“Very well.” Remal folded his arms on the table and looked out the window. “You have indeed demonstrated,” he said, “that you can draw attention.”
“We cleaned up all the mess lying around.”
“Yes. Thank you. That was thoughtful of you and, I suppose, in the manner of a beau geste.”
“A what?”
“You could have left the bodies there and made it difficult for me to cover things up. It was generous of you.”
“Welcome, I’m sure.”
“And of course the meaning is that it will not happen again, but the next time you will draw as much attention as possible.”
Quinn hadn’t thought of the last night’s corpse-dumping that way but he let the impression remain. He said nothing.
“And of course, in the same night’s work you have demonstrated something else I had not known, that you have help. Rather good help, as it turned out.”
“I’m alive.”
“Yes. We discussed that,” and Remal wiped his mouth. “I have learned to be flexible in my position, Mister Quinn, and will make a new proposal.”
“I know.”
“We are not friends, but we are not yet enemies. Let us choose something in between.”
“What’s that?”
“A gentlemen’s agreement.”
“The thought is new to me, but go on.”
“You sit still, Mister Quinn, and I will sit still. You stay in sight and you will come to no harm. Maybe I can harm you with more success than I had last night, but for the moment why risk it? In the meantime, I will do what I can to expedite what needs to be done to get your papers and pas sage.”
“A truce?”
“For the moment.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“Why? Because I no longer underestimate you.”
They parted as politely as they had talked, each wishing that the other would do nothing else.
At eleven Quinn met Turk. This was different. No hotel hush, no polite conversation, no touch of imported European culture. The narrow streets of the quarter were so full of screaming that Quinn thought something terrible was about to happen. But the noise was normal-only he felt excited. Neither he nor Turk talked at all. They walked. They left the street after a while and went through a courtyard, through an arch, then more courtyards, through a house once, and then came out into the open.
This was the back end of the town where the desert started. It was not all sand or large sand dunes, the way Quinn had thought of the desert, but there was gray and black rock strewn around and the sand was not really sand but rather bare packed dirt with nothing growing in it. The last sirocco had blown sand against the backs of the houses, fine and loose like dust, but the expanse of the desert was hard, hard as the light and as hot as the air.
“The jeep is here,” said Turk, and they walked to an oval passage which had no gate.
The jeep still showed army markings. It showed no signs of care and at first glance looked like four over-sized tires with two seats and machinery hung up in between. There was no windshield and the fenders were gone.
But the motor worked. Turk drove and Quinn sat with his eyes squinted tight. Turk was whistling.
The trip, Quinn knew, would not take very long. A short trip across the desert to catch the West highway away from town. Turk whistled and drove like a lunatic. Quinn appreciated the breeze but not much else.
“Look. You got all this land here. All this open space, like air to fly in. Stop going back and forth in zigzags like this was fun or like we had all the time in the world.”
“I am going the shortest way,” said Turk.
He spun the wheel and made Quinn fly sideways and almost out of the jeep. “I will explain to you,” said Turk, and drove straight for the moment. “Open your eyes more and look at the colors.”
Quinn opened his eyes and in a while he saw the colors. The sand was not yellow. It was brown, grey, whitish, and-a trick of light-sometimes blue.
“The colors show the way.” said Turk. “Some are too hard and some too soft and that big patch there, you can drive in it without sinking in but you can drive only in a very slow creep. All right?” and Turk laughed. Then he said, “I drove oil trucks for the French, from the Sahara fields to the coast, in Algiers. Then came the fighting, so I left,” and he laughed again.
Quinn grunted something. He held onto his seat and tried to squint the sun out of his eyes. A lieutenant I got, a real right-hand man. Then the fighting came and I left, haha.
But he did not worry the thought and just kept squinting, which drew his face into a constant grin. In a while he grinned for real. He was starting to look forward to the thing he had set up.
Turk swung the jeep around a large boulder and after that they could see the road. The heat on the road turned the air to silver which shimmered, waterlike.
Turk bounced the jeep on the road and drove North a short while until they came to a ruined house. It was four broken walls by the side of the road and the roof was gone. Turk left the road again and drove into the walled space by ramming the jeep through the door frame which had no top and one incomplete side. Turk let the motor die.
Now the air was very still, like water in a pond. They could not look out and from the road they could not be seen. It was important that the jeep should not be seen.
A dirty burnoose lay in one corner and a large pile of skin bags which were full of water. On the rubble floor of the house was old camel dung.
“You brought the tool?” Quinn asked.
“The tool? Ah, the tool, yes,” and Turk reached under his seat and came up with a wrench.
“And the rag,” said Turk.
Turk did not have a rag. He had seen no reason for a rag and so had forgotten it. But then he went to the corner where the dirty burnoose was lying and tore a piece out of that for a rag.
They had time and Quinn smoked a cigarette. Then Turk got on top of the jeep and from there to the top of the wall. He sat there and looked. Quinn wrapped the rag around the wrench.
“Anything?”
“I can see the camels.”
He could see three camels walking, one behind the other. They were crossing where the jeep had been driving and then they disappeared behind the boulder. Only one camel came out on the other side, head up in an angle of disdain, knock-kneed lurch of a walk. It went slowly, as if thinking about other things, but the Arab who was leading the animal had to trot to keep up.
Turk stayed on the wall and Quinn went out to see. The camel and the man had stopped on the other side of the road. Those two figures stood there and Quinn stood opposite. Nothing else happened-only grit itch prickled Quinn’s back.
“Tell him to put that beast down, the way we said,” Quinn called to Turk.
Turk yelled Arabic and the man with the camel walked into the road. He left his animal and walked alone to the middle of the road where he put his hand on the pavement a few times and then walked back to the camel.
“He says it’s too hot. Ah! I saw the truck for a moment!”
“Tell that goddamn animal…”
“He won’t listen. He says it’s too hot.”
Quinn started to sweat a new sweat, which was thin and rapid. He did not argue or curse now but ran back into the broken house, then came out again with a water skin. He ran with it, so that there was a gurgle sound from the skin. The skin was black and moist and made inside water movements under his arm so that it felt alive. On the pavement Quinn pulled the wooden plug out of the bag and let the water run out. He trained the stream all over the road and pressed pressure into the stream with his arm.
“You see him?” he called to the wall.
“No. It means now that he will come out of the dip when I see him the next time.”
Quinn licked sweat from the side of his mouth. The moist pavement was starting to steam.
“Get off the wall,” he said.
The skin was limp on his arm now and the water sputtered. Turk got off the wall.
“All right,” said Quinn and stepped back. “Tell him to put that animal down now. It isn’t hot any more.”