Sandstorm

by Asher, Michael

  As the meat was roasting, Bes pressed Taha to describe how he had killed the Twisted One, and the hunters murmured with understanding and admiration, plying him with questions and making him tell the tale over and over again.

  ‘Truly,’ Bes commented, ‘there is no more fearsome animal than the leopard. The lion is stronger but neither so fast nor so brave.’

  When the meat was done, Bes divided it carefully into nine equal portions with a razor-sharp knife. He presented the first portion to Taha, then, as he called out the names of each of his men in turn, they came forward to take their share. They ate silently, using their knives and stones as plates. Taha found it succulent and delicious after the fennec-meat the previous night. When all was eaten and the bones and scraps thrown to the dogs, Taha offered to make tea for the company, which was politely refused. ‘We drink neither tea nor milk, sir,’ said Hawwash smugly. ‘On the hunt we drink water but once, before sunrise, and then not again till sunset.’

  ‘But how do you get your water?’ Taha asked. ‘Many of the wells are too deep to draw water without camels.’

  Hawwash gave a superior smile. ‘We rarely use the nomads’ wells,’ he said. ‘We know many small watering places that the hook-noses do not know, sir. We know the hidden paths and secret places both in the south and the north. Their secrets have been passed down from father to son, sir, across the ages of time.’

  Bes noticed the bezoar stones around Taha’s neck, and asked him about them. Taha recounted how he had tracked and killed a white antelope up by the Jebel Sarhro as an initiation test. In turn, he asked about the Nemadi’s wanderings in the desert, and the animals they hunted.

  Bes explained that they had left their womenfolk and other kinsmen in the Tekna, far to the south, to look for lemha, which had almost disappeared there. Once upon a time ostrich had been their preferred quarry — ostrich meat was rich and full of grease that could be stored in skins, and they could trade the ostrich feathers for guns and cartridges. ‘But the ostrich is hard to kill,’ Bes explained. ‘She will take a bullet at fifty paces and not even falter in her step, unless you hit her vitals — and she can outrun a galloping horse.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘But the ostrich is almost hunted out,’ he added. ‘First by the hook-no— I mean the camel-folk, and then by the Christians in their iron chariots. We made a pact with the Ostrich Spirit that we would hunt them no more, but go after the lemha instead.’

  Bes described how they had tracked the family of addax for six days with their dogs, intending to kill only the bull. The hunters never killed female animals or young if they could help it, he said. The trail had led them directly to the carnage Taha had seen, and they had decided to lie in wait there for two days to see if the killers would come back.

  ‘What would you have done if they had returned?’ Taha enquired.

  ‘Why, we should have slaughtered one of them for every animal they slaughtered,’ Bes said.

  ‘And yet you kill the lemha,’ Taha observed. ‘We too.’

  Bes smiled but his eyes were grave. ‘There is a connection between the Great God, the hunter and the prey,’ he said. ‘When we merge in half-death trance, the Great God gives us the prey — the addax, the oryx, the antelope, the ibex, the ostrich — but the animal itself is willing. For while we eat its flesh, the essence of the animal lives on eternally, forever renewing itself, just as the stars appear each night though they vanish during the day. The ones who slaughtered those animals did not eat their flesh — they killed them without purpose, interrupting the flow of spirit.’

  Taha scratched his head, not fully understanding, but Bes seemed reluctant to go on. There was a pregnant silence until finally a hunter named Pyet, who was almost as broad as he was high, spoke up. ‘Bes is inhaden yenun,’ he said. ‘One who talks with the spirits. It is difficult for him to explain such things in the language of words. That is what he meant when he talked about “earth language”. Some things cannot be perfectly explained.’

  Taha nodded, remembering his own initiation vision, induced by afyun, in which he had felt himself unite with the soul of the white antelope. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘My father, Belhaan, is also inhaden yenun.’

  Bes croaked as if clearing his throat. ‘The world is One,’ he said. ‘Have you not observed it yourself? It exists in perfect harmony. No part of it can be taken away without another part being affected. Before the hunt, we become one with our prey. The spirit flows like a river between the hunter and the hunted: they fit together like lovers. Our prey is sacred. To kill it in the manner of the Delim is an insult to the Great God. An abomination.’

  ‘Bes,’ Taha said. ‘Will you come with me and punish the desecrators of the lemha. Like this, you will propitiate the Great God.’

  Bes considered it for a moment. ‘Take not the name of the Great God in vain,’ he said coldly. ‘We have no wish to become embroiled in the feuds of the camel-people. What goes on betwixt you is not our concern.’

  ‘But what of these new guns?’ Taha asked. ‘They are surely a threat to the flow of spirit?’

  Bes was cutting a toothpick from a branch of white-spined acacia. His eyes, lapped in folds of wrinkles pickled by the sun, were distant. He sighed. ‘The time of the hunters has almost passed,’ he said. ‘It is as the Great God wills. Whether we avenge the spirit of the addax or not, these weapons will prevail.’

  He placed the toothpick in his mouth and gazed at the horizon. ‘The way of life of our people is written upon the rocks of the desert,’ he said distantly. ‘Have you not seen them? Pictures made by the inhaden yenun from the dimmest depths of time. Where there are now regs there were once forests. Where there are now dunes there were once rivers; where there are now sand-seas there were lakes filled with fish, with crocodiles and hippopotami — creatures we know only from stories our grandmothers tell us.’

  ‘I have seen these pictures,’ Taha said.

  ‘In those days the hunters used only spears and bows and arrows. They had no metal — spearheads, arrowheads and knives they made of stones shaped with great skill. Some of our people still have this skill, but few now. The great veldts our forefathers, the Bafour, knew, have slowly become unstitched like a jerkin, split at the seams. The forests have gone, so that only few of the old tadout trees can be seen, and there are no saplings. Instead there is saltwort, white-spined acacia, tamarisk, Sodom’s apple. The lakes and rivers have dried up and been replaced by sands. The days of the great beasts have passed, just as the day of stones has passed, just as the use of our old rifles will pass. Just as everything will pass. It is the way of the Great God.’

  Taha nodded again. ‘Then you will not help me?’

  Bes smiled enigmatically, then closed his eyes and opened them. ‘We shall ask the Great God,’ he said.

  7

  Though Hamdu found the path through the dunes on the edge of the Zrouft, it was still late afternoon before Sterling’s caravan reached the Rose of Cimarron. Even closer up, little more of the aircraft’s shape was revealed. By chance she had landed in a great field of fish-scale dunes and the restless sands had covered her almost completely. No wonder, Sterling thought, she had never been located from the air. The dune-field was punctuated by islands of wind-mangled acacia and tamarisk, and in the distance, perhaps half a mile away, there was a school of yardangs — rocks with slender stems and bloated heads like petrified fungi.

  About fifty yards from the aircraft, Hamdu halted his camel and made the sign against the evil eye. ‘This place is cursed,’ he said. ‘I go no nearer.’

  ‘Nor I,’ Faris agreed.

  ‘Oh Lord,’ Churchill said. ‘You survived a sandstorm and a week in the Zrouft and an aeroplane gives you the heebie-jeebies?’

  ‘I go no nearer,’ Hamdu scowled.

  ‘All right,’ Churchill sighed. ‘We’ll go on foot.’

  While the others unloaded the camels, Sterling and Churchill walked towards the aircraft, but within twenty yards, Churchill paused to take in the sigh
t. ‘Damn,’ he said. ‘Knew I should have brought a camera. This would have looked marvellous on my wall. See, she made a crash-landing — the undercarriage folded, but she’s intact apart from that. Blow me, if you could rebuild the landing gear you could probably even fly her out.’

  Sterling was only half listening. He was staring at the bulk of the aircraft under the layers of sand, his head full of images of Billy. His son, here, alone, in this stultifyingly empty wilderness. He shivered and felt tears in his eyes. He brushed them away, and approached the sand-covered aircraft.

  Churchill went to inspect the props and the twin 1200 HP Pratt & Whitney engines in the nascelles on the wings, while Sterling, beginning at the opposite end from the tailplane, began to clear away the sand with his bare hands. It was not difficult work, and soon Churchill joined him. The sand was warm on the surface from the day’s sun, but cold underneath. Clear of the sand, the fuselage looked as if it had been recently burnished and, just below the cockpit, he found the legend Rose of Cimarron in black letters, only just legible after years of abrasion by the moving sand. When he had uncovered the side door, Churchill called Sterling over. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ he asked.

  Sterling looked at him, knowing that it was the moment of truth, knowing that Corrigan’s tale might have been a lie, and that all this effort might have been for nothing, or that his son’s corpse might lie on the other side of that door.

  ‘Dammit, Eric,’ he said. ‘I have to know.’

  He wrenched on the door and it opened easily.

  Then both Sterling and Churchill screamed.

  Swinging out of the door was the most ghoulish figure Sterling had ever seen. It was neither a corpse nor a skeleton, but a frame of bones with the skin dried on them like a tight suit, a skull whose jaw was opened in a monstrous grin, whose rotten hair still stood like tufts on its pate, whose vacant eye-sockets glared at them balefully, whose knuckle bones broke through parchment skin on its fingers to jab and poke at them.

  Sterling leapt backwards as the ghoul seemed to take a step towards them, then it tripped and tumbled forward, crashing awkwardly in the sand, no more than a lifeless bag of bones.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Sterling said.

  Churchill knelt down to examine the corpse. ‘It’s completely mummified,’ he said. ‘See — skin and ligaments, but no organs at all and no smell.’

  The corpse wore some kind of orange suit, in strips and tatters, and Churchill began to feel for the pockets. ‘There’s something in here,’ he said but, before he could find it, Sterling pointed to a nametag on the orange funeral-wrap where the left breast pocket might have been. Maj. K.L. Craven, it read.

  Almost simultaneously, Churchill pulled a wallet out of the remains of the map pocket. He examined the contents carefully. There was no map, but there was a pilot’s licence and other documents in the name of Keith Craven.

  ‘God Almighty,’ Churchill half whispered. ‘What do you know? It’s Ravin’ Craven, the blue-eyed war hero, the army air ace; so cool that butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. This is how he ended up. Jesus Christ! Doesn’t look so cool now. So are the mighty fallen: hoist by their own petards.’

  Sterling stared at him in surprise. ‘What do you mean by that?’ he demanded. ‘I thought you said you only knew Craven by name.’

  Churchill looked suddenly embarrassed, as if he’d been caught out. ‘Name and reputation, I should have said.’

  Sterling had returned his attention to the mummy. ‘Thank God it’s not Billy,’ he said.

  Churchill looked doubtful. ‘It certainly doesn’t look like it,’ he said. ‘But someone could have changed clothes. Can we be a hundred per cent sure?’

  ‘This can’t be Billy,’ Sterling said. ‘Because Billy was missing the joint of the little finger on his left hand. He got it caught in a wire fence when he was eight and it was ripped off.’

  Churchill glanced at the left hand of the mummified corpse. The joint was intact.

  ‘He always reckoned it affected his batting in cricket,’ Sterling said almost to himself. ‘But the truth was he just found cricket deadly boring.’

  They clambered inside, Sterling first, followed by Churchill. It was dim in the cabin, but not dark — the portholes let in enough light to see. The first thing that struck Sterling was how well preserved the aircraft was. It was almost as if it had come down only days, not years, before. The passenger seat-slings along the sides were still intact, and the three static lines originally attached to parachutes were still firmly clipped to the horizontal bar overhead. The floor was covered in packets of cigarettes, chewing gum, chocolate bars and tools. There were several US army-style water-canteens, and an overturned jerry can with the British MOD arrow on it — all of them empty.

  ‘Look!’ Churchill said excitedly, and Sterling glanced up to see him pointing to a long narrow tank that seemed to run almost the whole length of the cabin. The big man tapped it with his fingers and the metal made a hollow, ringing sound. ‘Spare tank,’ Churchill said. ‘Hobart was right. They fitted an extra tank to extend the range, so they weren’t going to Zagora at all.’

  Sterling stood next to Churchill and laid his hand on the cool metal. ‘You mean Corrigan was lying,’ he said.

  ‘At least about that. He wanted to cover up Craven’s intentions, that’s for sure.’

  There were more surprises in the cockpit. The control panels were intact, and an old leather flying helmet was tied to the pilot’s seat. There was a little pile of goodies on the floor — a carton of compo rations, a length of cord, a hatchet, a wrench, a flashlight — looking as if someone had only this moment collected them. Sterling picked up a half-finished packet of hard-tack biscuits, which at once dissolved into powder. Clipped in a bracket next to the seat was a thermos flask. Churchill pulled it out and unscrewed the cap. ‘Good God!’ he exclaimed. ‘Look at that — there’s still coffee in there.’

  It was a relief, though, to find no other corpses. Whatever had happened to Billy, at least Corrigan’s tale had held up in that respect. On the way back out through the cabin, Churchill’s face suddenly assumed a puzzled expression. He glanced around. ‘Doesn’t it strike you that something’s missing?’ he asked.

  Sterling stared at the empty space beyond the seat-slings. ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘The cargo,’ Churchill said, grinning. ‘Corrigan said they were carrying supplies ...’

  ‘No,’ Sterling corrected him. ‘That was what Arnold told me. Corrigan didn’t mention the cargo. Arnold said they were carrying food supplies for the French army in Zagora. Craven’s company had the contract.’

  ‘Did you see the manifest?’

  ‘Yes ... well, no, actually, but it was confirmed by a French army clerk we spoke to.’

  ‘Then where is it?’

  ‘Somebody looted it, obviously.’

  Churchill raised an eyebrow. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But where’s the evidence? Everything else is here, even the cigarettes and chewing gum, but no cargo. No bits of broken boxes or wrappings inside or out and ...’ His eyes lit up and he pounced on a dark mass of webbing coiled at the back of the cabin. ‘Look at this,’ he said excitedly. ‘Baggage nets. Any cargo has to be lashed down with these things, but they haven’t even been unfastened. Are you telling me that the looters took the stuff and then neatly coiled and fastened up the nets afterwards? It doesn’t make sense.’

  Sterling considered it, flicking through the probabilities with scientific intensity.

  ‘They could have jettisoned it,’ he said, ‘when they knew the crate was going down.’

  There was an expression of triumph on Churchill’s face. ‘George,’ he said. ‘Corrigan never mentioned jettisoning cargo, did he? You said he never mentioned cargo, and that’s because they weren’t carrying any. They never intended to go to Zagora at all — if they had they wouldn’t have needed the extra fuel. This tank must hold what —three or four hundred gallons. A Dakota C 47 like this has a three thousand five hu
ndred kilo payload, but not with that extra tank on board. They couldn’t have carried anywhere near the full payload. It just wouldn’t have been economical.’

  Sterling looked confused. ‘Why would the French military clerk lie?’

  ‘Maybe they were going to pick up cargo rather than deliver it. Maybe it was something they didn’t want to advertise. Maybe the clerk had been slipped something to keep his mouth shut.’

  ‘You mean Craven was into something illegal?’

  Churchill frowned and crosshatches appeared on the high forehead. ‘That company he worked for had some very dubious connections. I told you that when I was in Casablanca it was part of my job to investigate links between the mafia and the Forces. Didn’t Corrigan say he wanted to come out here with you? Pretty crazy move unless he was after something they left out here.’

  ‘That’s what I thought initially, but if he was after something it had to be on the aircraft, because that’s all that’s shown on the map. There’s nothing here, and if you’re right there never was. What you’re saying doesn’t add up anyway, because no one in their right mind would have taken a boy with them on a flight involving something devious. I mean, nobody forced Craven to take Billy, and if Billy had seen anything odd he’d certainly have told Arnold. It would have been a pretty stupid move.’

  Churchill blinked, apparently convinced. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘He’d have had to be an idiot, and with the DFC and bar he can’t have been that, can he? I mean, he was mister blue-eyed boy, wasn’t he? He was mister butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth, who sported the old-school tie and used to shit roses.’

  There was a bitterness in Churchill’s tone that Sterling hadn’t heard before, and he looked at his companion enquiringly.