Sandstorm

by Asher, Michael

  ‘The chap was off his rocker.’

  ‘Maybe, Arnold. But somebody had a bone to pick with him, that’s for certain. It can only have been the map they were after.’

  Hobart frowned, put the unlit pipe in his mouth and took it out again. ‘Don’t jump the gun,’ he said. ‘After you went last night, I made some phone-calls ... no, don’t worry, not to the police. Just to certain old colleagues from the “I” Corps boys. They were stationed in Morocco at the end of the war. Some discreet enquiries about Corrigan.’

  ‘Discreet?’ Sterling exploded. ‘Christ, Arnold! You’ve bloody well compromised yourself. His death is going to be all over the papers tomorrow, and I don’t care how discreet your old chums are, somebody will be wondering why you were checking up on him the night before!’

  Hobart shrugged magnificently, and Sterling had to admire his ability to stay unruffled. ‘How was I to know the chap was going to get bumped off?’ he said calmly. ‘Anyway, no good crying over spilt milk. The point is that I got a whisper from Frank Quayle, who was liaison to the French Deuxième Bureau that there was a Corrigan in Casablanca in 1946. The word is that he belonged to one of those mafia gangs that hung out there after the war — deserters, war criminals; all the scum of the earth. They were into everything shady — a bit of dope, a bit of white slavery, the odd smuggling deal. Frank wasn’t sure, but he thinks he remembers seeing a French file about a Corrigan, a USAF deserter, who did the dirty on his gang. Stole fifty thousand dollars of their money and disappeared. These people have memories like elephants, George. If it’s true, it could explain what happened to him.’

  Sterling looked at him aghast. ‘It fits,’ he said slowly. ‘But why would Craven fly with a fellow like that?’

  Hobart shook the leonine head. ‘I can’t answer that,’ he said. ‘And anyway, it assumes Corrigan was telling the truth. Maybe he just heard what happened to Rose of Cimarron and decided to cash in on it once his funds ran out.’

  ‘The map looks genuine enough to me.’

  Hobart leaned forward with a new spark of interest in his eyes. ‘Where is the map?’ he asked gently. ‘Can I see it?’

  Sterling took out the oilskin packet, slipped the map out of it and handed it to Hobart. The old man took it and held it up to the light. Moments passed in silence as the fire crackled and the grandfather clock beat time. Hobart seemed totally absorbed in it. Finally, he said, ‘It certainly looks genuine, but how can you be sure?’

  Sterling took it back and replaced it in its packet. ‘As I said, I’m not sure of anything. I’ve spent too much time pretending that there’s such a thing as certainty, Arnold. I don’t know why the hell I just accepted Billy’s death as cut and dried. It’s as if I’ve done a Rip Van Winkle act — been asleep for seven years, and now I’ve woken up. I’m going back there, and I’m going to face the uncertainty.’

  Hobart took a deep breath. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘What can I say? It was my fault Billy went off with Craven and, believe me, there hasn’t been a day since that I didn’t wish I’d said no. I’m responsible, and I’ll support you, George, in any way I can, even if things get hot here.’

  ‘I’m sorry—’ Sterling began, but his father-in-law cut him short.

  ‘I owe it to you,’ he said. ‘I owe it to Billy and to Margaret.’ He put out his boxer’s mitt and Sterling shook it. ‘That’s all I can do,’ Hobart said. ‘If I were a bit younger I’d come with you, but you know ... and there’s Molly.’

  Sterling felt a lump in his throat. ‘Thanks, Arnold,’ he said.

  Hobart looked at him through narrowed eyes, and it reminded Sterling of the day they’d first met, all those years ago when he’d been an aspiring chemistry undergrad at Cambridge and the world had seemed his oyster. Before the damn war came along and changed it all.

  ‘You take care of yourself,’ Hobart said.

  *

  Four days after leaving Hassi Messoud, the caravan reached ’Ushub al-Maraya. It was a region of succulent grasses and tamarisk, their last chance to graze the camels before the terrible plains of the Zrouft, which stretched endlessly beyond to the south. Groups of nomads were pasturing their animals here: for the first time in days, Sterling and Churchill saw faces other than those of their travelling companions. They realized that here they were in the presence of true desert people. These tribesmen dressed in blue robes and black head-cloths and spoke in a dialect less harsh and more melodious than that of Mafoudh’s men. They looked askance at the sheikh and his outcasts, yet they were eminently hospitable — it was impossible to pass a camp without being called to drink camels’ milk and eat dates. These tribesmen were as happy as they ever could be in their harsh lives, Sheikh Mafoudh pointed out — there was grazing here, their camels were fat and in milk, and they wanted for nothing.

  Two days passed, and Mafoudh himself showed no sign of leaving. When Churchill pushed him over it, he protested that the camels were weak and needed feeding up. On the third day, though, Churchill and Sterling decided that enough was enough. That evening, after dinner, Churchill announced that they would be leaving in the morning. Mafoudh looked at him uneasily, then said, ‘Captain, that is as far as we go.’

  For a moment Sterling thought he hadn’t heard right. ‘What?’ he said. ‘But you agreed to take us into the Spanish Zone.’

  The old sheikh wobbled his tooth. ‘The camels are weak,’ he said. ‘And it is far. There is no water at all in the Zrouft. If we go on we will die.’

  Churchill looked at him aghast. His features assumed their most Winstonian ferocity and he thumped the nearest saddle with his massive fist. ‘We all die when it’s time for us to die!’ he thundered. ‘What happened to all that bullshit, then? What happened to the honour of the tribe?’

  The old man hung his head, and Sterling suddenly understood that he was desperately afraid. Churchill had said these people weren’t true desert nomads; now he’d met the real thing here, he glimpsed what his friend had meant. Mafoudh looked old, washed out and defeated. He was far from his own country, and the Zrouft terrified him. Argue as they might, the old man would not change his mind. Sterling cast round at the starlit faces, seeing that most of them were set with the same determination that the old sheikh was showing. Only Hamdu, who had been unusually quiet since the storm, showed signs of unrest. ‘What about you, Hamdu?’ Sterling asked in Arabic.

  The Negro raised his head and stared back at Sterling. ‘You saved me,’ he said, slowly. ‘If you wish it, I will go with you.’

  Faris, the other ex-slave, who was sitting next to Hamdu, chimed in. ‘If Hamdu goes, then I too will go.’

  ‘By God!’ the ex-Znaga Jafar cut in, standing up and gripping the Martini-Henri rifle that was always by his side. ‘Am I to be outdone by a couple of slaves? By the heavens, I will go, too!’

  That evening Sterling paid Mafoudh and the others and they divided up the food and the water-skins. After it was done, Churchill and Sterling sat together on their saddles, sharing the last of the whisky. ‘It’s a shame about Mafoudh,’ Churchill said, passing the open bottle to Sterling. ‘He’s let the fear get to him. I’ve seen it happen before.’

  Sterling shivered involuntarily and took a gulp of whisky to cover it. ‘You can’t blame him,’ he said. ‘The Zrouft sounds like it’s a little bit south of hell.’

  ‘That doesn’t seem to have put you off.’

  ‘I have an incentive.’

  Churchill smiled and took the bottle. ‘I must admit,’ he said, ‘when you told me you were a Conchie in the war, I had you down as a sissy. But when you brought Hamdu back ... well, I’ve never seen anything so brave. It paid off too. You were having me on about being a Conchie, weren’t you? Come on, what did you really do in the war?’

  Sterling felt the whisky loosening his tongue. It had been one of the harder, scarier periods of his life, and he needed relief. He took the bottle from Churchill again and treated himself to another long swig.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I
’ll tell you. I was a Conchie in the war. I refused to be called up. You can call it idealism, or just plain cowardice, but to me it was a kind of protest. My father was killed in the first hour on the Somme in nineteen sixteen, the most devastating hour in the history of war. Someone had to stand up against that, make sure it never happened again. Anyway, they put me inside — Wormwood Scrubs. When they let me out in 1942, I had a choice. I’d made my name as an experimental research chemist at Cambridge before the war, and I had a good knowledge of the new physics — relativity and quantum mechanics, that is. They wanted me to take part in the heavy-water project they were planning. Nothing was said about hydrogen bombs in those days, of course, but I knew enough to guess which way the wind was blowing, and I refused to be part of it.’

  ‘And the other choice?’ Churchill asked, taking the bottle back.

  ‘Was to be an ambulance driver on Overlord,’ Sterling said. ‘Auxiliary Ambulance Corps. You didn’t have to carry a gun, but they threw you right in at the deep end. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I settled for that.’

  Churchill grinned. ‘So you were there on D-Day.’

  ‘D-Day and every other damn day. Of course, I never fired a shot, never even held a weapon. But Eric, the carnage I saw, you wouldn’t believe. Chaps with their eyes hanging out on strings, with both their legs blown off, still alive with half their heads missing. The horror of wounds like that is almost ... mystical. Then, one day, near the end, we were in action with Seventh Armoured Brigade. There was some kind of obstruction on the road ahead, and a Daimler scout car was pinned down by antitank fire. There was a driver and an officer in the vehicle, both severely wounded. The car was blocking the road and halting the advance, and they sent an armoured bulldozer up to shift it out of the way. I don’t know what happened — something just snapped inside at the sheer inhumanity of it. I got out of the ambulance, ran to the scout car and pulled the two men clear before the bulldozer got there. I didn’t even notice that the Germans were shooting at me. Once I’d got them out, some other medics came up to help and we stretchered them to the ambulance. To me, it was just an act of humanity, but the CO of the brigade saw it happen, and made a big hoo-ha, so they gave me a George Medal for bravery. First time in the history of war that a coward gets a bravery award! But actually it was nothing — some of the acts of courage I saw among my “Conchie” comrades in the Ambulance Corps were unbelievable.’

  Churchill handed him the bottle. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘you deserve this. I don’t know what to say.’

  Sterling grinned at him. He swilled around the little whisky remaining in the bottle, holding it up in the moonlight. ‘Since we’re doing last confessions,’ he said, ‘why don’t you tell me about yourself? After all, there are no minor branches of the Churchill family, are there?’

  The big man chuckled and looked at the stars. ‘Hard keeping secrets in the desert,’ he said. He took a deep breath. ‘All right, I suppose you’ve bared all, so let me follow suit. Churchill isn’t my name — I’m not even British, actually.’

  For a moment Sterling was taken by surprise, and his mouth fell open.

  ‘I mean, I am legally a British citizen,’ Churchill assured him, ‘and the name Churchill is on my birth certificate, but my father’s name was Joe Gusenkian. He was an Armenian who fled from the massacres in western Turkey in nineteen fifteen. My mother was French. I was born in London, but we spoke Armenian and French at home, and I grew up in a sort of extended family where a lot of languages were spoken — German, Italian, even Russian. I only really learned English at school — the little I got of it. My father hated the Turks, and he was a great admirer of Winston Churchill, who’d pushed the British into the Dardanelles Campaign. It didn’t matter that they got their backsides kicked; anyone who bashed the Turks was a friend of Dad’s. That was why he decided to change his name by deed poll to Joe Churchill.’

  ‘So you became more British than the British to fit in,’ Sterling said.

  Churchill shrugged. ‘Refugee syndrome,’ he said. ‘Don’t stand out. Blend in. But the odd thing is, I never really felt British, not even in the war. I already spoke five languages by the time I was twenty, and when the war came they tried to draft me into the Special Operations Executive. I was all for the Empire and everything, but SOE agents in France were going down like flies — there was only about an even chance of survival. That was no way to fight a war, so I refused. Instead, or maybe as a punishment I often thought, they put me in Field Security — the spy-catchers’ department — where languages were also crucial, but you got to wear a uniform ... sometimes, anyway. I started to pick up Arabic when I was with Defence Security in Egypt on the desert border.’

  ‘What was that like?’

  ‘Bloody dicey, I’ll tell you. The day after I was posted there they sent me — in uniform — with an Arab, to meet a Libyan agent who was supposed to be supplying info on the Eyeties. When I saw the chap I smelt a rat, and he must have read my face, because he drew his Beretta and said, “Hands up!” Mustafa went for him like a terrier, and he fired. The shot went wide, and Mustafa got hold of his weapon. I tell you, he’d very nearly got the muzzle stuck in Mustafa’s ribs when I ran up and gave him a round through the head. Point-blank. Mustafa was livid. He said we could have got a lot out of him if we’d just overpowered him. That was the first time I ever killed a man, and I lost my breakfast all over the shop. I’ve shot four people since then, but I still can’t stomach the sight of blood. Anyway, there I was, spilling my guts, when Mustafa yelled that there was an Italian patrol advancing to contact. My nose’d been right. We only got out by the skin of our teeth.’

  There was a moment’s silence as both reflected.

  ‘Sorry,’ Churchill said suddenly. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have told that story. You being a Conch ... a pacifist and everything.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Sterling said. He paused again, then asked, ‘So what did you do before the war?’

  Churchill sighed. ‘You won’t believe me if I tell you.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘I tell you, you’ll think I’m kidding.’

  ‘No, I won’t. Go on.’

  ‘All right. I was a circus performer.’

  ‘What? You’re kidding?’

  ‘Indeed I am not, sir. My father ran “Gusenkian’s Travelling Circus”. We had ten Siberian tigers, six white Arab horses, two camels, a hippo, performing poodles, an ostrich, assorted giant snakes, and an Indian elephant called Rajah. My father did a bit of everything — acrobatics, clowning, animal-taming. He even played the trumpet.’

  ‘He didn’t bring all that menagerie to London with him?’

  ‘Good God, no! He had to ditch his old circus in Turkey, and he started it up in Britain around a cadre of acts he’d brought out with him. Did very well, actually. When I wasn’t at school I was trained as an acrobat with my mother, brothers and cousins. My mother was small and slender — a beautiful mover. But at fifteen I was already six foot tall and fifteen stone. My father tried me out in animal-taming, but I just didn’t have the nerve for it. I was petrified of those damn tigers. So he talked me into doing strong-man stunts, like lifting Rajah the elephant or being sat on by a hippo. For a while I was anchor for a human pyramid, but that fell through — literally. I dropped eight people, and the top man broke a collarbone. All I ever really wanted was to be accepted as a conventional Englishman, but with my background there was fat chance. Then the war came along and changed all that. I mean, they’d never have looked at me except that I spoke six languages, and suddenly there was a premium on that and I walked into a commission. The day I got that first pip was the best day of my life. I’d made it. I was in the officers’ mess.’

  ‘So what were you actually doing in Casablanca at the end of the war?’

  Churchill flapped his large hand noncommittally. ‘You ever see the film Casablanca?’ he enquired. ‘With Humphrey Bogart? You know — “Play it again, Sam”? Yes, well, Casa really was like that in
the nineteen forties. Full of Nazis and mafia and criminals of every nationality. Part of my job was to investigate links between organized crime and the military. I never got very far.’ He sighed. ‘The Germans collapsed and Hitler topped himself, and my bubble burst. They didn’t need me any more. I’d have happily stayed on. The war raised my expectations, but I never really achieved my goal in the end ...’

  They looked up as old Mafoudh shuffled shamefacedly over and invited them to the fire to drink tea. Later, Hamdu cooked rice with dried meat pounded to a green powder with stones. To Sterling it had the flavour of old socks.

  In the morning they parted formally. Sheikh Mafoudh avoided meeting Churchill’s eye but, after they had shaken hands, he raised both his arms and pointed southwest. ‘There is no water in the Zrouft,’ he said in Arabic, ‘but after seven days you will come to a wall of dunes. The dunes are not wide — they are not the Uruq ash-Shaytan, which is on the other side of the Ghayda, and there is a way through them. Set in the dunes is an overhanging cliff, and at its base is a spring, Ain Effet, which can be reached by climbing down a crevasse between the cliff and the sand. If you wish to live, you must water there.’

  Churchill bowed theatrically and declared, ‘We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end ... whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.’

  Then, leaving the bemused sheikh behind them, the two Englishmen and their three companions took their head-ropes and led their caravan off into the Zrouft.

  3

  It was the silence of the camels that woke him. There were twenty of them hobbled around the remains of the camp fire, mostly females and young, and all night their rhythmic chewing had formed the backdrop of his sleep. Suddenly they had stopped, and their silence felt as shrill as a scream. When Taha opened his eyes and saw that they were craning their necks and gawking fearfully towards the saltwort thickets fifty paces behind him, he knew there had to be a big predator lurking there.