by Wilbur Smith
‘Are you mad? Have you lost your mind?’
‘I have lost more than my mind. You have taken everything from me. Now I am taking it back.’
She fired.
She had not expected the report to be so loud and the recoil to be so vicious. She had aimed at his black heart, but the bullet had nicked his left arm above the elbow. Blood trickled down his forearm and dripped from his fingertips.
‘Don’t do this, Eva. Please! I will do anything you say.’ She fired again and this shot flew wider than the first. It did not touch him. She had not known how difficult it was to shoot a pistol accurately at that range. Graf Otto was wriggling in the harness, swinging and jerking from side to side. She fired again and again. He was screaming with terror. ‘Stop! Stop my darling! I will make it up to you, I promise. You will have anything in the world you want from me.’ She drew a deep breath and tried to still the pounding of her heart as she levelled the pistol for the last time - but before she could squeeze off the shot a strong arm whipped around her from behind and a hand fastened on her wrist, pushing the gun down. The shot ploughed into the ground between the toecaps of her boots.
‘Good man, Ritter!’ Graf Otto bellowed. ‘Hold her fast! Wait until I can get my hands on the treacherous bitch.’
Ritter twisted the pistol out of Eva’s hands, then bore her to the ground with a knee between her shoulder-blades. He held her hands behind her back while one of his crew secured them with half a dozen workmanlike knots. Ritter handed him the Mauser. ‘Shoot her if she gives you an excuse to do so,’ he ordered, then ran to bring Graf Otto down from the tree. He grabbed the end of the dangling line and pulled it across. Graf Otto took a firm hold on a branch, then swung himself up until he was lying across it. There, he unbuckled his harness and let it fall. As agile as a huge ginger ape, he swarmed down the main trunk to the ground. He paused for only a minute to catch his breath, then walked slowly to where Eva lay. ‘Pick her up,’ he ordered the crewman, ‘and hold her firm.’ He smiled at her and showed her the metal fist. ‘This is for you, my darling!’ He hit her. He had judged the strength of his blow carefully: he did not want her to die too quickly.
‘Bitch!’ he said, then took a handful of her hair and twisted it until she fell on to her knees. ‘Treacherous bitch. Now I understand that it was you all along, not that pathetic Boer creature.’ He pushed her face into the rain-soaked earth and put his boot on the back of her head. ‘I don’t know what is the best way for you to die. Should I drown you in mud? Should I strangle you slowly? Or should I pound your beautiful head to jelly? It is a difficult decision.’ He lifted her face and stared into her eyes. The blood oozing from her nose mingled with the mud, streamed down her face and dripped off her chin. ‘Not so beautiful any more. More like the dirty little whore you truly are.’
Eva threw back her head and spat at him.
He wiped his face on his sleeve and laughed at her. ‘This will be great sport. I shall enjoy every moment.’
Ritter stepped forward and tried to intervene. ‘No, sir. You cannot do this to her. She is a woman.’
‘I will prove to you that I can, Commodore. Watch this.’ He lifted the armoured hand again, but as he leaned towards Eva, a deafening thunderbolt numbed their eardrums. It was the distinctive report of a.470 Nitro Express rifle. Graf Otto was hurled backwards, arms flailing, as the heavy bullet tore into the centre of his chest and erupted from between his shoulder-blades in a bright fountain of blood and pulped tissue.
‘There is another bullet for anyone who wishes to dispute the issue further. Hands high, please, gentlemen!’ Leon said in German, as he stepped from the bushes with Manyoro, Loikot and twenty Masai morani armed with stabbing assegais at his back.
‘Manyoro, tie these people like chickens going to market. Have the morani take them to the army fort at Lake Magadi and hand them over to the soldiers,’ he said, then ran to where Eva knelt in the mud. He jerked his hunting knife from its sheath and cut the rope. Then he cupped her face in his hands and lifted it to his.
‘My nose,’ she whispered. He brushed a kiss across her muddied and bloody lips.
‘It’s broken, and you will have a lovely pair of black eyes, but it’s nothing that Doc Thompson can’t deal with as soon as I can get you back to Nairobi.’ He lifted her and held her tightly to his chest as he started back up the mountainside to where the Butterfly waited on the landing strip. There, he laid her tenderly on the deck and covered her with a sheet of tarpaulin, for she was shivering with shock.
When he stood up he saw that Lusima was standing by the fuselage. ‘I’m taking her to Nairobi,’ he told Lusima, ‘but there’s a great service you can do for us.’
‘I will do it, my son,’ she said.
‘The silver monster lies broken upon the mountainside. Manyoro will take you and your morani to it. This is what I want you to do for me.’
‘I am listening to you, M’bogo.’ He spoke urgently. When he had finished she nodded. ‘All these things I will do. Now take your lovely broken flower to safety and cherish her until she is healed.’
It was four years almost to the day before they returned to Sheba’s Pool. They left Lusima, Manyoro, Ishmael and Loikot at the old campsite and rode up alone to the pool. Leon came to lift her down from the saddle and kissed her before he set her on her feet. ‘Passing strange,’ he said, ‘but how is it that you grow younger and more beautiful every day?’
She laughed and touched the side of her nose. ‘Except for a little kink and a bump here and there.’ Even the medical magic of Dr Thompson had not been up to the challenge of straightening her nose completely.
‘You call that a little bump?’ he asked, as he laid his hand on her belly. ‘What about this one?’
She looked down at it proudly. ‘Just watch it grow.’
‘I’m agog with anticipation, Mrs Courtney.’ He took her hand and led her to her usual seat on the rocky ledge. They sat side by side and gazed down into the dark waters.
‘I bet you’ve never heard the tale of the missing Meerbach millions,’ Eva said.
‘Of course I have.’ His face was straight and serious. ‘It’s one of the great mysteries of Africa. On a par with the lost mines of King Solomon and the Kruger millions that the old Boer president spirited away ahead of Kitchener’s army when he marched into Pretoria.’
‘Do you think somebody will solve the mystery soon?’
‘Perhaps today,’ he replied. He stood up and began to unbutton his shirt.
‘It’s been lying here for almost four years. What if somebody has found it already?’ she asked, and her light mood began to fade.
‘That could never have happened,’ he reassured her. ‘Lusima Mama put a curse on the pool. Nobody would dare go in there.’
‘But aren’t you afraid?’ she asked.
He smiled and touched the little carved-ivory charm that hung on a thong around his neck. ‘Lusima gave me this. It will ward off the curse.’
‘You’re making that up, Badger!’ she accused him.
‘There’s only one way I can prove it to you.’ He hopped on one leg as he shed his trousers, then took a running dive from the ledge into the water.
She jumped to her feet and shouted after him, ‘Come back! I’m afraid to know the answer. What if it’s all gone, Badger?’
He trod water and grinned at her from the middle of the pool. ‘You’re a determined pessimist, my love. In a few minutes from now we’ll know the worst or the very best.’ He drew four deep breaths and ducked. For a few seconds his bare feet kicked above the surface of the water and then he was gone. She knew it would be some time before he surfaced and she let her mind travel back over the last four years. They had been filled with excitement and danger, but also with love and laughter. She had been with him most of the time he was on campaign with Delamere’s light horse in the bush against that cunning rascal, von Lettow Vorbeck. Leon had taught her to fly the Bumble Bee and to act as his observer and navigator. The two of them had made a famous t
eam. Once, when Leon was not with her, she had landed the aircraft under heavy fire from the Germans to rescue four wounded askaris. Lord Delamare had pulled every trick in the book to see to it that she was awarded the Military Medal.
‘But now the war is fought and won, I will be grateful for a little less excitement and danger and a lot more love and laughter’.
She jumped up as Leon burst out of the water with a mighty splash. ‘Tell me the bad news!’ she yelled.
He did not reply but swam to the ledge below her and lifted his right hand out of the water. He was holding something and threw it at her feet. It was a small canvas bag and it was heavy, for the mouth burst open as it hit the ledge. Golden coins poured from it and sparkled in the sunlight, and she squealed with excitement and fell to her knees. She gathered them up in her cupped hands and looked down at him with an unspoken question in her eyes.
‘Some of the cases have burst open, probably when Lusima’s morani dropped them into the pool from the top of the waterfall, but it looks as though none or very little is missing.’ He slithered out of the water like an otter and she dropped the handful of gold sovereigns and reached out to hug his cold, wet body.
‘Don’t we have to give it all back?’ she whispered into his ear.
‘Give it back to whom? Kaiser Bill? I think he went out of business recently.’
‘I feel so guilty. It doesn’t belong to us.’
‘Why don’t you look upon it as full and final payment from Otto von Meerbach for the patents he stole from your father?’ he suggested.
She rocked back, held him at arms’ length and stared at him bemusedly. She started to smile. ‘Of course! When you look at it like that it’s really quite different.’ Then she laughed. ‘I can find no fault with your reasoning, my darling Badger!’
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7/29/2009
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Date:
7/29/2009
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