The Babylon Idol

Chapter 65

Anna came scrabbling over to him, crying out his name, shaking him. Ben blinked. His vision swirled, then drifted into focus. He rolled his head to one side and saw Bozza lying nearby, staring lifelessly into his eyes with a thin red trickle oozing from the hole in his brow. Then Ben turned his head back upwards and saw Anna kneeling over him, her long black hair dishevelled and hanging down past her tear-streaked face.

‘That guy Bozza takes a lot of killing, doesn’t he?’ he said.

‘So do you, Ben Hope. You hear me? More than anyone!’

‘I don’t know about that,’ he replied. He smiled at his feeble joke, but Anna didn’t seem to find it amusing. He lifted his head and peered down the length of his body, seeing it as though it belonged to someone else. Then saw the blood pouring from the gunshot wound in his side, and understood why she wasn’t laughing.

‘Oh, God,’ she sobbed. ‘You’re so badly hurt. It’s all because of me.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ he said. ‘I do this kind of thing all the time.’

‘We have to get out of here.’

‘Can’t you just let me lie here a while? I’m feeling a little tired.’

She wiped away her tears. ‘No! Put your arm around my neck. Let me help you. We have to go.’

Anna helped him get to his feet, but he couldn’t stand properly without her support. Blood seemed to be everywhere. ‘Fine. But I’m driving,’ he said, and collapsed again.

When he woke up, he was in the truck. They were tearing across the desert, bucking and bouncing crazily, Anna driving with one hand. He couldn’t see straight. The seat under him felt wet. He was so cold.

‘Don’t move,’ she yelled over the engine noise.

‘Where are we going?’

‘To a doctor.’

‘There are no doctors,’ he said. ‘Give me some more of that morphine, and I’ll be right as rain.’ The idea was an appealing one. He could kill himself with an opiate overdose or just sit here and bleed to death. An easy choice.

‘We’ll find help,’ she said, staring intently ahead as she hammered the truck over the rough terrain. ‘If it’s the last thing I do.’ Then she looked down at the dash instruments and her mouth fell open. ‘No! No!’

‘What is it?’ he asked drowsily. He soon understood. The truck began to judder, then to slow, then stalled and coasted to a complete halt.

‘We can’t be out of fuel!’ Anna yelled. She thumped the wheel with her good hand. ‘We can’t be!’ She kicked open her door and clambered out. Ben heard her cry of frustration from outside.

‘Let me guess,’ he said as she ran around the truck and opened his door. ‘Some idiot shot a hole in the fuel tank. It happens all the time.’

She nodded, ashen and distraught. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘Not your fault,’ he said. He managed to haul himself out of his seat and lean against the side of the truck. His legs wouldn’t hold him up. He slowly sank down to the cold, hard ground. The desert was huge and empty and still and quiet all around.

‘There must be something,’ she said. ‘I have to think of a way to help us.’

‘You can help yourself,’ he said. ‘Take the pistol and start walking.’

‘I don’t have the pistol,’ she said.

‘Then start walking without it. Someone will find you. You’ll be fine. Go home to Italy. Get that hand seen to. Finish the bloody book. Tell the world all about the great golden Babylon idol.’

‘And you?’

‘Who gives a damn? Not me.’

She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t work that way. Do you remember what you told me?’

‘Whatever it was, it was probably wrong.’

‘You told me that you wouldn’t leave my side until this was over. And now I’m telling you, Ben Hope, that I won’t leave yours.’

‘That’s a hell of a responsibility to lay on me,’ he said.

‘That’s the way it is,’ she replied.

‘Then we either stay here together, or we walk out of here together,’ he said. ‘Yes?’

‘Yes. What are you doing?’

‘What does it look like? I’m getting up. See? I’m fine.’

But he wasn’t fine. Not remotely. He wobbled on his feet for a second, then his knees buckled and he was down again. ‘Fuck it,’ he muttered. He battled upright again. He wouldn’t give up. If he died, he’d die standing. He put an arm around her shoulders.

‘Let’s go,’ he said.

The two of them struggled away from the dead truck. Apart from the desert wind that whistled and crackled and peppered them with flurries of snow, they were the only things moving on the whole massive, barren landscape. Two tiny insects crawling over a vast plateau of white nothingness.

‘That rise ahead,’ Anna said. ‘If we can get to the top of it, we might be able to see a village or a town where we can get help.’

Ben would have told her there were no villages or towns for miles and miles, but he had little energy left for speaking. Or for much else. The dark was clawing at him, beckoning to him, whispering in his ears.

Come down to us, it said in a silky voice.

Come on down.

‘I’m not dead yet,’ he mumbled.

They were halfway up the rise when the loud rumble of an engine came out of nowhere and a vehicle suddenly came roaring over the top. It came lurching and bouncing their way, and pulled up. Under the film of grime and slush that caked its bodywork, the jeep was painted up in desert camouflage. It had spare tyres and fuel cans and weaponry slung from everywhere. There were four guys inside.

Soldiers. Swathed in desert winter clothes. Their eyes hidden by wraparound dark glasses that reflected the pale sunlight, faces shielded from the cold wind by bandanas. All four stepped out. Automatic rifles in their gloved hands.

Ben blinked. His vision was hazy from blood loss, and he couldn’t make them out too well. Turkish soldiers, maybe, he thought. Or Syrian ones. Or rebel fighters. Or just about anybody else. Whoever they were, they didn’t look friendly.

Ben said, ‘Come on, you bastards. If you’re going to shoot us, get it over with.’

One of the soldiers stepped forward. He lowered his weapon. Peeled off his dark glasses and stripped the bandana away from his face, and peered at Ben with piercing, steely grey eyes.

‘Jesus Christ. Don’t I fucking know you?’ said the soldier. ‘Bloody hell, it’s a small world.’

Ben focused on the man’s grizzled, bristly, weather-beaten face. Muttered, ‘Tinker?’ Then went whirling into a black void that tunnelled through the centre of the Earth and carried him to the stars.