He remembered something his Dongolese guide Shaytan had told him at the cataracts, about the wind created by a desert battle: that if you listened hard enough, you could hear the distant shrieks and sighs of banshees who performed a wild dance in the sky high above the fight, mocking both the victors and the vanquished. He remembered the carving of the desert battle he had seen in the underground chamber beside the cataract: the Egyptian soldiers advancing hieratically, Akhenaten at their head, then their bodies splayed below, the vast disc of the sun and its rays dominating all. Had Akhenaten sensed this too? Had he fought battles against an enemy from the south where the desert seemed the only victor, where the sun seemed to eclipse all? Had he turned back to Egypt, bringing with him a new God and a belief that the power of the Aten might release men from conflict that could only ever give the illusion of victory?
He remembered crouching beside Burnaby, an event that seemed impossibly long ago, and Burnaby’s whispered warning to him: watch your back. He looked at Charrière, sword still in his hand, the blood congealing on his arm where he had prised out the bullet. He could barely think of his thirst. They would both need water, soon. There was no chance now of reaching the wells of Abu Klea, which would soon be under British control; they could not risk being seized and questioned. It would have to be the Nile, more than twenty miles off. They had to hope to find another source on the way if they were to have any chance of surviving the marathon run that now lay ahead of them.
He remembered their pursuers. Had that been the purpose of Burnaby’s warning? He looked beyond Charrière to where the clearing smoke had revealed the rocky knoll to the east, the rising ground that had provided a defensive position for the British encampment overnight. That was the direction their pursuers would have taken if they had decided to outflank the battlefield and regain the track to the Nile on the other side. More likely they would be lingering in the valley, waiting for the British to march down to the wells, intent on picking over the battlefield and checking the dead so they could tell their paymaster that their job had been done for them. But it would only be a matter of time before they realised that Mayne and Charrière had survived, and that with camels they had the advantage of speed. Mayne knew it was essential that the two of them cover the open ground on the way to the shrub and mimosa forest before their pursuers regained their trail. The forest would be a maze of danger and dead-end passages in the dark, and they needed to get as far through it as they could while it was still daylight.
And there was added urgency. The dervishes who had melted away from the battle would soon pass word of their defeat to the Mahdi himself, which might lead him to order the final assault on the city, losing Mayne precious time in his attempt to reach Gordon before it was overwhelmed. Abu Klea would show the Mahdi that the British were a force to be reckoned with, that they were superior to the Egyptian army he had terrorised and routed two years before. If the British were to stay in the Sudan, the jihad would not be the walkover his early successes had promised. But the victory might ultimately be a hollow one. The Mahdi knew that the British were there under duress, and that if he were to order the assault on Khartoum now, to remove Gordon from any hope of rescue, they would abandon the Sudan and withdraw to Egypt. He knew they were not present in numbers sufficient to defeat his main force in a set-piece battle; yet if word of Abu Klea were to reach tribesmen of wavering loyalties, it might tilt them towards the British, whilest the news might cause the garrison at Khartoum to redouble their resolve to stand firm, thinking that a British force was finally on its way to defeat the Mahdist army and relieve the city.
Mayne stared in the direction of the Nile to the south, seeing only the haze of an approaching dust storm on the horizon, and below that the undulating rocky plain that extended to the dark smudge marking the beginning of the tangled mass of shrub. He could see no sign of humanity, no flickering lights, no crumbled ruins, not even the camel trail that must lie somewhere in the folds of the ground ahead. He felt as if by passing through the battle he had entered a darker place, a shadowland, a world beyond knowledge where even the pharaohs had feared to tread. This was the land that Gordon had made his own, and it was only here that his motivations could be understood. He swallowed hard, trying to rid his throat of the taste of battle, then twisted round to look one last time. There was no sign of their pursuers, for now. He nodded to Charrière, who dropped the sword and sheathed his knife. Mayne holstered his revolver and grasped the wrapped rifle that was still on his back, knowing that the instant they stood up in their Arab gear they could still fall prey to a trigger-happy British soldier. They crouched forward, readying to leap up and run.
A bugle sounded, and he heard the stomping noise of soldiers falling in. Now was their chance. All eyes would be down the slope towards the retreating Mahdist forces, and the wells where the soldiers and their camels would be desperate to slake their thirst.
They needed to move fast. Mayne put his hand forward to signal Charrière. He tensed, his heart pounding.
They began to run.
PART 5
19
Near Kemna, on the Nile, Sudan, present day
The Toyota bounced and jolted along the track towards the Nile, through growths of desert grass and plots of vegetables and fruit trees enclosed by low mud-brick walls. They were approaching the site of the wreck of the Abbas, some sixty kilometres south of the Semna cataract along the Nile towards Khartoum. The surrounding land was more low-lying than at Semna, more suited to agriculture, and every available area of sandy soil had been turned to arable. The track ran beside an irrigation channel that extended over a kilometre from the river; ahead of them on the bank they could see a pair of pivoting shaduf water-raising devices, the oldest and simplest equipment for getting water from the river into the channels, used since early antiquity. Two scruffy boys who had been operating the devices left them and ran up to the Toyota as it sped by, chasing it through the cloud of dust they left behind. Ibrahim turned to Jack and pointed at the window. ‘Keep it wound up,’ he said. ‘This isn’t a good place. When we get out, watch your pockets.’
Jack glanced at Costas in the back seat, and then kept his eyes glued ahead as they tore down the final few hundred metres of the track, coming to a skidding halt only a few cars’ lengths from the water’s edge. ‘Thanks, Ibrahim,’ he said.
‘Rocket man, that’s what I’m going to call you,’ added Costas.
‘Apologies for the speed,’ Ibrahim said. ‘It’s a habit you pick up around here. I learned to do it when I was with a Sudanese naval attachment in Mogadishu. You go fast everywhere there, and avoid stopping at all costs.’
‘So what’s the lowdown here?’ Costas said, peering out of the closed window beside him.
‘There’s a local warlord who runs this district. His boys belt around in “specials” like those we used to see in Mogadishu, openly carrying AKs. It shouldn’t happen in Sudan any more, but it does. Basically they’re a continuation of the tribal fiefdoms that dotted this territory at the time the British arrived here, concentrating especially on these precious cultivable patches of land. Back in the old days, they made their loot from the slave trade. When you see how these places are run, you can understand how General Gordon found it so difficult to stamp it out. These days of course it’s drugs rather than slaves, and that’s why you don’t look over those mud-brick walls. It’s mostly poppies, but high-grade marijuana too.’
‘How does al’Ahmed fit in with this?’ Costas said. ‘The new official who got us here.’
‘Officially he’s a special appointee to oversee enhancement of the historical and archaeological evidence for Sudan in the period immediately before British rule, especially the era of the Mahdi, which is celebrated by many Sudanese as a time of independence between the Egyptian and the British regimes. That’s why he’s summoned you here, as a convenient way of getting the world’s top archaeological diving experts to hav
e a look at the Abbas site. And he’s secured this area by promising police if needed. But you won’t be seeing any of those when we arrive, because unofficially his family controls most of these drug-producing areas, providing protection from inter-gang warfare and an assured market in return for a substantial cream of the profits, usually eighty per cent. One word from al’Ahmed and these people bow to his will. Those shifty young men you can see sitting on the wall ahead of us, the two with Kalashnikovs, those are our police. But we have to remember that al’Ahmed wears his official hat too and he has the authority to call in the real police if he decides he doesn’t need us any more.’
‘Great,’ said Costas, staring at the children who were banging at the door of the car. ‘Why do I have a bad feeling about this?’
Jack pursed his lips. He had felt uneasy all the way from Semna, and now, seeing this place and sensing the atmosphere, he was beginning to question his decision to agree to a visit. He looked at the riverbank a few metres ahead. ‘How far out is the wreckage?’
‘The most likely site’s about two hundred metres out, and thirty metres deep,’ Ibrahim replied. ‘It should be a quick dive straight from shore to see whether there’s anything worth looking at. We can be in and out within two hours and back on the road to Semna.’
Jack tapped the dashboard. ‘Okay. Let’s do it.’
‘Watch the kids.’
They all got out of the car at the same time, and were immediately swarmed by about a dozen children. Jack firmly pushed two boys away and prevented another from looping his finger around his watch. The two young men with Kalashnikovs sauntered over, and one of them raised his rifle in the air. There was a deafening crack and the children quickly dispersed, scattering into the irrigation ditches and alleys surrounding the fields. One of the men swaggered up to Jack and put out his hand, grasping Jack’s in an iron grip. ‘Hassid Saib told us to look after you, and we will. No more trouble from small boys, eh? Or we shoot them, see, like little pigs.’ The man aimed his rifle here and there, laughing, the other hand still firmly holding Jack’s. ‘You give us a little baksheesh, huh, and maybe we give you something from our fields, eh? You Americans always like our hashish.’
‘Nobody said anything about money,’ Costas said.
Ibrahim walked up to the man, and they spoke in Sudanese. He turned to Jack. ‘I’m sorry. I hadn’t anticipated this. Can you do a hundred dollars to share between them?’
‘Then no more?’ Jack said.
Ibrahim spoke again to the man. ‘If any more men come asking for money, they will shoot them.’
‘That’s not exactly what I had in mind,’ Jack said.
‘It’s posturing. I’d give him the money from our cashbox, but it’s best that he sees you doing it. He knows you’re the boss.’
Jack produced a roll of notes from his back pocket and handed it over. The man released his grip, smiled, and took out an enormous spliff from his front shirt pocket, licking one end and putting it in his mouth, then lighting it. He took a deep drag and passed it to Jack, who patted his chest and declined. Ibrahim spoke to the man again. ‘I told him it’s the diving. You should never smoke before a dive.’
‘Okay,’ Jack said. ‘Let’s get moving.’ The two men sauntered back to their companions, split the roll of notes between them and resumed their seats on the wall, passing the spliff between them. Ibrahim opened the back of the Toyota and Jack and Costas quickly donned their equipment, then lumbered down to the shore and stepped into the muddy sludge on the edge. The river here was very different to Semna, more heavily silted and sluggish, and they were going to have a more difficult time seeing underwater. Jack pushed the men with guns from his mind and tried to focus on the excitement of being the first since 1884 to dive on the Abbas, with the possibility that they might find antiquities that had been left by the local salvors, who would have had little interest in them. He flipped down his visor, watched Costas do the same and then slipped into the water, swimming out on the surface until he reached a point close to the edge of a little island. The river bore little obvious resemblance to the descriptions of this place in 1884, when Colonel Butler of the river column had visited it and seen wreckage on the foreshore, but Jack and Ibrahim had compared a satellite image with the sketch maps from the time and estimated that a position about fifty metres off the southern tip of the island would land them on any wreckage, if it still existed.
He stopped in the water, gave an okay sign and a thumbs-down to Costas, and then raised his arm to signal their descent to Ibrahim on the shore. He could see that the men were now ranged along the bank; he watched as two more Toyotas hurtled into the parking place, screeched around and disgorged their occupants, all of them carrying guns. Jack remembered the murder of Colonel Stewart and his party on that fateful day when the steamer had run ashore here in September 1884, when a duplicitous local official had offered them hospitality and they had all been killed. Ibrahim was right. This was definitely not a good place. He turned to Costas, who was still on the surface, watching the shoreline as well. He clicked on his intercom. ‘Let’s get this done as quickly as possible. I want out of here.’
‘Roger that.’
Jack dropped below the surface. Seeing that the water visibility was no more than three or four metres, he swam close to Costas so that they were within visual range. He bled his buoyancy compensator and they quickly descended almost twenty metres to the river bottom, a dark brown bed of mud and sludge. ‘Compass bearing fifty-two degrees,’ he said, monitoring the directional readout data inside his visor. ‘We’ll do one transit for twenty metres, swim five metres south-west, do another transit, and call it a day if we don’t find anything.’
‘Let’s hope we do,’ Costas said. ‘I want to make this worthwhile.’
They began to swim slowly forward, three to four metres apart, scanning the riverbed for any anomalies. Almost immediately Costas sank down and pointed at a feature poking out of the sludge. ‘I may be wrong, but I think that’s a gun mounting,’ he said.
Jack swam over to take a look, suddenly excited again. ‘Probably a four-pounder, a typical deck gun for a steamer. That’s promising.’
‘Look ahead, Jack.’
Out of the gloom a large section of wooden planking came into view, curving round to a rudder and up to a railing that had rusty metal slabs attached to it, evidently armour plating. ‘That’s got to be it,’ Jack enthused. ‘Gordon had all of his river steamers armoured to the point where they became top-heavy, but it kept them pretty well protected from the Mahdi’s guns. You can see the dents of bullet impacts all over the place. This thing has really been through the wars.’
They swam through a gap in the frame and over the deck of the vessel. A good deal of planking had been removed and the deckhouse superstructure was largely flattened, but the vessel was in surprisingly good condition considering that it had been exposed to salvage at low water. Jack had to remind himself that he was no longer in seawater; that unlike the Beatrice in the Mediterranean this was a wreck where much of the wooden and metal structure could survive in the fresh water of the Nile in a good state of preservation. In the middle of the collapsed deck structure they swam over the large rotund mass of one of the boilers, collapsed sideways but remarkably intact. Jack stared at it, remembering how they had been a mixed blessing in 1884, providing steam power that made the boats the only screw-propulsion vessels on the upper Nile, but requiring such quantities of wood that they quickly outstripped the meagre local supply, forcing crews to demolish houses and even shaduf devices in their insatiable demand for fuel.
Jack sank down to the silt, leaving Costas to explore the other side of the boiler, and looked around. It was immediately apparent that any attempt to discover smaller artefacts and spilled crates would require a major excavation project, with airlifts and dredges to remove the overburden of sludge that had buried much of the wreckage. If there w
ere antiquities from Gordon’s collection here, they were unlikely to find them today. He tapped his intercom. ‘I think we’ve got the result we want. We found the wreck, it’s in good condition and it could be excavated.’
‘Jack, come round here.’ Costas had gone head first into a corroded hole in the deck below the boiler, leaving only his fins protruding. ‘There’s something wedged under the boiler plate. It’s a large slab of stone. I think it might have markings on it. Come down beside me and see if you can help me push it out.’
Jack swam round and squeezed through the hole, coming upright beside Costas. The slab looked perhaps a metre by a metre and a half in area, and about ten centimetres thick. He pulled himself past Costas, and inspected it as closely as he could. The edges were coarse and uneven, as if the slab had been hacked away from a larger piece. But the few centimetres of upper surface he could see were smooth and polished. He pushed his hand in further, and felt incised lines and a definite cartouche. There was no doubt about it. This was from an ancient Egyptian wall relief, far larger than any other that he knew of this far south in the Sudan, from a major temple or other monument. It looked as if it had been packed in multiple wrappings which had largely perished, leaving a compacted mass of burlap and cordage jamming the slab firmly beneath the boiler.
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