cup and I followed suit. It was spearminty and oversweet. ‘How does Hesther come into this?’
‘She knew Billson’s father.’
‘How well?’
I looked him in the eye. ‘If she wants you to know she’ll tell you.’
He smiled. ‘Okay, Stafford; no need to get sassy. Did you learn this from Hesther herself?’ When I nodded, he said, ‘You must have got right next to her. She don’t talk much about herself.’
I said, ‘What chance has Billson of finding the plane?’
‘In the Ahaggar? None at all, because it isn’t here. Quite a few wrecks scattered further north, though.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘Hell, I put one of them there myself.’
I glanced at him curiously. ‘How did that happen?’
‘It was during the war. I was in the Army Air Force, flying Liberators out of Oran. We got jumped by a gang of Focke-Wolfs and had the hell shot out of us. The cockpit was in a mess—no compass working—we didn’t know where the hell we were. Then the engines gave up so I put down. I guess that airplane’s still where I put it.’
‘What happened then?’
‘I walked out,’ said Byrne laconically. ‘Took a week and a half.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll be back in a couple of hours.’
I watched him walk away with the smooth, almost lazy stride I had already noticed was common to the Tuareg, and wondered what the hell he was doing in the desert.
Presently Mokhtar came over with another tray of mint tea together with small round cakes.
It was three hours before Byrne came back, and he came riding a camel. The sun was setting and the thorn trees cast long shadows. The beast rocked to its knees and Byrne slid from the saddle, then came into the tent carrying my bag. The camel snorted as Mokhtar urged it to its feet and led it away.
Byrne sat down. ‘I’ve found your boy.’
‘Where is he?’
He pointed north. ‘Out there somewhere—in the mountains. He left five days ago. He applied at Fort Lapperine for a
permis
but they wouldn’t give him one, so he left anyway. He’s a goddamn fool.’
‘That I know,’ I said. ‘Why wouldn’t they give him a
permis?’
‘They won’t—not for one man in one truck.’
‘He’ll be coming back,’ I said. ‘Hesther said Tam was the only place he can get fuel.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Byrne. ‘If he was coming back he’d be back by now. Those Land-Rovers are thirsty beasts. If you want him you’ll have to go get him.’
I leaned back against the reed wall of the tent. ‘I’d like that in more detail.’
‘Paul Billson is an idiot. He filled his tank with gas and went. No spare. Five days is overlong to be away, and if he has no spare water he’ll be dead by now.’
‘How do I get there?’ I said evenly.
Byrne looked at me for a long time, and sighed. ‘If I didn’t know Hesther thought something of you I’d tell you to go to hell. As it is, we start at first light.’ He grimaced. ‘And I’ll have to go against my principles and use a stinkpot.’
What he meant by that I didn’t know, but I merely said, ‘Thanks.’
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s help Mokhtar get chow.’
‘Chow’ proved to be stringy goat, hard on the teeth and digestion, followed by a strong cheese which I was told
was made of camel’s milk. Byrne was taciturn and we went to sleep early in readiness for an early start. I lay on my back at the entrance to the tent, staring up at a sky so full of stars it seemed I could just reach up an arm to grab a handful.
I wondered what I was doing there and what I was getting into. And I wondered about Byrne, who spoke almost as archaic a slang as Hesther Raulier, a man who referred to his food by the World War Two American army term of ‘chow’.
Byrne’s ‘stinkpot’ turned out to be a battered Toyota Land Cruiser which looked as though it had been in a multiple smash on a motorway. Since there wasn’t a motor-way within two thousand miles, that was unlikely. Byrne saw my expression and said, ‘Rough country,’ as though that was an adequate explanation. However, the engine ran sweetly enough and the tyres were good.
We left in the dim light of dawn with Byrne driving, me next to him, and Mokhtar sitting in the back. Jerricans containing petrol and water were strapped all around the truck wherever there was an available place, and I noted that Mokhtar had somewhat unobtrusively put a rifle aboard. He also had a sword, a thing about three feet long in a red leather scabbard; what the devil he was going to do with that I couldn’t imagine.
We drove north along a rough track, and I said, ‘Where are we going?’
It was a damnfool question because I didn’t understand the answer when it came. Byrne stabbed his finger forward and said briefly, ‘Atakor,’ then left me to make of that what I would.
I was silent for a while, then said, ‘Did you get a
permis
?’
‘No,’ said Byrne shortly. A few minutes went by before he relented. ‘No fat bureaucrat from the Maghreb
is going to tell me where I can, or cannot, go in the desert.’
After that there was no conversation at all, and I began to think that travelling with Byrne was going to be sticky; extracting words from him was like pulling teeth. But perhaps he was always like that in the early morning. I thought of what he had just said and smiled. It reminded me of my own reaction to Isaacson’s treatment of Hoyland. But that had been far away in another world, and seemed a thousand years ago.
The country changed from flat gravel plains to low hills, barren of vegetation, and we began to climb. Ahead were mountains, such mountains as I had never seen before. Most mountains begin rising gently from their base, but these soared vertically to the sky, a landscape of jagged teeth.
After two hours of jolting we entered a valley where there was a small encampment. There was a bit more vegetation here, but not much, and there were many sheep or goats—I never could tell the difference in the Sahara because the sheep were thin-fleeced, long-legged creatures and I began to appreciate the Biblical quotation about separating the sheep from the goats. Camels browsed on the thorny acacia and there was a scattering of the leather tents of the Tuareg.
Mokhtar leaned forward and said something to Byrne, who nodded and drew the truck to a halt. As the dust drifted away on the light breeze Mokhtar got out and walked over to the tents. He was wearing his sword slung across his back, the hilt over his left shoulder.
Byrne said, ‘These people are of the Tégéhé Mellet. Mokhtar has gone to question them. If a Land-Rover has been anywhere near here they’ll know about it.’
‘What’s the sword for?’
Byrne laughed. ‘He’d feel as undressed without it as you would with no pants.’ He seemed to be becoming more human.
‘The Teg-whatever-it-is-you-said…is that a tribe of some kind?’
‘That’s right. The Tuareg confederation of the Ahaggar consists of three tribes—the Kel Rela, the Tégéhé Mellet and the Taitoq. Mokhtar is of the Kel Rela and of the noble clan. That’s why he’s gone to ask the questions and not me.’
‘Noble!’
‘Yeah, but not in the British sense. Mokhtar is related to the
Amenokal—
he’s the boss, the paramount chief of the Ahaggar confederation. All you have to know is that when a noble Kel Rela says, “Jump, frog!” everybody jumps.’ He paused, then added, ‘Except, maybe, another noble Kel Rela.’ He shrugged. ‘But you didn’t come out here to study anthropology.’
‘It might come in useful at that,’ I said.
He gave me a sideways glance. ‘You won’t be here long enough.’
Mokhtar came back, accompanied by three men from the camp. All were veiled and wore the long, flowing blue and white gowns that seemed to be characteristic of the Tuareg. I wondered how they kept them so clean in that dusty wilderness. As they came close Byrne hastily adjusted his own veil so that his face was covered.
There were ceremonial greetings and then a slow and casual conversation of which I didn’t understand a single word, and I just sat there feeling like a spare part. After a while Byrne reached into the back of the truck and produced a big round biscuit tin. He took out some small packages and handed them round, and Mokhtar added his own contribution. There was much graceful bowing.
As he started the engine Byrne said, ‘Billson came through here four days ago. He must have been travelling damned slow.’
‘I don’t wonder,’ I said. ‘He’s more used to driving on a road. Which way did he go?’
‘Towards Assekrem—or further. And that’s not going to be any joke.’
‘What do you mean?’
He gave me a considering look. ‘Assekrem is a Tamachek word—it means, “The End of the World”.’
The truck jolted as he moved off. The Tuareg waved languidly and I waved back at them, glad to offer some contribution to the conversation. Then I sat back and chewed over what Byrne had just said. It wasn’t comforting.
Presently I said, ‘What did you give those men back there?’
‘Aspirin, needles, salt. All useful stuff.’
‘Oh!’
Three hours later we stopped again. We had been moving steadily into the mountains which Byrne called Atakor and had not seen a living soul or, indeed, anything alive at all except for thin grasses burnt by the sun and the inevitable scattered thorn trees. The mountains were tremendous, great shafts of rock thrusting through the skin of the earth, dizzyingly vertical.
And then, at a word from Mokhtar, we stopped in the middle of nowhere. He got out and walked back a few paces, then peered at the ground. Byrne looked back, keeping the engine running. Mokhtar straightened and walked back to the truck, exchanged a few words with Byrne, and then took the rifle and began to walk away into the middle distance. This time he left his sword.
Byrne put the truck into gear and we moved off. I said, ‘Where’s he going?’
‘To shoot supper. There are some gazelle close by. We’ll stop a little further on and wait for him.’
We drove on for about three miles and then came across a ruined building. Byrne drew to a halt. ‘This is it. We wait here.’
I got out and stretched, then looked across at the building. There was something strange about it which I couldn’t pin down at first, and then I got the impression that it wasn’t as much ruined as intended to be that way. It had started life as a ruin.
Byrne nodded towards the tremendous rock which towered three thousand feet above us. ‘Ilamen,’ he said. ‘The finger of God.’ I started to walk to the building, and he said sharply, ‘Don’t go in there.’
‘Why not? What is it?’
‘The Tuareg don’t go much for building,’ he said. ‘And they’re Moslem—in theory, anyway. That’s a mosque, more elaborate than most because this is a holy place. Most desert mosques are usually just an outline of stones on the ground.’
‘Is it all right if I look at it from the outside?’
‘Sure.’ He turned away.
The walls of the mosque were of stones piled crazily and haphazardly one upon the other. I suppose the highest bit of wall wasn’t more than three feet high. At one end was a higher structure, the only roofed bit, not much bigger than a telephone box, though not as high. The roof was supported by stone pillars. I suppose that would be a sort of pulpit for the imam.
When I returned to the truck Byrne had lit a small fire and was heating water in a miniature kettle. He looked up. ‘Like tea?’
‘Mint tea?’
‘No other kind here.’ I nodded, and he said, ‘Those stone pillars back there weren’t hand-worked; they’re natural basalt, but there’s none of that around here for twenty miles. Someone brought them.’
‘A bit like Stonehenge,’ I commented, and sat down.
Byrne grunted. ‘Heard of that—never seen it. Never been in England. Bigger, though, isn’t it?’
‘Much bigger.’
He brought flat cakes of bread from the truck and we ate. The bread was dry and not very flavoursome but a little camel cheese made it eatable. It had sand mixed in the flour which was gritty to the teeth. Byrne poured a small cup of mint tea and gave it to me. ‘What are you?’ he asked. ‘Some sort of private eye?’ It was the first time he had shown any curiosity about me.
I laughed at the outdated expression. ‘No.’ I told him what I did back in England.
He looked towards the mosque and Ilamen beyond. ‘Not much call for that stuff around here,’ he remarked. ‘How did you get into it?’
‘It was the only thing I know how to do,’ I said. ‘It was what I was trained for. I was in the Army in Intelligence, but when I was promoted from half-colonel to colonel I saw the red light and quit.’
He twitched his shaggy eyebrows at me. ‘Promotion in your army is
bad
?’ he enquired lazily.
‘That kind is. Normally, if you’re going to stay in the line of command—field officer—you’re promoted from lieutenant-colonel to brigadier; battalion CO to brigade CO. If you only go up one step it’s a warning that you’re being shunted sideways into a specialist job.’ I sighed. ‘I suppose it was my own fault. It was my pride to be a damned good intelligence officer, and they wanted to keep me that way. Anyway, I resigned my commission and started the firm I’ve been running for the last seven years.’
‘Chicken colonel,’ mused Byrne. ‘I never made more than sergeant myself. Long time ago, though.’
‘During the war,’ I said.
‘Yeah. Remember I told you I walked away from a crash?’
‘Yes.’
‘I liked what I saw during that walk—never felt so much alive. The other guys wouldn’t come. Two of them couldn’t;
too badly injured—and the others stayed to look after them. So I walked out myself.’
‘What happened to them?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘I gave the position of the plane and they sent a captured Fiesler Storch to have a look. Those things could land in fifty yards. It was no good; they were all dead.’
‘No water?’
He shook his head. ‘Goddamn Arabs. They wanted loot and they didn’t care how they got it.’
‘And you came back here after the war?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘I let the war go on without me. During the time I was walking through the desert I got to thinking. I’d never seen such space, such openness. And the desert is clean. You know, you can go without washing for quite a time here and you’re still clean—you don’t stink. I liked the place. Couldn’t say as much for the people, though.’ He poured some more mint tea. ‘The Chaamba Arabs around El Golea aren’t too bad, but those bastards in the Maghreb would skin a quarter and stretch the skin into a dollar.’
‘What’s the Maghreb?’
‘The coastal strip in between the Mediterranean and the Atlas.’ He paused. ‘Anyway, early in ‘43 I got a letter to say my Pop was dead. He was the only family I had, so I had no urge to go back to the States. And General Eisenhower and General Patton and more of the top brass were proposing to go to Italy. I didn’t fancy that, so when the army went north I came south looking for more favourable folks than Arabs. I found ‘em, and I’m still here.’
I smiled. ‘You deserted?’
‘It’s been known as that,’ he admitted. ‘But, hell; ain’t that what a desert’s for?’
I laughed at the unexpected pun. ‘What did you do before you joined the army?’
‘Fisherman,’ he said. ‘Me and my Pop sailed a boat out o’ Bar Harbor. That’s in Maine. Never did like fishing much.’
Fisherman!
That was a hell of a change of pace. I suppose it worked on the same principle that the best recruiting ground for the US Navy is Kansas. I said, ‘You’re a long way from the sea now.’
‘Yeah, but I can take you to a place in the Ténéré near Bilma—that’s down in Niger and over a thousand miles from the nearest ocean—where you can pick up sea-shells from the ground in hundreds. Some of them are real pretty. The sea’s been here and gone away. Maybe it’ll come back some day.’
‘Ever been back to the States?’
‘No; I’ve been here thirty-five years and like to die here,’ he said peacefully.
Mokhtar was away a long time, nearly five hours, and when he came back he had the gutted carcass of a gazelle slung across his shoulders. Byrne helped him butcher it, talking the while.
Presently he came over to me and squinted into the sun. ‘Getting late,’ he said. ‘I reckon we’ll stay here the night. Billson is either between here and Assekrem or he ain’t. If he is, we’ll find him tomorrow. If he ain’t, a few hours won’t make no difference.’
‘All right.’
‘And we’ve got fresh meat. Mokhtar tells me he stalked that gazelle for twenty kilometres and downed it in one shot.’
‘You mean he walked twenty kilometres!’
‘More. He had to come back. But he circled a bit, so say under thirty. That’s nothing for a Targui. Anyway, Mokhtar’s one of the old school; he learned to shoot with a muzzle-loader. With one of those you have to kill with one shot because the gazelle spooks and gets clear away before you can reload. But he likes a breech-action repeater better.’
And so we stayed under the shadow of Ilamen that night. I lay in the open, wrapped in a
djellaba
provided by Byrne, and looked up at those fantastic stars. A sickle moon arose but did little to dim the splendour of those faraway lights.
I thought of Byrne. Hesther Raulier had compared him with Billson, calling him, ‘another crazy man’. But the madness of Byrne was quite different from the neurotic obsession of Billson; his was the madness that had struck many white men—not many Americans, mostly Europeans—Doughty, Burton, Lawrence, Thesiger—the lure of the desert. There was a peacefulness and a sanity about Byrne’s manner which was very comforting.
I thought in wonder of the sea-shells to be picked up from the desert a thousand miles from the sea but had no fore-shadowing that I would be picking them myself. The night was calm and still. I suddenly became aware of the startling incongruity of Max Stafford, hot-shot businessman from the City of London, lying in a place improbably called Atakor beneath the Finger of God which was not far from the End of the World.