I knew I would have to stay the night in this village: for one thing, it was where I was due to meet my contact. It was also growing dark. But it wasn't going to be easy, with perhaps fifty families hiding in the mission building, and the cause of their displacement sitting in my car. I had already started to think of them as 'the strangers'. They had spoken no English nor any other recognisable language, and only whispers of song escaped them as I drove them to a maize field outside the city, where Jackson and I struck camp. We tried to find enough mosquito nets for everyone, but the strangers showed no interest in nets, or indeed in sleeping. They sat cross-legged on the mud beside the car, like skinny Buddhas, watching the sky.

In the morning I was woken by a bell ringing in the church, and African voices chanting. I got up, and saw that the strangers hadn't moved, but kept their vigil, watching the sky like statues. I felt unsettled again, and wondered why I had decided to take them with me.

As I neared the village, I heard the familiar and comforting susurrus of prayer from the church. I hurried my steps, hoping to take Communion. I also wondered if the priest would know what the villagers meant by 'demons'. I was in the long morning shadow of the mission building when a voice spoke behind me. 'We need your help.'

I knew without looking that the deep, musical voice could only come from one source. When I turned he was there, still in his African chieftain's clothes. His feet were splayed, his head c.o.c.ked to one side. He looked slightly ridiculous, like a man playing giant parrot in a pantomime.

'What can I do for you?' I asked.

'You can help us to find those we need to find.'

'Who is that?' There was suspicion in my voice: his words had made me forget everything strange, and think only of spies, agents, enemies of my country. 'And why do you suddenly speak English?'

He looked at me with a comical expression of sorrow, as if he had expected me to understand. Perhaps I should have done.

'It takes time to learn a language,' he said. 'I did not wish to risk being misunderstood.' His voice was unaccented, his English a copy of mine. When I didn't speak couldn't think of anything to say he added, 'We need to find those we need to find.'

I stared at the face, the eyes wide, the jaw a little slack. His skin was smooth. It wasn't without blemish, but it seemed somehow unused. Most of the time I can form an impression of a man's character from his expression. The shape of the lines on the face, the movements of the eyes, the tone of the voice, reveal a great deal. It is one of the tricks of the novelist to observe well and describe the results of his observations in quick verbal strokes, like a cartoon sketch. But this man appeared to have nothing to offer in his face. When he did wear an expression, it was exaggerated, and he wore it like a mask.

'Why do you speak in tautologies?' I asked, aware that I was trying to catch him out, and feeling ashamed of myself.

'No. We need to find those we need to find.'

I tried a few more questions, but all the responses were similar. I was tempted to ask him the price of eggs, but I didn't think his vocabulary would be up to it.

Instead I asked him if he would like to take Ma.s.s.

'I can't,' he said. 'It would not be part of the finding.'

'Why?'

'We are not the same.'

He could have been saying that he wasn't a Catholic, or wasn't a Christian, but I knew he meant more than that. More important, I knew that he meant something. He wasn't talking complete nonsense: he was talking what sense he could, but with a very small vocabulary.

'Who are you?' I asked. 'What is your name?'

'That is not part of the finding. We are not the same.'

'What do you mean, "part of the finding"?' The conversation was frustrating me. I wanted to laugh at the silliness of it, but the expressionless face in front of me made laughter impossible.

We approached the mission. I had missed Ma.s.s: people were walking out of the church, in small groups, some barefoot, chattering. I waited for the priest, went up to him and shook his hand. He was an iron-haired, big-boned man with that false geniality that can hide anything from extreme cruelty to extreme suffering. I decided not to tell him about the strangers, nor did I attempt to explain the man who was with me. Instead I asked what had happened in Markebo, the deserted village.

'Oh, the local people are afraid of lots of things,' he said. 'I expect there was a fire, or something. They're getting over it. I've told them they should go back.' He looked at me with a measuring stare. 'Why, is there any danger?'

'There might be.'

He became agitated then, his head swivelling like a puppet's, his arms jerking as he waved at his parishioners. It was fear that he protected with his geniality, then.

I said, 'I don't think they'll be in danger. Not in Markebo.' I turned away, feeling awkward, because I had no idea whether I was telling the truth. On the face of it, the conversation with the 'chieftain' hadn't been rea.s.suring. 'I'll let you know if there are any developments,' I muttered.

'What are you?' asked the priest. 'Police or military?' His eyes were shifty with the suspicion of a fear-filled man.

'Both,' I said, truthfully enough, since my cover was CID and my work MI6. 'And if you'll excuse me, I have to see someone.' Which was also true.

Chapter Eleven.

My agent in D'nalyel was a tiny man called Cray. He must have been about seventy. His face was as shrivelled as an old groundnut, his eyes dark and watery. Every time that we talked, his hands clasped each other tight, like two friends seeking comfort. His weakness was gambling and he worked for us because we were paying him to continue his habit across the border in French-controlled territory.

We met at his house, where I first had to take tea with his wife and his son and his son's wife, with three skinny grandchildren jumping around, feeding the fire, which served to boil the kettle and also to make the air in the small hut smoky and even hotter than usual. At last, after what seemed like several hours, the family were dispatched to the village and I was able to ask Cray what he had seen across the frontier.

'Lots of car, ma.s.sa. Big car, very metal.'

This wasn't exactly news: we knew from other sources that a French armoured brigade was in the area. But Cray's next revelation was more disturbing.

He leaned forward and touched my hand. 'French officer officer speak with Cray.' Cray's French was better than his English. 'Frenchey, he said see English very-bigweapon in sky. He want to know 'bout weapon.' speak with Cray.' Cray's French was better than his English. 'Frenchey, he said see English very-bigweapon in sky. He want to know 'bout weapon.'

I knew there was no weapon. All the English had in the sky over Sierra Leone were a couple of old seaplanes. What had the Frenchman seen?

'He offer me six shillings. I tell him ten and he give ten.' The watery eyes were watching me as he added, 'My second son, his wife have 'nother child soon.'

'I'll pay you fifteen shillings,' I said. It was usually five: I would probably have to find the extra ten from my own pocket, but it didn't matter. I was thinking about Africans who fled in fear from a secret weapon that the French thought was English, which lit up the sky and left behind confused white men with blank faces and no language.

A silence outside distracted me. It was the silence that replaces the noises you hadn't noticed were there: the shouts, the children's voices, the clink-clink of corn being ground in a pot. Cray became aware of it, too, and we both stood up. Cray was shaking. 'I am an old man,' he said.

The door burst open, and the hut was full of black, angular figures and the smell of gun oil. A man stood in front of me, and I recognised with a shock the uniform of a German SS officer.

'I am Leutnant Franz Schubert, Waffen Schutzstaffel. You are an English officer?'

'Police, actually.' I knew I was out of my depth here. If the SS sent a detachment to an obscure African territory, then this 'secret weapon' was very real and very important. It occurred to me that I might die.

'Police?' The officer's voice was cold. 'That will do.'

Cray was cowering in the corner: one of the other SS officers had a gun aimed at his head.

'You will tell me everything you know about the others, or my colleague will kill this man now.'

I knew that by 'the others' he meant the silent strangers I had found in Markebo. I also knew that if there had been anything in my power that I could have used to protect them, or to protect Cray, I would have done so. As it was, unarmed and at gunpoint, all I had was prayer. I offered them that.

Outside, I heard gunshots, and a sound like an electric wire short-circuiting. Cray's captor sprang up and ran from the hut. Schubert looked after him, and I saw an expression of fear on his face that did not match the fierce professional confidence he had shown until now.

'They aren't ' shouted a voice from outside, in English. It was unaccented: it might have been the priest. The sentence was cut off by an explosion.

Schubert ran from the hut: after a moment's hesitation I followed. Outside, the air was full of smoke. Two bright fires were burning: each had the hideous shape of a man, slowly melting under the heat. The shapes folded into a mess of oily stinking matter that could never have been flesh. I gagged on the thick air, and saw one of the Africans being sick.

The Germans were retreating, guns drawn, their expressions panicky and hopeless.

Two down, I realised: which meant one of 'the strangers' was still alive. I felt relief and at the same time the sort of terror and confusion that accompanies a bad dream. Action, for me, is a relief from boredom. I have faced threats to my life before and since without fear: this fear was born of knowing that the situation was beyond my knowledge, as well as out of my control. I knew as little as the Africans did about the fight that was happening around me.

'Ma.s.sa! Ma.s.sa!' It was Cray, emerging. 'I din' know. I din' know 'bout those men!'

I looked around, and realised the Germans were gone. Cray was clinging on to my arm. I saw Jackson standing with his knife drawn, guarding the car. From the shadows of the trees around us came the screams of men in unimaginable terror, and a splintering sound that might have been the breaking of branches or bones. Then there was a silence, a heavy dragging sound, a series of rasps and clicks. I waited we all waited as the sounds faded away, moving towards the river. There was, perhaps, a splashing of water, then silence.

'I din' know!' bawled Cray. 'I don' understand!'

He did, perhaps. Or perhaps he didn't. I looked again at the melted shapes that I had thought were men, and decided that what Cray had known about it all didn't matter.

The rest of the African story is that curious anticlimax which happens so often in real life and so rarely in novels. I made a brief search of the town, in the hope of finding the surviving stranger, but failed to do so. There was some blood in the bush, and a trail of broken bushes which led to the river. The smell of metal and oil was strong.

I questioned Cray some more about his meeting with the French officer, but he told me nothing else of substance, except that the weapon had been 'very bright'. I examined the melted 'strangers', and had the priest say last rites over them, though both he and I were unsure whether this was appropriate. I caught a sick fear in his face, and wondered if I was leaving him and his parishioners to die. But there was nothing I could do, except pay Cray his fifteen shillings and leave.

Back in Freetown, I reported the incident. I was careful not to mention the strangers, only that the SS had killed two white men, travellers of uncertain ident.i.ty, and that some of the Germans may have been killed in return. I speculated that the whites may have been agents, though the theory was ridiculous to me. As I had expected, nothing much happened as a result. There was a brief excitement, a flurry of telegrams, and a certain amount of interference from the SIS, who sent their agents to the area. I lost Cray, who may have defected to the French. I carried on working, and tedium silted up my memories of Markebo, until they became nothing more than an African curiosity, a story unfolding at the edges of civilisation and having meaning only in that setting.

In January 1943, my tour of duty in Sierra Leone came to an end. During my last week in Freetown, I met the Doctor for the first time. He was under arrest, in one of the concrete cells behind the police station. Brodie had said that he didn't know what to make of him. He had appeared from nowhere, had no papers, and appeared to be innocent of the need for any. I'd told the true story of the Markebo incident to Brodie in an unguarded moment. It was clear from the uncertain expression in my friend's eyes as he opened the cell door for me that he felt the Doctor may be the missing stranger, my 'chieftain'.

The air around the cell smelled, as always, of urine and stale cooking. The Doctor was crouched on a mattress in the corner, dressed in a white fancy shirt and dark trousers, with formal shoes, as if he had just come half dressed from a dinner party. He clearly wasn't the stranger, and looked nothing like him. His body was shadowed, curved forward over itself. At first, I decided he had been crying. Then I saw he was making something, weaving straw between his fingers to make an object rather like a corn dolly. He said nothing, but I heard the sound of his breathing, deep and uneven.

'I don't like being locked up,' he said.

He looked up, and I saw his green eyes watching me from under a head of foppish curls. I knew then that he wasn't a weak man. He was like a cat, stealthy and powerful. I remembered that cats don't like being locked up.

'You shouldn't sneak across the border without a pa.s.sport.'

'Nonsense. The Africans do it all the time.'

'You aren't an African,' I pointed out.

'No.'

'You're English?'

'No.'

'So were you in Markebo last year?'

He smiled. It was the smile of a knowing man who has found another that he can speak with on equal terms. 'No.'

'But you know what I'm talking about?'

'Do you you know what you're talking about?' A disappointed irritation showed in his voice. know what you're talking about?' A disappointed irritation showed in his voice.

I hesitated, wrong-footed. 'No.'

He sighed. 'It always catches up with me.' He went back to the corn dolly, or whatever it was.

'All right, just tell me how much you know,' I said.

'There were three of them. Two were killed, if you can call it that. We have to find the other one.'

I decided it was time to be reticent. I was already aware that the Doctor would be a formidable adversary. 'At least two men were killed in D'nalyel last year,' I said.

He sighed again. 'Oh, well. Lie if you want to.'

I felt like an awkward schoolboy caught out by his teacher. I was furious. I found a word I could pick on and began to beat it to death. 'Why do you say "we" have to catch the stranger? Are you on the same side as the Waffen SS?'

'Don't be silly. I haven't met any SS officers.'

Trumped again, I turned to the door, which was steel with a shuttered window that let on to a dull corridor. 'For what you've said already I could hand you over to '

'The SIS, the Security Police, the Thought Police. Yes I know. But you're not going to.' There was a calm certainty in his voice. 'Do you know how unimaginative you sound, Mr Greene? I'm disappointed. Your novels are better.'

I thought about it, and laughed. 'I have to admit you're right, Doctor Doctor what, by the way? Brodie said you wouldn't give your name.'

'Just Doctor will do.'

'You must have a name.'

'I've lost my memory.' He treated me to an innocent smile. 'No memory, no name, no papers. Convenient, isn't it?'

It was my turn to stage a sigh. 'You know, Doctor cases of total amnesia are rare. It's more common in literature, and quite frequent in movies, where it's an easy way of making mystery where there otherwise wouldn't be any. In life '

'Yes yes yes, but all that doesn't alter the fact that I have lost my memory and you're going to have to deal with it.'

'I'm going to have to keep you here or, rather, Brodie is. And you've just admitted to consorting with the enemy '

'No, I haven't. I didn't consort with anyone. I told you that we you and I have to catch a very dangerous person. Possibly more than one by now. Are you going to help?'

'Doctor, the SS are Hitler's personal bodyguard. I know they're dangerous, but it's hardly my job to catch them, and it certainly isn't yours.'

'You're not listening!' He stood up suddenly, and I could sense the impatience. He was like a lion in a cage, angry and hungry. 'Let's stop messing about, Mr Greene. I came here on purpose. I knew you had to be the Englishman who was in Markebo.' He grabbed my shoulder, and met my eyes with a powerful, urgent expression. 'We need to find the stranger, the one that survived, before he finds us.'

'You are very ready with the melodrama, Doctor. But I don't quite see why I should be helping the SS find him. Is he a threat to us? I felt no sense of threat when I was with him.'

He raised his eyebrows and turned away. 'People rarely do. But yes, he might be a threat to us. If I could remember more '

The corn dolly lay abandoned on the bed. It was strange, half ravelled into human shape from a different raw material. I had an insight into the truth then, but it flickered and was lost, because it seemed too improbable.