INCARNATION (39 page)

The sector David and Nabila were headed for lay somewhere around the centre of the oval. It was no coincidence: the centre was the logical place to put such a site. Ideally, they should have headed east by road, entering the sands only when they were directly south of their presumed target. But the fierce restrictions on road travel along the desert’s southern rim made it an unacceptable risk to go very far in any direction. After leaving the Abakh Hoja shrine, they’d spent much of their time ducking out of sight of military convoys and isolated trucks and jeeps. From time to time, they’d seen donkey carts go crawling over the semi-lunar landscape of the desert’s edge, and they’d seen the occupants pulled to the side and searched.

In the desert, there were no patrols. No soldiers, no jeeps, no helicopters, no searchlights, no barbed wire. The dunes would guarantee their safety. David had made his decision, and they’d gone in.

He sighed, looking up at the dune they were climbing. It only made matters worse that they were walking in the wrong direction. He’d caught on to the problem soon after they set foot in the sand. Travelling as they were from west to east, they were climbing the dunes on the leeward side, where the sand was softest and hardest to get a grip on. It felt like walking through treacle.

‘Mehmet,’ he called, feeling the grit enter his mouth as he did so. ‘We’ll stop at the bottom of this dune. It’s time we had a rest.’

They’d been up since first light, loading the animals before breakfast, then setting off at the slow but steady pace they’d grown accustomed to. Noon was the time of fiercest heat. They took what shelter they could inside their little tents while the camels rested, still fully laden, mouths agape with thirst. They would not be watered until that evening. If they were watered at all. It all depended on whether they found underground water or not.

They made their little camp at the bottom of the dune, leaving the camels spread out untidily where they’d knelt to rest. The sun was still too high to make it worthwhile looking for water, let alone digging a five-or six-foot hole to get at it.

Mehmet made tea, using water from one of the drums they’d carried from Tazgun. David had taken a dislike to them the moment they’d been trundled out of the store in which they’d been kept: dumpy metal barrels, square and squat, each one capable of holding around eighty litres. They’d seemed quite sturdy to look at, but when David inspected them he found they’d been welded together from smaller pieces of metal - parts of old oil cans, vegetable-oil containers, even imported beer cans from heaven knew where. In places, the metal was thin enough to pierce with a light blow, and everywhere the welding seemed no more than the work of moments.

‘One of these barrels is going to get smashed open,’ he said. But he didn’t think one, he thought four or five or more.

Mehmet said nothing. He’d heard this before. His younger brother had obtained the barrels from an uncle in Kumkesha. They’d been the best available. Well, all that was available. His uncle made them for households along the narrow corridor of fertile land that flanked the desert’s western edge, and he’d never had a complaint before this. Of course, none of his barrels had ever been used on a camel before.

‘Drink your tea, love, and stop fretting,’ said Nabila. She spoke to David frequently in English, in spite of Mehmet’s evident disapproval. Their guide seemed to suspect them of God knows what improprieties. They’d said they were man and wife in order to ward off awkward questions at Kizilawat; but Nabila was known in the area from her regular travelling clinics, and the sudden appearance of a husband provoked raised eyebrows here and there.

‘What’s our safety margin?’ she asked, sipping her own tea from a chipped cup. ‘How long before it’s just as far to get out as it was to come in?’

‘Quite wide. I’d say ten or eleven days before we reach that stage. That’s without accidents. The moment we have an accident, the margin narrows, maybe a little, maybe a lot. Each time something goes wrong, each time we stray from the route, each time someone sprains an ankle or a camel collapses, the margin narrows even more. You can count on accidents in a place like this. I’m surprised there haven’t been any already.’

‘I didn’t know we had a route.’

David shrugged, but she sensed he was being guarded about something. She’d caught him more than once, standing atop a dune, taking bearings with his compass.

‘It’s somewhere out there,’ he said, sweeping his hand in a wide semicircle; but they were hemmed in by dunes, and any direction might have been as good as another.

Nabila worried less about their struggle to cross the desert than she did about Kashgar and her father and the rest of her family.

‘They’re planning to use Kashgar as a test site for this new weapon, aren’t they?’ She sipped her tea calmly, as though at home, quiet in the afternoon. It was already full of irritating grains of fine sand.

‘I think so, yes,’ David answered. Nabila nodded and said no more, staring out along the valley between the nearest dunes.

‘Is there any chance of our getting to this place, this ... Karakhoto, before they carry out the test?’

He shrugged again.

‘Maybe. I don’t really know. Perhaps it’s already taken place. How would we know out here?’

‘But what if we do get there in time? What can we possibly do, just the two of us?’

‘Nothing directly. Our advantage is that no one will be expecting us. They won’t have defences or guard posts out in the desert. But the weapons centre must be huge. It doesn’t show up on satellite photographs - this region’s very closely studied, believe me. I think it might have been built under the bedrock, using equipment brought in from one of the Lop Nor centres.’

‘Brought in? Brought in how? You’re talking about very heavy equipment. Wouldn’t it have shown up on your spy photos?’

‘They won’t have brought the equipment in overland, Nabila. The desert alone would have made that impossible. No, they must have dug a tunnel and brought it in underground.’

‘But that ... that would have cost a fortune.’ 

‘Probably a lot less than the Channel Tunnel. They’d have used slave labour, cut corners on safety, built for limited use. They’ll have thought it worth the effort if it gave them a chance to build and test a weapon capable of doing what we think this can do.’

There was silence for a while. Nabila looked up. Wind touched the ridge of the dune they were about to climb, like a playful finger tossing sand. The whole place seemed like a playground, a huge sandpit fit for giant children. Somewhere out of sight, she thought, lurked faceless demons, monsters that could turn a desert to glass or mountains to the finest sand.

‘What do you think it can do?’ she asked. 

‘There isn’t much hard data on which to hazard even a wild theory, but ... my guess is that this is a nuclear device based on the latest weapons built at Lop Nor V and VI. I think you’ll find they’ve succeeded in compacting the central device. That will mean concentrating the blast so that a single weapon destroys no more than a street or two, maybe less, maybe just the building it falls on.’ 

‘Why not just drop a conventional bomb?’ He raised a hand.

‘You’re missing the point,’ he said. ‘They don’t want to destroy the street or the building. But when the bomb explodes, all the force goes into the radiation. Even from such a tiny blast, a very wide area would be saturated with radiation hundreds of times more deadly than that released by ordinary nuclear bombs. Nothing could shield against it. Nothing.’

‘But what’s the use of it?’

He looked almost surprised.

‘The use of it? Like any weapon. To kill people. The problem with most nuclear weapons is that they generally kill too many people. They make a mess, they wipe out entire cities. This one’s designed differently, or so we think. The Iraqis want it because it’s a perfect battlefield weapon. You can calibrate it so you either get a small blast and massive radiation with a very short half life, or you choose a large blast if that suits your strategy better.’

‘But ... my patients aren’t showing radiation symptoms.’

‘Aren’t they? Remember, this isn’t ordinary radiation. And what you’ve seen until now has been the early experimental stage. What they’re looking for is radiation that can kill its victims in a matter of hours, even minutes.’

The sand was like a dream nothing could pass. Nabila took a fistful of it in her hand and let it sift slowly to the ground. Dust to dust. A camel bayed behind them and was silent. Mehmet rose to his feet and strode to the first animal. It was time to go.

Laurence Royle ‘s Office, London

‘I
t’s like a bloody desert in here. Can’t a person have a drink, for God’s sake?’ Elizabeth flung open a cupboard door only to find two shelves of glasses and a cocktail mixer. ‘Bloody hell!’ She slammed the door shut, but it bounced open again, shaking the glasses.

‘Cut it out, Lizzie. You’re on the wagon as far as I’m concerned. And you’re on probation as far as the rest of the board goes. Don’t, for God’s sake, look so petulant. You agreed to stay sober, so do me a favour and pack it in. You can have a small brandy after lunch. A Hine Antique. Very old, almost as old as me.’

She didn’t laugh. How he wished she would. Even as a child she’d been too serious, too domineering to be much of a friend. It struck him suddenly that that was what he’d always wanted of her: companionship, humour, some sort of recognition that they were siblings. He looked at her now. Did she ever loosen up? he wondered. Did she laugh in bed?

He looked at his watch. The board was due to convene in ten minutes. He was expecting a stormy ride on two counts - first, his decision to reinstate his sister on the board, and secondly for the escalating costs incurred in setting up the Aladdin Oil deal. None of the rest of the board knew the first thing about it, of course, and Laurence had no intention of telling them. But money was shifting about between accounts, and some explanations would have to be given.

‘You could at least give me a ginger ale, you creep. I’m parched.’

‘Why didn’t you say so in the first place?’

He opened the drinks cupboard, found a small can of ginger ale, and poured it into a glass.

‘Ice?’

She shook her head. He handed the glass to her and closed the cupboard.

‘Nothing for yourself?’ Her voice carried a hint of danger. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes a little too sharp.

‘Afraid not. Look, there are things we have to talk about. But I’ve just remembered there are figures that have to be crunched before the meeting gets under way. Norton’s working on them upstairs, but I’d like to see just how he’s getting on. D’you mind if I leave you here for a few minutes? I won’t be long.’

‘Of course not, why the hell should I mind? Don’t worry - you don’t have to keep an eye on me: I won’t touch your precious booze.’

‘Yes, I’d far rather you didn’t.’

‘It’s a nice office, Laurie. Smarter than the old one. Not as tarty.’

‘Man called Forshaw. Very well thought of. He designed the whole thing.’

‘You’d better toddle along. People will be arriving any minute.’

He pursed his lips and made for the door. It closed behind him softly, as if layers of hot air had been placed between it and the jamb.

Elizabeth listened to the door, then set her ginger ale down on the table nearest her.

‘Bugger,’ she said. ‘Bugger, bugger, bugger.’ He hadn’t given her any time. It was just like Laurence to do that. She remembered, when she’d been a schoolgirl, with pubescent breasts and knickers from hell, she’d fancied him out of all proportion to his real usefulness as romp material. He’d never responded. When they were alone together - which was often enough - she’d take ages to work herself up to whatever it was she thought might get things going, only for him to make a sharp exit with an excuse about polishing his cricket bat or preparing for tomorrow’s Latin class. He’d been a wanker then, she thought, and he was a wanker now.

Still, she could try to make a start. She reckoned he’d be gone ten minutes at least. Even if the others arrived, they’d be shown straight to the boardroom.

Anthony had given her clues as to what to look for. She went about her task systematically: cupboards first of all, testing inside to see if any suggested a false front, paintings next. Laurence had never been one to skimp on art - the room had two Modiglianis, a Balthus, two very well-known De Chiricos, and a Matisse that had, if she was any judge, found its way to its present location by somewhat dubious means. But none of them concealed anything but wallpaper.

Her eye was attracted by a sturdy rosewood bookcase on the wall nearest the door. It fitted the decor perfectly, and it was filled with colour-coordinated books, all hand bound and arranged by size. It was a title on the middle shelf that caught her attention: James Joyce, Finnegans Wake.

She almost burst out laughing. Her eyes ran over some of the other titles. They amounted to a compilation of the most bought, least read novels of the past hundred years. Unless he’d picked up nasty habits since she last visited him, Laurence had always been innocent of the sins of intellectual pretension and reading. No doubt the man called Forshaw had recommended these to go with the Modiglianis and the Matisse. She was surprised there wasn’t a signed copy of Miss Smilla ‘s Feeling for Snow, her own candidate for the Pretentious, Moi? Award.

She reached for a large copy of Foucault’s Pendulum. It stayed put. She pulled harder, but it remained stuck fast where it was. Of course, she thought - they’re all fakes. That made it even worse. Just to confirm her suspicion, she reached right to the back and ran her fingers along the fronts of the fake books. The back of her hand raked along something metallic, and with a leap of comprehension she knew she’d found what she was looking for.

It took half a minute more to work out that pressing in the two outermost spines allowed the entire centre section, along with the shelf on which it rested, to tilt forward. The safe sat perfectly smugly at the rear, a difficult-looking bugger with three sets of combination wheels.