He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I am sorry. But it is not possible. They will be all right.’
A heavier gust hit the car. The wheels slithered and spun. The rain was turning the powdered sand of the piste to a thick, red paste. The mountains were blotted out entirely. I glanced back. I could see nothing but wet sand and rain through the rear window. The bus, like the mountains, had disappeared from sight and I cursed the Frenchman under my breath. It was no weather in which to make two girls drive a heavy vehicle over mountains on a narrow, treacherous track. Once more I tried to persuade him to let me change places with Karen and keep Julie company in the bus, but he shook his head. ‘Non, monsieur. We must be in Casablanca by this morning.’
‘You’ll never make it in this weather. You might just as well…’ The full weight of the storm hit us then and the rest of the sentence was drowned in the roar of the rain. It sheeted down, bouncing on the bonnet, drumming on the roof, cutting visibility to practically nil. The wheels churned in the mud of the piste. The car slithered and swayed. And then the rain slackened again and there were the mountains right ahead of us.
We reached the harder surface at the foot of the mountains and began to climb. Away to the left I saw the watch tower above Kasbah Foum, and the debris of the ruined city gleamed blackly through the rain. Sections of the track were running with water and in places there was a soft surface of mud. The car had front-wheel drive and the engine laboured as the wheels spun in the soft patches. We reached the spot where the road had been repaired and I looked down into the black gulf of the gorge. The whole place seemed to be streaming with water and, on the remote fringe of visibility, I saw the towers of Kasbah Foum looking withdrawn and hostile as they stood guard over the entrance to the gorge.
‘If we could have had two more days.’ There was a note of bitterness in Jan’s voice as he said this and he was leaning forward in his seat, peering down the mist-wrapped length of the gorge.
Then we had turned the corner under the cliff overhang and the gorge was behind us. Far below us down the mountain slope, I glimpsed the bus nosing its way across the flat valley floor. Then it was lost in a curtain of rain. ‘They’ll never make it,’ I said as the Citroen’s wheels spun again on a soft patch and Bilvidic fought the wheel to regain control of the car.
‘Then they will stop and wait,’ he replied impatiently. ‘The girl is not a fool. She will not try it if it is not possible.’
But I wasn’t sure. Julie knew it was important for her to contact the British Consul. She’d go on as long as she thought there was a chance of getting through. And Karen was with her. Karen would want to go on, too. ‘I think we should stop,’ I said.
‘No.’
‘They could go over the edge in these soft patches.’
‘Stop worrying, monsieur. They will be all right. They will be going uphill. Downhill, it would be different.’
‘You forget that the bus has rear-wheel drive. You can easily skid the back wheels….’
‘They will be all right, I tell you,’ he repeated angrily. And then he was fighting the wheel again and suddenly the whole road ahead was blotted out by another storm.
It swept down on us like a cloudburst, drumming on the car, beating at it as though trying to flatten it into the mud of the piste. A little spill of stones slithered in a trickle of water down the bank to our right. It had become very dark and all we could see was the rain and a few yards of mountain stretching ahead of us. The rain was solid like a million steel rods thrust at an angle into the ground. The car juddered, the engine roared. Mud spurted up past my window as the wheels clawed at the surface.
I glanced back. I didn’t know what I imagined I would be able to see. I was scared for Julie. I wanted to reassure myself that the bus was all right. But I could see nothing — only the rods of rain gleaming dull like steel against the utter blackness of the storm. I turned and gripped Bilvidic’s arm. ‘You must wait,’ I shouted at him. ‘You must wait for them.’
He glanced at me quickly, his eyes sharp and alert, measuring my mood. But he drove on. It was then that I became conscious of Jan’s increasing restlessness in the back. He kept twisting round and peering out through the rear window. Once, when I turned round, I met his eyes. ‘Do something!’ he said. He looked worried. He was thinking of Karen back there with Julie in the bus.
We turned a bend that overlooked the gorge and began to climb a straight stretch of track beside a shallow rock cliff down which rainwater streamed, glistening blackly. ‘Do something to stop him, can’t you?’ he said urgently. We were coming up to the point where the piste hair-pinned round the very head of the gorge. I caught hold of Bilvidic’s arm. ‘You must stop,’ I shouted at him. ‘If you don’t stop…’ There was a blinding flash of lightning and the crash of thunder right overhead.
‘Attention, Georges!’ Bilvidic threw my hand off as he called the warning to his assistant. I heard Jan struggling in the back and then I reached for the ignition key. Bilvidic caught hold of my hand. The car swayed wildly. We were coming up to the bend now and as I flung him off and grabbed again for the key, the wheels hit a stone and suddenly the rock wall of the cliff closed in against my window. There was a crash and I was flung forward, striking my head against the windscreen. The car stopped dead. ‘Imbecile!’ Bilvidic screamed at me. ‘Imbecile!’
I struggled back into my seat, momentarily dazed. ‘Look what you have done!’ Bilvidic’s face was white with anger. All the right-hand wing and the front of the bonnet were crumpled.
‘If you’d stopped when I asked you — ‘ I said.
He gave an order to his assistant. It wasn’t really necessary for he already had Jan pinned down by his arm. The starter whined. But nothing happened. Bilvidic kept his finger on the button. The motor went on and on, but the engine didn’t fire. It was completely dead. The rain was torrential, water pouring everywhere, glistening on the rocks, running in little streams. Now that the engine was silent, we could hear it: the hiss of the rain, the drumming of it on the tin body of the car, the little rushing noises of water carrying small stones down the mountain.
And then suddenly all movement ceased inside the car. The rain had lifted slightly and we could see the bend ahead. A brown flood of water was pouring across it, frothing white as it plunged on down the gorge. All the water from the slopes that formed the very beginning of the gorge was collected in the bottom of the V to form a torrent that was slowly eating into the piste. Already there was a jagged gap and, whilst we sat and watched, it widened as the rocks that formed its foundation were shifted and rolled down into the gorge. There had been a culvert there once, but that was gone, or else the weight of water was too great. And every minute the volume of it and the noise of it seemed to grow.
Jan began struggling again in the back. ‘Let me go!’ he shouted. ‘Philip. We must get back to the bus.’
Bilvidic gave an order to his assistant. One of the rear doors of the car was thrust open and I saw Jan standing there in the rain, staring back down the piste. ‘In all the years I have lived in Morocco,’ Bilvidic said, ‘I have never known a storm like this.’ He got out of the car then. He had given up all hope of reaching Casablanca. The piste was hopelessly cut. It would take several days to repair it. I scrambled across the driving seat and got out. ‘I think we should get back and stop Mademoiselle Corrigan from coming up,’ Bilvidic said.
I nodded. ‘Come on!’ Jan called to me. He had already started off down the piste. Bilvidic and his assistant were searching in the car for their raincoats. I started to run after Jan, splashing through the water that ran almost ankle-deep down the rutted surface of the track. I was soaked through and steaming by the time I caught up with him. Side by side we went back down the piste, loping down with long strides, our shoes slithering and squelching through the mud and water. Neither of us spoke. We were both intent on getting back down the mountain as fast as possible. The rain died away, but we scarcely noticed it. We were hurrying down through a dead world of mist and streaming rock, and the sound of water was all about us.