Flyaway / Windfall (22 page)

Paradise was built partly on the desert floor and partly on a rocky hillside and provided more amenities than most oasis towns. The hotel was spartan but clean and better than most; bedroom accommodation was in
zeribas,
grass huts with the walls hung with gaily-coloured blankets, and there were showers which actually worked. As I sponged myself down I reflected that Byrne had been right—the desert is a clean place and a man doesn’t stink. This was the first shower I’d had in nearly a month.

Byrne had left the Toyota in the hotel compound and had gone looking for his informant, the putative lucky winner of ten camels. He came back some time later with two Tuareg whom he introduced as Atitel and his son, Hami. ‘Have you got those photocopies of the Northrop?’

‘Sure.’ I dug into my bag and gave them to him.

He unfolded them. ‘Where did you get these?’

‘The Science Museum in London—they’re from Jane’s
All the World’s Aircraft,
1935 edition.’

He spread the photocopies on the table and began to interrogate Atitel, pointing frequently to the photograph of the Northrop ‘Gamma’. This particular specimen must have been one of the first aircraft to be used by Trans-World Airlines because the TWA emblem was on the fuselage near the tail. It was a stylishly designed plane, long and sleek,
with the cockpit set far back near the tail. It had, of course, been designed in the days when aircraft had cockpits and not flight decks, and it had a non-retracting undercarriage with the struts and wheels enclosed in streamlined casings. The caption described it as a freight and mail-carrying monoplane.

At last Byrne straightened. ‘This could be it. He says there’s a metal bird of the
Kel Ehendeset
up on the Tassili about three days’ march in from Tamrit.’

‘How far is that, and what the devil is a
Kel
whosit?’

‘Maybe seventy kilometres. The
Kel Ehendeset
are you and me—anyone who knows about machines.’ He turned to Atitel and they talked briefly, then he said, ‘He says the
Kel Ehendeset
have power over the
angeloussen
—the angels—and it’s the
angeloussen
who make the trucks move and lift the airplanes.’

‘Sounds logical. If it’s three days’ march then it’s about six hours by
angeloussen
power.’

Byrne looked at me disgustedly as though I ought to know better. ‘We won’t get the Toyota on to the plateau. When we go we walk.’ He tapped the photograph. ‘Atitel seems pretty certain that the wreck on the Tassili is just like this. He insists there are no engine nacelles on the wings and that the fuselage is cylindrical up front just like in the picture. That’s the big radial engine there.’

‘Then it may be Billson’s?’

‘Could be.’ Byrne shook his head. ‘But the Tuareg don’t go much for pictures—like all Moslems. Against their religion, so they have no experience of pictures. I’ve known a guy hang a picture on the wall of his tent in imitation of what he’s seen Europeans do in their houses. It was something he’d cut out of a magazine because he liked it. He’d put it upside-down.’ He smiled. ‘It was a picture of a square-rigger in full sail, but he’d never seen a ship or even the goddamn sea, so all it made was a
pretty pattern which maybe looked just as well upside-down.’

‘But if Atitel
has
seen a plane, then he should be able to compare it with a picture.’

‘I wouldn’t bet my life on it, but I suppose we’ll have to take the chance. We didn’t come all this way for nothing.’

‘When do we start?’

He began to dicker with Atitel and a lot of palavering went on with Hami putting in his tuppence-worth from time to time. It was fifteen minutes before Byrne said, ‘He says he can’t start until late tomorrow or, maybe, early the day after. He’s got to round up some donkeys that have strayed. The plane is about fifty kilometres from Tamrit—that’s on the edge of the plateau at the top. We won’t be doing much more than fifteen kilometres a day up there so it means taking water for at least a week, preferably ten days. That means baggage animals and more donkeys than he can lay his hands on right now.’

He turned back to Atitel and money changed hands. When the Tuareg had gone I said, ‘That money was Algerian.’

Byrne looked at me in surprise. ‘Yeah; because we’re in Algeria.’

‘When did that happen?’

He grinned. ‘Remember the detour we took to lose Lash? Well, it took around the border posts, too. You’re okay, Max; you’re legal in Algeria.’

‘But Billson may not be.’

He grunted. ‘Relax. There’s a hell of a lot of desert between here and Tam; the word may not have filtered through.’ He held up the photocopies. ‘Mind if I hang on to these? I have some figuring to do.’ I nodded. ‘Where’s Paul?’

‘Still in the shower.’

He laughed. ‘I told you a guy could drown in the desert.’ Then he sat at the table, took out his stub of pencil and
began making calculations on the back of one of the photocopies, referring constantly to the specifications of the Northrop ‘Gamma’.

We didn’t start next day or even the day after, but the day after that. Byrne grumbled ferociously. ‘Sometimes these people give me a pain in the ass.’

I grinned. ‘I thought you were one of them—a proper Targui.’

‘Yeah; but I revert to type at times. I’m thinking of Lash and Kissack. I don’t know how badly they were sanded in, but it won’t take them forever to get out. I want to get clear before they get here.’

‘What makes you think they’ll come to Djanet?’

‘Only place they can get gas.’

But it gave me the chance of unwinding and relaxing after the heavy pounding in the Toyota. And I slept in a bed for the first time since leaving Algiers—the hotel mattress wasn’t much harder than the sand I’d become accustomed to. And we all had a few welcome beers.

On the third day after arrival we drove out of Djanet in the Toyota and we still hadn’t seen Lash. I said, ‘Perhaps he’s still out there where you stranded him.’

‘My heart bleeds for him,’ said Byrne. He cocked his head and looked back at Paul. ‘What do you think?’

‘I hope he rots,’ said Paul vindictively. ‘Kissack, too. All of them.’

Paul was becoming bloodthirsty, but it wasn’t too surprising. It’s hard to be charitable towards people who shoot at you without telling you why.

We drove towards the mountains, towards steep cliffs which reared up like a great stone barrier. At last we bumped to a halt in a grove of tamarisk trees among which donkeys were grazing. Atitel and Hami waved in greeting as we got out. Byrne grunted in disgust.
‘Those goddamn animals should have been loaded by now.’

‘Where are we going?’

His arm rose forty-five degrees above the horizontal as he pointed and I got a crick in my neck as I looked up. ‘Up there.’

‘My God!’ The cliffs rose vertically for about two thousand feet and Byrne was pointing to a cleft, a ravine which cut into them, leaving a v-shaped notch at the top which looked like a gunsight. ‘I’m no bloody mountaineer.’

‘Neither is a donkey and any man can go where a donkey can. It’s not as steep as it looks.’ He cocked an eye at the sun. ‘Let’s get started. I want to be at the top before nightfall.’

He chivvied Atitel and Hami into loading the donkeys. The goatskin
djerbas
of the Tuareg were kinder to the animals than the jerricans which held the rest of our water supply because they caused less chafe, but there weren’t enough
djerbas
and so the jerricans had to be used. Most of the load was water for man and animal.

‘I’m figuring on ten days,’ said Byrne. ‘’Course we may be lucky and find a
guelta
—that’s a rock pool—but we can’t depend on it. Now you see ‘em, now you don’t.’

So we loaded water and food for five men and seven donkeys for ten days, and Byrne added a cloth-wrapped parcel which clinked metallically. He also added the Lee—Enfield rifle to the top of one load, being careful to strap it tight. ‘I’ll be back in ten minutes,’ he said, and got into the Toyota and drove away.

I watched him out of sight, then turned to Paul. ‘What about this? Think you can make it?’

He looked up at the cliffs. ‘I think I can; I won’t be carrying anything. Not like when we were crossing the dunes in the Ténéré.’

His face was drawn and pale in spite of the tan he had acquired. I don’t think he had been a fit man even when he
left England because his life had been sedentary. Since then he had been shot and nearly died of exposure, and what we had been doing since had been no rest cure. I said, ‘Maybe it would be better if you stayed. I’ll talk to Byrne about it.’

‘No,’ he said sharply. ‘He’d agree with you. I want to come. There may be—‘ he swallowed—‘may be a body.’

The obsession which had driven him all his life was nearing its culmination. Within only a few days he had the chance of finding out the truth about his father, and he wasn’t going to give up now. I nodded in agreement and looked up at the cliffs again. It still looked a killer of a climb.

Byrne came back on foot. ‘I’ve put the truck where it won’t be found easily. Let’s move.’

I drew him on one side. ‘Have you been up there before?’

‘Sure. I’ve been most places.’

‘What’s the travelling like once we get on top?’

‘Not bad—if we stick to the water-courses.’

‘Water-courses!’ I said incredulously.

‘You’ll see,’ he said with a grim smile. ‘It’s the damnedest country you’re ever likely to see. Like a maze—easy to get lost. What’s your point?’

‘I’m thinking of Paul.’

Byrne nodded. ‘Yeah, he’s been on my mind, too. But if he can get to the top here he’ll be okay.’

‘Tassili n’ Ajjer,’
I said thoughtfully. ‘What does that translate as?’

‘The Plateau of Goats—not that I’ve ever seen any. A few wild camels, though.’ He shook his head irritably. ‘Let’s move, for God’s sake!’

And so we started. It wasn’t bad at first because we were on gently rising ground approaching the base of the cliffs. When we got to the ravine it was bigger than it looked at first, maybe half a mile wide at the bottom and narrowing as it rose. There was a path of sorts which zig-zagged from side to side so that for every hundred yards of forward travel
we walked perhaps six hundred. And climbed, of course, but not as much.

It was a steady toil which put a strain on the calf muscles and on to the heart and lungs, a battle for altitude. It wasn’t any kind of a mountaineering feat, just damned hard work which went on and on. There was no sound but the steady rasping of breath in my throat, the occasional clatter as a stone was dislodged to go bounding down the ravine, and the clink of a jerrican as it hit a rock. Sometimes a donkey would snort but no one had breath for talking.

I think we would have made the top quicker had it not been for Paul who held us back. We stopped frequently for him to catch up, and waited while he rested. It gave me time to rest my own lungs, for which I was thankful. Atitel and Hami didn’t seem worried by the effort; they would smoke a half-cigarette and carefully put away the stubs before resuming the climb. As for Byrne, he was all whip-cord and leather, as usual, but his nose was beakier and his cheeks more sunken than I had noticed before.

So it was that it took us over four hours to climb two thousand feet and I doubt if the ground distance we had covered would be more than a mile and a half when measured on a map. As soon as the ground began to level we stopped and within minutes Atitel and Hami had the inevitable miniature Tuareg camp fires going and water on the boil to make tea. I said breathlessly, ‘Are we there?’

‘Nearly. The worst is over.’ Byrne pointed towards the setting sun. ‘I reckon you can see over eighty kilometres from here.’

The view was fantastic—dun-coloured hills close by changing to blue and purple in the distance. Byrne pointed towards a jumble of dunes. ‘The
Erg d’Admer
; all that sand was washed down from the plateau. Must have been one of the biggest waterfalls in the world right here—a fall of two thousand feet.’

‘Waterfall!’ I said weakly.

‘Sure; the Tassili was well watered at one time. Real big rivers. And it was good cattle country with plenty of feed. Long time ago, of course.’

Of course!

I sipped sweet tea from a small brass cup and regarded Paul, who was lying flat on his back and seemed completely exhausted. He’d made it but only just. I went over to him. ‘Have some tea, Paul.’

His chest heaved. ‘Later,’ he gasped.

‘Max!’ said Byrne. His voice was soft but there was a snap of command in it. I looked up and he jerked his head so I went and joined him where he stood looking down the ravine. He pointed to the desert floor and there, two miles away and nearly half a mile below was a movement of sand.

‘Dust devils?’ They were familiar in the desert; miniature whirlwinds caused by the convection currents stirred up by the heat.

Byrne looked up at the sun. ‘Not at this hour. I think we’ve got company. There are two.’

‘How the hell would Lash know we came here?’

Byrne shrugged. ‘Anyone going up to the Tassili from Djanet would come this way. No other way as easy.’ Easy! ‘He’ll have been asking around in Djanet; it would have been no trick to trace us—just a few enquiries at the hotel.’

‘We ought to have been more discreet.’

‘It wouldn’t have worked. No one can hire men and animals in Djanet without the word getting round. Lash’s men might speak Tamachek, but even if they have only Arabic they’d have no trouble in finding out what they wanted to know.’

I looked down the cliffside and there was no movement to be seen. ‘So we’re in trouble.’

‘Not too much,’ said Byrne unperturbedly. ‘They won’t climb up here in the dark, and the sun will set in an hour.
I guess they’ll wait until tomorrow. That gives us a chance to get lost.’ He looked back at Paul. ‘We’ll give him time to rest up then push on.’

‘Where to?’

‘Over the rise there—to Tamrit and Assakaô.’

Never could I have imagined a landscape such as that of the Tassili n’ Ajjer. We walked in the beds of long-gone rivers which, when in flood, had carved deeply into the soft sandstone, making what were now canyons, the walls of which were scalloped into whole series of shallow caves on all sides. When desiccation set in and the water had gone the wind had continued to work on the Tassili, abrading the sandstone for thousands of years and sculpturing the rock into pillars and pinnacles of fantastic shape, some towering two hundred or more feet, others undercut at the base and felled as a woodsman would fell a tree.