Flyaway / Windfall. Desmond Bagley
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