by Wilbur Smith
‘Okay, boss. I’d better make sure my boys aren’t sleeping.’
He left the compartment and the broken glass from the corridor windows crunched under his boots.
‘I’ll be on my way also.’ Mike stood up and pulled the groundsheet over his shoulders.
‘Don’t waste the batteries of the searchlights, Mike. Sweep every ten minutes or so.’
‘Okay, Bruce.’ Mike looked across at Hendry. ‘I’ll call you at nine o’clock.’
‘Jolly good show, old fruit.’ Wally exaggerated Mike’s accent. ‘Good hunting, what!’ and then as Mike left the compartment, ‘Silly old bugger, why does he have to talk like that?’
No one answered him, and he pulled up his shirt behind.
‘André, what’s this on my back?’
‘It’s a pimple.’
‘Well, squeeze it then.’
Bruce woke in the night, sweating, with the mosquitoes whining about his face. Outside it was still raining and occasionally the reflected light from the searchlight on the roof of the coach lit the interior dimly.
On one of the bottom bunks Mike Haig lay on his back. His face was shining with sweat and he rolled his head from side to side on the pillow. He was grinding his teeth – a sound to which Bruce had become accustomed, and he preferred it to Hendry’s snores.
‘You poor old bugger,’ whispered Bruce.
From the bunk opposite, André de Surrier whimpered. In sleep he looked like a child with dark soft hair falling over his forehead.
– 6 –
The rain petered out in the dawn and the sun was hot before it cleared the horizon. It lifted a warm mist from the dripping forest. As they ran north the forest thickened, the trees grew closer together and the undergrowth beneath them was coarser than it had been around Elisabethville.
Through the warm misty dawn Bruce saw the water tower at Msapa Junction rising like a lighthouse above the forest, its silver paint streaked with brown rust. Then they came round the last curve in the tracks and the little settlement huddled before them.
It was small, half a dozen buildings in all, and there was about it the desolate aspect of human habitation reverting to jungle.
Beside the tracks stood the water tower and the raised concrete coal bins. Then the station buildings of wood and iron, with the large sign above the verandah:
MSAPA JUNCTION. Elevation 963m.
There was an avenue of casia flora trees with very dark green foliage and orange flowers; and beyond that, on the edge of the forest, a row of cottages.
One of the cottages had been burned, its ruins were fire blackened and tumbled; and the gardens had lost all sense of discipline with three months’ neglect.
‘Driver, stop beside the water tower. You have fifteen minutes to fill your boiler.’
‘Thank you, monsieur.’
With a heavy sigh of steam the loco pulled up beside the tower.
‘Haig, take four men and go back to give the driver a hand.’
‘Okay, Bruce.’
Bruce turned once more to the radio.
‘Hendry.’
‘Hello there.’
‘Get a patrol together, six men, and search those cottages. Then take a look at the edge of the bush, we don’t want any unexpected visitors.’
Wally Hendry waved an acknowledgement from the leading truck, and Bruce went on:
‘Put de Surrier on.’ He watched Hendry pass the set to André. ‘De Surrier, you are in charge of the leading trucks in Hendry’s absence. Keep Hendry covered, but watch the bush behind you also. They could come from there.’
Bruce switched off the set and turned to Ruffy. ‘Stay up here on the roof, Ruffy. I’m going to chase them up with the watering. If you see anything, don’t write me a postcard, start pooping off.’
Ruffy nodded. ‘Have some breakfast to take with you.’ He proffered an open bottle of beer.
‘Better than bacon and eggs.’ Bruce accepted the bottle and climbed down on to the platform. Sipping the beer he walked back along the train and looked up at Mike and the engine driver in the tower.
‘Is it empty?’ he called up at them.
‘Half full, enough for a bath if you want one,’ answered Mike.
‘Don’t tempt me.’ The idea was suddenly very attractive, for he could smell his own stale body odour and his eyelids were itchy and swollen from mosquito bites. ‘My kingdom for a bath.’ He ran his fingers over his jowls and they rasped over stiff beard.
He watched them swing the canvas hose out over the loco. The chubby little engine driver clambered up and sat astride the boiler as he fitted the hose.
A shout behind him made Bruce turn quickly, and he saw Hendry’s patrol coming back from the cottages. They were dragging two small prisoners with them.
‘Hiding in the first cottage,’ shouted Hendry. ‘They tried to leg it into the bush.’ He prodded one of them with his bayonet. The child cried out and twisted in the hands of the gendarme who held her.
‘Enough of that.’ Bruce stopped him from using the bayonet again and went to meet them. He looked at the two children.
The girl was close to puberty with breasts like insect bites just starting to show, thin-legged with enlarged kneecaps out of proportion to her thighs and calves. She wore only a dirty piece of trade cloth drawn up between her legs and secured around her waist by a length of bark string, and the tribal tattoo marks across her chest and cheeks and forehead stood proud in ridges of scar tissue.
‘Ruffy.’ Bruce called him down from the coach. ‘Can you speak to them?’
Ruffy picked up the boy and held him on his hip. He was younger than the girl – seven, perhaps eight years old. Very dark-skinned and completely naked, as naked as the terror on his face.
Ruffy grunted sharply and the gendarme released the girl. She stood trembling, making no attempt to escape.
Then in a soothing rumble Ruffy began talking to the boy on his hip; he smiled as he spoke and stroked the child’s head. Slowly a little of the fear melted and the boy answered in a piping treble that Bruce could not understand.
‘What does he say?’ urged Bruce.
‘He thinks we’re going to eat them,’ laughed Ruffy. ‘Not enough here for a decent breakfast.’ He patted the skinny little arm, grey with crushed filth, then he gave an order to one of the gendarmes. The man disappeared into the coach and came back with a handful of chocolate bars. Still talking, Ruffy peeled one of them and placed it in the boy’s mouth. The child’s eyes widened appreciatively at the taste and he chewed quickly, his eyes on Ruffy’s face, his answers now muffled with chocolate.
At last Ruffy turned to Bruce.
‘No trouble here, boss. They come from a small village about an hour’s walk away. Just five or six families, and no war party. These kids sneaked across to have a look at the houses, pinch what they could perhaps, but that’s all.’
‘How many men at this village?’ asked Bruce, and Ruffy turned back to the boy. In reply to the question he held up the fingers of both hands, without interrupting the chewing.
‘Does he know if the line is clear through to Port Reprieve? Have they burnt the bridges or torn up the tracks?’ Both children were dumb to this question. The boy swallowed the last of his chocolate and looked hungrily at Ruffy, who filled his mouth again.
‘Jesus,’ muttered Hendry with deep disgust. ‘Is this a crèche or something. Let’s all play ring around the roses.’
‘Shut up,’ snapped Bruce, and then to Ruffy, ‘Have they seen any soldiers?’
Two heads shaken in solemn unison.
‘Have they seen any war parties of their own people?’
Again solemn negative.
‘All right, give them the rest of the chocolate,’ instructed Bruce. That was all he could get out of them, and time was wasting. He glanced back at the tower and saw that Haig and the engine driver had finished watering. For a further second he studied the boy. His own son would be about the same age now; it was twelve months since �
�� Bruce stopped himself hurriedly. That way lay madness.
‘Hendry, take them back to the edge of the bush and turn them loose. Hurry up. We’ve wasted long enough.’
‘You’re telling me!’ grunted Hendry and beckoned to the two children. With Hendry leading and a gendarme on each side they trotted away obediently and disappeared behind the station building.
‘Driver, are your preparations complete?’
‘Yes, monsieur, we are ready to depart.’
‘Shovel all the coal in, we’ve gotta keep her rolling.’ Bruce smiled at him, he liked the little man and their stilted exchanges gave him pleasure.
‘Pardon, monsieur.’
‘It was an imbecility, a joke – forgive me.’
‘Ah, a joke!’ The roly-poly stomach wobbled merrily.
‘Okay, Mike,’ Bruce shouted, ‘get your men aboard. We are—’
A burst of automatic gunfire cut his voice short. It came from behind the station buildings, and it battered into the heat-muted morning with such startling violence that for an instant Bruce stood paralysed.
‘Haig,’ he yelled, ‘get up front and take over from de Surrier.’ That was the weak point, and Mike’s party ran down the train.
‘You men.’ Bruce stopped the six gendarmes. ‘Come with me.’ They fell in behind him, and with a quick glance Bruce assured himself that the train was safe. All along its length rifle barrels were poking out protectively, while on the roof Ruffy was dragging the Bren round to cover the flank. A charge by even a thousand Baluba must fail before the fire power that was ready now to receive it.
‘Come on,’ said Bruce and ran, with the gendarmes behind him, to the sheltering wall of the station building. There had been no shot fired since that initial burst, which could mean either that it was a false alarm or that Hendry’s party had been overwhelmed by the first rush.
The door of the station master’s office was locked. Bruce kicked and it crashed open with the weight of his booted foot behind it.
I’ve always wanted to do that, he thought happily in his excitement, ever since I saw Gable do it in San Francisco.
‘You four – inside! Cover us from the windows.’ They crowded into the room with their rifles held ready. Through the open door Bruce saw the telegraph equipment on the table by the far wall; it was clattering metallically from traffic on the Elisabethville-Jadotville line. Why is it that under the stimulus of excitement my mind always registers irrelevances? Which thought is another irrelevancy, he decided.
‘Come on, you two, stay with me.’ He led them down the outside wall, keeping in close to its sheltering bulk, pausing at the corner to check the load of his rifle and slip the selector on to rapid fire.
A further moment he hesitated. What will I find around this corner? A hundred naked savages crowded round the mutilated bodies of Hendry and his gendarmes, or . . . ?
Crouching, ready to jump back behind the wall, rifle held at high port across his chest, every muscle and nerve of his body cocked like a hair-trigger, Bruce stepped sideways into the open.
Hendry and the two gendarmes stood in the dusty road beyond the first cottage. They were relaxed, talking together, Hendry reloading his rifle, cramming the magazine with big red hands on which the gingery hair caught the sunlight. A cigarette dangled from his lower lip and he laughed suddenly, throwing his head back as he did so and the cigarette ash dropped down his jacket front. Bruce noticed the long dark sweat stain across his shoulders.
The two children lay in the road fifty yards farther on.
Bruce was suddenly cold, it came from inside, a cramping coldness of the guts and chest. Slowly he straightened up and began to walk towards the children. His feet fell silently in the powder dust and the only sound was his own breathing, hoarse, as though a wounded beast followed close behind him. He walked past Hendry and the two gendarmes without looking at them; but they stopped talking, watching him uneasily.
He reached the girl first and went down on one knee beside her, laying his rifle aside and turning her gently on to her back.
‘This isn’t true,’ he whispered. ‘This can’t be true.’
The bullet had taken half her chest out with it, a hole the size of a coffee cup, with the blood still moving in it, but slowly, oozing, welling up into it with the viscosity of new honey.
Bruce moved across to the boy; he felt an almost dreamlike sense of unreality.
‘No, this isn’t true.’ He spoke louder, trying to undo it with words.
Three bullets had hit the boy; one had torn his arm loose at the shoulder and the sharp white end of the bone pointed accusingly out of the wound. The other bullets had severed his trunk almost in two.
It came from far away, like the rising roar of a train along a tunnel. Bruce could feel his whole being shaken by the strength of it, he shut his eyes and listened to the roaring in his head, and with his eyes tight closed his vision was filled with the colour of blood.
‘Hold on!’ a tiny voice screamed in his roaring head. ‘Don’t let go, fight it. Fight it as you’ve fought before.’
And he clung like a flood victim to the straw of his sanity while the great roaring was all around him. Then the roar was muted, rumbling away, gone past, a whisper, now nothing.
The coldness came back to him, a coldness more vast than the flood had been.
He opened his eyes and breathed again, stood up and walked back to where Hendry stood with the two gendarmes.
‘Corporal,’ Bruce addressed one of the men beside Hendry; and with a shock he heard that his own voice was calm, without any trace of the fury that had so nearly carried him away on its flood.
‘Corporal, go back to the train. Tell Lieutenant Haig and Sergeant Major Ruffararo that I want them here.’
Thankfully the man went, and Bruce spoke to Wally Hendry in the same dispassionate tone.
‘I told you to turn them loose,’ he said.
‘So they could run home and call the whole pack down on us – is that what you wanted, Bucko?’ Hendry had recovered now, he was defiant, grinning.
‘So instead you murdered them?’
‘Murdered! You crazy or something, Bruce? They’re Balubes, aren’t they? Bloody man-eating Balubes!’ shouted Hendry angrily, no longer grinning. ‘What’s wrong with you, man? This is war, Bucko, war. C’est la guerre, like the man said, c’est la guerre!’ Then suddenly his voice moderated again. ‘Let’s forget it. I did what was right, now let’s forget it; what’s two more bloody Balubes after all the killing that’s been going on? Let’s forget it.’
Bruce did not answer, he lit a cigarette and looked beyond Hendry for the others to come.
‘How’s that, Bruce? You willing we just forget it?’ persisted Hendry.
‘On the contrary, Hendry, I make you a sacred oath, and I call upon God to witness it.’ Bruce was not looking at him, he couldn’t trust himself to look at Hendry without killing him. ‘This is my promise to you: I will have you hanged for this, not shot, hanged on good hemp rope. I have sent for Haig and Ruffararo so we’ll have plenty of witnesses. The first thing I do once we get back to Elisabethville will be to turn you over to the proper authorities.’
‘You don’t mean that!’
‘I have never meant anything so seriously in my life.’
‘Jesus, Bruce—!’
Then Haig and Ruffy came; they came running until they saw, and they stopped suddenly and stood uncertainly in the bright sun, looking from Bruce to the two frail little corpses lying in the road.
‘What happened?’ asked Mike.
‘Hendry shot them,’ answered Bruce.
‘What for?’
‘Only he knows.’
‘You mean he – he just killed them, just shot them down?’
‘Yes.’
‘My God,’ said Mike, and then again, his voice dull with shock, ‘my God.’
‘Go and look at them, Haig. I want you to look closely so you remember.’
Haig walked across to the children
.
‘You too, Ruffy. You’ll be a witness at the trial.’
Mike Haig and Ruffy walked side by side to where the children lay, and stood staring down at them. Hendry shuffled his feet in the dust awkwardly and then went on loading the magazine of his rifle.
‘Oh, for Chrissake!’ he blustered. ‘What’s all the fuss? They’re just a couple of Balubes.’
Wheeling slowly to face him Mike Haig’s face was a yellowish colour with only his cheeks and his nose still flushed with the tiny burst of veins beneath the surface of the skin, but there was no colour in his lips. Each breath he drew sobbed in his throat. He started back towards Hendry, still breathing that way, and his mouth was working as he tried to force it to speak. As he came on he unslung the rifle from his shoulder.
‘Haig!’ said Bruce sharply.
‘This time – you – you bloody – this is the last—’ mouthed Haig.
‘Watch it, Bucko!’ Hendry warned him. He stepped back, clumsily trying to fit the loaded magazine on to his rifle.
Mike Haig dropped the point of his bayonet to the level of Hendry’s stomach.
‘Haig!’ shouted Bruce, and Haig charged surprisingly fast for a man of his age, leaning forward, leading with the bayonet at Hendry’s stomach, the incoherent mouthings reaching their climax in a formless bellow.
‘Come on, then!’ Hendry answered him and stepped forward. As they came together Hendry swept the bayonet to one side with the butt of his own rifle. The point went under his armpit and they collided chest to chest, staggering as Haig’s weight carried them backwards. Hendry dropped his rifle and locked both arms round Haig’s neck, forcing his head back so that his face was tilted up at the right angle.
‘Look out, Mike, he’s going to butt!’ Bruce had recognized the move, but his warning came too late. Hendry’s head jerked forward and Mike gasped as the front of Hendry’s steel helmet caught him across the bridge of his nose. The rifle slipped from Mike’s grip and fell into the road, he lifted his hands and covered his face with spread fingers and the redness oozed out between them.
Again Hendry’s head jerked forward like a hammer and again Mike gasped as the steel smashed into his face and fingers.