THE HALL OF TWO TRUTHS – A Novel
For the general reader

  • 6”X 9” book format
  • Paperback, full color covers
  • standard commercial binding, commercially printed
  • 601 pages
  • Book price US $29.95, plus handling and mailing from USA, or UK
  • Ebook version from iUniverse US $6

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Book Summary
Set in the context of a love story and its spiritual aftermath twenty years later, this tragicomic adventure
reveals social implications of the cosmic order through the strange “geophysics” of a very strange man. The
story will take you from the majestic shores of the Andaman Sea to the ancient temples of Malta, and into the
ridiculous trials of forty nationalities trying to keep a ramshackle oil field running in the Libyan Sahara. It will
show you a landscape that existed before the dawn of civilization. It will take you from a love nest in the
Canadian Rockies to an incredible journey up the Nile and a nation tortured by chaos and revolution. It will
expose the hatching of a terrorist plot that climaxes in a bizarre escape. And during the course of this madcap
action it will give you a glimpse into the meaning of the pyramids and Stonehenge. It will show you how we are
of three minds, not one. It will show you how to climb the mountain of history. It will show you how to transcend
the whole of space and time. It will give you a glimpse of the cosmic mind. It will make you laugh; it will make
you sad; and it will make you wonder profoundly. It will entertain you while will making you think as never
before.
Samples

                                                                  CHAPTER ONE

   Hormones! Had to be something like that. Had to be an explanation!
   The sea was a vast pliant blanket of color. It coasted in past the cliffs that stood like great teeth, rimming the
mouth of the inlet. It coasted in with the rising tide, undulating in long sleek swells, powered by the momentum
of some distant source.
  Perceptions exaggerated. Jesus! Like being on some kind of trip.
   There was no cause for the swells. The sea should have been calm. Yet the swells kept coming, strange and
haunting, driven by the unrelenting momentum impelling them endlessly across the lagoon.
  Something deep stirring. Like being part of something immense.
   They kept repeating the same cryptic message over and over. An incomprehensible plea from an unknown
source. A persistent hand of the blind, reaching out of the depths, knocking incessantly on the door of the deaf.
  But lovely! Like sex without effort or hassle. Like ongoing orgasm.
   Each swell built to a slick sharp knife, cut by the air, plunging recklessly into the shore. They captured the
sun. Rising from their rolling mounds of sea, they captured the glow of conscious intention. Then they
smashed themselves into a lather of death. In tireless succession, they hissed up the beach, then retreated
into the next restless plunge.
  Had to be hormones.  They had been at me for days. Waves of them. Whole scenes transformed. Insights
drowning in color. Floating. Something underneath moving Incredible!
   Legions of somnambulant swells kept marching to their death. They drifted in over rich beds of coral,
teeming with fish. They drifted in along the base of the cliffs, eroding cavities at the roots of the teeth that
soared a thousand feet from the sea.
  Something driving the endocrine glands. Flooding every cell in my body. Androgens flooding my brain!
Testosterone! Churning over in race. Going nowhere! Death! Madness! Like being raped by Aphrodite! Like
being one with water, earth, air!
   They drifted in silence from their secret source, to the roar of their final demise on this distant shore. They
drifted into the yawning mouth of the lagoon from the tireless mother of life in the vast deep ocean beyond.
  The ultimate seduction! Transcending desire. Union with the Mother of Life! The ultimate orgasm!
   I stretched my legs out on the warm dry sand, slipped off my sandals, dug my heels in a bit. I leaned back on
my hands. Incredible! She was wearing a swim suit as blue as the sea. At the end of the cove. She was
climbing down from some rocks. Just the two of us in the cove. People stayed around a bend in the other
direction. Her return journey would take her past me. She began strolling back along the edge of the surf,
maintaining her distance from it so that each rush of foam just barely nibbled her toes.
  Like some  hellish union with Persephone! Like continual climax!!
   There was a kind of melody in her casual stride, as if something in her movements betrayed that she was
both absorbed in her solitude and captivated by each restless lunge of the sea. She was oblivious to all but the
surf and the sea. Her limber frame swayed with the surge of the sea. The sea governed her pulse and her
tempo. It ebbed and flowed in her veins. It regulated her pace and her rhythm, as if she herself had emerged
from the surf through its striving to reach up and capture the light. She was one with the sea, born from it, by
some miracle of creation fashioned through its restless momentum.  
  Hormones! Cooking gaggles of cells in my hypothalamus! Screaming to my infundibulum!  Goddam
hormones!
   A vision in a dream was gliding toward me. Long blonde locks tumbled over tanned shoulders in fluent
brilliance, lifting to ride on a warm breath of breeze. Her pendulous arms swung diacritical hands with a
reciprocal grace that directed the fluid orchestration of her body. She was a symphony of motion. She was a
melody played by the sea.
  I was absorbed in the same timeless rhythms, the cadence crashing through my mind, the melody moving in
her lingering dance along the lips of the sea. Each surge of the surf roared, then hissed, then kissed at her
toes. I felt the same rush and pull of the surf at my soul, the same tidal surge from the source of life. I felt the
same gravity pulling me, longingly, back to the same mysterious source. I was suspended in a balance
between the rush and the pull, between the rise and the fall, the surf drawing us together in a common bond
with our common source in the sea. A vision was emerging out of eternity, riding on the amorous lips of the sea.
  Everything blurring, swirling, swimming in hormones, drowning in cellular orgasm. Lord, what was happening!
It was Oedipus all over  again! Answered the riddle of the winged sphinx, and he won the kingdom! Union with
the Mother! Unspeakable union!
   Sinking shafts of golden light were spilling through ruptured tiers of cloud, splashing as recklessly as the surf
over the majestic expanse of a paradise beyond compare. It spilled through emblazoned billowing windows,
drenching the towering cliffs in a golden rain. It glistened from the skin of the monstrous sea, writhing uneasily
in its mammoth bed. The sea was alive, pulsing with currents and tides in a rhythmic response to heavenly
motions. The sea was our mother. Her blood still flows in our veins. She tossed us ashore and bid us reach for
the light of knowing, through the power, the passion, and the pain of love. Thus we danced through the
clamorous chains of evolution, surging and receding in waves of life, striving for freedom.
  Chemical emotions splashing in cerebral splendor! Visions reeling out of eternity!
   We were one, she and I, as she danced through the light pouring over her shoulders in a golden sheen.
Long fingers played over her bosom, hugging the slender contour of her waist, then ran down the curve of her
leg, gushing forth in a profusion of diamonds awash in the foam. We were one, she and I, in the light of
knowing, with the mother of life in the sea. We were one, she and I, with the rush and the pull of the surf on the
shore, with the power, the passion, and the pain of love, as surely as if we were mutually locked in its tender
embrace. We were one, she and I, in the golden flood, spilling from the billowing windows of heaven. We were
one in the timeless mind of creation, drowned in the cadence of crashing and hissing.
  The scene transfigured! Vision adrift like froth on the sea! Hormones churning in cerebral flotsam! Every cell
rising in orgasm.
   The whole ocean reached up in wave after wave, out of the bowels of eternity. The whole ocean reached up
to capture the light, then smashed and hissed in the surf that kissed at her toes. It kissed at her toes, yet it won
her heart, the wild mute melody of life through the ages resounding through the solitary passion of her mind.  
  She released her gaze from the plunging surf. She turned her face toward me. A capricious breeze teased a
wisp of her hair to play with the tip of her delicate nose. As a nimble finger pulled it away, our eyes finally met in
mutual surprise. We were one, she and I, with the tide of life. It was like seeing oneself in another.
  I felt her presence in mine!
   For a moment our eyes were mutually locked in the passionate light of knowing. In our gaze there was mutual
amazement, a shock at being one in one another. The rhythm of her dance was slightly disturbed, then the
spell was broken in a mutual blush. The rush of blood, from the heart to the head, gushed up with a flood of
feelings. Tides of emotions bounded onto the stage of conscious reflection, without language to give them
expression. Each naked in the eyes of the other, we were exposed and embarrassed.
  I blushed like a schoolboy!
   Her face erupted in a radiant smile, her features awash in shimmering lights. Her blue eyes were alive like the
sea, “Hello,” she said softly, the word hovering between us in the vibrant air. “Hello,” I beamed back through
the blush that we shared. Her smile lingered on, as she went on with her dance, a warm glow of humility
embracing us both.
  Twenty years! She was twenty years younger!
   We were one, she and I, and yet we were two, as she continued gracefully on her separate way. Her torso
swayed with the surge of the surf, her blonde blonde hair caressed by the breeze, her silhouette drenched in
the glistening sheen spilling through the billowing windows of heaven. She wandered away on the lips of the
sea, impelled by the momentum of eternity. She dwindled away through the golden rain, until she dissolved to
a memory.

  I continued to watch the lazy line of palms lean over the beach, long after she disappeared from sight. Their
outstretched fronds strained like deaf ears to the cryptic preachments of the pounding surf, while her memory
danced on to the rhythms resounding through my mind. Her memory lingered, even as it slowly ebbed and
waned, fading in waves, losing clarity of form, disintegrating to a froth, then finally receding like a sweep of the
surf back into the fertile womb of the mind. Still her memory lingered on, a formless reality, alive in the timeless
ocean of mind wherein we are one. Her memory was focused as a point in the depths, an independent focus of
the same tireless momentum that stirred in my soul. Then it began to transform.
   It was as if that remnant of her spirit in my mind had sought out a friend; not a friend of hers, but of mine, not
a friend she could have known. The timeless momentum reached across a span of twenty years, seeking out a
love I had left on the other side of the world. At first it was only the point of focus that shifted, ever so subtly in
the depths. Two memories joined hands and merged for a moment as one—two memories, ignoring the waves
of intervening events. They were one, so much alike in their manner and appearance, and yet they were two.
Then out of the ocean of fragmented experience, the timeless momentum brought a name to the surface.
Lanny... Lananda Wren was the love that lived in my heart twenty years before. Her name touched off an
inferno.         
  Eternal! Sublime! Mundane!
   With her name, an image of her form began to crest in my mind. She captured the light of my vision, riding
the tide, impelled by a swell, wearing a dress as blue as the sky, her blonde blonde hair tossed by the breeze.
Choosing her form however she wished, from out of the mists of memory, she floated as a veil on the lips of the
sea, emerging out of eternity. She came like a ghost, across time and space, a blush on her cheeks, a smile
on her face. She came like the wind, with a will of her own, and splashed like the surf in the heart of me. We
were one, she and I, in a torrent of love that gushed through my mind in a dizzy whirl. We were one, she and I,
that incredible girl, one in the timeless mind of creation. We were one, she and I, with spirits entwined,
swimming and soaring through one body and mind. I could see her features without need for eyes, swarming
inside me in the rapture of union. She spilled through my spirit in wave after wave, with a surging momentum
that I couldn’t control... and it wouldn’t subside.  
  Goddam hormones! Waves of them back with a vengeance! Waves of them flooding with memories!
…


                                                                   CHAPTER THREE


   So far back as any of my family has been able to determine, the main threads of my father’s ancestry have
always been tied to Malta, but I suppose that makes for quite a mixture of blood: Sicilian, Phoenician,
Carthaginian, Roman, Arab, Norman, Berber, Turk, Saracen, French, Spanish, Italian, and English, not to
mention other nationalities they brought with them, and stray visitors besides.
  For at least six generations Father’s ancestors have been stone masons. It was a popular trade, since
limestone was the only building material available on the islands. The islands were essentially rocks sticking
out of the sea, having precious little soil in a climate that supports only shrubs. Ever since the first ancient
settlers arrived, stone has always been used for building, the quality of the stone lending itself admirably to the
skills of the mason. Houses, shops, cathedrals, office blocks, hotels, government buildings, harbor
fortifications, everything has been constructed of stone. The sounds of the streets have echoed through stone
for untold centuries, and stone lives on in the minds of the people.  
…
  When I was eight years old I brought a pup home one spring day. I traded Tony three ham sandwiches for it.
Tony’s Mom couldn’t afford ham. It was his dog that had the litter. At least it was his family’s dog. Tony had a
bunch of brothers and sisters.
  “Can’t figure out why you want the lame one,” he said. The pup was born with a crooked front leg. Must of
got hung up on the way out we figured.
  “Didn’t you see? He ran right over to me.”
  “He limped over, you mean. Can’t walk straight. Always fallin’ down.”
  “It just doesn’t matter none. A dog ought t’ have the right to pick its master.”
  “You mean it?”
  “I mean it. They’ve got feelings too.”
  “Then how do you know he was headed for you? He’s always goin’ in circles.”
  “He can’t help his gimpy leg.”
  “Gimpy, all right. That’s a good name for ’m.
  “Gimpy! Great. I like it. How about it Gimpy?” He was astraddle my arm chewing my thumb as we walked
along.
  “What’s your Mom goin’ to say? Think she’ll let you keep him?”
  “That’s the tricky bit.” The deal was made on condition I could keep him.
  “Maybe if your father ’s home.”
  “Yep. That’s what I’m counting on. He’ll get around her. You’ll see.”
…
  So that’s how I acquired my first real friends, Gimpy, and Tony too. Tony was my age but was in a different
classroom. From then on the three of us were together all the time. That summer we were in the water more
than we were out of it. The harbor was close-by and you could dive right off the rocks. Gimpy took to the water
like a duck. He even had a limp when he was swimming, but it didn’t hinder him any.
  When it got too cold to swim, Tony and I took up bobber fishing after school and weekends. We didn’t have
poles, just fishing line wound on a stick. We’d swing it around our head and toss the bait out a few meters, then
let it drift out with the current.
  Fishing bored Gimpy silly. He still tried to swim after it got too cold for us, getting tangled in our lines and
everything. We had to take hooks out of his hide a couple of times. Then he started grabbing the sticks and
running off with our fishing lines, bobber and bait bouncing over the rocks behind him. He even caught a fish
once, a foot long. Quite proud of himself, he was. He came back barking at it flipping on the rocks, then started
prancing around with his little chest stuck out.
  “Fantastika!” we shouted.
  “He’s probably the only dog in the world that ever caught a fish on a hook and line,” Tony said, and I’ll bet it’s
true.
  Those were good times, and I could cope with that gap eating away inside. Then the worst happened. We
had crossed Grenfell Street along the harbor front, when Gimpy suddenly turned back, chasing another dog
about his size. The driver of the cement truck never had a chance. The back wheels crushed him to pulp. I
couldn’t believe my eyes. Tony and I stood there in a daze. The finality of death hit us like a sledge. Gimpy was
a smear of hair and guts on the pavement.
  The driver stopped and ran over to us.
  “I couldn’t help it,” he said. “He ran right under me. I couldn’t help it!”
  Gimpy couldn’t help it either. Just a lame dog chasing a chum. Gone for no good reason at all.
  The driver scraped him off the street with a shovel. Put him in a plastic sack.
  “I’m sorry,” he kept saying, over and over.
  I couldn’t say anything. Neither could Tony. It was our first contact with death. We were numbed by it.
Disoriented. The driver left his truck there in the middle of the street. We led him home like a pair of robots. It
might have been better if we could have cried or screamed or something. There was a hole the size of the
universe inside me. That old gap grew a million times in a minute. It devoured all the words and tears. One
brutal thought lived. Gimpy was dead. Dead.

….
  The exploration of the temples was a revelation to us both. We wandered through the complex in awe. There
are four Tarxien temples in all, three of them enclosed within a common outer wall. They were each built in a
series of horseshoe shaped apses fashioned from large blocks of stone. It was hard to imagine how some of
the stones had been cut and fit.
  “Giants built them, I’ll bet, thousands and thousands of years ago.” Tony’s mobile eyes reconstructed the big
structures, tracing their contours, while his bronzed arms were busy suggesting their erection. These shards of
pantomime, unearthed from his imagination, drew on some wild tales he had heard about giants that once
roamed the world.
  “I don’t believe in giants,” I replied resolutely.
  “Then what about this statue of a giant?”
  Just the lower half of the obese figure was left in an alcove, standing there from the waist down.
  “She sure was fat!” he snickered through dimpled cheeks. “Must have weighed a ton!”
  “How do you know it’s a she?” I asked skeptically.
  “Isn’t that supposed to be a skirt?” Tony struggled to span his arms part way around one thigh.
  “Maybe it’s a goddess,” I suggested. “These are temples aren’t they?”
  “Yeah, maybe the giants were gods and goddesses.”
  “Don’t be stupid! Men built the temples—masons like my Dad I’ll bet. The statue just represents a goddess,
like statues in church.” I had a stubbornly rational mind... sometimes.
  “How could they lift those big stones, then, if they weren’t giants?”
  We couldn’t begin to satisfy our curiosity in a single day, returning the next weekend to try again. This time
we went to the Hypogeum, not far from Tarxien, where a huge maze of interconnected caverns, three tiers
deep, was hewn out of the living rock, over five thousand years ago. We found a way to sneak in, pretending
to be with some grownups, then proceeded to follow through the labyrinth of chambers with eyes bugged out
and mouths agape. We lagged behind the others a bit, trying to remain unnoticed.
  “These were tombs, they say,” I ventured.
  “Spooky... r-e-e-a-lly  sp-o-o-ky!”
  “Thousands and thousands of corpses were kept in here.” I could almost see the cadavers stacked up.
  “Veru-tal-bizgla!... R-e-e-a-lly sp-o-o-ky!”  
  “Why would they make a whole graveyard underground? It would be a whole lot easier just to bury people.”  
It was hard enough to dig graves on the surface.
  “It was a temple too,” whispered Tony. “Maybe they wanted to keep the souls down here.”
  “The souls. I hadn’t thought of that.”
  “Yeah, I guess caves are better for keeping souls.”
  “Do you suppose there’s ghosts then?”
  “G-ghosts?”
  “Yeah. If there’s souls, maybe there’s ghosts too?”
  “Do... do you believe in ghosts, George?”
  “I d-don’t know... I... I think so.” Weird shadows were dancing through the passage ways from the half a
dozen visitors filing through ahead. The dark shapes slid along the crooked halls like spooks trying to hold
themselves together.
  “It... it’s as if we’re being w-watched,” Tony whispered nervously.
  “W-watched?”
  “Yeah... Like somebody’s lookin’ at my back.”
  “Maybe... maybe ghosts can see us, and we can’t see them.” Dark niches, hewn in the walls, were filled with
invisible eyes. I could feel the blood throbbing through my veins. Fingers of sensation were playing through my
innards.
  “If... if you can’t see them, maybe... maybe you can feel them. C-can you feel them, George?”  Tony’s hazel
eyes kept looking bigger, and bigger, as if some force in his head was trying to pry his mind open enough to
contain himself.
  “I... I think I feel them... all around... all over.”
  “Can ghosts live for thousands of years?”
  “If... if they’re dead already... why not? They got souls, right?”
  “Yeah... I... I guess so... if they got souls...”
  “Yeah... Souls can’t die... At least I don’t think so.”
  By the time we’d reached the bottom tier of caverns we’d lost the small group ahead. We were scared. The
empty caverns came alive. They looked like stone-faced ghouls that had been resurrected with gaping mouths,
leading off into a maze of throats. The air was dank and damp—no motion to it. The foul breath of death hung
stale in the bronchioles of a solid rock lung. We were scared and lost. We were left behind alone—swallowed
deep in the earth.
  “How do we get out of here?” Tony’s eyes were wells of apprehension stirring with threads of terror, like the
terrors fingering through my innards. “Let’s call for help. Maybe someone will hear us.”
  “We can’t!  We’ll get in worse trouble.”
  “You’re right... we mustn’t panic.”  He mustered up some courage. “What can old ghosts do to us anyway!”
  “Let’s be quiet and listen. Maybe we’ll hear the people ahead.” I could only hear my heart pounding in my
chest. The hard stone walls were silent. We moved on, staying close, stopping to listen at intervals, hearing
only our own reactions.
  “I think we came from that direction.” Tony seemed to remember the way back. “Let’s go back a ways and
listen again.” There was only more silence... the mind numbing silence of a tomb. We kept moving along
cautiously, stopping to listen, Tony leading the way. We kept winding back and forth through the passage
ways, around many turns, going in circles. We were hopelessly confused. We stopped and looked at one
another, sweat running down our faces, hearts pounding.
  “What’ll we do?” Tony muttered.
  I was still clutching the brown paper bag in my hand. “I’m hungry... Let’s have some lunch!”
  “Lunch!?”
  “Yeah. There’s lots of time... can’t be past noon yet.”
  “Yeah... maybe we’ll think of something... “
  We sat down, propping ourselves against a wall, near a light. I opened the paper bag and took out a couple
of sandwiches.
  “Ham or cheese?
  “It doesn’t matter.”
  “Let’s have cheese.”
  “Maybe someone else will come.”
  “Yeah... Maybe.”
  I gave him half a cheese sandwich and started munching on the other half. “Someone’s gotta come sooner
or later.”
  “Yeah... sooner or later...”
  “Yeah... maybe tomorrow...”
  “Tomorrow... Sure... Not many tourists this time of year...”
  “Tomorrow!  Our folks’ll have the police out lookin’ for us!”
  “The police?!”
  “You know what my mother’s like!”
  “Yeah. Mine too.”
  “They’ll have the police on us sure.”
  “We... we mustn’t panic...”
  “Yeah... Mustn’t panic... Have another sandwich...”
  “Yeah... We’ll think of something...”
  “Yeah... We’ll think o’ something...”
  “Don’t want to spend the whole night in here.”
  “That would be bad.”
  “Yeah, real bad.”
  Then the horrid thought dawned on me. “Maybe they’ll turn off the lights!”  No sooner were the words out
than off they went. It was blacker than black. Total blindness invaded our minds. Instinctively we clutched for
one another.
…

  I still cannot clearly recall the details following the event, but I remember clearly that it happened about nine o’
clock on that next Saturday morning, as we made our way by bicycle toward Valletta. We were going down a
long grade, typical of many of the streets in Malta, going either up or down all the time, like long sloping
corridors with limestone buildings abutting one another right to the sidewalks. Tony was about twenty yards in
the lead, when I had a terrible premonition of what was about to happen. I slammed on my brakes and shouted.
  “TONY STOP! STOP! TONY!”
  I could hear it rumbling down a steep side street that cut across our path at a blind intersection. A pickup
truck came through the stop sign out of control. Tony didn’t see it until the moment of impact...a sickening
crunch of metal... the thud of his body flung forward into the path of the speeding truck... Thump! Thump!... It
was over!
  It was over, all but for the bowel rending scream of Tony’s bicycle, screeching down the paved street,
scraping along under the truck, as the driver clipped off a row of light standards and ground to a halt, etching
a deep scar across the stone faces of a long line of buildings. It was over, all but the echoes still ringing
through the stone streets in my mind years later. It was over, all but the searing sight of the tire tracks across
Tony’s mashed face, the blood oozing from the slits of his eyes, his head swelling in a vision of horror. It was
over, all but the sting of death through my flesh, all but the pain that sucked the living marrow from my bones
and mangled my guts to a throbbing pulp. It was over, all but the insatiable unbearable pang in an
unspeakable darkness that consumed me within.  
  I could hear people running, crowding round, shouting, talking in a hollow distant world that I suddenly couldn’
t comprehend. I could see faces looking... fuzzy faces milling around with strangely distorted expressions...
staring through a haze. I could feel hands touching numb trembling limbs that I couldn’t identify... helpless arms
hanging... stinging with death. I could hear meaningless questions from a vague dim distance I couldn’t
respond from... being pulled ever deeper by an unbearable pang into a paralyzing darkness. A buzzing in my
head began to drown out the sounds... the numbness grew heavier... the darkness claiming my peripheral
vision... till I was looking out through a tunnel at a blur of confusion.
  I don’t remember how I got home. There was a time missing that seemed forever. I was floating in limbo,
drifting between a blur of confusion and the unspeakable darkness that consumed me within. I found myself in
a bed. Was it my bed? The familiar room was swirling around the searing vision of Tony’s mashed face, the
blood oozing from the slits of his eyes, the unbearable pangs pulling me back into the darkness. Colors and
shapes returned around me through a groping wonder. A man hovered over me, holding my wrist, peering
weirdly through concerned brown eyes. I knew those eyes. Whose eyes were they? He took something from a
leather bag. I felt a prick in the arm. I was floating in limbo, drifting again between a blur of confusion and the
darkness consuming me within.  
  Again I roused to a hand holding mine. It was there all the time, through the haze, the same maternal
presence, the same reassuring voice, speaking words that I couldn’t make sense of. I saw her gentle face by
the side of the bed. “Drink some broth,” she said. I felt Father’s strong hand raising me up, to the cup that he
held to my lips. “Drink as much as you can. You’ll feel better tomorrow.” I drank. I looked at them both. I studied
them, and I knew them. Two days had passed. Then the searing vision of Tony’s mashed face pulled me back
into the darkness.
      Civilized medicine has invented convenient names for these transient conditions—amnesia, hysteria,
shock—but nothing to deal with the deep persistent pain. Such great security is placed in empty names. A long
period passed before I began to feel half human again. Familiar associations soon reestablished themselves in
a new orientation. I knew Tony was dead and that life must go on. But something in me had died with Tony.
The reality of death was vividly seared in my memory. It was a one-two combination. Gimpy’s death had
sensitized me for Tony’s. The horror of his mutilated face still stared out of dark places in my hours alone. The
gap within me opened again, following me through each day, gnawing deeper than ever at the anxious
unquenchable emptiness that lurked in my heart.
  I continued to visit the ancient stones on a regular basis, reminiscing on the countless hours that Tony and I
had spent exploring and pondering their mysteries. The living memory of our times together, helped to balance
the excruciating grief of his death—the terrible sense of injustice at the unmerciful blow that snuffed out a
friend who had never harmed a soul in his short happy life. The stones had acquired a more profound
significance, reaching back to those ancient people. I began to really understand why they had labored to build
monuments to a timeless sense of meaning that transcends our fleeting moments on earth. Although I had
studied the mythology of the temples before, there was a new feeling attached to them now. Something in me
had died with Tony, yet something of Tony lived on with me, something of his spirit, still alive in the times that
we shared, still alive in me.  …

…



                                                                   CHAPTER SIX

   At that time of year the morning sun was still slightly tardy in its rise through the blue day of its lonely abode.
The shadows were still resting long from their night of carousing with darkness, as I boarded a taxi to visit the
Ggantija Temples. There are two of them, similar in design, one older and larger than the other, both of them
snugly enclosed within a common outer wall. It was a remarkable feat of construction, especially for people
working without metal tools, and supposedly with no knowledge of mathematics. The legends that they were
erected by giants appear almost credible from the sheer size of some of the huge stones, weighing up to fifty
tons.
  The few visitors that came mostly wandered straight through, glancing here and there, or following a guide,
without spending much time to carefully study the ruins. One middle aged, heavy set woman—obviously a
tourist—had a book that gave a few details. She was clad in a prolific print dress, secured by a belt nearly
hidden in the bulk of her waist, and was crowned by a broad brimmed straw hat. She was trying to identify the
details in the book, as she dragged her beleaguered husband from place to place, explaining everything to
him. He followed like a placid child, nodding his head, as she led him through each of the five apses in the
larger temple, pointing out libation holes, carvings, and so on.
  They paused for a giggle, her red face turning incandescent, in front of the stone base that used to support
a huge phallus. The phallus itself has been removed to the local museum, apparently out of reverence for an
object of worship. The couple were about to enter the rear apse beyond it, when they suddenly stopped at the
entrance. They froze in their tracks, as if they had seen a ghost.   
  The walls of the apse were constructed of huge limestone slabs, rising twenty feet high, curving in at the top,
to suggest the appearance of a semi-dome overhead, open in the center.  Archaeologists conjecture that it
had been the holiest part of the temple—the domain of the priests. Sacrifices had been made on a stone altar,
still in place, complete with two holes to drain away the blood. The morning sun had risen by now, to the point
where it cast a broad shaft of sunlight streaming in over the great stones. The big woman and her little
husband stood petrified at the entrance to the apse, silhouetted in the shaft of light, momentarily unable to
move, as if stricken by a foreign presence. I took a step or two sideways to get a better look beyond them.
  A strange looking man had moved out of the shadows. He was standing directly by the altar, staring
transfixed over their heads, out through the center of the temple. He was holding a large book—opened—in
the palm of his left hand, his right hand hanging motionless by his side. He could have been in a trance or a
daze, except that he was concentrated. You could feel his presence. He was the living image of an ancient
priest getting ready to preach, the shaft of light angling over his head. It gave an uncanny glow to his imposing
features. A circle of vibrant red hair ringed his whole face, making his head appear extraordinarily large,
framed in an electrified corona. His eyes, deep set in their sockets, projected their own piercing vision. His
oversized shirt hung limp on his gaunt frame, like a priestly robe. It was as if he didn’t see the startled couple
standing directly in front of him at all.  It was as if they did not exist.
  The heavy woman nudged her husband with her elbow, almost bowling him over, then she gave a frantic sign
with a twitch of her huge straw hat. They both turned tail and scurried straight out of the temple, heads down.
They didn’t hesitate or deviate one degree in their course, nor did they look sideways, lest they invite some
ancient treachery to befall them. “He gives me the willies,” she shuddered to her husband as they passed.
  That left just the two of us in the temple, me in the central area, and the strange character staring over my
head from the altar. I was beginning to feel chills up my spine myself, for he still hadn’t moved.
  Then suddenly his eyes dropped, focusing on me. “Come here,” he ordered, motioning with his right hand,
while setting his book down on the altar and proceeding to study it, fully confident that I would do exactly as he
commanded.
  It annoyed me that he should so presumptuously summon me. It surprised me when I found myself moving
toward him. I don’t know why I obeyed him. Maybe I was taken by the challenge of a puzzle, for he certainly
presented something of a mystery. I wasn’t sure how to approach him, for I was walking into a sacred inner
sanctum toward an enigma.   …
…

                                                                   CHAPTER EIGHT

...
  That brief, tense meeting with Gillard knocked the wind from my sails, ending the buoyant years. Relations
with him remained tense, with hostility just under the surface, while his fame as a corporate genius flourished. I
began to feel that I was caught up in something that threaded through the whole business world. It robbed that
sense of participation in something creative and meaningful, feeding like a leech on the fruits of those labors.
  That emotional gap that I had struggled with so much as a boy, rushed through the years to confront me
anew. I was worried by it, facing the prospect of having to live indefinitely in irrational fear, grappling in the dark
with something dimensionless.
  Normal concerns became blown out of proportion. I was worried about Lanny, about our future together.
There would be children, a mortgage, and financial obligations that would render me a pawn at the mercy of
men like Melvin Gillard. I would be forced to compromise, to enact their will for the sake of my family, or face
financial execution. My faith in the responsible management of business was shattered. I would become a
clone of the same mentality for the wealth and power of others. I would be forced to betray our relationship,
turn it into hypocrisy.
  She began to notice that something was troubling me, one evening here, on the side of the mountain. She
ran her fingers through my hair, and looked at me tenderly. “What is it?” she asked.  “What is it that’s
bothering you so?”
  I should have tried to explain that I had a dark premonition that frightened me. Whatever was wrapped up in
that word security, that was what I couldn’t offer her. Maybe we could have worked it out together, found
another route. She had a right to know, to make her own decision. But I couldn’t explain the depth of the
feeling, with roots going back to my boyhood. It haunted me that there might be something irreparably wrong
with me, some inadequacy that I might never resolve. I held her close for a long time, unable to reply.
  It was as if hidden powers were interfering in events at every opening, as if every success had to be paid for
in failure, like the sudden death of Martin Granger that had precipitated the debilitating circumstances to follow.
It was as if there was an immutable law in the heavens that every joy had to be paid for in pain, every smile with
a grimace, every truth with a lie, the dark powers being assigned the contemptible task of working through
every weakness, squeezing through every crack, always manipulating contingencies to ensure that dues were
exacted in suffering for every pleasure, every truth, every justice, every beauty enjoyed.  
  Who knows what prompted the young girl to suddenly swerve her bicycle into the path of the car as we went
for a drive on that fated Sunday afternoon. It wasn’t her fate that was affected, for I reacted in time, skidding
into a utility pole. Lanny lurched forward in the seat, bumping her forehead against the rear view mirror.  
  “Lanny, you’re bleeding!” Horrors began romping through my mind when I saw the slight trickle of blood from
a scrape on her forehead. ...
…


                                                                   CHAPTER TEN

...
  The morning I left for the desert, a company bus picked a few of us up in front of the flats before daybreak,
then made the rounds picking up others at various locations, mostly Libyans, until the bus was packed. We
reached the airport at the gray hour of dawn, clambering out in front of an old airplane hangar at one extremity
of the airport unused by commercial traffic.
  Shapes across the far runway were shedding their pallor, waking with the morning. A line of thin trees stood
sentinel behind a group of Russian transports, squatting with drooping wings. To one side a row of Migs were
covered with neatly fitted tarpaulins. Two Russian helicopters were parked on a strip of grass that separated
the far runway from an access runway on the near side, to which a broad parking apron abutted. There were a
number of aircraft parked on the apron in front of the hangar, including some F-27’s. It was these that Libyan
Arab Airlines chartered out to various oil companies, for transporting personnel and supplies to their desert
locations. ….
…
  One man waited alone. He was moderately tall, trim, bronze skin, fine features, early thirties. He had a sense
of discipline about him, standing erect and alert, aware of what was going on around him. I had met him in the
transit flat the night before, a man named Thomas Bradley. He kept very much to himself. Although we would
be working together, he being a construction supervisor at Beda, he was reluctant to engage in idle
conversation, offering little or no information about himself. He said he was from England, although he
obviously had African blood. I tried to pass the time of day with him again.           
“It’s going to be another warm day,” I said.
  “Let us hope there isn’t a sand storm. There is a haze of dust from the desert.” His English was perfect,
without a trace of accent. He gave the impression of being well educated, more so than he admitted to.
  “What part of England are you from?”
  His brown eyes casually searched my face. “Near London. And where are you from?”
  “Canada... originally Malta.  Have you worked in Libya long?”
  “A few months.”  Then he let the conversation drop.  
  “Can you tell me anything about Beda?”
  He smiled. “You will be finding out for yourself soon enough.” Again he let the conversation drop.
  A few minutes later I started again.
  “This is my first attempt at working abroad. Have you worked in various countries?”
  “England, of course, and Scotland—Aberdeen.”
  “Aberdeen. Offshore?”
  “Yes.”
  Again he let the conversation drop. He felt uncomfortable talking about himself and I didn’t pursue it. Maybe
he didn’t want everyone knowing his history. It didn’t really matter. But I couldn’t help feeling that he had
something to hide.  
…

  The plane bounced aloft, pivoting, the pilot struggling to correct and get it down. The starboard side
screeched again, then port. Abdu was vomiting in the aisle.
  He can’t hold it down.  It’s too fast, too rough.  He can’t keep it straight.
  The plane rocked through another bounce, trying to pivot. The pilot struggled to correct.
  Get it down! Get it down!
  Speed was reduced. He got it down again. A smaller bounce and it was down again. It was swerving badly.
  Keep it down! Keep it down!
  It was veering from side to side down the runway. Everyone was pitching violently from side to side. Abdu was
covered in vomit. It was splattering all over me.
  He has it down! He has it down!
  The plane steadied, gradually slowing. It came to a halt, beyond the end of the demarcated runway.
  “Sweet Jesus!” I’d never meant the term so reverently in my life.
  The plane was silent. Nobody said a word as we taxied back to the fuel tank with a blown tire. A crew member
opened the rear passenger door, another the cargo door. A blast of torrid air gushed through the cabin. Then
the men began to file out into the scorching blizzard of sand.  
  A surly man in uniform stood at the bottom of the steps, with a gun draped over one arm. He gruffly
demanded my desert pass, glanced at it, then thrust it back at me. I leaned into the hurricane, shielding my
eyes, following the others to get my luggage at the cargo door.
  As I waited in the one hundred and thirty degree heat, my back to the wind, sand was streaming across the
desert like drifting snow. Surface visibility was only a few dozen meters. My stomach was in a turmoil, the taste
of vomit in my throat, a flood of apprehension drowning my mind. “Hell. It must be Hell!” I wanted to backtrack,
but there wasn’t any way.
  I collected my two bags. I was dragging them through the blizzard toward the guard rail, when I caught a
glimpse ahead that I couldn’t believe. I stopped and looked again, shielding my eyes against the drifting sand.
It couldn’t be possible. Not him. Not here. But there was no mistake. His red hair and beard were full of sand,
standing out like wire in all directions, a wild look dancing in his eyes.
  “Brother George!” he shouted through the gale. Then he jumped the barricade to help me with my bags.
  “What in hell are you doing here?” I shouted in astonishment.
  “Everyone’s got to be somewhere, Brother. It’s a geophysical law. Come with me. I’ll give you a ride to camp.
Brother Lorenzo is down with food poisoning, along with a couple dozen others. Too sick to make it.”   
  Food poisoning! Great!
  As we threw the bags in the back of the Toyota wagon, Hussein came running up with a big hello for Brother
Bart, then Tom Bradley joined us as well.  
  “Bartholomew Flynn!” I repeated when Tom introduced us. I felt I had known his name all my life. What was
the fool doing here? How did he know we would meet again?
…

  “Is there another way out of this place except by plane?”
  “Don’t worry, Brother George. You’ll get used to it. Somebody’s got to stay here and do their bit, and it might
as well be us.” He chuckled. “Besides, there must be worse places in the world than Beda... somewhere! There
must be!”
  “And what’s a geophysicist, one of the best, doing working in a place like this?”
  “Petroleum Engineering!” he shot back. “I don’t like working in an office all the time, pouring over charts,
computer printouts, living in the hypothetical world of hypothetical science. I like the challenge of the great
outdoors. I enjoy the power and beauty of nature.”  
  He was gesticulating with his right hand at the power and beauty of nature around us, as he tried to steer
around enormous potholes with his left, our vision being interrupted by blinding waves of sand and the streams
of muddy sweat running in our eyes.  ‘He’s totally mad,’ I thought.
  “I enjoy the interchange with people from different walks of life, from different lands, working shoulder to
shoulder, meeting a common challenge, bridging the cultural differences in the great brotherhood of man. I
treasure the opportunity to pass on the rudiments of knowledge and experience to some of Libya’s budding
technicians and engineers, like my fine friend and colleague, Brother Hussein. I cherish the chance to bring a
little human enlightenment to the sterility of the technocratic mind, to pry a corner open to the authentic
creative potential of humanity toward the bleak realities of human need. And here, as an added gratuitous
bonus, I have the time I need to devote to true geophysical studies of cosmic import and profound significance.
Soon you will see it for yourself, Brother George. Here, in humble Beda, such opportunities abound as
nowhere else on earth. You have truly been blessed by the gods to be thrown into such a nest of chance as
this!”
  I looked at Tom and Hussein in the back seat. Tom rolled his eyes. Hussein had a grin from ear to ear.
  “Tell us about the Planet Mind, Brother Bart,” Hussein pleaded.
  “Patience, young man, patience! To everything under the heavens there is a season. Another day perhaps,
but now, alas, we’re reaching journey’s end.”  
  The grim vista of Beda began to take shape through the dust ahead. Four tall rusty tanks were crowded
close together in a line, congested with dilapidated equipment along one side, with the main camp immediately
adjacent. Some permanent structures and a few dozen old trailers huddled together in a close pattern. Further
to the north, more permanent structures huddled together in a cluster. There was a tiny security shack with no
one in it, no gate or security fencing. Nothing was painted. Items of junk were parked all over, half buried in the
drifting sand. It looked a disaster area. It was.
…


                                                                   CHAPTER SIXTEEN

   The days churned over a random regurgitation of chaotic events with their usual linearity, searching for an
ultimate combination of ridiculous factors in the grim comedy playing itself out to an empty theater. The desert
fumed on, maintaining a heated silence, unreceptive to every civilized overture. It was a barren phantom
always pressing to invade the human soul. It crept in like the sand to your underwear, seeping in through
subtle cracks in your psyche, wearing away at the foundations of sanity. You didn’t notice it happening. That
was the insidious infliction. The normal supports one is used to—the encircling environment of life—was fried
to extinction in the hostile wastes. ...
…

  From the top of the tank my eye was drawn toward the police camp, a collection of four decrepit trailers off by
themselves, a kilometer away to the northwest. A jail, a roach-ridden kitchen, a bunkhouse for the three or four
men, and a separate trailer for the degenerate captain, with a desk and table in one end—this constituted their
filthy, miserable home. They were in jail themselves, abandoned to the vagaries of their own minds, isolated
even from Beda, without a jot of constructive work to do.
  The two men that functioned as desert police had been shunted off to the worst station in the desert. Nobody
wanted them. The Libyans in camp kept their distance as well, obliged as some were to invite the captain to the
mess for meals now and then. To see his vulgar corpulence overhanging the chair, a doomsday look hungrily
scouring the mess hall, this was enough to obliterate anyone’s appetite on those days when he came. An aura
of evil fluttered around him, tentacles searching to snatch any prey.
  There would have to be an accident report on the tank, and a copy of it would go to him.
…

  The police captain came in wearing army fatigues, a big pistol swinging on his hip. He was followed by his
skinny assistant, with one bad eye and a crazy look in the other, toting a machine gun under his arm. The
captain flopped down in a chair, threw one arm on the table, looking contemptuously around the room. His
skinny assistant took a seat on his right, carelessly planting the machine gun on the table. The muzzle was
pointing straight toward me. It was one of those Rambo type weapons, light and effective, about a yard long,
with a large clip loaded for action. There were no introductions. Just a cloud of depression that entered the
room with the sordid pair.  
  The captain kept his soiled tam on his head, looking out from under deep furrows across his Neanderthal
brow, like a nervous mastiff hungry for blood. A thick black mustache drooped into slumping jowls of fat that
tugged his face away from his bloodshot cavernous eyes. His thick lower lip sagged open from filthy teeth,
hanging there in a kind of lascivious drool. A heat, generated in his body, rendered sagging rolls of suet into a
greasy stench that emanated from under his shirt. The pair of them oozed the grossest kind of vulgarity. Little
wonder they had been shunted out to the worst place in the desert.
  Omar Hourani looked the assistant straight in his good eye, the milky white one giving the impression of half
a mind. “Put your gun over in the corner!” he demanded gruffly in Arabic, pointing with one arm.  
  The man’s crazy eye darted at him with an insane glare. He ignored the instruction. The police captain
snorted, drumming his fat fingers on the table.
  “Put your gun in the corner, I said,” Omar demanded again. “Why do you bring guns to a business meeting?!”
  “That’s our business!” growled the captain in Arabic, turning his head quickly, flicking a slobber on the table
toward Omar.  
  Omar stood up, pushing his chair back. “There won’t be any meeting with a gun on the table. What are you
going to do? Shoot us all?!”
  The captain grunted, drummed his fat fingers on the table, then signaled his assistant with a flip of his hand.
His crazy eye dancing, the skinny man put the gun on the floor with a sneer. The muzzle was still pointing at me
under the table.
  Omar sat back down.  “Go ahead Latch,” he said.
…


                                                                   CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

   Forty-five days in the desert was a lifetime. Everything seemed as though it happened an eternity ago,
almost as soon as it happened. Returning to Malta was like stepping out of a time machine, into an old familiar
world that for a while seemed a fantasy.
…

  The second week home I took Mother to Rome, to get her out of the mind set she was constantly exposed to.
It took a bit of convincing at first. She felt guilty about going against Sam’s wishes, then she got quite enthused
about the idea.
  “Let me see. What will I take along...”
  “Take an empty suitcase Mom. We’ll fill it with new clothes when we get there.”
  We stayed in a grand old hotel on Via Veneto, where she and Father had stayed on their honeymoon. I
couldn’t have made a better choice. She was soon restored to her sweet old self. Her eyes lit up with a million
memorable moments coming alive again, after fifty-six years. She looked like a teenager masquerading in a
tired old body. The beasts were exorcised from her heart and mind.  
…

  “When they were burying Pope Pius XI, back in 1940, they discovered some ancient brickwork under the
catacombs, encouraging them to investigate further. Apparently, when the Roman Emperor Constantine
adopted Christianity in 311 AD, he buried an entire pagan cemetery in order to build the first Roman Catholic
Basilica on the side of a small hill, one of the seven hills of Rome.”
  “You mean they buried a whole cemetery?” Mother whispered to me, loud enough for everyone to hear.
  “That’s what he said Mom,” I whispered back. “See the brick tombs?”
  The guide continued, after a polite pause to let us know we had interrupted.
  “What could be so important about the location to warrant going to such trouble? Besides burying elaborate
brick tombs of the wealthy, it meant building a high stone retaining wall, in order to fill and level the whole area
over the tombs. This also incurred the risk of settlement under the church.”
  “Is that the wall there?” Mother whispered again, pointing to the stout stone structure about five or six meters
high.
  “Yes Mom, that’s it. Shh.”  
  The guide smiled politely and went on. “That first basilica nevertheless stood for twelve hundred years, until
it was finally replaced in the sixteenth century by the present structure. It was designed by Michelangelo in
such a way that the altar was in exactly the same place, but a little above the original altar. The tombs, dating
back to the first century, have been excavated for about two hundred and seventy feet, approximately up the
central axis of the church.”  
  Each tomb was a few meters square with vaulted ceiling. They were aligned in a row, a narrow passageway
running along them, from which they could be entered.  The guide led us to one end of the passageway, near
the altar above, and continued.          
  “Specially designated, directly under the altar, is a small tomb that is clearly indicated as being that of Saint
Peter,” the guide continued. “Among other things, there is an ancient inscription on a wall, ‘Tu es Petros,’ with
an arrow pointing to this tomb.”  
  The tomb had been excavated and prepared so that you could look through a little window and see a few
bones. Saint Peter had been crucified upside down in Nero’s Circus, which had been only a short distance
away.
  “You mean those are actually the bones of Saint Peter?” Mother whispered again.
  This time the guide answered. “It’s impossible to prove, of course, Madam. But it is clear that Constantine
was sufficiently convinced to go to a great deal of trouble in order to build the altar of his church over this
tomb.”  
  The remaining tombs generally represented the cult of Isis and Osiris, which was popular at the time. The
tombs had been plastered inside with frescos of the cult, patches of the frescos still being intact.
  As we wandered through the stuffy cemetery, all underneath the tombs of the Popes in the catacombs, which
are themselves underneath the basilica, it struck me that this massive Christian church, a monument to the
crucifixion and resurrection of a savior, was erected over an ancient resurrection cult, going back to the Old
Kingdom in Egypt, with roots dating back to the early dynasties, 3100 BC.
  The group dispersed for a while, to go exploring inside various tombs.
  “Mercy me! To think that these frescoes are two thousand years old. What is this pagan cult all about?”
Mother asked me. We were in one of the larger tombs in which the frescoes were fairly well preserved.
  “It’s about a theme that was common all through the ancient world, Mom. In Egypt the myth grew out of early
beliefs in a supreme creator deity known as Ptah, whose vital energy resided within the nine gods mentioned in
the Pyramid Texts. Four of these gods were the opposing wife/husband pairs of Isis/Osiris and Nephthys/Set.”
  “Then they believed in one God, like we do.”
  “Yes. And nine lesser gods. As the story goes, Osiris and Isis were born to the earth god and sky goddess.
They were the first to cultivate wheat, barley, and fruit. But Set was jealous of his brother Osiris, of his virtue
and fame, and he conspired to destroy him on two occasions.”
  “You mean he wanted to kill his own brother?”
  “That’s right, Mom. The first time, Set nailed him in a coffin and set it adrift on the Nile. It floated all the way to
Phoenicia, where a tamarisk tree grew up around it. Because of the glorious aroma of the tree, the local king
and queen had it made into a pillar in their palace. Isis was wandering in grief in search of her husband and
finally discovered the location of the casket inside the pillar. She begged the queen to let her have it. On the
sea journey back to Egypt, she opened the chest and embraced her husband in tears.”  
  “You mean one brother killed the other, just as Cain killed Abel, then Isis was able to bring him back?”
  “Yes, Mom, but Set found him again, in the marshes of the Nile. This time he tore the body into fourteen
pieces and scattered them. Now Isis had a real problem the second time. But she had the help of her young
son Horus, together with Nephthys and her son Anubis. They were also joined by the moon-god Thoth, who
had invented language. At length they found all the pieces of Osiris except for his genital member. A fish had
swallowed that.”
  “A fish? His genital member?”
  “That’s the story, Mom.”
  “Mercy me!”   
  “Then after the body had been tightly wrapped in linen bandages, and certain rites had been performed, Isis
fanned the corpse with her wings. Osiris was revived to become the ruler of the dead. He now resides in the
underworld, in the Hall of the Two Truths, where he judges the souls of the dead.”
  “So Osiris judges the dead? The dead husband? In the Hall of Two Truths?”
  “That’s the story. When the dead come to confess before him, their hearts are weighed in a balance against
a feather. According to their lives they are rewarded or punished.”
  “Why a feather?”
  “Well, Maat wore a feather in her hair, so the feather represented Maat, the goddess that was the Cosmic
Order. The cosmic order was also the fulcrum of the balance. Maat is an expression of Ptah, who resides within
every living thing in creation.”
  “So why did they weigh the heart against the cosmic order?”
  “These are the two truths, Mom, one human and social, the other one cosmic. A balance between them was
their basis of judgment. The two must be reconciled.”
  “And they put Osiris back together, like humpty dumpty, all except for his genital member. My word! Why
would a fish swallow that?”
  “It’s a fantastic tale to be sure, Mom. Who knows. Maybe meaning transcends the act of creation.”
…


                                                                   CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

…
  But the incident, upsetting as it was to Lorenzo, was not foremost in his mind as we drove to the plane that
morning. He was deeply troubled by something else.  
  “Georgio, do you believe it’s ‘a possible that ‘a maybe... some’ahow... that ‘a maybe there’s ‘a such a thing
as ghosts?”  
  “Have you seen a ghost?” I grinned in astonishment. Lorenzo was a serious man. It wasn’t the kind of
question that you’d expect from him. He had a sense of humor, sure, but he was forty-five years old and he
certainly wasn’t feeble minded.
  “It sure look ‘a like a ghost to me, my friend. Last night in my trailer it come ‘a walking right ‘a through the
walls.”
  “You’re joking!”
  “It’s ‘a no joke, believe ‘a me.”
  “What did it look like?”
  “It look ‘a like a ghost! What ‘a can I say? Is ‘a transparent. I can ‘a see right through!”
  “Did it say anything?  Did it do anything?”
  “Maybe it’s ‘a going to say some’athing, Georgio, but I don’t ‘a give him a chance.”
  “What did you do?”
  “What ‘a you think I do? I tell him get to hell out ‘a my bedroom right ‘a now!”
  “Did he go?”
  “Vanish ‘a like a ghost!”  
  “What did he look like?  Did you recognize him?”
  “I don’t ‘a know for sure. Maybe like ‘a my Papa, but I can’t ‘a be sure.”
  “Is your Father dead yet?”
  “Yes he’s ‘a dead yet. You think he’s ‘a try to come back and ‘a tell ‘a me some’athing?”
  “Maybe you’ve just been in the desert too long. The mind is playing tricks on you. You’ll forget all about it
once you get home.”
  “That’s ‘a what worries me, Georgio. I’m ‘a scared to go on ‘a this airplane. After I go to sleep, I dream about
a big ‘a fire.” …

…
  This brought on a deluge of stories about ghosts and dreams, none of which helped any to allay Lorenzo's
apprehensions. Everyone delighted in playing on his fears, as he listened with great attentiveness to every wild
tale that anyone could embellish suitably for consumption by the group.  
  Big Paul Henry told a story about a ghost that sometimes haunted the monkey board on the drilling rig. “The
derrick man sees him sometimes... when we’re comin’ out o’ the hole on windy nights,” he drawled. “Some say
he was a derrick man himself... wouldn’t wear a safety line... fell a hundred feet t’ the platform... few years
ago... same rig... The derrick man wears a line now.”  
  Manny Mendosa had ghosts prowling the decks of fishing boats. He even told of a ghost ship with a crew of
ghosts.  “And ‘a now you’re going to tell ‘a me they catch ‘a ghost fish too?” asked Lorenzo.  
  “I swear on the holy cross, it’s true! I never see ghost fish, but the boat and the crew I see with my own eyes,
in a very bad storm. That’s why I change my job quick!”
  Bashir broke in with a hurried tale about seeing the ghost of his grandfather, in his bedroom one night in
Ghadamis. “It was just like you say, Lorenzo. He came through the walls of the room... told me beware of fire...
then vanished... but I can’t change my job.”  
  There were stories of objects flying off shelves, dreams that had come true, unexplained noises in empty
rooms, premonitions of having been there before.
  Karnik and Mahinda, who had come over from their camp to see the movie, both chimed in. “In India we are
having many ghosts,” said Karnik. “India is being a very spiritual country.”
  Mahinda concurred in his goliath voice. Then he told about a woman who had buried her baby the same day
it died, only to have a man dressed in white come to her in a dream, the same night, telling her the baby was
alive. “When they are digging up the grave and opening the coffin, they are finding the little baby perfectly
fine.”  
  Ian Innis, a tiny engineering clerk with the impossible job of keeping things filed in the office trailer, told a tale
about the little people. “I see them wi’ me own eyes in the forest, near me home in Ireland, peekin’ out from
behind trees, in broad daylight!” The father of six, he had an unruly lock of hair that always stood over his
forehead. He looked like a leprechaun himself—had a heart like a pot of gold. You could hardly disbelieve him,
the way he told it.  
  Buff Binson was a powerfully built man with a red face, and muscles that were tight as a drum. He was a good
mechanical inspector, new to his job with Tradewinds, and had been in the S.A.S. in his younger years. The
Strategic Air Services had in fact made its name under David Stirling, behind the German lines in North Africa,
passing a hundred miles north of Beda. They plagued Rommel on his retreat from Alemain, roaring into his
camps at night, two men to a jeep, Vickers K machine guns blazing.
  I saw Buff take a pill, then a while later he was moved to talk. He spoke with a nervous stoppage in his
speech, as if his past was haunting him, and there was something that he wanted to get off his chest. “We had
a mission in Borneo... insurgents in the jungle... shooting... killing... I still see their faces... at night... alone... in
the jungle... in my room...” He couldn’t finish. Just broken phrases conveying a message that made your heart
reach out to the man.
  Brother Bart, and the Imam listened in silence. Although I’d been haunted by dreams and the memory of
Tony, I certainly wasn’t convinced that such experiences were good for anyone, and the idea of ghosts walking
around with gray shapes seemed incredible to me. I thought that most of the men were putting Lorenzo on. I
just laughed, indicating as much. Lorenzo went to his room for the night a worried man.
  The next day another plane came, and I again took him to the airport. His face looked haggard and his eyes
were red.  “I didn’t ‘a sleep a wink last night, Georgio.”  
  “Too many ghost stories. Don’t worry. It can’t happen two days in a row.” I kept my fingers crossed just the
same. I was relieved to see the plane take off safely, and he was on his way.  
…


                                                                   CHAPTER NINETEEN

   About a week later, Black Bart was at it again, another one of his diabolical schemes, considerably more
involved than a simple blanket snatch. This time his targets were Buff Binson, the doctor, and the diminutive
Ian Innis. He had an uncanny flair for picking up on people’s weaknesses and exploiting them one against the
other to explode their foibles, usually in such a way that no one could take serious offense, but not always.
This particular scheme carried with it a considerable degree of risk.
…

  “You tell Black Bart that I’m gunnin’ for him! We’ve got to make him pay, at least a little... for his own good.
We can’t let it end like this!”
  Ian dropped the message to Latch that Buff was furious, ready to tear Bart to pieces, knowing it would get
back to him.
  Bart hid for a week, scouring his brains for a way to make amends. He was heart sick. His brilliant scheme
had backfired. He was in agony at adding to Buff’s agony, and not altogether fearless about the possible
physical consequences to himself.
  Finally, in desperation, he decided to send him a bouquet of flowers, or at least the next best thing out there
in the desert. He picked all those weeds that he’d been nurturing in tin cans for months, those treasured
objects of his painstaking researches. He tied them up in a huge bunch, and set them on Buff’s doorstep with a
note: “A bouquet to make amends. Begging your forgiveness. Brother Bart.” He hoped luck would be with him—
that he might touch a soft spot.
  That evening Bart decided to casually venture into the recreation room. He sauntered in very quietly, sat
down on a sofa next the wall, and stuck his head in a newspaper.  
  By this time the story was all over camp. Everyone knew Buff had been getting a little well deserved revenge,
and they played along. Buff wasn’t there and they gave Bart the cold shoulder. After while Ian came in, and
parked right beside him. He started to whisper up to Bart’s ear.  
  “Ye know, ye’ve done a dastardly thing.”   
  Bart nodded meekly. “How’s Buff?”
  “Don’t ye know?”
  “Know what?”
  “He’s contemplatin’ murder?”
  “Murder!” Bart dropped the paper... His jaw fell open.
  “Murder, I tell ye. We bin tryin’ t’ calm ‘im down, but he’s wantin’ revenge... revertin’ back t’ the jungle. Th’
best thing y’ kin do is leave... fer yer own safety. He’s liable t’ come in any minute.”
  Just then the door flew open and in came Buff, face full of fury, clutching the big bouquet of weeds. He took
three or four steps inside and stopped, planting his feet firmly, a couple of feet apart.
  The room was full that night. Everybody spread out of the way, like one of those scenes of an impending gun
fight in a western saloon. Then nobody moved... just heads turning, snatching glances between Bart and Buff.
The silence was broken only by the sound of Buff’s forced breathing. The suspense tightened.
  Bart looked across the room at him, filled with awe and remorse. He rose to his feet slowly. The newspaper
floated to the floor from his lap. No one had ever seen him at a loss for knowing what to do. He was beaten at
his own game, had suffered miserably for a week, was a tortured man. His eyes were frozen helplessly on Buff’
s angry face.  
  “Buff... I’m sorry,” he said, with more respect than I’d ever seen him show anyone.
  Buff was having none of it.  He took the bouquet of weeds and tore it to shreds like a madman. He stomped
the pieces into the floor then kicked them aside.
  “Now come and get what’s coming to you!” he bellowed.
  Bart was on the verge of collapse. All eyes were on him—not a mutter in the room. He was turning to jelly. He
managed to mobilize his big grief stricken feet a few steps.
  “Come and get what’s coming to you!” Buff bellowed again.
  Bart extended his arm as he shuffled toward him. “Buff... I’m sorry.” He was nearly in tears, ready to take a
beating without raising a finger.
  Buff could endure it no longer. “What for?” he shouted, as he stepped forward and shook Bart’s hand. “I just
want t’ thank you,” he grinned. “I’m off the pills!”  
  The howls went up for a half an hour. Black Bart had been duly humbled by his peers. He took it like a saint.
  I realized then that he was more than an esoteric clown. He really was a fine gentleman. But the enigma and
the legend of the man only grew.


                                                                 CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

…
  In the meantime Tom had been on a truck too, living on grapefruit. He had offered the driver and his helper
sixty dollars in advance. “All the cash I have with me,” he had explained, showing his empty wallet—the rest of
his cash securely hidden. “Get me to Khartoum in time to cash travelers checks tomorrow and I’ll give you
another fifty.”
  “We don’t leave until tomorrow,” the older man growled through rotten teeth.
  “Then get me there before the banks close the following day.” It was the only truck going straight through
from Wadi Halfa.
  “Another hundred,” he demanded.
  “OK. You’re holding me up, but OK.” Tom had to make a deal and they knew it. The truck was going anyway,
and for that kind of money they’d go to hell and back without sleep. The two men thought Tom a fool.
  Tom was overjoyed to get into Khartoum a day and a half ahead of time. The scheduled day was all he could
think of. He paid the men off and went straight to the selected hotel. It was a conservative place that had been
recommended by the Foreign Office. The young woman at the desk gave him a strange look. He had been on
the road for thirty hours, eating dust. He was filthy.
…

  Ninety minutes later, Tom was sitting in a room in a building adjacent to the Embassy, not with Ericson, whom
he hadn’t met, but with four other men, identified only as Ralph, Salem, Butch and Wilson. Salem could have
been Sudanese, Somali or Eritrean. It was hard to tell. His connection with the British Foreign Service was
unclear. Ralph and Wilson were English—Wilson sitting off by himself, like an elder shrink, not saying much,
just watching. Ralph and Butch did most of the talking.
  Tom’s head was swimming, wondering who these men were and what he was into. He was also angry. His
identity was supposed to be kept secret from all but the few essential people needed to process the necessary
documentation. He had been lied to. These men knew all about him, and he knew nothing about them. What
business did a Sudanese and an American have with him? God knows how many people knew about him—and
his family—concealed in the back of a truck. Who were these lunatics risking his family’s life? Were they
spooks? Spies? What did they want with him?
  “Tell us about your work at the refinery,” Ralph asked for the second time.
  Three of them were sitting in armchairs arranged in a semi-circle facing Tom, with Wilson removed to one
side. There was a large round coffee table between them. Venetian blinds were partially drawn behind them,
leaving slits of sunlight playing over their heads directly into Tom’s eyes.   
  “I’ve already told the story several times in London. I don’t see why I should repeat it again to strangers here.”
…

  “So you were expecting an attempt to destroy the refinery? Had you been tipped off?”
  “You would have to be a complete fool not to know that it was a prime target. By this time the EPLF and ELF
controlled ninety percent of Eritrean territory. They even controlled all the towns except Asmera, Mitsiwa,
Barentu, Adi Caieh, and Assab. Fuel—oil, diesel, gasoline, aviation fuel—is essential to fighting a war.
Government forces would be severely set back if the refinery was destroyed.”
  Butch intervened. He was sitting loosely in his chair as if his joints were dysfunctional, his hands flopped over
the ends of the arm rests, his body slouched, his head cocked to one side. He had a butch haircut and a bad
attitude. You could tell his attitude without him speaking a word. “Answer the question, please!” he snapped
sarcastically. “Had you been tipped off?”
  “There had been rumors going around for weeks. That’s why I moved my family. Are rumors a tip off?”
  “We’re asking the questions!” Butch retorted sharply. “Rumors from whom?”
  “Rumors are scuttlebutt. People say ‘I heard so and so.’ They go around in circles and come back again.
You hear the same tale with different embellishments from a dozen people. Nobody knows who starts them.”
  “Answer the question! Rumors from whom?”
  “From the men I worked with—my colleagues, my subordinates, my superiors.”
  “Never any rumors from outside friends?”
  “Of course! With gunfire in the distance and a war going on, everybody talks. There was all kinds of
speculation, all kinds of rumors. Everybody was on edge, nervous, scared.”
…

  “So you were expecting an attempt to destroy the refinery? Had you been tipped off?”
  “You would have to be a complete fool not to know that it was a prime target. By this time the EPLF and ELF
controlled ninety percent of Eritrean territory. They even controlled all the towns except Asmera, Mitsiwa,
Barentu, Adi Caieh, and Assab. Fuel—oil, diesel, gasoline, aviation fuel—is essential to fighting a war.
Government forces would be severely set back if the refinery was destroyed.”
  Butch intervened. He was sitting loosely in his chair as if his joints were dysfunctional, his hands flopped over
the ends of the arm rests, his body slouched, his head cocked to one side. He had a butch haircut and a bad
attitude. You could tell his attitude without him speaking a word. “Answer the question, please!” he snapped
sarcastically. “Had you been tipped off?”
  “There had been rumors going around for weeks. That’s why I moved my family. Are rumors a tip off?”
  “We’re asking the questions!” Butch retorted sharply. “Rumors from whom?”
  “Rumors are scuttlebutt. People say ‘I heard so and so.’ They go around in circles and come back again.
You hear the same tale with different embellishments from a dozen people. Nobody knows who starts them.”
  “Answer the question! Rumors from whom?”
  “From the men I worked with—my colleagues, my subordinates, my superiors.”
  “Never any rumors from outside friends?”
  “Of course! With gunfire in the distance and a war going on, everybody talks. There was all kinds of
speculation, all kinds of rumors. Everybody was on edge, nervous, scared.”
…

  “How did you get home? Were you alone?” The questions shot like bullets from behind him.  The sharpest
thing about Butch was his tongue.
  “I drove home alone in my pickup. I parked it in the usual place, where I rented secure parking space from a
neighbor. I walked the last hundred meters up to my flat.”
  “You say up to your flat. Was it up?”
  “It was on the second story, over a shop.”
  “Is that it? When did you decide to make a run for it? Were you just suddenly seized by a compulsion to pack
your bags and leave? Why did you skip the country and leave your family behind? You had been preparing for
trouble at work for months, you say. Only moments before you had been conscientiously checking
preparations—ready to ride out any storm. Now suddenly you were seized by a compulsion to flee. What
happened to suddenly change your mind? Why did you suddenly turn tail and run?  Why?”
  Butch’s bullets were finding their mark. Tom hesitated. He shifted in his chair. His mind was racing. He could
feel the beads of sweat running down his armpits. He took a deep breath. Wilson noted his reactions as he
answered. “Jamil came to warn me, that’s why.”
  “So you did get a tip-off! Now you’re changing your story!” Butch had leaned over, was shouting in his ear.
  “Not before then.  Not a tip-off in advance of that night in the context of your previous questions.”
  “But a tip-off, nonetheless! A tip-off by someone who knew! Is that not right?”  
  The words were detonating in Tom’s ear from close range. He was scouring his brains for the best way to
answer. All of his hopes were floating away in a frivolous breeze with the broken promises of bureaucrats in
London. Why did they toss him to the wolves here in Khartoum, with his family on the way and nowhere to go?
What do these lunatics want?  …
…

  Butch came pacing slowly and deliberately back across the room, stopping to hover between the chairs
across from Tom. His head was cocked again, ready to fire, having taken some time to reload.
  “So you say that revenge is the motive?”
  “Yes.”
  “And you indicated in London that your father’s death was linked to this motive also?”
  “Yes. I believe he was assassinated under the cover of political trouble. The whole country was in upheaval—
the Red Terror campaign by the government, political assassinations, violent uprisings over land reforms,
revolutionary groups warring in various parts of the country.”
  “Do you have any proof that Haj Ibrahim was behind your father’s death?”
  “No. But my father wasn’t politically involved. He was very sensitive to his status as a white foreigner. And he
had earned everyone’s respect. No one else had a motive to shoot him.”
  “How was he shot?”
  “One evening while he worked in his garden.”
  “Did you have any tip-off as to who did it, from Jamil for instance?”
  “Not specifically.”
  “Give me a direct answer!”
  “I’m trying to explain that Jamil knew that his father was in contact with many terrorists and terrorist groups
both inside and outside the country. He knew that his father had commissioned murders against opponents
before.”
  “If Jamil had advance information on the refinery operation, then why couldn’t he also have advance
information on your father’s assassination?”
  Tom hesitated a moment, his mind racing. His heart was pounding in his ears to drown out the sound. His
breathing was restricting his speech. His planet mind was rebelling with a sense of social outrage. “Because he
was dead!” he rasped. …
…


                                                           CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

….
  So it was that Ben entered my office with a long face on the last Wednesday of April, 1980. Bartholomew
Flynn was with me at the time, going over plans to reconvert the wells back to the new power system, whenever
we got it running again. Ben had just come back from his field break. The plane didn’t arrive until the afternoon
that day.
  “Where is Tom?” he asked.
  “He’s out on the job,” I replied. “Why?”
  “I want to talk alone,” he said, glancing at Bart and Ian Innis, who was doing some filing.  
  I asked them to leave the office for a moment, which Ian did promptly. I could sense Bart’s ears tune in to a
problem. He made no move to leave, and his eyes told me that he had a personal interest in Tom’s welfare
also.
  “Bart is a good friend of Tom’s. Can he stay?” I asked. Ben looked askance at him for a moment, then closed
the door to the outer office.
  “Tom is in trouble,” Ben said. “He must leave Beda now.”
  Bart and I looked at each other. The word was out.  
  “Tom is due to go out on field break in a couple of days,” I said cautiously.  “What is the problem?” I didn’t
know how much Ben knew.
  “Somebody wants to kill him,” He repeated it a second time.  “Somebody wants to kill Tom! Big reward! I don’t
know why. Tom is a good man.”
  For a moment I mulled over what to say. “You are right. Tom is a good man.  Who else knows?”
  “I know that one man knows—the Company Security Officer. Maybe others know now. The police captain
came out on the plane today. If I know, he must know. The Security Officer spoke to him too.”
  “Where is the police captain now?”
  “Maybe on his way here! Tom must not come back to camp. He must leave Beda now! Right now!” Ben must
have known by our response that …

…
  I got out of the truck and walked toward them.
  “What brings you up here this time of day?” Tom asked.
  I glanced at Buff. Hell, it didn’t matter if Buff knew. “You got trouble, Tom. They know! Ben warned me. The
police captain came back today and he is sure to come after you.”
  The news stopped Tom cold, fear in his eyes.
  Buff stiffened. “What trouble? What does that animal want with Tom?”
  Tom went to stop me from answering. I cut him off. “He’s got to know something, Tom. It is not a time for
secrets.”
  Buff had questions spelled out on his face—questions that couldn’t be answered in two minutes. “There is a
huge price on Tom’s head, Buff. A very wealthy relative wants him dead—a relative that is connected with
international terrorists. If we do not get him to Ora and on the Mobile plane safely, they will kill him sure! That’s
enough to know for now.” We would have to contend with the police captain’s homicidal assistant as well.
  Buff squinted at me, as if trying to believe it was really true. Then he squinted at Tom. Tom nodded it was
true. Buff looked back at me like he was ready to take on the world. ...

…
  Buff was walking in circles, kicking the dust, rubbing his brow, scratching his head—racking his brains. Black
Bart pulled up, leapt from the truck and tromped over. “Bee Geee!” he said, extending his hand to Tom, his
green eyes ablaze. Tom shook Bart’s hand with a wry smile. He had long since given up trying to understand
Bart.
  “Listen to me, Brothers,” Buff said. “This scene used to be my profession. I was one of the Special Air Service’
s finest, trained in techniques you would not believe. Guerrilla warfare, behind the lines operations against any
odds, sabotage, hand to hand combat, killing without weapons. I can take that grizzly pair out with my bare
hands, break both their necks without leaving a mark, spill some flash in their truck, and drive it off a cliff into a
canyon. Nobody would be any the wiser—think they got drunk and drove over the edge. And I could live with it
this time. That pair aren’t human beings.”
  “No!” Tom interrupted. “No killing!” There was an urgency in his voice that went beyond the moral concerns
of people who have never been exposed to more than a personal insult. It came from his bowels.
  “Yeah, I thought you would say that,” Buff retorted. “Just like you! There is another way, but it’s risky. I can’t
guarantee the result a hundred percent.”
  “Risks for who?” Tom pressed.
  “Risks for us all!”
  “No!” insisted Tom.
  “Camelcrap!” shouted Bart. It was the closest that I ever heard him come to conventional swearing. …
The Hall of Two Truths