The Seventh Scroll

by Wilbur Smith

  Although they were all exhausted by this time, Mek set out his pickets around the camp. The two women tended the wounded, working by the light of a small screened fire as they used up the last of Mek’s medical supplies.

  Sapper used the one electric torch whose batteries still held a charge, and he gave Nicholas a discreet screened light while he set up the radio and strung the aerial. Nicholas’s relief was intense when he opened the fibreglass case and found that, despite its dunking in the Nile, the rubber gasket that sealed the lid had kept the radio dry. When he switched on the power, the pilot light lit up. He tuned in to the short-wave frequency and picked up the early morning commercial transmission of Radio Nairobi.

  Yvonne Chaka Chaka was singing; he liked her voice and her style. But he quickly switched off the set so as to conserve the battery, and settled back against the bole of the acacia tree to try and get a little rest before daylight broke. However, sleep eluded him – his sense of betrayal and anger were too strong.

  Tuma Nogo watched the sun push its great fiery head out of the surface of the Nile ahead of them. They were flying only feet above the water to keep under the Sudanese military radar transmissions. He knew there was a radar station at Khartoum that might be able to pick them up, even at this range. Relations with the Sudanese were strained, and he could expect a quick and savage response if they discovered that he had violated their border.

  Nogo was a confused and worried man. Since the débâcle in the gorge of the Dandera river everything had run strongly against him. He had lost all his allies. Until they were gone he had not realized how heavily he had come to rely on both Helm and von Schiller. Now he was on his own and he had already made many mistakes.

  But despite all this he was determined to pursue the fugitives, and to run them down no matter how far he had to intrude into Sudanese territory. Over the past weeks it had gradually dawned upon Nogo, mostly by eavesdropping on the conversations of von Schiller and the Egyptian, that Harper and Mek Nimmur were in possession of treasure of immense value. His imagination could barely grasp the enormity of it, but he had heard others speak of tens of millions of dollars. Even a million dollars was a sum so vast that his mind had difficulty assimilating it, but he had a vague inkling as to what it might mean in earthly terms, of the possessions and women and luxuries it could buy.

  Equally slowly it had dawned upon him that, now that von Schiller and Helm were gone, this treasure could be his alone; there was no longer any other person to stand in his way, other than the fleeing shufta led by Mek Nimmur and the Englishman. And he had overwhelming force on his side and the helicopter at his command.

  If only he could pin the fugitives down, Nogo was certain he could wipe them out. There must be no survivors, no one to carry tales to Addis. After Mek and the Englishman and all their followers were dead it would be a simple matter to spirit his booty out of the country in the helicopter. There was a man in Nairobi and another in Khartoum whom he had dealt with before; they had bought contraband ivory and hashish from him. They would know how to market the booty to best advantage, although they were both devious men. He had already decided that he would not trust it all to one person but would spread the risk, so that even if one of them betrayed and cheated him—

  His mind raced off on another tack, and he savoured the thought of great riches and what they could buy for him. He would have fine clothes and motor cars, land and cattle and women – white women and black and brown, all the women he could use, a new one for every day of his life. He broke off his greedy daydreams. First he had to find where the runaways had vanished to.

  He had not realized that Harper and Mek Nimmur had inflatable boats hidden somewhere near the monastery. Hansith had not informed him of that fact. He and Helm had expected them to try to escape on foot, and all the plans to head them off before they could reach the Sudanese border had been based on that assumption. On Helm’s orders, he had even set up a reserve fuel dump near the border where they expected Mek Nimmur to cross, from which they could refuel the helicopter. Without those supplies of fuel he would long ago have been forced to give up the chase.

  Nogo had placed his men to cover the trails leading along the river bank towards the west, and he had not even considered guarding the river itself. It was quite by chance that one of his patrols had been in a position to spot the flotilla of yellow boats as they came racing downstream. However, there had not been enough warning to enable them to set up an effective ambush, and they had been able to fire on the boats only briefly before they escaped. They had not inflicted serious damage on any of the boats – at least, not enough to stop them getting through.

  Immediately the company commander had radioed his report of this contact with Mek Nimmur, Nogo had started ferrying men downstream to the Sudanese border to cut off the flotilla. Unfortunately, the Jet Ranger could carry no more than six fully armed men at a time, and transporting them had been a time-consuming business. He had only succeeded in bringing sixty of his men into position before night had fallen.

  During the night he fretted that the flotilla was slipping past him, and with the dawn they were in the air again. Fortunately the cloud had broken up during the night. There was still some high cumulus overhead, but they were now able to fly low along the river and search for any sign of Mek Nimmur’s flotilla.

  They had first flown back along the river on the Ethiopian side of the border, as far as the point where Mek Nimmur and Harper had been fired upon. They had picked up no sign of the boats, so Nogo had forced the pilot to turn back, cross the border and search the Sudanese stretch of the Nile. But Nogo had only been able to persuade his pilot to penetrate sixty nautical miles along the Nile into the Sudan before the man had rebelled. Despite the Tokarev pistol that Nogo held to his head, he had banked the Jet Ranger into a 180-degree turn and headed back low along the river.

  By now Nogo knew he had been defeated and outwitted. He brooded unhappily in the front seat of the helicopter beside the pilot, trying to fathom out what had happened to his quarry. He saw the tall smokestack of the abandoned sugar-mill at Roseires poking up into the early morning sky, and he glowered at it angrily. They had passed the mill only a short while before on their way downstream.

  ‘Turn in towards the north bank,’ he ordered the pilot, and the man hesitated and glanced at him before he obeyed.

  They passed directly over the building, flying lower than the chimney. The factory was roofless and the windows were empty rectangles in the broken walls. The boilers and machinery had been removed twenty years previously, and Nogo could look into the empty shell. The pilot hovered the aircraft while Nogo peered down, but there was no place where anyone could hide, and Nogo shook his head.

  ‘Nothing! We have lost them. Head back upstream.’

  The pilot lifted the machine’s nose and turned away towards the river, obeying the order with alacrity. As the aircraft banked steeply, Nogo was looking down directly into the overgrown canefields verging the river when a flash of bright yellow caught his eye.

  ‘Wait!’ he shouted into his mike. ‘There is something there. Go back!’

  The helicopter hovered over the field, and Nogo gestured urgently downwards. ‘Down! Put us down.’

  As soon as the skids touched the earth, the stick of six heavily armed troopers dived out of the rear cabin and raced out to take up defensive positions. Nogo clambered out of the front door and ran into the overgrown bed of tall cane. One look was all he needed. The yellow boats had been deflated and folded and hastily covered. The earth around them had been churned up by booted feet. The tracks led away inland. The men who had made them had been heavily laden, for they had trodden deeply into the soft, sandy earth.

  Nogo ran back to the helicopter and thrust his head in through the open cabin door. ‘Is there an airstrip near here?’ he shouted at the pilot, who shook his head.

  ‘There is nothing shown on the chart.’

  ‘There must have been one. The sugar-mill would have had
a strip.’

  ‘If there was one, it must have been decommissioned years ago.’

  ‘We will find it,’ Nogo declared. ‘Mek Nimmur’s tracks will lead us to it.’ He sobered immediately. ‘But I will have to bring up more men. Judging by his spoor, Mek Nimmur has at least fifty of his shufta with him.’

  He left his men at the sugar-mill and flew back to the border with an empty rear cabin to pick up the first load of reinforcements.

  Big Dolly! Come in, Big Dolly. This is Pharaoh. Do you read?’ Nicholas put out his first call an hour before sunrise.

  ‘If I know the way Jannie’s mind works, and I should, he would plan to make his approach flight in darkness and arrive here as soon as there is enough light to pick up the strip and land.’

  ‘If the Fat Man comes,’ Mek Nimmur qualified.

  ‘He will come,’ said Nicholas confidently. ‘Jannie has never let me down yet.’ He thumbed the microphone and called again: ‘Big Dolly! Come in, Big Dolly.’

  The static hummed softly, and Nicholas retuned the set carefully. He called again every fifteen minutes as they huddled around the set in the dark under the acacia trees.

  Suddenly Royan started to her feet and exclaimed excitedly, ‘There he is. I can hear Big Dolly’s engines. Listen!’

  Nicholas and Mek ran out into the open, and turned their faces upwards, looking into the north.

  ‘That’s not the Hercules,’ Nicholas exclaimed suddenly. ‘That’s another machine.’ He turned and faced southwards, towards the river. ‘Anyway, it’s coming from the wrong direction.’

  ‘You are right,’ Mek agreed. ‘That’s a single engine, and it’s not a fixed wing. You can hear the rotors.’

  ‘The Pegasus helicopter!’ Nicholas exclaimed bitterly. ‘They are on to us again.’

  As they listened, the sound of the rotors faded. Nicholas looked relieved. ‘They missed us. They can’t have spotted the Avons.’

  They trooped back under the cover of the acacias, and Nicholas called again on the radio, but there was no reply from Jannie.

  Twenty minutes later they heard the sound of the Jet Ranger returning, and they monitored it anxiously.

  ‘Gone again,’ said Nicholas after a while, but then twenty minutes later they heard it yet again.

  ‘Nogo is up to something out there,’ Mek said uneasily.

  ‘What do you think it is?’ Nicholas was infected by his mood. When Mek worried, there was usually a damned good reason to worry.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mek admitted. ‘Perhaps Nogo has spotted the Avons and is bringing up more men before he comes after us.’ He went out into the open and listened intently, then came back to where Nicholas crouched over the radio.

  ‘Keep calling,’ he said. ‘I am going out to the perimeter to make certain my men are ready to hold Nogo off if he comes.’

  The helicopter moved up and down the Nile at short intervals during the next three hours, but the lack of any further developments lulled them, and Nicholas barely looked up from the radio each time they heard the distant beat of the rotors. Suddenly the radio crackled, and Nicholas started violently at the shock.

  ‘Pharaoh! This is Big Dolly. Do you read?’

  Nicholas’s voice bubbled over with relief as he replied, ‘This is Pharaoh. Speak sweet words to me, Big Dolly.’

  ‘ETA your position one hour thirty minutes.’ Jannie’s accent was unmistakable.

  ‘You will be very welcome!’ Nicholas promised him fervently.

  He hung up the microphone and beamed at the two women, ‘Jannie is on his way, and he will—’

  He broke off and his smile shrivelled to an expression of dismay. From the direction of the river came the unmistakable rattle of AK-47 rapid fire, followed a few seconds later by the crump of an exploding grenade.

  ‘Oh, dammit to hell!’ he groaned. ‘I thought it was too good to last. Nogo has arrived.’

  He picked up the mike again and spoke into it expressionlessly. ‘Big Dolly! The uglies have arrived on the scene. It’s going to have to be a hot extraction.’

  ‘Hang on to your crown, Pharaoh!’ Jannie’s voice floated back. ‘I am on my way.’

  During the next half-hour the sounds of the fighting along the river intensified until the rattle of small-arms fire was almost continuous, and gradually it crept closer to the far end of the airstrip. It was clear that Mek’s men, spread out thinly along the river end of the strip, were falling back before the thrust of Nogo’s men. And every twenty minutes or so there was the sound of the returning helicopter, as it ferried another stick of men to increase the pressure on Mek’s scanty defence.

  Nicholas and Sapper were the only able-bodied men left in the acacia grove, for all the others had gone out to defend the perimeter. The two of them moved the ammunition crates to the edge of the trees, where they could be loaded in haste once the Hercules landed.

  Nicholas sorted out the cargo, reading the contents of each crate from the notations on the lids in Royan’s handwriting. The crate containing the death-mask and the Taita ushabti would be the first to go aboard, followed by the three crowns: the blue war crown, the Nemes crown and the red and white crown of the united kingdoms of upper and lower Egypt. The value of those three crates probably exceeded that of all the rest of the treasure combined.

  Once the cargo had been taken care of, Nicholas went down the row of wounded men and spoke to each of them in turn. First, he thanked them for their help and sacrifice, and then offered to take them out on the Hercules to where they could receive proper medical attention. He promised each of them that, if they accepted the offer, he would see to it that once they had recovered from their wounds they could return to Ethiopia.

  Seven of them – those who were less seriously wounded and were able to walk – refused to leave Mek Nimmur. Their loyalty was a touching demonstration of the high regard in which Mek was held by his men. The others reluctantly agreed to be evacuated, but only after Tessay had intervened and added her assurances to Nicholas’s. Then he and Sapper carried them to the point at the edge of the grove where Jannie would halt Big Dolly for the pick-up.

  ‘What about you?’ Nicholas asked Tessay. ‘Are you coming out with us? You are still in pretty bad shape.’

  Tessay laughed. ‘While I can still stand on my two feet, I will never leave Mek Nimmur.’

  ‘I can’t understand what you see in that old rogue,’ Nicholas laughed with her. ‘I have spoken to Mek. He wants me to take his share of the booty with me. He won’t be able to carry any extra luggage at the moment.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Mek and I discussed it. We need the money to continue the struggle here.’

  She broke off and ducked involuntarily, as a stunning explosion cracked in their eardrums and a tall column of dust leaped into the air close to the edge of the grove. Shrapnel whistled over their heads and twigs and leaves rained down on them.

  ‘Sweet Mary! What was that?’ Tessay cried.

  ‘Two-inch mortar,’ said Nicholas. He had not moved, nor made any attempt to take cover. ‘More bark than bite. Nogo must have brought it in with his last flight.’

  ‘When will the Hercules get here?’

  ‘I’ll give Jannie a call, and ask him.’

  As Nicholas sauntered over to the radio set Tessay whispered to Royan, ‘Are you English always so cool?’

  ‘Don’t ask me – I’m mostly Egyptian, and I am terrified.’ Royan smiled easily and put her arm around Tessay. ‘I am going to miss you, Lady Sun.’

  ‘Perhaps we will meet again in happier times.’ Tessay turned her head and kissed her impulsively, and Royan hugged her hard.

  ‘I hope so. I hope so with all my heart.’

  Nicholas spoke into the microphone. ‘Big Dolly, this is Pharaoh. What is your position now?’

  ‘Pharaoh, we are twenty minutes out, and hurrying. Did you have baked beans for dinner or is that mortar fire I hear in the background?’

  ‘With your wit you should have gone on the stage,’ Ni
cholas told him. ‘The uglies have control of the south end of the strip. Make your approach from the north. The wind is westerly at about five knots. So any way you come in, it will be cross-wind.’

  ‘Roger, Pharaoh. How many passengers and cargo do you have for me?’

  ‘Passengers are six cas-evac plus three. Cargo is fifty-two crates, about a quarter of a ton weight.’

  ‘Hardly worth coming all this way for so little, Pharaoh.’

  ‘Big Dolly. Be advised, there is another aircraft in the circuit. A Jet Ranger helicopter. Colour green and red. It is a hostile, but unarmed.’

  ‘Roger, Pharaoh. I will call again on finals.’

  Nicholas went back to where the two women were waiting with the wounded.

  ‘Not long now,’ he told them cheerfully. He had to raise his voice to make himself heard above the din of mortar bursts and rapid small-arms fire.

  ‘Just enough time for a cup of tea,’ he said. He pushed a few twigs into the embers of the previous night’s fire, then rummaged in his small emergency pack for the last of his tea bags while Sapper placed the smoke-blackened billycan back on the burgeoning flames.

  They only had one mug between them. ‘Girls first,’ said Nicholas, passing it to Royan. She took a swallow and scalded her lips.

  ‘Good!’ she sighed, and then cocked her head. ‘This time it is definitely Big Dolly I can hear.’

  Nicholas listened and then nodded. ‘I think you are right.’ He stood up and went to the radio. ‘Big Dolly. You are audible.’

  ‘Five minutes to landing, Pharaoh.’

  From where he stood, Nicholas looked down the long strip. Mek’s men were retreating, flitting like smoke through the thorn scrub and firing back in the direction of the river. Nogo was pushing them hard now.

  ‘Hurry along, Jannie,’ he murmured, and then adjusted his expression as he turned back to the two women. ‘Plenty of time to finish your tea. Don’t waste it.’

  The rumble of Big Dolly’s engines was louder than the sound of gunfire now. Then suddenly she was in sight, coming in so low that she seemed to brush the tops of the thorn trees. She was enormous. Her wingspan reached from one side of the narrow overgrown strip to the other. Jannie touched her down short, and she blew out a long rolling cloud of brown dust behind her as he put the engines into reverse thrust.