‘It could pass us without raining - that sometimes happens. It could be circling round and round that spot out there.’
‘Anything could happen. Let’s get these holes dug, then we can wait and see.’
They scooped out four shallow trenches, each one the length and breadth of a man’s grave, and they lined them carefully with the light silver material. They removed their shirts and used them to line two smaller holes. It was bitterly cold, but they’d grown used to that. The cloths were weighted down against the wind with a variety of objects from the packs: a gun, a shovel, a rescue beacon. And all the time the sky darkened, and the wind changed its pitch, and the sound of thunder grew until it was above their heads.
And then the wind stopped. They looked up to see themselves enveloped in an inky darkness that stretched for mile upon mile. Somewhere far away, perhaps as far as the desert’s edge, a violet light shivered like dawn. Next moment, a vast downpour of freezing rain crashed on to the desert all round them. A curtain of water washed over everything, and it quickly became difficult to breathe, as though they had fallen into a dark lake or a great inland sea. They crouched, frozen to the bone by the icy water, without any means to warm themselves in all that empty space. The rain fell without cease, and in the gully below, as Nabila had predicted, water rushed in torrents and tore at the sides of the dunes, mating away at them and threatening to send them tumbling.
They lost all measure of time. All that mattered was the cold and how to endure it. They huddled together, finding a thin shelter in one another.
Then it was finished. One moment the downpour, the next a blissful silence and a sky as clear as they could have hoped for. The sun came out, and before long their wet trousers were steaming in the sudden warmth and their skin had started to lose the deadly chill that had set in it.
The trenches were filled with water. They used cups to fill the water containers, and when that was done they drank and drank from what was left until their bellies had grown distended.
It was time to move on.
They made good speed at first, though the water they carried dragged them down. Now that the ache of thirst had been removed, hunger returned to gnaw at them. There was no way forward but to push one foot ahead of the other, no way to find the willpower to go on but to blot out all thoughts and all anticipations. David consulted the compass every mile or so, and with adjustments and bends they crept on towards their objective. He had only one purpose in remaining alive - to reach Karakhoto and make that one telephone call that would summon down death and destruction on the ruined city and whatever lay beneath it. The holocaust he would unleash would engulf himself and Nabila - but having come this far, and being so very close to death, what other choice did they have?
As they walked, the landscape around them began to alter perceptibly. Gradually, the sand started to turn a pale shade of green. Tiny seeds that had lain dormant just beneath the surface for long months or years, now suddenly drenched by rain, had rushed to germinate. They would flourish for a day or two, until the moisture was sucked back from the sand and the dead heat of the sun at noonday shrivelled them.
They struggled on until mid-afternoon, by which time neither could move another muscle. Without food, they were dying inside. They drank copiously, only to regret it soon after. David developed severe cramps that tormented him until he threw up, Nabila went to her bergen and fetched some herbs to ease his stomach pain. She heated a little water in a metal cup, using tamarisk twigs to make a fire. David sipped the infusion, a foul-tasting mixture smelling strongly of yarrow, and his tight stomach muscles slowly relaxed.
While he drank, he looked out over the vista of soft green. If you half closed your eyes just so and moved your head this way, you could believe you were in an expanse of meadows and tall, sloping lawns.
He opened his eyes to see a gecko making its clumsy way across the ground vegetation. It paused to feed on tiny insects that had sprung to life on the newly grown leaves. David got to his knees and crept towards the little creature, but as he neared it, it glanced at him and ran off to bury itself in the sand.
‘Do you still have the herbs you used to treat Mehmet?’ he asked.
Nabila nodded.
‘I had some left over. Why?’
‘If we go on at this rate, one of us is going to have an accident.’
‘Would it make any difference if we did?’
‘It might.’
He fell silent after that, and sat a little apart from her, watching the day pass. A vulture was circling in the copper sky, a mile or so away, its ragged wings catching fire in the sun. David thought it was waiting for them to die, and that others would join it before long.
When the sun dropped low and the green valley they were in vanished, he remained seated as he had been. Nabila brought two sleeping bag halves and put them gently round his shoulders, and kissed him goodnight. He said nothing. He was making up his mind to do something terrible.
Dawn again, and dew heavy on the grass and shrubs. Nabila did not wake.
He stretched his limbs painfully, and rose from the position he had occupied all night without moving. He went to his bergen, and found the bits and pieces to build what he wanted. Some thin cord cannibalized from rope, the boards from the ammunition box, a spring from his pistol. It took over an hour, and looked a mess when it was done. He tested it several times until he was satisfied it would perform well. Nabila was still asleep.
He found a suitable spot on which to set it up. It was steady, and it operated smoothly.
‘What’s that?’ a sleepy voice behind him asked.
He turned and smiled at her, a lopsided smile that had no connection to anything but itself.
‘Lizard trap,’ he said. He showed her how it worked.
‘You’ll need bait,’ she said.
‘We’ll catch some flies.’
She smiled at him with her thin, parched lips, and he smiled back at her, wishing she’d stayed asleep.
She went off a little way to wash and brush her hair and defecate if her bowels permitted. David took the opportunity to go to his bergen again. This time he took out the Ek survival knife that he’d used to amputate Mehmet’s hand, and that Nabila had used to slaughter the camels with.
The hardest surface he could put his hands on was a metal armour plate from the tombs: he’d taken it with him in a vain belief that it would somehow find its way back to London and the Chinese department in the British Museum. It was hard work getting his little finger correctly positioned on the plate. He wanted the operation to be as quick and painless as possible. Any slipping or last-second holding back could result in a nasty wound, all to no purpose. A half-severed finger was no earthly use to him.
He tied a tourniquet tightly round his wrist, and at once felt the flow of blood to his hand become constricted.
Taking deep breaths, he laid the finger as accurately as he could on the plate, which he rested on top of the box holding the Mobilfone. He brought the edge of the blade against his skin, and he told himself there was no choice, not if they wanted to live.
‘David! What are you doing?’
He looked up to see her coming towards him. There was anxiety in her voice and movements. It had to be now or never. He bit his lip hard and sucked his breath in. His forehead was covered in sweat. He tensed himself, pretending it was not his finger, that it would not hurt.
‘David?’
She was running to him. He gripped the knife as hard as he could and slammed down, slicing his finger through in a single motion.
‘Oh God, David! What have you done?’
He looked up at her and smiled a tilted smile.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. He nodded at his severed finger, at the blood pouring from it. ‘It’s done now.’
‘Why? What’s the point of it?’
‘It’s bait,’ he said. ‘We put this in the trap, it attracts flies, and the flies attract lizards.’
His right hand was shakin
g. He let the knife fall to the ground and clutched his right hand. After the first shock, pain had started to course through the stump.
‘Keep your hand upright,’ Nabila ordered. ‘Press your finger on this spot. Like that.’
She went off to her bergen and returned with dressings and a small bundle of herbs.
‘You’re very lucky I still have these. I’m very angry with you. Here we are, already in danger, and you pull a stunt like this.’
‘I’m sorry, but there was no choice. We can eat lizards. Some of the bigger ones are full of flesh. Edible flesh. We don’t have to starve. We’re a day or two from Karakhoto - this will get us there.’
‘Just keep quiet and give me your hand. This is going to hurt, but like yourself, I have no choice.’
Soon, the stump was expertly cleaned and bandaged, and a concoction of bitter herbs was brewing in the cup.
‘You should have spoken to me,’ said Nabila.
‘And what would you have said?’
‘I’d have told you that I was to blame for what happened. I was the one who killed the camels.’
‘You weren’t to blame for that.’
‘No? Then who was to blame?’
‘I don’t think blame matters, do you?’
She sank down facing him. The smell of new-sprung plants filled her nostrils. She felt tired and insecure. In the act of performing her accustomed skills, she realized how poorly equipped she was to survive in these conditions.
‘You should have spoken to me,’ she said. ‘You should have confided in me.’
‘I knew you wouldn’t let me.’
‘We are in this together, love.’
‘No, you’re in this because I wanted you to come.’
‘I volunteered. I came because I loved you and would not be parted from you. And because they have been killing my people. If we destroy this thing, we will have destroyed it together. Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘And do you understand how much I love you?’
‘Not entirely. I’m glad you’re with me. That we’ll be together at the end.’
‘I love you more than myself,’ she said. She reached out her hand and stroked his cheek. She lifted his severed finger and wrapped it in gauze.
‘I hope this works,’ she said.
‘We have to get there,’ he said. ‘Somehow or other, we have to stay alive until we reach our destination.’
CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE
The lizards came, heavy and wall-eyed, like small dinosaurs, sniffing the air in search of prey. They walked into the two traps - Nabila had built a second one - and by noon over a dozen had been captured. They skinned them, and Nabila roasted them slowly over an open fire. There’d been no sign of helicopters since they left the tombs, and neither of them could stomach raw flesh.
Once cooked, they tasted delicious, or so they told one another. David’s hand still throbbed with incessant pain, and yet the mere fact of having something to fill their stomachs with made it seem a trivial thing.
‘It’s like a picnic,’ David said, pulling a strip of flesh from his third lizard, and remembering the day they’d gone in search of the Snow Lotus.
When they finished, they stuffed four of the lizards into their bergens, and wrapped David’s finger in strips cut from their sleeping blankets. With any luck, they’d get a day or two more of baiting out of it.
Nabila walked on ahead. She still had not quite forgiven him, and she needed time to understand. Perhaps, she thought, she would not live that long.
They made supper on the remaining lizards. David pretended they were chickens, but, to be honest, they tasted more like snakes. All the same, he’d paid more for his two meals than he might have handed over at a smart restaurant for two dozen. If he got back, he planned to recommend lizard steaks to The Ivy.
Nabila took two branches from a tamarisk shrub and tried to dowse.
‘You’re wasting your time,’ said David, as she walked up and down. ‘There’s still too much moisture in the sand. You’ll end up finding wells everywhere.’
But not even that was true. She walked through a wide radius, but the branches never stirred.
A little before the sun went down, David climbed to the top of the nearest dune and gazed out towards the east. There was something strange out there, something he could not identify. He lifted the binoculars and focused them on the horizon. There was something lying in wait for them, something black, without detail. He could not see it more clearly, however much he played with the glasses.
He went back down to where Nabila was resting.
‘I’ve just seen Karakhoto,’ he said.
She looked up, not knowing if he was joking or not.
'The Black City?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘About seven miles from here. We’ll be there tomorrow.’
They left at first light. At their back, a halo still circled an enormous moon dressed in sheets of pearl. As the sunlight strengthened, they noticed that some of the vegetation was already showing signs of withering. By the end of Ihe day, the desert would have reclaimed itself.
Mid-way through the morning, they stopped to eat and drink. Nabila again went through her dowsing routine.
‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’ David tasked.
“Not really. But it can’t be that hard.’
Like a soldier detecting land mines, she swept her twigs back and forward across the sand. Suddenly, the twigs jerked in her hand and pulled down hard. She drew back and the twigs at once grew lifeless. Again she swept them over the narrow patch, and again they leaped,
‘David! Quickly, over here!’
He rushed over, and she handed the twigs to him.
‘Try it. Go on, see what happens.’
‘Where…’
‘Don’t worry about that. Just hold them like this and relax.’
Still sceptical, he walked in a straight line, holding the twigs in front of him. And suddenly they dipped, at the very spot Nabila had identified.
They fetched their shovels and dug down as far as they could. Because the tools had short handles, they were forced to make the hole as wide as possible, so they could climb down into it.
At five feet, they struck moisture; at six feet, cloudy water. Nabila dug a little further, and water gushed up, filling the bottom of the hole. She bent and scooped up a couple of handfuls of water, which she lifted to her mouth. Tilting her head back, she drank. A moment after, she choked and coughed and spat out every drop she could, and kept spitting and coughing, spitting and coughing.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
But Nabila could not answer. David bent and scooped up a little water and tasted it. He spat it out immediately, gagging. It wasn’t salty, as he’d thought, but utterly foul, as though a clear chemical had been substituted for the real thing.
He hurried to bring a flask of rainwater down to Nabila. She drank it in great gulps, then spat some out, and very slowly recovered.
They filled in the hole again, and sat beside it, sipping rainwater and slowly recovering from the effects of the water that had not been water.
‘Where did it come from?’ Nabila asked.
‘I’m not sure. But I’m willing to bet that the source is that way. In Karakhoto.’
They went on walking, like shadows passing between sand and sky. David sensed a terrible emptiness building inside him. He had achieved his goal, and there was nothing more to look forward to. He would die here, and that would be an end.
Shortly after noon, they reached a place unlike any other on the face of the planet. It began with small patches where the sand had turned black, or where something like pitch had been poured on to the surface. When David bent down to see what it was, he came up with what looked like an imperfect disc of plastic, rock hard, unbreakable.
The further they walked, the more complete the blackness grew. The landscape on every side now was flat, as though the dunes had melted away. David had often wo
ndered in the past if anything could be more bleak or desolate than the desert; he had his answer here. The lands’cape through which they were walking was the bleakest on earth. It was as if the blackness had destroyed every trace of life.
About a mile off they could see some buildings. They trudged towards them, bowed down and subdued by the vista on every side.
‘What’s that over there?’ asked Nabila, pointing at a small structure a little off to their right.
They walked across. It turned out to be something like an outsized bus shelter, open on all sides, and without a roof. From what looked like ropes, several objects were hanging from a rod along the top, and resting on a sort of bench below. David went up to one of them. He had a good idea what they were, but he wanted to be sure. He took the knife and prised lumps of the black stuff away from the upper part.
As if emerging from behind a mask, a half-decayed human face appeared out of the black shell.
‘Leave it, David,’ Nabila urged. ‘We’ve seen enough.’
But he continued to chip away at the carapace, concentrating on the area of the chest. Underneath lay the grey cloth of a work camp prisoner’s uniform, and on it a strip of white cloth with numbers.
‘They used them as guinea pigs,’ he said, stepping away from the stand to which the men had been tied. There had been seven of them. Their hands had been fastened behind their backs. ‘Just tied them there and waited to see what would happen.’
Nabila was almost too preoccupied to hear anything he said. She was thinking about Kashgar. If she closed her eyes she could see the whole city turning the colour of ink, its people dead in the streets, its birds dead in the branches of black trees. The only colour was in the sky. There was no birdsong, no barking of dogs, no calling of the muezzins in their black minarets.
There were prisoners everywhere they walked now. Their bodies were black and twisted, as though a sculptor had tried to represent different types of agony, like stations of the Cross. David reckoned they were coming to some central point from which all this blackness had radiated. The buildings they had seen in the distance were only a few hundred yards away.
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