The Seventh Scroll: A Novel of Ancient Egypt

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘Five minutes.’

  ‘Over there!’ Nicholas pointed over his shoulder. ‘That’s the course of the Blue Nile.’ A denser grove of thorn trees formed a dark line far ahead. ‘And there is the smokestack of the derelict sugar-mill on the river bank. Mek Nimmur says that the airstrip is about three miles from the mill.’

  ‘Well, if it is, it’s not shown on the chart,’ Jannie grumbled. ‘One minute before we are on the coordinates.’ The minute ticked off slowly on the stopwatch.

  ‘Still nothing—’ Fred broke off as a red flare shot up from the earth directly ahead and flashed past Big Dolly’s nose. Everyone in the cockpit smiled and relaxed with relief.

  ‘Right on the nose.’ Nicholas patted Jannie’s shoulder in congratulations. ‘Couldn’t have done better myself.’

  Fred climbed a few hundred feet and came round in a one-eighty turn. Now there were two signal fires burning out there on the plain – one with black smoke, the other sending a column of white straight up into the still evening sky. It was only when they were a kilometre out that they were able to make out the faint outline of the overgrown and long-disused landing strip. Roseires airstrip had been built twenty years before by a company that tried to grow sugar cane under irrigation from the Blue Nile. But Africa had won again and the company had passed into oblivion, leaving this feeble scrape mark on the plain as its epitaph. Mek Nimmur had chosen this remote and deserted place for the rendezvous.

  ‘No sign of a reception committee,’ Jannie grunted. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Continue your approach,’ Nicholas told him. ‘There should be another flare – ah, there it is!’ The ball of fire shot up from a clump of thorn trees at the far end of the runway, and for the first time they were able to make out human figures in the bleak landscape. They had stayed hidden until the very last moment.

  ‘That’s Mek, all right! Go ahead and land.’

  As Big Dolly finished her roll-out and the end of the rough and pitted runway came up ahead, a figure in camouflage fatigues popped up ahead of them. With a pair of paddles it signalled them to taxi into the space between two of the tallest thorn trees.

  Jannie cut the engines and grinned at them over his shoulder. ‘Well, boys and girls, looks like we pulled off another lucky one!’

  Even from the height of Big Dolly’s cockpit there was no mistaking the commanding figure of Mek Nimmur as he emerged from the cover of the clump of acacia trees. Only now did they realize that the trees had been shrouded with camouflage netting; this was why they had not been able to spot any sign of human presence from the air. As soon as the loading ramp was lowered, Mek Nimmur came striding up it.

  ‘Nicholas!’ They embraced and, after Mek had kissed him noisily on each cheek, he held Nicholas at arm’s length and studied his face, delighted to see him again. ‘So I was right! You are up to your old tricks. Not simply a dik-dik shoot, was it?’

  ‘How can I lie to an old friend?’ Nicholas shrugged.

  ‘It always came easy to you,’ Mek laughed, ‘but I am glad we are going to have some fun together. Life has been very boring recently.’

  ‘I bet!’ Nicholas punched his shoulder affectionately.

  A slim, graceful figure followed Mek up the ramp. In the olive-green fatigues Nicholas hardly recognized Tessay until she spoke. She wore canvas para boots and a cloth cap that made her look like a boy.

  ‘Nicholas! Royan! Welcome back!’ Tessay cried. The two women embraced as enthusiastically as the men had done.

  ‘Come on, you Ous!’ Jannie protested. ‘This isn’t Woodstock. I have to get back to Malta tonight. I want to take off before dark.’

  Swiftly Mek took charge of the offloading. His men swarmed aboard and manhandled the pallets forward on the rollers, while Sapper started up his beloved front-end loader and used it to run the cargo down the ramp and stack it in the acacia grove under the camouflage netting. With so many hands to help it went swiftly, and Big Dolly’s hold was emptied just as the sun settled wearily on to the horizon, and the short African twilight bled all colour from the landscape.

  Jannie and Nicholas had one last hurried discussion in the cockpit while Fred completed his flight checks. They went over the plans and radio procedures one last time.

  ‘Four days from today,’ Jannie agreed, as they shook hands briefly.

  ‘Let the man go, Nicholas,’ Mek bellowed from below. ‘We must get across the border before dawn.’

  They watched Big Dolly taxi down to the end of the strip and swing around. The engine beat crescendoed as she came tearing back in a long rolling shroud of dust and lifted off over their heads. Jannie waggled his wings in farewell and, without navigation lights showing, the great aircraft blended like a black bat into the darkening sky and disappeared almost immediately.

  ‘Come here.’ Nicholas led Royan to a seat under the acacia. ‘I don’t want that knee to play up again.’ He pushed her culottes halfway up her thigh and strapped the knee with an elastic bandage, trying not to make his pleasure in this task too apparent. He was pleased to see that the bruising had almost faded and there was no longer any swelling.

  He palpated it gently. Her skin was velvety and the flesh beneath it firm and warm to the touch. He looked up, and from the expression on her face realized that she was enjoying this intimacy as much as he was. As he caught her eye she flushed slightly, and quickly smoothed down her culottes.

  She jumped up and said, ‘Tessay and I have a lot of catching up to do,’ and hurried across to join her.

  ‘I am leaving a full combat platoon to guard your stores here,’ Mek explained to Nicholas as Tessay led Royan away. ‘We will travel in a very small party as far as the border. I don’t expect any trouble. There is very little enemy activity in this sector at the moment. Lots of fighting in the south, but we are quiet here. That is why I chose this rendezvous.’

  ‘How far to the Ethiopian border?’ Nicholas wanted to know.

  ‘Five hours’ march,’ Mek told him. ‘We will slip through one of our pipelines after the moon has set. The rest of my men are waiting in the entrance to the Abbay gorge. We should rendezvous with them before dawn tomorrow.’

  ‘And from there to the monastery?’

  ‘Another two days’ march,’ Mek replied. ‘We will be there just in time to receive the drop from your fat friend in the fat plane.’

  He turned away and gave his last orders to the platoon commander who would remain at Roseires to guard the stores. Then he assembled the party of six men who would form their escort across the border. Mek divided up the loads between them. The most important single item was the radio, a modern military lightweight model which Nicholas carried himself.

  ‘Those bags of yours are too difficult to carry. You will have to repack them,’ Mek told Nicholas and Royan. So they emptied their bags and stuffed the contents into the two canvas haversacks that Mek had ready for them. Two of his men slung the haversacks over their shoulders and disappeared into the darkness.

  ‘He is not taking that!’ Mek stared aghast at the bulky legs of the theodolite that Sapper had retrieved from one of the pallets. Sapper spoke no Arabic, so Nicholas had to translate.

  ‘Sapper says that it is a delicate instrument. He cannot allow it to be dropped from the aircraft. He says that if it is damaged he will not be able to do the work he was hired for.’

  ‘Who is going to carry it?’ Mek demanded. ‘My men will mutiny if I try to make them do it.’

  ‘Tell the cantankerous bugger that I will carry it myself.’ Sapper drew himself up with dignity. ‘I wouldn’t let one of his great clumsy oafs lay a finger on it.’ He picked up the bundle, placed it over his shoulder and stalked away with a stiff back.

  Mek let the advance guard have a five-minute start, and then he nodded. ‘We can go now.’

  Thirty minutes after Big Dolly had taken off, they left the airfield and set out across the dark and silent plain, headed into the east. Mek set a hard pace. He and Nicholas seemed to hav
e the eyes of a pair of cats, Royan thought, as she followed close behind them. They could see in the darkness, and only a whispered warning from one of them prevented her falling into a hole or tripping over a pile of rocks in the darkness. When she did stumble, Nicholas seemed always to be there, reaching back to steady her with a strong, firm grip.

  They marched in complete and disciplined silence. It was only every hour, when they rested for five minutes, that Nicholas and Mek sat close together, and from the few quiet words she picked up Royan realized that Nicholas was explaining to him the full reasons for their return to the Abbay gorge. She heard Nicholas repeat the names ‘Mamose’ and ‘Taita’ often, and Mek’s deep voice questioning him at length. Then they would be up again and moving forward in the night.

  After a while she lost all sense of the distance they had travelled. Only the hourly rest periods orientated her to the passage of time. Fatigue crept over her slowly, until it required an effort to lift her foot for each pace. Despite her boast, her knee was beginning to ache. Now and then she felt Nicholas touch her arm, guiding her over the rough places. At other times they would stop abruptly at some whispered warning from up front. Then they would stand quietly waiting in the darkness, nerves tensed, until at another whisper they would move on again at the same pressing pace. Once she smelt the cool muddy effluvium of the river on the dry warm night air, and she knew that they must be very close to the Nile. Without a word being spoken she sensed the nervous tension in the men ahead of her, and was aware of the alertness in the way they carried themselves and their weapons.

  ‘Crossing the border now,’ Nicholas breathed close to her face, and the tension was infectious. She forgot her tiredness, and heard her pulse beating in her own ears.

  This time they did not stop for the usual rest break, but continued for another hour until slowly she felt the mood of the men changing. Someone laughed softly, and there was a lightness in their pace as they swung on towards the luminescence in the eastern sky. Abruptly the moon thrust its crescent horns above the dark silhouette of far-off mountain ranges.

  ‘All clear. We are through,’ Nicholas told her in his normal voice. ‘Welcome back to Ethiopia. How are you feeling?’

  ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘I am tired too.’ He grinned at her in the moonlight. ‘Pretty soon we will camp and rest. Not much further.’

  He was lying, of course: the march went on and on until she wanted to weep. And then suddenly she heard the sound of the river again, the soft rushing flow of the Nile in the dawn. Up ahead she heard Mek talking to the men who were waiting for them, and then Nicholas guided her off the path and made her sit while he knelt in front of her and unlaced her boots.

  ‘You did well. I am proud of you,’ he told her, as he stripped off her socks and examined her feet for blisters. Then he unbandaged the knee. It was slightly swollen, and he massaged it with a skilled and tender touch.

  She sighed softly, ‘Don’t stop. That feels good.’

  ‘I’ll give you a Brufen for the inflammation.’ He dug the pills out of his pack and then spread his padded jacket for her to lie on. ‘Sorry, the sleeping bags are with our other gear. Have to rough it until Jannie makes his air drop.’

  He passed her the water bottle, and while she swallowed the pill he pulled the tab on a pack of emergency rations. ‘Not exactly gourmet fare.’ He sniffed the contents. ‘In the army we call them rat packs.’ She fell asleep with her mouth still half-filled with tasteless meat loaf and plastic cheese.

  When Nicholas woke her with a mug of hot sweet tea, she saw it was already late afternoon. He sat beside her and sipped at his own mug, noisily blowing away the steam between each mouthful.

  ‘You will be pleased to know that Mek is now fully in the picture. He has agreed to help us.’

  ‘What have you told him?’

  ‘Just enough to keep him interested.’ Nicholas grinned. ‘The theory of progressive disclosure. Never tell everything all at once, feed it to them a little at a time. He knows what we are looking for, and that we are going to dam a river.’

  ‘What about men to work on the dam?’

  ‘The monks at St Frumentius will do whatever he tells them. He is a great hero.’

  ‘What have you promised him in return?’

  ‘We haven’t got round to that yet. I told him that we have no idea what we are going to find, and he laughed and said he would trust me.’

  ‘Silly boy, isn’t he?’

  ‘Not exactly how I would describe Mek Nimmur,’ he murmured. ‘I think when the time is ripe he will let us know what the price of his cooperation is.’ He looked up at that moment. ‘We were just talking about you, Mek.’

  Mek strode up to them, and then squatted on his haunches beside Nicholas.

  ‘What were you saying about me?’

  ‘Royan says you are a hard bastard, pushing her on a forced march all night.’

  ‘Nicholas is spoiling you. I have been watching him fussing over you,’ he chuckled. ‘What I say is, treat them rough. Women love it.’ Then he grew serious. ‘I am sorry, Royan. The border is always a bad place. You will find me less of a monster now we are on home ground.’

  ‘We are very grateful for all you are doing.’

  He inclined his head gravely, ‘Nicholas is an old friend, and I hope that you are a new friend.’

  ‘I have been terribly distressed. Tessay told me last night that there had been trouble at the monastery.’

  Mek scowled and tugged at his short beard, pulling a tuft of hair from his own chin with the force of his anger. ‘Nogo and his killers. This is just a sample of what we are fighting against. We have been rescued from the tyranny of Mengistu, only to be plunged into fresh horror.’

  ‘What happened, Mek?’

  Speaking tersely but vividly, he described the massacre and the plunder of the monastery’s treasures. ‘There was no doubt it was Nogo. Every one of the monks that escaped knows him well.’

  His anger was too fierce for him to contain, and he stood up abruptly. ‘The monastery means much to all the people of the Gojam. I was christened there, by Jali Hora himself. The murder of the abbot and the desecration of the church is a terrible outrage.’ He jammed his cap down on his head. ‘And now we must get on. The road ahead is steep and difficult.’

  Now that they were clear of the border, it was safe to move in daylight. The second day’s march carried them into the depths of the gorge. There were no foothills: it was like entering through the keep of a vast castle. The walls of the great central massif rose up almost four thousand feet on either hand, and the river snaked along in the depths, its entire length churned by rapids and breaking white water. At noon Mek broke the march to rest in a grove of trees beside the river. There was a beach below them, sheltered by massive boulders which must have rolled down from the cliffs that hung like a rampart above them.

  The five of them sat a little apart from each other. Sapper was still smarting from his altercation over the theodolite with Mek, and keeping himself aloof. He placed the heavy instrument in a conspicuous position and sat ostentatiously close to it. Mek and Tessay seemed strangely quiet and withdrawn, until suddenly Tessay reached out and grasped Mek’s hand.

  ‘I want to tell them,’ she blurted out impulsively.

  Mek looked away at the river for a moment before he nodded. ‘Why not?’ he shrugged at last.

  ‘I want them to know,’ Tessay insisted. ‘They knew Boris. They will understand.’

  ‘Do you want me to tell them?’ Mek asked softly, and he was still holding her hand.

  ‘Yes,’ she nodded, ‘it is best that it comes from you.’

  Mek was silent for a while, gathering his words, and then he started in that low rumbling voice, not looking at them, but watching Tessay’s face. ‘The very first moment I looked upon this woman, I knew that she was the one that God had sent my way.’

  Tessay moved closer to him.

  ‘Tessay and I said our vows together on the nigh
t of Timkat and asked for God’s forgiveness, and then I took her away as my woman.’

  She laid her head upon his great muscular shoulder.

  ‘The Russian followed us. He found us here, on this very spot. He tried to kill us both.’

  Tessay looked down at the beach upon which she and Mek had so nearly died, and she shuddered at the memory.

  ‘We fought,’ he said simply, ‘and when he was dead, I sent his body floating away down the river.’

  ‘We knew he was dead,’ Royan told them. ‘We heard from the people at the embassy that the police found his body downstream, near the border. We didn’t know how it had happened.’

  They were all quiet for a while, and then Nicholas broke the silence, ‘I wish I had been there to watch. It must have been one hell of a fight.’ He shook his head in awe.

  ‘The Russian was good. I am glad I don’t have to fight him again,’ Mek admitted, and stood up. ‘We can reach the monastery before dark, if we start now.’

  Mai Metemma, the newly elected abbot of St Frumentius, met them on the terrace of the monastery overlooking the river. He was only a little younger than Jali Hora had been, tall and with a dignified silver head, and today he was wearing the blue crown in honour of such a distinguished guest as Mek Nimmur.

  After the visitors had bathed and rested for an hour in the cells that had been set aside for them, the monks came to lead them to the welcome feast that had been prepared. When the tej flasks had been refilled for the third time, and the mood of the abbot and of his monks had mellowed, Mek began to whisper into the old man’s ear.

  ‘You recall the history of St Frumentius – how God cast him up on our shore from the storm-tossed sea, so that he might bring the true faith to us?’

  The abbot’s eyes filled with tears. ‘His holy body was entombed here, in our maqdas. The barbarians came and stole the relic away from us. We are children without a father. The reason for the building of this church and monastery has been taken away,’ he lamented. ‘No longer will the pilgrims come from every corner of Ethiopia to pray at his shrine. We will be forgotten by the Church. We are undone. Our monastery will perish and our monks will be blown away like dead leaves on the wind.’