At last Hakim appeared, slouching along the street in his grubby Western sports clothes. He ignored the people waiting for him. He unlocked the side door of the garage, went in, and closed the door behind him. A few minutes later the up-and-over door opened and the bus was driven out.
The two jihadis came out after it, walking with a swagger, their assault rifles slung over their shoulders, staring hard at people who quickly looked away. Abdul wondered what the passengers made of those two obvious terrorists. Only he knew that the bus contained millions of dollars’ worth of cocaine. Did the others believe the jihadis were there to protect them? Perhaps they shrugged it off as a mystery.
Hakim got out of the bus and opened the passenger door, and the crowd surged forward.
Hakim shouted: ‘There is no place for luggage except the overhead rack. One bag per person. No exceptions, no arguments.’
There were groans and shouts of indignation from the crowd, but the guards came and stood either side of Hakim and the protests faded away.
Hakim said: ‘Get your money out now. One thousand American, one thousand Euros, or the equivalent. Pay me, then you can get on the bus.’
Some fought to be first aboard. Abdul did not join the crush; he would board last. Other passengers were trying to cram the contents of two suitcases into one. A few were hugging and kissing their weeping relatives. Abdul hung back.
He smelled cinnamon and turmeric, and found Kiah at his side. She said: ‘After I talked to you, I spoke to Hakim, and he said I had to pay the whole amount before leaving. Now he’s asking everyone for half, as you said. Do you think he will still try to make me pay it all?’
Abdul would have liked to say something reassuring, but he held his tongue and gave an indifferent shrug.
‘I’m going to offer him a thousand,’ she said. She joined the crush, with her child on her hip.
Eventually, he saw her hand Hakim the money. He took it, counted it, pocketed it, and waved her aboard, all without speaking or even looking at her face. Clearly the demand for the full fare up front had been a try-on, an attempt to exploit a woman alone, quickly abandoned when the woman turned out not to be so easy to push around.
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.