‘OK, OK, OK,’ said Paul soothingly. ‘He’s a pain in the ass, I know. But it’ll not be for much longer. The delegation has nearly finished its work. Another couple of weeks and they’ll be back in London, Roper included.’
‘Every time we go anywhere he’s bloody there and says something that sets her going.’
‘He won’t next time. Not if it’s in the next few days. He’s out of Cairo.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Oh Christ, I don’t know. In the desert somewhere. He and Plumley. It’s the best place for him.’
‘The only drawback is he comes back.’
‘When he comes back he’ll only have a very few days. Then Cairo will be safe again.’
Owen still felt aggrieved. However, he had been saying so to Paul for the past half-hour and thought it was probably time he stopped.
‘Drink?’
He went off to the bar. By the time he came back Paul had thought of a diversion.
‘The Old Man’s very pleased about the demonstration. Went off well, didn’t it?’
‘Just about right,’ Owen admitted, thinking of Mahmoud and Georgiades.
‘No one hurt. The damage contained. The Khedive not too much affronted. Excellent!’
‘And all without the Army,’ said Owen pointedly.
‘Oh yes, but the Army was the decisive factor, wasn’t it? Or so I’ve been telling them. I mean, it wouldn’t have gone off anything like so quietly if they hadn’t known that the moment they stepped out of line, there was the Army, ready to pounce.’
‘Or so you’ve been telling them.’
‘Quite so. Anyway, it’s much better to be told you’re a hero than to have to demonstrate it.’
Owen’s mind reverted.
‘You don’t happen to know where exactly he’s gone, do you?’
‘Roper? I wouldn’t have thought it was worth going to the lengths of tracking him down and killing him, if that’s what you have in mind.’
‘No, no. But where he is, trouble usually is, and I’d like to be forewarned.’
‘Somewhere down in Mina.’
‘Not Hamada?’
‘I think that’s the name of the place.’
‘Funny.’
‘Why?’
Owen told him.
‘I wouldn’t have thought it meant anything. He’s probably just got unfinished business there.’
‘Yes,’ said Owen, ‘and I’m beginning to wonder what that business is.’
Mahmoud and Georgiades were held for twenty-four hours, like most of the others who had caused trouble at the demonstration, and then released. The Government did not bother to press any charges.
Georgiades was a bit of a hero among the students afterwards, though very modest.
Mahmoud had attracted attention too. The students had not really noticed him before because he wasn’t attending the normal undergraduate course—he was, indeed, already a graduate—but just a few specialist courses to refresh his knowledge in the areas. However, Georgiades had had a chance to talk to him while they were in prison together and was able to tell the students something of his unfortunate background.
Apparently he’d fallen foul of the British. They’d not liked the way he’d tackled a case—had accused him of political bias, in fact, which was a bit rich, coming from them. They’d more or less insisted he be given a country posting.
That was the absolute kiss of death for any ambitious young official and Mahmoud had quite rightly objected. When they had overruled him, he’d walked out.
Now he was going to try and earn a living pleading in the Mixed Courts. But that was a bit specialist and he’d needed to brush up his knowledge of international law first. A law lecturer friend had suggested he apply for special dispensation to attend selected lectures and, somewhat to his surprise, it had been agreed.
The Dean of the Law School had, it seemed, been particularly sympathetic. Perhaps, a hundred years ago, he’d had his own troubles with the British. Anyway, he’d pushed the dispensation through virtually on his own say-so. The students hadn’t thought he’d had it in him.
After their experience in prison together, Mahmoud and Georgiades kept in touch. They often went to a café together, along with other student friends, and talked law and politics.
Mahmoud, as a matter of fact, was pretty helpful on the law. He even managed to explain some of it to Georgiades. It was quite useful just listening in. You picked up something yourself.
On politics both of them were, not surprisingly, bitter.
Mahmoud, who obviously knew quite a lot about the law, pointed out that the British action at the demonstration had been extra-judicial and therefore inadmissible in constitutional terms. You couldn’t quite follow all the points that he made—some of his arguments were definitely final-year stuff—but you could see how the way he’d been treated had really got to him.
Even Georgiades, who was a mild, uncritical sort of chap, seemed stirred up. The students, on reflection, put this down as a clear case of consciousness-raising.
One day someone introduced them to a sympathetic member of the staff of the Faculty. They got into the way of going to a café together after lectures.
He seemed really interested in what they had to say. Students were, he remarked, often closer to the issues of the day than staff were. There were others, too, who would be interested. He suggested one evening that they might like to go with him to a meeting of a debating club he was a member of.
They went, and certainly there were a lot of people who seemed to feel like them. The tone of the discussion was, well, pretty fierce. Mahmoud spoke really well. Georgiades was a bit lost.
Afterwards, they went on to another café with just a handful of the people who had been at the debate and continued the discussion.
Meanwhile, the constitutional crisis continued. Ali Osman was definitely back in favour. Sa’ad’s brilliance at the demonstration hadn’t quite convinced the Khedive. It had, in fact, alarmed him. Anyone who had such a masterful relationship to the mob was potentially dangerous. You wouldn’t want to give him too much power.
Besides, Ali Osman had a way with money. He seemed able to conjure it up in vast quantities. The Khedive thought that a very desirable quality in a Minister; certainly one of his Ministers.
The massive demonstration had, however, one unlooked-for effect. It seemed for the moment to have bled off some of the Nationalist pressure. For several days afterwards the streets were relatively quiet.
There were no more cases of following and no more attacks.
That could, of course, be for other reasons. There was a huge police presence on the streets. Owen had retained some of the provincial police he had brought in for the demonstration and was using them very conspicuously in the city.
More to the point, perhaps, his agents were everywhere. Rewards, really large rewards, were advertised for information. Descriptions of men the police wanted to interview were widely circulated. The two men who had followed Jullians would hardly recognize themselves in the descriptions but perhaps it had made them wary, for as the days went by there was no further incident.
Owen knew it wouldn’t last. But the longer it lasted, the more chance it gave him. For if the shadowy figures behind the attacks were really worried that their agents might be recognized, might not they be tempted to use someone new? Someone who had a grudge against the British, someone committed to the cause, someone who was obviously very, very bitter?
Fairclough, notable for perhaps the only time in his life, was becoming a bit of a bore. Owen could hear him at the far end of the bar regaling his cronies yet again.
‘Hand of Allah,’ said Fairclough, ‘that’s what I thought it was. You know, Fate picking me out. Just at random. But now I’m not so sure. I reckon they had me in their sights all the time. And do you know why?’
‘It was the only way they could shut you up, Fairclough,’ suggested a passer-by, overhearing.
Fairclough ignored him.
‘It was that salt business.’
‘Salt? I’m not quite with you, Fairclough,’ said one of the opposing team, bewildered. The bridge match had finished some time before and hosts were entertaining visitors afterwards.
Fairclough explained the duties on behalf of Customs and Excise which had taken him to Hamada.
‘Salt’s very important to the Arab,’ he said. ‘Take salt with them and you’re their friend for life.’
‘Then why did they want to kill you, Fairclough?’ asked the man who had passed by previously, now returning with a glass in each hand.
Fairclough let him go past.
‘So all that salt at Hamada was a big temptation. There was a place up in the hills which was a collecting point for the whole area. Some deserted buildings—it had been a shrine once, I believe. In a good state of repair still. And, out of the way like that, Customs thought it wouldn’t be perpetually reminding people of the stuff we’d taken away from them.’
‘Why didn’t you just give it back?’
‘Wouldn’t do, old boy. Technically it was still contraband. It would be giving stuff which had been illegally acquired back to the people who had illegally acquired it.’
‘Yes, but just leaving it there—’
‘A big temptation. As I said. The old Pasha down there was really worried about it. Had to keep the place flooded with armed men, so he told me. Otherwise the local brigands would have had the lot. Not to mention the gipsies. Bloody there in force, the day I went.’
Fairclough put his glass down.
‘Thanks. Yes, I will. Same again. Yes, the place was crawling with them. The old Pasha came down to me and said, “Look, effendi. I’ve got to clear these beggars out.” Well, not quite in those words, but I knew what he meant. “Would you mind coming tomorrow?”’
‘It’s always “tomorrow” in Egypt,’ said one of the visitors, newly arrived from England and already an expert on the country. ‘Tomorrow, bokra,’ he said, eager to demonstrate his new command of the language.
‘The bokra boys, that’s right,’ Fairclough granted him. ‘Mind you, I must say he had a point. There were people everywhere and he couldn’t let that go on. Had to clear them out somehow and I dare say he wasn’t too keen to let me see how he did it. They’re a bit rough and ready in the provinces. Still get the old curbash out, given half a chance. Thank you. Cheers.’
His first swallow diminished the contents of the glass by about a half. His face was already growing pinker.
‘I said I’d give him an hour. And to give him his due, by the time I got back they were all gone. The gipsies, that was.’
‘Taking everything with them, I expect,’ said another of the visiting team, an older hand. ‘Including your trousers.’
‘Not in my case. Not this time at any rate,’ said Fairclough, with a loud laugh which ended in a hiccup.
‘I still don’t see the connection,’ said the literal-minded visitor who had questioned Fairclough first. ‘What’s all this got to do with you being shot at in Cairo?’
‘That’s when they saw me, you see,’ Fairclough explained. ‘It’s the only time I’ve been out of the office so it must have been then. And because salt’s so fundamental with them, the image of me would have been fixed in their minds. The man who’s come to take the salt from them. Fairclough. That’s why they wanted to kill me.’
‘You were the Government to them.’
‘Well, yes,’ said Fairclough modestly, looking down into his beer, ‘I expect so.’
‘I still don’t see what this has got to do with something that happened in Cairo,’ the literal-minded visitor maintained obstinately.
‘Egypt’s a big country,’ said the old hand wisely, ‘but a small place. Word gets around. Someone must have seen Fairclough down in Hamada and then seen him again in Cairo and passed the word on.’
‘I passed the word on,’ said the previous interrupter, going by yet again with empty glasses, ‘but the beggars bungled it.’
Soraya denied it hotly.
‘Certainly not,’ she said. ‘We hardly even noticed him. And if we had, he wouldn’t have been worth mentioning.’
She perched herself on Owen’s knee. Owen automatically began to transfer his money, thought better, and divided it equally between her and him.
Soraya took it gracefully.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You can keep the rest as a gift from me.’
They were in a night club near the big hotels. Owen had gone down to the Citadel without much hope and had been pleased and surprised to hear that Soraya was back in town. He had expected the gipsies to be still on one of their vast nomadic treks.
‘They are,’ said his informant, ‘but Soraya has come back. She quarrelled with her man down in Minya and came back alone.’
She was as usual working the tourist area, which was where Owen had found her.
‘Of course we take information,’ she said, snuggling her head against Owen’s shoulder, ‘but no one’s interested in information about a fat, funny little Englishman. And anyway we wouldn’t know who to give it to. Not in Cairo. In Hamada we would, of course. In the provinces it’s different.’
‘What sort of information do you take?’
‘Messages for merchants. “Meet Abdul Latfi at Bir Hamna with the camels,” that sort of thing. It’s very important and so they pay us. That’s the kind of information we’re interested in.’
‘Why is it important?’
‘Well, suppose you have a big merchant in Aleppo. He wants, say, a dozen slaves for the markets in Istanbul. The best place for slaves is the Sudan. Well, he sends an order down—’
‘By you?’
‘Not usually an order. There are standing arrangements. All we carry is messages about times.’
‘Times when the merchant’s agents will pick up the slaves?’
‘Yes. It has to be done secretly, of course, because the British get so excited about it. The traders usually pick a place outside a town—’
‘In the hills outside Hamada, for instance?’
‘Well, yes.’ Soraya pouted. ‘You’re not really interested in me. You’re only interested in your work.’
Zeinab had been saying much the same thing. It wasn’t true, really. There were lots of things he was interested in. Soraya, for a start.
‘Not so,’ he protested, stroking the back of her neck.
Soraya sat up.
‘We could go somewhere,’ she said, eyes gleaming.
Owen thought that perhaps it would be better if they did. They were beginning to attract attention. Private endearments in public were not a feature of the Moslem way of life, even in a seedy night club.
Afterwards, though, with Soraya nestling drowsily in his arms, his mind returned to his other interest.
‘They told me at the Citadel that you had left your man,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Soraya sleepily.
‘Was that because you came to me at Hamada?’
‘Yes,’ said Soraya. ‘No,’ she corrected herself, ‘it was because I didn’t give him any money afterwards.’
‘I didn’t give you any money.’
‘It was for love,’ said Soraya, sitting up suddenly, wide awake, eyes flashing. ‘We did it for love. That is what I told him. He hit me and I stabbed him. A Ghawazi girl does not take blows. Unless she wants to, of course. You can beat me if you like,’ she offered, slipping back into his arms.
‘No, thanks. I am sorry, though, to come between you and your man.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Soraya. ‘He’ll come back. Or perhaps I’ll go back to him.’
Owen was relieved to hear that the stabbing had not been fatal.
‘What were you down in Hamada for?’ he asked. ‘Were you taking messages to Ali Osman?’
‘There probably were messages,’ she said, ‘but that wasn’t why we went to Hamada. We were going to take the guns down to Khamda.’
‘Guns?’
‘Didn’t I say? The slaves are not paid for in money, they’re paid for in guns. Guns are always wanted in the Sudan.’
‘The Mahdi?’
‘Isn’t he dead?’
‘Yes, but …’ Owen wondered if he had stumbled on something. Ever since the Mahdi’s forces had been broken by the British and the British had taken over running the country, it had been the constant fear of the Administration in Egypt that the Mahdi’s supporters would regroup and rise again.
‘Who are the guns for?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. Guns fetch a good price in the south.’
He would have to look into this. If arms were getting through to some of the big tribes in the West, particularly the more independent ones around Darfur, that was something the Administration needed to know.
‘The gipsies take the guns down to Khamda?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why there?’
‘That’s where we meet the slavers.’
‘You trade the guns for the slaves?’
‘We don’t trade anything. We just carry the guns.’
‘Why do you have to call in at Hamada?’
‘Because that’s where the guns are. That’s where we pick them up.’
‘You don’t bring them down with you?’
‘No. That would be too dangerous. The guns don’t come that way anyway. They are landed at the coast, at Ras Gharib. Then they are brought across the desert to Hamada.’
‘What happens there?’
‘They’re just left there. There’s a place in the hills.’
‘By a shrine?’ asked Owen, light beginning to dawn.
‘Yes. Up in the hills. Near where you found us.’
Owen, his lips touching the nape of Soraya’s neck, reflected. The arms trade and the slave trade were both illegal. Both, however, were widely practised.
The slave trade was rooted deep in the culture of the area. For centuries Arab slave traders had come down from the north and for centuries the black villages of the south had supplied them with slaves. Khartoum, the capital of the Sudan, had been the great slave centre of Africa until the British had arrived and put a stop to it.
Or thought they had. Slaving was now illegal in the British-governed Sudan but how could a handful of District and Police Commissioners, less than a hundred in all, police a million miles of desert? In the remoter areas slaving still thrived. And it was only too easy to bring slaves across the desert without going near a town, without coming within sight of human habitation, up and out of the Sudan and into the nearly equally remote southern and western parts of Egypt.
From there it was equally easy to ferry them across to the coast and ship them across the Red Sea to places where not only no questions would be asked but slaves were a normal feature of the economy.
Slaves were still in enormous demand throughout what remained of the Ottoman Empire. Black slaves from the Sudan fetched a particularly good price.
The arms trade was newer. It was, however, quite as profitable. To own a gun was the ambition of every desert Arab. It sounded, though, as if these guns were being purchased in bulk. It would be very interesting to know who by and what for.
Both trades were highly profitable. He wondered what the volume was.
‘How often do the slavers come?’ he asked.
‘Four times a year. This time, however, there were too many guns to be shipped in one load. Another is coming.’
‘It is still to come?’
‘Yes.’
‘When is it due to come?’
‘Any day now.’
‘At Hamada?’
‘At Hamada.’
‘Do you know …?’
But Soraya’s mind had moved on to other things.
The students were on the streets again.
‘Something we could have done without right now,’ said McPhee, preparing to go out with a detachment to quieten them down.
‘It was bound to come,’ said Owen, taking it with what to McPhee was surprising equanimity. ‘Things have been too quiet.’
Ever since he had returned from Hamada there seemed to have been an uncanny lull. The huge demonstration in front of the Abdin Palace had drawn off a lot of the anti-Government energy and the number of sporadic local outbreaks of violence had fallen sharply.
Even—and this was surprising—the reports of following had dwindled to a trickle. What instances there were seemed attributable more to game-playing youths than to genuine terrorists.
‘You’ve got them scared,’ said the loyal McPhee.
Nikos had a different view.
‘Those two were the only ones who could make bombs,’ he said. ‘When they blew themselves up there was no one else Rashid could go to.’
‘That doesn’t explain the followings,’ Owen pointed out.
‘Nine-tenths of them were imaginary anyway,’ said Nikos.
The lull, for whatever reason, was welcome. But now it seemed to have ended. And the British had only themselves to blame.
What had brought the students again on to the streets was the evident determination of the British to pursue Mahmoud for the prominent part he had played in the Abdin demonstration. They had, apparently, demanded his expulsion from the Law School.
‘Victimization!’ declared the student with the tribal scars whom Owen had remarked previously, pounding his fist on the café table.
‘Victimization!’ his friends round the table echoed.
‘Victimization!’ said Georgiades, a little late, but then he was always a bit slow to cotton on.
‘We must resist!’ declared the scarred student passionately. ‘Give way now and they will trample our liberties forever!’
‘Resist!’
‘Resist!’
The cries rose to the plastered ceiling of the café. The newspapered patrons of the café, however, among them Owen, read on with indifference.
‘Let us march on the Citadel!’
‘Let us march on the Palace!’
‘Let us lie down in front of the English Barracks and tell them they can shoot us if they wish but Mahmoud must be reinstated!’
‘Yes! Yes!’
There was a general thumping on tables.
‘What’s up?’ asked the proprietor of the café.
‘We are going to march on the Barracks.’
‘Good. You wouldn’t like to start as soon as possible, would you?’
The students rose indignantly and trooped out. Outside, they hesitated for a moment.
‘Oughtn’t we to go to the Dean’s first?’ asked Georgiades. ‘I mean, we don’t know yet that Mahmoud has actually been expelled.’
The students thought that a good idea and set off to march to the Dean’s office, gathering support as they went. By the time they reached it, their numbers had swollen to such an extent that they fitted the small square in front of the School offices.
They stood there for some time, shaking fists and chanting slogans, until at last someone came down to ask what they wanted.
They demanded Mahmoud’s reinstatement.
‘He hasn’t been expelled yet,’ said the emissary. ‘The Dean is still making up his mind.’
‘He oughtn’t even to be considering it,’ declared the student with the scars, who had constituted himself the students’ leader.
‘He’s got to consider it,’ said the emissary. ‘He’s received a direct request from the Minister of Education.’
This didn’t please the students at all and there was pandemonium in the square for the rest of the morning, which ended only when the students learned that the Dean, and everybody else, had gone home for lunch, using a back door.
There were no windows for them to break and they had to content themselves with hurling stones at the heavy wooden shutters.
The Dean’s decision was announced the following day. He had previously gained considerable respect, even from the students, by his willingness to bend procedures and admit Mahmoud as a special case to certain lectures. Now he lost it all by bowing to British pressure.
He had reluctantly reached the conclusion, he said, that it was in the best interests of the Law School for the special arrangements made for Mahmoud to be terminated. Mahmoud would therefore be debarred from attending further lectures.
The students rose in fury and marched in a body first to the Dean’s office, where they threw stones for several hours, and then on in a mass procession to the Abdin Palace, where they demonstrated until it was dark.
The situation seemed so ugly that the Army put itself on full alert. Doubtless it was knowledge of this, and the fact, of course, that it was dark, that finally induced the students to go home.
The Khedive delivered a formal protest to the Consul-General both about the injustice to his subjects and about the Civil Administration’s tolerance of violence and disorder on his very doorstep.
The protests continued for some time, although not on quite the same scale. They were substantial enough, however, to force the Administration into a misguided concession. In a blatant attempt to appease the students the authorities released from prison a former student, one Elbawi, who had been convicted of an attempt on the life of one of the royal family.
This did not please either the Khedive, who made another formal protest to the Consul-General, or the students, who saw it as an attempt to fob them off with something which ought to have been conceded long ago anyway.
Elbawi himself had the right attitude. He declared himself innocent of anything other than fighting for justice. That struggle must go on. The injustice presently being done to Mahmoud was merely another in the long series of injustices which characterized British rule in Egypt, and he called on the students to resist it as he himself had tried to resist a previous injustice.
The students thought it a pretty good speech, a brave one, too, in view of the fact that the British must be keeping their eye on him and would certainly have no hesitation in clapping him back in prison if he showed any sign of stepping out of line.
There was very keen interest, to say the least, when Elbawi submitted an application to be readmitted to the Law School and allowed to complete the course of studies interrupted by his imprisonment. Student feeling ran high. The Dean, no doubt aware of that, wisely accepted Elbawi as a student, thus repairing some of the damage caused by his previous action.
Elbawi was reinstalled as a student and took up his place immediately. On his first morning the students carried him triumphantly round the square outside the Dean’s office. Elbawi made a tremendous speech, rather like his first one.
After that, though, he settled down quietly as a student. He did not even join in the processions and demonstrations the students were now organizing every day. The students were surprised at first but then on reflection understood that in the circumstances the poor chap could hardly be expected to do anything else. He had probably been told that any sign of public dissent would see him back in prison.
What he was prepared to do, however, was address private meetings. Over the next few days he addressed dozens of these, in cafés, in lecture rooms, in students’ lodgings.
For the most part he spoke about his time in prison. He spoke with surprising restraint, quietly, objectively, as if he were describing what had happened to someone else. But on occasion, and especially when he was describing the time he had spent cutting stone in the quarries at Tura, he could not keep the bitterness from breaking through.
You felt that though for the moment there was nothing much he could do, at some point in the future, given half a chance, he would want to strike back.
The one who was really bitter, though, and understandably, was Mahmoud. As he said, the British kicked you out of Government service and then when you tried to find a job not in Government service they kicked you out of that too, or at least stopped you from earning a living at it. They had you either way.
And that was how it would always be, he went on, while the British were in control. It was Mahmoud today, he told the students; it would be them tomorrow. The only way out was to resist now, to drive the British back into the sea, as he put it.
The students cheered heartily at that. Mahmoud was so right. That was the only way out.
Georgiades, who had been pretty close to Mahmoud at one time, when they had been in prison together, but who now seemed to have drifted a bit apart, wanted to know how exactly they were going to manage that. He thought it would be pretty difficult to drive the British into the sea.
Some of the students were rather impatient with him, the one with scars particularly. Others, however, who knew he meant well, pointed out that the wave of student protest, which was still pretty small at the moment, would mount higher and higher until it became a great tide which would sweep the British away.
That seemed to satisfy Georgiades. You only had to point these things out to him.
The wave of student protest, though not yet of gigantic proportions, was washing around with sufficient vigour to alarm the Army. They made it clear to the Consul-General that they felt things were getting out of hand and that it was only a matter of time before they would have to be called in.
The Mamur Zapt, however, seemed to be taking it all very calmly.
He was, though, having trouble on another front.
‘Hamada?’ said Zeinab incredulously. ‘Again?’
‘Something has come up?’
‘It’s that girl!’
‘Nonsense. She’s in Cairo.’
‘So you know!’ pounced Zeinab. ‘You’ve been seeing her.’
Owen lost this one, too.
This time he went by the desert, leaving the boat at Faza, where a tracker was waiting for him with camels. They rode through the night and reached the hills above Hamada just before dawn.
The tracker hid the camels among the rocks and then they climbed on foot up the stony slopes, the sun coming up behind them as they walked, lighting the ground with a strange unearthly light.
He was cold and stiff after his ride. In the desert at night the temperature plunged down towards freezing point. He had wrapped himself in Bedawin robes but now was glad to stretch and exercise himself. The sun gradually became warmer on his back.
They curved around the hillside into the darkness again and emerged on a little ledge which looked down into a valley. The valley ran back up into the hills and half way up, as the sun reached around the hill and lit up the lower slopes, he saw a low, white-walled building.
One of the trackers touched him on the shoulder and pointed. A little beyond the shrine, low in a hollow, so low that you could hardly see it, was another building. It was built of the same mud bricks as the shrine but, without the white stucco of the shrine, blended inconspicuously into the rock.
‘The Place of Salt,’ said the tracker.
‘That is where the arms were taken?’
The tracker nodded.
The consignment had arrived two days before. There had been twenty baggage camels in the caravan, all heavily loaded. They had come in the afternoon when the world was at siesta and it had taken until nightfall to unload them.
The men who had come with them spent the night on the rocks in front of the Place of Salt, huddled for warmth around a solitary camp fire made from dried camel dung. There was, of course, no wood, either in the hills or in the desert below. In the morning the men had left, taking the baggage camels with them.
The men in the Place of Salt had worked on for most of the morning, stacking the arms more securely, probably covering them with bags of salt. They had left too.
‘We watched all day. There are no guards.’
Owen looked down at the two buildings just beginning to emerge from the shadows. The sun, creeping up the slopes, began to touch the shrine and turn the whiteness red.
‘Then let us go down,’ he said.
The doors were barred with heavy wooden bolts but not padlocked. The trackers drove the bolts out with the butts of their rifles.
Inside, all was dark and it took a moment or two for Owen’s eyes to get used to it. All round the floor, stacked against the walls, bales were lying covered with heavy sacks. He pushed one of the sacks aside with his foot. The bale underneath was solid and heavy. A tracker cut it open with his dagger. A little trickle of powder ran out, white and crystalline.
The tracker tasted it on his finger.
‘Salt,’ he said.
They moved the bale away. Underneath was another bale, less bulky, less solid, more angular. The tracker cut it open. He put in his hand and pulled out a rifle.
The trackers, interested in such things, took it over to the door where the sunlight fell through and examined it appreciatively.
It was new and oily. Owen looked over their shoulders. German-made.
He called the trackers back and began to work through the rest of the bales. He wanted to see if there was anything besides rifles.
They had gone about two-thirds of the way along one of the walls when the trackers stopped and looked at each other. Two of them went over to the door and looked out.
‘Someone is coming.’
They slipped back into cover, one each side of the door. Gently one of them eased the door to.
The other trackers covered the door with their guns.
Whoever it was was approaching on foot. There seemed to be only one.
He came up to the building and gave a grunt of surprise as he saw the open door. Unsuspecting, though, he pushed it open and stepped inside.
One of the trackers caught him deftly around the neck. The other pinioned his arm by his side.
‘What the hell is this?’ said Roper.