Bill Anderson was waiting for me at the tiny airstrip in Port Said, with a car and driver.
‘I thought I’d stay an extra night and catch up with you,’ he said. ‘My crew left for Texas this morning.’ Bill was a big muscular man just beginning to run to fat, his broad Texan physique incongruous next to the slender Arab driver waiting to drive us back to the camp. He extended his hand, a massive paw, the calloused palm abrasive against my own. ‘My sympathies, Oliver. I couldn’t believe the news when I heard. It’s a rough life, that’s for sure, rough and unjust.’
The intensity of his concern embarrassed me and again I found myself wrestling with my emotions. I nodded and we both climbed into the back of the car in silence.
On the way to the camp we drove past the capped oil well. Floodlit, the well was surrounded by a circle of burnt and charcoal ground; debris from the explosives that had been used to cause the fire to implode and extinguish itself.
‘Took a week to figure out the configuration,’ Bill said. ‘It was probably sheer bad luck but I wouldn’t rule out sabotage. Capping it was a bitch, took way too long - fortunately we didn’t lose anyone. This one was a mother, that’s for sure.’
‘Where are you off to next?’
‘Libya - there’s a problem at Sarir. That should be exciting, ’ he added ironically.
I turned back to the open window. Being back in Abu Rudeis was disorientating; my mind kept playing tricks on me, as if I’d slipped back in time to before the drowning. I kept expecting Isabella to ring on the satellite phone; for her to be still in Alexandria, at the villa, waiting. It was a seductive illusion.
The moon had painted the desert in black and white, with just a faint hint of azure streaked across the horizon. The vast scale of the landscape placed human life into perspective. But my grieving had flattened my emotions and the usual sense of cleansing I associated with the desert was absent. And the uncomfortable suspicion that I might have unwittingly endangered Barry by leaving the astrarium with him tugged at the back of my mind.
Anderson interrupted my reverie. ‘I looked at some of your core samples and the seismic. I hope you don’t mind?’
Actually, I did mind. I was fiercely private about my data and, as always between the research and the actual drilling, I was plagued by the vague sensation that I’d missed something in my analysis. This one was a particularly unpredictable risk, however. The seismic had indicated the possibility that the field extended out a good way, and the sonar readings had been promising. But the subsurface was a jigsaw of geological features and although I had taken my usual intuitive leap in my assessment - something only Moustafa had been party to - the idea that we might not hit black gold now played on my conscience.
‘Not at all, as long as you don’t change career and suddenly become the competition,’ I joked, trying to cover my annoyance.
‘No chance. I like gambling but I’m not that much of a risk-taker.’
I noticed the driver glance at his rear-view mirror as he reacted to Anderson’s sharp tone. I lowered my voice. ‘Is that what you think I am - a gambler?’
‘We’re all gamblers in one way or another, Oliver. But you have to admit this one’s a fairly long shot.’
‘Did Johannes Du Voor ring you?’
The chief executive officer of GeoConsultancy was a difficult man. He had no conventional training as a geologist or geophysicist but had fallen into the oil business via shipping after his time as a supplies officer in the South African navy during the Second World War. A perfectionist, Johannes Du Voor had an ambivalent relationship with the notion of risk. As a small consultancy that depended on fewer than a dozen large corporations as clients, GeoConsultancy couldn’t afford mistakes. Initially, he’d accepted that some of my methods were a little unorthodox, but lately he’d been pushing me to back up that final ten per cent of sheer instinct with data. I had tried fudging it, but sometimes my hunches were so inexplicable that even I couldn’t account for them. Understandably, the bigger the commission, the more nervous Johannes became.
‘We bumped into each other in the executive lounge at Austin,’ Anderson said. ‘Boy, that man can talk. I don’t think he realised that you and I know each other as well as we do. The guy didn’t look well, I have to say, and he was kinda morbid.’
‘He has an eating disorder. In that he eats too much, I mean. What else did the old bastard say?’
‘He asked me if you’re angling to set up your own consultancy, walk off with his clients.’
I laughed. The idea that I could be that underhand seemed absurd. ‘The guy’s paranoid,’ I answered. ‘He just doesn’t understand the way I work.’
The trouble with Johannes Du Voor was that he imagined the rest of humanity to be as ambitious as he was, particularly the few he recognised reluctantly as more talented than himself. He’d recruited me directly out of Imperial College and for two years had insisted I work as his assistant in the field. On our first job together I realised he’d made a mistake; that he was out by nearly a kilometre. It was an important job - the first well in a new structure in Angola - and millions were at stake. I had pored over the seismic data, tested the core samples myself and walked the field while sniffing the air. At the risk of being fired, I’d offered him my alternative interpretation. Johannes had listened and had trusted the leap my instinct was pointing to despite his own calculations. To his credit, he corrected the proposed drilling angle. Then told me that if I was wrong he would not only fire me but he would also go out of his way to ruin my ongoing career. We struck oil that day but our relationship altered profoundly after that. He respected this inherent talent of mine, but even so every new exploration was like free-falling all over again for him.
The car pulled up beside the new drilling rig - untouched since I’d left two weeks earlier. The drill bit hung above the deck, its steel gleaming in the floodlights, poised like some vast mole ready to begin burrowing. Nearby, a deep-water well had been drilled to tap bore water to cool the rig in operation. Generators and various other pieces of equipment stood in the long shadow cast by the drill, like a silent audience awaiting a performance. It was bizarre to think that this massive contraption had remained unchanged, as if frozen in time, while my own life had gone through such devastating upheaval.
I made a quick appraisal of the equipment and the operators waiting at their controls. Then I raised my thumb, just like I had only a few weeks ago, moments before the explosion, and jerked it downwards. The giant diesel motors burst into life and the drill started to rotate as the stem was lowered through the deck. Nearby, engines turning the turntable pumped away the rubble and mud.
Anderson, standing next to me, slapped me on the shoulder. ‘Rotary drilling - don’t you love it!’ he shouted over the noise. ‘Ultimate penetration!’
Ignoring him, I watched the process for a few minutes. This initial stage was always nerve-racking: one had to pray that the drill bit was the correct selection for the rock. So far it was holding.
‘I hear rumour there’s an oasis about fifty miles from here,’ Anderson interrupted my concentration. ‘The guys told me there’s a 1920s Arab-style hotel and it’s great swimming.’
‘I should stay here.’
‘C’mon, there’s nothing going on that your assistant can’t handle. Man, you’re suffering a loss. You need some time to gather yourself. I know how that feels.’
I glanced back at the rig. Anderson was right. It would take two days before the drill had gone deep enough so that it could change direction and enter the pay zone. Maybe a desert drive would burn away some of my sadness.
The road was little more than a track. I drove the company jeep like a madman. Somehow the prospect of dying out here attracted me; an instant way of escaping the grief that now shadowed me.
Inland, the Sinai was endless scrub broken by the occasional sand dune. My eyes played tricks, turning the clock back to repopulate the dunes with primordial trees, an inland sea, swooping gulls against a kinder sky. Once, areas of Egypt had been moister, the weather more tropical. There had been swampland, hippopotami in the Nile, lions and crocodiles, but the desert had always been the kingdom of the snake, jackal and scorpion, the domain of harsh death. Many of the Ancient Egyptian icons reflected this. Anubis, the jackal-headed god of embalming and cemeteries, was an embodiment of the stalking jackal at the edge of the desert, inching his greedy way towards the ravaged corpse; Ammut, the terrifying crocodile-headed goddess to whom the hearts of sinners were thrown during the weighing-of-the-heart ritual, was a manifestation of the real predators in the murky waters of the Nile. As my imagination sketched the fecund past against the arid horizon, I was reminded of Isabella’s recurring nightmare and then of the horror of her missing organs. When I got back to Alexandria I would need to find out more. What kind of individual or organisation might have authorised the desecration of a body? And what of the other Egyptologist whom the coroner had told me about, the young female corpse he’d seen years before with the same organs missing? Was there a link?
‘Anderson, have you ever heard of an illegal organ trade here in Egypt?’
He looked perplexed by the question. ‘Not here. Asia, maybe, but not in Egypt - why? You missing something?’ he joked. Then he realised I was serious.
‘No,’ I lied. ‘Just thought I might have stumbled onto something.’
‘Wow, that’s kinda heavy.’
‘Forget I even mentioned it.’
We fell back into an uneasy silence.
Two hours later we arrived at a fork in the road. There was nothing on the horizon in either direction.
Anderson studied the map in frustration. ‘Jesus, I thought you said you’d been there before.’
‘I have, but I had a local driver,’ I answered, smiling.
He swore and tried to trace on the map the way we’d come.
I jumped out of the jeep. Immediately the heat hit me like a furnace; punching me in the lungs and almost sending me reeling. I stood still, shallowing my breath, then wrapped the scarf I was wearing over my head and across my burning cheeks. I loved this elemental pain, this pushing-up against the tediousness of physicality, the proximity of death and the sharpness of life it brought with it.
Just then I heard the distinct plod of camels’ feet, followed by a shout in Arabic. A group of five Bedouin men emerged from behind a small dune, leisurely making their way down to the desert track, their headdresses and robes catching the breeze. They stopped their camels and stared at the jeep.
Uncertain of my reception, I waved. One of them waved back. Then the chief whipped his mount on its flanks and galloped towards me, the animal moving with surprisingly elegant strides.
From inside the jeep Anderson whistled. ‘Hope your Arabic’s good,’ he muttered as he climbed out.
‘It depends on how thick his dialect is.’
Close up, the hennaed beard of the Bedouin was startling. Now I could see the end of an AK-47 assault rifle poking out from under his saddle. He stared at Anderson. I followed his gaze; the Bedouin had noticed the old army ID tag from his service days in Vietnam that the oilman still wore.
‘May peace be with you,’ I said hurriedly in Arabic, hoping to distract the Bedouin.
Ignoring me, he pointed aggressively at Anderson. ‘Soldier?’
‘Say nothing,’ I murmured to Anderson, praying that the normally loquacious American would stay silent.
By now the others had ridden up. They formed a sullen bunch, staring over the chequered scarves covering the lower halves of their faces, wary, waiting for a cue from their leader as to how to react.
‘Not any more,’ I answered in Arabic, pointing to Anderson’s grey hair. ‘Old.’
Unconvinced, the Bedouin chief’s suspicious gaze travelled across Anderson’s T-shirt, flared jeans and ancient sneakers.
‘Old body, young mind,’ the Bedouin said, deadpan.
Behind him, the other four tribesmen burst into laughter. Anderson, sensing an affront, swung around to me.
‘What’s he say?’
‘He says you look very strong for a man of your age.’
Anderson narrowed his eyes in disbelief. ‘Jesus, Oliver, just ask him where the oasis is.’
‘The oasis is half an hour’s drive from here. You take the left track,’ the Bedouin replied in perfect English. ‘Be careful - the desert can be dangerous.’
He swung his camel around and they were gone.
The gravelly tones of JJ Cale floated out from Anderson’s radio, mingling with the rustling of the date palms above us. We were lounging beside a small lake surrounded by a green fringe of reeds and palms. Its surface mirrored the turquoise sky yawning above it. Set back a short distance was the low-lying hotel, its white-yellow desert-mud bricks making it barely discernible. Its Moorish architecture, with narrow slits for windows and with arches leading to an enclosed walled garden that was cool and shady even at midday, made it a refuge from the incessant heat.
I lay on a beach towel, left behind by some long-departed tourist and taken by me from the hotel, the grey flannel embroidered with ‘P&O, Suez Cruises’. Next to my head sat the satellite phone borrowed from the oil company. My contract stated that I was to be contactable at all times in case of possible crisis in the field - so where I went the phone went too. Above me, a thick serrated palm trunk leaned over the lake, its reflected counterpart swaying slightly with the movement of the water. It was a perfect isochronism, a parallel world in reverse where anything was possible. I sat up, intrigued by the notion.
Anderson, in voluminous crimson bathing trunks, a copious amount of suntan lotion smeared over his reddening face and chest, lay in full sun, resembling a beached starfish. A thick, crudely rolled joint hung between his fingers. He sat up, took a long drag of the marijuana and, holding his breath, handed it to me. After exhaling he fell back onto his towel.