by Wilbur Smith
answer my questions," he warned.
She turned in her chair and stared out of the window.
In the long silence that followed, Jake Helm crossed the room and went
to the door behind Nogo that led through to the rooms at the rebir of
the hut. He disappeared through it, and closed it behind him. The walls
of the hut were thin, and Tessay made out the murmur of voices from the
room beyond. The cadence and inflection were neither English nor
Amharic. They were using a foreign language in there. She guessed that
Helmw'as receiving instructions from a superior, who did not want her to
be able to recognize him at some later date.
After a few minutes Helm re-emerged and closed the door behind him
without locking it. He nodded to Nogo, who at once stood up. They both
came across to stand in front of Tessay.
I think that it will be better for all of us if we finish this business
as quickly as possible," said Helm softly. "Then you can go to the
bathroom, and I can go to my breakfast." She raised her chin and stared
at him defiantly, but did not answer him.
"Colonel Nogo, has tried to be reasonable. He is bound by certain
niceties of his official position. Fortunately I do not have the same
restraints. I am going to ask you the same questions that he did, but
this time you will answer them."
He took the dead cheroot from his mouth and examined the tip. Then he
threw the butt into a corner of the room and took a flat tin from his
hip pocket. From it he selected a fresh cheroot, long and black, and lit
it carefully, holding the match to it until it was drawing evenly. Then,
amid a cloud of pungent tobacco smoke, he waved the match to extinction
and asked, ",Ihere is Mek Nimmur?"
She shrugged and looked away, out of the side window of the hut.
Abruptly, without signalling the blow in any way, he hit her open-handed
across her face. It was a savage blow, delivered with a force that
snapped her head around, Then, before she could recover, he swung back
again and slammed his knuckles across her jawline. Her head was thrown
back violently in the opposite direction and she was knocked flying from
her chair.
Nogo stooped over her and seized her arms, twisting them up behind her
back. He lifted her back into the seat and stood behind her. He held her
in such a surprisingly powerful grip that she could feel the skin of her
upper arms bruising beneath his fingers.
"I have no more time to waste," Helm said quietly, taking the burning
cheroot from his lips to inspect the glowing tip. "Let us start again,
Where is Mek Nimmur?" Tessay's left eardrum felt as if it had burst with
the ferocity of those blows. Her hearing buzzed and sang. Her teeth had
been driven halfway through the flesh of her cheek, and her mouth filled
slowly with her own blood.
"Where is Mek Nimmur?" Helm repeated, leaning his face closer to hers.
"What are your friends doing with the dam in the Dandera river?"
She gathered the blood and saliva in her mouth, and suddenly and
explosively spat it into his face.
He recoiled violently and wiped the bloody mess from his eyes with the
palm of his hand.
Hold herV he said to Nogo, and seized the front of her blouse. With one
heave he ripped it open down to her waist, and Nogo giggled and leaned
forward over her shoulder to look at her breasts. He giggled again as
Helm took one of them in his hand and squeezed out the nipple between
his finger and thumb. It was the dark purple colour of a ripe mulberry.
He held her like that, pinching her flesh with his nails until the skin
tore and a droplet of blood welled up and trickled over his thumb. Then
with his other hand he took the burning cheroot from his lips and blew
on the top until it glowed hotly.
"Where is Mek Nimmur?" he asked, and lowered the cheroot towards her
breast. "WHAt are they doing in the Dandera river?
She stared down in horror as he brought the burning cheroot closer, and
tried to wriggle away from him. But Nogo held her firmly from behind.
She screamed once, on an agonized drawn-out note, as the glowing coal
touched, the tip of her nipple and the delicate skin began to blister.
inter," said Royan, spreading the enlargement of the fourth face of the
stele from Tanus's tomb under the bright glare of the floodlamp. "This
is the side that contains Taita's notations, which I am postulating are
those of the bao board. I don't understand all of them, but by a process
of elimination I have determined that the first symbol denotes one of
the four sides, or as he terms them the castles of the board., She
showed him the pages of her notebook on which she had made her
calculations.
"See here, the seated baboon is the north castle, the bee is the south,
the bird is the west and the scorpion the east." She pointed out to him
the same symbols on the photograph of the stele. "Then the second and
third figures are numbers - I believe that they designate the file and
the cup. With these we can follow the moves of his imaginary red stones.
The reds are the highest-ranking colours on the board."
"What about the verses between each set of notations?" Nicholas asked.
"Such as this one here, about the north wind and the storm?"
"I am not sure about those. Probably merely smoke, screens, if I know
Taita. He is never one to make life too easy for us. Perhaps they do
have significance, but we can only hope to unravel them as we work
through the moves of our stones."
Nicholas studied her figures a while, then grinned ruefully. "Just think
how remote was the possibility that anybody would ever be able to
decipher the clues he left behind. The first requirement is that the
searcher must have access to both chronicles, the seventh scroll and the
stele of Tanus, before he had any chance of understanding the key to the
tomb."
She laughed - a throaty, well'satisfied sound. "Yes, he must have
believed that he was perfectly safe. Well, we will see now, MasteTTaita.
We will see just how clever you really were." Then, sober and
businesslike once more, she looked up the stone staircase that led to
Taita's maze.
"Now we have to see if my figures and theories fit into the hard stones
and walls of Taita's architecture. But where do we start?"
"At the beginning," Nicholas suggested, "the god plays the first coup.
That's what Taita told us. If we start here in the shrine of Osiris, at
the foot of the staircase, then perhaps that will give us the alignment
of his imaginary bao board."
"I had the same idea," she agreed immediately. "Let's postulate that
this is the north castle of Taita board. Then we work the protocol of
the four bulls from here."
It was slow and painstaking work, trying to work their way into the mind
of the ancient scribe by probing the labyrinth of passages and tunnels
that he had built four thousand years previously. This time they moved
into the maze with more circumspection. Nicholas had filled his pockets
with lumps of dried white river clay, and he used
these like a
schoolmaster's stick of chalk to write on the stone walls at each branch
and fork of the tunnels, setting out the notations from the winter face
of the, stele and marking a signpost to enable them not only to find
their way through the maze but to relate it to the model that Royan was
drawing up in her notebook.
They found that their first assumption that the shrine of Osiris was the
north castle of the board seemed to be correct, and they happily
believed that with this as the key it would be a simple matter to follow
the moves of play to their conclusion. But these hopes were soon dashed
as they realized that Taita was not thinking in the simple two
dimensions of the conventional board. He had added the third dimension
to the equation.
The stairway leading up from the shrine of Osiris was not the only link
between the eight landings. Each of the passages leading off from it was
subtly angled either upwards or downwards. As they followed the twists
and turns of one of these tunnels they did not detect the fact that they
were changing levels. Then suddenly they reemerged on to the central
staircase, but on a landing higher than the one they had entered from.
They stood there and stared at each other in horrified disbelief.
Royan spoke first. "I didn't even have the feeling that we were
ascending," she whispered. "The whole thing is infinitely more complex
than I first assumed."
"It must be constructed like one of those nuclear models of some
complicated carbon atom,'Nicholas agreed with awe. "It interlinks on all
eight planes. Quite frankly, it's terrifying."
"Now I have some- inkling what those extraneous symbols signify," Royan
muttered. "They set out the levels.
I We are going to have to rethink the entire concept.
matic rules.
"Three'dimensional bao, played to enig What chance have we got against
him?" Nicholas shook his head ruefully. "What we really need is a
computer. Taita.
without good reason. The wasn't Puffing his own virtues old hooligan
really was a mathematical genius." He shone the lamp back down the
tunnel from which they had come.
"Even when you know it's there you cannot actually see the fall in the
floor level. He designed and built it without even a slide rule or a
spirit level in his back pocket. This maze is an extraordinary piece of
engineering."
"You can form Your fan club later," she suggested. "But right now let's
start grinding those numbers again."
I am going to move the lights and the desks up here, on to this central
landing of the staircase."Nicholas agreed, I think we should work from
the centre of the board. It may help us to visualize it. Right now he
has got me thoroughly confused."
The only sound in the room was the soft on the sobbing of the
woman who lay curled Milan floor in a puddle of her own blood and urine.
Tuma Nogo sat at the long conference table and lit a he looked
cigarette. His hands trembled slightly, and gh the sickened, He was a
soldier, and he had lived through Mengistu terror. He was a hard man and
accustomed to violence and cruelty, but he was shaken with what he had
just witnessed. He knew now why von Schiller placed such The man was
barely human.
reliance on Helm Across the room Jake Helm was washing his hands in
tediously and then dabbed the small basin. He dried them fas at the
stains on his clothing with the towel as he came back and stood over
Tessay.
"I don't think there is anything else she can tell us," he said calmly.
"I don't think she held anything back."
Nogo glanced down at the woman, and saw the livid burns that spotted her
chest and her cheeks like the running ulcerations of some dreadful
smallpox. Her eyes were closed, and her lashes were frizzled away. She
had held out well. It was only when Helm had touched her eyelids with
the burning cheroot that she had at last capitulated, and gabbled out
the answers to his questions.
Nogo felt queasy, but he was relieved that it had not been necessary to
hold her lids open, as Helm had ordered, and to watch as he quenched the
flame of the cheroot against her weeping eyeballs.
"Watch her," Helm ordered, as he rolled down his sleeves. "She is a
tough one. Don't take any chances with her."
Helm walked past him, and went to the door in the far end of the hut. He
left the door open, and Nogo could hear their voices, but they were
speaking in German so he could not understand what they were saying. He
understood now why von Schiller had chosen not to be present during the
questioning. He obviously knew how Helm worked.
Helm came back into the room, and nodded at Nogo.
"Very well. We are finished with her. You know what to do., Nogo stood
up nervously and placed his hand on the webbing holster at his side.
"Here?"he asked. "No!"
"Don't be a bloody fool," Helm snapped. "Take her away. Far away. Then
get somebody in here to clean up this mess." Helm turned on his heel and
went back into the rear room.
Nogo roused himself and then went to the door of the hut. He walked wide
of where Tessay lay, so as not to soil his canvas paratrooper boots.
"Lieutenant Hammed!the called through the door.
t Hammed and Nogo lifted Tessay to her feet. Neither them spoke and
they were subdued, almost chastened, as torn and bloodied clothing.
they helped her into her yes from her naked body and the Hammed averted
his ed her glossy amber skin.
burns and other injuries that marre He draped the shamnw over her
shoulders, and led her towards the door, When she stumbled he caught her
before her with a hand under her elbow.
she fell and supported truck, and she moved He led her down the steps to
the sat in the passenger seat slowly, like a very old woman. She her
cupped hands.
with her burned and swollen face in Nogo summoned Hammed with a jerk of
his head, and led him aside. He spoke quietly to him, and Hammed's
listened to his orders. At expression became stricken as he one point he
started to protest, but Nogo snarled at him savagely and he chewed his
lower lip in silence.
"Remember!" Nogo repeated. "Well away from any of the villages. Make
certain that there are no witnesses.
Report back to me immediately."
Hammed straightened his shoulders and saluted before up into the seat
he marched back to the truck and climbed the driver a curt order and
they beside Tessay. He gav drove out of the camp, following the track
back towards Debra Maryam. sed and in such pain that she had Tessay was
so confu s, she lurched lost all sense of time. Only half-consciou ugh
icularly ro about in the seat when the truck hit a part ead rolled
loosely on her stretch of the track, and her shoulders. Her face was so
swollen that it required an effort and when she did she thought to force
her eyelids apart, that her vision was failing and that she was going
blind.
sun, had set and darkness had Then she realized that the in the hut with
<
br /> fallen. She must have spent the whole day Helm.
She felt a mild lift of relief that the burns on her eyelids had not
done more damage. At least she was still
form able to see. She peered out through the windscreen, and found
that in the headlights the road was unfamiliar.
"Where are you taking me?" she mumbled. "This is not the way back to the
village."
Lieutenant Hammed sat slumped beside her in the seat and would not
answer. She relapsed into a daze of pain and exhaustion.
She was jerked awake when the truck braked abruptly and the driver
switched off the ignition. Rude hands dragged her out of the cab and
into the glare of the headlights. Her hands were jerked behind her back
and her wrists were bound together with a raw-hide thong.
"You are hurting me," she whimpered. "You are cutting my wrists." She
had used up the last of her strength and courage. She felt beaten and
pathetic, with no fight left in her.
One of the soldiers yanked on her bound wrists and shoved her off the
road. Two others followed, each carrying trenching tools. There was
enough of a moon for her to see a grove of eucalyptus trees about a
hundred metres from the side of the road, and they led her there. They
pushed her down at the base of one of the trees and the man who had tied
her wrists stood over her, holding his rifle casually aimed down at her
and smoking a cigarette with his free hand. The others stacked their
rifles and began digging.
They seemed to take no interest in her at all, but were discussing the
All Africa Soccer Championships that were being held in Lusaka, and the
Ethiopian team's chances of reachin the finals.
It was only after a while that it began to sink into Tessay's befuddled
mind that they were digging a grave for her. The saliva in her injured
mouth dried up and she looked around desperately for Lieutenant Hammed.
But he had stayed with the truck.
"Please," she whispered to her guard, but before she could say more he
kicked her painfully in the belly. -iftu vvurta 3 ivium i- utar vyo
"Keep quied' he used the derogatory term of address only applied to an
animal or a person of the lowest order, and as she lay doubled up on the
ground she realized the futility of appealing to them. A feeling of
weakness anded her and she found herself weeping resignation overwhelm
softly and hopelessly in the darkness.