Catacombs (21 page)

Todt summoned the officer on duty, who brought a Xerox copy of the letter now fragilely preserved between sheets of glass in a laboratory vault.

The letter was addressed to My Dear Friend and Suffering Compatriot Solomon (Solomon Mkhize, the other leader of the PNF, who was currently in hiding in Angola) . Jan-Nic read slowly, pausing often to try to fill in the puzzling gaps caused by fire. In essence the letter was an exhortation, almost Biblical in the grandiosity of its language, pledging the full faith and might of the government of Tanzania (Jan-Nic smiled at that) in helping the beleaguered PNF to fulfill its goals. Jumbe declared:

We will be
       
st of our na

to acq
    
nucle
   
weap

Trust in the pow
    
deliver
 
 
cel

A mult
          
of warhe

each with the explo
       
for
    
to

equ
  
ten Hiroshim
    
Pretoria

shall peris
 
 
in the brightn

our noon! The time is alm
   
upon

us, the reck
        
our impat

gods a matter of d

Jan-Nic put the photocopied letter aside, and for a time didn't meet his father-in-law's demanding gaze. He helped himself to more tea.

"Well, sir . . . it seems like aimless chest-thumping to me. The impotent ravings of a man we know to be ill."

"Presumably not mentally ill."

"Our intelligence has not been able to establish that. Of course it isn't my department. My own suspicions . . ." Jan-Nic shrugged.

"Nonetheless we will take this . . . disagreeable piece of correspondence as a serious threat to our well-being."

Jan-Nic
 
blew across his cup to cool the tea. His nerves tingled.

"May I ask why?"

"It's an undeniable fact that a little over a week ago the defense ministers of both the United States and Soviet Russia made simultaneous unpublicized visits to Chanvai. After a conference lasting for several hours both men abruptly left Tanzania. The Russians, true to form, will tell us nothing about the travels of Victor K. Nikolaiev; they deny he was ever south of Tripoli. The American government to date has not provided a satisfactory explanation for the sudden departure from his itinerary by Morgan Atterbury. He is, of course, a long-time supporter of and apologist for Kinyati. That letter to Solomon Mkhize, hand delivered we can assume, is dated April 30, the day after Jumbe's secret meeting with the world's superpowers. Whose lack of interest in our continuing survival is not a matter for conjecture."

Jan-Nic decided that he was more tired than he had thought; his father-in-law's concern just didn't make an impression.

"I think," Todt continued, "something was said at the Chanvai conference that has encouraged Jumbe Kinyati to believe he will soon have in his possession nuclear weapons capable of being launched from his own country and destroying ours. Highly mobile, medium-range ballistic missiles, to be specific."

"But–what kind of fools would give missiles to Jumbe? Can the buggers all have gone totally daft? Ach, I can't take any of this seriously! It's like a nightmare film comedy–superpowers skulking about, meetings in the bush in the middle of the night, all the parts played by Peter Sellers. Jumbe's country is of no strategic importance. He has nothing rare or valuable to trade. That coon and all of his kind aren't worth a crate of rusted sabers!"

"Unbelievable as it seems, Nico, that may not be true. I know you're badly in need of leave, you've counted on having some time with Anna-Marie and the children. But the prime minister wants immediate action, and I want my best man on the job. It's a deadly serious game that's being played, make no mistake. If we can move quickly we'll snatch the ball away from the Americans and the Russians. And put an end to Jumbe's schemes."

"What is it, though? What does Jumbe have that can be measured against the death of our country?"

"Diamonds, Nico. Perfect red diamonds each nearly as large as a pigeon's egg, from a storehouse more ancient than recorded time. There are symbols etched on these bloodstones, symbols that somehow are a key to the holocaust we must prevent."

Todt paused, anticipating Jan-Nic's next question.

"I'm sorry, my son, I do wish I could tell you I've seen one of the diamonds." His thin lips, usually as expressive as scar tissue, parted in a rare smile. "But I know where we may get our hands on one . . . and the man who can take us to the rest of this treasure."

VON KREUTZEN'S

SHOOTING PALACE

Bekele Big Springs, Tanzania

May 8

"O
liver," Erika said, pretending to relish the stew he'd prepared for her, "I'm better today. You know I'm much better."

Oliver Ijumaa nodded his dusty head. He sat cross-legged on the floor of the room with the great bronze bed-ship in it, and grinned with pride. His pet mongoose was perched on his knee, eating a candy bar that Erika had found in a flight bag salvaged from the wrecked airplane. A sunset rain of hardshell beetles fell on the quilted plastic packing material that Oliver had tacked over the window frames. A paraffin lantern lit the room.

Oliver had brought, in addition to the pilot's flight bag, a seat cushion from the plane for Erika to sit on, and a small steel barrel full of Tuborg beer. Erika gave Oliver most of Weed's personal effects, including a stainless-steel razor, keeping for herself clean socks, shorts, and a tattered but wearable bush shirt; a mirror she hadn't had the heart to look into; a comb she dragged through her unwashed hair with difficulty; a tube of cortisone hemorrhoid ointment already providing relief from bedsores; and a package of Rough Rider ribbed condoms, from which she fashioned two serviceable botas.

She was a little concerned about giving Oliver beer, not knowing what the consequences would be if he got drunk. But she was nearly dehydrated, dying of thirst and afraid of the water that was available. And she felt it would be wrong, a blow to his manhood, if she drank in front of Oliver without inviting him to help himself. As it turned out he was fascinated with the improvised bota but absorbed very little beer: Instead, he had an uproarious good time spraying his face and shirt and mongoose while trying to direct a stream of the warm beer into his mouth.

Erika drank more than was good for her, partially quenching her great thirst. She became intoxicated, which gave her a false sense of well-being.

"What I must do then," she said through her chewing ( it was some kind of brawny meat, none too fresh and heavily seasoned), "is to strike out tomorrow as soon as the sun rises. We're in a park of some kind, aren't we? A game reserve. By the way, how far is the plane from here?"

"Heaven knows, mum. Walking and walking, I. Long time walking."

"How did you ever find me, Oliver? Did you hear the plane crash?"

He shook his head. "No. Smelling it."

"You smelled the plane? Well, there may have been some fire, I don't remember–can't remember anything, after the poachers." She put down the dented pewter plate of stew. "But if the plane is so far away, how could you possibly–"

Oliver laid a long finger against the side of his nose. "Smelling it," he insisted. "Very good smeller, I." He had another squirt of beer, which ran down his chin. The mongoose, his own nose quivering with delight, --put his paws on Oliver's chest and licked the drops away.

"And you carried me back? Oliver, how long have you been here at the lodge?"

He shied away from the question, and shrugged. "Few days," he said. Erika knew he was lying, but she didn't press him. What mattered was that he had saved her life, and now would help her save a great many others.

"So there's no one around at all? You have no family or friends in the vicinity? You're very much on your own, then. But there must be some sort of settlement, Oliver, or at least a ranger post–with a radio–"

He was aroused, alarmed, by this line of thought. He looked uneasily at the plate beside her, a lid of cooling grease on top. He made eating motions with his hands.

"'More. Then resting, few days. Or the fever come again."

"That's ridiculous; you've cured me, I'm well, Oliver, I mean it." Erika was surprised by tears, the fragility of her emotions. "Haven't I proved–"

He sprang up, the mongoose clinging to a forearm by all four paws, and did one of his pantomimes, striding toward the door with vigor, then weakening, collapsing to his knees, panting for breath.

"Well, just let me show you what I can accomplish. I'm really my old self again."

Erika got off the airplane seat stiffly, finding it an effort not to tremble. In the red light of dusk her face was a mummer's mask of concentration, slotted eyes glowing deep in her head. The intemperate swigging of beer had resulted in an alcoholic haze; distances were distorted. Now that she intended to leave the room, the door looked very far away. She walked toward Oliver as if she were trying to keep her balance in a swirling, knee-deep tide at the seashore.

Oliver got up slowly and stood aside, frowning at her. The mongoose ran down his leg and out the door, chittering madly. By the time Erika reached the doorway she had broken out in blisters of perspiration.

She hesitated, then bit down on her lip and walked out of the bedchamber in which she had passed the numberless days of her convalescence. One shoulder grazed the jamb in passing. She took a deep breath and sighed with relief. Then she looked around.

In the fading light she was able to measure the vastness, the baronial scale of the hunting lodge. Obviously someone of great wealth–a captain of industry, a titled sportsman–had constructed it during the heyday of colonial domination of East Africa. Overhead, bats flew in and out of the ruined dome, which had been constructed of wood and stained glass. There was a curving mural above the front doors of the lodge, the bright colors of safari scenes dimmed by time. In one panel Erika thought she recognized the stalwart Kaiser Bill, in full uniform, bringing a bull elephant to its knees with a well-placed shot while nearly naked natives danced with glee around him. Before World War One the Germans had controlled most of what was then called German East Africa through force of arms and sheer terror.

Oliver's mongoose nipped down the fat rail of a balustrade to the rotunda floor. Erika followed him. The mahogany staircase had marble inlays. A lantern, placed by Oliver, glowed on a pedestal by the entrance. There were pieces of classical statuary around the rotunda, implausibly robust Teutonic gods and goddesses. Someone, many years ago, had used them for target practice, chipping off ears, fingers, folds of drapery.

The main floor and support columns of the lodge were stone, but enough mahogany had been used in construction to make the lodge a prime firetrap. A lamp dropped in the wrong place would turn the rotunda into a furnace. Erika envisioned the bronze bed-vessel overheating, taking on an other-worldly glow, then slowly sinking into a tumultuous sea of sparks. She licked her dry lips, ignored the painful hammering of her heart, and crossed the rotunda to the entrance. There one ten-foot cast-bronze door, as ambitious a work of art as anything she'd seen in a Renaissance church, stood open a couple of feet.

She went outside, passing from a gloomily baroque vision of man to the starkly primeval.

Before her, from the modest heights on which the lodge was set, was a vista of a thousand square miles, parched savanna and bush, flights of birds in a yellow sky, dark trees like thorny low clouds along a seeping stream. And animals quietly on the move everywhere to the scarce water: baboons, blue monkeys, the inordinately shy bushbuck. Within a hundred feet of the dooryard she saw a twitchy herd of golden impala, passing through what had once been a formal garden.

The red-eyed mongoose settled down to capturing a meal of flickering grasshoppers. Erika ventured farther into the yard and looked behind the great lodge, at an unexpected escarpment of naked rock three hundred feet high, an offshoot from the Great Rift Valley; it cast a premature darkness over them. She saw why the abandoned lodge might well have gone undetected for many years. Its stone exterior had the precise coloration of the rugged rise behind it.

This escarpment accounted for the abundance of game; even without rain some water and minerals would trickle into the lowlands the year round. Erika saw where elephants had demolished an acre of yellow acacia, leaving fragments, splinters, the beginnings of a desert. She was breathing through her mouth and knew she must rest. She sagged down on the rim of a fountain. Masonry, and bronze figures, discolored, dark as ink. From a cherub's blissful mouth a sinister lizard dripped. She heard the ominous hum of tsetse flies; but they hadn't found her yet. She panted. She knew she could not proceed another dozen steps. Her body trembled. In all this openness she was trapped by infirmity, as solidly as if she were anchored in concrete.

Among the stones ringing the fountain there was a larger oblong, as large as the roof of a crypt. She went down on one knee to examine a metal marker. She used her fingertips to decipher the Gothic letters. It was the final resting place of Admiral Von Kreutzen. Whoever he was. Another voyager, far from the mainstream, asleep, in bedrock. She batted away a bloodsucking tsetse, and winced.