Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers

by Wilbur Smith

  Chapter 41

  Pirri was confused and angry and filled with formless despair and hatred.

  For months now he had lived alone in the forest with not another man to talk to, or woman to laugh with. At night he lay alone in his carelessly built leaf hut far from the huts of other men and he thought of his youngest wife. She was sixteen years of age, with plump little breasts. He remembered the wetness and lubricious warmth of her body, and he moaned aloud in the darkness as he thought that he would never again know the comfort of a woman’s body.

  During the day he was lethargic and without care. He no longer hunted with his old intensity. Sometimes he sat for hours gazing into one of the dark forest pools. Twice he heard the honey chameleon call and he did not follow. He grew thin and his beard began turning white.

  Once he heard a party of Bambuti women in the forest, laughing and chattering as they gathered mushrooms and roots. He crept close and spied upon them, and his heart felt as though it would break. He longed to join them, but knew he could not.

  Then one day while wandering alone, Pirri cut the trail of a party of wazungu. He studied their tracks and read that there were twenty of them, and that they moved with purpose and determination as though on a journey. It was exceedingly strange to find other men in the forest, for the Hita and Uhali were afraid of hobgoblins and monsters, and never entered the tall trees if they could avoid doing so. Pirri recovered a little of his old curiosity, and he followed the tracks of the wazungu.

  They were moving well, and it took him many hours to catch up with them. Then he discovered a most remarkable thing. Deep in the forest he found a camp where many men were assembled. They were all armed with the Banduki that had a strange banana-shaped appendage hanging from beneath either a tail or a penis, Pirri was not certain. And while Pirri watched in astonishment from his hiding-place, these men fired their banduki and made a terrible clattering clamour that frightened the birds into flight and sent the monkeys scampering away across the forest galleries.

  All this was extraordinary, but most marvelous of all was that these men were not Hita. These days only Hita soldiers in uniform carried banduki. These men were Uhali.

  Pirri thought about what he had seen for many days, and then the acquisitive instinct, which had been dormant in him since the coming of the Molimo, began to stir. He thought about Chetti Singh, and wondered if Chetti Singh would give him tobacco if he told him about the armed men in the forest.

  He hated Chetti Singh who had cheated and lied to him but as he thought about the tobacco, the saliva jetted from under his tongue. He could almost taste it in his mouth. The old tobacco hunger was like a pain in his chest and his belly.

  The next day he went to find Chetti Singh and he whistled and sang as he went. He was coming alive again after the Molimo death. He stopped only once, to hunt a colobus monkey that he spied in the treetops eating the yellow fruit of the mongongo tree. His old skills came back to him and he crept to within twenty paces of the monkey without it suspecting his presence, and he shot a poisoned arrow that struck one of its legs.

  The monkey fled shrieking through the branches, but it did not go far before it fell to earth, paralysed by the poison, its lips curled up in the dreadful rictus of agony as it frothed and trembled and shook before it died. The poison on Pirri’s arrow was fresh and strong. He had found the nest of the little beetles only days before and had dug them up and crushed them to paste in a bark crucible and smeared his arrow-tips with the juices.

  With his belly full of monkey meat and the wet skin folded into his barkfibre bag, he went on towards the rendezvous with the one-armed Sikh.

  Pirri waited two days at the rendezvous, the clearing in the forest that had once been a logging camp but was now overgrown and reverting to jungle. He wondered if the Uhali storekeeper who kept the little duka on the side of the main highway had passed on his message to Chetti Singh.

  Then he began to believe that Chetti Singh had received the message but would not come to him. Perhaps Chetti Singh had learned of the Molimo death and was also ostracising him. Perhaps nobody would ever speak to Pirri again. His recent high spirits faded as he sat alone in the forest waiting for Chetti Singh to come, and the sense of despair and confusion overwhelmed him all over again.

  Chetti Singh came on the afternoon of the second day. Pirri heard his Landrover long before it arrived and suddenly his anger and hatred had something on which to focus.

  He thought how Chetti Singh had cheated and tricked him so many times before. He thought how he had never given him everything he had promised; always there was short-weight of tobacco, and water in the gin.

  Then he thought how Chetti Singh had made him kill the elephant. Pirri had never been as angry as he was now. He was too angry even to lash out at the trees around him, too angry to shout aloud. His throat was tight and closed, and his hands shook. Chetti Singh was the one who had brought the curse of the Molimo down upon him. Chetti Singh had killed his soul. Now he forgot about the armed wazungu in the forest. He even forgot about the tobacco hunger, as he waited for Chetti Singh to come.

  The mud-streaked Landrover butted its way into the clearing, pushing down the thick secondary growth of vegetation- ahead of it. It stopped and the door opened and Chetti Singh stepped down. He looked around him at the forest and wiped his, face with a white cloth. He had put on much weight recently. He was plumper now than he had been before he had lost the arm. His shirt was stained dark with sweat between his shoulder-blades where he had sat against the leather seat.

  He mopped his face and adjusted his turban before he shouted into the forest, “Pirri! Come out.”

  Pirri sniggered with laughter and whispered aloud, mimicking the Sikh. “Pirri! Come out!” And then his voice was bitter. “See how he oozes grease like a joint of pork on the coals.”

  “Pirri, come out!” Chetti Singh strutted around the clearing impatiently. After a while he opened his fly and urinated, then he zipped his trousers and looked at his wristwatch. “Pirri, are you there?”

  Pirri did not answer him, and Chetti Singh said something angrily in a language that Pirri did not understand, but he knew that it was an insult.

  “I am going now,” Chetti Singh shouted, and marched back to the Landrover.

  “O master, Pirri called to him. I see you! Do not go!” Chetti Singh spun around to face the forest.

  “Where are you?” he shouted.

  “I am here, o master. I have something for you that will make you very happy. Something of great value.”

  “What is it?” Chetti Singh asked. “Where are you?”

  “Here I am.” Pirri stepped out of the shadows with the bow slung over his shoulder.

  “What stupidity is this?” Chetti Singh demanded. “Why do you hide from me?”

  “I am your slave.” Pirri grinned ingratiatingly. “And I have a gift for you.”

  “What is it? Elephant teeth?” Chetti Singh asked, and there was greed in his voice.

  “Better than that. Something of greater value.”

  “Show me,” Chetti Singh demanded.

  “Will you give me tobacco?”

  “I will give you as, much tobacco as the gift is worth.”

  “I will show you,” Pirri agreed. “Follow me, O master.”

  “Where is it? How far is it?”

  “Only a short distance, only that far.” Pirri indicated a small arc of the sky with two fingers, less than an hour’s travel.

  Chetti Singh looked dubious. “It is a thing of great beauty and value,” Pirri wheedled. “You will be very pleased.”

  “All right,” the Sikh agreed. “Lead me to this treasure.”

  Pirri went slowly, allowing Chetti Singh to keep close behind him. He went in a wide circle through the densest part of the forest, crossing the same stream twice. There was no sun in the forest; a man steered by the fall of the land and the run of the rivers.

  Pirri showed Chetti Singh the same river twice from different directio
ns. By now, the Sikh was totally lost, blundering blindly after the little-pygmy with no sense of distance or direction. After the second hour Chetti Singh was sweating very heavily and his voice was rough. “How much further is it?” he asked.

  “Very close,” Pirri assured him.

  “I will rest for a while,” Chetti Singh said and sat down on a log. When he looked up again, Pirri had vanished.

  Chetti Singh was not alarmed. He was accustomed to the elusive comings and goings of the Bambuti. Come back here! he ordered, but there was no reply. Chetti Singh sat alone for a long time. Once or twice he called out to the pygmy. Each time his voice was shriller.

  The panic was building up in him.

  After another hour he was pleading. “Please, Pirri, I will give you anything you ask. Please show yourself.”

  Pirri laughed. His laughter floated through the trees and Chetti Singh sprang to his feet and plunged off the faint track. He stumbled towards where he thought he had heard the laughter. “Pirri!” he begged. “Please come to me.” But the laughter came from a new direction. Chetti Singh ran towards it.

  After a while he stopped, and looked about him wildly. He was streaming sweat and panting. Laughter, mocking and faint, trembled in the humid air. Chetti Singh turned around and staggered after it. It was like chasing a butterfly or a puff of smoke. The sound flitted and flirted through the trees, first from one direction, then the other.

  Chetti Singh was weeping now. His turban had come loose and hooked on a branch and he did not stop to retrieve it. His hair and beard tumbled down, streaming down his chest and flying out behind him. His hair was soaked with sweat.

  He fell and dragged himself up and ran on, his clothing stained with mud and leaf mould. He screamed his terror to the trees, and the laughter became fainter and fainter, until at last he heard it no more.

  Chetti Singh fell on his knees and held up his hand in supplication.

  “Please,” he whispered, with tears streaming down his face. “Please don’t leave me alone here.”

  And the forest was silent with dark menace.

  Pirri followed him for two days, watching him stagger haphazardly, ranting and pleading, through the forest, watching him grow weaker and more desperate, stumbling over dead branches, falling into streams, crawling on his belly, shaking with terror and loneliness. His clothing was ripped off him by branch and thorn. Only a few rags still hung on his body. His skin was scratched and lacerated, and the flies and the stinging insects buzzed around the wounds. His beard and long hair were tangled and matted, and his eyes were wild and mad.

  On the second day, Pirri stepped out of the forest ahead of him and Chetti Singh screamed like a woman with the shock and tried to drag himself to his feet again. “Don’t leave me alone again,” he screamed. “Please, anything you ask, but not again.”

  “Like you, I am alone, Pirri said with hatred in his heart. I am dead. The Molimo has killed me. You are talking to a dead man, to a ghost. You cannot ask mercy from the ghost of a man you murdered.” Deliberately Pirri fitted an arrow to his little bow. The poison was black and sticky on the point.

  Chetti Singh gaped stupidly. “What are you doing?” he blurted. He knew about the poison, he had seen animals die from Bambuti arrows.

  Pirri lifted his bow and drew the arrow to his chin.

  “No!” Chetti Singh, held up his hand to ward off the arrow just as Pirri released it.

  The arrow, aimed at his chest, hit Chetti Singh in the palm of his open hand and stuck firmly, its point buried between the bones of the first and second fingers. Chetti Singh stared at it.

  “Now we are both dead,” said Pirri softly, and vanished into the forest.

  Chetti Singh stared in horror at the arrow in his palm. The flesh around it was already stained purple by the poison. Then the pain began. It was stronger than anything that Chetti Singh had ever imagined. It was fire in his blood, he could feel it running up his arm into his chest. The pain was so terrible that for a long anguished moment it took his breath away and he could not scream.

  Then he found his voice and the sound of his agony rang through the trees. Pirri paused for a while to listen to it. Only when the forest was silent again did he move on.

  Chapter 42

  “We are ready,” Daniel said quietly, but his voice carried to every man seated in the headquarters hut at Gondola. They were the same men who had gathered here a month ago, and yet they were different. There was an air of confidence and determination about them that had not been there before.

  Daniel had spoken to his Matabele instructors before the meeting. They were pleased. No man had been dropped from the training camps for any reason except sickness or injury.

  “They are amabutho now,” Morgan Tembi had told Daniel. “They are warriors now.”

  “You have done well,” Daniel told them. “You can be proud of what you have achieved in so short a time.”

  He turned to the blackboard on the thatched wall behind him and pulled aside the cloth that had covered it. The board was covered with diagrams and schedules.

  “This, gentlemen, is our order of battle,” Daniel said. “We will go over it, not once but until every one of you can recite it in your sleep,” he warned them. “Here are your four cadres, each of two hundred and fifty men. Each cadre is assigned different targets and objectives, the main army barracks, the airfield, the harbour, the labour camps…” Daniel worked down the list. “Now, most important of all, the radio and television studio in Kahali. Taffari’s security forces are good. Even with initial surprise we cannot hope to hold all our objectives longer than the first few hours, not without popular support. We have to secure the studio.

  “President Omeru will be moved to the capital well ahead of time and will be in hiding in the old quarter, ready to come out and broadcast an appeal to the people. As soon as the populace sees him on television and realises that he is alive and leading the rising, we can expect every man and woman to join us. They will come out on to the streets and join the battle. Taffari’s storm-troopers may be better armed than we are, but we will crush them by sheer weight of numbers.

  “However, there is one other condition that we have to fulfil in order to ensure success. We have to take out Taffari himself within the first hour. We have to crush the head of the snake. Without Taffari they will collapse. There is nobody to replace him. Taffari himself has seen to that. He has murdered all possible rivals. He is a one-man band, but we have to get him with the first surprise stroke.”

  “That won’t be so easy.” Patrick Omeru came to his feet. “He seems to have a kind of sixth sense. He has already survived two assassination attempts in the short time he has been in power. They are beginning to say he is using witchcraft, like Idi Amin.”

  “Sit down, Patrick,” Daniel interrupted him sharply. “Witchcraft was a dangerous word to use, even to a group of educated and intelligent men such as this.” They were still African, and witchcraft was rooted in the African soil.

  “Taffari is a cunning swine. We all know that. He seldom sticks to any routine. He changes plans at the very last moment. He cancels appointments without reason and he sleeps at the home of a different wife each night, in random order. He’s cunning, but he is no wizard. He’ll bleed good red blood, I promise you that.” They cheered him for that and the mood of the gathering improved. They were confident and eager again.

  “However, there is one routine that Taffari has established. He visits the mining operation of Wengu at least once a month. He likes to see his treasure coming out of the earth. At Wengu he is isolated. It is the one place in the entire country where he is most vulnerable.” Daniel paused and looked down at them. “We are fortunate to have some good intelligence from Major Fashoda.” He indicated the Hita officer on the dais beside him. “As you all know, Major Fashoda is the transport officer on Taffari’s staff. He is the man responsible for arranging Taffari’s personal transport. Taffari always uses a Puma helicopter to visit Wengu. He has order
ed a Puma to stand by for Monday the 14th. This indicates a high probability that his next inspection tour to Wengu will be on that date. It gives us five days to make our final preparations.”

  Ning Cheng Gong sat beside President Taffari on the padded bench in the fuselage of the airforce Puma helicopter. Through the open hatch he could see the green blur of the treetops as the Puma sped low across the forest. The wind buffeted them and it was noisy in the cabin. They had to raise their voices and shout to be heard.

  “What news of Chetti Singh?” Ephrem Taffari shouted, his mouth close to Cheng’s ear.

  “Nothing,” Cheng shouted back. “We found his Landrover, but no sign of him. It has been two weeks now.”

  “He must have died in the forest, as Armstrong did. He was a good man,” Taffari said. “He knew how to get work out of the convict labour. He was good at keeping costs down.”

  “Yes,” Cheng agreed. “He will be very hard to replace. He spoke the language. He understood Africa. He understood…” Cheng bit his lip. He had been on the point of using a derogatory term for black people. “He understood the system,” he ended lamely.

  “Even in the short time since his disappearance there has been a marked drop in production and profits.”

  “I’m working on it,” Cheng assured him. “I have some good men coming to replace him. Mining men from South Africa, as good as Chetti Singh. They also know how to get the most work out of these people.”