Catacombs

by John Farris

  "Have I said I don't like it?"

  Nyshuri, somewhat mollified, stepped forward and dropped the thin but weighty links into the palm of Hecuba's long hand; the necklace was swallowed, covered by inch-long lacquered nails. Hecuba scraped her flawless leg again and removed the few remaining flecks of lather with a soft cloth. Her eyes, always her first concern after her bath, were duskily painted, drawn to points that curved upward to the fragile hollows of her temples. She favored Nyshuri with a concupiscent look.

  "You know my appetites almost too well."

  Nyshuri began to smile, but Hecuba cut short her approval with yet another pout.

  "I have many gold necklaces. I'm not ungrateful, but I feel that the love and affection which I have never denied you has been compromised. Gold is gold, but it is not the red diamond you have so tantalizingly described and promised to bring to me these past two weeks."

  Nyshuri looked stricken with guilt. Hecuba rose, chose from her luxurious wardrobe a sand-colored sari, and put it on. Her third-floor apartment in the Villa Bib-Shala, located a few miles north of Dar off the New Bagamoyo Road, was surrounded by a deep terrace with a tile roof. The entire east wall of the apartment was open to the sea fifty yards away, and the rooms were always cool, filled with light but not, due to ingenious methods of screening and shuttering, the direct rays of the sun.

  Hecuba left Nyshuri to fret for a while about her failure, poured an ounce of an aromatic Algerian wine from a chilled silver decanter, and enjoyed her commanding view of the Indian Ocean, which in the late afternoon was running blue as blood beneath the skin and littered with the rickety boats of a native fishing fleet. Below her on the terrace, chairs scraped stone as servants went about setting up for one of her thrice-weekly, by-invitation-only parties.

  In socialist Tanzania cabarets were decried as decadent but not officially banned, although it was now impossible to get a license to operate one, even in the new government-owned hotels that stood, three-quarters empty, along the northern strand near the coast road. The few cabarets in Dar remaining from the old days were poorly patronized and offered little in the way of entertainment. Closings by discouraged owners happened more frequently as the borders of the country continued to be sealed. Only Lady Hecuba ha-Levi de Quattro-Smythe (she had lavished this pedigree on herself, claiming the privilege if not the official status of a few past liaisons) had evolved a way to flourish in straitened circumstances. But she'd had loads of experience at making the needs of others suit her own, enriching herself at the same time.

  She was the sole offspring of a forbidden and eventually fatal affair between a Moroccan princess and a handsome Sephardic Jew in North Africa. Both parents had committed suicide; Hecuba subsequently survived a guttersnipe upbringing in the slums of Tangier as the unofficial ward, hashish supplier, and bed partner (at the tender age of eight) of a British expatriate who wrote dense symbolic novels with his right hand and pornography with his left. In the thirty-odd years since his demise she had supported herself with a cunning mind and a supple body, profiting handsomely from a total lack of compassion for the human race.

  She would always be two-thirds alley cat, and she knew it; lacking the aristocratic touch of the world-class courtesan, she had confined her activities to the fringe fleshpots and second-rate nations of the world, cultivating a rough vibrato singing voice, a polyglot flair for languages, a good business head. Invitations to her parties were always eagerly sought. The Villa Bib-Shala was the one place in all of Tanzania where diplomats from both eastern and western block countries mingled freely with government leaders and important businessmen from Tanzania and other African nations. Their gifts to their hostess were offered with discretion. A one-hundred-shilling note was the norm. It was placed inside a well-concealed drawer in the belly of a large bronze Buddha in the main bathroom. Somehow Hecuba always knew who was not being generous with her, or not contributing at all. Their phone calls requesting invitations to the villa were not returned by Hecuba's social secretary.

  It was a cruel ostracism, particularly for those who had heard about the type of entertainment which Hecuba, when she was in the mood, could provide with the assistance of one or more of her pet snakes, the hypnotic beat of a Congo drum, and some dramatic lighting effects.

  Hecuba turned suddenly and went back to Nyshuri. She lifted the black girl's chin on the ball of her thumb and smiled into her eyes. With the index finger of her other hand she dipped into the remaining half ounce of sticky, sweet wine, then pushed the finger gently between Nyshuri's slowly yielding lips. Nyshuri's breasts lifted; she sucked gratefully.

  "You see, I don't want to doubt you, Nyshuri. I don't ever want there to be a cause for mistrust between us. I love you very much, but our love can so easily be destroyed if we're not completely honest with each other.

  "Now what sort of lark have you got up to?"

  She withdrew her finger and wet it again. She stroked Nyshuri's trembling lips lightly, then, delicately, inserted the finger to tickle her palate. Nyshuri's body tautened from the pain and pleasure of this tease. She gasped, bit gently, released the sweet-tasting finger. She swallowed hotly, a flush that plunged straight to her loins.

  "I wasn't lying to you," Nyshuri said breathlessly. "Henry showed the diamond to me. He said it was very old, and worth more than the crown jewels of England. He called it a bloodstone."

  "And the writings?"

  "Yes! Marked all over with the writings. By people who lived, oh, ten thousand years ago."

  "How remarkable."

  Nyshuri, quivering a little from excitement, held up hooked fingers.

  "Henry says they were more like big cats than people. Cheetahs. He's seen them himself. I think he is afraid of them, although they are all dead, in tombs like glass."

  Lady Hecuba dispassionately turned Nyshuri back to the subject of diamonds.

  "Could Henry read the inscriptions on his bloodstone?"

  "Oh, yes."

  "Did he tell you what they meant?"

  "No, he wouldn't tell me."

  "And he wouldn't tell you where he found the bloodstone, or saw the creatures."

  "No. He only said there were other bloodstones, many others."

  Hecuba put her glass aside and her hands strayed to the full breasts of the trembling girl. Hecuba undid the top two buttons of Nyshuri's dress and gently popped her breasts free of the material, as if she were squeezing mangoes from a sack.

  "Oh, oh," Nyshuri moaned, feeling the slow pressure of Hecuba's thumbs beside her nipples.

  "After all," Hecuba persisted, "I don't wish to have the bloodstone; such rarities are obviously dangerous to possess."

  "'Henry doesn't sleep well. He paces the floor at night. Oh, do that again! I think since the English boy appeared he's afraid he might be found by others, and killed."

  Hecuba kissed Nyshuri on the cheek while peeling the dress from her body. "I only want to see it with my own eyes. Then you can take the bloodstone back."

  "But I've looked and looked, and I can't find it! Henry is too clever!"

  "You'll be clever too, won't you? You'll ask to see the bloodstone again, and this time you'll be watching when he puts it away."

  Fifteen minutes later Hecuba rose on her knees from the labor of lovemaking, leaving Nyshuri spread-eagled on the bed and all but gibbering as she waited for completion.

  "Which one?" Hecuba asked indulgently. "La Gorda?"

  "No," Nyshuri gasped. Reason had deserted her. "The boomslang. But hurry!"

  Hecuba padded lithely to another of the terrariums she kept near her bed, slid back the door, reached inside for the dark snake draped sullenly in the crotch of a scale-polished tree branch. The boomslang, one of nature's most lethal creatures, had like the boa in an adjoining cage begun to molt, making it twice as surly as it ordinarily was. The snake turned his head in her grasp, revealing an opaque, sky-blue eye. Hecuba removed the boomslang from the cage and carried it to her bed.

  Nyshuri looked at th
e angrily darting head, at blind death in the blue eye, and shrieked ecstatically. She had no way of knowing that Hecuba recently had pulled the boomslang's fangs so the snake would be usable in her act.

  Nyshuri slowly raised both knees and Hecuba snuggled the boomslang against her belly and mons veneris. When the snake slid hugely down between her legs Nyshuri climaxed and fainted, almost simultaneously. Hecuba came too, although not so powerfully, inspired not by the pseudomenace of the boomslang, which was old stuff to her, but by her knowledge that their unorthodox tribalism was being closely and secretly observed.

  Hecuba put the snake back in its cage, revived Nyshuri with cold astringent cloths and cooing words of adoration, and sent her on her way in a dreaming daze, with one more reminder about the bloodstone.

  By then it was nearly dusk. Seabirds cried and the waves hissed on the shore. She let Jan-Nic Pretorius out of the small room next to the boudoir where he'd been cooped up for more than an hour, with nothing to do but stare through the two-way mirror at the women and listen to their conversation.

  At a glance she knew just how aroused Jan-Nic had become by the staged lovemaking; he was paler than usual, sweating, almost sick from sexual excitement. He couldn't keep his eyes off the boomslang in its cage.

  Hecuba had judged that, like a lot of his puritanical countrymen, he had a deeply seated yen for black women. She had deliberately seduced Nyshuri in front of him when there was no real need for it. And, to keep him edgy now, she found it amusing to flaunt her naked body when she might easily have slipped into a fresh sari. The South African Department of National Security paid her well for information, but she'd always mistrusted zealots. Although she had no taste for fair-skinned blond men, this fellow they had sent to her was undeniably handsome–and a little too self-assured, undoubtedly someone of great importance in their police state. He'd made the vital mistake of condescending to her, as if she were a common whore. She was now quite a bit more than even, and enjoying herself immensely.

  "Could you use a drink?" she asked Jan-Nic.

  He requested mineral water with lime; Hecuba poured it for him while he stared at the sea and asserted some control over himself and the sexual images branded into his brain. When she came with his teetotaler's cocktail he looked at her in a new way, flatly and with a frigid reserve, as if he had decided her continued nakedness was a deliberate insult to his sensibilities. He didn't have the look of a killer, like some of the Afrikaner agents she'd dealt with. But there was a hint of something else that obscurely threatened her; tormented too long, the sexual beast within him could slip its leash and go into a frenzy, the result of which might be a bloody nightmare.

  Having no more to gain, Hecuba draped herself chastely and reclined on a chaise to study her superb skin in a magnifying mirror.

  "Now you know all that I know," she said.

  "It isn't enough," Jan-Nic brooded. "I must have one of the stones. If they exist. I don't think I trust this girl. She steals for you. She might say anything to please you."

  "She lies, of course, she exaggerates, they all do. But she has no imagination. It's beyond her abilities to make up such a story. There are a few facts worth considering. Dr. Henry Landreth was a famous British physicist who fell into disgrace. He now enjoys the protective hospitality of Dr. Robeson Kumenyere. Make no mistake about that one, he's very powerful, and quite close to Kinyati. I am well enough acquainted with Dr. Kumenyere to know that he would not be looking after Landreth unless he stood to profit by his generosity. Furthermore, he assigned Nyshuri to keep Landreth company, to amuse him and take his mind off his troubles. It would seem that Dr. Landreth is supposed to be missing, or dead. Yet he lives in seclusion at the hospital, suspicious of strangers, afraid for his life, while he awaits–his mistress tells me–an event of cataclysmic magnitude."

  Her voice was a purr as she lifted her jaw to assay her profile in the mirror; an insolent olive-shaped eye peered hugely at him. "What could that be, and what does it have to do with our strange red diamond?"

  Jan-Nic, remembering the conversation he'd had with his father-in-law a week ago, the partially burned letter from Jumbe Kinyati promising black Africans a retributive holocaust (Pretoria shall perish in the brightness of our noon), stared in distaste at Hecuba. She greedily took their money, but, being of suspicious blood herself, she had no sympathy for his country. His people were virtually friendless in the world; still it was unthinkable that they would not endure in their chosen land. They must. Jan-Nic felt an instant's panic, firmly suppressed. So much depended on him. He couldn't afford a wrong move. But he'd already decided what he had to do.

  "I don't think your lover will be of further use to us." he told Hecuba. "I'm going after Landreth myself."

  Chapter 18

  KIALAMAHINDI HOSPITAL

  Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

  May 15

  Michael Belov, his left arm in a sling supplied by the Emergency Department of Kialamahindi Hospital, walked through the grounds at nightfall with the air of a man resigned to waiting many hours for his X rays to be developed.

  He paused in the center garden to watch the tropical fish in a saline pool. The sun was setting, profusely reflected from the bronzed windows of the inverted pyramid that dominated the upper end of the dogleg hospital grounds. He nodded pleasantly to a bored guard, one of three patrolling with a .22-caliber submachine gun over one shoulder; he knew their patterns well by now. Toby Chapman hadn't reported seeing any guards the day before, so apparently he'd thrown quite a scare into Landreth, who had then complained to the head of the hospital: Dr. Kumenyere. A fourth guard was now permanently stationed by the padlocked gate of the hedge-enclosed compound fifty yards or so beyond the pyramid.

  Belov moved on, in the direction of the pyramid and the helicopter landing pad.

  He'd spent most of his afternoon at the hospital. An imaginary sprained wrist was his excuse. He had a permanent bump caused by a long-ago but harmless leak of synovial fluid from the wrist joint that lent credence to his complaint of injury. When he wasn't being examined, Belov prowled the grounds until he knew every path and doorway by heart. Having looked over the big generator shed, he briefly considered a blackout to cover his anticipated snatch of Henry Landreth. But to do it properly, while he was making good use of his time elsewhere, required plastic explosives and a timing device. The tools he had available were limited: a pair of heavy-duty wire clippers which could be concealed in one of the big cargo pockets of his bush jacket, a roll of filament tape. Also it was obvious that any kind of explosion would disturb the drowsy guards, inspire them to take some sort of furious, impetuous action that would surely be to his disadvantage even with the lights out. It was better to know where they were at all times, and work around them.

  Just an hour ago he'd had a good look at his quarry. Landreth, deep in conversation with Dr. Kumenyere, had emerged from the pyramidal building and walked to the compound gates with him. Landreth seemed to be trying to convince his host of a course of action, which the doctor rejected with a solid shaking of his bent head. Landreth then produced from a pocket of his jacket what looked to be a letter.

  Kumenyere glanced at it and shook his head again, smiling. Then he made an attempt to placate the Englishman. They stood face to face outside the gate, Kumenyere with a hand on Landreth's shoulder. Landreth shouted "We'll let Jumbe decide!" He turned on his heel and disappeared through the gates, which the guard promptly locked behind him.

  Kumenyere remained in place for several seconds, stiff and erect as if he'd received a pole up his backside, staring after the departed Landreth. Then he shook his head wearily and returned to the pyramid, looking through a sheaf of papers on a clipboard as he walked.

  With the light fast disappearing from the hospital grounds, Belov took off his sunglasses with the heavy French frames and reconnoitered once again. The guard on the compound gate was accustomed to seeing him by now and didn't rise from his campstool when Belov came within twenty feet of the
fence.

  He'd already picked his spot, where the fence made an abrupt angle away from the main hospital grounds. There, after dark, he couldn't be seen by guards or anyone else, unless they came around the corner. The fence wire was like cheap baling wire, and rusty. There was an overhead light in a metal shade where the fence made almost a right angle. But jacaranda trees grew in wild profusion along the shell path, the branches arching over the fence, a natural canopy that would all but eliminate the light from the low-wattage bulb.

  Beside the path workmen had begun a slit trench for the installation of sewer pipes that were stacked nearby and loosely covered with a tarpaulin. The path, wide enough to accommodate a small sedan, jogged another hundred yards through the deserted, heavily planted back acreage of the hospital to an isolated gate with a guard post that would probably be attended at night. But it didn't matter.

  Belov had worked out all the details but one–how to quickly remove the Englishman from the hospital grounds once he pried him out of his bungalow–when a blue Toyota hatchback drove toward him through the lower hospital grounds.

  The black girl at the wheel skidded the Toyota to a stop, parked it a few feet to the right of the gate and parallel to the fence. She had her own key to the padlock on the gate, which she opened, chattering in Swahili with the guard.

  So this was Nyshuri, Landreth's girl friend. Her presence would be a minor complication. But the hatchback, already headed in the right direction, was like a gift. Now it wouldn't be necessary to leave Landreth in the slit trench with a tarp over him while he brought a car down from the back gate.

  There was little he could do until well after dark. He went back and sat for a while in the crowded anteroom of the Emergency Department, where no one paid attention to him. Then he dawdled over a meal in the cafeteria. About nine o'clock he saw Nyshuri in the kitchen of the cafeteria putting together a tray for herself and Henry Landreth. She left by a back door.