The Hidden Oasis (70 page)

‘Now for the hard part,’ she called.

‘You have to be fucking joking!’

She ran through it with him, throwing constant glances to left and right as the gorge walls came to within ten metres of each other. He had to get his foot up onto the protruding rim of flint, she explained, and use that to lever himself up towards her outstretched hand. The manoeuvre she’d used back in the temple at Abydos had been crazy, but this was something else. And he wasn’t even a professional climber. There was no other option. It was either this or wait for the walls to knock him off, which they would in the next couple of minutes. Making sure he knew what he had to do, she adjusted her position and reached out an arm ready to catch him, stretching as far as she could.

‘Flin, you’ve only got one shot at this,’ she yelled. ‘So make sure you do it right.’

‘Well I wasn’t bloody planning on doing it wrong!’

Despite herself she smiled.

‘In your own time,’ she called. ‘Just make sure it’s soon.’

Rolling his eyes up towards her and then back down to fix the position of the flint, he mumbled a prayer even though he hadn’t seen the inside of a church for the best part of two decades and hoisted his foot onto the protrusion. A deep breath and he drove himself upwards, unleashing a wild, guttural yell as he released his grip on the crack and flung his hand towards Freya’s. She caught it, her palm clamping around his, his other hand coming up and seizing
her wrist, his body swinging back and forth like a clock pendulum, feet scrabbling on the cliff face. He was heavy, much heavier than she remembered from Abydos, and she could feel her grip on the ladder rung starting to slip, her shoulder to crack as though her entire arm was going to be ripped away. Somehow she managed to hold on as his feet flailed and after what seemed like hours but must have been only a matter of seconds he managed to jam first one toe and then the other into the rock crevice. Coming up straight, he steadied himself, taking most of the weight off her arm.

‘Climb up me!’ she cried. ‘Use your feet, get yourself up to the ladder. Come on, there’s no time!’

He started to do as she said, then stopped, teetering there on the rock face, one hand gripping hers, the other clasped around her forearm, his toes wedged into the crack, the gorge now only six or seven metres wide. Dust spewed up from below, wafting around them.

‘There’s no time!’ she cried, coughing. ‘Come on, Flin, climb up me. You’ve done the hard part.’

All his furious energy of a few moments earlier seemed to have vanished. He just clung there staring up at her, eyes glued to hers, a curious expression on his face – part anxiety, part determination.

‘Come on!’ she screamed. ‘What’s wrong with you? We’ve got to get out! There’s no—’

‘It was me,’ he shouted.

‘What?’

‘It was me, Freya. I killed Alex.’

She froze, her windpipe tightening as though she was being throttled.

‘It was me who injected her. Molly and Girgis had nothing to do with it. It was me, Freya. I killed her.’

Her mouth was opening and closing, no words coming out.

‘I didn’t want to,’ he cried. ‘Please believe me: it was the last thing on God’s earth I wanted to do. But she begged me. Pleaded. She’d lost her legs, her arm, her sight was failing, her hearing – she knew it was only going to get worse, wanted to at least have some control. I couldn’t refuse her. Please try to understand. It broke my heart but I couldn’t refuse her.’

The gorge walls were now less than four metres apart, towering shadows looming through the dust clouds. Neither of them even noticed. Freya hung from the ladder clasping his hand, Flin balanced on the crevice clutching her arm, both oblivious to everything around them, both locked together in a dimension of their own.

‘She said she loved you.’ His voice was hoarse, barely audible. ‘They were her last words. We sat out on her veranda, we watched the sunset, I injected her with morphine, I held her hand. And just as she went she said your name. Said she loved you. I couldn’t
not
tell you, Freya. Do you see that? I couldn’t
not
tell you. She loved you so much.’

He held her gaze, his eyes bright. Thoughts tumbled through Freya’s head, emotions pulled at her. Everything seemed to spin and convulse as if her inner world had come to reflect the wider chaos all around. At the heart of it, however, holding firm amidst the rush of shock and pain and grief, was a single solid kernel of certainty: she would have done exactly the same if Alex had asked her. And she also
knew – from the look in his eyes, the tone of his voice, everything she had seen and learnt of him these last few days – that Flin had done what he had done out of kindness, out of compassion, out of love for her sister, and she could neither blame nor condemn him for it. On the contrary, in a curious way she felt in his debt. He had taken that burden onto himself. He had been there for Alex in her hour of need when she, her own sister, so palpably hadn’t.

All of this flashed through Freya’s mind in a matter of seconds, time seeming to slow and expand to accommodate her thoughts. Then, with a nod, she squeezed his hand as if to say: ‘I understand. Now let’s get the hell out of here,’ and started to drag him up the cliff towards her. For a moment his face came right up against hers and their eyes met, both of them giving a faint smile of understanding, hardly visible through the choking curtain of grit. And then he was clambering up and over her and onto the bottom of the ladder, the sides of the gorge now practically touching them.

‘Go!’ she screamed. ‘Keep going!’

‘You first!’

‘Don’t be so fucking English! Go! I’m right behind.’

She swung her free arm and gave him a hard slap on the backside to get him moving. Once he was on his way, she pulled herself back onto the ladder and followed him up, climbing as fast as she could, her hands hitting each successive rung just as Flin’s feet left it, the steps trembling so fiercely she didn’t know how they could possibly stay attached to the rock face. The dust began to clear slightly and she caught a glimpse of Said above, leaning down with his arm outstretched, waving them on. They drove
themselves towards him, coughing and choking, the walls clamping ever tighter around them, now barely a metre and a half from each other. Up and up until finally Flin reached the top and Said grabbed his T-shirt and dragged him out. Freya was right behind. As the cliffs touched her shoulders and the sides of the ladder, the steps starting to warp and buckle beneath her feet, the wood to crack and splinter, she found herself seized beneath the armpits and hoisted up into the clean, clear, wonderfully open air on top of the Gilf.

Gasping for breath, they all backed away, watching as the last few centimetres of the gorge closed up. What less than an hour ago had been a broad valley filled with trees and buildings and waterfalls was now reduced to a cleft little more than forty centimetres across, slashes of red light still streaking upwards from deep within it. Now it was just thirty, now twenty, now ten, the crash of grinding rock diminishing all the time, giving way to a low grating rumble.

Even as the gorge sealed itself, there was one final dramatic encore. From deep within the ground there echoed a booming roar – a lion with stone lungs was how Freya would later describe it – and a brilliant blade of crimson light erupted from the last of the crack, the force of it throwing them backwards, slamming them to the ground.

‘Don’t look at it,’ cried Flin, grasping Freya’s shoulder and rolling her over, pressing her face into the sand. ‘Close your eyes! Both of you!’

Previously the lightning bolts had come and gone, flaring briefly before fading again, like shooting stars. This time the light endured, a gargantuan scalpel of fire that climbed and expanded, slowly forcing the walls of the gorge apart again as it formed into a towering obelisk of flame. It
stood there, swaying slightly, the roar growing ever louder, Freya experiencing the curious sensation of being burnt without actually feeling any pain or discomfort. Then, as if it had proved its point, the light receded, withdrawing into the ground like a dying flame. There came one last stony growl and with that the gorge slammed shut and this time it remained closed. Silence.

For a moment Freya lay there, then blinked her eyes open. She saw orange and thought for a confused instant that her retina had been damaged before realizing she was looking into the face of a flower: a delicate orange bloom that had somehow found purchase amid the barrenness all around.

The enclosed flower is a Sahara Orchid. It is, I am told, very rare. Treasure it, and think of me.

She smiled and, reaching out, clasped Flin’s hand, knowing it was all going to be OK.

Later, once they had got back to their feet, and brushed themselves down, and gulped in the clean air, and spent a while vainly searching for any trace of the Hidden Oasis, the three of them started walking across the top of the Gilf Kebir, Said leading.

The sun, inexplicably, seemed to have shifted backwards in the sky. When they had fled the gorge it had been well down in the west. Now it was almost directly overhead, bringing it back into synch with Flin’s watch, which read 2.16 p.m. They had been inside the oasis for only six hours. It felt like a lifetime.

They trooped towards the north, then turned into a narrow, sand-clogged gully that sloped away eastwards, carrying them gently back down onto the surface of the desert.

‘Very safe,’ said Said, slapping his hands against the rock walls to either side. ‘No close shut.’

‘I’m extremely pleased to hear it,’ said Flin.

At the bottom end the gully opened out into a small bay in the Gilf’s eastern face, where Zahir’s Land Cruiser stood parked in the shade beneath a low, umbrella-like overhang. They shared water, and talked about Zahir, and Said produced a first aid box and patched up Flin’s various cuts and wounds – ‘No be woman,’ he muttered disapprovingly as the Englishman groaned and winced. Then they climbed into the 4x4 and set off into the desert, following the cliff-line south, back towards the rock tower and the doorway in the sand.

Except that neither was there any more. They found the microlight easily enough, a garish pink blob that stuck out from the surrounding desert like a paint-spot on a bare sheet of paper. But the curving sickle of black stone had collapsed and broken into pieces, all that was left of it a featureless scatter of glassy rock that gave no hint of its former shape. And where the Mouth of Osiris should have been there was nothing, just flat, empty sand, perfectly level, perfectly blank. Even the rectangular opening in the rock face had gone, that particular portion of cliff seeming to have disintegrated and slid away, reduced to a jumbled heap of boulders piled up at the base of the wall. The only thing they found, the one indication that anything unusual had happened here was a thin triangle of metal that
protruded above the sand like a small black fin. It took them a moment to realize that it was the tip of a helicopter rotor blade. Not far away lay a pair of mirrored sunglasses, one of the lenses cracked.

‘It’s like it was all a dream,’ murmured Freya.

‘I can assure you it wasn’t,’ grunted Flin, touching a hand to his cut lip.

‘No be woman,’ muttered Said.

They drove back out to the microlight, Said waiting in the 4x4 while Flin climbed into the pod and checked the engine. It seemed to be working fine and, leaving it to idle, he climbed out and walked back to the Land Cruiser. Freya stood beside him.

‘Are you sure you’ll be OK, Said?’ Flin asked, leaning down to the open driver window. ‘It’s a long way back to Dakhla.’

‘I Bedouin. This desert. Of course OK. Stupid question.’

It was barely noticeable, no more than the faintest twitch of the lips, but he was definitely smiling. Freya reached in and touched his arm.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘It sounds so inadequate after everything you and your brother have done for me. For both of us. But thank you.’

Said just gave a slight nod of the head and, leaning forward, turned the ignition key and engaged the gears, gunning the engine.

‘When you come in Dakhla you come my house,’ he said, looking up at her. ‘You drink tea. Yes?’

‘I’d love to come to your house and drink tea,’ said Freya. ‘It would be an honour.’

He gave another nod, raised a hand in farewell and
moved off across the sands, tooting the horn as he gained speed. They watched him go, staring after him until the vehicle was no more than a distant white smudge bobbing its way across the dunes, then turned and walked back to the microlight. Flin bent down and picked up a small lump of what had once been the curving rock tower.

‘Souvenir,’ he said, handing it to Freya. ‘A little keepsake of your first visit to Egypt.’

She laughed.

‘I’ll treasure it.’

They refilled Miss Piggy’s tank, donned their helmets, climbed into the pod and rode out onto the sand flat on which they’d landed the previous night. Flin ran them back and forth for a while to get the oil temperature up, then increased the revs, eased the control bar forward and lifted them into the air, circling and gaining height. The Gilf’s eastern face reared to one side; an endless sea of yellow desert stretched off to the other.