It took me some time to decipher it, for the ink was very faint in places. As far as I could tell, it took in all the shoulder of the mountains on which the watch tower and the kasbah and the old city stood. It took in both sides of the stream from well below the camp and included the whole of the entrance to the gorge.
‘How far back into the gorge does it extend?’ Jan asked.
‘As far as the first bend.’
He nodded. ‘Good!’ And then he looked across at White who had been watching us curiously. ‘You know Caid Hassan, I suppose?’
‘Is that the old Caid at Foum-Skhira?’
‘Yes. Have you met him?’
‘No.’
‘But it is Caid Hassan. I mean, it’s the same Caid that ruled here before the war?’
‘Oh, sure. Legard says he’s been Caid here for more than forty years.’
‘That’s all right.’ Jan folded the deeds up and put them back in their envelope. Then he got to his feet. ‘Come on, Philip. Now we’ll go and look at the place.’
‘Just a moment,’ White said.
Jan turned to face him.
‘You say you’re Kavan?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did Wade get in touch with you?’
‘Yes. But I wouldn’t let him have the deeds.’
‘I see.’ He stared at Jan, frowning again. ‘I’m surprised he didn’t write me again and let me know.’ He said it more to himself than to Jan and then he gave a quick tug to the waistband of his trousers and turned away as though dismissing the whole matter. ‘Go on up there if you want to,’ he said.
But as we went back up the track, I glanced back and saw him standing by his tent, watching us. His face had a sullen, worried look. Julie had noticed it, too. ‘He’s like a child with a toy,’ she said. And then she added, ‘But the odd thing is, he’s glad we’ve come. He doesn’t want to be here alone.’
We had a look at the kasbah first. It was built with its back against a section of the old city wall. The sand had drifted in from the desert, piling against the walls, and there were goat droppings everywhere, dried and powdery. There was nothing of interest there. We climbed down to the track and walked up it into the entrance to the gorge. ‘Do you know where the mine entrance was?’ I asked Jan.
He nodded, his eyes searching the dark cavern of the gorge, comparing it with the mental picture he had been given. We crossed the sharp-cut line between sun and shade, and immediately we were in a damp, chill world of cliffs and tumbled rock. Ahead of us, in a crook of a bend, stood a plantation of fig trees, their stems twisted and gnarled and white like silver. And on a ledge above, a little almond tree clung in a froth of white blossom.
All above us to the right was a great spill of rock. The track had been slashed through the base of it and the debris shovelled into the bed of the stream, damming it up to form a lake. The water was still and reddish in colour. Skirting the base of the slide, we came upon two bulldozers, white with dust. They looked insignificant in that huge, natural chasm — forlorn pieces of man-made machinery. They had been cutting into the slide to expose the face of a shallow cliff of grey rock, piling the rubble out into the lake so that there was a big artificial platform.
Jan made straight for the cliff face White had been exposing. ‘This is the spot,’ he said. ‘He’s almost reached it. Marcel said the mine shaft was at the base of this cliff.’ He looked back at the towering cliff that formed the opposite side of the gorge as though to check his bearings. ‘Yes.’ He nodded to himself. ‘Another few days and he would have exposed the entrance.’ He stood there, staring at the cliff. ‘Marcel should have been here,’ he murmured. ‘He should have been the person to open it up, not an American. He would have opened it up and used it to help the people here.’ His eyes were clouded. In his mind he was back in that cellar in Essen.
‘What’s this?’ Julie asked, holding out a lump of rock to him. I think she wanted to distract him from his thoughts.
He stared down at it. One half of the rock was a strong reddish colour. ‘Iron oxide,’ he said. ‘What you’d probably call red ochre.’ He moved back a little way, staring up at the slope of the slide above us. ‘It looks as though it’s fallen from up there.’ He pointed high up the slope to a crumbling cliff from which much of the slide had come. ‘I hope there isn’t another fall whilst we’re — ‘ He stopped, turning to face the entrance to the gorge, his head on one side, listening.
A car was coming up the track from the camp. We couldn’t see it because of the slide, but the sound of its engine was thrown back to us by the cliff opposite, beating in upon the stillness of the gorge. It grew rapidly louder. And then a jeep appeared, roaring and bumping round the base of the slide. It stopped beside the second bulldozer and a European got out. He wore a light grey suit with a brown muffler round his neck and a wide-brimmed town hat.
It was Kostos. His suit was crumpled and dirty, and his narrow, pointed shoes were covered with a white film of dust. He looked uncomfortable and his city clothes seemed out of place against the towering background of the gorge.
‘So! It is you, Lat’am, eh?’ He glanced at Julie, and then his small, dark eyes fastened on Jan. ‘Hah!’ He was suddenly smiling. ‘For a minute I do not recognise you without your beard.’
‘How did you know we were here?’ I asked him.
He tapped the side of his nose, smiling. He was so close to me that I could see the skin peeling from his cracked lips and the individual hairs of stiff stubble that darkened his chin. ‘Not a sparrow falls, eh? Even ‘ere in the desert.’
‘Well, what do you want?’
‘What do I want? Don’t try to be stupid with me, Lat’am. You know what I want.’ He moved across to Jan, leaning slightly forward and speaking confidentially as though he might be overhead. ‘Come now, my friend. The papers. They are of no use to you. You cannot make claim to this place just because you have Duprez’s papers. Duprez is dead and any successor to the ownership of the property must be confirmed by Caid Hassan.’
‘I know that,’ Jan said.
Kostos chuckled. ‘Maybe you know it now. But you do not know it when you take the papers from that poor devil Kavan, eh?’
‘What makes you think I took the papers from him?’ I think that at that moment Jan was amused that the Greek still took him for Wade.
Kostos looked at him and there was a little gleam of triumph in his eyes. ‘You do not kill a man for nothing, my friend.’ His tone was gentle, like a kitten’s purr.
‘Kill a man!’ Jan stared at him with shocked surprise. Knowing how it had happened and that it was an accident, the idea that he might be charged with murder was still quite beyond his grasp.
‘You don’t suggest Kavan fell overboard from your boat, do you?’
‘What do you mean?’ Jan’s face was suddenly white. ‘Who told you anyone fell overboard?’
‘So! You do not listen to the radio, eh?’
‘No, we haven’t got one,’ I said. ‘But we saw the newspaper report. It was inaccurate.’
Kostos spun round on me. ‘You keep out of this, Lat’am. It is nothing to concern you. I make you an offer in Tangier. You remember? That is finish. You lie to me. But now I have a stronger hand, you see, an’ I deal direct.’ He turned back to Jan. ‘This is a new development, my friend. The body of Dr Jan Kavan, Czech refugee scientist, has been washed up on the coast of Portugal. This is what the radio said. It is two nights ago and they give your description — all very accurate, except for the beard which is gone now.’ He moved a little closer to Jan. ‘The police would be interested to know what motive you had.’
‘How do you mean?’ Jan’s body was rigid, his mouth slightly open.
‘If I tell them about the deeds you get from Kavan, then they know it is murder — they know you push him overboard.’
‘No.’ The denial burst from Jan’s mouth. ‘I didn’t push him. It was an accident. And it wasn’t — ‘ He checked himself as though a thought had suddenly occurred to him.