INCARNATION (40 page)

Elizabeth froze at the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside. She heard raised voices, and started to fold the shelf away; but the voices continued down towards Fusspot Finch’s office. She let the shelf down once more and hurried for her handbag.

The little device Anthony had given her snuggled comfortably alongside her atomizer and compact mirror as though it too had no more than a cosmetic use. She snatched it up and hurried back to the safe.

One by one she worked the dials through the device, turning them while it read the results into a series of computerized calculations. She felt her palms sweating as her fingers twisted and turned. She should have waited until the next visit, found a pretext to send him out for longer, or maybe found a way of getting herself in late at night.

A series of quick beeps told her the first dial had been fully decoded. She read off three numbers, twisted the dial, and pulled the handle. It clicked down with a satisfying thud. She started on the second dial. It seemed to take twice as long. More voices in the corridor, more footsteps. Anyone could pop their head round the door. The little green digits whirred. She was sweating all over now. Beep, beep, beep. She dialled three more digits, pulled down the second handle. Click.

The telephone rang. She froze. Not many people had Laurence’s direct number. Was Finch passing a call on to him, thinking he was in his office? The phone kept ringing. Elizabeth didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t just leave the safe as it was. She thought she was losing her nerve. The telephone stopped. She realized she was holding her breath tightly, that her bottom lip was trapped by her front teeth, that her fingernails were digging into her right palm.

She set the device for the third dial. Digits whirring faster than a fairground wheel of fortune, the clicking of the dial as it moved through its circumference. She couldn’t bear to turn her head and look at the door. Beep, beep, beep. Three more digits, clunk. The door swung open and a small light went on inside the safe.

Her instructions had been vague. ‘Anything to do with oil, anything with the name Aladdin, anything linked to China or Iraq.’ She foraged about among the contents of the little cavity. Bonds. Boxes that looked as though they held jewellery - that probably explained where Mother’s best pieces had gone. Deeds to a string of villas in France and Italy. Patents. Some private letters. A sheaf of papers marked ‘Aladdin Oil: Survey Findings’.

Underneath this last were five more sets of papers relating to Aladdin, and behind them two envelopes marked in Chinese "Diaochabu" - the name for the Central Committee’s own intelligence service.

Her nerve very nearly failed her at the end. Laurence could open the safe at almost any time, and surely he would miss the Aladdin papers and the envelopes before anything else. They were in her hand. She glanced at them and put them down.

At that moment, there was a scuffling of footsteps in the corridor again, and Laurence’s voice, rising in a greeting. She made her mind up instantly. Her jacket had an inside pocket like a man’s, so she swept up the papers and stuffed them into it. It took a matter of seconds to close the door, snap shut the handles, spin the dials, and flip the shelf back into place. She sat down and reached for her handbag.

The door opened and Laurence bounded in. He loved to appear spry, as though the affectation of athleticism served as a talisman against the creeping advent of old age. She looked up and smiled at him, at the same time pushing Anthony’s ever-so-useful device back into the recesses of her bag.

‘God, I hate board meetings,’ he said. ‘There’s always so much to do. And most of it boring.’

‘A bit like life, Laurie.’

‘You haven’t drunk your ginger ale. Would you like some ice?’

‘No, thanks. I just didn’t ... It’s not the same on one’s own.’

‘You said you were parched.’

‘Parched? Of course I’m bloody parched. Not half as parched as that little bitch Madeleine, mind you.’

He flung her a hurt look.

'There’s no need for that, Lizzie. The poor girl’s ill.’

‘Don’t you believe it. These doctors could make anyone ill. Once they start doping you, it’s downhill all the way. There’s nothing wrong with Maddie a spot of fresh air and sunshine won’t put right. And it’ll be a damned sight cheaper.’

‘Cheaper?’

‘Didn’t I tell you? I’ve taken her out of the clinic. They can’t just force you to stay in those places, you know. They don’t want you to if you don’t pay.’

‘What the hell are you up to, Lizzie? You can’t just go round hauling somebody in Maddie’s state out of reach of medical help.’

‘Don’t be so bloody po-faced. She’s perfectly happy to be with me. I love her, I want the best for her. I’m her mother, after all.’

‘You’re living with Anthony.’

‘We get on very well. We’re a little family.’

He sighed. He hated contretemps like these in his office. He’d made the room as perfect as possible: every colour coordinated, everything in its place. Raised voices, arguments, dissonance of any kind felt rough and out of keeping.

‘You said she was parched. What did you mean?’

‘Oh, that’s one of the drugs. Lithium or something. Don’t worry, I’m getting her off the lot. She’s seeing Rajiv Mahareshi every afternoon. He does readings of her chakras. Marvellous man. He cleared up my sinusitis in a matter of weeks.’

‘Lizzie, you can’t just take someone off lithium like that. It could be dangerous.’

‘Not with Rajiv at the controls. He communicates with the higher powers.’ She picked up the glass of ginger ale and downed it in a single swallow.

‘Now, Laurie, I think we’re keeping them all waiting.’

N
othing moved. In the first days of the crossing he had expected birds, their black or white wings effortless above the silent dunes. They would cry out from time to time, he thought, or spin in circles endlessly, like moths spinning in the night. The silence was absolute. In the west, the reddening sun tumbled towards the highest peaks of the Tien Shan, a haze of blue on the horizon.

David closed his compass, and skidded and stumbled his way back down the dune to where Nabila and Mehmet were already setting up camp. At one end, the camels were kneeling in a long line, patiently waiting to be unloaded. Nabila and Mehmet had already removed the loads from the front two beasts and were working on the third. Nabila looked up and waved. David waved back. As he did so, he lost his balance and pitched forward on to the sand.

He must have shouted. He couldn’t remember, but as he straightened there was almost the echo of a cry in the air.

He looked down towards the camp. The sudden cry had panicked two camels at the rear. They were on their feet, running between the dunes in search of some sort of safety. Mehmet and Nabila’s animal, still bowed down with a stack of boxes and sacks, lurched to its feet baying raucously, its neck outstretched, its eyes wide with unreasoning terror. The sight of its mates haring off across the sand had filled it with dread.

Nabila dashed to pacify the remaining animals. She had already developed a rapport with them, and called them by the private names she had given them, to which they seemed to respond. She called in a soft voice, trying to soothe them while they cut and reared, shaking their great heads from side to side, like children refusing a teacher’s admonitions.

In the meantime, Mehmet tried to make the third camel secure. He already had it marked down as a troublesome animal. It was very nervous, and inclined to be fractious at the slightest provocation. He approached it carefully, trying not to frighten it further, yet all too aware of how easily it could injure itself.

It was already on its hind legs, throwing its baggage askew on to its neck. Mehmet made a grab for the beast’s bridle, and as he did so its front legs straightened, and it reared up unsteadily, braying again. One of the camels ahead responded to the sound, sending its own low-pitched lament back across the sand.

That triggered off a second panic in the jumpy animal Mehmet was trying to help. It jerked forwards, at the same time snapping its head back as if to dislodge some of the slipping load that was holding it back, and tearing the bridle from Mehmet’s hand. He reached round in a clumsy effort to retrieve the bridle, and thus pull the camel’s head back in line. His hand missed, but the camel, irritated by his unwanted attentions, pulled back suddenly. Before Mehmet could react, the huge jaws opened and shut viciously round his hand.

He screamed once, then the camel bit down hard, and Mehmet dragged what was left of his hand out from between the inexorable teeth, and collapsed in a heap on the sand. The camel, prodded further by the scream, went lurching forward after its mates, trampling Mehmet’s legs as it went.

David reached him almost at the same moment as Nabila. Mehmet wasn’t unconscious, but he had nearly passed out from the pain. David looked down at his hand and turned his face away, wanting to be sick. The fingers had been severely crushed, dragging both skin and flesh away. Two fingers dangled, almost severed. The back of the hand was mangled badly.

‘I’ll deal with this,’ said Nabila. ‘You go after the camel.’

‘It can’t get far. I’ll hold him for you.’

She looked at him angrily.

‘David, I can handle this. If these camels drop their loads we could lose important items of equipment. They have six water barrels between them. For God’s sake, try to catch them and get them to hunker down again.’

Stung, he ran off after the nearest beast. To his left, the sun was falling rapidly, far out of sight behind the dunes that hemmed him in on every side. It would be dark in a few minutes. He knew he could end up losing the camels for good in the blackness, or, even worse, losing his own way, not just for one night, but for all time. In moments, the margin for error had narrowed to a thin line.

He twisted round the piled-up wall of a dune that had spread its skirts into the valley, and there ahead of him was the third camel. None of its load had broken free, but the jolting it had received made it seem more precarious than ever. David came in behind it quietly, but even as he did so, the camel shied. Suddenly, the ropes holding everything in place gave way, and the entire load toppled heavily from the beast’s back to the ground. The water drums, built for much lighter treatment, buckled along the side weldings, and David watched with anguish as water broke through and spilled in streams on to the sand. It continued to pour out for half a minute, then the sand drank it down eagerly. Soon there was nothing to see but two shrinking patches of damp.

The shock of losing its load had, paradoxically, brought the shivering camel to a complete standstill. David walked up to it gingerly, fearing it might attack him as it had gone for Mehmet. But it just stood rooted to the spot. He coaxed it, using the words Nabila used to get it to sit, and to his surprise, it did.

He didn’t know what to do next. There was no way for him to reload the animal on his own - it was a two-person job at the best of times. He was concerned about the first two camels, who seemed to have done a disappearing act. He was toying with the idea of going after them when darkness slammed down and he was lost between sand and stars. He carried no torch, he had no other means of making light.

With the darkness came the beginnings of a bitter cold that could not be easily endured. David rummaged blindly among the fallen baggage, feeling with numb fingers for cloth of any kind. Above him, starlight filtered down through a blatantly clear sky. No moonlight yet, but when it came he might risk the walk back along the valley, bringing the camel with him. He looked up at a long wedge of black thickly packed with stars. There were no constellations he recognized, no planets he could trust. All a stillness and a mystery. But as he watched, he noticed small lights creeping across the surface of things. Spy satellites, each in its own orbit, arcing over China down towards East Asia or up towards the Arctic.

He managed to pull the packing cloth from one bundle and to wrap himself in it. If he hunkered down by the camel he might be able to pass the night in some degree of comfort, and he’d know if it tried to get up and walk away. He was desperately thirsty, and pangs of hunger had started gnawing away at his shrivelling innards.

Mehmet had been badly hurt, he was sure of that. But what the hell could Nabila do for him, out here in the middle of a wasteland? Perhaps she could bandage the hand in some way, and tie it up so it could be tended to as soon as they got out of the desert. But in the meantime, what could be done to stop Mehmet’s pain?

The camel had not touched water in two days. There’d been signs of underground water at the spot they’d chosen to camp in, and the plan had been to dig down once camp was set up. Now, God alone knew when there’d be a chance. As though aware of David’s thoughts, the camel moaned gently. Its stomach made sympathetic noises, and it belched loudly, filling the air around it with an unbearable stench.

Out in the darkness he heard his name being called. He stumbled hurriedly to his feet.

‘Nabila!’ he called. ‘I’m over here. I’m with the camel. Try not to startle him.’

There was silence for a while, then footsteps sounded along the gully, and suddenly a light became visible in the darkness, bobbing and weaving its way towards him.

He stood up to greet her. The light dazzled him for a moment, then she was there beside him, her arms round him, clinging to him. She seemed lifeless, like someone who has been pushed beyond all limits. He ran his hand over her hair.

‘You’re exhausted,’ he said.

‘I’ll be more exhausted by the time this is over. So will you.’

She shone the torch over the camel, then across the scattered pieces of baggage it had dumped.

‘What a bloody mess,’ she said. ‘What about the water? Did you manage to save any?’

‘Not a drop.’

‘All right,’ she said. ‘We’ll hobble this one and leave her till the morning. She’ll be safe enough.’

‘She?’

‘Didn’t you know? Your precious Bobtail’s a woman. And I’d guess she’s about two months pregnant. I think that’s what’s been making her so jumpy. Better we don’t risk her with a normal load again. Certainly not water.’