Mayne lowered his telescope and looked at the island, sensing movement there too, and could just make out the palm trees swaying on the shore. He felt a prickle of wind on his neck, and then he saw another gust. It was barely perceptible, but it was as if there were some great beast slumbering under the river, building up its strength for dawn. Somewhere out there were a quarter of a million men of the Mahdi’s army, on the island, along the far shore of the White Nile. The thought of it made him feel light headed, as if all those men were sucking the oxygen from the air. Oxygen seemed in short supply here, like water in the desert, essentials of life that had been cut off from Khartoum weeks ago and were now dwindling by the hour.
The brush of wind made him think of his rifle, of the effect on a bullet flying across the river. He wiped his muddy hands on Charrière’s blanket, knelt up and unwrapped the bag, revealing the teakwood case inside. He unbolted the lid and opened it up. Everything looked pristine, unaffected by the jostling it had undergone over the past two weeks. Seeing the rifle quickened his pulse, excited him; he stroked his finger along the octagonal flats of the barrel and touched the forestock, smelling the gun oil. He used a small screwdriver to loosen the clamps that held the components rigidly in place, taking out the barrel and receiver and then the removable buttstock, and assembling them along with the breechblock. When he had finished, he tested the action, lowering the loading lever to drop the block and reveal the breech, drawing back the hammer, pulling the rear set-trigger and feathering his finger over the main trigger, knowing that the slightest pressure at full cock would bring the hammer down on the firing pin. He eased the hammer back to the half-cock safe position, opened the ammunition box in the case and took out one of the long brass cartridges; each contained ninety grains of the finest powder, hand loaded for him by his gunsmith in London, enough to propel the .50 calibre bullet out of the muzzle at over eighteen hundred feet per second. He carefully inspected it, then dropped the loading lever to open the breech, pushed the cartridge inside and closed the lever again, causing the block to rise into place behind the breech and the action to lock.
He lay forward and pushed the barrel of the rifle out of the embrasure in the wall, careful to avoid any mud or debris getting near the muzzle. He eased the butt into his right shoulder, flipped up the rear sight and then looked through it, shutting his left eye as he always did when aiming, seeing the cross-hairs of the front sight through the eyepiece aperture. He checked the elevation on the rear sight, six hundred and fifty metres, the nearest the setting would allow to the estimate he had made from the map measurements provided by Kitchener and the distance that Gordon himself had calculated, with a minute upwards adjustment that Mayne had made when he test-fired the rifle over a measured distance near the Nile south of Korti. He looked up from the sights, wetted the forefinger of his left hand and held it in the air, sensing nothing; the wind had gone. He eased the butt from his shoulder and propped it on his bag, leaving the rifle balanced on the embrasure. He was ready.
He lay on his back, looking around. The air seemed preternaturally still, unnervingly so. Somewhere in the distance he heard the cry of a tropical bird, a harsh, grating sound, perhaps what counted in this place as the dawn chorus; but the sky was still dark. He realised that the brickworks to the left had gone quiet, the place where the wounded cow had blindly circled round and round, groaning and wheezing. He saw that Charrière was cleaning his hunting knife, wiping congealed blood off the blade and leaving streaks of darkness on his blanket. Mayne gestured towards the brickworks. ‘You’ve been busy.’
Charrière said nothing, but finished cleaning his knife and laid it down on the edge of the blanket, its blade gleaming dully. It was a knife that Mayne himself had used years before to butcher deer, and one that Charrière’s ancestors had blooded through generations of hunting and war; its worn bone handle and the point of the blade, shaped through countless resharpenings and honings, seemed so perfectly fitted to Charrière that it had become an extension of himself, just as Mayne felt with his rifle. Charrière stared intently for a few moments at the rear of the fort, as if scanning for something, then turned to Mayne, his eyes unfathomable in the gloom. ‘The cow dropped dead. Something big came up and dragged it down into the river.’
‘A crocodile?’
‘I only saw marks on the ground. I was not here.’
Mayne looked at the knife, and thought again. ‘Our pursuers?’
‘I found three of them asleep in the desert.’
Mayne stared at him. ‘Identity?’
‘They were Sudanese, but each with different tattoos, from different tribes. They had English tobacco, and Martini-Henry rifles. I did not linger.’
Mayne thought hard, wondering who they might be. ‘Did you travel far?’
‘I took your rifle case on my back. I crossed the river at the point north of Khartoum where the White Nile joins the Blue Nile. I went far down the river, for several miles. I saw the steamers.’
‘You saw them?’ Mayne exclaimed, alarmed. ‘You’re sure they’re the ones? They shouldn’t be that close to us yet.’
‘I saw the turrets with gun emplacements, and the armour plating the sailors have built around the edges. They were anchored, but getting up steam. The soldiers had been ashore foraging for wood, chopping up water-lifting devices for fuel. The Nile is falling at a rate of three feet a day. They must have seen the mudflats, and decided to press on.’
‘That means they could be here very soon.’
‘They could be here shortly after dawn.’
Mayne thought hard, his mind racing. It was essential that he complete his mission before the steamers hove into view. He must be gone before any of the British soldiers or sailors saw him. He turned again to Charrière. ‘Did you see anything else?’
‘I walked through the Mahdi’s camp. I passed thousands of them, asleep on the desert floor. They have their spears beside them, polished and sharpened. Less than an hour from now this place will light up, in more ways than one. The artillery are positioned to blast at the main gates of the city. The main force will come over the river from the west, and others will attack the landward defences to the east. Khartoum will be overrun within minutes. The Ansar will be at the gates of the palace at dawn.’
Mayne thought for a moment. ‘Our pursuers. You said you found three in the desert. There were four when we saw them behind us at Abu Klea.’
‘He’s here.’
‘What do you mean, here?’
‘Don’t look.’ Charrière lowered his voice. ‘He followed us here yesterday evening. He’s an Ababda tribesman; he was their tracker and he’s good. He returned to their camp in the night and saw his companions with their throats cut, and now he’s come back here. He will make his move soon.’
‘Where is he?’ Mayne whispered.
‘I’ve been watching him while you’ve been loading your rifle. He’s been making his way around the wall to the entrance where you came in. When I laid those mimosa branches in the gaps after you left last night, I made it so that I can see out through them, but he will not be able to see in without looking over them. Don’t move. He’s there now.’
In a single lightning movement Charrière tossed off his blanket, picked up his knife and threw it past Mayne, the blade swishing through the air so fast he could barely see it. There was a shriek from behind the wall, and Charrière bounded forward, followed by Mayne. Charrière pushed through the branches and reached the man, pulling the knife out of his chest and preparing to lunge again. Mayne grabbed his arm and stopped him. ‘Let me question him first.’
The man had a grey robe but no headdress, and a wickedly curved knife lay by his side. He had the three slashed marks on his cheeks of the Ababda tribe. He was a warrior, but his eyes were full of fear, and the red stain from his chest was spreading over his robe, the blood pooling on the ground below. Mayne knelt down clo
se to his head. ‘Who sent you?’ he snarled.
The man gargled, spitting out blood and foaming at the mouth, his eyes wide, his skin turning grey. He gave a death rattle, and his head slumped backwards. He had said something, two words, but Mayne had only heard the second clearly: Pasha, the Ottoman word for general. It could be any number of Arab leaders who sported that title; the Ottomans and their minions were masters of intrigue, and any of them could have spies and secret missions in the desert. But how could these men have known to follow Mayne and Charrière from Korti? Who else could have wanted them dead before they reached Gordon?
And then he remembered. The Sudanese used Pasha for the British too; he had even done it himself in Khartoum, for Gordon. It was how the doomed General Hicks had been known to his Egyptian troops. And there was someone else, someone who had been called that by his fanatical bodyguard.
His heart pounded.
Kitchener Pasha.
He looked up at Charrière. ‘It was Kitchener. I’m sure of it. He was suspicious of me, and must have guessed my role. He idolised Gordon, and couldn’t bear to think of what I might be planning to do.’ He rocked back for a moment, feeling overwhelming relief. For days now he had been nagged by uncertainty, wondering whether Colonel Wilson might have had him followed, or even Wolseley. But Kitchener would have acted alone; in the desert he followed no orders. Mayne remembered Burnaby’s dying warning: don’t trust anyone. Burnaby had been watching and listening during the Korti conference, and would have sensed the depth of Kitchener’s loyalty to Gordon. Mayne shut his eyes for a moment. He felt in control again, and a sudden need to be behind the sights of his rifle, focusing on what he did best.
A huge explosion rent the air, and a shower of light crackled and cascaded down on Khartoum. It was followed by another, and then a distant drumming of gunfire that came through the still dawn air as if it were right next to them, the reports echoing down the river. Mayne saw the city lit up by the explosions, its shattered whitewashed buildings collapsing into the ground like the carapace of some long-dead river monster, and then he turned around and for the first time saw a sliver of dawn above the eastern horizon. He looked at Charrière. It had begun.
They both moved quickly back through the wall and lay down at the embrasure. The distant gunfire had become a continuous crackle to the north-east, somewhere near the junction of the two Niles, and was joined by a distinctive thudding of artillery that sounded like British nine-pounders, the guns that had been mounted on the steamers. They must be coming up through a gauntlet of fire from the Mahdi’s forces on either side of the river. Mayne looked at the pastel orange light that was now spreading over the city, diffused by the smoke of the explosions. If the steamers survived the barrage, they would be rounding the corner of Tutti island in less than half an hour.
They suddenly heard an extraordinary sound, a noise that Mayne realised must be the stomping of feet, the sound they had heard at Abu Klea but magnified here a hundred times, accompanied by thousands of tom-toms and a quarter of a million men shrieking and chanting, screaming death to the unbelievers. A cloud of dust rose over the landward end of the city and he saw thousands of dervishes spilling over the defensive ditch and into the streets. It was like a tidal wave smashing through a coastal town, drowning the streets and tossing everything aside as it surged forward. It was all happening astonishingly quickly; twenty minutes earlier, the city had been dead quiet. He whipped up his telescope and watched the dervishes run screaming towards the palace, in a matter of seconds reaching the residential quarter where the officials lived. He saw a man in a tarboosh and robe hurriedly lead a woman and five children out to the riverbank; he shot them all in the head with a revolver, six rounds, then flung the empty gun at the advancing dervishes, one of whom cleaved his head with a sword, sending the top half spinning off in a spray of blood and brain into the Nile. Seconds later the first dervishes reached the gates of the palace, pressing against them as Mayne had done a mere eight hours before.
He panned the telescope to a point just above the palace that he had spotted when he had lain here looking at the city the afternoon before. He had needed to find a feature he could see with his naked eye, a point of reference he could aim at before dropping the sights to the balcony; it would help to give structure to a scene whose details might be less easily visible this morning but which he had memorised, that he could see as clearly in his mind’s eye as if it were a photograph. He found it now: the conical roof of a mosque that rose behind the palace, just above and to the left of the balcony. He put down the telescope and tried sighting the rifle, placing the cross hairs on the roof and then dropping them infinitesimally below and to the right, where Gordon had said he would be when the Mahdi’s army arrived at the gate.
He looked at the palace gate again, at the horde of dervishes that must by now number in the thousands, filling the streets and alleyways, with more of them pressing in every second. And then he saw Gordon on the balcony above the compound, exactly where he had said he would be. Mayne had expected it, but it still sent a shudder through him. Gordon was wearing dress uniform with a red tunic, his sword in one hand and Mayne’s revolver in the other. Mayne felt a sudden surge of something like pride: an officer of the Royal Engineers was not going to go down without a fight. He fervently hoped that Gordon would have the chance to dish out some death before he was taken down. Then the gates collapsed in a crescendo of noise and the dervishes stormed over the soldiers who had been in the courtyard, reaching the bottom of the stairs and beginning to clamber up them. The soldiers in the upper-floor windows were firing as fast as they could reload, more steadfast than Mayne had expected, given the certainty of death. And then he saw Gordon in action too, laying about him with his sword, firing the revolver point-blank at dervishes coming up the stairs, kicking them back into the mass below, shouting orders to his Sudanese riflemen shooting from the windows beside him.
Mayne whispered under his breath: please God finish him now. A single bullet, a single spear; there were enough of them flying around. But still Gordon was there, untouched, standing with his feet planted apart facing across the river, facing Mayne. The dervishes had fallen back in a wide arc below the stairs in front of him, their spears raised, standing their ground even while the remaining Sudanese soldiers still fired into them, until they too went silent, their ammunition presumably expended. Then Mayne saw why the dervishes had stopped: two emirs on horseback had ridden through the throng, and stopped below the balcony. They seemed to be reading something to Gordon, talking to him. Mayne felt himself stop breathing. They were trying to take him alive.
He was going to have to do it.
He put down the telescope and raised the rifle, cocking it and setting the trigger. He peered down the sights, finding the mosque, dropping infinitesimally below and to the right until he found his mark. He could no longer see detail, but he was aiming at what he knew was there, a tiny splash of red, drawing his mind towards it as if he were looking through the telescope.
His throat was dry, and his stomach felt cavernous. He realised that he was shivering, that he had not registered the cold. But it was more than that. He had suddenly lost focus. This had never happened to him before. He knew that it was Gordon, that he should never have gone to see him, should never have allowed himself to know his target as a human being. And they had got it all wrong: Gordon was no messiah, nor a martyr in waiting. He was a man who had come back to Khartoum to find something, and who would not leave until he had discovered it. The Gordon he had been sent to kill was a fantasy in the minds of others. When he returned he would tell them, and that false Gordon would be extinguished, and his mission would be done.
Charrière had picked up the telescope. ‘He’s in full view,’ he said urgently. ‘The steamers are coming. Take the shot now.’
Mayne felt himself tighten up again. They were hunters, and he had the deer in his sights, just like the first tim
e as boys when Charrière had talked him through it, settled his nerves. He closed his eyes for a split second, sending himself back to that day beside the lake in the forest, then opened them, seeing nothing but the tunnel of the sights and the target beyond. And then in his mind’s eye he saw Gordon as he should be, Gordon as he might be right now, never allowing himself to be taken prisoner, lifting his revolver and firing his last round at the emir, then charging down the stairs with his sword raised, hacking and stabbing until he was cut down.
He touched the trigger. The rifle jumped, there was a crack and the report echoed down the Nile. He dropped it, and pushed away from the wall, sitting up on his knees and shutting his eyes. He slowly exhaled, feeling as if he would never need to breathe again. He felt the thirst he had first felt in the desert with Shaytan, the thirst that felt like dust in the throat, only this time he did not want to quench it; he wanted the desert to be part of him. He began to breathe again, shallow breaths, barely perceptible, and he opened his eyes. On the horizon over Omdurman to the west he saw the strip of orange widen, wavering and shimmering between sand and sky. Gordon had been right: the sun would shine today. The noise that he had somehow blocked out since aiming the rifle suddenly came back in full force, a din of shrieking and musketry and claps of artillery fire. The city was heaving with dervishes, and he could no longer see the steps of the palace. He looked down the Nile; the steamers had not yet appeared. He and Charrière would be able to leave before Colonel Wilson arrived, before anyone on the boats saw him and his rifle. It had all gone according to plan.
Suddenly the wind was knocked out of him and he was held in a vicelike grip from behind, his neck pinned back and his right arm pushed up in a half-nelson. He struggled, kicking his legs, but his arm was pushed up further. He felt the breath against his neck, and then saw that the forearm around his neck was brawny and scarred, wearing a braided bracelet. He relaxed, and let himself fall back against the man holding him: it was Charrière. ‘Do you remember how we used to wrestle as boys?’ he said. ‘You always won.’
Pharaoh (Jack Howard 7) Page 32
