by William Boyd
“Scairdy gowk,” Felix heard Gilzean mutter behind him.
There were no more explosions. They got to their feet and ran round the corner. In the middle of the road was a crater surrounded by Loveday’s excited platoon. By its side lay Loveday, or rather his top half. There was no sign of his legs or much of anything below his waist. None of his platoon seemed hurt, beyond a few cuts and bruises. They were voluble with nervous excitement over their narrow escape. Half a dozen men must have walked over the mine before Loveday’s boot set it off. What would Loveday have said? Felix found himself wondering. ‘Nom de nom’, ‘zut alor’?
Felix turned away and looked at the landscape. The road sloped down slightly at this point, affording a panorama of the countryside. The burnt grass plains, the thorn scrub, undulating hills fading out into the evening haze in the south, the lusher green of the Rovuma basin away in the distance. No sign of a German anywhere.
They spent the next morning and afternoon laboriously retracing their steps to the camp they’d left the day before. After a quiet night they buried Loveday at the foot of a baobab tree in the morning. After the burial service Felix returned to his tent for a breakfast of corned beef, mashed sweet potato and a local variety of bean which an ever efficient Human had ready for him. He was half-way through his meal when Gilzean approached with a tin can in his hand.
“What is it, Gilzean?” Felix asked.
“Could you take a peek at this, please sir?”
Felix looked. It contained a thick albuminous dark liquid.
“What’s this, coffee?”
“No. It’s aidle from my cullage.”
“Oh yes?”
“I’ve been passin’ this drumlie loppert water for a week. I just get a mitchkin, ye ken. A jaup.”
Felix frowned. He was about to ask Gilzean to repeat himself when he saw a vaguely familiar lanky figure sauntering over.
“I say, Cobb?” it shouted. “Captain Frearson said I’d find you here. Got some interesting news. It’s me, Wheech-Browning, Kilwa, GSO II (Intelligence). Remember?”
“Oh yes. Have a seat. I won’t be a minute.” He turned to Gilzean, and handed him back his tin.
“Let me get this straight,” he said. “Is this something to do with your health?” He wondered what Wheech-Browning wanted.
“Aye. I’m fair doited with worry. This grugous stuff…”
“How are you feeling?” He wanted to dismiss Gilzean, but the man was persistent.
“A bit tired. But it’s oorie. It could be a clyre in my culls.”
“Yes?” Wheech-Browning was staring curiously at Gilzean.
“Or my moniplies. My jag. Yes my jag even.”
Felix felt confused; by now he’d come almost to understand Gilzean, but when the man was upset his language retreated into the obscurities of his arcane Celtic vocabulary. He knew suddenly that Wheech-Browning had news of Gabriel.
“I shouldn’t worry,” he told Gilzean, “If you’re not feeling too bad otherwise. I’m sure it’ll clear up, um, whatever it is. See the MO if any complications arise.” That seemed to cover everything.
“Thank you very much indeed, sir,” Gilzean said gratefully, saluted and walked off with his curious tin.
“That’s remarkable,” Wheech-Browning said. “What language was that man speaking?”
“English.”
“Never! Quite incomprehensible.”
“A Scottish version, anyway.”
“Can you understand him?”
“It took a while, but I can catch the basic drift now.” He paused. “You said you had some news.”
“Yes,” said Wheech-Browning. “About your brother. We’ve come across some traces of him. You remember that American chap, Smith? He telephoned yesterday from a place called Nanda.”
Felix felt a sinking feeling in his body, as if all its vital fluids were being dragged towards his feet.
“Have you found him?”
“Not exactly. But we do know where he was up to a few days ago. I’ve cleared it with your captain. You can come along with me.”
Wheech-Browning explained what had happened as they bounced down the road towards Nanda in his Ford. ‘Kilforce’, moving parallel to but faster than ‘Linforce’, had captured Nambindinga the day before, found it deserted and had advanced on to the next village down the road, Nanda, where they had discovered a small POW camp. The prisoners had passed on information about Gabriel. How he had escaped just two days previously.
Felix and Wheech-Browning drove past columns of ‘Lin-force’ troops marching briskly down the road. Loveday’s mine crater had already been filled in by the pioneers. Felix wondered if anyone really knew what was going on in this war. Why had ‘Kilforce’ been halted and ‘Linforce’ advanced? He could have marched into Nanda…He felt a spine-snapping tension in his body. He was buoyant with a kind of nervous expectation and yet couldn’t ignore the forebodings that nagged at him. What would happen when he met Gabriel again? Could he tell him his fateful news?
Wheech-Browning was in a chatty mood.
“Remember that Zeppelin I told you about? Well, it set off all right a few days ago. The twenty-first, I think. Crossed the Med. and headed down over the desert in Sudan. Just as it got to Khartoum, our chaps in signals sent it a message in code, German code, saying: “German forces in East Africa have surrendered.” We’ve got the jerry codes, you see. We captured them in 1915. Bilderbeck’s work again. Great loss, that man.” His face looked solemn for an instant. “What do you think happened?”
Felix wasn’t really listening. “What? Oh, um, no idea.”
“Turned right round and went straight back home, that’s what. Bloody marvellous, don’t you think?”
Nanda was full of King’s African Rifles. Felix looked about him as he drove into the little town. He saw the row of cramped mud-walled, tin-roofed buildings lining the main street; the shade trees planted here and there; the tin and wood bungalows of the planters’ families; the long stone buildings of the former agricultural research station; the wire enclosure of the small POW stockade.
Wheech-Browning reported to battalion headquarters, which had taken over one of the larger bungalows. They were told where they might find Temple Smith and walked down the main street in search of him.
Behind the hospital, sitting in the shade of a large mango tree, were a disconsolate group of German women and children. Some little way off Temple was talking to one of them. Felix and Wheech-Browning approached. Temple broke off his interrogation and greeted Felix with some enthusiasm and Wheech-Browning with less.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded of Wheech-Browning suspiciously.
“I’m GSO II (Intelligence), for Heaven’s sake,” Wheech-Browning protested. “This is a matter for my department.”
Temple inclined his head in the direction of the German woman.
“That woman is the wife of the bastard I’m chasing,” he said. “But wait for this. He’s chasing your brother. Isn’t that extraordinary?”
Felix wasn’t interested in the American’s observations: what was coincidence to him was merely irrelevant to Felix.
“But why? Why is he chasing him?”
“Your brother escaped two days ago. It seems they think he was a spy.”
“A spy?” It didn’t make any sense. “Gabriel?”
“Yes. But Frau von Bishop says he wasn’t a spy.” Temple frowned, as if he too were having trouble comprehending everything. “Anyway,” he went on, “the Germans believe your brother is in possession of vital information, which is why they’re after him.”
“I wonder what it is?” Wheech-Browning said.
“Doesn’t she know?” Felix asked.
“No. Or at least she isn’t saying. She says she has no interest in the war at all.”
“But where’s he gone?” Felix said. It seemed the most malevolent cruelty to have allowed him to get so close.
“North,” Temple said. “That’s all she knows. She keeps s
aying not to worry. She says your brother will come back here any day. She says he’s just hiding out in the bush somewhere.”
“How does she know all this?”
“Your brother was in the hospital here for a long time as her patient. It seems she got to know him then.”
Felix felt lost. He couldn’t really grasp what was going on.
“Look,” Temple said. “I’m going after this von Bishop. They won’t be long off. If I catch him your brother might not be far away.”
“I’m coming too,” Felix said. “But I must ask this woman a question first.”
“Let’s get out of the damned sun first,” Wheech-Browning said, pushing open the door of an outhouse. “Cooler in here. I’ll just have a look.” He ducked inside. Ten seconds later he came out, red-faced, scrupulously wiping his hand with a handkerchief.
“Good God!” he seemed genuinely shocked. “Barbarians! The place is covered in…human ordure!”
“That’s right,” Temple said calmly. “I should have warned you.”
Felix walked over to the German woman, Temple and Wheech-Browning following. The woman was plump and strong-looking, with a pale freckly face. She had a mango leaf in her hands and was tearing it methodically into tiny pieces.
“Guten Tag, gnadige Frau,” Felix said, striving to remember his German.
“She speaks English,” Temple said.
“Oh good.” Felix started again. “I believe you know my brother, Gabriel Cobb. He escaped from here two days ago.”
The woman’s placid expression suddenly became curious. She stared at Felix’s face.
“You are Gabriel’s brother?” she said.
“Yes. I just want to ask you one question,” Felix said slowly. “Can you tell me if, during the time he was here, he ever received a letter? A letter from England.”
“A letter?”
“Yes.”
“No. No, I’m sure.”
“Sure he didn’t?”
“He never had any letter.”
Felix felt a delicious sensation momentarily envelop him. A feeling of supernatural release, a floating, an ecstatic removal of terrible worries and tormenting fears. Gabriel knew nothing. Now all he had to do was find him.
“Thank you,” he said with heartfelt sincerity to the woman, and rejoined Temple and Wheech-Browning.
“Were you speaking German then?” Wheech-Browning asked.
“You don’t happen to number Portuguese among your many tongues, do you?”
Felix was still overcome with the information he’d just received. He couldn’t be bothered with the idiotic, insane questions of this ludicrous bean-pole of a man.
“Portuguese? Yes, I speak it fluently.”
“You wouldn’t care for a job with GSO II (Intelligence), would you?” They were walking round the hospital back to the main street. “It seems my next task will be to liaise with our Portuguese allies, if and when von Lettow crosses the Rovuma, and I don’t speak a word.”
“No thank you,” Felix said firmly. “I’m fully committed to the Nigerian Brigade.”
“Are you coming?” the American asked casually, as if he were offering to drive him to the local railway station. “I’ve got orders to scout north anyway. They think there’s another column heading south from Tabora trying to rejoin Lettow.”
Felix paused. He experienced a sense of mounting desperation, he felt the imponderable obstacles of army custom and regulations hemming him in.
“I’ve got to come,” he said finally. “But my captain has only cleared me for today. What can I do?” he asked Temple.
“Easy,” Temple said. “Get Wheech-Browning here to say his motor car has broken down. We shouldn’t be more than two or three days.”
Wheech-Browning held up his hands. “Sony old chap. Not on, I’m afraid.”
“Come on,” Temple persuaded. “It’s his brother for God’s sake.”
“It could be his great-grandmother for all I care,” Wheech-Browning said cheerily. “No can do.”
Felix felt like killing the man. Wheech-Browning was a major. Frearson wouldn’t suspect anything.
“Jesus Christ,” Temple swore incredulously. “Can’t you say it’s a matter of vital security?”
“Oh yes,” Wheech-Browning agreed. “I can say that. But then I’d have to come along too, do you see. I couldn’t say that, then send Cobb along in my place, could I now?”
Temple’s face set. He looked at Felix. “Is that all right with you?”
“Yes,” Felix said desperately, “anything.”
“Jolly good,” Wheech-Browning said. “Let’s pop back to battalion HQ. I’ll give your company commander a call.”
Chapter 9
24 November 1917,
The Makonde plateau, German East Africa
Von Bishop had hoped to catch up with his quarry long before, but it had proved harder than he thought to pick up his trail and necessitated a tedious to-ing and fro-ing between native villages, and the issuing of bribes and threats, before reports started to come in. Once they had reached the plateau he thought it would only be a matter of hours, but Cobb’s course was so erratic that the ruga-ruga kept losing his trail. Cobb had been on the move now for two full days: by all accounts he should be collapsing from exhaustion. It was remarkable that he’d got so far.
As dusk fell the ruga-ruga made their unwillingness to continue evident. They hadn’t expected to be away from Nanda this long either, but von Bishop pressed them on regardless. Each night when he camped Cobb lit a fire, judging from the remains they found. He hoped that tonight they would be close enough to him to spot it glimmering in the darkness. He had been on the point of calling a halt—the sun had disappeared, only the shred of an orange-pink sunset lightened the sky—when one of the ruga-ruga up ahead gave a whistle. A kilometre or so away, at the base of the darker mass of a rock kopje, was a tiny twinkle of flame.
They stopped where they were and waited until it became fully dark. The ruga-ruga stood together whispering excitedly, clearly glad the chase was finally over. Von Bishop too felt a vague relief. He began to plot their next moves. They would have to head west for a while before wheeling south to the Ludjenda confluence. He wished suddenly that he had had the foresight to bring another mule. If Cobb was sick and weak their progress would be considerably impeded. Perhaps he could get the ruga-ruga to procure him one from a village: they couldn’t afford to waste any more time.
He wandered a little way from the group, staring at the twinkling point of light. There was a moon rising but it was too thin to make detection likely. He frowned with concentration, staring at Cobb’s fire—a tiny flicker in the vast encroaching darkness of the plateau—until his eyes watered.
What had made Cobb come to his house on that particular night? Sheer chance? Or was he really gathering intelligence? He’d known about Cobb for a long time: that the wounded Englishman was one of Deppe’s long-term projects. He’d even seen him once or twice. A manifestly sick, limping officer on parole who sometimes helped out in the ward…
He walked back to his mule. He waved one ruga-ruga twenty metres out to the left. He positioned another similarly on the right. To the third he gave the reins of his mule. He himself took the middle position. He could just see the ruga-ruga on either side. He unholstered his revolver. They would creep silently up to the fire. He was looking forward to seeing Cobb’s face when they stepped out of the gloom and into the fire-light.
He waved the men forward and they moved silently across the dark grass plain towards the glimmering fire. They were about a hundred metres away when von Bishop caught a glimpse of Cobb moving about in front of the flames. He seemed to be collecting twigs and wood for fuel. Von Bishop stopped and hissed at the ruga-ruga on either side to do the same. He would wait until Cobb had settled once more.
Just then his mule whinneyed. Not very loud—perhaps the ruga-ruga leading it had drawn it up too fiercely—but to von Bishop it sounded deafening. Swearing under his breath
he dropped to one knee, peering ahead at the fire. But it still burned on. Cobb evidently felt there was no need to extinguish it. Von Bishop allowed himself a small sigh of relief. The African night was full of sounds, especially those made by animals.
For safety’s sake, though, he and the ruga-ruga remained where they were, crouched in the knee-high grass, for another ten minutes, before moving slowly forward once again. As they drew closer von Bishop felt a tightening in his chest. Cobb had made his camp between two spurs of rock at the foot of the kopje. Slowly more details emerged. A stunted thorn tree grew out of a large fissure. The flames caused shifting knife-edged shadows to be cast by the jagged rocks on each side. They inched closer. Then von Bishop suddenly stood up. Cobb had gone.
He strode angrily into the deserted camp site followed by the chattering ruga-ruga. Cobb had obviously left at once, and in haste, abandoning everything as soon as he heard the mule snicker in the dark. Von Bishop looked at the dry tufts of grass around the fire. One had been flattened from the pressure of a body. A sack hung from the thorn tree. A heel of unleavened bread lay on the ground beside a small bundle of sticks. A box of matches had been placed neatly on a round stone…
Von Bishop looked around him vainly. The light from the fire made the surrounding night impenetrably black. One of the ruga-ruga unhooked the sack from the thorn tree and brought it over. Von Bishop reached inside and drew out two candles. He reached in again and his hand closed on a book. He frowned with surprise. A book? He took it out. The worn black and gold leather binding was immediately familiar. He held the spine to the fire, attempting to read the faint lettering of the title. Die Leiden des jungen Werthers.
He recognized the book as his own. How curious, he thought; how on earth did Cobb come to have it? And where were all the missing pages? He tugged at his bottom lip in puzzlement. For what possible reason would Cobb want to read Goethe while on the run? Did he tear out each page after he had read it?
His eye caught some faint writing on the top margin. “Report of Captain G. H. Cobb,” he read. “Account of imprisonment and escape.” He turned the pages with new interest, thinking that here would be some significant clues, but there was no more writing. Another frustration. He felt mildly disappointed.
