The Power of Five Oblivion

and he was taking her with him to continue the fight.
    Richard watched as both jeeps were reversed out of the garage and left with their engines ticking over. At the same time, Tarik came marching across the compound with Samir and three more rebel soldiers, all of them armed. He was more cheerful than he had been when they last saw him. He was holding what looked like a mobile phone in his right hand but as he approached, he slid it into his pocket.
    “Good morning!” he exclaimed. “I heard you were ill last night, Scarlett. I hope you’re feeling better.”
    “I think it was just nerves,” Scarlett said.
    “You have every right to be nervous. You are about to begin a long journey – two thousand kilometres. It will take you a week but the road is a straight one. It will mainly pass through Saudi Arabia, which is quiet now. The war there has been lost. There were very few survivors.” Perhaps the words were meant to be pointed but Tarik seemed genuine enough. He took off his glasses and wiped them on his sleeve. “Are you all ready?”
    “Just one question,” Richard said. He gestured at the jeep. “Are we driving all the way to Dubai in one of those?”
    “Oh no.” Tarik smiled. “I have arranged something much more comfortable. I will explain everything on the way. We have a meeting point about one hour’s drive from here.”
    “And who are we meeting?”
    “The man who will take you to Dubai. I will drive with you, Scarlett and Mr Rémy. Samir and the others will follow in the second vehicle. I would advise you to keep your heads down and well away from the window. It’s too early in the morning for a sniper and the sand will provide us with cover. But you never know…”
    The eight of them split up and moved towards the two jeeps. Richard paused. This was the moment of truth. The jeep with the beads and the photograph was on the left. This was the second vehicle that he had examined the night before. Quite deliberately, he made for the other jeep. But Samir stopped him.
    “You go in this one,” he said. “It’s more comfortable.”
    “That’s very considerate of you,” Richard said.
    Tarik climbed into the driver’s seat with the bead necklace hanging from the steering wheel and almost touching his lap. Richard sat next to him in the front. Scarlett and Rémy went behind. As soon as everyone was ready, one of the guards gave a signal from the watchtower and two men ran forward and slid open the metal gate. Tarik crunched the jeep into gear and for the first time in more than two weeks, Richard found himself being driven out of the compound. There was a sinking feeling in his stomach and he knew that he was full of anxiety about what lay ahead. He still couldn’t be sure that he had done the right thing. In the next hour, everything could go horribly wrong. Even so, he wasn’t sorry to leave the compound behind.
    They drove slowly through the Cairo streets, the two vehicles staying close together, constantly on the lookout for government forces on foot or travelling in convoys of their own. The sand was howling around every corner and it was hard to distinguish between the walls that rose up and down in front of them and the ones that stood there permanently. In fact there was so much sand being thrown against the window that Richard was surprised Tarik could see the way ahead – but perhaps he knew these streets by instinct as much as anything else. As they rumbled forward, Richard remembered the journey coming here. It had struck him then that there wasn’t very much left of this city that was actually worth fighting for. He thought the same now. Cairo had long since abandoned any sense of life or vitality. There was nobody in sight. It was as if the desert had decided to come in and bury it in a gigantic grave.
    However, as they left the metropolis behind them, the storm began to die down and Richard was able to see more details: halfbuildings with shattered windows and hanging doors, endless piles of rubble, a flyover that had been blown in half and jutted in the air like some grotesque concrete sculpture. They were more exposed now, following a six-lane motorway that must once have been jammed with traffic. If any of Akkad’s planes happened to fly overhead, they would be easy targets and, knowing this, the drivers accelerated, keen to be out of the city. They passed an open space contained behind what must have been a mile of barbed-wire fence. Scarlett tapped Richard on