A Cleft Of Stars

by Geoffrey Jenkins

  'Okay, no harm in talking, is there? If this gold of yours is really there, maybe we can get down to business. But I want to see it first. You're still my prisoners, so watch your step!

  Let's no!'

  The growing tension was almost as energy-sapping as the stiff hike across the sand-filled wadi. Nadine kept up gamely. Koen gave us no opportunity to exchange even a whisper. I wondered what he meant to do about the rolls of barbed wire which blocked the gully we were heading for. I couldn't imagine he'd be fool enough to involve himself in a crawl through it and lay himself wide open to attack. I accordingly kept my mouth shut when we got near; the last thing I wanted now was for him to change his plans and head for the river. Koen surveyed the wire-blocked entrance, backed by a high fence.

  'On!' he said briefly. We'll try the next one.'

  We trudged farther, our discomfort growing steadily in the sun. After a while the remains of a wall appeared on the terrace above our heads and where it became less ruined the wire barrier had been discontinued. Soon we were confronted with a broad eroded gap in the terrace itself, new since the time of the expedition, which was stoutly fenced with a big double gate and lock. Because of its width, the customary rolls of barbed wire were absent.

  'Stand clear!'

  Keen fired a short burst from the M-25. The echo magnified it to sound like a heavy machine-gun. Nadine was shaken. I think it brought her an added sense of dismay at what Koen would do if her stone missile missed him in the stairway. Koen gestured at the remains of the lock fastenings which still held.

  'Bowker Get this damn thing open!'

  A couple of kicks from me and we were through. I wanted if possible to keep him away from my camping-place but our footpath to the secret stairway led directly past it. I was worried that there might be spent cartridges lying around near the fire which could blow the cover on my story about meeting Rankin quite by chance. The Mannlicher, too, gave me qualms. We were almost past when Koen caught sight of my orange yellow gunny sack. Looking suspicious, he led us into my camp, examining everything. The fire was a mess and ash was littered about. It was obvious-that it had not died down of its own accord; in fact, it looked as if two wild animals had fought in its remains.

  'What's all this?'

  'Only my camping-place.' I tried to keep my voice neutral. He spotted a spent shell from my clip and picked it up. My heart missed a beat.

  'You're lying, Bowker. Look at the fire. Look at this.'

  The spent case was dulled from being in the embers. I took it from him, commenting casually with a confidence I did not feel, 'That's an old type of cartridge, if you look closely. It's probably been lying around for years.' I had a sudden brainwave about the fire: 'Baboons,' I said. 'They'll tear up anything - and they're starving. I'm surprised they've left anything in one piece.'

  A scatter of tins bore out my story. Koen, however, appeared to want to investigate further.

  'I'm famished,' I added. 'I'm going to collect this stuff and put it in the shade so that it won't spoil.'

  Unexpectedly, Koen sat himself down in the shadow of a rock with the machine-pistol across his knees.

  'We'll all eat. I'm hungry too. I've been up since sparrowfart.'

  'There was some brandy somewhere, provided the baboons haven't raided that as well.'

  He cast about and found the bottle on its side and uncorked, but there was a little brandy left, which he added to his halfjack.

  'Gesondheid!'

  We toasted him back in water from the jerrican I had filled at the hut tank. Then we all had some food, though I, for one, was too tense to do more than nibble at it.

  After what seemed hours we made our way under Nadine's guidance to the entrance of the secret stairway in my fig tree's root cage. I prayed that the Mannlicher might not show up and break Koen's somewhat relaxed mood. Fortunately there was no sign of it.

  Nadine took the lead, I followed, and Koen brought up the rear. From the cage itself the start of the climb was easy but higher up we had to resort to wedging ourselves by our backs and legs across the rocky funnel for purchase, and worked our way upwards in that way. It was slow and tedious and we made frequent stops to rest. About 150 feet from the ground Nadine called out from above.

  'Here we are! Come up, Guy, and I'll show you.'

  I relayed her message to Koen. He made himself secure across the passageway by the same method of legs and back: his arms were free for the gun. The M-25 pointed up at us. He couldn't miss at that range.

  The way ahead ran underneath the big boulder Nadine had described – a kind of upward sloping corkscrew – which would take us temporarily out of Koen's sight. The place seemed impossibly narrow and somewhat dark, too, away from the hard sunlight.

  I edged close to Nadine. She reached down a hand and clasped mine. It could have meant goodbye, or encouragement. High above her head on the summit I detected the top of the stack of missiles.

  'This is it.

  Then she was gone, her slim body squirming easily through the narrow aperture.

  In a few minutes I guessed she must be through but made no move myself. The longer I held back, the better became our chances.

  I felt the tension in my bowels and for the first time in my life a slight vertigo. I therefore didn't look down when I spoke to Koen.

  'I'll start off in a moment. She's not through yet. '

  What the hell's holding her up?'

  'It's very narrow.'

  'Get on!' snapped Keen. His voice changed and hardened. 'I tell you ..

  'Up! Get up!'

  I had no way of knowing whether T had given her time enough for her plan. I still delayed as much as I dared: moreover, while I was exposed she could do nothing with the missile. I was scared Koen would sight her near the stack. I jack-knifed upward suddenly, to be out of her line of fire, then flung myself full length to wriggle into the narrow space. I lay where I was, deliberately scuffling and pretending to make heavy weather of negotiating the passage. I could hear Koen breathing hard less than ten feet below me. Every second seemed an hour.

  'What's up?' he demanded.

  'I'm stuck.'

  'I'll give you a shove.'

  It was the last thing I wanted. Where was Nadine? 'Okay, Okay, I'm free now . . His smothered oath and the loading clunk of the M-25 sounded as one. My fingers clamped involuntarily on their holds and a spasm of terror shot through me as I expected a burst to rip into me from below. Simultaneously there was a heavy crash of stone on metal, the scream and slam of one isolated shot, followed by a long volley whose racket in the confined space stunned me. Sick with anxiety for Nadine and marvelling that I was unwounded, I clawed my way upwards into the open.

  I dreaded what I might see on the summit, but to my relief Nadine, her eyes wide with horror at what she had done, looked down into mine.

  Her primitive missile had smashed the stubby barrel and long magazine into Koen's head and chest, breaking its force, which otherwise might have brained him. It was probably some animalistic survival instinct which had caused him to glance up, throw up the weapon and try to fire at the last moment before the thing crashed on him but he had been too late. A whole long burst had discharged as he fell; and his broad shoulders had eventually. saved him, lodging across a narrow section of stairway and suspending him senseless a hundred feet above the ground.

  I was numb with reaction and couldn't make the rest of the climb. Nadine came down to me. Her tears fell into my face. When we had recovered we worked our way carefully down to Koen. Between us we managed to lever him safely to the bottom. Exhausted, we hid ourselves and him behind the curtain of fig roots, out of sight of Praeger.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Inside the cage formed by the overhanging roots the air was blessedly cool, with the same hint of concealed moisture as in my baobab hideout. Welcome, too, was the roots' filtering effect on the sun's scorching light - it was now a little after midday. Nadine and I hardly spoke: we were in the process of unwinding, relivin
g each risk and finding it magnified in retrospect. We tacitly avoided discussing Koen, whom I had dragged into a far corner.

  It was I, however, who unintentionally set off Nadine's latent nervous explosion.

  I indicated an ooze of sticky white sap which streaked a big main root. It resembled rubber latex.

  'Look at this, Nadine. That happened a moment after my clip exploded in the fire in front of Rankin. It was meant for me. It's where one of his bullets went in.'

  She stared at it for a long moment and then threw herself into my arms, shaking and sobbing. She kissed my lips, my eyes, my face, and her tears became part of the wild wetness of it all.

  'I'm changed the way The Hill's changed - oh God, how I hate myself for it!'

  Nothing's changed, my darling. Our love's more wonderful than it ever was.'

  'I looked down at him with that rock in my hands and something took hold of me. I wanted to kill him!'

  'You haven't killed him - he's not even badly hurt.' 'I wanted to, Guy! He stood between me and you.' 'It was a wonderful plan. It worked.'

  'It was my plan! I didn't want this!'

  'It's the way of it, Nadine. It had to be done.'

  'No, no, Guy!'

  'Of course it had to. It was very clever. I was at my wits'

  end to think of anything.'

  'I was in the grip of something, up there. My brain was burning- kill him, I'll kill him! I couldn't think of anything else.'

  'You were very brave and clever.'

  'Brave, clever - but it wasn't love; that's what I'M saying. It was hate - hate, Guy. At The Hill itself, which means love to me. I feel unclean.'

  I reached out a foot and pulled the M-25 to me. I held the barrel against her bare arm and the still-warm metal seemed to stem her rush of anguish.

  'There were maybe twenty rounds in there. Koen meant them for us. See it that way.'

  She gained control of herself and said in a small, flat voice.

  'Are there any left?'

  'I don't think so but I'll check. Even a couple of live rounds would put a different complexion on our entire strategy.'

  My words rekindled her nightmare. 'Strategy! Why has it got to be strategy, tactics, plans, plots, bullets? Why must they come between us and our love?'

  'I was the first to sell us down the river, remember. That day with Charlie Furstenberg. For a long time I've wanted to confess to that.'

  She closed my mouth with her lips. 'No, no, I won't have you say it!' Her body tight against mine wrote off the past and promised the future. Gradually, as I held her, her sobs subsided and when the storm was past she held up her face with the ghost of a smile.

  'I'm sorry. We'll see this thing through first and then things will be all right again in every way.' She went on, making a deliberate effort, 'We could say now that stage one of our master-plan is behind us?'

  'We could,' I smiled back. 'Thanks to you. We have the initiative now. We're past one of our biggest hurdles: breaking free from them. We'll make the rest of the plan work out too, I promise you.'

  She brought my lips to hers with her ring finger in a strange, lingering caress.

  'We'll make it work,' I repeated. 'We've got to play this thing strong.' I gestured towards K2. 'First, I'd like to know what that devil Praeger is up to.'

  'What about Koen?'

  She couldn't bring herself to look at him. I bent down and listened to his breathing and checked his pulse.

  'He's probably been worse off than this a dozen times in pub fights,' I comforted her. 'Concussed, I'd say. He'll be out for a couple of hours. He'll have a headache when he wakes – and a big grudge too.'

  'Shouldn't we . . . tie him or something?'

  'We'll get round to that later. I'm worried now about that burst of fire from Koen's gun. Von Praeger must have heard it'

  'I doubt it. It was magnified for you, right beside Koen as you were. i believe the stairway would have absorbed the sound. Just think, von Praeger didn't appear when he shot the gate to pieces.'

  'Von Praeger may have been very occupied.'

  'When you say things like that I don't feel safe unless I'm close to you. Do you think . . . ?'

  'I stop myself thinking. We must never again allow Praeger the chance to get his hands on us.'

  'I don't know which of those two is the worse.'

  'Koen's a big mouth and a bully! Praeger's a different kettle of fish; far more dangerous. I wish I knew for sure about those shots. The echo, too, would boost the sound.'

  'It wouldn't resemble the three spaced shots signal they arranged.'

  'Praeger said he would signal Koen, not the other way round. He was also reckoning on Koen hearing it as far away as the river. We're only halfway there.-I think we must assume that Praeger heard Koen's volley.'

  'Why assume?' She parted the screen cautiously. 'There are your binoculars in the camp. Why not see what he's up to in the command-post?'

  'You're the real brains of this outfit,' I tried to jolly her out of her dark mood. 'Wait here and I'll collect them.' 'No,' she replied. 'I'm not staying alone with Koen.' I checked him once more by lifting an eyelid.

  'He's still out cold.'

  'He looks even worse unconscious.'

  'I must admit that personally I prefer Koen in the horizontal position rather than the vertical.'

  I slipped off his belt and secured his hands behind his back with it. Then I removed his boots.

  'That'll make him slightly less mobile.'

  'I'll hide them later, high up in the stairway,' said Nadine. '

  Good. Here goes.'

  I crawled across to the camping-place and retrieved the glasses. I felt naked out in the open despite the fact that I knew that Praeger had no binoculars of his own. I hurried back to Nadine.

  Together we scanned the slopes of K2. The command-post harmonized so well with the surrounding rock that it was difficult to pick out. There was no sign of Praeger.

  'Heaven help Rankin,' I remarked.

  'Guy, where do we go from here?'

  I looked into her troubled eyes and for a moment I was tempted to flee downriver and damn the consequences. That conditioned my reply. 'Our escape route's wide open. We don't have to stay and face that madman. There's nothing to stop us beating it for my boat.'

  'Except Rankin. Except for a future which won't be a future for us. You'll never be your own man. At every turn we'll be waiting for von Praeger to show up and plunge us back into this nightmare. He'll be behind every bush. The farther we run, the farther he'll follow.'

  'Unless Rankin comes clean.'

  'About what? About something that doesn't exist except in von Praeger's own fevered imagination?'

  'We've added more fuel to the general fire by having to tell Koen about non-existent treasure. He won't forget that in a hurry.'

  I examined K2 again. I knew she was right. She was expressing my own deep-down conviction when she said very quietly and decisively:

  We must stay and stick it out, Guy.'

  'That's the way I see it, too.'

  'Rankin has got to come with us.'

  'If we can get our hands on him long enough to obtain a signed confession from him, we needn't take him along.'

  'It wouldn't be the answer, Guy. He could always deny it afterwards and say it was an admission extracted under duress. You're also assuming that he'll be willing to confess. I doubt it. Look at how he kept his mouth shut in front of von Praeger.'

  'Right. Let's say finally then that Rankin comes with us.'

  'That means seizing him out of von Praeger's grasp. It'll be very tough, Guy. Rankin's worth just as much to him as he is to us.'

  'Transport!' I exclaimed. 'If there were only some way of transporting Rankin to the river!'

  I had a sudden idea. 'What about those two old Land Rovers which were wrecked during the expedition? Where are they? They must be around somewhere.'

  'Over against the cliff beyond my trench,' she replied. 'But you ought to see them, G
uy. The rock that fell on them was the size of a room.'

  'Surely there's something left in the way of wheels we could use for Rankin.'

  She was dubious. 'A couple of years' lying out in the open won't have improved them either. But let's go and look. It's not far.'

  We made our way as unobtrusively as we could to the wrecks. I had previously missed them in the dark because they were partly hidden under an enormous boulder. Wheels and chassis, which had buckled from the initial blow, had rusted and collapsed. The vehicles were simply useless junk. The sight jerked me into a sense of cold reality.

  'Nadine,' I said. 'We won't succeed with a series of woolly improvisations: we must have a clear-cut plan. Yours worked because it was simple and straightforward. That's the sort of thinking we need now.'

  She was charming as she defended me to myself. 'It was worth coming, Guy. You might have spotted something of use.'

  'Forget it. I was carried away by the thought of wheels. We need wheels for Rankin if he's to be moved. And there simply aren't any wheels anywhere.'

  'Let's by-pass that problem for the moment and hope that something will occur to us when we've mulled over everything. We didn't know how we were to get away from Koen and von Praeger at the start, but we finally did. Let's tackle the Rankin dilemma in the same way.'

  'Right. First task is to get hold of Rankin. Consider what we're up against. He's held in a place from which anyone approaching can be seen for miles. It's guarded by a barred door and inside is a maniac: with a gun and a savage animal. Our prospective snatch victim can't be moved by ordinary means. I can't simply sling him over my shoulder: the pressure on his heart which Praeger mentioned would kill him before he'd covered fifty yards.'

  'You're over-simplifying,' she chided me gently. 'You're forgetting the ace in our hand. We have Koen.'

  'We can't hold him to ransom and say to Praeger that if he doesn't surrender Rankin we'll bash Koen on the head with a rock.'

  'I haven't thought how we can play our trump, but a trump nevertheless he is. Guy, we can't sit here at 'the thin shadow boxing with the problem at long distance. We must get close to the command-post and be ready to snatch Rankin when the opportunity offers.'