Empires of Sand

by Empires of Sand (retail) (epub)

  Paul looked for patterns in the raids so that he might anticipate where Tamrit would strike next. There were none. If he thought Tamrit was going to move west, he moved east. If he thought he would strike a farm next, he attacked a village. In one thing only did he prove predictable.

  He killed without mercy.

  Even the most callous of the tirailleurs looked away from the grisly scenes they encountered. Only Paul was able to stare at the bodies without flinching. Nothing he saw compared to what he had already seen.

  “We will catch them,” he said with absolute conviction to Messaoud. “And we will kill them all.”

  The chase went on for months, ranging from Wargla to the fringes of the Grand Erg Occidental, and south almost to the Tademait Plateau – farther into the desert than any other French patrols had ventured, and well beyond the range approved by Captain Chirac. As hard as they pushed, they were always days or weeks behind Tamrit, who seemed to mock them by the very ease with which he moved.

  They nearly caught him once, at an encampment of a few tents that belonged to nomads journeying to the souk in Wargla with a flock of sheep. It was clear that the nomads had fed Tamrit’s men, who had stayed the night. They had been gone for some time, but evidence of their presence was everywhere.

  Messaoud interrogated the patriarch of the clan, who nervously regarded the waiting French column behind him as he explained what had happened. “He says yes, they fed Tamrit, but only on pain of death. He says they were forced to provide them food,” Messaoud said.

  Paul nodded. “Then he must pay,” he said evenly. Paul didn’t know whether the nomad was telling the truth about being coerced. It didn’t matter. It was time for an example to be made. “Burn their tents. Kill all the sheep. Butcher one and bring the meat for us.”

  Messaoud snapped the order. The patriarch watched with horror as he realized what was going to happen. Pleading for leniency, he began wailing and pulling at Paul’s pant leg. Unmoved, Paul sat in his saddle.

  “What is he saying?”

  Messaoud snorted. “That our action is, too extreme, sir. That this is all they have in the world.”

  “No. Their life is everything. I am not taking that – not this time. Tell him to be thankful for that. Tell him to spread the word that men caught helping Tamrit will be treated without mercy. They must be prepared to pay a great price.”

  The women of the camp raised a shrill cry as their belongings went up in smoke. One tried to snatch a leather bag from the flames, a bag of cheap jewelry and sewing utensils. A tirailleur pushed her roughly and she collapsed to her knees in tears. Paul watched without sympathy.

  The sheep were slaughtered without the ritual ceremony that would have at least permitted their use as food. They were shot where they stood by a soldier who moved quickly through the flock with his pistol. Each shot raised a fresh cry from the nomads, who were beating their breasts and crying.

  In addition to the sheep the nomads had eight camels. They grazed next to the camp, oblivious to everything. Paul called out, “Messaoud! Bring the headman’s mehari!”

  Messaoud cut the camel’s hobbles and led the beast to Paul. It was a strong fawn-colored female. Fearing the worst, the patriarch followed along, clasping his hands and whimpering. He looked up at the French lieutenant, whose stare was stone.

  “Tell him I want to know of Tamrit – where he is going, how he is dressed, how many men he has, what arms they carry,” Paul said.

  The headman gave quick answers, shaking his head. The NCO barked at him, clearly dissatisfied. “We might as well ask the camel, Lieutenant. He says he doesn’t know which of them was Tamrit. There were several men who seemed to be giving orders. All their faces were veiled. He doesn’t know where they were going. He didn’t count how many there were.”

  Paul pulled his pistol from its holster and without a word shot the man’s camel. The beast sagged to its knees and rolled over on its side. A fresh wail arose from the members of the clan.

  “Bring another mehari,” Paul said coldly. “Then ask him again.”

  It was done. The headman just shook his head, caught in a deadly game he knew he could not win. Whatever the French or the warriors of the jihad might do to him, he could not afford the loss of his camels. He began talking. He pointed off toward the eastern end of a low range of barren hills. He drew a map in the sand. Messaoud asked a few questions, nodding at the responses. When he was finished the tirailleur looked at Paul with a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes.

  “His memory has improved, sir. There are twenty, maybe twenty-five, moving toward El Gassi. They have old muskets and two new carbines, he thinks of Italian manufacture. Tamrit is dressed like a Targui. He swears he could only see his eyes, and that they were as green as emeralds. He thought the man unusual because he wore no amulets, no ornaments of any kind. All Tuareg wear amulets.”

  Paul was satisfied, knowing the man was telling the truth at last. He watched from his saddle as his men butchered the sheep. The nomads began picking through the smoking ruin of their camp. The soldiers finished quickly and they set out at once. Paul brushed off Messaoud’s cautions that they should not travel in the heat of the day. “The heat does not stop Tamrit. It will not stop me.”

  As they departed, the air was still as only the desert can make it, thick with the smell of blood and smoke.

  Paul did not look back.

  * * *

  Paul retreated into his thoughts as they rode toward El Gassi. He was vaguely troubled that it had been so easy to shoot the camel. Certainly it had been harder than giving the order to torch the camp. Yet he had done both without hesitation and felt no remorse. He knew that had he run out of camels he would have shot one of the men.

  You’ve changed and gone cruel. He remembered Hakeem’s words, spoken a lifetime ago. He knew it was true. He felt himself growing cold inside, indifferent to people. At first he had focused on Tamrit as the symbol of everything he hated. But hatred, having taken root, fought to blossom inside him, nurtured in his mind by the death he saw and the death he delivered. He felt some part of himself withering inside. Soon the other men traveling with Tamrit, men of different tribes, became as evil to him as Tamrit himself. The line between Tuareg and all men of the Sahara, all men of Africa, was becoming blurred. The desert faces began to look alike to him, the victims as well as the criminals. Retribution wore no veil.

  It was an awful state he’d gotten to, he knew. Yet the demons of Tadjenout were stronger than he was, nipping away at his soul.

  He also knew that in his neat mosaic of loathing, there were two parts that didn’t fit.

  He wanted to hate Moussa the way he hated the others. Moussa had made it difficult, by interfering during the march. He had intentionally ignored Paul’s orders to stay away. Now Paul didn’t know what he might be capable of doing if he saw his cousin again. How many times had Moussa saved his life on that march? He loved his cousin and he hated him too, and he hated the world that had torn them apart.

  Then at night when all was silent in camp and sleep wouldn’t come he let himself think of Melika. He saw her face clearly, and felt her touch on his cheek, and heard her soft laughter. He knew he had been falling in love with her, yet when he walked away from her he had crossed an invisible bridge. Could he ever cross back? Would she ever let him, if he could? He was afraid of the answers. His duty was so clear to him, until he thought of her – and so he tried not to let himself think. But Melika never left him,

  He still drank no alcohol. He ate little and slept less. He was growing as lean as the desert itself. He learned a great deal about tracks and the telltale signs of the passage of men and animals. He watched the sky and the shifting sands, but only for the hunt. He did not see the beauty of the land, or of the stars at night. Delicate desert wildflowers perished unnoticed beneath the hooves of his horse.

  The chase went on.

  * * *

  Elisabeth was consumed with thoughts of her son. Of course she knew of the
outcome of the Flatters expedition. All France knew and shared a common humiliation. It was all too awful to bear, that her own son had been part of such a debacle. She was cursed by military failure. First Jules and now Paul. The newspaper articles were horrid. Slaughter, retreat, cannibalism. Shame at the hands of savages. Everywhere accounts of the survivor Lieutenant deVries. Some called him a hero. Others – well, others used words she could not repeat. Her friends looked at her with a dreadful mixture of pity and condescension.

  Well. Enough was enough. Even Paul would have to see that how. She would get him out of the loathsome military and into his proper civilian role as the Count deVries. She was deliciously close to a resolution in the courts and expected to hear any day. But now, just when she could taste victory, Paul had fallen mute. She knew he was safe, yet he had not even bothered to write her. She had a letter about him from the governor in Algiers, and another from Captain Chirac, but she had heard nothing at all from Paul himself. She had written back demanding the officials order him to write her. She had enclosed letters to him, letters in which she made it quite clear what was in his best interest. Still he had not responded. How could he be so unfeeling? She assumed he was chastened by the fiasco, but that was no reason not to write his own mother. And now he was off in the insufferable desert somewhere, chasing some Arab thug.

  “There is a… someone to see you, madame la comtesse,” the butler announced, interrupting her thoughts. “A – foreign… gentleman.” The distaste was evident on his face as he struggled for the proper word to describe the man. Besides, civilized people did not call before three-thirty and it was not yet noon. “He has no calling card or letter of introduction. He is quite persistent. He says he has news of Count deVries. He insists on seeing you personally.”

  “Le comte? Why did you not say so immediately? I will receive him in the study,” she said.

  A few moments later the visitor was ushered in and stood before her. “Madame, it is kind of you to receive me. I am called El Hussein. It humbles me to be at your service.” The speaker bowed deeply. He was tall and dark skinned and resplendent in the flowing robes of a Bedouin, woven of silk as fine as could be bought in France. A jewel adorned his turban. His face had the sharp lines of a hawk above a neatly trimmed goatee. He had long fingers with lacquered nails and wore rings on both hands. She saw there was a certain elegance about the man, for a desert ruffian.

  Elisabeth was fascinated by him, at once repelled and attracted. Were it not for his birth she knew he would have been a gentleman of distinction, a man as comfortable in a French parlor as in a desert tent. His failing, apart from his race, was that his teeth were long and pointed, and he sucked at them quietly. It annoyed her, as did his eyes, which were sharply penetrating, too bold. As he took her hand and bent to kiss it they rested for just a moment on her breasts, and she felt his gaze almost as if he had touched her there. Certainly he was mentally undressing her. His attention turned subtly to the diamonds she wore, clearly assessing their value rather than appreciating their beauty. Next his eyes roamed the rich contents of the study, from the crystal to the silver candelabra to the rich boxes inlaid with mother-of-pearl, to the priceless Gobelin tapestries on the walls. It was all done in an instant, his gaze practiced and smooth. Most people would not even have noticed, but Elisabeth did. She had always been an excellent judge of people, men in particular, and there was something unsettling about this man, something that filled her with a profound unease. She couldn’t pinpoint it. He was a cobra with its hood withdrawn – no immediate peril, yet no mistaking the danger.

  If El Hussein noticed her discomfort he gave no sign. He turned to business. “Perhaps your manservant has informed you already, madame. I have come about the Count deVries.”

  “Oui. My son. You have seen him? I am anxious for news.”

  El Hussein gave her a blank look. “He is your son, madame? Perhaps I have made an error. I had been led to believe the count was your nephew.”

  Elisabeth’s blood ran cold. Moussa. She recovered quickly.

  “Ah, my nephew. There are some, oui, who call— called him count. He died with his father years ago. A balloon crash. Now it is my own son Paul who—”

  “But madame, pardon,” he interrupted her excitedly. “It is that very matter about which I have come to see you!” His eyes were alight with triumph, that he could share such glad tidings. “I am delighted to be able to bring you the joyous news that he is not dead.” He expected a cry of relief, or a gasp, or something more than a mouth turned down in displeasure, but that was all Elisabeth could manage.

  “Indeed.”

  Her reaction puzzled El Hussein. His news had made her tense, alert. There is something here I do not understand, he thought. She said he was dead, yet she knew already he was not. Strange.

  “It is quite so, madame. However, I regret my news is not all good. He is in great peril, being held… ah, how should I say it? – captive in a remote desert village. He has been taken prisoner by a powerful sheikh. It is a most unpleasant matter. A question of tribal rivalries. Ordinarily nothing could be done about it, nothing at all. But I was pleased to learn of his family here. It opened the possibility that he need not suffer a most unpleasant fate at the hands of his captors. It is within my power to… to intervene with the sheikh. To assist you, and the family of the Count deVries, in obtaining his release.”

  Elisabeth’s anger flared. “You presume much, coming here to me. Your offer to help is nothing more than a bald attempt at ransom. I should call the prefect of police. He knows what to do with brigands.”

  “I presume nothing, madame, and assure you I am no brigand. Besides, what would your prefect say of me? That I am guilty of attempting to help? I have traveled far, madame, at considerable expense and difficulty, in an effort to render some small assistance to you. I gain nothing from this personally. I have come in the spirit of the Koran. And forgive me, madame, but what could your prefect do while the count suffers in another land? He is deep in the desert, well beyond the realm of French influence. Not even your military can help him. I assure you – there is only one way to the count’s salvation.”

  El Hussein opened his arms in supplication. “I must confess I do not understand your anger, madame. Frankly I had assumed you would be glad of my news, and thankful for my humble effort.”

  “Of course I am… interested,” she said. She regarded him warily. She would have to be careful. This was a clever man.

  Elisabeth sat down. She rang the bell for the butler, who appeared immediately. He had been waiting just outside the door, as if he expected the foreigner to attack the mistress.

  “Countess?”

  “Brandy.” She looked inquiringly at her visitor. El Hussein started to decline. “It is not permit—” he started to say, but then relented. He was in France, after all. “Of course, you are too kind,” and his glass was filled. He raised the glass to Elisabeth, who ignored him. The liquor burned his throat. As he drank he cursed Jubar Pasha for giving him insufficient information. The butler had addressed the woman as “countess.” If her nephew Moussa was the count, this woman could not be la comtesse deVries. Inwardly he shrugged. There was much about France he didn’t understand. Its few customs that weren’t odd were backward. And too, there was much about this woman he didn’t understand. He sensed a very resourceful woman. He did not like being ignorant of either.

  “You say Moussa is alive. You have seen him yourself?”

  “But of course, madame.” Jubar Pasha had summoned Moussa to stand naked before them, his hands bound behind his back. El Hussein had walked slowly around the prisoner, touching, probing, memorizing every detail for precisely this moment. Even though tightly bound, Moussa had lashed out at him, kneeing him in the groin. A most unpleasant man. El Hussein had beaten him until the pasha would allow no more.

  “Describe him to me.”

  El Hussein complied. Elisabeth didn’t know what Moussa looked like anymore. She had no idea whether the de
scription fit. The blue eyes, the dark hair, the noble features all sounded like a man who could have grown from the boy she remembered. There was something of Henri in the description. Yet there was no way to be certain. A thousand men might have similar features.

  “That is all? It is hardly proof.”

  “There is a scar, madame.”

  “A scar?”

  “Oui. I saw it myself. In his side. Just here, below his rib cage.” He indicated the spot at his own side, drawing a line with his finger. “It appears to be quite old.”

  Elisabeth closed her eyes. The boar. She struggled to maintain her composure.

  “And his mother? You know who she is? Where she is?”

  “Certainement, madame, although I have not met her myself. She is called Serena. She is of the Tuareg. She lives in their tents in the Hoggar Mountains. Deep in the southern desert.”

  “I know where the mountains are,” she snapped.

  El Hussein gave her a thin smile. “Of course. Please forgive me. You are convinced, then, that I speak the truth? That it is truly the count in captivity?”

  Elisabeth waved her hand. She would not quibble with this man over the identity of the true count. “I believe you have Moussa in captivity, yes.”

  “I can, of course, guarantee his safety. Arrange a meeting where an exchange can be made. In Algiers, perhaps. Any place to your liking.”

  “And tell me, just how much ransom will it take to pry the – my nephew from the grip of this sheikh?”

  El Hussein looked pained. “I prefer not to call it ‘ransom,’ madame,” he said. “Such a coarse term for a transaction that is nothing more than commonplace in the desert.”

  “And what term is commonplace enough for you?”