Strange, disembodied sounds drifted up to me on the warm night air; the murmur of Arab voices, the grunt of camels, a child crying — and in the distance the weird chuckle of a hyena. I knelt on the firing step, peering down. Beyond the mud houses I could see the darker mass of the palms. Bare feet sounded on the turret stairs and the yellow light of a hurricane-lamp appeared; the room was suddenly full of armed men bearing bedding, which they laid on the floor — a carpet, some blankets, an oryx skin and a silken cushion. ‘May Allah guard you,’ Yousif said, ‘and may your sleep be as the sleep of a little child.’
He was halfway through the door before I realized what that long speech in English must mean. ‘You’re Colonel Whitaker’s man, aren’t you?’
He checked and turned. ‘Yes, sahib. Me driver for Coll-onel.’ He was staring at me, his eyes very wide so that the whites showed yellow in the lamplight. ‘I tell Coll-onel you are here in Sheikh’s palace.’ He was gone then.
There was no doubt in my mind that he’d been sent to find me. Whitaker was in Saraifa and Khalid had known it as soon as Yousif had sidled up to us. I sat down on the silken cushion, staring blindly at that cell-like room. There was nothing to do now but wait. I felt tired; dirty, too. But I’d no water with which to wash. No soap, no clothes — nothing but what I was wearing. Yousif had left me the hurricane lamp and its light reached dimly to the palm wood rafters. A large desert spider moved among them with deliberation. I watched it for a long time as it went about its unpleasant business, and finally I killed it, overcome with a fellow-feeling for the flies caught in its web. And then I put out the lamp and rolled myself up in a blanket.
It was hot, but I must have fallen asleep for I didn’t hear Yousif return; he was suddenly there, his torch stabbing the darkness, almost blinding me. ‘Coll-onel say you come.’
I sat up, glancing at my watch. It was past eleven-thirty.
‘Now?’
‘Yes, now.’
Down in the courtyard the fires were almost out, the Sheikh’s retainers lying like corpses wrapped in their robes. A few stirred as we crossed to the gate, now barred and guarded; a brief argument and then I was in a battered Land-Rover being driven at reckless speed across the deserted village square, down into the date gardens.
Behind us the palace fort stood bone-white in the moonlight, and then the palms closed round us.
Whitaker’s house was an old mud fort on the far side of the oasis. Most of it seemed to be in ruins, the courtyard empty, the mud walls cracked and crumbling. There was sand everywhere as we hurried through a maze of passages and empty rooms. The palace seemed dead and I wondered that a man could live alone like this and retain his sanity, for he seemed to have no servants but Yousif and to live in Spartan simplicity in one corner of this vast, rambling building.
We came at last to a room where old portmanteaux and tin boxes stood ranged against the walls, and then I was out on a rooftop that looked out upon the desert. He was standing against the parapet, a tall, robed figure in silhouette, for there was no light there, only the moon and the stars. Yousif coughed and announced my presence.
Whitaker turned then and came towards me. His face was in shadow, but I could see the black patch over the eye. No word of greeting, no attempt to shake my hand. ‘Sit down,’ he said and waved imperiously to a carpet and some cushions spread on the floor. ‘Yousif. Gahwa.’ His servant disappeared and as I sat down I was conscious of the stillness all about us — no sound of Arab voices, none of the tumult of the Sheikh’s palace, no murmur of the village below the walls. The place was as isolated, as deserted as though we were the only people in the whole oasis.
He folded himself up, cross-legged on the carpet facing me, and I could see his face then, the beard thinning and grey, the cheeks hollowed and lined by the desert years, that single imperious eye deep-sunken above the great nose. ‘You had a good journey, I trust.’ His voice was oddly-pitched, hard but unusually high, and he spoke the words slowly as though English were no longer a familiar language.
‘It was interesting,’ I said.
‘No doubt. But quite unnecessary. It was clearly understood between us that you would make no attempt to contact me direct. And though I admit the financial situation must have seemed-’
‘I came about your son,’ I said.
‘My son?’ He looked surprised. ‘Your letter merely said you were worried about the amount of money I was spending.’
‘Your son appointed me his Executor.’
He moved his head slightly, the eye glinting in the moonlight, bright and watchful. He didn’t say anything. Behind him the low parapet hid the desert so that all I could see was the great vault of the night studded with stars. The air was deathly still, impregnated with the day’s heat.
‘I’m not convinced your son died a natural death.’ I hadn’t meant to put it like that. It was his stillness, the overpowering silence that had forced it out of me.
He made no comment and I knew that this was going to be more difficult than my interview with Erkhard, more difficult even than my meeting with Gorde, and some sixth sense warned me that this man was much more unpredictable. The clatter of cups came as a distinct relief. Yousif moved silently as a shadow on to the rooftop and poured us coffee from a battered silver pot. The cups were handleless, the Mocha coffee black and bitter. ‘Does his mother know he’s dead?’ It surprised me that he should think of her; and when I told him that I’d broken the news to her myself, he asked, ‘How did she take it?’
‘She didn’t believe it at first. And because I had an overwhelming desire to break through his strange aura of calm, I added, ‘In fact she seemed to think it was your own death I was reporting.’
‘Why? Why did she think I was dead?’
The stars,’ I said. ‘She believes in astrology.’
He sighed. ‘Yes, I remember now. I used to talk to her about the stars.’ And he added, ‘It’s a longtime ago. A long time.’
‘Do you believe in astrology then?’ I asked.
He shrugged, sipping noisily at his coffee. ‘Here in the desert we live a great deal by the stars. It is very difficult not to believe that they have some influence.’ And then, abruptly changing the conversation: ‘How did you get here? It’s not easy to get to Saraifa.’ I started to tell him, but as soon as I mentioned Gorde, he said, ‘Philip Gorde? I didn’t know he was out here.’ It seemed to upset him. ‘Did he tell you why he was here?’ He mistook my silence. ‘No, of course not. He’d hardly tell you that.’ He shook his cup at Yousif to indicate that he’d had enough, and when I did the same the man departed as silently as he had come, leaving a dish of some sticky sweetmeat between us. ‘Halwa. Do you like it?’ Whitaker made a vague gesture of invitation.
‘I’ve never tried it.’
We were alone again now and the silence between us hung heavy as the thick night air, a blanket through which each tried to gauge the other. I let it drag out, and it was Whitaker who finally broke it. ‘You were telling me about your journey.’ He stared at me, waiting for me to continue. I broke off a piece of the halwa. It was cloying on the tongue and it had a sickly-sweet taste. ‘You arrived here with Entwhistle, one of the Company’s geologists. What was he doing on the Hadd border, do you know? The fellow had no business there.’
‘He was checking your son’s survey,’ I said.
There was a sudden stillness. ‘I see.’ He said it quietly. And then, in a voice that was suddenly trembling with anger: ‘On whose orders? Not Philip Gorde’s surely?’
‘No.’
‘Erkhard?’
‘You seem very worried about this?’