The top of the Jebel was rolling hillside. It rolled for about a hundred and twenty miles from west to east, and twenty or thirty miles from south to north. Sometimes it rolled vigorously and the terrain became rugged, with deep valleys and steep cliffs. It was a blend of the Cotswold hills and the Scottish Highlands; not so green, but plentifully supplied with stunted trees and shrubs, wandering Arabs and herds of goats, and just right for hiding in.
Sergeant Davis drove the Alfa. In half an hour he found the dry wadi where they had left the jeep. Corporal Harris drove the jeep. At one a.m. they reached the main camp, five miles further south in the Jebel. Three vehicles were waiting there: an armed jeep, a wireless truck, and an armed Chevrolet truck, all loaded and ready to move.
The rear party—six men—had started a brew-up as soon as they heard the engines. Everyone got a pint mug of thick, sweet tea with a tot of rum in it while they discussed the raid. Schramm too was given a mug. He tasted the drink and asked if he might have the rum without the tea. “Don’t mind him,” Davis told the soldier who had made the brew-up, “he’s foreign, he doesn’t know any better.”
“You’d better get used to it,” Dunn told Schramm.
Schramm took another sip, and winced. “I have only one cousin and he lives in Leipzig,” he said.
“Yes? So what?”
Schramm sipped his tea, and recoiled fractionally. “Next of kin,” he said.
“Cheeky bastard!” Pocock said.
“Take that man’s name, sergeant,” Schramm said.
“You’re very frisky,” Lampard said, “for a prisoner-of-war with a gammy leg and no boots.” The German smiled. He had a very broad smile which bunched up the skin over his cheekbones and, despite all the arrowhead wrinkles, made his eyes look quite boyish. Lampard smiled back. What a nice chap, he thought. Just waiting for a chance to kill us all and do a bunk.
By daybreak the patrol had moved ten miles further south and the vehicles were tucked away in the curve of a winding valley, beneath an overhang of tall limestone cliffs. The shape of the trucks was lost under camouflage nets, spread wide and held down with rocks. Schramm watched while pretending not to watch. He knew that even the most low-flying aircraft would never find them. It was difficult enough to find somebody who wanted to be found in the Jebel.
The sun rose with its usual abruptness: from gray-green dawn to full daylight in fifteen minutes. Schramm could feel the temperature start to climb, baking the dew-damp out of his clothes. He sat, resting his back against the cliff, and admired the way they worked. Nobody gave orders, each man knew his job. Nobody hurried, but nobody stood and scratched himself and waited to be told what to do. A bit of quiet joking went on, not much. Lampard ducked under the camouflage netting and came out with a jerrican of water, carrying it as lightly as a briefcase. Someone was whistling. Bacon was frying. Schramm thought: They are three hundred kilometers behind our lines and they are at home.
He awoke when Corporal Pocock shook his shoulder. “Breakfast,” Pocock said. For a second or two, the German was in the wrong world and nothing made sense. Then he remembered, and groaned. “You’ll feel better after a nice mug of tea,” Pocock said. “And Mr. Lampard says you can have one of your boots back.”
It was the boot with the built-up heel. Schramm put it on and limped after Pocock.
Breakfast was a lavish fry-up: sausage, bacon, steak, potatoes, beans; all out of tins. There was tea by the pint and tinned apricots. Schramm looked at his loaded mess tin. “No sauerbraten mit knödels? he said. “No rahmschnitzel mit champignons?”
“You catch us on a poor day, I’m afraid,” Lampard said. “But when we reach Cairo I can promise you lots of egg and chips.”
“Egg and chips!” Harris said, and his eyelids drooped at the thought. “I’d kill for a plate of egg and chips.” A few men laughed, but only a few; evidently it was an old joke.
“Tell you what,” Lampard said to Harris. “If our prisoner tries to escape, you kill him and I’ll buy you egg and chips in Cairo for a week.”
Harris looked at Schramm. Harris had flat gray eyes, as flat as buttons, and they narrowed and widened as he chewed a piece of steak. He swallowed it, sucked his teeth, and said: “You look like a sporting gent. I’ll give you a kilometer start and I bet I kill you inside twenty minutes.” He stabbed a sausage and twirled his fork.
Schramm ate a fried potato and studied the sergeant as if sizing him up. Then he ate another potato, still looking at him.
“Not interested?” Harris said. “Don’t blame you.”
“Oh, it interests me. Not as a piece of sport, because for me war is not sport. I am thinking, what is the possible stake? What do you own that I want to win, maybe?”
Harris unbuttoned a pocket and took out a very old and dirty rabbit’s-paw. “Lucky charm?” he suggested.
“If I win it,” Schramm said, “it will not have been lucky, will it?”
“He’s got you there,” Pocock said.
“Only bloody time he will get me.”
There were caves in the cliff, and the men carried their bedrolls into them. Schramm expected to have to lie on the ground, but he found that the back seats of the Alfa had been removed and taken into a cave for him to sleep on. “Most kind,” he said.
“Our pleasure,” Lampard said. “Tell me: do you think your people are out looking for us?”
“Yes.” Schramm made a pillow of his tunic. “Hundreds. Thousands.”
“Jolly good. Where?”
“Here, naturally. The Jebel.”
“Why naturally? For all they know we came by submarine. Or we could be hiding out in Benghazi.”
Schramm covered a yawn with his hand. “If you please… Could we discuss this later? I am not so young as you. I tire more rapidly.”
“My dear major, I do apologize. Shocking manners.” Lampard straightened the car seats and brushed dust from them. “By all means get some rest. You are, after all, our guest. And if there’s anything you need, anything at all… um… I’m afraid you can’t have it.” He smiled with such charmingly fake regret that Schramm, already drowsy in the growing heat, thought: He wants me to believe we’re all playing a game. All in fun. Beyond Lampard, standing silhouetted in the mouth of the cave, was Corporal Harris. Nothing funny about Harris. Schramm shut his eyes and tried to ignore the squadrons of wheeling, buzzing flies, and very soon succeeded.
By mid-morning the rocks were frying. By midday the air had had all the guts baked out of it. You could breathe it, given that there was nothing else available, as long as you kept it out of your lungs.
By midafternoon, the blaze of noon was just a cool and enviable memory. By midafternoon, the sun was dumping a massive glut of heat on the Western Desert. The sun had beaten everyone, beaten them to the ground, left them for dead. The sun was, yet again, undisputed champion of the solar system. And then, thank Christ, it relaxed. The heat eased. Men breathed again.
Schramm had slept, on and off, for most of the day. Now he came out and sat in the shade and watched the patrol get on with the chores of desert life: cooking food and cleaning weapons, refueling the trucks, checking the tires, double-checking the radiators, and a dozen other details. Schramm noticed that the camouflage nets were still in place. And there was a lookout on top of the cliffs.
Lampard sat beside him and began cleaning his tommy-gun. “I’m awfully sorry we can’t offer you shaving water,” he said.
“My dear Lampard.” Schramm half-raised a hand to dispel any anxiety.
“Satisfy my curiosity.” Lampard squinted down the barrel. “Does everyone in Abteilung 5 speak such good English?”