by Wilbur Smith
Sapper is leaving this afternoon to take charge and get it all loaded.
You and I have some last-minute arrangements to see to, and then we will
follow him at the end of the week. You must remember I was not expecting
you back from Cairo so soon,'Nicholas said. "If I had known, I could
have arranged for us all to fly down to Valletta together."
"Valletta?" Royan looked mystified. "As in Malta? I thought we were
going to Ethiopia."
"Malta is where Jannie Badenhorst has his base."
"Jannie who?"
"Badenhorst. Africair."
"Now you have really lost me."
"Africair is an air transport company that owns one old ex-RAF Hercules,
flown by Jannie and his son Fred. They use Malta as their base. It's a
stable and pragmatic little no country African politics, no corruption -
and yet it is the door to most of the destinations in the Middle East
and in the northern half of Africa where Jannie and Fred do most of
their work. His main employment is smuggling booze into the Islamic
countries, where of course it is prohibited. He's the Al Capone of the
Mediterranean.
Bootlegging is big business in that part of the world, but he does take
on other work. Duraid and I flew into Libya from there with Jannie on
our little jaunt to the Tibesti Massif.
Jannie will be taking us down to the Abbay."
"Nicky, I don't want to be a killjoy, but you and I are now undesirable
immigrants to Ethiopia. Had you over looked that little fact? How do you
propose to get back in there?"
"Through the back door," Nicholas grinned, "and my old pal Mek Nimmur is
the gatekeeper."
"You have been in contact with Mek?"
"With Tessay. It seems that she is now his go'between.
I imagine it's very convenient for Mek to have her on board. She has all
the right connections, and she can slip in and out of Khartoum or Addis
or places where it might be awkward or even dangerous for him to be
seen."
"Well, well!" Royan looked impressed. "You have been busy."
"Not all of us can afford a holiday in Cairo whenever the fancy takes
us," he told her tartly.
"One more little question." She ignored the jibe, although she realized
that despite his easy smile her absence must have irked him. "Does Mek
know about Taita's game?"
"Not in detail." Nicholas shook his head. "But he has some suspicions,
and anyway I know I can rely on him." He hesitated, and then went on.
"Tessay was very cagey when I spoke to her on the phone, but it seems
that there has been some sort of attack on St. Frumentius monastery. Jah
Hora. and thirty or forty of his monks were massacred, and most of the
sacred relics from the church were stolen."
"Oh, dear God, no!" Royan looked stricken. "Who would do a thing like
that?"
"The same people who murdered Duraid, and made three attempts to wipe
you out."
"Pegasus."
"Von Schiller," he agreed.
"Then we are directly responsible," Royan whispered.
"We led them to the monastery. The Polaroids they captured from us when
they raided our camp would have shown them the stele and the tomb of
Tanus. Von Schiller wouldn't have to be a clairvoyant to guess where we
had taken them. Now there is more blood on our hands."
"Hell, Royan, how can you take responsibility for von Schiller's
madness? I am not going to let you punish yourself for that." Nicholas's
tone was sharp and angry.
"We started this whole thing."
"I don't agree with that, but I admit that von, Schiller is the one who
must have cleaned out the maqdas of St. Frumentius and that the stele
and the coffin are now almost certainly part of his collection."
"Oh, Nicky, I feel so guilty. I never realized what a danger we were to
those simple devout Christians."
"Do you want to call off the whole thing?" he asked cruelly.
She thought about it seriously for a while, then shook her head.
"No. Perhaps when we go back we will be able to compensate the monks for
their losses with what we find in the bottom of Taita's pool."
"I hope so," he agreed fervently. "I do hope so."
The giant Hercules -Mkl four-engined turbo, prop aircraft was painted a
dusty nondescript brown, and the identification lettering on the
fuselage was faded and indistinct. There was no Afticair legend
displayed anywhere on the machine, and it had a tired and scruffy
appearance that spoke eloquently of the fact that it was almost forty
years old and had flown well over half a million hours even before it
had fallen into Jannie Badenhorst's hands.
"Does that thing still fly?" Royan asked, as she looked at it standing
forlornly in a back corner of the Valletta airfield. Its drooping belly
gave it the air of a sad old streetwalker who had been put out of
business by an unexpected and unlooked-for pregnancy.
Jannie keeps it looking that way deliberately," Nicholas assured her.
"The places that he flies to, it's best not to draw envious eyes."
"He certainly succeeds."
"But both Jannie and Fred are first-rate aero-engineers, Between them
they keep Big Dolly perfect under her engine cowlings.
"Big Dolly?"
"Dolly Parton. Jannie is an avid fan." The taxi dropped them and their
meagre luggage outside the side door of the hangar, and Nicholas paid
the driver while Royan thrust her hands -into the pockets of her anorak
and shivered in the cold wind off the Mediterranean.
"There's Jannie now." Nicholas pointed to the bulky figure in greasy
brown overalls coming down the loading ramp of the Hercules. He saw them
and jumped down off the ramp.
"Hello, man! I was beginning to give up on you," he said as he came
shambling across the tarmac. He looked like a rugby player, as he had
been in his youth, and the slight limp was from an old playing-field
injury.
"We were late leaving Heathrow. Strike by French air traffic control.
The joys of international travel," Nicholas told him, and then
introduced Royan.
"Come and meet my new secretary," Jannie invited.
She may even give you a cup of coffee."
He led them through a wicket in the main hangar door and into the
cavernous interior. There was a small office cubicle beside the entrance
with a sign over the door saying Africair' and the company logo of a
winged battleaxe.
Mara, Jannie's new secretary, was a Maltese lady only a few years
younger than himself. What she lacked in youth and beauty she fully made
up for across the chest.
"Jannie likes them mature and with plenty of top hamper," Nicholas
murmured to Royan from the side of his mouth.
Mara gave them coffee, while Jannie went over his flight plan with
Nicholas.
"It's a little complicated," he apologized. "As you can imagine, we will
have to do a bit of ducking and diving.
Muammar Gadaffi is not wallowing in affection for me at the moment, so
I' rather not overfly any of his territory.
We will be going in through Egypt, but without landing there." He
&n
bsp; pointed out their flight path on the maps spread over his desk.
"Bit of a problem over the Sudan. They are having a little civil war
there." He winked at Nicholas. I However, the northern government are
not equipped with the most up-to'date radar in the world. Lot of old
Russian reject stuff. It's an enormous bit of country, and Fred and I
have worked out their blank spots. We will be keeping well clear of
their main military installations."
"What's our flying time?" Nicholas wanted to know.
Jannio pulled a face. "Big Dolly is no sprinter, and as I have just told
you we will not be taking any short-cuts."
"How long?"Nicholas insisted.
"Fred and I have rigged up bunks and a kitchen, so that during the
flight you will have all the comforts of home." He lifted his cap and
scratched his head before he admitted, "Fifteen hours."
"Has Big Dolly got that sort of endurance?" Nicholas wanted to know.
"Extra tanks. Seventy-one thousand kilos of fuel. Even with the load you
have given us, we can get there and back without refuelling." He was
interrupted by the huge hangar doors rolling open, and a heavy truck
being driven through. "That will be Fred and Sapper now." Jannie swigged
the last of his coffee and hugged Mara. She giggled, and her bosom
quivered like a snowfield on the point of an avalanche.
The truck parked at the far end of the hangar, where. an array of
equipment and stores was already neatly stacked, ready for loading. When
Fred climbed down from the cab, Jannie introduced him to Royan. He was a
younger version of the father, already beginning to spread around the
waist, and with an open bucolic face, more like a Karroo sheep farmer
than a commercial pilot.
"That's the last truckload." Sapper came around the front of the truck
and shook Nicholas's hand. "All set to begin loading."
"I want to take off before four 'clock tomorrow morning. That will get
us into our rendezvous at the optimum time tomorrow evening,'Jannie cut
in. "We have a bit of work to do, if we are going to get some sleep
before we leave." He gestured to the pallets waiting to be loaded.
I wanted to get some of the local lads to give a hand with the loading,
but Sapper wouldn't hear of it."
"Quite right," Nicholas agreed, "The fewer who are in on this, the
merrier. Let's get cracking."
The cargo had been prepacked on the steel pallets, secured with heavy
nylon strapping and covered with cargo netting. There were thirty-six
loaded pallets, and the canvas packs containing the parachutes formed an
integral part of each load. This huge Cargo would require two separate
flights to ferry it all across to Africa.
Royan called out the contents of each pallet from the typed manifest,
while Nicholas checkd it against the actual load. Nicholas and Sapper
had worked out the loads carefully to ensure that the items that would
be required first were on the initial flight. Only when he was Certain
that each pallet was complete in every detail id he signal to Fred, who
was operating the forklift. Fred ran the arms into the slots of the
pallet and lifted it, then he drove it out of the hangar and up the ramp
of the Hercules.
In the hold of the enormous aircraft, jannie and Sapper helped Fred to
position each pallet precisely on the rollers and then strap it down
securely. The last part of the cargo to go aboard was the small
front-end-loading tractor.
Sapper had found this in a secondhand yard in York, and after testing it
exhaustively declared it to be a "steal'. Now he drove this up the ramp
under its own power, and lovingly strapped it down to the rollers.
The -tractor made up almost a third of the total weight of the entire
shipment, but it was the one item that Sapper considered essential if
they were to complete the earthworks for the dam in the time that
Nicholas had stipulated.
He had calculated that it would require a cluster of five cargo
parachutes to get the heavy tractor back to earth without damage. Fuel
for it would of course present a problem, and the bulk of the second
cargo would be made up of dieseline in special nylon tanks that could
withstand the impact of an airdrop.
it was after midnight before the aircraft was loaded with the first
shipment. The remaining pallets were still stacked against the hangar
wall awaiting Big Dolly's return for the second flight. Now they could
turn their full attention to the farewell banquet of island specialities
that Mara had laid out for the ' in the tiny Africair office.
"Yes," Jannie assured them, I she's also a good cook," and gave Mara a
loving squeeze as she rested her bosom on his shoulder, leaning over him
to refill his plate with calamari.
"Happy landings!" Nicholas gave them the toast in red Chianti.
"Eight hours between the throttle and the bottle," jannie apologized, as
he drank the toast in Coca-Cola.
They lay down their clothes to get a few hours' sleep on the bunks
bolted to the bulkhead behind the flight deck, but it seemed to Royan
that she was woken only a few minutes later by the quiet voices of the
two pilots completing their pre-take-off checks, and the whine of the
starters on the huge turbo-prop engines. As Jannie spoke on the radio to
the control tower, and Fred taxied out to the holding point, the three
passengers climbed out of their bunks and strapped themselves into the
folding seats down the side of the main cabin. Big Dolly climbed into
the night sky and the lights of the island dwindled and were swiftly
lost behind them. Then there was only the dark sea below and the bright
pricking of the stars above. Royan turned her head to smile at Nicholas
in the dim overhead lights of the cabin.
"Well, Taita, we are back on court for the final set." Her voice was
tight with excitement.
"The one good thing about being forced to sneak about like this is that
Pegasus may take a while to find out that we are back in the Abbay
gorge." Nicholas looked complacent.
"Let's hope that you are right." Royan held up her right hand and
crossed her fingers. "We will have enough to worry about with what Taita
has in store for us, without Pegasus muscling in on us again just yet."
They are on their way back to Ethiopia," said von Schiller with utter
certainty.
"How can we be certain of that, Herr von Schiller?" Nahoot asked.
Von Schiller glared at him. The Egyptian irritated him intensely, and he
was beginning to regret having employed him. Nahoot had made very little
headway in deciphering the meaning of the engravings on the stele that
they had taken from the monastery.
The actual translation had offered no insurmountable problems. Von
Schiller was convinced that he could have done this work himself,
without Nahoot's assistance, given time and the use of his extensive
library of reference works.
It comprised, for the most part, nonsensical rhymes and extraneous
couplets out of place and context. One face of the stele was almost
completely covered by columns of lett
ers and figures that bore no
relation whatsoever to the text on the other three faces of the column.
But although Nahoot would not admit it, it was clear that the underlying
meaning behind most of this had eluded him. Von Schiller's patience was
almost exhausted.
He was tired of listening to Nahoot's excuses, and to promises that were
never fulfilled. Everything about him, from his oily ingratiating tone
of voice to his sad eyes in their deep lined sockets, had begun to annoy
him. But especially he had come to detest his exasperating habit of
questioning the statements that he, Gotthold von Schiller, made.
"General Obeid was able to inform me of their exact flight arrangements
when they left Addis Ababa. It was very simple to have my security men
at the airport when they arrived in England. Neither Harper nor the
woman are the kind of people that are easily overlooked, even in a
crowd. My men followed the woman to Cairo-'
"Excuse me, Herr von Schiller, but why did you not have her taken care
of if you were aware of her movements?"
"Dummkopf!" von Schiller snapped at him. "Because it now seems that she
is much more likely to lead me to the tomb than you are."
"But, sir, I have done-' Nahoot protested.
you have done nothing but make up excuses for your ilure. Thanks to you,
the stele is still an enigma,'
own fa von Schiller interrupted him contemptuously.
"It is very difficult-'
"Of course it is difficult. That's why I am paying you a great deal of
money. If it were easy I would have done it myself. If it is indeed the
instruction to find the tomb of Mamose, then the scribe Taita meant it
to be difficult."
"If I am allowed a little more time, I think I am very near to
establishing the key-'
"You have no more time. Did you not hear what I have just told you?
Harper is on his way back to the Abbay gorge. They flew from Malta last
night in a chartered aircraft that was heavily loaded with cargo. My men
were not able to establish the nature of that cargo, except that it
included some earth-moving equipment, a front-endloading tractor. To me,
this can mean only one thing.
They have located the tomb, and they are returning to begin excavating
it."
"You will be able to get rid of them as soon as they reach the
monastery." Nahoot relished the thought.
"Colonel Nogo will-'
"Why do I have to keep repeating myself?" Von Schiller's voice turned