The Lost Army of Cambyses (54 page)

thing like this put a spanner in the works.'

'I understand, Hosni. If you have to tell them,

you have to tell them. Is Zenab there?'

'Yes, she is. Just turned up on our doorstep this

morning. We need to talk, Yusuf. When you get

back. Man to man. There are things that need to

be said.'

'OK, OK. When I get back. Just put Zenab on,

will you?'

There was muttering, then a clunk and the

sound of receding feet. A moment later Zenab

came on the line.

'And shut the door, please, Hosni,' he heard her

say. More muttering, and the sound of a door

slamming. 'That man is such a busybody!'

Khalifa smiled. 'Are you OK?'

'Fine,' she said. 'You?'

'Fine.'

'I won't ask where you are.'

'Best not to. The kids?'

'Missing you. Ali says he won't blow his

trumpet till you get back. So feel free to stay away

as long as you like.'

They laughed, although there was something

forced about it.

'They're out with Sama,' she went on. 'At the

festival. I'll tell them you rang.'

'Give them my love.'

'Of course.'

He'd been thinking about her for most of

the day. Now, for some reason, he couldn't think

of anything to say. He wished he could just

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sit there for an hour listening to her breathing.

'Anyway, it was just a quick call,' he said

eventually. 'To make sure Hosni isn't making life

too difficult for you.'

'He wouldn't dare.' Another silence. 'These

men, Yusuf . . .'

'Don't ask, Zenab. Please. The less you know

the better. So long as you're OK, that's all that

matters.'

'We're OK,' she said.

'Good.'

He scoured his mind for something to add,

some parting line of reassurance. All he could

think of was to tell her that he'd seen the sea.

'Maybe we'll go there one day. I'd love to see you

in a swimsuit.'

'You'll have to wait a long time before you get

me in one of those!' She laughed indignantly, the

sound dying away to silence. 'I love you, Yusuf.'

'I love you too. More than anything in the

world. Kiss the kids for me.'

'Of course. And be careful.'

There was a final silence and then they both

hung up.

He finished his tea and stood. The electricity

still hadn't come back on and the main square was

full of shadows. Ahead of him a large mosque

loomed, its whitish stone seeming to glow in the

moonlight as if it was made of ice. He had intended

to get a bite to eat but instead wandered over to the

mosque's entrance, slipping off his shoes and

bathing his hands and face at a tap in the wall.

The interior was dark and silent, the few

candles that had been lit doing little to dispel the

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enveloping gloom. Initially he thought he was

the only person there, but then he noticed another

man towards the back of the hall, kneeling, his

forehead pressed to the ground.

He stood for a while, taking in the stillness, and

then moved forward, his feet making no noise on

the carpeted floor, stopping midway across the

hall beneath a large chandelier, thousands of

lozenges of glass dripping from the shadows as if

the ceiling was weeping. He gazed up at it for a

moment and then, turning towards the
mihrab,

lowered his head and began to recite.

Praise belongs to Allah, the Lord of all being;

the All-compassionate, the All-merciful,

the Master of the Day of Judgement;

Thee only we serve, and to Thee alone we

pray for succour;

Guide us in the straight path;

the path of those whom Thou hast blessed,

not of those against whom Thou art wrathful,

nor of those who are astray.

As he prayed thus, asking God to watch over him,

and his family too, he felt his cares and concerns

gradually falling away, as they always did when he

spoke directly to Allah. The world outside seemed

to recede; or rather the interior of the mosque to

expand so that its stillness and tranquillity filled the

entire universe. Sayf al-Tha'r, Dravic, Chief Hassani,

the army of Cambyses – all dwindled until they were

no more than motes of dust floating in the eternity

of God's embrace. He felt an overwhelming sense of

calm.

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He continued for twenty minutes, performing

ten
rek'ahs,
or prayer cycles, before eventually

coming to his feet and whispering amen. As he did

so the chandelier above him suddenly burst into

light, filling the interior of the mosque with a

radiant whiteness. He smiled, sensing that in

some way it was a sign his prayers had been

acknowledged.

Back outside, the town square was once more

ablaze with light and the petrol pumps working

again. The attendant filled his tank and the eight

jerrycans, while he himself filled the three water

containers from a tap in the wall. By the time he'd

paid for the fuel and bought himself another three

packs of Cleopatras he had almost no money left.

He got back into the car, drove on through the

town and out onto the low dunes that washed up

against its southern edge.

He didn't go far into the desert, just a couple of

kilometres, and then pulled up beside a flattish

hummock of sand, its sides covered with a thin

mat of scrub grass. Behind him the lights of Siwa

twinkled brightly. In the other direction, out

across the desert, there was nothing, just an end-

less vista of moonlit emptiness. Somewhere far off

a dog was howling. He ate some of the food

Zenab had given him – the first time he had eaten

that day – and, fetching a couple of blankets from

the back of the Toyota, reclined his seat and curled

up, gazing out of the window at the stars above.

The thought suddenly struck him that having

come all the way out here he had no real idea what

he was going to do once he reached the army. He

tried to focus his mind on what lay ahead, but he

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was too tired. The more he tried to concentrate,

the more the army and Sayf al-Tha'r and Dravic

dissolved before him, until eventually, somehow,

they had transformed into a vast fountain of water

spurting out of the desert, turning the sand around

them into greenery. Beside him his gun lay cocked

on the passenger seat. He'd locked the doors.

THE WESTERN DESERT

Tara jolted awake. Her head was in Daniel's lap

and he was staring down at her.

'You were digging my heart out,' she mumbled.

'You had a trowel and you were digging my heart

out.'

'It was just a dream,' he said gently, stroking her

hair. 'Everything's OK.'

'You were going to bury me. There was a coffin.'

He bent down and kissed her forehead.

'Go back to sleep,' he whispered. 'Everything

will be all right.'

She gazed up at him for a while, and then slowly

her eyes drifted shut and she was asleep again, her

face pale, her body limp. Daniel gazed down at

her, and then, easing himself away, laid her head

softly on the floor and stood. He began pacing up

and down the tent, eyes flicking constantly

towards the doorway, his features seeming to twist

and warp in the flicker of the kerosene lamp, as if

he was wearing a mask and it was slowly slipping.

'Come on,' he muttered. 'Where are you? Come

on.'

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Their guard stared up at him, face impassive,

finger curled around the trigger of his gun.

THE WESTERN DESERT, NEAR SIWA

OASIS

Khalifa woke with Zenab nuzzling his face. Or at

least he thought it was Zenab. Then he opened his

eyes, and realized that what he had taken to be the

warmth of her breath was in fact the first rays of

the sun pushing through the car window. He

threw off the blankets, opened the door and got

out, shivering, for the world had not yet had time

to warm up. He said his morning prayers, lit a

cigarette and climbed to the top of the low mound

beside which he'd parked. To the north the ragged

green crescent of the oasis stretched off to left and

right, its salt lakes glowing a delicate pink in the

light of the rising sun, columns of smoke drifting

up from among the palm and olive groves.

Everywhere else was desert, a jagged, broken land-

scape of sand and gravel flats and twisted rocky

outcrops. He stared at it for a while, daunted by

its emptiness, and then, flicking aside his cigarette,

went back down to the four-by-four and pulled

the GPS unit out of the glove compartment.

It was, as Abdul had said, all fairly self-

explanatory. He keyed in the co-ordinates of the

pyramid-shaped rock and pressed the GoTo key.

According to the display it was 179 kilometres

away, on a bearing of 133 degrees. He keyed in his

current position as well, and that of al-Farafra

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oasis, and dropped the unit into his holdall along

with Abdul's mobile phone and his gun. He then

let a little air out of each of the tyres to improve

traction, got back into the car and, starting

the engine, moved slowly off into the desert, the

wheels leaving a deep wake in the sand behind

him.

He had never driven on this sort of terrain before

and took things carefully, keeping his speed low

and even. The desert floor seemed solid, but there

were unexpected dips and bumps, while occasion-

ally he would come to the top of what seemed like

a gently sloping dune only to find that the ground

suddenly disappeared in front of him, plunging

down twenty metres in a near-vertical wall of

sand. At one point he almost rolled the car, only

just managing to keep it under control as it slid

sideways down a slope, cutting a deep groove in

the desert's flank. After that he reduced his speed

still further.

For the first few kilometres there were other

tyre tracks in the sand, presumably from the

vehicles that took tourists from Siwa out on desert

safaris. Gradually these dwindled and then dis-

appeared altogether. Every now and then he

passed a swathe of struggling dune grass,

and, twice, skeletons, half buried in the sand and

bleached an unnatural white by the sun. Jackals,

he thought, although he couldn't be sure.

Otherwise there were no signs of life. Just sand,

rock, gravel and, above, the immense powdery

blue sky. The green fuzz of the oasis slowly

receded until it was lost beneath the horizon.

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It soon became clear that although the GPS unit

had calculated the distance he had to cover as 179

kilometres, he was going to have to travel a lot

further than that to reach his destination. The unit

had given him a straight-line measurement. On the

ground it was impossible to hold such a course,

for impassable slopes of sand, high limestone

ridges and sudden explosions of jagged rock

meant that he was continually having to divert to