Crouched over, again adjusting the dial of the radio, out of the corner of her eye she could see that he was doing something besides pouring. As he turned to hand the glass to her, she stood up under his outstretched arm, knocking the drink to the floor.
“Oh, my God,” she exclaimed, “I’m so sorry! Give me a refill, Willem honey, won’t you?” What could he do but comply, all the while thinking, how could such a witless little woman do this?
After accepting the refill from him, she sat down on the cot again, smiling seductively up at him, invitingly patting the spot on the cot next to her.
With her other hand, she raised her glass to his, toasting, “To us!”
As she tipped her glass to her mouth while gazing adoringly at him, he forgot his plan to drug her. Enough alcohol will serve almost as well, he decided. Then he too drank up.
When he sat down, she took another gulp of the booze and then rested her head on his chest, caressing his thigh. He felt confident that she would soon drink herself into a stupor, even without the knockout capsule. But as he emptied his glass, he felt the first of the effect of the barbiturate. The sedative dulled his brain enough so that he failed to realize that his own method had been used on him. He felt a serene sense of comfort, something like his head sinking into a feather pillow and floating there.
When the combination of vodka and phenobarbital had taken full effect, Adina gently laid him back on the cot. Christ, she thought, he’s beautiful, a blond Nordic God. What might have happened, had he also been a gentleman! Sighing, she lifted the mosquito net at the entrance, and called to her accomplices outside.
“It’s OK, he out like a light. Those capsules and the liquor really did the job. Here’s his jacket with the exposed film and his camera. His Mickey Finn kit is in his pack somewhere. It’s silver and looks like a cigarette case.”
“Ya did great, gal,” Chet said as he cautiously entered, his Colt .45 at the ready. Diana and Dan followed him inside. Then Chet said, “Get those films, and put these in the jacket pocket instead. They’re the same thirty-five millimeter Agfa rolls he uses. His camera probably has exposed film also, so empty it and put this new roll in ta replace it.”
“What about his cache of knockout pills? Shouldn’t we empty that too?” Adina asked, as they went about the exchange.
“We should leave that,” Chet said. “If we fool with it, he’ll immediately know he’s been had, and that might create complications. Security around the spaceship will have ta block photography in sensitive areas. If that don’t work, only then should we confiscate his camera.”
Dan, looking at the camera, offered, “From what we know about Eastern Bloc operatives, they usually have a tiny hidden camera on them somewhere. There’s no way to neutralize this guy unless we jail him.”
Diana added, “You’re right. We have to blow the whistle on him with the British. I have to fly to Dar tomorrow anyway. His assistant is the man to see. I think he’ll go along with us and investigate.”
“But that could take weeks,” said Chet. “What do we do with him in the meantime?”
“It’s your department, Crowley,” Dan replied, “You and your men will have to stick to him like glue.”
The next day, Diana took off for Dar, and her hoped-for meeting with Kindred to initiate the investigation of Dragonov, who, even Max was now certain, was a Communist espionage agent. The flight was uneventful, as she picked up the railroad tracks below and followed them to her destination. The air was somewhat bumpy, due to the thermals of the particularly glorious dry season that year. After landing, she hurried to the Ministry. It was near the end of the day, but she counted on finding the Assistant Minister working late.
When she reached his office, he was there, and greeted her in his friendly manner. “Hello, Miss Howard,” he called out when he saw her at the door. “Do come in. What brings you here? I hope not a problem?”
She asked, “Do you have time for a very important discussion? It’s about your Chief’s activities at the exploration site.”
He looked at her quizzically, saying, “Please sit down, that does sound important. Unfortunately, he is, in fact, known to favor the ladies. I hope, my dear, that he has behaved himself with you.”
“With me, yes, but that’s not the real problem.”
With a solemn glance, Kindred took out a file, evidently that of Krueger, studying it a minute. “Well,” he finally said, “everything seems to check out. This includes credentials from the Mining Institute, and a copy of his birth certificate from the Union of South Africa. We also have his letter of appointment to this Ministry from the British Colonial Office, signed by the Head of that office himself.”
She asked, “What of his university education? His accent would suggest he could have been educated in Britain, and for that, there should be a transcript. But my opinion is that he learned English listening to the BBC.”
Kindred, almost aghast, looked at her in disbelief. “See here, young lady, what evidence can you produce to support your suspicions?”
“Do I have your promise of strict secrecy, that this information will remain only between us?”
“Of course,” he answered immediately, with a solemn nod.
Diana told him of their discovery, and Krueger’s obsession with photographing it as well as their secret equipment, rather than inspecting the oil exploration and the archeological part of the dig itself. She described Adina’s experience with him, his apparent shock at the playing of The Red Army Song that caused him to curse, leading Adina, whose mother was from the Netherlands, to believe that the language he used sounded more like Russian than either Afrikaans or its parent, Dutch.
Kindred looked seriously at Diana for a full minute before speaking. “Your accusation is rather serious, Miss Howard. But for the fact that Tanganyika at the present time appears to be the target of Chinese Communists, I’d be inclined to disbelieve you. But with your amazing discovery, the espionage agencies of the entire world will soon be sending operatives here, if they haven’t already. I have connections with MI6, British Intelligence, which is always happy indeed to expose any subversive activity. I’ll cable them immediately. They certainly will want to send someone to your camp, you know. Shall you be able to permit that?” He smiled as Diana nodded assent. He then called in his secretary to take a message to be cabled.
* * *
Max gave up the painstaking dig on the port side of the ship, delegating that to his male grad students, and took over direction of the work within the hulk itself. Using Diana’s notes mapping the underground water she had located by dowsing on the port side, he directed Steve Short, the senior of the students, to dig down into that. He correctly envisioned that the inflow of water on the starboard side indicated that its exit would be where her witching portside had detected it. All were rightly concerned with crocodiles, considering the failure to find the monster inside the spaceship yet. They hadn’t penetrated to the upper decks, so some uncertainty remained. Just to be safe, Crowley was asked to have an armed Pinkerton guard posted with the diggers for their protection.
Inside, starting on the second deck, one of the many mounds of soft rock was attacked, first with a jackhammer, and then by hand, using hammer and chisel. When the concretions were removed, very little was found except for a hollow in the shape of what could easily have been mistaken for a coffin. There was a thick layer of dust on the deck suggested that the original lining had long since crumbled. Expecting to find fossils, Max ordered similar work on the neighboring formations, with identical results. Nothing more was found. That evening, he gathered with his students to ponder the meaning of their findings.
“Coffins,” one said, “but where are the fossil bones?”
Max rejected that, saying, “If they had been coffins, why? Wouldn’t this ship have been bringing live people here? What better shape could their beds have been in than what we found today? Over six feet in length. That suggests that if they were bipeds, they might have been abo
ut as tall as we are.”
“Or as long as we are tall,” said Steve, taking a devil’s advocate stance, “maybe they were like lizards, or crocodiles.”
“Oh, come now, let’s stick to the facts. They have stairs, so they walked upright, probably,” Max chided. “We must assume that those spaces--I’ll call them pods--contained material that has long since rotted away, left by their occupants. When the spaceship landed, the pods probably contained passengers, now gone without a trace, at least in the few that we‘ve opened. Did they leave, or are they part of that residual dust layer we see?”
Nobody had a reasonable answer, leading the professor to say, “We’ll just have to keep searching. Tomorrow let’s try the top deck, as the third deck contains the same type of objects that we found today, making the total almost two thousand.”
The next day, Steve and his co-workers, digging along the starboard side, broke into a cavern. They were able to see, through the clear water, a large opening suggesting a cargo hatch. This was near the top of the hulk, opening onto one of the upper decks, but with the interior obscured by concretions, suggesting the previous presence of a screen. Unlike the mineral layer that had initially blocked the smaller ports, this broad expanse already had a large, central, jagged opening. No door was seen, evidently having been retracted and then covered in limestone.
Unarmed, and inexpert with firearms, the workers dared not enter because of the water and their fear of meeting the crocodile. Max was called to the scene, and ordered the water level drawn down by pumping. Dragunov showed up and was allowed to view the new finding, out of deference to his role there, but his camera was nowhere in evidence. He did make notes, however.
FOURTEEN
The Attack
That afternoon, Diana flew in with mail and lengths of electrical cable. Coming in on her approach, she saw the herd of cattle that natives were tending quite close to the camp. Unlike the Maasai, who usually had one man for each ten or so cows, she saw the ratio there was almost reversed. And they didn’t wear red robes or blankets, but blended well into the terrain, as if wearing camouflage. She made a mental note to discuss this seeming anomaly with Chet and Dan when she landed. Something was amiss. She had radioed ahead earlier to advertise the mail’s arrival, and was met by an expectant and happy crowd as she shut down the plane’s engine.
While the contents of the mail pouch were being handed out, and after collecting her own mail, she looked for the Pinkerton chief and ran into Dan. As they embraced in a rare moment of privacy, it was easy to see the herd, not a half-mile from their compound.
“What do you make of it, Danny? They aren’t Maasai, the usual people around here. There are, in fact, far more men than one would think necessary for the job.”
Borrowing her binoculars, he surveyed the herd for a minute and responded, “You may have something there, Di. But in the Southwest, near the Mexican border, cattle have to be protected by gunslingers to prevent rustling. A short hop over the border, and you never see them again. Here, maybe something like that holds true. As I understand it, the Maasai’s attitude is that all the cattle in the world belong to them anyway.”
Diana exclaimed, “But they are obviously not Maasai, Danny!” Seeing Chet, she called him over, handed him the binoculars, and asked, “What do you think, Chet? Are those men anything like the Mau Mau you shot when they ambushed us?”
After studying them closely, he handed the glasses back, and in haste headed back to the compound, calling, “They look like the others, all right, and they have rifles slung over their shoulders. I’m callin’ my men together, and ya’all should make tracks fer shelter.”
Quickly, Diana herded all the workers in the area back to the circle of vehicles, telling them to take cover and to expect an attack. Dan went to gather the men from the dig, and to tell the Sicilian drivers to get their weapons. Max and Krueger, notified by a runner, ran up from the work at the ship, and were informed of the threat. While Max hardly knew what to do, Krueger hastened to his tent, emerging almost immediately armed with a high-powered rifle, ready for action. The camp soon bristled with weapons, almost everyone armed with a rifle or a handgun, after a student brought the roustabouts back from the drilling rig and they were armed. Chet assumed command easily, and with quiet instructions, soon had the perimeter manned and ready. He posted most of the men facing the known threat, but a couple of BAR men were placed on either flank of their circle to ward off assault, if necessary, from the rear. A command post was set up centrally, with Diana and Myra to serve as medics, familiar as they were with the medical supplies.
They didn’t have long to wait. As the sun dropped toward the western hills, the air was rent by a sudden chorus of screams, followed by the appearance of clouds of dust and the sound of clattering hooves.
Chet shouted, “They’re stampedin’ the cattle! Get into the vehicles until they jump past, and then get down again. They’re Mau Mau, all right, and countin’ on comin’ in out of the setting sun and in the dust from the herd, so keep yer sunglasses on, and pull down the brims of your hats. Shoot when ya get a target, and keep shootin’!”
Diana and Myra had quickly set up a first aid station near the command post in one of the trucks, and with Diana's Winchester rifle slung across her back, she arranged bandages and I.V. fluids for use. Everyone from the University was frightened, but there was no panic except on the part of the frightened animals. Only around 20 cattle were stampeding, but what they lacked in numbers they made up for by bouncing against the circled trucks and trailers and scattering the barriers of boxes piled between the vehicles. On their way out of the enclosure, they trampled most of the tents.
Before the dust settled, the Mau Mau riflemen came running toward the camp, wildly firing their Enfields and screaming at the top of their lungs, “Uhuru, Uhuru!”
Chet, positioned next to Dan, shouted, “If it’s freedom they want, let’s give it to ’em, like the Japanese got in their Banzai charges!”
With that, the camp’s firepower erupted. A half-dozen automatic rifles opened up almost simultaneously, and the din of the rapid fire and screaming would have seemed deafening, if anyone had time to notice. Not one of the more than thirty charging men reached the circled vehicles, so effective was the defensive fire. It ended almost as soon as it had begun. Instead of rifle shots, there was only the mixture of the cries of the wounded and the shouts of the defenders. As the remnants of the defeated Mau Mau withdrew, they were pursued for a short distance by the Pinkertons. Scattered fires that had been started in the dry grass were quickly stamped out by Dan and the roustabouts. Only a few wounded attackers were found and brought in for treatment.
At the aid station, it was all Diana and Myra could do to keep up. Only a few defenders had been wounded, and in the triage that was necessary, the ones with the most treatable conditions were attended to first.
That included Dragunov, who had been on the firing line with his hunting rifle. A .303 Caliber bullet had hit him in the right frontal region, laterally and above the eye. Luckily for him, it was a tangential shot, creasing and fracturing the skull, but not penetrating inside. At first unconscious when he was brought in, he regained his senses after several minutes, and seemed lucid. As Diana cleansed the wound prior to bandaging it, she noted that the bullet had cut across the temporal region, where the bone is extremely thin, almost taking his ear off as it exited. It took a number of stitches to close the wound and to tack the ear back together, before everything was covered with a head dressing.
She then busied herself with one of the Sicilians, who had a gunshot wound in the abdomen, a wound that was beyond the simple measures available there. She started an I.V. with antibiotics, but knew his only hope was timely surgery. Ordinarily he’d be flown to Dar, but because of darkness, that was out. Going by truck to Dodoma was the only viable alternative, since the hospital there had the necessary surgical facilities.
She found Max in his tent comforting Myra, who had found the day’s ev
ents too much for her, and had broken down in tears. “Max,” Diana said, “Krueger looks like he’ll survive, if complications such as an epidural hematoma don’t occur, but the truck driver will die, and painfully, of peritonitis if he isn’t taken to the hospital. He can get to Dodoma by truck tonight well before I can fly him to Dar in the morning.”
Max, deferring to Diana’s medical knowledge, called Staltieri. “One of your men has been seriously wounded in the abdomen, and unless he’s taken immediately to a hospital, he’ll have no chance. I suggest you have a couple of your men run him over to Dodoma. The darkness makes it too late to fly.”
The head driver nodded, and called two of his men over. In rapid Italian, he directed them to their wounded comrade. As they carried him to the truck, the driver smirked, and slowly shook his head.
The three wounded Mau Mau had all been shot in the chest, and were gasping their last breaths. She couldn’t do much, but was able to seal one wound that was sucking air with Vaseline gauze, thereby aiding the man’s breathing. Each was given morphine to lessen the pain, which incidentally slowed the bleeding. It was only then that she realized how tired she was. She felt as if she had been carrying extra weight on her shoulders, besides the responsibility for the lives of her charges.
Dan came in just before she collapsed into a camp chair and asked, “Di, sweetie, why do you still have that rifle slung over your shoulder?”
The question was rhetorical, but after she hastily removed the rifle, she was overcome with relief. Then, as she sought the comfort of Dan’s arms, her profuse tears covered his dusty, sweaty shirt.
“Come on,” he said, basking in her long-sought closeness. “You need something to eat, and even more, something to drink. The aftermath of the battle has just begun.”
That night, one by one, the wounded attackers died, amid the wild screams of the hyenas fighting over the bodies of the others outside the perimeter. And there was commotion in the aid tent also; Krueger had become delirious, and was beginning to babble. Diana asked one of the women grad students to watch him, and ironically, it was Adina who drew the short straw. His ravings became more active toward morning, leading her to give him a sedative of the same kind she had slipped in his drink before. That quieted him down, but not before she was able to identify that his apparent gibberish was indeed Russian. Before she reported on that discovery, snooping through his things, she found his silver drug case, and his hat camera.
The Martian Pendant Page 16
