CHAPTER TWELVE

I didn't know what to expect of Tammanrasset but it was certainly different from Algiers. From the air it was a scattering of houses set in a mist of green at the foot of barren hills. Transport from the airstrip was by truck along an asphalted road which led between tall, square pillars which were the entrance to the town. They looked like the decor for a fifth-rate B-movie about the Foreign Legion.

I called it a town, but it would be more appropriate to call it a village. Be that as it may, it was the metropolis of the Ahaggar. The main street was wide, shaded by acacia trees, and bordered by single-storey houses apparently made of dried mud which looked as though they'd wash away in a half-way decent shower of rain. The truck driver blared his horn to clear a path through the pedestrians, tall men dressed in blue and white who thronged the centre of the street as though the internal combustion engine hadn't been invented. The truck drew up outside the Hotel Tin Hinan where there was a tree-shaded courtyard filled with spindly metal tables and chairs at which people sat drinking. From a loudspeaker above the hotel entrance came the nasal wail of an Eastern singer. I went inside into a dusty hall and waited until someone noticed me. There was no reception desk.

Presently I was noticed. A dapper man in none too clean whites asked in massacred French what he could do for me. I said, 'There should be a reservation. My name is Stafford.' His eyebrows lifted. 'Ah, M'sieur Stafford! M'sieur Byrne awaits you.' He steered me to the door and pointed. 'Voila!' I stared at the man sitting at the table. He was dressed in a long blue robe and a white turban and he looked like nobody who could be called Byrne. I turned back to the receptionist only to find that he had gone back into the hotel, so I walked over to the table and said hesitantly, 'Mr Byrne?' The man hesitated with a glass of beer half-way to his lips and then set it down. 'Yes,' he said, and turned to face me. Under shaggy white eyebrows blue eyes stared out of a deeply tanned face which was thin to the point of emaciation so that the nose jutted out like a beak. Beneath the nose was a wide mouth with thin lips firmly compressed. I could not see his chin because a fold of his turban had somehow become wrapped about his neck, but his cheeks were bearded with white hair. He looked like Moses and twice as old. I said, 'My name is Stafford.'

'Sit down, Mr Stafford. Have a beer?' He spoke in English with an American accent which, under the circumstances, was incongruous.

As I sat down he beckoned to a waiter. 'Deux bidres.' He turned back to me. 'Hesther told me about you. She said you might need help.'

'I might. I'm looking for a man.'

'So? Most men look for women.'

'His name is Billson. He's around here somewhere.'

'Billson,' Byrne repeated thoughtfully. 'Why do you want him?'

'I don't know that I do,' I said. 'But his sister does. He's looking for a crashed aeroplane. Are there any of those about here?'

'A couple.'

'This one crashed over forty years ago.'

Byrne's expression didn't change. 'None as old as that.' The waiter came back and put down two bottles of lager and two glasses; Byrne nodded at him briefly and he went away. It seemed that Byrne had a line of credit at the Hotel Tin Hinan.

I poured the beer. 'I'm told the Ahaggar is a big place -very mountainous. A wrecked plane may not have been found.' 'It would be,' said Byrne.

'But, surely, with the thin population…'

'It would be found.' Byrne was positive. 'How did Billson get here? By air?'

'He has a Land-Rover.'

'How long has he been here?'

I shrugged. 'I don't know. A week – maybe two.'

Byrne stared into the street without moving his eyes and was silent for some time. I leaned back in the chair and let him think it over. This was a man I found hard to assess because I had no notion of the springs which moved him. He was as alien to me as any' of the men dressed like him who strolled in the street, in spite of the fact that he spoke English.

Presently he asked, 'How well do you know Hesther Raulier?'

'Hardly at all. I met her only two days ago.'

'She likes you,' he said. 'Got a bag?'

I jerked my thumb in the direction of the hotel entrance. 'In there.'

'Leave it lay – we'll pick it up later. I'm camped just outside Tarn; let's take a walk.' He arose and did something complicated with his head cloth, making quite a production of it. When he had finished his face was hidden, and the cloth left only a slit at eye-level through which he looked.

We left the hotel and walked along the main street of Tammanrasset in a direction away from the airstrip. Byrne was a tall man, yet no taller than any of the other men who, similarly dressed, walked languidly in the street. It was I who was the incongruous figure in that place. 'Do you always dress like an Arab?' I asked. 'Not if I can help it. I don't like Arabs.' I stared at him because his answer was incomprehensible. 'But He bent his head and said, with some amusement, 'You have a lot to learn, Stafford. These guys aren't Arab, they're Imazighen – Tuareg, if you prefer.'

Byrne's camp was about two miles outside the village. It consisted of three large leather tents set in a semi-circle, their backs to the wind. The sand in front of them had been swept smooth and, to one side, a small fire crackled, setting off detonations like miniature fireworks. In the middle distance camels browsed.

As we approached, a man who had been squatting next to the fire stood up. 'That's Mokhtar,' said Byrne. 'He'll look after you while I'm away.'

'Where are you going?'

To snoop around. But first you tell me more about Billson.'

Byrne strode over to the fire and the two men had a brief conversation. Mokhtar was another tall man who wore the veil. Byrne beckoned me to join him in the middle tent where we sat on soft rugs. The inner walls of the tent were made of reeds.

'Right; why does Billson want to find a forty-year-old crash?'

'It killed his father,' I said, and related the story.

I had just finished when Mokhtar laid a brass tray before Byrne; on it was a spouted pot and two brass cups. 'You like mint tea?' asked Byrne.

'Never had any.'

'It's not bad.' He poured liquid and handed a cup to me. 'Would you say Billson was right in the head?'

'No, I wouldn't. He's obsessed.'

'That's what I figured.' He drank from his cup and I followed suit. It was spearminty and oversweet. 'How does Hesther come into this?'

'She knew Billson's father.'

'How well?'

I looked him in the eye. 'If she wants you to know she'll tell you.'

He smiled. 'Okay, Stafford; no need to get sassy. Did you learn this from Hesther herself?' When I nodded, he said, 'You must have got right next to her. She don't talk much about herself.'

I said, 'What chance has Billson of finding the plane?'

'In the Ahaggar? None at all, because it isn't here. Quite a few wrecks scattered further north, though.' He laughed suddenly. 'Hell, I put one of them there myself.' I glanced at him curiously. 'How did that happen?'

'It was during the war. I was in the Army Air Force, flying Liberators out of Oran. We got jumped by a gang of Focke-Wolfs and had the hell shot out of us. The cockpit was in a mess – no compass working – we didn't know where the hell we were. Then the engines gave out so I put down. I guess that airplane's still where I put it.'

'What happened then?'

'I walked out,' said Byrne laconically. Took a week and a half.' He stood up. 'I'll be back in a couple of hours.'

I watched him walk away with the smooth, almost lazy stride I had already noticed was common to the Tuareg, and wondered what the hell he was doing in the desert.