by Wilbur Smith
‘I could ask you the same question,’ she retorted.
‘I was taught the basics in the army,’ he replied.
‘The same with me.’
He stared at her in astonishment. ‘The German Army?’
‘One day I may tell you my life story, but for the moment we must get on with the job.’ She wiped her bloody hands on her skirt while she appraised what they had done, then shook her head. ‘He may survive the injuries, he’s tougher than most, but infection and mortification will probably kill him,’ she said.
‘You’re right. The fangs and claws of a lion are more deadly than poison arrows. They’re caked with rotten flesh and dried blood, a seething hothouse of germs. Dr Joseph Lister’s little friends. We must get him to Nairobi right away, so that Doc Thompson can stew him in a hot iodine bath.’
‘We can’t move him until we’ve done something about the tears in his belly. If we try to lift him now, his bowels will fall out. Can you stitch him?’ she asked.
‘I wouldn’t know where to begin,’ Leon said. ‘That’s a job for a surgeon. We’ll just strap him up and hope for the best.’ They bound up his stomach with lengths of shuka. Leon was watching Eva, waiting for her to express some emotion. She did not seem to be grieving. Did she have any feelings for him at all? She seemed to be working with professional detachment and avoided his eyes so he could not be certain.
At last they were able to lift Graf Otto on to a war-shield. Six of the morani took up the burden and carried him at a run in the direction of the salt pan where the Butterfly stood waiting.
Under Manyoro’s supervision they lifted the makeshift litter into the cockpit and Leon lashed it to the ring bolts in the deck. Then he looked up at Eva. Pale and dishevelled, she was squatting opposite him, her skirts filthy with blood and dust.
‘I don’t think he’ll make it, Eva. He’s lost too much blood. But perhaps Doc Thompson can pull off one of his miracles, if we get him to Nairobi in time.’
‘I’m not coming with you,’ Eva said softly.
He stared at her in amazement. It was not only the words themselves, but also the language in which she had spoken them. ‘You speak English. That’s a Geordie accent,’ he said. Its lyrical cadence was sweet to his ears.
‘Yes.’ She smiled sadly. ‘I am from Northumberland.’
‘I don’t understand.’
She pushed the hair back from her eyes and shook her head. ‘No, Badger, you cannot understand. Oh, God! There’s so much you don’t know about me, and which I can’t tell you... yet.’
‘Tell me one thing. What do you truly feel for Otto von Meer-bach? Do you love him, Eva?’
Her eyes widened, then darkened with horror. ‘Love him?’ She gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘No, I don’t love him. I hate him with all my heart and to the depths of my soul.’
‘Then why are you here with him? Why do you behave towards him as you do?’
‘You’re a soldier, Badger, as I am. You know about duty and patriotism.’ She drew a long, deep breath. ‘But I’ve had enough. I cannot go on. I’m not going with you to Nairobi. If I do I’ll never be able to escape.’
‘Who are you trying to escape from?’
‘Those who own my soul.’
‘Where will you go?’
‘I don’t know. Some secret place where they cannot find me.’ She reached out to him and took his hand. ‘I was relying on you, Leon. I hoped you could find a place where I might hide. Somewhere to which we could escape together.’
‘What about him?’ He indicated the blood-smeared body lying on the deck between them. ‘We cannot leave him to die, as he surely will if we don’t do something soon.’
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘Despite my feelings towards him, we cannot do that. Find me a place to hide. Leave me there. Come back for me as soon as you can. That is my only chance of winning my freedom.’
‘Freedom? Aren’t you free now?’
‘No. I am the captive of circumstances. You don’t believe that I chose to be what I have become, what they have made me, do you?’
‘What are you? What have you become?’
‘I have become a whore and an impostor, a liar and a cheat. I am caught in the jaws of a monster. Once I was like you, good, honest and innocent. I want to be like that again. I want to be like you. Will you have me? Shop-soiled and dirty as I am, will you take me?’
‘Oh, God, Eva, there’s nothing I want more. I’ve loved you from the first moment I laid eyes on you.’
‘Then no more questions now. I beg you. Hide me here in the wilderness. Take Otto to Nairobi. If anybody there asks about me, and I mean anybody at all, don’t tell them where I am. Tell them simply that I’ve disappeared. Leave Otto at the hospital. If he survives they will send him back to Germany. But as soon as you can, you must return to me. I will explain everything to you then. Will you do it? The Lord knows there’s no reason why you should, but will you trust me?’
‘You know I will,’ he said softly, then he shouted, ‘Manyoro! Loikot!’ They were waiting close at hand. The orders he had for them were short and to the point. It took him less than a minute to issue them. He turned back to Eva. ‘Go with them,’ he told her. ‘Do as they tell you. You can trust them.’
‘I know I can. But where will they take me?’
‘To Lonsonyo Mountain. To Lusima,’ he answered, and watched all the worry disappear from her violet eyes.
‘To our mountain?’ she said. ‘Oh, Leon, from the first moment I saw it I knew Lonsonyo had a special significance for us.’
While they were speaking Manyoro had found the carpet bag in which Eva carried her personal things. He dragged it out of the stowage hatch at the rear of the cockpit and tossed it down to Loikot, who was standing below the fuselage, then vaulted over the side. For the moment Leon and Eva were alone together. They gazed at each other wordlessly. He reached out to touch her, and she came into his arms with a swift, lissom grace. They clung to each other, as though they were trying to meld their bodies into a single entity. Her lips quivered against his cheek as she whispered, ‘Kiss me, my darling. I have waited so long. Kiss me now.’
Their lips came together, as lightly at first as two butterflies touching in flight, then stronger, deeper, so that he could taste her essence and savour the warmth of her tongue and the pink, fragrant recesses of her mouth. That first kiss seemed to last an instant yet all of eternity. Then with an effort, they broke apart and stared at each other in awe.
‘I knew I loved you, but not until this moment did I realize how much,’ he said softly.
‘I know, for I feel it also,’ she replied. ‘Until this moment, I never knew what it would be like to trust and love somebody completely.’
‘You must go,’ he told her. ‘If you stay another minute I cannot trust myself to let you go.’
She tore her eyes from his and looked out across the pan to where the morani and the villagers were streaming back towards them. Some were carrying the carcasses of the two lions slung on poles, their heads hanging.
‘Gustav and Hennie are coming,’ she said. ‘They must not see me leave or know where I have gone.’ She kissed him again swiftly, then broke away. ‘I shall wait for you to come back to me, and every second that we are apart will be agony and an eternity.’ Then, with a rustle and flurry of skirts, she sprang out of the cockpit. With Manyoro and Loikot on each side of her she ran for the trees, screened from Gustav and Hennie by the fuselage of the aircraft. When they reached the treeline Eva paused to look back. She waved, then vanished into the forest. He was surprised by the desolation that came over him now that she was gone, and he made a conscious effort to shake off the mood and brace himself to meet Gustav, who was scrambling into the cockpit.
He fell on his knees beside Graf Otto’s body. ‘Oh, my God, my good God!’ he cried. ‘He is killed!’ Unaffected tears streamed down his weathered cheeks. ‘Please, God, spare him! He was more than my own father to me.’ Apparently Gustav had forgotten the existence of
Eva von Wellberg.
‘He’s not dead,’ Leon told him brusquely, ‘but he soon will be if you don’t get the engines started so I can take him to a doctor.’ Gustav and Hennie sprang to work, and within a few minutes all four engines were rumbling and popping blue smoke scented with castor oil as they warmed up. Leon swung the Butterfly’s nose to the wind, and waited for the engines to settle down to a steady beat, then shouted at Gustav and Hennie, ‘Hold him steady!’
They crouched beside the makeshift stretcher on which Graf Otto lay and took a firm grasp. Leon pushed the throttles forward to the stops. The aircraft roared and rolled forward. As he lifted her over the trees he looked over the side, searching for Eva. He saw her then. She and the Masai had covered the ground, and they were already a quarter of a mile beyond the perimeter of the pan. She was running a little behind the other two. She stopped and looked up, swept off her hat and waved. Her hair tumbled down her shoulders and she was laughing, and he knew that her laughter was for his encouragement. He felt his heart squeezed by her courage and fortitude, but he dared not return her wave for it might draw Gustav’s attention to the little figure far below. The Butterfly roared on, climbing towards the rampart of the Rift Valley wall.
It was late afternoon and the sun was setting when Leon set the Butterfly down on the Nairobi polo ground. It was deserted, for nobody was expecting them. He taxied to the hangar where the hunting car was parked, shut down the engines and, between them, they manhandled the stretcher over the side of the cockpit and lowered Graf Otto to the ground.
Leon examined him briefly. He could detect no breathing, and Graf’s skin was deathly pale, damp and cold to the touch. He showed no signs of life. Leon felt a guilty jolt of relief that his wish for the man’s death had been so swiftly realized. But then he touched Graf Otto’s neck under the ear and felt the carotid artery throbbing feebly and irregularly. Then he placed his ear to the man’s lips and heard the faint hiss of air, in and out of his lungs.
Any normal human being would have been dead long ago, but this bastard is as tough as the skin on an elephant’s backside, he thought bitterly. ‘Bring the hunting car,’ he told Gustav. They placed the litter across the back seat, where Gustav and Hennie held it securely while he drove carefully to the hospital, avoiding the ruts and bumps in the track.
The hospital was a small building of mud-brick and thatch, across the road from the new Anglican church. It comprised a clinic, a rudimentary operating theatre and two small, empty wards. The entire building was deserted and Leon hurried to the cottage at the rear.
He found Doc Thompson and his wife sitting down to their dinner, but they left it on the table and rushed with Leon to the hospital. Mrs Thompson was the only trained nursing sister in the entire colony and took over immediately. Under her supervision Gustav and Hennie carried Graf Otto into the clinic and lifted him off the stretcher on to the examination table. While the doctor cut away the makeshift bandages, they dragged in a galvanized iron bath and filled it with hot water into which Mrs Thompson emptied a quart bottle of concentrated potassium of iodine. Then they lifted Graf Otto’s broken body off the table and lowered him into the steaming brew.
The pain was so excruciating that he was jerked out of the dark fog of coma, shrieking and struggling as he tried to drag himself out of the caustic antiseptic. They held him down mercilessly so that the iodine could soak into the deep, terrible wounds. Despite his antipathy towards the man, Leon found the spectacle of his agony harrowing. He backed to the door and slipped quietly out of the clinic into the sweet evening air.
By the time he reached the polo ground the sun had set. Paulus and Ludwig, two of the Meerbach mechanics, had got there before him: they had heard the Butterfly’s earlier landing and had come to find out what was happening. Leon gave them a brief account of the Graf’s mauling, then said, ‘I must get back. I don’t know what has happened to Fräulein von Wellberg. She is there alone. She may be in danger. The Butterfly’s fuel tanks are almost empty. What about the Bumble Bee?’
‘We filled her up after you brought her in,’ Ludwig told him.
‘Help me to get the engines started.’ Leon went to the aircraft, and the mechanics ran after him.
‘You cannot fly in darkness!’ Ludwig protested.
‘The moon is only two nights from full and will rise within the next hour. Then it will be as bright as day.’
‘What if it clouds over?’
‘Not at this time of year,’ Leon told him. ‘Now, stop arguing. Give me a hand to get her started.’ He climbed into the cockpit and began the routine, but halfway through he stopped and tilted his head to listen to the galloping hoofbeats coming up the track from the town. ‘Damn it to hell,’ he muttered. ‘I was hoping to sneak away without attracting any unwelcome attention. Who’s this?’ He crouched below the cockpit coaming and watched the dark shape of horse and rider materialize out of the night. Then he sighed as he recognized the tall, portly figure in the saddle, even though he could not yet make out the face. ‘Uncle Penrod!’ he called.
The rider reined in. ‘Leon? Is that you?’
‘None other, sir.’ Leon tried to keep the tone of resignation from his voice.
‘What’s happening?’ Penrod asked. ‘I was having dinner with Hugh Delamere out at the Muthaiga Country Club when we heard the aircraft arriving. Almost immediately there were all sorts of rumours flying around the bar. Somebody had seen von Meerbach brought in on a stretcher. They were saying he’d been in an accident, bitten by a lion, and that Fräulein von Wellberg was dead or missing. I went up to the hospital but I was told that Doc was operating and wouldn’t talk to me. Then I realized that as there are only two people in the colony who can fly an aeroplane, and von Meerbach was apparently in no condition to do so, it had to have been you who had flown in. I came to look for you.’
Leon laughed ruefully. It was not easy to beat Brigadier General Ballantyne to the punch. ‘Uncle, you’re a bloody genius.’
‘So everybody keeps telling me. Now, my boy, I want a full report. What in the name of all that’s holy are you up to? What has really happened to von Meerbach, and where is the lovely Fräulein?’
‘Some of the rumours you heard are correct, sir. I brought von Meerbach in from the field. He was badly mauled by a lion, as you heard. I left him with Doc. I don’t think he’ll pull through. He’s badly hurt.’
‘How could you let it happen, Leon?’ Penrod’s tone betrayed his outrage. ‘By Gad, all my hard work gone to pot.’
‘He insisted on taking on the lion in the Masai fashion with the assegai. It had him down before I had a chance to prevent it.’
‘The man’s a bloody fool,’ Penrod snapped, ‘and you’re not much better. You should never have let him get himself into such a position. You knew how important it was, how much we were hoping to learn from him. Damn it! You should have stopped him. You should have looked after him as though he was a baby.’
‘A big bad baby with a mind of his own, sir. Not easy to look after.’ Leon’s tone was sharp with anger.
Penrod changed tack smoothly. ‘Where is von Wellberg? I hope you haven’t fed her to the lions too.’
The taunt riled Leon, as Penrod had intended it to. The truthful reply leaped angrily to his lips but, with an effort, he stopped it there. Eva’s warning echoed in his ears: If anybody there asks about me, and I mean anybody at all, don’t tell them where I am. Tell them simply that I’ve disappeared.
Anybody at all. Had she meant to include Penrod in that warning? His mind raced. He recalled the incident at the regimental dinner when he had come across them in the garden. His suspicions at that time must have been well founded. Eva would never have dropped her guard like that unless there was some special understanding between them. Then he recalled how Eva had adumbrated her connections to the military. Penrod was the commander of the armed forces in the colony. It was all starting to take on a shadowy shape in his mind.
I am caught in the jaws of a monster, s
he had said. Was Penrod the monster? If so, then Leon had been on the point of betraying her. He took a deep breath and said firmly, ‘She disappeared, sir.’
‘What in hell do you mean, “disappeared”?’ Penrod barked.
His swift, sharp reaction confirmed Leon’s suspicions. Penrod was at the centre of the murky mystery.
You are a soldier, Badger, as I am. You know about duty and patriotism.
Yes, he was a soldier, and here he was, lying to his superior officer. Once before he had been found guilty of disobeying a superior officer and dereliction of duty. Now he was committing the same capital offences, but this time he was doing it deliberately and wilfully. Like Eva, he was caught in the jaws of the monster.
‘Come on, boy, spit it out. What do you mean she disappeared? People don’t just disappear.’
‘At the time of the lion attack I was trying to protect von Meerbach. He was the one in real jeopardy, not...’ he had almost said ‘Eva’ but corrected himself ‘... not the lady. I told her to stay well back, and I ran forward among the Masai. I lost sight of her in the confusion. Then, when the lion got von Meerbach down and ripped him up, I had only one thing on my mind, and that was to patch him up and get him to Doc Thompson. I didn’t think about Fräulein von Wellberg again until I was airborne, and by then it was too late to turn back for her. I trusted Manyoro and Loikot to find her and take care of her. I believe they will have taken her to safety. But right now I’m going to risk a night flight into the valley to make sure she’s all right.’
Penrod pushed his horse close alongside the fuselage and glared up at Leon, who was certain that his guilt must be stamped clearly on his features. He blessed the darkness that hid his face from Penrod’s harsh scrutiny.
‘Listen to me, Leon Courtney! If any harm comes to her you will answer to me. Now, here are my orders. Mark them well. You will go back to where you left Eva von Wellberg in the bush and bring her out. You will conduct her to me - directly to me and nobody else. Do I make myself clear?’