‘Dunno. See how the cookie crumbles. Could all be done tonight.’
Basri was aware that all the dining-room staff were off, but there was always – or should be – one waiter on duty until midnight. He went in search of him and was annoyed to find the kitchens empty. He looked out over the lighted swimming-pool and heard voices in the staff pavilion that was used to service the pool for light refreshments and drinks. Basri knew what had happened. The waiter was out there chatting to a girl.
Swearing under his breath, he went out to call him, unaware that this action saved his life. He reached the pavilion, found the situation exactly as he had supposed, rebuked the sulky waiter, gave the order and started back.
As he did so there was a crackling crumbling roar and a belch of sulphur. As the ground hit him the swimming-pool broke in two, a piece of concrete briefly sticking up in the air. And then, scrambling to his knees, he saw the great six-storey hotel in front of him fall to pieces. First the roof came off, scattering tiles and slates and timbers, and then the walls followed, buckling and sinking quite slowly towards the ground, crumbling, breaking, splitting, powdering into a shapeless ruin.
The ground weaved and waved; hot air like a breath from hell blew over him. And then every light went out.
Chapter Eleven
I
The earthquake lasted twenty seconds. The Hôtel Saada, built only five years ago, collapsed entirely, going down as the ground opened under it. The Mahraba, where Smith and Garrett were staying, split down the centre but remained drunkenly upright, masonry from it falling all over the garden. The Préfecture, opposite the Saada but built on seismic-resisting principles, stood alone among the ruins round it. (Though, its being Ramadan, most of the police force were on leave and were killed piecemeal in cafés and in their own homes.) The hospital totally collapsed, as did the Chamber of Commerce and the Post Office. The Casino fell upon itself but, being built of wood, caused less injury to those still gambling, except for the unlucky few who were under the chandelier. The new central market – not yet opened – went with the rest.
The Taborit quarter, where thousands of Moroccans lived in blocks of flats, was laid waste. In the walled Kasbah on the hill its entire population of six hundred people were buried. The barracks collapsed and three companies of the Royal Moroccan Infantry were wiped out. The official residence of the Governor, M. Bouamrani, caved in upon itself, killing his three sons. Dr Berrada lost his wife and family. In pitch darkness in the space of half a minute four-fifths of the city was shaken to pieces. What was worse, many of the victims were buried alive without hope of help.
Of the one hundred and fifty guests at the Hôtel Saada, nineteen survived.
II
Matthew was in Nadine’s room. He was lying on the bed beside her, in a lovely comfortable state of lassitude, when the heavens cracked, the walls shook and gave way, the ceiling and part of the floor above fell upon them; the bed tipped, and they half slid off it as they tumbled into the abyss.
When they finished falling Matthew tried to struggle out from the remnants of a wardrobe that trapped his leg. Clothes from the wardrobe had spilled out, almost smothering him. He was dizzy and shaken, and there was something warm and wet on his arm. It was pitch dark, all lights having instantly gone.
‘Nadine!’ he called hoarsely. ‘Where are you?’ She did not reply, and he raised his voice. ‘ Nadine! Nadine!’
After the terrible roar accompanying the shock and the fall, silence seemed to settle on the building from which as minutes passed all the other noises began to emerge, to surface, to identify themselves. There were cries and shrieks and groans, and the crackle of wood and masonry as these continued to settle. And all in intense, murderous darkness.
He kicked his feet free, reached out across the sloping bed to touch Nadine. She was not there. He called her name a couple of times more. He was almost naked; but he had come into the room in trousers and jacket and had dropped them beside the bed. But where was the bed?
He stretched up, the other way, climbing the tilt, painfully pulled himself further from the wardrobe, attained the edge, reached down. Clothes. But they were not his. Then a pair of slacks. His. But nothing in the pockets except a handkerchief and a key-ring. A jacket.
Something settled with a great thunderous sigh quite near to him – some other part of the building coming down, murmuring and groaning, tons of masonry settling around him.
That day he had bought a rose, put it in his lapel. His fingers closed on it, still fragrant, identifying. Leaning like a man out of a sinking lifeboat, he reached with both hands and pulled his jacket to him. His head was swimming and he was out of breath, but trembling fingers found their way to his jacket pocket. A round cool cylinder with a thin band round the middle. Cigarette lighter. Flip. Flip. Flip. The third time it sparked, came to life. He stared round at a flickering yellow nightmare of slanting beams and heaped rubble, a bed tilted like an upended raft, and more rubble below him, eight feet below him, things sticking out of the rubble, a wash basin, a clock, an arm, a broken table, a chair …
Arm.
They had been on the third floor but must have fallen through to the second or further. He got hold of his shoes, his trousers, he pulled them on, then launched himself over the edge, thumped on to the rubble and slithered down it until a table stopped him. The lighter had gone out but re-sparked when he tried it. The thing would probably only last a few minutes. Desperate not to lose it. His only eyes.
Arm. He slithered down towards it, peered at the hand. Dear Christ, it was Nadine’s.
There was a block of masonry which looked stable, too heavy to move again; stand the lighter on it, touch the hand, begin to pull the rubble away. Among the plaster and the powder there were great stones and blocks that he could hardly shift, roll them further down; someone was moaning; not Nadine, a man; someone else buried even deeper? How breathe? He unearthed more of the arm and a naked shoulder, reddish-black curling hair. He coughed out the smell of sulphur, plucked with bleeding fingertips at the mess, praying, half-crying: ‘ Oh God, oh God, oh God!’
The forehead, the face, the neck; the beautiful eyes had been open but were smothered in white dust. He put his hand to her mouth, to her neck, the pulse of the neck. There was no pulse in the neck. For some minutes he went on digging, careless of where his diggings were sliding to, uncovering the top quarter of her body. Then he stopped, face in hands. He could see it was no use, could be no further use. Nadine was dead.
III
He sat there for an unmeasured time, face in hands, tears trickling between fingers and mixing with his blood. Some time later he began to be aware again of shouts and groans around him. His light had gone out but there was now some sort of light flickering through the ruins. He forced himself to move. His own bedroom was on the second floor, so he was probably now on a level with that. Whoever had been in the room below this must also be dead. His own room was on the opposite side of the corridor.
Was there still a corridor? Did he have a room? If he clawed his way through the ruins … He staggered and slithered over the rubble to a piece of open flooring from which a draught of poisonous air seemed to be emanating. The door of this second-floor bedroom had gone altogether but an area of carpeted passageway existed beyond. A body lay across his path but no sound came from it, and he moved on. A door, actually his door, but it was jammed. Next to it was another gap, and he peered in.
This had been the next door bedroom, and all the floors above had collapsed upon it, carrying part of it down to ground level. He peered over a precipice and nearly fell. People were crawling about down there like maimed insects. Some were digging, clawing at the rubble and the wood and the stone. Stink of sulphur whose hot breath might have come from a volcano.
A quarter of this room had somehow survived, protected by a mighty concrete beam which had fallen diagonally across it. Part of the bed, a wardrobe; two bodies lying beside the bed, both dead, he could see by their sprawling l
imbs; it was the beam maybe that had crushed them, though on his way across he stumbled over a half-dozen lethal pieces which had also come down from the floors above.
The light coming through to what was left of the collapsed building derived from a fire in the staff pavilion where the swimming-pool used to be. Beyond the beam he could see this, for all the side of the hotel had gone; he was staring through piled masonry at the open beach and the sea. But there was no beach, and the sea occupied the gardens and lapped around a few stark figures struggling away to get help. No fire in the hotel.
His head and his heart were bursting. The enormity took his breath. He had no time to think of the rest of the town, or even to wonder about fellow guests: all he knew was that he had been struck as with a thunderbolt, and his love, his very own new love, just found, now lost after only three days: it was to be the love of his life; it was at an end. Nadine was gone, all that youth and entrancing beauty was lost, crushed under mighty tons of falling rubble, out of his life, out of all life.
Even his own life was still at risk. If he were to climb out upon the great beam which protruded into the air and drop eighteen feet or so onto the flooded garden – or even upon more rubble – he would break his leg or his neck. There seemed no way back. But time was not on his side. The whole ruin might at any moment settle still further, or – worse dread of all – there might come another earthquake.
He peered at the two dead people, then crawled back over the litter and wrecked furniture to the one apparently secure corner of the room. The fire was burning more brightly now; it had reached some fuel and a sharp flaring flame lit up the scene.
The first man, in a skullcap and a long black coat, whom he recognized as a croupier from the Casino, was dead. The other was Johnny Frazier, and he too was dead. A girder had broken his back.
Someone was shouting. It sounded like: ‘Is anyone up there?’ But it didn’t seem to be directed towards him. The moans and groans had not died down. How many were buried alive?
But if they could be heard they must surely be reachable. If he could help, he must help, and at once.
On the bed he saw the small suitcase. It had been so obvious a part of Johnny Frazier’s life and appearance that Matthew had come to speculate on what the case was likely to contain. It was no longer going to be of any use to Johnny Frazier.
Matthew picked it up and flipped the catches, but they were both locked.
On the bed was a wallet with some money in it. A newspaper. An empty brown leather bag. A passport. The light wasn’t good enough to see the name, but he could recognize Johnny’s photograph. He put it in his pocket, and the other bits and pieces as well. Then he took up the case. Should he try to take it with him? Better leave it for the police.
There was an explosion somewhere behind him, quite distant. Might be a gas main.
Behind the bed a smaller beam had fallen, also slantwise; it made a triangular corner between where its ends rested and what was left of the floor. He pushed Frazier’s case into this corner, then stood up, head singing and swirling, wiped more blood from his arm. He set about trying to find a way down into the flooded gardens.
IV
As the Saada collapsed it took with it downwards the bedrooms occupied by Lee Burford and Letty Heinz, down almost two floors, crushing to death the people below them. The two floors above came on top of them but a freak of construction caused them to fall partly outwards, so that the occupants of this part of the third floor were buried but not crushed.
Lee was sitting on the bed pulling at his tie when the world screamed and thundered and gave way under him and he fell with an ear-bursting crash amid a miscellaneous hail of objects of all sizes, fell some eighteen feet, landing still on the bed, not physically injured but stunned with shock and noise. When he came to, clutching at sense and reason as if they were about to leave him, he at once began to push the plaster and the broken glass off his body and to peer over to the right to where Letty’s room had been. There was no wall now, only a mountain of refuse and broken furniture.
‘Letty!’ he called.
There was no reply. He struggled up, took a cautious step upon the shards of glass.
‘Letty!’
‘Lee …’ It was a faint cry, but it was hers.
‘Where are you?’
‘Down here. Half – buried. I cannot – get free.’
He found a match and struck it. Before it burned down it showed he was in a low cave created by the way the rafters from the upper floors had fallen, and beyond the low cave a black crevice, about three feet high.
‘Can you see my light?’
‘Yes.’
‘Wait. Don’t move. I’ll try to get you.’
The matchbox was more than half full. In darkness he edged towards where he thought the crevice was. Then he struck another match. It was a sideways crevice slanting downwards at about twenty degrees. Before the match went out he caught a glimpse of fair hair.
‘I can see you. I’m coming for you.’
Again in darkness, he edged his way under the overhanging weight of two floors, clawed at the debris, encountered a great lump of masonry that barred his path. He did not dare try to dislodge it lest it should cause a general collapse. Scrape at the rubble.
‘This way!’ Letty gasped. ‘ Wait! I think I have a light!’
He lay there prone and exhausted, and then a pencil of light penetrated the devastation. He saw her lying under a pile of debris, half buried, her long fair hair white with plaster dust. Her face was bloodstained, and below the waist she disappeared into a tangle of broken pipes and fallen furniture.
He could now see a way round the boulder and edged himself nearer to her.
There was a narrow space about her, and he touched her; felt enormous relief at the grip of her hand. On hands and knees he pulled at the mountain of stuff that buried her. There was no way for this to fall into any further hole, so it had to be picked away piece by piece, gingerly lest it should dislodge something above, and put to one side where it was near her but no longer pressing on her.
However careful he was, other rubble edged down several times to take the place of what he pulled away, and once a pipe clanged down just missing her arm. But he made progress, and he saw with overwhelming relief that as the weight was taken off her legs, she was able to move them.
‘Take a rest,’ she said. ‘ You are injured yourself?’
‘No, nothing.’
She said: ‘I had just picked up my bag when this happened. And the torch was inside.’
‘I have a few matches left. But we must economize. You’ve hurt your head?’
‘I do not think it is bad.’
He began to dig and scrabble again. Both shoes were still on. As he uncovered them she lifted one knee and then the other.
‘Your back?’
‘No, I think it is OK. Oh, my God, what a thing! How deep are we buried?’
‘Well, I think we’ve almost come down to ground floor. It seemed further!’
‘The whole hotel has gone?’
‘I guess so.’
A nasty wound on the crown of her head. A flap of skin hung loose; her hair was tangled and crimson. He saw this when, having taken most of the weight off her legs, he crouched behind her and put his hands under her arms to see if she could sit up.
She sat up, retched, shook her head trying to clear it.
‘Can you get onto your knees, follow me back? There’s more room and a bit more air where I was. And a bed!’
Inch by inch he began to return, making sure that she was following. Behind them there was a sudden thump and clatter as more of the debris settled, already filling the space where she had been.
V
Parts of the town were blazing, but not many of the fires lasted the night. The tidal wave, which had followed the earthquakes and submerged parts of the town, began to recede, taking with it the bodies of those who had been drowned and sucking away many who had been killed as the buildings c
ollapsed. A few lights glinted, where hurricane lamps and candle lamps had been found and lit. New pinpoints of light began to show where two companies of French marines, drafted hastily to help and the first to arrive, began to penetrate the town.
Dawn came quite late; but when it came it looked like atomic war. In many of the smaller streets, where buildings had been chiefly of baked clay and compressed stone, the structures had collapsed into piles of white dust, from which a piece of furniture, a rocking horse or a human arm or leg protruded as the only solids left.
The Saada, a luxury hotel, was a different matter. A mountain of rubble and metal, concrete, wood, plaster, beams, pillars, furniture and fittings had become compressed into the earth’s crack which had opened below it, so that twenty feet was the highest point of what had been sixty. Over it, sardonically, stood the large sign which had normally been illuminated. The S was gone, but the AADA drunkenly remained.
Scratching among the ruins as light came were the manager, Paul Gaviscon, Basri, the receptionist and only other surviving member of the staff, and a half-dozen of the guests. Another half-dozen sat huddled on stones, clutching some garment round their shoulders against the cool of dawn.
One man working with a spade and doing something to direct operations was Matthew Morris. He was in a jacket and trousers and sandals, no shirt, a bloodstained cloth round his arm, his hands scarred and bruised with pulling pieces of debris away to get to the many dozens of people buried underneath.
They had found twelve dead, but one man had been heard shouting, and they got him out as dawn came. He had a broken arm but was otherwise uninjured. He had been buried for seven hours. He was a German, who said not to bother about him. But he had lost his wife.
Sounds, cries, had been heard very faintly, more in the centre of the hotel, where one could imagine the lift had been, and Matthew and two other men whom he knew by sight were trying to lift off a great piece of cable that twisted and twined among the wreckage. It was too heavy to pull out and too tough to cut through without a blow-torch; but by moving a piece of a mantelpiece and three splintered beams it might be possible to lift a loop of it far enough away to dig below. One of the men – called Jonathan Jones – had been reluctant to deal with the cable lest it should be live, but, in so far as he thought about it at all Matthew assumed that nothing electrically alive could still exist in this town.