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the airstrip. It seemed they were as good as abandoned in the absolute middle of nowhere. Soon, the big Russian plane taxied down the runway, its takeoff lights blinking, gathering speed for the assault on the night sky. As the prop-jets screamed into full power, Dr. Milhauz put his hands over his ears. Then the plane was gone, its wheels folded into the fuselage, the sound of its engines fading into nothing.
    “By the way, let me do the talking,” Milhauz said presently.
    “There’s no one to talk to,” Phillipe said.
    “I mean tomorrow. When we meet the Saharoui Camp Committee. As a gesture of respect, I like to speak to them in the Hassaniya dialect and not Spanish or French. Do you speak Saharoui, Colonel?”
    “I speak only French and English,” Phillipe said. “And also Spanish, German, Portuguese, Swedish, Italian, and a little Russian.”
    “Aha!” The UN representative raised a finger. “You do not speak Hassaniya! I do!” But this moment of triumph instantly dissipated. He took a step closer to the colonel, his shadow elongating. A fenec fox, its ears trembling, watched him from the darkness of its burrow beneath the lip of the dune.
    “I shouldn’t tell you any of this,” he said in a low voice. “I mean you’re not one of us, are you?”
    “Aren’t we all engaged in the same cause, Herr Dr. Milhauz,” Phillipe replied, “world peace?”
    “Yes, yes”—the little man wagged his head impatiently—“as are all beauty queens and socialists and children under ten. But let’s be realistic. The United Nations is a country unto itself, with its own laws, it’s own hierarchy and chain of command. In some sense, it’s like a perpetual motion machine, feeding on self-generating energy and rarely going forward. It responds to a crisis, but inevitably becomes part of the crisis by refusing to act, by maintaining its own status quo. Understand me, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing—merely the way things are.”
    Phillipe looked at the little man, astonished. “Well, that’s deeply enlightening, Herr Dr. Milhauz!”
    “We negotiate endlessly, we produce reams of paperwork, just to produce reams of paperwork,” the little man continued. “As I say, our interest is in the status quo. If we keep things the same, they can’t get worse, don’t you see?” He licked his dry lips. “But now, I think events are getting ahead of us. There have been odd rumblings. Conversations overheard in the bazaar at Dahkla, rumors from the Saharoui souk in Laayoune, a place all but impenetrable to Westerners. Even the Moroccans can’t get in. And there’s this symbol—”
    He inscribed a crude hieroglyph in the sand with the heel of his boot: an eye shape, with a sharp point at one end and crossed over the middle by three parallel lines:

    “It has appeared everywhere very suddenly. On walls, on street corners.”
    Phillipe leaned over to study the odd marking.
    “Some say it’s an eye, others”—Dr. Milhauz swallowed—“a bee.”
    “I don’t see that at all.” Phillipe frowned. “Looks more like a fish to me.”
    “This part”—Dr. Milhauz indicated the sharp point coming out one end—“is supposed to be the stinger.”
    “But what’s it a symbol of?”
    Dr. Milhauz shrugged. “A secret society, a conspiracy, who knows. Perhaps an uprising—”
    “Against whom?” Phillipe said, perplexed.
    “Against the Moroccans. Or against Polisario. Or perhaps against us, against the West. Against reason, you might say, against the sciences. Against”—his voice descended to a frightened whisper—“economics.”
    “ Du calme, mon ami ,” Phillipe said, smiling to himself. “There will always be economics.”
    “Or it may be nothing,” Dr. Milhauz continued. “Maybe just a kind of joke. In any case, I urge caution. Watchfulness. Can you be watchful, Colonel?”
    “Yes, I think so,” Phillipe said. He studied the little man critically in the red light. Perhaps he was insane.

    4.
    N ight