Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers

by Wilbur Smith

  Kelly stared at him in horror. “Kill him? she blurted. They want Pirri to kill him? And cut off his head,” Sepoo confirmed with relish. “Is it not strange and exciting?”

  “You have to stop him!” Kelly sprang to her feet, dragging Sepoo up with her. “You must not let Pirri kill him. You must rescue the white man and bring him here to Gondola. Do you hear me, Sepoo? Go, now! Go swiftly! You must stop Pirri.”

  “I will go with him to see that he does what you tell him, Kara-Ki,” Pamba announced. “For he is a stupid old man, and if he hears the honey chameleon whistle or meets one of his cronies in the forest, he will forget everything you have told him.” She turned to her husband. “Come on, old man.” She prodded him with her thumb. “Let us go and find this white wazungu and bring him back to Kara-Ki. Let us go before Pirri kills him and takes his head to Sengi-Sengi.”

  Pirri the hunter went down on one knee in the forest and examined the tracks. He adjusted the hang of the bow on his shoulder and shook his head with reluctant admiration. “He knows that I am here, close behind him,” he whispered. “How does he know that? Unless of course he is one of the fundis.”

  He touched the spoor where the wazungu had left the water. “He had done it with great skill, leaving only traces that someone as good as Pirri could detect. Yes, you know I am following you,” Pirri nodded. “But where did you learn to move and cover your tracks almost as well as a Bambuti?” he muttered.

  He had picked up the wazungu’s tracks where he had crossed the broad road that the big yellow earth-eating tree-gobbling machine had left through the forest. The earth there was soft and the wazungu had left tracks that a blind man could follow on a dark night. He was heading westwards towards the mountains, as Chetti Singh had said he would.

  Pirri thought immediately that it would be an easy hunt and a quick kill, especially when he had found where the wazungu had broken off a piece of poisonous fungus from a dead tree and eaten a little of it.

  He found the man’s teeth marks in the piece of fungus that he had discarded, and Pirri laughed. “Your bowels will turn to water and run like the great river, O stupid wazungu. And I will kill you while you squat to shit.” Sure enough, he had found the place where the wazungu had slept the previous night and close by where he had voided his bowels for the first time. “You will not go far now,” he chuckled, “before I catch you and kill you.”

  Pirri glided onwards, softly as a wisp of dark smoke blending with the gloom and shadows and sombre colours of the deep forest, following the easy trail at twice the speed of the man who had laid it. At intervals he found dribbles of his poisoned yellow dung, and then the trail reached the bank of a small stream and went into the water and vanished.

  Pirri worked for almost half a day, casting both banks for a mile both upstream and down before he found where the wazungu had left the water again. “You are clever,” he conceded. “But not as clever as Pirri.” And he took the spoor again, going slowly now, for the man he was following was good. He laid back trails and false sign and used the water, and Pirri had to unravel each of his tricks, frowning while he worked it out and then grinning with approbation. “Ah yes, you will be a worthy one to kill. You would long ago have got clean away from a lesser hunter. But I am Pirri.”

  In the late afternoon of the second day he had reached a clearing and he caught his first glimpse of the wazungu. At first he thought it was one of the rare forest antelope on the opposite hillside. He caught just a tiny flicker of movement in one of the forest glades, almost a mile distant across the valley.

  For an instant even Pirri’s phenomenal eyesight was cheated. It did not seem to be a man, certainly not a white man, and then as he disappeared into the tall trees at the edge of the forest he realised that the man had covered himself with mud from head to foot and wore a hat of bark and leaves which distorted the outline of his head and made it difficult to make out his human shape. “Ha!” Pirri rubbed his belly with delight and granted himself another small pinch of tobacco under his upper lip to reward himself for the sighting. “Yes, you are good, my wazungu. Even I will not be able to catch you before darkness falls, but in the morning your head will be mine.” That night Pirri Slept without a fire at the edge of the clearing where last he had seen the white man, and was moving again just as soon as it was light enough to make out the sign.

  In the middle of the morning he found the wazungu. He was lying at the foot of one of the towering African mahogany trees and at first Pirri thought he was already dead. He had tried to cover himself with dead leaves, a pathetic last effort to thwart the remorseless little hunter. Pirri moved in very slowly, taking every precaution, trusting nothing. He carried his broad-bladed machete ready in his right hand, and the weapon was honed to a razor edge.

  When at last he stood over Daniel Armstrong he realised that although he was sick and wasted, he was not yet dead. He was unconscious, breathing with a soft bubbling sound in the back of his throat, curled like a sick dog under the blanket of leaf trash. His head was tilted at an angle, and the sweat had washed away the mud camouflage below his jaw line, leaving a white line. A perfect aiming mark for the decapitating stroke.

  Pirri tested the edge of the blade of the machete with his thumb. It was sharp enough to shave his beard. He lifted it high above his head with both hands. The man’s neck was no thicker than that of one of the forest duikers which were Pirri’s usual prey. The machete would hack through meat and bone just as readily, and the head would spring away from the trunk with the same startling alacrity. He would hang it by its thick curly hair from a branch for an hour or so, to allow the blood to drain from the severed neck, then he would smoke it over a slow fire of green leaves and herbs to preserve it, before slinging it in a small carrying net of bark string and bearing it back to his poaching master, Chetti Singh, to collect his reward.

  Pirri felt a little cold gust of regret as he paused at the top of his stroke before sending the blade hissing down. Because he was a true hunter he always experienced this sadness for his quarry at the moment of the kill, the creed of his tribe was to respect and honour the animals he killed, especially when the quarry had been cunning and brave and worthy.

  “Die swiftly,” he made his silent entreaty.

  He was on the point of slashing downwards when a voice said quietly behind him, “Hold your blade, my brother, or I will put this poison arrow through your liver.” Pirri was so startled that he leapt in the air and whirled to face about.

  Sepoo was five paces behind him. His bow was arched and the arrow was drawn to his cheek, the poison on the tip of the arrow was black and sticky as toffee and it was pointed unwaveringly at Pirri’s chest.

  Y”ou are my own brother! Pirri gasped with the shock. You are the fruit of my own mother’s womb. You would not let your arrow fly?”

  “If you believe that, Pirri, my brother, you are even more stupid than I believe you to be. Kara-Ki wants this white wazungu alive. If you tap a single drop of his blood, I will put this arrow through you, from brisket to backbone.”

  “And I,” said Pamba his wife from the forest shadows behind him, “I will sing and dance around you as you lie writhing on the ground.”

  Pirri backed away sharply. He knew he could talk Sepoo into or out of almost anything, but not Pamba. He had a vast respect for and healthy fear of his sister-in-law. “They have offered me great treasure to kill this wazungu.” His voice was shrill. “I will share it equally with you. As much tobacco as you can carry! I will give it to you.”

  “Shoot him in the belly,” ordered Pamba cheerfully, and Sepoo’s arm trembled with the strain of his draw as he closed one eye to correct his aim.

  “Wait,” shrieked Pirri. “I love you, my dear sister; you would not allow this old idiot to kill me.”

  “I am going to take a little snuff,” said Pamba coldly. “If you are still here when I finish sneezing–”

  “I am going,” howled Pirri, and took another dozen paces backwards. “I am going.”
He ducked into the undergrowth and the instant he was out of the line of fire he screamed, “You foul old monkey woman… “They could hear him slashing out with his machete at the bushes around him in fury and frustration.

  “Only a decrepit venereal baboon like Sepoo would marry a drooling old hag.” The sounds of his ranting fury gradually diminished as he retreated into the forest and Sepoo lowered his bow and turned to his wife.

  “I haven’t enjoyed myself so much since the day Pirri fell into his own trap on top of the buffalo that was already in the pit!” he guffawed.

  “But he described you well, my lovely wife.” Pamba ignored him and went to where Daniel Armstrong lay unconscious, half buried in dirt and dead leaves. She knelt beside him and examined him quickly but thoroughly, plucking the ants from the corners of his eyes and his nostrils.

  “I will have to work hard to save him for Karl-Ki,” she said as she reached into her medicine bag. “If I lose this one, I don’t know where I will find another one for her.”

  While Pamba ministered to Daniel, Sepoo built a hut over him where he lay and then lit a little fire to disperse the mosquitoes and the humidity. He squatted in the doorway and watched his wife work.

  She was the most skilled medicine woman of all the Bambuti, and her fingers were swift and dextrous as she cleaned the wound in the wazungu’s back and applied a poultice of mashed and boiled roots and leaves. Then she forced him to drink copious quantities of a hot infusion of herbs that would bind his bowels and replace the fluid that his body had shed.

  She crooned and muttered encouragement to the unconscious man as she worked, her bare dugs swinging wrinkled and empty as a pair of leather tobacco pouches from her bony chest and her necklace of ivory and beads clicking each time she moved.

  Within three hours Daniel had regained consciousness. He looked up dazedly at the two little old people crouched over him in the smoky hut and asked in Swahili, “Who are you?”

  “I am Sepoo,” said the man. A famous hunter and a renowned sage of the Bambuti.

  “And I am Pamba, the wife of the greatest liar in all the forest of Ubomo,” said the woman, and cackled with laughter.

  By the next morning Daniel’s diarrhea had dried up and he could eat a little of the stew of monkey meat and herbs that Pamba had prepared for him. By the following morning the infection of the wound in his back had abated and he was strong enough to begin the journey to Gondola.

  Daniel went slowly at first, using a staff to steady himself, for his legs were still wobbly and his head seemed to be filled with wool and floating clear of his shoulders. Pamba kept him company, leading him at a gentle pace through the forest and keeping up a constant chattering punctuated with shrieks of merry laughter, Sepoo ranged afar hunting and scavenging in the usual Bambuti manner.

  Daniel had already guessed the identity of the mysterious Kara-Ki who had sent the pygmies to rescue him, but as soon as Pamba gave him an opportunity he questioned her further trying to get her to describe her patron in detail.

  “Kara-Ki is very tall,” Pamba told him, and Daniel realised that to a Bambuti everybody else in the world is very tall. “And she has a long pointed nose.” All Bambuti noses were flat and broad. Pamba’s description could apply to any wazungu, so Daniel gave up and hobbled on after the little woman.

  Towards dusk Sepoo suddenly appeared again from the forest with the carcass of a duiker he had killed hanging over his shoulder. That night they feasted on grilled liver and fillets.

  The next morning Daniel was strong enough to discard his staff and Pamba increased the pace of the march. They reached Gondola the following afternoon. The pygmies had given Daniel no warning that they had arrived, and as he stepped out of the forest he was presented with the dramatic view of the little community. Its open gardens and streams, and the high snow-capped mountains forming a grand backdrop to the scene.

  “Daniel,” Kelly Kinnear greeted him as he climbed the verandah steps, and even though he had half expected it, Daniel was unprepared for his own pleasure at meeting her again. She looked fresh and vital and attractive, but he sensed a reserve in her as she came to him and shook his hand. “I was so worried that Sepoo might not get to you in time…” Then she broke off and stood back. “God, you look awful. What on earth happened to you?”

  “Thanks for the compliment,” he grinned ruefully. “But to answer your question, a great deal has happened to me since we last met.”

  “Come into the surgery. Let’s have a look at you, before we do anything else.”

  “Couldn’t I have a bath first? I find it difficult even being near myself.”

  She laughed. “You are rather strong on the nose, but so are most of my patients. I’m used to it.”

  She took him into the surgery and laid him on the examination table. After she had gone over him thoroughly and inspected the wound on his back, she remarked, “Pamba has done a pretty good job. I’ll give you a shot of antibiotic and I’ll put a fresh dressing on your back after your bath. It should have had stitches but it’s too late for that now. You’ll have a new interesting scar to add to all the others.”

  As she washed her hands in the basin, she smiled at him over her shoulder. “You look as though you’ve been in a fight or two.”

  “Always the other guy’s fault,” he assured her.

  “Talking about fights, you never let me explain myself at our last meeting. You jumped on your motorbike before I had a chance.”

  “I know. It’s my Irish blood.”

  “Can I explain now?”

  “How about a bath first?”

  The bathroom was a thatched hut, and the bath was a galvanised iron tub just large enough to contain him if he kept his knees up under his chin. The camp servants filled it with buckets of steaming water heated on the fire outside. There was clothing laid out for him: khaki shorts and shirt, faded and worn but clean and crisply ironed, together with a pair of rawhide sandals. one of the servants took away his stinking blood-stained shorts and muddy boots.

  Kelly was waiting for him in her surgery when he had dressed. “What a transformation,” she greeted him. “Let’s fix that back.”

  He sat on the single chair and she stood behind him. Her fingers were cool and light and quick on his skin. When she spoke he could feel her breath on the back of his neck and smell her. He liked the feel of her hands and the sweet clean smell of her breath.

  “I didn’t thank you for sending your pygmies to save my life,” he said.

  “All in the day’s work. Think nothing of it.”

  “I owe you one.”

  “I’ll call on you.”

  “You were the very last person I’d have expected to find here,” Daniel told her. “But when Pamba described you I began to suspect who you were. How did you get into the country? And what the hell are you doing here? If Taffari gets hold of you it will be a shooting party on the beach or a head-dress of hornets.

  “Oh, so you’re beginning to find out the truth about Ephrem Taffari, that he’s not the saint and saviour you thought he was?”

  “Don’t let’s fight again,” he pleaded. “I’m still too weak to defend myself.”

  “You’re as weak as a bull. Look at all that muscle. Okay, now it’s time for your shot. Lie on the bed and drop your shorts.”

  “Hey! Can’t I have it in the arm?”

  “You haven’t got anything I haven’t seen before. Get on the table.”

  Grumbling he lay face down, and lowered his shorts halfway. “Nothing to be ashamed of, in fact, not bad at all,” she assured him, and slid the needle home. “Okay, that does it. Get dressed and come to dinner. I’ve got another surprise for you. A dinner guest, somebody you haven’t seen for years.”

  In the sunset they crossed from the clinic to Kelly’s living quarters at the end of the clearing. On the way they stopped for a minute to watch the sunset turn the Mountains of the Moon to a splendour of gold and flames. “I carry the memory of this beauty wherever I travel in th
e world,” Kelly whispered. “It’s one of the things that draws me back.”

  And Daniel was moved as much by her reaction to it as by the grandeur of the scene itself. To express his accord with her he wanted to take her arm and squeeze it, but he kept his distance and after a while they moved on.

  There was a dinner-table laid on the verandah of Kelly’s bungalow and a solitary figure seated at it, who rose as they approached. “Doctor Armstrong. How good to see you again.” Daniel stared at him in astonishment and then hurried forward. “I heard that you were dead, Mr. President, that you had died of a heart-attack or been shot by Taffari.”

  “The news of my death was slightly exaggerated.” Victor Omeru chuckled and took Daniel’s hand.

  “I found a flask of whisky in my medical chest,” Kelly said. “Tonight seems like an auspicious occasion to administer it.” She poured a little of the golden liquid into each of their glasses and offered them the toast. “To Ubomo! May it soon be released from the tyrant.”

  Dinner was a simple meat of fish from the river and vegetables from the gardens of Gondola, but there was plenty of it and the conversation at the table never slackened or palled. Victor Omeru explained to Danny the circumstances of the revolution and his overthrow, his escape into the forest and his activities since then.

  “With Kelly’s help, I have been able to turn Gondola into the headquarters of the resistance to Taffari’s brutal dictatorship,” he ended, but Kelly pressed him eagerly.

  “Victor, tell Daniel what Taffari has done to the country and its people since he seized power. Daniel has been duped into believing that Taffari is a black Christ figure. In fact, Daniel is here to shoot a production that was to extol Taffari’s virtues…”

  “No, Kelly,” Daniel interrupted her. “That’s not the way it was. It’s far more complicated than that. Originally I accepted the commission to make the film for personal and private reasons.” He went on to explain the murder of Johnny Nzou and his family. He told them of Ning Cheng Gong’s involvement and how he had traced the Lucky Dragon to Ubomo. He told them about Chetti Singh.