The Seventh Scroll (14 page)

I will see to the "If you will let me have your passports. There is a formalities while you relax in the VIP lounge.

from your British Embassy waiting there to greet you, man Sir Nicholas. I don't know how he knew that you were arriving."

the VIP lounge.

There was only one person waiting i He was dressed in a well-cut tropical suit and wore the orange, yellow and blue diagonally striped old Sandhurst tie. He stood up and came to greet Nicholas immediately, Nor, ? it's good to see you again Must be all

"Nicky, how are yo of twelve years, isn't it?"

"Hello, Geoffrey. I had no idea they had stuck you out here."

"Military attache. His Excellency sent me down to meet you as soon as he heard that you and I had been at Sandhurst together." Geoffrey looked at Royan with marked interest, and with a resigned air Nicholas introduced them.

"Geoffrey Tennant. Be careful of him. Biggest ram I safe within half a mile of north of the equator. No girl him."

"I say,. steady on,, Geoffrey protested, looking pleased with the reference that Nicholas had given him. "Please don't believe a word the man says, Dr Al Simma. Notorious prevaricator."

Geoffrey drew Nicholas aside and quickly gave him a r6sum6 of conditions in the country, particularly in the outlying areas. "HE is a little worried. He doesn't like the idea of you swarming around out there on your own. Lots of nasty men down there in the Goiam. I told him that you knew how to look after yourself.)

In a remarkably short time Woizero Tessay was back.

"I have cleared all your luggage, including the firearm and ammunition. This is your temporary permit. You must keep it with you at all times whilst you are in Ethiopia. Here are your passports - the visas are stamped and in order. Our flight to Lake Tana leaves in an hour, so we have plenty of time to check in."

"Any time you need a job, come and see me,'Nicholas commended her efficiency.

Geoffrey Tennant walked with them as far as the departures gate, where he shook hands, "Anything I can do, it goes without saying. "Serve to Lead", Nicky."

"'Serve to lead"T Royan asked, as they walked out to the waiting aircraft.

"Sandhurst's motto the explained.

"How nice, Nicky, she murmered.

"I have always considered Nicholas to be more dignified and appropriate he said.

"Yes, but Nicky is so sweet."

the high, thin air the Twin Otter aircraft that took them on the last, northern, leg pitched and yawed in the updraughts; from the mountains below.

Although they were at fifteen thousand feet above sea level, the ground was close enough for them to make out the, villages and the sparse areas of cultivation around them. Subjected for so many centuries to primitive agricultural methods and to the uncontrolled grazing of domestic herds, the land had a thin, impoverished look, and the bones of rock showed through the thin red fleshing of earth.

Abruptly ahead of them the plateau over which they were flying was rent through by a monstrous chasm. It was as though the earth had received a mighty sword-stroke that struck through to her very bowels.

"The Abbay river!" Tessay leaned forward in her seat to tap Royan's shoulder.

The rim of the gorge was Clear-cut, and then the slope dropped away at an angle of over thirty degrees. The bare plains of the plateau gave way immediately to the heavily forested walls of the gorge. They could make out the candelabra shapes of giant euphorbia rising above the dense jungle. In places the walls had collapsed in scree slopes of loose rock, and in others they were up-thrust into bluffs and needles that erosion had sculpted with a monstrous artistry into the figures of towering humanoids and other fantastic creatures of stone.

Down and down it plunged, and they winged out over the void until they could look directly down, a mile and more, on to the glittering snake of the river in the depths.

The funnel shape of the upper walls formed a secondary rim as they reached the sheer cliffs of the sub-gorge five hundred feet above the Nile water. Deep down there between its terrible cliffs the river gouged dark pools and long slithering runs through the red sandstone. In places the gorge was forty miles across, in others it narrowed to under ten, but through all its length the grandeur and the desolation were infinite and eternal. Man had made no impression upon it.

"You will soon be down there," Tessay told them in a voice so awed that it was almost a whisper, and they were both silent. Words seemed superfluous in the face of such raw and savage nature.

.. Almost with relief they watched the northern wall rise to meet them, and the high mountains of the Choke range stood up against the tall blue African sky, higher than their fragile little craft was flying. The aircraft banked into its descent and Tessay pointed over the starboard wingtip.

"Lake Tana," she told them. It was a wide and lovely body of water, over fifty miles long, studded with islands on each of which stood a monastery or an ancient church. As they dropped in over the water on the final approach, they could make out the white-robed priests plying between the islands on their traditional little boats made from bundles of papyrus.

The Otter touched down on the dirt strip beside the lake and rolled out in a long trailing cloud of dust. It swung in -and stopped engines beside the run-down terminal building of thatch and daub.

The sunlight was so bright that Nicholas pulled a pair of sunglasses from the breast pocket of his khaki jacket and placed them on his nose as he stood at the top of the boarding ladder. He took in the pock-marks of bullets and shrapnel on the dirty white walls of the terminal, and the burnt'out hull of a Russian T35 battle tank standing in the grass on the verge of the runway. The' barrel of its turret gun pointed earthwards, and grass had grown up between the rusted tracks.

The other passengers pushed forward impatiently behind him, jostling him and jabbering with excitement as they saw friends and relatives waiting to greet them under the eucalyptus trees that shaded the building. There was only one vehicle parked out there, a sand-coloured Toyota Land Cruiser. The roundel on the driver's do6r had at its centre the painted head of a mountain nyala, with long corkscrew horns, and in a ribbon below it the title "Wild Chase Safaris'. A white man lounged behind the wheel. As Nicholas came down the ladder behind the two women, the driver slipped out of the truck and strode out on to the strip to meet them. He was dressed in a faded khaki bush suit, and he was tall and lean and walked with a spring to his step.

"Fortyish," Nicholas judged his age from the grizzling in his short beard.

"One of the hard men," Nicholas thought.

His ginger hair was cropped short, his eyes were pale killer blue. There was a puckered white scar that ran across one cheek and up to twist and deform his nose.

Tessay introduced `Royan to him first, and he made a short, choppy bow as he shook her hand. "Enchant6, he told her in an execrable French accent and then looked at Nicholas.

"This is my husband, Alto Boris," Tessay introduced him. "Boris, this is Alto Nicholas."

"My English is bad," Boris said. "My French is better."

"Not much to choose between them," Nicholas thought, but he smiled easily and said, "So we will speak French then. Bonjour, Monsieur Brusilov. I am delighted to make your acquaintance." He offered the Russian his hand.

Boris's grip was hard - too hard. He was making a contest out of the greeting, but Nicholas had expected it He knew this type of old, and he had taken a deep grip so Boris could not crush his fingers. Nicholas held him without allowing any strain or effort to show on his lazy smile. Boris was the first to break the handshake, and there was just the trace of respect in those pale eyes.

"So you have come for a dikdik?" he asked, just short of a sneer. Most of my clients come for big elephant, or at least for mountain nyala."

"Bit rich for my nerves," Nicholas grinned, "all that big stuff. Dik-dik will suit me fine."

"Have you ever been down in the gorge?" Boris demanded. His Russian accent overpowered the French words and made them difficult to follow.

"Sir Nicholas was one of the leaders of the 1976 river expedition,' Royan intervened sweetly, and Nicholas was amused by her unexpected intervention. She had picked up the antagonism between them very quickly, and come to his rescue.

Boris grunted, and turned to his wife. "Have you got all the stores I ordered?" he demanded.

"Yes, Boris," she answered meekly. "They are all on board the aircraft." She is afraid of him, Nicholas decided, probably with good reason.

"Let's get loaded up, then. We have a long journey ahead of us." The two men rode in the front seats of the Toyota, and the women sat behind them with many of the packages of stores packed in around them. Good African protocol, Nicholas smiled to himself: men first, women fend for themselves.

"You don't want to do the tourist run, do you?" Boris made it sound like a threat.

"The tourist run?"

"The outlet from the lake, and the power station," he explained. "The Portuguese bridge over the gorge and the point where the Blue Nile begins," he added. But before they could accept he warned them, "If you do, we won't get into camp until long -after dark."

"Thanks for the suggestion,) Nicholas told him politely, "but I have seen it all before."

"Good." Boris made his approval evident. "Let's get out of here." The road swung away into the west, below the high mountains. This was the Goiam, the land of the aloof mountaineers. It was well-populated country, and they passed many tall, thin men along the roadside as they strode along behind their herds of goats and sheep, with their long staffs held crossways over their shoulders. Both men and women wore

shammas, woollen shawls, and baggy white jodhpur pants, with their feet in open sandals.

They were people with proud and handsome features, their hair dressed out into thick, bushy halos, and their eyes fierce as those of eagles. Some of the younger women in the villages they passed through were truly beautiful.

Most of the men were heavily armed. They carried twohanded swords in chased silver scabbards, and AK-47 assault rifles.

"Makes them feel like big men," Boris chuckled. "Very brave, very macho." The huts in the villages were circular walled tukuls, surrounded by plantations of eucalyptus and spiky-headed sisal.

Bruised purple storm clouds boiled over the high peaks of the Choke and swept them with squalls of rain. Like silver coins, the huge drops rattled against the windscreen of the Land Cruiser and turned the road to a running river of mud under their wheels.

The condition of the road surface was appalling; in places it deteriorated into a rocky gully which even the four-wheel drive Toyota could not negotiate, and Boris was forced to make his own track across the rocky hillside.

Often reduced to walking speed, they were nevertheless tossed about in their seats as the wheels bounced over the rough terrain.

"These damn blacks don't even think to repair the roads," Boris grunted.

"They are happy to live like animals." None of them replied, but Nicholas glanced up into the rear-view mirror at the faces of the two women. They were closed and neutral, hiding any hurt that either of them might have felt at the remark.

As they went on, the road, bad as it had been originally, became even worse. From here onwards the soft the fire. The two women sat a little to one side, talking quietly, and Boris had his feet propped on the low table as he leaned back in his chair with a glass in one hand.

He indicated the vodka bottle on the table, as Nicholas stepped into the circle of firelight, "Get yourself a drink Ice in the bucket."

"I prefer a beer," Nicholas told him. "Thirsty drive." Boris shrugged and bellowed for his camp butler to bring a brown bottle from the portable gas refrigerator.

"Let me tell you something, a little secret." He grinned at Nicholas as he poured himself another vodka. "There is no such animal as a striped dikdik these days, even if there ever was one. You are wasting your time and your money."

"Fine," Nicholas agreed mildly. "It's my time and my money."

"Just because some old fart shot one back in the Dark Ages, doesn't mean you are going to find another now. We could go up into the tea plantations for elephant. I saw three bulls there only ten days ago. All with tusks over a hundred pounds a side."

As they argued, the level in Boris's vodka bottle fell like the Nile at the end of the inundation. When Tessay told them that the meal was ready, Boris carried the bottle with him; he stumbled on his way to the table. During the meal his only contribution to the conversation was to snarl at Tessay.

"The lamb is raw. Why don't you see to it that the cook does it properly?

Damn monkeys, you have to watch everything they do."

"Is your lamb under-cooked, Alto Nicholas?" Tessay asked without looking at her husband. "I can have them cook it longer."

"It's perfect he assured her. "I like mine pink." Si By the end of dinner the vodka bottle at Boris elbow was empty, and his face was flushed and swollen. He got up from the table without a word and disappeared into the darkness in the direction of his tent, swaying on his feet and occasionally catching his balance with a two-step jig.

"I apologize," essay told them quietly. "It is only in the evenings. In the day he is fine. It is a Russian tradition, the vodka." She smiled brightly; only her eyes stayed sad.

"It is a lovely night, and too early yet for bed. Would you like to walk up to the church? It is very old and famous.

I will have one of the servants bring a lantern, so that you may admire the murals."

The servant walked ahead of them, lighting their way, and an ancient priest waited to welcome them on the portico of the circular building. He was thin and so very black that only his teeth flashed in the gloom. He carried a magnificent Coptic cross in massive native silver, set with carnelians and other semi-precious stones.

Both Royan and Tessay dropped on their knees in front of him to ask for his blessing. He slapped their cheeks lightly with the cross and genuflected over them, mumbling his benediction in Amharic. Then he ushered them into the interior.