Assegai

by Wilbur Smith

  Leon was about to deny any knowledge of this arrangement, but then he realized that would be a mistake so he nodded. ‘Of course,’ he agreed, and Mr Vilabjhi looked relieved. ‘The reason that the General chose me is that I have a niece who lives with her husband in Altnau, a small town in Switzerland on the north shore of Lake Bodensee. Across the lake is the town of Wieskirche in Bavaria. This is where the castle of the German count is situated, and also the main factory of the Meerbach Motor Works. It is also where Memsahib von Wellberg lives.’ Mr Vilabjhi had phrased it delicately. ‘My niece works in the Swiss cablegram company. Her husband has a small fishing-boat on the lake. The shore is not heavily guarded by the egregious Germans, so it is easy for them to cross the water at night and pick up any message at Wieskirche, then return home and telegraph it to me. I take it to General Ballantyne. But now the esteemed general has gone. Before he left he told me I should deliver any future messages to the man who has taken over his job at KAR Headquarters.’

  ‘Yes. Colonel Snell,’ Leon said calmly, although his heart raced at the prospect of messages coming directly from Eva.

  ‘Ah, of course I am telling you nothing that is not already well known to you. However, a terrible thing has happened.’ Mr Vilabjhi broke off and rolled his eyes tragically.

  Leon’s heart was chilled with dread. ‘Something has happened to Memsahib von Wellberg?’ he asked.

  ‘No, not in the very least, not to the memsahib, but it has happened to me. After the departure of the general I took the first despatch from my niece to the office of Colonel Snell. I learned in no ambivalent terms that the man is an enemy of the general. Now that he has left for Egypt, Snell will not pursue or foster any enterprise initiated by your honourable avuncular relative. I think it is because the praise and success arising from it would redound to the general’s credit, rather than to Snell himself. Also it seems he knows that you and I are friends and he looks upon you as an enemy. He knew that if he insulted me and questioned my veracity, he would be getting at you. He drove me away with harsh words.’ Mr Vilabjhi paused. It was obvious that he had been deeply hurt by his encounter with Snell. Then he went on bitterly, ‘He called me a “devil-worshipping wog”, and told me not to go back to him with my vaunting claptrap about secret despatches.’ Tears welled in his dark eyes. ‘I am at the end and far limit of my wits. I know not what to do so I appeal to you.’

  Leon rubbed his chin thoughtfully. His mind was racing. He knew that if he wanted ever to lay eyes on Eva again he needed Mr Vilabjhi as his ally. He chose his words carefully. ‘You and I are loyal subjects of King George the Fifth, are we not?’

  ‘Indeed we are, Sahib.’

  ‘If the beastly man Snell is a traitor, then you and I are not.’

  ‘No! Never! We are true and resolute Englishmen.’

  ‘In the name of our sovereign, we have to take over this enterprise from Snell and steer it to a victorious conclusion.’ Leon had picked up Mr Vilabjhi’s floral turn of phrase.

  ‘I rejoice to hear such words of wisdom, Sahib! This is what I hoped you would say.’

  ‘First, you and I must read the message that Snell has rejected. Have you kept it safe?’

  Vilabjhi sprang up from his desk and went to the iron safe in the wall. He brought out a large cash book bound in red leather. Tucked under the rear cover was one of the distinctive Post Office envelopes. He handed it to Leon. The flap was sealed.

  ‘You did not open it?’

  ‘Of course not. That is not my business.’

  ‘Well, it is now,’ Leon told him, and split the envelope with his thumbnail. He drew out the folded buff sheet, his hands trembling with excitement as he unfolded and spread it on the desk. Then he sagged with dismay. It was covered with rows and columns of numbers, no letters.

  ‘Damn it to hell! It’s in code,’ he lamented. ‘Do you have the key?’

  Mr Vilabjhi shook his head.

  ‘But of course you know how to send a reply?’

  ‘Of course. I arranged the link with the memsahib through my niece.’

  Eva ran lightly down the magnificent marble staircase of the Schloss. Her riding boots made no sound on the carpeted treads. The panelled walls were hung with canvases depicting Otto’s ancestors down the centuries and there were suits of armour at each landing. At first she had found the architectural style and heavy furnishings depressing, but now she no longer noticed them. As she reached the lowest landing she heard voices coming up the stairwell. She stopped to listen.

  Otto was in conversation with at least two other men, and she recognized the voice of Alfred Lutz, the commodore of his fleet of dirigible airships, and that of Hans Ritter, the senior navigator, who seemed to be arguing with the Graf.

  Otto’s tone was loud and hectoring. Since his mauling by the lion his previously overbearing manner had become ever more authoritarian. Eva thought that Ritter should have known this by now and taken care not to provoke him. ‘We will leave from Wieskirche and overfly Bulgaria and Turkey, then go on to Mesopotamia where our forces are already occupying the northern part of the country. We will land there to top up our tanks with fuel, oil and water. From there we go on to Damascus, then across the Red Sea to the Nile valley, Khartoum and the Sudan.’

  It sounded as though Otto was illustrating his lecture to Lutz and Ritter on the large-scale pull-down map on the far wall of the library.

  He went on, ‘From the Sudan we will cross the Great African Lakes and fly on down the Rift Valley to Arusha, where Schnee and von Lettow Vorbeck are holding stores of fuel and oil for us. From there, we go to Lake Nyasa and Rhodesia. We will observe strict radio silence until we are over the central Kalahari. Only then will we contact Koos de la Rey by radio to our relay station at Walvis Bay on the west coast of Africa.’

  She felt a deep sense of accomplishment. This was the most vital piece of information, which until now she had been unable to discover. Now she knew exactly how Otto intended to convey his cargo of arms and bullion to the South African rebels. Penrod had suggested that it would be sent by submarine to some uninhabited beach on the west coast of South Africa. No one had thought of a dirigible airship. But now she had the entire plan, even a precise description of the route Otto would take down the African continent. With this information she would have given Penrod Ballantyne everything he needed, except the date that the journey would begin.

  She started as she heard the library doors opening and the voices were louder and clearer. Footsteps warned her that Otto and his aviators were coming out into the hall. She must not be found eavesdropping. She ran on down the last flight of stairs, making no attempt to cover the sound of her descent. The men were standing in a group in the centre of the hall. The airmen saluted her respectfully, and Otto’s face lightened with pleasure.

  ‘You are going out for a ride?’ he asked.

  ‘I told Chef I would go into Friedrichshafen and see if the old lady in the market has any black truffles for your dinner. I know how you love them. You don’t mind if I leave you for a few hours, Otto? I might stop on my way back to sketch a view of the lake.’

  ‘Not at all, my dear. Anyway, I am going to the factory with Lutz and Ritter to check the final assembly of the new airship. I might be gone for some time. I shall probably lunch with Commodore Lutz in the senior managers’ mess. However, do not make any plans for next week.’

  ‘Are you almost ready to fly the airship?’ She clapped her hands in feigned excitement.

  ‘Perhaps, perhaps not,’ he teased, with heavy humour. ‘But I would like you to be there when we walk her out from her hangar for her maiden flight. I think you will find it extremely exciting.’ He lifted his left arm and clicked open the metal thumb and finger of the prosthesis that was fitted to the end of the stump. He placed a Cuban cigar in the jaws of the metal appendage and secured it in place with a lateral twist of his wrist. Then he lifted it, and placed the tip between his lips, and Lutz struck a Vesta and held it for him while he puffed out clou
ds of smoke.

  Eva suppressed a shiver of unease. The artificial hand frightened her. It had been made for Otto by the engineers in his factory to his own design. It was an extraordinary creation with which he had already developed an alarming dexterity. Holding a bottle between the steel fingers he could pour wine for his dinner guests without spilling a drop, button the front of his coat, clean his teeth, deal a hand of cards or tie his shoelaces.

  He had devised a number of other fittings to replace the metal finger and thumb, which included a selection of fighting knives, a grip for a polo stick and a rest to hold the forestock of a rifle steady while he aimed the weapon with his usual accuracy. However, most formidable of all was a spiked battle mace. With this terrible club replacing his hand, Otto was able to splinter a heavy oak beam to kindling. She had seen him put a horse with a broken leg out of its misery with a blow that had shattered its skull.

  Otto kissed her, then led his guests down the front steps of the Schloss. They climbed into a glistening black Meerbach touring car, Otto dismissed the chauffeur, took the wheel in his steel fist and they roared off in the direction of the factory. Eva waved him out of sight. Then, with a sigh of relief, she ran down to the forecourt, where one of the grooms was holding her favourite mare. As soon as she was out of sight of the Schloss she kicked her heels into the mare’s flanks and urged her into a headlong gallop down the bridlepath through the forest to the lake. These solitary rides were her only escape from the gloomy old castle and Otto.

  Since she had known Leon it had become almost impossible for her to sustain her carefully rehearsed role as the Graf’s dutiful and doting mistress, and to satisfy his endless physical demands. There were nights when, with his naked muscular body pounding into hers, his flesh latticed by vivid red scars inflicted by the lion’s claws, his face swollen and inflamed with passion, sweat dripping from it on to her own, she had barely been able to prevent herself clawing with her fingernails at his passion-glazed eyes and throwing herself out of the great four-poster bed. She could not go on much longer before she made a mistake and he discovered that he had been gulled. When that happened his vengeance would be merciless. She was afraid, and longed to be safe in Leon’s arms, shielded by his love. There was not a moment of her waking existence when she did not miss him.

  ‘I love him but I know I’ll never see him again,’ she whispered, and the tears blew back across her cheeks with the speed of the mare’s gallop. At last they burst out on her favourite view across Lake Bodensee to the snow-clad heights of the Swiss Alps on the far side. She stopped on the high ground, wiped away her tears and gazed out across the blue waters. There were many sails in sight, but she picked out a tiny fishing-boat, running before the wind under a reefed mainsail and jib. A man was slumped lazily over the tiller in the stern, and a dark girl in a brightly coloured dress sat cross-legged on the foredeck. With an inscrutable expression she gazed across the water at Eva. Though they knew each other well, they had never spoken, and this was the closest they had ever been to an actual meeting. Eva did not know her name. Their relationship had been arranged by Penrod Ballantyne and Mr Goolam Vilabjhi.

  The girl turned her head and said something to the man in the stern. He put the tiller over and tacked the fishing-boat. As it came across the wind, the blue swallow-tailed pennant at the masthead unfurled and flapped open. It was the signal that there was a message for Eva. The boat came about on the starboard tack and settled on a course for the Swiss shore of the lake.

  Eva was relieved. For the past weeks she had been expecting a response to her last signal to Penrod in Nairobi. His silence had made her feel even more vulnerable. Although she was still bitter that he had separated her and Leon, Penrod was the only ally she had in all her lonely world. She gathered the reins and trotted the mare along the shore in the direction of Friedrichshafen. The Meerbach estates stretched for more than twenty miles.

  At one point ahead a copse came to the water’s edge, the trees marking the juncture of the boundary wall with the lake. She reached the wall and dismounted to open the gate in it. The wall was a substantial construction of dry-packed stone blocks. Otto had boasted to her that it had been built originally by the Roman legionaries of Tiberius. She hitched the mare to the gate, climbed up on to the stone blocks and, her sketchpad open in her lap, gazed about as though she was admiring the scenery.

  When she had satisfied herself that she was not observed, she reached down casually and lifted a mossy stone from its niche. In the recess beneath it lay the folded sheet of thin rice paper that the dark girl had placed there for her.

  Eva put back the stone carefully before she unfolded the paper. She was alarmed to see that the script was in clear language, not coded. Her first thought was that a trap had been set for her. Swiftly she scanned the two lines of text, then gasped with astonishment. ‘Uncle gone stop What code are you using query Badger.’

  Joy surged through her. ‘Badger!’ she exclaimed. ‘My darling Badger, you’ve found me.’ Although he was half a world away she was no longer completely alone. The knowledge armed her and strengthened her wounded heart. She put the scrap of rice paper into her mouth, chewed it and swallowed. Then, struggling to control her soaring emotions, she began a sketch of the lakeshore, with the spire of the Wieskirche in the background. Finally, satisfied that Otto had not sent any of his men to spy on her, she tore a small strip from the foot of the pad and wrote in neat block capitals: ‘MACMILLAN ENGLISH DICTIONARY JULY 1908 EDITION STOP FIRST NUMERAL GROUP IS PAGE STOP SECOND NUMERAL GROUP IS COLUMN STOP FINAL NUMERAL GROUP IS WORD FROM THE TOP STOP.’ She paused, searching for words to express her feelings adequately. Finally she wrote, ‘YOU ARE IN MY HEART FOR EVER.’ She did not add a signature. She folded the sheet and placed it carefully in the niche under the stone in the top of the wall. The girl from across the lake would come for it after dark. She would transmit it to Mr Goolam Vilabjhi, and by tomorrow evening Badger would be reading it in Nairobi. She sat for a while longer, bowed over the sketchpad, pretending to draw, but her spirits were bubbling like a freshly opened bottle of Dom Pérignon champagne.

  ‘To get back to Africa and the man I love. This is all I desire. Please, dear God, have mercy on me,’ she prayed aloud.

  Leon spent the morning in conference with Hugh Delamere and his other officers. The little man had thrown himself whole-heartedly into the formation and training of his tiny force. Already he had raised more than two hundred troopers and had mounted and equipped them from his own pocket. Delamere was renowned throughout the colony for his energy and enthusiasm, but keeping pace with him was exhausting. It had taken Delamere less than two weeks to bully and cajole the regiment into a state of campaign readiness. Now he wanted an enemy to fight and had turned to Leon to find one.

  ‘You’re the only pilot we have, Courtney. Our border with the Hun is long and the bush is thick. I agree with you that the best way to keep an eye open for the movements of von Lettow and his askaris is from the air. You have the job. My guess is that he will try to reach Nairobi by forced marches up the Rift Valley from the main German base at Arusha. I want you to fly regular reconnaissance patrols from Percy’s Camp. I also know you have a network of Masai chungaji keeping watch for elephant coming into your area. You should let your boys know that, for the time being, we are more interested in the Hun than in ivory.’

  By noon Leon’s notebook was half filled with his lordship’s orders and instructions. Delamere dismissed his officers for lunch with orders to return promptly at fourteen hundred hours. His lordship enjoyed his food and his siesta, so two hours was plenty of time to get out to the club for a bite of lunch and back again before Delamere ordered him flogged. But when he strode out into the street Latika was waiting for him by the hitching rail in front of the bank. She was feeding his horse with sugar cubes, which both of them were enjoying.

  ‘Hello, Lollipop. Did you come to see me or my horse?’

  ‘My daddy sent me to give this to you.’ She pulled a s
ealed buff envelope from her apron pocket and offered it to him. She watched his face as he opened it and read the cablegram. ‘Is it a letter from someone who loves you?’ she asked wistfully.

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘Do you love her back?’

  ‘Yes, very much.’

  ‘Don’t forget I love you too,’ she whispered, and he saw she was close to tears.

  ‘Then you won’t mind if I give you a ride home on horseback, will you?’

  Latika sniffed back her tears and forgot her potential rival. Mounted up behind him, she chattered happily all the way to her father’s shop.

  Mr Goolam Vilabjhi Esquire came out on to the pavement to welcome them. ‘Welcome! Welcome! Mrs Vilabjhi is serving her world-famous chicken curry and saffron rice for lunch. She will be cross and sad if you do not sample it with us.’

  While Mrs Vilabjhi and her daughters put the finishing touches to the luncheon table, Leon went to stand in front of the bookshelf and ran his eye over the display of books. Then he grunted with satisfaction and took a copy of Macmillan’s English Dictionary from the upper shelf. ‘May I borrow this for a while?’ he asked.

  Mr Vilabjhi touched the side of his nose with a finger and looked knowing. ‘General Ballantyne kept a copy of that book on his desk. It was the first thing he reached for whenever I took him a cable from Switzerland. Maybe Memsahib von Wellberg has sent you the code.’ Then he covered both ears with his hands and said, ‘But do not tell me about it. I am like the monkey who hears no evil. We secret agents must always be discreet.’

  The curry was exquisite but Leon, eager to compose his response to Eva, hardly tasted it. As soon as the girls were clearing away the empty dishes he sequestered himself in Mr Vilabhji’s office and, within twenty minutes, had encoded a message to be sent to Eva. He began with a fervent protestation of his love, then explained Penrod’s absence and went on, ‘With my uncle transferred to Cairo I am left in the dark stop I need to have all intelligence that you have in your possession stop Eternal love stop Badger.’