The Strange Land

CHAPTER ONE

The mountains changed abruptly the moment we were across the divide as though to emphasize that we were entering upon a wild, strange land. Where, on the northern side, there had been scrub and small trees and slopes of snow glimmering white in the dawn, there was nothing now but naked rock. The sky was pale, a duck’s egg, pastel blue, and above us to the left rose piled-up cliffs of sandblasted stone that flanked the valley in a long ridge, their battlements picked out in gold as the sun rose in the east.

It was a beautiful, pitiless country.

We stopped for breakfast where the road crossed the first big torrent of melted snow. It was bitterly cold with a chill wind whistling down the valley from the peaks behind us. Yet, by the time the tea was made, the sun had risen above the red rock fortresses of the ridge, the wind had gone, and it was suddenly hot. The abruptness of the change was startling.

It was then that Julie remembered she had some letters for me. There were two from England — a Bible Society tract and an offer of old clothes from some association I had never heard of. The third was postmarked Tangier and was from Karen Kavan. As we had agreed, she had written to me, not to Jan. It simply announced that her employers were taking a trip south and would be staying at the Hotel Mamounia for Christmas and then going on to Ouarzazate and Tinerhir. She was travelling with them and she gave the telephone numbers of the hotels they were staying at. The number of the gite d’etapes at Ouarzazate was 12. It was the same number that Wade had noted down in the back of his log against the name of Ed White.

I was still thinking about this as I handed Jan the letter. ‘It’s from your wife,’ I said. He scanned it eagerly and then asked the date.

‘Today is the twenty-third,’ Julie said.

He folded the letter slowly and put it away in his breast pocket, staring out through the side window along the grey ribbon of the road leading south towards Ouarzazate.

‘Is she all right?’ Julie asked.

‘Yes.’ He nodded quickly. ‘Yes, she’s all right. She’ll be in Ouarzazate on the twenty-sixth.’ There was a sort of wonder in his voice as though he couldn’t believe it was true.

‘Then you’ll see her.’

He looked across at Julie and smiled. ‘Yes. Yes, I hope so. It would be wonderful!’

He was thinking of his wife, stopping there at the gite d’etapes. And I was thinking of this man White. If Wade had planned to phone him there… ‘You remember you mentioned a man called White,’ I said to him. ‘When you were telling me about Kasbah Foum.’ He nodded. ‘Do you know anything about him?’

‘No, nothing. Except that he’d tried to contact me through the lawyers.’

‘Wade told you that?’

‘Yes.’

‘You don’t know why?’

‘No.’

‘Weren’t you curious about it?’

‘Yes. I asked Wade. But he wouldn’t tell me. Why do you ask?’

I didn’t say anything. I was thinking that perhaps it was White who had started this whole chain of interest in Kasbah Foum. He had been down to the south here. He might even have been to Kasbah Foum. Was that the reason Ali had instructed Wade to purchase the deeds from Jan? ‘Was White ever at Kasbah Foum?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know.’ He shook his head, staring at me with a puzzled frown.

‘Wade told you nothing about him?’

‘No, nothing. Only what I’ve told you.’

I hesitated and then said, ‘What about Wade? Had he ever visited Kasbah Foum?’

‘No.’ He said it slowly and then added, ‘But I think he intended to.’ He paused for a moment before saying, ‘As I told you, Wade was a crook. I have an idea he didn’t intend to play straight with Ali.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I think, if he had got the deeds, he would have gone straight to Kasbah Foum. When he discovered I wouldn’t sell, he tried to persuade me to go into some sort of partnership with him. He said there was money in it. I think he knew about the possibilities of silver. Right up to the end I think he believed that when we reached Tangier I would agree to his proposition. I didn’t discourage him. I wanted that passage out and I didn’t trust him. If I had definitely refused…’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter now.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘It’s time we went on.’ He said it almost brusquely, as though he didn’t want to think about what had happened on the boat.

The road ran gently down the valley of the Imini and emerged on to an arid, stony plain. The mountains dropped behind until I could see them in the mirror as a long, brown wall topped with snow. I was driving. The others were asleep — Julie in her own compartment at the back of the caravan, Jan sprawled out on the berth behind me. I was alone at the wheel with the road reeling out ahead of me and the blazing sun and the blue sky and the parched earth stretching brown to the horizon — just the two colours, blue and brown, and the grey ribbon of the road. I had an odd sense of space coming down out of the mountains. It was as though I could feel by the lie of the land that the way was open to the south. Ahead were the humped shapes of a range of low, dark hills. Beyond them was the Sahara.

It was strange and a little frightening. This was the most recently conquered part of Morocco. Barely twenty years ago Marshal Lyautey and his troops had still been fighting there. The whole area was run by the military — by Les Officiers des Affaires Indigenes. There were few Europeans and until quite recently it had been known as the Zone of Insecurity.

We passed the turning to the manganese mines of Imini and then we were running through Amerzgane and El Mdint. The white kasbah of Tifoultout stood like a fairy castle on a little rise on the far side of the river and after that the road was straight and tree-lined, ending abruptly in a hill with a fort on it. We were driving into Ouarzazate. The town was largely French, a single street pushed between two small hills. On the right was the Military Post. The road leading up to it was signposted territoire. And then I saw a second signpost — gite d’etapes. I turned up a sharp hill, climbing to a long, low building with a tower built like a kasbah.

‘Why have you turned up here?’ Jan asked, roused from his sleep by the change in the engine note.

‘I want to phone Frehel,’ I said. ‘Also, your friend Ed White stayed here.’

I told him about the telephone number noted down at the back of Wade’s log as we went into the hotel. The place was centrally heated and very warm. Beyond the reception desk was a bar and on either side were two big glass cabinets, one displaying Berber jewellery — silver bangles and coin headdresses, blanket pins and long necklaces of intricately-worked silver and beads — the other filled with specimens of minerals found locally. A French officer seated at a table reading a magazine glanced at us idly. Then Madame appeared and I asked her whether she knew a Mr White.

‘Mais oui, monsieur. An American. He has stayed here several times.’

‘On holiday?’ I asked.

‘En vacance? Non, non, monsieur. He is a prospector.’

‘A prospector!’ Jan’s voice was suddenly interested.

‘Is this Monsieur’s first visit to Ouarzazate?’ Madame asked. And when Jan nodded, she said, ‘Ah, well then, you must understand that all this country south of here is very rich in minerals. We have many prospectors who stay — ‘

‘Is he staying here now, madame?’ Jan asked her.

‘Monsieur White? NoŤ, monsieur. He has not been here for several weeks now.’

‘Do you know where he is?’

‘Un moment.’ She went behind the desk and picked up a notebook, running her finger down the passages. ‘Ah, oui. He left instructions for us to forward his letters to the office of Monsieur le Capitaine at the Military Post of Foum-Skhira.’

So, Ed White was at Kasbah Foum!

‘I suppose he didn’t say what he was prospecting for?‘Jan asked.

‘Non, non.’ Madame laughed. ‘Prospectors do not talk about what they are searching for. But probably it is uranium.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Always they dream of uranium now.’

‘Did a Monsieur Kostos stay here last night or the night before?’ I asked her.

‘Non, monsieur.’

I phoned Frehel then and told him where he could find us. And whilst I was doing that, Jan wrote a note for his wife. He left it with Madame and we went back to the bus, driving out of Ouarzazate by a road that forded the river not far from the great Kasbah of Taourirt. Everything was very still in the sunlight and as the wheels splashed and bumped over the stones of the river bed, we could see the kasbah reflected in the water. It was a completely walled town, crowding up out of the palmerie in tower after tower, standing out against the blue of the sky like a part of the desert country in which it was built.

And then we were clear of the water and climbing the narrow, ploughed-up surface of the piste, climbing up through a long valley that led into the foothills of the Anti-Atlas. All about us were dark, sombre hills, shadowed by the stones that littered their slopes, closing up behind us and hemming us in so that we could no longer see the clean, white wall of the High Atlas. A little wind rose and drifted dust between the stones. Gaunt skeletons of heath and tamarisk marked out the drainage courses in dusty green.

‘Marcel called this country Le Pays Noir,’ Jan murmured. ‘He said it was geologically much older than the High Atlas and full of undeveloped mineral resources.’ He was dreaming of Kasbah Foum again.

All afternoon we struggled through those dark, satanic hills. Dust seeped up through the floorboards in choking clouds from the fine-ground powder of the piste. It got in our clothes and in our nostrils. It powdered our hair grey. Once a jeep passed us, and for an hour after that we caught glimpses of it, a little cloud of dust far ahead. We climbed steadily upwards and then dropped down to a rocky basin in which a lonely kasbah stood subsisting on a few dusty palms and the herds of black goats that roamed the stunted vegetation. After that we climbed again, up a steep escarpment to a lonely watch tower and the pass of Tizi N Tinififft, more than five thousand feet up. Here we were in a land of sudden deep gorges, dark in shadow, that descended in shelves of rock. For an hour we wound round the tops of these gorges until, as the sun set, we came out on to a hill-top, and far below us saw the Draa Valley, a green ribbon of palm trees. And there, on a little hill, was the Military Post of Agdz.

We had a meal then and slept, and at two in the morning we drove through the sleeping Post of Agdz and down the valley of the Draa. The piste was white and ground as fine as talcum powder. It followed the line of the river, winding along the edge of the palmerie, past kasbah after kasbah, and in every open space the kasbah cemeteries showed as patches of desert littered with small, upended stones, mute testimony to the countless thousands who had lived and died here over the centuries. We came at length to a fork: a little-used piste turning off to the right and running south over low hills. There was no signpost, but we took it, relying on the map.

Julie was driving again. I could see her face in the light from the dashboard; an intent, serious, competent face. Her black hair was grey with dust, her eyes narrowed as they peered ahead along the beam of the headlights. The stony, desert country ground past us, always the same — an unchanging yellow in the lights, and then suddenly black as it disappeared behind us. Her hands were brown and slender on the dusty ebony of the wheel and every now and then she beat at her knees to restore her circulation. A bitter wind blew in through the chinks in the windscreen, but our feet were warm in the heat of the engine, which came up from the floorboards with a musty smell of dust mixed with engine oil.

Looking at her, I wondered what she’d do now that her brother was dead. She’d have to do something, for I was pretty sure that George would have left her nothing but a few pictures. George hadn’t been the saving type. He’d spent money as he made it — always travelling, always painting.

I was remembering how I had first met them. It must be seven years ago now, when I was in Tangier. Their mother had died and left them some money, and they’d come out to Tangier because in Tangier there are no taxes. I had helped them get their money out. That was how I’d met them. Julie had been little more than a schoolgirl then, wide-eyed, excited by everything, deeply concerned at the poverty she saw side-by-side with the rich elegance of the crooks and tax-evaders who occupied the villas on La Montagne. They had stayed for a few months, and then they had gone to Greece and on to Turkey and Syria. Occasionally Julie had sent me a postcard — from Baghdad, Cairo, Haifa, and one, I remember, from Lake Chad after they had done a trip from Algeria right across the Sahara. It wasn’t difficult to understand why Julie had stayed with her brother. He had given her all the excitement and colour she had wanted. And it had suited George, for he was interested in nothing but his painting.

She glanced at me suddenly and our eyes met. ‘What are you thinking about, Philip?’ she asked. ‘About what an odd trip this is?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I was thinking about you.’

‘Oh,’ Her mouth spread into a smile and the corners of her eyes crinkled with laughter. But she didn’t say anything further, just sat there, her gaze on the faint track of the piste.

‘I was wondering what you were going to do now,’ I said after a while.

She shrugged her shoulders. It was a very Latin shrug. But she didn’t answer my question and I was conscious of the stillness between us, It was as though we had suddenly touched each other and then as quickly withdrawn. I felt a softening in the marrow of my bones and I sat back, watching her face, absorbing the straight line of her nose, the smallness of her ears, the way her hair curled at the back of her neck. I’d never thought of her quite like that before. When I had first met her she had seemed very young and then, when they had descended on the Mission three months ago, she had just been George Corrigan’s sister. That was all.

And now… Now I didn’t quite know.

‘What’s that? Up there.’ Jan’s voice cut across my thoughts, tense and excited. He was leaning forward over my shoulder and pointing through the windshield. We were climbing now, and far ahead, high up where the dark shadow of a hill cut across the starry velvet of the sky, the yellow pinpoint of a fire showed.

Our radiator was boiling by the time we reached it. It was a petrol fire flickering ghostlike out of a pile of stones beside a battered jeep. Four men were huddled round it. Three of them were town Arabs, but the fourth was a Berber and behind him his two camels stood motionless, hobbled by the foreleg. I signalled Julie to stop and called out to them, enquiring if the piste led to Foum-Skhira.

The Arabs stared at us nervously, whispering together, the whites of their eyes gleaming in the headlights. It was the Berber who answered me. ‘lyyeh, sidi.’ Yes, Foum-Skhira was beyond the mountain. The piste had been washed away by the rains, but it was almost repaired now. The souk at Foum-Skhira had also been washed away. He shook his head gloomily. ‘Thanks be to Allah I have left that place.’

The three Arabs had got to their feet. They were moving nervously towards their jeep, which still carried the American Army star. ‘I’m going on,’ Julie said.

‘No, wait…’ But already her foot was pressed down on the accelerator and as we moved off she said, ‘I didn’t like the look of them. I’m sure that jeep wasn’t their own.’

I had been thinking the same thing, but I didn’t say anything and we climbed steadily up the mountainside. Out on the top it was bitterly cold. There was nothing between us and the snow-capped peaks of the Atlas, and the sense of space was immense. We stopped where the road dipped down on the other side. The sky was already paling in the east. We made some tea and watched the sun rise, turning the dark hills first pink, then gold, then a hard, arid brown.

I took over the driving then and we started down the mountain, which was black in shadow and cleft by the start of a deep gorge. Below us lay a brown valley broken by the green of a palmerie, which was shaped like a fist, with the forefinger extended and curving towards the base of the mountain away to our right. From the centre of the fist rose the sun-baked walls of a kasbah. It was Kasbah Foum-Skhira, and close by were the forts of the French Post.

Away to the south the valley opened out, vanishing into the morning haze as though running straight out into the sands of the Sahara: it was like a broad estuary, and on the far side — ten, maybe fifteen miles away — the containing hills were ruler-straight as though cut from the bed of an ancient sea. The sky was palest blue, the earth almost yellow in the clear, dry air. The piste leading to Foum-Skhira was a faint line drawn across the valley floor like the tracing of a Roman road in an aerial photograph.

We swung down in sharp curves until we came to a crumbling cliff and looked down a thousand feet into the black depths of a gorge. The piste seemed to hang on the very edge of the drop and as we rounded the cliff, we came upon a road gang cutting their way through a fall of rock. ‘Look!’ Jan gripped my arm, pointing down towards the entrance to the gorge. A walled kasbah with four mud towers, two of which had crumbled away, was picked out in the slanting sunlight. And beyond it, on the edge of a stream bed, was a little cluster of tents.

Kasbah Foum! It couldn’t be anything else, standing like that in the entrance to the gorge. And those would be Ed White’s tents. I glanced at Jan. Though his face looked tired under the dust-white stubble, his blue eyes gleamed with excitement. ‘We’re almost there,’ he breathed.

But it was half an hour before we were driving into Foum-Skhira. The Post consisted of two large forts with a big, open space like a parade ground between them and a single European house. One of the forts was white, with adobe roofs that made it look like a mosque. I learned later that it had been built by the Legion. The other, built by native Goumiers, was of mud with embrasured walls and little square towers like a kasbah. They were both of them empty and as we drove past they had the silent, deserted look of lost cities. A Tricolour fluttered from a white flagstaff outside the European house.

I suggested to Jan that we make contact with the French officer in charge of the Post first. But he said. ‘No. Drive straight on to Kasbah Foum. If those were White’s tents, I’d like to find out what he’s doing before I talk to the French.’

I drove on, past the European house, down towards the palmerie where ruined mud walls marked the site where the souk had been. There were camels hobbled there and mules, and there was a large crowd of people who stood and stared at us, not curiously and not hostilely, but with a strange air of waiting for something. It was the same when we skirted the walls of Ksar Foum-Skhira, the village of the kasbah. The place teemed with people who stood and watched us go by in silence. The women, clustered round the well holes, let go of the ropes so that the long poles for lifting the water stood curved against the sky like the gaffs of dhows. But all the palmerie seemed deserted and the cultivated patches had a neglected look, the little earthen banks to contain the water flattened almost to the ground.

Dust rose in choking clouds through the floorboards as we ran along the edge of the palmerie. Gradually the trees thinned and fell away so that we could see the dried-up stream bed we were following. ‘There it is!’ Jan cried, leaning forward. ‘Right at the entrance to the gorge. And there’s the old city and the watch tower just as Marcel described it to me.’

I screwed up my eyes, seeing for the moment only the white glare of the piste and the black bulk of the mountain slope down which we had come. And then I saw it — the little kasbah with its two ruined towers standing out yellow against the black, shadowed immensity of the gorge. I could see the watch tower, too, and all the hill below it was strewn with the debris of an old city. In places the walls still stood, a yard thick and some twelve feet high, and one stone archway remained intact. But all the rest of it had been thrown down as though by some natural upheaval. And yet it was impressive, for this was a land of mud buildings, and I wondered who these people were who had built in stone.

Just short of the kasbah was the huddle of tents we had looked down on from above. We were very close now. A flash of light momentarily dazzled me. It was a mirror reflecting the sun. A man stood, watching us, a razor in his hand and half of his face white with shaving soap. He wore a singlet and green-khaki trousers tucked into half-length boots.

‘He looks American,’ Jan said, and then his gaze switched to the mouth of the gorge.

I pulled up outside the tent and we got stiffly down, our clothes white with the coating of dust we’d picked up crossing the valley. My eyes felt gritty and tired. It was hot already and there were flies and the smell of bacon frying.

The man who had been shaving came towards us. He was tall, broad-shouldered, slim-hipped, with a young, rather square face and a crew cut. He was undoubtedly American — his features, his clothes, everything about him. He was wiping the soap from his face as he came.

‘Are you Mr White?’ Jan asked.

‘Yeah.’ He waited, watching Jan uncertainly.

‘I believe you were recently in touch with a firm of French lawyers in Rouen.’

‘That’s right. You must be Wade, I guess.’ There was interest, but no enthusiasm in his voice.

‘Wade was in touch with you then?’ Jan’s tone had sharpened.

The man frowned. ‘You mean you’re not Wade?’ He sounded puzzled.

‘No. I’m not Wade.’ Jan said, and then he nodded towards the ruined fort. ‘Is that Kasbah Foum?’

‘Yeah.’

There was a short, awkward silence. The two of them stared at each other. Jan’s gaze shifted to the tented camp and then followed the broad track that ran up into the entrance of the gorge. The track looked as though it had been made by a bulldozer, for where it passed below the kasbah it had been levelled out by thrusting aside the stones and rubble of the old city.

‘Well, what do you want?’ White’s tone had hardened. He looked very young with his fair, cropped hair and freckled face — very young and very Nordic.

‘Would you mind telling me what you’re doing up there?’

‘What business is it of yours?’

Jan reached into his breast pocket and brought out the crumpled envelope. ‘I hold the deeds to this property,’ he said.

White stared at him. His mouth had opened in an expression of surprise. But he shut it suddenly and his whole face hardened, so that he looked big and tough and a good deal older. ‘Is that so?’ He seemed to tower over Jan as he took a pace forward. ‘What the hell goes on here? Is everyone screwy? Yesterday it was a Greek telling me the land belonged to him. Now you come here and tell me — ‘

‘Was the Greek’s name Kostos?’ I asked.

White seemed to notice me for the first time. ‘Yeah, that was his name. Kostos.’ The name seemed to bring the anger that was in him to a sudden head. He swung round on Jan. ‘Now you get the hell out of here. Both of you. D’you hear? I got a concession from the Sultan’s Government. That’s good enough for me. If you think you own the land, then you go an’ tell them so. Okay?’

‘I have the documents here,’ Jan said quietly. ‘All I want to know is what you’re doing up there. You’re a prospector, aren’t you?’

‘Goddammit!’ the other exploded. ‘I’m not interested in documents. The guy who came yesterday had documents. You go an’ sort it out with the authorities.’ His voice was excited, nervous. ‘Jesus! I got enough trouble, what with the Ay-rabs bellyaching because I use bulldozers instead of employing them and Captain Legard at the Post getting scared I’ll upset the water. Now you and this Greek telling me I’ve got no right to operate here.’

‘I didn’t say that,’ Jan put in mildly.

‘All right. You didn’t say it. But that’s the inference, isn’t it? Now suppose you get out. I’ve work to do.’

Jan stood there, uncertain what to do next. The man seemed oddly belligerent. ‘Why don’t you talk it over,’ I suggested to White. ‘You haven’t looked at the documents yet.’

‘I looked at enough documents yesterday.’

‘If Kostos showed you any documents they were forgeries,’ Jan said. His voice had risen slightly and his shoulders were beginning to move excitedly. ‘Kostos is a crook and if you — ‘

‘You’re all crooks as far as I’m concerned,’ White cut in.

‘That’s not a very nice thing to say.’ It was Julie. The American looked at her, screwing up his eyes against the sun. I don’t think he’d noticed her before.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. And then he turned to Jan again and added, ‘I don’t know who you all are, and I don’t much care. I’m telling you the same as I told the Greek yesterday — go and sort it out with Caid Hassan and the authorities.’

‘If you’d just look at these deeds,’ Jan began, but the other cut him short.

‘What sort of fool do you take me for?’ he cried. ‘Do you think I’d start work here, spending my own dough, without finding out who owns the place? It belonged to a man called Duprez. It was given him by the Caid here. And Duprez is dead. I found that out from his lawyers. He’s dead and he passed the deeds on to a guy called Kavan. Now, according to the Greek, Kavan’s dead, too. Anyway, he never got his title to the property confirmed by the Caid, which he had to — ‘

‘But I am Kavan,’ Jan said.

White opened his mouth to say something and then stopped.

‘You’d better know our names,’ I said. This is Dr Jan Kavan, the man to whom Duprez gave the deeds of Kasbah Foum.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ he said. ‘Wade wrote me he’d be bringing the deeds out with him. Why should Kavan come here and not Wade? Kavan never took any interest in the place. The lawyers didn’t even know where he was. And the Greek said he was dead.’

‘Well, he’s not dead,’ I said a little irritably. ‘This is Dr Kavan, and he has the deeds with him. And this is Miss Corrigan.’

He stared at her for a moment and then turned back to me and said, ‘And what about you?’

‘My name’s Philip Latham.’

‘I mean, what’s your interest in this?’

‘I haven’t any,’ I told him. ‘I’m an English missionary out here.’

‘A missionary!’ He stared at me, open-mouthed.

‘There’s a most delicious smell of bacon,’ Julie said. pointedly sniffing at the air.

He stared at her, still frowning. ‘Oh, sure — yeah.’ He I looked at the three of us uncertainly. He was bewildered and a little uneasy.

‘We’ve been travelling all night,’ Julie said.

That was something he could understand. He! seemed to relax and a gleam of warmth came into his eyes. ‘If you haven’t had chow…’ His friendly nature asserted itself. He turned and shouted, ‘Abdul!’ And then he laughed awkwardly and said, ‘I forgot. I’m cook this morning, I guess.’ And he glanced a little angrily-round the camp.

‘Are you on your own?’ I asked. There was accommodation for at least four in the tents.

‘Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.’

‘Where’s the rest of your party?’ I was thinking of the Arabs with their jeep parked beside that fire in the mountains.

‘Oh — they left this morning….’ He stared at us and then added quickly, To get stores and things, you know.’ He turned back to the mirror. ‘I’ll just finish shaving: then I’ll see about some food.’ He gave a little laugh for no apparent reason except that he seemed nervous. There was a streak of blood on his chin where he had cut himself. He slapped irritably at a fly that was trying to settle on it.

‘Would you like me to cope with breakfast for you?’ Julie asked hesitantly.

He glanced at her and then nodded. ‘Sure. Go ahead. There’s tinned bacon, biscuits, jam and coffee.’ He watched her disappear into the cook tent, glanced quickly at us and then turned back to the mirror again.

‘You’re mining up here, aren’t you?’ Jan asked.

‘I told you — I’ve got a concession from the Sheriffian Government.’

‘What are you mining?’

‘That’s my business.’

Jan started to ask another question, but then stopped and stood staring up the newly-made track to the entrance to the gorge. An uneasy silence developed between us. The morning was very still. There wasn’t a breath of wind and the air was clear and crisp with that freshness that occurs in desert country before the sun bakes the land to arid heat.

‘What about a wash?’ I suggested.

Jan looked at me and nodded. ‘Yes. A wash would be good.’ We got our things and scrambled down the steep bank where a few dwarf palms thrust dusty fronds above the sand. Then we were in the rock bed of the stream and the only vegetation was the feathery sprays of the tamarisk and the needle-pointed tufts of the reeds. A heron rose from the edge of the muddy-flowing stream, its wings beating slowly, cumbersomely. Occasional banks of dark sand were white-crusted and marked by the feet of birds and when I rinsed out my mouth I found the water was slightly salt.

‘He was expecting Wade,’ Jan said suddenly. And then, after a pause, he added, ‘He doesn’t believe I’m Kavan.’

‘He’ll get used to the idea,’ I said.

He bent down and washed his face. As he stood up he said, ‘I was right, you know.’

‘What about?’

‘Wade was going into partnership with him.’

‘You mean he was double-crossing Ali?’

He nodded.

‘You may be right,’ I said as I towelled my face. ‘The point is, what do we do now?’

‘First I’m going up to have a look at the gorge.’ He was standing with his towel slung round his neck, staring towards the entrance which was a black canyon of shadow.

‘Well, you’d better have breakfast first,’ I said.

‘Yes, of course.’ He nodded, laughing excitedly. Then he turned to me, his expression suddenly serious. ‘Philip. You’ve no idea what this means to me; to be actually here, at Kasbah Foum. It was like a dream come true. Back in England, as things became more difficult, I thought of nothing else. It was my dream — a sort of El Dorado.’ He laughed a little self-consciously and, in a more practical tone, added, ‘After we’ve looked at the place, perhaps you’ll come with me to see Caid Hassan?’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘But I think we’d better see this Capitaine Legard first. You don’t want to upset the French.’

Julie joined us then. ‘Breakfast is ready,’ she said. She washed her hands and face and then came and stood beside us. ‘It’s a queer, wild place.’ She said it a little breathlessly, as though she was uneasy about it. ‘Why do you think the others left him?’

‘How do you mean?’ I stared at her and saw that her eyes were troubled. ‘They went to get stores. You heard what White — ‘

But she shook her head. ‘I’ve been inside the big tent. All their things are gone. And there are three empty beds there. You remember those men sitting round that petrol fire on the other side of the mountain?’

‘The three Arabs with the jeep?’

‘Yes. They came from here. I’m certain of it. That was his jeep. They were frightened. They stole the jeep because they were frightened and wanted to get away.’ She stared up at the entrance to the gorge. ‘I don’t like it, Philip. He’s frightened, too. I can feel it. He’s trying to hide something, but he’s frightened.’

‘Who? White? Nonsense,’ I said. ‘You’re imagining things.’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m not imagining things. There’s a queer atmosphere about the place. And those people down by the souk.’ She hesitated and then said, ‘A little boy came into the tent while I was cooking. Apparently Abdul used to give him scraps to eat in the mornings. He told me he sleeps up in the ruins of that kasbah. His father keeps his flock of goats there. He daren’t bring them down into the palmerie in case they get stolen. Since the souk was destroyed they’re very short of food here.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know.’ Her voice trembled slightly. ‘There’s a feeling of…” She didn’t seem able to put it into words.

‘Oh, come on,’ I said. ‘You’re tired and you need some food.’

She looked up at me uncertainly. Then she smiled and, with a sense of relief, I saw the smile spread from her lips to her eyes. ‘I expect you’re right. Let’s go and have breakfast. Maybe I’ll feel differently afterwards.’

We. breakfasted under the extended fly-sheet of the larger tent and from where I sat I looked through into the tent, to the three empty camp beds. I, too, began to feel Julie’s sense of uneasiness. It wasn’t only the fact that the tent looked deserted. It was White himself. He was oddly talkative. And once started, he talked quickly, eagerly, as though he had to go on talking to keep his mind off other things. He talked about himself, about North Africa — about anything that came into his head. He was from the Middle West and he had worked with Atlas Constructors for eighteen months, building the big American bomber base at Sidi Slimane near Fez. ‘Hell! That was a tough job. But I needed the dough. That eighteen months made it possible for me to come down here with my own outfit.’

‘You’d been prospecting here before, I suppose?’ Jan said.

‘Prospecting?’ White frowned. ‘No, I hadn’t been prospecting.’

‘But you knew the place? You’d been down here — ‘

‘No. I’d never been here before.’

Jan stared at him. ‘But how did you know? …’ He stopped, a puzzled expression on his face.

But White didn’t want to talk about Kasbah Foum. He slid quickly away from the subject and began talking about Morocco. He talked about it with an odd disregard for the French as though he had no idea what the country must have been like before they came. And yet he knew more about the history of the Berbers than I did, and when Julie asked him about the old city that lay in ruins on the slopes above us, he talked with authority. ‘I’d say it was six or seven hundred years old,’ he said. ‘Maybe more.’ And he went on to describe the ruins in detail, a sudden enthusiasm in his voice as though they touched him personally.

In his view the people who had built it had come in from the desert. ‘It’s a very complicated history down here in the south. And it isn’t helped by the fact that it’s been passed on by word of mouth from generation to generation. Some of the officers of the AI have done some good work on reconstructing it, but I guess nobody will ever really know. Basically, it’s quite simple though,’ he added. ‘Nomadic tribes move in from the desert, become date farmers and goatherds in the palmeries, get soft and then themselves fall victim to another wave of tough guys coming in from the desert. It’s a cycle that went on repeating itself. But the people who built this city, they were something bigger. As you see, they built in stone.’

He had been staring up at the ruins as he talked, but now I saw his gaze shift to the track running into the gorge. It had become very hot and the whole place seemed to brood in the shimmering light.

‘And what about the kasbah?’ Julie asked.

The kasbah? Oh, that’s later. Much later. It was the first kasbah built here in the valley. Legard says it was originally called Kasbah Foum-Skhira. Then, when the palmerie developed and they built a bigger kasbah and a new village, they called that Kasbah Foum-Skhira, and the deserted fort here became just Kasbah Foum. To differentiate between the two, I guess.’

Jan leaned forward and touched my arm. He had the deeds of Kasbah Foum in his hands. ‘Will you check through this and see if it says how far the properly extends?’ he asked me.

It took me some time to decipher it, for the ink was very faint in places. As far as I could tell, it took in all the shoulder of the mountains on which the watch tower and the kasbah and the old city stood. It took in both sides of the stream from well below the camp and included the whole of the entrance to the gorge.

‘How far back into the gorge does it extend?’ Jan asked.

‘As far as the first bend.’

He nodded. ‘Good!’ And then he looked across at White who had been watching us curiously. ‘You know Caid Hassan, I suppose?’

‘Is that the old Caid at Foum-Skhira?’

‘Yes. Have you met him?’

‘No.’

‘But it is Caid Hassan. I mean, it’s the same Caid that ruled here before the war?’

‘Oh, sure. Legard says he’s been Caid here for more than forty years.’

‘That’s all right.’ Jan folded the deeds up and put them back in their envelope. Then he got to his feet. ‘Come on, Philip. Now we’ll go and look at the place.’

‘Just a moment,’ White said.

Jan turned to face him.

‘You say you’re Kavan?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did Wade get in touch with you?’

‘Yes. But I wouldn’t let him have the deeds.’

‘I see.’ He stared at Jan, frowning again. ‘I’m surprised he didn’t write me again and let me know.’ He said it more to himself than to Jan and then he gave a quick tug to the waistband of his trousers and turned away as though dismissing the whole matter. ‘Go on up there if you want to,’ he said.

But as we went back up the track, I glanced back and saw him standing by his tent, watching us. His face had a sullen, worried look. Julie had noticed it, too. ‘He’s like a child with a toy,’ she said. And then she added, ‘But the odd thing is, he’s glad we’ve come. He doesn’t want to be here alone.’

We had a look at the kasbah first. It was built with its back against a section of the old city wall. The sand had drifted in from the desert, piling against the walls, and there were goat droppings everywhere, dried and powdery. There was nothing of interest there. We climbed down to the track and walked up it into the entrance to the gorge. ‘Do you know where the mine entrance was?’ I asked Jan.

He nodded, his eyes searching the dark cavern of the gorge, comparing it with the mental picture he had been given. We crossed the sharp-cut line between sun and shade, and immediately we were in a damp, chill world of cliffs and tumbled rock. Ahead of us, in a crook of a bend, stood a plantation of fig trees, their stems twisted and gnarled and white like silver. And on a ledge above, a little almond tree clung in a froth of white blossom.

All above us to the right was a great spill of rock. The track had been slashed through the base of it and the debris shovelled into the bed of the stream, damming it up to form a lake. The water was still and reddish in colour. Skirting the base of the slide, we came upon two bulldozers, white with dust. They looked insignificant in that huge, natural chasm — forlorn pieces of man-made machinery. They had been cutting into the slide to expose the face of a shallow cliff of grey rock, piling the rubble out into the lake so that there was a big artificial platform.

Jan made straight for the cliff face White had been exposing. ‘This is the spot,’ he said. ‘He’s almost reached it. Marcel said the mine shaft was at the base of this cliff.’ He looked back at the towering cliff that formed the opposite side of the gorge as though to check his bearings. ‘Yes.’ He nodded to himself. ‘Another few days and he would have exposed the entrance.’ He stood there, staring at the cliff. ‘Marcel should have been here,’ he murmured. ‘He should have been the person to open it up, not an American. He would have opened it up and used it to help the people here.’ His eyes were clouded. In his mind he was back in that cellar in Essen.

‘What’s this?’ Julie asked, holding out a lump of rock to him. I think she wanted to distract him from his thoughts.

He stared down at it. One half of the rock was a strong reddish colour. ‘Iron oxide,’ he said. ‘What you’d probably call red ochre.’ He moved back a little way, staring up at the slope of the slide above us. ‘It looks as though it’s fallen from up there.’ He pointed high up the slope to a crumbling cliff from which much of the slide had come. ‘I hope there isn’t another fall whilst we’re — ‘ He stopped, turning to face the entrance to the gorge, his head on one side, listening.

A car was coming up the track from the camp. We couldn’t see it because of the slide, but the sound of its engine was thrown back to us by the cliff opposite, beating in upon the stillness of the gorge. It grew rapidly louder. And then a jeep appeared, roaring and bumping round the base of the slide. It stopped beside the second bulldozer and a European got out. He wore a light grey suit with a brown muffler round his neck and a wide-brimmed town hat.

It was Kostos. His suit was crumpled and dirty, and his narrow, pointed shoes were covered with a white film of dust. He looked uncomfortable and his city clothes seemed out of place against the towering background of the gorge.

‘So! It is you, Lat’am, eh?’ He glanced at Julie, and then his small, dark eyes fastened on Jan. ‘Hah!’ He was suddenly smiling. ‘For a minute I do not recognise you without your beard.’

‘How did you know we were here?’ I asked him.

He tapped the side of his nose, smiling. He was so close to me that I could see the skin peeling from his cracked lips and the individual hairs of stiff stubble that darkened his chin. ‘Not a sparrow falls, eh? Even ‘ere in the desert.’

‘Well, what do you want?’

‘What do I want? Don’t try to be stupid with me, Lat’am. You know what I want.’ He moved across to Jan, leaning slightly forward and speaking confidentially as though he might be overhead. ‘Come now, my friend. The papers. They are of no use to you. You cannot make claim to this place just because you have Duprez’s papers. Duprez is dead and any successor to the ownership of the property must be confirmed by Caid Hassan.’

‘I know that,’ Jan said.

Kostos chuckled. ‘Maybe you know it now. But you do not know it when you take the papers from that poor devil Kavan, eh?’

‘What makes you think I took the papers from him?’ I think that at that moment Jan was amused that the Greek still took him for Wade.

Kostos looked at him and there was a little gleam of triumph in his eyes. ‘You do not kill a man for nothing, my friend.’ His tone was gentle, like a kitten’s purr.

‘Kill a man!’ Jan stared at him with shocked surprise. Knowing how it had happened and that it was an accident, the idea that he might be charged with murder was still quite beyond his grasp.

‘You don’t suggest Kavan fell overboard from your boat, do you?’

‘What do you mean?’ Jan’s face was suddenly white. ‘Who told you anyone fell overboard?’

‘So! You do not listen to the radio, eh?’

‘No, we haven’t got one,’ I said. ‘But we saw the newspaper report. It was inaccurate.’

Kostos spun round on me. ‘You keep out of this, Lat’am. It is nothing to concern you. I make you an offer in Tangier. You remember? That is finish. You lie to me. But now I have a stronger hand, you see, an’ I deal direct.’ He turned back to Jan. ‘This is a new development, my friend. The body of Dr Jan Kavan, Czech refugee scientist, has been washed up on the coast of Portugal. This is what the radio said. It is two nights ago and they give your description — all very accurate, except for the beard which is gone now.’ He moved a little closer to Jan. ‘The police would be interested to know what motive you had.’

‘How do you mean?’ Jan’s body was rigid, his mouth slightly open.

‘If I tell them about the deeds you get from Kavan, then they know it is murder — they know you push him overboard.’

‘No.’ The denial burst from Jan’s mouth. ‘I didn’t push him. It was an accident. And it wasn’t — ‘ He checked himself as though a thought had suddenly occurred to him.

‘Now, perhaps you understand, eh?’ Kostos was smiling. ‘We make a deal. You and I. You give me the papers and I keep silent. Maybe I help you get out of Morocco safe. But if you do not give me the papers, then I — ‘ He stopped and turned at the sound of footsteps echoing along the cliffs of the gorge.

It was White. He wore an old fleece-lined flying jacket, open at the front to expose the dirty white of his T-shirt. ‘What’s going on here?’ he demanded. And then he recognised Kostos.

‘Oh, so you two have got together, have you?’

Kostos smiled and looked across at Jan. ‘Yes. That is just about what we do, eh?’ He jerked the muffler tighter round his neck. ‘I give you to tonight, my friend. I will be ‘ere — ‘ he glanced at his heavy gold wrist-watch — ‘at five o’clock. If you do not meet me then, ready to come to an agreement, then I will know what to do, eh?’ He smiled and nodded and walked back to the jeep. The engine started with a roar that reverberated through the gorge and then he went bumping and slithering over the rocks at the base of the slide and was lost to sight.

‘Who was that frightful little man?’ Julie asked. ‘What did he mean about — ‘

‘I’ll tell you later,’ I said quickly. I was looking at White, wondering how much he had heard.

He seemed to hesitate a moment. And then he half shrugged his shoulders and turned and walked over to the nearest bulldozer, his tall, slim-hipped body moving easily, rhythmically as though he belonged in this wild place.

‘White!’ I called after him. ‘Do you know how we contact the Caid?’

But he climbed on to the seat of the bulldozer without replying, and a moment later the engine started with a shattering roar. The tracks moved and the dull, rock-burnished steel of the blade dropped to the ground, scooped a pile of rock out of the slide and thrust it to the edge of the dumping ground. The gorge echoed to the splash and rumble of a ton of rock spilling down the slope into the water.

I tapped Jan on the shoulder. ‘We’d better go down and see Capitaine Legard at the Post. He’ll take us to the Caid.’ I had to shout to make myself heard above the reverberating roar of the bulldozer.

He nodded and we went back down the track to the camp. ‘Do you think it is true, what Kostos said?’ he said.

‘He’d hardly have invented it,’ I said.

‘No, I suppose not.’ He looked worried. ‘It must be Wade’s body that was washed up. But why should they mistake Wade for me?’

‘Don’t forget they’re convinced Wade is alive,’ I pointed out. ‘And your papers showed that you aren’t unalike. The body wouldn’t have been in too good shape.’ I hesitated and then said, ‘Was Wade wearing any of your clothing?’

‘I don’t know.’ He hesitated. ‘He could be. You know what it’s like in a yacht — oilskins, windbreakers, sweaters, everything gets mixed up. One’s too tired … Maybe he was wearing something of mine.’ He said it slowly, considering the matter, and he walked with quick, nervous strides, his eyes fixed on the ground. ‘If it’s true what Kostos said,’ he murmured half to himself, ‘then officially I’m dead.’

‘You’ll have to explain that it’s Wade’s body that’s been found in Portugal,’ I told him. ‘And you’ll have to explain how he died.’

‘That means publicity.’ The words seemed to be jerked out of him. ‘There mustn’t be any publicity. It was publicity that started it last time. I told you that. I must keep my name out of the papers. At all costs there mustn’t be any publicity.’

‘That can’t be helped.’ I said. ‘The man’s body has been found and his death will have to be explained.’

He didn’t seem to hear me. ‘If I’m dead,’ he murmured to himself, ‘then it’s Wade who is alive. It’s as simple as that.’ He said it almost wonderingly. And then he strode on ahead until we came to the camp. He seemed to want to be alone.

And when we drove down the piste towards Foum-Skhira he was strangely silent. It was a queer day now. It seemed to have changed. The strength and clarity had gone out of the sun and the sky was no longer blue, but opaque and hazy. A little wind had sprung up from the mountains and it blew the dust from our wheels out in streamers in front of us. We stopped at the house where the Tricolour flew. There was a sign-board half-hidden by sand. One arrow pointed to the mountains — Agdz, 44kms.; the other south towards the desert — Tombouctou, 50js…. Fifty days! A dog raced out to meet us as we stopped. He stood barking at us furiously, a big, rangy animal, oddly reminiscent of the medieval hunting dogs depicted on old tapestries.

‘Look!’ Julie cried. ‘A baby gazelle.’ It was in a wire enclosure; a small deer, beautifully marked with long, straight horns.

A Berber servant came to the door of the house and stared at us. I called out to him, asking for Capitaine Legard, and he pointed to the fort, telling us to go to the Bureau.

The sun had disappeared completely now. Yet there was no cloud. It seemed to have been overlaid by an atmospheric miasma. It had become very cold and the wind had risen further, driving little sifting runnels of sand before it. The whole great open space between the two forts seemed to be on the move as the powder-dry top surface of sand drifted along the ground. We were shown into the captain’s office by an immensely large, black-bearded orderly wearing a turban and a blue cloak. He was a Tuareg, one of the Blue Men of the desert.

By comparison, Legard seemed small and insignificant. He was short and stocky with sallow, tired features. There was no heating in the stone-floored office and he sat huddled behind the desk in a torn and dusty greatcoat with no insignia of rank on the shoulders. A khaki scarf was muffled round his neck. He glanced at Julie and then pulled himself to his feet, staring at us in silence from behind thick-lensed, hornrimmed glasses. The glasses caught the light so that it was impossible to see the expression of his eyes. But I felt he resented our intrusion. Moreover, though he might look insignificant, he conveyed a sense of power, as though whatever he wore or however ill he looked, he was conscious of being the ruler in this place.

Faced with the authority of the man, Jan remained silent, leaving me to explain who we were and why we had come to Foum Skhira. ‘We hoped you would be willing to take us to see the Caid Hassan,’ I added.

‘Caid Hassan is an old man now,’ he said. ‘Old and sick.’ He got Julie a chair and went back to his seat behind the desk. ‘Also, you come at a bad time.’ He made little explosive noises with his lips and stared at Jan. ‘So! You are now the owner of Kasbah Foum, eh?’

‘It has to be confirmed by the Caid,’ Jan said.

‘C’est ca.’

He stared at us from the protection of his glasses and the stillness of the room seemed to crowd in on us. His hostility and the chill drabness of the office with its bare, map-lined walls had a depressing effect on me.

‘And if the Caid confirms your title, what do you intend to do about this American?’ He said ‘this American’ with undisguised contempt.

‘I understand he’s been granted a mining concession,’ Jan said.

Capitaine Legard grunted. The grunt seemed to express what he thought of people in Rabat who granted mining concessions in his territory. There was silence again, and then he said, ‘You have documents to prove your ownership of the property, monsieur?’

Jan produced once more the crumpled envelope and passed it across the desk. Legard pulled out the deeds and examined them. Then he glanced at the covering letter. He read it slowly, carefully. Then he looked up at Jan. This letter is from Marcel Duprez?’

‘Yes.’ Jan cleared his throat. ‘Perhaps you knew him, Monsieur le Capitaine?’

‘Now. But everybody has heard of him. Capitaine Marcel Duprez was one of the finest officers of les Affaires Indigenes.’ There was sudden warmth in his tone. ‘Tell me, monsieur, how was it he came to leave you this property? Are you a relative?’

Briefly Jan explained how the war had brought them together and the part Duprez had played in helping him to get information out to the British. And as he talked, I saw Legard’s face soften and relax. ‘And you were with him when he died?’ he asked. And when Jan had described the scene in that cellar in Essen, Legard nodded his head slowly. ‘He was a fine man,’ he said quietly. ‘I am sorry he died like that. He was what the men who sit at desks in Rabat call an officer of the bled — of the country. It seems that he was not an executive type but only a leader of the people. He understood the Berbers as few of us will ever understand them. If he had not been half-dead with dysentery and undergoing a cure in France, the Germans would never have captured him.’ He shrugged his shoulders and again those little explosive noises blew his lips out. He glanced at his watch and got quickly to his feet. He seemed suddenly alert and full of vigour. ‘Alors. We will go back to the house. We will have a drink and you will perhaps tell me the full story. Then I will phone mon commandant. He will be interested. He served with Duprez. He was with him when they took Foum-Skhira. Duprez told you the story of that, eh?’

Jan nodded.

‘Eh bien.’ He took a battered and dusty pill-box officer’s hat from a nail on the wall and led us out through the drifting sand to his house. Like all houses in Morocco, it was built for intense heat. The floors were tiled, the walls cold, white expanses of plaster, their severity relieved by a few hand-woven rugs. There was a gramophone and some books and a small collection of brass sugar hammers, beautifully inlaid with copper and silver. When Julie admired them, he said, ‘Ah, yes. Once Foum-Skhira was famous for its silver craftsmen.’ He turned to Jan. ‘There is an old story that your Kasbah Foum was built on the site of a smelting place — for extracting silver from ore. But — ‘ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Like all these stories, it has come down by word of mouth only. Maybe it is true. Duprez excavated some old fire-places there and now there is this American…’

He shrugged his shoulders again and took us through into his study. There was a big desk with a field telephone on it, and the walls were lined with books. Magazines, some of them American, littered the floors. On the mantelpiece were some family photographs framed in silver and above it a delightful oil painting of a Paris boulevard. He saw me looking at it and said, ‘That one I picked up in a little gallery I know on the Left Bank. It is by a man called Valere. He is not much known yet. But I think he is good. In the other room I have another by him and also one by Briffe. But this is the one I like ‘best. It is a great pleasure to sit here at my desk and look at Paris, eh? I am a Parisian, you see.’ He laughed and then turned to one of the bookshelves. ‘Regardez, monsieur.’ He pointed to a beautifully bound collection of volumes, all on art. ‘I like to look at the works of the great painters, even if I can never afford to own one. I like pictures.’ He turned abruptly away, as though he had revealed too much of himself. ‘Alors, mademoiselle. Qu’est ce que vous voulez boiret Vermouth? Cognac? I have a good cognac that I have sent out to me from France.’

‘I’d like a cognac then,’ Julie said. He pulled up a chair for her and then shouted for his Berber servant, who came and poured paraffin on the pile of wood in the grate so that it went up with a roar as he lit it. Legard poured us our drinks. ‘Sante!’

‘Sante!’

The fire blazed with heat. The room was suddenly warm and friendly.

‘What is the best way for me to contact the Caid?’ Jan asked.

‘Ah, that is a little difficult, monsieur. I would take you myself, but…’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘It is as I have said — you come at a bad time. I cannot leave the Post until the food trucks arrive. I have two trucks bringing food here to these people, and they have both broken down.’ He made rude, angry noises to himself. ‘Our transport is all from the war. It works, but it needs servicing.’ He began to cough. ‘Like me,’ he said as he recovered, and he grinned at us sardonically. ‘The trouble is that everything — even the wood for the fire — has to come across the Atlas from Marrakech.’

‘Could you provide a guide then?’ Jan said. ‘I have to see Caid Hassan. It’s urgent.’

Legard looked at him, frowning. ‘You have waited ten years, monsieur. What is the hurry?’ And when Jan didn’t answer, he smiled and said, ‘Ah, it is the American that is worrying you, eh? Well, he is worrying me, also.’ He leaned quickly forward. ‘Things were difficult enough here before. The date crop failed. For two years now we have what is called the Marlatt scale pest here in the palmerie. We have sprayed from the air at the time when the insect comes out to moult, but it is no good.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Then this fool arrives, paying three Arabs incredible wages to run his abominable machines. I asked him to clear the rock by hand with local labour. He refused. He did not seem to understand that the people here needed the money.’

‘His Arabs have left him,’ Julie said.

‘Yes, yes, I know.’ He had risen and was pacing up and down excitedly. ‘They departed early this morning.’ He stopped and stared at us. ‘But do you know why? Does the American say why they left?’

‘He said they left to get stores,’ I told him.

‘Pff! You do not send three indigenes to get stores when one would do.’

‘Maybe they were told to go,’ I suggested.

‘Who by?’

‘Isn’t the Caid’s son, Ali, here in Foum-Skhira?’

He looked at me hard. ‘How did you know that, monsieur?’

I told him then about the visit we had had from Kostos.

‘Ah, oui. That man Kostos!’ He resumed his pacing. ‘Merde!’ The word burst out of him with explosive force. ‘Everything goes wrong this year.’ He swung round on his heels so that he faced me. ‘Did you see the souk when you came in and the road up the mountain?

First the dates and then the rain. And now Ali is here.’ He started to cough again and winced, pressing his hand against his belly. He leaned on the desk for a moment and then walked slowly round to his chair, his body bent, and slumped into it. ‘Eh bien,’ he murmured, ‘my relief will arrive soon.’

‘You’re not well,’ Julie said.

He looked across at her and smiled wanly, shrugging his shoulders. ‘Every year I go to Vichy to take the cure. I am late this year, that is all.’ He shouted for the house-boy who came running with a glass of water, and he drained it at a gulp.

‘Is it dysentery?’ Julie asked.

He nodded. ‘Oui, mademoiselle. The amibe. With us it is an occupational disease. We do not always stay in the Posts. We have to visit all parts of the Territory, and sometimes we must drink bad water. For the indigenes it is different. They are immune. But for us…’ He shrugged his shoulders again.

‘About this man Ali,’ I said. ‘Can’t you arrest him? I understood…’

‘Oui, oui, monsieur. I can walk into the kasbah now, this morning and arrest him. But it would disturb the people, and things have been difficult here lately. Maybe when the food trucks arrive …’

The field telephone on the desk buzzed. ‘Pardon, monsieur.’ Legard lifted the receiver. ‘Oui, mon commandant — id Legard… Oui… Oui… Oui, mon commandant….’ He looked across at us, the instrument still held against his ear, and his eyes fastened on Jan. ‘Oui. Exactement… Vraiment?’ His tone was one of astonishment. For a moment there was silence whilst he listened to the voice at the other end of the line, and then he said, ‘Je le ferai…. Non, non, Us sont justement arrives…. Oui, out, je comprends parfaitement.’ He asked about the food trucks then and after a short conversation on the subject, he nodded. ‘Oui, je le ferai… Ca va bien. Adieu, mon commandant.’ He put the receiver down slowly on to its rest. Then he stared at the three of us, a little startled, a little angry. ‘Your papers, monsieur,’ he demanded, looking at Jan and holding out his hand. When they were handed to him, he went through them slowly, glancing up every now and then as though to check that they really did relate to the man sitting opposite him.

‘And yours, monsieur,’ he asked, addressing me.

He checked my passport and then he looked up at the two of us and said, ‘I regret, but I have orders to retain your papers temporarily. You are to remain in this district until you have permission to leave.’

‘What exactly is the trouble?’ I asked.

‘There is no trouble. It is solely a matter of routine.’ He pushed back his chair and got to his feet. ‘If you require accommodation …’

‘We sleep in our vehicle,’ I said.

‘Bon. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to leave for Agdz.’

‘Don’t you want to see my passport?’ Julie asked.

‘It is not necessary, mademoiselle.’

‘But if it is a matter of routine.’ She held out her passport.

‘I repeat, mademoiselle. It is not necessary.’ He shouted for the house-boy. ‘If there is anything you require for your comfort,’ he added formally, ‘Mohammed will see that you have it.’ He indicated the Berber boy and then ordered him to escort us out.

Disconcerted by the abruptness of his change of attitude towards us, we went without another word.

Little runnels of sand had drifted under the front door despite the sacking that had been placed there. And when Mohammed opened it for us, we were met by a cold blast of wind that flung a cloud of stinging sand in our faces. We thrust our way out, too battered by the impact of the storm to think. The door closed behind us and we hesitated, huddling together for protection. The palmerie had disappeared completely. The Foreign Legion fort was no more than a vague blur in the sand-laden atmosphere. The whole surface of the ground seemed to be on the move, rustling past our feet and climbing into the air with a singing sound on each gust, swirling upwards higher than the flagstaff.

We fought our way to the bus, hauled open the door and staggered inside.

‘What happened?’ Julie asked us as she got her breath back. ‘What was that phone call about?’

‘I think the police have discovered that Jan didn’t come straight out from England,’ I said.

But she shook her head. ‘No, it wasn’t that. Legard is an officer of the AI, not a policeman, and Jan was a friend of Capitaine Duprez. His attitude wouldn’t change because he was in trouble with the immigration authorities.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘But it would if his commandant had thrown doubt on Jan’s identity.’ I glanced at Jan. He was sitting on the berth, his head in his hands, frowning. ‘Well, what do we do now?’ I asked him.

He lifted his head and looked at me almost in surprise. ‘We find Caid Hassan. That’s the first thing. Afterwards…’ He shrugged his shoulders a little wearily. ‘Afterwards, I don’t know. But first we’ll see the Caid. As soon as the storm is over.’

I glanced at my watch. It was just after twelve. And at five Kostos would be at the camp again.