The Doomed Oasis (24 page)

“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.”

“Worried!” The word seemed forced out of him. “Don't you understand what's happened here tonight? The thing I've been dreading … The thing I've been trying to avoid ever since I knew.…” He checked himself. And then in a quieter voice: “No, you're new out here. You wouldn't understand. One of the
falajes
has been stopped. And all because of this blundering fool Entwhistle running a survey on the Hadd border.” His voice had risen again, trembling with anger.

“He was doing what David was doing at the time he disappeared,” I said quietly.

But it didn't seem to register. He had withdrawn into his own thoughts. “Twenty years …” His voice sounded tired. And then his eye was staring at me again. “How would you feel if the thing you'd worked for over a period of twenty years was in danger of being ruined by young fools too impatient to understand the politics of the desert?” He turned his head and stared for a moment into the night. “The air is heavy. There'll be a storm soon.” He gathered his robes about him and rose to his feet, crossing to the parapet and leaning against it, staring out into the desert like some Biblical figure from the distant past. “Come here, Grant.” And when I joined him, he stretched out his arm. “Look, do you see those dunes?” He gripped my arm, pointing west into the desert.

Standing on that rooftop was like standing on the bridge of a ship lying anchored off a low-lying island. To the left lay the dark-treed expanse of the oasis, and beyond the date-gardens I could see the village and the squat bulk of the Sheikh's palace standing on its gravel rise. But to the right, where his arm pointed, was nothing but desert. Dim in the moonlight the dunes stretched away into infinity, a ridged sea of sand, pale as milk.

“When you've seen a storm here you'll understand. Then all the desert seems in motion, like the sea beating against the shore of the oasis, flooding into the date-gardens. The dunes smoke. They stream with sand. They're like waves breaking; the whole great desert of the Empty Quarter thundering in, the sand flowing like water.” He turned to me and his grip on my arm tightened. “The only thing that stands between Saraifa and destruction is the camel thorn. Out there—do you see? Those trees. They're like a breakwater holding the sand sea back, and they're dying for lack of water.”

“The
falajes?
” I asked, and he nodded. “Entwhistle said there used to be around a hundred of them.”

“Yes. We've traced them from aerial photographs.”

“Your son was very much concerned about—”

“Oh, yes, concerned … But he lacked patience. He was like a young bull. No subtlety. No subtlety at all.” And he added: “What's been done tonight can be quickly repaired. There's an open well every mile or so along the length of the underground channel of the
falaj
. They've blocked one of those wells with sand and stone. It can be unblocked almost as quickly. But the old
falajes
…” He shook his head. “The wells are fallen in, the underground channels collapsed. Restoring them is a lengthy and costly business. Sheikh Makhmud has managed to restore just one in the fourteen years he's been Sheikh of Saraifa. It took two years and cost more than twenty thousand pounds. If Saraifa is to survive …” He gave a little shrug. “We need a dozen new
falajes
, not one.”

“And only oil will pay for them?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“David took the same view,” I said. “That's why he was prospecting on the Hadd border.” And I added: “What happened, Colonel Whitaker? What happened to your son?”

He turned and looked at me. “You think I should know?”

“I've come a long way,” I said, “in the certainty that you must know.”

His eyebrows lifted, the single eye stared at me, not blinking. “The certainty?”

“Yes,” I said. “The certainty.” And I added: “He was on loan to you at the time he disappeared. It was the seismological truck you purchased in Basra last June that he left abandoned on the side of a dune twenty miles inside the borders of Saudi Arabia. And just before he disappeared, you visited the Emir of Hadd. You must know what happened.”

“Well, I don't.” He said it flatly, and it was difficult not to accept it.

“Then why did you visit Hadd?”

“Who else could do it?” And he added: “David was on the Hadd border against my orders—against Sheikh Makhmud's orders, too. Somebody had to try and convince the Emir there wasn't any oil there.”

“Because the border's in dispute.”

“Yes. There's been trouble there ever since the Company was first granted a concession to prospect in Saraifa. As you probably know, Saraifa is an independent sheikhdom. Unlike the Trucial States, it's not even in treaty relation with the British Crown, though it's generally considered to be a part of the British sphere of influence. Hadd is different again. It's independent in theory and in fact, and during the last few years it has strengthened its ties with Arab countries. Some years back we were finally driven to sending troops in, to keep the peace, and they occupied the fort of Jebel al-Akhbar overlooking the town of Hadd. But we couldn't do that now. It would be much too dangerous.” He hesitated, and then he added: “The risk would only be justified if vital interests of our own were involved.”

“What sort of vital interests?” I asked. But I knew the answer before he gave it.

“Oil,” he said. “From a Western point of view—as you'd know if you'd been out here any length of time—everything in Arabia comes back to oil.”

“Your son's death, too?” I asked. He looked at me, but didn't say anything. “When did you first hear he was missing?”

“Towards the end of February.”

“Could you give me a date?”

He frowned and for a moment I thought he wasn't going to answer that. But then he said: “I can't be certain. Your calendar doesn't mean very much to us out here in the desert. But by the moon it would be about the beginning of the last week in February.”

Almost a week before the abandoned truck had been found by the Bedouin, more than three weeks before his disappearance had been reported to the Company. “You didn't notify Erkhard.”

“No.”

“Why not? David was in the Company's employ, even if he was on loan to you.”

He didn't say anything. He seemed suddenly to have withdrawn inside himself. I think perhaps he was waiting for my next question, knowing it was coming.

“The truck was discovered abandoned on February twenty-eight,” I said. “Yet you say you knew he was missing almost a week before that. How did you know?”

There was a long pause. At length he said: “Some askari were dispatched from Saraifa. When they reached his camp they found it deserted, not a soul there; the truck and the Land Rover had gone, too.”

“Askari?”

“Members of Sheikh Makhmud's bodyguard. Their orders were to arrest him and bring him back to Saraifa.”

“Alive?”

“Of course.” He stared at me angrily. “What other instructions do you imagine they would be given? They were dispatched by Sheikh Makhmud—at my request. That was immediately after my return from Hadd.” And he added: “It was done for his own good—and because it was necessary. The Emir was in a very dangerous mood.”

So that was how it had been. “And you didn't want Erkhard to know that he'd been operating on the Hadd border?”

“I didn't want Erkhard to know and I didn't want the political boys to know. As I've said, David was there against my express orders. God Almighty!” he breathed. “The impatience of youth! They want the moon for breakfast and the sun for lunch.” He leaned on the parapet, staring down to the white sand below. “I blame myself,” he said quietly. “I should have packed him off back to Cardiff. Instead, I let him stay. More, I tried to think of him as my son, as God's gift from my loins, a prodigal given back into my hands.” He shook his head. “I should have known it wouldn't work.”

He paused there and I didn't say anything, for I felt his isolation here might trap him into some self-revelation if I didn't try to force it. He looked at me again, the desert lines deep-etched by the moon, a long, sad, solitary face. “As you know, I'm a Muslim. I wanted him to become a Muslim, too. I wanted him to make the desert his home and to carry on where I left off in due course.” He sighed softly. “I forgot the boy was already nineteen, and only half mine … and that half as obstinate as the devil.” He smiled. In that harsh face it was a smile of extraordinary tenderness. “I turned him into a Christian instead.” He said it with bitterness, adding: “In the end I think he came to hate me.”

“Why?”

The question was out before I could stop myself, and I saw him freeze and close up on me. “People get at cross-purposes, you know.” His tone was casual now. “It's one of the sad things about human relationships. But there … No point in talking about it now. The boy's dead, and that's that.”

“You can't be sure of that,” I said.

He stared at me, his eye blazing in the darkness. “What do you mean? I had all the chaps I could spare out looking for him. Khalid was searching, too, and Makhmud had men hunting for him all over Saraifa. The one place we never thought of searching was west into the Empty Quarter.” And he said, with gentleness, softly to himself: “The desert is like the sea. No man can disappear into it for two months and come out alive.”

“All right,” I said. “He's dead. But if you haven't discovered what happened to him, what do you think happened to him?”

His eye looked into mine. “Have you ever been frightened?”

“Yes, once,” I said. “In Tanganyika.”

He nodded. “Then you'll understand me when I say no man knows how he'll react to fear until he's faced with it. Especially when he's alone. And David was alone. His Arab crew had deserted him. We found that out later. They panicked.”

“And you think David did the same?”

He shrugged. “It's a cruel place, the desert. And solitary as hell. Empty, too. Even in company the Bedou sing to keep their spirits up.” It was much what Griffiths had said, and it seemed plausible enough. He took my arm and led me back to the carpet. “You were telling me about your journey.…”

I told him as much as I thought he'd a right to know—about the package Griffiths had brought me and my meeting with Erkhard. But it was Gorde he was really interested in—Gorde and Entwhistle and the fact that the two of them had been together at the locations David had been surveying. It seemed to worry him, and he questioned me closely about Gorde's reactions—what had he said, where was he going when he'd left me there with Entwhistle? And then he asked me what it was that had decided Entwhistle to check David's survey. “He must have known he was risking his life there on that border. What made him think it was so important?”

I hesitated. He was sitting there, watching me, very still, very tense, and I knew suddenly that this was what the whole interview had been leading up to and that he was deeply concerned. “When Entwhistle searched the abandoned truck,” I said, “he found all David's papers. They included his own survey report and also the report of a much older survey run just before the war. I think it was that report—”

“Whose report?” The question was shot at me out of the dark. “Was it Henry Farr's report?”

I stared at him. “You know about that?”

“Of course. Henry sent me a copy of it. He was well aware of my interest in the area. Later we had a talk about it—just before he went into Abyssinia.”

“But if you knew about it …” It seemed so incredible. “In his letter to me David said he found it in the Company's files. You never told him about it?”

“No.”

“Why ever not? You must have known how he felt about Saraifa, his desperate urge to—”

“He was employed by the Company—by Erkhard.” His voice was taut and hard, a note almost of hostility.

“But … I don't understand,” I said. “All these years … And Khalid says you're drilling to the south of the oasis. That's at least forty miles from David's locations.”

“Exactly. Just about as far from the Hadd border as it's possible to get and still be in Saraifa.” He got to his feet and began pacing up and down, seeking relief in movement from the nervous tension that I now realized had existed inside him from the first moment of our meeting. “It's not easy to explain. You don't understand the situation.” He stopped suddenly and faced me. “For twenty years I've had to sit on this, convinced that my theory was right, that the oil-bearing strata continued from the Gulf down into Saraifa, between the Empty Quarter and the mountains you can see there to the east.” His voice was sharp and bitter with frustration. “I had to find some way.…” He paused, standing there over me, and he was silent a long time, as though reaching for a decision. Finally he said: “You know so much.… You may as well know the rest. Erkhard's coming here tomorrow, flying down from Sharjah. He's under pressure, as I think you'll have guessed from your conversation with Philip Gorde. With God's help I'll get him to sign the concession, and once the Company's involved …” He turned and resumed his pacing. “There was no other way. No company would sign a concession with Saraifa if they knew it involved drilling on the Hadd-Saraifa border. No company would dare. But once they're committed …” He beat his fist against the palm of his hand. “I've seen it happen before. The technical men come in. They're not concerned with politics. They ride roughshod over everything, and in the end the Government is forced to support them.”