The Lost Army of Cambyses (68 page)

there, on the ground in front of them, emerging

from the gloom as though from beneath a curtain,

were Daniel's jeans-clad legs, one booted foot

twitching slightly, everything from the waist up

lost in the murk. They paused for a moment,

uncertain, and then continued cautiously forward

as the rest of the body slowly hove into view.

'Oh Jesus,' mumbled Tara when she could see

all of it. 'Oh Christ.'

He was lying flat on his back, arms flapped out

to either side of him, a sword thrusting upwards

through his sternum where he had tumbled back-

wards onto it. It was a short sword, its blade

inscribed with the image of a serpent, the sinuous

body coiling around the blood-smeared metal as

though slithering from the rent in Daniel's chest.

The serpent's fangs, Tara noticed, opened up

around the sword's tip as though adding their own

bite to that of the blade.

'Oh Jesus,' she repeated, turning her head away.

'Oh Daniel.'

For a moment she sat slumped on the ground,

oblivious to the tumult around her. She felt as

though everything in her life had broken and dis-

integrated. Her father was gone, Daniel was gone

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– it was as if the shell of her past had been

ripped away, leaving her raw and exposed. For so

long she had defined herself by her relationships

with these two men, father and lover. And now

they were no more and she was . . . what?

Unformed, somehow. Atomized. She couldn't see

how she would ever put herself back together

again.

'Miss Mullray!' Khalifa had pressed his mouth

right against her ear, shouting to be heard above

the raging bellow of the storm. 'We can't stay here,

Miss Mullray,' he yelled. 'We'll be buried. We

must go up. Up.'

She didn't respond.

'Please, Miss Mullray,' he cried. 'We must go

up. It's our only chance.'

He could sense that she had lost the will to go

on, was about to give up and, seizing her face in

both hands, he turned it towards him.

'Please!' he screamed, his voice shredded by the

maelstrom. 'Be strong. You must be strong!'

She stared at him, sand scouring so viciously

across her face she thought it would scrub away

all her features, and then nodded. He took

her hand and, slowly, they began to crawl away.

After a few metres she looked back at Daniel's

body, his open mouth already filled with sand,

and then the chaos seemed to thicken around

him and he was gone. She forced her head

round again and struggled forward through the

madness.

It seemed impossible the storm could grow any

more violent. Now, however, just when it

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appeared to have reached the apex of its fury, it

tapped deep into some hidden reserve of energy

and unleashed a vortex of sand and wind to which

everything so far seemed to have been no more

than a gentle prelude. Unimaginable forces raged

all around them. Tara felt as if the clothes would

be ripped from her body, the flesh from her back,

the meat from her bones, and the bones them-

selves then twisted and broken and pummelled to

dust. She had no idea where she was going or why.

She had no idea about anything at all. She just

kept moving forward automatically, driven by

some imperative beyond reason or thought. Up.

That was all she knew. Up.

They reached the foot of the dune and began to

climb, creeping on their hands and knees, inching

slowly out of the valley, every movement a

torment of exhausted muscle and sinew. The air

was now so thick with sand that to have raised

their eyelids even a hair's breadth would have been

to have their pupils instantly scoured, and so they

went forward with their eyes closed, feeling their

way solely by the gradient of the land. Each

clasped the other's hand, lifting and lowering their

arms in unison, while with their other hand they

kept their shirts pulled close across their mouths,

breathing in short sharp gasps. Such was the blast-

ing of the wind that even on their knees it was

hard to keep their balance.

How she kept going Tara had no idea. Within

seconds she was exhausted and every inch

exhausted her further. More than anything on

God's earth she wanted to drop down onto her

face and lie flat and still.

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Somehow, however, she kept crawling, forcing

herself inexorably upwards, further and further,

until eventually, just as her legs and arms began to

buckle, the slope beneath her started to ease and

flatten. She struggled on for another couple of

metres and then slumped face forward onto the

summit of the dune. She heard Khalifa's voice

coming to her as if from far away.

'Keep your head down, Miss Mullray. And try

to . . . how do you say . . . wiggle your body as

much as possible. It will stop the sand piling up on

top of you.'

She squeezed his hand to show she'd heard and

buried her face in the crook of her arm, the storm

howling over her, sand lashing in from all sides

like a million biting insects.

I must wiggle, she thought to herself. Wiggle,

girl, wiggle!

She kicked her legs feebly and raised her hips up

and down a couple of times, but she was too

exhausted and after a few moments her body

sagged and was still. She was overwhelmed with a

sudden, delicious sense of peace, as though she

was rolled up in a swathe of black velvet. Images

drifted through her mind: her parents, Daniel,

Jenny, the necklace her father had given her for

her fifteenth birthday. She remembered how she

had woken to find an envelope on her mantel-

piece, how she had followed the treasure trail up

into the attic, how she had laughed with delight as

she opened the old trunk and found the necklace

hidden deep inside it. She laughed now, the sound

growing stronger and stronger until it drowned

out the storm and filled the entire world. She gave

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herself up to the laughter, allowing it to wash over

her, to smother her, and then suddenly there was a

blinding flash of white light and she remembered

no more.

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44

EPILOGUE

Inspector Khalifa was asleep beside his wife,

cascades of soft black hair falling across his face.

It was so warm, that hair, so fragrant, and as he

always did when they were in bed together, he

burrowed his way into it, taking long, deep

breaths as if to draw its perfume way down into

his lungs.

Rather than filling him with calmness and

delight, it made him choke uncontrollably. He

coughed and spluttered, fighting for breath, and

eventually rolled away from her and came

unsteadily to his feet. Sand showered from his

back and shoulders, his wife and bed evaporated.

He was standing on top of a dune, in the middle

of a desert, with a blazing sun overhead and a

mouthful of sand. The storm, it seemed, had

blown over.

He spat and coughed for several seconds, clear-

ing his windpipe, and then suddenly remembered

Tara. She'd been beside him when they'd reached

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the summit of the dune, he was sure of that. Now

there was no sign of her. He dropped to his knees

and began scrabbling in the sand.

Initially he could find nothing. Perhaps she'd

been rolled further along, he thought, or been

dragged back down into the valley. He redoubled

his efforts, but to no effect, and was beginning to

despair when suddenly his hand snagged on some-

thing solid. He scraped furiously around it,

scooping out armful after armful of sand until

he'd revealed a small trainered foot. He seized the

ankle and pulled. The body was clamped tight in

the mouth of the dune, and he resumed digging,

burrowing like a rabbit, revealing first one leg,

then another.

'Come on,' he hissed to himself. 'Faster! Dig!'

He seized both ankles and pulled again, but still

she wouldn't come. He changed his angle of

attack, working down from above rather than the

side, gouging out the sand and flinging it away

between his legs. He revealed a shoulder, the back

of her head and her left arm. Yanking the wrist

free, he felt for a pulse. Nothing.

'Please, Allah,' he cried, voice echoing across

the desert. 'Please let her live!'

He clawed off the remaining sand and rolled her

onto her back. Her eyes were closed, her lips and

mouth thick with yellowy grains, like biscuit

crumbs. He felt for a pulse again but still got

nothing and so he rolled her back onto her front,

clasped his arms around her midriff and yanked,

doubling her up. He repeated the movement, jerk-

ing her with all his strength, willing her to live.

'Come on!' he yelled. 'Breathe! Breathe, dammit!'

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He bent his knees and jerked again and this

time, suddenly, her body convulsed as though a

bolt of electricity had been driven through it. For

a moment she was still, hanging from his arms as

though across a swing, and then she began to

splutter and choke. He yanked one final time and

a pat of sandy vomit spurted from her mouth onto

the dune top. She coughed and retched, struggled,

and drew in a deep gasping breath of air. He laid

her down gently.

'Thank you, Allah,' he whispered. 'Thank you.

Thank you.'

She lay for a while recovering, coughing and

gagging and breathing, and then, wiping her sleeve

across her mouth, rolled into a sitting position and

looked over at Khalifa, who was squatting a few

feet away. He nodded at her, she nodded at

him, they smiled, and then turned their attention

to the valley below.

The army was gone. Everything was gone.

There were no tents, no helicopters, no crates, no

corpses. Nothing. All was buried beneath a

smooth duvet of new-laid sand, as though it had

never existed. Only the pyramid rock remained,

vast and silent, spearing upwards into the pale

morning sky, surrounded once more by a pristine

expanse of desert. It had, thought Khalifa, a

vaguely satisfied air about it, as though it had

witnessed a great drama and was content with the

conclusion.

They sat in silence for some while, staring out

across the desert, struggling to come to terms with

all that had happened, and then Khalifa spoke.

'The mobile phone?'

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Tara patted her pockets, but they were empty.

'It must have fallen out.'

'The GPS unit?'

'Daniel had that.'

He nodded and leaned back against the slope of

the dune. 'Then I fear we might have a problem

getting back.'

'How far are we?'

'Not that far. About a hundred and twenty kilo-

metres to the nearest settlement. But we have no

idea of the precise direction. Half a degree out and

we could end up walking all the way to the

Sudan.'

'Dymmachus made it.'

'Only in Dr Lacage's imagination.'

'Of course.' She smiled. 'I forgot.'

He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out his

cigarettes, proffering the pack to Tara.

'You haven't got any ice cubes, have you?' she

asked.

'Ice cubes?'

'I'm trying to give up smoking, you see, and

whenever I get the urge I suck an ice cube instead.'

'Ah, I see. No, I'm afraid I don't have any ice

cubes.'

'Then I guess I'll just have to have the cigarette.'

She reached out, pulled one from the pack and

put it between her lips. Khalifa leaned forward

and lit it for her.

'That's a hundred pounds I owe my best friend,'

she said, closing her eyes and drawing deeply on

the filter. 'We had a bet I couldn't last a year

without smoking. I did eleven months and two

weeks.'

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'I am impressed,' said Khalifa. 'I have smoked a

pack a day since I was fifteen.'

'Jesus, you'll kill yourself!'

They looked at each other and then burst out

laughing.

'I guess it doesn't really matter how many

cigarettes I smoke from now on,' said Khalifa.

'You don't think we've got any chance then?'

'No, I don't.'

'I thought you said something about never

despairing?'

'I did. In this case, however, I see no other

option.'

They laughed again, genuine laughter, not

forced. Tara took another deep pull on her

cigarette. She didn't think she'd ever tasted any-

thing so delicious.

'You know it's funny,' she said, 'but I actually

feel happy. I'm going to die of thirst in the middle

of a desert and all I want to do is laugh. It's

like . . .'

'A weight has been lifted,' said Khalifa.

'Exactly. I feel clean. Free. Like I own my life

again.'

'I understand. I am the same. The past has been

settled and forgotten. We can look forward.'