Page 13 of Never

‘You’re right,’ Yusuf said to his wife. ‘I’m just saying there’s danger everywhere. We’ll die here if we don’t leave.’

Yusuf was being dismissive, which suited Kiah’s purpose. She reinforced his words by saying: ‘We’d be safer together, the five of us.’

‘Of course,’ said Yusuf. ‘I will take care of everybody.’

That was not what Kiah had meant, but she did not contradict him. ‘Exactly,’ she said.

He said: ‘I have heard that in Three Palms there is a man called Hakim.’ Three Palms was a small town ten miles away. ‘They say Hakim can take people all the way to Italy.’

Kiah’s pulse quickened. She had not known about Hakim. This news meant that escape could be closer than she had imagined. The prospect suddenly became more real – and more frightening. She said: ‘The white woman I met told me you can easily go from Italy to France.’

Azra’s baby, Danna, had drunk enough. Azra wiped the child’s chin with her sleeve and set her on her feet. Danna toddled to Naji and the two began to play side by side. Azra picked up a small jar of oil and rubbed a little on her nipples, then adjusted the bodice of her dress. She said: ‘How much money does this Hakim want?’

Yusuf said: ‘The usual price is two thousand American dollars.’

‘Per person, or per family?’ Azra asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘And do you have to pay for babies?’

‘It probably depends on whether they’re big enough to need a seat.’

Kiah scorned arguments without facts. ‘I will go to Three Palms and ask him,’ she said impatiently. In any case, she wanted to see Hakim with her own eyes, speak to him, and get a sense of what kind of man he was. She could walk ten miles there and ten miles back in a day.

Azra said: ‘Leave Naji with me. You can’t carry him all that way.’

Kiah thought she probably could, if she had to, but she said: ‘Thank you. That would be a great help.’ She and Azra often babysat one another’s children. Naji loved coming here. He liked to watch what Danna did and to imitate her.

Yusuf said brightly: ‘Now that you’ve walked this far, you might as well spend the night with us, and get an early start.’

It was a sensible idea, but Yusuf was a little too keen on sleeping in the same room as Kiah, and she saw a frown briefly cross Azra’s face. ‘No, thank you, I need to go home,’ she said tactfully. ‘But I’ll bring Naji first thing in the morning.’ She got up and lifted her son. ‘Thank you for the milk,’ she said. ‘God be with you until tomorrow.’

***

Filling-station stops took longer in Chad than in the States. People were not in such a hurry to get in and out and back on the road. They checked their tyres, put oil in their engines, and topped up their radiators. They needed to be cautious: you could wait days for roadside recovery. A gas station was also a social place. Drivers talked to the proprietor and to one another, exchanging news about roadblocks, military convoys, jihadi bandits and sandstorms.

Abdul and Tamara had agreed a rendezvous on the road between N’Djamena and Lake Chad. Abdul wanted to talk to her a second time before he headed into the desert and he preferred not to use phones or messaging if he could avoid it.

He reached the gas station ahead of her, and sold a whole box of Cleopatras to the owner. He had the hood of his car up, and was putting water into the windscreen-washer reservoir, when another car pulled in. A local man was driving it but Tamara was the passenger. In this country embassy staff never travelled alone, especially if they were women.

At first sight she might have been taken for a local woman, Abdul thought as she got out of the car. She had dark hair and eyes, and she wore a long-sleeved dress over trousers plus a headscarf. However, a careful observer would know she was American by the confident way she walked, the level gaze she directed at him, and the way she addressed him as an equal.

Abdul smiled. She was attractive and charming. His interest in her was not romantic – he had been soured on romance a couple of years ago and he had not yet got over it – but he liked her joie de vivre.

He looked around. The office was a mud-brick hut where the proprietor sold food and water. A pickup truck was just leaving. There was no one else.

All the same, he and Tamara played safe and pretended not to know each other. She stood with her back to him as her driver filled his tank. She said quietly: ‘Yesterday we raided the encampment you discovered in Niger. The military men are triumphant: they destroyed the camp, captured tons of weaponry, and took prisoners for interrogation.’

‘But did they capture al-Farabi?’

‘No.’

‘So the camp wasn’t Hufra.’

‘The prisoners call it al-Bustan.’

‘The Garden,’ Abdul translated.