Flyaway / Windfall by Desmond Bagley Page B

contribution. There was much graceful bowing.
    As he started the engine Byrne said, ‘Billson came through here four days ago. He must have been travelling damned slow.’
    ‘I don’t wonder,’ I said. ‘He’s more used to driving on a road. Which way did he go?’
    ‘Towards Assekrem—or further. And that’s not going to be any joke.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    He gave me a considering look. ‘Assekrem is a Tamachek word—it means, “The End of the World”.’
    The truck jolted as he moved off. The Tuareg waved languidly and I waved back at them, glad to offer some contribution to the conversation. Then I sat back and chewed over what Byrne had just said. It wasn’t comforting.
    Presently I said, ‘What did you give those men back there?’
    ‘Aspirin, needles, salt. All useful stuff.’
    ‘Oh!’
    Three hours later we stopped again. We had been moving steadily into the mountains which Byrne called Atakor and had not seen a living soul or, indeed, anything alive at all except for thin grasses burnt by the sun and the inevitable scattered thorn trees. The mountains were tremendous, great shafts of rock thrusting through the skin of the earth, dizzyingly vertical.
    And then, at a word from Mokhtar, we stopped in the middle of nowhere. He got out and walked back a few paces, then peered at the ground. Byrne looked back, keeping the engine running. Mokhtar straightened and walked back to the truck, exchanged a few words with Byrne, and then took the rifle and began to walk away into the middle distance. This time he left his sword.
    Byrne put the truck into gear and we moved off. I said, ‘Where’s he going?’
    ‘To shoot supper. There are some gazelle close by. We’ll stop a little further on and wait for him.’
    We drove on for about three miles and then came across a ruined building. Byrne drew to a halt. ‘This is it. We wait here.’
    I got out and stretched, then looked across at the building. There was something strange about it which I couldn’t pin down at first, and then I got the impression that it wasn’t as much ruined as intended to be that way. It had started life as a ruin.
    Byrne nodded towards the tremendous rock which towered three thousand feet above us. ‘Ilamen,’ he said. ‘The finger of God.’ I started to walk to the building, and he said sharply, ‘Don’t go in there.’
    ‘Why not? What is it?’
    ‘The Tuareg don’t go much for building,’ he said. ‘And they’re Moslem—in theory, anyway. That’s a mosque, more elaborate than most because this is a holy place. Most desert mosques are usually just an outline of stones on the ground.’
    ‘Is it all right if I look at it from the outside?’
    ‘Sure.’ He turned away.
    The walls of the mosque were of stones piled crazily and haphazardly one upon the other. I suppose the highest bit of wall wasn’t more than three feet high. At one end was a higher structure, the only roofed bit, not much bigger than a telephone box, though not as high. The roof was supported by stone pillars. I suppose that would be a sort of pulpit for the imam.
    When I returned to the truck Byrne had lit a small fire and was heating water in a miniature kettle. He looked up. ‘Like tea?’
    ‘Mint tea?’
    ‘No other kind here.’ I nodded, and he said, ‘Those stone pillars back there weren’t hand-worked; they’re natural basalt, but there’s none of that around here for twenty miles. Someone brought them.’
    ‘A bit like Stonehenge,’ I commented, and sat down.
    Byrne grunted. ‘Heard of that—never seen it. Never been in England. Bigger, though, isn’t it?’
    ‘Much bigger.’
    He brought flat cakes of bread from the truck and we ate. The bread was dry and not very flavoursome but a little camel cheese made it eatable. It had sand mixed in the flour which was gritty to the teeth. Byrne poured a small cup of mint tea and gave it to me. ‘What are you?’ he asked. ‘Some sort of private eye?’ It was the first time he