There was no trouble. Lash's truck was more powerful than it looked and pulled us out of the sand easily, though what it did to one of the sand ladders was indescribable. Byrne threw away that twisted bit of junk as being unusable and we collected the few tools that were lying around. As we did so, the missing man came walking at a smart pace up the road. He saw us looking at him and zipped up the fly of his trousers. Byrne looked at me and grinned faintly.

So the man who was going to kill us towed us into Seguedine, which wasn't much of a place, but there was a ruin with three standing walls and a decrepit roof which was enough to shelter the Toyota from the wind. Lash helped us push it in. 'Mind if I stay the night here with you?' he asked. 'Perhaps I could help you strip the transmission.'

'No call for that,' said Byrne. 'I can manage.'

Lash smiled. 'And I don't feel like driving on in a sandstorm. A man could lose his way. I have a feeling that could be bad.'

'Sure could,' Byrne agreed. 'You could get dead. You want to stay, you stay. It's a free country. Thanks for your help, Mr Lash; you got us out of a nasty hole, but there's no call for you to get your hands dirty.'

But Lash helped us anyway. I suppose he thought it in his own interest to put us on our way as fast as possible. His henchmen disappeared, probably to tell Kissack what was happening. Lash wasn't all that much of a help, though, and his aid was confined to handing over tools when asked, as indeed was mine. Byrne could have done the job quite handily himself and, for a man who professed hatred of 'stinkpots' he was American enough to understand them well.

Paul came and went restlessly. Once, in Lash's absence, Byrne said to him enthusiastically, 'Lash is a real nice guy, don't you think? Him getting us out of the sand and helping us like this and all.'

I said, 'Yes; a Good Samaritan, Paul.' I looked over Byrne's' shoulder and saw Lash come slowly out of the shadows, and wondered if Byrne had known that Lash was behind him, listening. Probably he had known; there were no flies on Luke Byrne.

We finished the job in the glare of a pressure lantern after nightfall, then cleaned up and prepared a meal just as Konti showed up. Byrne talked to him for a moment then said to me, 'He walked as far as here, found no one, so he went up the track a long ways with no success. Walking fools, these Teda.'

Lash contributed a bottle of whisky for after-dinner drinks. I accepted a tot, and so did Paul, but Byrne refused politely. 'Where are your friends, Mr Lash?'

Lash raised his eyebrows. 'Friends? Oh, you mean… They're just showing me around. Professional guides.' I glanced at Byrne who didn't bat an eyelid at that preposterous statement. 'They prefer to eat their own food.' Lash looked around in the darkness. 'What is this place?'

'Seguedine? Used to be people here – three or four families of Kanuri. Must have moved out since I was here last. The Tassili Tuareg come from the north when the feed gives out there. Where are you heading?'

Lash shrugged. 'Nowhere in particular. Just looking around.' That was supposed to give him an excuse for popping up out of nowhere at any time and occasioning no surprise, but it was a stupid thing to say. Even a tyro like myself had observed that desert crossings were most carefully prepared with times and distances collated and fuel and water carefully metered. No one in his right mind would flutter hither and yon like a carefree butterfly. To risk running out of fuel or water was dangerous.

Lash sipped his whisky. 'And you?'

'Pretty much the same,' said Byrne uninformatively.

I would have thought Lash might have pursued the subject of our further travels, but he didn't. He made desultory conversation, telling us he was the managing director of a firm in Birmingham which specialized in packaging and that this was the first real holiday he'd had in seven years. 'I decided to do something different,' he said.

He tried to draw me out on what I did in England so I told him the truth because he knew all about me anyway and to lie would arouse his suspicions. 'Recuperating from an illness,' I said, then added, 'And getting over a divorce.' Both statements were true; he'd probably been the cause of the 'illness' and the bit about Gloria could confuse him by its truth. The truth can be a better weapon than lies.

After a while he excused himself, after getting nowhere with Billson, and went to his truck where he bedded down. Soon thereafter Konti came out of the darkness and spoke to Byrne, who questioned him closely. Paul said to me, 'Inquisitive, isn't he?'

'Not abnormally so. Chit-chat between ships that pass in the night.'

'I don't like him.' Paul pulled his djellaba closer about him. 'I don't think he's what he says he is.' I knew it, but Paul was showing an acuity which surprised me. Perhaps it was the sixth sense of the hunted animal.

A few minutes later, out of Paul's hearing, Byrne said, 'Kissack is camped about a mile from here. I sent Konti to scout him out.' He chuckled. 'I don't think Kissack will be comfortable out there. The wind's still rising.'

'Do we stand watches?'

Byrne shook his head. 'Konti will watch all night'

'Bit hard on him, isn't it?'

'Hell, no! He'll sleep in the Toyota tomorrow. For a Teda to sleep while on the move is sheer unaccustomed luxury.'

Next morning the storm had blown itself out and Lash had gone together with his truck. 'Went just before dawn,' said Byrne. 'Sudden guys, these friends of yours. Kissack shoots folks without saying a word and Lash goes, just like that. Un-neighbourly, I call it.'

'So what now?'

'On to Chirfa and Djanet.'

Chirfa was nearly a hundred and fifty kilometres north of Seguedine and consisted of a Tuareg camp and one deserted Foreign Legion fortress which might have stood in for Fort Zinderneuf in Beau Geste but for one thing – there was an anchor carved above the main gate. Because we were about as far away from the sea as a human being can get on this planet I stared at this improbable emblem and asked Byrne about it.

'I wouldn't know. Maybe it was built by French marines.'

The Tuareg seemed different from those I had met before, being more shabbily dressed. Byrne said they were of the Tassili Tuareg. From them he bought a donkey, which he gave to Konti. 'This is where he leaves us,' he said. 'He'll go east, past Djado and on to the Tibesti.'

'How far to the Tibesti?'

'Maybe five hundred kilometres; it's over in Chad.'

'Walking all the way?'

'Yeah. But the donkey'll help.'

'My God!' I watched Konti walk out of sight, towing the donkey.

As he walked back to where the Toyota was parked Byrne said, 'We've been followed most of the way here, but I lost sight of them about an hour ago. Two trucks.'

'Lash and Kissack.'

'I guess so. Wish I hadn't lost them; they're a couple of guys I like to keep my eye on.'