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drag out, and it was Whitaker who finally broke it. 'You were telling me ab
out your journey.' He stared at me, waiting for me to continue. I broke off a
piece of the halwa. It was cloying on the tongue and it had a sickly-swe et
taste. 'You arrived here with Entwhistle, one of the Company's geologist s.
What was he doing on the Hadd border, do you know? The fellow had no bus iness
there.'
'He was checking your son's survey,' I said.
There was a sudden stillness. 'I see.' He said it quietly. And then, in a voi
ce that was suddenly trembling with anger: 'On whose orders? Not Philip Gorde
's surely?'
'No.'
'Erkhard?'
'You seem very worried about this?'
'Worried!' The word seemed forced out of him. 'Don't you understand what's
happened here tonight? The thing I've been dreading. . . . The thing I've b
een trying to avoid ever since I knew--' He checked himself. And then in a
quieter voice: 'No, you're new out here. You wouldn't understand. One of th e
falajes has been stopped. And all because of this blundering fool Entwhis tle
running a survey on the Hadd border.' His voice had risen again, trembl ing
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with anger.
'He was doing what David was doing at the time he disappeared,' I said quiet
ly.
But it didn't seem to register. He had withdrawn into his own thoughts. 'Twe
nty years--' His voice sounded tired. And then his eye was staring at me aga
in. 'How would you feel if the thing you'd worked for over a period of twent y
years was in danger of being ruined by young fools too impatient to unders
tand the politics of the desert?' He turned his head and stared for a moment
into the night. 'The air is heavy. There'll be a storm soon.' He gathered h is
robes about him and rose to his feet, crossing to the parapet and leaning
against it, staring out into the desert like some Biblical figure from the
distant past. 'Come here, Grant.' And when I joined him, he stretched out hi s
arm. 'Look, do you see those dunes?' He gripped my arm, pointing west into the
desert.
Standing on that rooftop was like standing on the bridge of a ship lying anc
hored off a low-lying island. To the left lay the dark-treed expanse of the
oasis, and beyond the date gardens I could see the village and the squat bul k
of the Sheikh's palace standing on its gravel rise. But to the right, wher e
his arm pointed, was nothing but desert. Dim in the moonlight the dunes st
retched away into infinity, a ridged sea of sand, pale as milk. 'When you've
seen a storm here you'll understand. Then all the desert seems in motion, l
ike the sea beating against the shore of the oasis, flooding into the date g
ardens. The dunes smoke. They stream with sand. They're like waves breaking;
the whole great desert of the Empty Quarter thundering in, the sand flowing
like water.' He turned to me and his grip on my arm tightened. 'The only th
ing that stands between Saraifa and destruction is the camel thorn. Out ther e
- do you see?
Those trees. They're like a breakwater holding the sand sea back, and they're
dying for lack of water.'
'The falajes?' I asked, and he nodded. 'Entwhistle said there used to be arou
nd a hundred of them.'
'Yes. We've traced them from aerial photographs.'
'Your son was very much concerned about--'
'Oh yes, concerned. . . . But he lacked patience. He was like a young bull.
No subtlety. No subtlety at all.' And he added, 'What's been done tonight ca n
be quickly repaired. There's an open well every mile or so along the lengt
h of the underground channel of the falaj. They've blocked one of these well s
with sand and stone. It can be unblocked almost as quickly. But the old fa
lajes--' He shook his head. The wells are fallen in, the underground channel s
collapsed. Restoring them is a lengthy and costly business. Sheikh Makhmud has
managed to restore just one in the fourteen years he's been Sheikh of S
araifa. It took two years and cost more than twenty thousand pounds. If Sara
ifa is to survive--' He gave a little shrug. 'We need a dozen new falajes, n
ot one.'
'And only oil will pay for them?'
He nodded. 'Yes.'
'David took the same view,' I said. That's why he was prospecting on the
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Hadd border.' And I added, 'What happened, Colonel Whitaker? What happene d to
your son?'
He turned and looked at me. 'You think I should know?'
'I've come a long way,' I said, 'in the certainty that you must know.'
His eyebrows lifted, the single eye stared at me, not blinking. The certainty?
'
'Yes,' I said. The certainty.' And I added, 'He was on loan to you at the t
ime he disappeared. It was the seismological truck you purchased in Basra l
ast June that he left abandoned on the side of a dune twenty miles inside t he
borders of Saudi Arabia. And just before he disappeared, you visited the
Emir of Hadd. You must know what happened.'
'Well, I don't.' He said it flatly and it was difficult not to accept it.
Then why did you visit Hadd?'
'Who else could do it?' And he added, 'David was on the Hadd border agains t
my orders, against Sheikh Makhmud's orders, too. Somebody had to try and
convince the Emir there wasn't any oil there.'
'Because the border's in dispute?'
'Yes. There's been trouble there ever since the Company was first granted a
concession to prospect in Saraifa. As you probably know, Saraifa is an indep
endent sheikhdom. Unlike the Trucial States, it's not even in treaty relatio n
with the British Crown, though it's generally considered to be a part of t he
British sphere of influence. Hadd is different again. It's independent in
theory and in fact, and during the last few years it has strengthened its t
ies with Arab countries. Some years back we were finally driven to sending t
roops in, to keep the peace, and they occupied the fort of Jebel al-Akhbar o
verlooking the town of Hadd. But we couldn't do that now. It would be much t
oo dangerous.' He hesitated, and then he added, The risk would only be justi
fied if vital interests of our own were involved.'
'What sort of vital interests?' I asked. But I knew the answer before he gave
i t.
'Oil,' he said. 'From a Western point of view - as you'd know if you'd been o
ut here any length of time - everything in Arabia comes back to oil.'
'Your son's death, too?' I asked. He looked at me, but didn't say anything. '
When did you first hear he was missing?'
Towards the end of February.'
'Could you give me a date?'
He frowned and for a moment I thought he wasn't going to answer that. But t
hen he said, 'I can't be certain. Your calendar doesn't mean very much to u s
out here in the desert. But by the moon it would be about the beginning o f
the last week in February.'
Almost a week before the abandoned truck had been found by the Bedouin, m ore
than three weeks before his disappearance had been reported to the Co mpany.
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'You didn't notify Erkhard.'
'No.'
'Why not? David was in the Company's employ, even if he was on loan to yo u.'
He didn't say anything. He seemed suddenly to have withdrawn inside himse lf.
I think perhaps he was waiting for my next question, knowing it was c oming.
'The truck was discovered abandoned on February twenty-eight,' I s aid. 'Yet
you say you knew he was missing almost a week before that. How did you know?'
There was a long pause. At length he said, 'Some askari were despatched fro m
Saraifa. When they reached his camp they found it deserted, not a soul th ere;
the truck and the Land-Rover had gone, too.'
'Askari?'
'Yes. Members of Sheikh Makhmud's bodyguard. Their orders were to arrest him
and bring him back to Saraifa.'
'Alive?'
'Of course.' He stared at me angrily. 'What other instructions do you ima gine [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
