The Seventh Scroll tes-2

by Wilbur Smith

  don't bully-girls. Please don't let it happen again."

  He straightened up and spoke to Royan, "Get her to your tent and keep

  her there." He combed his hair back from his face with his fingers. "And

  now, if you have no serious objections, may we get a little sleep?"

  It rained again during the early hours. The heavy drops drummed down on

  the canvas and the lightning lit the interior of the tents with an eerie

  brilliance. However, by the time that Nicholas went through to the

  dining tent for breakfast the next morning, the clouds had cleared and

  the sunshine was bright and cheering. The sweet mountain air smelt of

  wet earth and mushrooms.

  Boris greeted Nicholas with hearty good fellowship.

  "Good morning, English. We had some fun last night. I still laugh to

  remember it. Very good jokes. One day soon we will have some more vodka,

  then we will makesome more good jokes." And he bellowed through to the

  kitchen tent, "Hey! Lady Sun, bring your new boyfriend something to eat.

  He is hungry from all the sport last night."

  Tessay was quiet and withdrawn as she supervised the' servants handing

  round breakfast. One eye was swollen almost closed, and her lip was cut.

  She did not look at Nicholas once during the meal.

  "We will go on ahead," Boris explained jovially as they drank coffee.

  "My servants will break camp, and follow us in my big truck. With luck,

  we will be able to camp tonight on the rim above the gorge, and tomorrow

  we will begin the descent."

  As they were climbing into the truck, Tessay was able to speak to him

  softly for a moment, without danger of Boris overhearing her. "Thank

  you, Alto Nicholas. But it was not wise. You don't know him. You must be

  careful now. He does not forget, not does he forgive."

  From the village of Debra Maryarn Boris took a branch road that ran

  alongside the Dandera river directly south, wards. The road they had

  followed the previous day from Lake Tana was shown on the map as a major

  highway. It had been bad enough. But this track that they were now on

  was marked as a secondary road "not passable in all weather'. To

  compound matters, it seemed that most of the heavy traffic that had torn

  up the main road had followed this same track. They came to a place

  where some huge vehicle had become bogged down in the rain-saturated

  earth, and the efforts to free it had left areas of ploughed land and an

  excavation like a bomb crater that resembled an old photograph of the

  battlefields of First World War Flanders.

  Twice during the day the Toyota too became stuck in this foul ground.

  Each time this happened, the big truck that was following them came up

  and all the servants swarmed down from the cargo body to push and heave

  the Toyota through. Even Nicholas stripped to the waist to work with

  them in the mud to free it.

  "If you had only listened to my advice," Boris grumbled, "we would not

  be here. There is no game where you want to go, and there are no roads

  worth the name either."

  In the early afternoon they stopped beside the river for an alfresco

  lunch. Nicholas went down to the pool beside the road to wash off the

  mud and filth of the morning's labours. He had been in the forefront of

  the efforts to keep the truck moving. Royan followed him down the slope

  and perched on a rock above the pool while he stripped off his shirt and

  knelt, at the verge to splash himself with the cold mountain water. The

  river was muddy yellow and swollen from the rainstorms.

  "I don't think Boris believes your story about the striped dik-dik," she

  warned him. "Tessay tells me that he is suspicious of what we are up

  to." She watched with interest as he sluiced his chest and upper arms.

  '"ere the sun had not touched it, his skin was very white and

  unblemished.

  His chest hair was thick and dark. She decided that his body was good to

  look at.

  "He is the type that would go through our luggage if he gets a chance,'

  Nicholas agreed. "You didn't bring anything with you that has any clues

  for him? No papers or notes?"

  "Only the satellite photograph, and my notebooks are all in my own

  shorthand. He won't be able to make anything of them."

  "Be very careful of what you discuss with Tessay."

  "She is a dear. There is nothing underhand about her." Heatedly Royan

  came to the defence of her new friend.

  "She may be all right, but she's married to my chum Boris. Her first

  allegiance lies there. No matter what your feelings towards her, don't

  trust either of them." He dried himself on his shirt, slipped it on and

  then buttoned it over his chest. "Let's go and get something to eat."

  Back at the parked truck Boris was pulling the cork from a bottle of

  South African white wine. He poured a tumbler full for Nicholas. Chilled

  in the river, it was crisp and fruity. Tessay offered them cold roast

  chicken and injera bread, the flat, thin sheets of stone-ground

  unleavened bread of the country. The trials and labours of the morning's

  travels faded into insignificance as Royan lay beside Nicholas in the

  grass and they watched a bearded vulture sailing high against the blue.

  It saw them and drifted overhead curiously, twisting its head to look

  down at them. Its eyes were masked in black like those of a highwayman,

  and the distinctive wedge-shaped tail feathers flirted with the wind the

  way the fingers of a concert pianist would stroke the ivories of the

  keyboard.

  When it was time to go on, Nicholas gave her his hand to lift her to her

  feet. It was one of their rare moments of physical contact, and she held

  on to his fingers for just a second or two longer than was strictly

  necessary.

  There was no improvement in the surface of the trac as they drew nearer

  to the rim of the gorge, and the hours passed in this bone-jarring,

  teeth-rattling progress. The track snaked over a rise and then

  dog-legged down the far slope. Halfway down Boris swore in Russian as

  they came round the hairpin bend of a high earthen bank to find a huge

  diesel truck slewed across the track, almost blocking it.

  Even though they had been following the tracks of this convoy of

  vehicles since the previous day, this was the first of them that they

  had encountered, and it took Boris by surprise. He hit his brakes so

  suddenly that his passengers were almost catapulted from their seats,

  but on the steep incline in the mud the brakes did not bring them to a

  complete halt. Boris was forced to change down into his lowest gear and

  steer for the narrow gap between the bank and the truck.

  From the back seat Royan looked out of the window I beside her, up the

  high side of the diesel truck. There was a company name and logo

  emblazoned in scarlet on the green background.

  A strong feeling of du vu overcame her as she stared at the image. She

  had seen this sign recently, but her memory cheated her: she could not

  recall the time or the place. She only knew that it was of vital

  importance that she should remember.

  The side of the Toyota scraped against the metal of the truck, and then
>
  they were past it. Boris leaned out of his window and shook his fist at

  the driver of the larger vehicle.

  He was a local man, probably recruited in Addis by the owner of the

  truck. Grinning at Boris's antics, he leaned out of his own cab to

  return the clenched fist salute, adding a nice little touch by jerking a

  raised forefinger upwards.

  "Dungeater!" Boris roared with outrage at being bested in the exchange,

  but he did not stop. "No use even talking to them. What do they know?

  Black chimps!'

  For the rest of the wearisome journey Royan remained silent and

  withdrawn, shaken and troubled by the conviction that she had seen the

  trademark of the winged red horse before, with, set above it in a

  pennant, the name of the company: "PEGASUS EXPLORATION'.

  As they approached the end of the day's journey at last they passed a

  signpost beside the track. The supporting legs of the sign were solidly

  set in concrete, and the artwork was of such high quality that it could

  only have been that of a professional signwriter.

  Across the top of the board an arrow indicated a newly bulldozed road

  that headed off to the right, and the directions read:

  PEGASUS EXPLORATION

  BASE CAMP - ONE KILOMETRE

  PRIVATE ROAD

  NO ENTRY TO UNAUTHORIZED TRAFFIC

  The scarlet horse reared in the centre of the board with its wings

  spread wide, on the point of flight.

  Now she gasped aloud as the elusive memory came upon her with stunning

  clarity. She remembered where she had last seen the flying red horse. In

  an instant she was transported back into the icy waters of an English

  salmon river, flung from the rolling body of the Land Rover, the huge

  MAN truck roaring over the bridge above her, and, for a subliminal pulse

  of time, the prancing red horse upon its side.

  she almost shouted aloud, but controlled herself. The terror of the

  moment returned to her with full force, and she found herself breathing

  hard and her heart racing as though she had run a long way.

  "It cannot be a coincidence," she assured herself silently, "and I am

  not mistaken. It is the same company.

  Pegasus Exploration."

  She was withdrawn and distracted for the last few miles of the journey,

  until the track they were following ended abruptly on the brink of the

  sheer cliffs of the escarpment, Here Boris pulled on to the grassy verge

  and stopped the engine.

  "This is as far as we ride. We camp here tonight. My big truck is not

  far behind. They will make camp as so on as they arrive. Tomorrow we

  will go down into the gorge on foot."

  As they dismounted, Royan tugged at Nicholas's arm, "I must speak to

  you," she whispered urgently, and she followed him as he led her along

  the bank of the river.

  He found a place for them to sit side by side, with their legs dangling

  over the drop. Beside them the swollen yellow river seemed to sense what

  lay ahead of it. The cold mountain waters speeded up, swirled amongst

  the rocks, and gathered themselves for that dizzying leap out into empty

  space. The cliff below them was a sheer wall of rock almost a thousand

  feet deep. It was so high that in the evening light the abyss far below

  was a dark, mysterious place, its bottom hidden from them by shadow and

  spray from the falls. As Royan looked down into it her sense of balance

  swirled with vertigo. She cringed back from the edge and found herself

  instinctively leaning against Nicholas's shoulder to steady herself.

  Only when they touched did she realize what she was doing, and she

  pulled away from him self-consciously.

  The muddied waters of the Dandera. river leaped from the brink, and were

  miraculously transformed into curtains of ethereal lacework as they

  fell. Like the skirts of waltzing bride they shimmered and swirled, and

  rainbows of light played through them as though from an embroidery of

  seed pearls. Still falling, the columns of white spray twisted and

  changed into lovely but ephemeral shapes, until they struck the lower

  ledges of glistening black rock and exploded outwards into fresh clouds

  of white that at last screened the dark depths of the abyss with " an

  opalescent veil.

  It was with a conscious effort that Royan pulled her mind away from the

  awe-inspiring scene and back to the troubled present.

  "Nicky, do you remember I told you about the truck that forced my mother

  and me over the bridge in the Land Rover?"

  "Of course." His expression was mystified as he studied her face. "You

  are upset. "What is it, Royan?"

  "The truck had signwriting down the sides of the trailers that it was

  towing."

  "You told me, yes. Green and red. You told me that you didn't get a good

  enough look to read the sign."

  "It was the same as the truck we passed this afternoon.

  I saw the sign at the same angle as before and it came back to me. The

  red Pegasus, the flying horse."

  He studied her face for a while, "Are you absolutely certain?"

  "Absolutely!" She nodded vehemently.

  Nicholas stared out over the magnificent panorama of the gorge spread

  below them. It was forty miles to the far wall of the canyon, but in the

  brilliant rain-washed air it seemed so close that he could reach across

  and touch it.

  "A coincidence?"he wondered at last.

  "Do you think so? A very strange and wonderful coincidence, then.

  Pegasus in both Yorkshire and Gojam?

  Do you accept that?"

  "It doesn't make sense. The truck that hit you was stolen-'

  "Was it?" she demanded. "Are we sure of that?"

  "If it wasn't, then let's hear your ideas."

  "If you were planning an assassination, would you rely on stealing a

  truck conveniently left at a Little Chef for you?"

  He shook his head, "Go on."

  "Suppose you arranged for your own truck to be placed there for you, and

  for your driver to report it stolen only after you had a good head start

  on the police."

  "It's possible," he agreed without enthusiasm.

  "Whoever murdered Duraid, and made two further attempts to kill me,

  obviously has considerable resources at his disposal. He is able to make

  arrangements in Egypt and England. On top of that, he has the seventh

  scroll in his possession. He has our notes and all our workings and

  translations which point him clearly to this spot on the Abbay river.

  Just suppose that he has control of a company like Pegasus - is there

  any reason why he can't be here in Ethiopia, just as we are, right at

  this moment?"

  Nicholas was silent for a while. He picked up a stone from the ledge

  beside him and tossed it out over the cliff.

  They both watched it drop away, dwindling in size until it vanished in

  the veils of spray far below where they sat.

  Abruptly Nicholas stood up and reached for her hand to pull her to her

  feet beside him. "Come on," he said.

  "Where are we going?"

  "Pegasus base camp. Let's go and have a chat to the site foreman."

  Boris protested angrily and hurried to intervene when Nicholas climbed

  in
to the Toyota and started the engine, "Where the hell do you think you

  are going?, "Sight-seeing." Nicholas let in the clutch. "Back in an

  hour."

  "Hey, English, my truck!" He ran to catch up with them, but Nicholas

  accelerated away.

  "Charge me for the hire." fie grinned back at Boris in the rear-view

  mirror. -off and followed the They reached the signposted turn side

  track over the ridge. The Pegasus camp lay on the far side. Nicholas

  braked to a halt on the crest of the rise and they studied it in

  silence.

  An area of about ten acres had been cleared and levelled. It was

  surrounded by a barbed-wire security fence, with a single closed gate.

  Three of the massive diesel trucks in their green and red livery were

  parked in a rank inside the fence. There were also several smaller

  vehicles and a tall mobile drilling rig in the line. The rest of the

  yard was filled with prospecting equipment and stores. There were stacks

  of drilling rods and steel core boxes, wooden crates of spares, and

  several hundred forty-four-gallon drums of diesel and oil and drilling

  mud. The drums and the stores were stacked with a neatness and sense of

  good order that was startling in this wild and rocky landscape. just

  inside the gate stood a small village of a dozen buildings made of

  corrugated sheet sections, of the Quonset type. They too were set out in

  a street of military precision.

  "A big, well-organized outfit," Nicholas commented.

  "Let's go down and see who is in charge."

  There were two armed guards on the gate, dressed in the camouflage

  uniform of the Ethiopian army. They were clearly surprised by the

  arrival at the gate of the strange Land Cruiser, and when Nicholas

  sounded his horn one of them came forward suspiciously with his AK,47

  rifle at the ready.

  "I want to speak to the manager here," Nicholas told him in Arabic, with

  enough haughty authority to make the entry uncertain and uneasy.

  The soldier grunted, went back and consulted his colleague, then lifted

  the handset of the two-way radio and spoke earnestly into the

  mouthpiece. There was a five minute delay after he finished speaking,

  and then the door of the nearest Quonset building opened and a white man

  came out.

  He was dressed in khaki coveralls and a soft bush cap.

  His eyes, covered by mirrored sunglasses, were set in a deeply tanned,