by Tony Park
He could see the despair in her eyes. It seemed that neither Claire nor he could get away from war and killing. He couldn’t tell her how easy it had been to slide back into a soldier’s life.
Perhaps she missed it, as well.
She held a hand to her forehead. ‘Oh, Blake, I’m so glad you found me.’
He took her in his arms and they fed off each other with their kisses. While Claire undid his belt buckle he hurriedly undid the buttons of her blouse, exposing those glorious pale breasts he had never quite forgotten. He suckled on her as she freed him and grabbed him. She was brazen, and he loved it. ‘The bedroom . . .’
‘I can’t wait, Blake.’ Claire backed up against the heavy old timber kitchen table and slid up onto the smooth-worn surface.
‘Your husband?’
Claire smiled. ‘He’ll be a few hours.’
Blake pulled off her riding boots, taking his time, revelling in the wanton look in her eyes, then slid down her breeches and her knickers. She was ready for him and he entered her, in one long fluid movement.
There was no need for more talk, not now, he thought. They had only lain with each other once, that night in the bush, but it had been unlike any other time he’d been with a woman. She clung to him, the pain of her fingers digging into his flesh only arousing him further. He leaned over her, kissing her deeply as he joined with her, as they erased the longing and the loss of the missed years with their bodies.
When they were done, out of breath, they went to her bed, undressed fully and got in. She lay on her side, facing him, and he traced her contour with his fingers, lingering on the swell of her hip above the thatch of red hair.
‘It’s like we were never apart,’ he said.
She smiled. ‘I was thinking the same thing.’
‘Tell me, did you ever plan on going through with the deal, selling guns to the Boers in exchange for the gold?’
She looked away, as if remembering. ‘Maybe. If Nathaniel had lived and brought me the gold, I would have sold him the guns, probably, but he was having second thoughts himself.’
‘Did the Afrikaners not come looking for their gold?’
Claire shook her head. ‘Very few people other than Nathaniel knew the location of the gold. Hermanus’ rogue commando got wind that Nathaniel and his American boys were escorting some gold and Hermanus ambushed them and killed them all except for Nathaniel and Christiaan, the loyal Afrikaner man who was at the trading post raid. Walters must have got a lead on Nathaniel from a Boer prisoner or some other source.’
‘What do we do now, Claire?’
‘I don’t know,’ she sighed. ‘I came here looking for a paradise in the desert, an escape, but it was just a dream. Instead I’ve ended up in a war that’s even worse than the one you fought in South Africa.’
‘Come back to the Cape Colony with me, after I’ve found Liesl. I’ve been saving money, to brief a lawyer, to make a case against Walters.’
She smiled at him. ‘Sure and you’re the one dreaming, now, Blake. If you ever catch up with this girl and free her you’ll have half the German army chasing you across the desert. Tell me . . .’
‘Yes?’ he said.
‘You and this girl . . .’
‘We were close once,’ he said, and he felt her stiffen against him, ‘but it’s as I said, it’s the cause she’s devoted to, not me. She’s too young, Claire, and she doesn’t deserve to be worked to death or condemned to a slower end as a soldiers’ whore.’
Claire seemed to accept his explanation and gave a little nod of understanding, then kissed him. She rolled over on top of him, flattening her breasts against his chest. He loved the feel of her, every inch of her pressed into him, yet she was no burden. He felt he could sleep like this, with her body giving him warmth against the chill desert night.
But she had other ideas. He opened his mouth to speak, but she put a finger to his lips as she drew herself up and straddled him. She leaned over him, her nipples brushing his chest, and he could feel her hand around him again, guiding him into her. She was even warmer there and they melded into one like two metals being poured into a crucible. Claire sat up, arching her back, and he covered her breasts with his hands as they moved against each other.
He looked at her, at her eyes half closed, her slightly crooked smile, and he felt he could stay like this, joined to her, for eternity. The pleasure rolled up like a wave’s swell, created from deep within an ocean. The peak rose and he knew that if he could he would have frozen this moment, poised forever on the crest, weightless in the swell.
Claire crashed against him and cried out loud.
Chapter 42
Rietfontein, Cape Colony, near the border of German South West Africa, 1906
The camel dropped to its front knees and Colonel Llewellyn Walters gratefully and painfully dismounted. A coloured levy took the cantankerous beast’s reins and a white constable saluted.
Walters narrowed his eyes against the glare. Even by African standards this was a godforsaken middle-of-nowhere place. The police post and lockup were made of brick and tin but the dozen or so other dwellings were mean little places of mud and whatever rubbish some trader had bothered bringing this far into the rocky desert and abandoned. He’d been assaulted by the sun throughout the journey and now the ground was trying to burn him from the soles of his boots upwards.
The lioness had taken a good deal of muscle and tendon from his right leg in 1902, and he suffered when he had to sit for extended periods. He had survived because he’d kept a cool head and feigned death. The lioness that had attacked him was the biggest in the pride and she had spent some time fighting off her sisters. This had given Walters time to draw a knife that Hermanus’ Boers had missed, hidden inside his belt. When the lioness returned for him she had clamped her jaws over his shoulder and dragged him, between her forelegs, deep into the bush. When Walters was sure they were away from the rest of the pride he had reached up under her and stabbed her in the heart. Bleeding profusely he had managed to climb a tree, where he spent an agonising night out of reach of the other lions. When they lost interest, at daybreak, he had seen one of the dead Boers’ ponies trotting down the nearby track and had called to it. The horse had come to him and he was able, with great difficulty, to get into the saddle and ride as far as the main railway line, where a patrol from Steinaecker’s Horse had come upon him and taken him to Komatipoort. From there he was put on a British hospital ship, which had been moored in Delagoa Bay in neutral Portuguese East Africa. Seriously wounded British soldiers were taken there for surgery. Though far from recovered, when he had regained consciousness after being operated on he had thanked whatever force had landed him in the same port Claire Martin would no doubt be shipping her stolen gold from. Unfortunately, he narrowly missed her. Before he could board another ship for Cape Town his wounds became infected. He believed it was his sheer will to find the woman and the gold that had brought him through the fever.
His convalescence was long, but the story of his brush with the lion spread and Walters decided it would be to his advantage to stay in Africa. A fellow officer organised his posting to the Cape Mounted Police and he found his ability to sniff out and take over as many rackets as he broke up earned him money and higher rank. He spent his spare time investigating the whereabouts of the gold and his early queries ascertained that Sergeant Cyril Blake had died of malaria in Komatipoort at the war’s end.
Claire Martin had disappeared, or reinvented herself somewhere. Walters had befriended the German consul in the Cape Colony and the man had made enquiries on his behalf – in repayment for a goodly number of cigars, women and bottles of the Cape’s finest wines. It seemed the Germans had no record of Claire arriving in the Fatherland, and the consul’s queries across the border in South West Africa had drawn blanks.
But now, four years on, he had two new leads.
Walters touched
his giraffe’s tail fly whisk to the peak of his pith helmet.
‘Welcome to Rietfontein, sir.’
Hell, more like it, Walters thought to himself.
‘You’ll be wanting to freshen up, sir?’ the constable continued.
‘The understatement of the new century, constable,’ Walters said, ‘but where are the Germans?’
‘Waiting, sir, at the border post. They sent word this morning that the German colonel, von Deimling, had only just arrived. We hear there’s been quite a bit of fighting to the south, sir, at a place called Narudas. Von Deimling let the rest of his column carry on to Keetmanshoop, but he’s ridden here to meet you. Perhaps you’d like to freshen up, let them cool their heels, sir? I could show you around, like.’
The constable seemed impressed, and so he should. Walters knew he wielded considerable power in the Cape, yet he was under no illusions that a German colonel would go too far out of his way to meet with the Cape Mounted Police if there wasn’t something of importance to von Deimling as well. ‘No. It’s them I’m here to see.’
The constable looked ever so slightly crestfallen. ‘Very well, sir. We can take a horse from here.’
Thank God, Walters thought. As tempting as the idea of a bath was, he was here on a mission, one that he had deemed worth the arduous journey from his comfortable digs in the Cape.
‘It’s just, that, well, sir . . .’
‘Out with it, Constable . . . ?’
‘Laidlaw, sir, Malcolm Laidlaw. It’s just that it’s not every day we get the commandant of the Cape Mounted Police paying us a visit and if you’d like to see the station . . .’
‘I would not. Ready the horses, Laidlove.’
‘Laidlaw, sir.’
‘Hop to it, man.’
Walters fought a brief and losing battle with the flies and took a sip of warm water from his canteen while Constable Laidlaw fetched the horses.
The horse was marginally less uncomfortable than the lurching gait of the camel that had taken him over the longest and worst stretch of his journey to reach this, the remotest police outpost in the northwestern corner of the colony.
A mile down the track they found four Germans on horseback. A Leutnant, a lieutenant who introduced himself as Kurtz, saluted Walters and welcomed him to German South West Africa. He was accompanied by an NCO and two Schutztruppen who gave curt nods and cool stares to Laidlaw.
Kurtz led him another mile into the desert where a small camp had been set up. An older man stepped out from under the awning of one of three canvas tents. He had a moustache modelled on the Kaiser’s and iron-grey stubble on his head, which he covered with his cap as they approached. The riders all dismounted and the German officer stood.
‘May I present Colonel Walters of the Cape Mounted Police, sir,’ Lieutenant Kurtz said with a click of his heels.
‘Colonel,’ Walters said. The two men shook hands and von Deimling gave a sharp nod of his head.
‘Welcome to German South West Africa, please take a seat.’ Von Deimling gestured to a canvas and timber safari chair. ‘A drink? Beer, wine, schnapps?’
‘Water, please, if you have it,’ Walters said.
Von Deimling spoke German to Lieutenant Kurtz, who then saluted and left, making for the next tent. Walters noticed Kurtz walked with a pronounced limp and von Deimling followed his gaze.
‘My aide was wounded in action.’
‘I must commend you on your English, Colonel,’ Walters said. ‘I picked up some Afrikaans during war, but I don’t speak your language.’
‘I trust your journey was not too arduous,’ von Deimling said.
Walters eased himself, somewhat gratefully, into the low-slung chair and crossed his legs. A soldier handed him a glass of cool water, a balm for his lips, which were cracked from days of exposure to the sun and dry, hot wind. Lieutenant Kurtz had also returned, carrying a folder. He stood behind the colonel and if his wounded leg troubled him his posture or face did not betray it. ‘My journey was fine, thank you.’
‘Good. I will, as you would say, get to the point – I am eager to return to Keetmanshoop. As I said in my telegram to my superiors, which you received through diplomatic channels, there is a British subject serving with the Nama rebels.’
‘Technically,’ Walters set his glass down on a folding side table, ‘the man is Australian and they seem to have taken matters of government somewhat into their own hands since becoming a federation, but, yes, the man in question is still a subject of the crown.’
‘This man, Edward Prestwich,’ von Deimling snapped a finger and Kurtz handed him the folder, ‘took part in the battle at Narudas earlier this week. He subsequently was involved in an ambush of my forces who were returning to Keetmanshoop after a successful engagement with the rebel commander Jakob Morengo in the Karasberge. We inflicted serious casualties on the rebels.’
Yet they were still able to ambush you on the way home. Walters kept his thought to himself and simply smiled and nodded.
‘Several wagons at the rear of our column were cut off. Three were destroyed but of more concern was the murder of four wounded German soldiers by the rebels. Prestwich was last seen by one of our officers standing on the back of the wagon where the murders took place.’
‘You believe he was responsible?’ Walters said.
Colonel von Deimling gave a small shrug. ‘Of that I have no proof – I would hope that a white man would not stoop so low, but your colonial troops in your last war had a reputation for shooting prisoners of war, did they not?’
Walters pursed his lips. ‘What else do you know about this man?’
‘From our sources,’ Von Deimling reclined in his chair and brought his fingers together, ‘we know that this Prestwich is an Australian who served with the British Army in the war against the Boers in an irregular horse unit. He has been known to us for some time as a thief, trading in cattle stolen by the Hottentots, the Nama as they call themselves, and supplying horses and perhaps arms and ammunition to the rebels. It would be of assistance to German South West Africa if your police could perhaps exercise greater diligence in controlling the illegal trade in livestock back and forth across the border.’
Walters did not need some Hun telling him how to run his police force. Ordinarily he would have sent an underling to a meeting about some miscreant colonial scoundrel, but this case was of particular interest to him. A particularly diligent lieutenant on his staff, on receiving the cable from the foreign office, had shown great initiative by searching for the service record of Edward Lionel Prestwich. Two things leapt out from the briefing the lieutenant had prepared for him.
Firstly, Edward Prestwich had been a member of Steinaecker’s Horse and he had died of malaria in 1902 at Komatipoort; secondly, when Walters had consulted his notes from that period he confirmed that Sergeant Cyril Blake had been reported as dead on that same day.
On top of all that, just two days ago Walters had received a routine report from a patrol officer when he passed through Upington which mentioned a red-headed European woman visiting the town in search of missing cattle some time earlier. Her name was Claire Kohl, wife of a German doctor-cum-farmer across the border.
There had been no sign of the alleged Prestwich in Upington, and no one seemed to know where he was or when he would be back, so Walters had come to Rietfontein to discuss the man with his German counterparts across the border. He also wanted information on the red-headed woman.
‘What would you like me to do about this, Colonel?’ Walters asked, punctuating his feigned disinterest with a swish of the giraffe’s tail.
Von Deimling gave a tight smile. ‘I am tempted to say your job, Colonel, but I do not wish to sound flippant or rude.’
Walters ignored the criticism. ‘Naturally, the Cape Mounted Police take all allegations of illegal activity seriously and I am sure our government would take a d
im view of a British subject, colonial or otherwise, acting as a gun runner or armed rebel.’
Von Deimling stroked his moustache. ‘For my part, I have put a price of three thousand Marks on the head of this man, Prestwich. He seems to be overly sympathetic towards the natives. There are even reports of him cohabiting with a coloured girl in Upington from time to time. If this man was to brag of his exploits, perhaps spreading falsehoods of Morengo’s successes around Upington, then he might sow the seeds of rebellion among your own native people. I’m sure the Cape Colony and your masters in England would not like to have to deal with the type of uprising and banditry that we are faced with.’
‘Quite,’ Walters said. ‘I see you have a file.’
Von Deimling nodded. ‘In the interests of international cooperation I would be pleased to share what we have with you, and in return perhaps you could give me some sort of assurance that I could pass on to my superiors.’
It was Walters’ turn to negotiate. ‘Perhaps you might be able to assist me with something?’
‘Of course.’ Von Deimling spread his hands wide. ‘If it is in my power. I am but a humble soldier.’
‘While you are concerned about an Australian entering your territory illegally, I have recently had reports of a woman, possibly of Irish or American descent, red hair, a farmer’s wife I believe, crossing from your side of the border into the Cape Colony at Upington.’
Von Deimling brought his hands together again, on his chest. ‘There would be very few women of that background in South West Africa. There are precious few women in colony still, in fact, and most of them come by ship from Germany.’
‘So I’ve heard.’
‘May I ask your interest in this woman?’
‘It dates back to my time during the war against the Boers. I was involved in investigations then, much as I am now.’
Von Deimling broke into a wide smile, which was as pleasant and lifelike as dried skin stretched either side of a corpse’s jaw. ‘Come, come, Colonel, it’s known to us that you were an officer in British military intelligence during the war. As that conflict is over and our two nations are not at war I’m sure we can be frank with each other, as one old soldier to another.’