Page 75 of Never

Boarding took an hour. Abdul climbed the steps last, his cheap leather holdall in his hand.

The bus had ten rows of seats, four to a row, two each side of the aisle. It was crowded, but the front row was empty. However, there was a bag on each pair of seats, and a man in the row behind said: ‘The guards are sitting there. It seems they need two seats each.’

Abdul shrugged and looked down the coach. One seat was left. It was next to Kiah.

He realized that no one wanted to sit next to the baby, who would undoubtedly fidget, cry and vomit all the way to Tripoli.

Abdul put his bag in the overhead rack and sat next to Kiah.

Hakim got into the driving seat, the guards boarded, and the bus headed north out of town.

The smashed-out windows let in a cooling breeze as the vehicle picked up speed. With forty people on board they needed ventilation. But it was going to be uncomfortable in a sandstorm.

After an hour he saw in the distance what looked like a small American town, a sprawl of assorted buildings including several towers, and he realized he was looking at the oil refinery at Djermaya, with its smoking chimneys, distillation columns and squat white storage tanks. It was Chad’s first refinery, and it had been built by the Chinese as part of their deal to exploit the country’s oil. The government had earned billions in royalties from the deal, but none of the money had found its way to the destitute people on the shores of Lake Chad.

Ahead was mainly desert.

Most of Chad’s population lived in the south, around Lake Chad and N’Djamena. At the far end of the journey, most of the towns of Libya were concentrated to the north, on the Mediterranean coast. In between these two population centres were a thousand miles of desert. There were a few made-up roads, including the Trans-Sahara Highway, but this bus with its contraband cargo and illegal migrants would not be taking the main routes. It would follow little-used tracks in the sand, doing twenty miles per hour, from one small oasis to the next, often seeing no other vehicle from dawn to dusk.

Kiah’s child was fascinated by Abdul. He stared until Abdul looked at him, when he quickly hid his face. Gradually, he decided that Abdul was harmless, and the looking and hiding became a game.

Abdul sighed. He could not be sulkily silent for a thousand miles. He gave in and said: ‘Hello, Naji.’

Kiah said: ‘You remembered his name!’ And she smiled.

Her smile reminded him of someone else.

***

He was working at Langley, the CIA headquarters on the outskirts of Washington DC. He was using his middle name, John, for he had found that when he called himself Abdul, he had to tell his life story to every white person he met.

He had been with the Agency for a year, and all he had done, apart from training, was to read Arabic newspapers and write summaries in English of any reports that touched on foreign policy, defence or espionage. At first he had written too much, but he had soon developed a sense of what his bosses wanted, and now he was getting bored.

He had met Annabelle Sorrentino at a party in a Washington apartment. She was tall, though not as tall as Abdul, and athletic: she worked out and ran marathons. She was also strikingly beautiful. She worked at the State Department, and they had talked about the Arab world, which interested them both. Abdul had quickly realized that she was very smart. But what he liked best was her smile.

As she was leaving he had asked for her phone number and she had given it to him.

They dated, then they slept together, and he discovered that she was wild in bed. Within a few weeks he knew that he wanted to marry her.

After six months of spending most nights together, either in his studio or her apartment, they decided to move together to a larger home. They found a beautiful place, but they could not afford the deposit. However, Annabelle said she would borrow from her parents. It turned out that her father was the millionaire owner of Sorrentino’s, a small chain of upmarket retail stores selling expensive wine, prestige brands of spirits and specialty olive oils.

Tony and Lena Sorrentino wanted to meet ‘John’.

They lived in a high apartment building on a gated site at Miami Beach. Annabelle and Abdul flew there on a Saturday and arrived in time for dinner. They were given separate rooms. Annabelle said: ‘We can sleep together – this is just for the benefit of the staff.’

Lena Sorrentino looked shocked when she saw Abdul, and he realized at that moment that Annabelle had not told her parents that he was dark skinned.

‘So, John,’ said Tony over the clams, ‘tell us about your background.’

‘I was born in Beirut—’

‘So, an immigrant.’

‘Yes – like the original Mr Sorrentino, I imagine. He must have come from Sorrento, I suppose.’

Tony forced a smile. He was undoubtedly thinking,Yeah, but we’re white. He said: ‘In this country we’re all immigrants, I guess. Why did your family leave Beirut?’

‘If you’d been born in Beirut, you’d want to leave, too.’