The Accidental Spy

by Jacqueline George

  He woke with a rush, heart pounding, and remembered where he was. He could see grey between the slats of the shutters but he knew that it was far from dawn. His arm was cramped beneath him and he tried to get comfortable by rolling his face into the wall and lying on the other side for a change.

  Next time he woke he had Danka curled up behind him. Her breathing tickled his back. There was light in the room now. His mind started to race again and he knew there would be no more sleep for him. He climbed out of bed and left Danka sleeping.

  - 26 -

  He was clean, shaved and boiling water for coffee when Danka appeared in her bathrobe. “Boże, Virgin, I’m tired,” she complained. “I want to sleep again.”

  “You can sleep in the bus. What do you want for breakfast?”

  “Just wait. I wake Wanda and make breakfast.” The Virgin made three cups of coffee.

  They had a quiet and thoughtful meal with little said. Afterwards The Virgin sat alone in the main room. Danka stood on the balcony watching for the minibus, while Wanda made sandwiches. He hated the waiting. Eventually Wanda brought her picnic bag and came to wait beside him.

  “They are here, Virgin,” called Danka. “We go now. Quickly.”

  With a sense of relief, The Virgin hurried down the stairs. Danka held him at the door and stepped out alone. The minibus was waiting with its sliding door open. There was no one else around. It was too early and the neighbouring apartment blocks were still asleep. Danka waved him in and he slipped out of the building and took the empty seat waiting for him at the back of the bus. The mesh body of his cart was in the aisle beside him, full of blankets and picnic bags. His neighbours looked at him curiously. They were working men with lined faces and cheap tee shirts. He nodded smiles at them and they smiled shyly back. Then Janusz, tousled as ever, reached over the seat to shake his hand. “Good, Wirgin, good to come!” The Virgin felt a glow of welcome and safety.

  And then they were off, lurching over the rough ground towards the road. Sabah was waking sluggishly to another Friday and there was very little traffic around. Once they got onto the modern roads around the old town centre, the driver put his foot down and they sailed over the empty concrete fly-overs. Beside him, the town still slept. The Virgin craned around to get a last look at Sabah.

  The highway ran out of town between a jumble of villas and the walled compounds of the rich. The road had trees beside it here, tough eucalypts throwing striped shadows across the road. The driver slowed for the police post at the edge of town. It, too, was sleeping. They slowed to a crawl as they approached the transportable building beside the road. Outside a young policeman sat on a metal chair. He was hatless and had yet to put his shoes on. He looked at them without curiosity and casually flapped a hand to wave them through. Good, thought The Virgin, let them all be like that and we will be fine.

  They started on the serious driving. Flat, stony ground on either side of the divided highway. The red-gold disc of the sun shouldered its way up out of a grey dust haze. There must have been some wind across the desert in the last few days. Perhaps The Virgin would have his wish and be blessed with a small ghibli or two to hide in. He looked out over the featureless landscape. He would not miss this, he decided, not for a minute. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

  They were stopped at the next checkpoint. Two soldiers idly waving cars through wanted a closer look at Danka and Wanda in the front seat. One of them held his hand out for papers. The driver had a wallet of car and company documentation ready, and his badaka and driving licence on top. The soldiers were holding the documents but staring at the girls. Danka said something abrupt in Arabic and they straightened up. The men handed back the papers and they were through. Danka cranked herself round in her seat to give him a wave and a smile. The Virgin closed his eyes again.

  They did not have a serious delay until the first check point on the Cape Town Road. They were stuck behind a battered Volvo truck. Its load was piled high and covered in tarpaulins. Strings of empty plastic containers were tied to the outside of the load and several white-turbaned Sudanese sat on top. The driver had got down and was arguing listlessly with the police about his documents. The minibus driver switched off the engine and they waited. The passengers slid open their windows and lit cigarettes. Patience, The Virgin told himself, patience. This is normal. He closed his eyes and tried to relax.

  They must have waited for fifteen minutes or more when there was hooting from behind. The Virgin looked back. A black Mercedes limousine was passing the substantial queue on the wrong side of the road. It pulled up opposite the police post. A fat, balding man leant out of the window, shouting and gesturing emphatically with one arm. He accelerated away without waiting for approval. Lethargically, the police sent the truck driver back to his cab and moments later he was jolting off down the road. The police waived the queue of vehicles through without checking.

  They were at the edge of the true desert now. No more vegetation, just a wide brown nothing stretching to the horizon in every direction. And there was only one more check to go. Now The Virgin would see if anyone remembered him. He wished he had cut his hair short and shaved his beard right off. Too late now, and he peered forward waiting for the dot on the road that would turn into the last checkpoint.

  Two more desert trucks waited beside the road, complete with empty plastic containers and forlorn Sudanese passengers. Their faces were expressionless as they awaited their fate. The black Mercedes had parked next to the police post and the fat man was laughing and smiling with the policemen crowded around him.

  They rolled to a halt. Once there had been a ceremonial arch here, built out of steel and bearing green placards with slogans in white Arabic lettering. There had been an accident and only one lonely upright remained. The span of the arch, with its stirring slogans intact, lay propped up beside the road on oil drums. All around the sand of the desert was littered with the rubbish of people who had been held up here, perhaps for days, while they waited for their paperwork.

  The minibus driver waited patiently for someone to notice them. At last one of the policemen took his attention from the fat man and gave them a cursory wave. The driver let in the clutch and they jolted slowly over the ship’s cable that lay across the road as a speed bump. They picked up speed and headed south. A load fell from The Virgin’s shoulders.

  He was asleep when they slowed down and turned off the highway. A short, hard-packed road led to a brine pit at the edge of the Al Ha’il sabkha. They must have used this brine to lay dust during the road construction. A narrow track wound past the sump and along the edge of the sabkha. They climbed stiffly out of the minibus and stretched themselves. They were out of sight of the highway here. To either side layered brown dirt had been cut into badlands by ancient rains flooding down to the sabkha. In front of them stretched Al Ha’il. Flat, white salt, a lake made solid.

  It was not yet mid-day. The Virgin had plenty of time to waste so he helped putting up the beach umbrellas and getting the barbecue ready. In the shade beneath the umbrellas the weather was fine. The sun had not hammered winter out of the desert yet and the air temperature felt comfortable. A dry wind was blowing, not enough to stir the dust but enough to cool the skin. He spread a blanket under one of the umbrellas and stretched out. Now he could sleep.

  Danka shook him awake. “Eating, Virgin! Come and eat.” He joined the crowd around the barbecue. They were laughing and chattering, plastic cups of flash and Pepsi in their hands. They had set a grill up between three stones and steaks were sizzling and dripping over the coals. The Virgin was suddenly hungry and the meat smelt good. Following the girls, he carried off a steak sandwiched between two slices of white bread.

  They settled back on the blanket. Danka poured him a Pepsi. “For you, no flash today. We have flash,” and she poured big slugs into the cups for herself and Wanda. She raised her cup. “Good luck, Virgin!”

  He was beginning to feel restless and took Danka for a walk after they had eate
n. “This place was like the sea before, Virgin? How much before?”

  He thought. “Not long, I think. I bet there was still water here twenty thousand years ago. But salty water. And if you look in the rocks over there, you can find shark’s teeth from dinosaur times. Big ones too. Anyway, I expect that a million years ago or more, it was like the sea here. Perhaps even connected to the sea.”

  Danka shrugged her shoulders. “Twenty thousand year is long time to me, Virgin.”

  He smiled. “But not to a geologist. That’s not even yesterday. More like – just before lunch. But this is a very historic place, you know. Come on, I’ll show you something.”

  They walked on along the edge of the sabkha until they came to a place where a small promontory jutted out into the salt bed. The ground was rough and disturbed and black rocks were lying scattered in the sand. “Look, the caravans used to stop here. They used these stones around their fires.”

  Danka looked at him in disbelief. “How do you know, Virgin?”

  “Just look – you’ll find things.” He searched for a moment and then turned over a stone with his foot. “There – now what do you think?” It was a thick shard of rough pottery, probably from a storage jar of some sort.

  Danka picked it up. “Heavy,” she said. “You think they come here by camel?”

  “No other way, except walking. And I wouldn’t want to walk with a pot like that on my back. Keep looking. I expect you’ll find some bigger pieces. I think they used them as plates after the jars had been broken.”

  Danka started to search. The Virgin had often promised himself he would bring a metal detector here one day, but now it was too late. Something caught his eye. “Look – recognize this? It’s a gun-flint. You know, from the old rifles they used to have. Or perhaps from a fire lighter – it’s all the same.”

  They walked back to the others, Danka clutching a large pottery fragment. “You’ve got to imagine that people have always walked around this end of the sabkha. They didn’t want to cross it with their camels – it’s bad for their feet – so they came around the end. And later on, when Europeans came, they just followed the caravan routes. There’s even an old Italian fort about five kilometres that way. That must have been a God-awful posting for those poor guys. Sitting in the middle of the Sahara, playing soldiers and watching for passing camels. Even today trucks can’t drive over the sabkha, so the Cape Town Road goes through here as well. Just the same way.”

  The guys were relaxing when they got back, sleeping or smoking in the shade. The Virgin went to the back of the minibus to unload the cart. Slowly and with care he started to assemble it. Rubberdy had done a good job. It was the Ferrari of carts, a sleek, shiny aluminium speedster. Empty, it moved with the lightest touch. He started to weigh it down with water containers. This would be his life’s blood. He loaded the cart so it almost balanced over its axle. Just a slight weight on the shafts, Rubberdy had said.

  The sun was beginning to shine under the umbrellas and take away their shade. He got Danka to stir up the men. Complaining, they followed Pawel out onto the salt and started to play football. They threw long shadows on the ground as they ran back and forth, stirring up the surface. The Virgin watched for a while and then went back to his packing. He clipped the MacAllans safety belt around his waist and adjusted the shoulder straps. It was comfortable enough.

  “You are ready, Virgin?” asked Danka standing beside him.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.”

  “Come on – before you start, first you must sit with us. It is tradition.” They joined Wanda on the blanket. Danka offered him a Pepsi bottle. “Drink, Virgin, drink.”

  He smiled at her concern. “I’m not a camel, you know. I can’t store up Pepsi for three weeks of travel. If I drink too much, I’ll just piss it away.”

  “No problem. But drink anyway.” Then she was silent for a while. “Virgin – you must tell us. Why is your name Virgin?”

  “That? Oh – it’s just a Hash name. They say I look like Richard Bransome.”

  “Like who?”

  “Like Richard Bransome. You know, the guy who owns Virgin Records and Virgin Atlantic. The businessman. Always flying around the world in a balloon and doing crazy things like that.”

  “Virgin, this is stupid!” She did not approve. “When do you go?”

  He looked around him. “About half an hour, I guess. You can still see too much just now.”

  “I am cold,” she complained and snuggled up to him. Wanda snuggled up to the other side and they waited in silence.

  Pawel and Janusz came to help him. The three of them lifted the cart off the ground and carried it out through the football players. The football players were dribbling and feinting over their tracks. Danka and Wanda took another route out to join them.

  The Virgin looked back. Already the minibus was far away, nearly invisible in the dusk. This would have to do. They set the cart on the ground. Pawel picked up the shafts and gave an experimental push. It rode easily. He said something to Danka.

  “He says it is very good,” she said with a defiant note in her voice.

  “I know,” said The Virgin. “Tell him and the guys thank you for everything.”

  Pawel gave a long answer. “He says it is nothing. We are Polish. Always we have trouble with Germans or Russians or Austrians. And then with Communists. For us this is normal. And he says – Good Luck.”

  The Virgin slipped the ends of the shafts through his belt loops and clipped the towing strap into the large eye at the back. He shook hands with Pawel and Janusz. A hug for Wanda and another longer one for Danka. She was crying. “Virgin – you go to where the sun wakes up – keep going and you will make it. I see you in Cairo.”

  He waved to the footballers, faced the sabkha and started to walk. The cart came freely, the salt making a light crunching sound beneath the tyres. Yes, he thought, I’ll keep walking to where the sun wakes up and I’ll make it.

  Other titles by Jacqueline George

  The Prince and the Nun

  Foreign Affairs

  Her Master’s Voice

  Light o’Love

  How to make Wild, Passionate Love to your Man

  Where Gold Lies

  www.jacquelinegeorgewriter.com