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Eventually he spoke: ‘When the shooting started—’

‘You picked up that little girl.’

He smiled. ‘The minx. She bit me, you know.’ He looked at his hand. ‘No blood, but look at that bruise!’

She took his hand and kissed the bruise. ‘You poor thing.’

‘This is nothing, but I did think I might die. And then I thought: I wish I’d spent more time with Tamara.’

She stared at him. ‘That was your, like, dying thought.’

‘Yes.’

‘On the way there,’ she said, ‘that long trip across the desert in the helicopter, I was thinking about us, and I had a similar feeling. I just didn’t want to be apart from you ever again.’

‘So we both feel the same.’

‘I knew we would.’

‘But what do we do about it?’

‘That’s the big question.’

‘I’ve been thinking about it. You’re committed to the CIA. I don’t feel that way about the DGSE. I’ve enjoyed working in intelligence, and boy, have I learned a lot, but I have no ambition to rise to the top. I’ve served my country for ten years, and I’d like to move into the family business now, and maybe take charge of it when my mother wants to retire. I love fashion and luxury, and we French are so good at it. But that means living in Paris.’

‘I figured that out.’

‘If the Agency would transfer you, would you move to Paris with me?’

‘Yes,’ said Tamara. ‘In a heartbeat.’

CHAPTER 16

The temperature rose mercilessly as the bus groaned slowly across the desert. Kiah had not realized that her old home, on the shore of Lake Chad, was one of the cooler areas of her country. She had always imagined that the whole of Chad was the same, and she was unpleasantly surprised to discover that the sparsely inhabited north was hotter. At the start of the journey she had been bothered by the open glassless windows, which let in an irritating dusty breeze; but now, sweaty and uncomfortable with Naji on her lap, she was glad of any wind, even if it was hot and gritty.

Naji was fidgety and cranky. ‘Want leben,’ he kept saying, but Kiah had no rice and no buttermilk and no way of cooking anything. She put him to her nipple, but he quickly became dissatisfied. She suspected that her breast milk was becoming thin because she herself was hungry. The food Hakim had promised was all too often just water and stale bread, and not much bread. The ‘luxuries’ for which he charged extra included blankets, soap, and any food other than bread or porridge. Was there anything worse for a mother than to know that she cannot feed her hungry child?

Abdul glanced across at Naji. Kiah was not as embarrassed as she should have been at him seeing her breast. After more than two weeks of sitting side by side all day, every day, a weary intimacy had set in.

Now he spoke to Naji. ‘There was once a man called Samson, and he was the strongest man in the whole wide world,’ he said.

Naji stopped grizzling and went quiet.

‘One day Samson was walking in the desert when, suddenly, he heard a lion roar nearby – really near.’

Naji put his thumb in his mouth and snuggled up to Kiah, at the same time staring at Abdul with big eyes.

Abdul was everyone’s friend, Kiah had found. All the passengers liked him. He often made them laugh. Kiah was not surprised: she had first seen him as the vendor of cigarettes, joking with the men and flirting with the women, and she had recalled that the Lebanese were said to be good businessmen. At the first town where the bus stopped for a night, Abdul had gone to an open-air bar. Kiah went to the same place, with Esma and her parents-in-law, just for a change of scene. She had seen Abdul playing cards, not winning or losing much. He had a bottle of beer in his hand, though he never seemed to finish it. Most of all he talked to people, apparently inconsequential chatter, but later she realized he had found out how many wives the men had and which shopkeepers were dishonest and who they were all frightened of. Thereafter it was similar at every town or village.

Yet she felt sure this was an act. When not making friends with everyone he could be withdrawn, aloof, even depressed, like a man with worries in his life and sorrows in his past. This had at first led her to think he disliked her. In time she started to believe he had two personalities. And then, beneath all that, there was a third man, one who would take the trouble to soothe Naji by telling a story that a two-year-old boy would understand and like.

The bus was following tracks that were hardly marked and often invisible to Kiah. Most of the desert consisted of flat, hard rock with a thin layer of sand, an adequate driving surface at low speeds. Every now and again a discarded Coca-Cola can or a ruined tyre confirmed that they were in fact following the road, and not lost in the wilderness.

Every village was an oasis: people could not live without water. Each little settlement had an underground lake, often showing itself on the surface as a small pond or a well. Sometimes they dried up, like Lake Chad; and then the people had to go somewhere else, as Kiah was doing.

One night there was nowhere to stop, and they all slept in their seats on the bus until the morning sun woke them.

Early in the trip some of the men had pestered Kiah. It always happened in the evenings, after dark, when all the passengers were lying on the floor of some house, or in a courtyard – on mattresses, if they were lucky. One night one of the men climbed on top of her. She fought him off silently, knowing that if she screamed, or humiliated the man in any other way, his friends would take revenge on her, and she would be accused of being a whore. But he was too strong for her, and he managed to pull aside her blanket. Then, suddenly, he jerked away, and she realized that someone strong had pulled him off her. In the starlight she saw that Abdul had the man pinned to the ground with one hand gripping his neck, preventing him from making any noise or, perhaps, even breathing. She heard Abdul whisper: ‘Leave her alone or I will kill you. Do you understand? I will kill you.’ Then he was gone. The man lay gasping for breath for a minute then crept away. She was not even sure who it was.