Assegai

by Wilbur Smith

  Lusima Mama was waiting for them under a favourite tree beside the path. She greeted her sons and made them sit one on each side of her. ‘Your flower is not with you, M’bogo.’ It was a statement, not a question. ‘She has gone to that land far to the north.’

  ‘When will she return, Mama?’ Leon asked.

  She smiled. ‘Do not seek to know that which is not for us to know. She will come in the fullness of days.’

  Leon shrugged helplessly. ‘Then let us speak of that which is for us to know. I have a favour to ask of you, Mama.’

  ‘I have fifty men waiting for you near my hut. It is fortunate that the Mkuba Mkuba has already cleared much of the ground for you with his lightning bolt.’ She smiled slyly at him. ‘But you do not believe that, do you, my son?’

  Lusima accompanied the expedition to the open tableland above the waterfall. She sat in the shade and watched her men labour. Leon soon understood why she had come: under her eye the team worked like a pack of demons and by noon on the second day he was able to pace out the extent of the ground they had opened up. At such high altitude the air was thin and he would have to maintain a high approach speed to avoid stalling his aircraft. It would be a near-run thing to get the Butterfly down on such a short runway. In fact, it would have been impossible if it were not for the slope and aspect of the ground. The landing strip was on the very edge of the cliffs. If he made his approach from the valley side, the strip would be at an uphill angle, and once he touched down, the slope would bring her to a rapid standstill. On the other hand, if he took off down the slope the Butterfly would accelerate and reach her flying speed equally swiftly. Then when he shot off the top of the cliff he could hold her nose down in a shallow dive and her airspeed would rocket up.

  ‘Interesting times ahead for all of us,’ he told himself. He had not yet considered the nub of the problem. If everything worked out as he hoped the Assegai would come down the Rift Valley from the north. She would not be flying higher than ten thousand feet above sea level: her crew would be in danger of oxygen starvation if she flew higher than that for any extended period.

  There was no possibility that Graf Otto could bring the monster down the centre of the valley without being spotted by the network of bright-eyed chungaji. Leon would have ample warning of his approach, certainly enough time to get the Butterfly airborne and into her patrol station. ‘But what happens then?’ he asked himself. ‘A gunfight between the two of us?’

  He laughed at that ludicrous notion. From the illustrations he had seen of the airship, the Assegai would be armed with at least three or four Maxim machine-guns, which would be served by trained German airmen from a stable firing platform. Taking them on from the Butterfly, with his two Masai armed with service rifles, would be a novel means of committing suicide.

  He had been able to beg two hand grenades from Hugh Delamere, and had a vague idea of flying above the Assegai and dropping one on top of her great domed hull. There would be two and a half million cubic feet of highly explosive hydrogen in her hull and the resulting fireball would be spectacular. As the grenades had only a six-second delay after they connected with their target, though, the Butterfly would be near the centre of it.

  ‘There must be a better plan than frying myself,’ he murmured ruefully. ‘I just have to find it before I run out of time.’ According to Eva’s last cablegram from Switzerland, there were only five days to go before the Assegai was due to leave Wieskirche. ‘I haven’t even had a chance to test the feasibility of the new landing strip. We must go to Percy’s Camp tomorrow to fetch the Butterfly and bring her here.’

  Leon decided to sleep that night at Lusima’s hut and head down the mountain at first light the next day. He and Lusima sat side by side at the fire, sharing a bowl of cassava porridge for dinner. She was in an expansive mood and Leon was encouraged by this to speak of Eva. He was trying to milk from Lusima any details or suggestions that might be of value in the endeavour that lay ahead. He could see by the wicked twinkle in her dark eyes that she knew exactly what he had in mind, but he persisted and framed his questions as subtly as he could. They spoke of Eva and he reiterated his love for her.

  ‘The little flower is worthy of that love,’ Lusima agreed.

  ‘Yet she has gone from me. And I despair that I will ever see her again.’

  ‘You must never despair, M’bogo. Without hope we are nothing.’

  ‘Mama, you spoke to us once of a great silver fish in the sky that brings fortune and love.’

  ‘I grow old, my son, and more often these days I speak great stupidity.’

  ‘Mama, that is the first and only stupidity I have ever heard you utter.’ Leon smiled at her, and she smiled back. ‘It comes to me that soon the fish you do not remember will take to the sky.’

  ‘All things are possible, but what do I know of fish?’

  ‘I thought in my own stupidity that, as my mother, you might be able to tell me how to catch this fish of fortune and love.’

  She was silent for a long time and then she shook her head. ‘I know nothing about the catching of fish. You should ask a fisherman about that. Perhaps one of the fishermen of Lake Natron might teach you.’

  He stared at her in astonishment, then slapped his forehead. ‘Fool!’ he said. ‘Oh, Mama, your son is a fool! Lake Natron! Of course! The fishing nets! That’s what you were trying to tell me!’

  Leaving Loikot and Ishmael on the mountain, Leon and Manyoro hurried to Percy’s Camp. He wanted to keep the load on the plane for landing on the mountain to a minimum.

  From Percy’s Camp they took off almost immediately for Lake Natron. This time Leon took no chances with another landing on soft ground: he put the Butterfly down safely on the firm surface of the soda pan. He and Manyoro bargained with the chieftain of the fishing village and finally bought four lengths of old, damaged netting from him, each roughly two hundred paces long. As they had not been used recently they were dust-dry, but even so, the weight taxed the power of the Butterfly’s Meerbach engines. Leon had to make four separate flights to the makeshift landing strip on top of the mountain, carrying one net at a time, each landing a challenge to his skill as a pilot. He had to bring the Butterfly in fast to keep her just above stall speed and made a heavy touch-down that strained the landing gear to its limit.

  By the afternoon of the second day they had all four nets laid out on the open ground. They sewed them together in pairs so that finally they had two separate nets, each about four hundred paces long.

  There would be no opportunity for practice or experiment with packing and deploying the nets. They would go straight into action against the Assegai, and had only one chance of unfurling the nets successfully. Leon hoped that, with the first attack, he might be able to entangle the propellers of the airship’s two rear engines and slow her down to the extent that he had time to return to Lonsonyo landing strip and load the second length for another attack.

  One of the many critical aspects of the scheme was to pack the net so that it would unfurl from the bomb bay and stream out behind the Butterfly in an orderly fashion. Then, once Leon had entangled the airship’s propellers in the mesh, he had to be able to release the net from its retaining hooks before the Butterfly became snarled up in it. He had to be able to break away cleanly. If he failed to get clear, his aircraft would be dragged along tail-first behind the stricken airship. Her wings and fuselage would be broken up by the unnatural forces brought to bear upon them. There were so many imponderables that it would all depend on guesswork, teamwork, quick reactions to any unexpected development and an inordinate amount of good old-fashioned luck.

  By the evening of the fourth day the Butterfly stood at the head of the short strip of cleared ground with her nose pointed down the slope, the cliff face falling away abruptly at the end of the runway. Twenty porters waited in readiness to throw their combined weight behind her and give her a push start down the slope.

  At dawn and dusk each day Loikot had stood on the heights of L
onsonyo and exchanged shouts with his chungaji companions across the length and breadth of Masailand. It seemed that the eyes of every morani in the territory were fastened on the northern sky: all hoped to be first to spot the approach of the silver fish monster.

  Leon and his crew sat under a crudely thatched sun-shelter beside the fuselage of the Butterfly. When the call came they could be at their stations in the cockpit within seconds. There was nothing they could do now but wait.

  It looked like a solid unbroken wall in the sky, stretching across the eastern horizon and reaching from the dun desert floor to the milky blue of the heavens. Eva was alone in the control gondola of the Assegai. The airship was on the ground, moored for the day, and she was standing her watch like any of the officers. Every other member of the crew was either off-duty and resting after the night flight or busy servicing and tuning the main engines. Graf Otto was in the nacelle that housed the forward port engine. Despite four hours of determined effort he and his men were still unable to restart it, and had realized the extent of the damage. They were stripping the crank case to get to the root of the problem.

  Eva knew that sounding the alarm was not a decision that could be taken lightly. She hesitated a few minutes longer, but in the short time that the eastern horizon had been blotted out by the approaching yellow wall, the speed of its advance was startling. She could see that it was no longer solid but swirled and rolled upon itself, like a dense cloud of yellow smoke. Suddenly she knew what it was. She had read about it in books written by desert travellers. It was one of the most dangerous natural phenomena. She breathed the single word, ‘Khamsin!’ and darted across the bridge to the ship’s main telegraph. She yanked down the handle and the jangling of the emergency bells drowned every other sound.

  From the main cabin, crew members stumbled from their mattresses, still more than half asleep, and stared out at the approaching sandstorm. Some were stunned into silence by its size and ferocity, while others jabbered at each other in panic and confusion.

  Graf Otto came racing up the companion ladder from the gondola of the damaged engine. He stared at the storm for only a second before he took control. Within minutes two of the three serviceable engines were running, and he signalled the docking team to release the mooring cable from the bows.

  The third engine in the forward port gondola was silent. The engineer there was still having difficulty starting her. ‘Take command, Lutz!’ he shouted. ‘I have to go down and get that engine running.’ He ran out on to the open catwalk and disappeared down the ladder to the engine nacelle.

  Lutz ran to his control panel and opened all eight gas valves. Hydrogen rushed into the Assegai’s gas chambers and she flung up her nose so violently that Eva and those men who had no handholds were thrown to the deck as she went into a nose-high climb with half a million cubic feet of buoyant gas hurtling her aloft.

  The atmospheric pressure dropped so rapidly that the needle of the barometer spun giddily around the dial. Lutz, the ship’s commander, who was suffering from an infected sinus, squealed with pain and clutched at his ears. A thin trickle of blood ran down his cheek as an eardrum ruptured. He doubled over and fell to his knees. There was no other officer on the bridge who could take over from him, so Eva dragged herself to her feet and, pulling herself along the handrail, she reached Lutz before he lost consciousness with the pain. ‘What must I do?’ she screamed.

  ‘Vent!’ he moaned. ‘Blow the gas from all the chambers. Red handles!’ She reached up, took hold of them and forced them down with all her strength. She heard the escaping gas howling from the main vents above. The airship shuddered and bucked, but her uncontrolled climb steadied, and the needle on the barometer slowed its wild gyration.

  Graf Otto had come up the giraffe neck of the companion ladder from the forward engine gondola, where he had gone to start the engine. Now he was pinned on the open catwalk, clinging to the side-rail while the Assegai’s violent manoeuvres threatened to hurl him into space like a pebble from a slingshot. He was fifty feet from Eva and yelled at her urgently, ‘Both starboard throttles, full ahead.’

  She obeyed him instinctively and the engines thundered, driving the airship’s nose around in a counter-turn. For a few moments she steadied sufficiently for Graf Otto to release his death grip on the rail and run lightly along the catwalk. He burst in through the main doors as the Assegai started to spin in a clockwise direction. He reached Eva’s side and grabbed the controls. His movements were quick and co-ordinated to those of the Assegai. He gentled the great airship like a runaway horse, but before he had her steady she had climbed to fourteen thousand feet and was taking a terrible buffeting from the khamsin winds. However, the full force of the storm passed under the hull and left her at nine thousand feet, running southwards on an even keel. But she had been battered by the winds: the forward port engine was damaged beyond hope of repair, and a number of struts in the framework of the gas chambers had been broken. The shell bulged over these weak spots, but she was still making eighty knots and her cargo had been secured and lashed down.

  Ahead they could just make out the shape of the Nile winding through the desert. Suddenly the radio squawked and Graf Otto started with surprise. This was the first contact they had heard since they had crossed the Mediterranean coastline.

  ‘It’s the naval radio at Walvis Bay on the south-west coast.’ The operator looked up from his set. ‘They’re asking for a secure contact with Graf von Meerbach. They have an urgent top-secret message for you.’

  Graf Otto handed the helm to Thomas Bueler, the first officer, and put on the earphones. He turned the switch to suppress the sound so that only he could hear the transmission. He listened intently, his expression darkening, and flushed with anger. At last he ended the contact and went to stand at the forward window, staring down at the mighty river passing below.

  At last he seemed to reach a difficult decision and growled brusquely at Bueler, ‘In ten minutes, assemble the entire ship’s company in the control room. I want them seated in two ranks down the centre of the deck, facing forward. I am going to make an important announcement.’ He stumped out and went to the tiny cubby-hole cabin that he and Eva shared.

  When he emerged, Eva was filled with dread: he had changed his artificial hand. In place of the steel finger and thumb, he now wore the menacing spike-headed mace. The crew, too, were staring at the strange weapon, which he made no effort to conceal as he took up a position facing the two rows of seated men. He glared at them in silence until they were sweating and fidgeting with anxiety. Then he said, in a cold hard tone, ‘Gentlemen, we have a traitor on board.’ He let them think about that for a while. Then he went on, ‘The enemy has been alerted to our mission. They have been informed of our course and movements. Berlin is ordering us to abort the operation.’

  Suddenly he lifted his armoured fist and slammed it into the chart table. The panel shattered into splinters. ‘I am not turning back,’ he snarled. ‘I know who this traitor is.’ He prowled down the front rank of seated figures, and stopped behind Eva. She felt herself cringe inwardly and steeled herself. ‘I am a man who does not readily forgive treachery. The traitor is about to learn that.’ She wanted to scream and run out on to the catwalk, hurl herself over the side of the airship and die a clean, quick death rather than be mutilated and crushed by that steel fist. He touched the top of her head gently. ‘Who is it? you are wondering,’ he whispered.

  She opened her mouth to shout defiance at him, dare him to do his worst. Then she felt him lift his hand from her head, and he walked on down the line. She felt hot, bitter bile rise in her throat, and it took all her strength to prevent herself vomiting with terror.

  At the end of the line of men Graf Otto turned, and then he was coming back towards her. Her bowels felt as though they were filled with hot water and that she had to vent them. His footsteps stopped and she drew a quivering breath. It sounded as though he was directly behind her again.

  She heard the blow and almost s
creamed. The sound was not as loud as the shattering of the chart table had been. It was a muffled wet thump and she clearly heard bone break. She whipped around as Hennie du Rand fell forward on his face. Graf Otto stood over him and swung the iron fist again and again, lifting the mace high, then putting all his weight and strength behind the blows. When he straightened up he was breathing hard and his face was speckled with droplets of blood.

  ‘Throw the filthy dog overboard,’ he ordered, in a milder tone, and he was smiling. ‘It’s always those you trust most who betray you. I repeat, gentlemen, there is no turning back. But we cannot allow our cargo to fall into the hands of the British. If we maintain our speed, by noon tomorrow we will have reached Arusha in German territory and be safely through the worst of it.’

  He walked slowly from the cabin and Eva covered her eyes with both hands as two crewmen laid hold of Hennie’s ankles and dragged his corpse out on to the catwalk. Between them they lifted him over the rail and let him drop into the Nile valley, far below. Eva found herself weeping silently but each teardrop seemed to burn her eyes, like the sting of a bee.

  The moon was so near full that when Eva woke and went to the observation car it was low over the high ground of the escarpment, glowing like a huge gold coin. She watched it sink below the dark horizon, shrouded by garlands of cloud that were blowing in on the monsoon winds streaming from the Indian Ocean. Before it disappeared completely, the first rays of the rising sun sparkled on the silver dome of the airship, and gradually the details of the landscape reappeared out of the darkness. Then her heart was thumping against her ribs as she saw the familiar outline of Lonsonyo Mountain taking shape before her eyes. Every detail was etched on her memory. She recognized the red cliffs above Sheba’s Pool and saw the foaming waters sparkle at the touch of the first sunbeams. It was as though Badger was with her again. In her mind’s eye she saw every plane and angle of his naked torso as he stood under the cascading falls and laughed at her, teasing her, daring her to come to him.