She shrugged. ‘The truck had engine trouble. Selim had to stop to fix it, and Skiros and Muller went on with Marie. They said they’d wait for us at a place called Hazar near Bir el Madani.’
‘They’ll have to wait a long time for Selim,’ Cunningham said.
She looked down at her hands, twisting together nervously in her lap. ‘He kept telling me what he was going to do when we camped for the night. He was so loathsome.’
Cunningham pulled her close and she turned her head into his chest and started to cry, her whole body shaking with the violence of her weeping.
Outside, the wind howled, driving the sand against the frail skin of the tent in a relentless fury that was somehow terrifying. Kane bowed his head down on his knees and relaxed, breathing deeply through half-open mouth, feeling each tired muscle ease.
Gradually it became completely dark, and the wind was so violent that he and Jamal had to hang on to the pole at each end of the tent to prevent it from being torn away into the night.
Four hours later, the storm departed as suddenly as it had come, and Kane unlaced the tent flap and crawled outside. The night sky was clear and millions of stars burned in its depths like white candles. The moon was full and its radiance flooded down into the hollow.
The sides of the tent sagged under the weight of the drifting sand and the truck was half-buried. Cunningham ducked out through the opening of the tent and joined him. What do we do now?’
‘See if we can round up the camels,’ Kane told him. Til take Jamal with me.’
‘You don’t sound too hopeful,’ Cunningham said.
‘It was a bad storm. I know we hobbled them, but a frightened camel has surprising strength. Once they get into a panic, they can kick themselves free of anything.’
He called to Jamal and they moved up the steep side of the dune away from the camp. The view from the top was quite spectacular. Rolling dunes stretched away to meet the horizon, and the hollows between them lay dark and forbidding, thrown into relief by the white moonlight, which picked out the higher stretches of ground.
They moved down the other side and walked forward in the general direction of the place where they had left the camels. All tracks had been swept away by the storm, and Kane’s heart sank. He stopped and whistled several times, the sound falling shrill on the cold night air, but there was no answering cry.
They separated, Kane going one way, Jamal another, but it was no good. An hour later, they returned to the camp without the camels.
Cunningham was sitting outside the camp, wearing his Bedouin robes against the chill of the night. He rose to meet them, and as they approached, his wife emerged from the tent and joined him.
‘No luck,’ Kane told them. ‘They’re probably miles away by now. I’m afraid our last goatskin of water has gone with them as well.’
Cunningham slipped an arm around his wife’s shoulders. ‘What do we do?’
Kane shrugged. ‘There isn’t any choice – we start walking.’
‘But the nearest water’s at Shabwa and that’s at least forty miles away,’ Cunningham said. ‘It’s impossible – especially for Ruth.’
Kane went across to the truck, leaned inside the cab and unscrewed the compass from its fixing. When he turned, his face was grim. ‘There aren’t any ifs or buts about it. We walk, and we walk now. With luck we can cover maybe twenty or twenty-five miles before daylight. If we don’t, we’re finished.’
Cunningham’s shoulders sagged and he turned to his wife. ‘In a way, I got you into this. I want you to know that I’m sorry.’
She touched his face gently and smiled. ‘There’s no place I’d rather be.’
They might have been alone as they stood there, staring into each other’s eyes, and Kane turned away quickly and went to speak to Jamal.
SIXTEEN
A THOROUGH SEARCH of the camp produced plenty of food, but only one aluminium water-bottle. When they left at midnight, Kane carried it slung over one shoulder.