They were in darkness. Only a thin light washed down from the moon. He thought, was not certain of it, that the route of the march was no longer straight but that it curved along the line of a crescent.
His eyes were slitted against the sand the wind pelted him with, and sometimes – against the strongest gusts – he lifted the cloth that covered his mouth and protected his eyes. When he went blind, or when he peered ahead, he could only make out the rump of Ghaffur's camel in front of him. He could not see Rashid, but he sensed that the guide took them on great lengths of quarter-circles, then corrected, then took another curved course.
Was the guide lost?
He thought Fahd slept, and Hosni. Both men were tied to their saddles. Three times, after they had restarted the march, when the moon was highest, Caleb had lost sight of Ghaffur and the boy had gone forward and must have talked with his father, but each time he had dropped back and taken a place again in front of Caleb, and then
– each time – the route had swung into another gentle long and arching turn.
What if they were lost?
The guide had no map, no instruments, and in the darkness he could not see the features of the greater dunes – if there were any.
His mind had drifted back into his memory. He had seen a room.
There was a bed, unmade, and a green coverlet was crumpled on the floor. The carpet was thin and pale brown and magazines tossed down shared it with the coverlet. Motorcycles and cars were the photographs on the opened magazines. Girls – big hips, small swim-suit bottoms, big breasts – were on the walls. The room was gone from Caleb's mind.
He tried to remember from what direction the sand hit him, didn't know, was too confused, too tired, too thirsty, hungry and bruised by the day's heat, and now chilled by the night. Each of the Beautiful One's strides dragged her closer to collapse. He had set in his mind that they were lost, that they had doubled back on sand covered the previous day, or the day before. He croaked the question: 'Does he know where he's going, Ghaffur, does your father know?'
The boy seemed to hiss for him to be quiet.
'Has your father been here before, ever before?'
The hiss was louder, sharper.
'It is madness to move in darkness…'
The hiss whistled at him, cut him.
He could see, faintly, that Ghaffur was high on his saddle. His head was raised. The wind tore at the boy's robe. It was natural to ride into the wind with the body bent low and the target for the wind minimized. It was as though Ghaffur sniffed the wind, or listened.
He strained to see the boy better, could not. 'Ghaffur, tell me – are we lost?'
'My father knows where he is, where we go. He knows everything of the Sands.'
'Why do we not go straight, in a straight line?'
'Only God knows more about the Sands. My father is responsible for you. He decides the route and you follow.'
'Why do you go forward and talk to him, and then each time we turn?'
The boy called back to him, a slight voice beaten by the wind,
'Because of what I hear.'
'I hear nothing.'
'My ears are the best, my father says they are the ears of a leopard, one that lives in the mountains. It is an engine's noise. A long way off, but I thought I heard it.'
'What sort of engine? On the air or on the ground? Where was it?'
'I do not know. Each time you talk I cannot listen.'
Caleb heard only the footfall of the camels, the snoring of Fahd and Hosni, and the darkness closed round him and the wind speared against him.
In the night the wind swerved to come from the north, and greater ferocity came with the change.
In the sands of the Rub' al Khali, men lay against their camels' bodies to find shelter, and only their guide knew the value of the wind.
Above the sands, rocked, tossed and shaken, a Predator flew and hunted, in secrecy and silence, and under each wing was a Hellfire missile.
The dawn's light nestled on the wings of the Predator and caught the sandcoated backs of the camels.
'In words of one syllable, or two, stop fucking me about.'
'I am sorry, Mr Wroughton, sir, but I do not have authority to admit you.'
'Young man, I am expected.'
'I don't think so, Mr Wroughton, sir.'
'I had a meeting fixed up.'
'Yes, sir, but not here.'
In the half-light, as the city woke, Wroughton had left the bed of an agronomist's wife – Belgian, large and not entirely pretty, but experienced – and had driven to the Gonsalves' compound.
Sometimes he went there when Teresa was giving the kids their tea and waited for Juan's return, sometimes it was for breakfast before Juan drove to the embassy. The agronomist was due back in Riyadh from Layla, west of the big desert, that evening. If it had not been for his appointment with Juan, his friend, Wroughton would have enjoyed another three hours, or four if he could last it, in the agronomist's bed – inside the agronomist's wife; the man was down in Layla to examine the possibilities of growing a strawberry crop on the edge of the big desert – bloody fool. Teresa had said, in her night-dress and with the kids howling round her, that Juan had already gone down to the embassy, had been gone an hour.
'Just, please, get on the phone and tell him that I'm downstairs. .. or is that too bloody difficult?'
'He knows you are here, Mr Wroughton, sir.'
Teresa, at her front door, had yawned, then pulled a face and winked. 'Big flap, Eddie. Panic call. He was dressing as he was driving.' The marine on the embassy desk had rung through, and the young man had come down. Wroughton knew him as the number five out of five in the Agency's Riyadh pecking order. The meeting, over breakfast, round the kitchen table, was just routine and the chance to exchange snippets, but it was important for Wroughton.
That day of each month he started on his report, regular as his bowels, for Vauxhall Bridge Cross. Much, too much, of his monthly report came from the crumbs off Juan and Teresa's kitchen table. A big flap, a panic call, he needed to know the detail of that. He was blocked, and his temper rose.
Wroughton swung his fist towards the internal phone on the desk in front of the marine guard. 'Just get him on the phone – I'll speak to him.'
He thought this young man had a future in fielding customer complaints in a telephone or electricity company – so calm, and his voice never betrayed anger. 'He said you'd be round. He said, when you came round, I was to come down and tell you that he was too busy – some other time. He'd ring. That's what I was to tell you, Mr Wroughton, sir.'
The young man shrugged, then sidled away, went through the inner gate with a punch-number lock.
Wroughton turned, furious. What price the special fucking relationship? He stamped towards the swing doors where the marines watched him impassively. A big flap, a panic call, and Eddie Wroughton was shut out. He would not have believed it, not of the special relationship, not of his friend. He could still smell the Belgian woman on him, and he went home to change his shirt… and his whole damned world was upside-down, was tossed aside.
'How much more time, for God's sake, do they need?'
For five minutes more than an hour, Juan Gonsalves had been watching the screen. He wore a bar microphone and the headset was clamped in his uncombed hair. He paced in the communications area. His shirt hung out of his trousers and his vest had the hand-prints of last night's kids' food – but his eyes, bloodshot and tired, never left the screen. Not often did he show raw stress.
He was not permitted a direct link with the Ground Control at Shaybah. The raised hut on the trailer down at the end of the runway, beside the perimeter fence, was off-limits to Gonsalves. Too fraught down there, he'd been told. What it meant, they didn't need a rubber-necker over their shoulder. Close to him, leaning against the closed door, was Nathan, the new guy out from Langley, and he'd had the signal from the young man that the visitor in the lobby had been sent away. There were things that Gonsalves would share, and things he would not. A live image from four and a half miles over the Rub' al Khali – with a target – was not to be shared.