The Templar Cross

11

It took Tidyman a day to collect what he thought they'd need, and another day to plan the trip and spread the rumor that he was taking his two new "pigeons" on a tourist visit to Bahariya Oasis to the east, getting the requisite permits to bolster the story. It was a reasonable objective: lots of tourists who came to Siwa went to Bahariya, some for the folk music the oasis was famous for and others because it was an alternate route back to Cairo. After the crazy people who came for the total eclipse a few years before, the people of Siwa were ready to believe just about anything was possible where their foreign visitors were concerned. As long as they left some of their money in Siwa they could do anything they liked.

They drove east along an almost arrow-straight two-lane paved highway, heading directly away from Siwa and in the opposite direction from the Libyan border. Tidyman was at the wheel. Empty plastic jerry cans for water had been stored in bolt-on racks on the sides and roof that Tidyman had purchased the day before. Extra fuel was stored in the cargo compartment in the rear along with their other supplies. The three men were crowded into the bench seat up front.

Tidyman had explained their jog to the east. According to him the Siwans were an inquisitive, curious bunch and the ride toward Bahariya Oasis was a ruse for their benefit. There was also the slim chance that they would be spotted by a National Border Police overflight, although Tidyman thought it was unlikely; the light-plane pilots they used were terrified of being shot down by Libyan fighter jets and even their own air force.

After half an hour Tidyman slowed the vehicle, then reached over and dragged down a blackknobbed stick beside the shift lever.

"What's that?" Rafi asked as there was an odd lurch. The engine note changed as well.

"Just like it says on the sign," answered Tidyman. " 'Pri vjezdu voziola do terenu zapni predni nahon'-' When going off-road engage four-wheel drive.' "

"You speak Czech?" Holliday asked, impressed.

"Just enough to drive a Goat," their companion said and laughed. "A necessity in some of the places I've fought. A colleague who called himself Svejka taught me. A good soldier, Svejka."

"What happened to him, or should I ask?" Holliday said.

"You shouldn't ask," answered Tidyman. Abruptly the Egyptian hauled around the big wheel and they thumped off the road and into the hard-packed sand, the oversized mud tires gripping easily. They swung high to the right, arcing away from the highway until it was lost behind them in the rolling dunes. He dug into his pocket and tossed a Garmin Rino GPS unit across to Holliday. "Know how to use that?" Tidyman asked.

"Sure," said Holliday. He'd first used the technology during combat missions in Desert Storm, the first brief war with Iraq. The theory was as old as navigation, but instead of using a sextant to take a bearing on the sun and stars you used a radio beam to triangulate your position by pinging off a series of geosynchronous satellites.

"It's already been set with our base coordinates," said Tidyman. "Now you just follow the bouncing ball."

Twenty-five minutes later they reached the Siwa-Mersa Matruh highway and crossed it at right angles, running along the northern edge of the long east-west depression that held the oasis. After another hour, the town well behind them, Tidyman guided the Goat down a barely visible track that led into the depression. In the distance to the south one of the huge saltwater lakes that dotted the oasis glittered in the brilliant sun. To Holliday the shimmering lake looked like a heat mirage on the highway.

The desert here was rocky, interspersed with small pockets of vegetation. Ahead of them dark, bare hills with windswept crags and plateaus rose before them. So far they hadn't seen another vehicle. Every few minutes Tidyman would ask if they'd reached the next flagged location on the GPS and Holliday would call out the coordinates.

"Do you have some sort of plan?" Rafi asked. "Or are we just playing this by ear?"

"First we get across the border. Then we head for Jaghbub." Tidyman eased the Goat around an outcropping of sandstone, then found the track again. "I have friends there," the gray-haired Egyptian continued. "If they've heard anything about your friend, they'll tell me."

"Where exactly are we?" Holliday asked, looking down at the GPS unit in his hand and then at the barren landscape ahead of them.

"This is the Masrab al-Ikhwan," answered Tidyman. "What they once called the Thieves Road."

"Appropriate," muttered Rafi.

"Once upon a time it was the only southern passage between Egypt and Libya. It was used mostly by smugglers and slave traders going to and fro."

"You seem to know your way around even without this thing," said Holliday, indicating the GPS unit in his hand.

"My father was a captain in the Long Range Desert Group, based at Siwa during the war. His maps were just about my only inheritance. I've put them to good use over the years. They used to rattle back and forth through here all the time."

"When we find the people who took Peggy, if we find them, then what are we supposed to do?" Rafi asked, a skeptical tone in his voice.

Tidyman glanced over at him and smiled blandly.

"I would have thought that was obvious, my young Israeli friend." The smile broadened. "We kill them."

At the next GPS waypoint Tidyman hauled the wheel around, turning the old truck north, navigating carefully along the base of the ranging lines of dunes following the now invisible pathway through the sand. There were no landmarks now, only the burning sky above their heads and the relentless sun.

"We're traveling parallel to the border now," commented Tidyman. He waved a hand. "The old Italian fence is a couple of miles to the west. Long since buried by the dunes, of course. Mussolini was really an arrogant fool, thinking that he could tame the desert with a string of wire."

They traveled for another twenty minutes, then pulled into the meager shade offered by a wind-sculpted pinnacle of rock. The sandstone looked vaguely like a truncated version of the Sphinx.

"Why are we stopping?" asked Rafi, suspicion clear in his voice.

"A bit of a recce, as my father would say," Tidyman said and smiled. "And a little bit of protective coloration." He half turned in his seat and dragged a small knapsack from the back of the Goat. "Get out and stretch your legs," the Egyptian offered. "It will take a minute or two."

Tidyman climbed out from behind the driver's seat with the knapsack and Holliday joined him.

"Your Israeli friend doesn't seem to like me very much," said Tidyman.

"He's worried abut Peggy."

"He is romantically involved with your cousin?"

"Yes."

"Don't worry. We'll find her," said Tidyman. He put his hand on Holliday's shoulder. "Tell him I am sorry for his pain."

"I will."

Tidyman nodded, then followed a steep pathway that ran up the tall pale outcropping of stone. Holliday turned and saw Rafi approaching.

"What was that all about?" he asked.

"Extending the hand of friendship." Holliday shrugged. "He thinks you don't like him."

"He's right," grunted Rafi. "I don't like him and I don't trust him."

"He's all we've got at the moment," said Holliday. "So make nice."

Rafi nodded and walked a little way into the shadows off the rocky outcropping. Joining him, Holliday saw it wasn't rock at all; the outcropping was made up of aggregated fossil oyster shells and dense chalk.

"Miocene," said Rafi. "Twenty million years old, give or take a millennia or two, despite what your so-called Creationists think."

Holliday's shoe stubbed itself on something buried in the hard-packed sand at his feet. He squatted down and swept some of the sand away. It looked like a blackened tin. He dug away more sand and tugged at the can. He held it up. The can had oxidized over the years but the label was still readable.

"Campbell's Cream of Tomato," said Holliday.

Rafi had discovered another tin.

"Vacuum Oil Company." Like the soup tin, this one was blackened with oxidation.

"The original name of Socony Mobil," said Holliday. "This must have been a Long Range Desert Group camp back in the war."

"So what do we call this place?" pondered Rafi. "A garbage pit or an archaeological site?"

"That would depend on your point of view, I suppose," said Tidyman, coming down from the rock. "On my father's maps it is referred to as the Mushroom, I suppose because of its shape."

Rafi turned away without comment. Tidyman shrugged and smiled thinly at Holliday.

"As I said, your friend does not like me."

"He doesn't have to," answered Holliday, a little curtly. "Did you see anything up there?"

"A great deal of nothing," said Tidyman. He nodded politely to Holliday, then went to the truck. He squatted down and took a screwdriver out of his knapsack, then removed the blue-and-white Egyptian license plate and replaced it with an oblong Libyan plate, black on reflective green. That done, he put on a rear plate and then a magnetic stick-on symbol on the door, much like the one Felix Valador used on his truck in Cannes.

"The license plate I understand," commented Holliday. "But what exactly is that?" The stick-on symbol showed four lengths of open pipeline in forced perspective with a line of cursive Arabic below it.

"It's the insignia of the Great Man-Made River Authority, Qaddafi's big irrigation project. Jaghbub Oasis is the wellhead for the pipeline that goes to Tobruk." He stood back and examined his handiwork. "Luckily they use a Chinese knockoff of the Goat called a BJ-212 to get around in." He shrugged. "It won't stand close inspection but it would pass a quick surveillance from the air."

"Is that likely to happen?"

"It's happened to me before. But Colonel Qaddafi is rather stingy with fuel for those Mil-24 Hind helicopters of his and they have to come all the way from the air base at Kufra; that's almost four hundred miles south."

"How far is Jaghbub from here?"

"About twenty miles. But we'll wait here until it's dark. The actual border is only about two miles west of us."

They waited for nightfall, Tidyman dozing, his back against the Mushroom, Rafi pacing, listening for sounds that weren't there and worrying, Holliday looking idly at the debris left behind by the Long Range Desert Group more than half a century before. Not for the first time in his life Holliday found himself thinking about the borders between countries and why men fought over such artificial boundaries. Once a holocaust had been birthed for one man's need for Lebensraum, but Hitler was by no means the first to fight for more territory, nor would he likely be the last.

When night came it came quickly, the sun burning down among the windswept dunes and flat-topped sandstone buttes, leaving nothing behind but a dark pink curtain against the darkness. Tidyman roused himself and they climbed back into the Goat. There was a chill in the air and Holliday shivered as Tidyman started the engine and went around the base of the tall mushroom-shaped rock.

"Ten minutes to the border now. If there is any trouble I will handle it," the Egyptian said quietly. They drove on, the desert more rough stones and gravel now rather than sifting sand. The darkness was almost absolute and Tidyman piloted the truck along the trail more by instinct than sight. When they crossed the border there was no indication other than a brief pinging sound from the GPS unit in Holliday's hand.

"That's it," he said. "We're in Libya now."