“Oh, Sam!”
A breaking wave threw her against him. Her waist was surprisingly smooth and slim and supple. He felt a rush of desire for her that overcame his natural and ingrained restraint. It was a rare moment, recaptured from childhood; but they were not children. Her body slid warmly against him, and he saw her laugh as a breaker crashed over them, tumbling them. to the bottom as they clung to each other.
“Let’s go back,” he said.
“Yes. Oh, yes, Sam!”
They made love with their wet, tingling bodies while the night spread over them. The last of the Seagulls had soared home. The stars reeled in the black, infinite depths of space above them. Kitty responded to him with a desperate passion, as if love had been something almost forgotten, eagerly recaptured. Her body was quick, voluptuous, as if her Portuguese blood had overwhelmed her prim Yankee side. There was no restraint in her. Durell felt almost overwhelmed. It was like a fierce battle, in which she was trying to prove something to him, and in which she succeeded.
“Sam, don’t stop. Hold me.”
“We must.”
“Why? Why?”
“We have to go on. The moon is up."
She came out of their lovemaking as if out of a dream, her eyes dazed but aware of him, her long hair swinging as she looked up at the black sky. The moon was a fat crescent over the sea’s horizon, silvering the combers as they roared in toward the beach. The sound of the surf, now that it was dark, seemed faintly ominous.
She sighed. “All right. How much farther is it?”
“About five miles to the river mouth.”
“There is no river to the south of us.”
“It was one of Lepaka’s little jokes. He said there is a river.”
“It’s dry,” she said. “Almost always dry.”
“We’ll see.”
She dressed quickly, and he regretted seeing the slim, fine, velvet lines of her body lost in her clothing. He looked up and clown the beach in the moonlight, which turned everything silver and ebony. It was as empty as before. The girl picked up his rifle and checked it for him. He took it from her and examined it for himself.
She laughed. “You don't trust me?”
“I don‘t trust anybody.”
“Not even after—after—”
“You needed it. So did I.”
“You sound angry, Sam. Should I be ashamed, because of Brady, because it’s so soon after we found him?”
“No. You told me it had been over with Brady for several months.”
“Than what is it?”
“The Apgaks want to kill you. Me, too, of course. They think you know something about their plans to take over Lubinda, and they don’t want you to tell me. Brady never had a chance to transmit to Washington what he knew. They don’t want me to find out from you what it might have been.”
“But they’re all mistaken about that. I don’t know what was in Brady’s mind.”
“Komo thinks you do. He can’t afford the men to guard you, since you refused to take the night plane. So he put you in my care.”
“But if you’re a target, too—”
Durell was grim. "I'm used to it. My real job is to help Lepaka save the government here. We’d like to keep the Apgaks out, if possible. They’re the real colonialists. They’d tie up Lubinda economically and politically, make it a vassal state. This is a tiny bastion of democracy surrounded by nations leaning the other way. That's why the things Brady learned are so important. It’s tied up with the oil here, but how or why it fits together, I don’t know yet. As for the Saka—”
Durell paused thoughtfully.
The girl said, “You’re interfering in local affairs, coming all this way to bring the old man back.”
“If we can find him. I’m working with Lepaka only out of expediency. The Saka is solid, mature. wise. He can keep the local government resisting the Maoist Apgaks. So I’ll do what I can to help Lepaka find the old man."
“And I’m only incidental to that job, too, is that it?”
“Keep trying to remember if Brady ever hinted at anything useful.”
“Do you believe I’m lying to you, Sam?”
“No.”
“You do think so.”
“Let’s not quarrel,” he said gently.
“All right.”
“You’ll remember something.”
“There’s nothing to remember,” she said sharply.
“All right.”
“Yes. All right.”
They began walking again, hostility between them.
The Suidwes Lugdiens night plane from Lubinda to Luanda roared high overhead as they walked along the lonely beach an hour later. Durell listened to the thin, high thunder of the jets and watched the winking lights and wondered if Betty Tallman was on it. Kitty refused to raise her head to look at the plane as it moved along the coast southward.
The high bluff, inland from the sea, lowered more and more, until at times the beach merged with the sparse growth and the stunted trees. The jungle that had been evident when they first started was long gone now. Patches of sand extended far inland. A warm wind from the interior brought a hot, dry lifeless smell to the air instead of the previous ozone from the ocean. Once, he saw a dozen reedbuck lift up, shaking their slender yellow flanks; they moved inland, away from the beach. Again, among the stunted, twisted trees, he thought he saw something else move, black and formless, darting from shadow to shadow. He could not be sure if it was a man or an animal. He kept the .375 Magnum ready, looking and watching, although Kitty was unaware of his sense of being watched. The moon slid lower to the horizon of the sea. The sand grew firmer, which helped their walking. The way seemed endless. Driftwood, dry and silvered by the African sun, began to show up in high piles along the dunes, as if driven there by inland floods that had raked and scoured the interior. The sea bluffs vanished and there was nothing but a fiat plain, rising ever so gently, from the coast to the interior.
“Sam?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not an animal.”
“I didn’t know you saw anything.”
“It’s a man.”
“He’s out of range now,” Durell said. “In this light, anyway.”
“Would he be an Apgak?"
“If Madragata gets any kind of a hint of where we are and what we’re trying to do, he’ll bend every effort to find us and kill us. He has to.”
She shivered. “This country needs stability, Sam, It’s like a baby wobbling on its feet, just taking its first steps. Lubinda is poor. You can‘t imagine how poor it is. The oil exploration offshore is its big hope. Its only dream. Otherwise, Lubinda has nothing.”
He watched the semi-desert inland, and then Kitty checked herself abruptly and put a hand on his arm.
“Civilization,” she said grimly.
Two fishing boats were drawn up on the beach, long shapes with outriggers tilted toward the black sky. The moon outlined their hulls in silver. The masts were canted to one side, the sails brailed up. The beach itself was scuffed and marked by a trail left by perhaps two dozen men. Several of the heel marks looked as if some of the men had been dragged. Durell remembered the two fishing boats he had seen from the oil platform, far out to sea. It was possible, he thought. There was no one in sight here now. No guards had been left with the primitive boats. He moved closer and looked at the sails, and they were red, like the ones he had seen from the Lady.
“What is it, Sam?”
“The drilling crew who were taken off the rig—I think they were brought here.”
“Should we follow them?”
“Not now. We follow Colonel Lepaka’s instructions."
They did not have far to go for the first landmark. The character of the beach changed again, for perhaps half a mile ahead. A long tongue of sand swept in a crescent out to sea, and the beach was flat, watermarked, filled with more inland debris than before. When he looked toward the interior, he saw that they had come to the edge of a dry
riverbed that curved far inland between the sparse, stunted trees and the black, shapeless brush. On the map he had seen during his briefing in Washington, it was marked as the Bieu Zei River. Torrents brought about by seasonal rainstorms in the far interior had swept everything before them, time after time, until there were great heaps of litter, the bones of antelope and larger animals drowned in the floods, even the unmistakable neck and skull of a giraffe. He saw now why Lepaka had referred to this stretch as the Bone Coast. The litter of bones gleamed ghostly white in the light of the setting moon. Everything had been picked clean by the sea birds and vultures that followed the innumerable flood victims.
Kitty shuddered. “What a horrible place.”
The watercourse was dry now, except for a tiny trickle toward the far edge of the little delta. Durell moved across the tidal sands, hating to leave the distinct trail of their bootprints He went from one huge tangle of brush to another. Sometimes the dry tree trunks and heaps of bones were high enough to form a barrier that forced him to detour around them. The trickle of water barely flowed on the far side. He knelt beside the tiny stream and tasted the water carefully. He spat it out. The water was brackish.
“We’ll go inland now,” he said.
“Just who or what are we looking for?” Kitty asked.
“The Saka’s former favorite wife. Komo Lepaka’s adoptive mother.”
When he looked up the wide, dry watercourse, it didn’t seem as if any human being could live up there.
Chapter 13.
The place was like a desert mirage, an illusion. They came upon it unexpectedly, an old Rhineland castle built by an ambitious German settler hungry for something to remind him of home. The stones had collapsed, and it was only a pile of ruins except for one fingerlike turret probing the sky above a ridge of reddish rock. The village had been built around the ruins.
“Maka,” Durell said. He tried the tongue-click he had heard from Colonel Lepaka, and failed. “Mother. We have come to help you.”
The old woman simply stared at him from fathomless dark eyes. Her face was incredibly wrinkled. There was no sign that she understood him or even heard him. For ten minutes she had simply sat there, defying him, in a sense, to communicate with her.
The smell of smoke was thick and choking in the midnight air. The glow of fires from the huts that had been burned cast enough ruddy light for Durell to see the old woman’s face with reasonable clarity. She wore a fine striped robe and large, thin gold hoops in her ears, which had grown enormous and pendulous from the weight attached to them throughout a lifetime. She squatted in front of her hut, one of the few that had not been put to the torch, with her feet tucked under her, her hands resting palms up, one within the other, in her lap. She was as tall, Durell judged, as Komo Lepaka. There was wisdom in her small black eyes, and a deep hunger he could not fathom.
"Maka," he said. “Surely you understand me.”
The woman looked at him, unblinking.
Some of the villagers were straggling back from the scrub brush and sand to which they had fled. It must have happened only an hour ago, Durell thought. The village had been raided and put to the torch, and so far he had counted two bodies of old men. The livestock, two cows, and any number of dogs and goats had all been slaughtered by cutting their throats. The primitive Apgak thatch huts had been burned at random. some here, some there. In some ways, it was worse than a natural cataclysm. Durell saw no young women, no young men. He assumed they had all been taken away—those who had not fled in time.
“Kitty?” he called.
He saw her moving among some of the old people, tending to their injuries. She heard him and looked up and came walking over to him. Her face betrayed her anger and her anguish at what had happened to these simple people.
“Is this the one?” she asked, looking at the old woman.
“I think so. The Saka’s first wife. She won’t answer me.
She isn’t in shock, nothing like that.” Durell paused. “My Apgak isn’t very good, perhaps. But you speak it, don’t you? You’ve been teaching English to the children in Lubinda.”
“What do you want me to ask her?”
“Let’s see if she responds to anything,” Durell said.
“Talk to her, Kitty.”
The girl sank to the hard-packed earth in front of the hut, her movement graceful and accomplished, and seated herself cross-legged in front of the old woman. She offered the canteen of water that Durell had given her.
Smoke drifted over her head. Oil in the empty, sandy wilderness beyond the dry riverbed, a few jackals howled. A bird beat the night sky with invisible wings, veering over the raided village. Durell stepped back a bit from the old woman and the girl. They sat quietly, staring at each other in an almost formal silence that was both a greeting and a measurement.
“Maka,” Kitty said, and her tongue clicked perfectly.
“Maka, this man is a friend. He needs help. We will also help you and the people of the village, when we can.”
The old woman blinked her eyes. Then she spoke in reply, using perfect English, and Durell swore to himself.
The old woman said, “You are Mrs. Cotton, the young woman who teaches the children of Lubinda?”
“Yes, I am she.”
Durell drew a deep breath. He said, “Ask her what happened here.”
Kitty did not turn her head to look at him. “It’s obvious what happened, Sam. The Apgaks who landed on the beach with their prisoners came up this way. They wanted recruits and took the young men and women with them. They need men for their revolutionary army, and women to take care of the men.” She spoke to the woman again, made the clicking sound. “Is it not so, Maka?”
“Yes. Until now, our village was privileged. It has happened to other villages, but Madragata promised that we would not be harmed. He has broken his promise to us and destroyed our lives.”
“When did this happen?”
“Before the moon set. We were all asleep when they came.”
“Did you see any of their prisoners?”
“Yes. White men, in slave chains.”
“Were they injured?”
“Two carried blood on their heads. The others were beaten and tormented. They did not look up.”
Durell said, “Maka, where did they go?”
The old woman raised dark eyes to consider him. In her wrinkled, aged face there was pride and a hint of past tribal beauty. “Does one follow the jackals to find their lairs? They came. They burned. They killed. They went.”
“Are you hungry?” Kitty asked.
“No.”
“Do you want some water?”
“Nay
Durell said, “Maka, I have been sent to you by your son, Komo Lepaka.”
The old woman’s eyes flickered. She said nothing.
“Did you see Madragata with the raiders?”
“Is your name Durell?” the old woman countered.
“Yes. Samuel Durell.” ‘
“He asked for you. He wishes to kill you.”
“Did he say why?”
“Madragata is also my son. There are sons who do not speak the truth to their mothers. One does. One does not. My true son is a false one. Madragata killed my people he-re. Komo is more my true son than the other.”
“Komo said you would help me it I came to you with a message from him.”
The old woman’s eyes went blank. “Now I truly grow afraid.”
“Komo said you would help me to find the Saka.”
The woman blinked. “The Saka, my beloved, is dead in his tomb on the banks of the Lubinda River.”
“Komo says the Saka is not dead.”
“Has Komo seen his ghost?”
“Komo says the Saka is alive.”
“Aiyee,” the old woman whispered. “He was my moren, my master. Many a time I baked his bread in the ant heaps of the Kahara.” She looked down into the folded palms of her long, wrinkled hands. “The Saka taught me English. In those days, a woma
n was not supposed to be taught anything but how to take care of her man. I was his first wife, so he taught me. He was proud that I learned so easily. He also taught me Portuguese. Now I wish he had taught me nothing, so that I would not understand your words.”
Kitty said gently, “Durell speaks the truth, Maka.”
The old woman began to tremble.
“I cannot help you. I do not know where ghosts and spirits go.”
“The saka is alive and on this earth,” Kitty said. “We must find him.”
“He would be old, old. Very old.”
More villagers had straggled back from the desolate plain that stretched darkly to the south of the dry riverbed, beyond the ruined German castle. Some of the women went to the single well and drew water. A few of the men came and looked at the maka and at Durell and the girl, and then wont away to consider their ruined houses, their slaughtered livestock. The moon was down over the western horizon, and the night air felt cooler, dry and dusty, with no life in it. There was tension in the atmosphere, however, as if a storm were brewing somewhere inland, although there was no breath of wind, no hint of movement. In the firelight, the old woman’s face looked as if it had been carved from mahogany, like the artifacts Brady Cotton once collected. Durell looked at his watch. It was past three o’clock in the morning.
“Old Mother, I have a token from your adopted son, Komo.” He reached into his pocket for the Maria Teresa dollar with the four holes in it, which Lepaka had given him. The woman now watched him with bright, unblinking eyes. A shadow of pain flickered in their dark depths when she saw the silver coin in Durell’s palm. She leaned forward a little and touched it with an uncertain, trembling forefinger, but she made no effort to take the coin from his hand. “Yes,” she said. “Yes. It is from Komo.”
“He said to me that you would help me find the Saka, if he is still alive. If the Saka is alive, Old Mother, where would he be?”
The old woman sighed. “I weep for him.”
“Why?”
“It was his wish to die in the minds of men.”
“Why?” Durell repeated.
“He did not wish to live in a shadowed land of sorrow, in a land of disillusionment.”
“Why would he be so sad?”
Assignment Black Gold Page 11