The Seventh Scroll (23 page)

"No. Hold on. That's not military. Green and red fuselage, and the red horse emblem. None other than your old friends from Pegasus

Exploration."

The sound of the rotors crescendoed, and now with her naked eye Royan could make out the flying horse on the fuselage of the helicopter as it flew low across their front, half a mile out, headed down towards the Nile. Neither of them paid any attention to Tamre as he crouched behind Royan, trying to hide behind her body.

His teeth were chattering with terror and his eyes rolled until the whites showed.

"It looks as if our friend Jake Helm has got himself some fancy transport. If Pegasus is in any way connected with Duraid's murder and the other attempts on your life, then we can expect them to be breathing heavily down our necks from now on. They are now in a position to overlook us at will." Nicholas was still watching the aircraft through the binoculars.

"When your enemy is up in the air, it gives you a helpless feeling." Royan edged instinctively closer to him, staring up.

The green and scarlet machine disappeared over the hump of the subgorge, down towards the monastery.

"Unless he's just on a joy-ride, he's probably looking for our camp,'

Nicholas guessed. "Under orders from the main man to keep tabs on us."

"He will have no trouble finding it. Boris made no attempt to conceal the huts," Royan said uneasily. "Let's get out of here, then." She stood up.

"Good plan." Nicholas was about to follow her, when suddenly he caught her hand and drew her down again.

"Hold it. They are coming back this way."

The engine beat was rising again. Then they caught a glimpse of the helicopter through the canopy of leaves and thorn branches overhead.

"Now he is following the river. Still searching for something, by the looks of it."

"Us?"Royan asked nervously.

"If they are under orders from the head man, could be," Nicholas agreed. The machine was very close now, and the shrill whine of the engine was deafening.

At that moment Tamre's nerve broke. He let out a wail of terror, "It is the Devil, come to take me; Save me, Jesus Christ the Saviour, save me!'

Nicholas put out a hand to restrain him, but he was not quick enough. Tamre broke free and leaped to his feet.

Still howling with fear of the pit and the flames of hell, he darted away down the path into the Thorn scrub, the skirts of his shamma swirling about his skinny legs and his shiny black face swivelled back over his shoulder to watch the approaching machine.

The pilot spotted him immediately, and the nose of the helicopter sank in their direction. It came directly towards them, slowing as it approached the lip of the chasm. They could make out the heads of the two occupants behind the windscreen of the forward cabin. Still decelerating, the aircraft hung suspended over the river, pivoting on the spinning disc of its rotor, while Royan and Nicholas crouched down in the scrub, trying to avoid detection.

"That's the American from the prospecting camp." Royan recognized Jake Helm, despite the bulky radio earphones and the mirrored dark glasses. He and the black pilot were craning their necks to search the river banks.

"They haven't spotted us-' But even as Nicholas said it, Jake Helm looked directly at them across the open void.

Although his expression did not change, he tapped the pilot's shoulder and pointed down at them.

The pilot let the helicopter sink lower until it hovered in the opening of the chasm, almost on the same level as they were. Only a hundred feet separated them now. No longer making any attempt at concealment, Nicholas leaned back against the hole of the Thorn tree. He tipped his Panama hat forward over one eye and gave Jake Helm a laconic wave. The foreman made no response to the greeting. He regarded Nicholas with a flat, baleful stare, then struck a match and held the flame to the tip of the half-smoked cigar between his lips. He flipped the dead match away and blew a feather of smoke in Nicholas's direction. Still without change of expression, he said something to the pilot out of the corner of his mouth. Immediately the helicopter rose vertically and banked away to the north, heading back directly towards the wall of the escarpment and the base camp on its summit.

"Mission accomplished. He found what he was looking for."Royan sat up.

"Us!'

"And he must have spotted the camp. He knows where to find us again,'Nicholas agreed.

Royan shivered and hugged herself briefly. "He gives me the creeps, that one. He looks like a toad."

"Oh, come on!" Nicholas chided her. "What have you got against toads?" He stood up. "I don't think we are going to see great-grandfather's dik-dik again today. He has been thoroughly shaken up by the chopper. I'll come back for another try tomorrow."

"We should go and look for Tamre. He has probably had another fit, the poor little fellow."

She was wrong. They found the boy beside the path.

He was still shivering and weeping, but had not suffered another seizure. He calmed down quickly when Royan soothed him, and followed them back towards the camp.

However, when they neared the grove he slipped away in the direction of the monastery.

That evening, while it was still light, Nicholas took Royan back to the monastery.

"I believe that the criminal fraternity refer to a reconnaissance of this nature as "casing the joint"," he remarked, as they stooped through the entrance of the rock cathedral and joined the throng of worshippers in the outer chamber.

"From what Tamre says, it sounds as though the novices wait until they know that the priests on duty are ones that will nod off during their watch," Royan told him softly, as they paused to gaze through the doors into the middle chamber.

"We don't have that sort of insider knowledge," Nicholas pointed out. There were priests passing backwards and forwards through the doors as they watched.

"There doesn't seem to be any sort of procedure," Nicholas noted. "No password or ritual to allow them through."

"On the other hand, they greeted the guards at the door by name. It's a small community. They must all know each other intimately."

"There doesn't seem any chance at all that I could dress up like a monk and brazen my way through,'Nicholas agreed-A wonder what they do to intruders in the sacred areas?"

"Throw them off the terrace to the crocodiles in the cauldron of the Nile?" she suggested maliciously. "Anyway, you are not going in there without me."

This was not the time to argue, he decided, and instead he tried to see as much as possible through the open doors of the qiddist. The middle chamber seemed much smaller than the outer chamber in which they stood. He could just make out the shadowy murals that covered the portions of the inner walls that he could see. In the facing wall was another doorway. From Tamre's description, he realized that this must be the entrance to the maqdas. The opening was barred by a heavy grille gate of dark wooden beams, the joints of the cross-pieces reinforced with gussets of hand hammered native iron.

On each side of the doorway, from rock ceiling to floor, hung long embroidered tapestries depicting scenes from the life of St. Frumentius. In one he was preaching to a kneeling congregation, with the Bible in one hand and his right hand raised in benediction. In the other tapestry he was baptizing an emperor. The king wore a high golden crown like that of Jali Hora, and the saint's head was surrounded by a halo. The saint's face was white, while the emperor's was black.

"Politically correct?" Nicholas asked himself, with a smile.

"What is amusing you?" Royan asked. "Have you thought of a way of getting in there?"

"No, I was thinking of dinner. Let's go!

At dinner Boris showed no ill effects from the previous night's debauch. During the day he had taken out his shotgun and shot a bunch of green pigeons. Tessay had marinated these and barbecued them over the coals.

"Tell me, English, how was the hunting today? Did you get attacked by the deadly striped dik-dik? Hey? Hey?" He bellowed with laughter.

"Did your trackers have any success?" Nicholas asked mildly.

."Da! Da! They found kudu and hushbuck and buffalo.

They even found dik-dik, but no stripes. Sorry, no stripes."

Royan leaned forward and opened her mouth to intervene, but Nicholas cautioned her with a shake of the head. She shut her mouth again and looked down at her plate, slicing a morsel from the breast of a pigeon.

"We don't really need company tomorrow," Nicholas explained mildly in Arabic. "If he knew, he would insist on coming with us."

"Did your Mummy never teach you no manners, English? It's rude to talk in a language that others can't understand. Have a vodka."

"You have my share," Nicholas invited him. "I know when I am outclassed."

During the rest of the meal Tessay replied only in low monosyllables when Royan tried to draw her into the conversation. She looked tragic and defeated. She never looked at her husband, even when he was at his loudest and most overbearing. When the meal ended, they left her sitting with Boris at the fire. Boris had a fresh bottle of vodka on the table beside him.

"The way he is pumping the liquor, it looks as if I might be called out on another midnight rescue mission," Nicholas remarked as they made their way to their own huts.

"Tessay has been in camp all day with him. There has been more trouble between them. She told me that as soon as they get back to Addis Ababa she is going to leave him.

She can't take any more of this."

"The only thing I find surprising is that she ever got mixed up with an animal like Boris in the first place. She is a lovely woman. She could pick and choose."

"Some women are drawn to animals," Royan shrugged.

"I suppose it must be the thrill of danger. Anyway, Tessay has asked me if she can come with us tomorrow. She cannot stand another day in camp with Boris on her own.

I think she is really afraid of him now. She says that she has never seen him drink like this before."

"Tell her to come along, Nicholas said resignedly. "The more of us the merrier. Perhaps we will be able to frighten the dik-dik to death by sheer weight of numbers. Save me wasting ammunition."

It was still dark when the three of them left camp the next morning. There was no sign of Boris and, when Nicholas asked about him, Tessay said simply, "After you went to bed last night he finished the bottle. He won't be out of his hut before noon. He won't miss me."

Carrying the Rigby, Nicholas led them tip into the weathered limestone hills, retracing the path along which Tamre had taken them the previous day. As they walked, Nicholas heard the two women talking behind him. Royan was explaining to Tessay how they had sighted the striped dik-dik, and what they planned.

The sun was well up by the time they again reached the spot under the thorn tree on the lip of the chasm, and settled down to wait in ambush.

"How will you retrieve the carcass, if you do manage to shoot the poor little creature?" Royan asked.

"I made certain of that before we left camp," he explained. "I spoke to the head tracker. If he hears a shot he will bring up the ropes and help me get across to the other side."

"I wouldn't like to make the journey across there." Tessay eyed the drop below them.

"They teach you some useful things in the army, along with all the rubbish," Nicholas replied. He made himself comfortable against the thorn tree, the rifle ready in his lap.

The women lay close by him, talking together softly.

It was unlikely that the sound of their low voices would carry across the ravine, Nicholas decided, so he did not try to hush them.

He expected that if it came at all, the dik-dik would show itself early. But he was wrong. By noon there was still no sign of it. The valley sweltered in the midday sun. The distant wall of the escarpment, veiled in the blue heat haze, looked like jagged blue glass, and the mirage danced across the rocky ridges and shimmered like the waters of a silver lake above the tops of the thorn thickets.

The women had long ago given up talking, and they lay somnolent in the heat. The whole world was silent and heat-struck. Only a bush dove broke the silence with its mournful lament, "My wife is dead, my children are dead, Oh, me! Oh, my! Oh, me!'Nicholas found his own eyelids becoming leaden. His head nodded involuntarily, and he jerked it up only to have it flop forward again. On the very edge of sleep he heard a sound, close by in the thorn scrub behind him.

It was a tiny sound, but one that he knew so well. A sound that whiplashed across his nerve endings and jerked him back to full consciousness, with his pulse racing and the coppery taste of fear in the back of his throat. It was the metallic sound of the safety-catch on an AK-47 assault rifle being slipped forward into the "Fire' position.

In one fluid movement he lifted the rifle out of his lap and rolled twice, twisting his body to cover the two women who lay beside him. At the same time he brought the Rigby into his shoulder, aimed into the scrub behind him from where the sound had come.

"Down!" he hissed at his companions. "Keep your heads down!'

His finger was on the trigger and, even though it was a puny weapon with which to take on a Kalashnikov, he was ready to return fire. He picked up his target immediately, and swung on to it.

There was a man crouched twenty paces away, the assault rifle he carried aimed into Nicholas's face. He was black, dressed in worn and tattered camouflage fatigues and a soft cap of the same material. His webbing held a bush-knife and grenades, water bottle' and all the other accoutrements of a guerrilla fighter.

"Shufta!" thought Nicholas. "A real pro. Don't take chances with this one." Yet at the same time he realized that if the intention had been to kill him, then he would be dead already.

He aimed the Rigby an inch over the muzzle of the assault rifle, into the bloodshot right eye of the shufta behind it. The man acknowledged the stand-off with a narrowing of his eyes, and then gave an order in Arabic.

"Salim, cover the women. Shoot them if he moves.