‘And the Englishman?’
‘Don’t worry about him. Wolfgang has been assigned to him.’
‘Then what are my orders?’
‘Steppenwolf says you are to visit the drop tonight for redeployment instructions. You are going after the boy.’
*
It was while serving in North Africa that Von Neumann had learned Arabic — it had saved his life during the Sonnenblume fiasco. He had a certain disdainful admiration for the nomads, acknowledging that, despite their racial inferiority, they lived by a code of honour not dissimilar from that of the SS.
Now, Von Neumann watched the nomads’ leader, Amir ould Hamel, as he walked towards him across the rubble-strewn court. The Arab’s unhurried dignity betrayed nothing, and Von Neumann was suddenly filled with anticipation. He had supplied the Delim with all the details Steppenwolf had obtained from Corrigan. Had they found the Rose of Cimarron? Had they discovered any news of the boy?
Amir halted before Von Neumann, a small, tightly built man, as all the nomads were, with brooding eyes under saturnine eyebrows, a disdainful hook of a nose and slivers of moustache and beard. He looked as poised and graceful as a ballet-dancer, Von Neumann thought. They shook hands and exchanged the courteous desert greetings, then Von Neumann invited the chief inside the partly ruined hall, where he’d had a carpet and cushions laid out. He snapped his fingers for tea, which was quickly brought by his servant, a furtive Senegalese.
Von Neumann watched as Amir swallowed three glasses of tea, one after the other, and finally set the glass back on the brass tray. The chief waved the servant away imperiously, and leaned towards Von Neumann, ready to talk. ‘We found it,’ he said. ‘The big bird — it was there, on the Ghaydat al-Jahoucha, just where you said it would be. But by God we were taking a risk venturing into Reguibat land.’
Von Neumann watched the nomad hungrily. ‘Did you inspect the aircraft?’ he demanded. ‘Did you find anything?’
Amir surveyed Von Neumann haughtily, his satanic eyebrows creased with displeasure. ‘No,’ he said, ‘we didn’t stay long. That place is evil, it is peopled by jinn, and even the local clans don’t go near it. Then, on the way back, fortune smiled on us. We found a Znaga camp, unprotected, and we demanded information. The serf was stubborn, so we did a job on his wife and children. In the end he squealed. He told us that there is such a boy as you mentioned, who came down in the iron bird on Ghaydat al-Jahoucha. The Znaga said he is alive and living with the Reguibat. He swore he didn’t know which family or clan the boy lived among, but he knew his name — Taha Minan Nijum, Fell-From-The-Stars.’
Von Neumann could scarcely conceal his delight. The Delim had done better than he’d dreamed possible. If the boy was alive, he could be found. If he could be found then the answers that Von Neumann had sought for so long — the answers to the Sonnenblume riddle — could soon be within his grasp.
‘That is what we discovered,’ Amir was saying. ‘And as we risked our lives for you, you will now keep your part of the bargain: five bales of blue cloth for every man and ten for myself.’
Von Neumann smiled. The blue cotton cloth, imported from France, had provided the key to buying the Delim’s services. To the nomads it was a currency. They even liked the blue stain the dye left on their skin, which they said gave them extra protection against the sun. It was a small price to pay compared with the riches of Sonnenblume.
‘You’ll get your blue cloth,’ he said. ‘But you must go back.’
The sheikh looked at him sharply. ‘You pay us now,’ he said sourly. ‘We did not agree to go back a second time. It was only because we were moving fast that we managed to return without a fight. After the war between the tribes the councils of the Delim and the Reguibat agreed that neither would enter the other’s territory without permission. We have violated that agreement and that is an act of war. When the Reguibat gather they are many — as many as the crows in the sky. Our party cannot fight an entire tribe.’
The German’s eyes were gleaming, and the sheikh did not miss it. ‘You have a plan?’ he asked.
‘You could fight a whole tribe if you had modern rifles,’ he said. ‘You could fight almost anyone.’
For the first time, Amir dropped his languid pose. ‘You mean Mother-Of-Ten-Shots rifles?’ he asked. ‘The ones that carry a store of bullets and you pull a handle back to fire one after the other?’
Von Neumann held up a hand. He rummaged under the cushions behind him for a moment, and brought out a long object wrapped in waxed paper. He unwrapped it carefully and removed a heavy wooden-stocked rifle, still covered in its factory grease. He held it up with both hands, then passed it to the sheikh.
‘Look at this,’ he smiled. ‘It is a Mother-Of-Eight-Shots, an Amerikani rifle. The one they call Garand. This one will fire many bullets without even pulling a handle. It is the best rifle in the world.’
Amir was sitting up straight, cradling the weapon as if it was a baby, his eyes ablaze. Von Neumann saw that he was virtually drooling as he examined the weapon.
‘By God,’ Amir said. ‘With such weapons as these we could defeat the entire Reguibat tribe. We could even regain our territory from them and drive them into exile. Better still, we could slaughter the men and take their women and children. A rightful revenge for the years of humiliation they have inflicted on us.’ He glanced at Von Neumann avidly. ‘How many of these do you have?’ he demanded.
‘Enough,’ Von Neumann said. ‘But don’t get any ideas. They’re safely stored and you don’t get them unless you agree to the deal.’
‘My word is my bond. What do you want us to do?’
‘This time I want you to find that boy, Taha Minan Nijum. I don’t care how you do it, but you must find him and bring him back to me — alive.’
‘But the Reguibat ...’ Amir protested. ‘We can’t just ride up to them and say, “Where is Taha Minan Nijum and what clan does he belong to?”’
‘Go back to the iron bird. Start from there. Send patrols out to all the nearest encampments. If anyone resists, kill them. Do what you did with the Znaga — take prisoners, force them to talk. You will soon find what you are looking for. I also want you to keep a look out to the northwest, on the plain you call the Zrouft. If you find any travellers coming from that direction, stop them. If you find any afrang among them, you must bring them here to me.’
A frown creased Amir’s brow. ‘It will be difficult to do all that quickly,’ he said. ‘The Ghayda is hard to get into from the south — on one side there is a quicksand and on the other high dunes. We have no one who knows the way through the quicksand, so we must go through the dunes, but it is dangerous. Last time we lost three camels. And what of the Reguibat? Once they hear we have re-entered their territory they will gather a pursuit party.’
‘You won’t have to worry about them,’ Von Neumann said. ‘First, because you will have the new rifles, and second, because I shall be organizing a small diversion in their rear. Simple military tactics. Believe me, they won’t want to worry about one boy and a handful of nomads.’
‘How many bullets do we get?’ Amir demanded.
‘Thirty-two each — four full magazines.’
‘Thirty-two! But that is nothing!’
Von Neumann grinned. ‘It’s plenty,’ he said. ‘That way you won’t go blasting off rounds for fun. Make every shot count. You do the job properly and you’ll get more ammunition than you ever dreamed of, and many more rifles. Enough for the entire Delim. And you will be in charge of the ammunition, which will make you the most powerful man in the tribe. Once you have the guns you can do what you like. Wipe the Reguibat off the face of the earth for all I care.’
5
For six days Sterling and Churchill had seen no one else but their companions, nothing but the terrible black plain of the Zrouft going on and on until its emptiness scoured their minds. At times Sterling felt they were no longer on the planet earth at all, but had passed through the eye of uncertainty into a pa
rallel universe where they were the only moving things. Nothing else lived here. After the first day they had passed no tracks, no animal droppings, no sign of human life, and thereafter not a single tree nor blade of grass. There were no hares, no snakes, no desert rats, no lizards, no skinks, no scorpions — not even flies. It was a sterile universe, as strange and un-lived in as Mars. It was an effort to remember that beyond all this there were teeming cities: the world had been whittled down to their tiny group of survivors, and Sterling experienced weird paradoxes of scale. When he turned his gaze to the distant horizon, it seemed that their small caravan was as insignificant as an amoeba oozing across an ocean; when he turned inward to the group, though, every action and every word seemed of epic significance — as if you were close up to a giant cinema screen.
Every day was hell in its own way. Every day a furnace wind blew in their faces, beginning lightly as they set off after sunrise, and growing in strength towards noon. By mid-morning it was almost unbearable, and soon Sterling’s lips were cracked and broken, his face reduced to a mass of itching sores — he began to wish fervently he had worn an Arab head-cloth to keep out the biting sand. By now they had to ration their water to a few cups a day each, and the hot wind began to leach their water-skins dry. They ate only in the evenings — Arab bread cooked in the sand under the embers of a fire, so dry that Sterling had to force it down.
Churchill never complained, but he became morose and short-tempered. Often he cursed his stupidity in taking on the assignment at all. During the long, painful, silent hours of the day, his mind would constantly replay the scene of his first meeting with Sterling.
When he’d walked into Sterling’s spacious terraced house in Kew, he’d immediately classified him as a ‘boffin type’. Sterling was slightly built, and had been sloppily dressed in an old pepper-and-salt jacket, khaki shirt and squinted tie. Churchill thought he was probably in his forties, with a foxy face, keen eyes and greying, curly, uncombed hair. ‘George Bridger Sterling,’ the boffin had said, extending his hand. ‘Thank you for coming.’
Actually, Churchill had been surprised at Sterling’s appearance. He had imagined a broad-beamed and ponderous burgher of the old school. By contrast, Sterling seemed positively eccentric, a man whose almost palpable energy — or perhaps it was inherent nervousness — kept his body ceaselessly on the boil. He had looked defensive. His clear blue eyes had appraised Churchill carefully, then he’d gestured to a wooden upright chair by the fire. ‘Chilly, isn’t it?’ he’d said, in the same slightly nasal voice Churchill had noticed on the phone. ‘Whisky?’
‘I could murder one,’ Churchill nodded, and sat down, stiffly upright, in a wooden chair. Sterling returned from a side-cabinet with whisky in two tumblers and handed one to Churchill. ‘Afraid it’s neat,’ he commented. ‘I’ve run out of soda.’
‘You can’t get it for love nor money,’ Churchill said, shaking his head wryly, taking the whisky. ‘Heavens —these days! The things up with which we have to put!’
While he sampled the whisky, Sterling contemplated him uneasily. There was a matching straight-backed chair on the opposite side of the fireplace, but he didn’t sit. He played with the whisky glass, his eyes flickering nervously, and Churchill realized that he was anything but at ease.
‘So,’ Churchill began. ‘Tell me about your son.’
Sterling paused. ‘Billy was fourteen,’ he said. ‘Still a child, really. I blame myself for letting him go off to Morocco at that age, but my wife, Margaret, was suffering from depression, and couldn’t look after him. During termtime it was all right. Billy was away at boarding school. But it was the summer holidays and he had time on his hands. As for myself — well, it was just after the war, you know. I wasn’t exactly in a fit state to entertain him, and of course I had the business ... we were just setting it up then.’
‘Dakin and Sterling’s?’
‘Yes. Vernon Dakin — the man who recommended you — was an officer in the Royal Tank Regiment during the war. Quite a broad thinker for an officer, if you know what I mean. With my record he could have been excused if he ... Anyway, he’s a good businessman. I’m a chemist, so we were complementary elements, you could say. I look after the technical side of the business and he does the management ...’
‘So how come you sent Billy off to Morocco?’
‘His grandfather, Arnold Hobart, was out there at the time. He was some sort of attaché to the British Embassy. Since Margaret and I couldn’t look after Billy, Margaret asked her father to have him for a few weeks, and he agreed. At the time it seemed the perfect solution. I took him out there on the new air-service to Casablanca from Paris. Billy loved aeroplanes. Did you ever come across Arnold Hobart when you were in Casablanca?’
Churchill reflected for a moment. ‘Broad-chested fellow?’ he said. ‘Half-Colonel? Head like the Sphinx?’
‘Sounds like him.’
‘Remember him well. I was a military cop originally, but in forty-five Field Security was transferred to the Intelligence Corps, where it should have been from the beginning. Same job, different badge. Hobart was Intelligence Corps, so our paths crossed from time to time, that’s all.’
‘Anyway,’ Sterling went on grimly, ‘Arnold had a friend called Craven — Major Keith Craven, a former Long Range Desert Group pilot in the war. One of the few army men to win the DFC. Did you know him?’
‘Ravin’ Craven? Heard the name, certainly.’
‘Arnold had been in the LRDG before the Int. and he and Craven had been pals. In nineteen forty-six, Craven had got his demob and was working as a pilot for Atlantic Air Transport, a civilian company in Casa. He was flying a Douglas Dakota, an ex-USAF kite called Rose of Cimarron. One day he offered to take Billy on a flight. Billy leapt at the idea, probably, and, knowing Craven was a very sound man, Arnold agreed. It was only meant to be a quick there and back — Casablanca to the Foreign Legion post at Zagora — a round daytrip. Some brilliant views of the High Atlas. Only thing was, the Rose of Cimarron never arrived. She went down in the mountains somewhere — at least that’s what we thought — and no trace of her was ever found: no pilot, no crew, no Billy —nothing. Until now.’
For a moment Sterling’s eyes moistened. Churchill polished off his whisky and, in the absence of a table, laid the glass on the floor.
‘I presume a search and rescue mission went out?’ he commented.
‘Not just one. Several. Arnold and I did hardly anything else for almost a year but search for Billy. After Arnold moved back to Britain, I went out there on a regular basis every summer for five years. We scoured the route between Casablanca and Zagora with a fine-tooth comb. Nobody knew a thing.’
‘What about the company? Weren’t they interested in a lost aircraft — I mean, they’re not cheap?’
‘They just wrote it off for the insurance. They were so disorganized that they didn’t even know who’d been on the aircraft with Craven. Their paperwork was an unbelievable mess and, of course, there was no radar or anything out there: it was like the Dark Ages as far as technology was concerned. In the end the French authorities concluded that Billy and Craven and the rest of the crew were missing presumed dead.’
‘So what happened? You said “until now”, and you mentioned new evidence on the phone.’
Sterling had paused. ‘I’d better tell you the whole story,’ he’d said.
He had related the details of his meeting with Corrigan, and how, only hours earlier, he had found the man’s mutilated corpse in a garret in Rotherhithe. Churchill had listened with an attention that became increasingly rapt as Sterling described his escape from the police.
When he’d finished there was a pregnant silence. Sterling stared at Churchill, who squirmed in his seat, and cleared his throat.
‘Well, Mr Sterling,’ he said finally. ‘It’s certainly a tale and a half. But to be honest I hadn’t reckoned on this business of the police. I mean, I was a military cop myself, you know. I don’t normally touch anything illegal
. Wouldn’t you be better just to hand the map over to them and come clean, as your father-in-law said?’
‘After running from the scene of Corrigan’s death and assaulting a police officer? I’ve got a record. They’d throw the book at me.’
Churchill considered it carefully. ‘Maybe,’ he said uneasily. ‘But we’re talking about some real nasty stuff. I mean, that wasn’t an amateur job, not unless you imagined the piano-wire round the neck. You have to be trained to use that stuff — some commandos used it in the war. The Brandenbergers — Hitler’s special service troops — used it, but the British did too. Maybe the mafia, like Arnold said, and you wouldn’t want to get mixed up with that lot, believe me.’
‘The question is, do you believe me?’
Churchill wriggled his big body awkwardly. ‘As I say, I normally do aircrew,’ he said. ‘It’s plain sailing. Most of the ops are on record. Even if we find Rose of Cimarron, so what? Your boy’s not going to be there, is he?’
‘Maybe not, but as Corrigan said, you have to have a fixed point to start with.’
‘But I mean, sorry to say it, but even if Corrigan was telling the truth, it was a long time ago. Even if your boy wasn’t killed by the Arabs — look, I have to speak frankly — he might have died of disease, or in an accident. There are no hospitals or doctors out there. You might not even be able to find his body — it could have been picked clean by vultures or hyenas by now.’
Sterling had regarded him with disappointment. ‘Look,’ he’d said, ‘my business partner said you were a good man. If you don’t want the job, say so now. I’m not poor, Mr Churchill. I’ll pay you well — anything you want.’
‘That’s tempting,’ Churchill had said, apparently wrestling with himself. ‘Still, I ...’ He’d straightened his dicky-bow, thinking that he had done as much bargaining as he needed to. ‘All right,’ he’d said. ‘To hell with the police. After all, assuming you’ve told me the truth, you’ve done nothing wrong really. You’ve got a deal, but we’d better get weaving right away before any unwelcome visitors start knocking at the door.’
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