He spread the photocopies on the table and began to interrogate Atitel, pointing frequently to the photograph of the Northrop 'Gamma'. This particular specimen must have been one of the first aircraft to be used by Trans-World Airlines because the TWA emblem was on the fuselage near the tail. It was a stylishly designed plane, long and sleek, with the cockpit set far back near the tail. It had, of course, been designed in the days when aircraft had cockpits and not flight decks, and it had a non-retracting undercarriage with the struts and wheels enclosed in streamlined casings. The caption described it as a freight and mail-carrying monoplane.

At last Byrne straightened. 'This could be it. He says there's a metal bird of the Kel Ehendeset up on the Tassili about three days' march in from Tamrit.'

'How far is that, and what the devil is a Kel whosit?'

'Maybe seventy kilometres. The Kel Ehendeset are you and me – anyone who knows about machines.' He turned to Atitel and they talked briefly, then he said, 'He says the Kel Ehendeset have power over the angeloussen – the angels -and it's the angeloussen who make the trucks move and lift the airplanes.'

'Sounds logical. If it's three days' march then it's about six hours by angeloussen power.'

Byrne looked at me disgustedly as though I ought to know better. 'We won't get the Toyota on to the plateau. When we go we walk.' He tapped the photograph. 'Atitel seems pretty certain that the wreck on the Tassili is just like this. He insists there are no engine nacelles on the wings and that the fuselage is cylindrical up front just like in the picture. That's the big radial engine there.'

Then it may be Billson's?'

'Could be.' Byrne shook his head. 'But the Tuareg don't go much for pictures – like all Moslems. Against their religion, so they have no experience of pictures. I've known a guy hang a picture on the wall of his tent in imitation of what he's seen Europeans do in their houses. It was something he'd cut out of a magazine because he liked it. He'd put it upside-down.' He smiled. 'It was a picture of a square-rigger in full sail, but he'd never seen a ship or even t he goddamn sea, so all it made was a pretty pattern which maybe looked just as well upside-down.' . 'But if Atitel has seen a plane, then he should be able to compare it with a picture.'

'I wouldn't bet my life on it, but I suppose we'll have to take the chance. We didn't come all this way for nothing.'

'When do we start?'

He began to dicker with Atitel and a lot of palavering went on with Hami putting in his tuppence-worth from time to time. It was fifteen minutes before Byrne said, 'He says he can't start until Late tomorrow or, maybe, early the day after. He's got to round up some donkeys that have strayed. The plane is about fifty kilometres from Tamrit – that's on the edge of the plateau at the top. We won't be doing much more than fifteen kilometres a day up there so it means taking water for at least a week, preferably ten days. That means baggage animals and more donkeys than he can lay his hands on right now.'

He turned back to Atitel and money changed hands. When the Tuareg had gone I said, 'That money was Algerian.'

Byrne looked at me in surprise. 'Yeah; because we're in Algeria.'

'When did that happen?'

He grinned. 'Remember the detour we took to lose Lash? Well, it took around the border posts, too. You're okay, Max; you're legal in Algeria.'

'But Billson may not be.'

He grunted. 'Relax. There's a hell of a lot of desert between here and Tarn; the word may not have filtered through.' He held up the photocopies. 'Mind if I hang on to these? I have some figuring to do.' I nodded. 'Where's Paul?'

'Still in the shower.'

He laughed. 'I told you a guy could drown in the desert.' Then he sat at the table, took out his stub of pencil and began making calculations on the back of. one of the photocopies, referring constantly to the specifications of the Northrop 'Gamma'.

We didn't start next day or even the day after, but the day after that. Byrne grumbled ferociously. 'Sometimes these people give me a pain in the ass.'

I grinned. 'I thought you were one of them – a proper Targui.'

'Yeah; but I revert to type at times. I'm thinking of Lash and Kissack. I don't know how badly they were sanded in, but it won't take them forever to get out. I want to get clear before they get here.'

'What makes you think they'll come to Djanet?'

'Only place they can get gas.'

But it gave me the chance of unwinding and relaxing after the heavy pounding in the Toyota. And I slept in a bed for the first time since leaving Algiers – the hotel mattress wasn't much harder than the sand I'd become accustomed to. And we all had a few welcome beers.

On the third day after arrival we drove out of Djanet in the Toyota and we still hadn't seen Lash. I said, 'Perhaps he's still out there where you stranded him.'

'My heart bleeds for him,' said Byrne. He cocked his head and looked back at Paul. 'What do you think?'

'I hope he rots,' said Paul vindictively. 'Kissack, too. All of them.'

Paul was becoming bloodthirsty, but it wasn't too surprising. It's hard to be charitable towards people who shoot at you without telling you why.

We drove towards the mountains, towards steep cliffs which reared up like a great stone barrier. At last we bumped to a halt in a grove of tamarisk trees among which donkeys were grazing, Atitel and Kami waved in greeting as we got out Byrne grunted in disgust. Those goddamn animals should have been loaded by now.'

'Where are we going?'

His arm rose forty-five degrees above the horizontal as he pointed and I got a crick in my neck as I looked up. 'Up there.'

'My God!' The cliffs rose vertically for about two thousand feet and Byrne was pointing to a cleft, a ravine which cut into them, leaving a v-shaped notch at the top which looked like a gunsight. 'I'm no bloody mountaineer.'

'Neither is a donkey and any man can go where a donkey can. It's not as steep as it looks.' He cocked an eye at the sun. 'Let's get started. I want to be at the top before nightfall.'

He chivvied Atitel and Hami into loading the donkeys. The goatskin djerbas of the Tuareg were kinder to the animals than the jerricans which held the rest of our water supply because they caused less chafe, but there weren't enough djerbas and so the jerricans had to be used. Most of the load was water for man and animal.

'I'm figuring on ten days,' said Byrne. 'Course we may be lucky and find a guelta – that's a rock pool – but we can't depend on it. Now you see 'em, now you don't.'

So we loaded water and food for five men and seven donkeys for ten days, and Byrne added a cloth-wrapped parcel which clinked metallically. He also added the Lee-Enfield rifle to the top of one load, being careful to strap it tight. 'I'll be back in ten minutes,' he said, and got into the Toyota and drove away.

I watched him out of sight, then turned to Paul 'What about this? Think you can make it?'

He looked up at the cliffs. 'I think I can; I won't be carrying anything. Not like when we were crossing the dunes in the Tenere.'

His face was drawn and pale in spite of the tan he had acquired. I don't think he had been a fit man even when he left England because his life had been sedentary. Since then he had been shot and nearly died of exposure, and what we had been doing since had been no rest cure. I said, 'Maybe it would be better if you stayed. I'll talk to Byrne about it.'

'No,' he said sharply. 'He'd agree with you. I want to come. There may be -' lie swallowed – 'may be a body.'

The obsession which had driven him all his life was nearing its culmination. Within only a few days he had the chance of finding out the truth about his father, and he wasn't going to give up now. I nodded in agreement and looked up at the cliffs again. It still looked a killer of a climb.