The Mysterious Ambassador (3 page)

Strange tiny men of fierce appearance had come to the village gates. They had small arrows in their little bows and carried short spears. The medical team and the delegation stood with high chief Wambato and a group of warriors in the open gateway. The women and children had fled into their huts. There was an awkward silence as the two groups stared at each other. The Wambesi and the delegation appeared paralyzed by the sight of the little warriors who had materialized so suddenly out of nowhere.

"Who are they?" asked Alec Kirk, almost in a whisper.

"The Bandar. The pygmies," replied Luaga in the same tone.

"Why are they here? Where are they from?" continued Alec in a slightly louder tone. The rest looked at him to quiet him, as if the small arrows held in the small taut bows might be released by a loud sound.

"From the
Deep Woods,"
said Luaga softly.

One of the little men took a step forward. The people in the gateway tensed, all eyes on that small arrow. The little man looked at the medical team and spoke. He had come with a message.

"You will wait here," he said speaking the words flatly as if he had learned them by rote.

These were the Bandar, the pygmy people of the
Deep Woods,
and all the jungle knew that their arrows and spears were tipped with poison that caused instant death. Everyone in Bangalla knew about the Bandar, but they were rarely seen, a shy people who remained in their shadowy forests behind hidden entrances—a place feared and avoided by all normal-sized jungle people. Approach to this place was forbidden. The pygmies would have it so. But there was another thing that guarded its secrecy—an ancient taboo.

Diana stared at the little men excitedly. From the
Deep Woods!
That meant—from the Phantom! Had they come for her? She stepped forward.

"You wait here," said the little man.

Luaga took her arm and pulled her back. Then Luaga and Kirk took a few steps toward the spokesman. Arrows were pointed at them. They stood quietly for a moment, then tried to explain their need to leave at once. Luaga tried all the jungle dialects he knew. If the little man understood, he showed no sign.

"You wait here. The Phantom orders," he said.

Kirk and Luaga returned to the gateway with the others.

"Pygmies? Why are they here?" asked Kirk.

"I believe they want to protect us," said Luaga.

The spokesman gestured to high chief Wambato, who approached him calmly and without fear. The little man spoke to him in his odd click-clack language. Wambato nodded, and whispered briefly to several of his warriors. Then he walked rapidly into the jungle with two pygmies trotting behind him. The other little men remained as they were, arrows in their bows.

"What is this? Did I hear him right? The Phantom's orders? Who or what is the Phantom?" asked Kirk, bewildered by the strangeness of it all.

"That's a long story, difficult to explain," said Luaga. "Perhaps Diana can try."

The men looked at the smiling girl.

"The Phantom is my friend," she said.

Someone (who didn't like him) described General Bababu as "half gorilla, half rhino, and all monster." Perhaps this was not completely fair to Bababu. He could be suave and charming. He had been known to make light, witty remarks while watching an enemy being slowly tortured to death. Picture him sitting at a desk in his command tent, neatly combed, shaved and powdered, all two hundred forty pounds of muscle and hard fat beneath a smartly tailored uniform glittering with a dozen medals, as he puffed elegantly on a long cigarette holder and confidently awaited the outcome of the elections.

He was confident because he didn't dream he could lose. He never had. He had come up the hard way, a young tough brawler and street fighter fresh out of the jungle—out because his Byangi tribe had thrown him out with orders never to return—a little matter of theft, assault, and rape. After battling his way in and out of a dozen saloons in Mawitaan and escaping jail only because the arresting officer was found strangled—by whom no one knew—he joined the army of the colonial power that ruled Bangalla. He was trained and rose rapidly in the ranks. The abilities that made him a menace in civilian life served him well in the rough and tumble of a colonial army. When the colonial power withdrew, he was one of three ranking native officers left. The other two died shortly ... some said suicide ... leaving Bababu at the top.

Then came the invaders, mercenaries, to cut up the helpless former colony. Bababu played with the idea of joining them.They were his breed of men, adventurers, killers. But he had a deep streak of common sense, and he felt they would lose. And they did. The Bangalla people, having rid themselves of foreign rulers, were in no mood to accept new ones.

There was an interim government, headed by an uneasy triumvirate: Bababu, "a weak-kneed skinny lawyer" (Bababu's description) named Onato Omu, and a doctor named Lamanda Luaga, "a dandified pill- pusher" (again Bababu's description).

Then the election. There were several candidates, Bababu, Luaga, and a rich native landowner and shipping magnate, Manago. Bababu respected Manago's money and made quiet plans to seize it as soon as he was elected. He had no doubt about victory. He was constantly surrounded by his officers, all of whom assured him he could not lose. The army would vote for him. The people would vote for their national hero. But the people voted for Dr. Luaga.

Seated at his desk in the command tent when the final returns came in, Bababu turned purple with rage. ("Actually purple," reported an astounded aide.) He had never lost before. He would not lose now. The results had just become known and the street celebrations barely started when he began to formulate his plans. His officers gathered around him, shaken by their faulty forecasts and fearful of his wrath. But he needed them now.

Within a week, while the newly arrived legislators were unpacking and finding their desks and while government heads were waiting for the first President, Lamanda Luaga, to return from the jungle, Bababu made his move. In classic fashion, his soldiers seized newspapers and radio stations, government buildings, and even the old armory which housed the new congress.

The city people of Mawitaan did not accept this easily. They were proud of their new freedom, their first election, and the plaudits from all over the world that had come to them for their achievement. So they fought back. Many had fought in the war, and had retained their weapons. They fought in the streets and alleys and from rooftops, against Bababu's machine guns and tanks and, for a short while, held their own.

The fighting raged in the main streets, in the suburbs, and spilled over into the farms, villages, and the jungle. There were bands of deserters and irregulars who left the brutal fighting for the easier life of looting poorly armed or defenseless people in the countryside.

From a high hill overlooking the capital city, a somber figure sat mounted on a magnificent white stallion. He was dressed in strange garb—a tight bodysuit, boots, hood, and mask. Next to the white horse sat a large animal that could be taken for a dog, but was in fact a mountain wolf. Man, horse, and wolf looked through the darkness of the night into the valley. There were fires burning, explosions, gunfire; even at this distance, faint shouts, shrieks, and cries could be heard—• all the agony of a country at war.

"War," he said bitterly. "Bababu's stolen the election, cheated the people. This will spill over into the jungle. We must be prepared."

He turned from the cliff's edge and galloped through the woods, soon reaching a small hut where lamplight shone from a window. A man inside, hearing the thunder of hooves, came to the door holding a lamp. He was a short black man wearing trousers and sneakers. He smiled as he looked at his huge mounted visitor.

"Torda," said the masked man in his deep voice. "A message for the talking drum."

Torda listened attentively.

"Council of Chiefs, come to the
Deep Woods''
repeated Torda carefully. He nodded. "It will be done, Ghost Who Walks."

The masked man briefly smiled his thanks. Then the great white stallion wheeled about, and horse, rider, and mountain wolf thundered off into the dark. Torda hurriedly brought a large tomtom from the hut and began to pound out the message. The area throbbed with the deep tones. He repeated the message a dozen times, then paused and listened. In the distance, another drum was repeating the message. He had been heard. The message would be repeated, passed on, from village to village, over woods, pools, hills, and fields. And it would be heeded. For at the end of the message were the two rapid beats, the code used for only one word—Phantom.

The masked man heard the drums as he raced along the jungle path. The night was alive with drums now, of all pitches and timbres—some deep, some high, some rapid, some slow, a medley of drums from all sides. For this was the Phantom, the Ghost Who Walks, called by some, the Man Who Cannot Die.

The ancient taboo that guarded the secrecy of the
Deep Woods
was the tradition of the Phantom, the Ghost Who Walks—the Sign of the Skull. For it was known that somewhere in the shadowy vastness of this almost impenetrable jungle, hidden behind concealed entrances, was the fabulous Skull Cave, the home of the Phantom. Good jungle folk respected the taboo, evildoers feared it. In addition, all knew that the Bandar were there; one scratch of their arrows or spears meant instant death. It is no wonder that the
Deep Woods
were as completely shut off from the rest of the jungle as if surrounded by a mile-high wall of solid steel.

The Bangalla jungle, along with portions of the upper Amazon, parts of the Himalayas, and much of the Arctic and Antartic, was one of the few large land areas still wild and largely unexplored. On the west was the seacoast with the sleepy seaport capital of Mawitaan, now reverberating to the violent eruptions of revolution and counter-revolution. After several miles of villages and farms, the jungle began and stretched almost a thousand miles east to the Misty Mountain range, remote land of the feudal mountain princes. This jungle was peopled by many large and powerful tribes: the Wambesi with their broad fields, the Llongo with their vast herds, the Oogaan with their crafts of weaving and carving, the Mori, skilled fishermen of the Great Bay area. These were peaceful people with rich traditions and solid social structures. A few other tribes were less peaceful and less social, such as the Tirangi, fierce fighters living on the lower slopes of the Misty Mountains, only a generation away from head-hunting (and still dreaming of returning to it), and the roving Mussanga, said to revert to their outlawed ceremony of cannibalism when the mood seized them.

Somewhere east of the center in the wildest and thickest part of this vast jungle were the
Deep. Woods.
liven the would-be headhunters and the moody cannibals gave it wide berth. They wanted no part of the Bandar, much less the Ghost Who Walks. But on occasion, jungle folk did enter the
Deep Woods
by invitation.

This was one of those times. The tomtoms were throbbing, "Council of Chiefs, come to the
Deep Woods."
And the chiefs were on the way. It was rare for the Council to meet in the
Deep Woods,
but these chiefs were wise men and they could guess the reason for the gathering. The jungle was full of trouble, new danger, for the city war was spilling over.

The Phantom saw some of it as he raced along jungle paths toward the
Deep Woods.
Outlying villages and farms had been terrorized and burned down, their owners robbed, killed, or fled from the bands of terrorists. He heard gunfire, savage laughter, screams of grief as he sped on. He did not stop to intervene. The menace was widespread and needed unified jungle action.

Pygmy sentries rose from the thickets to greet him as he reached the edge of the
Deep Woods.
He waved to them and raced on through the waterfall, one of the secret entrances, and reached the clearing before the Skull Cave where some chiefs and a message from Diana awaited him. Guran, the pygmy chief and the Phantom's life-long friend gave him the message—
"My work is finished. May I visit you?"
His face softened at the thought of Diana. He had known she was with the UN team, and had waited for this moment. He gave Guran the reply, to be sent by talking drums at once
. . . "Wait until I send for you."
Then guessing at the impatience of the team to leave the jungle, and knowing danger now threatened every jungle path, he sent six of the Bandar to the Wambesi village.

Then he sat on the ground before the skull throne with the chiefs. The Bandar served a feast of meat, fish, nuts, berries, and spring water, and the conference began. The chiefs were all aware of the criminal bands who were looting and pillaging the countryside.

"How can we fight them?" they asked each other

anxiously. "The deserters are armed with rifles, submachine guns, and grenades. They are vicious people, and without pity."

"They are animals. We will fight them as we fight animals," said the Phantom.

"We have only arrows and spears against their guns," said the chiefs, worried and uncertain.

"Yes," said the Phantom, "our spears and arrows against their bullets and grenades. But they will never see our spearmen or bowmen, even as the hunted animal does not see them until it is too late. And we will use tiie traps and snares and pits that we use to catch large animals. And if all else fails—which it will not— then we will use the deadliest weapon of the jungle." And he gestured toward the silent watching Bandar, the pygmy poison people.