Deaken's War

by Brian Freemantle

  Why fifteen minutes? Why not right away, without wasting any more time?

  Occasionally scurrying things—only rats or field mice, he hoped—darted noisily through the underbrush in front of him as he edged hesitantly forward. He jerked back at a sting worse than the others, high over his eye. At once a puffiness formed, soft under his fingers, the swelling quickly closing his left eye.

  The bus was already firmly on the plain by the time he noticed it. There was a surprised moment of total immobility, impressions kaleidoscoping through Deaken’s mind—he was going in the wrong direction, parallel rather than towards the road.

  He started to run, waving his arms wildly and yelling to attract the driver’s attention, careless now of any danger underfoot or of the pain pumping through him.

  There was a horrifying surrealism about it all. The bus seemed to be travelling slowly, as the aircraft had earlier, and his progress through the snagging scrub seemed equally slow. Realizing that he would never reach the road in time to stop the bus, Deaken halted, snatching off his jacket and waving it above his head. The speed of the bus didn’t alter and he began running again. He ran with his head bent sideways, able to see the shape of the occupants through the slatted side windows and their luggage bundled on the rimmed rack of the roof.

  Deaken stopped again, cupping his hands to his mouth and shouting, “Stop! Help! Stop!” The vehicle continued on, speed unchanged.

  Deaken couldn’t run any more. His breath was wheezing and his body ached and throbbed. He stood, aware he was a long way from the road, vainly waving, and then stopped bothering even with this, to watch the bus become smaller and smaller until it finally vanished from the plain. It took a long time for his breathing to become normal and the pain to diminish. Deaken remained slump-shouldered, feeling the sun burn into him. Then, head bowed, he began to trudge towards the road. Sweat rivered his face, making the bites irritate even more. He was still some way from the road when he saw the air quiver for which he’d been looking while far back among the trees. He was surprised how far from the road the coppice was: it looked very small from where he stood. He must have been very frightened to have travelled that far the previous night. Deaken moved on, coming finally to the storm ditch. It was wide and deep, filled at the bottom with the junk of passing travellers, wrappers and boxes and rotting fruit and the inevitable Coca-Cola can. The bank upon which Deaken stood was sheer but the opposing one was sloped up towards the road. It was wide, but he thought he could jump it. He moved back several paces and then attempted a stumbling run-up. At the last moment he missed his footing, and launched himself into the air with hardly any pace. Arms and legs flailing, Deaken thumped down on the other side, but felt himself sliding backwards into the filthy ditch. His fingers scrabbled to catch a grip, and groaning with the effort, he hauled himself upwards, until he could feel the macadam hot and sticky under his fingers.

  Deaken levered himself upright. The road ran black and ruler-straight from horizon to horizon, the cooked air dancing crazily above it. There was no shade in either direction. The sun seemed to be burning into him at the very crown of his head. He took his jacket off again to create a protective canopy and crouched down in the dust at the side of the road. Flicking his tongue against the dryness, Deaken felt his lips were already hard and scaling. Down there among the bottle and the cans there would be trapped water. But it would be stagnant and stale, diseased. His throat felt swollen and gritty. Deaken dropped his jacket to look at his watch. Nine thirty. Still time, if someone were to come along soon. He screwed around, looking back and forth along the road. Nothing. It seemed to be getting more difficult to swallow, as if his throat were closing. He coughed and it hurt. Deaken stood to ease the cramp from his legs.

  At first he imagined that it was a trick of the distorted light against the heat of the road. He squinted, squeezing his eyes tightly shut to clear his vision and when he opened them he saw that there was definite movement, a black shape materializing down the highway. Deaken struggled back into his jacket and stepped out onto the road, feeling the heat scorch at once through the soles of his feet. He stood in the very centre, arms raised in front of him. It was a lorry, open-backed with slatted sides to hold its cargo, bulbous wings and a dust-covered cab; the wipers had cleared two semi-circular eyes in the windscreen, which made it look like a vast, metallic insect.

  Then he heard the horn sound, strident and impatient. It hadn’t occurred to him that people wouldn’t stop, coming upon him stranded in this deserted savannah.

  “Dear God, no!” Deaken moaned.

  He waved his arms faster. The engine note didn’t change and the horn blast was more prolonged. He wouldn’t move, Deaken decided. He would stay right where he was. The man would have to halt or run him down. Deaken glanced desperately to left and right, trying to estimate if there were room for the man to swerve around him at the last minute. A hundred yards now, maybe less. The insect face was bearing down, hom screeching, and then suddenly the headlights flared on in a warning flash. Deaken moved sideways, bringing himself more directly into the path of the vehicle. There was a puff of burning smoke from the squealing rear wheels as they locked. The back slid in the soft tar, slewing the lorry towards the ditch. The driver released the brakes, correcting the skid, then braked again. There were fresh spurts of smoke. Cold with fear, Deaken remained where he was, staring up at the lorry, so close now that it towered above him. He could see the driver’s face, black, eyes pebbled with fear. Behind the ballooned wings were rusting running boards, Deaken noticed. He had slowed the lorry sufficiently to leap aboard if he had to dodge at the last minute. He wouldn’t lose the lorry. Couldn’t. It slewed again, slow and controllable. Deaken had to move, but backwards, not sideways, so that he still blocked the road.

  There was a moment of dust-settling silence. Deaken recovered first. He went immediately to the passenger side, hauling at the door, not thinking until he was framed at the opening that the man might have a weapon. He didn’t. From his startled expression it was obvious he expected Deaken to have one. The lawyer smiled, splaying his hands.

  “I need help”, he said in English. “Transport.”

  The driver looked blankly at him but there was a discernible relaxation in his attitude.

  “Assistance,” he said, attempting French. “Aid.” There was still no comprehension. What was help in Swahili? Fervently Deaken tried to recall the long-unused words, remembering at last. “Saidia,” he said. Still nothing.

  Deaken pointed to the road. “Dakar?” he said.

  The man’s face cleared. He said something Deaken could not understand, nodding and smiling agreement. Deaken indicated that he wanted to sit in the adjoining seat, repeatedly pointing ahead and repeating “Dakar.” Smiling, clearly relieved, the man met the request with a further nod of agreement. As an afterthought, Deaken indicated the way from which the lorry had been travelling and said. “Dakar?” again. Once more there was a nod of agreement.

  “Shit!” said Deaken.

  The driver nodded and smiled, apparently now enjoying the encounter, a relief from the boring, lonely drive.

  “Dakar?” said Deaken again, not offering an opinion this time. He was given another smiling, acquiescent nod.

  “Which …?” started Deaken and then stopped, realizing the hopelessness. “Shit!” he repeated. Another nod.

  He got in, slamming the door. It was movement, whatever the direction. At the first township or hamlet he would inquire again, get it right. Maybe find a taxi. Ten fifteen, he noted. The driver ground the gears into mesh with a shudder of cogs, snagging up through the gate in a ritual flourish which Deaken realized he was supposed to appreciate. When the speedometer needle registered seventy-five kilometres, the man hunched forward over the wheel, arms encompassing the rim.

  Surely this hadn’t been the speed at which he had approached, horn blaring, fast enough to burn the tread off the tyres when he braked? Deaken stared at him and the Senegalese answered the look, s
mirking at what he believed to be admiration. There was nothing he could do, Deaken accepted. At least he was moving, he tried again to reassure himself, not stuck in some wasteland, being gradually dried in the sun.

  The oblong of the rust-framed window gaped behind him; dust drifted in, fashioned in weaving snakes. Beyond he saw the load, a haphazard pile of vegetables and fruit. Deaken groped for an orange. It was green and unripened, hard under his hands. He gestured for permission to the driver, who shrugged and nodded. The fruit was as hard as its outer skin. Deaken bit into it, face twisting at the sourness, his mouth stung by it. He gulped at the orange, devouring the flesh almost without awareness, snatching back through the hole for another orange as soon as the first went. The rear window was not the only entry point for the dust. It seeped in wedges through the floor and ill-fitting doors and Deaken became aware of the vehicle’s age. The cab, he realized, was more than the driver’s workplace, it was his home, as well. Two jackets jostled from a peg immediately behind the man and, level with the back of his head, there was a shelf containing two shirts and a pair of shoes. Deaken looked down and saw that the driver was barefoot, skeletal legs jutting from the frayed ends of greased trousers. The plastic bench seat upon which he was sitting was covered with a plaid blanket which Deaken assumed was the man’s nighttime sleeping protection. Deaken eased forward uncomfortably.

  Deaken followed the driver’s example, and wound down the side window to get some air. He tried resting his arm on the sill but hurriedly pulled back, the underside of his elbow burned by the heat of the metal. The plain stretched unbroken and unending, proof that the world was flat. They passed more gazelle and then a group of stunted piglike animals, which gazed back without fear but with ear-cocked curiosity. Around a distant anthill black birds wheeled in maypolelike flight; crows, Deaken thought, and maybe vultures. He wondered what the unseen carrion was. It could easily have been him.

  Anxious to please, the driver groped beneath his feet with one hand for a small battered portable radio. One dial was missing and the plastic frame was supported by strips of tape and sticking plaster. The man extended an aerial and looked carelessly from the road while he selected a station. There was a blurred fuzz of interference from the unsuppressed engine, beneath which it was just possible to detect the monotonous ululating of what Deaken presumed was some local pop song.

  The man said something in identification, nodding to the radio, and it was Deaken’s turn to smile and nod with a complete lack of understanding. The dashboard clock was smashed, robbed of its hour hand, and Deaken travelled with his left arm twisted across his lap so he could count away the time. It was exactly thirty minutes from the moment of his pickup to their arrival at the top of an incline above a small township huddled in a protective valley not more than a mile away. Deaken sat forward eagerly as they descended, taking note of the outlying fields and the irrigation stream and the needle spires of more than one church.

  The French influence remained, with the place-name visible despite the chipped paint, secure on its rusting pole.

  “Kaolack!” shouted Deaken in despair.

  The driver smiled and nodded.

  Carré had gone ashore from the Bellicose, ostensibly to pick up Deaken from the Royale, but really to limit the time with the captain, prolonging his absence as long as possible before returning. When he made his way onto the ship from the quayside, he saw the bowser cables being lifted away on their umbilical lines. Erlander was on the bridge wing.

  “Where the hell’s our passenger?” he said.

  “I sent a car,” said Carr6. “He wasn’t there.”

  “We’re refuelled and revictualled,” said the captain.

  “Should I check with Athens?” Carré welcomed the opportunity of getting away from the ship again.

  Erlander shook his head. “I’ve already done so by radio. I’ve been told to make it an on-the-spot decision.”

  There was a shout from the deck signalling the final freeing of the fuel lines, and Erlander led the way into his day cabin. He poured two glasses of gin, topping both lightly with water. Carré picked up the jug, adding another inch.

  “What are you going to do?” said Carré”. He had never before earned as much on the side as he had from Makimber. He was unsure whether to hoard the dollars, in the expectation of the conversion rate going up, or change them at once. It was a lot of money to move at one time and risk alerting the currency controllers. And if that happened he would have to bribe his way out of trouble. He would shift just a little at first, he decided. It was a warm feeling, to be rich. It justified the present unease.

  Erlander walked to the starboard side of his cabin, looking out over the quay. The early morning activity was slowing in the full heat of the day, the shore cranes bowed with inactivity, stevedores and harbour workers grouped in the warehouse shade or trailed to the liquor stalls. “Did this fellow tell you what he had to do?” he asked.

  “Just sail with you.”

  The captain turned back into the room. “What authorization did you see?”

  “I told you.”

  Erlander was a man who knew he sailed on the shaded side of every route, never properly believing the manifest listing on any voyage. It was a risk he took consciously, for the money which Levcos paid. Despite which, he was a careful man, running a clean, efficient ship with a reliable professional crew, never exposing himself to unnecessary danger. The preposterous sailing instructions and the presence of a man who had constantly to be duped with false positions and speeds constituted precisely the sort of conditions which Erlander had until now succeeded in avoiding. Which was why he was pleased the man had not turned up. And why he had lied to the agent about making contact with Athens. There would be contact, but not yet.

  “We sail at noon,” said Erlander. “I’ll wait until then. But no longer.”

  One hundred and twenty miles away Deaken was agreeing to double the price if the taxi driver could get him from Kaolack to Dakar in time.

  Greening and Leiberwitz stood watching Levy and Karen walking in the garden and Leiberwitz said, “Look at them! Mooning like youngsters.”

  Greening looked sympathetically at the bearded man. “It must be difficult for you, involved in the family,” he said.

  “That’s not my first consideration.”

  “What then?”

  “I don’t think Levy is capable of leading us anymore.”

  “He’s not let his relationship with the woman interfere so far,” said Greening.

  “I don’t think he can be trusted anymore to make dispassionate decisions,” said Leiberwitz. “What are you saying?” “That it’s time someone else took over.”

  23

  Deaken chose a Peugeot with the best bodywork and least tattered upholstery, hoping that the engine would be in matching condition. The taxi driver was a mulatto, so there was a bridge with French. Fighting against the impatience and despair that swept through him when the man told him how far they were from Dakar, Deaken still insisted the car be checked at a service station for oil and water, and to fill the petrol tanks. Having escaped once from the wilderness, he didn’t want to be trapped there again.

  The Kaolack market was at its busiest, the streets crowded with unhurried people and obstructing animals. The driver forced his way through with his hand constantly on the horn. It took ten minutes to clear the township, but the car was moving easily with no sound of strain from the engine, and Deaken felt a prick of hope. They actually accelerated on the gradient from the town, and by the time they had reached the played-out ribbon of the Dakar road, the speedometer was flickering at 130 kilometres.

  Deaken anxiously scanned the dashboard, ensuring that all the temperatures and levels were reading properly. Between the driver’s hands the steering column jarred from imbalanced wheels, but it did not seem to worry him.

  Deaken eased back against the sticky upholstery, recognizing the surrounding countryside and then what he believed to be the tree outcrop wh
ere he had hidden. Freed from the stomach-tightening anxiety and with nothing to do except sit, Deaken examined the events of the previous night. It certainly hadn’t been a simple backstreet mugging. There had been no attempt at robbery, not until those last few moments when they hauled him from the car. Bwana mkubwa, he remembered. Who was the big man they had kept talking about? Underberg possibly, but Underberg wouldn’t have attempted to keep him off the Bellicose. It was Underberg’s idea that he sail, to ensure the freighter’s return. Azziz then? No. There was no logic in that, because Azziz wanted him aboard as well. And he had seen the thugs Azziz employed. Evans and his trained mercenaries wouldn’t have allowed such an amateur, panic-ridden escape. Had Azziz ordered him stopped, he would have been stopped. So it was another unanswered question, to be filed away with all the rest.

  The plain ended at last, the landscape becoming stubbled with isolated trees and then thicker vegetation. Occasionally there were villages, clusters of mud-walled huts with corrugated metal roofs set out along the highway, staffed by scattering chickens and round-eyed, pot-bellied children. Deaken noticed that the fuel was already half gone and that the water-temperature gauge was twitching up towards the amber-coloured danger area. He gestured towards it and the driver nodded. “Diourbel in fifteen kilometres,” he promised.

  Halfway, guessed Deaken, maybe slightly less. Sixty miles then. He checked his watch again. Could he hope to do sixty miles in an hour and ten minutes?

  “How’s the road, beyond Diourbel?” he demanded.

  “Good,” said the driver, shrugging in what appeared to be immediate contradiction.

  Deaken realized the man didn’t know. “Noon,” he said. “I must be in Dakar by noon.”

  “No problem.”

  But there was, Deaken knew. No road in Africa, certainly not this part of Africa, was good enough to allow the sort of speed necessary to cover sixty or more miles in just over an hour, even if the overstrained, overheated engine could maintain a good average. The idea came abruptly to Deaken, his first reaction one of excitement, quickly followed by that of annoyance because it was so obvious and hadn’t occurred to him earlier in Kaolack. When the taxi pulled into the service station, he leaped out before they came to a halt, and ran into the office, Carre’s card in his hand, shouting in French for the telephone. A surprised attendant pointed to his right where the instrument was clamped to the wall. Deaken obtained the price of the call to the capital from the operator and then asked him to wait while he dashed to the cashier for change. He pumped the money in, repeated Carré’s number and then stood, shuffling his feet with growing frustration, while the ringing tone purred out at him. Through the cracked window out on the forecourt he saw the driver make sure that the fuel cap was fully tightened and then look inquiringly into the office. The tone purred on with no reply. Angrily Deaken slammed down the receiver and ran from the building without bothering to reclaim his unused coins. It was as difficult getting through Diourbel as it had been to leave Kaolack and Deaken was unable to sit still, impatiently tapping his hands against the front seat. He should have tried to call from Kaolack, he thought in bitter selfrecrimination. Obvious, downright bloody obvious and it hadn’t occurred to him until it was too late!