The front door was open, and through it he saw the old woman, now at the top of the stairs, the broom still in one hand, the doorknob in the other. She let the broom fall and took off, screaming for help.
Malcolm stepped around a low table to where the second man lay, gasping, struggling for breath. The knife was within the man’s reach, and he saw the man go for it. Malcolm kicked it away, placed the sole of his boot on the man’s hand, and leveled his gun at the man’s face. “Who sent you?” Malcolm said.
The man was going into shock: his skin was gray and his face was shaking. The look of rage on his face was replaced by one of despair as the pain intensified. He spoke in a child’s singsong whisper, the same words over and over: “Molekh sh’ar liyot bein tekhem.”
“Who sent you?” Malcolm put more pressure on the man’s hand. “Were you after Ettouati or me?”
“…sh’ar liyot bein tekhem,” the man whispered. “Molekh sh’ar…”
There wasn’t time for this. The woman’s screams had faded, but she’d be back any minute, together with whatever passed for the authorities in this town. They’d find him with a half-empty revolver in an apartment where three men had just been shot. He didn’t want to find out what the inside of a Libyan prison was like.
He returned the gun to his holster and stepped off the man’s hand. It wasn’t mercy: the man would die of his gut wound, probably quite painfully as his stomach acids leaked out to poison his body. Shooting him now might have been more merciful. But Malcolm couldn’t spare the bullet.
He took the stairs two at a time. In the alley behind the building, he found the transportation the men had used: a BMW R12, left over from the Wermacht. The sidecar was dented, the kickstand missing, the carriage streaked with rust. The glass cover of the headlamp was smashed in and one of the rubber handle grips had been torn off. But the engine was purring softly and when he gunned it, it responded instantly.
He pushed off against the wall with one leg and drove along the narrow alley as quickly as he dared, taking a sharp right when it became clear that continuing straight would take him to a dead end.
There was no time to return to the hostel, even assuming he could find it again. Between buildings, he could see the mountain in the distance and he used that to orient himself. He prayed the motorcycle’s saddlebags held some water. It would be a short expedition if they didn’t.
From behind him, he heard the roar of another motorcycle engine, and further back the throatier growl of a truck. He shot a look back over his shoulder and after a second saw the other cycle round a corner. The man driving it held a machine gun in one hand, the barrel resting on the handlebars. He shouted something in Arabic, raised the gun.
Malcolm took another corner, skirting the stone wall of the building by inches. The whine of his pursuer’s engine grew higher pitched as he accelerated. Malcolm turned his handgrip to match and felt the cobblestones streak by beneath him, jolting him, forcing him to hold on tighter than his wounds would allow. His sleeve was wet where his shoulder had bled, and his forearm still ached from the slash he’d received in the pub. He struggled to keep the machine upright, to find the end of this maze of alleys, to keep at least one turn between him and the men behind him.
Was this how the others had died, shot from behind or smashed against a wall? He tried not to think about it, forced himself to concentrate on steering.
He was glad now that he hadn’t taken a drink. His heart was racing and his reflexes, he knew, weren’t what they once had been, but his hands were relatively steady and his vision clear. He heard Margaret’s voice again—The other four…they had a chance—and gunned the engine.
They shot out from the old quarter, first Malcolm, then, some distance back, the man on the cycle, and finally what looked, at the edge of the circular mirror mounted on his handlebar, like an American jeep. There were no more turns to make: just the city’s wide southern gate and, past it, the open desert. A spray of bullets shot in his direction, missing him narrowly. He grabbed the gun out of his holster. Only two shots left and no way to reload while driving, but it was still better than facing a machine gun unarmed. He sped through the gate, then took a hard left and braked to a stop behind the city wall. He turned back, lay low against the chassis, and waited for the other cycle to burst past.
But it didn’t. The other cycle braked just inside the gate, idled as the jeep pulled up. He couldn’t see them from where he was hidden, but he could hear their voices, the old woman and several men, all speaking in a tongue of which he understood only a few words. Among the words he recognized were “desert” and “death.” It sounded as though they were deciding whether it was worth pursuing him. Why bother? One man alone in the desert would get all the justice he deserved. The night was coming; it was growing dark and cold. Let the man enjoy his victory—it would be brief.
Only don’t allow him to seek refuge by sneaking back in. With alarm, Malcolm saw the heavy doors draw shut and heard the wooden bolt slide into place. Derna was off-limits to him now.
The foothills of the Jebel Akhdar were distant, and who knew how long his petrol would last—but that was the only direction open to him.
Could he make it? He’d have to; there was no choice.
He drove off. Within minutes it was dark. Fortunately, the headlamp still worked, shattered glass or no, and he used it to cut a narrow path through the night. The light illuminated a trail of hard-packed sand and scrub, just a few feet at a time. He couldn’t see the mountains any longer, but he took it on faith that he was still pointed in the right direction. In the morning he would check Ettouati’s map, would correct his course. For now, all he had to do was drive—that, and stay awake.
The strange silence lulled him. Rarely, he would hear the cry of a distant bird, some nocturnal hunter calling to others of its kind; otherwise, the only sounds were those of his tires scouring the sand and his engine tearing through the night.
In his mind, he saw Burke’s face, the naked eyes bulging in the half light. He heard Margaret’s voice: Why did you say yes? No one forced you to.
And he saw Lydia’s face, too, remembered her as he’d seen her last, breathing shallow breaths in the hospital bed, delirious from the pain but clinging tightly to his hand, until all at once she wasn’t any longer, all at once her face was still and her suffering was over. It had only been four months since he’d returned from the army. Four years he’d spent away, always a sea or an ocean or a continent between them, and then when he’d been able to return home at last, she’d been just a few months away from death.
When he’d been here last, in the desert, with tanks and munitions and men eager to kill for their masters, she’d kept him alive. He’d see her face when his eyes were closed, would whisper her name at night, would kiss the one snapshot he had of her when other men kissed crucifixes. He used to imagine that she’d protect him in battle, keep bullets from his path. He’d prayed to her: Darling, let me come home to you, safe and sound, let no man take me from you. And no man had.