The Tower (33 page)

‘There’s a powerful magnetic recording system in there, Colonel. I wouldn’t hesitate to define it as a sort of mass memory.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t understand.’

‘Now that we’ve set off on our mission I can tell you. At the Vatican, we’ve been picking up a signal from a mysterious transmitter that, in exactly twenty-five days, seventeen hours and seven minutes, will concentrate a gigantic flow of data at a precise point of the south-eastern desert. Since we haven’t been able to calculate its speed or the rate of flow, we’ve prepared an instrument that will, in theory, store this information and allow us to decipher it at a later date.’

‘In theory?’

‘That’s right. It’s an experiment that’s never been attempted before.’

‘But how do you know that the capacity of this . . . box will be sufficient? If you’re trying to collect all the water in a waterfall, what difference does it make if you’re using a glass or a cistern? Most of the flow will be lost anyway.’

Father Hogan could feel the evening breeze stirring as he attached the rotor and turned on the radio. ‘Give me the frequency of your station,’ he said. When he had tuned the instrument in, he continued, ‘Do you imagine that we hadn’t considered that possibility? Let me tell you about something that once happened to me. I was at a mission in central Africa, in a village that had been isolated for days and days by civil war. The old people and children had already started to succumb to starvation. Finally, one day we got news that a lorry full of flour had managed to make its way through and would be arriving the next morning. Before dawn, anyone who was still capable of standing was waiting at the side of the road with every imaginable sort of container. As soon as the lorry came into sight, they all started running towards it, but before they got close the vehicle hit a landmine. There was a terrifying explosion and a white cloud rose to the sky. After a moment of shock, the people kept running, holding out the containers they’d brought, their skirts, their scarves, their aprons. That flour seemed so precious that saving any amount, no matter how small, was better than seeing it go completely to waste.’

Jobert did not answer and went off to complete his inspection rounds.

Father Hogan sat next to the radio all evening, having his rations of food and water brought to him, but the instrument remained mute. Just as he was about to give up and get some rest, a voice came in, calling from a locality on the coast. They had received a dispatch via telegraph reporting the sighting of an officer of the Legion with a group of bedouin horsemen journeying towards the south-eastern quadrant on the Al Shabqa trail. From the description of the officer, it was Selznick.

Father Hogan sent a man to call Colonel Jobert, who arrived immediately.

‘Well,’ Jobert said, laying a map out on the field table, ‘he’s attempting the route from the north, through Egypt and Fezzan. He’ll be certain that he’s chosen the safest option, where no one can intercept him. Except us.’

‘What do you intend to do?’ asked Father Hogan.

Jobert ran his finger down the map, along the itinerary that was taking form in his mind. ‘If Selznick, as I believe, is coming from here, he has no choice. There’s only one well on the road before reaching the valley of Wadi Addir, where he’s planning to meet up with his old enemy. And that’s where we’ll wait for him,’ he said, pointing his index finger at the Bir el Walid well on his map.

Father Hogan shook his head. ‘How can you possibly find one man in a sea of sand? In an area millions of square kilometres wide?’

‘The desert does not forgive mistakes,’ said Jobert. ‘It’s not as if you can go whichever way you like. You only go the way you can – that’s where there’s a well. We can easily calculate his rate of advance by the route and the time of year. Selznick will be at Bir el Walid in two weeks’ time, at the very latest, and we will be there waiting for him. If my hunch is correct, it was Selznick who ambushed the unit of my fellow officer LaSalle in Syria. He wiped out every last one of them, including the commander, and took his place. He must be captured and brought before a firing squad.’

‘Two weeks!’ said Father Hogan. ‘At that point, we’ll have less than two more to reach the Sand of Ghosts. I’m sorry, but that’s too high a risk.’

‘Selznick free and on our trail would be much worse.’

Father Hogan rose to his feet. ‘This trip is already risky enough on its own, Colonel, and full of unknowns. The detour you’re proposing is not justified. Selznick cannot be so dangerous as to pose a threat to a Legion unit in full battle order, equipped with heavy arms. Or is there something else I’m not aware of?’

‘There’s nothing else,’ said Jobert. ‘The slaughter of an entire garrison seems sufficient to me, without counting desertion and other crimes.’

‘I can’t agree with you,’ repeated Father Hogan. ‘Our expedition is based on a specific agreement, and this deviation could seriously jeopardize its outcome. If the mission fails, you will be held responsible.’

Jobert smirked. ‘You wouldn’t want to provoke a diplomatic incident between our countries, would you? Between the Holy Mother Church and her beloved firstborn daughter?’

‘Worse,’ said Father Hogan, who was becoming suspicious of the officer’s obstinate attitude.

Jobert turned serious, which convinced Father Hogan that he’d hit a nerve. ‘Why should I listen to you?’ he asked.

‘Because, as you know, we can provide you with information regarding Selznick’s identity.’

‘Not much. At least up to now.’

‘I’ll tell you what we know, as I promised. But I can also tell you that our investigation is still under way.’

Jobert seemed noticeably disconcerted by his words and Hogan, who had actually been bluffing, realized that there must be some shameful, highly embarrassing secret that the Legion was eager to bury as soon as possible by executing Selznick.

‘Tell me what you know,’ Jobert demanded. ‘That was part of the agreement as well.’

‘As I had begun to tell you, it’s not Selznick’s father that interests us, but his mother: Evelyn Brown Garrett. The mother of Desmond Garrett.’

‘Are you sure of what you’re saying?’ asked Jobert, frowning.

‘Absolutely. It all goes back about fifty years. Jason Garrett was an American engineer working in eastern Anatolia, on a project building a road that would cross the Pontian mountains, connecting Erzurum and Trebizond. Rioting broke out in the area and there was armed conflict with the local Kurdish tribes. The sultan sent troops in to quash the uprising. Garrett was worried about the safety of his wife and son, and decided to send them back to Europe, but as they were travelling through the village of Bayburt, their carriage was stopped by a patrol for what seemed to be a routine check. However, the patrol commander was so struck by the woman’s beauty that he did away with her escort and had her brought to his quarters. He tried first to seduce her and then to threaten her, but she would not be swayed, so he resorted to violence. He raped her and forced her to stay with him for the entire operation. Then he brought her back to Istanbul and had her accompanied to the border.

‘Evelyn Garrett was so shaken and distressed that she did not dare let her husband know what had happened. She sent word that she had taken ill on the journey and had sought shelter at a monastery in Smyrna. But her troubles were far from over. When she reached Salonika, she realized that she was pregnant. She continued on to Belgrade and then to Vienna, where she put her son Desmond in a boarding school. He was young enough not to have realized what had happened and he believed her series of merciful lies.

‘She told him that she would have to be away for some time to regain her health and she went to a clinic, where she gave birth to a boy, whom she turned over to a Passionist orphanage.

‘Her husband never learned what had happened. She hid her rage and humiliation, along with her remorse for abandoning a blameless child to his destiny. Evelyn Garrett was a cultured, sensitive woman from a prominent New England family. She paid dearly for her decision to follow her husband into such difficult and dangerous territory, in defiance of her family’s wishes. You see, they were completely against her marriage in the first place, because the young man she had chosen, though certainly intelligent and willing, was from a lower social background. And they were even more against her taking a small child so far away, to live among people they considered little more than barbarians.’

Colonel Jobert took a puff on his cigar and shook his head. ‘The power of the Church!’ He sighed. ‘You have eyes and ears everywhere. You hear people’s most shameful secrets in your confessionals. You have no arms, yet you can move the armies of kings and nations. You have no territory, yet you are everywhere. Any other state must struggle to recover after a war, but you fight your battles everywhere without ever stopping, with no restrictions.’

‘We can’t stop,’ said Father Hogan. ‘We have to bring the Word to all people before the end of time.’

‘How do you know that Selznick was that child abandoned in an orphanage in Vienna?’

‘As far as possible our organizations follow the affairs of those who were left in their custody as children. Especially when these affairs turn out to be particularly conspicuous one way or other. In the sphere of good or of evil.’

‘I see,’ said Colonel Jobert. ‘Especially when they stand out. Is that all you have to tell me about Selznick?’

‘For the moment,’ said Father Hogan. ‘The rest depends on the outcome of my mission.’

‘Then don’t worry about it. I will assume all responsibility. First I will capture Selznick and then I will take you to Kalaat Hallaki and the Sand of Ghosts. I wouldn’t want to miss the show myself. If a priest threatens me with political blackmail at the prospect of turning up late, he must be anticipating something quite special . . . Isn’t that so, Reverend?’

Father Hogan did not answer. Jobert got to his feet and ground his cigar butt under his heel. ‘Tomorrow we have a tough journey ahead of us. Thank you for your help, Reverend. Without that radio of yours we would never have been able to get the information we needed to help us capture such a dangerous criminal. Who would have thought, just a few short years ago, that a voice could cross the limitless expanse of the desert in a heartbeat and reach a lonely squad of soldiers hidden in the dark of night? We would have imagined that only the voice of God was capable of so much!’

Father Hogan raised his eyes to the constellation of Scorpio, to the cold light of Acrab. ‘The voice of God . . .’ he mused, as if talking to himself. ‘As a child I would hear His voice in the wind and thunder, in the billows crashing against the cliffs . . .’

‘There’s nothing but silence here,’ said Jobert. ‘The silence that reigned before man existed and that will continue to reign unopposed on our planet after we are gone, until the end of time. The desert is a petrified prophecy. Goodnight, Father Hogan.’

He walked off into the darkness.

T
HEY SET OFF
the next morning before dawn. The land they rode across was rough and even rocky at times, covered by dust as fine as talcum powder. They continued in the same direction for the whole day. The next morning they saw a caravan in the distance proceeding in the opposite direction; Jobert observed it at length through binoculars before it disappeared among the dunes. They never saw another living soul on the entire journey. Their direction had to be worked out with a compass, since long stretches of the route had been completely erased or were just barely visible.

Father Hogan had initially felt acutely uncomfortable in the suffocating conditions, so completely devoid were they of any nuances, but slowly, day after day, he had become fascinated by the violent light and the vivid colours of the desert, by the extreme purity of the air and land, by the sky where the alternation of day and night was the ultimate expression of light and darkness.

That landscape, which in the beginning had seemed a skeleton of nature condemned to hell, revealed a hidden, secret life with every step: tenuous scents carried on swift, uncontaminated winds to distant lands and seas, fleeting shadows and sudden flashes of light, concealed presences which gave the only hint of their being in the unreal silence of dawn or the flames of sunset.

He realized that they were walking along the beds of evaporated rivers and lakes; they were crossing the ancient plains of Delfud, where endless meadows had once been teeming with vast herds of wild animals. This very land – in a remote time, in a mysterious way – had bordered upon the Garden of Immortality.

When they neared Bir el Walid, Jobert took half a dozen men and reconnoitred the entire area. Only when he was sure that there was no one for a radius of several kilometres around the well did he allow the men and animals to drink and to replenish their water supplies.

That night he let them pitch camp near the well, but then he had them carefully remove any traces they had left and retreat to lower terrain a few kilometres away. He sent scouts out along the trail that came from the east so they could warn him of anyone approaching. The weather had been good up to that point and they had not encountered any insuperable difficulties on their journey. Everything seemed to be going well and Jobert calculated that Selznick would show up in three or four days, but the time passed without anything happening and Father Hogan grew more anxious with every passing hour. There was so little time left! He imagined the voice plunging through infinite space and couldn’t help but compare the immeasurable speed of that message, devouring the distance between the stars, with the slow plodding of the mules and camels all around him. A sense of impotence consumed him. He would turn on the radio whenever he had the chance and seek out an ultra-short-wave frequency, pointing the antenna towards the constellation of Scorpio. He would then sit for hours and listen to the insistent signal as it became more and more frequent.

On the evening of the fifth day, Colonel Jobert, who had been observing him for some time, approached, silent as always. ‘Is that it?’