Presently Mokhtar came over with another tray of mint tea together with small round cakes.

It was three hours before Byrne came back, and he came riding a camel. The sun was setting and the thorn trees cast long shadows. The beast rocked to its knees and Byrne slid from the saddle, then came into the tent carrying my bag. The camel snorted as Mokhtar urged it to its feet and led it away.

Byrne sat down.'I've found your boy.'

'Where is he?'

He pointed north. 'Out there somewhere – in the mountains. He left five days ago. He applied at Fort Lapperine for a per mis but they wouldn't give him one, so he left anyway. He's a goddam fool.'

'That I know,' I said. 'Why wouldn't they give him a permis?'

'They won't – not for one man in one truck.'

'He'll be coming back,' I said. 'Hesther said Tarn was the only place he can get fuel.'

'I doubt it,' said Byrne. 'If he was coming back he'd be back, by now. Those Land-Rovers are thirsty beasts. If you want him you'll have to go get him.'

I leaned back against the reed wall of the tent. 'I'd like that in more detail.'

'Paul Billson is an idiot. He filled his tank with gas and went. No spare. Five days is overlong to be away, and if he has no spare water he'll be dead by now.'

'How do I get there?' I said evenly.

Byrne looked at me for a long time, and sighed. 'If I didn't know Hesther thought something of you I'd tell you to go to hell. As it is, we start at first light.' He grimaced. 'And I'll have to go against my principles and use a stinkpot.'

What he meant by that I didn't know, but I merely said, 'Thanks.'

'Come on,' he said. 'Let's help Mokhtar get chow.'

'Chow' proved to be stringy goat, hard on the teeth and digestion, followed by a strong cheese which I was told was made of camel's milk. Byrne was taciturn and we went to sleep early in readiness for an early start. I lay on my back at the entrance to the tent, staring up at a sky so full of stars it seemed I could just reach up an arm to grab a handful.

I wondered what I was doing there and what I was getting into. And I wondered about Byrne, who spoke almost as archaic a slang as Hesther Raulier, a man who referred to his food by. the World War Two American army term of 'chow'.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Byrne's 'stinkpot turned out to be a battered Toyota Land Cruiser which looked as though it had been in a multiple smash on a motorway. Since there wasn't a motorway within two thousand miles, that was unlikely. Byrne saw my expression and said, 'Rough country,' as though that was an adequate explanation. However, the engine ran sweetly enough and the tyres were good.

We left in the dim light of dawn with Byrne driving, me next to him, and Mokhtar sitting in the back. Jerricans containing petrol and water were strapped all around the truck wherever there was an available place, and I noted that Mokhtar had somewhat unobtrusively put a rifle aboard. He also had a sword, a thing about three feet long in a red leather scabbard; what the devil he was going to do with that I couldn't imagine.

We drove north along a rough track, and I said, 'Where are we going?'

It was a damnfool question because I didn't understand the answer when it came. Byrne stabbed his finger forward and said briefly, 'Atakor,' then left me to make of that what I would.

I was silent for a while, then said, 'Did you get a permis?'

'No,' said Byrne shortly. A few minutes went by before he relented. 'No fat bureaucrat from the Maghreb is going to tell me where I can, or cannot, go in the desert.'

After that there was no conversation at all, and I began to think that travelling with Byrne was going to be sticky; extracting words from him was like pulling teeth. But perhaps he was always like that in the early morning. I thought of what he had just said and smiled. It reminded me of my own reaction to Isaacson's treatment of Hoyland. But that had been far away in another world, and seemed a thousand years ago.

The country changed from flat gravel plains to low hills, barren of vegetation, and we began to climb. Ahead were mountains, such mountains as I had never seen before. Most mountains begin rising gently from their base, but these soared vertically to the sky, a landscape of jagged teeth.

After two hours of jolting we entered a valley where there was a small encampment. There was a bit more vegetation here, but not much, and there were many sheep or goats – I never could tell the difference in the Sahara because the sheep were thin-fleeced, long-legged creatures and I began to appreciate the Biblical quotation about separating the sheep from the goats. Camels browsed on the thorny acacia and there was a scattering of the leather tents of the Tuareg.

Mokhtar leaned forward and said something to Byrne, who nodded and drew the truck to a halt. As the dust drifted away on the light breeze Mokhtar got out and walked over to the tents. He was wearing his sword slung across his back, the hilt over his left shoulder.

Byrne said, 'These people are of the Tegehe Mellet. Mokhtar has gone to question them. If a Land-Rover has been anywhere near here they'll know about it.'

'What's the sword for?'

Byrne laughed. 'He'd feel as undressed without it as you would with no pants.' He seemed to be becoming more human.

'The Teg-whatever-it-is-you-said… is that a tribe of some kind?'

'That's right. The Tuareg confederation of the Ahaggar consists of three tribes – the Kel Rela, the Tegehe Mellet and the Taitoq. Mokhtar is of the Kel Rela a nd of the noble clan. That's why he's gone to ask the questions and not me.'

'Noble!'

'Yeah, but not in the British sense. Mokhtar is related to the Amenokal – he's the boss, the paramount chief of the Ahaggar confederation. All you have to know is that when a noble Kel Rela says, "Jump, frog!" everybody jumps.' He paused, then added, 'Except, maybe, another noble Kel Rela.' He shrugged. 'But you didn't come out here to study anthropology.'

'It might come in useful at that,' I said.

He gave me a sideways glance. 'You won't be here long enough.'

Mokhtar came back, accompanied by three men from the camp. All were veiled and wore the long, flowing blue and white gowns that seemed to be characteristic of the Tuareg. I wondered how they kept them so clean in that dusty wilderness. As they came close Byrne hastily adjusted his own veil so that his face was covered.

There were ceremonial greetings and then a slow and casual conversation of which I didn't understand a single word, and I just sat there feeling like a spare part. After a while Byrne reached into the back of the truck and produced a big round biscuit tin. He took out some small packages and handed them round, and Mokhtar added his own contribution. There was much graceful bowing.

As he started the engine Byrne said, 'Billson came through here four days ago. He must have been travelling damned slow.'

'I don't wonder,' I said. 'He's more used to driving on a road. Which way did he go?'

Towards Assekrem – or further. And that's not going to be any joke.'

'What do you mean?'

He gave me a considering look. 'Assekrem is a Tamachek word – it means, "The End of the World".'

The truck jolted as he moved off. The Tuareg waved languidly and I waved back at them, glad to offer some contribution to the conversation. Then I sat back and chewed over what Byrne had just said. It wasn't comforting.

Presently I said, 'What did you give those men back there?'

'Aspirin, needles, salt All useful stuff.'

'Oh!'

Three hours later we stopped again. We had been moving steadily into the mountains which Byrne called Atakor and had not seen a living soul or, indeed, anything alive at all except for thin grasses burnt by the sun and the inevitable scattered thorn trees. The mountains were tremendous, great shafts of rock thrusting through the skin of the earth, dizzyingly vertical.