Darkness fell with More than half the pallets still not unpacked, lying
where they had fallen. Mek placed an armed guard over them, and they all
traipsed wearily back up the valley to the camp.
That night, with a dram of whisky and a decent meal warming his belly, a
mosquito net over his head and a thick foam mattress under him, Nicholas
drifted off to sleep with a smile on his face. They were off to a good
start.
The chanting of the monks at their matins woke him, "We won't need an
alarm clock here," he groaned, and staggered down to the river to wash
and shave.
As the sun gilded the battlements of the escarpment, he and Mek were
already at their post on the heights, searching the western sky. The
plan had been for Jannie to spend the night at Roseires, while Mek's men
assisted him with the loading of the cargo they had stored-there on
their first flight out from Malta. This was one of the vulnerable stages
of the operation. Although Mek had assured them that there was little
military presence in the area at the moment, it needed only a stray
Sudanese government patrol to stumble on Big, Dolly while she was on the
ground to plunge them all into disaster. So it was with a leap of the
heart that they heard the familiar drone of the turbo-props
reverberating off the cliffs.
Big Dolly lined up again for her first pass down the valley, and as she
flew over the quartz crosses the huge yellow front'end loader tumbled
out of her hold. Instinctively Nicholas held his breath as he watched it
come the parachute hurtling down and then jerk up short on shrouds. it
swayed wildly all over the sky, yoyoing on the nylon ropes, and the
monks howled with amazement and excitement as they watched it drop in.
it struck in a cloud of dust.
Sapper was standing next to Nicholas, groaning and covering his eyes so
that he did not have to watch the "Shit!' he said in a hollow cloud of
dust rising into the air.
voice.
"Is that a command, or merely a request?" Nicholas asked, but he wasn't
really amused.
As the last pallet dropped, and the aircraft climbed away under full
power, Nicholas called Jannie on the radio.
"Many thanks, Big Dolly. Safe flight home."
"Inshallahl If God wills!'Jannie called back.
"I will call you when I need a lift back."
"I'll be waiting." Big Dolly trundled away. "Break a leg!'
"Well now." Nicholas slapped Sapper's back. "Let's go down and see if
you still have a front'ender."
The battered yellow machine lay on its side with oil pouring out of her,
like blood from a heart-shot dinosaur.
"You can push off. just leave me a dozen of these black guys to help
me," Sapper told them as sorrowfully as if he was standing at the
graveside of his beloved, Sapper did not return to camp for dinner, so
Tessay sent a bowl of wat and some injera bread down to him to
1i eat while he worked. Nicholas considered going down to offer his help
with repairing the damaged tractor, but thought better of it. From
bitter experience he knew that at certain times Sapper wanted to be left
alone, and that this was one of those times.
in the small dark hours of the morning the camp was lit up by the blaze
of headlights and the hills reverberated to the roar of a diesel engine.
With, even his bald head covered with grease and dust, hollow-eyed but
triumphant, Sapper drove the yellow tractor into the camp and shouted at
them from the high driver's seat.
okay, knaves and nymphs! Drop your cocks and grab your socks. Let's go
build a dam."
t took them another two full days to gather in all the pallets that lay
strewn down the valley and to carry the stores into the ancient quarry.
There they stacked them carefully in accordance with the manifest that
Nicholas and Sapper had drawn up in England. it was essential that they
knew where every item was stored, and that they had immediate access to
it when needed. In the meantime Sapper was at work on the dam site,
laying out his foundations, driving numbered wooden pegs into the banks
of the river, and taking his final measurements with the long steel
surveyor's tape.
During this preliminary work Nicholas was watching the performance of
the monks, and getting to know them individually. He was able to pick
out the natural leaders and the most intelligent and willing men amongst
them.
He was also able to identify those who spoke Arabic or a little English.
The most promising of these was a monk named Hansith Sherif, whom
Nicholas made his personal assistant and interpreter.
Once they were settled into the camp, and had worked out a relationship
with the monks, Mek Nimmur took of Nicholas aside out of earshot the two
women.
"From now on, my work will be the security of the site.
MOS Maa's :rllar WV.
We will have to be ready to prevent another raid like the one on your
camp, and the slaughter at St. Frumentius.
Nogo and his thugs are still out there. It won't take long for him to
hear that you are back in the gorge. When he comes, I will be waiting
for him."
"You are better with an AK-47 than with a pickaxes' Nicholas agreed.
"Just leave Tessay here with me.. I need her."
"So do I' Mek smiled and shook his head ruefully, "I am only just
learning how much. Look after her for me. I will be back every night to
check on her."
Mek took his men into the bush and deployed them in defensive positions
along the trail and around the campWhen Nicholas looked up from his own
work he could often make out the figure of one of Mek's sentries on the
high ground above the camp. It was reassuring to know that they were
there.
However, as he had promised, Mek was back in camp most evenings, and
often in the night Nicholas heard, coming from the shelter he shared
with Tessay, his deep rumbling laughter blending with her sweet silvery
tones.
Then Nicholas lay awake and thought about Royan in the hut so close, but
yet so far away from where he lay.
On the fifth day the second draft of three hundred labourers that Mai
Metemma had conscripted for them arrived, and Nicholas was astonished,
Things seldom worked that way in Africa.
Nothing ever happened ahead of the promised time. He
wondered what exactly they decided
that he didn't really want to know, for now main construction work could
begin.
These men were not monks, for St. Frumentius had already given its all
to the sacred labour, but villagers who lived up on the highlands of the
escarpment. Mai Metemma had coerced them with promises of religious
indulgences and threats of hellfire.
Nicholas and Sapper divided this work force into gangs of thirty men
each, and set one of the picked monks as foreman over each gang. They
were careful to grade the men by their physical appearance, so that the
big strapping specimens were all grouped together as the project
storm.troopers, while the smaller, more wiry men could be reser
ved for
the tasks in which brute strength was not a necessity.
Nicholas dreamed up a name for each gang - the Buffaloes, the Lions, the
Axes and so on. It taxed his powers of invention, but he wanted to
inspire in them a sense of pride and, to his own particular advantage,
to encourage the gangs to compete with one another. He paraded them in
the quarry, each group headed by its newly appointed ecclesiastical
foreman. Using one of the ancient stone blocks as a platform, and with
Tessay interpreting for him, he harangued them heartily and then told
them that they would be paid in silver Maria Theresa dollars. He set
their wages at three times the going rate.
Up to this stage the men had listened to him with a sullen air of
resignation, but now a remarkable transformation came over them. None of
them had expected to be paid for the work, and most of them were
wondering how soon they could desert and go home. Now Nicholas was
promising them not only money, but silver dollars. In Ethiopia for the
past two hundred years the Maria Theresa dollar had been regarded as the
only true coinage. For this reason they were still minted with the
original date of 1780 and the portrait of the old Empress, with her
double chin and her decolletage exposing half her great bust. One of
these coins was more prized than a sackful of the worthless paper birr
issued by the regime in Addis. To pay his labour bills, Nicholas had
included a chest of these silver coins in the first pallet load that
Jannie had dropped.
Celestial grins bloomed as they listened, and white teeth sparkled in
their ebony faces. Someone began to sing, and they all stamped and
danced and cheered Nicholas as they trooped off to queue for their
tools. With mattocks and shovels at the slope they filed off up the
valley to the dam site, still singing and prancing.
"St. Nicholas," Tessay laughed. "Father Christmas. They will never
forget you now."
"They may even enshrine you and build a monastery over you" Royan
suggested sweetly.
"What they don't know is that they are going to earn every single dollar
, the hard way."
From then onwards the work began as soon as it was light enough to see,
and stopped only when it was too dark to continue. The men came back to-
their temporary compound each night by the light of grass torches, too
weary to sing. However, Nicholas had contracted with the headmen from
the highland villages to supply a slaughter beast every day. Each
morning the women came down the trail driving the animal before them,
and with huge pots of tej balanced on their heads.
Over the days that followed, there were no deserters from Nicholas's
little army of workers.
ounted on the high seat of the front-ender, Sapper lifted the first
filled mesh gabion in the hydraulic arms. The mesh'bound parcel of
boulders weighed several tons, and all work on the site came to a halt
as the men crowded the banks of the Dandera river to watch. A hum of
astonishment went up as Sapper eased the yellow tractor down the steep
bank and, with the gabion held high, drove the vehicle in to the water.
The current, affronted by this invasion, swirled angrily around the high
rear wheels, but Sapper pushed in deeper.
The crowds lining the bank began to chant and clap encouragement as the
water reached as high as the belly of the machine, and louds of steam
hissed from the hot steel of the sump. Sapper locked the brakes, and
then lowered the heavy gabion into the flood before reversing back up
the bank. The men cheered him wildly, even though the first gabion was
instantly submerged and only a whirlpool on the river's surface marked
its position. Another filled gabion lay ready. The Contender waddled up
to it, lowered its- steel arms and picked it up as tenderly as a mother
gathering up her infant.
Nicholas shouted at the foremen to get their gangs back to work. The
long lines of men came up the valley, naked except for their brief white
loincloths. Sweating heavily in the heat of the gorge, their skin
glistened like anthracite freshly cut from the coal face. Each of them
carried on his head a basket of stone aggregate, which he dumped into
the mouth of the waiting gabion. Then he returned with his empty basket
down the hill to the quary.
As each gabion was filled, another team fitted the mesh lid and laced it
closed with heavy eight-gauge wire.
"Twenty dollars bonus to the team with the most baskets filled
today!'Nicholas bellowed. They shouted with glee and redoubled their
efforts, but they were unable to keep up with Sapper on the Contender.
He laid his stone piers artfully, working out from the shallow water
alongside the bank so that each gabion lay against its neighbour, keying
into the wall to give mutual support.
At first there was little evident progress, but as a solid reef was
built up beneath the surface the river began to react savagely. The
voice of the water changed from a low rustle to a dull roar as it tore
at Sapper's wall.
Soon the top of the wall of gabions thrust its head above the surface,
and the river was constricted to half its former width. Now its mood was
truculent. It poured through the gap in a solid green torrent, and crept
barriers The rive worried the foundations of the dam, clawing at it to
find its weak spots, and the progress of the work slowed down as the
waters rose higher.
Up in the river in forests along the banks the axemen were at work, and
Nicholas winced each time one of the great trees toppled, groaning and
shrieking like a living creature. He liked to think of himself as a
conservationist, and some of these trees had taken centuries to reach
this girth.
"Do you want your bleeding dam, or your pretty trees?" Sapper demanded
ferociously, when Nicholas lamented in his hearing. Nicholas turned away
without replying.
They were all becoming tired with the unremitting labour. Their nerves
were stretching towards snapping point, and tempers were mercurial.
Already there had been a number of murderous fights amongst the workmen,
and each time Nicholas had been forced to duck in under the swinging
steel mattocks to break it up and separate the combatants.
lowly they squeezed the' river in its bed as the pier crept out from the
bank, and the time came when they had to transfer their efforts to the
far bank. It required the combined efforts of their entire labour force
to build a new road along the bank as far as the ford.
There they manhandled the front-ender into the water, and, with a
hundred men hauling on the tow ropes and her tall lugged rear wheels
spinning and churning the surface to a froth they. dragged her across.
Then they had to build another road back along the far bank to reach the
dam site. They cut out the treetrunks that obstructed them and levered
the boulders out of the way to get the tractor through, Once they had
her back at the dam
site they could begin the same process of laying out
gabions from the far bank.
Gradually, a few metres each day, the two walls crept closer to each
other, and as the gap between them narrowed the water rose higher and
became more raucous, making the work more difficult.
In the meanwhile, two hundred metres upstream of the dam site, the
Falcons and the Scorpions were at work.
These two teams were building the raft of treetrunks that they had
hacked from the forest. The timbers were lashed together to form a
grating. Over this was laid heavy PVC sheeting to make it waterproof,
then a second grating of treetrunks went over this to form a gigantic
sandwich. It was all lashed together with heavy baling wire. Finally,
one end of the grating was ballasted with boulders.
Sapper arranged the ballast of boulders to make the raft one-side heavy,
so that it would float almost vertically in the water, with one end of
it scraping the bottom of the river and the other sticking up above the
surface. The dimensions of the completed raft were carefully related to
the gap between the two buttresses of the dam. And while the work on the
raft and the wall continued Sapper built up a stockpile of filled
gabions, which he stacked on both banks below the dam.
Three other full work teams, the Elephants, the Buffaloes and the
Rhinos,,comprising the biggest and strongest men in the force, laboured.
at the head of the valley. They were digging out a deep canal into which
the river could be diverted.
"Your hot-shot engineer, Taita, never thought of that little
refinement," Sapper gloated to Royan as they stood on the lip of the
trench. "What it means is that we only have to raise the level of the
river another six feet before it will start flowing down the canal and
into the valley.
Without it we would have had to lift the water almost twenty feet to
divert it."
"Perhaps the river levels were different four thousand years ago." Royan
felt a strange loyalty to the long-dead Egyptian, and she defended him.
"Or perhaps he dug a canal but all traces of it have been obliterated."
"Not bleeding likely," Sapper grunted. "The little perisher just plain
didn't think of it." His expression was smug and self-satisfied, "One up
on Mr Taita, I think."
Royan smiled to herself. It was strange how even the practical and