Assignment Black Gold

by Edward S. Aarons

  “He saw his life’s work unfinished.”

  “But he was powerful, and in command—”

  “The power was taken from him by his sons.”

  “Komo?”

  “And Madragata,” the old woman said. “Like your Hebrew story of Cain and Abel. They fought each other, for different purposes. They saw opposite visions here in the Kahara, They ignored the Saka and did not listen to his words. So he chose to die.”

  “He is not dead,” Durell said again. “If he were alive, where would he be?”

  “I do not know.”

  “You know,” Durell insisted.

  The old woman was uneasy and fearful now, where before she had shown no fear. She sighed and looked down again at her hands. For a long moment, she was silent. Then she said, “He did much thinking, the Saka. He was a man of the mind, of principles and ideals, not action. It was the flaw in him. He often talked of it, when we lay together at night, when I was young and full of juice, and he loved me. He could think, but he could not act. It was his weakness. His sons came to know this and acted for him, each in his own different way, and his heart was broken. And so he died. He thought it best.”

  “He died deliberately?”

  “He removed himself from this world, yes.”

  Kitty said quietly, “And just where did he go to die, maka?”

  “He went to the mountain that is round.”

  “Round Mountain?”

  “To the mountain that is round.”

  “Where is that?” Durell asked.

  She paused again. He did not think she would reply. All around them, the villagers moved like ghosts through the ruins of their homes. One of the few surviving dogs began to bark, and was quickly hushed. None of the people came near them.

  Durell said, “Do any of these others know about the Saka?”

  “No. It is my secret. Now it is yours.”

  “Did you tell Madragata?”

  “No. He has no respect for his maka.” The old woman chuckled. “He is son of my breast, he suckled my milk, but it is a truth that he is less a son to me than Komo, the desert orphan. whom I also let suck on my breast.”

  “Where is the mountain that is round?"

  “One must go a day’s walk into the sun when it rises.” A glint of amusement at last enlivened the old woman’s eyes. A sound that might have been laughter came from her wrinkled mouth. “It is beyond the lake that is salt. Where once the wild little men used to live.”

  “Thank, you, maka," Durell said.

  “Thank you," Kitty said.

  Chapter 14.

  The sun was a hot iron on the napes of their necks. Its glare was blinding as they walked east into the dawn. There was no sound except the susurration of the wind that rustled the sand and stirred the dry, leafless branches of the occasional shrub and thicket of brush they passed. During the hours of darkness before the shimmering, violet dawn, they had slept for a time, near a ridge of red rock, and Durell had wakened to the early dawn, listening to the whistle of a night plover over the sandy plain. The desert that seemed so lifeless actually held antelope and steenbok, lizards and tiny striped mice, honey birds, snakes, and even an occasional pride of lions. Wild bees began to hum in the air as the light grew stronger. He listened to ta jackal cough and then howl. The sound was mournful. A vulture came spinning out of the violet dawn sky.

  “Kitty?”

  “I’m awake.”

  They had not made love again during the two-hour sleep they had enjoyed, after walking toward the east, away from the village. It would be hot today, and the wind would cut like sandpaper, searching out the land. They had filled their canteens from the village well, near two flamboyant trees, and the old woman had ordered a meal for them of bush pigeons. The old German castle gloomed against the sky.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  “Did you believe her?” Kitty asked.

  “The maka? Yes.”

  “She never admitted that the Saka is alive, you know.”

  “He’s alive,” Durell said.

  “Do you think he will listen to you and come back to Lubinda?”

  “I don’t know. I hope so.”

  When the sun came up, they saw that the Kahara sand was red, and there were great ridges of blushing stone. Now and then they passed giant baobab trees, the bark looking hot and also red, the sap like permanganate; the trunks were wide, but they were hollow inside and they were stripped of leaves, the awkward limbs reaching toward the blinding sky as if in prayer. There were dunes covered with brush and clusters of spiked thorn trees amid yellow grass that bent in the hot wind, suffering until the seasonal rains would come.

  At midmorning, they paused to rest in the shade of a grove of mopane trees, the bark all green and red and gold, twisted in spirals going up along the trunks. Crickets shrilled in the yellow grass that thrived although no water was visible. This was a land that had been pioneered by the first Portuguese captains, hunting gold and finding slaves, for the slave trade of the Carib and Brazil, and later the States. Durell kept himself occupied with his thoughts, but not once did he lose his caution and alertness as he watched the terrain, The first Portuguese captains had been Ruy de Siqueiera, Alfonso d’Aveiro, and Duarte Pires, the forerunners of many other adventurers who met the Bantu people and the great warrior races of the Amampondo, the Namaqua Ovambo, Mambukush, and the Bechuana races of Tembu and Thaba’nchu. The word Bantu simply meant people; it was the plural of muntu, a single person. Long ago, south of the Congo River, in the land now called the Zaire, the Kongo people of Bundu had been conquered by the Mbanza, along with the Ambundu and the Ambwela people, under the king whose title was Ntinu and Mani, Lord of the Earth, Earth Priest. In the early sixteenth century, there had been a king named Ngola, and the Portuguese traders in gold and slaves took the king’s name for the name of the country and called it Angola. Those were the days of Queen Nzinga of the powerful Ovambo tribe that still lived in modern Namibia; those had been the glory days of the Portuguese adventurers, Balthazar de Castro and Paulo Dias de Novais—

  “Hold it,” Durell said.

  The girl stopped obediently. She had said little to him that meant anything since their lovemaking on the beach. He did not know for certain what was troubling her; perhaps it was true that she was prim and was suffering pangs of guilt for what they had done.

  “I don’t see anything,” she said.

  “There. Over there.”

  Light flashed and glittered from a wide stretch of water ahead, reflecting the brazen sky, the ridge of red rock beyond. There were pinnacles of stone to the right, a single karee tree, a glimpse of tangled riverbeds amid gorges that sliced through the desert plain before them. The land was polished smooth by the wind and the heat of the sun.

  “I still don’t see—oh,” the girl said. “Yes.”

  The tracks of the men who had raided the village that night were clearly visible under the bright sky. The trail went north, around the weedy shores of the bitter lake. There were outcroppings of stone close to the shore, and the water looked like rippled glass under the glinting sun.

  A man was propped against the reddish rock, a rifle in his hand. The rifle was pointed at Durell.

  “Do we run?” the girl whispered.

  “Not a chance.”

  He walked forward toward the man, holding his own powerful Magnum loosely in his right hand, swinging at his hip. For a moment, he wasn’t certain if the black man was alive or dead. Then he saw the eyes blink and a pink tongue touch the black lips.

  Durell held his hand high over his head and gave the man with the rifle the Bushman greeting. “Tshjamm! Good day!”

  The man had grayish woolly hair and looked to be about forty or fifty. He could not he certain. Pain had etched deep lines of suffering around his mouth. His eyes were red-rimmed, his face caked with dust. A clump of acacia made a wavering shade over his legs. There was blood on hi-m, and Durell saw a broken thigh bone thrusting through the black skin.
Although it was hot, the man was not sweating; there was little liquid left in him.

  “Old Father,” Kitty began. “We are friends.”

  The man kept staring at Durell. Durell saw that the rifle was a heavy old Remington, powerful and accurate. The muzzle was pointed at his stomach. One shot would blow his spine away.

  The man spoke in Bantu. “Are you the police?”

  Durell looked at Kitty, not sure of the language, with its complex clicking consonants. The girl said something at length, and the man answered, and then she explained to Durell. “I told him we were looking for Madragata. He says Madragata has gone on. Since he is helpless, he has been left here with only some brandy with which to die.”

  “Is he angry at Madragata?"

  “No.”

  “Translate for me, please.” Durell turned to the man.

  “We will try to help you, Old Father.”

  “I am not so old,” the man whispered, “but my days are ended. No one can help me. I die.”

  “Did Madragata have the prisoners with him?”

  “Yes. Six Americans.”

  “Where does he take them?”

  “To a camp. I do not know where.”

  “Give me your gun,” Durell said.

  When Kitty repeated the order in Bantu, the man licked his lips again and then shrugged and let the gun fall from his grip. It was plain that the broken leg was a mortal wound, and the man had been abandoned here to die. Durell picked up the heavy Remington and handed it to the girl. She carried it with familiarity.

  “Ask him—” he began, and then he paused.

  The man’s eyes stared with a fixity that was familiar to Durell, who had seen death come to many men in many ways. The jaw hung slack. Kitty murmured something and turned away. For a moment, Durell looked out over the salt lake, shimmering under the hot sky. Then he reached behind the dead man for the bottle he saw there. It was Cape brandy, fiery stuff often called blitz or lightning. Half of the contents were still there. He uncorked it and took a swallow and felt the heat of the liquor hit his stomach. The girl watched him in silence. When he offered her a drink, she said, “No, thank you.”

  “Kitty, what’s troubling you?”

  “I don’t like to see anyone die like this, out here in such a place.”

  “He was an Apgak. A terrorist.”

  “He seemed decent enough. He didn’t put a slug in your belly,” she said.

  The shade of the small acacia shrubs trembled in the hot, gritty wind. Durell wished the man had lived only a few minutes longer. He wanted to know if Madragata, too, was headed for the “mountain that is round,” seeking the Saka. There was no way of knowing. When he stood up, he felt the increased force of the easterly wind, a pressure of heat, and he heard the sound of it among the rocks and the sparse grass and thorn trees like the sound of a rushing river.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  They saw the mountain an hour before sunset. The salt lake was far behind them. He saw now why the old woman of the village had insisted on her name for it. It was not a mound, with soft slopes, but a semi-circle of rough red crags, as if a meteor had landed here millions of years ago and thrown up a barrier like those on the moon, with a level center that was almost perfectly circular.

  Eons of time had etched caves and grottoes into the reddish walls of the rimrock, and baboons with prehensile toes and long fingers scrambled in tribal groups over the steep, sloping walls of stone. The sunlight flashed and flickered off the red sandstone. A single baobab tree grew in front of one of the middle cave entrances.

  “He’ll be up there,” Durell said. pointing to the tree.

  “All alone? Living here in this wasteland, an old man, alone?” Kitty asked.

  “This is his home.”

  “But he’s been all over the world. He’s a cultured, cultivated man, a mover of events, a statesman for his people—"

  “Events moved in a way he didn’t anticipate,” Durell said softly. “The years piled up on him. If Komo Lepaka is right, he’s become like the mystics of the old biblical days, an Essene, a hermit living and talking to his god.”

  “I don’t see anyone.”

  “He's here,” Durell said.

  He started forward, holding the Magnum .375 in loose fingers. There was no sign of Madragata’s band or his captives. He was wary. The place seemed too empty, too suspiciously innocent. Despite what he had just said to Kitty, this face of nature seemed too harsh and uncompromising to support an old, old man who had known the luxuries of Paris and London, of Lisbon and Geneva. He slapped at flies that unaccountably began to buzz

  about them. The girl followed more slowly.

  Near the big baobab tree, which he saw was truly dead and not simply leafless in the dry season, he paused and cupped his hands.

  “Saka!”

  His word echoed back and forth from the circle of high red sandstone. For a long moment, nothing happened. Two vultures lifted on lazy, flapping wings and began to circle upward. Durell called again, and then a third time.

  “There he is,” he said.

  The old man had appeared at the mouth of the highest cave. He stood quietly watching Durell and the girl as they climbed up the mountainside toward him.

  He was tall and thin, storklike, with the same tribal heritage that belonged to Komo Lepaka. His hair was white and his short beard was neatly trimmed. His figure was straight and strong. Durell could not begin to guess at the Saka’s years. He wore a striped cloak and leaned on a straight staff, in an odd resemblance to an Old Testament shepherd. The evening wind made his white beard blow. He had a fine brow, deep-set intelligent eyes that held the banked fire of mysticism in the mind behind them. Old tribal scars beaded his leathery, wrinkled cheeks. What those eyes had seen no man could ever guess.

  “Saka,” Durell said. He told his name and Kitty’s. “You could have hidden forever from us in this place, for a long, long time. You did not need to show yourself.”

  “Indeed, forever.” The old man’s English was faintly accented, part Portuguese, part London public schools. “It was foolish of you to seek me out, when most of Lubinda believes I lie in my tomb. But of course, when you called my name, I knew that my life was not a secret to you. The time will come, soon enough, when I will occupy that tomb. But I have taken these years selfishly for myself, after a lifetime of service that seems to have come to nothing. Now, I suppose, my secret is ended.” The old man smiled and gestured graciously. “Will you have some tea‘? It is fine Ceylon tea. I have all the amenities l need here. A few—very few—faithful people know that I live here, and help me to survive in this wilderness."

  “We would be grateful for tea,” Durell murmured.

  “Come in, then. We do not have much time.”

  “There is never enough time," Durell said.

  The old man paused while turning toward the mouth of the cave and looked at him sharply. “Then of course you know about Madragata?”

  “Is he here?”

  The old man gestured with his stall. “He is all around us, my dear sir. As I said, you were foolish to come."

  “Are you sympathetic to the Apgaks?”

  The old man did not reply to that. He led the way inside the cave. The interior was surprisingly comfortable. There was a cot with a spring mattress, a table and several chairs, an oil lantern, several chests, one old wood carving, and heaps and heaps of books that were perfectly preserved in the climate of the meteorite mountain. The old man dropped a curtain made of zebra skins over the cave entrance, and in the momentary darkness, Durell could smell him, a musty smell compounded of old age and dry leathery skin and something else, as if the Saka’s thoughts scented the air of the cavern. Durell could not see where the back of the cave ended. The yellow glow of the oil lamp did not extend that far.

  “I have seen the old woman in Ngama Kotumbama,” he -said quietly. “Your first wife, she says. The mother of your son, Madragata, and the foster mother of your other son, Komo Lepaka.
”

  “Ah. And which is the true son?” the old man asked.

  “I think it is Lepaka," Durell said.

  “What made the old woman tell you about me?”

  Durell took out the Maria Teresa silver coin with the four holes drilled in it. Like the old woman, the Saka stared at it and touched it with his forefinger as it lay in Durell’s palm, but he did not take it in his own hand. For a long time he stared at it, and the only sound in the cave was the sputter of the oil lantern and the Saka’s long, labored breathing. '

  Finally he raised his eyes. “Lubinda is in danger?”

  “Yes. From your son Madragata.”

  “He is honest in his beliefs.”

  “So is Lepaka.”

  “They will go to war?”

  “They are already at war."

  The old man nodded. “I thought I had already known the darkness of the deepest sorrow. And now this is added to my many years.”

  “Lepaka looks to you, his true father, for help.”

  “But is it not a matter of ambition, of one son set against the other?”

  “It is a matter of Lubinda,” Durell said.

  “And you, a stranger, a foreigner? Why should you care about any of this?”

  “We care for any nation that seeks to keep its freedom. Tiny as Lubinda is, it is important. It would be a great victory if democracy survived here. You and I are not important, otherwise. None of us are.”

  “You are an idealist?”

  “I do my job. I’ve been accused of being pragmatic about it.” Durell paused. He looked at Kitty. “I was not sent here merely to learn what happened to one of our people, to Brady Cotton. I was sent to help stop the Maoists, if I can. With your consent. Otherwise, I have no wish to interfere.”

  The old man looked thoughtful. “What did the old woman of the village say to all this?”

  “I think she know about it, but l did not speak to her at length. The village was destroyed. Most of the homes had been burned. Men were killed. Many young men were taken for Madragata’s army. Apparently, some of them did not wish to go, so there was a small struggle and the village was burned.”