THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER (31 page)

'Give me the skinny. Whatever's pissing you off, tell me.'

He gave it to her. 'Well, for one, the head honcho comes down, spiels crappy intelligence, expands the search area . . . We are in a no-hoper, that's my—'

'It's what we got to work with. Next.'

Marty stumbled, stuttered: 'My picture. I shelled out for that. It got sand in it, the storm, it got sand between the glass and the print - and it's got condensation, hot days and cold nights. It's the only picture I ever wanted, and it might just be fucked up.'

She said, sweet and soft, 'I'm sorry. I never had a picture. Maybe when we get out of here it can get repaired . . . I'm sorry. Next.'

He rallied. 'The air-conditioning's going down. It's half strength.

We are both dripping wet.'

There was a bleep beside her and a green light blinked.

'Just think about it, if the air-conditioning fails, we're fucked.

We're gonna bake.'

She hit keys, made alive a blank screen on which a message flickered.

'The outside temperature is one hundred and twenty degrees, we're gonna cook. We've got an intolerable—'

Lizzy-Jo said curtly, 'What we have got, Marty, is a visitor. I am going to channel eight.'

Against the grinding purr of the failing air-conditioning came a clear, calm voice, brought by satellite from across the world. The voice was Langley's.

'Hi, Marty, and greetings to you, Lizzy-Jo. My call sign is Oscar Golf, that's how you'll know me. You may both feel out on the end of the line, but that is going to change. All the time that
First Lcidy
and
Carnival Girl
are airborne and transmitting material, from camera and infra-red, we will be monitoring the output. You are not alone, we are right behind you. If you need comfort breaks, meal stops, rest, and the Predators are up, we are here and ready to step in. That's what I wanted to say, over and out.'

The sound feed was cut. Marty slumped. His hands were off the joystick and held his head.

'They don't think we're capable,' he said, his voice a murmur through his fingers. 'Like we're not professional. Shit, and it's all I wanted, to hit, to win—'

'What we both want, Marty, both of us.' Her fingertips brushed against the back of his neck and slipped in the sweat to the tight knot of his shoulder muscles. She was broad Bronx, like she was in a truckers' bar. 'Fuck 'em.'

There was an unused plate, and one portion less of water was poured into the mug.

When they had halted, the boy had searched for an hour but had found neither dead wood, nor roots. When the sun had sunk and the cold came they were without a fire's warmth, and the bread could not be baked. The travellers ate the uncooked dough and dried dates, drank the water in silence, were subdued, but Rashid spoke quietly to his son from the far side of the circle they made and his voice was too indistinct for Caleb to hear. The cool nestled his body, and he seemed to hear the scream of the man whom the quicksand had taken. It pealed in his ears, shrieked for his help.

Caleb broke the quiet. 'That was a game, each move planned. A game was played and Tommy was killed. Why did it have to be a game?'

He heard Fahd's cackle. 'Do you wish to be told? Is it important?'

'It is important to know why one of our family was killed in an entertainment.'

The wind sang around them and Hosni's words were frail against it. 'He struck the guide. That condemned him. After he had hit the Bedu, Tommy was dead . . . I negotiated the death. Whatever Tommy's value to us, to Fahd and you and I, he was dead. If we had tried to protect Tommy, the guide with his son would have left us. It is the duty of Fahd and I, and especially of you, to achieve the end of our journey . .. you in particular, because of your value. Do you understand?'

'I do not understand why it was a game, an entertainment.'

Again Fahd chuckled, again Hosni answered. 'He was your friend, you talked to him, you heard of the life of a hangman, and you identified with him .. . and you stayed with the woman who had seen us and who endangered us, and you helped her. It was not an entertainment, it had a purpose. We watched. Would you go to save him? Would you run across the sand to him? Would you lie on your stomach, where the sand softened, and reach with your hand for his?

Very closely, we watched you. You did not look at him. You turned your back on him. He called for you. He faced death and he called for the only one among us whom he thought would help him. It was Tommy's judgement that you were not strong enough for what is asked of you. He called you. You turned your back on him and rode away - you showed us your strength.'

Caleb whispered hoarsely, 'If I had helped him, if I had pulled Tommy from the quicksand, if I had brought him back, what then would have happened?'

Hosni's voice was sharp. 'The guide would have shot you both, but you first. We would have had our answer. Because you would have been of no use to us, the guide would have shot you. It was agreed.'

Caleb sat a long time in the darkness. He saw the patterns of the stars and the moon's mountains, and he felt the freshness of the wind on his body. He shivered, sat hunched with his arms close round him

. . . Rashid told a story to his son of a warrior in the history of the Bedouin and the boy was against his knee and rapt in his listening.

He thought of a man whose cries he had ignored and the death of that man in the sinking sand. The voices eddied round him and the wind snatched at his robe and the sores below his buttocks itched in pain. He thought of his promise, that he had not made a mistake in helping the woman, and the test set for him.

Hosni leaned across and jabbed his finger into Caleb's chest.

'Tomorrow is a new day. It is the day we start to recall your past, make the old life live.'

Caleb said, 'I killed the old life, forgot it.'

The old body shook. Hosni's voice had the keenness of a knife.

'You breathe on it, reclaim it.'

Caleb could not escape the dream. He was drawn towards the chasm. 'Recall the past .. . reclaim it.' The voice was at his back, the chasm was ahead of him. Each time he stared into the chasm, he wavered. Each time he hesitated, the voice behind him was more demanding. The last time he approached the chasm, his stride quickened. He ran, launched, his feet kicking.

He hung in the air. A chill seemed to grip him. He would not reach the far side of the chasm. It seemed to widen. The moon's light hovered on the far rim. He heard his own cry for help. His arms were outstretched, his fingers splayed. He was falling. The chasm widened. He snatched.

The dream played back to him each moment of his jump, then each moment of his fall.

The fingers caught the rim. The tips and nails of his fingers grabbed at grass and loose earth, at rocks and the roots of trees. His feet, bare, had no support. Grass came away in his hands, and earth crumbled. He slipped back. However hard he struggled for a grip, the weight of his body took him further down into the chasm. The rocks that had broken free fell past his face, bruised it, and cannoned against his legs, then dropped. A single root held him. He heard the rocks bounce on the chasm's side. He grasped the root and waited for the noise of the final strike of the rocks against the chasm's floor -

nothing, only the fainter noise of the rocks' tumble. The chasm had no floor. He did not know if the root, dry in his fists, would snap. If it snapped, he would fall. He hauled himself up. The root held him.

He reached over the rim, one-handed, and the root made a support for his knee, and his fingers grappled in the earth and the grass. He crawled on to the rim. He would never go back. He lay on the grass and his breath sobbed in his throat. He looked behind him, across the chasm, and he could not see Hosni, only a mist. The wind seemed to lug at his clothes. He saw the terrace of houses. He walked through a door, a hall, a kitchen, and he looked out across a yard. Over the low wall was the canal towpath. He knew he would never go back, over the chasm. He wept.

Caleb woke. He did not know where he was, did not know who he was.

The boy stood over him, dark and silhouetted against the stars.

'You screamed.'

'Did I?'

'You made the camels restless and that woke me. Then I heard you scream.'

'I am sorry. It was a dream.'

'What was the dream?'

'Nothing - something about the past.'

'Was it so bad for you to scream?'

'It was only a dream. It was not real . . . How long is it before dawn?'

'Enough time to sleep again.'

'Co away.'

'I hope you sleep again and do not dream.'

"I hank you, Ghaffur.'

' I never dream,' the boy said, and drifted away into the darkness.

Caleb lay on his side and, as if he were now vulnerable, his knees were pulled up against his chest. The images, recalled from the past and reclaimed, played in his mind, but his eyes were open. He was too frightened to sleep. If he slept, he might be pushed again towards the chasm, might have to jump it again, might feel again the grass and earth and rocks breaking away as he clung to them, the emptiness below his feet. He had crossed the chasm, there was no going back, his memory lived.

Caleb lay in the sand and waited for the first light in the east.

Murky pale, the dawn came as Beth finally regained her bungalow, dead tired, hungry and thirsty. Although her headlights had caught the car she did not register it until she had to swerve to miss it. It was parked in the unmade road outside the gates that led up to the carport beside the villa. She knew the Mercedes, top of the range, and she swore. She took her time. Outside her front door, which was ajar, she unloaded the Land Rover. On the patio, she dumped her cold box, her water canisters, which were empty, her sleeping-bag, her clipboard and the filled sample sack. She felt a wreck. Sand was stuck to her face, held there by the sweat, oil streaks were on her hands and her blouse, and grime was caked under her fingernails.

She wanted to lie in a bath, gorge herself from the refrigerator, then sleep. What she did not want was a visitor. The exhaustion caught her as she pushed the door wider. For a moment she leaned against the jamb, then went inside to face him.

The deputy governor was sitting on the couch in her living room.

How long had be been there? The answer was in the ashtray on the couch's arm, filled with crushed filters . .. God.

'Hello,' she said, playing natural and failing. 'What a surprise.'

The response was bitter, an attack that the politeness and softness of the voice did not hide. 'Where have you been? I came yesterday in the morning, yesterday in the evening. In the morning the maid told me you had packed food and water as if for the desert, and in the evening the bungalow was still empty. In two hours' time, if you had not returned, I was going to call out the trackers, a search would have been mounted for you . . . I was worried. You left no note, no indication of where you had gone. While you were away there was a storm in the Sands. You can easily understand my anxiety.'

'I was on a field survey trip, it took longer,' she said, and knew the explanation was inadequate and hollow.

'There was a storm and you were alone. I am
disappointed,
Miss Bethany, that you declined to take the offer that I have always made to you, that I provide an escort with reliable vehicles for you to go into the Sands - exceptionally disappointed. A person such as yourself, a distinguished scholar . . . under my patronage and support - has no need to travel by herself, with all the attendant risks that creates.'

He was indeed, and Beth understood it, her patron and supporter.

Without that patronage and support, her visa was worthless. She would be on the next night's flight out of Riyadh.

'I'm sorry, truly sorry,' she said. 'I just didn't think, being selfish, that anyone would worry.'

She could still feel the touch of him. She had thought of him, no name, all through the night as she had bumped, sped and woven, always searching for the hard salt flats ahead, the lights' beams arrowing over the sand and guiding her. He had been with her. He had left her. He had roused feelings in her passionless, loveless life.

Yet she had not owned him. She owned everything she wanted, except him. He had gone away from her, gone away into the Sands, gone beyond reach. The deputy governor, prince of the Kingdom, owned her. She was his chattel.

'I sincerely apologize. It was selfishness. What else can I say? I thought only of myself. I very much respect, and am grateful, that you worried for me.'

Well, short of getting down on her knees and ripping off her blouse and exposing her back for a bloody good flogging, there was not much more she could do. At the convent, when in minor trouble, she had learned that the contrite approach softened anger, reduced punishment. Beth hung her head.

'You, better than any foreigner, understand the dangers of the Sands. You know them as the Bedu do. You know them as I know them.'

'I do.'

'It is basic procedure that if you go into the Sands for even half a day, you leave a map of your route.'

'It is.'

'I was fearful for you.'

The ashtray told her he had been on her couch for the whole night.

His robe was crumpled, creased, from sitting through the long hours in the quiet of her bungalow . . . She wondered where the man without a name was - where a little caravan of camels was. Had he already moved because the dawn had come, along with the men who had wanted to kill her, and him? She owned nothing of him. He was not of the Bedu, not of the Arabs, she did not know where he came from or what was his destination, or the purpose of his journey. He went in secrecy - others, to preserve the secret, would have killed her. Her life was saved by his trust in her . . . She smiled, dreamed.

'You take it lightly, Miss Bethany, my anxiety and your danger?'

'No, no . . . I can only apologize.'

The silken voice hardened. 'The storm, Miss Bethany? The airfield here was closed. I could not come back from Riyadh because of the storm. Nothing moved here. Because of the storm I was concerned for your welfare.'