The Seventh Scroll (61 page)

Sapper connected it up to the lights that he had rigged along the foot of the cliff. The small petrol engine ran smoothly and quietly, but the amount of power it put out was impressive. The floodlights chased the shadows from the furthest corners of the cavern, and lit the deep rock bowl like a stage.

Immediately the mood changed. Everybody became more cheerful and confident. There was laughter and excited chatter from the chain of men on the scaffolding as Royan climbed down to join Sapper and Nicholas at the side of the pool.

"Now that we know that they are working, switch off those lights,' Nicholas ordered.

"It's so dark and gloomy without them," Royan protested.

"Saving fuel," Nicholas explained. "No filling station on the corner. We only have two hundred litres in reserve, and although the little Honda is pretty economical we have to be careful We don't know how long we are going to need it in the tunnel."

Royan shrugged with resignation, and when Sapper cut the generator the cavern was plunged once more into gloom and shadow. She looked at the dark pool and pulled a face.

"What are you going to do about those horrid pets of yours?" she demanded, glancing at Nicholas's bandaged right hand.

"Sapper and I have worked out a plan. We thought of trying to empty the pool completely, using a bucket chain.

But the amount of water still coming down the river bed makes that a poor choice."

"We would be lucky to hold our own against that flow, even working around the clock with buckets," Sapper grunted. "If only the major had thought to bring along a high-speed water pump-'

"Even I can't think of everything, Sapper. What we are going to do is to build a small coffer dam around the riderwater opening, and bale that out with buckets."

Royan stood back and watched the preparations. Half a dozen of the empty mesh gabions were carried down the scaffolding and placed at the edge of the pool. Here they were partially filled with boulders that the men gathered up from the river bed. However the gabions were not filled so full that they became too heavy to handle. There was no front-ender down here to move them around, and they would be forced to rely on oldfashioned manpower. There was just sufficient of the yellow PVC sheeting left over to wrap around each gabion and render it waterproof.

"What about your eels?" Royan was fascinated by these loathsome creatures, and she hung well back from the edge of the pool. "You can't send any of your men in there!

"Watch and learn." Nicholas grinned at her. "I have a little treat in store for your favourite fish."

Once all the preparations for the construction of the coffer were complete, Nicholas cleared the cavern, sending Royan and Sapper and all of the men up the scaffolding.

He alone remained at the edge of the pool, with the bag of fragmentation grenades that he had begged from Mek Nimmur slung over his shoulder. With a grenade in each hand, he hesitated. "Seven second delay," he reminded himself "Quenton-Harper dry flies. More effective than the Royal Coachman!'

He pulled the pins from each of the grenades and then lobbed them out into the middle of the pool. Quickly he turned away and hurried to the furthest corner of the cavern. He knelt with his face to the rock wall and covered his ears with both hands.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he braced himself. The rock floor jumped under him and the double shock waves from the explosions swept over him in quick succession, with a savage power that drove in his chest and stopped his breath. In the confines of the chasm the detonations were thunderous, but his ears were protected and the deep water of the pool absorbed much of the blast. A twin fountain of water shot high into the air and splashed against the cliff above his head. It poured down in a sheet over him, soaking his clothing.

As the echoes died away, he stood up, His hearing had not been adversely affected, and he had suffered no injury other than the shower of cold water. Back at the edge of the pool the water shimmered with movement. Scores of the great eels flopped and writhed on the surface, flashing their white bellies as they twisted. Many of them were dead, their bellies burst open, floating inert, while others were merely stunned by the blast. Knowing how tenaciously they clung to life he suspected that they would soon recover, but for the time being they were no longer a danger. He bellowed up toward the top of the cliff. "All clear, Sapper. Send them down."

The men came swarming down the scaffolding, amazed by the carnage that the grenades had wreaked in the pool.

They lined the bank and began to fish out the bodies of the dead eels.

"You eat them?" Nicholas demanded of one of the monks.

"Very good!" The monk rubbed his belly in anticipation.

"Enough of that, you greedy perishers." SappeT drove them back to work.

"Let's get those gabions in place before they wake up and start eating you."

With a bamboo pole Nicholas sounded the depth of the water that covered the entrance to the shaft, and found that it was well over the height of a man's head. They were forced to roll the gabions down into it, and complete the filling once they were in position. It was difficult and taxing work, and took almost two days to complete, but at last they had built a half-moon-shaped weir around the under, water entrance, walling it off from the main body of water in the pool.

Using leather buckets and clay tej pots the Buffaloes began to bale out the coffer and scoop the water over the wall into the main pool. Nicholas and Royan watched with silent trepidation as the level in the coffer fell and the opening in the cliff was gradually revealed.

Very soon they were able to see that it was almost rectangular, about three metres wide by two metres high, The sides and the roof had been eroded by the rush of water through the opening, but as the level fell lower they could see the remains of shaped stone blocks that had probably once sealed the opening. Four courses of them I still stood where the ancient masons had placed them across the threshold of the opening, but the others had been torn out by thousands of years of flood seasons and thrown into the tunnel behind, partially blocking it.

Ea erly Nicholas climbed down into the coffer. It was not yet empty but he could not control his impatience.

The water was knee-deep as he crawled forward into the opening, and with his bare hands tried to shift some of the rock debris that choked it.

"It's definitely some sort of shaft," he shouted back, and Royan could not restrain herself either. She came slithering and sloshing down into the offer, and pushed into the opening beside him.

"There's an obstruction," she cried in disappointment.

"Did Taita do that deliberately?"

might have," Nicholas gave his opinion. "Hard to tell. A lot of this rubble and flotsam has been sucked in from the main flow of the river, but he might have filled the tunnel behind him as he pulled out."

"It's going to take a tremendous amount of work just to clear it enough to find out where this passage leads to." Royan's voice had lost its ring of excitement.

"I am afraid it is," Nicholas agreed. "We are going to have to clear every bit of this rubbish by hand, and there won It be time for the niceties of formal archaeological excavation. We are just going to rip it out." He clambered back out of the coffer, and reached back to hand her up the bank. "Well, at least we have the-floodlights he added, "We can keep the men working in shifts, night and day, until we get through." hey have dammed the Dandera river," said Nahoot Ouddabi, and Gotthold von Schiller stared at him in astonishment.

"Dammed the river? Are you certain?"he demanded.

"Yes, Herr von Schiller. We have a report from our spy in Harper's camp. He has over three hundred men working in the gorge. That is not all. He has air-dropped huge amounts of equipment and supplies. It is like a.military operation. Our spy tells us that he even has an earth, moving machine, some sort of tractor, which he has brought in." Von Schiller looked across the table at Jake Helm for confirmation, and Helm nodded. "Yes, Herr von Schiller.

That is true. Harper must have spent a large amount of money. The air charter alone could have cost him fifty grand."

Von Schiller felt the first stirrings of real passion since the "Urgent satellite message had summoned him from Frankfurt. He had flown directly to Addis Ababa, where the jet Ranger had been waiting to carry him to the Pegasus base camp on the escarpment above the Abbay gorge.

If this was true, and he did not doubt Helm's word, then Harper was on to something of enormous importance.

He looked out of the window of the Quonset hut to where flowed down the valley below the base camp.

the Dandera It was a large river. To dam that volume of water would be an expensive and difficult project in this remote and primitive situation - not a project to be taken on lightly without the prospect of substantial reward. He felt a reluctant admiration for the Englishman's achievement. "Show me where he has placed his dam!" he ordered, and Helm came around the table to stand beside him. Von Schiller was standing on his block, and their eyes were on the same level.

Helm bent over the satellite photograph and carefully marked in the site of the dam. They both studied it for a minute, and then von Schiller asked,

"What do you make of it, Helm?"

Helm shook his head, hunching it down on his bulllike shoulders. "I can only guess."

"Guess then," said von Schiller, but still Helm all, hesitated.

"Go on!'

"Either he wants to move the water to another area downstream, to use it for washing out a deposit, gold nuggets or artefacts made of precious metals, perhaps even site of the to use it for hosing the overburden off the tomb,$

"Highly unlikely!" von Schiller interjected. "That would be an inefficient and expensive manner of excavation."

"I agree that it is far-fetched." Nahoot obsequiously followed von Schiller's lead, but no one even looked at him.

"What is your other supposition?" Von Schiller glared at Helm.

"The only other reason for damming the river, that I can think of, would be to reach something that has been covered by the water. Something lying in the bed of the river."

"That is more logical," von Schiller mused, and turned his attention back to the photograph. "What is there below this dam site?"

"The river enters a deep and narrow ravine here." Helm pointed at the spot. "Just below his dam. The ravine stretches about eight miles, down to this point, just above the monastery. I have flown over it in the helicopter, and it seems to be impassable, and yet-' he broke off, "Yes, go on! And yet - what?"

"On one flight over the area, we found Harper and the woman on the high ground above the ravine. They were at this spot here." He touched the photograph, and von Schiller leaned forward to peer at it.

"What were they doing there?" he demanded, without looking up.

"Nothing. They were merely sitting on the top of the cliff above the ravine."

"But they were aware of your presence?"

"Of course. We were in the helicopter. They heard our approach. They were watching us, and Harper even waved."

And so they would have ceased whatever activity they were engaged in when they became aware of your approach?"

Von Schiller was silent for so long that they began to fidget uncomfortably and exchange glances. When he spoke it was so unexpected that Nahoot started.

"Harper obviously has reason to believe that the tomb lies in the gorge below the dam. When and how do you make contact with your spy that you have in Harper's camp?"

"Harper is receiving some of his supplies from the villages here on the escarpment. The women are driving down slaughter cattle to feed his men, and carrying down pots of tej. Out man sends back his reports with the women when they return."

"Very well. Very well!" Von Schiller waved him to silence. "I don't need to know his life history. All I want to know is if Harper is working in the ravine below his dam.

How soon can you find this out?"

"By the day after tomorrow at the latest," Helm promised him. Von Schiller turned to Colonel Nogo at the far end Of the conference table. So far he had not spoken, but had watched and listened quietly to the others.

"How many men have you deployed in this area?" von Schiller asked.

"Three full companies, over three hundred men. All well trained. Many are battle-hardened veterans."

"Where are they? Show me on the map."

The colonel came to stand beside him. "One company here, another billeted at the village of Debra Maryam, and the third company at the foot of the escarpment, ready to move forward and attack Harper's camp."

"I think you should attack them now. Wipe them out, before they can uncover the tomb-' Nahoot came in again.

"Shut your mouth," von Schiller snapped' without looking up at Nahoot. "I will ask for your opinion when I need it."

He considered the map for a while longer, then asked Nogo, "How many men has this guerrilla commander, what is his name, the one who has allied himself to Harper?"

"Mek Nimmur is no a guerrilla. He is a bandit, and notorious shufta terrorist," Nogo corrected him hotly.

"One man's freedom fighter is the next man's terrorist," von Schiller remarked drily. "How many men has he under his command?"

"Not many. Fewer than a hundred, perhaps no more than fifty. He has them all guarding Harper's camp, and the dam."

Von Schiller nodded to himself, plucking at the lobe of his ear. "How did Harper and his gang return to Ethiopia?" he mused. "I know he flew from Malta, but it is not possible that the aircraft could have landed down there in the gorge."

He hopped down off his block and strutted to the window of the hut through which he had a panoramic view spread below him. He stared down into the depths of the gorge, a vista of cliffs and broken hilltops and wild tablelands, smoked blue with distance.

"How did they get in without being discovered by the authorities? Did he parachute in, the same way as he dropped his supplies?"

"No, said Nogo. "My informer tells us that he marched in with Mek Nimmut, some days before the supplies were dropped to him."