by Wilbur Smith
I should pray, he thought, but after this morning when I prayed that it should not rain, and the rains came and saved me, I will not presume again to tell the Old Man how to run things. Perhaps he knows best after all.
Thy will be done, he thought instead, and suddenly his nerves jerked tight as a line hit by a marlin. The sound he had heard was that of cloth brushing against rough rock.
He held his breath and listened, but all he could discern was the pulse in his ears and the wind in the trees of the forest below. The wind was a lonely sound.
Thy will be done, he repeated without breathing, and heard Hendry breathe close behind the shoulder of rock.
He stood away from the wall and waited. Then he saw Hendry’s shadow thrown by the early morning sun along the ledge. A great distorted shadow on the grey rock.
Thy will be done. And he went round the shoulder fast, his good hand held like a blade and the weight of his body behind it.
Hendry was three feet away, the rifle at high port across his chest, standing close in against the cliff, the cup-shaped steel helmet pulled low over the slitty eyes and little beads of sweat clinging in the red-gold stubble of his beard. He tried to drop the muzzle of the rifle but Bruce was too close.
Bruce lunged with stiff fingers at his throat and he felt the crackle and give of cartilage. Then his weight carried him on and Hendry sprawled backwards on to the stone platform with Bruce on top of him.
The rifle slithered across the rock and dropped over the edge, and they lay chest to chest with legs locked together in a horrible parody of the love act. But in this act we do not procreate, we destroy!
Hendry’s face was purple and swollen above his damaged throat, his mouth open as he struggled for air, and his breath smelt old and sour in Bruce’s face.
With a twist towards the thumb Bruce freed his right wrist from Hendry’s grip and, lifting it like an axe, brought it down across the bridge of Hendry’s nose. Twin jets of blood spouted from the nostrils and gushed into his open mouth.
With a wet strangling sound in his throat Hendry’s body arched violently upwards and Bruce was thrown back against the side of the cliff with such force that for a second he lay there.
Wally was on his knees, facing Bruce, his eyes glazed and sightless, and the strangling rattling sound spraying from his throat in a pink cloud of blood. With both hands he was fumbling his pistol out of its canvas holster.
Bruce drew his knees up on to his chest, then straightened his legs in a mule kick. His feet landed together in the centre of Hendry’s stomach, throwing him backwards off the platform. Hendry made that strangled bellow all the way to the bottom, but at the end it was cut off abruptly, and afterwards there was only the sound of the wind in the forest below.
For a long time, drained of strength and the power to think, Bruce sat on the ledge with his back against the rock.
Above him the clouds had rolled aside and half the sky was blue. He looked out across the land and the forest was lush and clean from the rain. And I am still alive. The realization warmed Bruce’s mind as comfortably as the early sun was warming his body. He wanted to shout it out across the forest. I am still alive!
At last he stood up, crossed to the edge of the cliff and looked down at the tiny crumpled figure on the rocks below. Then he turned away and dragged his beaten body down the side of the turret.
It took him twenty minutes to find Wally Hendry in the chaos of broken rock and scrub below the turret. He lay on his side with his legs drawn up as though he slept. Bruce knelt beside him and drew his pistol from the olive-green canvas holster; then he unbuttoned the flap of Hendry’s bulging breast pocket and took out the white canvas bag.
He stood up, opened the mouth of the bag and stirred the diamonds with his forefinger. Satisfied, he jerked the drawstring closed and dropped them into his own pocket.
In death he is even more repulsive than he was alive, thought Bruce without regret as he looked down at the corpse.
The flies were crawling into the bloody nostrils and clustering round the eyes.
Then he spoke aloud.
‘So Mike Haig was right and I was wrong – you can destroy it.’
Without looking back he walked away. The tiredness left him.
– 34 –
Carl Engelbrecht came through the doorway from the cockpit into the main cabin of the Dakota.
‘Are you two happy?’ he asked above the deep drone of the engines, and then grinning with his big brown face, ‘I can see you are!’
Bruce grinned back at him and tightened his arm around Shermaine’s shoulders.
‘Go away! Can’t you see we’re busy?’
‘You’ve got lots of cheek for a hitch-hiker – bloody good mind to make you get out and walk,’ he grumbled as he sat down beside them on the bench that ran the full length of the fuselage. ‘I’ve brought you some coffee and sandwiches.’
‘Good. Good. I’m starving.’ Shermaine sat up and reached for the thermos flask and the greaseproof paper packet. The bruise on her cheek had faded to a shadow with yellow edges – it was almost ten days old. With his mouth full of chicken sandwich Bruce kicked one of the wooden cases that were roped securely to the floor of the aircraft.
‘What have you got in these, Carl?’
‘Dunno,’ said Carl and poured coffee into the three plastic mugs. ‘In this game you don’t ask questions. You fly out, take your money, and let it go.’ He drained his mug and stood up. ‘Well, I’ll leave you two alone now. We’ll be in Nairobi in a couple of hours, so you can sleep or something!’ He winked. ‘You’ll have to stay aboard while we refuel. But we’ll be airborne again in an hour or so, and the day after tomorrow, God and the weather permitting, we’ll set you down in Zurich.’
‘Thanks, old cock.’
‘Think nothing of it – all in the day’s work.’
He went forward and disappeared into the cockpit, closing the door behind him.
Shermaine turned back to Bruce, studied him for a moment and then laughed.
‘You look so different – now you look like a lawyer!’
Self-consciously Bruce tightened the knot of his Old Michaelhouse tie.
‘I must admit it feels strange to wear a suit and tie again.’ He looked down at the well-cut blue suit – the only one he had left – and then up again at Shermaine.
‘And in a dress I hardly recognize you either.’ She was wearing a lime-green cotton frock, cool and crisp looking, white high-heel shoes and just a little make-up to cover the bruise. A damn fine woman, Bruce decided with pleasure.
‘How does your thumb feel?’ she asked, and Bruce held up the stump with its neat little turban of adhesive tape.
‘I had almost forgotten about it.’
Suddenly Shermaine’s expression changed, and she pointed excitedly out of the perspex window behind Bruce’s shoulder.
‘Look, there’s the sea!’ It lay far below them, shaded from blue to pale green in the shallows, with a round of white beach and the wave formation moving across it like ripples on a pond.
‘That’s Lake Tanganyika.’ Bruce laughed. ‘We’ve left the Congo behind.’
‘Forever?’ she asked.
‘Forever!’ he assured her.
The aircraft banked slightly, throwing them closer together, as Carl picked out his landmarks and altered course towards the north-east.
Four thousand feet below them the dark insect that was their shadow flitted and hopped across the surface of the water.
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