Legacy of War

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘Get out, Sophie, get out!’ Dorian yelled.

  Sophie looked at him for an instant, then darted for the door into the hall, keeping low as a fusillade of shots peppered the air around her. She made it to the exit, dashed into the hall and screamed, ‘Help! Help! Someone . . . please!’

  Dorian fired the second round in his shotgun, unable to make out any specific targets in the chaotic mêlée, hoping for the best. He wanted to reach for his Sten, which was lying on the floor at his feet, but there was no time.

  Another Mau Mau was coming his way. He too had not bothered reloading his empty gun, preferring to fight with his knife. Dorian had no bayonet with which to fend him off. He grabbed his shotgun by the barrel, ignoring the scalding heat, and jabbed the gun-butt at the man’s face.

  The Mau Mau dodged the blow, swatted away the gun with his left hand and kept moving forward. There was a terrible grin on his face as he bore down upon Dorian, like a black panther on a frightened deer.

  Dorian heard his brother shouting, ‘You too, Dory! Save yourself! Go!’

  He swung his gun again, hitting the Mau Mau on his upper arm but not slowing him.

  Dorian had no defence left. His only hope was to flee. He turned, tried to run, but brought his foot down on the abandoned Sten gun. It skidded a few inches on the floor. Dorian lost his balance. He stumbled to his knees.

  A second later an arm wrapped itself around Dorian’s neck and lifted him upwards. He smelled the rank tang of the Mau Mau’s sweat. He felt the arm let go of his neck then, an instant later, a hand had grabbed his hair and his head was being pulled back.

  Dorian’s throat was exposed. He lashed out with his arms but hit nothing but air. He stamped his feet down on the Mau Mau’s boots, but that made not the slightest jot of difference.

  He sensed the Mau Mau’s arm bring the panga across his upper body. He sensed the cold, biting touch of honed steel against his skin. And a thought flashed across Dorian Courtney’s mind.

  This is what it feels like to die.

  Leon emptied his Sten in two bursts, firing round the side of the cabinet without looking. It was suppressing fire, intended to force the enemy to take cover.

  Leon threw the empty magazine away, slammed in the fresh one, then prepared to make a fighting retreat. He crouched down, his gun at his shoulder, ready to fire and move.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Sophie running for the door.

  Ahead of him a Mau Mau had leaped onto the top of the cabinet. Leon fired a quick burst and saw the man fall backwards.

  Before another attacker could take his place, Leon was already heading in a low, crablike movement towards the door, but keeping his head and gun facing towards the oncoming enemy. He shouted at Dorian, wanting him to retreat as well.

  There was no response. Leon darted his head to one side and saw his brother helpless in the grip of a Mau Mau at least a foot taller than him. The man was about to cut Dorian’s throat.

  Leon aimed at the Mau Mau’s head.

  The Sten was a notoriously crude weapon, infamous for its inaccuracy and unreliability. Leon was attempting a surgically precise shot in low visibility. He took aim as quickly as he could, then fired.

  The Mau Mau’s face disintegrated, like a watermelon hit by a sledgehammer. He fell backwards, letting go of Dorian’s hair. The panga clattered to the floor.

  Dorian picked it up and ran like hell.

  Leon had barely taken two seconds to kill Dorian’s attacker, but that was a lifetime in a gunfight.

  He had been distracted from the danger in front of him and, as he turned towards the oncoming Mau Mau, he was hit by a sudden pulverising blow to his upper left arm.

  Before the pain of the wound had hit him, Leon had registered that he had been hit, seen his arm fall away from its grip on the Sten’s magazine and fired one-handed towards the enemy.

  He staggered backwards for a couple of steps and then, as the screaming agony of his shattered bones and minced flesh hit him, forced himself to concentrate on the task in hand.

  Somehow, anyhow, he had to get out of the garden room.

  Gerhard had been crouched by the bedroom window, waiting for the sound of gunfire that would tell him that the battle at the front of the house had shifted from stalemate to action once again. Then he heard Sophie’s desperate cry for help.

  He did not want to desert his post. But this was not where the immediate danger lay. The threat was coming from the flanks. That was where he was needed. He slung his rifle over his shoulder, picked up the shotgun and ran for the stairs.

  All the way down Gerhard could hear shooting coming from the garden room. Sophie watched him as he came down. He could see her mouth ‘Thank God,’ then she turned away as the door to the garden room opened again and Dorian stumbled into the hall.

  Gerhard was in the hall.

  Dorian shouted, ‘Leon’s still in there!’

  Gerhard didn’t stop moving. He kicked the door to the garden room open and stepped through it.

  Leon was trying to fend off at least six advancing Mau Mau. Almost all of them were brandishing pangas; only one had a rifle in his hands.

  Gerhard shot him first. It wasn’t an immediate kill shot but it stopped the gunman in his tracks as he fell to his knees, clutching at his guts. Gerhard fired again, didn’t hit anyone and took three quick strides to Leon. He grabbed Leon’s Sten, fired it in a spray burst from left to right. Then he pulled Leon’s good arm over his shoulder and dragged him back.

  Leon’s feet kept moving, helping to push them towards the door.

  Gerhard fired again. But after a couple of rounds the magazine was empty.

  Gerhard threw it away. His rifle was still over his shoulder. Trapped there by Leon’s body.

  The two of them were only three or four feet from the door. The Mau Mau were so close Gerhard could hear their breathing, smell their bodies, almost feel the blades about to cut into his flesh.

  ‘Drop me!’ Leon gasped, wincing with pain.

  Gerhard kept hold of him.

  He was almost at the door. It was closed.

  But closed or open, it didn’t matter. They were dead either way.

  At the front of the house, the Mau Mau made their move. They advanced like proper soldiers: groups of one or two darting out from their cover and running to the next shelter while the others shot at the front rooms.

  The ones who had gone forward first provided the fire while the others leapfrogged them to a more advanced position.

  A few shots rang out from the windows on either side of the front door. But none came from upstairs. The white man who had been up there had left his post: one less danger to worry about.

  Kabaya had a small, precious stock of hand grenades, captured from British soldiers. He had given three to a carefully selected trio of the frontal attackers. They were now close enough to make accurate throws.

  One after another they popped up from behind their cover, threw and jumped back down again before they could be shot.

  The first grenade hit the verandah that provided shelter to the front door, blowing it to smithereens. The second missed the door, hitting the wall to its right. The blast obliterated the window of the dining room where Bill Finney was stationed, parted the curtains intended to act as protective screens and studded him with a myriad needle-sharp fragments of glass and wood.

  Muriel Finney screamed. She had been several feet from the blast, loading her husband’s shotgun. She was thrown to the middle of the room, mortally wounded, with the gun in her hand and the window gaping open as the Mau Mau ran towards the house.

  The third grenade thrower darted forward another few yards before letting go of his projectile, which flew straight and true before coming to rest about three feet from the front door.

  The door was made of a single piece of mahogany, more than three inches thick. It had become harder over the years and a mere grenade was not enough to shatter it. But the hinges and lock mechanism that kept it in
place were more vulnerable. The blast ripped the hinges from their mountings and shattered the lock. The door fell backwards, crashing onto the stone floor of the hall.

  Tommy and Jane Sharpe were still firing from the drawing room window – one of them shooting while the other reloaded. But they could not get a bead on the flitting black figures, darting from one shadow to another in the faint grey moonlight.

  The Mau Mau kept moving. They were almost at the door. And once they reached it, the house would be at their mercy.

  The moment Gerhard had stepped into the garden room, Sophie Courtney had run to the kitchen and screamed, ‘Come quick! Bwana Courtney is in danger!’

  Mpishi reacted at once.

  ‘Mashraf, take command here! Kiprop, come with me! And you . . .’ He pointed at one of the housemaids. ‘Bring hot oil!’

  While the maid dunked a small saucepan into the large pot of oil boiling on the range, the two male servants followed Sophie into the hall. Dorian was standing there.

  He nodded at the garden room door and said, ‘In there.’

  Mpishi did not hesitate. He opened the door halfway, for something was preventing him pushing it any further. Then he darted in with Kiprop behind him. He fired three shots at the Mau Mau in quick succession, not even trying to pick out individual targets.

  ‘Cover us!’ he shouted at Kiprop as he took hold of Leon, supporting him from one side while Gerhard took the other.

  Kiprop emptied his magazine. The half a dozen shots fired by the two servants made the Mau Mau hesitate long enough for Mpishi and Gerhard to carry Leon out of the room.

  They were in the doorway, turning into the hall, with their backs turned to the enemy, Kiprop behind them, fending off attackers with his gun.

  Then a shot rang out and Leon’s body jerked as if seized by some sudden spasm.

  They were in the hall now. Kiprop had closed the door. Dorian had his right shoulder up against the glass-fronted cabinet, his face white with agony and strain.

  The girl was standing, holding the pan filled with oil.

  ‘Listen to me, Mary!’ Mpishi ordered her. ‘As soon as the door opens, throw it at them!’

  A moment later, the door was pulled back. A Mau Mau warrior stood there, brandishing his panga. Mary flung the oil at his face and the man staggered backwards.

  Dorian pushed the cabinet with all the strength he had left in his wiry body, so that it scraped across the floor and blocked the door.

  Mpishi darted to the other side of the door and sent the grandfather clock crashing down onto the cabinet, so that it lay diagonally across the doorway.

  It was only a temporary measure. The Mau Mau would soon shove their way through. But it would buy a few precious seconds.

  Then Mpishi heard Gerhard calling his name. He turned around.

  Leon was lying on the floor. There was a small, neat hole in the base of his back. And a pool of blood was pouring out from beneath his body and spreading in a rich crimson pool across the polished wood floor.

  Once Harriet Courtney had settled the children in the wine cellar, which was tucked away at the furthest, coolest corner of the basement, she had turned out the lights. She did not want to risk the chance that one of the Mau Mau might venture downstairs and see the faintest glimmer to suggest that someone might be hiding down there.

  She had hoped, though she knew she was asking too much, that the darkness might soothe two exhausted children and send them off to sleep. But there was no chance of that. They could hear the gunfire, the shouts and the screams coming from up above them. Small boys in Kenya told one another blood-curdling stories about the bestiality of the Mau Mau and now, for Zander, those stories were coming true. Kika was only in her first year at nursery school. She had no idea who the Mau Mau were or what they might do. But the sounds from upstairs were as terrifying to her as to her brother. The two of them were crying out for their mother and saying that they wanted to get out of this horrid place and asking, ‘Why won’t the bad men just go away?’

  Harriet had no answer for them. She was as frightened as they were. But the need to look after the children and keep them quiet occupied her mind enough to keep the feeling of panic at bay.

  The far end of the cellar, opposite the door, was lined from floor to ceiling with wine racks. But there was room on one of the side walls for Harriet to sit on the floor, with her back to a wall and the children to either side of her. She cuddled them close, stroked their hair and told them to be as quiet as little mice who didn’t want a cat to find them.

  Gradually, Zander and Kika became calmer and as they did, the sound of fighting ebbed away and a brief moment of peace descended upon the cellar.

  In that moment, Harriet heard something. It was the clatter of heavy, nailed boots on a hard surface, and more than one set of footsteps. A sudden glow from beneath the wine cellar door indicated that the basement lights had been turned on. There were other people down there. And they were heading for the wine cellar.

  Maina Mwangi had been given a special task by Kabaya: to lead five men around the far side of the house, where no truck had gone, and see if he could find a way in. De Lancey had told Kabaya that there were no ground floor windows on this side of the building.

  ‘But you might be able to get in through an upstairs window. And I know Courtney has a cellar. There might be a hatch of some sort for it round there.’

  Sure enough, Mwangi spotted the bathroom window and the drain that ran down from it to the ground. There was no light coming from the window, which was shut. There had been no reaction from the bathroom to their presence below it. Mwangi concluded there was no one behind the window.

  But the window wasn’t the only thing that had caught his eye in the moonlight. At ground level there was a long, flat piece of wood, set in a frame to which it was secured by a hefty padlock.

  Mwangi had never lived or worked in a building that had a basement. Had it not been for De Lancey’s suggestion, he would not have known that he was looking at a hatch. But now he looked closer and saw two sets of hinges on the side of the frame closest to the house. There was also a metal hook attached to the wood and a catch on the wall. So the wood lifted up on the hinges and was then hooked onto the wall.

  But first he had to deal with the padlock.

  Mwangi told one of his men to stay with him. He told the other four to climb up the drain, go into the house through the bathroom window and sweep the top floor of the house.

  ‘If you find bwanas and memsahibs, kill them all,’ he said. ‘Then go down the stairs and join our comrades in the fight.’

  Next Mwangi turned his attention to the basement hatch. He blew the padlock to pieces with a quick burst from his Sten, though the sound of his firing was lost in the din from the rest of the building. He lifted up the hatch, which was a single piece of solid wood and surprisingly heavy, and ordered his sidekick, who went by the name of Roosevelt, to secure it to the wall.

  The hatch opened to reveal a steep brick staircase descending into the darkness. Mwangi did not like the look of that. But he could not show fear in front of a man he was leading, so he affected an air of stern determination and headed down the stairs with one hand on his gun and the other stretched out ahead of him to guide the way.

  Unable to see a thing, Mwangi kept his hand brushing against the brick wall that ran beside the staircase. He hit something protruding from the wall: a light switch.

  Mwangi turned on the lights. He saw an arch at the bottom of the stair, facing into the house. It opened onto a broad passage with a flagstone floor with storage bays on either side. One served as a coal bunker, a second was piled with firewood, a third was packed with old pieces of furniture and wooden tea chests.

  The sight of so much material wealth – usable beds and tables, comfortable chairs, fine curtains and carpets – discarded in a chamber below the earth, infuriated Mwangi. Why should these people have so much when every man and woman he knew made do with infinitely less? And what they
have they throw away.

  His thirst for vengeance and bloodshed intensified further. He entered the gunroom, recognised at once what it was and was furious to discover that it was empty. At the end of the passage was another door. It was closed.

  Mwangi asked himself, If Bwana Courtney keeps so much wealth out in the open, how much more precious must be the possessions he locks away?

  He gestured to Roosevelt to follow him and marched towards the wine-cellar door.

  In Russia, Gerhard had witnessed bloodshed on the greatest scale that mankind had ever seen. He knew a fatal wound when he saw one. When he crouched beside Leon, his face was grey and bathed in sweat and breaths were coming in agonised, rasping gulps of air.

  The bullet that had hit him had gone right through his torso above the waist. Gerhard didn’t have to look to know that it had caused a larger, messier wound going out. The chances were that it had hit a kidney and it had certainly punched a hole through his intestines. He didn’t have a hope in hell of surviving. Not here, not now.

  Gerhard heard a woman’s scream coming from the dining room. Before he could run to her aid the scream was cut short.

  He was shouting to Kiprop and Mary the housemaid to get Bwana Courtney into the kitchen when something exploded outside the front door. Another explosion followed seconds later.

  There was firing coming from the drawing room, and then the door opened and Jane Sharpe ran out, clutching a shotgun and a box of cartridges. Two shots came from inside the room and Jane stopped for a second, turned to face the way she had come and screamed, ‘Tommy!’

  A third explosion battered the front door, leaving it leaning inwards, barely hanging on its hinges.

  Tommy Sharpe burst out of the drawing room, a rifle in one hand, a captured Sten in the other, pursued by a Mau Mau with a panga. Gerhard lifted his rifle to his shoulder and fired once, hitting the Mau Mau in the chest.

  ‘Thanks, old man,’ gasped Sharpe, as he ran past Gerhard towards his wife.