Flyaway / Windfall (25 page)

That seemingly small task took longer than I thought and by the time we had finished the sun was setting. We had our evening meal and went to sleep early. At dawn the following morning Paul and I helped Byrne take out the last two bolts that held the propeller to the shaft and we lowered it to the ground using a rope made up of bits and pieces of the donkey harness. Byrne and I carried it to the grave in the cave while Paul brought the plaque. We set the propeller upright near the grave and Byrne fastened the plaque to the boss using some wire he had found in
Flyaway.

Then we stood there for a while, doing nothing, but just standing there. Byrne said, ‘I guess Billson was the first guy to see those pictures in here in a few thousand years. Maybe this propeller and the inscription will still be there in a thousand years from now. Aluminum don’t rust and things change slow in the desert. It’s a good marker.’

After a while we went away, leaving Paul to his own thoughts.

In spite of the hobbles the donkeys had moved a fair way in search of grazing and it took us a while to find them and it was an hour before we got them back to the camp. Paul had come back looking sombre and helped us load them. It was time to go.

We took one last long look at
Flyaway
and then began the awkward business of coaxing the donkeys through the narrow cleft in the rock. When we got them out Byrne said, ‘Okay—back to Tamrit. Maybe three days.’

Paul said, ‘Do you mind waiting a minute? I won’t be long. I just want…’ He swallowed convulsively and looked at me. ‘You didn’t take a picture of the plaque. I’d like that.’

I glanced at Byrne who said, ‘All right, Paul, but not more than fifteen minutes. Tether those donkeys firmly. We’ll stroll ahead.’ He pointed. ‘That’s the line we take.’

I unfastened my bag and took out my camera. ‘Shall I come with you, or can you take the pictures?’

‘I can do it,’ he said, so I gave him the camera and he went back through the cleft.

Byrne said, ‘Funny thing, this flesh and blood. You wouldn’t think he’d feel like that about a man he hardly knew.’ He tugged at the donkey rein. ‘Let’s go; he can catch up.’

We went at an easy pace, threading our way among the rocks for about half a mile. I looked back and said, ‘Perhaps we’d better wait for Paul.’

‘Huh?’ said Byrne abstractedly. He was staring at the ground. ‘Been camels here.’

I looked down at the enormous pad marks in the sand. ‘You said there were wild camels.’

Byrne dropped on one knee. ‘Yeah, I know I did—but wild camels don’t repair their own pads.’ He traced a line on one of the footprints. ‘This one cut its foot and someone put a leather patch on.’

I frowned. ‘Can that be done?’

‘Sure. I just said so, didn’t I?’ He stood up and looked around. ‘And there it is.’

I turned and, coming up from behind us was a man riding a camel—the Arab who had been with Kissack. He whistled shrilly and from our front came an answering
whistle. There were five of them altogether; Kissack and the Arab, and Lash and his two musclemen, all mounted on camels and with no less than six baggage animals. There were no weapons in sight but that didn’t mean a thing.

Lash looked down at us from the enormous height a camel confers. ‘Mr Byrne,’ he said pleasantly. ‘And Mr Stafford. Well met. I didn’t expect to find you here. Looking for frescoes, I take it?’

Kissack said, ‘You’re a long way from Kano, Stafford. You’ve come the wrong way.’

‘And there’s someone missing.’ Lash snapped his fingers. ‘What was his name? Ah, yes—Billson. Where is Mr Billson?’ One of the men behind him muttered something, and he added, ‘And the Tuareg who were with you?’

Byrne dropped the leading rein of his donkey and put his foot on it. ‘Paul went sick so they took him back to Djanet.’ It was a good improvised lie.

‘Strange that we didn’t meet him,’ observed Lash. He beckoned to the Arab, who came close to him. Lash tossed him the camel reins and the Arab coaxed the camel to its knees and Lash dismounted awkwardly. He had not been riding in the Tuareg manner with his feet on the neck of the camel, but had stirrups. He grimaced. ‘Damned uncomfortable beasts.’

‘No call to ride them if you don’t want,’ said Byrne. ‘You’d do better with a Tuareg saddle instead of that Chaamba rig.’ He jerked his head at the Arab. ‘His, I suppose.’

‘You suppose correctly.’ Lash waved his hand and all the men dismounted, the camels grunting discontentedly. ‘Cat got your tongue, Mr Stafford?’

‘I’ve found nothing interesting to say, so far.’

‘Oh, you will,’ he assured me. ‘I’m certain you will. You’ve both already met Kissack so there’s no need to introduce him. As for my other friends, they have no English.’

‘Friends!’ I said. ‘Not guides?’

Lash smiled thinly. ‘Propinquity breeds friendship. From the direction you’re taking it seems you are returning to Tamrit. Do I gather that you’ve found what you were looking for?’

‘Yeah, we found some paintings,’ said Byrne. ‘And I guess these are new ones—not seen before.’

‘You weren’t looking for frescoes,’ said Lash flatly. ‘Let’s cut the cat and mouse act, shall we? You were looking for an aeroplane. Did you find it?’

‘I don’t know what business it is of yours,’ I said.

Lash looked at me unsmilingly. ‘Or yours, either. You wouldn’t take a warning back in London. You had to play the thick-headed hero and meddle in things that don’t concern you.’

So there it was said outright—Lash had been responsible for having me beaten up. ‘Who’s paying you?’ I asked.

‘Still meddling? That’s dangerous. Now, where’s Billson?’

‘You’ve just been told,’ I said. ‘He went back to Djanet three days ago. He had an injury which was inflamed.’ I touched my own shoulder. ‘Here.’ I was careful not to look at Kissack.

The play of expression on Lash’s face was interesting because what I had just said could be circumstantially true. He dismissed Billson for the moment. ‘And the aeroplane—where is it?’

‘What airplane?’ asked Byrne.

Lash sighed. ‘Look, Byrne; don’t play with me. That’s just being stupid.’ He turned away and began to talk to the Arab in low tones. The Arab remounted his camel, urged it to its feet, and began to backtrack along the way we had come. If he went far enough he’d find the donkeys Paul had left tethered outside the cleft in the rock. He might even find Paul.

Lash turned back to face us. ‘Where’s that aeroplane? And don’t ask which aeroplane. It’s a Northrop “Gamma”
2—D, built in 1934 and called
Flyaway.
It was crashed around here in 1936 by Peter Billson.’ As Byrne opened his mouth Lash held up his hand. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about. That would be a big mistake.’

Before Byrne could reply Kissack said, ‘You’re wasting time, Mr Lash. Let me try.’

‘Shut up!’ said Lash coldly.

Byrne said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘All right,’ said Lash wearily. ‘We’ll try it your way, Kissack.’

There was suddenly a gun in Kissack’s hand. He stepped forward and looked at us speculatively. ‘The old geezer knows more about the desert than Stafford, I reckon; so he’d be a better guide.’ I looked at the pistol he lifted; the muzzle was pointing directly between my eyes and I knew I was close to death. ‘If you don’t tell us, Stafford will be dead meat.’

It seemed an eternity before Byrne said, ‘Okay—it’s about ten kilometres back.’

A grunt of satisfaction came from Lash, and Kissack said, ‘Do I kill him anyway, Mr Lash?’

‘No,’ said Lash. ‘We might need him again—and for the same reason. Search them.’

They found our pistols, of course. Kissack checked the loads on the three donkeys. ‘You had a rifle—where is it?’

I realized it had been packed on one of Paul’s donkeys. Byrne said, ‘Left it behind in the Ténéré. Too much sand and the action jammed. That’s the only reason you’re still alive, Kissack.’

Kissack’s face whitened and he lifted the pistol again and pointed it at Byrne. ‘What, for Christ’s sake, did you do to Bailly?’

‘That’s enough,’ commanded Lash. ‘We’re wasting time. Help me get up on this bloody camel.’ They all remounted and now they all had guns showing except Lash, who
seemed to be unarmed. ‘About face,’ he ordered. ‘Now, take us to that aeroplane. No tricks, Byrne, or you’ll be shot in the back where you stand.’

And so we retraced our steps. I glanced sideways at Byrne whose nose was beakier than ever. He didn’t look at me but gazed ahead with a bleak expression. All he had bought was time—ten kilometres’ worth of it—say, four or five hours. Then it would all start again.

I wondered about Paul—Byrne had given him fifteen minutes and he ought to have shown up by now. I prayed to God that he would live up to his reputation. Be a
nebbish,
Paul, I thought. Be the invisible man,

I tramped along, conscious of the guns at my back, and a rhyme chittered insanely through my mind over and over again:

As I was going up the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there; He wasn’t there again today, I wish to hell he’d go away!

We hadn’t been moving long when the Arab appeared and reined his camel alongside Lash. There was a muttered conversation, and Lash called ‘Stop!’ I stopped and looked back. Lash said silkily, ‘More tricks, Byrne? I warned you about that. Follow Zayid.’

The Arab moved in front of us and veered to the left on a course which would take us directly to where we had left Paul. Byrne grunted and shrugged imperceptibly. It seemed that Zayid was a good tracker—good enough to call Byrne’s bluff.

We came to the cleft in the rock and there were no donkeys and no sign of Paul. If he was a
nebbish
he had also the characteristics of a boojum because, wraithlike, he had ‘softly and suddenly vanished away’. Byrne looked at me
and raised his eyebrows, and I shook my head to indicate that I didn’t know, either. The little man who wasn’t there had indeed gone away.

There was a bit of discussion in French with Zayid pointing out the imprint of donkey hooves in the sand and a clear indication they had gone through the cleft. Lash said, ‘Kissack, get down and go through there, and tell me what you see.’

Kissack dismounted and, with drawn gun, went through the cleft. He disappeared from sight because there was a bend half way through and then all was silence except for the snuffling of a camel behind me. Suddenly there was a shout, incoherent and without words, which echoed among the rock pillars, and Kissack came back, yelling excitedly, ‘It’s there, Mr Lash; the bloody plane is there!’

‘Is it?’ Lash seemed unmoved. ‘Zayid!’ The Arab helped him dismount ‘Now let’s all go and look at this aeroplane which is unaccountably ten kilometres out of position according to Mr Byrne’s reckoning.’

There was no choice for it so we went. The camels were too big to go through the cleft so Zayid hobbled them and left them outside, but they took the donkeys through. And there stood
Flyaway
just as we had left her. Zayid and Lash’s hired thugs from Algiers weren’t very much interested, but Lash and Kissack were. They went towards her, Lash at a steady pace and Kissack practically dancing a jig. ‘Is it the one, Mr Lash?’ he asked excitedly. ‘Is it the one?’

Lash took a paper from his pocket and unfolded it, then studied it and compared it with what was before him. He peered at the side of the fuselage and said, ‘Yes, Kissack, my boy; this is indeed the one.’

‘Christ!’ said Kissack, and jumped up and down. ‘Five thousand quid! Five grand!’

‘Keep your damned mouth shut,’ said Lash. ‘You talk too much.’ He swung on his heel and stared back at us. ‘You—come here!’ Byrne and I were hustled forward, and Lash pointed to the hole we had cut. ‘Did you do that?’

‘Yeah,’ said Byrne.

‘Why?’

‘We found Billson’s body. We wanted to mark the grave.’ He nodded up towards the engine. ‘That’s also why we took the propeller.’

‘You buried the body?’

‘What there was of it. The ground is pretty hard. We built a cairn over it.’

Lash showed his teeth in a grim smile. ‘So that’s what you did. Then all is not lost.’ I didn’t know what he meant by that. ‘Where is the body?’

Byrne told him. ‘Get that propeller, Kissack,’ said Lash. ‘Take Zayid with you. But first tie these two—arms behind them and ankles secured.’

So we were tied up and left to lie under the rock wall of the gully. Kissack and Zayid went off to find the grave and Lash and the other two ducked into the cleft. Where they were going I didn’t know. I said, ‘Sorry to have got you into this, Luke.’

He merely grunted and wriggled, and in his struggles with his bonds he fell against me and knocked me over. I fell heavily and a stone dug into my breastbone. When I got back into a sitting position I was panting. ‘It’s no good,’ he said. ‘They know how to tie a guy. Struggle and the knots tighten.’

‘Yes. What do you think he’s going to do?’

‘About the airplane—I don’t know. But if you’re right about what you heard in Bilma he’s sure as hell going to kill us. Why he hasn’t done it yet I don’t know.’

I looked down at the sand on which I had fallen. The imprint of my body was there, but there was no stone. And yet I had felt it. ‘Luke! Remember that stone axe-head you
found at the Col des Chandeliers? It’s in the pocket of my
gandoura.
Think you can get it out?’

I fell on my side and he wriggled around with his back to me, his bound arms groping for my chest. It was a grotesque business, but he got his hands into the pocket and explored around. ‘It’s right at the bottom.’

‘Got it!’ Slowly his hands came out under my nose and I saw he grasped the small object between his fingers. It wasn’t very big—not more than an inch long—and was probably more of a stone scraper than an axe-head. But the edge was keen enough.

‘Trying to bite free?’ said an amused voice behind us. Byrne dropped the scraper and it fell to the sand and I rolled on to it. ‘You’ll need strong teeth to bite through leather thongs,’ said Lash.

I turned my head and looked at him. ‘Do you blame me for trying?’

‘Of course not, Colonel Stafford. It’s the duty of every officer to try to escape, isn’t it?’ He squatted on his heels. ‘But you won’t, you know.’