‘They haven’t seen me,’ said Oliver. ‘I’m just taking precautions.’
‘The man who fixes my word-processor,’ said my mother. ‘He talks exactly so. Tell him to stay off the road.’
Johnson told him. He had some trouble, because we had arrived at all the blind bends, and our torsos were switching like metronomes. Then we fell on our backs, because on the next bend thirty large speckled goats were discovered crossing the road in the charge of an eight-year-old child and a mongrel. We recovered. We slewed round long, slow arabesque curves, and slewed back over others. Morgan said, ‘Oh, hooray, there’s the Lancia.’
There weren’t very many places where you could pass, but the Lancia’s driver soon did, waving cheerfully as he went by. Having passed, he maintained a decorous pace. Indeed, he dropped speed. Red and elegant, he occupied the whole road before us.
A shining Lancia is a handsome sight, and it annoyed me to hear Morgan cursing it. Then my mother said, ‘Why does he linger? His gasket is weakening?’
‘I don’t know,’ Morgan said. ‘But if he gets any slower, we’re going to slide backwards.’ I could see the dials. I could see how the temperature was rising. And if the gradient got any steeper, I could see the Lancia relapsing back into us. She must have realised it as well. At the next bend she crawled halfway round, viewed the highway ahead, and signalled flamboyantly for us to pass her.
Morgan was a good driver. From a standing start, he gave the Land Rover as much power as would provide grip and steering and set it at the bend outside the Lancia. He was halfway round when he met the oncoming truck full of half-ripe tomatoes. Because it was coming down, it was using part of the hard shoulder as well as the centre, spraying loose stones and small rocks as it came. We had the flexibility, the tyres and the presence of mind, but what really mattered was how wide the hard shoulder was. As the truck driver slammed on his brakes, Morgan swerved round his outer side with a snarl of his engine. For a moment we rocked on the brink, gravel flying, wheels whining and spinning. And then we were round and past, and crossing the road to hug the inner side of the next U bend while the truck blared its furious horn, and the Lancia dropped demurely behind us. I said, ‘The Americans! These were the Americans!’
‘They sure were,’ Morgan said. ‘And one of the John Does was Pymm.’
‘Pymm?’ I said.
‘Of course,’ Johnson said. ‘That’s why they broke down by the river. They shed a passenger and took Pymm aboard. Folks, we’ve found Ellwood Pymm’s contacts.’
‘Great,’ said Morgan. ‘Now explain why they tried to get rid of me?’
‘Because they didn’t recognise you,’ said my mother. Her needles ran along, fast and soothing as sleeper wheels. ‘You they have hardly seen. But they observe me and Wendy, who have lied about our departure to London. They do not wish me and Wendy to see what they are up to. They are up to something, for sure. There is the radio van. We are not far from the summit. With Pymm behind you, I do not recommend that you stop.’
Now and then, I felt she had a grasp of the situation. This time, however, my mother and the High Atlas stood face to face. Now the mountains about us were deep with snow and the air was cool and fresh and thin, making us breathe quickly. There were ovals of snow at the roadside, valanced like sea-shore sand with patterns of thawing, but as we got higher they spread, and the red and yellow snow-posts stood sunk in them. There was a barrier ready to drop, if the road became impassable.
This morning, Rita had driven through snow. Now the passage of cars had half melted it, making it easier and also more difficult. We veered round sickening bends, braking abruptly for oncoming traffic and accelerating sharply when pushy drivers behind bounded forwards. We slid through slush and lurched into pot holes, but we kept going. We didn’t stop at the radio van, although we saw faces watching us pass. Near the top were the efficient fawn block-houses, labelled Gendarmerie Royale, and beyond that, the checkpoint trestles with their freezing officials bundled in anoraks, and a white-topped police car with cheerful men in red-banded caps and grey uniforms and two or three Vintages, cars and owners steaming together.
It was a temptation to halt, but we didn’t. His hair undone, his face rather set, Morgan drove to the top of the col Tizi n’ Tichka, seven thousand four hundred feet high, and slid over the crest. My mother said, ‘Born of a corkscrew, I knew it. Open your mouth.’
She put chocolate into it, and fed me and tried to feed Johnson, who was crouched over his crackling transmitter. When he shook his head, she turned back to Mo. She said, ‘The Lancia will stop at the checkpoint. You take your time.’ And Morgan, his face widening, smiled.
She knew, I suppose, that our road would be worse going down. Around us, also, the mountains seemed different. The lower slopes weren’t red any more, but ochre dusted with grit, and all the hamlets, the shacks, the terraces were the same colour crusted with snow, with jade water rushing between. The road looped and coiled and wound far below us, and behind the blotched, crumpled cups of the valleys the snowy mountains rose, rank upon rank. For the second time Johnson called Oliver, and for the second time, he didn’t answer.
The third time of asking he did, and duly shrivelled, rushed to excuse himself. ‘Christ, I’m sorry, but I’m bloody dying. I had to take off my helmet: big deal, don’t have kittens, I’m off the road. I’m up above you; I can see you. The Sunbeam and Kingsley have both passed the radio van and the summit and are on their way downhill ahead of you. Oppenheim has passed the south radio van on his way to the summit, and so has Chahid, still tailing him. The gap between Oppenheim and Sir Robert is closing, but I don’t know where the hell they’re expecting to stop.’
‘They may not try,’ Johnson said. ‘Pymm is in the red Lancia, travelling south with the worst of intentions. He’s had a swipe already at us, and will do the same, I assume, to anyone he thinks Kingsley is courting. God knows what will happen if and when he finds Oppenheim and Sir Robert are buddies.’
‘Is that a note of hope?’ Morgan said.
‘That,’ said Johnson, ‘would be an overstatement. Oliver, can you climb any higher? I’d really like to know if Kingsley has stopped or turned off.’
‘I’ll try,’ Oliver said.
Johnson put his hand on Morgan’s shoulder and Morgan slowed. My mother laid down her knitting. Morgan said, ‘I’ll have to keep some momentum.’ We’d seen a car have to back down already, to take a run at a bend.
Johnson said, ‘I know. I want to keep within Oliver’s cheapo binocs as long as it’s possible.’ I wondered what he was afraid of, apart from a landslide, or a crack in the road, or a perfectly legitimate crash. I thought of a number of things he might be afraid of, because I was. Oliver’s voice came abruptly again.
‘It’s conclusive, I think. Kingsley hasn’t shown up at the next checkpoint after the summit. And Oppenheim passed that checkpoint and vanished. They’ve met, JJ.’
‘Or crashed. Or stopped for a pee, or a picnic. Or Chahid has wiped them both out. Let’s be crazy,’ Johnson said, ‘and suppose we are right. Where are they meeting? Rumour says there’s a Berber market somewhere about. What about that? Can you see one?’
‘No,’ said Oliver’s voice. ‘At least, maybe. There’s a dip over there, and a road of sorts with some mules walking along it.’
‘Wide enough for a car?’
‘I should think so. Dirt surface. But where could they meet in a market?’ He broke off. ‘Hey!’
‘Hey,’ repeated Johnson with patience. ‘What?’
‘The Lancia!’ Oliver said. ‘The Lancia’s coming behind you. It’s pulled out to pass!’
‘It can’t,’ said Morgan. My mother stopped knitting. Morgan said, ‘It can’t. We’re on a blind corner.
Christ Jesus!’
In a flash of red, the Lancia drew alongside on the left, and I prepared for the squeal of metal, the bump that would slam us into the core of the hill. But the cars roared side by side without touching, and then the other car pulled past at top speed, still on the wrong side, full into the bend. Morgan was pumping the brake, slackening speed as much as he dared; trying to keep steering power for anything. His knuckles were white on the wheel.
There was no crash. The Land Rover, answering painfully to the accelerator, brought us round a bend that was free of traffic and empty, but for the tail of the Lancia vanishing down and round the next bend. Oliver said in a shrill voice, ‘You saw that?’
Johnson said. ‘How the hell did he know how to pass? Oliver?’
‘I don’t know. He’s two bends down and fairly gunning it. No, he isn’t. He’s slowed. Jay, do you hear me? The Lancia’s stopped on the hard shoulder. He’s unloaded something . . . someone. He’s unloaded Pymm, and gone on without him. Pymm is making for something. Chahid’s car! I can see Chahid’s car! Chahid’s car is standing on the verge just below where the Lancia stopped. But it’s empty.’
He was still speaking when Johnson broke in. He said, ‘Oliver, Chahid’s on the hill. He must have signalled the Lancia.
Oliver, look out for Chahid! Chahid! He’s there, and he knows you.’
Oliver didn’t reply. Instead of his voice, there came a number of thuds, a clang, a shout, and the sound of the Harley-Davidson’s engine revving and roaring. Then I realised that I was hearing it myself, and not just through a transmitter, and that it was coming from the fold of the hill just above us. Looking up, Morgan braked with all his strength, regardless of the consequences. No one spoke.
The Harley-Davidson, so smart at Essaouira, came bouncing down the high ground above us in a spray of mud and tumbling rubble. It shot over the road, Oliver’s boot trailing sparks, and bounding over the verge, continued screaming and slithering through the scree to the road loop below us. It flashed across between cars, and slid over the verge and veered down the next slope the way goats did, descending from bend to bend of the road until they reached valley bottom.
Except that Oliver didn’t reach valley bottom. Seven hundred pounds of Harley-Davidson skewed, slid and trembled and finally heeled over flat on the scree, throwing Oliver like a dummy far below it. It rumbled on with its own weight for a while until it came to lodge in the end at a bush, its two tyres, torn by bullets, pointing upwards. There was a pause, during which I heard Johnson’s voice speaking clearly in French like a CAF commentator. Then the Harley exploded.
The Land Rover slewed to a halt. Morgan jumped down and ran to the back. Johnson, still transmitting, had swung Morgan’s climbing boots from their satchel and, one-handed, was rapidly loosening the laces. Morgan tore them from him. ‘They wouldn’t fit you,’ he said. ‘And you’re dead. And you couldn’t bloody do it now, anyway.’
He picked up Johnson’s discarded shoes and flung them into my lap, then set about exchanging his own for his boots. He said, ‘Drive this down but don’t take any bloody risks: there’ll be others nearer than we are. If he can be moved, I’ll bring him down to you.’ He had rope over one shoulder, and a stick, and a groundsheet. The next moment, he had walked to the edge of the road and stepped over, and Johnson sat in his socks, looking after him. Then he switched on his radio, and began talking quickly again.
I stood up, until I could see where Morgan had gone. I had never seen a man surfing on boulders. Plunging down between roads, plastered with snow, the mountain slope was an avalanche waiting to happen. Morgan planed on it. He rode it like a man skiing on rock, in a skimming cloud of sharp grit and slush, a racing carpet of stones underneath him. He looked intent, precarious, wire-taut as a spider. ‘Your Mr. Thornton,’ said my mother, ‘is lucky.’
‘Yes,’ said Johnson; and slid out of the Land Rover. He was wearing his shoes again. A moment later, Morgan’s door opened and shut and Johnson was starting the engine. He said, ‘It’s called riding the scree. Atlas scree is the worst in the world. He’ll be with Oliver in something like three minutes.’
‘He knows the risks,’ said my mother. ‘Delegation, Mr. Johnson.’ Johnson didn’t reply. He was busy doing what Morgan had told him not to do.
It took us fifteen minutes of near-suicidal driving to reach the road nearest to the slope where the bike was. Halfway there, the radio sprang to life and I took it. It said, ‘Ambulance on its way. The car you describe has not passed the col or either van: it is still in your vicinity. If it appears, it will be followed and stopped. Support is coming from Ouarzazate. What is the news?’
And at Johnson’s request, I replied. ‘We don’t know. When we do, we’ll tell you.’
We found five cars already there at the bottom, including the official Vintage Support Vehicle and a gendarmerie van from the col. Above us, the Harley still smouldered but the young fellow, they said, had been taken in by the Berbers, and the support’s auxiliary medic was with him.
Across the road, we could see the hamlet they spoke of. It straddled the stream and rose up the opposite hill in tiers of clay houses with flat rush-woven roofs and ladders of exterior steps. Hens and children and adults wandered up and down the steep snow-streaked lanes, their heads turned to watch us. Among them was Morgan, striding over. We heard him say, ‘It’s OK. They seem to think that they’ll manage. He’s alive, and there’s help on the way. Nasty fall. Take care yourselves. And thank you.’
The waiting cars loaded, and began to disperse. ‘True?’ said Johnson. In the cold and the snow, his hood and dark glasses looked natural.
‘True. He’ll make it. Berber magic.’
‘They climbed up to help you?’
‘Hassan did. I know him. He was a guide when he was young, and his son is a skier. Listen, I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry.’
‘No. I ought to know better by this time. He’s over there?’
‘That’s the house. There’s an ambulance on the way. From Ouarzazate, they can fly Oliver anywhere. Doris, do you want to be carried or pushed?’
‘On that news,’ said my mother, ‘I can fly.’
The house he pointed out seemed little more than a mud compound, built to one side of the river. Walking towards it, I felt numb. My mother said nothing, and Johnson, who had returned briefly to the Land Rover to radio, was questioning Morgan. I couldn’t hear what they were saying.