Height of Day: A Johnny Fedora Espionage Spy Thriller Assignment Book 5

by Desmond Cory

  “Don’t knock yourself out, Fedora. That head of yours must be splitting.” The pressure of the hand guided him downwards to the earth. “I can’t keep up this pace for much longer, either. Let’s have a short rest.”

  “Gimme a drink,” said Johnny briefly.

  Madrid passed him the water-bottle; he unscrewed the stopper with fingers that felt like bananas, rinsed his mouth out and spat. The water hissed on the hard earth, formed a little moving blob like a bubble of quicksilver, and disappeared. Johnny swallowed a mouthful, and with great resolution, passed the bottle back.

  “How much ground have we covered?”

  “Seven or eight miles. We must be halfway to that ridge.” Madrid shook her head wearily. “You know, Otto can keep up this pace all day. I can’t and neither can you.”

  Johnny ran his hand over his sun-dried face and considered this remark. It had a lot of truth in it.

  “All the same,” he said. “Those lakes must cover quite a wide area. He may have to spend some time looking for Huysmans after he’s actually got there. We have to go on, Madrid; what else can we do?”

  “I’m all for going on. But we don’t have to kill ourselves doing it.”

  “Not if there was only your brother to consider,” said Johnny grittily. “But there isn’t. There’s our friend van Kuyp as well.”

  So they rested for less than three minutes, and then set off again.

  “It was now four o’clock by Johnny’s wrist-watch, and the worst of the heat was over. The sun was a blazing fireball on their right hand as they marched northwards; their shadows on the ground were growing long and ungainly. Johnny was able to forget the heat long enough to remember his hunger; he had eaten nothing but a few captain’s biscuits that day, and his emptiness was a constant nagging pain in the pit of his stomach. The ground became more broken as the shadows lengthened; the clumps of acacia became more thickly scattered; and tall trees came swinging from the far side of the river to tower overhead. In their shade it was comparatively cool, not more than ninety degrees; but the ground became more uneven still and began to develop a considerable gradient; Johnny found himself stumbling over twisted roots, and swearing uselessly to himself. He was passing through a glade of a surprisingly venomous green when he heard a peculiar noise, a noise that came from the distance like the beating of a giant drum, and he paused to stare about him.

  “What the hell was that?”

  Madrid attempted a very dry-throated laugh. “You’re a fine gorilla hunter, you are. Haven’t you heard that before?”

  “You mean that’s a gorilla?”

  “A young one. They make that noise beating their chests. Which is more than you can do, you’ll admit.”

  “Well, well,” said Johnny, mildly surprised. “So we’re in gorilla country.”

  “On the outskirts, I suppose. That noise is coming from a long way south of here, though.” Madrid took a deep breath; the muscles about her mouth were pinched and white, for she was feeling the strain now. “We’re going away from them, up on the hills.”

  “Better keep moving,” said Johnny.

  They kept moving, mounting steadily. Ten minutes later they heard the unmistakable sound of white water, the rushing and gurgling of a great cataract; they had reached the point where the Kob’ei came tumbling enthusiastically down from the hills to reach the plateau. They had entered the watershed of the Mountains of the Sun.

  Upwards they climbed through the curtaining trees, legs aching, heavy-footed; the sunlight was filtered by the leaves overhead into a constantly-shifting pattern of gold and green, breathtakingly beautiful yet indicating by its angle that time was getting short. Not even Johnny was prepared to travel strange country after nightfall; the risks were far too great; and now they had little more than an hour and a half in which to reach their chosen destination. Their clothes stuck to their bodies as they trudged on, for it was now cool enough for the sweat to stay damp instead of being instantly absorbed by the heat; and the straps of Johnny’s forty-pound rucksack chafed cruelly against his shoulders. He saw Madrid’s feet falter not once, but several times; he himself had gone past the stumbling stage and now moved like an automaton.

  Then, with startling suddenness, the forest fell back and they found themselves on the bare ridge of the mountain; the trees ceased so abruptly, indeed, that for a moment neither of them quite understood what had happened. They stood on the edge of the forest, in the full golden thunder of the descending sun; listening to a faraway sound that came from the south, a sound that both had difficulty in placing. Then Johnny took Madrid by the arm; together, they almost hurried up the final two hundred yards of the slope, to that point where the land leapt away into a steep valley … A valley where, not half a mile distant and yet incredibly remote, the Kob’ei thundered over a cleft in a vast waterfall, a green-white downrush of foaming water that sent clouds of spray up to veil the lowering sun.

  Above the waterfall, the river wound down the valley in a series of cataracts, shimmering in the sunlight, dark and mysterious where the sides of the hills had already brought misty twilight; while from the north-west came another stream, a silvery leaping stream as wide and as fast as the other, to join in confluence at the whirling apex of the waterfall. Around stood the great shapes of the hills, forested at the shoulders, bare and grey at the peaks, black where the sun shadowed them, a rusty brown where it bathed them. Johnny stood with his arm around the girl’s waist, taking in the superb grandeur of the scene; Johnny had little eye for the beauties of natural scenery, as a rule, but the full glory of the Mountains of the Sun was something that went beyond mere beauty. The sight of them caught at the throat and the chest like a line of great poetry or an adagio by Mozart; they held a secret for ever unfathomable; this was the birthplace of the Gods of the Sun.

  “… If it’s always like this,” said Johnny, impressed, “No wonder your old man decided to stop here.”

  Madrid was brought by his voice to awareness of the weight of the rucksack upon her back; she slipped her shoulders free from it and lowered it to the ground. Then she surveyed the ground before her again, and said.

  “It frightens me.”

  “Frightens you?”

  “Yes. I was just thinking of … You know the verse. ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help.’ It must have been … hills like these.”

  “And that frightens you? Yes,” said Johnny thoughtfully. “I think I can see how it might.”

  “Oh, never mind. A silly idea. I’m so terribly tired.” She moved round behind him. “Let me help you off with your rucksack.”

  Johnny allowed her to do so, then flexed his muscles painfully. “You know what occurs to me, with my mundane and practical mind?”

  “What?”

  “Well, take a look. Not unto the hills, this time; but unto the rivers. You’ll notice I used the plural.”

  “Oh my goodness,” said Madrid. “You’re quite right. There seem to be …”

  “Quite. There are two Kob’eis. That possibility is one which I hadn’t considered.”

  “Still – presumably they both lead to the lakes. We’ll just have to take our pick. Fedora, we haven’t got much time; you go and get some dinner while I light a fire.”

  Johnny gave a little groan, then stooped to pick up his rifle. “All right,” he said. “I’ll see what I can find. And look – light the fire well back from this ridge. See if you can find some kind of crack or – or recess in the rock. I don’t see much point in advertising our presence in the neighbourhood.”

  “All right. Don’t worry.”

  Johnny unbuckled his pistol-belt and swung the holster across to her. “You’d better borrow my gun again. Just in case.”

  Madrid took it and wrapped the belt around her own slim waist, where it naturally looked ridiculous. “Trustful of you, after what happened the last time I used it.”

  “You can cosh me again if you like,” said Johnny. “I’m much too tired to car
e.”

  11

  THE FIRE glowed brightly in a little nest of rocks, a small red sparkle in the blue vastness of the African night. A faint breeze had come with the evening, just strong enough to make the flames jump and veer; it brought with it a thousand distant rustlings and the constant quiet rumble of the waterfall. Johnny sat on the ground with his back to a shattered treebole, smoking a cigarette and listening to the night, feeling his great tiredness as a not unpleasant weight dragging at his shoulders and enveloping all his body. With his left hand he stroked Madrid’s hair; she lay beside him limply with her eyes closed and her face turned up to the stars. A hunting owl passed overhead with a sudden glimmer of grey wings; it called mournfully as it coasted down towards the river and was lost in the darkness of the trees.

  Johnny slid his hand inside the girl’s collar, and felt the weals on her shoulders as narrow raised ridges across the smooth skin. “How are you feeling?” he asked, watching to see her open her eyes.

  “All right. Tired. Awfully tired. Those bruises are going to stiffen up all right, though.”

  “It was lucky they didn’t draw blood,” said Johnny, “or it would have been another story.”

  She moved her head and trapped his hand between her chin and collar-bone. “I’m all right,” she said again. “You’ve got a tough, tough mistress, Fedora, with a skin like an old boot. D’you mind?”

  “Not if you don’t.”

  “It comes in useful at times. Tell me something, Fedora.”

  “What.”

  “Would you have beaten me, if I knew something that you particularly wanted to find out?”

  “Very probably,” said Johnny, and grinned.

  “I think you would have, too.”

  “But I’ve been trained in these things. I should have used my bare hands, not a whip; I’d have hurt you very terribly, and in ten minutes you would have told me all that I wanted to know. Then, after another ten minutes, you’d be feeling nothing worse than a little ache behind your ear.” Johnny took a last drag at his cigarette, then stubbed it out on the ground. “That’s the advantage of being dealt with by professionals.”

  “You think that van Kuyp isn’t a professional.”

  “No, my dear. As I explained to you, he represents Progress and Private Enterprise; the sort of people you’d like your father to work for, rather than for my clientele. The only real difference between us is that when they have to beat anybody up, they do it more inefficiently.”

  “Are things … really like that?”

  “I’m afraid so, you know,” said Johnny. “Your father is an expert in something called uranium; and uranium has the peculiar quality of changing things. It changes meek little lambs into big wolves. So even if your father finds a lamb to work for, it won’t stay that way for long … I think he always knew that; that’s why he chose to work for the biggest wolf of the lot.”

  “You mean Nazi Germany?”

  “I – Of which I am the humble representative.” Johnny bowed ironically. Madrid put her arm around his shoulders and pulled herself up to a sitting position.

  “I don’t believe you’re a Nazi,” she said.

  “No?”

  “No. I’ve met some of them, you know. I met some of the S.S. men who came to talk to my father. And Otto had a few Nazi friends before he went abroad. They were like you, and yet they were different.”

  “I see,” said Johnny. “That’s very clear.”

  “I know what I mean all right; I’m not very good at explaining. And it doesn’t matter, anyway.” Her grip on his right shoulder tightened slightly. “When we get back to civilisation, as they call it, I suppose we’ll go our different ways; so it doesn’t matter. And if we don’t get back, it’ll matter even less.”

  “You’re a funny little animal,” said Johnny, squeezing her affectionately.

  “No, I’m not. I just like to see things straight. And even if you did persuade my father to work for your people – whoever they are – and even I did go with him … you’d be off again somewhere else. Somewhere where I wouldn’t be wanted. Isn’t that true?”

  “Yes. It’s true.”

  “So I feel perfectly safe with you. Whatever we do … doesn’t matter.”

  Madrid’s rather corncrakey voice sounded somewhat forlorn. Johnny looked at her, at her face thrown into high contour by the dying light of the fire, and he kissed her mouth; his hand moved up her body, accepting the soft weight of her breast inside the shirt. “It matters now,” he said. “Nobody ever knows what’s going to happen in the future. So now is always the time that counts.”

  “That’s really what I meant,” she said.

  “Listen,” said Johnny, pushing her gently to the ground again. “Sooner or later you’re going to find something that you’ll know is really worth hanging on to. Not your father; because his life has taken another direction from yours. Not me; I’m not good enough to do anything but show you what it’s about. But somebody and something different.”

  “I know. I know it now.” Her fingers followed the line of his profile in the descending darkness. “When I left Nairobi, I could speak sixteen African dialects and I didn’t know a thing. The things that matter you learn from other people.”

  “Oh, yes, we’re ever so grown-up now,” said Johnny; and paused. In that second of silence at the end of his sentence a noise came tingling downwind from the far slopes of the ridge; a yell, a terrible howl, long-drawn-out and despairing, the death-cry of some great animal or monster to which distance had lent a petrifying touch of the human. It swelled outwards in a wavering crescendo, then died away; the beat of the waterfall overwhelmed it.

  “Wow,” said Johnny, halfway to his feet. “What dialect was that one in?”

  But the night held its secret; and in the morning there was no time to spare for investigations. Johnny rose well before the dawn; kicked the embers of the fire into life and split open a packet of the Expedition’s soup. It was cool, at that hour and at that height; the coming suffusion of light in the east was blurred by trailers of vapour rising from the waterfall, and the mountains lifted their grey backs through the river-mists like gargantuan dolphins at play. Madrid slept on peacefully, her long limbs tucked neatly up so that she formed a compact little bundle with her head pillowed on her rucksack. Johnny waited until the soup was ready before he woke her; then they drank, repacked their rucksacks, and set off once more on their journey, stiff-limbed and sleepy-eyed.

  The going was easy, down the flattened slope of the escarpment; and gradually the motion of walking and the unaccustomed freshness of the air brought them to a semblance of wakefulness. “I think,” said Johnny, halting to point towards the twin threads of darkness that wound away from the waterfall, “I think we’ll take the left-hand river.”

  Madrid, blinking slowly like a cat, followed the direction of his gaze. “I don’t see how we can do anything else,” she said. “It’s too fast and too deep to cross very easily.”

  “Quite. So we’ll make a virtue of necessity. You’ve realised, I suppose, that since your brother and van Kuyp are on the other side of the river, they’ve probably taken the right hand fork?”

  “It doesn’t much matter,” said Madrid, reverting to her recently-discovered theme. “One guess is as good as another.”

  “Right. Then we’ll carry on.”

  They carried on. And near the foot of the escarpment they made their discovery.

  Madrid, who was slightly in the lead, saw it first. They were traversing a strip of forest similar to that through which they had passed the previous evening, yet made very different by the absence of the sun. It was a dim place, grey and fearful, and they were walking through it at a good pace, hopeful of reaching the open parkland that lay beyond it; when Madrid stopped short and seemed to shrink in her tracks. Johnny, stepping to one side and bringing his rifle up, could at first see nothing; then, as he moved forward, he saw a great black shape huddled at the foot of the tree.

  It w
as a bull gorilla, a full-sized male; and it was dead. It was very dead. Its great jaws were frozen in a forbidding snarl, and patches of blood spattered the bark of the tree behind it; one herculean arm was outstretched, as though it had tried to drag itself away to shelter. Johnny walked closer, his rifle at the ready; and as he approached, he realised that this gorilla had died in a way that he had never seen any animal die before.

  The back of its skull was smashed almost flat; not with a bullet, but with something more like a brick. An expanding slug from an elephant-gun would have caused less devastation. Madrid and Johnny stopped beside the body, and peered at it in silent wonder.

  “It must have been him we heard last night.”

  “I never heard a pongo give a yell like that before,” said Madrid. “But I never saw a wound quite like that, either. A croc’s tail might have done it, but …”

  “The last croc we saw was on the Ubangi.”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “What about a lion?”

  “No claw marks. And no lion would fight a gorilla, anyway not a bull that size. He’s huge, isn’t he?”

  “It looks almost as if it had been done … by something.”

  They looked at each other, perplexed. Then Johnny took a pace forward and stooped to examine the body more closely. After a few minutes, he began to probe the great hairy muscle-swellings underneath the gorilla’s right arm; then, with a great deal of difficulty, he succeeded in pulling out a long splinter of pointed wood, about a foot long.

  “Holy Moses,” he said, looking at it.

  Madrid was no less taken aback. “That’s … That’s a spear,” she said uncertainly.

  “It must be. The head of a spear – broken off in the poor brute’s chest.” Johnny fingered his prize cautiously; first the roughly-broken fibres of the blunted end, then the other. “It’s been deliberately pointed. That’s perfectly obvious.”