Ralston said: ‘Take a pot shot. Who knows, you might even hit him.’
Bartlett leaned out and aimed the big pistol at Yamani’s Jeep. The gun kicked viciously in his hand. The Jeep sped on.
On either side of them the remnants of the town rested after the bombardment. Dogs and rats foraged, walls creaked uneasily.
Their Jeep bundled along the shell-pocked road, taking mounds of rubble as if they were miniature ski jumps. But they didn’t gain on Yamani.
Ralston said: ‘I reckon the son-of-a-bitch is heading for the pick-up point on the Canal. Yosevitz seems to have gotten himself an able lieutenant this time.’
Bartlett leaned out and took another shot at Yamani. He missed.
‘I can’t make out what he’s aiming to do,’ Ralston said. ‘He’s got to stop at the Canal. Then he’s ours.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ Bartlett said. He grinned, for no particular reason, into the silvered night; the slipstream whipped his hair across his face.
Ralston said: ‘He’s slowing up. Keep your head down.’
They were rapidly overhauling Yamani now. A hundred yards, seventy-five, fifty. Bartlett raised the pistol and took careful aim. As he fired their Jeep jumped a shell-hole and the barrel jerked towards the moon.
Yamani’s Jeep leaped forward, accelerating with a rasp of gears. Bartlett saw the grenade first. He shouted to Ralston and pointed.
Ralston swung the Jeep off the road. The explosion of the grenade hurt Bartlett’s eardrums. The Jeep rocked, almost overturned, then sank back on its wheels.
‘The bastard,’ Ralston said. ‘How many goddamn grenades has he got? He swung the Jeep back on to the road. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yes,’ Bartlett said. ‘I’m okay.’
‘Yamani knows he’s got to shake us off to stand any chance of getting across the canal,’ Ralston said. ‘They’ll probably start another bombardment at a fixed time to distract attention from him.’
The fleeing Jeep rocked round a corner and disappeared.
Ralston said: ‘I wonder it there’s another grenade waiting round the corner for us?’
‘I wonder,’ Bartlett said.
‘We’ll just have to chance it.’
Bartlett nodded with the fatalism that had become part of his existence.
They rounded the corner. But there was no grenade waiting for them. And no Jeep either.
‘Where the hell’s he gone?’ Ralston said.
The tranquility of the light from the moon and the thick stars seemed to intensify. A dog chased a rat down the road – or it may have been the other way round. The wall of a wrecked house swung gently outwards and fell to the ground. The rest of the house followed thankfully.
Ahead Bartlett saw a line of stumps that had once been buildings, then a gap. The bank of the Canal. The moonlight found a railroad line and coated it with bright ice; a tangle of wires hung from a fractured telegraph pole. The smell in the air had changed subtly; the smell of De Lesseps’ dream stagnating.
The devastated buildings and the telegraph pole reminded Bartlett of photographs of the battlefields of the First World War. The Canal – a water-filled trench dividing Arab and Jew.
Ralston said: ‘Yamani’s around here somewhere. He probably hoped we’d drive past.’
‘Perhaps he’s going on by foot.’
‘He could be. But he must be going left because the United Nations and the Israeli are to the right.’
The engine of Yamani’s Jeep started up about fifty yards away. The Jeep jumped away, skidded off the road and headed across wasteland.
Ralston said: ‘The UN told me that was laid with mines. The stupid bastard will blow himself up.’
‘There’s no point in chasing him them.’
Ralston jumped out of the Jeep and shouted after Yamani. ‘You’re in a minefield. Stop where you are. We won’t shoot.’
The Jeep bounced on. They waited in the moonlight smelling the rotting water of the Canal, listening to the creak of the resting buildings.
Bartlett said: ‘He’s halfway across.’
‘He can’t get much farther.’
‘Who laid the mines?’
‘Egyptian commandos maybe. Israelis. Who the hell knows around here?’
Yamani was three-quarters of the way across.
Ralston shouted again. ‘Stop, Yamani. It’s suicide.’ His voice was muffled by the deadness around them.
The first explosion came as Yamani’s Jeep partially disappeared in a crater. But it wasn’t a mine: the Egyptian bombardment had started again.
Ralston said: ‘It’s his cover. They’ll have one of those motorboats with French electric engines waiting for him. We’ll have to risk following him.’ He climbed back into the Jeep.
Bartlett said: ‘He’s got a long way to go yet.’
‘Sorry,’ Ralston said. ‘We’ve got to go. At least I’ve got to go.’
‘Don’t be a fool,’ Bartlett said.
‘I’m going after him.’
Yamani’s Jeep reared up on the other side of the crater. The Egyptian guns were firing continuously but the shells were falling a long way behind Kantara. Then the Israeli guns opened up in reply.
Ralston put the Jeep into gear.
Bartlett said: ‘Let him go. You’ve won anyway. The map he’s got is quite worthless.’