Suddenly London ceased to matter. Lord Brinton and Andrew McGovern ceased to matter; Charlie Malleson and Jack Ellis ceased to matter; Gloria and Alix Aarvik ceased to matter. All the pettifogging business of our so-called civilization seemed to slough away like an outworn skin and I felt incredibly happy.
I slept.
I woke in the thin light of dawn conscious of movement and sound. When I lifted my head I saw Byrne filling the petrol tank from a jerrican—it was that metallic noise that had roused me. I leaned up on one elbow and saw Mokhtar in the desert mosque; he was making obeisances to the east in the dawn ritual of Islam. I waited until he had finished because I did not want to disturb his devotions, then I arose.
Thirty minutes later after a breakfast of cold roast venison, bread and hot mint tea we were on our way again, a long plume of dust stretching away behind us. Slowly the majestic peak of Ilamen receded and new vistas of tortured rock came into view. According to Byrne, we were on a well-travelled road but to a man more accustomed to city streets and motorway driving that seemed improbable. The so-called road was vestigial, distinguishable only by boulders a shade smaller than those elsewhere, and the truck was taking a beating. As for it being well-travelled I did not see a single person moving on it all the time I was in Atakor.
Nearly three hours later Byrne pointed ahead. ‘Assekrem!’
There was a large hill or a small mountain, depending on how you looked at it, on the top of which appeared to be a building. ‘Is that a house?’ I asked, wondering who would build on a mountain top in the middle of a wilderness.
‘It’s the Hermitage. Tell you about it later.’
We drove on and, at last, Byrne stopped at the foot of the mountain. There seemed to be traces of long-gone cultivation about; the outlines of fields and now dry irrigation ditches. Byrne said, ‘Now we climb to the top.’
‘For God’s sake, why?’
‘To see what’s on the other side,’ he said sardonically. ‘Come on.’
And so we climbed Assekrem. It was by no means a mountaineering feat; a track zig-zagged up the mountain, steep but not unbearably so, and yet I felt out of breath and panted for air. Half way up Byrne obligingly stopped for a breather, although he did not seem in discomfort.
I leaned against the rock wall. ‘I thought I was fitter than this.’
‘Altitude. When you get to the top you’ll be nine thousand feet high.’
I looked down to the plain below where I saw the truck with Mokhtar sitting in its shade. ‘This hill isn’t nine thousand feet high.’
‘Above sea level,’ said Byrne. ‘At Tam we were four and a half thousand high, and we’ve been climbing ever since.’ He rearranged his veil as he was always doing.
‘What’s this about a Hermitage?’
‘Ever hear of Charles de Foucauld?’
‘No.’
‘Frenchman, a Trappist monk. In his youth, so I hear, he was a hellion, but he caught religion bad in Morocco. He took his vows and came out here to help the Tuareg. I suppose he did help them in his way. Anyway, most of what the outside world knows about the Tuareg came from de Foucauld.’
‘When was this?’
‘About 1905. He lived in Tam then, but it wasn’t much of a place in those days. In 1911 he moved here and built the Hermitage with his own hands. He was a mystic, you see
,
and wanted a place for contemplation.’
I looked at the barren landscape. ‘Some place!’
‘You’ll see why when we get to the top. He didn’t stay long—it damn near killed him; so he went back to Tam and that did kill him.’
‘How so?’
‘In 1916 the Germans bribed the Libyan Sennousi to stir up trouble with the desert tribes against the French. The Tuareg of the Tassili n’ Ajjer joined with the Sennousi and sent a raiding party against Tam. De Foucauld was caught and shot with his hands bound—and it was an accident. An excitable kid of fifteen let a gun go off. I don’t think they meant to kill him. Everyone knew he was a
marabout
—a holy man.’ He shrugged. ‘Either way he was just as dead.’
I looked at Byrne closely. ‘How do you know all this?’
He leaned forward and said gently, ‘I can read, Stafford.’ I felt myself redden under the implied rebuke, but he laughed suddenly. ‘And I talked to some old guys over in the Tassili who had been on the raid against Tam in 1916. Some of the books I read sure are wrong.’ He half-turned as if about to set off again, but stopped. ‘And there was someone else in Tam not long ago like de Foucauld—but a woman. English, she was; name of Daisy Wakefield. Said she was related to some English lord—something to do with oil. Is there a Lord Wakefield?’
‘There is.’
‘Then that must be the guy.’
‘Did you know her?’
‘Sure, Daisy and I got on fine. That’s how I caught up with the news; she subscribed to the London
Times.
A mite out-of-date by the time it got here but that didn’t matter.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘She got old,’ he said simply. ‘She went north to El Golea and died there, God rest her soul.’ He turned. ‘Come on.’
‘Byrne,’ I said. ‘Why are we climbing this mountain?’
‘To see a guy at the top,’ he said without turning.
I trudged after him and thought:
My God! Wakefield oil!
This damned desert seemed littered with improbable people. In fact, I was following one of them. Maybe two, counting Paul Billson.
The building at the top of Assekrem was simple enough. Three small rooms built of stone. There were two men there who ushered us inside. They were dark-skinned men with Negroid features. Byrne said casually, ‘Don’t handle any of the stuff here; it’s de Foucauld’s stuff—holy relics.’
I looked about with interest as he talked with the men. There was a simple wooden table on which were some books, a couple of old-fashioned steel pens and a dried-out ink-well. In one corner was a wooden cot with an inch-
thick mattress which looked about as comfortable as concrete. On a wall was a picture of the Virgin.
Byrne came over to me. ‘Billson went through three days ago, I think. Or it could have been two days because another truck went through the day after, and I’m not sure which was Billson. But that truck came out again yesterday.’
‘We didn’t see it.’
‘Might have gone out the other way—through Akar-Akar.’ He rubbed his jaw reflectively and looked at me. I noticed he hadn’t bothered to keep up his veil in the presence of these men. He said abruptly, ‘I want to show you something frightening—and why de Foucauld built here.’
He turned and went outside and I followed. He walked across the natural rock floor of a sort of patio to a low stone parapet, and then pointed north. ‘That’s where your boy is.’
I caught my breath. Assekrem was a pimple on the edge of a plateau. Below the parapet were vertiginous cliffs, and spread wide was the most awe-inspiring landscape I had ever seen. Range after range after range of mountains receded into the blue distance, but these were none of your tame mountains of the Scottish Highlands or even the half-tamed Swiss Alps. Some time in the past there had been a fearsome convulsion of the earth here; raw rock had ripped open the earth’s belly with fangs of stone—and the fangs were still there. There was no regularity, just a jumble of lava fields and the protruding cores of volcanoes for as far as the eye could see, festering under a brassy sun. It was killer country.
‘That’s Koudia,’ said Byrne. ‘The land beyond the end of the world.’
I didn’t say anything then, but I wondered about de Foucauld. If he chose to meditate here—did he worship God or the Devil?
Byrne was still talking to the dark-skinned men who had come out to join us. There was much gesticulating and pointing until, at last, Byrne got something settled to his satisfaction. ‘These guys say they saw something burning out there two days ago.’
‘Christ!’ I said. ‘What is there to burn?’
‘Don’t know.’ He fumbled in the leather pouch which depended from a cord around his neck and took out a prismatic compass. He looked at me and said with a grin, ‘I’m not against all scientific advance. Mokhtar, down there, thinks I’m a genius the way I find my way around.’ He put the compass to his eye to take a sight.
‘How far away?’
‘Don’t know that, either. They say it was a column of smoke—black smoke.’
‘In the daytime?’
There was astonishment in Byrne’s eyes as he looked at me. ‘Sure; how the hell else could they see smoke?’
‘I was thinking about the Bible,’ I said. ‘The Israelites in the wilderness, guided by a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night.’
‘I don’t think you’ve got that right,’ he said mildly. ‘I read it as a pillar of cloud.’ He turned back to take another sight. ‘But I guess we’d better take a look. I make
it just about due north of here, on a compass bearing. I don’t bother none about magnetic variation, not on a short run.’
‘What do you call short?’
‘Anything up to fifty kilometres. Magnetic deviation is another thing. These goddamn hills are full of iron and you’ve got to check your compass bearing by the sun all the time.’
He put the compass away, and from another bag he took a couple of small packages which he gave to the two men. There was a ceremonial leave-taking, and he said, ‘Salt and tobacco. In these parts you pay for what you get.’
As we set off down the steep path I said, ‘There is something that’s been puzzling me.’
Byrne grunted. ‘Hell of a lot of things puzzle me, too, from time to time. What’s your problem?’
‘That veil of yours. I know it’s Tuareg dress, but sometimes you muffle yourself up to the bloody eyebrows and other times you don’t bother. For instance, you didn’t bother up there; you let them see your face. I don’t understand the rationale.’
Byrne stopped. ‘Still on your anthropological kick, huh? Okay, I’ll tell you. It’s the politeness of the country. If you’re in a place and you don’t do as everybody does in that place, you could get yourself very dead. Take a Targui and set him in the middle of London. If he didn’t know he had to cross the street in a special place, and only when the light is green, he could get killed. Right?’
‘I suppose so.’
Byrne touched his head cloth. ‘This thing is a
chech;
it’s a substitute for the real thing, which is a
tagelmoust,
but you don’t see many of those around except on high days and holidays. They’re very precious. Now, nobody knows why the Tuareg wear the veil. I don’t know; the anthropologists don’t know; the Tuareg don’t know. I wear mine because it’s
handy for keeping the dust out of my throat and keeps a high humidity in the sinuses on a dry day. It also cuts down water loss from the body.’
He sat down on a convenient rock and pointed downwards. ‘You’ve seen Mokhtar’s face?’
‘Yes. He doesn’t seem to bother about me seeing it.’
‘He wouldn’t—he’s a noble of the Kel Rela,’ said Byrne cryptically. ‘Society here is highly class-structured and a ceremonial has grown up around the veil. It’s polite to hide your face from your superiors and, to a lesser extent, from your equals. If Mokhtar met the
Amenokal
you’d see nothing of him except his eyelashes.’
He jerked his thumb upwards. ‘Now, those guys up there are Haratin, and the Haratin were here thousands of years ago, long before the Tuareg moved in. But the Tuareg conquered them and made slaves of them, so they’re definitely not my superior, so the veil don’t matter.’
‘But you’re not a Tuareg.’
‘The male singular is Targui,’ said Byrne. ‘And I’ve been a Targui ten years longer than I was an American.’ He jabbed his finger at me. ‘Now, you’ll see lots of Tuareg faces, because you’re a no-account European and don’t matter. Got it?’
I nodded. ‘I feel properly put in my place.’
‘Then let’s get the hell out of here.’
If I had thought Atakor was bad it was hard to make a comparison with Koudia; I suppose the only comparison could be between Purgatory and Hell. I soon came to realize that the high road I had anathematized in Atakor was a super highway when compared to anything in Koudia.
I put it to Byrne and he explained. ‘It’s simple. People make roads when they want to go places, and who in God’s name would want to come here?’
‘But why would anyone want to be in Atakor except a mystic like de Foucauld?’
‘The Hermitage is a place of pilgrimage. People go there, Moslem and Christian alike. So the going is easy back there.’
After leaving Assekrem and plunging into the wilderness of Koudia I don’t suppose we made more than seven miles in the first two hours—walking pace in any reasonable country. Koudia was anything but reasonable; I don’t think there was a single horizontal bit of land more than five paces across. If we weren’t going up we were going down, and if we weren’t doing either we were going around.
The place was a litter of boulders—anything from head size to as big as St Paul’s Cathedral, and the springing of the Toyota was suffering. So was I. We bounced around from rock to rock and I rattled around the cab until I was bruised and sore. Byrne, at least, had the wheel to hold on to, but I don’t think that made it any better for him because it twisted in his hands as though it was alive. As for Mokhtar, he spent more of his time out of the truck than in.
Apart from the boulders there were the mountains themselves, and no one could drive up those vertical cliffs so that was when we went around, Byrne keeping his eyes on his compass so as not to lose direction in all the twisting and turning we had to do. He stopped often to take a reciprocal sighting on Assekrem to make sure we were on the right line.
As I say, Mokhtar spent more time on the ground than in the truck, and it wasn’t too hard for him to keep up. He had a sharp eye for signs of passage, and once he stopped us to indicate tyre marks on a patch of sand. He and Byrne squatted down to examine them while I investigated my bruises. When we were about to start again Byrne said, ‘Superimposed tracks. One vehicle going in and another, later, coming out.’
I had casually inspected those tracks myself but I couldn’t have trusted myself to tell which way the vehicles were going. As a Saharan intelligence officer I was a dead loss.
About seven miles in two hours, then we stopped for a rest and food. There was no vegetation in Koudia at all but Mokhtar had thoughtfully gathered a bundle of acacia twigs while waiting for us at Assekrem and soon had a fire going to boil water for the inevitable mint tea. I said to Byrne, ‘Don’t you ever drink coffee?’
‘Sure, but this is better for you in the desert. You can have coffee when we get back to Tam. Expensive, though.’
The sun was past its height and sinking towards the west as we sat in the shade of the Toyota. This was the hottest part of the day and, in Koudia, that meant really hot. The bare rocks were hot enough to fry eggs and the landscape danced in a constant heat shimmer.
I remarked on this to Byrne, and he grinned. ‘This is winter—would you like to be here in summer?’
‘Christ, no!’
‘This is why they wouldn’t give Billson a
permis.
And come nightfall the temperature will drop like a rock. You leave water exposed out here and you’ll have half an inch of ice on it by three in the morning. If Billson is lost he’ll either have burned to death or frozen to death.’
‘I like a cheerful man,’ I said acidly.
Mokhtar had disappeared about his private business but suddenly he appeared on top of a boulder about two hundred yards away. He gave a shrill whistle which attracted our attention, and waved both his arms. ‘He’s found something,’ said Byrne, scrambling to his feet.
We went over to Mokhtar and that took us more than ten minutes in that ankle-breaking terrain. When we were fifty yards away Mokhtar shouted something, and Byrne said, ‘He’s found a truck. Let’s see if it’s a Land-Rover.’
As we scrambled on top of the boulder, which was as big as a moderate-sized stately home, Mokhtar pointed downwards, behind him. We walked over and stared to where his finger was pointing. There was a vehicle down there behind the boulder, and it was a Land-Rover. Or, at least, it had been—it was totally burnt-out. There was no sign of Billson or anyone else, and I suddenly realized that I wouldn’t know Billson if I saw him. I was a damn fool for not having a photograph.
Byrne said, ‘The black smoke would come from the burning tyres. Let’s get down there.’
Going down meant going back the way we had come and walking around the boulder. As we came in sight of the Land-Rover, Byrne, in the lead, spread his arms to stop us. He spoke rapidly to Mokhtar who went on ahead, peering at the ground. Presently he waved and Byrne walked over to him, and they had a brief discussion before Byrne beckoned to me.
‘There’s been another truck here; its tracks are on top of those of the Land-Rover, and it went that way.’ He pointed back in the general direction of the Toyota.
‘Where’s Billson?’ My mouth was dry.
Byrne jerked his head at the Land-Rover. ‘Probably in there—what’s left of him. Let’s see.’
He stood up and we walked over to the Land-Rover. It was a total wreck—a burnt-out carcass; it sat on the ground, the wheel rims entangled in the steel reinforcing wires of what had been tyres. There was still a lingering stench of burning rubber in the air.
The window glass had cracked and some of it had melted, and the windscreen was totally opaque so that it was difficult to see inside. Byrne reached out and tugged at the handle of the door on the driver’s side and cursed as it came away in his hand. He walked around and tried the other door. He jerked it open and looked inside, with me looking over his shoulder.
The inside was a mess. The upholstery had burned, releasing blackened coil springs, and even the plastic coating of the driving wheel had burnt away, leaving bare metal. But there was no body, either in front or on the rear seats.
We went around to the back and got the tailgate open, to find scant remnants of what appeared to be two suitcases. Again, no body. I said, ‘The other truck must have taken him away.’
‘Maybe,’ said Byrne noncommittally. He poked around a bit more in the ruined Land-Rover, then he straightened up. ‘Did Paul Billson have any enemies?’
‘He may have had.’ I went cold as I realized we were speaking of Billson in the past tense just as his half-sister had done. I said, ‘I hardly think he’d have the kind of enemy who would follow him to the middle of the Sahara to kill him.’
‘Mmm.’ Byrne made a nondescript noise and continued his examination. ‘I’ve seen lots of burnt-out trucks,’ he said. He picked up a jerrican lying to one side, snapped open the cap, and sniffed. ‘He had gas in here. He must have been carrying it in the back there, because he had no cans strapped on the side when he left. This is empty now.’
‘Perhaps there was an accident when he was refilling the main tank.’
‘Then where’s the body?’
‘As I say—the other truck rescued him.’
Byrne stood back and looked at the Land-Rover, then talked more to himself than to me. ‘Let’s see; twenty-eight gallons in the main tank plus about four in the can—that’s thirty-two. He’d need at least twenty to get here, so he was in trouble without a fire—he didn’t have enough gas to get back to Tam. That leaves twelve gallons—eight in the tank and four in this can, I’d say.’
‘How do you know the can wasn’t empty? He could have refilled his main tank anywhere—even before Assekrem.’
‘There’s been gas in the can until quite recently—it smells too strong. And when I picked it up the cap was still closed. Now, if that can had been full of gas during the fire it would have exploded—but it hasn’t.’
Byrne seemed to be arguing in circles. ‘So he put it in the main tank,’ I said exasperatedly.
‘No,’ said Byrne definitely. ‘I’ve seen a lot of burnt-out trucks in the desert, but never one like this—not with all four tyres gone like that, not with so much fire damage up front.’ He bent down to examine the petrol tank, and then crawled under.
When he emerged he stood up and tossed something in his hand. ‘That was lying on the ground.’ It was a small screw cap with a broken wire hanging from it. ‘That’s the drain cap for the gas tank. The wire which is supposed to stop it unscrewing has been cut. That makes it certain. Someone doused this truck with gas from the can, then decided it would be a good idea to have more. So he drained another four gallons from the tank—maybe eight—to do a really good job of arson. You don’t get auto tyres burning all that easily. Then he tossed in a match and went away, and the guy who would do that wouldn’t be rescuing Billson.’
‘So where’s Billson?’
‘Don’t know. Maybe we’ll find his body around here some place.’
I remembered something. ‘The man I put on Billson’s track back in England seemed to think that someone else was also looking for him.’ I frowned. ‘And then Hesther Raulier…’ I pulled out my wallet and found the note she had enclosed with the air ticket. I scanned it and handed it to Byrne.
He read it through, then said, ‘Know this guy, Kissack?’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘Neither have I.’ He gave me back the note.
‘Another thing,’ I said. ‘Billson might have had a lot of money with him. I think he smuggled it out of the UK.’
‘What do you call a lot of money?’
‘The thick end of £60,000.’
Byrne whistled. ‘I’d call that a lot, too.’ He swung around and rooted in the back of the Land-Rover where all that was left of two suitcases were the locks, hinges, metal frames and a pile of ashes. He said, ‘Whether Billson’s money was in here when the fire bust out we’ll never know without a forensic laboratory, and those are a mite scarce around here. Was it common knowledge that Billson would be carrying so much loose dough?’
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ I said. ‘It’s really only a guess on my part.’