The Hidden Oasis (20 page)

She reached the far end of the grove and hurdled again, plunging headlong into a dense bank of reeds. She fought
her way through and into a field beyond. The gunfire had stopped, although the shouting continued. Half a dozen voices, all coming from slightly different directions as her pursuers spread out, hunting her. Also, a menacing whine and thud as the helicopter powered up.

She crossed the field and scrambled down and through a deep irrigation ditch, feet sinking ankle deep in mud, her hands slithering and clawing at the opposite bank as she pulled herself up and out. She stumbled onwards. First through a grove of lemon trees, then a field of towering maize plants, then a seemingly endless expanse of tangled undergrowth, her arms sweeping and flailing at the vegetation as though she was swimming until suddenly the greenery came to an abrupt halt. She was right at the very edge of the oasis, the desert lapping against her feet. Away to her left, swathed in shadow, stood some sort of barn. Breeze-block walls with a palm-thatch roof. Running up to it, she tried the door, but it was padlocked. She looked around, frantic, then squatted down beside an old wooden cart parked up against one of the barn’s walls, her entire body trembling, her breath coming in short, painful rasps.

The helicopter was in the air now and circling low over the tree-tops, its searchlight slashing through the shadows beneath. The pounding of rotors drowned out all other sounds although every now and then Freya thought she caught a shout and, once, unmistakably, the crackle of gunfire.

‘They killed Alex,’ she mumbled to herself, the scene she had just witnessed leaving her in no doubt about what had happened to her sister. ‘They killed Alex, and now they’re going to kill me. And I don’t even know why.’

She wiped the sweat from her forehead, cursing herself for leaving her mobile in Alex’s house, trying to figure out what to do. It was possible all the commotion had attracted attention back in Dakhla and would bring people out here to investigate, but she couldn’t count on it. Nor could she just play cat and mouse for the rest of the night. The oasis was small, there were only so many places she could hide. Even in the dark and with all the dense vegetation, they’d track her down in the end, especially with the helicopter hovering above.

‘I have to get to Dakhla,’ she thought, gulping air. ‘I have to get away from the oasis and back across the desert to Dakhla.’

How, though? With the helicopter overhead and the moon brightening all the time they’d spot her the moment she stepped out of the trees.

She stood, looking around, orientating herself, then squatted again. She seemed to be at the very southern tip of the oasis. To her left, eastwards, some five kilometres away as though across a broad channel of water, lay the main body of Dakhla, its scattered lights twinkling, the ghostly wall of the Gebel el-Qasr escarpment looming behind.

It was the obvious direction to take and offered the shortest route to safety. But the terrain was completely open, all gravel flats and low sand hummocks. There was no protection whatsoever, nowhere to hunker down against the probing eye of the helicopter’s searchlight. She’d be spotted immediately, skewered, like a rabbit in the headlamps of a car.

Things didn’t look much better to the south, although the landscape was more broken and varied, the desert
swirling into high dunes and twisted rock formations, its surface scattered with boulders and clusters of vegetation. It was still exposed, but a lot less so and offered the possibility, if not of complete concealment, at least some vague shelter. She could trek a few miles to the south, she thought, well away from the oasis, and only then turn east to Dakhla, by which point she hoped she would be outside the radius of her pursuers’ search.

Freya decided it was her best option. Her only option. The problem was that between the derelict barn where she was cowering and the first cover – a tall clump of desert grass – lay two hundred metres of flat, compacted sand. Crossing it would leave her horribly visible, like standing alone in the middle of an ice rink.

Every rock climb has its crux, the hardest part of the ascent beyond which the rest of the route suddenly opens out and becomes easier. This was the crux of Freya’s escape. If she could negotiate those two hundred metres she’d have a chance. If she was spotted, either from above or by one of the men on the ground, she was finished.

The thud of the chopper grew louder as it came in almost directly overhead, its searchlight scanning back and forth, the downdraught from its rotors causing the trees to sway madly. Freya rolled underneath the cart, wafts of sand and dust spitting into her face, thin wafers of light cutting down onto her through the cracked wooden planking above. The machine hovered a moment, then swung away, swooping north towards the other end of the cultivation. The sound of its engines faded only to grow louder again as it turned and came back towards her. That seemed to be the pattern of its flight: up and down the oasis, end to end, as though
doing lengths in a pool, seeking her out, thirty seconds one way, thirty seconds the other. If she was to have any hope of making it across the sand flat she’d have to synchronize her run with that pattern, starting the instant the helicopter began its run in the opposite direction, towards the far end of the oasis and finishing before it turned and flew back again, when she would come directly into its field of vision.

She pressed her palm against her forehead, calculating. Thirty seconds to cover two hundred metres. On a track it would have been easy – as a schoolgirl she had run for Markham County and done the distance in just under twenty-five. But this was across sand, and at night. It was going to be close, painfully close. And that was without factoring in the men on the ground. What if one of them spotted her? What if they’d already fanned out into the desert to watch for just this eventuality? She bit her lip, suddenly doubtful, scared, wondering if it wasn’t too big a risk. There hadn’t been that many of them, after all. And it was dark, the undergrowth was heavy in places – surely she’d be able to evade them, stay one step ahead.

Then she heard a shout. Tensing, she peered into the gloom, ears straining, trying to work out where it had come from. Somewhere behind her, beyond the tangled mass of vegetation she’d fought her way through a few moments earlier. Still a way off, but not that far. It was answered by another shout, and then another. Three of them, and all coming her way, converging. One she might be able to dodge, two even, but three … no chance. Decision made. She’d have to run. If it wasn’t already too late.

A clattering roar and the helicopter swung in overhead again, its search beam carving blinding avenues of light
around and across the barn. On its previous run the chopper had moved on almost immediately. This time, agonizingly, it just hovered where it was. Freya clasped her ears against the noise, the cart above her rattling madly as if it was being shaken by invisible hands, the blast of the rotors lifting part of the barn’s thatch roof and whirling it off into the night. On and on it went, every second bringing the men on the ground closer, narrowing her window of opportunity. She had all but given up hope, accepted that she would be cornered here like a rat in a trap, when finally the roar started to lessen and the air around her to still as the machine rolled away and began its run back up to the top end of the oasis.

She was out and on her feet immediately. Barely aware of what she was doing, driven by an elemental, adrenalin-fuelled instinct for self-preservation, she sprinted past the barn and onto the desert. She had no idea where her pursuers were, just prayed they were still struggling through the undergrowth behind the barn and wouldn’t be able to see her through the heavy curtain of leaves.

The sand was flat, compacted, almost as firm as a cinder track, and she covered the first hundred and fifty metres easily, elbows pumping, legs powering her forward towards the clump of desert grass ahead.

She was just starting to believe she might make it when her feet began to drag. The desert surface was loosening beneath her, the sand sucking at her shoes, slowing her down. The going became harder with every stride, her lungs heaving, her thighs burning as the muscles flooded with a surge of lactic acid.

When they were young she and Alex had played a game of dare, knocking on people’s doors and then running away,
every step an agony of anticipation as they waited for the home-owner’s angry shouts behind them. She had that same feeling now, but amplified a thousand-fold – a breathless, desperate hope that she would not be caught twinned with the sickening expectation that she almost certainly would be.

Slower and slower, feet slipping and sliding and fighting for traction, she kept going. The malevolent throb of the helicopter rotors held steady as it hovered at the far end of the oasis before gradually swelling again as the chopper turned and came back towards her. Freya knew she was out of time, was going to be spotted, couldn’t fail to be now that she was directly in the helicopter’s line of sight. She powered on regardless, her body continuing to run even as her mind seemed to slow and give up hope. Scrabbling over the last ten metres of flat, she pitched headlong through the clump of grass and down a steep incline, tumbling to a halt in a shower of sand.

For a while she just lay there, chest heaving, legs screaming in pain, waiting for the helicopter to swamp her with light. It remained dark. Rolling onto her front, she crawled back up the bank and carefully parted the wiry stems of grass to make a small gap. Two hundred metres away the chopper was now hanging directly above the barn, swaying this way and that. Below, caught in its searchlight, three suited figures were holding their arms up as if to say ‘She’s not here.’ There was some gesticulating and waving, and then the helicopter sped off back across the oasis and the three men disappeared into the undergrowth.

She’d made it.

Having said his evening prayers – bowing and kneeling in the inner courtyard of his house – Zahir ate dinner with his wife and son, the three of them sitting cross-legged on the floor of their living room, silently picking with their fingers at bowls of rice, beans and
molocchia.
When they had finished the woman fetched a shisha pipe and placed it at her husband’s side before leading the boy away, leaving Zahir alone. For fifteen minutes he sat thus, motionless, lost in thought, the only sound the soft popping of his lips as he pulled at the shisha’s mouthpiece. Then, laying the mouthpiece aside, he stood and walked back through the house and out into the internal courtyard. Crossing to the first door on his right, he opened it and switched on the light. In front of him, on the wall above the desk, was the photograph Miss Freya had seen: the curving arm of rock, with Doctor Alex standing in the shade beneath it. He stared, fingers drumming nervously on the doorframe.

‘What is troubling you?’

His wife had come up beside him and laid a hand on his arm. He said nothing, just continued gazing at the picture.

‘You are not yourself,’ she said. ‘What is wrong?’

Still he didn’t reply, but put his hand on his wife’s, squeezing gently.

‘Is it the American girl?’ she asked.

‘She went to the police,’ he murmured. ‘Thinks someone killed her sister.’

‘And?’

He shrugged.

‘You should talk to her,’ said his wife. ‘Find out what she knows.’

He nodded.

‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I’ll go tomorrow.’

He kissed her forehead, running a finger down her cheek, then indicated that she should leave him. When she was gone he stepped into the room and, closing the door, went over to the desk and sat down, eyes never leaving the picture.

‘Sandfire,’ he murmured.

Freya gave it a few minutes, crouching behind the clump of grass, the sound of the helicopter waxing and waning as it patrolled up and down the oasis. She checked that the camera, film canister and compass were all still safe inside her knapsack, and dabbed away the worst of the blood on her arms and neck, which had been badly scratched during her headlong charge through the undergrowth. She then began working her way south.