The Strange Land

CHAPTER THREE

A gust of rain swept over us as we went out past the Foreign Legion fort. It drummed on the bonnet and stabbed into the sand. A grey murk enveloped us. Looking back I saw the old bus turn and begin to lumber along in our wake. The rain came in gusts. Nobody in the car talked. The only sound was the click-click of the windscreen wipers. The wheels spun in a soft patch, flinging sand up in sheets like a brown spray. I wondered how the bus would behave on the sticky surface of the piste. It was a heavy vehicle for a girl to drive and the going would be bad through the mountains unless the rain eased up. ‘You should have let me go with Mademoiselle Corrigan,’ I told Bilvidic angrily. I was thinking of the section of road overhanging the gorge where the road gang had been working.

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I am sorry. But it is not possible. They will be all right.’

A heavier gust hit the car. The wheels slithered and spun. The rain was turning the powdered sand of the piste to a thick, red paste. The mountains were blotted out entirely. I glanced back. I could see nothing but wet sand and rain through the rear window. The bus, like the mountains, had disappeared from sight and I cursed the Frenchman under my breath. It was no weather in which to make two girls drive a heavy vehicle over mountains on a narrow, treacherous track. Once more I tried to persuade him to let me change places with Karen and keep Julie company in the bus, but he shook his head. ‘Non, monsieur. We must be in Casablanca by this morning.’

‘You’ll never make it in this weather. You might just as well…’ The full weight of the storm hit us then and the rest of the sentence was drowned in the roar of the rain. It sheeted down, bouncing on the bonnet, drumming on the roof, cutting visibility to practically nil. The wheels churned in the mud of the piste. The car slithered and swayed. And then the rain slackened again and there were the mountains right ahead of us.

We reached the harder surface at the foot of the mountains and began to climb. Away to the left I saw the watch tower above Kasbah Foum, and the debris of the ruined city gleamed blackly through the rain. Sections of the track were running with water and in places there was a soft surface of mud. The car had front-wheel drive and the engine laboured as the wheels spun in the soft patches. We reached the spot where the road had been repaired and I looked down into the black gulf of the gorge. The whole place seemed to be streaming with water and, on the remote fringe of visibility, I saw the towers of Kasbah Foum looking withdrawn and hostile as they stood guard over the entrance to the gorge.

‘If we could have had two more days.’ There was a note of bitterness in Jan’s voice as he said this and he was leaning forward in his seat, peering down the mist-wrapped length of the gorge.

Then we had turned the corner under the cliff overhang and the gorge was behind us. Far below us down the mountain slope, I glimpsed the bus nosing its way across the flat valley floor. Then it was lost in a curtain of rain. ‘They’ll never make it,’ I said as the Citroen’s wheels spun again on a soft patch and Bilvidic fought the wheel to regain control of the car.

‘Then they will stop and wait,’ he replied impatiently. ‘The girl is not a fool. She will not try it if it is not possible.’

But I wasn’t sure. Julie knew it was important for her to contact the British Consul. She’d go on as long as she thought there was a chance of getting through. And Karen was with her. Karen would want to go on, too. ‘I think we should stop,’ I said.

‘No.’

‘They could go over the edge in these soft patches.’

‘Stop worrying, monsieur. They will be all right. They will be going uphill. Downhill, it would be different.’

‘You forget that the bus has rear-wheel drive. You can easily skid the back wheels….’

‘They will be all right, I tell you,’ he repeated angrily. And then he was fighting the wheel again and suddenly the whole road ahead was blotted out by another storm.

It swept down on us like a cloudburst, drumming on the car, beating at it as though trying to flatten it into the mud of the piste. A little spill of stones slithered in a trickle of water down the bank to our right. It had become very dark and all we could see was the rain and a few yards of mountain stretching ahead of us. The rain was solid like a million steel rods thrust at an angle into the ground. The car juddered, the engine roared. Mud spurted up past my window as the wheels clawed at the surface.

I glanced back. I didn’t know what I imagined I would be able to see. I was scared for Julie. I wanted to reassure myself that the bus was all right. But I could see nothing — only the rods of rain gleaming dull like steel against the utter blackness of the storm. I turned and gripped Bilvidic’s arm. ‘You must wait,’ I shouted at him. ‘You must wait for them.’

He glanced at me quickly, his eyes sharp and alert, measuring my mood. But he drove on. It was then that I became conscious of Jan’s increasing restlessness in the back. He kept twisting round and peering out through the rear window. Once, when I turned round, I met his eyes. ‘Do something!’ he said. He looked worried. He was thinking of Karen back there with Julie in the bus.

We turned a bend that overlooked the gorge and began to climb a straight stretch of track beside a shallow rock cliff down which rainwater streamed, glistening blackly. ‘Do something to stop him, can’t you?’ he said urgently. We were coming up to the point where the piste hair-pinned round the very head of the gorge. I caught hold of Bilvidic’s arm. ‘You must stop,’ I shouted at him. ‘If you don’t stop…’ There was a blinding flash of lightning and the crash of thunder right overhead.

‘Attention, Georges!’ Bilvidic threw my hand off as he called the warning to his assistant. I heard Jan struggling in the back and then I reached for the ignition key. Bilvidic caught hold of my hand. The car swayed wildly. We were coming up to the bend now and as I flung him off and grabbed again for the key, the wheels hit a stone and suddenly the rock wall of the cliff closed in against my window. There was a crash and I was flung forward, striking my head against the windscreen. The car stopped dead. ‘Imbecile!’ Bilvidic screamed at me. ‘Imbecile!’

I struggled back into my seat, momentarily dazed. ‘Look what you have done!’ Bilvidic’s face was white with anger. All the right-hand wing and the front of the bonnet were crumpled.

‘If you’d stopped when I asked you — ‘ I said.

He gave an order to his assistant. It wasn’t really necessary for he already had Jan pinned down by his arm. The starter whined. But nothing happened. Bilvidic kept his finger on the button. The motor went on and on, but the engine didn’t fire. It was completely dead. The rain was torrential, water pouring everywhere, glistening on the rocks, running in little streams. Now that the engine was silent, we could hear it: the hiss of the rain, the drumming of it on the tin body of the car, the little rushing noises of water carrying small stones down the mountain.

And then suddenly all movement ceased inside the car. The rain had lifted slightly and we could see the bend ahead. A brown flood of water was pouring across it, frothing white as it plunged on down the gorge. All the water from the slopes that formed the very beginning of the gorge was collected in the bottom of the V to form a torrent that was slowly eating into the piste. Already there was a jagged gap and, whilst we sat and watched, it widened as the rocks that formed its foundation were shifted and rolled down into the gorge. There had been a culvert there once, but that was gone, or else the weight of water was too great. And every minute the volume of it and the noise of it seemed to grow.

Jan began struggling again in the back. ‘Let me go!’ he shouted. ‘Philip. We must get back to the bus.’

Bilvidic gave an order to his assistant. One of the rear doors of the car was thrust open and I saw Jan standing there in the rain, staring back down the piste. ‘In all the years I have lived in Morocco,’ Bilvidic said, ‘I have never known a storm like this.’ He got out of the car then. He had given up all hope of reaching Casablanca. The piste was hopelessly cut. It would take several days to repair it. I scrambled across the driving seat and got out. ‘I think we should get back and stop Mademoiselle Corrigan from coming up,’ Bilvidic said.

I nodded. ‘Come on!’ Jan called to me. He had already started off down the piste. Bilvidic and his assistant were searching in the car for their raincoats. I started to run after Jan, splashing through the water that ran almost ankle-deep down the rutted surface of the track. I was soaked through and steaming by the time I caught up with him. Side by side we went back down the piste, loping down with long strides, our shoes slithering and squelching through the mud and water. Neither of us spoke. We were both intent on getting back down the mountain as fast as possible. The rain died away, but we scarcely noticed it. We were hurrying down through a dead world of mist and streaming rock, and the sound of water was all about us.

The mist gradually lightened and a gleam of warmth softened the blackness of the mountain sides. A wind sprang up, the mist swirled streamers over our heads, and then abruptly it cleared and we were in bright sunshine. All the wet, glistening landscape of rock smiled at us. But above and behind us the sky was black with storm.

And then we saw the bus. It was caught on a bend far below us. The sound of its engine, revving violently, came up to us faintly on the wind, an angry sound like a buzz-saw. But we lost it almost immediately in the roar of a small avalanche of stone on the other side of the gorge.

‘The sooner we’re out of these mountains the better,’ Jan panted.

We had reached the section that had only just been repaired. All along under the cliff face little cascades of rock had built themselves up into small piles and the outer edge of the new-made piste was already sliding away into the gorge. Kasbah Foum was picked out in sunshine as we had first seen it and from far below came the steady, insistent roar of water.

We finally found the bus at the next bend. It had slewed half across the track, its wheels deep in mud. Karen was kicking rocks under the spinning tyres as Julie revved the engine. The engine died away as they saw us coming down the track towards them. Karen stood quite still, almost breathless, as though she couldn’t believe it was true.

Jan had stopped. I glanced back over my shoulder. Bilvidic and his assistant weren’t in sight yet. They knew we couldn’t escape. ‘Listen, Philip.’ Jan gripped by arm. ‘I’m going back to Kasbah Foum. The whole valley is cut off now. It may be several days …’ He was staring down towards Karen. ‘In two days we might have that shaft opened up.’

‘That won’t do you much good,’ I said. ‘Not now.’

‘Who knows?’ He looked up at me and he was smiling. He seemed suddenly to have found himself. It was as though at this moment, with his wife standing there waiting for him to come to her, anything was possible. ‘I’ll take Karen with me,’ he said. ‘At least we’ll have a little time together….’ He glanced back up the track. The rain was closing in again and visibility was lessening. Then he started down towards the bus. ‘Karen!’ he called. ‘Karen!’

She came running to meet him then. They were both running and he was calling her name and she was answering him, her eyes shining, her face suddenly quite beautiful. They met in the rain and the mud there and he caught her in his arms, hugging her to him.

And then they parted, almost guiltily, as though they hadn’t a right to be so happy. They stood there, looking at each other a little shyly, their hands locked, talking quietly.

I turned away, looking down towards Kasbah Foum. I could just see the top of the watch tower. The tumbled rocks of the mountainside would be hard going. Then the rain swept over the tower, blotting it out. ‘You two had better get going,’ I said. ‘It’s a goodish way to the camp.’

‘Oh, we’ll make it before dark,’ Jan answered. He said it as though he were going on a picnic, his voice was so full of happiness.

‘What do you want me to tell Bilvidic?’

‘Tell him Monsieur Wade has gone down to Kasbah Foum.’ He laughed, but I knew he meant it. He was looking up at the curtain of rain that was sweeping over us and there was an obstinate set to his mouth. Then he called to Karen who had run back to the bus and was speaking urgently to Julie. Jan ran down to her and took her hand, and together they crossed the Piste and dropped on to the steep slope of the mountainside.

‘Don’t forget, please,’ Karen called back to Julie.

In a moment the two of them had disappeared into the driving mist of rain. ‘What happened up there?’ Julie called out to me from the cab of the bus. ‘Couldn’t you get through?’

I climbed in beside her and was in the middle of explaining to her about the crash and the piste being washed away when a voice hailed us out of the rain. It was Bilvidic. He was panting and his thinning hair was plastered down by the rain. ‘Where’s Wade?’ he demanded, his eyes searching the roadway and the limited area of mountainside visible in the downpour. He wrenched open the door of the bus. ‘Where is he?’ he demanded angrily.

‘He’s gone to Kasbah Foum,’ I told him.

‘I don’t believe you. Why should he do that? He cannot go down the mountain in this weather. Georges!’ His assistant came running and he ordered him to search the vicinity. ‘The fool!’ he exclaimed angrily. ‘He cannot go far in this rain. He cannot sleep on the mountain.’ He looked at Julie. ‘And where is Madame Kavan? Why is she not with you?’

I started to explain, but Julie stopped me. ‘She’s not very well,’ she told him. ‘She’s resting.’

‘Where?’ Bilvidic demanded suspiciously and he began to climb into the bus.

‘Non, non, monsieur,’ she said quickly. ‘I cannot allow you to disturb her. She is lying down on my bed in the rear compartment. She is quite exhausted, poor thing.’ And then she added, ‘It was a great shock to her to discover that that man is not her husband. She had hoped … You understand, monsieur?’

Bilvidic nodded, clicking his tongue sympathetically. ‘Of course, mademoiselle. I should have realised.’ He jumped back on to the piste and began to walk up it, shouting, ‘Wade! Wade!’

I turned to Julie then. ‘Why did you say that, about Karen?’

‘She asked me to. Bilvidic would be suspicious if he knew she’d gone off to Kasbah Foum with a man who is supposed to be a stranger to her.’

‘It’s madness,’ I said.

Julie shrugged her shoulders. ‘It was what she wanted, anyway.’

That meant it was what Jan wanted. ‘So he’s determined to go through with it,’ I said and leaned back in the seat, staring at the water streaming down the piste and wondering what would be the end of it all. The storm was passing now and in a moment there was a gleam of sunshine. Bilvidic abandoned the search then. ‘He cannot get out of the valley, unless he walks. And if he does that one of the Military Posts will soon be notified.’ He stood for a moment staring down towards Kasbah Foum. Then he turned abruptly. ‘Now we will go back to the Post. I must phone the Chef de Territoire.’

With him guiding me, I started to back the bus down the hill. There was no room to turn and I had to go on backing until we reached the level sand at the foot of the mountains. And there we bogged down. The piste was a sea of mud, and even the sand beside it was impassable, for it was layered with two inches of glutinous paste that filled the treads of the tyres.

Finally Bilvidic left with his assistant for the Post. It was beginning to get dark and Julie and I watched the two Frenchmen go, sitting in the bus in our stockinged feet, thankful we hadn’t got to trudge three miles through that mud.

We spent the night where we were, and in the morning the sun shone out of a clear sky. The air was clean and fresh after the rain. We did the chores and then sat around waiting for the piste to dry, not talking much, just enjoying the sense of being alone. It was the first time Julie and I had been alone together and I think we both felt that these were precious, stolen hours. ‘You might have been in Casablanca now,’ Julie said once. ‘I loathe Casablanca.’

Everybody loathes Casablanca. The thought of the place emphasised the clean beauty of this desert country. The fact that we were cut off here gave it an unreal quality. I glanced at her, seeing the smooth, clear-cut line of her features, the black hair swept back and softly curving to her shoulders. She looked as fresh and sparkling as the day. ‘When we’ve got ourselves out of the mess we’re in, I’d like to come down here again and travel through this country.’

She looked at me. ‘Like this?’ And I knew she meant the two of us and the old bus. She smiled. ‘Yes, let’s do that.’ And she looked away again towards the mountains.

The desert sand dried quickly and by midday we were able to travel on it. As I drove across the open space between the forts, I saw that the French truck was still parked outside the Bureau. Its bonnet was up and both the orderly and Bilvidic’s assistant were working on the engine. There was a big crowd gathered by the ruins of the souk. They stared at us in silence as we drove by, a sullen, menacing group. And as we skirted Ksar Foum-Skhira along the edge of the palmerie there seemed a brooding stillness. There was nobody drawing water at the wells and, apart from a few children, nobody moved outside the walls.

‘The village looks deserted,’ Julie said. ‘It’s too quiet.’ Her voice sounded taut and strained and I remembered her reaction on our first arrival.

‘They’re short of food,’ I said. ‘That’s all. As soon as the piste is open again and the food trucks — ‘

‘It isn’t that. Something’s happened. They wouldn’t all be gathered round the souk like that if it hadn’t.’

I thought her sudden change of mood was due to the fact that in a few minutes now we should have rejoined Jan and Karen and that the reality of the situation would have closed round us again. ‘I’d rather be here than in Casablanca anyway,’ I said, trying to make a joke of it.

But all she said was, ‘I wish Legard were here.’

The camp looked empty when we reached it. The sides of the tents had been rolled up; clothes and bedding were laid out to air in the sun. The stream was much wider now, a surging flood of rustred water. As we got down, Karen appeared at the entrance to the cook tent and waved to us. I barely recognised her. She was wearing a pair of Ed White’s khaki trousers and a bush shirt several sizes too large for her. She was barefoot, trousers rolled up almost to her knees and the waist held in by a broad leather belt. ‘You look like a castaway,’ Julie said.

She laughed. ‘I’m cooking. Isn’t it wonderful!’ She tossed back her hair, her eyes sparkling. I tried to see in her the girl who had sat waiting in Jose’s cafe in Tangier. But it was impossible. She was somehow different, more alive, almost beautiful. ‘Where’s your husband?’ I asked.

‘He is up in the gorge.’ The laughter died out of her eyes. ‘And please, you must not call him my husband. He has told Ed that his name is Wade. We are sleeping in different tents and we came here together only because we got separated from the rest of you coming down the mountain.’ She hesitated. ‘I have to be very careful not to give Jan away. I keep my eyes on the ground and never look at him when he is here. It is not easy after so long.’

‘Good God!’ I said. I was appalled at the self-control required. It shocked me that he’d asked it of her. ‘And what about Ed?’ I asked. ‘Is he convinced?’

‘I.don’t know whether he is convinced or not. He doesn’t say much. He thinks only of the work up there in the gorge. I don’t think he cares.’

‘Jan’s being a fool,’ I said. ‘You know about this body they’ve found. You realise the risk he’s running?’

She nodded. ‘Yes. I realise.’

‘Have you talked to him about it?’

‘Yes, we have talked.’

‘And you didn’t try to dissuade him?’

‘No.’ She hesitated, and then said, ‘Please. You must try to understand. They think Jan Kavan is dead. It is the answer to everything.’ She stared up into my face, her eyes pleading. ‘You saved his life. You got him out of Tangier. You must help him now.’

‘How?’ I asked. ‘What does he want me to do?’

From the entrance to the gorge came the muffled thud of an explosion. Karen turned her head sharply, an anxious expression on her face.

‘What are they doing?’ Julie asked.

‘Blasting. He and the American. They have cleared the entrance to the mine and they are blasting to break up the rock falls inside the shaft so that they can clear it away by hand. He warned me what they were doing, but I don’t” like it. When we came down last night we went too far to the right and had to come down the shoulder of the gorge. All the rock there is crumbling away and the stones kept moving under our feet.’

‘Have you been up into the gorge?’ I asked her.

‘Yes.’ She gave a shudder. ‘I don’t like the place. It is cold and a little frightening. I prefer to cook.’ She said it with a little laugh. And then she looked at me, her face serious again. ‘That American — why is he so afraid?’

‘Afraid of what?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. But last night, when we got here, he was waiting for us by his tent with a gun in his hand. He was terribly pleased to see us. I think he’s frightened to be here by himself.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ Julie said. ‘I would be myself.’

They were both of them looking up towards the gorge. Then Karen began to collect the blankets and fold them. Julie went to help her and I walked up the track into the gorge. Water was pouring in a cascade over the lip of the lake. It was a violent brick red. The whole gorge was full of the sound of water seeping down from above and it was cold and dank despite the noonday heat of the sun. The bulldozers stood idle. There was no sign of Jan or Ed White. But the rubble had been cleared from the base of the cliff to expose a round opening from which a cloud of rock dust drifted. It was like the entrance to a cave. ‘Jan!’ I shouted. ‘Jan!’ There was no answer, but back from the wall of the gorge opposite came the echo — Jan! Jan!

I walked towards the entrance to the mine. A little pile of clothing lay beside a plain deal box which was marked in red — explosives: Danger — Handle with Care. The top of it had been ripped off to expose cartridges of dynamite with slow-match fuses. The dust was thick by the shaft entrance, hanging like an iridescent cloud where the sunlight struck through from above. There was the sound of a stone shifting and Ed White appeared, staggering under the weight of a rock he was carrying. ‘Oh, it’s you, Latham.’ He dropped the rock on to a pile they had made just outside the entrance. ‘I thought I heard somebody call.’ He glanced up at the cliff top on the far side of the gorge, and then he gave a quick, nervous hitch to his trousers and came over. He was stripped to the waist and the dust had caked on the sweat of his body in a white film. He had his gun fastened to his belt. ‘Well, we’ve made some progress since yesterday. We’ve cleared the entrance and we’re working on the rock falls now. But we need some local labour. Wade thought you might help there. You know the language.’

‘He’s told you then?’ I asked tentatively. ‘About his name? Yeah, he told me.’ ‘It must have come as a bit of a shock to you.’ He looked at me for a moment and then said, ‘Between you and me I don’t care what he calls himself. All I’m interested in is getting through those falls before my dough runs out. This is a new country and what a man was before he came out here doesn’t interest me. All I know is I like the guy and we get on together. Have done from the first. Which was more than I expected from the tone of his letters,’ he added. And then he hitched up his belt and turned away towards the entrance to the shaft.

At that moment Jan emerged, blinking in the sunlight. ‘Philip!’ He came quickly forward. He, too, was stripped to the waist and the dust was white on his thick, hairy body. ‘I’m so glad you’ve come. We need your help.’ He stopped and his voice was suddenly nervous. ‘Bilvidic isn’t down at the camp, is he?’

‘No.’

‘That’s all right.’ It was almost a sigh of relief. ‘Look! We need men up here. There’s tons of rock to be hauled. We need twenty men at least.’ The eagerness was back in his voice again. ‘I thought if you could go down and have a word with Moha, maybe we could hire men from his village.’ He seemed to have no thought in his mind except the opening up of the shaft. ‘Come here. I want to show you something.’ He switched on the big torch he had slung on his belt and dived back into the shaft.

‘What is it?’ I asked Ed, for Jan’s voice had been excited.

‘He’s found traces of silver,’ he said and he pushed me towards the shaft entrance. ‘You go ahead. I’ll follow.’ I climbed the piled-up debris and ducked into the entrance to the shaft. It was dark inside and the air was thick with dust. The yellow light of Jan’s torch flashed ahead. We went in about forty feet and then we were crawling over piles of broken rock. ‘You see,’ Jan said. ‘The roof collapsed. We’re having to blast and clear by hand. Now. Look here.’ He had stopped and was directing the beam of his torch into a cavity half blocked by the fallen roof. ‘We’ve just cleared this.’ He gripped my arm and thrust me forward.

The cavity seemed to be a long, narrow fissure in the rock. I couldn’t see it very well. Only a small part of it was so far exposed. But it ran well back, for the beam of the torch failed to reach the end of it. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Part of the mine,’ Jan said. ‘It’s where a seam of ore has been removed.’

‘How do you know?’

He shifted the beam of the torch to the sides of the fissures. ‘See the marks of their tools. And look at this.’ He pulled a piece of crumbled rock from his pocket. ‘That’s polybasite — a complex ore, but one where the extraction of the silver is a simple, quite primitive process. Probably that’s what Marcel found.’

I turned to Ed. ‘Do you agree with him?’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ he said. ‘But if he says so, then I guess he’s right. He’s like a walking encyclopaedia. All I know is that this mine must date way back. It wasn’t being worked five hundred years ago when the landslide sealed this shaft.’ He started to back out again. ‘Come on. The sooner we have those natives on the job, the better. I want to get through this fall.’

We scrambled back over the debris and then we were out in the open again, blinking our eyes in the bright sunlight. Once more I saw Ed’s gaze go straight to the cliff top on the far side of the gorge. ‘Look at him — the bastard!’ he cried, and his voice was pitched a shade higher than normal.

‘What is it?’ I asked, shading my eyes.

‘Can’t you see him? Look!’ He took my arm and pointed. ‘I noticed him there for the first time yesterday. He was sitting there all day and again today — just sitting there, watching us.’

I saw him then, a small, turbaned figure, sitting cross-legged and motionless in a natural niche right at the top of the cliff. ‘Who is he?’ I asked.

‘How the hell should I know? They change the guard about midday and a new guy takes over. They never move. They just sit there, watching us.’ He turned away to get his clothes. ‘It gives me the creeps.’

I looked at Jan. ‘All?’

‘I imagine so.’ He hesitated and then drew me aside. ‘Did Karen tell you?’

‘About the name? Yes, she told me. Look, Jan,’ I said. ‘This is crazy. You’ll never get away with it.’

He gave me a quick, sidelong glance. ‘All right, it’s crazy,’ he said. ‘But I don’t have to convince anybody. They’re convinced already.’

‘And what about the British authorities?’ I asked.

But he smiled and shook his head. ‘Their only worry would be if they discovered I was alive. So long as I’m dead they don’t have to try and explain the disappearance of another scientist.’ He looked up at me anxiously. ‘It’s up to you now, Philip.’ And then he added with sudden violence, ‘Don’t you see? This is the perfect solution.’

I shook my head. He seemed utterly blind to the real problem. ‘You seem to forget that a body has been washed up.’

‘Well, it was an accident, wasn’t it?’ And then he added quickly, ‘Whether I’m Wade or Kavan, I’ve still got to explain that.’

‘I suppose so,’ I said. ‘But you’ve entered Morocco illegally.’

He nodded, but he didn’t seem worried about it. ‘I think I can make them understand. If Kostos keeps his mouth shut, I know I can. And if we could prove this mine…’ He glanced towards Ed White who was pulling on his clothes. He was frowning again. ‘Did Karen tell you what happened when we arrived at the camp last night? Ed met us with that German Luger of his in his hand. He seemed scared stiff. He was all packed up, too, ready to clear out.’

‘Why? Because Ali has men watching him?’

Jan nodded. ‘That and something that happened yesterday afternoon. He had a visit from the Caid’s younger son — the man who made tea for us when we visited the kasbah that night. He rode out on a white mule to give Ed a message from his father.’

‘Well, what was the message?’ I asked.

‘The man only spoke a few words of French. But he kept pointing to the Post — ‘

Ed White’s shadow fell between us. ‘I got the idea anyway,’ he said. ‘I was to get out, and quick.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘How the hell do I know why? Could be that the food trucks haven’t arrived and the people are getting sore. Could be that your friend Ali is just trying to scare me. I don’t know. But I can tell you this; I was plenty scared last night.’ His gaze swung again to the watcher on the cliff. ‘Those three Ay-rabs I had working for me were paid good dough. They wouldn’t have quit for nothing.’ He shook his head angrily, buttoning up his bush shirt. ‘I suppose Miss Corrigan is down at the camp now?’

‘Yes.’

‘At least those two girls ought to go down to the Post. I don’t mind staying on here so long as you guys are with me. But they should be down at the Post. They’d be safe there.’

His attitude made me feel uneasy. ‘What are you expecting to happen?’ I demanded.

He pushed his fingers up through his hair. ‘If I knew that, I wouldn’t be so Goddamned jittery.’

Jan had scrambled down the rock tip to the water to wash the dust off his body. He was out of sight and for a moment Ed and I were alone. There was something I had to find out and now was the time to do it. If Jan had really convinced Ed, then there was just a chance he could get away with it. I hesitated, wondering how to put it. ‘Sooner or later,’ I said, ‘the police will want a statement from you.’

‘From me? What about?’

‘About him,’ I said, nodding towards Jan.

‘Well, they won’t get much out of me.’ He seemed to consider the matter. ‘The only intelligent comment I could make is that he doesn’t seem British the way you do. And he talks differently.’ He said it slowly, as though it were something that had been on his mind for a long time.

‘He’s Cornish,’ I said, remembering the details of Wade’s passport.

‘Cornish? Oh, you mean dialect. And then he’s knocked around a bit. I guess that would make him different.’ He nodded to himself, frowning slightly. And then he shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, Mrs Kavan should know. I feel sorry for that girl. When she came down here she must have been thinking there was a chance that her husband was alive. Instead, it’s a stranger, impersonating him. That’s not very nice, is it?’ He had been staring down at his boots, but now he looked up at me. ‘Wasn’t Kavan going to act as doctor at your Mission?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

He nodded, staring at me, and then turned away. ‘What I’ve seen of the people here, they could have used a doctor.’ Jan climbed up from the water and he called to him: ‘Come on. Let’s get some food.’

Jan picked up his clothes and joined us. ‘Pity about that shaft,’ he said, glancing back over his shoulder. ‘Fortunately Ed had that dynamite and he knows how to use it. But even so, it may take several days to break through the falls.’

I knew he was thinking about Bilvidic and I asked him how long he thought he’d be allowed to stay up here. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I hope he’ll leave us here until the piste is open. He knows I’m here. That orderly from the Post rode out to the camp on a mule this morning to check that. And he knows I can’t get out — not unless I walk, and the Military would soon be informed if I tried to do that.’ His eyes lifted to the slope of the mountain above us. It was very steep and about five hundred feet up there was a sudden cliff face, not high, but sheer and crumbling. It shone red in the sunlight. ‘I didn’t like it when I first saw it,’ he muttered. ‘But now that we’re blasting …’ He shook his head and turned and started to walk down the track towards the camp.

‘It’s the Ay-rabs that worry me,’ Ed said. ‘Legard’s away and with the piste cut, God knows when the food trucks will get through. And now there’s this discoloration of the water.’

We had reached the entrance of the gorge and in the sunlight the water pouring down the stream-bed was almost the colour of blood against the yellow of the sand. ‘How far does the discoloration extend?’ I asked., ‘Right down into the palmerie,’ Jan said over his shoulder. ‘There was quite a rush of water coming out of the gorge last night.’

None of us spoke after that and we walked down to the camp in silence. We were thinking about the water and the watcher on the cliff top. For the moment I had forgotten about Jan’s personal problems. But it was impossible to forget about them once we had reached the camp, for Karen was there to remind me. She ignored Jan completely. He might not have been there, and not by a single glance, even when Ed’s back was turned, did she betray the fact that she was conscious of him. Her self-control was so rigid that I began to understand how it must have been for her in Czechoslovakia.

Lunch was laid out in the open under the fly of the big tent as it had been on Christmas Day. But the atmosphere was very different. There was a sense of strain. As though conscious that she was partly responsible, Karen announced at the end of the meal that she had arranged for Julie to take her down to the Post. ‘It will be better if I go.’ She said it to Ed, but it was directed at Jan. He stared at her for a moment and then turned abruptly away.

‘What about you?’ I asked Julie.

‘I’ll drop Karen and then bring the bus back here.’

‘No, don’t do that,’ I said. ‘Stay down at the Post, It’d be safer.’

‘My view is we should all go down to the Post,’ Ed announced. ‘When Legard gets back — ‘

‘No,’ Jan said, almost violently. ‘I’m damned if I’ll leave here now. A day’s work might see that shaft opened up. And if it is a workable mine …’ He hunched his shoulders, staring up towards the gorge. He was thinking that it would give him a stake in the country. That was the thought that was driving him.

‘Well, of course, I see your point,’ Ed said. ‘I’m pretty interested myself to know whether there’s still silver to be got out of it. But that isn’t the reason I’m here, as you know. The way I see it — ‘

‘Then what is the reason?’ Jan demanded.

‘Exactly what I told you.’ He sounded surprised. ‘I never knew there was a chance of finding silver — ‘ He checked himself. He was staring at Jan with a puzzled frown. ‘Didn’t you bother to read my letters?’

Jan’s eyes widened slightly with the shock of realising that he had nearly given himself away. It was Karen who covered up for him. ‘But I thought you were a prospector, Ed? When we stopped at Agdz on the way down I heard Capitaine Legard talking about you to Monsieur Bilvidic. He said you had been granted a mining concession.’

‘That’s right.’ Ed was grinning to himself like a boy. ‘It seemed the smart thing to say. I didn’t want people asking a lot of questions.’

‘But if you’re not a prospector,’ Julie said, ‘what are you?’

‘An archaeologist.’

‘But why ever didn’t you tell us?’

He shrugged his shoulders, still grinning. ‘Nobody bothered to ask me.’ And then he turned to Jan. ‘Anyway, you knew. I explained it all in that second letter. Or didn’t you get it?’

‘But I thought you were a construction engineer,’ Karen cut in. ‘You were telling me last night — ‘

‘Sure. That’s right. I am a construction engineer. But I got a bee in my bonnet about this place Kasbah Foum. Look,’ he said, facing the two girls. ‘Maybe I’d better explain. Archaeology is a sort of a hobby I picked up in college. Old cities and things; they fascinated me. Well, a friend of my father’s was a collector of books and he used to let me browse around in his library when I was a kid. There was an old manuscript there that particularly intrigued me; it was the diary of an Englishman who had turned Muslim and lived in North Africa as an Arab trader in the early fifteen hundreds. It was an incredible story — “of wars and love-making and long camel treks through the desert. In it, he described a great stone city built at the entrance to a gorge down here south of the Atlas. He had traded from that city for several years and he knew it well. And this is what interested me. He described a shaft or tunnel running into the cliff face at the entrance to the gorge. There were rooms cut back into the rock from the sides of this tunnel and these had been used partly as the city treasury and partly as an arsenal. He went to Mecca and on to Arabia, and some years later he came back to the same city. It had been sacked and was partly in ruins. And a great landslide had poured down the mountains, completely covering the entrance to the tunnel.’ He glanced round at us. ‘Well, two years back I got this job at Sidi Slimane air base and I came down here — just out of curiosity. And there were the ruins of the city and there was the slide he’d described.’ He had turned his head so that he could see the entrance to the gorge. ‘I just had to find out whether that shaft did exist and, if so, what was in it.’

‘But it’s fascinating,’ Julie said. ‘You might find all sorts of treasures there.’

‘Maybe,’ Ed said. ‘On the other hand, the people who sacked the city may have looted the treasury. But whatever I find, when it’s opened up, I shall be the first man to set foot in there for almost five centuries. That’s pretty exciting. At least to me.’ He turned and glanced at Jan. ‘That’s why my angle on this is different from yours. A few days one way or the other won’t make any difference to me. But if I open it up and there’s trouble — well, I don’t want a lot of ignorant natives getting in there and maybe busting up stuff that’s priceless. There could be things in there dating back to …’ He laughed. ‘Oh, I don’t know — to the first nomadic infiltration from the desert.’

‘Not if it were originally the shaft of a silver mine,’ Jan said.

‘No. That’s right, I guess.’

A silence settled on the table. I was thinking how strange it was that these two — the Czech refugee and the American construction engineer — should be working together to open up this shaft for two such different reasons.

Jan suddenly got to his feet. ‘You do what you like,’ he said to Ed. ‘But I’m going straight on clearing the debris out.’ He turned to me. ‘Will you go down and see Moha about labour for me, Philip?’

‘Now wait a minute.’ Ed, too, had risen. ‘Get this straight, Wade. Our interests don’t conflict. But mine come first. Okay?’ He was much taller than Jan and he had moved towards him so that he towered over him. ‘If I decide that we wait until Legard returns and things have settled down — ‘

‘All right,’ Jan said. He was looking up at Ed and then his eyes shifted towards the gorge. ‘I understand your point. But suppose we have another rainstorm like we did last night? It could bring the whole mountainside down and cover the entrance again.’

‘Yeah. It could.’

‘The mine won’t run away any more than your antiques will, if they’re there. But if the mountain comes down …’ He stared up at Ed and then said, ‘I think we should push straight on with opening up the shaft.’

Ed stood there, considering it. His gaze, too, had shifted to the gorge. In the end he nodded. ‘Okay,’ he agreed. ‘Maybe you’re right.’

‘I’ll go and see Moha,’ I said. ‘How many men do you want?’

‘As many as he can let us have,’ Ed answered. Twenty at least.’

‘And how much are you prepared to pay them?’

‘Whatever he asks, within reason. I leave that to you.’

I had Julie drive me down in the bus to the point on the piste nearest the village, and then I entered the palmerie and crossed the irrigation ditch by the bridge of palm logs. Even here the water was strangely red, instead of its normal muddy colour. I knocked at the wooden door of the chief’s house and was admitted by one of his sons and taken to an upper room. Moha lay on a bed of cushions and rugs. There was little light in the room and it was very cold. The lines on his face were more deeply etched, the gash on his forehead a brown scab of dried blood. His wound, he said, did not worry him except that he could not sit and if he walked it started to bleed again. He lay there, watching me, and I had the feeling that I wasn’t welcome.

Briefly I explained the purpose of my visit. He didn’t answer for a moment, but just lay there, staring at me. At length he said, ‘The people are angry, sidi. They will not come to work for the man of machines who has destroyed the water.’ He raised himself up on one elbow. ‘My father and his father and his father’s father have lived here in this place. In all the time we have been here, the water has never been like it is now. The people are afraid to drink it. They are afraid that their trees will finally be destroyed.’

I tried to explain to him that it was only mineral discoloration, that it would soon pass, but he shook his head and murmured ‘Insh’ Allah.’ His people might need money, but nothing I could say would make him send them up to work at the mine. I offered them as much as five hundred francs a day — an unheard of figure — but he only shook his head. ‘The people are angry. They will not come.’

In the end I left him and walked back to the bus. I didn’t tell Julie what he had said. It had scared me badly, for in the south here water was the same as life, and, if they thought the water had been poisoned, anything could happen.

As we drove up to the camp we passed several villagers, sitting on the banks of the stream bed. They stared at us as we went by, their tough, lined faces expressionless, their eyes glinting in the sunlight. ‘Where did they come from?’ I asked her. ‘They weren’t there when we drove down.’

‘They came out of the palmerie. There are some more over there.’ She nodded to the open country between ourselves and the mountains. There were about twenty or thirty there, sitting motionless as stones in the hot sun.

‘Which direction did they come from?’ I asked.

‘I didn’t see. They were just suddenly there.’

Karen was alone at the camp when we drew up. ‘Where are the others?’ I asked her. ‘Up at the gorge?’

She nodded and I walked up the track. The sun’s light was already slanting and the gorge was black in shadow. I had to go into the shaft to find them. There, in the light of the torches and amongst the debris of the rock fall, I told Ed what Moha had said. ‘Until this matter of the water is cleared up,’ I said, ‘you won’t get any of them to come and work for you. I think we should get down to the Post.’ And I explained about the group of villagers who were waiting within sight of the camp. ‘I don’t like it,’ I said. ‘It may be just curiosity, but I had a feeling they were expecting something.’

We stood there in the torchlit darkness arguing for some time. Jan was angry. Time was running out for him and he desperately wanted to get through that rock fall, to know what was on the other side. But time meant nothing to Ed and he was all for packing up the camp and getting down to the Post. ‘If we can’t get labour, then we can’t and that’s that. The only thing for us to do is go down to the Post and wait for Legard to return. He’ll have a talk with the Caid and then maybe we’ll get somewhere.’

We went out into the daylight and they washed and put on their clothes. Jan was in a sullen mood. When he was dressed, he walked over to the entrance to the shaft and stood there looking at it. I didn’t hear what he said, but I guessed he was cursing that fall of rock. Twenty men could probably have cleared it in a couple of days. As it was, he’d have to leave it. He turned suddenly and stared at me. ‘If only we could have got down here two or three days earlier.’ He said it as though it were my fault that we hadn’t.

‘Come on,’ Ed said. ‘There’s no good beefing about it.’

‘What about the bulldozers?’ I asked him.

‘We’ll pile all the gear and that box of explosives on them and take them with us. I’m not leaving them to be fooled around with by curious villagers. Come on. Give me a hand and let’s get started. It’ll be dark before we get down to the Post, anyway.’

We had just started to collect the tools when we heard the sound of footsteps in the entrance to the gorge. We stopped, all three of us, for they were a man’s step, but light, as though he had sandals on his feet.

But it wasn’t a Berber. It was Kostos. He saw us and jerked himself into a shambling run. His clothes were white with dust and his shoes were cracked and broken, the thin soles breaking away from the uppers. He was shabby and tired and frightened. ‘Jeez!’ Ed exclaimed. ‘He looks like a piece of white trash.’

‘Lat’m! Lat’m!’ Kostos came to a halt and his eyes watched our faces nervously. ‘I must stay ‘ere. I must stay with you.’ He was out of breath and his eyes seemed to have sunk back into the dark sockets as though he hadn’t slept for a long time. He was unshaven and the blue stubble of his chin emphasised the pallor of his face. A drop of sweat ran down the bridge of his sharp nose and hung on the tip.

‘What’s the trouble?’ I said. ‘Why do you suddenly prefer our company to Ali’s?’

His body shivered. It may have been the coldness of the gorge, for his clothes were all damp with sweat. But he had a scared look. ‘Caid Hassan is dead,’ he blurted out. ‘Ali is in control of Foum-Skhira.’

‘Hassan dead!’ I exclaimed. ‘But we saw him only … How did it happen?’

‘I don’t know. I am not there, you see.’ He said it quickly as though it were something carefully rehearsed that he had to be sure of saying. ‘I am in the village, in a pigsty of a house. It happens suddenly. That’s all I know.’

‘When?’

‘Last night.’

I glanced at Jan. His face was hard. He was thinking of the old man who had found it necessary to send him the confirmation of his title to this place secretly because he was afraid of his son. He looked as though he could kill Kostos. ‘We don’t want you here,’ he said angrily. ‘Why don’t you go to the Post if you’re scared?’

‘Because at the Post are two men from the Surete. I don’t like to be so close to the Surete.’ Kostos looked at me almost pleadingly. ‘You understand, eh, Lat’am?’ And then his tone changed to truculence as he said, ‘Well, I am ‘ere now. So what you do? It is a public place, this gorge. You cannot throw me out of it.’ He looked at Ed and his small, black eyes fastened on the holster at his belt. ‘I see you ‘ave guns. That is good. You will give me a gun, eh? I am very good shot with a pistol.’

Ed laughed. It was a hard, tense laugh. ‘What do you think we are — an arsenal?’ He turned and looked at me. ‘Is this guy nuts or something?’ He was trying to shrug the whole thing off, but the tremor of his voice betrayed him.

Kostos noticed it, too. He crossed over to Ed and caught hold of his arm. ‘Please now. You give me a gun. You give me a gun and I stay here and — ‘

‘Are you crazy?’ Ed threw his hand off angrily. ‘We haven’t got any guns. This — ‘ He tapped the Luger at his waist. ‘This is the only gun in the place.’

‘The only gun!’ Kostos stared at him, and then his eyes darted quickly round at Jan and myself. ‘But you have women to protect. You must have guns. You couldn’t be such fools…’ His voice died away as he saw from our eyes that it was the truth. ‘Oh, Santo Dios!’ he cried, reverting to Tangier Spanish, and he wiped his brow on a filthy handkerchief, his eyes darting round the sides of the gorge as though looking for a way out.

Jan moved slowly forward then. ‘What’s happened to make you so scared?’

‘Nothing. Nothing.’ Kostos backed away from him. ‘You keep away from me. You keep away.’

‘What about that passport?’

‘I never had your passport.’

‘Don’t lie. Why did you slip it into my suitcase when you came up here that first morning?’

‘All right. I tell you. Because I want no part of any killing. The passport is too dangerous.’

‘And now you come running up here.’ Jan was still walking towards him. ‘Let’s have the truth now. You’re scared of something. You’ve seen something or done something that has frightened you out of your wits. What is it?’ He lunged forward and caught Kostos by the arm. ‘Why have you abandoned Ali? What’s he done that’s frightened you?’ His grip tightened on the Greek’s arm and he began to twist it back. ‘Come on now. Let’s have the truth.’

‘Look out!’ I said. ‘He may have a knife.’ I had seen the Greek’s other hand slide under his jacket.

Jan flung the man away from him and turned angrily back towards us. He pushed his hand up through his hair. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said. ‘The old man dead. He was ill, I know, but…’ He turned again and stared at Kostos, who was standing there, breathing heavily, his eyes watching us uncertainly. ‘He knows something. I’d like to beat the truth out of the swine.’

‘I think you’d better go down to the Post,’ I said to Kostos.

‘No. I am staying here.’

‘Then suppose you tell us — ‘

‘Philip!’ It was Julie’s voice and it rang shrilly through the gorge. ‘Philip!’ There was a note of panic in it and I started to run, the others close behind me.

Julie stopped as she came round the base of the slide and saw us. Karen was with her and they stood there, panting. ‘What is it?’ I cried. ‘What’s happened?’

‘I think it’s Ali,’ she panted. ‘There’s a whole crowd of them coming up out of the palmerie. Some of them are on mules. They’re heading straight for the camp.’

‘Julie saw them first,’ Karen said. ‘I was in the tent. She called to me and then we began to run, up here.’

‘Okay,’ Ed said. ‘Let’s go and see what it’s all about.’

We didn’t have to go far. From the entrance of the gorge we could see them swarming over the camp and round the bus. ‘Goddammit!’ Ed cried. ‘They’re looting the place.’ He had unbuttoned the holster of his pistol and was pulling it out.

‘Better put that away,’ I said, ‘till we find out what they want.’

‘Do you think I’m going to stand by and see my whole outfit vanish under my nose?’

I tightened my grip on his arm. ‘How many rounds have you got on you?’

He stared at me. ‘Only what’s in the magazine,’ he said sullenly and began cursing under his breath.

Just twelve rounds and there were a hundred men milling around the camp. ‘Then I think you’d better regard that gun as being for purposes of bluff only.’

He nodded sullenly, staring at the scene with hard, angry eyes. A murmur of sound came up from the camp. They were like wasps round a jam pot. They were looting the food and all the time a man on a white mule was shouting at them. It was Ali and he was trying to get them to follow him up towards the gorge. The crowd increased steadily. It was being joined by little groups of men coming in from the desert and up out of the palmerie. A wisp of smoke rose in a blue spiral from the cook tent. It drifted lazily up into the still air and then died away as the tent disintegrated. The other tents were on fire now and then the bus was set alight. We could hear the crackle and the roar of the flames above the steady murmur of the mob.

‘The bastards!’ Ed cried. ‘The bastards!’ His eyes glistened with tears of rage and frustration. I kept a tight hold of his arm. The situation was explosive enough.

A hand touched my sleeve. It was Julie. She was staring at the bus which was now well alight and I knew she was thinking of her brother. It was her last link with him, apart from a few paintings scattered up and down the world. ‘Why are they doing it?’ she whispered. ‘Why are they doing it?’

‘The Caid is dead,’ I said. ‘And they think the water is poisoned.’ I turned and glanced back at the gorge. The sides were too steep to climb. We should have to retreat back into it until we could climb out. ‘Come on,’ I said to the others. ‘We’d better get started. I don’t think they will attack us.’

Jan nodded. ‘Yes. We’d better go.’ The mob was breaking away from the tents now and starting up towards us, packing close round their leader on his white mule. They weren’t shouting. They were, in fact, quite silent, so that we could hear the sound of the flames. Their silence was full of menace. ‘Come on,’ Jan said, and we went back hurriedly into the gorge.

But when he came to the bulldozers, Ed stopped. He had his gun out now. ‘I’m staying here,’ he said. He looked very young and a little frightened. But his tone was obstinate.

‘You’ll only get hurt,’ I said. ‘Come on now. There are the girls to think of.’

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You go back with the girls. But I’m staying here.’

‘Don’t be a fool,’ Jan said.

Ed stared at him sullenly. ‘These machines represent all the cash I got in the world. If you think I’m going to run off and let these bastards… Latham. Will you stay here with me? I don’t speak their language. But if you were here, maybe we could — ‘

‘No,’ Julie said. ‘Please, Philip. Don’t stay.’

But Ed caught hold of my arm. ‘You’re not afraid to face them, are you? I’ve got a gun. I can hold them off. If you’ll only talk to them, explain to them.’

‘All right,’ I said, and I turned to Jan and told him to get the girls back up the gorge.

‘Do you rate a couple of bulldozers higher than your own life, or Philip’s?’ Julie demanded. ‘Please, Philip. Let’s get out of here.’

‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘You go on. I’ll just have a word with Ali and see what I can do. They won’t harm us.’

She turned and faced Ed. ‘Damn you!’ she cried. ‘Damn you and your bloody bulldozers.’ She was crying with anger.

‘I’m sorry, Miss Corrigan,’ Ed said, his voice quiet and restrained. ‘I appreciate how you feel. But those bloody bulldozers cost me eighteen months’ work. No man likes to pass up eighteen months of his life without a fight.’ He looked at me. ‘You do what you think best, Latham.’

‘I’ll stay, for the moment,’ I said, and told Jan to take Karen and Julie back up the gorge. Julie hesitated, her jaw set, though her face was white and frightened. ‘Please,’ I said. ‘I’ll be with you in a few minutes.’

I turned to face the mob that was now coming into the gorge round the base of the slide. As I did so, I caught sight of Kostos. He was beside the bulldozer nearest the mine entrance and he was bending down, stuffing something into the pockets of his jacket. ‘Kostos!’ I shouted. ‘Get back with the others.’ And as he didn’t move, I shouted, ‘What are you doing? Get back with the others.’

He straightened up then and his pale, haggard face was twisted in an evil, frightened grin. He held out his hand so that I could see what he had been picking up. He held a stick of dynamite. ‘One gun is not enough,’ he said. ‘I like to be certain.’ And he bit the slow-match of the cartridge off short.

‘Kostos!’ Ali’s voice rang through the gorge. He had halted his white mule just in sight of us, sitting it very still. He was wearing a turban now like his followers and it gave him height, so that he looked a commanding figure with his aquiline face and his blazing eyes. His exile hadn’t made him a stranger to the land that had produced him. He belonged, and sitting there, with the sides of the gorge reared up on either side of him, he looked like some virile leader out of the Old Testament. The tribesmen were bunched together behind him. ‘So. This is where you are hiding. Come here! At once! You hear me?’ He had spoken in French, but Kostos didn’t move. And when he saw that the Greek wasn’t going to come, he turned and gave an order in Berber to the men who were mounted on mules close behind him. They thumped the flanks of their mounts with their bare heels and came riding forward at a trot, their voluminous clothes billowing out behind them.

I shouted at Kostos to come down and join us, for there was panic in his face. He was city bred with no sense of this country or these people, and I was afraid he’d light the fuse of that stick of dynamite and fling it without thought for the consequences. If he did, the Berbers would attack. There would be no holding them.

But instead, he broke and ran, flinging himself at the steep slopes where the fig trees grew.

‘Don’t shoot,’ I warned Ed. ‘For God’s sake don’t shoot.’ He had the gun in his hand and it was aimed at the men who were riding their mules towards us. But he didn’t shoot and they swept past us, headed towards Kostos.

The mob was now packed tight in the entrance of the gorge and Ali was coming forward again, his mule stepping daintily on the stones of the track. The men of Foum-Skhira closed up behind him, shoulder to shoulder like a herd of goats. They were mostly young men and they were silent as though awed by the place and by what they were doing. I called on them to halt and began to speak to them in their own tongue, telling them that what they were doing was a wicked thing, that the wrath of Allah would fall upon themselves and their families if they did harm to anyone. I started to explain that there was nothing wrong with the water, telling them that if they wished I would drink it myself. And all the time I didn’t dare look round to see how far up the gorge Julie and the others had got, though I was conscious of the movement of rocks and the scrape of feet as Kostos was hounded up the slopes.

Ali’s voice suddenly cut across mine. ‘Monsieur. These people are angry. They have no food and the water is bad. This place belongs to Foum-Skhira and they believe there is great wealth here that will save them from starvation. Leave this place and you will not be hurt. But if you stay, I cannot be sure what my people will do.’

That mention of ‘my people’ reminded me of the Caid’s death and I called out to them again in Berber: ‘Men of Foum-Skhira! Two nights ago I saw Caid Hassan. Because of this man’ — I pointed to Ali — ‘he was not permitted to say what he wished. He had to send a secret messenger. That messenger was set upon by the men of Ali. They tried to kill him. Now Caid Hassan is dead and I must tell you …’

‘Silence!’ Ali screamed at me in French. ‘Silence!’ And then he was shouting at his followers, screaming at them in a frenzy, inciting them to attack. And they answered him with a low murmur like an animal that is being roused to fury.

‘We’d better get out of here,’ I cried. But Ed didn’t need to be told what that low mob growl meant. ‘I guess it’s no good,’ he said, and his voice was resigned.

And as we backed, so the mob advanced, and the sound that emanated from their throats filled the gorge like the growl of a monster. Then, suddenly, they rushed forward. We turned and ran for it.

The others were already well up the side of the gorge on a shelf of rock that slanted up from the bend. And, as I ran, I glimped Kostos, cut off from the rest of the party by his pursuers and being forced out along the cliff top above the entrance to the mine.

Ed, just ahead of me, turned and looked over his shoulder. And then he stopped. ‘It’s all right,’ he said as I halted beside him. ‘They’re not following us.’ I turned and stared back. The gorge was full of weird howls of triumph and blood lust. But it wasn’t directed against us. All their warlike instincts were concentrated on the two bulldozers. ‘Goddam the bastards!’ Ed breathed. The men of Foum-Skhira were clustered round the machines like ants. They shouted and yelled and as though by magic the bulldozers moved. They trundled them down across the tight-packed rocks of the dumping ground and toppled them into the water. There was a splash and then the waters closed over them and the place was suddenly as God had made it again.

And then they moved towards the entrance to the mine shaft. Ali was already there. He had got off his mule and was standing in front of the entrance. My eyes travelled upwards and I saw Kostos balanced precariously on the rocks of the slide almost directly above him. He must have dislodged a stone, for Ali was looking up now. Whether the two men could see each other I don’t know. I think it likely, for Kostos wasn’t looking at the Berbers creeping over the rocks towards him. He held a stick of dynamite and he was looking down at Ali and the scene below him.

A pinpoint flicker of flame showed for an instant in his hand.

My eyes went involuntarily upwards. Not four hundred feet above, the crumbling cliff, that Jan had pointed out to me, towered above him. The flicker of flame was replaced by a wisp of smoke. I wanted to shout, to tell him not to do it. The men were packed tight below him. It was murder. Stupid, unnecessary, pointless murder. His arm swung back and the wisp of smoke curved through the air. From where we were Kostos was no bigger than a puppet and the wisp of smoke curving downwards into the close-packed mob looked as harmless as a feather floating through the air.

It fell into the centre of the crowd which mushroomed out away from it with an instinctive sense of fear. We could see it sizzling away on the ground now, and I felt a sudden relief. Kostos had left too long a fuse. It would injure nobody. But then Ed gripped my arm. ‘The dynamite!’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘Do you see it? That box.’

It was — a small, square patch of yellow close beside the sputtering wisp of smoke. I saw it for a second, and then there was a flash. It was followed instantly by a great, roaring burst of flame. The whole area of beaten rock on which the mob stood seemed lifted skywards. Rocks were flung up and men flattened to the ground. I saw Ali thrown backwards into the mouth of the shaft. And whilst the rocks were still rising in the air, the sound of that explosion hit us and the blast of it rocked us on our feet. It was an ear-shattering, indescribable crash in that confined space. And the noise went on, hammering at the cliff faces, rolling upwards over the mountain slopes, and drumming back at us in a stupendous cacophony of sound, whilst the rocks stopped heaving upwards and began to fall back to the ground.

The sound of the explosion began to diminish as the echoes reverberated back from farther and farther away. And just as a deep, mutilated silence seemed to settle on the gorge, there was a rumble like thunder out of the sky. I looked up. And then Ed’s hand clutched my arm and I knew that he’d seen it, too. The sky was blue. There wasn’t a cloud to mar the pastel shades of sunset.

But against that blue the cliff face where Kostos stood was slowly, lazily toppling outwards. It was catching the reddening rays of the sun so that the rock glowed. It was like something in Technicolor, remote and rather beautiful.

But the sound was not beautiful. It grew in volume, a great, grumbling, earth-shaking roar. The whole cliff was toppling down, hitting the slopes below and rebounding. It was as slow and inevitable as a waterfall, and the dust rose like spray.

I glanced round me in sudden fear, expecting all the cliffs around us to be toppling. But it was only that one cliff and below it Kostos stood, his body twisted round so that I knew he was looking upwards, seeing the ghastly thing he had let loose, but standing transfixed, knowing it was death that was pouring down upon him in the form of millions of tons of rock and unable to do anything to save himself. And below, by the entrance to the mine, the men of Foum-Skhira lay dazed, barely aware of what was descending on them from above.

All this I saw in a flash and then my gaze returned to the mountainside. The cliff was hidden now by a cloud of dust that shone red in the sunlight, and below it, the great tide rolled like a tidal wave, and as it rolled it seemed to gather the mountainside with it, so that the whole slope on which Kostos stood was thrust over the lip of the cliff, taking him with it, still oddly standing erect staring up at the main body of the landslide.

And in that split second in which my eyes recorded his fall, the whole gorge was suddenly filled by chaos. The sound pounded at the ground under our feet. Pieces of cliff from the farther side were shaken loose. Small avalanches were started. And all the time the noise gathered volume, the dust rose white like steam till it caught fire in the sunlight, and all the mountain poured into the gorge, thundering and crashing and filling it with rock.

Long after the movement had slowed and the weight had gone out of the sound, Ed and I stood there, incapable of action, stunned by the terrible vastness of it. It had a sort of horrible fascination. It took an effort of will-power to make me turn my head and look behind me, up the gorge, to see that the others were safe. Thank God, they were. They were in a little huddle as though clinging to each other, and they were as motionless as we were.

I looked back again at the scene of desolation and felt slightly sick. The dust was settling now and the sunset colours on the mountain top were flaming into vivid beauty. And into the dark cavern of the gorge a stillness was creeping, not a graveyard stillness, but the deep, satisfied stillness of Nature. And then, clear across that stillness, came a cry. It was a high, piercing cry, and I heard the name of Allah. Down by the gorge mouth, clear of the outer spill of the slide, was a little knot of men. They were waving their arms and calling down curses on our heads. One of them, a big, bearded man, was shaking his fist at us and clawing his way towards us across the debris of the slide.

I turned and started up the slope of rock towards the others. ‘Come on,’ I shouted at Ed. ‘Hurry, man. We’ve got to be out of this gorge by nightfall.’

He caught the urgency of my voice and came hurrying after me. ‘There’s only a handful of them left,’ he said breathlessly as he caught up with me. ‘And anyway it was that damned Greek that caused the explosion. It was nothing to do with us.’

‘They don’t know that,’ I said. ‘He was a European. That’s all they know. If they catch us in these mountains at dawn…’ I didn’t bother to finish the sentence. I needed my breath, for we were climbing at a desperate rate to join up with the rest of the party.