by Wilbur Smith
had given her.
"You silly girl," he scolded her. "Why didn't you let me know you were
on your way? I would have met you at the airport."
She was surprised at how pleased she was to see him, and at how much she
had missed him, as she watched him step out of the Range Rover and come
striding towards her on those long legs. He was bare-headed and
obviously had not subjected himself to a haircut since she had last seen
him. His dark hair was rumpled and wind-tossed and the silver wings
fluffed over his ears.
"How's the knee?" he greeted her. "Do you still need to be carried?"
"Almost better now. Nearly time to throw away the stick." She felt a
sudden urge to throw her arms around his neck, but at the last moment
she prevented herself from making a display and merely offered him a
cold, rosy brown cheek to kiss. He smelt good - of leather and some
spicy aftershave, and of clean virile manhood.
In the driver's seat he delayed starting the engine for a moment, and
studied her face in the street light that streamed in through the side
window.
"You look mighty pleased with yourself, madam. Cat been at the cream?"
"Just pleased to see old friends," she smiled, "but I must admit Cairo
is always a tonic."
"No supper laid on. Thought we would stop at a pub.
Do you fancy steak and kidney pud?"
"I want to see my mother. I feel so guilty. I don't even know how her
leg is mending."
"Popped in to see her day before yesterday. She's doing fine. Loving the
new puppy. Named it Taita, would you believe?"
"You are really a very kind person - I mean, taking the trouble to visit
her."
"I like her. One of the good old ones. They don't build them like that
any more. I suggest we have a bite to eat, and then I will pick up a
bottle of Laphroaig and we will go and see her."
It was after midnight when they left Georgina's cottage. She had
dispensed rough frontier justice to the malt whisky that Nicholas had
brought and now she waved them off, standing in the kitchen doorway,
clutching her new puppy to her ample bosom and teetering slightly on her
plaster-cast leg.
"You are a bad influence on my mother," Royan told him.
"Who's a bad influence on whom?" he protested. "Some of those jokes of
hers turned the Stilton a richer shade of blue."
"You should have let me stay with her."
"She has Taita to keep her company now. Besides, I need you close at
hand. Plenty of work to do. I can't wait to show you what I have been up
to since you went swanning off to Egypt."
The Quenton Park housekeeper had repared her a bedroom in the flat in
the lanes behind York Minster.
As Nicholas carried her bags up the stairs ripsaw snoring came from
behind the door of the bedroom on the second landing, and she looked at
Nicholas enquiringly.
"Sapper Webb," he told her. "Latest addition to the team. Our own
engineer. You will meet him tomorrow, and I think you will like him. He
is a fisherman."
"What's that got to do with me liking him?"
"All the best people are fishermen."
"Present company excluded," she laughed. "Are you staying at Quenton
Park?"
"Giving the house a wide berth, for the time being." He shook his head.
"Don't want it bruited about that I amback in England. There are some
fellows from Lloyd's that I would rather not speak to at the moment. I
will be in the small bedroom on the top floor. Call if you need me."
When she was alone she looked around the tiny chintzy room with its own
doll's house bathroom, and the double bed that took up most of the floor
area. She remembered his remark about calling if she needed him, and she
looked up at the ceiling just as she heard him drop one of his shoes on
the floor.
"Don't tempt me," she whispered. The smell of him lingered in her
nostrils, and she remembered the feel of his lean hard body, moist with
sweat, pressed against hers as he had carried her up out of the Abbay
gorge. Hunger and eed were two words she had not thought of for many
years. They were starting to loom too large in her existence.
"Enough of that, my girl," she chided herself, and went to run a bath.
Nicholas pounded on her door the next morning on his way downstairs.
"Come along, Royan. Life is real. Life is urgent."
It was still pitch dark outside, and she groaned softly and asked, "What
time is it?" But he was gone, and faintly she could hear him whistling
"The Big Rock Candy Mountain'somewhere downstairs.
She checked her watch and groaned again. "Whistling at six-thirty, after
what he and Mummy did to the Laphroaig last night. I don't believe it.
The man is truly a monster."
Twenty minutes later she found him in a dark blue fisherman's sweater
and jeans and a butcher's apron, working in the kitchen.
"Slice toast for three, there's a love." He gestured towards the brown
loaf that lay beside the electric toaster.
"Omelettes coming up'in five minutes."
She looked at the other man in the room. He was middle-aged, with wide
shoulders and sleeves rolled up high around muscular biceps, and he was
as bald as a cannonball.
"Hello," she said, "I am Royan Al Sirnma."
"Sorry." Nicholas waved the egg-whisk. "This is Danny Daniel Webb, known
as Sapper to his friends."
Danny stood up with a cup of coffee in his big competent-looking fist.
"Pleased to meet you, Miss Al Simma. May I pour you a cup of coffee?"
The top of his head was'freckled, and she noticed how blue his eyes
were.
"Dr Al Simma,'Nicholas corrected him.
"But please call me Royan," she cut in quickly, "and yes, I' love a
cup."
There was no mention of Ethiopia or Taita's game during breakfast, and
Royan ate her omelette and listened respectfully to a passionate
dissertation on how to catch sail fish on a fly rod from Sapper, while
Nicholas heckled him mercilessly, calling into question almost every
statement he made. Very obviously they had a good relationship, and she
supposed she would become accustomed to all the angling jargon.
As soon as breakfast was over, Nicholas stood up with the coffee pot in
one hand. "Bring your mugs, and follow me., He led Royan to the front
sitting room. "I have a surprise for you. My people up at the museum
worked round the clock to get it ready for you."
He threw open the door of the sitting room, with an imitation of a
trumpet flourish, "Tarantara!'
On the centre table stood a fully mounted model of the striped dik-dik,
crowned with the pricked horns and clad in the skin that Nicholas had
smuggled back from Africa. It was so realistic that for a moment she
expected it to leap off the table and dash away as she walked towards
it.
"Oh, Nicky. It's beautifully done!" She circled it appraisingly. "The
artist has captured it exactly."
The model brought back to her vividly the heat and smell of the bush in
the gorge, and she felt a twinge of nostalgia and sadness for the
&nbs
p; delicate, beautiful creature.
Its glass eyes were deceptively lifelike and bright, and the end of its
proboscis looked wet and gleaming as though it was about to wiggle it
and sniff the air.
"I think it's splendid. Glad you agree with me." He stroked the soft,
smooth hide. She felt this was not the moment to spoil his boyish
pleasure. "As soon as we have Ir sorted out Taita's puzzle, I intend
writing a paper on it for the Natural History Museum, the same lads that
called Great-grandpapa a liar. Restore the family honour." He laughed
and spread a dust-sheet over the model. Carefully he lifted it down from
the table and placed it safely in a corner of the room where it was out
of harm's way.
"That was the first surprise I had saved up for you. But now for the big
one." He pointed to a sofa against one wall.
"Take a seat. I don't want you to be bowled over by this." She smiled at
his nonsense, but went obediently to the furthest end of the sofa afid
curled her legs under her as she settled there. Sapper Webb came to sit
awkwardly at the other end, obviously uncomfortable at being so close to
her.
"Let's talk about how we are going to get into the chasm on the Dandera
river," Nicholas suggested. "Sapper and I have talked about nothing else
the whole time that you have been away."
"That and catching fish, I'll warrant." She grinned at him, and he
looked guilty.
"Well, both subjects involve water. That is my justification." His
expression became serious. "You recall that we discussed the idea of
exploring the depths of Taita's pool with scuba gear, and I explained
the difficulties."
"I remember," she agreed. "You said the pressure into the underwater
opening was too great, and that we would have to find another method of
getting in there."
"Correct." Nicholas smiled mysteriously. "Well, Sapper here has already
earned the exorbitant fee that I have promised him - promised, I
emphasize, not yet paid. He has come up with the alternative method."
Now she too became serious and unfolded her legs.
She placed both feet on the floor and leaned forward attentively, with
her elbows on her knees and her chin cupped in her hands.
"It must have been all those brains of his that pushed out his hair. I
mean, it's very neat thinking. Although it was staring us both in the
face, neither you nor I thought of it."
Stop it, Nicky," she told him ominously, "you are doing it again."
"I am going to give you a clue." He ignored the warning and went on
teasing her blithely. "Sometimes the old ways are the best. That's the
'if you are so clever, how come you aren't famous?" she began, and then
broke off as the solution occurred to her.
"The old ways? You mean, the same way as Taita did it?
The same way he reached the bottom of the pool without the benefit of
diving equipment?"
"By George! I think she's got itV Nicholas put on a convincing Rex
Harrison imitation.
"A dam." Royan clapped her hands. "You propose to redam. the river at
the same place where Taita built his dam four thousand years ago."
"She's got it Nicholas laughed. "No flies on our girl!
Show her your drawings, Sapper."
Sapper Webb made no attempt to disguise his selfsatisfaction as he went
to the board that stood against the facing wall. Royan had noticed it,
but had paid no attention to it, until now he pulled away the cover and
proudly displayed the illustrations that were pegged to it.
She recognized immediately the enlargements of the photographs that
Nicholas had taken at the putative site of Taita's.dam on the Dandera
river, and others that he had taken in the ancient quarry that Tamre had
shown them. These had been liberally adorned with calculations and lines
in thick black marker pen.
"The major has provided me with estimates of the dimensions of the river
bed at this point, and he has also calculated the height that we will
have to raise the wall to induce a flow down the former course. I have,
of course, allowed for errors in these calculations. Even if these
errors are in the region of thirty percent, I believe that the project
is still feasible with the very limited equipment we will have available
to us."
"If the ancient Egyptians could do it, it will be a breeze for you,
Sapper."
"Kind of you to say so, major, but "breeze" is not the word I would have
chosen."
He turned to the drawings pegged beside the photographs on the board,
and Royan saw that they were plans and elevations of the project based
upon the photographs and Nicholas's estimates.
"There are a number of different methods of dam construction, but these
days most of them presuppose the availability of reinforced concrete and
heavy earth-moving Al.
equipment. I understand that we will not have the benefit of these
modern aids."
"Remember Taita," Nicholas exhorted him. "He did it without bulldozers."
"On the other hand, the Egyptians probably had unlimited numbers of
slaves at their disposal."
"Slaves I can promise you. Or the modern equivalent thereof. Unlimited
numbers? Well, perhaps not."
"The more tabour you can provide, the sooner I can divert the flow of
the river for you. We are agreed that this has to be done before the
onset of the rainy season."
"We have two months at the most." Nicholas dropped his flippant
attitude. "As regards the provision of tabour, I will be relying on
enlisting the aid of the monastic community at St. Frumentius. I am
still working out a sound theological reason that might convince them to
take part in the building of the dam. I don't think they will fall for
the idea that we have discovered the site of the Holy Sepulchre in
Ethiopia and not in Jerusalem."
"You find me the tabour, and I will build your dam," Sapper grunted. "As
you said earlier, the old ways are the best. It is almost certain that
the ancients would have used a system of gabions and coffer dams to lay
the foundations of the original dam."
"Sorry," Royan interrupted. "Gabions? I don't have an engineering
degree."
"I am the one who must apologize." Sapper made a clumsy attempt at
chivalry. "Let me show you my drawings." He turned to the board. "What
this fellow Taita probably did was to weave huge bamboo baskets, which
he placed in the river and filled with rock and stone. These are what we
call gabions." He indicated the plans on the board. "After that he would
have used rough-cut timber to build circular walls between the gabions -
the coffer dams. These he would also have filled with stone and earth."
"I get the general idea," Royan said, sounding dubious, "but then it is
not really necessary for me to understand all the details."
"Right you are!" Sapper agreed heartily. "Although the major assures me
that there is all the timber we will need on the site, I plan to use
wire mesh for the construction of the abions and human tabour for the
filling of the mesh 9 nets with stone
and aggregate."
"Wire mesh?" Royan demanded. "Where do you hope to find that in the
Abbay valley?"
Sapper began to reply, but Nicholas forestalled him."
will come to that in a moment. Let Sapper finish his lecture. Don't
spoil his fun. Tell Royan about the stone from the quarry. She will
enjoy that."
"Although I have designed the dam as a temporary Structure, we have to
make certain that it is capable of holding back the river long enough to
enable the members of our team to enter the underwater tunnel in the
downstream pool Safely-'
"We call it Taita's pool,'Nicholas told him, and Sapper nodded.
"We have to make sure that the dam does not burst while people are in
there. You can imagine the consequences, should that happen."
He was silent for a moment while he let them dwell upon the possibility.
Royan shuddered slightly and hugged her own arms.
"Not very pleasant," Nicholas agreed. "So you plan to use the blocks?"
he prompted Sapper.
"That's right. I have studied the photographs taken in the quarry. I
have picked out over a hundred and fifty granite blocks lying there
completed or almost completed, and I calculate that if we use these in
combination with the steel mesh gabions and the timber coffer walls,
this would give us a firm foundation for the main dam wall."
"Those blocks must weigh many tons each," Royan pointed out. "How will
you move them?" Then, as Sapper opened his mouth to explain, she changed
her mind. "No!
don't tell me. If you say it's possible, I will take your word for it."
"It's possible," Sapper assured her.
"Taita did it," Nicholas said. "We will be doing it all his way. That
should please you. After all, he is a relative of yours."
"You know, you are right. In a strange sort of way, it does give me
pleasure." She smiled at him. I think it's a good omen. When does all
this happen?".
"It's happening already," Nicholas told her. "Sapper and I have already
ordered all the stores and equipment that we will be taking with us.
Even the mesh for the gabions has been precut to size by a small
engineering firm near here. Thanks to the recession, they had machines
standing idle."
"I have been down there at their workshop every day, supervising the
cutting and packing," Sapper butted in.
"Half the shipment is already on its way. The rest of it will follow
before the weekend."
