Then the hand opened.
In the palm was a pair of yellowed dice with red pips.
The boy closed his hand almost at once, and kept shaking the dice within it.
A gift from the same soldier who’d given him the tam? Michael wondered. “Give him some water,” he told Gantt.
“Hey, you don’t order me around!”
Michael turned to face him. The green eyes were hard and, as Gantt would have put it, supremely confident. “Water,” he repeated. The flyer muttered a curse that would have knocked down a B-17, but the canteen’s strap came off his shoulder. He uncapped the flask, stepped forward and gave it to the boy.
Drink, Michael told him.
The boy did. One sip under the keffiyeh, and one sip only. He knew from the amount of water in the canteen how desperate their situation was. He handed it back to Gantt, who had already gotten his head covering back into an orderly position.
Michael was running out of his knowledge of Tamazight. He asked the boy, A well nearby?
The boy made a motion with his right hand like a bird taking flight. He ended it with a finger pointing to the southwest. Michael took it to mean: A distance.
Which, to these people, could be many, many miles.
“What are you saying to him?”
“Asking him if there’s a well anywhere near. He’s saying… I think…that it’s a distance away, to the southwest.”
“How far?”
“He couldn’t tell me.”
“I intend for us to continue our present course.”
“All right,” Michael said. “We probably each have one swallow remaining.” He began to work his shirt back into position over his head and face. Had he ever been so feeble in his life? he asked himself. Everything was such a damned labor. The heat was sapping even the will to move. “Continue your present course. I’m going with the boy to find a well.”
“Pardon me?” The Walther pointed at Michael’s midsection.
Behind him, Michael heard the dice clicking together in the boy’s hand. What numbers were coming up? What pips of fate? Lucky sevens, or snake-eyes?
Michael had made his decision. If he could not overpower Rolfe Gantt, he was going to die here in this desert. It would be a death of his own choosing, at least a freedom of sorts, and not a miserable wasting-away behind coils of barbed wire. Besides, when they found out what he was they would likely fly him directly to Berlin, give him over to some bald-headed mad doctor with magnified lenses for eyeglasses and a thirst for dissection, to find out how the creature ticked. He would not tick for anybody. He listened to the dice, and then he spoke.
“Use the gun or put it down,” he said. His voice was calm and even, perhaps a little weary, but strong with the resolve of a man who does not fear the end. “I’m going with this boy to find a well. Maybe there’s one out there, maybe not. But I’m not going to let you walk me into a POW camp. Yes, I thought I could get away. Now I know I can’t trick you, or beat you. My compliments. But my time is running out. Yours also.” He paused to let that settle. The Walther did not move an inch.
Michael said, “I suggest you take the last of the water and continue your course. You might find a patrol or an outpost later this afternoon, or tonight, or tomorrow. You might run right into the Dahlasiffa. You have two guns, you can hold them off for awhile. Or you might run into a British patrol and then you can sit out the rest of the war but unfortunately the sky will not wait. Whatever you decide to do, Rolfe. It’s your day.” Michael dared to glance quickly up toward the sun. “Isn’t it lovely?”
“You’re out of your mind,” Gantt answered.
“I’ve come to my senses. No man will force me to do anything. Certainly not on what may very likely be the last day of my life. So, as they say: lead…follow…or get the hell out of the way.” Michael turned his attention to the boy: The well. Take me there.
The boy looked from one man to another. The dice kept clicking together in his hand. Then he stopped shaking them, opened his palm and regarded the number of pips revealed there. Michael thought that he too knew the great and mystic meaning of Fate in the lives of human beings.
The boy began to walk toward the southwest.
Michael followed.
Gantt stood at a crossroads, though beneath him there was only shifting and uncertain sand.
He watched the two figures, the small and the tall, walk away from him. He gazed along his present course, further to the northwest where he hoped he might find his brothers-in-arms. He looked at the canteen, and putting it alongside his ear he listened to the meager amount move within. Hardly enough to fill three thimbles.
It was a huge desert. Sometimes an eagle who flew so high could not realize the immensity of the earth below, for he was fixed on sky and currents of air and the desire to remain in that beautiful realm forever.
But he was fallen now, and he was just a man.
He let the pistol drop to his side.
His thought was: If they run into the Dahlasiffa, they’re going to need me.
Because he was a man of action.
He drew in a long breath from the furnace. Then he began to follow the two figures, the small and the tall, across the golden dunes toward the far horizon.
Three
In the shadow of a rough mound of red rock carved by the Sahara’s wind into a spidery shape more suited for an exhibit of Picasso’s bronze sculptures, the three wanderers rested.
The sun sat at the position of late afternoon. It, too, was turning red, and the desert landscape itself had taken on a bloody tinge. Silence reigned, but for the soft clicking that came from the dice in the boy’s left hand.
“Does he have to do that?” Gantt asked irritably, as he sat with his back against the rock. He had removed his head covering to let the sweat dry from his face. He was aware that he’d stopped sweating so much. Their water was gone.
Michael didn’t reply. They were all arranged in various positions on the parachute, which had been laid down to shield their bodies from the heat radiating off the hard surface beneath. Michael, lying on his back with his eyes closed, saw no point in answering. He thought the boy might be a little insane.
He, too, had removed his keffiyeh. The boy, sitting a distance away with his knees up to his chin, stared straight ahead through his slit of brown cloth, the tam on his head pale with dust.
There was no longer a need for Gantt to brandish a gun. The Colt had gone into his parachute pack and the Walther into his waistband. They were all equals now, and all equally tired and thirsty.
Gantt scanned the sky once more, as he had so many times. Searching for the aircraft—preferably German—that were never there. Then he focused his attention on the landscape, looking for six men on camels. Thankfully, they were never there either.
“Hartler was a good man,” said Gantt. His voice was husky, his throat scratched raw by the fine grit that had gotten through his undershirt and into his mouth a few grains at a time. This was the third time he’d said Hartler was a good man. Gantt closed his eyes, his head lolling. “He was a very efficient wingman,” he said, repeating himself. “Trust is an important quality, isn’t it, Michael?”
“Yes, it is.” Michael’s eyes opened; this was a new avenue of approach.
“I trusted Hartler with my life. Many, many times. He had a wife and two beautiful daughters. I told him… Hartler, give this up and go home. Tell them you have a family that you wish to live for. And do you know what he answered?” Gantt’s eyes, as bloodshot as the sun, opened to take Michael in. “He said he would go home when he was as big a hero as me.”