The Power of Five Oblivion

same time, she heard the sound of an engine revving and somebody shouting at her. There was blood on her hands. She jolted forward as the car she was in hit a pothole.
    She was in the desert, in the front of a Land Cruiser. Rémy, the Frenchman, was slumped in the back.
    Egypt was behind them. Dubai was eighty kilometres ahead.

WHEEL OF FORTUNE

TWENTY-SIX
    Albert Rémy was dead. The Frenchman, who had been part of the Nexus in London and who had waited ten years for them in Egypt, hadn’t made it through the night. Richard wasn’t surprised. For three days, Rémy had been in constant pain, every jolt and every bump on the deserted main road causing him to cry out, a bubble of blood appearing on his lips. A bullet had entered his chest just under his left arm and Richard suspected it had punctured his lung. His breathing had been horrible, a constant rattling that competed with the engine of the car, and both Richard and Scarlett had known the moment he had slipped away. That had happened during the fourth night but they had kept going, afraid to stop in the dark.
    Then the sun rose, the road was empty with nothing but desert all around – as it had been almost always during the long, sweltering journey that had taken them out of Egypt across the Suez Canal bridge and through no fewer than three countries, including the full length of Saudi Arabia. Richard had driven the entire distance, his eyes glazed, his hands grimly clutching the steering wheel. For her part, Scarlett had talked to him almost incessantly, not because she had anything to say but because she knew she had to help keep him awake. There had been almost nothing to look at, nothing to separate one dreary mile from the next. Even the sight of a burnt-out bus or armoured vehicle became a landmark, something to break the monotony. As they continued south, they had passed a few scattered villages, electricity pylons, abandoned frontier posts with twisting barbed wire and ragged flags … but not a single sign of human life. The sand was still blowing and it might have disguised the truth. Perhaps people had heard them as they drove around Eilat in Israel or Aqaba in Jordan and had run to intercept them. If so, they had been too late. Richard had kept his foot down. The car hurtled on.
    The sky was grey, the sand a dirty orange as they dragged Rémy out and laid him on the ground. Richard climbed onto the Land Cruiser and pulled a spade from the various supplies and pieces of equipment that were strapped to the roof. Scarlett realized that he was going to dig a grave and felt guilty because, if she’d had her way, she wouldn’t have bothered. Rémy was dead. What difference would it make to him?
    “Richard, let me do it,” she said.
    Richard shook his head. “No. I’m fine. In fact I need the exercise. I’ve lost count of how many hours I’ve been cooped up in that thing.”
    “We’re only about an hour from Dubai.”
    “I know. If he’d waited just a little longer we might have got him to a hospital.”
    “If there are any hospitals…”
    “Yeah. Take a look at this…” He handed something to her, a thick wallet made of pale brown leather.
    “What is it?”
    “It’s Rémy’s. It was in his pocket.”
    Scarlett opened the wallet. Inside, in one of the compartments, there was a wad of banknotes; American one-hundred-dollar bills, neatly pressed together. Scarlett flicked them with her thumb. “How much is there here?” she asked.
    “There’s fifty of them. Five thousand dollars.” Richard took the spade in both hands. “I guess he was keeping them for a rainy day.”
    “Not much chance of that out here.”
    “It’s funny though. There are no photographs. No pictures of his wife or kids. Nothing about him. Just a pile of cash. We’ll never know anything about him.”
    “He tried to help us. That’s enough.” Scarlett closed the wallet. “The money may help us. Maybe it’ll buy us a ticket out.”
    The sand was soft and it only took Richard about half an hour to cut a trench a metre deep. That was enough. He threw down the spade, then he and Scarlett went over and dragged Rémy in. As she took hold of the dead man’s ankles, Scarlett had one of those moments where she seemed to be looking at herself and couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. What would Mrs Ridgewell say if she were here now? she wondered. Somehow she doubted that the head teacher at her old school in Dulwich would have any advice on how to bury