a flat, baleful stare, then struck a match and held the flame to the tip
of the half-smoked cigar between his lips. He flipped the dead match
away and blew a feather of smoke in Nicholas's direction. Still without
change of expression, he said something to the pilot out of the corner
of his mouth.
Immediately the helicopter rose vertically and banked away to the north,
heading back directly towards the wall of the escarpment and the base
camp on its summit.
"Mission accomplished. He found what he was looking for."Royan sat up.
"Us!'
"And he must have spotted the camp. He knows where to find us
again,'Nicholas agreed.
Royan shivered and hugged herself briefly. "He gives me the creeps, that
one. He looks like a toad."
"Oh, come on!" Nicholas chided her. "What have you got against toads?"
He stood up. "I don't think we are going to see great-grandfather's
dik-dik again today. He has been thoroughly shaken up by the chopper.
I'll come back for another try tomorrow."
"We should go and look for Tamre. He has probably had another fit, the
poor little fellow."
She was wrong. They found the boy beside the path.
He was still shivering and weeping, but had not suffered another
seizure. He calmed down quickly when Royan soothed him, and followed
them back towards the camp.
However, when they neared the grove he slipped away in the direction of
the monastery.
That evening, while it was still light, Nicholas took Royan back to the
monastery.
"I believe that the criminal fraternity refer to a reconnaissance of
this nature as "casing the joint"," he remarked, as they stooped through
the entrance of the rock cathedral and joined the throng of worshippers
in the outer chamber.
"From what Tamre says, it sounds as though the novices wait until they
know that the priests on duty are ones that will nod off during their
watch," Royan told him softly, as they paused to gaze through the doors
into the middle chamber.
"We don't have that sort of insider knowledge," Nicholas pointed out.
There were priests passing backwards and forwards through the doors as
they watched.
"There doesn't seem to be any sort of procedure," Nicholas noted. "No
password or ritual to allow them through."
"On the other hand, they greeted the guards at the door by name. It's a
small community. They must all know each other intimately."
"There doesn't seem any chance at all that I could dress up like a monk
and brazen my way through,'Nicholas agreed-A wonder what they do to
intruders in the sacred areas?"
"Throw them off the terrace to the crocodiles in the cauldron of the
Nile?" she suggested maliciously. "Anyway, you are not going in there
without me."
This was not the time to argue, he decided, and instead he tried to see
as much as possible through the open doors of the qiddist. The middle
chamber seemed much smaller than the outer chamber in which they stood.
He could just make out the shadowy murals that covered the portions of
the inner walls that he could see. In the facing wall was another
doorway. From Tamre's description, he realized that this must be the
entrance to the maqdas. The opening was barred by a heavy grille gate of
dark wooden beams, the joints of the cross-pieces reinforced with
gussets of hand hammered native iron.
On each side of the doorway, from rock ceiling to floor, hung long
embroidered tapestries depicting scenes from the life of St. Frumentius.
In one he was preaching to a kneeling congregation, with the Bible in
one hand and his right hand raised in benediction. In the other tapestry
he was baptizing an emperor. The king wore a high golden crown like that
of Jali Hora, and the saint's head was surrounded by a halo. The saint's
face was white, while the emperor's was black.
"Politically correct?" Nicholas asked himself, with a smile.
"What is amusing you?" Royan asked. "Have you thought of a way of
getting in there?"
At dinner Boris showed no ill effects from the previous night's debauch.
During the day he had taken out his shotgun and shot a bunch of green
pigeons. Tessay had marinated these and barbecued them over the coals.
"Tell me, English, how was the hunting today? Did you get attacked by
the deadly striped dik-dik? Hey? Hey?" He bellowed with laughter.
"Did your trackers have any success?" Nicholas asked mildly.
."Da! Da! They found kudu and hushbuck and buffalo.
They even found dik-dik, but no stripes. Sorry, no stripes."
Royan leaned forward and opened her mouth to intervene, but Nicholas
cautioned her with a shake of the head. She shut her mouth again and
looked down at her plate, slicing a morsel from the breast of a pigeon.
"We don't really need company tomorrow," Nicholas explained mildly in
Arabic. "If he knew, he would insist on coming with us."
"Did your Mummy never teach you no manners, English? It's rude to talk
in a language that others can't understand. Have a vodka."
"You have my share," Nicholas invited him. "I know when I am
outclassed."
During the rest of the meal Tessay replied only in low monosyllables
when Royan tried to draw her into the conversation. She looked tragic
and defeated. She never looked at her husband, even when he was at his
loudest and most overbearing. When the meal ended, they left her sitting
with Boris at the fire. Boris had a fresh bottle of vodka on the table
beside him.
"The way he is pumping the liquor, it looks as if I might be called out
on another midnight rescue mission," Nicholas remarked as they made
their way to their own huts.
"Tessay has been in camp all day with him. There has been more trouble
between them. She told me that as soon as they get back to Addis Ababa
she is going to leave him.
She can't take any more of this."
"The only thing I find surprising is that she ever got mixed up with an
animal like Boris in the first place. She is a lovely woman. She could
pick and choose."
"Some women are drawn to animals," Royan shrugged.
"I suppose it must be the thrill of danger. Anyway, Tessay has asked me
if she can come with us tomorrow. She cannot stand another day in camp
with Boris on her own.
I think she is really afraid of him now. She says that she has never
seen him drink like this before."
"Tell her to come along, Nicholas said resignedly. "The more of us the
merrier. Perhaps we will be able to frighten the dik-dik to death by
sheer weight of numbers. Save me wasting ammunition."
It was still dark when the three of them left camp the next morning.
There was no sign of Boris and, when Nicholas asked about him, Tessay
said simply, "After you went to bed last night he finished the bottle.
He won't be out of his hut before noon. He won't miss me."
Carrying the Rigby, Nicholas led them tip into the weathered limestone
hills, retracing the path along which Tamre had
taken them the previous
day. As they walked, Nicholas heard the two women talking behind him.
Royan was explaining to Tessay how they had sighted the striped dik-dik,
and what they planned.
The sun was well up by the time they again reached the spot under the
thorn tree on the lip of the chasm, and settled down to wait in ambush.
"How will you retrieve the carcass, if you do manage to shoot the poor
little creature?" Royan asked.
"I made certain of that before we left camp," he explained. "I spoke to
the head tracker. If he hears a shot he will bring up the ropes and help
me get across to the other side."
"I wouldn't like to make the journey across there." Tessay eyed the drop
below them.
"They teach you some useful things in the army, along with all the
rubbish," Nicholas replied. He made himself comfortable against the
thorn tree, the rifle ready in his lap.
The women lay close by him, talking together softly.
It was unlikely that the sound of their low voices would carry across
the ravine, Nicholas decided, so he did not try to hush them.
He expected that if it came at all, the dik-dik would show itself early.
But he was wrong. By noon there was still no sign of it. The valley
sweltered in the midday sun. The distant wall of the escarpment, veiled
in the blue heat haze, looked like jagged blue glass, and the mirage
danced across the rocky ridges and shimmered like the waters of a silver
lake above the tops of the thorn thickets.
The women had long ago given up talking, and they lay somnolent in the
heat. The whole world was silent and heat-struck. Only a bush dove broke
the silence with its mournful lament, "My wife is dead, my children are
dead, Oh, me! Oh, my! Oh, me!'Nicholas found his own eyelids becoming
leaden. His head nodded involuntarily, and he jerked it up only to have
it flop forward again. On the very edge of sleep he heard a sound, close
by in the thorn scrub behind him.
It was a tiny sound, but one that he knew so well. A sound that
whiplashed across his nerve endings and jerked him back to full
consciousness, with his pulse racing and the coppery taste of fear in
the back of his throat. It was the metallic sound of the safety-catch on
an AK-47 assault rifle being slipped forward into the "Fire' position.
In one fluid movement he lifted the rifle out of his lap and rolled
twice, twisting his body to cover the two women who lay beside him. At
the same time he brought the Rigby into his shoulder, aimed into the
scrub behind him from where the sound had come.
"Down!" he hissed at his companions. "Keep your heads down!'
His finger was on the trigger and, even though it was a puny weapon with
which to take on a Kalashnikov, he was ready to return fire. He picked
up his target immediately, and swung on to it.
There was a man crouched twenty paces away, the assault rifle he carried
aimed into Nicholas's face. He was black, dressed in worn and tattered
camouflage fatigues and a soft cap of the same material. His webbing
held a bush-knife and grenades, water bottle' and all the other
accoutrements of a guerrilla fighter.
"Shufta!" thought Nicholas. "A real pro. Don't take chances with this
one." Yet at the same time he realized that if the intention had been to
kill him, then he would be dead already.
He aimed the Rigby an inch over the muzzle of the assault rifle, into
the bloodshot right eye of the shufta behind it. The man acknowledged
the stand-off with a narrowing of his eyes, and then gave an order in
Arabic.
"Salim, cover the women. Shoot them if he moves.
Nicholas heard movement on his flank and glanced in that direction,
still keeping the shufta in his peripheral vision.
Another guerrilla stepped out of the scrub. He was all: similarly
dressed, but he carried a Soviet RPD light machine gun on his hip. The
barrel was sawn off short to make the weapon more handy for bush
fighting, and there was a loop of ammunition belt draped around his
neck. He came forward carefully, the RPD aimed point-blank at the two
women. Nicholas knew that, with a touch on the trigger, he could chop
them both to mincemeat.
There were other stealthy rustling sounds in the bush all around them.
These two were not the only ones, Nicholas realized. This was a large
war party. He might be able to get off one shot with the Rigby, but by
then Royan and Tessay would be dead. And he would not be far behind
them.
Very slowly and deliberately he lowered the muzzle of the rifle until it
was pointing at the ground. Then he laid the weapon down and raised his
hands.
"Get your hands up," he told the women. "Do exactly what they tell you."
The guerrilla leader acknowledged his surrender by coming to his full
height and speaking rapidly to his men, still in Arabic.
"Get the rifle and his pack."
"We are British subjects," Nicholas told him loudly, and the guerrilla
looked surprised by his use of Arabic. "We are simple tourists. We are
not military. We are not government people."
Be quiet. Shut your face!" he ordered, as the rest of the guerrilla
patrol emerged from cover. Nicholas counted five of them all told,
though he knew there were probably others who had not come forward. They
were very professional as they rounded up their prisoners. They never
blocked each other's field of fire, nor offered an opportunity of
escape. Quickly they searched them for weapons, then closed in around
them and hustled them on to the path.
"Where are you taking us?"Nicholas demanded.
"No questions!" The butt of an AK-47 smashed between his shoulder blades
and almost knocked him off his feet.
"Steady on, chaps," he murmured mildly in English.
"That wasn't really called for."
They were forced to keep marching through the heat of the afternoon.
Nicholas kept a check on the position of the sun and the distant
glimpses of the escarpment wall.
He realized that they were heading westwards, following the course of
the Nile towards the Sudanese border. It was late afternoon, and
Nicholas estimated that they had covered some ten miles, before they
came upon a side shoot of the main valley. The slopes were heavily
wooded, and the three prisoners were herded into a patch of this forest.
They were actually within the perimeter of the guerrilla camp before
they were aware of its existence. Cunningly camouflaged, it consisted
merely of a few crude lean, to shelters and a ring of weapons
emplacements. The sentries were well placed, and all the light machine
guns in the foxholes were manned.
They were led to one of the shelters in the centre of the camp, where
three men were squatting around a map spread on a low camp table. These
were obviously officers, and there was no mistaking which of the three
was the commander. The leader of the patrol which had captured them went
to this man, saluted him deferentially and then spoke to him urgently,
pointing at his captives.
The guerrilla com
mander straightened up from the table, and came out
into the sunlight. He was of medium height, but was imbued with such an
air of authority that he seemed taller. His shoulders were broad and his
body square and chunky, with the beginning of a dignified spread around
the waist. He wore a short curly beard which contained a few strands of
grey, and his features were refined and handsome. His skin tones were
amber and copper. His dark eyes were intelligent, his gaze quick and
restless.
"My men tell me that you speak Arabic," he said to -Nicholas.
"Better than you do, Mek Nimmur,'Nicholas told him.
"So now you are the leader of a bunch of bandits and kidnappers? I
always told you that you would never get to heaven, you old reprobate."
Mek Nimmur stared at him in astonishment, and then began to smile.
"Nicholas! I did not recognize you. You are older. Look at the grey on
your head!'
He opened his arms wide and folded Nicholas into a bear hug.
"Nicholas! Nicholas!" He kissed him once on each cheek. Then he held him
at arm's length and looked at the two women, who were standing amazed.
"He saved my life," he explained to them.
"You make me blush, Mek." Mek kissed him again' "He saved my life
twice."
"Once," Nicholas contradicted him. "The second time was a mistake. I
should have let them shoot you."
Mek laughed delightedly. "How long ago was it, Nicholas?"
"It doesn't bear thinking about."
"Fifteen years ago at least,'.Mek said. "Are you still in the British
army? What is your rank? You must be a general by now!'
"Reserves only," Nicholas shook his head. "I have been back in civvy
street a long time now."
Still hugging Nicholas, Mek Nimmur looked at the women with interest.
"Nicholas taught me most of what I know about soldiering," he told them.
His eyes flicked from Royan to Tessay, and then stayed on the Ethiopian
girl's dark and lovely face.
"I know you," he said. "I saw you in Addis, years ago.
You were a young girl then. Your father was Alto Zemen, a great and good
man. He was murdered by the tyrant Mengistu."
"I know you also, Alto Mek. My father held you in high esteem. There are
many of us who believe that you should be the president of this Ethiopia
of ours, in place of that other one." She dropped him a graceful little
curtsey, hanging her head in a shy but appealing gesture of respect.