by Wilbur Smith
‘I hope you’re right.’
‘So do I,’ said Bruce absently, his mind busy with the problem of defending the bridge. ‘We’ll strip all the sandbags off the coaches and build an emplacement here in the middle of the roadway, leave two of the battery-operated searchlights and a case of flares with them, one of the Brens and a couple of cases of grenades. Food and water for a week. No, they’ll be all right.’
The train was rolling down slowly towards them – and a single arrow rose from the edge of the jungle. Slowly it rose, curving in flight and falling towards the train, dropping faster now, silently into the mass of men in the leading truck.
So Hendry had missed and the Baluba had come up stream through the thick bush to launch his arrow in retaliation. Bruce sprang to the guard rail and, using it as a rest for his rifle, opened up in short bursts, searching the green mass and seeing it tremble with his bullets. Haig was shooting also, hunting the area from which the arrow had come.
The train was up to them now and Bruce slung his rifle over his shoulder and scrambled up the side of the truck. He pushed his way to the radio set.
‘Driver, stop the covered coaches in the middle of the bridge,’ he snapped, and then he switched it off and looked for Ruffy.
‘Sergeant Major, get all those sandbags off the roof into the roadway.’ While they worked, the gendarmes would be protected from further arrows by the body of the train.
‘Okay, boss.’
‘Kanaki.’ Bruce picked his most reliable sergeant. ‘I am leaving you here with ten men to hold the bridge for us. Take one of the Brens, and two of the lights—’ Quickly Bruce issued his orders and then he had time to ask André:
‘What happened to that arrow? Was anyone hit?’
‘No, missed by a few inches. Here it is.’
‘That was a bit of luck.’ Bruce took the arrow from André and inspected it quickly. A light reed, crudely fletched with green leaves and with the iron head bound into it with a strip of rawhide. It looked fragile and ineffectual, but the barbs of the head were smeared thickly with a dark paste that had dried like toffee.
‘Pleasant,’ murmured Bruce, and then he shuddered slightly. He could imagine it embedded in his body with the poison purple-staining the flesh beneath the skin. He had heard that it was not a comfortable death, and the iron-tipped reed was suddenly malignant and repulsive. He snapped it in half and threw it out over the side of the bridge before he jumped down from the truck to supervise the building of the guard post.
‘Not enough sandbags, boss.’
‘Take the mattresses off all the bunks, Ruffy.’ Bruce solved that quickly. The leather-covered coir pallets would stop an arrow with ease.
Fifteen minutes later the post was completed, a shoulder-high ring of sandbags and mattresses large enough to accommodate ten men and their equipment, with embrasures sited to command both ends of the bridge.
‘We’ll be back early tomorrow, Kanaki. Let none of your men leave this post for any purpose; the gaps between the timbers are sufficient for purposes of sanitation.’
‘We shall enjoy enviable comfort, Captain. But we will lack that which soothes.’ Kanaki grinned meaningly at Bruce.
‘Ruffy, leave them a case of beer.’
‘A whole case?’ Ruffy made no attempt to hide his shocked disapproval of such a prodigal order.
‘Is my credit not good?’
‘You credit is okay, boss,’ and then he changed to French to make his protest formal. ‘My concern is the replacement of such a valuable commodity.’
‘You’re wasting time, Ruffy!’
– 8 –
From the bridge it was thirty miles to Port Reprieve. They met the road again six miles outside the town; it crossed under them and disappeared into the forest again to circle out round the high ground taking the easier route into Port Reprieve. But the railroad climbed up the hills in a series of traverses and came out at the top six hundred feet above the town. On the stony slopes the forest found meagre purchase and the vegetation was sparser; it did not obscure the view.
Standing on the roof Bruce looked out across the Lufira swamps to the north, a vastness of poisonous green swamp grass and open water, disappearing into the blue heat haze without any sign of ending. From its southern extremity it was drained by the Lufira river. The river was half a mile wide, deep olive-green, ruffled darker by eddies of wind across its surface, fenced into the very edge of the water by a solid barrier of dense river bush. In the angle formed by the swamp and the river was a headland which protected the natural harbour of Port Reprieve. The town was on a spit of land, the harbour on one side and a smaller swamp on the other. The road came round the right-hand side of the hills, crossed a causeway over the swamp and entered the single street of the town from the far side.
There were three large buildings in the centre of the town opposite the railway yard, their iron roofs bright beacons in the sunlight; and clustered round them were perhaps fifty smaller thatched dwellings.
Down on the edge of the harbour was a long shed, obviously a workshop, and two jetties ran into the water. The diamond dredgers were moored alongside; three of them, ungainly black hulks with high superstructures and blunt ends.
It was a place of heat and fever and swamp smells, an ugly little village by a green reptile river.
‘Nice place to retire,’ Mike Haig grunted.
‘Or open a health resort,’ said Bruce.
Beyond the causeway, on the main headland, there was another cluster of buildings, just the tops were showing above the forest. Among them rose the copper-clad spire of a church.
‘Mission station,’ guessed Bruce.
‘St Augustine’s,’ agreed Ruffy. ‘My first wife’s little brudder got himself educated there. He’s an attaché to the ministry of something or other in Elisabethville now, doing damn good for himself.’ Boasting a little.
‘Bully for him,’ said Bruce.
The train had started angling down the hills towards the town.
‘Well, I reckon we’ve made it, boss.’
‘I reckon also; all we have to do is get back again.’
‘Yessir, I reckon that’s all.’
And they ran into the town.
There were more than forty people in the crowd that lined the platform to welcome them.
We’ll have a heavy load on the way home, thought Bruce as he ran his eye over them. He saw the bright spots of women’s dresses in the throng. Bruce counted four of them. That’s another complication; one day I hope I find something in this life that turns out exactly as expected, something that will run smoothly and evenly through to its right and logical conclusion. Some hope, he decided, some bloody hope.
The joy and relief of the men and women on the platform was pathetically apparent in their greetings. Most of the women were crying and the men ran beside the train like small boys as it slid in along the raised concrete platform. All of them were of mixed blood, Bruce noted. They varied in colour from creamy yellow to charcoal. The Belgians had certainly left much to be remembered by.
Standing back from the throng, a little aloof from the general jollification, was a half-blooded Belgian. There was an air of authority about him that was unmistakable. On one side of him stood a large bosomy woman of his own advanced age, darker skinned than he was; but Bruce saw immediately that she was his wife. At his other hand stood a figure dressed in a white open-necked shirt and blue jeans that Bruce at first thought was a boy, until the head turned and he saw the long plume of dark hair that hung down her back, and the unmanly double pressure beneath the white shirt.
The train stopped and Bruce jumped down on to the platform and laughingly pushed his way through the crowds towards the Belgian. Despite a year in the Congo, Bruce had not grown accustomed to being kissed by someone who had not shaved for two or three days and who smelled strongly of garlic and cheap tobacco. This atrocity was committed upon him a dozen times or more before he arrived before the Belgian.
‘The Good Lord bless you for coming to our aid, Monsieur Captain.’ The Belgian recognized the twin bars on the front of Bruce’s helmet and held out his hand. Bruce had expected another kiss, so he accepted the handshake with relief.
‘I am only glad that we are in time,’ he answered.
‘May I introduce myself – Martin Boussier, district manager of Union Miniére Corporation, and this is my wife, Madame Boussier.’ He was a tall man, but unlike his wife, sparsely fleshed. His hair was completely silver and his skin folded, toughened and browned by a life under the equatorial sun. Bruce took an instant liking to him. Madame Boussier pressed her bulk against Bruce and kissed him heartily. Her moustache was too soft to cause him discomfort and she smelled of toilet soap, which was a distinct improvement, decided Bruce.
‘May I also present Madame Cartier,’ and for the first time Bruce looked squarely at the girl. A number of things registered in his mind simultaneously: the paleness of her skin which was not unhealthy but had an opaque coolness which he wanted to touch, the size of her eyes which seemed to fill half her face, the unconscious provocation of her lips, and the use of the word Madame before her name.
‘Captain Curry – of the Katanga Army,’ said Bruce. She’s too young to be married, can’t be more than seventeen. She’s still got that little girl freshness about her and I bet she smells like an unweaned puppy.
‘Thank you for coming, monsieur.’ She had a throatiness in her voice as though she were just about to laugh or to make love, and Bruce added three years to his estimate of her age. That was not a little girl’s voice, nor were those little girl’s legs in the jeans, and little girls had less under their shirt fronts.
His eyes came back to her face and he saw that there was colour in her cheeks now and sparks of annoyance in her eyes.
My God, he thought, I’m ogling her like a matelot on shore leave. He hurriedly transferred his attention back to Boussier, but his throat felt constricted as he asked:
‘How many are you?’
‘There are forty-two of us, of which five are women and two are children.’
Bruce nodded, it was what he had expected. The women could ride in one of the covered coaches. He turned and surveyed the railway yard.
‘Is there a turntable on which we can revolve the locomotive?’ he asked Boussier.
‘No, Captain.’
They would have to reverse all the way back to Msapa Junction, another complication. It would be more difficult to keep a watch on the tracks ahead, and it would mean a sooty and uncomfortable journey.
‘What precautions have you taken against attack, monsieur?’
‘They are inadequate, Captain,’ Boussier admitted. ‘I have not sufficient men to defend the town – most of the population left before the emergency. Instead I have posted sentries on all the approaches and I have fortified the hotel to the best of my ability. It was there we intended to stand in the event of attack.’
Bruce nodded again and glanced up at the sun. It was already reddening as it dropped towards the horizon, perhaps another hour or two of daylight.
‘Monsieur, it is too late to entrain all your people and leave before nightfall. I intend to load their possessions this evening. We will stay overnight and leave in the early morning.’
‘We are all anxious to be away from this place; we have twice seen large parties of Baluba on the edge of the jungle.’
‘I understand,’ said Bruce. ‘But the dangers of travelling by night exceed those of waiting another twelve hours.’
‘The decision is yours,’ Boussier agreed. ‘What do you wish us to do now?’
‘Please see to the embarkation of your people. I regret that only the most essential possessions may be entertained. We will be almost a hundred persons.’
‘I shall see to that myself,’ Boussier assured him, ‘and then?’
‘Is that the hotel?’ Bruce pointed across the street at one of the large double-storeyed buildings. It was only two hundred yards from where they stood.
‘Yes, Captain.’
‘Good,’ said Bruce. ‘It is close enough. Your people can spend the night there in more comfort than aboard the train.’
He looked at the girl again; she was watching him with a small smile on her face. It was a smile of almost maternal amusement, as though she were watching a little boy playing at soldiers. Now it was Bruce’s turn to feel annoyed. He was suddenly embarrassed by his uniform and epaulettes, by the pistol at his hip, the automatic rifle across his shoulder and the heavy helmet on his head.
‘I will require someone who is familiar with the area to accompany me, I want to inspect your defences,’ he said to Boussier.
‘Madame Cartier could show you,’ suggested Boussier’s wife artlessly. I wonder if she noticed our little exchange, thought Bruce. Of course she did. All women have a most sensitive nose for that sort of thing.
‘Will you go with the captain, Shermaine?’ asked Madame Boussier.
‘As the captain wishes.’ She was still smiling.
‘That is settled then,’ said Bruce gruffly. ‘I will meet you at the hotel in ten minutes, after I have made arrangements here.’ He turned back to Boussier. ‘You may proceed with the embarkation, monsieur.’ Bruce left them and went back to the train.
‘Hendry,’ he shouted, ‘you and de Surrier will stay on board. We are not leaving until the morning but these people are going to load their stuff now. In the meantime rig the searchlights to sweep both sides of the track and make sure the Brens are properly sited.’
Hendry grunted an acknowledgement without looking at Bruce.
‘Mike, take ten men with you and go to the hotel. I want you there in case of trouble during the night.’
‘Okay, Bruce.’
‘Ruffy.’
‘Sa!’
‘Take a gang and help the driver refuel.’
‘Okay, boss. Hey, boss!’
‘Yes.’ Bruce turned to him.
‘When you go to the hotel, have a look-see maybe they got some beer up there. We’re just about fresh out.’
‘I’ll keep it in mind.’
‘Thanks, boss.’ Ruffy looked relieved. ‘I’d hate like hell to die of thirst in this hole.’
The townsfolk were streaming back towards the hotel. The girl Shermaine walked with the Boussiers, and Bruce heard Hendry’s voice above him.
‘Jesus, look what that pretty has got in her pants. What ever it is, one thing is sure: it’s round and it’s in two pieces, and those pieces move like they don’t belong to each other.’
‘You haven’t any work to do Hendry?’ Bruce asked harshly.
‘What’s wrong, Curry?’ Hendry jeered down at him. ‘You got plans yourself? Is that it, Bucko?’
‘She’s married,’ said Bruce, and immediately was surprised that he had said it.
‘Sure,’ laughed Hendry. ‘All the best ones are married; that don’t mean a thing, not a bloody thing.’
‘Get on with your work,’ snapped Bruce, and then to Haig, ‘Are you ready? Come with me then.’
– 9 –
When they reached the hotel Boussier was waiting for them on the open verandah. He led Bruce aside and spoke quietly.
‘Monsieur, I don’t wish to be an alarmist but I have received some most disturbing news. There are brigands armed with modern weapons raiding down from the north. The last reports state that they had sacked Senwati Mission about three hundred kilometres north of here.’
‘Yes,’ Bruce nodded, ‘I know about them. We heard on the radio.’
‘Then you will have realized that they can be expected to arrive here very soon.’
‘I don’t see them arriving before tomorrow afternoon; by then we should be well on our way to Msapa Junction.’
‘I hope you are right, Monsieur. The atrocities committed by this General Moses at Senwati are beyond the conception of any normal mind. He appears to bear an almost pathological hatred for all people of European descent.’ Boussier hesitated before g
oing on. ‘There were a dozen white nuns at Senwati. I have heard that they—’
‘Yes,’ Bruce interrupted him quickly; he did not want to listen to it. ‘I can imagine. Try and prevent these stories circulating amongst your people. I don’t want to have them panic.’
‘Of course,’ Boussier nodded.
‘Do you know what force this General Moses commands?’
‘It is not more than a hundred men but, as I have said, they are all armed with modern weapons. I have even heard that they have with them a cannon of some description, though I think this unlikely. They are travelling in a convoy of stolen vehicles and at Senwati they captured a gasoline tanker belonging to the commercial oil companies.’
‘I see,’ mused Bruce. ‘But it doesn’t alter my decision to remain here overnight. However, we must leave at first light tomorrow.’
‘As you wish, Captain.’
‘Now, monsieur,’ Bruce changed the subject, ‘I require some form of transport. Is that car in running order?’ He pointed at a pale green Ford Ranchero station wagon parked beside the verandah wall.
‘It is. It belongs to my company.’ Boussier took a key ring from his pocket and handed it to Bruce. ‘Here are the keys. The tank is full of gasoline.’
‘Good,’ said Bruce. ‘Now if we can find Madame Car-tier—’
She was waiting in the hotel lounge and she stood up as Bruce and Boussier came in.
‘Are you ready, madame?’
‘I await your pleasure,’ she answered, and Bruce looked at her sharply. Just a trace of a twinkle in her dark blue eyes suggested that she was aware of the double meaning.
They walked out to the Ford and Bruce opened the door for her.
‘You are gracious, monsieur.’ She thanked him and slid into the seat. Bruce went round to the driver’s side and climbed in beside her.
‘It’s nearly dark,’ he said.
‘Turn right on to the Msapa Junction road, there is one post there.’
Bruce drove out along the dirt road through the town until they came to the last house before the causeway. ‘Here,’ said the girl and Bruce stopped the car. There were two men there, both armed with sporting rifles. Bruce spoke to them. They had seen no sign of Baluba, but they were both very nervous. Bruce made a decision.