Assignment Golden Girl
Page 12
Something whistled and thumped into the wooden floor of the platform. A spear shaft quivered between Atim-boku's feet. Gloria saw the long, skinny form of Khwama climb slowly toward them over the stacked cordwood. He had another spear ready, aimed at Atimboku's chest.
Atimboku paused, stared. Slowly he lowered Harvey's pliant, unresisting body.
"Help me," Gloria whimpered to Khwama.
The warrior did not seem to hear her. His black eyes fixed without expression on Atimboku. The tribal scars stood out on his cheeks.
"It shall be recorded," Khwama said.
Twenty-One
MOKHEHLE Station was a collection of beehive huts, concrete block police barracks, some kraals for skinny, hump-backed cattle along the last shore of Emerald Lake. Durell brought the train to a smooth halt just as darkness began to spread over the world of Africa. The first stars glimmered in the sky. They needed water and fuel and food for the suffering passengers. He brought Old 79 to a panting halt alongside the station, but no one was there. The village was wrapped in silent gloom. There were no people in sight anywhere. Under the thorn and fever trees the lanes between the huts were deserted, and a faint wind that had sprung up across the lake made a rusty, battered Coca-Cola sign creak dismally from a banyan tree beside the platform.
Oyashi climbed down slowly from the engine cab with him. Other passengers descended from the coach with the look of travelers arriving on a strange planet. There was only silence, the whisper of the wind, the quiet lapping of water along pilings where the Mokhehle people kept their fishing dugouts.
"Where did everyone go?" Durell asked.
Oyashi shrugged. "Scared off, I suppose.''
"How could they know we were coming?"
"Africa is still a mystery to me, Cajun. With all the modem innovations—^jet planes and hotels and roads— you can still come to a place like this and never xmder-stand it."
"What would scare them off?" Durell insisted.
"You know the answer to that. The Neighbors. Maybe the Chinese. Maybe tribal chiefs who don't approve of Atimboku. How is Harvey, by the way?"
"Still out," Durell said shortly. "And you?"
"Sleepy. I feel as if I were drugged," Oyashi said. "Lots of ketones piling up in my bloodstream: I've got another day or so yet before it starts putting me into a coma. If we get across the desert though, I may be all right. It's an inferno. We have to make it by morning or never, Cajun."
"And beyond the desert?"
"The mountains. You've been watching them all day. It's a 4 and 5 percent grade up to the pass. I don't know if this old tea kettle will make it. You may have to drop the hopper and the last coach."
Sally came down out of the tender and joined them. In the gloom she looked fresh and tidy as if she had just stepped from her dressing room. Her proud face was clean of the soot that marked them all. Her long, looped earrings swung with the lift of her head.
"Have you seen Khwama?" she asked.
"No."
"Or the other two?"
"Not since Atimboku tried to kill Harvey."
She said nothing about that. She looked up and down the tracks of Mokhehle Station. A little frown touched her slightly slanted eyes, and she put a finger to her ripe underlip. "This is Mokhehle, isn't it?"
"That's what the sign says, Salduva," said Oyashi.
More passengers climbed down from the train. Colonel Abdundi came trotting along the crumbly station platform and quickly ordered them back. His own men clambered out of the hopper car ahead of the locomotive and calmly set up cooking pots and lit fires and smoked. The green of the lake began to fade into the black of night. The little wind over the water was stronger now. It smelled rank with the primeval slime and ooze of the shore. And still none of the local people came into sight. Colonel Abdundi stalked importantly along the train and stopped beside them.
"M'sieu Durell, do you think it strange that no one is here?"
"Quite strange."
"You can think of an explanation, perhaps?" The barrel-chested colonel spoke in a whisper. His manner reflected an uneasy, inner disturbance. "I am not a superstitious man, you understand, mais —"
"Something scared the locals off," Durell said.
"But the Neighbor troops have not penetrated this far east as yet, m'sieu."
"How can you be sure?" Durell asked.
"I am not sure, but it seems impossible."
Sally interrupted. "I'll go look for Nam Sring. He's an Indian merchant here. His place is just down the way a bit. I'd suggest, colonel, that you get done what's needed for the train as quickly as possible so we can go on. Mr. Durell and I will investigate."
The colonel hesitated, shrugged, touched his small, tidy moustache. He drew a deep breath. He looked tired. He said, "As you wish," and went on to his own men, who by now had begun casually cooking what food they had in their pots, murmuring to themselves in Banda while they lolled about and smoked, their weapons put aside. Durell followed Sally across the cracked paving of Mokhehle Station and into the village proper. She moved with the proud, free stride of all Pakuru women. All at once Durell stopped in his tracks and stared at a sign that had been nailed over the door to the waiting room of the little station. The sign was obviously new.
He touched the red paint, and some of it stuck wetly to his finger.
Sally stared at him in the fading light.
"What is it?"
"Can you read Chinese? Mandarin Chinese?"
^'No. Why should I? Sam, I know you don't trust me, but I swear I didn't use that radio or betray the train in any way. I swear it! I wish," she said tiredly, "that you believed me for once." She paused. "What does the sign say?"
"It's a personal message from Colonel Yi to me."
"It was newly painted, wasn't it?"
"Less than an hour ago, I'd say."
"Well, what does it read?"
Durell said, "He's waiting for me."
"Here?"
"Somewhere."
Sally said, "I think we'd better get back to the train, Sam."
"Yes, if you're afraid."
"Aren't you?"
"I am," Durell admitted. "But we need some men to help get firewood and haul water for the engine. Abdun-di's soldiers seem to be ia a ticklish mood. Where can I find this Indian storekeeper of yours, this Nam Sring?"
"Sam, I don't think he'd be here under the circumstances. He'd have run with everybody else. Everybody has been frightened out of the village."
Durell walked across the flat dirt square into the shadows across from the little station. Sally hesitated, then walked after him in resignation. There was a row of little shops here, but they were all shuttered and dark. There was a glow in the sky from the rising moon once they got away from the dim illimiination of the waiting train. He paused in the shadows of a tree and waited for Sally to catch up with him. Far away in the tall jungle growth that began a short distance from the shore of the lake, he heard a dog bark. Its yelping was abruptly cut off, but it seemed as if the echoes lingered in the evening air.
"This way, Sam."
"Salduva, I'd better go alone. The whole place could be a trap—designed for me. No use your risking your neck."
"I'll stay with you."
"You'd be better off if you stuck to Khwama."
"I don't know where he is. It's the first time I've looked around and not seen him watching over me. It's kind of a funny feeling." Sally rubbed her nose. "It was annoying and frustrating all day, never being able to get away from him, but it made me feel good at the same time."
He walked on into the village. Again Sally paused, then she trotted after him and took his hand. He shook it free in order to be able to reach his gun if he had to.
He knew Colonel Yi was here.
Somewhere in the shadows the Chinese agent from the Black House was watching and waiting for him.
He had been in the business too long not to know the price of carelessness. He took no unnecessary risks, and he did not let
personal emotion override normal logic. Colonel Yi could have come here by boat or plane. The train had only averaged about thirty miles an hour during the day. Easy enough to hop over them and wait somewhere ahead, throw up a roadblock or prepare an ambush. Mokhehle Station was as good a place as any, Durell thought. Sooner or later during the trip the danger had to be faced. It might as well be right now, right here in this place.
He drew out his gun and halted as Sally paused and said, "This is Nam Sring's place. He's an old friend, Sam. You can trust him."
Durell didn't trust anyone; but he said nothing. The shop was closed and shuttered like all the others in the village. The signs over it in Indian and Banda and English indicated general merchandise for sale. It stood at the edge of a kind of shantytown, and beyond it was a lane that led down to more shacks along the lake shore where local fishing boats, long and narrow and of shallow draft, were drawn up on the muddy bank.
"Nam Sring helped me to hide when Atimboku first came back and threw my cousins and other relatives into prison," Sally whispered. "He helped me get to the Ngami people—^where Oyashi works. After that I was safe."
Durell walked around to the back of the little shop. As he turned the comer, there came a quick scuttling movement, a slippage of shadows, a patter of naked feet. He smelled spices and soft incense through the open back door of the shop, and then he spotted the man and dove at him, bowled him over in the dust, and pinned him down. There was a frantic wriggling under, a smell of curry on the man's breath.
"Hold it, Sring," he whispered.
"Please, please, I am only a harmless citizen—"
"We'll see about that."
He lifted the man to his feet. Sring was about sixty, thin and wiry with a narrow, hungry face. His eyes were big and bright. Durell pushed him back against the wall of the shack and listened again. Sally stood a little distance away. He heard a night bird cry, and there was the slight wind off the lake rattling the trees. Nothing else. But he wasn't sure.
"Sring, do you see Salduva there?"
"Yes, I see her, sir, I am her friend—"
"Where is everybody?"
"Off in the jungle, sir. There was an alarm, and they were frightened—"
"Why did you stay here all alone?"
"I hid myself, sir. Everything I own, all my merchandise, my whole life, sir, my savings—everything is in my little shop. I am a poor man, sir. My wife is dead. My children left the country—there has been much angry talk and racism against Asians here in Africa. But I am a coward. I am afraid to go and afraid to leave—"
"Were there soldiers here?"
"Some, yes, sir."
"And a Chinese?"
"Oh, yes, sir, he was a terrible man, he shot poor Okovannato and drove everyone away. He also shot old Nkuruteita and Tandaho and—"
"Where are this Chinese and his soldiers now?"
"Gone, sir."
"Don't lie to me, Sring. They're still here."
"I don't know where, sir. They came by float planes, three of them, and the planes are gone, less than twenty minutes ago."
"Who left with the planes?'*
"The soldiers."
"And the Chinese?"
Sring said thinly, "I don't know, sir."
"All right. Can you find the villagers for me?"
"I think so, sir, but—"
"Do it. Bring the men back. We need some work done. Tell them if I don't see them in twenty minutes, we'll bum down Mokhehle Station. The whole village. Your place will be the first, Sring."
"Sam—" Sally protested.
He turned his head to her. "This man is lying."
"But I trusted Nam Sring with my life, Sam."
"He's lying now."
The Indian cowered back against the wall of his shack. A bird hooted in the dark jungle that edged the banks of the lake beyond the fishing houses. Durell turned aside, then suddeidy kicked in the back door of the merchant's shop. The crash of broken hinges sounded loud in the silence of the village. Nam Sring made a whimpering sound. He said, "Oh. Oh, please sir." Durell went into the dark interior of the store. It contained the usual wares: cheap cotton goods in bolts on rickety shelves, kerosene stoves and lamps, Japanese transistor radios. Hong Kong watches, even a television set that had mysteriously gotten here, although they must be almost a thousand miles from the nearest broadcasting station in South Africa. Durell moved inside with Sring wringing his hands behind him.
Durell paid no attention to him. He found a kerosene can behind the counter and unscrewed the rusty cap and began to pour the kerosene over the counter and the bare plank floor and along the walls. Sring whimpered again.
"Where is the Chinese man?" Durell asked.
"Everything I own is here. My eldest son went back to
Bombay, you see. But he starves there. I told him not to go, that the Pakuru people would be kind to us and let us do business, even if we had to take in Okovannato, who was the head man of Mokhehle Station and who is now dead, shot by that very devilish Chinese man, that Colonel Yi—"
"Where is the colonel now?" Durell persisted. He took out his lighter and JBicked it into flame. In the yellow light he saw that Nam Sring was sweating, torn between two terrors. "Tell me. Then get the men of the village and go to the train. You will be safe there."
The Indian turned to Sally. "Must I, Salduva?"
Sally's eyes remained fixed on Durell with a curious expression. "Yes, I think you must, Mr. Sring."
Nam Sring complained, "Oh, why did you bring this man to me to repay my kindness to you with his cruelty?"
"I thought he was a nice man," Sally said. "But perhaps he is as great a monster as Colonel Yi. Perhaps their business makes them what they are. But you should do as Durell tells you."
The Chinese, Nam Sring said, had remained behind when the float planes took off over Emerald Lake. He had kept only two men with him when the Neighbor soldiers departed. He had gone somewhere farther up the tracks, and they had packs with them, and they had laughed much, Sring said, speaking in Chinese among themselves.
"What was in their packs?" Durell asked.
"They were covered with canvas. I could not see."
"Did you hear any orders about the planes?"
"Yes. One was to return within the hour and pick them up. Sir, I am only a widower persecuted on racial grounds because I am an Asian among black people, and I am afraid to go to the villagers and tell them to come back here and work for the train."
"You must go anyway," Sally intervened gently. "I am sorry. Nam Sring. My poor country seems to be in the grip of ptakanis" She used the Banda word for devils when she looked at DureU.
Durell was as accustomed to warfare in the jungle as he was to the other kind of savagery m the great cities iof the world. He was as at home among the creeping, growing predator things in the wilderness as he was among the assassins who sometimes stalked him in the steel and glass canyons of the earth's great metropoles. He was familiar with both sides of the coin of hunting. He was a hunter, and he had been hunted. Long ago when he was a boy, his old grandfather had taught him the tricks of stealth and deception in the bayous of the delta country. He had set snares, and sometimes he had been trapped himself. He knew how to proceed in silence. And he was surprised and grateful that Sally knew how to do so, too.
The shore of the lake began to lift above the level of the swamp just a short distance beyond the fishermen's shacks. In the moonlight the jungle presented itself as a black wall beyond the cattle kraals and the last shack of Mokhehle Station. There were paths here beaten hard by generations of naked native feet, and he followed one close to the lake, ignoring the railroad tracks that swept south from the little station. He moved quickly, not knowing how much time he had, and Sally kept silent pace with him.
Once past the last kraal fence their booted feet sank into ooze for perhaps another hundred paces. The wind in their path was cool and rank now. He heard birds call like loons off in the distance; and something moved suddenly in
the black trees overhead. The trail moved through the trees, turned inland, twisted left, then right again toward higher ground. Far behind he heard a clang of metal from something being done to the train. He wished they were still moving forward, covering the miles between Mokhehle and safety. Somewhere far to the south and east was the Indian Ocean, maybe another three hundred miles. There was first the range of mountains, then the dreaded Kaisata Desert, then the savannah where Oyashi's Ngami people were being taught agriculture. The border seemed endless miles away. Right now Colonel Yi was much closer at hand.
"Sam?" Sally whispered.
"Hush. Please."
"I'm—I am a bit scared."
"Of Colonel Yi?"
"Let's turn back."
"We can't."
Moonlight touched the girl's face, and he saw that she was genuinely alarmed for the first time. Neither Atimboku's threats nor the flight from the Neighbor's invasion had shaken her inner calm like this imminent confrontation with the Chinese. Durell himself did not know what lay ahead. He halted briefly. An animal grunted somewhere off to the right. Then he turned that way, touching Sally's hand to guide her. She caught his fingers and clung to him with a tight grip. The rising moon sent dappled yellow shadows down through the foliage. It was enough to show him the way.
He saw no sign of other humans nearby. He drifted ahead silently, moving toward the railroad tracks again, and again he halted when he caught the gleam of moonlight on the rails. The right-of-way was a hard slash through the undergrowth, curving slightly southward. He paused at the edge of the jungle and held Sally back. He looked both ways, his head turning carefully. Nothing. He began to wonder about the truth of Nam Sring's story. He wondered about Sally, too.
He spoke in a quiet undertone. "How does the track run south of here?"
She frowned. She touched the loop of earring in her right ear and said, "Well, there's the Mokhehle River about a third of a mile farther on."
"And a bridge?"
"Of course. Built of logs."
"How wide is the river?"
"Oh, very wide. It's hard to say. It empties into the lake here, you see. Lots of islands, different channels."
"So it's a long bridge?"
"Oh, yes. Very long, Sam."