The Khufra Run

Which all took time - too much time. I hadn’t eaten, hadn’t even swallowed a cup of coffee which was a mistake for, in spite of the wetsuit, it was cold.

I was getting old, that was the trouble. Too old for this kind of nonsense. The cold ate into me like acid and I was gripped by a mood of savage despair. Everything I had in the world was tied up in the Otter. Without it I was nothing. On the beach once and for all and no way back.

I surfaced close to the slipway and found Turk sitting cross-legged on the beach, a blanket around his shoulders. There was a bottle of that cheap local brandy wedged in the sand between his feet and he nursed a tin cup in both hands.

‘Enjoying yourself?’ he asked.

‘The only way to live.’

He swallowed some more of that terrible brandy and nodded slightly, a curiously vacant look in his eyes. It was as if he was not really there, in spirit at least.

He said, ‘Okay, General, what’s it all about?’

So I told him. The mill at La Grande, Claire Bouvier, Redshirt and his friends - the whole bit and as I talked, the sun edged its way over the point, flooding the creek with light.

When I was finished he shook his head and sighed heavily. ‘You never did learn to mind your own business did you? Little friend of all the world.’

‘That’s me,’ I said. ‘Now let’s have your professional opinion.’

‘Simple. You’ve been looking in the wrong place. The way the currents run in this cove you should have tried the mid-channel.’

My heart, as they say, sank. ‘But it’s fifteen or sixteen fathoms in places out there.’

‘I know, General. I know.’ He smiled wearily. ‘Which is why you’re going to need papa. Give me five minutes to get into my gear. We’ll use the inflatable with the outboard and make sure there’s at least twenty fathoms of line on the anchor. We’re going to need it out there.’

I said, ‘Are you sure you feel up to this?’

‘You’ve got to be joking,’ he replied without even an attempt at a smile.

He turned and walked away with a curious kind of dignity, the blanket trailing from his shoulders like a cloak and yet there was something utterly and terrifyingly wrong. Earlier when I had attempted to waken him he had seemed like a corpse. Now the corpse walked. It was simple as that.

I was crouched in the dinghy in mid-channel taking a breather just before nine o’clock when Turk surfaced and gave me the sign. I adjusted my mouthpiece, went over the side and followed him down through around ten fathoms of smoke-grey water.

The Otter was crouched in a patch of seagrass like some strange marine monster. From a distance everything seemed perfectly normal and then, when I was close enough, I saw the holes ripped in the floats and hull.

So that was very much that and there was certainly nothing to hang around for. I followed Turk up and surfaced beside the dinghy. He spat out his mouthpiece and grinned savagely.

‘Somebody’s a handy man with a fireaxe. You certainly know how to win friends and influence people.’

I pulled myself into the dinghy, unstrapped my aqualung and started the outboard. ‘All right, so I’m splitting my sides laughing. What are the prospects?’

‘Of raising her?’ He shrugged. ‘Oh, I could do it, but I’d need to have a couple of pontoons and a steam winch and we’d need to recruit half-a-dozen locals as general labourers.’

‘How long?’

‘A month - maybe more if the weather plays us up, but whatever happens it would cost you. Four, maybe five thousand dollars and that would be cutting it to the bone, a friend for a friend.’

Which still left repairs to the floats and hull and the entire engine would have to be stripped, the control system. And add to that the airworthiness check the authorities would insist on before she flew again. God alone knows how much that would cost.

‘Is it on?’ he asked.

I shook my head. ‘Not in a thousand years.’

‘What about insurance?’

‘Nothing that would cover this. I could never afford the right kind of premium.’

I killed the motor as we drifted in through the shallows and we got out and pulled the dinghy up onto the beach together.

Turk picked up his aqualung. ‘This character in the red shirt and wire glasses. I’ll ask around. Somebody must know him.’

‘What good would that do?’ I said bitterly. ‘He could never pay for this.’

‘Maybe not, but you could always take it out of his hide some, after asking him politely why he did it?’

I suppose it was only then that the full extent of the catastrophe really got through to me and I kicked out at the inflatable dinghy savagely.

‘Why?’ I said. ‘Why?’

‘I’d say the girl was the person to put that question to.’

‘Claire Bouvier?’

‘She didn’t want the police in on things did she? She told you it wasn’t how it looked. This creep tried to run you down in a truck and failing in that direction, sees the Otter off and leaves you a warning to mind your own business. I’d say if anyone can throw any light on the situation it should be her.’

I glanced at my watch. It was just after nine-thirty. ‘Okay, that makes sense if nothing else does. I’ve arranged to meet her at ten o’clock at the Iglesia de Jesus. You want to come along for the ride?’

He smiled, that strange, melancholy smile of his. ‘Not me, General, I haven’t been to church in years. It’s not my scene and neither is this. I’ve got my own coffin to carry. You’re on your own.’

And on that definite and rather sombre note, he turned and walked into the cottage.

The Iglesia de Jesus is no more than a ten-minute drive from the town and stands in the middle of some of the richest farmland in Ibiza. An area criss-crossed with irrigation ditches, whitewashed farmhouses dotting a landscape that is strikingly beautiful. Lemon groves and wheatfields everywhere, even palm trees combining with the Moorish architecture of the houses to paint a picture that is more North African than European.

The church itself is typical of country churches to be found all over the island. Beautifully simple in design, blindingly white in the Mediterranean sun. A perfect setting for one of the most glorious pieces of Gothic art in Europe.

When I opened the door and went inside it was like diving into cool water. The silence was so intense that for a moment, I paused as if waiting for something though I hadn’t the slightest idea what. A sign perhaps, from heaven to tell me that everything was for the best in this best of all possible worlds. That my own experience of life and its rottenness was simply an illusion after all.

There was the usual smell of incense, candles flickered down by the altar. There was no one there, and I suddenly knew with a kind of anger, that the girl wasn’t going to come. Had never intended to.

And then I saw that I had been mistaken in thinking I had the place to myself for a nun in black habit knelt in front of the Reredos, head bowed, hands clasped in prayer.

I took a deep breath, fought hard to contain the impulse to kick out at something and made for the door.

A soft, familiar voice called, ‘Mr Nelson.’

I turned slowly, too astounded to speak.

The central panel of the Jesus Reredos portraying the Virgin and Child is a masterpiece by any standard and beautiful in the extreme. But it is an austere beauty. Something quite untouchable by anything human with the quiet serenity of one who knows that God is Love beyond any possibility of doubt and lives life accordingly.

Standing in front of it in that simple, black habit, Claire Bouvier might well have been mistaken for the artist’s model had it not been for the fact that the Reredos had been painted in the early years of the sixteenth century.

It could only be for real - had to be - I didn’t doubt that for a minute, for in some strange way it fitted. At least it explained the cropped hair and I sat down rather heavily in the nearest pew.

‘I am sorry, Mr Nelson,’ she said. ‘This must be something of a shock for you.’

‘You can say that again. Why didn’t you tell me last night?’

‘The cirumstances were unusual to say the least as I think you will agree.’

She sat down rather primly in the chair next to me, hands folded in her lap, those work-roughened hands which had so puzzled me. Then she looked up at the Reredos.

‘I didn’t realise it was so beautiful. Everything is so moving - so perfectly part of a whole. Particularly the scenes from the life of the Virgin on the predella.’

‘To hell with the …’ She turned sharply and I took a deep breath and continued. ‘Look, what do I call you for a start?’

‘I am still Claire Bouvier, Mr Nelson. Sister Claire, if you prefer it, of the Little Sisters of Pity. I’m on leave from our convent near Grenoble.’

‘On leave?’ I said. ‘Isn’t that a little irregular?’

‘There are special circumstances. I’ve been in East Pakistan for the past couple of years or BanglaDesh as they now call it.’

The whole thing seemed to move further into the realms of fantasy by the minute. I said, ‘All right, just tell me one thing. You were dressed like a nun last night when our friends grabbed you?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And you said it wasn’t just an ordinary assault. You wouldn’t let me take you to the police, for instance, which I would have thought reasonably strange behaviour for someone of your persuasion.’

She got up abruptly, moved towards the altar and stood there gripping the rail. I said quietly, ‘Our friend in the red shirt tried to run me down in a truck last night after I left you. When I got back to my cottage at Tijola, I found a note telling me to mind my own business.’

She turned quickly, a frown on her face. ‘From whom?’

‘Redshirt and friends. It has to be. You’ll be interested to know they also towed my seaplane out into the middle of the channel and sank it in sixty feet of water, just to encourage me.’

There was genuine horror on her face at that, but she turned away again, head bowed, gripping the rail so tightly that her knuckles whitened.

I grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her round roughly. ‘Look, that plane was all I had in the world and it’s not salvageable, so I’m finished, Sister. A ruined man because I played the Good Samaritan last night. At least I’m entitled to know why’

She looked up at me calmly without struggling and nodded. ‘You are right, dear friend. I owe you that at least. Perhaps there is a quiet place you know of? Somewhere we could talk …’

I took the road to Talamanca then followed a cart track that brought us after a couple of miles to an old ruined farmhouse in an olive grove above the sea. There wasn’t a soul around. She sat on a low stone wall which had once marked the boundary of the grove and I sprawled on the ground at her feet and smoked a cigarette.

It was a marvellous day and quite suddenly, nothing seemed to matter very much. I narrowed my eyes, watching a hawk spiralling down out of the blue and she said, ‘Did you really mean what you said back there in the church? That you are ruined?’

‘As near as makes no difference.’

She sighed, ‘I too, know what it is like to lose everything.’

‘Is that supposed to make me feel better?’

She looked down at me sharply, something very close to anger in her face for the first time, but she controlled it admirably.

‘Perhaps if I told you about it, Mr Nelson.’

‘Has it anything to do with this present affair?’

‘Everything.’ She plucked a green leaf from a caper shrub, shredding it between her fingers as she stared back into the past. ‘I was born in Algeria. In the back country. My father was French, my mother, Bedu.’

‘An interesting mixture,’ I said. ‘Where do you keep your knife?’

She ignored me completely and carried straight on. ‘We had a large estate. Two vineyards. My father was a wealthy man. When de Gaulle declared Algeria independent in 1962 we decided to stay, but by 1965 things were very bad. All agricultural land owned by foreigners had been expropriated and most of the French population had gone. When my mother died, my father decided it was time we left also.’

‘How old were you then?’

‘Just fourteen. He decided to fly us out secretly, mainly because he considered it unlikely that the authorities would allow us to leave with anything worth having.’

‘There was another reason?’

‘I think you could say that.’ She smiled faintly. ‘There was a convent of the Little Sisters of Pity not far from our place at Tizi Benou. An old Moorish palace built like a fortress. I received my education there. During those difficult early years of independence, it acted as a refuge many times and churches over the entire region sent their more tangible assets there for safe keeping rather than see them looted.’

The whole thing was beginning to sound more than interesting and I sat up and turned to face her. ‘These tangible assets - what exactly did they consist of?’

‘Oh, the usual things. Church plate, precious objects of various kinds. Most of this was rendered down into bullion at the convent, crudely, but effective enough.’

‘Why bullion?’ It was something of a superfluous question for I already knew the answer.

‘So that my father could fly it out.’

‘And how much did that little lot come to?’

‘Something over a million pounds sterling in gold and silver. A rough approximation only and then there was a considerable amount in precious stones impossible to estimate and the most important item of all was priceless.’

‘And what was that?’

‘A statue of the Virgin in beaten silver, known as Our Lady of Tizi Benou, but actually manufactured by the great Saracen silversmith, Amor Khalif in Damascus in the eleventh century’

‘My God, but they must have loved you when you flew in with that little lot.’ I said. ‘But we didn’t, Mr Nelson,’ she said calmly. ‘That’s the whole point. It’s still there.’

‘The pilot my father hired was a man named Jaeger. A South African. He flew in from France by night at four hundred feet. He told me that was to foil their radar.’ She shook her head and there was a kind of sadness in her voice. ‘He was so alive. A great, black-bearded man who seemed to laugh all the time and wore a pistol in a shoulder holster. I think he was the most romantic figure I’d ever seen in my life.’

‘What was the aircraft?’

‘A Heron, is that right?’

I nodded, ‘Four engines. They used them for the Queen’s Flight a few years back. What about passengers?’

‘My father and I and Talif who was overseer of the vineyards.’

‘What was his story?’

‘He had worked for my father for years. They were very close.’ She shrugged. ‘He preferred to come with us rather than stay. There should have been others, but there was trouble at the last moment and we had to leave in a hurry.’

‘What went wrong?’

‘Oh, I don’t really know. Somehow the local area commander got to know - Major Taleb. He and my father never really got on. Taleb’s mother had been French, but for some reason that only seemed to make him hate France more. He’d fought with the F.L.N. for years.’

‘What happened?’

‘We took off as Taleb arrived to arrest us. Not that it did us any good. I suppose he must have got on to their air force straightaway’

‘And you were intercepted?’

She nodded. ‘Over the Algerian coast near Cape Djinet. Are you familiar with that coast at all? Do you know the Khufra Marshes?’

‘I’ve heard of them.’

‘Jaeger managed to crash-land and in one of the lagoons in there. He and my father were killed and the Heron went to the bottom, but Talif managed to get me out in time. He took me to a fishing village not far away, a place called Zarza and nursed me back to health. Later, he got me to France and placed me in the care of the Little Sisters at Grenoble.’

‘And did you tell anyone about all this?’

‘Only the Sisters, but there was nothing to be done about the situation obviously. To the Algerians, of course, we were all dead.’

‘So what happened then?’

‘The Order used its influence to get Talif work in Marseilles. I continued my education with them and eventually realised I had a vocation. After my training as a nurse, they sent me to our centre in Dacca.’

‘And now you’re back.’

‘For a time only. I had yellow fever very badly. It was thought that a spell in Grenoble would prove beneficial.’

Which was all absolutely fascinating, but came nowhere near explaining more recent events.

‘So what’s all this got to do with Redshirt and his friends?’ I demanded.

‘That’s simple enough. They work for Taleb. He’s a colonel now in the Algerian Security Police. I’ve made enquiries.’

‘But how in the hell did he come back into the picture?’

‘Talif came to see me in Grenoble three weeks ago. It seems that about a month ago while working on the Marseilles docks, he was recognised by an Algerian merchant navy officer he’d known years before. He packed his bags at once and moved to Lyon where he got work on the night shift at the local market. When he got home one morning, he found Taleb waiting for him in his room. He told Talif that if he came back to Algeria with him and showed them where the plane had gone down, they’d give him ten per cent and a government job.’

‘And what did Talif do?’

‘Pretended to agree, then gave him the slip on the way to Marseilles and came to see me.’ She raised her hands and suddenly her face was flooded by the most glorious smile imaginable. ‘Oh, how can I put it to you. It seemed like a sign. Like something that was meant to be.’

I was completely puzzled. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Our hospital in Dacca was burned to the ground, Mr Nelson. We lost everything. We have willing hands, plenty of those, but now what we need more than anything else in the world is money’

I saw it all then, in that single, precise moment in time and stared at her in astonishment. ‘And you think the best way of raising it is to pay a quick visit by night to the Khufra Marshes.’

‘Exactly,’ she said, her eyes shining. ‘When Mr Jaeger was dying, just before the plane sank he gave me the exact bearing, made me repeat it to him. It’s burned into my brain until this very day’

‘What do the Sisters of Pity think of this little scheme?’

‘They know nothing about it. I was due some leave and I’m taking it. Talif agreed to help and we decided, between us, that Ibiza would be the most suitable base for operations. It’s only two hundred miles from here to Cape Djinet. I borrowed a little money from an old aunt in Dijon and Talif came on ahead of me to procure a suitable boat.’

‘You must be stark, staring, raving mad,’ I said.

‘Not at all. Talif wrote to tell me he had arranged for a boat and was negotiating with a diver. He suggested I join him this week and booked a hotel room for me.’

‘Let me get this straight,’ I said. ‘You actually intend to go with him?’

‘Naturally.’

The whole thing by then, of course, had assumed all the aspects of a privileged nightmare and I was aware of that curiously helpless feeling again where she was concerned.

I said, ‘All right, what about Redshirt and his pals last night.’

‘There was a note from Talif at the hotel when I got in yesterday. It asked me to meet him at the Mill at La Grande at nine o’clock. It seemed genuine enough. I went out there by taxi.’

‘And promptly found yourself in the bag.’

To my astonishment she said, ‘They were not responsible for their actions, those young men. They were all under the influence of drugs.’

‘Oh, I get it,’ I said. ‘I suppose I hit them too hard. Anyway, how can you be sure they weren’t just three fun-loving boys out for kicks?’

‘Because they had an argument about keeping me intact, as the one in the red shirt termed it, for Taleb.’

‘In other words, things just got out of hand?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘And Talif?’

‘Not a word. He gave me no address. Simply told me that he would contact me through the hotel.’

Which didn’t look too good for Talif.

I said, ‘So what are you going to do now?’

‘I don’t know. Look for him, I suppose.’ She hesitated, glanced at me rather shyly, then looked down at her hands. ‘It’s a great imposition I know, Mr Nelson, but I was wondering whether you might be persuaded to help me.’

‘To go into the Khufra Marshes?’ I demanded. ‘You must be joking.’

She held up a hand defensively. ‘Of course not. I simply want to find Talif, that’s all, and it occurred to me that with your local knowledge, you might be able to help.’

The face, framed by the white band of her hood, was as guileless as any child’s. I sighed heavily, got to my feet and gave her a hand up.

‘All right, Sister, I’ll find Talif for you. It should be simple enough. Algerians aren’t exactly thick on the ground in Ibiza. But that’s all - understood?’

‘Perfectly, dear friend,’ she said with that calm, radiant smile of hers, turned and led the way back to the jeep.

I followed a trifle reluctantly, I admit, but when it came right down to it, I didn’t really seem to have much choice - or did I?

The hotel she was staying at was decent enough. Little more than a pension really and it was certainly no tourist trap. Quiet and unpretentious. I could see why Talif had chosen it. There was no one behind the desk in the tiny entrance hall and when I rattled the brass handbell it sounded unnaturally loud in the quiet.

‘I tried to make some enquiries about Talif this morning,’ Sister Claire whispered. ‘But I didn’t get very far. The proprietor only seems to speak Spanish and half a dozen words of English.’

A door at the back opened and a fat, amiable man appeared in a straw hat and green baize apron. From the trowel in his hand it seemed a fair assumption that he had been gardening.

He removed his hat instantly, not for me, but for Sister Claire, a slightly anxious smile on his face. It seemed more than likely that the language difficulty had been a great worry to him.

‘Ah, senor,’ I said in Spanish. ‘Perhaps you could help us?’

The relief on his face was intense and he bobbed his head eagerly. ‘At your orders, senor.’

‘The good Sister is anxious to contact her friend. The one who booked the room for her. Unfortunately she has mislaid his address and as her time is strictly limited …’

‘Ah, the Arab, senor.’ He shrugged. ‘What can I say? He left no address with me.’

I turned to Sister Claire who waited anxiously, ‘It’s no go, I’m afraid.’

And then the proprietor added, ‘Of course, I have seen this man on many occasions, senor.’

‘And where would that be?’

‘Pepe’s place at the other end of the harbour by the breakwater. You know it, senor?’

‘My thanks.’

We went out into the heat of noon. There was a small cafe next to the hotel, tables and chairs spilling across the sidewalk.

‘Did he tell you anything?’

‘Only that Talif’s been in the habit of using a certain bar at the other end of the waterfront. I’ll go and see what I can dig up there.’

‘Can’t I come with you?’

I shook my head. ‘Not your style at all, Sister. The sort of place stevedores and sailors use. They’d run for the hills if a nun walked in. You have a coffee and admire the view.’

I steered her firmly towards a table under a large and colourful umbrella, snapped my fingers for a waiter and was away before she could argue.

She was on her second cup when I got back, the waiter hovering, anxiously a table to two away, for Ibizans, like all Spaniards, have enormous respect for anything to do with the Church.

She looked up eagerly. ‘Did you get anywhere?’

‘I think you could say that.’ I told the waiter to bring me a gin and tonic and sat down. ‘The man who owns the place, Pepe, had arranged to hire Talif a thirty-foot sea-going launch and he was trying to find him a diver.’