by Wilbur Smith
"The way you treat her, that comes as no stunning surprise. Now go away
and leave me to sleep."
"The whore has run off with that black bastard, Mek Nimmur. I know all
about them. Don't try and protect her, English. I know everything that
goes on around here. You are trying to cover for her - admit it!'
"Get out of here, Boris. Don't try an involve me in your sordid private
life." saw you and that shufta bastard talking in the skinning hut the
other night. Don't try to deny it, English.
You are in this thing with them."
Nicholas flung back the mosquito net and jumped out of his bed. "Kindly
moderate your language when you talk to me, you great oaf'
Boris backed off towards the door. "I know that she has run away with
him. I searched for them all last night at the river. They have gone,
and most of his men with them."
"Good for Tessay.- She is showing some taste in men for a change."
"You think I will let the whore get away with this? You are wrong, very
wrong. I am going to follow them and kill them both. I know which way
they are headed. You think I am a fool. I know all about Mek Nimmur. I
was head of intelligence-' He broke off as he realized what he had said.
"I will shoot him in the belly and let that whore Tessay watch him die."
"If you are going after Mek Nimmur,.then my bet is that you won't be
coming back."
"You don't know me, English. You beat me up one night when I had a
bottle of vodka in my belly, so you think I am easy, da? Well, Mek
Nimmur will see now how easy I am."
Boris dung out of the hut. Nicholas pulled on a shirt over his shorts
and followed him.
Back in his own hut, Boris had flung a few essential items into a light
pack. Now he was stuffing cartridges into the magazine of his 30/06
hunting rifle.
"Let them go, Boris," Nicholas advised him in a more reasonable tone of
voice "Mek is a tough lad - they don't come tougher - and he has a war
party of fifty men with him. You are old enough to know that you can
never hold on to a woman by force. Let her go!
"I do not want to hold on to her. I want to kill her.
The safari is over, English." He flung a pair of keys on a. leather tag
on the floor at Nicholas's feet. "There are the keys of the Land
Cruiser. You can make your own way back to Addis from here. I will leave
four of my best men to look after you, and hold your hand. Leave the big
truck for me to use. When you get to Addis, leave the keys of the Land
Cruiser with my tracker, Aly. I will know where to find him later. I
will send you the money I owe you for cancellation. Don't worry - I am a
man of principles."
"How could I ever doubt it?" Nicholas smiled. "Good bye, old chum. I
wish you luck. You'll need plenty of that if you are going up against
Mek Nimmur."
Boris was several hours behind his quarry, and as soon as he had left
the camp he broke into a jog trot that carried him down the pathway to
join the main track to the west, towards the Sudanese border. He ran
like a scout, with an easy swinging gait that ate up the ground.
"Looks as though he is still in good shape, even with the vodka."
Despite himself Nicholas was impressed as he watched him go. "But I
wonder how long he will be able to keep up that pace?"
He turned back to'his own quarters to get a little more sleep, but as he
passed her hut Royan popped her head out.
"What was all the shouting about? I thought that you and Boris were
having another little difference of opinion."
"Tessay has done a bunk. Boris has guessed that she has gone off with
Mek, and he is chasing after them."
"Oh, icky! Can't we warn them?
"No chance of that, but unless Mek has gone soft he will be expecting
Boris to come after him. In fact, now that I come to think of it, he is
probably hoping for just that chance to even the score. No, Mek doesn't
need any more help from us. Go back to sleep!
"I can't possibly sleep now. I am so worked up. I have been looking at
the Polaroids that we took last night. Taita has given us an overflowing
cup. Come and have a look at this."
"Just one hour's sleep moreP He made a mock plea.
"Immediately, if not sooner."She laughed at him.
In her hut she had the Polaroids and the rubbings spread out on the camp
table, and she beckoned him to take the seat beside her.
"While you were snoring your head off, I made some progress." She laid
four Polaroids side by side, and placed her large magnifying glass over
them. It was a professional land surveyor's model on folding legs, and
under it every detail of the photographs was revealed. "Taita has headed
each of the sides of the stele with the name of one of the seasons of
the year - spring, summer, autumn and winter.
What do you think he was getting at?"
"Page numbers?"
"Exactly my own thought," she agreed. "The Egyptians considered spring
as the beginning of all new life. He is telling us in which order to
read the panels. This one is spring." She selected one of the
photographs.
"It starts with four standard quotations from the Book of the Dead." She
quoted the first few lines of the opening section: "'I am the first
breeze blowing softly over the dark ocean of eternity. I am the first
sunrise. The first glimmer of light. A white feather blowing in the dawn
wind. I am Ra. I am the beginning of all things. I will live for ever. I
shall never perish."' Still holding the glass poised, she looked up at
him. "As far as I can see, they do not differ "Substantially from the
original. My instinct is to set these aside for the time being. We can
always come back to them later."
"Let's go with your instinct," he suggested. "Read the next section."
She held the glass to the Polaroid. "I am not going to look at you while
I read this. Taita. can be as earthy as Rabelais when he is in the mood.
Anyway, here goes. "The daughter of the goddess pines for her dam. She
roars like a lioness as she hurries to meet her. She leaps from the
mountain, and her fangs are white. She is the harlot of all the world.
Her vagina pisseth out great torrents. Her vagina has swallowed an army
of men. Her sex eateth up the masons and the workers of stone. Her
vagina is an octopus that has swallowed up a king."'
"Whoa there!" Nicholas chuckled. "Pretty fruity stuff, don't you think?"
He leaned forward to study her face, for it was still turned away from
him. "Och, lassie, you have roses in your bonny cheeks. Not a blush,
surely not?"
"Your Scots accent is not in the least convincing," she told him coldly,
still not looking at him. "When you have finished being clever at my
expense, what do you think of what I have just read?"
"Apart from the obvious, I have't any idea."
"I want to show you something." She stood up and packed the photographs
and the rolls of art paper back into the haversack. "You'll need to get
your boots on. I am taking you on a little walk."
An hour later they stood in the centre of the suspension bridge, sway
ing
gently high above the swift waters of the Dandera river.
"Hapi is the goddess of the Nile. Is this river not then her daughter,
pining to meet her, leaping from the mountain top, roaring like a
lioness, her fangs white with spume?" she asked him.
They stared in silence at the archway of pink stone through which the
river poured, and suddenly Nicholas grinned lasciviously. "I think that
I know what you are going to say next. That's what I first thought of
when I looked at that cleft. You said it was like a gargoyle's mouth,
but I had another image."
"All I can say is that you must have some extraordinary lady friends,'
she said, and then covered her mouth. "Ooops!
I didn't mean to say that. I am being as disgusting as either you or
Taita."
"The workmen swallowed up in there!" His voice became more excite& "The
masons and the workers in stone!'
"Pharaoh Mamose was a god. The river has swallowed up a god with her -
with her stone archway." She was equally excited. "I must admit that I
would not have made the association if you hadn't explored the interior
of the cavern, and found those niches in the wall." She shook his arm.
"Nicky, we have to get in there again. We have to get a clearer look at
that has-relief you found on the cavern wall."
"It will take some preparation," he said dubiously. "I will have to
splice the ropes and make some sort of pulley system, and I will have to
drill Aly and the other men to avoid a repetition of my last little
fiasco. We won't be ready to make the attempt until tomorrow morning at
the very earliest."
"You get on with it. I will have plenty to keep me occupied with the
translation of the stele." Then she stopped and looked up at the sky.
"Listen!" she whispered.
He cocked his head and above the sound of the river, heard the whining
flutter of rotors in the air.
"Dammit!" he snapped. "I thought we had lost the Pegasus presence. Come
on!" He grabbed her arm and hustled her off the bridge. When they
reached the land he jumped down on to the beach, and she followed him.
The two of them crept under the hanging eaves of the bridge.
They sat quietly on the white sandy beach and listened to the Jet Ranger
helicopter approaching swiftly, and then circling back over the hills
beyond the pink cliffs. This time the pilot had not spotted them, for he
turned away and began to patrol up and down the line of the chasm.
Suddenly the engine-beat changed dramatically as the pitch altered and
the pilot pulled up the collective.
"Sounds as if he is going in for a landing up there in the hills,,
Nicholas said as he crawled out from under the bridge. "I would feel a
lot easier without them snooping around."
"I don't think we have too much to worry about," Royan disagreed. "Even
if they are connected with Duraid's killers, we are still way out ahead
of them. Obviously they have not tumbled to the importance of the
monastery, and the stele."
"I hope you are right. Let's get back to camp. We must not let them see
us in the vicinity of the chasm again. It will be too much of a
coincidence for them to find us hanging around here every time they come
this way."
while Royan went to her hut and pored over her photographs and etchings,
Nicholas worked with the trackers and skinners. He spliced the
unravelled end of the nylon rope to the second Thank, to make a single
length five hundred feet long. Then he cannibalized the canvas fly of
the cooking hut, cutting it up and whipping the raw edges to make a
sling seat. He fashioned the ends of the rope into a harness which he
spliced into the four corners of the canvas seat.
He had no block and tackle, so he put together a crude gantry of poles
which could be extended out over the cliff edge to keep the rope clear
of the rock. The rope would run through the groove that he drilled in
the end of the central beam with a red-hot iron. He lubricated it with
cooking lard.
It was the middle of the afternoon by the time he had completed his
preparations. Then, leaving Royan in camp, he led his men, burdened with
the coils of rope and the pole sections of the gantry, back up the
pathway to the spot where he had abseiled down into the ravine to
retrieve the carcass of the dik-dik. From there they worked their way
downstream, following the rim of the cliff. It was heavy going for Thorn
scrub grew right up to the edge, and in many places they were forced to
use their-machetes to hack their way through.
The sound of the waterfall guided him. As they moved down river it grew
louder, until the rock seemed to quiver under his feet with the roar of
falling waters. Finally, by leaning out over the edge and peering
downwards, Nicholas could make out the flash of spray in the depths
below.
This is the spot." He grunted with satisfaction, and explained to Aly in
Arabic what he wanted done.
In order to determine the exact position in which to set up the gantry,
Nicholas climbed into the canvas sling seat and had them lower him
twenty feet down the cliff face, just as far as the beginning of the
overhang. Up to that point he was able to keep the nylon rope from
abrading on the rock, but he was also able to see around the bulge of
the face.
Hanging backwards over the falls and the rocky bowl of the river one
hundred and fifty feet below him, he was able at last to see the double
row of niches in the rock face.
However, the has-relief engraving was still hidden from view by the
tumblehome of the cliff. He gave Aly the signal and they hauled him up.
"We must set up the gantry a little further down," he told him, and
directed them as they hacked away the dense shrubbery that choked the
rim. Then suddenly he exclaimed, "I'll be damned!" He went down on one
knee to examine the rim rock that the thorns had concealed.
"There are more excavations here."
Exposed to the elements, unlike those works further down that had been
protected by the overhang, these were badly eroded. There were just
vague traces remaining in the rim rock, but he was certain that these
indentations were the upper anchor points for the ancient scaffoldin
9They set up their own gantry on the same levelled area, and extended
the long pole out over the drop. Then they rigged and secured it with a
crude cantilever system of ropes and lighter poles.
When they were finished, Nicholas crawled out to the end to test the
structure and to run the end of the rope through the slot he had
prepared for it. The whole structure seemed solid and firm.
Nevertheless, it was with relief that he crawled back to solid ground.
He stood up and looked over the tops of the thorn scrub to where the
lowering sun was fuming red and angry on the horizon.
"Enough for one day," he decided. "The rest can wait for-tomorrow."
The next morning Nicholas and Royan were both up and drinking coffee at
the campfire while it was still dark. Aly and his men were squatting at
their own fire near
by, talking quietly and coughing over the first
cigarettes of the day. The project seemed to have caught their
imagination. They had no inkling of the reason for this second descent
into the chasm, but the enthusiasm of the two ferengi was infectious.
As soon as it was light enough to see the path, Nicholas led them back
up into the hills. The men chatted cheerfully amongst themselves in
Amharic as they hurried through the thorn scrub, and they came out on
the rim rock just as the sun broke out over the eastern escarpment of
the valley. Nicholas had drilled the men the previous day, and he and
Royan had sat half the night going over the plans, so each of them knew
their part and they lost little time in setting themselves up for the
descent.
Nicholas had stripped to shorts and tennis shoes, but this time he had
brought along an old Barbarians rugby jersey for warmth. While he pulled
this over his head he pointed out to Royan the platform that had been
dug out from the solid rock.
She examined it carefully. "It's very hard to be sure, but I think you
are right. This probably is man-made."
"When you get further down you will have no doubts.
There is very little weathering of the face under the overhang, and the
niches are almost perfectly preserved until they reach the high-water
mark, that is," he told her, as he took his seat in the sling and swung
out over the cliff.
Dangling from the end of the gantry he gave Aly the sign, and the men
lowered him down into the gorge. The rope ran smoothly through the
lubricated slot.
He saw at once that he had judged it correctly, and that he was
descending in line with the double row of -niches. He came level with
the enigmatic circle on the cliff face, but it was fifty feet from him,
and a growth of gaudy Coloured lichens had streaked and discotoured the
rock, partially obscuring the details, so that he still could not be
certain that. it was not a natural flaw. He passed it and went on down
as Aly and his team paid out the rope from above.
When he reached the surface of the water he slipped out of the sling and
dropped in. The water was very cold.
He trod water, gasping, until his body became acclimatized.
Then he gave Aly three tugs on the signal rope. While the canvas seat
was hauled up he swam to the side of the pool and held on to one of the