The Hidden Oasis Read Online Free PDF Page B

more of a disaster than it already is.’
    He picked up his papers and swept from the room, followed by the rest of the group. The woman alone remained, one hand held at her neck, the other reaching up to the map.
    ‘Gilf Kebir,’ she murmured, touching a finger to the paper, holding it there a moment before placing her foot over the lamp’s On-Off button. Pressing down with the toe of her shoe, she plunged the room into darkness.

F OUR MONTHS LATER , P ARIS
    They were waiting for Kanunin in his hotel suite when he got back from the nightclub. The moment he steppedthrough the door they took out his bodyguard with a single, silenced shot to the temple and punched him to the floor, his ankle-length coat tangling around him in a swirl of black leather. One of the hookers started screaming and they shot her as well, a 9mm dumdum into her right ear, the entire left side of her head exploding away like a shattered eggshell. Waving a pistol at her companion to indicate that if she said a word the same would happen to her, they forced Kanunin onto his belly and yanked his head back so that he was staring up at the ceiling. He didn’t bother to struggle, knew who they were, knew it was pointless.
    ‘Just get on with it,’ he coughed.
    He closed his eyes and waited for the bullet. Instead, there was a rustle of paper followed by the feel of something – lots of things – pattering down onto his face. His eyes flicked open again. Above him hovered the mouth of a paper bag from which was dribbling a steady stream of pea-sized steel ball-bearings.
    ‘What the—’
    His head was forced back further as a knee pressed into the base of his spine, huge hands clasping vice-like around his forehead and temples.
    ‘Mr Girgis invites you to dine with him.’
    Other hands clawed at his mouth, prising apart his jaws, yanking them open, the bag coming closer to his face so that the ball-bearings dribbled directly down into his mouth, choking him. He bucked and writhed, his screams no more than a muted gurgle, but the hands held him tight and the pouring continued, on and on until the bag was empty and his jerking had grown weaker and eventually stopped altogether. They dropped his body on the floor, steeltrickling from between his bloodied lips, put a bullet through his head just to be certain and, without even glancing at the girl hunched against the wall, left. They were already speeding away into the dawn traffic when the hotel suddenly echoed to the crazed soprano of her screaming.

T HE WESTERN DESERT, BETWEEN THE G ILF K EBIR AND D AKHLA O ASIS – THE PRESENT
    They were the last Bedouin still making the great journey between Kufra and Dakhla, a 1,400-kilometre round trip through the empty desert. Using only camels for transport, they carried palm oil, embroideries, and silver and leather-work on the way out, and returned with dates, dried mulberries, cigarettes and Coca-Cola.
    It made no economic sense, such a journey, but then it was not about economics. Rather, it was about tradition, keeping alive the old ways, following the ancient caravan routes that their fathers had followed, and their fathers before them, and their fathers before them, suviving where no one else could survive, navigating where no one else could navigate. They were tough people, proud, Kufra Bedouin, Sanusi, descendants of the Banu Sulaim. The desert was their home, travelling through it their life. Even if it did make no economic sense.
    This particular trip had been hard even by the harsh standards of the Sahara, where no journey is ever easy. From Kufra, the trek south-east to the Gilf Kebir and through theal-Aqaba gap – the direct route east would have taken them into the Great Sand Sea which even the Bedouin dared not cross – had passed off uneventfully.
    Then, at the eastern end of the gap, they had discovered that the artesian well at which they would normally have filled their water-skins had dried up, leaving supplies dangerously tight for the