by Mark Hodder
“For the wind, sir,” Playfair replied.
Burton stepped back to the window. He turned and gestured for Oscar Wilde to join him.
“Yes, sir?” the boy asked.
“Can you find me some field glasses?”
“Right over here,” said Wilde, crossing to a wall cabinet and returning with a large-lensed brass device. Burton took it and raised it to his face, clipping its bracket over his head. He turned back to the window, and with the fingers of both hands rotated the focusing wheels on either side of the apparatus.
The land below was wreathed in darkness, with just the tips of dunes visible in the faint light of al-fajr al-kaadhib. The field glasses threw them into sharp relief.
“Captain Lawless,” Burton murmured, “I have a reasonably clear view of the sand dunes below us.”
“What of it, Sir Richard?”
“They are entirely motionless. There is no sand rippling across their surface or spraying from their peaks. In other words, the strong wind Mr. Playfair just mentioned is nonexistent, at least at ground level, and since we're flying low-”
“If I've been taking into account a wind that isn't actually blowing, it would certainly explain our position,” Playfair put in.
“Mr. Bingham!” Lawless roared, but when he turned to the meteorologist's position, he saw that it was unoccupied. “Where the devil is he?” he demanded.
“Mr. Bingham left the bridge some little time ago, so he did, sir,” said Oscar Wilde.
“Playfair, Wenham, get us back on course! Sir Richard, come with me. We have to find my meteorologist. He has some explaining to do!”
Some minutes later, they located Arthur Bingham in the engine room, standing with Daniel Gooch, Shyamji Bhatti, and Winford Doe near one of the open hull doors. Doe was unbuckling his harness.
“Hallo, Captain Burton, Captain Lawless!” Bhatti called as they approached.
Gooch turned and said, “Almost done, Captain. Mr. Champion is just putting the finishing touches to the last of our wayward engines.”
Lawless ignored the chief engineer and glared at the short, fat meteorologist. “You appear to have deserted your post without permission, Bingham.”
“I–I just came down to watch Mr. Gooch at-at work, sir,” Bingham responded.
“Worried he'd be blown off the pylon by the high winds, were you?”
Bingham took a couple of steps backward.
“Is there a problem?” Gooch asked.
Lawless's eyes flashed angrily. “There most certainly is!”
Bingham pulled a pistol from his pocket and brandished it at them. “Get back, all of you!”
“Bloody traitor!” Lawless snapped.
“Hey! Drop that!” Bhatti cried out.
Bingham swung the pistol toward the constable, then pointed it at Burton, then at Lawless. His lips thinned against his teeth and his eyes flashed threateningly.
Lawless said, “Why?”
“Because I have a wife and two children,” the meteorologist snarled. “And I also happen to have a tumour in my gut and not many months to live. A certain party has agreed to pay my family a large amount of money in return for the sacrifice I'm about to make.” He directed his gun back at the king's agent. “I wouldn't have to do it at all but for you, Burton. I followed you to Ilford and back and took a pot-shot at you.”
“You ruined a perfectly good hat.”
“It's a crying shame I didn't spoil the head it was adorning. If you'd have been decent enough to die then, this ship and its crew would have been spared.”
“You're not the only man Zeppelin hired to kill me,” Burton revealed. “The other was promised money and received instead the count's hands around his neck.”
“Ah, so you know my employer, then! But what do you mean?”
“My other would-be assassin was strangled to death, Bingham. Had you managed to put a bullet in me, I have little doubt that Zeppelin's associates would have then put one in you. As for money being paid to your family, you can forget it. The Prussians will feel no obligation to you once you're dead.”
“Shut your mouth!” Bingham yelled. His finger whitened on the trigger as he jerked his pistol back and forth between Burton, Lawless, and Bhatti.
“Give it up, man!” the latter advised. “Don't leave your family stained with the name of a traitor!”
The meteorologist backed away a step. “Not another word out of you!” he spat at Bhatti. “As for you, Burton, they want an end to your little jaunt to Africa, and this-” With his free hand, Bingham undid his tightly buttoned jacket and pulled it open. He wasn't the fat man they thought he was. He was a slim man made bulky by a vest fashioned from sticks of dynamite. “This will ensure they get what they want!”
“Hell's teeth!” Captain Lawless shouted. “Are you bloody insane, man?”
Bingham sneered nastily. “Blame your friend here, Lawless. He's left me with no choice but to eliminate you all.”
“You do have a choice,” Burton said. “Shoot me now and spare the ship.”
“No. I've overheard you and your companions enough to know that, now they're on their way to Africa, they'd continue your mission without you. This is it for all of you.”
He placed his left index finger over a button in the middle of his chest.
“Bingham! There are women and children on board!” Lawless bellowed.
“To protect my own woman, and my own children, I would do anything, even-”
Shyamji Bhatti suddenly threw himself at the meteorologist, thudded into him, and with his arms wrapped around the saboteur, allowed his momentum to send them both toppling out of the open hull door. There came a blinding flash from outside and a tremendous discharge. The floor swung upward and slapped into the side of Burton's head, stunning him and sending him sliding across its metal surface. Bells jangled in his ears. Through the clamour, as if from a far-off place, he heard someone yell: “We're going down!”
CHAPTER 5
Through the desert
“A Phenomenal Success.”
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Sir Richard Francis Burton was leaning against a palm tree just beyond the final cottage of Kaltenberg. Beside him, Bertie Wells, sitting on a rock, was dabbing at a small wound on the back of his neck with a handkerchief. Burton had just used a penknife to dig a jigger flea out from beneath the war correspondent's skin.
From the trees around them, the shrieks and cackles of birds and monkeys blended into a cacophonous racket.
High overhead, eagles wheeled majestically through the dazzling sky.
The terrain in front of the two men angled down to the outlying houses and huts of Tanga.
Burton squinted, looking across the rooftops of the sprawling town to the ocean beyond. It was like peering through glass; the atmosphere was solid with heat. The humidity pressed against him, making his skin prickle. Respiration required a conscious effort, with each scalding breath having to be sucked in, the air resisting, as if too lethargic to move.
Wells pointed at a large building in the western part of the seaport.“That's the railway terminal. Two major lines run from it-the Tanganyika, all the way west to the lake; and the Usambara, up to Kilimanjaro.”
“Language is an astonishingly liquid affair,” Burton muttered. “We pronounced it Kilima Njaro in my day. Like the natives.”
“Perhaps some still do,” Wells replied. “But it's the fluid quality that makes language an excellent tool for imperialists. Force people to speak like you and soon enough they'll be thinking like you. Rename their villages, towns
, and mountains, and before they know it, they're inhabiting your territory. So Kilimanjaro it is. Anyway, as I was saying, that's the station and our forces need to capture or destroy it to slow down the movement of German troops and supplies.” He indicated a twin-funnelled warship lying at anchor in the bay. “And that's HMS Fox. She's almost two decades obsolete but such is our desperation that we have to resort to whatever's available. She's been sweeping the harbour for mines. Look at her flags. Do you understand the signal?”
“No.”
“It's a demand for surrender. The British Indian Expeditionary Force transports have already offloaded the troops onto the beaches. They're awaiting the order to attack. The Fox's captain will lead the assault. He's probably waiting for Aitken to get our lot into position. It won't be long now.”
Burton frowned. “The town looks uninhabited.”
Wells glanced at his bloodstained handkerchief and pushed it into a pocket. “They're all hiding indoors,” he said. “They've known the attack was coming for a couple of days.”
Burton closed his eyes, removed his helmet, and massaged his scalp with his fingertips.
Wells looked at him and asked, “Is that tattoo of yours hurting?”
“No. It's just that-I don't know-I feel like I should be somewhere else.”
“Ha! Don't we all!”
They lapsed into silence, broken a few minutes later when Wells said, “I have a theory about it. Your tattoo, I mean. It looks African in pattern. You still don't recall how you got it?”
“No.”
“I think perhaps you were captured and tortured by some obscure tribe. There are still a few independent ones scattered about, especially up around the Blood Jungle where you were found. Certainly the state you were in suggests some sort of trauma in addition to the malaria and shell shock, and the tattoo possesses a ritualistic look.”
“It's possible, I suppose, but your theory doesn't ring any bells. Why is it called the Blood Jungle?”
“Because it's red. It's the thickest and most impassable jungle on the whole continent. The Germans have been trying to burn it away for I don't know how long but it grows back faster than they can destroy it.”
An hour passed before, in the distance, a bugle sounded. Others took up its call; then more, much closer.
Wells used a crutch to lever himself to his feet. He leaned on it, raised his binoculars, and said, “Here we go. Stay on your toes, we're closer to the action than I'd like.”
A single shot echoed from afar and, instantly, the birds in the trees became silent. For a moment there was no sound at all, then came a staccato roar as thousands of firearms let loose their bullets. An explosion shook the port.
Below and to his left, Burton saw a long line of British Askaris emerging from the undergrowth, moving cautiously into the town. They had hardly set foot past the outermost shack before they were caught in a hail of gunfire from windows and doorways. As men fell and others scattered for cover, Wells let loose a cry: “Bloody hell!”
A stray bullet whistled past him and thudded into a tree.
“Get down!” Burton snapped. The two observers dived onto the ground and lay prone, watching in horror as the Askaris were shredded by the crossfire. It fast became apparent that armed men inhabited all the houses and huts. Tanga wasn't a town waiting to be conquered-it was a trap.
A squadron of Askaris ran forward, threw themselves flat, and lobbed grenades. Explosions tore apart wooden residences and sent smoke rolling through the air. Similar scenes unfolded all along the southern outskirts of the town as the allied forces pressed forward. Hundreds of men were falling, but by sheer weight of numbers, they slowly advanced.
A sequence of blasts assaulted Burton's eardrums as HMS Fox launched shells into the middle of the settlement. Colonial houses erupted into clouds of brickwork, masonry, and glass.
“There goes the Hun administration!” Wells shouted. “If we're lucky, Lettow-Vorbeck was in one of those buildings!”
A Scorpion Tank scuttled out of the smoke and into a street just below them. The cannon on its tail sent shell after shell into the houses, many of which were now burning. When a German soldier raced from a doorway, one of the Scorpion's claws whipped forward, closed around him, and snipped him in half.
Harvestmen were entering the town, too, firing their Gatling guns and wailing their uncanny “Ulla! Ulla!”
Forty minutes later, the last of the troops with whom Burton and Wells had travelled moved past the observation point and pushed on into the more central districts of Tanga. As the clamour attested, the battle was far from over, but it had passed beyond Burton and Wells's view now, so they were forced to judge its progress by the sounds and eruptions of smoke. A particularly unbridled sequence of detonations occurred in the eastern part of the town, and, shortly afterward, a Union Jack was spotted there by Wells as it was hoisted up a flagpole at the top of a large building.
“That's the Hotel Nietzsche!” Wells exclaimed.
Pain lanced through Burton's head.
“Nietzsche!” he gasped. “I know that name! Who is he?”
“Bismarck's advisor,” Wells replied. “The second most powerful man in the Greater German Empire!”
“He-he's going to-he's going to betray Bismarck!” Burton said hoarsely. “He's going to take over the empire! This year!”
Wells regarded his companion, a confused expression on his face. “How can you possibly know that? You're from the past, not the future.”
Burton was panting with the effort of remembering. “I-it-something-something to do with Rasputin.”
“If Ras-”
“Wait!” Burton interrupted. “1914. It's 1914! Rasputin will die this year. I killed him!”
“You're not making any sense, man!”
Burton hung his head and ground his teeth in frustration. A tiny patch of soil just in front of his face suddenly bulged upward and a green shoot sprouted out of it. He watched in astonishment as a plant grew rapidly before his eyes. It budded and its flower opened, all at a phenomenal speed.
It was a red poppy.
Wells suddenly clutched at the explorer's arm. “What's that over there?”
Burton looked up and saw, writhing into the air from various places around the town, thick black smudges, twisting and spiralling as if alive. They expanded outward, flattened, then sank down into the streets. From amid the continuing gunfire, distant screams arose.
“What the hell?” Wells whispered.
Some minutes later, British troops came running out from between the burning buildings. They'd dropped their rifles and were waving their arms wildly, yelling in agony, many of them dropping to the ground, twitching, then lying still. One, an Askari, scrambled up the slope and fell in front of the two onlookers. He contorted and thrashed, then a rattle came from his throat, his eyes turned upward, and he died.
He was covered in bees.
“We've got to get out of here!” Wells shouted. “This is Eugenicist deviltry!”
Many more men were now climbing the incline toward them, all screaming.
Burton hauled Wells to his feet, handed him his crutches, then guided him from the observation point back into Kaltenberg. Behind them, gunfire was drawing closer.
“Counterattack!” Wells said. “Go on ahead, Richard. Get out of here. Don't let me slow you down.”
“Don't be a blessed fool!” Burton growled. “What manner of ridiculous war is this that our forces can be routed by bees?”
Even as he spoke, one of the insects landed on the back of his hand and stung him. Then another, on his neck. And another, on his jaw. The pain was a hundred times worse than a normal sting and he yelled, slapping the insects away. Almost immediately his senses began to swim and his heart fluttered as the venom entered his system. He staggered but found himself supported on either side by a couple of British Tommies who began to drag him along.
“Come on, chum!” said one. “Move yer bleedin' arse!”
“Bertie
!” Burton shouted, but it came out slurred.
“Never mind your pal,” the other soldier snapped. “He's bein' taken care of. Keep movin'. Have you been stung?”
“Yes.” Burton's legs had stopped functioning and he had tunnel vision; all he could see was the ground speeding by. There was a buzzing in his ears.
The soldiers' voices came from a long way away: “He's snuffed it. Drop him.”
“No. He's just passed out.”
“He's slowing us down. Aah! I've been stung!”
“I'll not leave a man. Not while he still lives. Help me, damn it!”
A shot. The whine of a bullet.
“They're on us!”
“Run! Run!”
Burton's senses came swimming back. Two men were dragging him along.
“I can walk,” he mumbled, and, regaining his feet, he stood and opened his eyes.
Light blinded him. It glared down from the sky and it glared up from the sand.
He raised a hand for shade and felt a big bump over his right eyebrow. It was sticky with blood.
“Are you dizzy, Captain?” asked Wordsworth Pryce, the second officer of the Orpheus.
“You took quite a knock,” observed another. Burton recognised the voice as that of Cyril Goodenough, one of the engineers.
His vision blurred and swirled then popped back into focus. He looked around, and croaked, “I'm fine. Somewhat dazed. We crashed?”
“The bomb destroyed our starboard engines,” Pryce replied. “It's a good job we were flying low. Nevertheless, we turned right over and came down with one hell of a thump.”
Burton saw the Orpheus.
The huge rotorship was upside down, slumped on desert dunes, its back broken, its flight pylons snapped and scattered. Steam was pouring from it and rising straight up into a clear blue morning sky. The sun was not long risen, but the heat was already intense. Long shadows extended from the wreckage, from the figures climbing out of it, and from the bodies they were lining up on the ground some way from the ship.
William Trounce was suddenly at his side. The detective's jacket and shirt were badly torn and bloodied but his wounds-lacerations, grazes, and bruises-were superficial; no broken bones.