border that shortens the distance to Kuwait City.
The camels that Martin had asked for were waiting for them at a small farm outside the village, a rangy female in her prime, and her offspring, a cream-colored calf with a velvet muzzle and gentle eyes, still at the suck. She would grow up to become as foul-tempered as the rest of her genus, but not yet.
“Why the calf?” asked Low as they sat in the jeep and watched the animals in the corral.
“Cover story. If anyone asks, I’m taking her to the camel farms outside Sulaibiya for sale. The prices are better there.”
He slid out of the jeep and shuffled on sandaled feet to rouse the camel-drover, who dozed in the shade of his shack. For thirty minutes the two men squatted in the dust and haggled the price of the two beasts.
It never occurred to the drover, glancing at the dark face, the stained teeth, and the stubble, squatting in the dust in his dirty shift and his odor, that he was not talking to a trader of the Bedouin with money to spend on two good camels.
When the deal was settled, Martin paid up from a roll of Saudi riyals that he had taken from Low and held under one armpit for a while until they were soiled. Then he led the two camels a mile away and stopped when they were shielded from prying eyes by the sand dunes. Low caught up in the jeep.
He had sat a few hundred yards from the drover’s corral and watched. Though he knew the Arabian Peninsula well, he had never worked with Martin, and he was impressed. The man did not just pretend to be an Arab; when he had slipped from the jeep, he had simply become a Bedou in every line and gesture.
Though Low did not know it, the previous day in Kuwait two British engineers, seeking to escape, had left their apartment dressed in the white neck-to-floor Kuwaiti thob with the ghutra headdress on their heads. They got halfway to their car fifty feet away when a child called up from the gutter: “You may dress like an Arab, but you still walk like English.” The engineers went back to their flat and stayed there.
Sweating in the sun but out of sight of any who might be surprised at such labor being carried out in the heat of the day, the two SAS men transferred the gear into the baggage panniers that hung on either side of the she-camel. She was hunkered down on all fours but still protested at the extra weight, spitting and snarling at the men who worked on her.
The two hundred pounds of Semtex-H explosive went into one, each five-pound block wrapped in cloth, with some Hessian sacks of coffee beans on top in case any curious Iraqi soldier insisted on looking. The other pannier took the submachine guns, ammunition, detonators, time-pencils, and grenades, along with Martin’s small but powerful transceiver with its fold-away satellite dish and spare cadmium-nickel batteries. These too were topped with coffee bags.
When they were finished, Low asked:
“Anything more I can do?”
“No, that’s it, thanks. I’ll stay here till sundown. No need for you to wait.”
Low held out his hand.
“Sorry about the Brecons.”
Martin shook it.
“No sweat. I survived.”
Low laughed, a short bark.
“Yeah, that’s what we do. We fucking survive. Stay lucky, Mike.”
He drove away. The camel rolled an eye, belched, regurgitated some cud, and began to chew. The calf tried to get at her teats, failed, and lay down by her side.
Martin propped himself against the camel saddle, drew his keffiyeh around his face, and thought about the days to come. The desert would not be a problem; the bustle of occupied Kuwait City might be.
How tight were the controls, how tough the roadblocks, how astute the soldiers who manned them?
Century had offered to try and get him forged papers, but he had turned them down. The Iraqis might change the ID cards.
He was confident that the cover he had chosen was one of the best in the Arab world. The Bedouin come and go as they please. They offer no resistance to invading armies, for they have seen too many—Saracen and Turk, Crusader and Knight Templar, German and French, British and Egyptian, Israeli and Iraqi. They have survived them all because they stay out of all matters political and military.
Many regimes have tried to tame them, all without success. King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, decreeing that all his citizens should have houses, built a handsome village called Escan, equipped with all modern facilities—a swimming pool, toilets, baths, running water. Some Bedouin were rounded up and moved in.
They drank the pool (it looked like an oasis), crapped on the patio, played with the water faucets, and then moved out, explaining politely to their monarch that they preferred to sleep under the stars. Escan was cleaned up and used by the Americans during the Gulf crisis.
Martin knew that his real problem was his height. He was an inch under six feet, but most Bedouin are far shorter than that. Centuries of sickness and malnourishment have left most of them disease-ridden and stunted. Water in the desert is only for drinking, by man, goat, or camel; hence, Martin’s avoiding the bath. The glamour of desert living, he knew, is strictly for Westerners.
He had no identification papers, but that was not a problem. Several governments have tried to issue the Bedouin with ID papers. The tribesmen are usually delighted because they make such good toilet paper, better than a handful of gravel. For a policeman or soldier to insist on seeing a Bedou’s ID papers is a waste of time, and both parties know it. From the authorities’ point of view, the main thing is that the Bedouin cause no trouble. They would never dream of getting involved in any Kuwaiti resistance movement. Martin knew that; he hoped the Iraqis did, too.
He dozed until sundown, then mounted the camel. At his “hut hut hut,” she rose to her feet. Her baby suckled for a while, tethered behind her, and they set off at that ambling, rolling pace that seems to be very slow but covers an amazing amount of ground. The she-camel had been well fed and watered at the corral and would not tire for days.