2/7 Byrne said, 'Left it behind in the Tenere. Too much sand and the action jammed. That's the only reason you're still alive, Kissack.'

Kissack's face whitened and he lifted the pistol again and pointed it at Byrne. 'What, for Christ's sake, did you do to Bailly?'

'That's enough,' commanded Lash. 'We're wasting time. Help me get up on this bloody camel.' They all remounted and now they all had guns showing except Lash, who seemed to be unarmed. 'About face,' he ordered. 'Now, take us to that aeroplane. No tricks, Byrne, or you'll be shot in the back where you stand.'

And so we retraced our steps. I glanced sideways at Byrne whose nose was beakier than ever. He didn't look at me but gazed ahead with a bleak expression. All he had bought was time – ten kilometres' worth of it – say, four or five hours. Then it would all start again.

I wondered about Paul – Byrne had given him fifteen minutes and he ought to have shown up by now. I prayed to God that he would live up to his reputation. Be a nebbish, Paul, I thought. Be the invisible man.

I tramped along, conscious of the guns at my back, and a rhyme chittered insanely through my mind over and over again As I was going up the stair, I met a man who wasn't there; He wasn't there again today, I wish to hell he'd go away!

We hadn't been moving long when the Arab appeared and reined his camel alongside Lash. There was a muttered conversation, and Lash called 'Stop!' I stopped and looked back. Lash said silkily, 'More tricks, Byrne? I warned you about that. Follow Zayid.'

The Arab moved in front of us and veered to the left on a course which would take us directly to where we had left Paul. Byrne grunted and shrugged imperceptibly. It seemed that Zayid was a good tracker – good enough to call Byrne's bluff.

We came to the cleft in the rock and there were no donkeys and no sign of Paul. If he was a nebbish he had also the characteristics of a boojum because, wraithlike, he had 'softly and suddenly vanished away'. Byrne looked at me and raised his eyebrows, and I shook my head to indicate that I didn't know, either. The little man who wasn't there had indeed gone away.

There was a bit of discussion in French with Zayid pointing out the imprint of donkey hooves in the sand and a clear indication they had gone through the cleft. Lash said, 'Kissack, get down and go through there, and tell me what you see.'

Kissack dismounted and, with drawn gun, went through the cleft. He disappeared from sight because there was a bend half-way through and then all was silence except for the snuffling of a camel behind me. Suddenly there was a shout, incoherent and without words, which echoed among the rock pillars, and Kissack came back, yelling excitedly, 'It's there, Mr Lash; the bloody plane is there!'

'Is it?' Lash seemed unmoved. 'Zayid!' The Arab helped him dismount. 'Now let's all go and look at this aeroplane which is unaccountably ten kilometres out of position according to Mr Byrne's reckoning.'

There was no choice for it so we went. The camels were too big to go through the cleft so Zayid hobbled them and left them outside, but they took the donkeys through. And there stood Flyaway just as we had left her. Zayid and Lash's hired thugs from Algiers weren't very much interested, but Lash and Kissack were. They went towards her, Lash at a steady pace and Kissack practically dancing a jig. 'Is it the one, Mr Lash?' he asked excitedly. 'Is it the one?'

Lash took a paper from his pocket and unfolded it, then studied it and compared it with what was before him. He peered at the side of the fuselage and said, 'Yes, Kissack, my boy; this is indeed the one.'

'Christ!' said Kissack, and jumped up and down. 'Five thousand quid! Five grand!'

'Keep your damned mouth shut,' said Lash. 'You talk too much.' He swung on his heel and stared back at us. 'You -come here!' Byrne and I were hustled forward, and Lash pointed to the hole we had cut 'Did you do that?'

'Yeah,' said Byrne.

'Why?'

'We found Billson's body. We wanted to mark the grave.' He nodded up towards the engine. 'That's also why we took the propeller.'

'You buried the body?'

'What there was of it The ground is pretty hard. We built a cairn over it'

Lash showed his teeth in a grim smile. 'So that's what you did. Then all is not lost.' I didn't know what he meant by that. 'Where is the body?'

Byrne told him. 'Get that propeller, Kissack,' said Lash. 'Take Zayid with you. But first tie these two – arms behind them and ankles secured.'

So we were tied up and left to lie under the rock wall of the gully. Kissack and Zayid went off to find the grave and Lash and the other two ducked into the cleft. Where they were going I didn't know. I said, 'Sorry to have got you into this, Luke.'

He merely grunted and wriggled, and hi his struggles with his bonds he fell against me and knocked me over. I fell heavily and a stone dug into my breastbone. When I got back into a sitting position I was panting. 'It's no good,' he said. 'They know how to tie a guy. Struggle and the knots tighten.'

'Yes. What do you think he's going to do?'

'About the airplane – I don't know. But if you're right about what you heard in Bilma he's sure as hell going to kill us. Why he hasn't done it yet I don't know.'

I looked down at the sand on which I had fallen. The imprint of my body was there, but there was no stone. And yet I had felt it. 'Luke! Remember that stone axe-head you found at the Col des Chandeliers? It's in the pocket of my gandoura. Think you can get it out?'

I fell on my side and he wriggled around with his back to me, his bound arms groping for my chest. It was a grotesque business, but he got his hands into the pocket and explored around. 'It's right at the bottom.'

'Got it!' Slowly his hands came out under my nose and I saw he grasped the small object between his fingers. It wasn't very big – not more than an inch long – and was probably more of a stone scraper than an axe-head. But the edge was keen enough.

Trying to bite free?' said an amused voice behind us. Byrne dropped the scraper and it fell to the sand and I rolled on to it. 'You'll need strong teeth to bite through leather thongs,' said Lash.

I turned my head and looked at him. 'Do you blame me for trying?'

'Of course not, Colonel Stafford. It's the duty of every officer to try to escape, isn't it?' He squatted on his heels. 'But you won't, you know.'

'Get lost,' I said sourly.

'No – it will be you who are lost. If your bodies are ever found they'll look something like Billson's, I imagine. But they won't be found near here – oh, dear me, no! We couldn't have a coincidence like that'

He turned his head at the clanging of metal on rock, and I followed his gaze to see his men coming through the cleft, each carrying two jerricans. They carried them over to Flyaway and set them down, then went away again. Lash's attention returned to us. He said to Byrne, 'I've been going over what you've told me since we met this morning and I've come to a conclusion, Byrne. You're a damned liar!'. Byrne grinned tightly. 'You wouldn't say that if I had my hands free.'

'Yes, you lied about practically everything – about the position of this aeroplane, about looking for frescoes – so why shouldn't you have lied about Billson? It would fit your pattern. Where is he?'

'He left us three days ago!' said Byrne. 'His shoulder was bad and getting worse. That was where Kissack shot him. He'd had a hard time in the Tenere and it had opened up again and, like the goddamned fool he is, he said nothing about it because he wanted to find his Pappy's airplane.'

'So you know about that.' Lash glanced at me. 'Both of you.'

'When I found out how bad his shoulder was I was feared of gangrene,' said Byrne. 'So I sent him back with Atitel and Hami. I guess he's travelling slow, so he should be going down from Tamrit about now.'