Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers

by Wilbur Smith

  “Victor and I were so worried,” she blurted, but she was blushing a deep rose colour that Daniel found enchanting, and she released his hand quickly.

  That afternoon, after Daniel had bathed and eaten and slept for two hours, he showed them the new material. There were sequences of the forced labour gangs working along the logging roads. They had obviously been filmed, from a distance with a telephoto lens.

  The Hita guards stood over the gangs with clubs in their hands, and they struck out seemingly at random at the half-naked men and women toiling in the mud and slush below them. I’ve got much too much of this, Daniel explained, but I’ll edit it down, and keep only the most striking sequences. There were sequences of the gangs being marched in slow exhausted columns back to the camps at the end of the day’s work, and other shots, taken through wire, of their primitive living conditions.

  Then there were a series of interviews, shot in the forest, with prisoners who had escaped from the camps. One of the men stripped naked in front of the camera and displayed the injuries that the guards had inflicted- upon him. His back was cut to ribbons by the lash, and his skull was crisscrossed with scars and half-healed cuts where the clubs had fallen.

  A young woman showed her feet. The flesh was rotting and falling away from the bone. She spoke in soft Swahili, describing the conditions in the camp. “We work all day in the mud, our feet are never dry. The cuts and scratches on them fester like this, until we cannot walk. We cannot work.” She began to weep softly.

  Daniel was sitting beside her on the log. He looked up at the camera which he had previously set up on a tripod. “This is what the soldiers in the trenches of France during’World War One called ‘trench foot’. It’s a contagious fungoidal infection that will cripple the sufferer, will literally rot his feet if it is not treated.”

  Daniel turned back to the weeping woman and asked gently in Swahili, “What happens when you can no longer work?”

  “The Hita say that they will not feed us, that we eat too much food and are no longer of any use. They take the sick people into the forest…”

  Daniel switched off the VTR and turned to Kelly and Victor. “What you are about to see are the most shocking sequences I have ever filmed. They’re similar to the scenes of the Nazi death squads in Poland and Russia. Some of the quality might be rather poor. We were filming from hiding. It’s horrible stuff. You might prefer not to watch it, Kelly?”

  Kelly shook her head. “I’ll watch it,” she said firmly.

  “Okay, but I warned you.” Daniel switched on the VTR and they leaned forward towards the tiny screen as it flickered and came alive again.

  They were looking into a clearing in the forest. One of the UDC bulldozers was gouging a trench in the soft earth. The trench was forty or fifty yards long and at least ten feet deep, judging by the way the bulldozer almost disappeared into it. Patrick was able to find out from his spies where they were doing this, Daniel explained. So we could get into position the night before. The bulldozer completed the excavation and trundled up out of the trench. It parked nearby. The shot was cut off. This next sequence is about three hours later, Daniel told them.

  The head of a column of prisoners appeared out of the forest, chivvied on by the Hita guards on the flanks. It was apparent that all the prisoners were sick or crippled. They staggered or limped slowly into sight. Some were supporting each other with arms around the shoulders, others were using crude crutches. A few were carried on litters by their companions.

  One or two of the women had infants strapped on their backs. The guards marched them down into the trench and they disappeared from sight. The guards formed up in a line on top of the excavation.

  There were at least fifty of them in paratrooper overalls with sub-machine-guns carried on the hip. Quite casually they began firing down into the trench. The fusillade went on for a long time. As each paratrooper emptied his Uzi machine-gun, he reloaded it with a fresh magazine and recommenced firing. Some of the men were laughing.

  Suddenly one of the prisoners crawled up over the bank of the pit. It was almost unthinkable that he could have survived this long. One of his legs was half shot away. He dragged himself along on his elbows. A Hita officer unholstered his pistol and stood over him and shot him in the back of his head. The man collapsed on his face and the officer put his boot against his ribs and shoved him over the lip of the trench.

  One at a time the soldiers stopped shooting. Some of them lit cigarettes and stood in groups along the edge of the grave, smoking and laughing and chatting.

  The driver of the bulldozer climbed back on to his machine and eased it forward. He lowered the blade and pushed the piles of loose earth back into the trench. When the excavation was refilled he drove the bulldozer back and forth over it to compact the earth.

  The soldiers formed up into a column and marched away along the track they had come. They were out of step and slovenly, chatting and smoking as they went.

  Daniel switched off the VTR and the screen went blank.

  Kelly stood up without a word and went out on to the verandah of the bungalow. The two men sat in silence until Victor Omeru said quietly, “Help us please, Daniel. Help my poor people.”

  The word went through the forest that the Molimo was coming, and the clans began to gather at the tribal meeting place below the waterfall at Gondola. Some of the clans came from two hundred miles away, across the Zaire border, for the Bambuti recognized no territorial boundaries but their own.

  From every clan area and from every remote corner of the forest they came, until there were over a thousand of the little people gathered together for the terrible Molimo visitation.

  Each woman built her leafy hut with the doorway facing the doorway of a particular friend or a close and beloved relative, and they gathered in laughing groups throughout the encampment, for not even the threat of the Molimo could quench their high spirits or dull their cheerful nature.

  The men met old cronies and hunting companions that they had not seen since the last communal net hunt, and they shared tobacco and tall stories, and gossiped with as much relish as the women at the cooking-fires. The children squealed and ran unchecked amongst the huts, tumbling over each other like puppies, and they swam in the pool below the waterfall like sleek otter cubs.

  One of the last to arrive at the meeting place was Pirri the hunter. His three wives staggered under the heavy sacks of tobacco they carried.

  Pirri ordered his wives to build his hut with the doorway facing the doorway of his brother Sepoo. However, when the hut was finished, Pamba closed in the doorway of Sepoo’s hut and built another opening facing in the opposite direction. In Bambuti custom this was a terrible snub, and it set the women at the cooking-fires chattering like parrots at roosting time.

  Pirri called to old friends, “See how much tobacco I have. It is yours to share. Come, fill your pouches. Pirri invites you, take as much as you wish. See here! Pirri has bottles of gin. Come drink with Pirri.” But not a man of all the Bambuti took advantage of the offer.

  In the evening, when a group of the most famous hunters and story-tellers of the tribe were gathered around a single fire with Sepoo in their midst, Pirri came swaggering out of the darkness with a bottle of gin in each hand and elbowed a place for himself at the fire. He drank from the open gin bottle and then passed it to the man on his left.

  “Drink!” he ordered. “Pass it on, so that all may share Pirri’s good fortune.” The man placed the untouched bottle on one side and stood up and walked away from the fire. One after the other, the men stood up and followed him into the darkness until only Sepoo and Pirri were left.

  “Tomorrow the Molimo comes,” Sepoo warned his brother Softly, and then he also stood up and walked away.Pirri the hunter was left with his gin and his bulging tobacco pouch, sitting alone in the night.

  Sepoo came to the laboratory to call Daniel the following morning, and Daniel followed him into the forest, carrying the camera on his shoulder. They wen
t swiftly, for Daniel had by now learned all the tricks of forest travel, and even his superior height and size were no great handicap. He could keep up with Sepoo.

  They started off alone, but as they went others joined them, slipping silently out of the forest, or appearing like dark sprites ahead or behind them, until at last there was a multitude of Bambuti hurrying towards the place of the Molimo.

  When they arrived there were already many others before them, squatting silently around the base of a huge silk-cotton tree in the depths of the forest. For once there was no laughter nor skylarking. The men were all grave and silent.

  Daniel squatted with them and filmed their sombre faces. All of them were looking up into the silk-cotton tree.

  “This is the home of the Molimo,” Sepoo whispered softly. “We have come to fetch him.”

  Somebody in the ranks called out a name. “Grivi!” And a man stood up and moved to the base of the tree. From another direction another name was called. “Sepoo!” And Sepoo went to stand with the first man chosen.

  Soon there were fifteen men at the base of the tree. Some were old and famous, some were mere striplings. Young or old, callow or proven, all men had equal right to take part in the ceremony of the Molimo.

  Suddenly Sepoo let out a shout and the chosen band swarmed excitedly up into the tree. They disappeared into the high foliage and for a time there was only the sound of their singing and shouting. Then down they came again, bearing a length of bamboo.

  They laid it on the ground at the foot of the tree and Daniel went forward to examine it. The bamboo was not more than fifteen feet long. It was cured and dried out, and must have been cut many years before. There were stylised symbols and crude animal caricatures scratched on it, but otherwise it was simply a length of bamboo.

  “Is this the Molimo?” Daniel whispered to Sepoo while the men of the tribe gathered around it reverently.

  “Yes, Kuokoa, this is the Molimo,” Sepoo affirmed.

  “What is the Molimo?” Daniel persisted. “The Molimo is the voice of the forest,” Sepoo tried to explain. “It is the voice of the Mother and the Father. But before it can speak, it must be taken to drink.” The chosen band took up the Molimo and carried it to the stream and submerged it in a cool dark pool. The banks of the pool were lined with ranks of little men, solemn and attentive, naked and bright-eyed.

  They waited for an hour and then another while the Molimo drank the sweet water of the forest stream, and then they brought the Molimo to the bank.

  It was shining and dripping with water. Sepoo went to the bamboo tube and placed his lips over the open end. His chest inflated as he drew breath and the Molimo, spoke from the tube. It was the startlingly clear sweet voice of a young girl singing in the forest, and all the men of the Bambuti shuddered and swayed like the top leaves of a tall tree hit by a sudden wind.

  Then the Molimo changed its voice, and cried like a duiker caught in the hunter’s net. It chattered like the grey parrot in flight and whistled like the honey chameleon. it was all the voices and sounds of the forest. Another man replaced Sepoo at the tube, and then another.

  There were voices of men and ghosts and other creatures that all men had heard of but none had ever seen.

  Then suddenly the Molimo screamed like an elephant. It was a terrible angry sound and the men of the Bambuti swarmed forward, clustering around the Molimo in a struggling heaving horde. The simple bamboo tube disappeared in their midst, but still it squealed and roared, cooed and whistled and cackled with a hundred different voices.

  Now a strange and magical thing took place. As Daniel watched, the struggling knot of men changed. They were no longer individuals, for they were pressed too closely together. In the same way that a shoal of fish or a flock of birds is one beast, so the men of the Bambuti blended into an entity. They became one creature. They became the Molimo. They became the godhead of the forest.

  The Molimo was angry. It roared and squealed with the voice of the buffalo and the giant forest hog. It raged through the forest on a hundred legs that were no longer human. It revolved on its axis like a jellyfish in the current. It pulsed and changed shape, and dashed one way and then the other, flattening the undergrowth in its fury.

  It crossed the river, kicking up a white foam of spray, and then slowly but with awakening purpose began to move towards the gathering place of the tribe below the waterfall at Gondola.

  The women heard the Molimo coming from a long way off. They left the cooking-fires and seized the children and ran to their huts, dragging the little ones with them. Wailing with terror, they closed the doors of the huts and crouched in the darkness with the children clutched to their breasts.

  The Molimo rampaged through the forest, its terrible voice rising and falling, crashing through the undergrowth, charging one way and then the other, until at last it broke into the encampment. It trampled the cooking-fires and the children screamed as some of the flimsy huts were knocked askew by its ungoverned anger.

  The great beast raged back and forth through the camp, seeming to quest for the source of its outrage. Suddenly it revolved and moved purposefully towards the far corner of the camp where Pirri had built his hut.

  Pirri’s wives heard it coming and they burst from the hut and fled into the jungle, but Pirri did not run. He had not gone to the silk-cotton tree with the other men to fetch the Molimo down from its home. Now he crouched in his hut, with. his hands over his head and waited. He knew there was no escape in flight, he had to wait for the retribution of the forest god.

  The Molimo circled Pirri’s hut like one of the giant forest millipedes, its feet stamping and kicking up the earth, screaming like a bull elephant in the agony of a ruptured bladder. Then abruptly it charged at the hut in which Pirri was hiding. It flattened the hut, and trampled all Pirri’s possessions. It stamped his tobacco to dust. It shattered his bottles of gin and the pungent liquor soaked into the earth. It kicked the gold wristwatch into the fire and scattered all his treasures. Pirri made no attempt to fly its wrath or to protect himself.

  The Molimo trampled him; squealing with rage it kicked and pommelled him. It crushed his nose and broke his teeth; it cracked his ribs and bruised his limbs.

  Then suddenly, it left him and rushed back into the forest from whence it had come. Its voice had changed, the rage was gone out of it. It wailed and lamented as though it mourned the death and the poisoning of the forest and the sins of the tribe that had brought disaster upon them all.

  Slowly it retreated and its voice became fainter, until at last it faded into the distance.

  Pirri picked himself up slowly. He made no effort to gather up his scattered treasures. He took only his bow and his quiver of arrows. He left his elephant spear and his machete. He limped away into the forest. He went alone. His wives did not go with him, for they were widows now.

  They would find new husbands in the tribe. Pirri was dead. The Molimo had killed him. No man would ever see him again. Even when they met his ghost wandering amongst the tall trees, no man or woman would acknowledge it.

  Pirri was dead to his tribe for ever.

  Chapter 38

  “Will you help us, Daniel?” Victor Omeru asked.

  “Yes,” Daniel agreed. “I will help you. I will take the tapes to London. I will arrange to have them shown on public television in London and Paris and New York.”

  “What else will you do to help us?” Victor asked.

  “What else do you want of me?” Daniel countered. “What else is there I can do?”

  “You are a soldier, and a good one, from what I have heard. Will you join us in our fight to regain our freedom?”

  “I was a soldier, long ago,” Daniel corrected him, “in a cruel unjust war. I learned to hate war in a way that no one can until they have experienced it.”

  “Daniel, I am asking you to take part in a just war. This time I am asking you to make a stand against tyranny.”

  “I am no longer a soldier. I am a journalist, Victo
r. It is not my war.”

  “You are a soldier still,” Victor contradicted him. “And it is your war. It is the war of any decent man.”

  Daniel did not reply immediately. He glanced sideways at Kelly, on the point of asking for her support. Then he saw her expression. There was no comfort for him there. He looked back at Victor, and the old man leaned closer to him.

  “We Uhali are a peaceful people. For that reason we, alone, do not have the skill necessary to overthrow the tyrant. We need weapons. We need people to teach us how to use them. Help me, please, Daniel. I will find all the young brave men you need, if only you will promise to train and command them.”

  “I don’t want –” Daniel began, but Victor forestalled him.

  “Don’t refuse me outright. Don’t say anything more tonight. Sleep on it. Give me your answer in the morning. Think about it, Daniel. Dream of the men and women you saw in the camps. Dream of the people you saw killed or deported at Fish Eagle Bay, and the mass grave in the forest. Give me your answer in the morning.

  Victor Omeru stood up. He paused beside Daniel’s chair and placed his hand on his shoulder. “Good night, Daniel,” he said, and went down the steps and crossed in the moonlight to his own small bungalow beyond the gardens.

  “What are you going to do?” Kelly asked softly.

  “I don’t know. I really don’t know.” Daniel stood up. “I’ll tell you tomorrow. But right now, I’ll do what Victor suggested, I’m going to bed.”

  “Yes.” Kelly stood up beside him.

  “Good night,” he said.

  She was standing very close to him, her face tilted up towards him. He kissed her. The kiss held for a long time.

  She drew back only a few inches from his mouth and said, “Come.” And led him down the verandah to her bedroom.