Sandstorm

by Asher, Michael

  Hobart was rubbing his boxer’s hands. ‘Come on then,’ he said. ‘Let’s get the rest of the stuff out and loaded in the lorries. I want to be off by this afternoon at the latest.’

  The Delim resumed work, their shovels crunching in the sand. More bundles of gold came up. Hobart brought his janissary-faced pipe from his smock pocket and stuck it in his mouth. He walked up to where Sterling knelt, his arms crossed over his chest, rocking back and forth.

  ‘Sorry, old man,’ he said, ‘but I’ve waited my whole life for this.’

  ‘Arnold?’ Sterling was repeating, as if he still couldn’t believe the man standing there was his father-in-law. ‘You killed Corrigan?’

  Hobart removed the pipe, brought a pouch of tobacco from another pocket and began to fill it. ‘You supplied his address,’ he scoffed. ‘The man was out of his tree, of course, or he’d never have trusted you with it. I’d been trying to find him for years. Someone spotted him hiding out in Fez in nineteen forty-six and told me. Von Neumann had been on his trail ever since he became operational again in nineteen forty-seven, when Skorzeny gave me his name. Von Neumann revered Skorzeny and wanted to put his blunder right — he thought Otto was Steppenwolf.’

  Sterling turned lifeless eyes to Hobart. ‘But why did you try to persuade me to go to the police?’ he asked dully.

  Hobart shrugged. ‘Just covering myself. I knew you wouldn’t. Not with that stretch in the Scrubs on your record. Knew you wouldn’t touch them with a bargepole. But even if you had it could have been worked out.’

  ‘And that stuff about the mafia ...?’

  A big smile creased Hobart’s massive face. ‘I thought that was rather good,’ he said. ‘There was no such person as Frank Quayle, and I never made any phone calls to old colleagues that night — as if I’d really have compromised myself! The story about Corrigan half-inching fifty grand from the mafia was just made up to explain why he might have been murdered. You fell for it lock, stock, and beer-barrel.’

  ‘All these years,’ Sterling whispered. ‘I thought ... you were an honourable man.’

  ‘So are they all, all honourable men,’ Hobart said, striking a match and lighting the pipe. ‘I found out early that honour means having a big bank account,’ he went on bitterly, letting smoke trickle out through his teeth. ‘That’s all it means. All I wanted, George, was to have the money to live up to the family name, to live like a member of the gentry was meant to, not to be a damned civil servant. You understand that, don’t you? Sonnenblume was my big chance. You see, in forty-five I was attached to the Int. Corps and sent to Casablanca on Operation Esperance — that was the Allied op to stop Nazi funds getting out of Europe. I was lucky. I got wind of a big treasure convoy and I kept it to myself — myself and Craven, that was. We’d known each other well in the LRDG in the Western Desert. In fact, I wrote the citations for his DFC and bar — they were spurious, actually. Craven was mouthy, but in the end he was chicken-livered. Anyway, we thought, why should the bloody Allies have the Nazi gold when we’d risked our necks for five years? I’d lost my son on Crete and my wife in the Blitz. We decided to keep it for ourselves, you see. I sent Craven out in one of those little Wacos he liked to fly, and he spotted the convoy. He landed the kite at Zagora, and I picked him up. We led the LRDG patrol in together. I think you know the rest.’

  Sterling shook his head again, as if he had something in it he wanted to get rid of. ‘You ... murdered your own men,’ he murmured, hearing his own voice coming from far off.

  Hobart made a helpless gesture. ‘Had no choice,’ he said. ‘There’s no honour among thieves, George. Can’t keep ten thousand kilos of gold a secret among fifteen men for long. Somebody was bound to squeal. You know how it goes: “Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest — Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum — Drink and the devil had done for the rest.” Only it wasn’t the bloody SRD rum that did for them, it was me and Keith.’

  He blew a smoke cloud, his eyes distant, as if musing on his dead comrades. Sterling gagged at the sheer callousness of Hobart’s words. ‘All right,’ he said slowly. ‘But I have to know ... why Billy? What did he have to do with it? Why did you have to wreck his life and mine too? You caused your own daughter’s suicide.’

  Hobart took the pipe out of his mouth, and his expression turned black. He glared at Sterling with a look of repulsion. ‘Lip, George,’ he snapped. ‘Margaret had had it the day she teamed up with a limp-wrist like you.’

  He looked at the piles of bagged gold, and his expression relaxed slightly. ‘Can’t change it now,’ he sighed. ‘It was you and Margaret who wanted Billy to come to Morocco. Like a bloody fool I accepted — never could deny Margaret anything, not even marrying you. Should have known Craven would take advantage.’

  Sterling watched Churchill sidling nearer to them. The big man stuffed a half-smoked cigar into his mouth and sat down in the sand, listening. ‘Got a match, Arnold?’ he asked.

  Hobart passed him a box of Swan Vestas. ‘You know what we used to say?’ he commented.

  ‘Yes,’ Churchill sniggered. ‘Your face and my backside.’

  They both chortled like schoolkids.

  ‘How did Craven take advantage of Billy?’ Sterling insisted, looking at them as if they were both mad.

  ‘Craven was scared,’ Hobart said, the grin fading from his lips. He took the matches back from Churchill. ‘As I said, he was always chicken-livered under the bluster. He’d seen the way I’d dealt with the patrol, and he thought I might whack him out too. While I was in hospital in Algiers with my leg — it had turned gangrenous and I almost lost it — he came back out here with two vehicles and a crew of five prisoners of war, and moved the gold from the Kidja. God knows what he’d promised those poor buggers, but he certainly lost them on the way back. I don’t suppose they’ll ever be found. Anyway, by the time I got back to Casa, Craven was the only one who knew where the treasure was.

  ‘I didn’t see him for a while, but in forty-six, when I was a half-colonel working for the Int. attached to the British Embassy in Morocco, Craven turned up as a civilian working for Atlantic Air Transport. He came to see me and explained he’d moved the stuff in case I got any funny ideas. He was going out to get it, he said, but he needed my swing to square things. He said I’d get my share — half — as long as I didn’t try anything nasty. He noticed Billy and asked who he was. I should have paid more attention. See, Billy used to hang around the aero-drome a lot — he liked aircraft, as all kids of that age do. One day, out of the blue, I received a phone call from Craven saying he was going to get the gold, or the first lot of it, and he was taking Billy with him as “insurance”. His plan was to leave Billy with some nomads in the desert while he ferried back the gold — it would have taken four trips, he reckoned. There were ten thousand kilos and the crate could take about two thousand five hundred a trip with the extra tank fitted. If I tried anything untoward, he said, Billy would get it. That was the idea, but of course, it never came off. Rose of Cimarron went down, Craven snuffed it, and Billy walked off with the map. The gold was lost to the outside world, and I had to pretend to you that I had given Billy the go ahead, that it had all been on the up and up, and that Rose had been flying to Zagora. I got heartily sick of searching that bloody road, knowing the kite had never been anywhere near there!’

  He puffed on his pipe and Churchill blew smoke from his cigar silently. The Delim were working less enthusiastically now, tiring, but the work was almost done. Hobart began to count the packages. When he was satisfied they were all there, he called one of his drivers to bring the first lorry over. Churchill noticed that the machine-gun sentry on the left-hand lorry had changed — Hobart’s men didn’t look like soldiers, but they knew their jobs all right.

  The first four-tonner roared up in a cloud of dust, and the driver — a dark-skinned Spaniard with shoulder-length black hair — jumped out and opened the tailgate. There, under the canvas awning, were strapped a score of boxes. Hobart pointed at one with his pipe, and t
he driver clambered up into the back and unstrapped it. Hobart yanked it half out by its rope handle, and Amir sprang to help. The driver jumped down, produced a jemmy and levered the top off, his long hair swinging as he worked. Inside were a dozen Garand rifles packed in greased paper. ‘All yours,’ Hobart told Amir. ‘A thousand rifles, straight out of the factory.’

  Amir picked one up and shucked the paper. His eagle eyes gleamed. ‘With these,’ he said, ‘we shall obliterate the Ulad al-Mizna from the face of the land.’

  He stared at Hobart. ‘Where are the bullets?’ he said.

  ‘Fifty thousand rounds, and more to come whenever you like.’

  Amir grunted.

  ‘Let’s get to work,’ Hobart said.

  It took more than two hours to unload the rifles and ammunition and load the packs of gold. The lorry crews worked in a methodical and disciplined way, bringing only one truck forward at a time, always maintaining a sentry on the machine gun and another on foot with a Tommy gun or a rifle. The pile of crates grew taller; those of the gold diminished. Churchill lounged in the shade of one of the sandstone dolmens, smoking a cigar and watching. Sterling and Billy sat together in silence.

  When the last truck was loaded and the tailgate slammed shut, the driver moved it to where the others were drawn up, already gunning their engines. Hobart called Amir and whispered something to him, pointing to the two Germans, who were sitting in the shade of the wireless truck. Amir barked an order, and a dozen tribesmen ran forward. The two men lurched up, terrified, but in a moment they were engulfed in a tide of blue-robed figures. Sterling jumped to his feet. ‘No!’ he screeched, but no one was listening.

  He saw daggers flash, heard animal grunts and squeals of terror. When the Delim withdrew, two more mangled, bloody corpses lay in the sand. Amir pointed to Sterling now, and the tribesmen moved towards him ominously.. He saw savage eyes shaded by head-cloths, blood-smeared daggers in dark hands. Taha stood up and moved in front of him as gracefully as a leopard. He had a sharp stone in each hand.

  ‘I am Taha Minan Nijum of the Ulad al-Mizna,’ Taha yelled. ‘I slew the Twisted One, and by God, the first man to touch my father shall die.’

  There was power and authority in his voice, and the Delim halted, reluctant to move forward. Amir cursed and lifted his rifle.

  ‘Stop!’ Hobart shouted. ‘Don’t shoot. I need that boy!’

  He limped up to Taha, who watched him coming warily, the stones gripped tightly in his hands. ‘Grandfather,’ he said quietly in Arabic. ‘I mean it.’

  Hobart laughed. ‘You’re a real chip off the old block,’ he said. ‘But in your case it skipped a generation. I don’t know why you bother. What did this yellow bastard ever do for you?’

  Taha said nothing.

  ‘All right,’ Hobart said. ‘I’ll make you a bargain. In fact, I’ll make you two bargains. Just to ensure that we get away clean, I shall be taking the route through the Umm al-Khof, the quicksand. Now, if what my friend Eric Churchill reported is correct, you’re the only “Arab” who’s been through it. Eric has too, of course, but, with all due respect, I wouldn’t trust his tracking skills. You’ve lived here all these years so I’d trust yours. Now, you agree to guide me through the quicksand and I won’t kill your dad here or your folks back in the crater.’

  Taha’s eyes opened wide in alarm.

  Hobart laughed. ‘Von Neumann’s trick was quite astute,’ he said. ‘And I’ve taken the leaf out of an expert’s book. I left a couple of men back there when we passed through, and I am in wireless contact with them. I shall be calling in every hour until we are clear, with a special codeword. If I don’t call in, or the codeword is missing, my boys will tell the Delim with them to start shooting your adopted family.’

  Taha glared at him. ‘If I refuse?’ he said.

  Hobart frowned. ‘Then your dad dies, you die, and all your people die, too.’

  *

  When Taha was seated in the first lorry, Hobart called Churchill and took him aside. ‘You’ve done a good job, Eric,’ he whispered. ‘And you’ll get your whack, I promise you. When we’re over the horizon, though, bump George off, will you? We don’t want any more accidents, you know.’

  Churchill nodded grimly. ‘What about the people back at the Guelb?’

  ‘Wait till I’m through the Umm al-Khof,’ Hobart said. ‘Then you and the two chaps I left back there can deal with them. You can soon catch up with me in your Jeep, and my boys will have the wireless to keep in contact — just follow my tracks through the quicksand.’

  Churchill grunted. ‘And Billy?’

  Hobart shrugged. ‘He can either come home and be the heir to a fortune, or I can leave his body in the Umm al-Khof. It’s entirely up to him.’

  Hobart stuck the pipe back into his smock, hobbled back to the lorry and climbed up into the cab beside Taha. The driver hooted and the convoy began to pull out.

  Churchill stood watching them for many minutes until they merged into the dust-haze, then turned to look for Sterling who was examining the bodies of Franz and Reuth, probably wondering if he could do anything for them. The Delim were ignoring him now. They had brought their camels up, couched them, and were busily breaking open boxes of rifles and ammunition and loading them onto the beasts’ backs. The men jabbered and bawled at one another and the camels jumped up, throwing their loads, while the tribesmen yanked them down, cursing. Two of the men were actually fighting. Despite the bloody murders he had just witnessed, Churchill grinned. It had been a long time, he guessed, since the Delim had seen such bounty.

  He shouldered his M1 and marched towards Sterling, knowing he would have to move quickly now. Sterling saw him coming and stood up. He did not back away and there was no fear in his eyes.

  ‘Did you see that?’ he said distantly. ‘Billy stood up for me. He said “the first man who touches my father will die.” Ironic, isn’t it, Eric, if you think all I ever wanted to do was to sell aspirins.’ He sighed. ‘Still, I suppose it’s a good enough declaration of love, in its way.’

  ‘George,’ Churchill said urgently. ‘See the Jeep over there? When I say “go”, run like hell to it, get in and start driving. I’ll be right behind you.’

  There was a grave smile on Sterling’s face. ‘No more tricks, Eric,’ he said. ‘If you’re going to kill me, you’ll have to do it face to face.’

  ‘You idiot! I told you the first day out of Layoune that whatever happened, whatever weird things you saw, I would always be on your side. I’m not working for Hobart and I never have been. Can you imagine a man like me ever ratting on my country? Now, if we don’t move quickly those Arabs over there are going to get curious.’

  On an impulse, he pulled the Garand off his shoulder, slipped out his pistol and thrust both weapons into Sterling’s hands. Sterling took them, wondering what it meant, and Churchill saw a sudden flame of hope flicker in his eyes.

  ‘We have to save Billy,’ he growled. ‘But that means getting to his folks before Hobart’s boys start shooting. Come on, George. I can’t kill you without a weapon.’

  Sterling took a deep breath, knowing that he was once again in the land of uncertainty. Churchill had lied to him: there was no doubt about that. It was quite possible that the big man had some other trick up his sleeve. But if he did nothing, he was going to lose Billy again. He had to make one final leap of faith.

  ‘All right,’ he said.

  Churchill watched the Arabs for a moment, and saw that they were still preoccupied. ‘One, two, three,’ he whispered. ‘Go!’

  The two of them sprinted towards the Jeep, covering the ground in seconds. Sterling leapt into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition switch. The engine fired. He put the vehicle in gear, feeling the springs give under Churchill’s weight when he jumped into the back. As he let the clutch out, jabbing down on the accelerator, he heard Churchill cocking the Bren mounted on the rear bracket. The tyres hummed and sawed across the gravel. There were shouts and raised voices behind th
em, and then cracks as a couple of bullets seared past his ears. Drum-fire rattled from the Bren in answer, and then Sterling slipped into second, and the Jeep’s engine roared. In less than sixty seconds they were out of rifle shot, and racing back towards the Guelb.

  12

  It was a good twenty minutes before Sterling slowed, and Churchill dropped into the seat beside him, his face and shirt covered in dust. ‘Brilliant driving, George,’ the big man mumbled, reaching for a canteen of water. He uncorked it and offered it to Sterling. ‘No Mickey Finns,’ he grinned, ‘I promise.’

  Sterling made a face, took the water and swigged. It was warm and tasted earthy. He handed it back to Churchill, who was slapping dust off his clothes. ‘It’ll take them a long time to catch us, anyway,’ Sterling said.

  Churchill glugged water and corked the canteen. ‘Don’t underestimate camels,’ he said. ‘They’re in their own country here.’

  He took the Smith & Wesson from the seat where Sterling had laid it, blew dust off it and checked the chambers, then restored it to its holster. He picked up the M1 and clipped it in the bracket behind the seats. ‘We’re well set up,’ he said. ‘I half-inched all the spare petrol from the Jerry wireless truck while the Arabs weren’t looking, and the water. We’ve got ammo, too.’

  Sterling’s eyes were fixed on the desert ahead. Evening was approaching, the sun about five inches above the horizon, the air cooler, but the landscape still palpably radiating the heat it had absorbed during the day. The wind-graded serir was easy driving, but the occasional patches of pebbly hammada were harder and had to be avoided, like the dune-fields and soft flat sand. Sandstone buttes reared out of the desert around them like the serrated fins of mythical sea-monsters, holding lakes of shadows among their scales, or chiselled by wind and grit into hammerheads, obelisks or giant chessmen. A slight breeze whipped up strings of dust around their bases.

  After a while, Churchill stopped Sterling and got out of the Jeep with his prismatic compass in his hand. ‘I’ve got a back-bearing on the Guelb,’ he said. ‘But the compass is no good in the Jeep — the engine’s magnetic field throws it out.’