“Not so fast,” I said. “Look, the Tassili is well over a thousand miles from here. Lily is in the country illegally, and I’ve a job to do of pressing urgency. Can’t this wait until—”
“Nothing could be more urgent than what I ask of you!” she cried. “If you don’t get those pieces, they may fall into other hands. The world could become a place not possible to imagine. Don’t you see the logical extension of such a formula?”
I did. There was another process that employed transmutation of elements—the creation of transuranic elements. Elements with a higher atomic weight than uranium.
“You mean with this formula someone could cook up plutonium?” I suggested. Now I understood why Nim said the most important thing a nuclear physicist could study was ethics. And I understood Minnie’s sense of urgency.
“I’ll draw you a map,” Minnie was saying, as if our going were a fait accompli. “You’ll commit it to memory, then I’ll destroy it. And there’s something else I wish you to have, a document of great importance, great value.” She handed me the leather-bound book tied in twine that she’d brought in with the cloth. As she started drawing the map, I searched in my bag for my nail scissors to cut the twine.
The book was small—the size of a thick paperback—and very old from the look of it. The cover was of soft Moroccan leather, well worn and stamped with markings that seemed burned in with a hot brand—like a signet cut into leather instead of wax—in the shape of figure eights. I felt something cold pass through me as I looked at it. Then I snipped through the stiff twine, and the book fell open.
It was hand-tied. The paper was as transparent as onionskin, but smooth and creamy as cloth—so thin I realized there were more pages than I’d thought, maybe six or seven hundred, all handwritten.
It was a small, tight script with flourishes typical of old-fashioned writing like the kind John Hancock had fancied. Copied on both sides of the thin paper, the ink had bled through, making it doubly hard to read. But read it I did. It was in an old style of French, and I didn’t recognize some of the words, but I quickly got the message.
As Minnie murmured to Lily in the background, going over the map in detail, my heart grew cold and frightened. Now I understood how she’d learned all she’d been telling us.
“Cette Anno Dominii Mille Sept Cent Quatre-Vingt-Treize, au fin de Juin à Tassili n’Ajjer Saharien, je devient de racontre cette histoire. Mireille ai nun, si suis de France …”
As I began to read aloud, translating along the way, Lily looked up and slowly came to realize what I was reading. Minnie sat in silence, as if lost in a trance. She seemed to be hearing a voice calling from the wilderness, from the dim mists of time—a voice that spanned the millennia. In fact, it was not yet two hundred years since the document had been written:
“This year of 1793,” I read,
in the month of June at Tassili n’Ajjer in the Sahara, I begin to recount this tale. My name is Mireille, and I come from France. After passing eight years of my youth at the Abbey of Montglane in the Pyrenees, I beheld a great evil released into the world—an evil I now begin to comprehend. I shall set down its story. They call it the Montglane Service, and it began with Charlemagne, the great King who built our Abbey.…
THE LOST CONTINENT
At a distance of ten days’ journey there is a salt mound, a spring, and a tract of uninhabited land. Beside this rises Mount Atlas, shaped like a slender cone, so tall they say the top cannot be seen, for summer or winter it’s never free of clouds.
The natives are named “Atlanteans” after this mountain, which they call “Pillar of the Sky.” It’s said these people eat no living creature, and that they never dream.
—“People of the Sand Belt”
The Histories (454 B.C.)
Herodotus
As Lily’s big Corniche swept down from the Ergs toward the oasis at Ghardaïa, I saw the endless miles of dark red sand that stretched out beyond in all directions.
On a map, the geography of Algeria is pretty simple: it’s designed like a tilted pitcher. The spout, at the bottom of the Moroccan border, appears to be pouring water into the neighboring countries of western Sahara and Mauretania. The handle is formed by two strips: a fifty-mile-thick stretch of irrigated land along the north coast and another three-hundred-mile ribbon of mountains just south of that. The rest of the country—nearly a million square miles—is desert.
Lily was driving. We’d been on the road five hours and covered 360 miles of hairpin mountain turns headed for the desert, a feat that had driven Carioca whimpering beneath the seat. I hadn’t noticed. I’d been too absorbed translating aloud from the journal Minnie had given us—a tale of dark mystery, the unfolding of the Terror in France, and beneath it all the two-hundred-year-old quest of the French nun Mireille for the secret of the Montglane Service. The same quest we were on ourselves.
Now it was clear how Minnie had discovered the history of the service—its mysterious power, the formula contained in it, and the deadly game for the pieces. A game that had continued for generation after generation, sweeping the players along in its wake just as Lily and I, Solarin and Nim—and perhaps Minnie herself—had been swallowed up in it. A game played over the same terrain that we were now crossing.
“The Sahara,” I said, glancing up from the book as we started the descent into Ghardaïa. “You know, this wasn’t always the largest desert in the world. Millions of years ago, the Sahara was the world’s largest inland sea. That’s how all the crude oil and liquid natural gas were formed—the gaseous decomposition of tiny marine animals and plants. Nature’s alchemy.”
“You don’t say?” Lily commented dryly. “Well, my fuel meter indicates we should stop for a refill of those little marine life forms. I guess we’d better do it at Ghardaïa. Minnie’s map didn’t show too many more towns along this route.”
“I didn’t see it,” I said, referring to the map Minnie’d drawn and then destroyed. “I hope you’ve got a good memory.”
“I’m a chess player,” said Lily as if that explained it all.
“This town, Ghardaïa, used to be called Khardaia,” I said, drawn back to the journal. “Our friend Mireille seems to have stopped here in the year 1793.” I read:
And we came into the place of Khardaia, named for the Berber Goddess Kar—the Moon—whom the Arabs called “Libya”—dripping with rain. She ruled the inland sea from the Nile to the Atlantic Ocean; her son Phoenix founded the Phoenician Empire; her father is said to be Poseidon himself. She has many names in many lands: Ishtar, Astarte, Kali, Cybelle. From her all life springs as from the sea. In this land, they call her the White Queen.
“My God,” said Lily, glancing at me as she slowed the car for the turnoff to Ghardaïa. “You mean this town was named for our arch-nemesis? So maybe we’re about to land on a white square!”
So involved were we in plowing through the journal for more facts that I failed to notice the dark gray Renault behind us until it hit the brakes and followed us on the turnoff to Ghardaïa.
“Haven’t we seen that car before?” I asked Lily.
She nodded affirmatively, keeping her eyes on the road. “In Algiers,” she said calmly. “It was parked three cars away from us in the ministry parking lot. The same two guys were inside; they passed us in the mountains maybe an hour back, so I got a good look. They haven’t left us since. Think our pal Sharrif had anything to do with this?”
“Nope,” I said, checking them out in my side mirror. “That’s a ministry car.” And I knew who had sent it.
I’d been upset ever since Algiers. As we’d left Minnie in the Casbah, I phoned Kamel from a pay booth on the plaza to let him know I’d be gone a few days. He hit the ceiling.
“Are you mad?” he cried over the fuzzy line. “You know that balance of trade model is critical to me right now! I must have these figures by no later than the end of the week! This project of yours has reached the highest level of urgency.”
“Look, I’ll
be back soon,” I said. “Besides, everything’s done. I’ve collected data from every country you specified and loaded most of it into the computers at Sonatrach. I can leave you a list of instructions on how to run the programs—they’re all set up.”
“Where are you right now?” Kamel interrupted, practically jumping through the line at me. “It’s after one o’clock. You should’ve been at work hours ago. I found that ridiculous car in my parking slot with a note on it. Now Sharrif’s just outside my door looking for you. Says you’ve been smuggling automobiles, harboring illegal immigrants—something about a vicious dog! Will you please explain what’s going on?”
Great. If I ran into Sharrif before completing this mission, my goose was cooked. I’d have to level with Kamel—at least in part. I was getting short of allies.
“Okay,” I said. “A friend of mine’s in trouble. She came to visit me, but her visa isn’t stamped.”
“Her passport’s sitting here on my desk,” fumed Kamel. “Sharrif brought it. She doesn’t even have a visa!”
“A technicality,” I said quickly. “She has dual citizenship—another passport. You could get it fixed up so it looked as if she’d come in legally. You’d make Sharrif appear a fool.…”
Kamel’s voice was becoming brittle. “It is not my ambition, mademoiselle, to make the chief of secret police appear a fool!” Then he seemed to mellow a bit. “Though it’s against my better judgment, I’ll try to help. Incidentally, I know who the young woman is. I knew her grandfather. He was a close friend of my father. They played chess together in England.”
Well now—the plot thickened! I motioned to Lily, who tried to squeeze into the booth and press her ear to the phone with me.
“Your father played chess with Mordecai?” I repeated. “Was he a serious player?”
“Aren’t we all?” Kamel replied obliquely. He was silent a moment; he seemed to be thinking. With his next words, Lily stiffened beside me, and I felt my stomach do a flip-flop. “I know what you’re planning. You’ve seen her, haven’t you?”
“Her who?” I said with all the naïveté I could muster.
“Don’t be an idiot. I’m your friend. I know what El-Marad told you—I know what you’re seeking. My dear girl, you’re playing a dangerous game. These people are killers, all of them. It’s not hard to guess where you’re headed—I know what’s rumored to be hidden there. Don’t you imagine when he’s certain you’re missing, Sharrif will look for you there as well?”
Lily and I stared at each other across the receiver. Did this mean Kamel was a player, too?
“I’ll try to cover for you,” he was saying, “but I expect you back by the end of the week. Whatever you do, don’t come to your office or mine before then—and don’t try the airports. If you’ve something you need to tell me regarding your … project … it’s best to communicate through the Poste Centrale.”
From his tone, I guessed what that meant: I should pass all correspondence through Therese. I could drop Lily’s passport and my OPEC instructions with her before we left.
As we rang off, Kamel wished me luck and added, “I’ll try to look out for you the best I can. But if you get into real trouble, you may be on your own.”
“Aren’t we all,” I replied, laughing. Then I quoted El-Marad: “El-safar Zafar!” Voyaging is Victory. I hoped that old Arabic proverb would prove true, but I had grave reservations. As I hung up, I felt as if my last link with reality had been cut.
So the ministry car that eased into Ghardaïa behind us had been sent by Kamel, I was certain. Probably guards dispatched for our protection. We couldn’t have them tagging along with us into the desert. I’d have to figure something out.
I didn’t know this chunk of Algeria, but I did know that the town of Ghardaïa we were approaching was one of the famous Pentapolis, or “Five Cities of the M’zab.” As Lily cruised along looking for a gas station, I saw the towns arrayed against the purple, pink, and red cliffs around us, like crystalline rock formations that had risen from the sand. These were cities that had been written of in every book on the desert. Le Corbusier said they flowed with “the natural rhythm of life.” Frank Lloyd Wright had called them the most beautiful cities in the world, their sand-red structures “the color of blood—the color of creation.” But the diary of the French nun Mireille had something more interesting to say of them:
These cities were founded a thousand years ago by the Ibadites—“Those Possessed by God”—who believed the towns were possessed by the spirit of the strange Moon Goddess, and named them after her: the Luminous One, Melika—the Queen.…
“Holy shit,” said Lily, pulling into the gas station. The pursuing car had passed us, made a U-turn, and doubled back for a fill-up of its own. “We’re in the middle of nowhere with two mugs on our tail, a million miles of sand in front of us, and no idea what we’re looking for, even when we’ve found it.”
I had to agree with her bleak assessment. But things were soon to go from bad to worse.
“I’d better get some extra gas,” Lily said, jumping from the car. She pulled out a wad of money and bought two 5-gallon cans of gas and two more of water while an attendant filled the gas-guzzling Rolls to the brim.
“You didn’t need to do that,” I told her when she returned from loading the extras into the trunk. “The road to the Tassili goes through the Hassi-Messaoud oil field. It’s derricks and pipelines all the way.”
“Not the way we’re going,” she informed me, starting the engine. “You should’ve looked at that map.” I began to get a sick feeling at the pit of my stomach.
From here there were only two routes into the Tassili. One went east through the oil fields at Ourgla, then dipped south to enter the top of the region. Even this route called for four-wheel drive most of the way. But the other, maybe twice as long, went through the barren, arid Plain of Tidikelt—one of the driest, most dangerous parts of the desert, a place where the road was marked with thirty-foot-high poles so they could dig it out when it vanished, which was often. The Corniche might look like a tank, but it didn’t have the Caterpillar belt needed to cross those dunes.
“You’re not serious,” I assured Lily as she pulled out of the filling station with our companions right on our tail. “Pull in at the nearest restaurant. We need to have a chat.”
“And a strategy session,” she agreed, glancing in the rearview mirror. “Those guys are making me nervous.”
We found a little restaurant at the edge of Ghardaïa. Disembarking, we went through the cool pub at the entrance into the inner courtyard, where umbrellaed tables and stringy date palms cast shadows in the evening’s red glow. The tables were all empty—it was only six P.M.—but I found a waiter and ordered some crudités and a tadjine, spicy ragout of lamb, with couscous.
Lily was picking at the raw vegetables in the oily array of crudités when our companions arrived and discreetly took a table some distance away.
“How do you suggest we unload those bozos?” said Lily, dropping a piece of lamb tadjine into Carioca’s mouth as he sat on her lap.
“First let’s discuss the route,” I told her. “I’m guessing it’s four hundred miles from here to the Tassili. But if we take the southern route, it’ll be eight hundred, on a road where the food, fuel, and towns are few and far between—just endless sand.”
“Eight hundred miles is nothing,” said Lily. “It’s all on the flat. The way I drive, we’ll be there before morning.” She snapped her fingers for the waiter and ordered six large bottles of Ben Haroun, the Perrier water of the South. “Besides, it’s the only way to get where we’re going. I committed this route to memory, remember?”
Before I could counter, I glanced toward the courtyard entrance and let out a muffled groan. “Don’t look now,” I said under my breath, “but we’ve got some more guests.”
Two burly guys had come through the beaded curtain and were crossing the palm court to take a seat nearby. They checked us out casually, but Kamel’s emissaries
at our other side were getting eyestrain. They stared at the newcomers, then back at one another, and I knew why. I’d last seen one of these burly chaps fondling a gun at the airport, and the other had chauffeured me home from the bistro that same night I’d arrived in Algiers—gratis the secret police.
“Sharrif hasn’t forgotten us after all,” I informed Lily, picking at my food. “I never forget a face, and maybe he chose them because they wouldn’t, either. They’ve both seen me before.”
“But they couldn’t have followed us on that empty road,” she insisted. “I’d have noticed them just like the others.”
“Tracking with your nose to the ground went out with Sherlock Holmes,” I pointed out.
“You mean they stuck something on our car—like radar!” she whispered in her husky voice. “So they could tail us without being seen themselves!”
“Bingo, my dear Watson,” I said in a low voice. “Shake them for twenty minutes, and I’ll find the little bug and pry it off. Electronic devices are my forte.”
“I’ve got a few techniques of my own,” Lily whispered with a wink. “If you’ll excuse me, I believe I’ll retire to the powder room.” Standing with a smile, she dropped Carioca on my lap. The thug who rose to follow her was forestalled when she called loudly to the waiter across the room, inquiring the location of “les toilettes.” The thug resumed his seat.
I was wrestling with Carioca, who seemed to have formed a preference for tadjine. When at last Lily returned, she grabbed him up, stuffed him in my bag, divvied up the heavy bottles of water between us, and headed for the door.
“What’s the game?” I whispered. All our dinner companions were hastily paying their tabs in our wake.