The Hidden Oasis (50 page)

It was a curious thing, but from the moment she’d first heard about the Hidden Oasis – was it really less than twenty-four hours ago? – Freya had somehow sensed she’d be heading out into the burning wastes of the western desert in search of it. Although that sense had grown stronger as the hours had slipped by and the oasis had come more and more to dominate events, at no point had it ever been anything more than an abstract notion. It was only now, as they tore along the desert track back towards the mini-oasis and Alex’s house, that the reality of their impending journey fully came home to her.

‘Don’t we need supplies?’ she asked, clutching the dashboard as they bumped and slewed on the track’s uneven surface. ‘Fuel and stuff? Three hundred and fifty kilometres is a hell of a long way.’

‘It’s in hand,’ was all Flin would say. ‘Trust me.’

They reached the oasis – its dense, tangled undergrowth feeling considerably less malevolent than it had done when she was last here – and followed the track as it looped and twisted through the trees. Finally they arrived at Alex’s house, skidding to a halt in a billow of dust. Freya wondered if there would be blood inside. If the old farmer’s body would be sprawled on the floor. But the building was empty – cool and neat and ordered, exactly as it had been the first time she had seen it.

‘I need you to get some warm clothes together,’ said Flin, pointing her towards Alex’s bedroom. ‘Jumpers, coats, anything like that: the desert gets pretty cold at night. We’re
going to need water as well – there should be a couple of containers in the kitchen. Just fill them from the tap, it’s perfectly drinkable. If you can find any food and coffee, great, but don’t go overboard. Hopefully we won’t be out there for much more than twenty-four hours.’

‘But Zahir said it would take us three days to get there.’

She was talking to herself for Flin had already disappeared into Alex’s study.

She hovered a moment, wondering, rather late in the day, if the Englishman was actually qualified for this sort of expedition and whether they should have taken Zahir up on his offer after all. She dismissed the thought – better someone unqualified, she figured, than someone she didn’t trust – and went into her sister’s bedroom. She found a large nylon holdall underneath the bed. Sifting through the drawers and cupboards, she pulled out a couple of jumpers, a sweatshirt and a heavy woollen shawl; pressing the garments against her cheek, she sensed her sister’s presence in each one, then stuffed them into the holdall. She added Alex’s old suede travelling jacket from the hook behind the door, swung the bag onto her shoulder and was moving out into the living area when she suddenly turned and went back into the room. Walking over to the picture frame on the bedside table, she removed the passport-booth photograph of her and Alex together as teenagers and slipped it into the pocket of her jeans.

‘Didn’t think I’d leave you behind, did you?’ she said, patting the pocket.

In the kitchen there were a couple of five-litre plastic water containers sitting on the sideboard. As Flin had instructed, she filled these direct from the tap before
foraging for various other items: a jar of instant coffee, some chocolate bars, a large tin of baked beans, a tin opener. Adding these to the holdall, she lugged the whole lot outside and hefted it all into the back of the Cherokee.

Throughout all this Flin had remained out of sight in Alex’s study, the clunk of opening drawers and the rustle of paper the only indication that he was still in the house. He emerged now, just as she closed the Jeep’s rear door, holding a chunky black briefcase in one hand and a book and a couple of maps in the other.

‘Know where we’re going?’ she asked as he climbed into the Jeep, waving her in as well.

‘Pretty much,’ he replied. ‘You get everything?’

She jerked a thumb towards the holdall and water containers in the back. He nodded and started the engine.

‘Gilf Kebir here we come,’ he said.

He reversed the Cherokee and took them back through the oasis. When they reached the point where the track dog-legged left around a large dirt threshing floor, he swung right onto a smaller track that Freya had not noticed before. It was little more than a glorified footpath and the Jeep was only just able to squeeze between the dense walls of vegetation that hemmed it in, high tufts of grass sweeping the vehicle’s underside with a sharp rasping sound. They jolted along for another minute, rarely getting above 20km/hour, passing a sheep pen and a concrete cistern with water pumping into it before abruptly the undergrowth dropped away. They were right at the edge of the oasis, beside the breeze-block barn where Freya had taken refuge two nights ago. Ahead stretched the flat expanse of sand across which she had sprinted to make her escape, the
indentations of her footprints still faintly visible on its compacted surface.

She assumed that this was it, that from here Flin would simply drive out onto the desert and off they’d go towards the Gilf Kebir. Instead he pulled over beside the barn, cut the engine and got out. Removing the briefcase, maps, book and holdall and asking her to bring the water containers, he went over to the building’s iron door, fished a key from his pocket and undid the padlock. He swung the door open and disappeared inside.

We must be going in another car,
she thought as she lifted the water containers from the back seat and followed him in. The building’s interior smelt strongly of petrol and was awash with light, partly from the window openings set high in the walls, mainly from the gaping hole in the roof where the downdraught from the twins’ helicopter had ripped away a chunk of its palm thatch. A row of 20-litre plastic jerry cans were lined up along the wall to her left, filled with a transparent liquid which, from the pervasive smell, she assumed was petrol. Beside them sat a small orange cool box, a heap of thick woollen blankets and a tray piled with spanners, screwdrivers and other tools. But what really caught her attention – unavoidably – was an enormous object sitting in the middle of the barn and taking up most of the building’s length, width and height. What it was exactly she couldn’t tell for it was shrouded in a heavy canvas tarpaulin, but it certainly didn’t look like any car she’d ever seen before. Any vehicle of any kind.

‘What the hell’s that?’ she asked.

‘Miss Piggy,’ replied Flin cryptically, squeezing past the mysterious object and moving to the far end of the barn.
Rather than breeze-block, this end of the building was walled in by a heavy steel roller-door. Grasping the chain that dangled down from the roller-wheel above, he started to tug. The door furled itself up and around with a clank and a rattle until it was open, the barn’s concrete floor segueing seamlessly into the shimmering yellow carpet of the desert. Again Freya asked what was going on, but Flin simply beckoned her over and, taking one corner of the tarpaulin, indicated that she should take the other. Together they slowly drew it up and over the object, working their way back along the barn until it was completely exposed.

‘Say hello to Miss Piggy,’ he said. ‘AKA the Pegasus Quantum 912 Flex-Wing Microlight. Desert travel, executive style.’

‘You’ve got to be joking,’ murmured Freya, standing there with her mouth open. ‘No fucking way.’

In front of her sat what looked like a cross between a hang glider, a go-kart and a toboggan. It had a conical, two-seater pod in bright metallic pink – hence the name, she assumed – with three wheels, a propeller on the back and, attached to its tail fin, an enormous triangular sail which seemed to hover over the pod like some giant white bird.

‘No way,’ she repeated, moving around the machine, taking it all in. ‘You can actually fly this thing?’

‘Well, Alex was the ace pilot,’ Flin replied. ‘But yes, I just about know what I’m doing. Enough to get us airborne, certainly. Whether I can get us down, again … ?’

He winked and started issuing instructions, showing Freya how to attach two of the 20-litre jerry cans to the saddle-bags slung on either side of the pod while he filled
the tank underneath the front seat from the remaining cans.

‘Is this going to be enough fuel?’ she asked as they worked, still barely able to believe what they were about to do.

‘Only just,’ he replied. ‘It’s a 49-litre tank. She uses about eleven litres per hour of flight and it’s a good four hours out to the Gilf, so it’s going to be tight. Especially since we’re at maximum weight capacity. We can take on some extra at Abu Ballas, though, and that should see us through without too many problems.’

‘There’s a gas station in the desert?’ she asked, incredulous.

He smiled, something faintly mischievous in the expression, as though he was enjoying her bewilderment.

‘All will be revealed when we get there,’ he said with another wink.

Once the microlight was fuelled they stowed the equipment inside the pod – maps, book, water, holdall, blankets, cool box, Flin’s black briefcase – only just managing to fit it all in. They then pushed the aircraft outside, its rubber wheels making a soft crunching sound as they rolled onto the compacted desert surface. There were two helmets sitting on the seats, with in-built headsets and intercoms. Throwing one to Freya, Flin helped her into the rear seat and strapped her in, plugging her headset’s jack into the socket beside her knee.

‘It’s all a bit cosy,’ he said, squeezing into the front seat and donning his own helmet; Freya’s legs extended to either side of him as though she was riding him piggyback. ‘And I’m afraid there’s no in-flight catering. But if you can put up with that it’s actually not such a bad way to travel.’

‘As long as you don’t kill us I’ll be happy,’ she said, feeling both nervous and strangely energized.

Flin glanced at his watch – 1.39 p.m. Flicking various switches and turning a key on the dashboard, he jabbed a finger against the starter button. The engine coughed once, twice, then roared into life, the propeller whirring around behind Freya’s head. Its rushing draught caused her shirt to ripple and flap although her helmet filtered out the worst of the noise.

‘You’re sure you know where we’re going?’ she called.

Flin made a chopping motion with his right hand.

‘South-west till we hit the Gilf Kebir,’ he said, his voice sounding through the headset. ‘Then south along its eastern edge till we find the rock. Shouldn’t be too difficult.’

‘And you’re absolutely sure you know how to fly this thing?’

‘I guess we’ll just have to find out,’ he replied, pushing a lever on the seat beside his hip. The engine’s revs shot up and they started to move, gliding smoothly across the sand towards the clump of desert grass behind which Freya had sheltered following her escape from the oasis. After a hundred metres Flin turned them round, steering with his feet, and took them back towards the barn again. ‘We need to get the oil temperature up to 50 degrees,’ he explained, tapping one of the dials on the dashboard in front of him. ‘Otherwise the engine’s going to seize.’

They repeated the pattern for several minutes, back and forth across the sands, until eventually the gauge was showing the correct temperature. Swinging round a final time in front of the outbuilding Flin brought them to a halt. He
went through some last-minute checks, then craned his head round towards her.

‘Ready?’

Freya gave him the thumbs-up. He nodded, turned to the front again and, grasping the control bar hanging from the sail above, eased the throttle forward.

‘Piggy Airways welcomes you on board this unscheduled flight to the Gilf Kebir,’ he intoned in mock pilot-speak. ‘We shall be cruising at an altitude of—’

He got no further. Just as they started to pick up speed there was a blur of movement away to their right. Like a cork from a champagne bottle, a lime-green Honda Civic – mud-spattered and badly dented – burst from the undergrowth, slewing madly on the sands before correcting itself and heading straight towards them, its driver beeping furiously. It was difficult to make out much of him, although even at this distance it was clear he was an extremely large man, his body seeming to fill the entire front of the car. Flin’s shoulders tensed and his hands tightened around the control bar, his voice crackling through the headset.

‘Angleton!’