Flyaway

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Paradise was built partly on the desert floor and partly on a rocky hillside and provided more amenities than most oasis towns. The hotel was spartan but clean and better than most; bedroom accommodation was in zeribas, grass huts with the walls hung with gaily-coloured blankets, and there were showers which actually worked. As I sponged myself down I reflected that Byrne had been right — the desert is a clean place and a man doesn't stink. This was the first shower I'd had in nearly a month.

Byrne had left the Toyota in the hotel compound and had gone looking for his informant, the putative lucky winner of ten camels. He came back some time later with two Tuareg whom he introduced as Atitel and his son, Hami. 'Have you got those photocopies of the Northrop?'

'Sure.' I dug into my bag and gave them to him.

He unfolded them. 'Where did you get these?'

'The Science Museum in London — they're from Jane's All the World's Aircraft, 1935 edition.'

He spread the photocopies on the table and began to interrogate Atitel, pointing frequently to the photograph of the Northrop 'Gamma'. This particular specimen must have been one of the first aircraft to be used by Trans-World Airlines because the TWA emblem was on the fuselage near the tail. It was a stylishly designed plane, long and sleek, with the cockpit set far back near the tail. It had, of course, been designed in the days when aircraft had cockpits and not flight decks, and it had a non-retracting undercarriage with the struts and wheels enclosed in streamlined casings. The caption described it as a freight and mail-carrying monoplane.

At last Byrne straightened. 'This could be it. He says there's a metal bird of the Kel Ehendeset up on the Tassili about three days' march in from Tamrit.'

'How far is that, and what the devil is a Kel whosit?'

'Maybe seventy kilometres. The Kel Ehendeset are you and me — anyone who knows about machines.' He turned to Atitel and they talked briefly, then he said, 'He says the Kel Ehendeset have power over the angeloussen — the angels — and it's the angeloussen who make the trucks move and lift the airplanes.'

'Sounds logical. If it's three days' march then it's about six hours by angeloussen power.'

Byrne looked at me disgustedly as though I ought to know better. 'We won't get the Toyota on to the plateau. When we go we walk.' He tapped the photograph. 'Atitel seems pretty certain that the wreck on the Tassili is just like this. He insists there are no engine nacelles on the wings and that the fuselage is cylindrical up front just like in the picture. That's the big radial engine there.'

Then it may be Billson's?'

'Could be.' Byrne shook his head. 'But the Tuareg don't go much for pictures — like all Moslems. Against their religion, so they have no experience of pictures. I've known a guy hang a picture on the wall of his tent in imitation of what he's seen Europeans do in their houses. It was something he'd cut out of a magazine because he liked it. He'd put it upside-down.' He smiled. 'It was a picture of a square-rigger in full sail, but he'd never seen a ship or even t he goddamn sea, so all it made was a pretty pattern which maybe looked just as well upside-down.'. 'But if Atitel has seen a plane, then he should be able to compare it with a picture.'

'I wouldn't bet my life on it, but I suppose we'll have to take the chance. We didn't come all this way for nothing.'

'When do we start?'

He began to dicker with Atitel and a lot of palavering went on with Hami putting in his tuppence-worth from time to time. It was fifteen minutes before Byrne said, 'He says he can't start until Late tomorrow or, maybe, early the day after. He's got to round up some donkeys that have strayed. The plane is about fifty kilometres from Tamrit — that's on the edge of the plateau at the top. We won't be doing much more than fifteen kilometres a day up there so it means taking water for at least a week, preferably ten days. That means baggage animals and more donkeys than he can lay his hands on right now.'

He turned back to Atitel and money changed hands. When the Tuareg had gone I said, 'That money was Algerian.'

Byrne looked at me in surprise. 'Yeah; because we're in Algeria.'

'When did that happen?'

He grinned. 'Remember the detour we took to lose Lash? Well, it took around the border posts, too. You're okay, Max; you're legal in Algeria.'

'But Billson may not be.'

He grunted. 'Relax. There's a hell of a lot of desert between here and Tarn; the word may not have filtered through.' He held up the photocopies. 'Mind if I hang on to these? I have some figuring to do.' I nodded. 'Where's Paul?'

'Still in the shower.'

He laughed. 'I told you a guy could drown in the desert.' Then he sat at the table, took out his stub of pencil and began making calculations on the back of. one of the photocopies, referring constantly to the specifications of the Northrop 'Gamma'.

We didn't start next day or even the day after, but the day after that. Byrne grumbled ferociously. 'Sometimes these people give me a pain in the ass.'

I grinned. 'I thought you were one of them — a proper Targui.'

'Yeah; but I revert to type at times. I'm thinking of Lash and Kissack. I don't know how badly they were sanded in, but it won't take them forever to get out. I want to get clear before they get here.'

'What makes you think they'll come to Djanet?'

'Only place they can get gas.'

But it gave me the chance of unwinding and relaxing after the heavy pounding in the Toyota. And I slept in a bed for the first time since leaving Algiers — the hotel mattress wasn't much harder than the sand I'd become accustomed to. And we all had a few welcome beers.

On the third day after arrival we drove out of Djanet in the Toyota and we still hadn't seen Lash. I said, 'Perhaps he's still out there where you stranded him.'

'My heart bleeds for him,' said Byrne. He cocked his head and looked back at Paul. 'What do you think?'

'I hope he rots,' said Paul vindictively. 'Kissack, too. All of them.'

Paul was becoming bloodthirsty, but it wasn't too surprising. It's hard to be charitable towards people who shoot at you without telling you why.

We drove towards the mountains, towards steep cliffs which reared up like a great stone barrier. At last we bumped to a halt in a grove of tamarisk trees among which donkeys were grazing, Atitel and Kami waved in greeting as we got out Byrne grunted in disgust. Those goddamn animals should have been loaded by now.'

'Where are we going?'

His arm rose forty-five degrees above the horizontal as he pointed and I got a crick in my neck as I looked up. 'Up there.'

'My God!' The cliffs rose vertically for about two thousand feet and Byrne was pointing to a cleft, a ravine which cut into them, leaving a v-shaped notch at the top which looked like a gunsight. 'I'm no bloody mountaineer.'

'Neither is a donkey and any man can go where a donkey can. It's not as steep as it looks.' He cocked an eye at the sun. 'Let's get started. I want to be at the top before nightfall.'

He chivvied Atitel and Hami into loading the donkeys. The goatskin djerbas of the Tuareg were kinder to the animals than the jerricans which held the rest of our water supply because they caused less chafe, but there weren't enough djerbas and so the jerricans had to be used. Most of the load was water for man and animal.

'I'm figuring on ten days,' said Byrne. 'Course we may be lucky and find a guelta — that's a rock pool — but we can't depend on it. Now you see 'em, now you don't.'

So we loaded water and food for five men and seven donkeys for ten days, and Byrne added a cloth-wrapped parcel which clinked metallically. He also added the Lee-Enfield rifle to the top of one load, being careful to strap it tight. 'I'll be back in ten minutes,' he said, and got into the Toyota and drove away.

I watched him out of sight, then turned to Paul 'What about this? Think you can make it?'

He looked up at the cliffs. 'I think I can; I won't be carrying anything. Not like when we were crossing the dunes in the Tenere.'

His face was drawn and pale in spite of the tan he had acquired. I don't think he had been a fit man even when he left England because his life had been sedentary. Since then he had been shot and nearly died of exposure, and what we had been doing since had been no rest cure. I said, 'Maybe it would be better if you stayed. I'll talk to Byrne about it.'

'No,' he said sharply. 'He'd agree with you. I want to come. There may be — ' lie swallowed — 'may be a body.'

The obsession which had driven him all his life was nearing its culmination. Within only a few days he had the chance of finding out the truth about his father, and he wasn't going to give up now. I nodded in agreement and looked up at the cliffs again. It still looked a killer of a climb.

Byrne came back on foot. 'I've put the truck where it won't be found easily. Let's move.'

I drew him on one side. 'Have you been up there before?'

'Sure. I've been most places.'

'What's the travelling like once we get on top?'

'Not bad — if we stick to the water-courses.'

'Water-courses!' I said incredulously.

'You'll see,' he said with a grim smile. 'It's the damnedest country you're ever likely to see. Like a maze — easy to get lost. What's your point?'

'I'm thinking of Paul.'

Byrne nodded. 'Yeah, he's been on my mind, too. But if he can get to the top here he'll be okay.'

'Tassili n' Ajjer,' I said thoughtfully. 'What does that translate as?'

'The Plateau of Goats — not that I've ever seen any. A few wild camels, though.' He shook his head irritably. 'Let's move, for God's sake!'

And so we started. It wasn't bad at first because we were on gently rising ground approaching the base of the cliffs. When we got to the ravine it was bigger than it looked at first, maybe half a mile wide at the bottom and narrowing as it rose. There was a path of sorts which zig-zagged from side to side so that for every hundred yards of forward travel we walked perhaps six hundred. And climbed, of course, but not as much.

It was a steady toil which put a strain on the calf muscles and on to the heart and lungs, a battle for altitude. It wasn't any kind of a mountaineering feat, just damned hard work which went on and on. There was no sound but the steady rasping of breath in my throat, the occasional clatter as a stone was dislodged to go bounding down the ravine, and the clink of a jerrican as it hit a rock. Sometimes a donkey would snort but no one had breath for talking.

I think we would have made the top quicker had it not been for Paul who held us back. We stopped frequently for him to catch up, and waited while he rested. It gave me time to rest my own lungs, for which I was thankful. Atitel and Hami didn't seem worried by the effort; they would smoke a half-cigarette and carefully put away the stubs before resuming the climb. As for Byrne, he was all whipcord and leather, as usual, but his nose was beakier and- his cheeks more sunken than I had noticed before.

So it was that it took us over four hours to climb two thousand feet and I doubt if the ground distance we had covered would be more than a mile and a half when measured on a map. As soon as the ground began to level we stopped and within minutes Atitel and Hami had the inevitable miniature Tuareg camp fires going and water on the boil to make tea. I said breathlessly, 'Are we there?'

'Nearly. The worst is over.' Byrne pointed towards the setting sun. 'I reckon you can see over eighty kilometres from here.'

The view was fantastic — dun-coloured hills close by changing to blue and purple in the distance. Byrne pointed towards a jumble of dunes. 'The Erg d'Admer; all that sand was washed down from the plateau. Must have been one of the biggest waterfalls in the world right here — a fall of two thousand feet.'

'Waterfall!' I said weakly.

'Sure; the Tassili was well watered at one time. Real big rivers. And it was good cattle country with plenty of feed. Long time ago, of course.'

Of course!

I sipped sweet tea from a small brass cup and regarded Paul, who was lying flat on his back and seemed completely exhausted. He'd made it but only just. I went over to him. 'Have some tea, Paul.'

His chest heaved. 'Later,' he gasped.

'Max!' said Byrne. His voice was soft but there was a snap of command in it. I looked up and he jerked his head so I went and joined him where he stood looking down the ravine.

He pointed to the desert floor and there, two miles away and nearly half a mile below was a movement of sand.

'Dust devils?' They were familiar in the desert; miniature whirlwinds caused by the convection currents stirred up by the heat.

Byrne looked up at the sun. 'Not at this hour. I think we've got company. There are two.'

'How the hell would Lash know we came here?'

Byrne shrugged. 'Anyone going up to the Tassili from Djanet would com e this way. No other way as easy.' Easy! 'He'll have been asking around in Djanet; it would have been no trick to trace us — just a few enquiries at the hotel.'

'We ought to have been more discreet.'

'It wouldn't have worked. No one can hire men and animals in Djanet without the word getting round. Lash's men might speak Tamachek, but even if they have only Arabic they'd have no trouble in finding out what they wanted to know.'

I looked down the cliffside and there was no movement to be seen. 'So we're in trouble.'

'Not too much,' said Byrne unperturbedly. They won't climb up here in the dark, and the sun will set in an hour. I guess they'll wait until tomorrow. That gives us a chance to get lost.' He looked back at Paul. 'We'll give him time to rest up then push on.'

'Where to?'

'Over the rise there — to Tamrit and Assakao.'

Never could I have imagined a landscape such as that of the Tassili n' Ajjer. We walked in the beds of long-gone rivers which, when in flood, had carved deeply into the soft sandstone, making what were now canyons, the walls of which were scalloped into whole series of shallow caves on all sides. When desiccation set in and the water had gone the wind had continued to work on the Tassili, abrading the sandstone for thousands of years and sculpturing the rock into pillars and pinnacles of fantastic shape, some towering two hundred or more feet, others undercut at the base and felled as a woodsman would fell a tree.

The land had a baked appearance like an ill-made pie left too long in the oven and, indeed, the Tassili had been under the furnace of the sun for too long without the amelioration of vegetative cover. The sandstone was blackened and covered with a patina of what Byrne called desert varnish. 'You get dew on the stone some nights,' he said. 'And it draws iron and manganese to the surface. Next day the dew evaporates and the iron and manganese oxidize. Have that happening for a few hundred or thousand years and you get a good coating of varnish.'

As he had said, it was a maze, the canyons that had been water-courses joining, linking and separating. I had the feeling that this had been some sort of delta, the end of a journey for a mighty river, once fast but now slow and heavy with silt like the delta of the Nile. But then it had come to Tamrit and the edge of the Tassili to plunge two thousand feet to the land below, taking the silt to what were now the huge dunes of the Erg d'Admer. And now there was no water. The land was dry as a camel bone found in the Tenere, but not bleached — rather sun-scorched and hardened like a mummified corpse.

That I saw during the first hour before the sun set and then, at Byrne's insistence, we continued, aided by the lamp of a full moon, until nine that night when he relented and we made camp. By this time. Paul was near collapse and I was wearier than I'd been since our stroll through the Tenere. Too tired to eat, I crawled into one of the shallow caves in the rock and fell asleep huddled in my djellaba, I awoke in daylight to find a man looking down at me. He was dark-skinned and wore nothing but a loincloth and, in his right hand, he carried a spear. Behind him was a herd of cattle, healthy-looking beasts with piebald hides and wide-spreading horns. And beyond them was a group of hunters carrying bows, some with arrows nocked to the string.

I blinked in surprise and sat up and stared. The man was nothing but paint on the wall of the cave, and so were the cattle and the hunters. I jerked my head around and saw Byrne squatting outside the cave, feeding the water-boiling contraption he called a volcano. Behind him Hami was loading djerbas on to a donkey.

'Luke,' I said, 'have you seen this?'

He looked up. 'Time you were awake. Sure, I've seen it — one of the Tassili frescoes.'

I turned back to stare at it. The colours seemed as fresh as though it had been painted the week before and there was a fluency and elegance of line in the drawing of the cattle which any modern painter would envy. 'How old is this?'

Byrne came into the cave. 'The cattle? Three thousand years, could be four.' He moved along the wall of the cave until he came to the end. 'This is older — this mouflon.' I scrambled to my feet and joined him. The wild sheep was more crudely executed. 'Eight thousand years,' said Byrne. 'Maybe more, I wouldn't know.'

I began to examine the wall more carefully, looking for more treasures, but he said brusquely, 'No time for that We've a long way to go. Wake Billson.'

Reluctantly I turned away, woke Paul, and then helped to make our breakfast. Not more than half an hour after I had woken we were on our way again, threading the canyons of the Tassili. An hour later I saw the green of trees, big ones lofting more than fifty feet. The branches were wide spread but twisted and gnarled. I said, 'There must be water here,' and pointed. 'Cypress,' said Byrne. 'Those can have a tap root a hundred feet long and going straight down. And they're older than Methuselah; maybe they were here at the time the guy was painting those cattle back there in the cave.'

We left the trees behind and marched in silence and again all was silence except for the clatter of stones and the snorting of the donkeys and an occasional word passing between Atitel and Hami. There wasn't much to say about what we were looking for — everything had been said to exhaustion. And there wasn't much to say about Lash, either. If he was coming up behind he'd either catch us or he wouldn't.

We stopped briefly at midday to eat, and again at sunset, and then pressed on into the moonlit night I thought it unsafe and said so, but Byrne was confident that Atitel knew what he was doing, more confident than I. Again we stopped at about nine and I found another cave. To my surprise I was not as tired as I had expected to be, and Paul was better, too. I looked at him as he unslung a jerrican from a donkey and thought of what Isaacson, back in Luton, had called him. A nebbish! The total nonentity.

It was true! Hours had gone by at a time when, even in Paul's presence, I had not given him a thought. When we drove in the Toyota he always sat in the back and wasn't under my eye. On this, and other, desert marches he always brought up the rear. He said little, never commenting on what he saw, however wondrous, but just stubbornly put one foot in front of the other. And he never complained, no matter how he felt. It was something to say for Paul but, all the same, he might just as well not have been there. The nebbish!

As for Luton — that was a million miles away, on another planet.

We fed on dates and dried mutton and I asked Byrne what progress we were making. He chewed vigorously, then swallowed. 'Not too bad. Atitel reckons on less than a day and a half. He says he'll see a landmark he knows before dark tomorrow.'

'What about Lash?' I said. 'And Kissack?'

'What about them? At Tamrit we left them at least eight hours behind, and you can add another three hours tonight because they won't be moving at night. I guess we're a full day ahead. And they don't know where we're going.'

'We've been leaving tracks. I've noticed. Prints in the sand and donkey droppings.'

He nodded. 'Sure. But we've also been moving a lot on rock and leaving no trail. They can follow us if they know how but it'll take up a lot of time, casting around and all. That puts us another day ahead, maybe two.' He took another bite of mutton and said casually, 'We might run into them on the way back.'

That's nice.'

He grinned. 'I'll ask Atitel to take us back another way.'

When I awoke the next morning I eagerly scanned the wall of the cave but, to my disappointment, it was bare rock. Kami had baked bread in the hot sand under a fire, and it was crunchy in the crust and very tasty if you ignored the gritty sand. After breakfast we set off again, Atitel leading the way through the shattered wastes of the Tassili n' Ajjer.

The worst thing that could possibly have happened occurred at mid-afternoon, We were picking our way through a particularly bad patch where, for some reason or other, the wind action on the sandstone columns had been accentuated. The grinding action of sand-laden wind against the bases of the columns had felled a lot of them and, in their fall they had smashed and broken, leaving a chaos of debris through which it was difficult to negotiate our way.

Suddenly the donkey which Atitel was leading brayed vigorously and plunged, butting him in the back so that he fell. He gave a cry and Byrne ran up and stamped at something on the ground. When I got to him I saw it was a snake.

'Horned viper,' said Byrne, and ground its head to pulp under his heel. 'It scared the donkey.'

It had done more than that because Atitel was sitting up holding his leg and groaning. Byrne examined it and looked up at me. 'It's broken,' he said flatly. 'Christ!' I said. 'What do we do now?'

'Make a splint for a start'

That wasn't as easy as it sounded because we had nothing suitable for a splint other than the barrel of the rifle. Unexpectedly, it was Paul who came up with a good idea. He tapped a jerrican which was hanging on the flank of a donkey and it rang hollowly. 'This empty?'

'Yeah.'

'We can bash it with rocks,' said Paul. 'Flatten it. We ought to be able to make some sort of rigid splint.'

'We can do better than rocks,' said Byrne, and went to a donkey and unpacked the cloth-covered bundle he had brought. From it he produced a hammer and a cold chisel. 'Get that can on the ground.'

It took time and the desert rang with the sound as it echoed from column to column but eventually we splinted Atitel's leg, padding it first and then binding the metal with strips ripped from a gandoura. He had stopped groaning and looked on interestedly as we did it.

When we had finished Byrne squatted next to him an d uttered the first words of what proved to be a long conversation. I said to Paul, 'God knows what we'll do now. From what Byrne told me last night we're ten or twelve kilometres from where the old man said he saw the plane.'

'We'll go on.' Paul's face was set in stubbornness. 'Be reasonable.' I waved my hand at the chaos all about us. 'How the hell can we find it without a guide? This, Paul — this bloody Godforsaken land — is the reason it wasn't found in the first place. You could walk within ten yards and never see it.'

'We'll go on,' he said. 'And we'll find it.' I shook my head and looked to where Atitel was drawing with his finger in the sand. Byrne was asking questions. I shrugged and went to help Hami adjust the harness on one of the donkeys where the edge of a jerrican had chafed and worn a sore spot in its hide.

Half an hour later Byrne stood up. 'Okay; Atitel and Hami are going back. The old man can ride a donkey and Hami will lead another with enough food and water for the two of them. He'll take Atitel to Tamrit and then go down into Djanet for help.'

I said. 'They might run into Lash.'

'I've told them about Lash. They know enough to keep clear of him. Hami will go back a different way.' He laughed shortly. 'I said it's a blood feud; they understand that.'

'And us?'

'We go on.' I looked at Paul, who was grinning. 'Atitel's landmark is unmistakable, according to him. It's a big rock column about two hundred feet high and split from the top to half-way down as though someone has driven a wedge into it — you know, like splitting timber. He says all we have to do is to keep going the way we are now and we should see it in a couple of hours.'

'And the plane?' Paul's voice was shrill.

'Is about three kilometres north-west of the split column.'

It was chancy. Atitel's idea of north-west might not coincide with Byrne's compass, and I didn't like the sound of that 'about three kilometres' — it could be anything from two to four, more or less. I figured we might have to search five or six square kilometres. Still, it was better than the situation I had envisaged when talking to Paul.

I said, 'Can you guide us back to Tamrit? I don't know that I could.'

'Yeah. I've been taking compass bearings.' Byrne looked from me to Paul. 'Well, what about it?'

Paul nodded vigorously, so I shrugged. If it was a question of taking a vote I was out-voted. I said, 'It's all right with me as long as Atitel will be okay. It's a long way back to Tamrit and then he'll have to wait alone while Hami goes down that bloody ravine and on into Djanet. Do you think it's fair on him?'

'It's his idea,' said Byrne. 'He don't mind the broken leg just as long as he can get it set properly. He says he's broken that leg before. What he's really worried about is his ten goddamned camels. He wants them.'

'Then tell him to pray to Allah that this is the aeroplane we're looking for.'

We redistributed loads on the donkeys and then the two Tuareg went back, with Atitel riding a donkey led by Hami, his splinted leg sticking out grotesquely at right-angles. Then there were just the three of us left with five donkeys. I led two and so did Paul, while Byrne coped with one so that he could have a hand free for his compass.

I was mildly surprised when we saw Atitel's landmark after a two-hour march. It didn't seem possible that things could go right for us -1 had half expected that we'd have to search for the damn thing — but there it stood unmistakably as Byrne had described it, a tall tower which looked as though a giant had taken a swipe at it with an axe and had cleft it from the top.

We camped at its base. Paul was all for going on the further three kilometres to the north-west but Byrne wouldn't have it. 'It's late,' he said 'I didn't mind night marches with Atitel; I trusted him. But any one of us could bust a leg in the dark. We'll leave it until morning.'

So we left it until morning and breakfasted before dawn, then set out as soon as it was light enough to see clearly. In all my years, even in the army, there was never a period during which I made as many dawn starts as in the desert. We marched three kilometres, Byrne setting the direction and pacing us. That took an hour. Then we stopped in the middle of nowhere and unloaded the donkeys and hobbled them so they wouldn't stray.

The landscape was anarchic; a disorder of rock columns, a hugger-mugger of hiding places. Peter Billson's plane could be within a hundred yards but there was no way of knowing. I said into silence, 'It could have burnt out.'

'No,' said Byrne. 'Atitel said it was intact. He's seen planes before at the airstrip at In Debiren and he said that this plane still had its wings on. He said it was exactly like the plane in the picture.'

'That's incredible! You mean Billson landed in the middle of all this in the dark without bending anything. I don't believe it.'

'He was a good pilot,' protested Paul.

'I don't care if he could fly as well as the Archangel Gabriel — it still seems bloody impossible.'

'Maybe the angeloussen helped him,' said Byrne. 'Now, we've got to do this real careful. No one goes off alone. We keep in sight or sound of each other. If you're out of sight keep hollering.' He stared at Paul. 'In this mess a guy can get lost awful easy so mind what I say.'

Paul mumbled assent. He was quivering like an eager dog who wanted to go and chase rabbits. I said, 'I didn't look at those photocopies too closely. How big is this Northrop?'

'Forty-eight feet wingspan,' said Paul. 'Length, thirty-two feet. Maximum height, nine feet'

It was bigger than I had assumed. We were looking for something in an area of, say, fifteen hundred square feet I felt a bit better, but not much.

'We spread out in a line, Paul in the middle,' said Byrne. 'And you take your direction from me.'

And so began the search. We quartered the area in overlapping sweeps so as not to miss anything, and it was damned hard work. This was not a mere matter of making a march; we had to cover and inspect an area, which meant scrambling over rocks and looking behind every column in that broken wilderness.

We searched all day without finding anything but rocks.

That night Paul was dispirited. He huddled in his djellaba and aimlessly tossed a stone from one hand to the other while staring blankly with unmoving eyes. I didn't feel too good myself and said to Byrne, 'What do you think?'

He shrugged. 'Maybe Atitel was out in his distance and direction. We'll look again tomorrow. Get some sleep.'

'God!' I said. Talk about needles in haystacks. And there's that proverb about leaving no bloody stone unturned.'

Byrne grunted. 'If it was easy to see it would have been found years ago. Atitel says he came on it only by chance four years ago. He'd come up here trying to trap wild camel foals and got himself lost.'

'Why didn't he report it when he got back to Djanet?'

'It didn't mean that much to him. If there had been a body he might have, but he said there was no body near.'

'Do you think Billson tried to walk out?'

'He was a damned fool if he did.'

Paul came alive. 'He wouldn't try that,' he said positively. 'He knew the rules about that. All the pilots in the race were told to stay by the plane if they came down.'

'Yeah,' said Byrne. 'It's the sensible thing to do and, from what I've heard of him, Peter Billson was a sensible guy.' He paused. 'Sorry to bring this up, Paul; but when Atitel told me there was no body I had my doubts about this being the right airplane. What in hell would a good flier like your old man be doing way over here anyway? He'd be off course by nearly two hundred miles.'

'Atitel identified the plane,' said Paul obstinately.

'Yeah, but when I first suggested the Tassili you said yourself your father was too good a pilot to be fifteen degrees out.'

It was all very depressing.

We found it next morning only ten minutes after restarting the search. I found it, and it was infuriating to think that if Byrne hadn't called off the search the previous night another ten minutes would have done it.

I scaled the side of a pillar of rock that had fallen intact and walked across it to see what was on the other side. There, in a sixty-foot-wide gully was an aeroplane looking as pristine as though it had just been delivered from the manufacturer. It stood in that incongruous place as it might have stood on the tarmac outside a hangar.

'Luke!' I yelled. 'Paul! It's here!'

I scrambled down to it, and they both arrived breathless. 'That's it!' shouted Paul. That's my father's plane.' I looked at Byrne. 'Is it?'

'It's a Northrop "Gamma",' he said, and passed his hand almost reverentially over the fuselage. 'Yeah, this is Peter Billson's plane. Look!'

Over forty years of wind-driven sand had worn away the painted registration marks but on the fuselage one could still detect the outline of the letters which made up a word — Flyaway.

'Oh, God!' said Paul, and leaned on the trailing edge of the wing. Suddenly he burst into tears. All the pent-up emotion of a lifetime came out of him in one rush and he just stood there and wept, racked with sobs. To those brought up in our stiff-upper-lip society the sight of a man in tears is apt to be unnerving, so Byrne and I tactfully walked away until Paul could get a grip on himself.

We walked a little way down the gully away from the plane, then Byrne turned and said, 'Now how in hell did he put it down there?' There was wonder in his voice.

I saw what he meant. There was not much clearance at the end of each wingtip and beyond the plane the gully narrowed sharply and if the aircraft had rolled a few feet further the wings would have been ripped off. I said as much. That's not what I mean,' said Byrne. He turned and studied the terrain with narrowed eyes. This airplane is in a goddamn box.' He pointed to the wall of rock at the wider end of the gully. 'So how did it get in the box?' He shook his head and looked up at the sky. 'He must have brought it down like a helicopter.'

'Is that possible?'

'Unlikely. Look, the guy is in trouble; it's night time and something has gone wrong, so he has to put down. He can't see worth a damn, his landing speed is sixty miles an hour, and yet he sets that thing down right way up on its wheels in a space that should be impossible.'

I looked around. 'No wonder it wasn't found. Who'd look on the Tassili anyway? And if they did it's in an impossible place.'

'Let's go get the gear,' he said. 'We'll set up camp here.'

He called out, telling Paul to stay there, and we went to round up the donkeys, load them, and take them back to the plane. It was difficult to find a way in but we found a cleft big enough to take one donkey at a time, and unloaded and set up camp in the clear space just behind Flyaway. After that the donkeys were taken out again, hobbled, and turned loose to feed on what sparse vegetation they could find.

When we got back Paul had recovered, although his eyes were still red. 'Sorry about that.'

'That's all right, Paul,' I said. 'I didn't expect an icy calmness.'

Byrne was pacing the distance from the rock wall at the end of the gully to the tail of the plane. I walked towards him. 'Sixty yards,' he said, and blew out his cheeks expressively. 'I still don't believe it. Paul okay?'

I nodded and put my hand up to touch the rudder. 'She looks ready to fly.'

'You'd have to lift her out of here with a crane,' said Byrne. 'And then build a runway. But there's more. Look!' He pointed down to the tail wheel which was flat. When he kicked it, it fell apart in a powdery heap. 'That's the weak link. The airplane is fine — all metal. 24ST Alclad according to the specification, and the desert wouldn't hurt that. The engine will be fine, too; it'll just need the dried oil cleaning out and it'll run as sweetly as new. But all the sealings will have gone, and all the gaskets, and anything made of rubber. And I guess any plastic parts, too. I hear those early plastics weren't too stable chemically.' He sighed. 'No, she'll not fly again — ever.'

As Paul joined us Byrne said, 'Mind if I take a look in the cockpit?' Paul looked puzzled, as well he might, because this was the first time Byrne had asked his permission to do anything. Byrne explained, 'I guess this is your airplane — by inheritance, Paul.'

Paul swallowed, and I saw the glisten of tears in his eyes. 'No,' he said huskily. 'I don't mind.'

Byrne walked around the tailplane and put his foot on the step on the wing fillet, then swung himself up to look into the cockpit. The cockpit cover was slid back and he looked down and said, 'Fair amount of sand in here.'

I left him to it and walked back to get my camera. I spent some time cleaning the lens, which wasn't easy because the air was dry and the static electricity such that you could see the fine dust jumping on to the surface of the lens under its attraction. I did my best and then loaded the camera with a film and went back to take pictures.

Byrne had got into the cockpit and was fiddling around with the controls. The rudder moved, but with a squeaking and grating noise, and then the ailerons went up and down with less disturbance. Paul was standing on one side, doing nothing but just looking at Flyaway. I have never seen a man look so peaceful, and I hoped he would now be cured of what ailed him, because there was no doubt that he had been a man badly disturbed to the point of insanity.

I used up the whole roll of film, taking pictures from various angles, including two of the faded name on the side of the fuselage. Then I rewound the film into its cassette and packed it away with my unused shaving gear.

Presently Byrne called me and I went back to the plane. He. was still in the cockpit. 'Come up here.'

I put my foot on the step and hoisted myself up. He had his pocket prismatic compass in his hand. 'Look at this!' He tapped an instrument set at the top of the windscreen.

'What is it?'

'The compass. It reads one hundred eighty-two degrees.' He held up the prismatic compass so I could see it 'Mine reads one hundred seventy-five.'

'Seven degrees difference. Which is right?'

'Mine's not wrong,' he said evenly.

'An error of seven degrees wouldn't account for Billson being fifteen degrees off course.'

'Maybe not.' He handed me the prismatic compass. 'I want you to go back there — well away from the airplane. Take a sighting on the rudder; I want you lined up exactly the way the airplane is. Then take a reading and come back and tell me what it is.'

I nodded and climbed down, then went back as far as I had left the baggage. I sighted on the rudder and got a reading of 168°. I thought I'd made an error so I checked my position and tried again and got the same result. I went back to Byrne. 'A hundred and sixty-eight.'

He nodded. 'Fourteen degrees difference — that would be about right to put him here.' He tapped the aircraft compass again. 'Look, Billson is flying at night, right? So he's flying by compass. Let's say he sets a course of one eighty degrees. He's actually going one sixty-six and way off course.'

'His compass was that much out?'

'Looks like it. And it must have gone wrong in Algiers because he got that far without trouble.'

I said, 'Why did your compass give different readings in here and out there?'

'Magnetic deviation,' he said. 'Remember what I told you at Assekrem about iron in the mountains causing trouble? Well, there's a lot of iron here. Up front there's a goddamn hunk of iron called an engine. That affects the compass reading. Now, that's a Wright Cyclone with nine cylinders and, in flight, all the spark plugs are busy sparking and sending out radiation. They tell you they can be screened but I've never seen anyone do a good job of screening yet. And there'll be other bits of iron about the airplane — the oleo struts, for instance.' He tapped the metal of the fuselage. 'This don't matter — it's aluminium.'

I said, 'What are you trying to tell me?'

'I'm getting to it.' Byrne stared thoughtfully at the compass. 'Now, you build an airplane, and you take a perfectly good compass and put it in that airplane and it gives you a wrong reading because of all the iron around. So you have to adjust it to bring it back to what it was before you put it in the airplane.' He pointed to the compass. 'Built in back of there are some small magnets put in just the right places to compensate for all the other iron.'

'And you think one of them fell off? Because of vibration, perhaps?

'Nope,' he said shortly. They're not built to fall off; they're screwed in real tight. And there's something else — any compass, no matter how good, will give a reading that's a bit off when you're flying on different courses. You see, the needle is always pointing in the same direction, to magnetic north; so when you change course you're swinging all your iron around the needle.'

'It's getting more complicated.'

This is the real point. Every compass in every airplane is tested individually because all airplanes have different magnetic characteristics — even the same models. The airplane is flown along different known courses arid the compass readings are checked. Then a compass adjuster does his bit with his magnets. It's a real skilled job, more of an art than a science. He works out his calculations and maybe adds in the date last Tuesday, then he makes out a deviation card for the residual errors he can't get rid of on various courses. I've been looking for Billson's deviation card and I can't find it.'

'Not surprising, after forty-two years. What are you really getting at, Luke?'

'You can bet your last cent that Billson would have had his compass checked out real good before the race. His life depended on it.'

'And it let him down.'

'Yeah; but only after Algiers. And compasses don't go fourteen degrees wrong that easy.'

I stared at him. 'Sabotage!'

'Could be. Can't think of anything else.'

My thoughts went back to English, the journalist who had set fire to Paul. 'That idea has come up before,' I said slowly. 'A German won the race — a Nazi. I don't suppose he could have done it personally, but a friend of his might.'

'I'd like to take this compass out,' said Byrne. 'There's a screwdriver in that kit of tools I brought.'

'I wondered about that,' I said. 'Were you expecting this?'

'I was expecting something. Don't forget there's a son of a bitch who is willing to kill to prevent this plane being found.'

'I'll get the screwdriver.'

As I dropped to the ground Byrne said, 'Don't tell Paul.'

Paul was sitting on the ground in front of Flyaway just looking at her. I walked away, got the screwdriver and came back, concealing it in the folds of my gandoura. Byrne attacked the first of the four screws which held the compass in place. It seemed locked solid but an extra effort moved it and then it rotated freely.

He took out all four screws and gently eased the compass out of place and turned it over in his hands. 'Yeah,' he said. 'You see these two brass tubes here? Inside those are small pole magnets. This screw here makes the tubes move like scissor blades — that's how the compass adjuster gets his results. And this is a locking nut to make sure the tubes can't move once they're set'

He tested it with his fingers. 'It's locked tight — which means…'

'… that if the compass is fourteen degrees out of true it was done deliberately?'

'That's right,' said Byrne.