girls. The chicks. If it wasn’t for them men would just sit around having a nice pint and a chat about the fitba.’
‘Sorry? Girls?’ said Amy, a defensive tinge in her voice.
David stared at the Scotsman, who was chewing almost as fast as he was talking. Nairn was consuming an enormous meal; yet he was so skinny. Angular cheekbones, wild red hair, green eyes a-glitter in the gloaming of the semi desert.
‘Yep,’ he said, tearing off another fistful of flatbread. ‘Women. The female of the species. They’re the ones who guide human evolution. Via sexual selection, no? And how do they steer our evolution? Towards nastiness – by choosing nasty guys. True or not? OK, yes, they all pretend they like metrosexual chardonnay sippers but they really go for the ruffians, don’t they? The bastards, the bad boys, the Miguel Garovillos – and so these bastards reproduce and so the evolution of man tends towards ever greater cruelty, perhaps explaining the pageant of blood that is twentieth-century history.’ He burped. ‘Thank God I take the Tube not the bus.’
An animal barked in the gloomy depths beyond the camp. A jackal or a hyena. Angus was momentarily quiet, eating, drinking, smiling broadly and knowingly at Alphonse, his gracefully handsome helpmate. The rest of the camp dwellers seemed to have fled with the dying of the day. Disappeared unto their villages.
Amy was asking questions: ‘So Eloise is safe but you’re still camped out here. Why?’
‘Coz I’m testing the last racial variants.’ Angus shrugged, contented. ‘Dotting some genetic i’s and crossing some chromosomal t’s. And we’re nearly done. The Spanish fucking Inquisition are too late. I’ve got the Namibian blood tests in the car, ready to go.’ He slugged some Tafel and burped robustly. ‘We just have to pack up tomorrow, head down to the Sperrgebiet. Get to safety.’ A pause. ‘We’ve got all we need down there. Kellerman Namcorp have been preparing for this, for years, just in case they closed down GenoMap. We’ve been setting up parallel facilities, in the Sperrgebiet, so we could finish off, if it came to it.’ He chortled. ‘And so it goes. We need a few more days, do the last tests on Eloise, and…Canasta! The Fischer experiments are reiterated.’
He turned and looked solicitously at Alphonse. ‘Alphonse, have a bloody beer. You work too hard.’
‘Sure, Angus.’
‘Alfie, I mean it. C’m’ere.’ The Scotsman pulled the young ochre-skinned man towards him; Alphonse had glittering feline eyes, slender limbs. Angus kissed him on the lips.
Alphonse laughed, and pushed him away – ‘Mad Scotsman!’ he said, and gestured at the diminishing food. ‘Did you eat all the kudu…Again? You’ll get fat!’
‘Me? Get fat? As if.’ The Scotsman lifted his T-shirt and slapped his white stomach. ‘The six-pack of Apollo!’ Then he glared at Alphonse as he sat down again. ‘Don’t make fun, my little bambusen, or I shall be forced to wield the sjambok.’
‘No. No, sir. White massa he very kind. He give me de good job picken de cotton.’
The two men guffawed, then kissed again. Angus turned and offered Amy some of the kudu steak from the big steel bowl. David stared at Alphonse.
Angus was turning:
‘Jesus, jesusfuck. What’s that?’
The Scotsman stared down the valley. Now the noise was discernible. David realized he’d been hearing it for a while – but in the back of his mind he’d thought it a distant growling animal, or some effect of the wind in the thorn trees.
There were cars. Big dark cars were sweeping suddenly, up the dry river bed: heading for them. A roar of engines and lights. David stared. The fear was like a physical pain.
‘The tents – the guns are in the tents –’
Angus was up and moving – but then a rifle shot split the still and sultry air. It whipped the sand between the tables and the tents. A warning shot.
Angus sat down, very slowly.
David looked the opposite way. More dust clouds. More. Two more. Coming at them. From every direction, looming out of the murky shadows. The largest car, a black car with black windows, swept up to the camp and parked in a savage curve. Spraying sand over the food with a kind of bullying contempt.
A tall lean figure climbed out, his gait and his twitch and his pale scarred face quite distinctive, even in the darkness.
Miguel stared at them.
‘Found you.’
35
The last Vespers had been sung in the chapel. The last pilgrims had retreated to their cells.
Simon crossed the refectory, and climbed the sloping corridors. He