"You're forgetting," said Massarde, trying to remain calm, "the French engineers and scientists I contracted to build the project and threw into Tebezza. Once they reach safety, they will spread the word of their abduction and imprisonment. Even more damaging, they will expose our illegal waste dumping operation. Massarde Enterprises will be attacked on all fronts, and I will face criminal charges in every country I have an office or project."
"None will live to give evidence," Yerli said as if it was a foregone conclusion.
"What is the next step?" Massarde asked.
"Kazim's aerial reconnaissance and motor patrols can find no indication of their crossing into Algeria. That means they're still in Mali, staying undercover and awaiting rescue."
"Which Kazim's forces will stop."
"Of course."
"Could they have headed west for Mauritania?"
Yerli shook his head to himself. "Not with over 1000 kilometers between them and the first village with water. Also, they couldn't possibly have carried enough fuel for that distance."
"They must be stopped, Ismail," said Massarde without concealing a note of desperation. "They must be exterminated."
"And they shall be," Yerli promised. "I vow to you, they will not get out of Mali. Every last one of them will be hunted down. They may fool Kazim, but they won't fool me."
El Haj Ali sat in the sand under the shade of his camel and waited for a train to pass by. He had walked and ridden over 200 kilometers from his village of Araouane to see the wonder of a railroad, described to him by a passing Britisher who was leading a group of tourists across the desert.
Just past his fourteenth birthday, Ali's father had given him permission to take one of the family's two camels, a superb white animal, and travel north to the shining rails and witness the great steel monster with his own eyes. Though he had seen automobiles and distant aircraft in the sky, other wonders such as cameras, radios, and television sets were a mystery to him. But to actually see and perhaps touch a locomotive would make him the envy of every boy and girl in his village.
He drank tea and sucked on boiled sweets as he waited. After three hours and no sign of an approaching train, he mounted his camel and set off along the tracks toward the Fort Foureau project so he could tell his family about the immense buildings that rose out of the desert.
As he passed the long-abandoned Foreign Legion fort, surrounded by high walls, isolated and lonely, he turned off the rails and approached the gate out of curiosity. The big, sun-bleached doors were shut tight. He jumped from his camel and led it around the fort's walls looking for another opening to gain entrance inside, but finding only solid mud and stone, he gave up and walked back toward the railroad.
He looked to the west, intrigued with the way the silver rails strung out far into the distance and curled under the heat waves rising from the sun-baked sands. His eye caught something as he stood on the ties and stared. A speck appeared and floated through the heat waves. It enlarged and came toward him. The great steel monster, he thought with excitement.
But as the object drew closer, he could see it was too small for a locomotive. Then he discerned two men riding on it as if it was an open automobile driving on the rails. Ali moved off the track bed and stood next to his camel as the motor cart carrying two section hands who were inspecting the track rolled to a stop in front of him.
One was a white foreigner, the other, a dark-skinned Moor, greeted him. "Sallam al laikum."
"Al laikum el sallam, " Ali replied.
"Where do you come from, boy?" asked the Moor in the Berber language of the Tuareg.
"From Araouane to see the steel monster."
"You've come a long way."
"The trip was easy," Ali boasted.
"You have a fine
camel."
"My father loaned me his best."
The Moor looked at a gold wristwatch. "You don't have long to wait. The train from Mauritania is due in about forty-five minutes."
"Thank you. I will wait," said Ali.
"See anything interesting inside the old fort?"
Ali shook his head. "I could not enter. The gates are locked."
The two section men exchanged quizzical glances and conversed in French for a few moments.