For all the English versions that had been recorded, the auf Deutsch original was the anthem of all the British troops in the desert. Some hummed, others listened silently. The desert swallowed the music and the silence equally. There was this moment in every day when they sat and thought of home and the nearness of violent death. The song ended, and Leary switched off the wireless.
Gerald drank the last sip of rum and put his mug back on the car. As he did so, he saw a dark figure coming towards the cars from the encampment. He reached for his pistol, then remembered what he’d done with it.
‘Chips!’ he hissed. ‘Someone’s coming. Maybe more than one. Tell the others.’
He jumped into the car and crouched behind the Browning. The figure moved rapidly across the sand, half shadow, half reflected moonlight. It didn’t seem to be making any effort to conceal itself.
He let the shadow come within several yards of the car, then shouted ‘Stop!’ in Tamasheq. The figure came to a halt.
‘I must speak to your lord.’ It was a woman’s voice. Relieved, Gerald told her to come forward.
‘Is something wrong?’ he asked. Donaldson had left the child sleeping after the dancing, and said there was nothing more he could do for him. Either the antitoxin worked or the child died. Had the woman come to tell them he was dead?
‘My name is A’isha,’ she said. ‘Si Musa’s wife. Is the doctor here?’
‘Donaldson,’ called Gerald, ‘I think you’d better come over. It’s the headman’s wife. She wants to speak with you.’
Donaldson’s heart was thumping. He knew how much might hinge on this one small life. As he came out of the shadows that encircled the second car, the woman broke away and ran to him, throwing herself onto the sand at his feet and grabbing his legs, sobbing and laughing simultaneously. Amidst the tears and laughter, broken words escaped her lips.
‘Bloody hell, Bill, I think the kid pulled through. She thinks you’re a miracle worker. Next best thing to God.’
And so it transpired. When she finally collected herself, she told Gerald that her son had come out of his sleep hungry and asking for food. She’d given him some leftovers from the meal, and he’d kept them down. The doctor raised her to her feet and clapped her on the shoulders.
‘No one else knows,’ she said. ‘Just my sisters. I came to tell you first. To thank you for saving his life. I am in your debt. My husband, my son, and myself will for ever be in your debt.’
Flustered, Donaldson said he would come to see the boy right away. But A’isha put up a hand and shook her head.
‘He’s sleeping again,’ she said. ‘Before you see him, you must come with me. All of you. You must be rewarded.’
They looked at one another awkwardly, assuming she meant that she would share her sexual favours with them. Gerald explained that they wanted no reward, that hearing of the child’s survival was sufficient reward in itself.
She continued to shake her head.
‘I know why you came to Ain Suleiman. Everyone knows. Shaykh Harun says you must be killed before you find what you are looking for. But you have given my son back his life, so I will take you there. I will take you there tonight. It isn’t far.’
Gerald looked at her, not understanding.
‘We came to find Ain Suleiman. That is all we sought.’
‘I know what you came to find,’ she said. ‘I will show you. The sands have moved in the storm. There is much to see.’
‘What is this thing?’ Gerald asked.
‘It is not a thing,’ she said. ‘It is a city. The city of Wardabaha. I will walk there with you now. Before the moon sets. I will take you to the hall of the sleepers, where the Old Ones sleep. I cannot go all the way inside, none of us can. But you are angels. Come with me. Come to Wardabaha.’
3
The City of Wardabaha
Leary stayed by the radio in case base tried to make contact. Skinner had already been placed on sentry duty: he manned one of the Brownings, with a Very flare to hand if it turned out that the whole thing was a ploy on the part of the Tuaregs to raid the cars. The others set out with torches, following A’isha across the silver landscape. Not a word was said by anyone. Their feet sank in the soft sand, leaving impressions that were at once filled by moonlight, like mercury flowing into hollows. A white lizard, startled by the light, ran across their path and vanished.
They did not go far, a quarter of a mile at most. Their minds set on a desert city, on towers and battlements, on domes and minarets, on ancient stairways and the inevitable ruin of things once lovely and blessed, they saw nothing at first. When A’isha’s voice rang out, telling them they had arrived, they looked and saw only dunes with more dunes behind them, moonlight with moonlight following.
Then A’isha took Gerald by the arm and led him forward. The others followed, all certain by now that they’d been tricked, that the woman had, out of treachery or high spirits, fooled them or betrayed them. Chips wanted to turn back, thinking the Tuaregs had duped them in order to loot the cars, fearing Leary and Skinner might already be dead. Yet there had been no shooting, no shouts, no hint of any activity behind them.
And then something altered, as though the landscape itself had undergone a great change or things magical become evident to the material eye. Just to his right, Gerald saw what looked like a human figure, a woman draped in clinging fabric. In a flash, he saw she had no head, and in the same moment realised it was a statue. Behind him Max Chippendale whistled.
‘Holy Hercules!’
He walked up to it, content to let the moonlight serve for illumination.
‘Roman,’ he said. ‘Roman and this far south, it doesn’t make sense.’
‘Over here, Dr Chippendale,’ called Teddy Clark, reverting quite naturally to the don’s civilian title.
Teddy had stumbled on a lion’s head carved from marble, its nostrils flared, its eyes wide open, its luxuriant mane sculpted with great delicacy.
They went on, crossing between two dunes, and now a new world opened before their awestruck eyes. Pillars, some broken, others still topped by carvings of acanthus leaves, sprang from the sand. To one side, there was a fallen archway linked to another by a round face surrounded by what seemed to be long, wreathing curls.
‘Medusa,’ whispered Chippendale. Not curls of hair, he said, but serpents chiselled into it so finely they might yet have moved. Moonlight trickled across the face, blanching it, making it appear lit from within.
Max wandered among the ruins, mesmerised, at every step reminded of the great Roman sites to the north: Leptis Magna, Ptolemais, Sabratha. Libya, known then as Cyrenaica, had been one of the greatest provinces of the Roman Empire, producing grain, livestock, and a vast array of medicinal plants. The trade in silphium alone had made the province rich. Ancient Libya had boasted amphitheatres, baths, forums, villas — all the rich panoply of an imperial success story.