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The Land Rover bumped off the hard verge with a flurry of sand as the wheels slipped into a soft patch. My smooth tyres took hold and then followed slowly along the pattern of tracks. I kept close behind the others, lining up our vehicles to simplify the problems of winching, for there was little doubt that I would be the one who got stuck. Their four-wheel drive would get them out of this kind of sand.
The detour was marked each hundred metres or so by an old oil-drum. Some of them had been blown over, and rolled far away from their original positions. Two were almost buried in drifting sand. It was easier to watch the tyre tracks.
After about eight kilometres the Land Rover stopped. Mann got out and walked back to me. It was fully light now and even with sun-glasses I found myself squinting into the light reflecting from the sand. It was still early morning, but now that we’d stopped I felt the heat of the sun and smelt the warm rubber, evaporating fuel and Mann’s after-shave lotion.
‘How far was that last drum?’ asked Mann.
‘A couple of hundred metres.’
‘Right and I don’t see another ahead. You stay here. I’ll mosey around a little.’
‘What about these tyre tracks?’ I asked.
‘Famous last words,’ pronounced Mann. ‘Tracks like those can lead you out there into that sand-sea, and finally you get to the place where they turn around and head back again.’
‘Then why tracks?’
‘An old disused camp for oil prospectors, or a dump for road gangs.’ He kicked at one of the tyre marks.
‘These tracks look fresh,’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ said Mann. He kicked one of the ridges of impacted sand. It was as hard as concrete. ‘So do the tank tracks you find in southern Libya – and they’ve been there since Rommel.’
I looked at my watch.
Mann said, ‘I hope the diversion is well marked on the highway to the south of here, or that Russian cat will come wheeling past us while we’re stuck out here in this egg-timer factory.’
It was then that Percy Dempsey got out of the Land Rover and limped back to join us. He was a curious figure in his floppy hat, cardigan, long baggy shorts and gaiters.
‘Jesus!’ said Mann. ‘Here comes Miss Marple.’
‘I say – old chap,’ said the old man. He had difficulty remembering our names. Perhaps that was because we changed them so often. ‘Mr Antony, I mean. Are you wondering about the road ahead?’
‘Yes,’ I said. My name was Antony; Frederick L. Antony, tourist.
Dempsey blinked. His face was soft and babyish as old men’s faces sometimes are. Now that he had taken off his sun-glasses, his blue eyes became watery.
Mann said, ‘Don’t get nervous, Auntie. We’ll dope it out.’
‘The oil-drum markers continue along this track,’ said the old man.
‘How do you know that?’ said Mann.
‘I can see them,’ said the old man.
‘Yeah!’ said Mann. ‘So how come I can’t see them, and my buddy here can’t see them?’
‘I used my binoculars,’ said the old man apologetically.
‘Why the hell didn’t you say you had binoculars?’ said Mann.
‘I offered them to you just outside Oran. You said you weren’t planning a trip to the opera.’
‘Let’s go,’ said Mann. ‘I want to make camp before the sun gets high. And we have to find a place where the Russkie can spot us from the main road.’
Dempsey’s Desert Tours VW bus was equipped with two tent sides that expanded to provide a large area of shade. There was also a nylon sheet stretched across the roof, and held taut above it, which prevented the direct sunlight striking the top of the bus and so making it into the kind of oven that metal car bodies became.
The bright orange panels could be seen for miles. The Russian spotted them easily. He had driven non-stop from some prospecting site along the river Niger east of Timbuktu. It was a gruelling journey over poor tracks and open country, and he’d ended it in the fierce heat of early afternoon.
The Russian was a hatchet-faced man in his early forties.
He was tall and slim with cropped black hair that showed no sign of greying. His dark suit was baggy and stained, its jacket slung over his brawny shoulder. His red check shirt was equally dirty, and the gold pencil clipped into its pocket was conspicuous because of that. Pale blue eyes were almost sealed by fine desert sand, and his face was lined and bore the curious bruise-like marks that come with exhaustion. His arms were muscular and his skin was tanned very dark.
Major Mann opened the nylon flap and indicated the passenger seats of the VW bus and the table-top fixed between them. In spite of the tinted windows the plastic seat covering was hot to the touch. I sat opposite the Russian and watched him take off his sun-glasses, yawn and scratch the side of his nose with his car-key.
It was typical of Mann’s cunning, and of his training, that he offered the Russian no chance to rest. Instead he pushed towards him a glass and a vacuum flask containing ice-cubes and water. There was a snap as Mann broke the cap on a half-bottle of whisky and poured a generous measure for our guest. The Russian looked at Mann and gave him a thin smile. He pushed the whisky aside and from the flask grabbed a handful of ice-cubes and rubbed them on his face.
‘You got ID?’ Mann asked. As if to save face he poured whisky for himself and for me.
‘What are ID?’
‘Identification. Passport, security pass or something.’
The Russian took a wallet from his hip pocket. From it he brought a dog-eared piece of brown cardboard with his photo attached. He passed it to Mann, who handed it to me. It was a pass into the military zone along the Mali frontier with Niger. It described the Russian’s physical characteristics and named him as Professor Andrei Mikhail Bekuv. Significantly the card was printed in Russian and Chinese as well as Arabic. I gave it back to him.
‘You have the photo of my wife?’
‘It would have been poor security to risk it,’ said Mann. He sipped at his drink but when he set it down again the level seemed unchanged.
Professor Bekuv closed his eyes. ‘It’s fifteen months since I last saw her.’
Mann shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘She will be in London by the time we get there.’
Bekuv spoke very quietly, as if trying to keep a terrible temper under control. ‘Your people promised a photo of her – standing in Trafalgar Square.’
‘It was …’
‘That was the agreement,’ said Bekuv, ‘and you haven’t kept to it.’
‘She never left Copenhagen,’ said Mann.
Bekuv was silent for a long time. ‘Was she on the ship from Leningrad?’ he said finally. ‘Did you check the passenger list?’
‘All we know is that they didn’t come in on the plane to London,’ said Mann.
‘You lie,’ said Bekuv. ‘I know the sort of people you are. My country is filled with such men as you. You had men there waiting for her.’
‘She will come,’ said Mann.
‘Without her I will not come with you.’
‘She will come,’ said Mann. ‘She is probably there already.’
‘No,’ said Bekuv. He turned in his seat, to see the road that would take him a thousand miles back to the Russians in Timbuktu. In spite of the tinted windows, the sand was