For some reason, Pauline did not want Gerry to know what she had realized. ‘So, you had a good time,’ she said brightly.
‘I sure did.’
‘I’m so glad.’
Gerry took his suitcase into the Master Bedroom. Pauline knelt on the polished wood floor and began to help Pippa with her clothes, but her mind was elsewhere. Gerry’s fling with Ms Judd might be a passing thing, a one-night stand. All the same, she asked herself if it was her fault. She had been sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom more often. Had she become indifferent to sex? But Gerry himself had never been very demanding. Surely that was not the issue.
Cy came in with a lipstick in his hand. ‘This was in the First Gentleman’s laundry,’ he said. ‘Must have dropped in there somehow.’ He offered it to Pippa.
Pippa said: ‘I don’t use that stuff.’
Pauline stared at the little gold-coloured tube as if it was a gun.
It was a colour she never wore and a brand she did not use.
After a moment she pulled herself together. Pippa must not suspect. She took the lipstick from Cyrus’s outstretched hand. ‘Oh, thanks,’ she said.
Then she quickly dropped it into the pocket of her jacket.
CHAPTER 26
Men did not live long in the mining camp. Women did better, not having to work in the pit, but a man died every few days. Some just dropped where they stood, victims of the heat and the back-breaking toil. Others were shot for disobeying the rules. There were accidents: a rock falling on a sandalled foot, a hammer slipping from a sweaty grasp, a sharp-edged shard flying through the air and slicing into flesh. Two of the women happened to have some nursing experience, but they had no drugs or sterile dressings, not even a Band-Aid, and anything more than a minor wound could be fatal.
A dead man would remain where he lay until the end of the working day, whereupon the backhoe would be driven out into an area of gravelly sand to dig a grave alongside many others. The man’s co-workers were left to carry out any funeral rites if they wished or, if not, to leave the grave unmarked and the man unremembered.
The guards showed no concern. Abdul assumed they were confident that more slaves would soon arrive to replace the dead.
He had to escape. Otherwise he would end up in that desert graveyard.
Within twenty-four hours of arriving, Abdul had become convinced that the mine was run by Islamic State. It was obviously unlicensed but certainly not informal. The people managing the place were slavers and murderers, but they were also highly competent. There was only one criminal enterprise in North Africa that could achieve this level of organization, and that was ISGS.
Abdul was desperate to flee but he spent several more days gathering crucial data. He calculated the number of jihadis living in the compound, estimated how many rifles they had in total, and guessed at what other armaments they possessed – the shrouded vehicles in the compound looked to him as if they might even be missile launchers.
He discreetly took photographs with his phone, not the cheap one in his pocket but the highly sophisticated device hidden in the sole of his boot, which still had power remaining. He put all the numbers into a document ready to be sent to Tamara as soon as he reached a place where there was connectivity.
He spent a long time thinking about how to escape.
His first decision was not to take Kiah and Naji with him. They would slow him down, perhaps fatally. It would be difficult enough alone. And if he was caught, he would be killed, and they would be too, if they were with him. They were better off waiting here for the rescue team that Tamara would dispatch as soon as she got Abdul’s message.
His yearning for his own freedom was only part of what drove him. He also longed to bring about the destruction of this evil place, to see the guards arrested and the weapons confiscated and the buildings flattened until the whole area went back to being barren desert.
Again and again he thought about just walking away, again and again he rejected the idea. He could navigate by the sun and stars, so he could head north and avoid the danger of going around in a circle, but he did not know where the nearest oasis was. Riding in Hakim’s bus had taught him that it was even difficult to see the road at times. He had no map, and probably there was no map in existence that showed the small oasis villages that saved the lives of people travelling on foot or by camel. All that, and he would be carrying a heavy container of water under the desert sun. The chances of survival were just too poor.
He studied the vehicles going in and out of the camp. Observation was not easy, for he worked in the pit twelve hours every day, and the guards would notice anything more than a glance at passing vehicles. But he could recognize the ones that called regularly. Tankers brought water and gasoline, refrigerated trucks supplied food to the kitchens, pickup trucks left with gold – always accompanied by two guards with rifles – and came back with sundry supplies: blankets, soap and gas for the kitchen fires.