we are photographing moths?’
‘No explanation necessary,’ I said. ‘These roads probably have more traffic at night when it’s cool. The danger is running into camels or people walking.’
‘Look at tha – Jesus Christ!’
Mann was staring ahead but I could see nothing there, and by the time I realized he was looking in the rear-view mirror it was too late. Mann was wrenching the steering-wheel and we were jolting into the desert in a cloud of sand. There was a howl of fury as Bekuv was shaken off the back seat and hit the floor.
I heard the jet helicopter long before I caught sight of it. I was still staring at the GAZ, watching it disappear in a flurry of sand and white flashes. Then it became a big molten blob that swelled up, and, like a bright red balloon, the fuel exploded with a terrible bang.
The helicopter’s whine turned to a thudding of rotor blades as it came back and flew over us with only a few feet clearance, its blades chopping Indian signals out of the smoke that drifted up from the GAZ.
The Plexiglas bubble flashed in the sun as it banked so close to the desert that the blade tips almost touched the dunes. It was out of sight for a moment and by the time I heard the engine again I was fifty yards from the track full length on my face and trying to bury my head in the sand.
The pilot turned tightly as he came to the roadway. He circled the burning car and then came back again before he was satisfied about his task. He turned his nose eastwards. At that altitude he was out of sight within a second or two.
‘How did you guess?’ I asked Mann.
‘The way he was sitting there above the road. I’ve seen gun-ships in Nam. I knew what he was going to pull.’ He smacked the dust off his trousers. ‘OK, Professor?’
Bekuv nodded grimly. Obviously it had removed any last thoughts he might have had about driving back to Mali to kiss and make up.
‘Then let’s get the hell out of here, before the cops arrive to mop up the mess.’
We slowed as we passed through the smoke and the stink of rubber and carbonized flesh. Bekuv and I both turned to make sure that there was no last chance that the boy could have survived it. Then Mann accelerated, but behind us we saw the Land Rover stop.
Mann was looking in the rear-view mirror. He saw it too. ‘What’s the old fool stopping for?’
I didn’t answer.
‘You got cloth ears?’
‘To bury the kid.’
‘He can’t be that dumb!’
‘There are traditions in the desert,’ I said.
‘You mean that’s what the dummy is going to tell the cops when they get here and find him carving a headstone.’
‘Probably.’
‘They’ll shake him,’ said Mann. ‘The cops will shake Percy Dempsey, and you know what will fall out of his pockets?’
‘Nothing will.’
‘We will!’ said Mann, still watching in the mirror. ‘Goddamned stupid fruit.’
‘I make it twenty k.’s to the turn-off for the airstrip.’
‘Unless our fly-boy was scared shitless by that gunship, and went back to Morocco again.’
‘Our boy hasn’t even faked his flight plan yet,’ I said. ‘He’s only fifteen minutes’ flying time away from here.’
‘OK, OK, OK,’ said Mann. ‘I don’t need any of that Dunkirk spirit crap.’ For a long time we drove in silence.
‘Watch for that cairn at the turn-off,’ I said. ‘It’s no more than half a dozen stones, and the sand has drifted since we came down this road.’
‘There’s no spade in the Land Rover,’ said Mann. ‘You don’t think he’d bury him with his bare hands, do you.’
‘Slow a little now,’ I said. ‘The cairn is on this side.’
An aircraft came dune-hopping in from the north-west. It was one of a fleet of Dornier Skyservant short-haul machines, contracted to take Moroccan civil servants, politicians and technicians down to the phosphate workings near the Algerian border. The world demand for phosphates had made the workings the most pampered industry in Morocco.
The pilot landed at the first approach. It was part of his job to be able to land on any treeless piece of hard dirt. The Dornier taxied over to us and flipped the throttle of the port engine, so that it turned on its own axis, and was ready to fly out again. ‘Watch out for the prop-wash!’ Mann warned me.
Mann’s father had been an airline pilot, and Mann had a ten-year subscription to Aviation Week. Flying machines brought out the worst in him. He rapped the metal skin of this one before climbing through the door. ‘Great ships, these Dorniers,’ he told me. ‘Ever see a Dornier before?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘My uncle George shot one down in 1940.’
‘Just make sure you lock the door,’ said Mann.
‘Let’s go, let’s go,’ said the pilot, a young Swede with a droopy moustache and ‘Elsa’ tattooed on his bicep.
I pushed Bekuv ahead of me. There were a dozen or more seats in the cabin, and Mann had already planted himself nearest the door.
‘Hurry!’ said the pilot. ‘I want to get back on to my flight plan.’
‘Casablanca?’ said Mann.
‘And all the couscous you can eat,’ said the pilot, and he opened the throttles even before I had locked the door.
The place from which the twin-engined Dornier climbed steeply was a disused site left by the road-builders. There were the usual piles of oil-drums, two tractor chassis and some stone markers. Everything else had been taken by the nomads. Now a bright new VW bus marked Dempsey Desert Tours was parked in the shallow depression of a wadi.
‘That’s screwed this one up for ever,’ said Mann. ‘When the cops find the VW they’ll be watching this airstrip for ever.’
‘Dempsey will collect it,’ I said.
‘He’s a regular little Lawrence of Arabia, your pal Dempsey.’
‘He could have done this job on his own,’ I said. ‘There was no need for us to come down here.’
‘You’re even dumber than you look.’ Mann looked round to make sure that Bekuv couldn’t hear.
‘Why then …?’
‘Because if the prof yells loud enough for his spouse, someone is going to have to go in and get her.’
‘They’ll use one of the people in the field,’ I said.
‘They’ll use someone who talked to the professor … and you know it! Someone who was here, who can talk to his old lady and make it sound convincing.’
‘Bloody risky,’ I said.
‘Yep!’ said Mann. ‘If the Russkies are going to send gun-ships here and blast cars out of the desert, they are not going to let his old lady out of their clutches without a struggle.’
‘Perhaps they’ll write Bekuv off as dead,’ I said.
Mann turned in his seat to look at the professor. His head was thrown back over the edge of the seat-back. His mouth was open and his eyes closed. ‘Maybe,’ said Mann.
Now I could see the mountains of the High Atlas. They were almost hidden behind the shimmer of heat that rose from the colourless desert below us, but above the heat haze I could distinguish the snow-capped tops of the highest peaks. Soon we’d see the Atlantic Ocean.
4