by Wilbur Smith
around the clock with buckets," Sapper grunted. "If only the major had
thought to bring along a high-speed water pump-'
"Even I can't think of everything, Sapper. What we are going to do is to
build a small coffer dam around the riderwater opening, and bale that
out with buckets."
Royan stood back and watched the preparations. Half a dozen of the empty
mesh gabions were carried down the scaffolding and placed at the edge of
the pool. Here they were partially filled with boulders that the men
gathered up from the river bed. However the gabions were not filled so
full that they became too heavy to handle. There was no front-ender down
here to move them around, and they would be forced to rely on
old-fashioned manpower. There was just sufficient of the yellow PVC
sheeting left over to wrap around each gabion and render it waterproof.
"What about your eels?" Royan was fascinated by these loathsome
creatures, and she hung well back from the edge of the pool. "You can't
send any of your men in there!
"Watch and learn." Nicholas grinned at her. "I have a little treat in
store for your favourite fish."
Once all the preparations for the construction of the coffer were
complete, Nicholas cleared the cavern, sending Royan and Sapper and all
of the men up the scaffolding.
He alone remained at the edge of the pool, with the bag of fragmentation
grenades that he had begged from Mek Nimmur slung over his shoulder.
With a grenade in each hand, he hesitated. "Seven second delay," he
reminded himself "Quenton-Harper dry flies. More effective than the
Royal Coachman!'
He pulled the pins from each of the grenades and then lobbed them out
into the middle of the pool. Quickly he turned away and hurried to the
furthest corner of the cavern. He knelt with his face to the rock wall
and covered his ears with both hands.
Squeezing his eyes shut, he braced himself. The rock floor jumped under
him and the double shock waves from the explosions swept over him in
quick succession, with a savage power that drove in his chest and
stopped his breath. In the confines of the chasm the detonations were
thunderous, but his ears were protected and the deep water of the pool
absorbed much of the blast. A twin fountain of water shot high into the
air and splashed against the cliff above his head. It poured down in a
sheet over him, soaking his clothing.
As the echoes died away, he stood up, His hearing had not been adversely
affected, and he had suffered no injury other than the shower of cold
water. Back at the edge of the pool the water shimmered with movement.
Scores of the great eels flopped and writhed on the surface, flashing
their white bellies as they twisted. Many of them were dead, their
bellies burst open, floating inert, while others were merely stunned by
the blast. Knowing how tenaciously they clung to life he suspected that
they would soon recover, but for the time being they were no longer a
danger.
He bellowed up toward the top of the cliff. "All clear, Sapper. Send
them down."
The men came swarming down the scaffolding, amazed by the carnage that
the grenades had wreaked in the pool.
They lined the bank and began to fish out the bodies of the dead eels.
"You eat them?" Nicholas demanded of one of the monks.
"Very good!" The monk rubbed his belly in anticipation.
"Enough of that, you greedy perishers." SappeT drove them back to work.
"Let's get those gabions in place before they wake up and start eating
you."
With a bamboo pole Nicholas sounded the depth of the water that covered
the entrance to the shaft, and found that it was well over the height of
a man's head. They were forced to roll the gabions down into it, and
complete the filling once they were in position. It was difficult and
taxing work, and took almost two days to complete, but at last they had
built a half-moon-shaped weir around the under, water entrance, walling
it off from the main body of water in the pool.
Using leather buckets and clay tej pots the Buffaloes began to bale out
the coffer and scoop the water over the wall into the main pool.
Nicholas and Royan watched with silent trepidation as the level in the
coffer fell and the opening in the cliff was gradually revealed.
Very soon they were able to see that it was almost rectangular, about
three metres wide by two metres high, The sides and the roof had been
eroded by the rush of water through the opening, but as the level fell
lower they could see the remains of shaped stone blocks that had
probably once sealed the opening. Four courses of them I still stood
where the ancient masons had placed them across the threshold of the
opening, but the others had been torn out by thousands of years of flood
seasons and thrown into the tunnel behind, partially blocking it.
Ea erly Nicholas climbed down into the coffer. It was not yet empty but
he could not control his impatience.
The water was knee-deep as he crawled forward into the opening, and with
his bare hands tried to shift some of the rock debris that choked it.
"It's definitely some sort of shaft," he shouted back, and Royan could
not restrain herself either. She came slithering and sloshing down into
the offer, and pushed into the opening beside him.
"There's an obstruction," she cried in disappointment.
"Did Taita do that deliberately?"
might have," Nicholas gave his opinion. "Hard to tell.
A lot of this rubble and flotsam has been sucked in from the main flow
of the river, but he might have filled the tunnel behind him as he
pulled out."
"It's going to take a tremendous amount of work just to clear it enough
to find out where this passage leads to." Royan's voice had lost its
ring of excitement.
"I am afraid it is," Nicholas agreed. "We are going to have to clear
every bit of this rubbish by hand, and there won It be time for the
niceties of formal archaeological excavation. We are just going to rip
it out." He clambered back out of the coffer, and reached back to hand
her up the bank. "Well, at least we have the-floodlights he added, "We
can keep the men working in shifts, night and day, until we get
through."
hey have dammed the Dandera river," said Nahoot Ouddabi, and Gotthold
von Schiller stared at him in astonishment.
"Dammed the river? Are you certain?"he demanded.
"Yes, Herr von Schiller. We have a report from our spy in Harper's camp.
He has over three hundred men working in the gorge. That is not all. He
has air-dropped huge amounts of equipment and supplies. It is like
a.military operation. Our spy tells us that he even has an earth, moving
machine, some sort of tractor, which he has brought in."
Von Schiller looked across the table at Jake Helm for confirmation, and
Helm nodded. "Yes, Herr von Schiller.
That is true. Harper must have spent a large amount of money. The air
charter alone could have cost him fifty grand."
Von Schiller felt the first stirrings of real passion since t
he "Urgent
satellite message had summoned him from Frankfurt. He had flown directly
to Addis Ababa, where the jet Ranger had been waiting to carry him to
the Pegasus base camp on the escarpment above the Abbay gorge.
If this was true, and he did not doubt Helm's word, then Harper was on
to something of enormous importance.
He looked out of the window of the Quonset hut to where flowed down the
valley below the base camp.
the Dandera It was a large river. To dam that volume of water would be
an expensive and difficult project in this remote and primitive
situation - not a project to be taken on lightly without the prospect of
substantial reward.
He felt a reluctant admiration for the Englishman's achievement. "Show
me where he has placed his dam!" he ordered, and Helm came around the
table to stand beside him. Von Schiller was standing on his block, and
their eyes were on the same level.
Helm bent over the satellite photograph and carefully marked in the site
of the dam. They both studied it for a minute, and then von Schiller
asked, "What do you make of it, Helm?"
Helm shook his head, hunching it down on his bulllike shoulders. "I can
only guess."
"Guess then," said von Schiller, but still Helm all, hesitated.
"Go on!'
"Either he wants to move the water to another area downstream, to use it
for washing out a deposit, gold nuggets or artefacts made of precious
metals, perhaps even site of the to use it for hosing the overburden off
the tomb,$
"Highly unlikely!" von Schiller interjected. "That would be an
inefficient and expensive manner of excavation."
"I agree that it is far-fetched." Nahoot obsequiously followed von
Schiller's lead, but no one even looked at him.
"What is your other supposition?" Von Schiller glared at Helm.
"The only other reason for damming the river, that I can think of, would
be to reach something that has been covered by the water. Something
lying in the bed of the river."
"That is more logical," von Schiller mused, and turned his attention
back to the photograph. "What is there below this dam site?"
"The river enters a deep and narrow ravine here." Helm pointed at the
spot. "Just below his dam. The ravine stretches about eight miles, down
to this point, just above the monastery. I have flown over it in the
helicopter, and it seems to be impassable, and yet-' he broke off, "Yes,
go on! And yet - what?"
"On one flight over the area, we found Harper and the woman on the high
ground above the ravine. They were at this spot here." He touched the
photograph, and von Schiller leaned forward to peer at it.
"What were they doing there?" he demanded, without looking up.
"Nothing. They were merely sitting on the top of the cliff above the
ravine."
"But they were aware of your presence?"
"Of course. We were in the helicopter. They heard our approach. They
were watching us, and Harper even waved."
And so they would have ceased whatever activity they were engaged in
when they became aware of your approach?"
Von Schiller was silent for so long that they began to fidget
uncomfortably and exchange glances. When he spoke it was so unexpected
that Nahoot started.
"Harper obviously has reason to believe that the tomb lies in the gorge
below the dam. When and how do you make contact with your spy that you
have in Harper's camp?"
"Harper is receiving some of his supplies from the villages here on the
escarpment. The women are driving down slaughter cattle to feed his men,
and carrying down pots of tej. Out man sends back his reports with the
women when they return."
"Very well. Very well!" Von Schiller waved him to silence. "I don't need
to know his life history. All I want to know is if Harper is working in
the ravine below his dam.
How soon can you find this out?"
"By the day after tomorrow at the latest," Helm promised him.
Von Schiller turned to Colonel Nogo at the far end Of the conference
table. So far he had not spoken, but had watched and listened quietly to
the others.
"How many men have you deployed in this area?" von Schiller asked.
"Three full companies, over three hundred men. All well trained. Many
are battle-hardened veterans."
"Where are they? Show me on the map."
The colonel came to stand beside him. "One company here, another
billeted at the village of Debra Maryam, and the third company at the
foot of the escarpment, ready to move forward and attack Harper's camp."
"I think you should attack them now. Wipe them out, before they can
uncover the tomb-' Nahoot came in again.
"Shut your mouth," von Schiller snapped' without looking up at Nahoot.
"I will ask for your opinion when I need it."
He considered the map for a while longer, then asked Nogo, "How many men
has this guerrilla commander, what is his name, the one who has allied
himself to Harper?"
"Mek Nimmur is no a guerrilla. He is a bandit, and notorious shufta
terrorist," Nogo corrected him hotly.
"One man's freedom fighter is the next man's terrorist," von Schiller
remarked drily. "How many men has he under his command?"
"Not many. Fewer than a hundred, perhaps no more than fifty. He has them
all guarding Harper's camp, and the dam."
Von Schiller nodded to himself, plucking at the lobe of his ear. "How
did Harper and his gang return to Ethiopia?" he mused. "I know he flew
from Malta, but it is not possible that the aircraft could have landed
down there in the gorge."
He hopped down off his block and strutted to the window of the hut
through which he had a panoramic view spread below him. He stared down
into the depths of the gorge, a vista of cliffs and broken hilltops and
wild tablelands, smoked blue with distance.
"How did they get in without being discovered by the authorities? Did he
parachute in, the same way as he dropped his supplies?"
"No, said Nogo. "My informer tells us that he marched in with Mek
Nimmut, some days before the supplies were dropped to him."
"So from where did he march?" von Schiller pondered.
"Where is the nearest airfield where a heavy aircraft could land?"
"If he came in with Mek Nimmur, then they almost certainly came in from
the Sudan. That is where Nimmur operates from. There are many old
abandoned airfields near the border. The war," Nogo shrugged
expressively, "the armies are always on the move, that war has been
going on for twenty years."
"From the Sudan?" Von Schiller picked out the border on the map. "So
they must have trekked in along the river."
"Almost certainly,'Nogo agreed.
"Then just as certainly Harper plans to escape the same way. I want you
to move the company of men that you have at Debra Maryam and deploy them
here and here. On both banks of the river, below the monastery. They
must be in a position to prevent Harper reaching the Sudanese border,
if he should try to make a run for it."
"Yes. Good! I understa
nd. That is good tactics," Nogo nodded gloatingly,
his eyes bright behind the tenses of his spectacles.
"Then I want your remaining men moved down to the foot of the
escarpment. Tell them to avoid contact with Mek Nimmur's men, but to be
in a position to move forward very quickly and seize the dam area, and
to block off the ravine below the dam as soon as I give you the word."
When will that be?"Nogo asked.
"We will continue to watch him carefully. If he makes a discovery, he
will start moving the artefacts out. Many of them will be too large to
conceal. Your informer will know about it. That is when we will move in
on him."
"You should move in now, Herr von Schiller," Nahoot advised him, "before
he gets a chance to open the tomb."
"Don't be an idiot," von Schiller snarled at him. "If we strike too
soon, we might never discover what he obviously has learned about the
whereabouts of the tomb."
"We could force him-'
"If I have learned anything in my life, it is that you. cannot force a
man like Harper. There is a certain type of Englishman - I remember
during the last war with them' He broke off and frowned. "No. They are
very' difficult people. We must not rush it now. When Harper makes a
discovery in the ravine, that will be the time to pounce."
The frown faded and he smiled a small, cold smile. "The waiting game. In
the meantime, we play the waiting game."
The debris that filled the shaft was not so tightly packed that it
completely blocked the flow of water through it. If it had done so,
Nicholas would never have been sucked in by the current, as he had been
on his first dive into the pool. There were still gaps in the blockage
where the larger boulders had lodged or where a treetrunk en sucked in.
and jammed sideways across the width of the tunnel. Through these
sections the water had found the weak spots and kept them open.
Nevertheless, the debris had taken centuries to wedge itself in, and it
required back-breaking effort to prise it apart. The clearing operation
was further hampered by the lack of working space in the shaft. Only
three or four of the big men from the Buffaloes were able to work in the
shaft at -any one time. The rest of the team were employed in passing
back the rubble as it was levered out.
Nicholas changed the shifts every hour. They had more labour than they