by Len Deighton
The Ilyushin’s engines came to full power, one at a time. Then, with all brakes released, it grew bigger and bigger, until, when it seemed it must roll over us, it lifted. With a brain-numbing roar it passed low over our heads.
‘Yes,’ I said.
21
The town of Algiers fits snugly into the curve of its massive bay. It is a city of narrow alleys and steep staircases, hovels and office blocks, secret gardens and boulevards. At its feet there is a busy port. Behind it, the roads hairpin up into the lush green hills and pine forests, climbing ever higher into the Atlas Mountains. It’s an uncomfortable place. Of the whole African coastline, only the Red Sea gets hotter in summer, and few places get as much rain in winter. It was dark by the time we arrived and raining heavily.
Percy Dempsey was at the airport. He’d brought his own personal Peugeot 504. You’ll not see many of those broken down along the desert tracks, polished silver by the sand. Down south in the Sahara there were only Peugeots, and Land Rovers, and the smart little cars that came in by transporter. And Percy’s was special; he’d taken the sump away, to provide a flat underside. The oil was pumped out of a tank in the boot. It reduced the luggage space but it was a small price to pay for a desert-worthy car.
Percy Dempsey was wearing a suit – perhaps the cable, and the CIA contact-man, had given him hopes of a long-term contract with the Americans – and a waistcoat, and a public-school tie, Charterhouse as I remember it. The grubby trenchcoat let him down, or did he think that was de rigueur for agents. The Algiers traffic moved slowly through the night. Yellow headlights glared through the spray and darkness.
‘I sent one of my people down to Ghardaia,’ said Percy. ‘If they are going south to the Sahara they will have to go that way.’
‘Has he got a two-way radio in the car?’ said Mann.
‘That would be rather dangerous, Major,’ said Percy. ‘Only the police are permitted such luxuries. In any of these towns and villages you can find the police station, simply by looking for the only building with a radio mast.’ Percy murmured some gentle Arabic oath as the truck ahead of us stopped and signalled that it was going to turn into the docks.
‘How will we know what’s happening down there?’
‘My man’s based in a hotel, Major. We can speak to him on the phone.’ A driver behind us sounded his horn, and so did another behind him.
‘We don’t even know they will go south,’ said Mann. ‘They might just transfer to the Aeroflot flight and continue through to Moscow.’
‘I thought we’d have something to eat,’ said Percy. ‘They won’t be here for hours. You made good time.’ The truck turned, and we moved on into the city.
‘They sold them only enough fuel to get to London. That will delay their arrival time by nearly two hours,’ I told him.
‘You’re not worried that they might change plans in London?’ Percy asked.
‘That will be prevented,’ I said. We stopped at a big intersection while a traffic cop twirled a baton and blew his whistle.
‘Bekuv will go south all right,’ said Percy. ‘I had that feeling when we met him that day. He had unfinished business here in the desert.’ He turned off the main boulevard into a succession of ever narrower streets.
‘Where were you when we needed you?’ said Mann sarcastically.
‘Hindsight,’ admitted Percy. ‘Pure hindsight, I admit. But if you think about his indecision that day …’ He pointed. ‘This is the Kasbah,’ he said. ‘That’s the big market.’
Mann nodded.
Percy said, ‘People only go south if they have a purpose. You don’t go into the Sahara to hide. Are they looking for something? Do you know what?’ He parked the car in a space marked private.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Big or small?’
‘Big,’ I said.
‘How the hell could you know that?’ said Mann.
‘Deduction. Something very small and he might have tried to conceal it. Even something of a medium size would have tempted him to take it into a village post office and address it poste restante in the USA.’
‘Screw it,’ said Mann. ‘Maybe they won’t even leave the airport.’
‘Big,’ I said. ‘It will be big.’
Percy locked the car and led the way through a maze of alleys, each one narrower than the one before it. Every third shop seemed to be a butcher, and the carcasses were displayed complete with skin and fur. ‘Ughh,’ said Mann.
Percy had first discovered this place during the war when he was a young officer with the First Army. He’d returned in 1955, and on and off he’d lived here ever since, right through the fighting and the restrictions and difficulties that followed it. Of course Percy spoke Arabic; not just the elegant stuff used by Cairo eggheads who came to the university to lecture on poetry, but the coarse dialects of the southern villagers and the laconic mumblings of the nomad.
The alley in which Percy lived was steep and narrow. Most of the windows were shuttered, but a café was marked by bright yellow patches of light and the ululating song of Om Kalsum, the Ella Fitzgerald of Arab pop.
This part of the old Arab quarter must have been unchanged for a thousand years. Only by common consent were the premises defined, for the rooms of one house were the upstairs of the place next door. Percy’s frontage was no more than the width of his battered old door, but once inside the place opened up to become a dozen rooms, with – at the back – a view into the courtyard of a dilapidated mosque.
I heard Percy Dempsey go to the back of the house and tell the servant to fetch food. Then he returned to the front, and poured wine for some and a Jack Daniels for Major Mann. Percy had that sort of memory.
Three of the original cell-like rooms had been knocked together. The changes of level that provided a step at the entrance to each room put the dining space on a platform at the end of the living-room. Antique swords were arranged over the fireplace, where smoke rose from a log fire that was only just alight. Over the dining-table – it was too large, and the ceilings too low, for it to fit anywhere else – there was a brass chandelier that was said to have been looted from a house in Oran when the French departed. An ornate ‘Chinese Chippendale’ mirror provided anyone sitting at the head of the table with a chance to see into the kitchen. The floor was pine boarding, polished like glass. The carpets were brushed, the books were placed in the shelves according to size rather than subject, and the mirror was gleaming as brightly as the brass chandelier and the blades of the swords. And yet there was no cosiness. Here was obsessional cleanliness, combined with masculine orderliness in a way you seldom find, except in a lighthouse.
Mann lowered himself on to the sofa, holding his drink high so that none of it would spill. ‘How do you know they will phone in good time?’
Percy said, ‘Just relax for a moment, you’ve had a long journey.’
‘Why don’t you just check that your telephone is working?’ It wasn’t a suggestion, it was an order.
‘Because I’ve already done so,’ said Percy. He poured himself a little tonic water, and turned to look at Mann. Now that his hat was off, you could see the shaved patch of skull, the stains of the antiseptic and the large pink piece of sticking-plaster that the doctor had applied to the bullet graze. The bruising from its impact reached all the way from his discoloured eye to his stiff neck. Percy studied it with interest but did not comment.
Mann scowled and sipped at his Jack Daniels. I could tell that he approved of the high standards of hygiene that were present on every side.
Percy said, ‘I hope you like Arab food.’ He leaned over the dining-table to rearrange the cutlery and the glasses. I got the idea that he’d been rearranging them all the afternoon.
‘I didn’t come all this way for fancy cooking,’ said Mann.
‘But this is delicious,’ said Percy.
‘Look, pal. My idea of culinary exotica is hot pastrami on rye bread.’
Percy smiled, but the smile became rather fixed,
and he continued to adjust the table setting in a more mechanical manner.
I walked through the kitchen to the balcony at the back. It was like being in the doll’s-house, the balcony was no larger than a pocket handkerchief, and it was spitting distance from here to the street. There was a wonderful view. The rain had almost stopped and stars peered through gaps in the cloud. You could see the old port and the black ocean beyond. The Grand Mosque was outlined against the night sky, and I could hear the same Arab music that I’d heard from the street.
Percy came into the kitchen whistling. He lifted the lid from a pot and brought a cooked lobster out of the water. He split it into sections with all the skills and strength of a professional chef. ‘Your friend …’ he said, still looking down at the lobster, ‘… do you think that crack on the head affected him?’
‘No, he’s always like that,’ I said.
‘Odd chap … and he can’t sit still for a moment.’ There was the sound of the front door opening. ‘It’s my servant with the food,’ said Percy.
From the next room Mann bellowed. ‘Hey, Pop. There’s a waiter arrived with a mountain of chow.’
‘Oh, dear,’ said Percy, and sighed.
By the time I got back to the dining-table, the table was arrayed with the tiny dishes that the Arabs called mezze. There were miniature kebabs, sliced tomato, shiny black olives, stuffed vine leaves and bite-sized pies of soft flaky pastry. The servant was a young man. There was rain on his starched white jacket, and I guessed he’d been to some local restaurant to get the food and the strong Arab coffee that I could smell. He was a handsome youth, very slim, with carefully arranged hair and large, sad, brown eyes. He watched Percy all the time. At one time I would have been indifferent to Percy’s choice of such handsome young employees – smiled even – but now I found it more difficult to write it off as just a part of the fascinating spectrum of human passion.
‘I don’t want a foul-up,’ said Mann. He tucked a napkin into his collar, and leaned forward over the table, sniffing at the mezze and pushing the dishes aside until he came to the platter of hot lobster. He speared a large piece of it.
‘Nothing will go wrong,’ said Percy. He gave the servant the emptied tray, and indicated that he would serve the coffee himself. The boy withdrew. ‘I’ll drive,’ said Percy. ‘I know these roads. I’ve spent the best part of twenty years going into the desert. But the roads over the mountains are dangerous and narrow, with hairpin bends, crowded villages and bus-drivers who know only the horn and accelerator. If a man is young enough and reckless enough …’ Percy paused, ‘… to say nothing of frightened enough, he’ll outstrip any car that follows him.’
‘Or get killed himself,’ said Mann, with a large piece of lobster in his mouth.
‘Or get killed himself,’ said Percy, as he picked up a knife and fork. ‘There’s local beer or ouzo, or you can continue with the Jack Daniels.’
‘And when you get over the mountains?’ asked Mann. He leaned back in the delicate chair until it creaked, and then held a speared chunk of lobster aloft, chewing pieces from it and nodding approval at the flavour.
‘The high plateau and then more mountains – the Ouled Nail – before you reach Laghouat, where the real desert begins: about 400 kilometres in all.’
‘By that time they will know they are being followed,’ said Mann.
‘My dear fellow,’ said Percy. He chuckled. ‘He’ll know he’s being followed before you’re in the hills, before you’re out of the suburbs even. If you were hoping to be inconspicuous, forget it. At this time of year there will be hardly any private cars down there in the desert. He’ll see your dust for a hundred kilometres.’
Mann prodded at some cubes of grilled cheese before putting one into his mouth. They were very hot. He tried not to show his discomfort, although tears came into his eyes.
‘I think Percy should drive,’ I said.
Mann clamped a napkin to his mouth, nodded, looked up to see if anyone was watching him, and finally swallowed the burning-hot cheese.
‘That’s settled then,’ said Percy and reached for the same grilled cheese cubes. He put three of them into his mouth and chewed impassively. I realized then that it was the similarity of their upbringing that made them so antagonistic. Exchange Percy’s public school for the Mid-West military academy where Mann’s estranged parents had sent him, and each would have become the other.
It was the small hours before the Algerian jet arrived at Algiers Airport. Mrs Bekuv must have known that we’d be waiting for her on the other side of the barrier. Whatever kind of deal the men from the Russian Trade Delegation made with the authorities, it included permission for her to leave the airport on the far side. We almost missed her altogether – but Percy’s pal in Immigration tipped us off, and we gave chase.
They were in a Land Rover: the two Bekuvs, Red Bancroft and the driver who had delivered the vehicle. It was that dark hour before dawn that you read about in books, and the windscreen was awash with rain and the car ahead of us no more than a blurred dribble of yellow headlights, with a couple of red dots when the driver stabbed the brakes.
We didn’t speak much, the noise of the engine, the heavy rain and the thrash of the wipers made it necessary for Percy to shout. ‘This bloke’s damned good, and I’ll tell you that for nothing!’
We were climbing. The villages were shuttered and silent. As we roared through them, there came the answering bellow of our reflected sound. All the time the rain continued. The tyres were uncertain on the steep, twisting road. Percy clawed at the steering-wheel as each hairpin revealed another hairpin, and soon the windscreen flashed pink with the raw light of dawn.
‘We’ve got him on speed,’ said Percy, ‘but he’s got the better traction. Damn you!’ He blasted the horn as a man on a mule swayed out into our paths. ‘It’s like that game that children play – stones, paper and scissors – there’s no telling yet what will prove the most important.’
‘They know we’re behind them,’ said Mann.
‘A driver like that,’ said Percy with unconcealed admiration, ‘has already calculated our tyre pressures and how much I had to drink last night.’
The sun came up very quickly, its light intermittently extinguished by the black clouds that were racing across the sky, and its almost horizontal rays shafting into our eyes, and twisting with every movement of the car. Percy slammed the sun visor fully down but it didn’t help much.
They began to force the pace now, and the road became more difficult. On one side there were steep banks, pine trees and outcrops of vertical rock; on the other a sheer drop over an unmarked edge. And not all the road was hard. More than once, a sudden patch of loose surface hammered the metal underside, sent the car sliding and made the wheels spin.
Percy stared ahead, concentrating on the road’s nearside edge, hitting the accelerator as soon as a curve could be seen as nothing more than a kink. He used the camber of the road too, steering up it – at an angle to the road’s direction – to get maximum traction and the burst of acceleration that it provided. For one section of the road we were actually leaping into the air from one camber to the next.
‘Christ,’ said Mann the first time Percy did it, but the jarring crash as the car landed back on the road caused him to bite his tongue and fall sideways across the back seat.
‘Hold tight,’ said Percy and gave a fruity chuckle. Mann swore through his teeth.
Ahead of us, the Land Rover disappeared in a fountain of spray as it hit a rain-filled ridge and was jolted up into the air. Percy pumped the brakes releasing the pressure each time the car’s front dipped on its suspension. By the time we reached the ridge our speed was down to forty. The other car had spilled enough of the rainwater for us to see the ragged series of potholes. Percy flicked the steering, to hit it on a curving path and so bring the outer wheels – with the lighter loading – over the deepest hole.
In spite of all his skill we landed with a brain-shattering thump, and a terrib
le groan of metal. Mann clasped his hands upon his head in an effort to save himself more pain.
But the Land Rover was also having problems. There were four of them crowded into it and the big bump must have shaken them up for they had slowed enough for us to be eating their spray.
‘Grab her ass,’ said Mann. Percy moved up close and now we could see that Mrs Bekuv was the driver. For a couple of miles we raced along together.
‘It’s in the soft sand where they will laugh at us,’ said Percy. ‘With that four-wheel drive they can crawl off into the desert and come back to the macadam again while we’re still digging.’
‘You brought sand-mats?’ said Mann, all ready for a row.
‘What are sand-mats?’ said Percy, tilting his head to see Mann’s reaction in the mirror. Mann gave a humourless smile and said nothing.
Although the sun was up, the rain cloud obscured it. A few yellow lights high on the road ahead of us fast became a village. The Land Rover’s horn echoed in the narrow street. Scarcely slowing, we followed them through the twisting alleys. A sudden scream of brakes told us that Mrs Bekuv had seen a huge desert bus, parked in the middle of the road, but the Land Rover raced on, its speed scarcely checked. Avoiding a head-on collision by only the narrowest of margins, the Land Rover lurched as it climbed on to the footpath and screamed through the narrow gap. Percy followed. Men and women scattered. There was a snowstorm of chicken feathers, as hens broke loose from the roof-rack of the bus, and flailed through the air, and a sickening thump as one of them struck the side of the car. Then we were through, and on the mountain road again. The surface was loose gravel and Percy dropped back as some of it hit our windscreen.
‘Just hold them like that,’ said Mann and for a few minutes we did. Then, after the straight stretch, with Percy pushing the needle well past a hundred, the road looped suddenly and dropped away in a tangle of hairpins to run along a short luxuriant valley.
‘Jesus!’ shouted Mann and I heard Percy gasp. Ahead of us the Land Rover had slowed. On this straight stretch of road, that meant they were still doing well over fifty. It slid sideways a little, waggled its behind and then picked up speed again as a large piece of it fell into the roadside. Percy’s arm came across my chest, as he jammed his foot hard on to the brakes. We shrieked to a halt. Even so, we had to go into reverse in order to find the bundle that they had tossed out of the door.