Legacy of War

by Wilbur Smith

  Her brother took a second to catch on and then agreed with heartfelt sincerity.

  ‘We’ll be the bestest children ever!’

  ‘Hmm . . .’

  Gerhard pondered, letting the silence drag out as his children looked on with wide-eyed tension. So far as they knew, their mother was just away for the day seeing friends. Gerhard didn’t want them worrying. So if he could give them something else to occupy their minds, so much the better.

  ‘All right, then,’ he conceded. ‘You can come flying with me.’

  Zander whooped with delight while Kika hugged Gerhard’s leg.

  ‘But it will only be a quick little hop because the sun will be setting soon. And you must give me your solemn promise to behave yourselves in the aircraft and do exactly what I say. I mean it. Flying is a serious business. So you have to do what the pilot says. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, Daddy!’ came the two replies.

  ‘Right then, off we go.’

  On the plateau atop Lonsonyo Mountain, in the large, thatched hut where Mama Lusima had lived and practised her healing arts, Manyoro lay on his deathbed. Naserian, his senior wife, and Benjamin were in attendance.

  Manyoro’s condition had been stable for the past fortnight, but suddenly, within a matter of hours it had deteriorated. He could only manage a morsel of food and a few sips of water. Even the soothing herbs that his womenfolk had gathered could no longer reduce his pain.

  ‘Benjamin, my boy, there is no more you can do for me,’ Manyoro said, and every word was an effort for him.

  ‘But, Father . . .’

  ‘Hush . . . let me speak . . .’ Manyoro had to pause and summon up a few last dregs of energy before he could continue. ‘I was wrong to say that Mbogo, my brother, should not come here. I must see him again before I die. Go to him now. Bring him to me.’

  ‘Yes, Father.’ Benjamin stood, then paused, seized by the overwhelming intuition that he would never speak to his father again. He knelt by the bed, took Manyoro’s hand and said, ‘Father, I . . .’ He stopped short, unable to form the words that could express the storm of emotions that filled his heart.

  Manyoro managed a faint, weary smile. ‘I understand . . .’ he said. ‘You have my love, and my blessing.’ He looked Benjamin in his eye, and it was as if that look swept away the years of conflict and misunderstanding and peace had been made between them, finally and forever. ‘Now go.’

  Benjamin stopped by the entrance for one last look at his father. The old man’s eyes were closed and his mouth was hanging half-open, giving his face an even more drawn, hollow appearance.

  Benjamin thought that Manyoro had died, but he noticed the barely perceptible rise and fall of his chest and the fluttering sound of his breath. He waited, then turned away and walked out of the hut.

  Naserian was waiting for him in the darkness.

  ‘I am going to fetch Mbogo.’ Benjamin glanced towards Manyoro’s hut and said, ‘Stay with him, Mother. It will not be long now.’

  The sun was setting fast. Benjamin frowned as he thought of the path that zigzagged across the precipitous rock face.

  ‘I need a torch,’ he said.

  Naserian smiled. ‘You have spent too long in the white men’s cities, my dear. But you have the blood of Lusima the Wise in your veins. Your feet will find their own way.’

  Benjamin nodded, but he went back to his hut for a thick jumper, a water-bottle and his gun, all of which would be essential if he was going to be driving by night, crossing wild country, still populated by leopards and lions.

  Essential for a white man, Benjamin thought. No Maasai would need these things. Maybe Mother was right. Maybe I should trust in who I really am.

  Naserian had been right about one thing – Benjamin didn’t need a torch. As the dusk gave way to night, his eyes adjusted to the darkness and his body seemed to remember all the times he had gone up and down the mountain, from scampering as a little boy to a tall, strong, proud young man. He strode up the path as sure-footed as a mountain lion, oblivious to the drop, thinking only of what lay in store for him at the summit.

  ‘Time to go home,’ said Gerhard. ‘Can you see over there . . . ?’

  He banked the Tri-Pacer to make it easier for the children to see across the vast open plain towards the far horizon. Towering clouds of billowing black cumulonimbus were marching into view like the advance guard of a storm god’s all-conquering army. A sudden blast of sheet lightning exploded across the sky.

  The storm was still away in the distance, coming in from the east. It must have already hit the Estate House. It would be a matter of minutes before it reached Cresta Lodge.

  ‘I want this plane on the ground and safely stowed before the first drop of rain falls on our landing strip.’

  Gerhard was grateful that he had only taken the children up for a quick circuit of the area immediately around their home. He began to turn into the descent that would take them back to the landing strip, and as he did something caught his eye – a movement on the ground a couple of thousand feet down below.

  He looked again. Three trucks were driving at speed, following one of the hard-beaten earth roads that cut across the Lusima game reserve. They were driving towards the storm.

  Gerhard’s first thought was that the truck drivers must be crazy. He looked at his compass, made a rough calculation of the direction of the wind and realised, They’re heading for the Estate House, and, an instant later, But those aren’t Leon’s trucks.

  A sudden premonition of danger struck him. For the first time in almost a decade, Gerhard felt like a combat pilot again, spotting a suspicious movement and thinking, That’s the enemy!

  For a moment he was torn. He wanted to go down and take a closer look at the trucks. But he had his children aboard and a storm was coming. They needed to be safe at home and tucked up in bed. He had lectured Saffron about keeping herself safe, for her family’s sake. How could he not do the same thing?

  But Gerhard’s long-dormant warrior instincts were lighting up his nerve endings with danger signals. He looked at the clouds and told himself, I’ll take a look, then head for the strip as fast as I can. We can still get there ahead of the storm.

  Gerhard turned the Tri-Pacer towards the trucks and began a descent down to three hundred feet.

  In the front seat of the lead truck, Kabaya saw the aircraft to his right, travelling in the opposite direction. He narrowed his eyes. It was small and single-engined, like the ones the police had taken to using.

  But why is there a police plane out here?

  A thought struck him: Perhaps the mighty Bwana Courtney is so rich, he can afford his own aircraft. We must hope it does not see us.

  The hope was dashed. The plane turned and dropped into a shallow dive. The pilot had seen them. He wanted a closer look.

  The Tri-Pacer dropped down towards the trucks, until it was only a few hundred feet above them. Kabaya watched it come, hating the feeling of impotence that had seized him. His men were useless to him. They could not shoot at the plane unless the trucks stopped and they all dismounted. By the time the first shot was fired, the aircraft would have flown out of range.

  All he could do was hope that the pilot would be satisfied that they were delivering groceries and clean laundry to Bwana Courtney’s home. But who would do that late in the evening, with a storm raging ahead?

  He will not be fooled, Kabaya thought as the plane came closer. It flew for a while on a parallel course to the two trucks, practically skimming over the tall baobab trees that dotted the savanna.

  Kabaya was holding his Sten gun across his lap. His fingers were itching to use it. He could see the pilot looking at him, trying to decide whether the trucks were a threat to his master, or not.

  Kabaya could stand it no longer. He wound down the window, poked the barrel of the Sten into the open air, aimed at the cockpit, and emptied his magazine in a single, prolonged burst.

  Kabaya was a seasoned sol
dier, firing at point-blank range. He wasn’t going to miss.

  Gerhard saw the Sten gun barrel poke out of the passenger’s side window and reacted immediately. As Kabaya pulled the trigger, he threw the Tri-Pacer sideways, like a man diving for cover, banking so tightly at such low altitude that his wing tip was barely a foot or two off the earth below.

  If it made contact the aircraft was as good as dead, for it would trip and fall to the ground. But Gerhard drastically altered the angle of the turn, jinking the other way and throwing one wing tip back up into the air while the other swung down towards the red-brown Kenyan earth.

  But as he ducked and dived, Gerhard could not escape the Sten gun’s long burst.

  The Plexiglas in front of him cracked open as three rounds hit, and a line of holes was stitched across the thin aluminium skin of the fuselage.

  Those bullets had entered the aircraft. But what had they hit?

  As Gerhard took the Tri-Pacer up and away from the trucks, he called towards his children.

  ‘Are you all right back there? Zander! Kika! Tell me you’re okay.’

  ‘I’m all right, Daddy,’ Zander replied, but his was the only answering voice.

  Gerhard was gripped by the terrible, leaden chill of fear.

  ‘Kika! Talk to me!’ he begged her. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m frightened,’ the little girl’s voice replied. ‘I want to go home.’

  Gerhard knew for sure he had stumbled upon a raiding party. If those trucks were full, there could be thirty or more Mau Mau fighters heading for the Estate House. If they could manage a surprise attack, Leon and Harriet would not stand a chance.

  Gerhard tried to send a warning message over the aircraft radio, but it was a futile gesture. The storm had surely put Leon’s short-wave radio out of action; if the transmitter was unscathed, the tall, spindly aerial would not have survived the pounding wind.

  He glanced at the children, then looked at his fuel gauge. It was almost empty. The conclusion was inescapable: either the storm would dash the Tri-Pacer from the sky, or it would run out of gas. Meanwhile Gerhard had two tired, hungry, frightened children to consider.

  He couldn’t risk his babies’ lives. But nor could he condemn their grandparents to certain death.

  It was an impossible dilemma, but Gerhard didn’t have time to come up with a reasoned solution. All he could do was follow his instincts. He took a course heading due east towards the Estate House.

  He put on his cheeriest voice and told the children, ‘I’ve changed my mind. We’re going to pay Grandma and Grandpa a visit.’

  He pointed his aircraft at the raging black heart of the oncoming storm.

  Benjamin had seen the line of storm clouds advancing towards him as he walked down to the grasslands. By the time he reached the car their presence was manifest as a black curtain across the night sky, blotting out the stars, torn asunder from time to time by the dazzling flashes of lightning.

  The deluge was almost upon him when Benjamin’s headlights picked out the lines of tyre tread marks cutting across the bare earth to his left and then joining the track he was on: the route to the Estate House. He stopped the Land Rover and asked himself: were they there when I came this way towards the mountain?

  Benjamin got out of the car, the gun in one hand, and squatted to look at the tracks. They were new, with clear, undisturbed imprints in the dust. He studied them more closely, picking out the various tread patterns and identifying individual vehicles, as he might have deduced information about passing animals from the marks of their feet, hooves or paws.

  Three large trucks, he concluded. They know where they’re going, because they didn’t stop or slow down when they reached the track. And if they’re travelling at night, they want to arrive without warning.

  Suddenly Benjamin’s journey had acquired a new urgency.

  Saffron and Makori’s convoy was still travelling cross-country when the storm hit. In an instant, the visibility was reduced to near zero, as the charcoal clouds blocked every ray of sunlight and the relentless downpour formed an impenetrable curtain of water which no windscreen wiper could clear.

  Saffron and Wambui were deafened by the hammering rain on the steel roof of the cab, but at least they were dry inside. The men in the open Land Rovers were drenched to the skin in a matter of seconds. Within a couple of minutes, Makori and Thiga were having to stop and open the doors to let out the water that had collected inside their vehicles.

  In the dry they had been speeding across the rock-hard terrain at almost fifty miles per hour, heedless of the risk of a rock or animal hole that might cripple any car that hit it. Now they were crawling through the murk.

  When they reached the road, matters barely improved. The rain had been falling for longer here so that they found themselves having to navigate around fallen trees and telegraph poles, ford small streams that had become raging torrents, cross bridges that were themselves under water.

  Kabaya was closing on the Estate House from the north. For all that Saffron knew the storm might not have reached him yet. He was gaining ground while she was barely moving. She thought of Gerhard and the children. Despite Makori’s reassurances, some primal instinct deep inside her was screaming that they were in danger. Saffron knew that if she hadn’t been on patrol with Makori, there would never be a chance of rescuing her family. But still she couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that bad things were going to happen, and they would be all her fault.

  At last they reached a tarmac road. Though they were driving through water that was inches deep, sending up great sprays on either side, at least the carriageway beneath them was firm.

  Saffron was in the lead vehicle, since she knew the way to Lusima. She pushed harder on the accelerator and changed into a higher gear. The Land Rover was constantly slipping and skidding on the treacherously slick road surface, but she maintained and even increased her speed, leaning forward over the wheel to peer through the gloom.

  If she maintained this crazy pace there was a very good chance that Saffron would kill herself and Wambui. But if she arrived too late at the house, all its inhabitants and staff would certainly be dead.

  She had no choice.

  Gerhard had flown over Russia in worse weather than this, and done so with enemy aircraft shooting at him. As the winds tossed the Tri-Pacer across the sky like the dried pea in a tin whistle, he was confident that he would get through to the Estate House and land successfully on the sweeping lawns that surrounded the property.

  But he was not alone. He had his children to consider. They were frightened out of their wits. There was crying and screams of alarm as lightning flashed around them. The wind was howling through the aircraft’s rigging and blowing through the bullet-holes in the fuselage, and the plane was being hurled up and down and from one side to another.

  Gerhard asked himself again and again, Why am I flying into danger? Why didn’t I just go home?

  He realised it resided in his past. He had seen with his own eyes what happened when people turned a blind eye to evil, said a prayer of thanks for not being the victims themselves and continued as though nothing was happening. Germany was guilty of that and the result had been the deaths of millions in the camps, at the battlefront and in cities reduced to burned-out rubble by Allied bombs.

  If Gerhard let the trucks drive on, he might make Zander and Kika safer tonight. But the men in those trucks – or others like them – would arrive another night, knowing they could attack with impunity. The only way to keep his children secure was to confront the enemy and defeat him.

  He looked at the speedometer. Gerhard had the Tri-Pacer’s engine screaming into the red zone. But it only had a fraction of the power of the mighty Daimler-Benz unit that had powered Gerhard’s Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter plane. Flying into gale-force headwinds, the aircraft was barely managing seventy knots of forward progress. The trucks on the ground would be impeded by the rain and its effect on the road’s surface, but the ground b
elow was parched. The rain would be soaked up like ink into blotting paper and the trucks’ heavy tyres would cut through the muddy slurry and grip on the hard ground beneath. If the drivers knew what they were doing, they could maintain a fast pace.

  I’ll be lucky to get five minutes’ lead on them, Gerhard thought.

  He had been flying by his compass and dead reckoning, relying on his familiarity with what was usually a short, uneventful hop between Cresta and the Estate House. But the sudden gusts of crosswind were making it almost impossible to maintain a steady course and visibility was near zero.

  He brought the aircraft down as low as he dared above the treetops and peered into the murk. Suddenly, to his left he saw a flicker of brightness. He turned towards it and the flicker gradually took on a recognisable form: the lights of the Estate House.

  Gerhard flew around the house once, to orientate himself and determine where he was going to land. Then he brought the Tri-Pacer into the wind so that the oncoming gale would act as an air-brake, to slow down the aircraft and lessen the amount of room it needed to come to a halt.

  He called out, ‘Hang on tight!’ then came down so low over the trees that ringed the lawns that the undercarriage ripped through the upper branches. The plane hit the ground hard, bounced, skidded on the sodden grass and slewed around so violently that it was all Gerhard could do to stop it tipping over.

  The children found their voices again, shrieking as the aircraft careered across the ground until brought to a halt by one of the immaculately maintained high hedges of which Leon was so proud.

  Gerhard did not have time to explain anything to the children. He threw open the cabin door and leaped onto the ground. He leaned into the rear of the cabin, ignoring the soaking rain and biting wind as he unbuckled his children’s seat belts and lifted them out of the aircraft so that they were standing beside him.