African Pursuit

by David Alric

  Peter brightened up a bit. Lucinda’s optimism was infectious and in the shock of receiving the inspector’s e-mail he had completely forgotten that he had sent one of their final specimens of ore to an expert who possessed a large library of rock samples from all over the world. If they could find some similar rocks at another location they would never need to revisit the crater in the Amazon.

  Two days later an e-mail arrived from England.

  Dear Peter (if I may),

  It was a pleasure meeting you at the international convention in Chicago last month. I have now had a chance to investigate the fascinating sample you sent me. I agree with you that it is a precambrian deposit of a form of kimberlite but its exact composition is most unusual. As you know, the museum here receives samples from all over the world and we keep detailed scientific records because of the crucial economic importance of mineral deposits. In our entire database, however, we have only a single sample that corresponds precisely with the one you sent. This came from a test sample obtained by a mining company exploring potential diamond deposits in the Democratic Republic of Congo. They surmised (correctly) that the well-known diamond seam, the Kasai Craton in Mbuji-Mayi, might extend much further north than was previously appreciated and the sample they sent us was extracted from a precambrian terrain in a river gorge on the Lomela river. The exact map reference of this site is attached. The site was never developed because this lode extension is actually situated in the heart of the rainforest and its remoteness and inaccessibility meant that commercially it was a complete non-starter.

  The lode they located is apparently visible above the surface, as the rock stratum within which it is contained emerges in an exposed river cliff. If you were ever to make the formidable journey to the site I have little doubt, from the company explorers’ descriptions, that you would be able to obtain further samples of the ore without the necessity of any sophisticated mining equipment.

  I hope this information is helpful. Thanks again for sharing this exciting sample with me and I look forward to seeing you again at the Sydney Conference next year.

  Yours sincerely,

  Alan Cutcliff, Curator of Minerals

  Peter forwarded it to Lucinda, then rang her to discuss the good news. They decided that, whatever the difficulties and cost, they would have to go on an expedition to Africa to obtain the ore, though Lucinda wasn’t sure the Congo was quite the right spot for their honeymoon.

  The next morning Peter was sitting at his desk making a start on planning the Congo expedition when there was a knock and a porter put his head round the door:

  ‘Your package has arrived, sir. Where do you want it?’ Peter looked up.

  ‘What package?’ He was not expecting any rock samples. The porter opened the door wider, revealing two other porters who were struggling to get a heavy crate out of the lift opposite.

  ‘Arrived from the airport in a taxi this morning, sir. It came from Manaus several days ago, but has been stuck in customs. They’re checking everything from the Amazon for drugs.’

  Peter hurried over to look. A letter was stapled to the top of the crate.

  Dr Peter Flint, Faculty of Geology, Sabedoria University, Rio de Janeiro

  Peter tore the envelope open and read the scribbled note inside.

  Dear Peter Flint,

  Inspector Poirot (the Rio policeman who investigated Lucinda Angstrom’s attempted murder by Professor Strahlung) gave us your name and contact address. We thought you and Lucinda could use this collection of ore in your research. Professor Strahlung collected it for his own use but is now, we are happy to say, indisposed.

  Good luck to you both in your amazing work.

  Kind regards,

  Julian and Helen Fossfinder.

  Peter couldn’t believe his luck as he reread the note in excitement. The porter coughed politely.

  ‘The box, sir?’

  ‘Oh, sorry! Stick it in my lab please.’ He pointed to the next door down the corridor and thanked the men. Then he picked up the phone. ‘Lucinda, you’re just not going to believe this. Julian Fossfinder has sent us a box of ore that the professor collected in the crater. Julian obviously guessed it must be important for the invisibility research and brought it back when they all left the crater.’

  ‘She paused. ‘So what about the honeymoon?’

  ‘Sorry about missing the trip to Africa,’ said Peter, pretending he hadn’t heard the final question, ‘but to tell the truth it would have been an incredible hassle to arrange, very expensive and possibly dangerous. And we know for certain that the ore in this box is photogyraspar – there was always a possibility that the African ore might not have been quite right. Now we can get to work straightaway on these samples—I think we’ll just have time to assemble the data in time for the Sydney congress.’

  ‘Sounds cool,’ said Lucinda.

  ‘Then off to Stockholm,’ he added.

  ‘Stockholm?’

  ‘That’s where they dish out the Nobel prizes isn’t it? You can pick yours up at the same time.’

  ‘Same time as what?’

  ‘The honeymoon of course!’

  ‘So you did hear,’ she laughed, ‘OK, but if they offer me a Nobel prize I’ll only take it if they let me share it with you!’

  ‘If you insist!.’

  8

  A Perfidious Professor

  Professor Lucius Strahlung finally became fully awake. For several days he had been drifting in and out of a confused state of consciousness; a mixture of moments of comparative lucidity and long periods of outlandish dreams and nightmares. Now, though, he was really awake. He was lying in a hospital bed. An intravenous drip was fixed to his left arm and above his head he could see a monitor recording regular events that he assumed were to do with his heart rate and breathing. His head and throat were sore and when he gingerly explored them with his right hand he could feel dressings protecting the parts that were hurting. Later he was to learn that he had had two operations: one to remove a blood clot from his brain and the other to insert a breathing tube into his throat to keep him on artificial respiration in the intensive therapy unit where he had lain unconscious for several days. He had in fact, been moved back to his present room only a few hours earlier. As he became more aware of his surroundings he realised that a regular sighing noise which he had at first assumed to be emanating from some medical equipment was, in fact, the sound of someone snoring. Slowly and painfully he turned his head to one side and there in the corner of the room he saw a muscular figure slumped in a chair. The man was young and darkly handsome and was dressed in a uniform, but it was not a medical uniform – and doctors and nurses did not normally have handcuffs dangling from their belt and machine pistols resting on their knees. The professor began to analyse his situation. He was obviously recovering from some operation but why was he being guarded! And from whom? Slowly, fragmented memories began to piece themselves together as his mind attempted to reconstruct his life and situation. The most distant memories came back first and most easily. His repressive childhood in South America with his over-protective mother and his arrogant father; both had been immigrants from war-torn Europe, his father fleeing from retribution for suspected war crimes. Luke’s childhood memories were dominated by recollections of his father’s sneering comments and sardonic wit, and by the dread of incurring his wrath and the cruel and unusual punishments that would inevitably follow.

  At university Luke had excelled in his chosen subjects of physics and mathematics and he had followed an illustrious academic career, his researches into the physics of light culminating in his being appointed professor at one of the most prestigious departments in Brazil. He had, however, inherited many of his father’s unpleasant qualities and his academic progress was marked by ruthless ambition and complete disregard for the rights and concerns of his fellow workers. When eventually he was appointed Chairman of his department after the unexpected death of his principal rival under somewhat mysterious circumstances,
the predominant emotions among his colleagues were those of fear and apprehension rather than respect and admiration. As his mind moved on to his time running the department more recent memories began to return. He could now vividly recall the day he first found his brilliant young researcher, Lucinda Angstrom, experimenting with an invisibility robe that she had invented using materials found only – where was it? – yes, found only in a remote crater deep in the jungle.

  Luke’s recollections were interrupted by the sound of the door opening and a nurse entering. The snoring ended abruptly. Luke was determined to continue with his thoughts, however, so he quietly closed his eyes and pretended still to be asleep. The nurse glanced at the ever-flickering monitor above the professor’s bed.

  ‘He’s improved,’ she said to the policeman in Portuguese, the principal language of Brazil. ‘I think he’ll be coming round soon.’ The policeman gave a vague grunt in reply. In the dream she had so rudely interrupted he had just been about to score the only goal in the match in the last minute of extra time to win the world cup for Brazil and he found football a great deal more interesting than nurses, especially this one.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ she continued coyly. ‘If he wakes up I’d hate to be alone. A beast like that …’

  Luke forgot all about his reminiscences. The policeman wasn’t here to guard him from others. He was obviously here to guard others from him. He listened intently as the nurse continued.

  ‘Funny that – his heart rate suddenly changed when I just spoke – he’s definitely coming round. Please don’t leave me alone with him. When I think of that poor girl – and all those others he was going to maroon to die in that remote place …’

  ‘Just a minute,’ said the guard who realised he was going to have to postpone winning the world cup until this chatterbox was silenced. ‘He hasn’t even been tried yet. For all you know he could be innocent. I’m just here to make sure he doesn’t escape before standing trial. And should you be speaking like that in front of a patient? He might be able to hear you.’ The nurse was affronted by this dig at her professional competence.

  ‘I think I’m better qualified than you to decide what he can and can’t hear,’ she retorted huffily. ‘And you must be the only person in Brazil who thinks he isn’t a cold-blooded murderer. Oh, and don’t think I don’t know you were fast asleep when I came in. Some guard!’ She swept out, throwing back a final shaft across her shoulder. ‘And, by the way, you snore like a pig!’

  Luke’s mind was racing as the nurse’s comments caused memories to come flooding back. ‘That poor girl’ was of course Lucinda Angstrom. A pity he had had to kill her; she’d been a nice kid, but if he was to succeed in taking the credit for her incredible scientific discovery and making himself the richest man on earth by abusing the power of making himself invisible at will, there had really been no other realistic option. After pushing Lucinda off the cliff into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean he had stolen her invisibility robe and all her research data, only to discover that he could not make any more invisibility clothes without obtaining supplies of the raw material, photogyraspar, from which they were made. This was vital, for the stolen research data gave no indication as to how long the original invisibility robe would retain its power. He had discovered that the ore from which photogyraspar was obtained came from a remote prehistoric crater deep in the Amazon jungle and had used a gang of criminals to get him to the crater and assist him in mining supplies of ore. His plan had gone well up to the point at which a group of explorers, including a young girl of thirteen, had landed their plane in the crater where the ore was being mined. A series of adventures had ended in all his fellow criminals being killed by animals and he had become dependent on using the explorers’ help to escape from the crater. He had pretended to befriend them with the intention of taking their pilot hostage and leaving them marooned in the crater. The pilot he had intended to kill once he reached civilization and then he would be free to make unlimited use of his knowledge and the ore he had acquired… Luke stopped short in his thoughts as he desperately attempted to recall the final moments of his stay in the crater. He was aware that a head injury (and that, it was now obvious to him, is what he must have sustained) could cause loss of memory of previous events, and particularly those immediately preceding the injury. He also knew that this memory loss could be permanent. In his case, however, it was vital that he should remember as much as possible of his final moments of consciousness or he might never know the results of his studies in the crater. As he struggled to recall the events of that day he gradually became drowsier and eventually fell asleep to the monotonous sound of the policeman snoring.

  The next morning Luke woke early and immediately started once again to try and remember the events preceding his accident. He tried to be logical. The two things he would have needed to take from the crater were his research data on invisibility – the original material he had stolen from Lucinda and the results of the additional research he had conducted in the crater – and the actual ore from which new robes could be made. He recalled loading all his data onto a USB memory stick from his computer but where had he concealed it? Of course! He suddenly remembered that he had hidden it in a false cavity in the heel of his shoe. It was vital that he regained his clothing. But what about the ore? He remembered that in the crater he had filled a box with highly concentrated ore that had turned out to be so heavy that he had found it impossible to move on his own. Whatever had happened to it?

  Just then he heard voices. Opening one eye he saw that a new nurse had come in to change his intravenous fluids and was chatting to the guard – a different one from yesterday.

  ‘So what happened to him?’ the guard was saying.

  ‘Apparently he walked backwards into a propeller,’ the nurse replied. ‘He was lucky not to have had his head cut off.’

  ‘Must have given him quite a turn just the same,’ joked the guard as he turned back to his newspaper.

  Luke, who had hurriedly closed his eye again, listened to this exchange with interest. That was it! The nurse’s remark had triggered a hidden memory. He had held Julian, the pilot, hostage at gunpoint and was about to force him to help load the crate full of ore onto the plane when all had gone black. But that meant… with dawning horror Luke realised that he must have failed in his attempt to obtain ore from the crater. Without fresh ore all his research data were useless and his dreams of power and riches would come to nothing. He obviously needed to work out a very careful plan.

  A fortnight later Luke sat in his room waiting for his first visitor. He was now feeling much better but he found the continuous presence of the guards intensely irksome and couldn’t wait to escape. With any luck that would be very soon, especially as the detective in charge of his case was due to come and interrogate him the next day and he told himself he had better things to do than to waste time telling a pack of lies to some half-witted local plod. His request for his clothes and shoes to be returned had been politely refused – even the police seemed to have worked out that it would make it easier for him to escape if he were dressed – but he had at least established that his possessions had been kept and were in a locker outside his room. His request to telephone his housekeeper for some personal items such as a toothbrush and dressing gown had been approved, though the call had been carefully monitored. His housekeeper, Frau Schadenfreude, was an elderly German widow who had worked loyally for the professor for years and, despite her name, she had refused to believe any of the scandal she had read about him in the newspapers. She seemed delighted to hear his voice and listened carefully as he told her where his spare washbag and new dressing gown were to be found. She was very impressed when he told her that he had bought the gown in London’s Savile Row. She would have been even more impressed to know that the ‘dressing gown’ was, in fact, the very first invisibility robe that the professor had stolen from Lucinda on the day he had pushed her off the cliff. After using it to assist some criminals to escape f
rom jail and then create a second robe, he had concealed it in his flat against just such an eventuality as this one.

  When his housekeeper arrived at the hospital the guard searched the bag she had brought with her and after confiscating some nail scissors and tweezers from the washbag allowed her to see the professor. The soft invisibility helmet, an essential part of the kit, was masquerading as a shower cap in his washbag but the guard didn’t seem to appreciate that the Professor’s thinning wisps of grey hardly necessitated such an item.

  During his period of convalescence Luke had perused the newspapers and read the accounts of his capture. Apparently the family he had intended to maroon in the crater, including Julian the pilot he had intended to murder, had returned safely to civilization. None of the accounts he had read referred to the exact location of the crater, simply using phrases such as “a remote jungle valley” or suchlike. There was no mention anywhere of invisibility robes or of prehistoric animals and the professor rightly concluded that the family had decided to keep these secret. He himself was described as “recovering in hospital from a serious injury, under constant police supervision.” Because of the severity of his injury he had, apparently, been transferred from the Amazon hospital where he was first taken to a top neurosurgical centre in Rio. According to the news articles he would, when fit, be questioned concerning the murder of Dr Lucinda Angstrom, the attempted theft of a plane, the taking of a pilot hostage and the intent to leave a family abandoned in a remote location where they were unlikely to survive.

  His chat with his housekeeper confirmed all he had gleaned from the newspapers and he thanked her for her loyalty while reassuring her that the vicious slander to which he had been subjected had originated from what he described as “eco-nuts and anti-German pressure groups”.