Briefly I explained the purpose of my visit. He didn’t answer for a moment, but just lay there, staring at me. At length he said, ‘The people are angry, sidi. They will not come to work for the man of machines who has destroyed the water.’ He raised himself up on one elbow. ‘My father and his father and his father’s father have lived here in this place. In all the time we have been here, the water has never been like it is now. The people are afraid to drink it. They are afraid that their trees will finally be destroyed.’
I tried to explain to him that it was only mineral discoloration, that it would soon pass, but he shook his head and murmured ‘Insh’ Allah.’ His people might need money, but nothing I could say would make him send them up to work at the mine. I offered them as much as five hundred francs a day — an unheard of figure — but he only shook his head. ‘The people are angry. They will not come.’
In the end I left him and walked back to the bus. I didn’t tell Julie what he had said. It had scared me badly, for in the south here water was the same as life, and, if they thought the water had been poisoned, anything could happen.
As we drove up to the camp we passed several villagers, sitting on the banks of the stream bed. They stared at us as we went by, their tough, lined faces expressionless, their eyes glinting in the sunlight. ‘Where did they come from?’ I asked her. ‘They weren’t there when we drove down.’
‘They came out of the palmerie. There are some more over there.’ She nodded to the open country between ourselves and the mountains. There were about twenty or thirty there, sitting motionless as stones in the hot sun.
‘Which direction did they come from?’ I asked.
‘I didn’t see. They were just suddenly there.’
Karen was alone at the camp when we drew up. ‘Where are the others?’ I asked her. ‘Up at the gorge?’
She nodded and I walked up the track. The sun’s light was already slanting and the gorge was black in shadow. I had to go into the shaft to find them. There, in the light of the torches and amongst the debris of the rock fall, I told Ed what Moha had said. ‘Until this matter of the water is cleared up,’ I said, ‘you won’t get any of them to come and work for you. I think we should get down to the Post.’ And I explained about the group of villagers who were waiting within sight of the camp. ‘I don’t like it,’ I said. ‘It may be just curiosity, but I had a feeling they were expecting something.’
We stood there in the torchlit darkness arguing for some time. Jan was angry. Time was running out for him and he desperately wanted to get through that rock fall, to know what was on the other side. But time meant nothing to Ed and he was all for packing up the camp and getting down to the Post. ‘If we can’t get labour, then we can’t and that’s that. The only thing for us to do is go down to the Post and wait for Legard to return. He’ll have a talk with the Caid and then maybe we’ll get somewhere.’
We went out into the daylight and they washed and put on their clothes. Jan was in a sullen mood. When he was dressed, he walked over to the entrance to the shaft and stood there looking at it. I didn’t hear what he said, but I guessed he was cursing that fall of rock. Twenty men could probably have cleared it in a couple of days. As it was, he’d have to leave it. He turned suddenly and stared at me. ‘If only we could have got down here two or three days earlier.’ He said it as though it were my fault that we hadn’t.
‘Come on,’ Ed said. ‘There’s no good beefing about it.’
‘What about the bulldozers?’ I asked him.
‘We’ll pile all the gear and that box of explosives on them and take them with us. I’m not leaving them to be fooled around with by curious villagers. Come on. Give me a hand and let’s get started. It’ll be dark before we get down to the Post, anyway.’
We had just started to collect the tools when we heard the sound of footsteps in the entrance to the gorge. We stopped, all three of us, for they were a man’s step, but light, as though he had sandals on his feet.
But it wasn’t a Berber. It was Kostos. He saw us and jerked himself into a shambling run. His clothes were white with dust and his shoes were cracked and broken, the thin soles breaking away from the uppers. He was shabby and tired and frightened. ‘Jeez!’ Ed exclaimed. ‘He looks like a piece of white trash.’
‘Lat’m! Lat’m!’ Kostos came to a halt and his eyes watched our faces nervously. ‘I must stay ‘ere. I must stay with you.’ He was out of breath and his eyes seemed to have sunk back into the dark sockets as though he hadn’t slept for a long time. He was unshaven and the blue stubble of his chin emphasised the pallor of his face. A drop of sweat ran down the bridge of his sharp nose and hung on the tip.
‘What’s the trouble?’ I said. ‘Why do you suddenly prefer our company to Ali’s?’
His body shivered. It may have been the coldness of the gorge, for his clothes were all damp with sweat. But he had a scared look. ‘Caid Hassan is dead,’ he blurted out. ‘Ali is in control of Foum-Skhira.’
‘Hassan dead!’ I exclaimed. ‘But we saw him only … How did it happen?’
‘I don’t know. I am not there, you see.’ He said it quickly as though it were something carefully rehearsed that he had to be sure of saying. ‘I am in the village, in a pigsty of a house. It happens suddenly. That’s all I know.’
‘When?’
‘Last night.’
I glanced at Jan. His face was hard. He was thinking of the old man who had found it necessary to send him the confirmation of his title to this place secretly because he was afraid of his son. He looked as though he could kill Kostos. ‘We don’t want you here,’ he said angrily. ‘Why don’t you go to the Post if you’re scared?’
‘Because at the Post are two men from the Surete. I don’t like to be so close to the Surete.’ Kostos looked at me almost pleadingly. ‘You understand, eh, Lat’am?’ And then his tone changed to truculence as he said, ‘Well, I am ‘ere now. So what you do? It is a public place, this gorge. You cannot throw me out of it.’ He looked at Ed and his small, black eyes fastened on the holster at his belt. ‘I see you ‘ave guns. That is good. You will give me a gun, eh? I am very good shot with a pistol.’
Ed laughed. It was a hard, tense laugh. ‘What do you think we are — an arsenal?’ He turned and looked at me. ‘Is this guy nuts or something?’ He was trying to shrug the whole thing off, but the tremor of his voice betrayed him.
Kostos noticed it, too. He crossed over to Ed and caught hold of his arm. ‘Please now. You give me a gun. You give me a gun and I stay here and — ‘
‘Are you crazy?’ Ed threw his hand off angrily. ‘We haven’t got any guns. This — ‘ He tapped the Luger at his waist. ‘This is the only gun in the place.’
‘The only gun!’ Kostos stared at him, and then his eyes darted quickly round at Jan and myself. ‘But you have women to protect. You must have guns. You couldn’t be such fools…’ His voice died away as he saw from our eyes that it was the truth. ‘Oh, Santo Dios!’ he cried, reverting to Tangier Spanish, and he wiped his brow on a filthy handkerchief, his eyes darting round the sides of the gorge as though looking for a way out.
Jan moved slowly forward then. ‘What’s happened to make you so scared?’
‘Nothing. Nothing.’ Kostos backed away from him. ‘You keep away from me. You keep away.’
‘What about that passport?’
‘I never had your passport.’
‘Don’t lie. Why did you slip it into my suitcase when you came up here that first morning?’
‘All right. I tell you. Because I want no part of any killing. The passport is too dangerous.’