The Seventh Scroll

by Wilbur Smith

  From the back seat Royan looked out of the window 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 déjà 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.

  ‘Dung-eater!’ 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  For the rest of the wearisome journey Royan remained silent and withdrawn, shaken and troubled by the conviction that she had seen the trademark of the winged red horse before, with, set above it in a pennant, the name of the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.

  ‘It’s the same!’ 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 soon 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 a 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 into 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.’ He grinned back at Boris in the rear-view mirror.

  They reached the signposted turn-off and followed the 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 sentry 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, leathery face. His physique was short and chunky, and his sleeves were rolled up over hairy, work-thickened arms. After speaking a few words to the guards at the gate he came out to the Toyota.

  ‘Yeah? What’s going down here?’ he demanded in a Texan drawl, speaking around the stub of an unlit cigar.

  ‘The name is Quenton-Harper.’ Nicholas dismounted from the truck to greet him, and held out his hand. ‘Nicholas Quenton-Harper. How do you do?’

  The American hesitated, and then took the hand as though he had been offered an electric eel to squeeze.

  ‘Helm,’ he said. ‘Jake Helm, from Abilene, Texas. I am the foreman here.’ His hand was that of an artisan, with calloused palms and lumpy scar tissue over the knuckles, and half moons of black grease under the fingernails.

  ‘Terribly sorry to worry you. I am having some trouble with my truck. I wondered if you had a mechanic who could have a look at it for me.’ Nicholas smiled winningly, but received no encouragement from the man.

  ‘Not company policy.’ He shook his head.

  ‘I am prepared to pay for any—’

  ‘Listen, buddy, I said no.’ Jake removed the cigar from his mouth and examined it minutely.

  ‘Your company – Pegasus. Can you tell me where your head office is situated? Who is your managing director?’

  ‘I am a busy man. You are wasting my time.’ Helm returned the cigar to his mouth and began to turn away.

  ‘I will be hunting in this area over the next few weeks. I would not like to endanger any of your employees with a stray shot. Can you give me some idea of where you will be working?’

  ‘I am running a prospecting outfit here, mister. I don’t give out news flashes on my movements. Beat it!’

  He turned and walked to the gate and gave brusque orders to the guards before marching back to his office building.

  ‘Satellite disc on the roof,’ Nicholas remarked. ‘I wonder who our lad Jake is speaking to at this very moment.’

  ‘Somebody in Texas?’ Royan hazarded.

  ‘Doesn’t follow, necessarily,’ Nicholas demurred. ‘Pegasus is probably a multinational. Just because Jake is one, doesn’t mean his boss is Texan also. Not a very instructive conversation, I am afraid.’ He started the engine and U-turned the Toyota. ‘But if someone at Pegasus is the ugly mixed up in this, he will recognize my name. We have given them notice of our arrival. Let’s see what we have flushed out of the bushes.’

  When they got back to the Dandera river falls, they found that Boris’s truck had arrived, the tents had been erected, and the chef had brewed tea for them. Boris was less welcoming than his chef, and maintained a sullen silence while Nicholas tried to placate him for commandeering his truck. It was only after his first vodka of the evening that he mellowed sufficiently to speak again.

  ‘The mules were supposed to be waiting for us here. Time means nothing to these people. We cannot start down into the gorge until they arrive.’

  ‘Well, at least while we are waiting for them I will have a chance to sight in my rifle,’ Nicholas remarked with resignation. ‘In Africa it never pays to be in a hurry. Too wearing on the nerves.’

  After a leisurely breakfast the next morning, when there was still no sign of the mules, Nicholas fetched his rifle case.

  When Nicholas lifted the weapon out of its nest of green baize, Boris took it from him and examined it minutely.

  ‘An old rifle?’

  ‘Made in 1926,’ Nicholas nodded. ‘My grandfather had it made for himself.’

  ‘They knew how to make them in those days. Not like the mass-produced crap they turn out today.’ Boris pursed his lips critically. ‘Short Mauser Oberndorf double square-bridge action, beautiful! But it has been rebarrelled, no?’

  ‘The original barrel was shot out. I had it replaced with a Shilen match barrel. It will shoot the wings off a mosquito at a hundred paces.’

  ‘Calibre 7 × 57, is it?’ Boris asked.

  ‘275 Rigby, as a matter of fact,’ Nicholas corrected him, but Boris snorted.

  ‘It is exactly the same cartridge – just your English bloodiness must call it something else.’ He grinned. ‘It will push a 150 grain bullet out there at 2800 feet per second. It is a good rifle, one of the best.’

  ‘You will never know, my dear fellow, how much your approval means to me,’ Nicholas murmured in English, and Boris chuckled as he handed the rifle back to him.

  ‘English jokes! I love your English jokes.’

  When Nicholas left camp carrying the little rifle in its slip case, Royan followed him down to the river and helped him fill two small canvas bags with white river sand. He laid them on top of a convenient rock and they formed a firm but malleable rest for the rifle as he settled it over them.

  Using the open hillside as a safe back-stop, he stepped out two hundred yards and at that range set up a cardboard carton on which he had taped a Bisley-type target. He came back to where Royan waited and then settled down behind the rock on which the weapon lay.

  Royan was unprepared for the report of the first shot from the dainty, almost feminine-looking rifle. She jumped involuntarily, and her ears sang.

  ‘What a horrible, vicious thing!’ she exclaimed. ‘How can you bring yourself to kill lovely animals with a high-powered gun like that?’ she demanded.

  ‘Rifle,’ he corrected her, as he noted the strike of the shot through his binoculars. ‘Would it make you feel better if I used a low-powered rifle, or beat them to death with a stick?’

  The shot had struck three inches right and two inches low. As he adjusted the telescopic sight he attempted to explain. ‘An ethical hunter does everything in his power to kill as swiftly and as cleanly as is possible, and that means stalking in as close as he is able to do, using a weapon of adequate power and sighting it the best way he knows how.’

  His next shot struck exactly on line but only an inch above the bullseye. He wanted it to shoot three inches high at that range. He worked on the sight again.

  ‘Gun or rifle, but I don’t understand why you would want to deliberately kill any of God’s creatures,’ she protested.

  ‘That I can never explain to you.’ He aimed deliberately and fired once. Even through the lower magnification of the sight lens he could see that the bullet had struck exactly three inches high.

  ‘It is something to do with an atavistic urge that few men, no matter how culture
d and civilized they deem themselves, can deny completely.’ He fired a second time. ‘Some of them work it out in the board room, others on the golf course or the tennis court, and some of us on a salmon river, in the ocean deeps or in the hunting field.’

  He fired a third shot, merely to confirm the previous two, and then went on, ‘As for God’s creatures, he gave them to us. You are the believer. Quote me Acts 10, verses 12 and 13.’

  ‘Sorry.’ She shook her head. ‘You tell me.’

  ‘“. . . all manner of fourfooted beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air,”’ Nicholas obliged her. ‘“And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter; kill, and eat.”’

  ‘You should have been a lawyer,’ she moaned in mock despair.

  ‘Or a priest,’ he suggested, and went forward to retrieve the target. He found that his last three shots had punched a tiny symmetrical rosette three inches above the bull, all three bullet holes just touching each other.

  He patted the butt stock of the little rifle, ‘That’s my lovely darling, Lucrezia Borgia.’ He had named the rifle for her beauty and for her murderous potential.

  He slid the rifle back into its leather slip case and they walked back together. As they came in sight of the camp, Nicholas pulled up short.

  ‘Visitors,’ he said, and raised his binoculars. ‘Aha! We have flushed something out of the undergrowth. That is a Pegasus truck parked there and, unless I am much mistaken, one of our visitors is the charming laddie from Abilene. Let’s go down and find out what is going on.’

  As they drew closer to camp, they realized that there were a dozen or more heavily armed, uniformed soldiers clustered around the red and green Pegasus truck, and that Jake Helm and an Ethiopian army officer were seated under the awning of the dining tent in serious and intent conversation with Boris.

  As soon as Nicholas entered the tent, Boris introduced him to the bespectacled Ethiopian officer. ‘This is Colonel Tuma Nogo, the military commander of the southern Gojam region.’