Assignment Black Gold (16 page)

“Old Father,” Kitty began. “We are friends.”

The man kept staring at Durell. Durell saw that the rifle
was a heavy old Remington, powerful and accurate. The muzzle was pointed at his
stomach. One shot would blow his spine away.

The man spoke in Bantu. “Are you the police?”

Durell looked at Kitty, not sure of the language, with its
complex clicking consonants. The girl said something at length, and the man
answered, and then she explained to Durell. “I told him we were looking for
Madragata. He says Madragata has gone on. Since he is helpless, he has been
left here with only some brandy with which to die.”

“Is he angry at Madragata?"

“No.”

“Translate for me, please.” Durell turned to the man.

“We will try to help you, Old Father.”

“I am not so old,” the man whispered, “but my days are
ended. No one can help me. I die.”

“Did Madragata have the prisoners with him?”

“Yes. Six Americans.”

“Where does he take them?”

“To a camp. I do not know where.”

“Give me your gun,” Durell said.

When Kitty repeated the order in Bantu, the man licked his
lips again and then shrugged and let the gun fall from his grip. It was plain
that the broken leg was a mortal wound, and the man had been abandoned here to
die. Durell picked up the heavy Remington and handed it to the girl. She
carried it with familiarity.

“Ask him—” he began, and then he paused.

The man’s eyes stared with a fixity that was familiar to
Durell, who had seen death come to many men in many ways. The jaw hung slack.
Kitty murmured something and turned away. For a moment, Durell looked out over
the salt lake, shimmering under the hot sky. Then he reached behind the dead
man for the bottle he saw there. It was Cape brandy, fiery stuff often
called blitz or lightning. Half of the contents were still there. He uncorked
it and took a swallow and felt the heat of the liquor hit his stomach. The girl
watched him in silence. When he offered her a drink, she said, “No, thank you.”

“Kitty, what’s troubling you?”

“I don’t like to see anyone die like this, out here in such
a place.”

“He was an Apgak. A terrorist.”

“He seemed decent enough. He didn’t put a slug in your
belly,” she said.

The shade of the small acacia shrubs trembled in the hot,
gritty wind. Durell wished the man had lived only a few minutes longer. He
wanted to know if Madragata, too, was headed for the “mountain that is round,”
seeking the Saka. There was no way of knowing. When he stood up, he felt the
increased force of the easterly wind, a pressure of heat, and he heard the
sound of it among the rocks and the sparse grass and thorn trees like the sound
of a rushing river.

“Let’s go,” he said.

They saw the mountain an hour before sunset. The salt lake
was far behind them. He saw now why the old woman of the village had insisted
on her name for it. It was not a mound, with soft slopes, but a semi-circle of
rough red crags, as if a meteor had landed here millions of years ago and
thrown up a barrier like those on the moon, with a level center that was almost
perfectly circular.

Eons of time had etched caves and grottoes into the reddish
walls of the
rimrock
, and baboons with prehensile
toes and long fingers scrambled in tribal groups over the steep, sloping
walls of stone. The sunlight flashed and flickered off the red
sandstone. A single baobab tree grew in front of one of the middle cave
entrances.

“He’ll be up there,” Durell said. pointing to the tree.

“All alone? Living here in this wasteland, an old man,
alone?” Kitty asked.

“This is his home.”

“But he’s been all over the world. He’s a cultured,
cultivated man, a mover of events, a statesman for his people—"

“Events moved in a way he didn’t anticipate,” Durell said
softly. “The years piled up on him. If Komo Lepaka is right, he’s become like
the mystics of the old biblical days, an Essene, a hermit living and talking to
his god.”

“I don’t see anyone.”

“He's here,” Durell said.

He started forward, holding the Magnum .375 in loose fingers.
There was no sign of Madragata’s band or his captives. He was wary. The place
seemed too empty, too suspiciously innocent. Despite what he had just said to
Kitty, this face of nature seemed too harsh and uncompromising to support an
old, old man who had known the luxuries of Paris and London, of Lisbon and
Geneva. He slapped at flies that unaccountably began to buzz

about them. The girl followed more slowly.

Near the big baobab tree, which he saw was truly dead and
not simply leafless in the dry season, he paused and cupped his hands.

“Saka!”

His word echoed back and forth from the circle of high red
sandstone. For a long moment, nothing happened. Two vultures lifted on lazy, flapping
wings and began to circle upward. Durell called again, and then a third time.

“There he is,” he said.

The old man had appeared at the mouth of the highest cave.
He stood quietly watching Durell and the girl as they climbed up the
mountainside toward him.

He was tall and thin,
storklike
,
with the same tribal heritage that belonged to Komo Lepaka. His hair was white
and his short beard was neatly trimmed. His figure was straight and
strong. Durell could not begin to guess at the Saka’s years. He wore a striped
cloak and leaned on a straight staff, in an odd resemblance to an Old Testament
shepherd. The evening wind made his white beard blow. He had a fine brow,
deep-set intelligent eyes that held the banked fire of mysticism in the
mind behind them. Old tribal scars beaded his leathery, wrinkled cheeks. What
those eyes had seen no man could ever guess.

“Saka,” Durell said. He told his name and Kitty’s. “You
could have hidden forever from us in this place, for a long, long time. You did
not need to show yourself.”

“Indeed, forever.” The old man’s English was faintly
accented, part Portuguese, part London public schools. “It was foolish of you
to seek me out, when most of Lubinda believes I lie in my tomb. But of course,
when you called my name, I knew that my life was not a secret to you. The time
will come, soon enough, when I will occupy that tomb. But I have taken these
years selfishly for myself, after a lifetime of service that seems to
have come to nothing. Now, I suppose, my secret is ended.” The old man smiled
and gestured graciously. “Will you have some tea‘? It is fine Ceylon tea.
I have all the amenities l need here. A few—very few—faithful people know that
I live here, and help me to survive in this wilderness."

“We would be grateful for tea,” Durell murmured.

“Come in, then. We do not have much time.”

“There is never enough time," Durell said.

The old man paused while turning toward the mouth of the
cave and looked at him sharply. “Then of course you know about Madragata?”

“Is he here?”

The old man gestured with his stall. “He is all around us,
my dear sir. As I said, you were foolish to come."

“Are you sympathetic to the Apgaks?”

The old man did not reply to that. He led the way inside the
cave. The interior was surprisingly comfortable. There was a cot with a spring
mattress, a table and several chairs, an oil lantern, several chests, one old
wood carving, and heaps and heaps of books that were perfectly preserved in the
climate of the meteorite mountain. The old man dropped a curtain made of zebra
skins over the cave entrance, and in the momentary darkness, Durell could smell
him, a musty smell compounded of old age and dry leathery skin and something
else, as if the Saka’s thoughts scented the air of the cavern. Durell could not
see where the back of the cave ended. The yellow glow of the oil lamp did not
extend that far.

“I have seen the old woman in Ngama Kotumbama,” he -said
quietly. “Your first wife, she says. The mother of your son, Madragata,
and the foster mother of your other son, Komo Lepaka.”

“Ah. And which is the true son?” the old man asked.

“I think it is Lepaka," Durell said.

“What made the old woman tell you about me?”

Durell took out the Maria Teresa silver coin with the four
holes drilled in it. Like the old woman, the Saka stared at it and touched it
with his forefinger as it lay in Durell’s palm, but he did not take it in
his own hand. For a long time he stared at it, and the only sound in the cave
was the sputter of the oil lantern and the Saka’s long, labored breathing. '

Finally he raised his eyes. “Lubinda is in danger?”

“Yes. From your son Madragata.”

“He is honest in his beliefs.”

“So is Lepaka.”

“They will go to war?”

“They are already at war."

The old man nodded. “I thought I had already known the
darkness of the deepest sorrow. And now this is added to my many years.”

“Lepaka looks to you, his true father, for help.”

“But is it not a matter of ambition, of one son set against
the other?”

“It is a matter of Lubinda,” Durell said.

“And you, a stranger, a foreigner? Why should you care about
any of this?”

“We care for any nation that seeks to keep its freedom. Tiny
as Lubinda is, it is important. It would be a great victory if democracy
survived here. You and I are not important, otherwise. None of us are.”

“You are an idealist?”

“I do my job. I’ve been accused of being pragmatic about
it.” Durell paused. He looked at Kitty. “I was not sent here merely to learn
what happened to one of our people, to Brady Cotton. I was sent to help stop
the Maoists, if I can. With your consent. Otherwise, I have no wish to
interfere.”

The old man looked thoughtful. “What did the old woman of
the village say to all this?”

“I think she know about it, but l did not speak to her at
length. The village was destroyed. Most of the homes had been burned. Men were
killed. Many young men were taken for Madragata’s army. Apparently, some of them
did not wish to go, so there was a small struggle and the village was burned.”

The old man was silent again for a long time. He turned from
Durell to the girl. “This is true? You are no stranger to me, Mrs. Cotton,
although of course you did not know of my true existence. You have helped
Lubindan children with your work in the schools and your kindness, teaching
them of the world. It is you I trust, not this man, this American, who comes
here for his own purposes, whatever his tokens of coins and messages. Was the
village burned, Mrs. Cotton?” .

“Yes,” the girl said. “I don’t know how they will live until
the rains come.”

“The rains come soon," said the old man. “They will be
strong and heavy, and the Kahara will bloom. But—”

The Saka was interrupted.

Once again, Durell heard the familiar, booming voice call to
him from out of the unfamiliar darkness.

“Durell! . . .
Durell!”

Kitty made a small movement of shock and surprise. The old
man did not move except to cock his head slightly toward the closed cave
entrance. Durell lifted the heavy Magnum.

“So,” said the Saka. “It is my son.”

“I know it’s your son. It’s Madragata.”

“Let him come in.”

“He’ll kill you,” Durell said flatly.

“And you, too, if he can.”

“But you’ll talk to him?”

“Will you not?" the old man asked gently. “Is it not
best to talk first? Then perhaps there will be no fighting.”

“You don’t know—”

“We will talk,” the old man decided.

Chapter 15.

Durell listened to their voices that echoed back and forth
within the jagged rim of the mountain that surrounded the cave entrance. The
Saka spoke strongly. in a dialect he did not understand, and when Durell looked
at Kitty, she shook her head. “I don’t know what they’re saying,” she murmured.

Her manner toward him had changed again. She stood close
beside him as they watched from the partly open zebra-hide curtain at the cave
entrance. From outside came shouted replies to the Saka’s words, a lift in the
voices that hinted at argument, then silence.

“Will he sell us out?” Kitty whispered.

“The Saka? No.”

“Why are you so sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Her hand crept into his. Her fingers felt chilly. The
sunlight touched her face and turned it to gold.

The Saka spoke again, this time at greater length. The
clicking consonants rolled out with force and power. The old man turned, waved
his tall walking stick like a baton, and came back into the cave.

“Madragata will be here.”

“Alone?” Durell asked.

“With one man. An adviser.” The old man looked at Kitty and
smiled. “Be seated. Be calm. No harm will come to you.”

But there was anger in the old, dark eyes.

Madragata wore his complacency and arrogance like a royal
cloak. He was tall, but not as tall as his father. Neither did he have the
long, angular muscularity of the Saka’s people. Durell had not seen him too clearly
on the night of the raid on Hobe Tallman’s bungalow. Now he saw the pride in
the man, the ferocious ambition, the cruel and coldly analytical mind behind
the eyes that smiled; the smile meant nothing. It was no deeper than the film
spread from a drop of oil in a pond. He carried no weapons that Durell could
see, and at a sign from the Saka, he himself put aside the Magnum and Remington
rifles and then added the S&W .38 from his waistband as the old man
waited patiently.

“We meet again, Senhor Durell,” said Madragata.

“It is not my pleasure,” Durell said.

“Most certainly not. It will be quite the opposite, I
promise you.” Madragata turned. “Old Father, I want -this man. I have been
hunting for him for some time, since he came to our country. Also the young
woman. These are spies, capitalists and colonialists who would grind our
country into deeper poverty and enslave us all with invisible economic chains,
reducing us to the state of vassals.”