Tom Foran Clark

It was ten minutes or more before Pike could be picked up from the ground. He was just devastated. He asked Emery what ideas he had, if any, about what they should do now.

“Do you still have the diary?”

Pike nodded that he did.

“Is the map any good without the diary?

Pike thought on that. “Actually,” Pike said, “you kind of need to have the diary for the map to make much sense.”

“Aha!” Emery blurted out. “Just as I thought.”

“You’re saying we should give Ahmed the diary?

“We’ll use it as as a lure,” Emery said. “You know, we’ll make sure Ahmed learns about the diary, then we’ll get him to come after it. Then we’ll trick him, somehow, and get the map back.”

“Do you think it’ll work?” Pike asked, getting some color back into his face.

“There’s only one way to find out,” Emery said. “Come on. Let’s get these bikes on the road.”

They returned to the hotel and left their bait, a confidential note, for Ahmed. Then they headed north toward Algiers. They cut into crusty furrows between low ridges, traveling into the rising folds of mountains, and turned off at a fork in the road not to Algiers, but to Aflou.

Chilling, halting northern winds pressed on them. They rode a good ways, and then walked some. It was long, lone, hard going. Somewhere out there, on stony ground, they pitched their tent. The winds ceased rushing. They settled into their sleeping bags. The emptiness of where they were was so austerely, densely quiet, it seemed almost to ring in their ears.

They went further into this forbidding further no-man’s land in the morning, walking with their bikes. A truck pulled over -- a rattle-clap Berliot that must have been issued in the 1940s, like to shake off its mortal coil, rumbling on the crumbling narrow lane of asphalt. Its cab and engine were held together by ropes, and lamb’s wool had been stuffed all around the windows where once had been caulk or plastic weatherstripping. The driver of this relic was a middle-aged Arab in a beige burnous robe with rotten teeth and a spiffy white scarf around his neck, wearing shiny point-toed presumably Italian shoes. Pike at once began to ply him with questions, in French, on both gross and fine points concerning the history of Algeria according to Ahmed Bougaiba. Everything Ahmed had said checked out, verified by this open, jovial courier carrying Pike and Emery merrily over the low, loping hills to Aflou, where the village rose up before them, its ragged orange tile rooftops encircling the mosque minaret.

Pike and Emery first sought out the Restaurant Populaire, a hole-in the-wall tucked away, unmarked, down an obscure side street and, famished, ordered high pyramid double servings of cous-cous. After, they rolled over to the mosque and sat a while in the shade of the minaret, then got on a road rising into the hills above Aflou. Gentle breezes brushed lightly across swaying sage grasses but, overhead, the sun was at white-heat pitch or fervor. They did not ride through until dusk, but pitched the tent early. They were sound asleep in the evening when a stampede rush of hooves startled them awake. It was a big sheep and ram or cattle run. An Arab cowboy or Gaucho galloped by on a horse, crying out "Tgchk! Tgchk!" and then was gone.

They were up early in the morning. There was a dusting of frost on the ground, covering the tracks of whatever had rushed through in the night. Practicing the scales, birds sang out as if trying to usher in the sun, which did not emerge. It stayed dully gray and cold all day -- a perfect day for piling up the miles. Instead, Pike and Emery stayed parked where they were, resting, writing, and reading. The next morning, under a cool, hazy sky neither scorching nor blinding, they got on the smooth, winding road to El-Bayedh, passing easily amid scattered jumbles of peaks and plains.

Two police patrol officers in an unmarked jeep passed by them on the road, raising up a dust cloud. The driver got out, pushed his beret back on his head, and wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. Sipping water from a water bottle, he cautiously approached. "Emery and Pike?" he said. Pike looked at Emery, puzzled. Emery rolled his eyes. The officer asked to see their papers. These he looked at only briefly, then handed them back. Then he reached into his front shirt pocket and brought out a piece of paper folded so many times it looked more like origami than a message, which he delivered to Pike. He then ambled back to the jeep and, churning up grist and gravel, drove away.

"What’s it say?" Emery asked eagerly, as Pike slowly unfolded the paper, being careful not to tear it.

"Ahmed has written he will meet us at the Hotel Du Sud in Ain-Sefra in five days."

"I think we got his attention,.” Emery congratulated himself.

"Looks like."

Pike and Emery entered an extraordinary territory of luxurious greenery, shrubs, and grasses amid the stark, red-ochre knolls and bluffs. They walked along a dry river bed to a sandy bank and made their camp, circled by the sweet rolling sweeps of green thrust among the crags. At dusk, an elegant Arab horseman in a white turban, multicolored bandannas, and a silvery, shining, long satin robe observantly proceeded by on a white stallion, offering up four salutes. The night sky, devoid of moonlight, was filled with sextillions of pinpoints and twinkling and occasional shooting stars.

“Emery,” Pike whispered, once the two were settled in for the night, “I’m confused about one thing.”

“Yes?

“Those two policemen in the jeep who pulled over and handed us Ahmed’s note saying Ahmed would be meeting us in Ain-Sefra in five days…”

“Yes?

“Why didn’t they just dog-gone shoot us and take the diary?”

“Why didn’t Ahmed just kill us in the first place?” Emery asked rhetorically. “I don’t think he wants us dead. Get some sleep,” he advised.

Big pterodactyl-like blackbirds flapping overhead awoke them in the morning, their caws echoing far through the canyon cliffwalls. The two packed and got back to the road going south and west, boosted forward in their journey by kind winds at their backs. It was easy going over the long and winding way across the Haut Plateaux. They passed through the village of Boualam, partly ancient (crusty barnacles on the red ridges) and partly new (a French-style ville of orange rooftops), then entered a rough terrain of ridges and bluffs. In a fertile fold between the thighs of canyons lay El-Bayadh. The orange ville circled around the ancient core, gritty and in tatters. The sun beat down. Pike and Emery sought out shade and water, but the wells and fountains of El-Bayadh had been either bombed or sealed, and there was no shade of trees. Pike was eager to press on.

"Aha!" Pike said, pointing from the central square to a lovely cluster of trees high on a distant canyon rim. "We’ll go there." He seemed inspired, newly fearless, also reckless. Emery scratched his head. Perhaps Pike was hallucinating, thinking Algerian spirits, fairies, and Djinns would magically carry them to that remote place. There were no road signs. The two proceeded cautiously along a path into forbidding, rocky territory. The earth beneath them held glinting glass splinters, broken bottle shards, iron dagger-tips, assorted car parts, rusted cans, and other dull or sparkling rubble amid wildly strewn lengths of coiling barbed wire. This was no place for bikes.

The two never reached Pike’s haven. As they rose on the bluffs negotiating higher levels of jeopardy, it got clearer and clearer how inaccessible the place was. They arrived at a neighboring peak where the rocks increasingly began to dislodge, falling away underfoot. Pike and Emery came to a startling ledge where the world fell away. The view from there must have been across all southern Algeria. More exhilarating than this was their realization that they’d come to a dead-end so precarious, they were almost unable even to turn back. No blame was assigned. No words were spoken. Cautiously, not wanting that either of them should take a sudden plunge from that height, they backed off from that precipice.

Back in El-Bayedh, they started all over again, going a different way. By the light of the Saharan stars, they pitched their tent. In the morning, rain was falling. It wasn’t long before the rain turned to snow. The tent, encased in ice, looked like a pyramid-shaped igloo, an extraordinary sight to see out there on the vast Atlas Saharien. Snowflakes floated down through the day, accumulating and accumulating. Putting on every article of clothing they owned, the two went out to play. Their lonely-looking ice-caked bikes and tent looked like the fossil relics of a Himalayan or Antarctic expedition, the abandoned base-camp of some lost but optimistic Mallory or Admiral Byrd.

Around noon the next day, the snow began to melt. By mid-afternoon, it was gone -- all except that in the distant, higher hills -- burnt off by the raw glare of the sun in a pristine, gleaming sky. Pike and Emery emptied the tent, swept it clean, folded it neatly, loaded up their bikes, and rode back again, to El-Bayedh, where it was just another day. There was no sign at all that snow had fallen -- rain, maybe, but not snow. Pools of water were evaporating here and there around the town.

Once more they tried to leave El-Bayedh, going by yet another unmarked way. A crowd of boys circled around them, pointing out the way to Saida, cheering for them when they wobbled forth unsteadily. High up along this mountain was a crossroads where a signpost had endured, pointing southwest. The map showed the road would pass through Ain-Sefra on its way to Saida. The winds were at their backs. They camped in low-lying foothills. Twittering warblers woke them the next day. Already, early in the morning, the heat rose from the plain in tremulous waves under clear, and shimmering skies. Pike and Emery climbed to a ridge with a panoramic view across the plain to locomotive-plateau mesas. They walked with their bikes over bluffs jutting up like knuckles from the valley floor and discovered, behind one low knoll, a sandy beach. It was an easy feat, pitching the tent amid the liquid, amber sundown, purple hues reaching deep into the crevices and folds.

In the morning they rode through the ancient village of Chellala at the edge of the Des Ksour mountains. They went through a riverbed, following along a narrow stream of glistening, bubbling water. They soaked their feet in the pebbly stream a while, then wound away from it back onto the plain. They camped in a cove of sand circled on three sides by boulders. They passed through the village of Tiout in the morning and reached another fork in the road where road signs still remained. One arrow pointed to Bechar; the two took the road going to Saida, leading also to Ain-Sefra.

Pike and Emery passed amid great beige dunes, majestic pyramids of sand, and finally arrived in the outskirts of the deathly quiet, orange-roofed ghost town, Ain-Sefra. The scorching sun seemed to hold the place down like an insect under a magnifying glass. They walked with their bikes past lines of silent, scowling military guards posted throughout the ville, careful not to make a single sudden, unexpected move. They knew how handily any one of them could mow them down with his machine gun -- could make them dance like twigs in a firestorm. This was a razor’s edge between sordid and perplexing here-and-now and eternity or nothingness. In no mood for idle speculation, Emery focused on the here-and-now.

As they moved to the denser center of Ain-Sefra, things normalized somewhat. Elderly, haggard Arabs in brown robes shuffled along in their slippers, passing us in their quotidian world of narrowing aisles, betraying no emotion of fear or doom. Ahmed approached in his camelhair burnous, even as they arrived at the Hotel Du Sud, just off the main square. He made small talk in French, gesturing for Pike and Emery to go ahead of him into the hotel.

Ahmed took them two flights up. The room was powder blue and sparse and clean. Next to a double-sized bed was an army cot. Ahmed gestured Pike to the bed, and Emery to the cot. He put the map down in front of them, on the floor. He began to click and chit-chat with Pike in French -- just light banter, it sounded like. Soon Pike was overcome with laughter. One of Ahmed’s henchmen came in shortly, to serve tea. Ahmed and Pike were laughing riotously. Pike's sides were just about splitting, he was laughing so hard. Emery could see how he’d come under Ahmed’s charismatic spell. Pike had that hypnotized, glazed-over look. He got out Townsend’s treasure diary and placed it on the floor next to the map. Lying down on the narrow cot, Emery turned his back to them. The two began to speak now in hushed tones. Emery quickly fell asleep.

Warblers wild with glee woke Emery in the morning. Pike was gone. His bike -- gone. Emery's harmonica and can opener -- gone. The tent -- gone. Pike’s bed was neatly made. There was no sign of him but for a neatly written message consisting of a dozen words: "Ride to Oran. Ahmed will meet you at the Hotel Charkel Arabi.”