The Rift

by H Schmidt

  “Where is Giesela?” Scheuer had come to the room because of the urgent message he had received from Giesela Gottfried, the brothel’s madam.

  “Please, I need to see you. Something important has come up. I cannot meet you in my rooms. Come to the third room on the right at the top of the back stairs. Do not let anyone see you.

  Giesela”

  ----

  Ibrahim was tall like his brother. He was the older of the two, the more careful one. It was he who made the arrangements with importers in Asia, Europe, and even America to receive the ivory, the skins, and rhinoceros horns, and who found the market for the young boys and girls they would capture or buy from the inland tribes. Unlike Farah, who had an appetite for small boys, Ibrahim cared little about sexual gratification. He had once had wealth, and he remembered its power over others. He wanted that again.

  He found it difficult to purge himself of the bitterness he felt for the Germans. They had shrunken his slave trade, closed his brothels, put a price on his head and that of his beloved brother. His hatred intensified when he found that German clerks and police charged him exorbitant amounts for information he needed to survive. Ibrahim and his brother had lived in a palace. They were respected in East Africa. They were received as princes in Mogadishu, Djibouti, Aden. Now they were hunted. He hated the Germans. He hated the man in front of him.

  ---

  Scheuer’s eyes widened as he saw Ibrahim step out of the shadows.

  “Where is Giesela? She said she would meet me here.” Scheuer felt the sweat on this cool night begin to flow from his armpits down the sides of his body. He fought to compose himself. He cannot know. How can he know?

  “Giesela is not here. Giesela told me something which troubles me very much. I asked her to write the note for me.” Ibrahim now stood within a meter of Scheuer. He looked into the darting eyes of the clerk. Scheuer forced himself to look at Ibrahim, whose face seemed made of stone. Almost instantaneously with the Somali’s announcement, the German’s quick mind began to pick up speed. I can confuse this stupid man. But first, I need to know what he is after. I do not know yet. I will not jump to conclusions. Ibrahim, my friend, you are counting on that, aren’t you? While Scheuer’s eyes darted about, the Somali’s eyes were fixed on him.

  Still, he said nothing. Scheuer began to feel confident. The Somali could see the quizzical look change to the familiar look of disdain. He hated this man. Giesela was correct. He has betrayed Farah. But if I kill him now, he will only be surprised. I want him to fear Ibrahim. I want him to feel the wrath of Ibrahim. I need to know if Farah is in danger.

  “What is it you want, Ibrahim?” He tried to keep his voice steady. For the first time, he was aware that they were not alone in the room. In one corner, a tall, thick figure stood. A second, shorter, but thick like the other, stood between the German and the door. “Why are these men here?!”

  He tried to put anger in his voice, but fear betrayed him. Before he could scream, the man behind him delivered a carefully aimed blow to his skull. Nothingness. Before the fat man reached the floor, he was grabbed under the arms, the second man taking his legs. Quickly, they laid the limp body in a thick carpet and rolled it around him. Ibrahim stood in the doorway while a large, red-faced man passed, looked quickly at Ibrahim, shrugged and disappeared into one of the rooms.

  “Come.” Ibrahim’s command brought the two men into the hallway, then down the stairs. In less than thirty seconds they were out the door, carrying their baggage to a waiting oxen cart. The brothel was situated at the edge of the town, on the side nearest the great plains to the southeast. Soon, they moved under the cloudy sky into open country where they would be alone. As they moved, Ibrahim could see the silhouettes of a band of hyenas under a great flame tree. They watched the cart as it passed, then followed.

  Chapter Six

  The plan developed by the four men, Krueger, Mawenzi, the sergeant and Gustav, was a simple one. They would wait for the poachers to leave the village. The ambush would be on the trail below where they made camp.

  Much of the discussion was about the placement of the machine gun. With only twenty soldiers plus the two scouts and two leaders, they would be outnumbered. Farah had more than forty rifles with him. Few, however, had rifles with magazines. Most were single-shot weapons, some predating the Franco-Prussian War. Forty men, however, spread out along the length of the caravan, could inflict heavy casualties on the soldiers if they chose to fight.

  The machine gun was the equalizer. More than that. The sergeant remembered the first time he had heard a machine gun. It was the French who had used them in the Franco-Prussian War. He was only eighteen at that time twenty-five years ago. Standing beside the Maxim facing the three men, he recalled that day.

  The French had been falling back throughout the day, and the morale of our company was high. To our front, the French had dug in across the top of a ridge. We were only one hundred meters below in a wooded area. Because of the rapid retreat of French units, the French on the hill were not expecting our unit to be so close and were surprised when we charged out of the woods. I was on the left flank, a private full of the fury that consumes us in battle. We had covered more than half the distance to the trench before we were discovered.

  Suddenly to the right, I heard it. The thump, thump, thump of the machine gun, like a single-piston engine, but many times its speed. In front of it, our men were falling like wheat before a scythe. In seconds, the whole center of the company lay dead or dying. If we had not surprised them, if the woods had been another hundred meters away from the French, the machine gun would have gotten the entire company.

  Before the French could move the gun to rake our flanks, we were in their trench. In fury, men near the machine gun fell upon its operators as if they were the spawn of the devil. While taking the other French soldiers prisoner, they bayoneted and clubbed to death the men behind the machine. Looking back, it wasn’t fury, but terror that consumed the men. I remember the old sergeant standing beside the gun, looking down at it and shaking his head.

  “Boys,” he said, “I hope I am not around for the next war.” The war ended soon after that, and I Thank God there has not been another.

  It was Friday afternoon. Gustav had observed that all that Scheuer had told him was true. He had decided that the caravan would begin its journey from Macha’me tomorrow. Now the four men who had worked together to lay the trap for Farah gathered on the ridge, overlooking the valley. Gustav laid out his plan for the attack. The others were silent, listening for any flaws which they might see.

  “We are two kilometers from the village. The valley floor is flat, but the clumps of trees and high grass make it difficult for those in the village to see what we are doing at this point.”

  A makeshift table had been set up near the edge of the ridge where they could overlook the valley. Gustav pointed to the area immediately below them in the valley, which he had also marked on the rough map he had drawn. He pointed to a spot below and then to his map.

  “The clump of trees which you see one hundred meters to our right provides a field of fire down the trail for five hundred meters.”

  The sergeant looked at the clump of trees below and pictured on the map, and saw that the trail veered to the left around the clump. In front of the clump, in the direction of the village, the trail extended in a straight line until it veered to the right around a small marsh.

  “The Maxim will be set in the clump of trees. Sergeant, you will stay with the gun. We cannot take any risks of firing too soon or the gun jamming.”

  While there was high grass in the area between the village and the ambush site, the ambush site itself was a large meadow heavily grazed by wildebeests, gazelle, and zebra. The meadow ran almost four hundred meters down the trail from the tree clump where the machine gun would be placed. In that area, the meadow extended to the ridge on the east side of the trail, and over two hundred meters to the west.

  The camp was silent as the sun dro
pped below the hills on the western side of the valley. The colors in the valley quickly retreated, leaving it gray and still. The silhouettes of grazing animals could be seen from the ridge above. When the sunlight had faded completely, someone with good night vision and a sense of where to look could see the machine gun crew with Sergeant Hoffman moving into position. As the sergeant spoke quietly to his men, he prepared them for the appearance of the caravan at first light. The Maxim was carefully covered to remove any possibility of the sun’s rays reflecting off of it. The men would sleep in shifts awaiting the morning.

  Gustav walked with Krueger and Mawenzi, and the askari squad leaders, going over the marching orders for the morning. He wished the sergeant were with him now. He could see the uncertainty on the faces of the askari with the sergeant gone. The ambush depended upon the Maxim.

  ---

  The hut was dark. Farah lay naked, his body shivering as the sweat cooled in the cold night air. Outside, the drunken porters, guards, and hangers-on chanted to the sounds of the drums. Above the drums and chants, the high-pitched squeals of laughter from the women. Farah, his mind numbed by pombe, mumbled blasphemies to Allah. In the corner, doubled in pain, Makonnen wept, his spirit too weak to destroy his prostrate tormentor. Soon it would be daylight and the caravan would begin.

  ---

  A full day’s ride from Macha’me, Ibrahim spurred his mule to the northwest. He must warn Farah. Scheuer had betrayed him. The Somali thought with satisfaction of the last hours of Wolfgang Scheuer.

  The pig thought his arrogance and his cleverness would save him, almost to the end.

  Ibrahim had taken Scheuer southeast of Moshi, stopping when they could no longer be seen from the town. Scheuer had regained consciousness on the way and began to demand that we release him.

  “In the name of the German government, I demand you release me. You will all hang for this.”

  He spoke first in Arabic, then Swahili, then German. I had commanded my two men to be silent.

  Scheuer swore at us until I ordered the cart stopped and had the men roll the carpet off the cart. As the huge man rolled off the gate, he dropped suddenly to the hard ground, screaming as he landed. We waited for fifteen minutes while he continued to threaten us. The men began to laugh. Yes, the thought of the man bound inside a carpet demanding to be released struck me as humorous also. I joined in their laughter.

  The sound of the laughter caused Scheuer to stop.

  He began to whimper softly. I bent over to listen, and I could hear the whimper, much like that of a distressed kitten of a domestic cat. I ordered the men to roll him out of the carpet. I stood over him.

  “Take off your clothes.”

  I stood over him with a branch of the Acacia. Only the thorns where my hand held the branch had been removed.

  “I will not...”

  I never let him finish as I brought the branch down upon the top of his head. He screamed as the thorns ripped his scalp and blood flowed into his eyes. Then, his eyes wide, he began to take his clothes off, moving quickly, stopping only to wipe his face of the blood running from his scalp.

  Behind me, the men shouted, one of them hurling a stick into the darkness.

  Both began to yell, and I watched the hyenas move away.

  Ibrahim smiled to himself. I knew they would be back.

  One of the men went to the cart and came back with rope and a huge mallet. It was then that the ferenji began to scream and leaped up, quicker than I imagined he could, and began to run toward Moshi. The men quickly ran him down, and dragged him back.

  I grimaced as the foul smell of urine and feces hit my nostrils. “Stake him down.”

  Bitu was a man tall as I but as thick as a buffalo. He threw Scheuer to the ground and sat upon his chest, and the Tonu drove in one stake. He tied one arm to the stake. He drove the second stake on the other side of the German, who had begun now to whimper and sob. As the second arm was tied, then the rope tightened around the driven stake, the screams seemed to echo against the far away mountains.

  I ordered him gagged.

  Ibrahim’s hate had caused him to make a mistake. When he took Scheuer out onto the plains, he should have focused only on finding out whether the soldiers had gone after Farah, and where they would attack. Instead, he had indulged his hatred, to see the white man stripped of his identity as a man, his spirit destroyed, his submission to Ibrahim total.

  When he had completed the destruction of the man, the panic rose in him as he realized he must give the man back some small piece of dignity and hope before he would tell Ibrahim anything.

  “I am sorry that this was necessary, Herr Scheuer. After we talk, I will release you and allow you to return to Moshi.”

  Still, the man only whimpered and cried, now crying for his father to forgive him, to save him. He began to talk about things which he had done when he was a boy and a student.

  I did not listen. I had no interest in this man. Still, I tried to make him think I understood, telling him that his father would forgive him. I had the men release this foul-smelling creature and allowed him to dress.

  Had I driven him mad? For hours I talked to him. The sun had risen well above the horizon, and still I crouched beside him, speaking softly. He seemed to be coming back.

  “Do you trust me, Wolfgang?”

  It tore at my guts to speak to him in this way. He looked at me. “Yes,” he said.

  “If I release you, will you tell me about Farah?”

  I looked at his eyes. They were like the eyes of a dog, trusting. I had taken this clever man’s soul! I had mastered the bodies of men, but never before their souls. I had simply to ask.

  “Where have the soldiers gone?”

  “They have gone to Macha’me. They know that Farah will bring his porters to Pagani from Macha’me.”

  As he spoke, he looked directly at me. His face was almost serene. I looked at this wretch. When I first found out that Scheuer had betrayed Farah, I had planned to leave him staked out for the hyenas. Now, as he sat, his back leaning against the side of the cart wheel, I walked to his side where he no longer could see me. I quietly pulled the Browning revolver from its holster and blew out the light behind those serene eyes.

  ---

  The clouds were dark. There would be rain. Sergeant Hoffman spoke softly to himself, “Let the rain hold off until we have finished.”

  He had received the signal from the ridge that the caravan had left the village. Coolly, he checked the belt, the water jacket, and the traversing gears. From the nest they had created, the machine gun crew could see movement to their flanks, as soldiers took their positions. Before daylight, Gustav had come by to check on their readiness, to go over the plans. He must have been a fine officer, he thought. Men with such self-assurance always make good officers. He shook his head when he thought of Lieutenant Schmidt.

  Perhaps there is hope. He is young. He thought about the sergeants he had known. They were like stern fathers to the soldiers and wise uncles to the young officers. They had to be gentle with them lest the fiction of chain of command be forced into play. It is a subtle thing, he thought. With the young lieutenants, you must let them play at command. The good ones understood that they must look to you for leadership in the beginning, the bad ones did not.

  In the village, Farah shouted commands, trying to ignore the pounding in his head. The porters worked in pairs, sometimes in threes, to carry the great ivory tusks. Dressed in his princely attire, Farah whipped his mount forward. He looked at the heavy clouds. In the distance, he could hear thunder. They moved out of the village, the women moving about and children still asleep, the old men watching as the long caravan moved onto the trail. It would be a long trek to the coast. The porters began their low chant, stepping to its slow, steady rhythm. Like Farah, most suffered from the pombe that flowed the night before.

  To their front, along the flanks, and bringing up the rear, the armed guards rode their mules, their rifles slung across their shoulder
s. None expected trouble near the outlaw village. All walked to the rhythm of the chant, paying little attention to movement around them.

  In the soldiers’ camp, the porters huddled together. They were silent. The soldiers had moved into their positions, looking to the northwest. The clouds had grown darker since morning light. The soldiers had been broken up into three squads. Krueger stayed with the first squad on the ridge. One of the best rifle shots in the highlands, Krueger had taken a position halfway down the ridge, thirty meters above the valley floor. He was two hundred meters forward of the machine gun, equidistant of the front and back ends of the meadow. A second squad had positioned itself on the left flank of the machine gun, hidden by the high grass at the edge of the meadow. Gustav stood behind this squad, one hundred fifty meters from the machine gun. The third squad, with Mawenzi, had moved to a position opposite the second squad on the other side of the meadow, above the valley floor. They were fifty meters from the edge of the meadow.

  It was Mawenzi who first heard the low chants and shouts of the caravan. In the shade of a thorn tree, he used his glasses. Only a hundred meters from the meadow, they moved slowly, oblivious to danger. As he moved his glasses to the front of the caravan, his heart stopped. There, back rigid, dressed in his robes, rode the devil. Taught by Krueger to shoot, he fought the temptation to kill this man. He waited.

  In the clump of trees where the machine gun rested, the askari grew agitated as they saw the first mounted rider round the bend created by the marsh and head toward them. Calmly, Sergeant Hoffman told them not to speak and to listen to his commands. They had tested the Maxim on the trail. Carefully, the sergeant slipped the first round in the chamber and gently placed his hand on the grip, fingers away from the trigger.

  Farah entered the clearing and sensed the danger. If they were to be attacked, the spot was perfect. The open ground, the high grass surrounding them. He raised his hand for the caravan to stop. Several of the armed men rode up to him. One of the men had been in the group that had been sent out to scout the area before Farah arrived.