The River of Diamonds

by Geoffrey Jenkins

  They never came.

  Instead, Piet's body- legs, head and arms jack-knifing, convulsing, jerking- floated past me, borne surface-wards by his life-jacket. I caught one glimpse of the face behind the mask: it was a ghastly, death-like travesty of Piet's placid, stolid features. I grabbed, but the rubber-encased body kicked free. God! His rate of ascent alone was enough to kill him! It didn't look like the bends, oxygen starvation, or any of the usual symptoms of a Scuba fault — sting-ray? octopus? scorpion fish? sea snake? catfish? What ever it was, it had been hellish quick. The smoke candle was still at Piet's belt and so was his knife, but the speargun with its buoyant butt was missing.

  Piet and I surfaced simultaneously, nausea filling me after the dangerous rate of ascent. He jerked over and over in the water, splashing, thrashing.

  I tore off my mask. 'Felix! Bob! Help here!'

  The dinghy was a dozen yards away and Sheriff's hydrofoil thirty. I glimpsed Mary's white face. A lifebelt splashed down, out of arm's reach. I ducked under Piet's flailing arms, but his knee mule-kicked me in the chest. His mask was white inside with foam, his own foam. I dived, locking my arms under his shoulders. He gave two or three frightful spasms and then went limp. Holding his head high, I kicked out on my back for Sheriff's boat.

  'Get him into the decompression chamber — quick!' I snapped.

  'What on earth…?' began Mary.

  'Later! Piet is bad…'

  Rhennin, who had shot over in the dinghy, said quietly, 'Not bad, John — he's dead.'

  I looked over at the lithe, still figure. I couldn't believe it. 'Nonsense!' I tore off the foam-splashed mask and ripped the hood full back behind the ears. I knelt down and listened. There was no breathing. Where his neck joined his shoulder, it was mottled and blotched. I turned him over to apply artificial respiration.

  'That man Shelborne…' I cursed softly as I began the rhythmic movements of resuscitation.

  Rhennin said, 'Look, John, those blotches mean decompression sickness. He did something down deep he should not have done. He was adventurous…'

  'He wasn't a fool,' I panted. 'Piet wouldn't have taken a risk if it was stupid. There's something horrible down there, Felix.'

  He looked at me oddly. 'You suffering from diving hallucinations? Seeing things which aren't?'

  I paused. Piet remained still, lifeless. 'I wasn't deeper than sixty feet at any stage, and most of the time I was at forty,' I said sharply. 'You're a pretty poor diver if you can't take a hundred, let alone sixty.'

  Rhennin repeated. 'Don't go on, John — it's useless. He's dead.' There was a dreadful blue tinge round his mouth.

  'Get him over to the Mazy Zed,' I ordered Bob. 'We'll have relays work on him. Warmth, blankets, hot-water bottles…'

  Silent, fearful hands helped bring the still figure aboard the mining barge. I was still fresh enough for the first relay! Blankets under him, we stripped him down to trunks. I eased rhythmically up and down, my eyes unable to take themselves from the hideous blotches near his neck. What had done that? I asked myself as many times as I rose and fell. Then I rested, tired, and my eyes lifted for the first time from Piet into the distance beyond Mercury.

  I must be drunk from lack of oxygen I told myself — it produces the same effects as alcohol.

  The north-eastern side of the bay, between the shore and the neck in the lows hills backing it, was moving, marching.

  The desert was marching into the quicksands by the old Portuguese warship. A great, endless dun legion was streaming towards and around the T-shaped white scars.

  I dropped my eyes to Piet's blotches. They weren't blurred: I was seeing straight. The Mazy Zed group stood statue-like, staring at my face. I lifted my eyes and gestured with my head.

  The tidal wave ashore was white on top, brown underneath. It was not desert. The wave creamed and broke like foam as it hit the water.

  A host of springbok, innumerable as the sands of the Namib, threw itself into the sea.

  12

  Suicide of a Legion

  The Bells of St Mary's tolled.

  Awe-struck, we watched the host of springbok advancing from the desert to the sea, from life to death. They were countless — one might as well have tried to describe a Namib dune in terms of its individual grains. The desert seemed to be powdered with snow shaken from their silver-white manes; their fawn flanks merged with the dunes' own colour. Here and there a scintilla of light sparked where a buck bounded high into the air. This army of living things was changed to a sodden picture of death as the animals threw themselves into the waves. The buck made a peculiar noise, which matched that of the Bells, half a whistle, half a snort, in their final impetus to the beach. This uncanny shout of death rolled across the water, backed by the thunderous diapason of the Bells. Behind the hills the dust hung like fog as the squadrons wheeled, in obedience to some mysterious magnet of self-destruction, and headed for the sea.

  Captain Morrell's hills of dead seals! Before our eyes, another great host was destroying itself. Had the same death-dealing force — Shelborne's secret — brushed aside Piet's life, a murder which now seemed paltry by comparison with this demonstration of irresistible power? Would five U-boats also shatter to splinters against the breastplate of this unknown thing?

  Mary knelt by me, an arm round my shoulders. 'What was down there under the water, John? Can it be the same killer?' She indicated the buck.

  I straightened up. 'There was nothing, nothing but murky green water. Piet is dead.'

  'You're not going to…'

  'Yes, I am — I must dive again. I've got to find out.'

  The steel sides of the Mazy Zed were a giant sounding-board for another eruption of the Bells.

  Johaar was ashen. 'Soon I am a dead man… the Bells…'

  Mary said, 'Look, the buck are not going far into the sea, John. Then they bend down and drink.'

  'Salt water doesn't kill and it doesn't kill that quickly, I replied.

  I outlined to them Shelborne's account of the mass suicide of the seals, half a million of them. There seemed as many buck.

  Mary's hands shook on her binoculars. 'It's horrible They're throwing themselves into the quicksands, too They're kicking and rolling and being sucked down!'

  Rhennin said in a hard voice. 'I don't believe in some Shelborne bogy, John. There's a perfectly natural explanation for this somewhere.'

  'Yes, but where?'

  He called to Sheriff in his boat. 'Bob, is this your quickfirer in order?'

  'Aye, aye.'

  'Take your boat, will you, and have Watson fire a couple of big bursts into them and stop the stampede.'

  'Into them?'

  'Yes. They're panicking. Something back there in the desert — maybe a big dust storm we can't see. It doesn't matter how many you kill — they'll die anyway.'

  'I wonder,' I said, 'if Korvettenkapitan Rhennin made a similar order?'

  Rehnning wheeled on me. 'Yes, he would, if the situation were the same.'

  You might as well open up against the dunes themselves, for all the impression it will make.' Dieter knew how to look after himself. It was war. To open fire against the enemy was quite normal.' 'Against a normal enemy, yes, but I found his Knight's Cross in the graveyard.'

  Bob!' snapped Rhennin. 'Get going! Give them the works and stop this damned nonsense!'

  'Aye, aye.'

  Rhennin turned back to me. 'I intend going ashore as soon as this firing picnic is over — to the graveyard. Are you coming?'

  'John! You've risked your life once today.' Mary was.growing quite angry.

  'I'm coming all right,' I replied. 'Gruppe Eisbar may not have been lost entirely without trace.'

  Rhennin said, 'The war is a long time ago now. Dieter may or may not have picked up the Goering cache. It is more important that we find a way into the Glory Hole — it is the Mazy Zed's, own Schwerpunkt. Shelborne…'

  'Shelborne, Shelborne!' Mary exclaimed. 'You talk as if he were some sort of Mephistophele
s who controls supernatural powers…' She pointed to the springbok, now stumbling and climbing over mounds of their dead companions to get to the water. The roar of Bob Sheriff's engine drowned her words. The boat tore away at full throttle from the Mazy Zed, rising on her hydrofoils as she streaked towards the shore. Watson, the gunner, grinned and swung the twin muzzles in anticipation.

  Rhennin spoke to the ship's medical orderly — there was no doctor — who had tried to help me with Piet. 'Get him below, will you?'

  'He was dead when you brought him aboard,' the orderly said with an irritating presumption of medical ominscience. 'Anoxia, that is what he died from.' He rolled the term round his tongue, 'That caused the blotches and mottling. Classic symptoms.'

  'Oh, bull!' I retorted. My nerves were shot to hell. 'You're no doctor…'

  Rhennin interrupted. 'Everything points to its being a simple drowning.'

  'There are other things which have the same symptoms.'

  'Such as what, John?'

  'It wasn't a deep dive and a good diver like Piet simply doesn't drown. It's the foam in the mask that bothers me.'

  Rhennin shrugged. 'If you want a post-mortem you won't get it at Mercury. I intend to log his death as accidental drowning.'

  It was useless to argue. 'I'll dive and see tomorrow if the weather holds. We must watch our step on the island — I think Shelborne is holed up somewhere where we can't spot turn.'

  'Let me come too,' Mary insisted, but we refused. 'John! you remember what I said about express trains… You won't crash head-on if I am there.'

  I shrugged off the idea of Shelborne's fatal attraction for me. 'I intend to find out a lot of things — a lot of things.'

  Above the death-cry of the springbok came the savage rattle of Watson's gun firing into the horde advancing towards the quicksands. Glasses to our eyes, we saw the bullets cut a swathe. Others advanced, ignoring and submerging the dead. The patrol boat tore past the shallows, firing in short professional bursts. Sheriff made a big circle and slowed down.

  'He's trying for a steady platform,' said Rhennin.

  'For all the good he's doing, he might as well have stayed,'I said.

  The boat cruised slowly past the carcass-choked beach. The continuous rattle broke, chattered, broke again.

  'What the hell…?' snapped Rhennin.

  My glasses were on the boat. One short burst.

  Mary exclaimed incredulously. 'He's firing into the air!'

  The twin machine-guns pointed skywards. Two single shots. Five. One. Silence. The guns aimed heavenwards. The boat cruised slowly on.

  'What in the name of all that's holy is he doing!' burst out Rhennin. 'Keep course, man, or else you'll be ashore next to the old coaster!'

  In slow motion, that describes exactly what happened. The hydrofoils, guns raked skywards, drove erratically towards the base of Sudhuk and crashed ashore on the rocks to the right of the landing-beach.

  'Is Sheriff drunk?' rapped out Rhennin. 'God! I lose one boat through his men being asleep, and the second…'

  'Because they are dead.'

  He dropped the glasses. 'I… I… why do you say that, John?'

  I indicated the hydrofoil. The boat runs ashore. Not a man shows. No one tries even to fend her off. That crew is dead.'

  Rhennin lifted his powerful Zeiss glasses to his eyes again. His voice was shot with uneasiness. 'Watson is lying at the foot of the gun. I can't see properly… the helm is unattended… we must go and see…'

  'No, Felix,' I said. 'Something hellish is afoot. If Sheriff is alive, he'll come back. If he's dead, there's no point in exposing ourselves to the same unknown danger. He had the fastest and best-armed boat between here and Simonstown. He was as well prepared as…'

  '… as Gruppe Eisbar,' supplemented Mary.

  Rhennin's voice was harsh. 'Yes, by heavens! — as prepared as Gruppe Eisbar, and as unprepared as the Mazy Zed.' The crew watching were muttering among themselves. 'Mercury… John! Get dressed and come to my cabin.' He went below.

  The Bells tolled. Mary stood close to me, silent. The macabre scene held me. Like thistledown, airy, fawn-and-white, the graceful buck trotted down through the nek in the sandhills to the beach of death. The nearby quicksand was a rearing, plunging mass of dead and half-dead beasts. Rhennin was right: somewhere there was a perfectly everyday explanation. What? Food. Were the animals the victims of mass starvation? These were certainly not thin-ribbed creatures at the end of their tether. Water? Richtersveld lore said springbok could go for as long as ten years without flowing water, — succulents and naras, the water-packed melon of the Namib, provided all they needed.

  Richtersveld! Richtersveld! — something was flickering at the back of my mind, but it would not ignite. Could the springbok be emulating those blind migrations of the arctic lemming? I knew that this small Norwegian rodent has been known to drown itself in hundreds of thousands in the freezing waters of the north.

  Richtersveld! — like a drug which revives in the neurotic's mind whole forgotten passages of music, only once heard, there arose in my mind a grey image of a granite range, sea on one side, desert on the other. The image swelled, grew, vanished — and I found my eyes again registering Mercury's mass suicide.

  Richtersveld! — an oyster dawn; a sun red as the burning sand; towards the east a valley of rose-and-white quartz; among the stones… I fought for the mental key… whatever it was, it would, I knew, give me the clue to the springbok suicide.

  Richtersveld! — I saw every stapelia, every minute stoneplant, every withdrawn succulent, covered in pellucid dew: sea-dew, water. And the grey granite clothed in young green shoots, all glistening and white — food for the young, water, life.

  I knew then what I was seeing at Mercury: the ancient migration of animals to traditional water. Such migrations have gone on since time immemorial. The Namib was timeless, but the ancient place to which they came had changed. It must have been a river, and it must have been here! The line of strange T-shaped whitenesses among the dunes was the line of an age-old barrier, at the foot of which had flowed a prehistoric river to which the animals were driven by a compulsion buried deep in their race-life.

  A prehistoric river! Stratton had told the court, and it was held by Oranjemund experts, that diamonds had been carried to the coast by rivers whose courses had vanished 500,000 years ago, but which had spread them out to sea, where they were redistributed by ocean currents into the Sperrgebiet's marine terraces.

  The mouth of that ancient river — where was it? The fountainhead of all diamonds, the parent rock! Shelborne knew where the mouth was. Nothing would move him from Mercury, because he knew. That is why he had killed Caldwell at Strandloper's Water. Had the whole coastline changed because of what we surveyors call continental uplift? Certainly the beacons had moved inland — the soggy quagmire of quicksands might well be the remnants of an old river mouth. Or had the river's course been halted by the coast lifting and broken off — at Strandloper's Water? I must trek inland to Strandloper's Water; and I must find Shelborne.

  I dropped the binoculars on their lanyard.

  There was something in my face which made Mary draw back. 'John! Dear God, John! What is it?'

  'I'm going ashore to Mercury to open a few coffins.'

  'No! No! That is not what you were thinking of!' 'No,' I replied harshly. 'I think I know now why Shelborne killed your father.' 'I'll never believe that,' she said. 'I'm going to Strandloper's Water to find out.' 'No! — please not, John! What is past is past — no more deaths…'

  'Not unless Shelborne chooses.' She came close to me. 'John, listen: there seems to be a fate which hangs like an aura about those who deal in diamonds. Caldwell. Shelborne. Now you. You felt it yourself that first day in court — that strange, forceful, wonderful man in his faded clothes. He is not evil. Power, yes. You sense it, but it is power he has learned to be humble about. I believe it came to him in the Namib, some lonely coming to grips with himself. He understands it, he lives
with it, but he doesn't deploy it for evil ends.'

  I gestured towards the shore. 'He deploys it.' She said desperately, 'Don't believe it! Shelborne may live in the presence of power, of force, of death.'

  '"Primal mysteries," he called them to me.'

  'Yes! But they're passive for him. They lie quiet under his hand because he knows what terrible forces the Namib unleashes. It is old, it is savage, its capacity for cruelty on the grand scale is unbounded, just in the same way that prehistoric things are blatantly, unashamedly, uncomplicatedly cruel. It was born so long ago.'

  The third day of the Creation, he told the court.' 'Shelborne has his hand upon whatever this grim, elemental thing is. It's tame under his hand, like Mercury. But it becomes more dangerous than a hydrogen bomb when the catalyst comes along.' 'You're saying the catalyst is me.'

  'No, John, not you, not Rhennin. Diamonds — diamonds as symbolized by the Mazy Zed.'

  'You're not Caldwell's daughter for nothing.'

  She went on urgently. 'Forget this crazy business of breaking into Shelborne's graveyard to find Korvettenkapitan Rhennin. What if he is there? What does it tell you? Nothing! The war has been over a long time — Felix says so himself — and who has heard of Gruppe Eisbar anyway? Dieter Rhennin didn't sink the Queen Mary convoy; he may have found the cache. He's dead, whatever way you look at it.'

  'Yes, but Goering's cache…'

  'Diamonds' Diamonds again!' she burst out bitterly.

  I looked deep into her eyes. 'It is not simple for Shelborne. It is almost — you said it yourself — as if he had assumed Caldwell's own character: "Something hid behind the ranges, go and look behind the ranges." To give the world Caldwell's diamond fountainhead, the parent rock, would, as he sees it, pay back fate for what he did to your father. He doesn't want Goering's hoard, He doesn't even want the riches of the fountainhead. It's a sidestake with fate. He doesn't give a damn for the size of it, except in so far as the more fabulous it is, the greater the redemption of Caldwell. The game's the thing.'

  'And you mean to beat him at the game.'