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Page 53.

The truck rode high on its rear springs, looking oddly insectlike. The front smelled of spilled gasoline and balled up oily rags on the floor. The floor mats were gone. Tim spotted a hand-sized hole under which the roadway spun past.

“Keep your feet away from there. It’s rusted through,” Willi said. “These French. Why can’t they be like Germans and fix things? I’d never fly on a French airline. I’d be afraid to fall through with my seat.”

They raced over dark roads among shadowy houses from which occasional small patches of lantern light flickered, or now and then an open hearth gone into embers for the night.

Several clustered, broken columns flew past. “French?” Tim asked.

“Roman,” Willi said. “Two thousand years old. They used to send expeditions into the interior from here to hunt exotic animals for the Colosseum.”

“I had a run-in with some lions on the coast.”

“Ah yes, the old Barbary lions. Thought to be extinct, but a few have come back with all the confusion of war. They aren’t pure breeds, but mixed with various other subtypes.”

“You are a hunter?”

“I was a Classics student,” Willi said simply. “I had aims of going into the pulpit as a Lutheran pastor, but the war changed everything for us.” He trailed off, grinding gears loudly on a hill as he downshifted before descending into an outlying village.

The desert was bright with moonlight as far as Tim could see. What a beautiful country, he thought. The beer was going through his system, and he had to relieve himself. Soon, Willi pulled up with a screech of brakes at an isolated farmhouse made of wedges of same-size stone neatly fitted together under a roof of corrugated tin scrounged from some old French mine in the area, probably.

Tim found a stand of small palm trees and let the beer flow back out of him while Willi went around the dark house knocking on doors and windows. “Malone!” he called out. “Malone!”

Tim finished and sauntered over. Willi had a strange look on his face. “You hear something?”

Tim listened intently. He heard a distant buzzing sound. “Airplane?” He rumpled his nose as a dreadful smell reached him on the clean alkaline desert night air.

“I think not,” Willi said, holding his nose with one hand. In the other hand he held the Luger, aimed ahead, as he kicked the door open.

“My God,” Tim said, as the stench wafted out.

Willi flicked on a single overhead bulb, using a large white ceramic switch beside the inside of the door.

On the floor, subject to the buzzing of a thousand flies, was a bloated green corpse with a large knife sticking in his back. Nearby lay the smaller, thinner corpse of a dark-haired young woman who must have been very attractive before the green bloat set in. She might have been European and Arab or some similar exotic cross.

“Malone?” Tim mumbled holding his nose.

Willi nodded. “I recognize the ring on his finger. Whoever did it wasn’t robbing him. It was a bit more thoughtful of a crime. And the woman. They were up here to buy drugs. Christus, now what?”

“Let’s run,” Tim offered helpfully.

“Not that simple,” Willi said. “Not sure what happened here, but we can’t have our Alsatian police hound find this. Not when we had you playing Malone on our plane and now Malone is dead.” Willi scratched his head. “Can’t carry him in the car, or we’ll get a mess all over Osman’s boot and he does need to carry food out to the workmen on the roads when the French are paying men to work. What to do?”

“Maybe Malone smokes in bed,” Tim said.

Willi looked confused for a second, then brightened. “Say, that’s good. How do we get him to walk over there?”

“Good question,” Tim said, looking at the bloated greenish-black mass that would surely fall apart in ripe chunks if they tried to help Malone walk to the bed by picking him up. “Maybe he is drunk. He is wrapped up in a sheet.”

“Good,” Willi said, “I like it.” He started ransacking cupboards. “This was Malone’s little local hideaway. I know from flying with him that he liked to drink nice American-style whiskey from South Africa, which we fly up here sometimes to the local Mahdi for his intimate male get-togethers.” Bottles, cups, plates, forks, spoons, all clattered down onto the kitchen counters. “While I am doing this,” Willi said, “Pick out what you want from his clothing. The two of you are about the same size and build. Grab some shoes and socks.”

Feeling macabre, Tim poked through dressers and closets. He found the man’s suitcase and put on an ensemble—khakis, boots, baseball cap, everything for the well-dressed American. He took the suitcase with suit, shirts, ties, socks, dress shoes.

“Aha!” Willi said. “Look at this, how subtle!” Behind the spice rack was a false door and there, lined up like soldiers, were bottles of Johnny Walker Black. “American stuff. Good quality. Shame to waste it, but this is more important.” He tossed a pair of bottles through the air, and Tim caught them expertly. In a few moments, Tim and Willi had uncorked four bottles.

Holding his nose, Willi leaned over the body and pulled the knife from its back. He went to the back door and threw the knife as far as he could into a mass of brush and thorns where nobody would ever find it. He came back, clapping his hands clean of dust. “It will look as if he and his girlfriend died smoking in bed while dead drunk.”

They got a sheet from the bedroom, laid it beside the corpse, and used rolled-up towels as a pushbar to roll the corpse over onto the sheets. The flies buzzed more loudly, and a new stench rose as foul smelling liquids burst through the blackened, greenish skin and soiled clothes in which Malone had died.

Now it was quick work: roll him up, carry him to the bed, unroll him dumping him onto the bed, soak the bed with scotch, and leave a mass of lighted cigarettes lying around.

Régine Clery went the same way, though it was easier because she was smaller and lighter. Her blackened skin burst open in various places as they moved her. Her eyes, her nostrils, her mouth divested shiny greenish-black puddles of liquids, including cadaverine and putrescine, along with knots of wriggling white maggots. Poor thing, Tim thought, she must have been quite beautiful.

The interior of the place had a lot of bone-dry wood in it, including furniture and stacked newspapers, and other combustibles. From a single dropped match, the bed caught with a loud woosh! before Tim and Willi were out of the living room.

As Tim and Willi raced to the car, Tim became aware of a shadowy presence. It was a spooky feeling for a moment, and his hackles stood on end though he had no idea why. Willi threw him the car keys, and they got into the car. Tim pulled his door shut and turned the key in the ignition.

As Willi’s door slammed, there was a popping noise. Willi twitched in his seat. Tim looked over, puzzled, as several more popping noises rang out. Willi was arched over backwards with his eyes glazing over and blood running from one temple. Someone was shooting at them! Tim cranked the engine, wishing it would turn over. Glass shattered around him. Another shot. Two men, shadowy figures, stood by the house. Tim pulled out his Luger and let go a few rounds at them. They scattered. Tim got the engine going, fishtailed the car, and raced away down the road leaving a cloud of dust. Through the dust, he saw the two men coming at either side. He shot at them until the Luger was empty. A few more bullets whizzed by his head, and some more glass shattered, as he raced away. The house became a blazing ball of yellow-blue light, miles back. Tim reached over to check for a pulse, but there was none. Willi’s body grew cold long before Tim drove into the mud-walled outskirts of Néma.