Flyaway / Windfall. Desmond Bagley
in their languid, majestic manner, or stood about in small groups discussing whatever it was that Tuareg discuss. Probably the price of camels and the difficulty of shooting gazelle. A lot of them wore swords.
Of course, there was no reason why Tam should have changed. It was I who had changed. Those few days in Atakor and Koudia had made the devil of a difference. And now it seemed I was to go down to Niger – to a place called Agadez and where was it? Ah yes; the Aïr ou something or other. I didn’t know how far it was and I wondered if I could buy a map.
There were other things I needed. I looked down at myself. The natty tropical suiting the London tailor had foisted on me was showing the strain of desert travel. I gave the jacket an open-handed blow and a cloud of dust arose. With those travel stains and my unshaven appearance I probably looked like a tramp; any London bobby would have run me in on sight. But I saw no chance of buying European-style clothing in Tam. I’d ask Byrne about that.
I finished the beer and ordered a coffee which came thick and sugary and in very small quantity, which was just as well, and I decided I’d rather stay with the mint tea. I was half way through the second beer when Byrne pitched up. His first act was to order a beer and his second to drain the glass in one swallow. Then he ordered another, and said, ‘No one called Kissack has been around.’
‘So?’
He sighed. ‘Don’t mean much, of course. A guy can change his name. There’s a party of German tourists going through.’ He laughed. ‘Some of them are wearing Lederhosen.’
I wasn’t very much amused. In the desert Lederhosen weren’t any more ridiculous than the suit I was wearing. I said, ‘Have you any maps? I’d like to know where I’m going.’
‘Don’t use them myself, but I can get you one.’
‘And I can do with some clothes.’
He inspected me. ‘Wait until we get further south,’ he advised. ‘Nothing much here; better in Agadez. Your prints will be ready in an hour; I put the arm on the photographer.’ He drained his glass. ‘Now let’s go tell the tale to the cops.’
Outside the entrance to the poste de police he said, ‘Got your passport?’
I pulled it out of my pocket and hesitated. ‘Look, if I say I’m going to Niger it’s going to look funny when he finds no Niger visa in here.’
‘No problem,’ said Byrne. ‘He won’t give a damn about that. Niger is another country and it’s not his worry what trouble you find yourself in there. He’ll be only too happy to get you out of Algeria. Now go in and act the idiot tourist. I’ll be right behind you.’
So I reported to the plump uniformed policeman behind the desk, and laid down my passport. ‘I’ve been waiting for you, M’sieur Stafford,’ he said coldly. ‘What kept you?’ He spoke heavily accented French.
‘Merde!’ said Byrne. ‘It was only a couple of days.’ I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised that Byrne spoke French, but I was. It was ungrammatical but serviceable.
‘Three and a half, M’sieur Byrne,’ said the policeman flatly.
‘I thought he’d reported – I only found out last night, and we came straight in.’
‘Where were you?’
‘Abalessa.’ He added something in a guttural language totally unlike that in which he spoke to Mokhtar. I took it to be Arabic.
‘Nowhere else?’
‘Where else is there to go out there?’ asked Byrne.
I said, ‘I suppose it’s my fault. I jumped at the chance to go out there as soon as I met Mr Byrne. I didn’t know I had to report here until he told me last night.’ I paused, and added, ‘It’s quite a place out there; I’m not sure it’s Roman, though.’
The policeman didn’t comment on that. ‘Are you staying in Tammanrasset long, M’sieur Stafford?’
I glanced at Byrne. ‘No; I’m going down to Agadez and the Aïr.’
‘With M’sieur Byrne?’
‘Yes.’
He suddenly seemed more cheerful as he picked up my passport. ‘We have much trouble with you tourists. You don’t understand that there are strict rules that you must follow. There is another Englishman we are looking for. It all wastes our time.’ He opened the passport, checked me against the photograph, and flicked the pages. ‘There is no visa for Algeria here,’ he said sharply.
‘You know it’s not necessary,’ said Byrne.
‘Of course.’ The policeman’s eyes narrowed as he looked at Byrne. ‘Very good of you to instruct me in my work.’ He put his hands flat on the table. ‘I think a lot about you, M’sieur Byrne. I do not think you are a good influence in the Ahaggar. It may be that I shall write a report on you.’
‘It won’t get past the Commissioner of Police in Algiers,’ said Byrne. ‘You can depend on that.’
The policeman said nothing to that. His face was expressionless as he stamped my passport and pushed it across the desk. ‘You will fill out fiches in triplicate. If you do not know how I am sure M’sieur Byrne will instruct you.’ He indicated a side table.
The fiche was a small card, somewhat smaller than a standard postcard and printed in Arabic and French. I scanned it, then said to Byrne, ‘Standard bureaucratic stuff – but what the hell do I put down under “Tribe”?’
Byrne grinned. ‘A couple of years ago there was a guy here from the Isle of Man. He put down Manx.’ He wilted a little under my glare and said, ‘Just put a stroke through it.’
I filled in all three fiches and put them on the policeman’s desk. He said, ‘When are you leaving for Niger?’
I looked at Byrne, who said, ‘Now. We just have to go to Abalessa to pick up some gear.’
The policeman nodded. ‘Don’t forget to report at the checkpoint outside town. You have an unfortunate habit of going around it, M’sieur Byrne.’
‘Me? I never!’ said Byrne righteously.
We left and, just outside the office, passed a man carrying a sub-machine-gun. Once in the street I said, ‘He doesn’t like you. What was all that about?’
‘Just a general principle. The boys in the Maghreb don’t like foreigners getting too close to the Tuareg. That guy is an Arab from Sidi-bel-Abbès. It’s about time they recruited their police from the Tuareg.’
‘Can he get you into trouble?’
‘Fat chance. The Commissioner of Police lives in Hesther Raulier’s pocket.’
I digested that thoughtfully, then said, ‘What did you say to him in Arabic?’
Byrne smiled. ‘Just something I wouldn’t want to say to your face. I told him you were a goddamn stupid tourist who didn’t know which end was up. I also managed to slip in that we were waiting for a roll of film to be developed. With a bit of luck he’ll check on that.’
We went shopping. Byrne seemed well known and there was a lot of good-natured chaffing and laughter – also a lot of mint tea. He bought salt, sugar and flour, small quantities of each in many places, spreading his custom wide. He also bought a map for me and then we went back to the hotel for a final beer.
As we sat down he said, ‘No trace of Kissack, but the word is out to look for him.’
The map was the Michelin North and West Africa, and the scale was 40 kilometres to the centimetre, about 63 miles to the inch. Even so, it was a big map and more than covered the small table at which we were sitting. I folded it to more comfortable proportions and looked at the area around Tammanrasset. The ground we had covered in the last few days occupied an astonishingly small portion of that map. I could