Catacombs (61 page)

"Is there a checkpoint on this road?" Jade shouted as they shot after the Land-Rover.

"About five miles north, at the edge of the park!"

"What's the terrain like?"

"Brush and grass."

"Dry enough to burn?"

"Instantly." He realized what Jade was after, and reached for the microphone of the radio slung under the dashboard of the Jeep. When he had contacted the checkpoint he ordered brushfires to be started on either side of the road.

Jade hung on to the bouncing, careening Jeep and muttered, "Fly up his nose, Raunie." He had the sniper's rifle cradled in one arm, but it would be useless to him until both vehicles came to a crawl. Then he was complicating his task by adding fire and smoke in a dry wilderness, perhaps endangering Raun and Jumbe all the more. But it was the only thing he could think of to slow the Rover down long enough to get off a shot at Kumenyere.

I
n the Land-Rover Kunienyere had discarded the hypodermic syringe, which was of less value to him under the circumstances than the stubby Ingram. He had the muzzle pressed against Jumbe's side. Jumbe sat quietly, distressed by the dust and the sun beating down on the open vehicle, the rough ride.

"
Kwa nini
" he said dispiritedly. "How could you use me so cruelly? After Rhodesia you were the only son I had. We built a fine hospital together. I would have done anything for you."

"I'm a better man than you, Jumbe. And I will prove it yet."

After that Jumbe said nothing, but sat with his eyes half closed, wincing at the jolts from the road.

Kumenyere was aware of the smoke boiling over the road as soon as Raun was. He stood up in the Rover as she began to slow.

"I can't see!" Raun yelled.

He looked back and saw the Jeep and the van in pursuit, the hard glint of light off a tilted windshield. "Get off the track! Go around the fire!"

Raun cocked the wheel hard left and drove between a couple of umbrella thorns, crackled through tall caper and toothbrush bush. A leopard tortoise, caught in the open, was crushed by the offside front wheel. They rebounded from flat rocks and found a natural tunnel paved with dung in the thick browning bush. A termite-riddled hulk of a stinkbark lying in the way exploded into sawdust as Raun drove across it. A change of wind brought the taint of smoke.

And suddenly there were elephants, elephants everywhere, in shades from toffee brown to rusty gray, huge beasts wheeling and snorting in a double panic from the approach of fire, the roar of the Land-Rover's engine.

"No!" Kumenyere screamed. "Stop! Get us out of here!"

Raun hit the brakes on ground hammered hard as concrete in the drought by ponderous feet. The Rover slowed, stopped, stalled beneath trunks raised in alarm like cobras in baskets, the lethal slant of old ivory. Raun ground the starter and the engine spun, five seconds, ten, but nothing happened.

The Rover was bumped, bumped again. There was nothing but elephant hide all around them, rage, flailing trunks, fear, dust. The windshield was shattered as Raun ducked beneath the dashboard, getting as low as she could. Kumenyere screamed, firing his machine gun to little effect. Blood sprayed down, but the Rover began to rock until it turned over on its side. Both Kumenyere and Jumbe were spilled from the backseat.

A
s Jade and Timbaroo came bouncing through the brush to the clearing where the Land-Rover had stalled, two of the biggest elephants Jade had ever seen were trying to crush the Rover with their feet. It was, already, very nearly unrecognizable.

"Jumbe!" Timbaroo cried, and he jumped out from behind the wheel, rushing fearlessly into the churning mass of elephants.

Jade took aim from the Jeep and shot one of the elephants in the eye.

The huge animal staggered back, almost going down on its hindquarters. It turned, lumbered trumpeting toward deeper brush, but suddenly fell. Timbaroo appeared, dragging Jumbe with him, through the smoke and haze. An elephant was on a collision course with them. Jade turned on the Jeep's siren and began firing the rifle to get the herd moving away from them.

Most of the elephants swung away from the threat of fire and the surging siren. But one, a matron with a shattered tusk, stayed behind.

Jade saw Robeson Kumenyere moving, in a crouch, through the haze toward General Timbaroo and Jumbe. They had their backs to him. Kumenyere raised the submachine gun. Jade realized he had abandoned hope of getting away, his vision of life had receded to a narrow focus. All he cared about was killing Jumbe before he was killed himself.

Jade swung the muzzle of the Heckler-Koch toward Kumenyère and pulled the trigger. The magazine was empty. He yelled. Timbaroo heard him but reacted too slowly to protect himself. A rip of bullets across his back sent him sprawling and Jumbe, on hands and knees, was motionless, an easy target.

The female elephant loomed up behind Kumenyere and sent him flying, separated from his weapon, with a swing of her trunk. As he lay on his back in the dirt trying to lift his head, she swayed up to him and reached down with a certain delicacy, lifted him, held him dangling a few feet above the ground. Kumenyere screamed and struggled in her embrace.

She lifted one forefoot and began slowly to swing it from side to side, building momentum. Then with a quick dip of her trunk she lowered Kumenyere and sliced him across the middle with toenails sharp enough to separate a clump of coarse grass from its roots.

The lower half of his body sagged down in a long stretch that almost touched his toes to the ground. Everything fell out of him in a gush of blood like water from an uncapped hydrant. His spine, along with the tough fibrous cord, held him together momentarily. Then she gave a little upward jerk with her trunk and the spine was severed. She threw the head and torso aside and moved off with a blast that sounded to Jade like sweet revenge. The matriarch had singled out Kumenyere, he was sure of that; it hadn't been a random attack. But he would never know why, and he had other things to think about.

Soldiers were arriving in droves. He got out of the Jeep and hobbled to the place where Timbaroo had fallen. He was badly wounded but conscious; he might live. Smoke was getting thick, the crackle of fire was closer. Jade grabbed one of the soldiers and pulled him toward the nearly demolished Land-Rover. Raun was upside down inside, cut and terrified. They pried her carefully out of the wreckage. More soldiers came running to lend a hand. A combi arrived and Raun and Jade were helped into it

She was too stunned to speak. They were driven back to Chanvai. Jade declined Erika's offer of help and put Raun to bed himself. He sat with her the rest of the afternoon and gave her whiskey. He drank a lot of the whiskey himself, and kept an eye on her, and touched her when he thought she needed touching.

Jumbe came around dusk. He had a drink with Jade, and shook his hand. He said they were welcome to stay at Chanvai as long as they liked. If Jade wanted anything from the government or the people of Tanzania, he had only to ask. Jade had never seen a sadder face.

Jade left Raun sleeping and visited Lem, who was in an air-conditioned bungalow, flat on his back, still heavily sedated. Two nurses attended him. Both knees required surgery, for which he was to be flown back to the States. Jade fed him, although Lem wasn't very hungry, and told him how Robeson Kumenyere had finished. Jade had a few more drinks and turned off a few more lights in his head.

A
bout seven thirty Erika was summoned to the conference room at Chanvai.

For a few minutes she was alone. There was a fire on the hearth; it provided all of the light in the room. Erika sat in a zebra-skin chair beneath the flag of Tanzania, her somber eyes fixed on the flames, the play of light across the glistening onyx table. She didn't look around when she heard the sounds of Jumbe's sandals on the concrete floor.

He stopped near her, and held out a sheet of paper. Erika scarcely glanced at it.

"What's this?"

"It seems that Tiernan Clarke lied to you, in order to more easily enlist your aid in reaching the Catacombs. There were survivors at Ivututu. Dr. Poincarré did heroic work on behalf of all the victims. This is a list of those we have flown to the hosp–"

Erika lunged from the chair and snatched at the flimsy paper, scanned the eleven names with eyes that quickly scalded.

"Chips–" she moaned.

Jumbe shook his head. "I'm sorry. According to Dr. Poincarré, he died on the evening of May seventeenth."

Erika let the paper fall from her fingers; it drifted in the draft from the fire and came to rest under the table. She stared in bitter anger at the hunched old man.

"Of course we have notified his son, who is on his way to Chanvai. Now, I think we should talk. I want us to be in full accord as to what will be said, and not said, at the press conference tomorrow."

"Or there will be no press conference."

"To some extent I'm at your mercy," Jumbe said, with a smile that begged her indulgence. "You realize that. I have no wish to make life more difficult for you than it is already. But I can, if I must. You realize that too. In my opinion it will serve no useful purpose to dwell on the tragedy, and the treachery, we have suffered. You have lost someone you loved dearly; I have lost a man I thought of as my son. My reputation has diminished during the past year, but I haven't been hopelessly compromised through my folly. I believe I can continue to serve my country usefully. For your part, I would think you most profitably might apply yourself to the years of research that remain, the volumes you will write about the Catacombs and the people of Zan. In your work you will of course have the full backing of the government of Tanzania."

"The exclusive backing."

"Yes."

"And the funds to establish a museum, in Chips' name."

"That too."

"I find it distasteful–degrading–even talking to you like this."

He shrugged. "And how much satisfaction will you ultimately find in your bitterness, the slight revenge you may exact from telling the truth as you know it?"

"None, I suppose."

"I'm having a statement drafted," Jumbe said, "that I'm sure we can both agree on before the conference."

"Some things simply can't be explained away," Erika said tautly.

"Oh?" Jumbe smiled again. "You would indeed be surprised." He turned to go.

"There's one more thing," Erika said. "I'd like to talk to you about Oliver."

A
fter her meeting with Jumbe, Erika spent a half hour roaming the grounds of Chanvai, trying to locate Oliver. She was afraid he had succumbed to his deep-rooted distrust of governments and authority figures and hit the road again, without a penny.

It was nearly dusk when she found him, in scrounged clothing that included a crinkly pair of plaid pants that ended above his ankles, and soiled white golfing visor. He was attempting to repair a bicycle he had pulled out of a shed. He'd adopted a new pet, another mongoose, one of scores that lived on the estate. It clung to Oliver's right shoulder and talked urgently in his ear at Erika's approach. Oliver didn't look around. There was a hot post-daylight glaze of silk and pearl and purple shadow across the land. He spun a tireless wheel of the upended bicycle; the spokes flashed in a mime of flight.

"Oliver."

He hunched his shoulders and covered his face with his long hands, shuddering a little in an agony of the soul. Erika stopped a few feet from him and studied him compassionately.

"It's all right, Oliver. You have nothing to blame yourself for."

"Your friend, dying. My fault."

"No, Oliver. Chips was very sick, even before I left Ivututu. His fate was never in your hands. You did everything humanly possible to help me. Performed miracles, really. I don't feel merely indebted to you. I feel about you as I would a brother, my own flesh and blood."

For a while he didn't move. It got swiftly darker. Then he spread his fingers, peering at her incredulously.

"I mean it, Oliver. You have saved my life, and since I'm not what you'd call long in the tooth, I'm afraid you're stuck with me for quite a few years yet. I intend to devote as much time as necessary to seeing that you have what you need most in this life: your freedom. The freedom to do your prospecting utterly without interference from this government or special interest groups. I'm arranging for the necessary documents now. You will be provided with all the tools you require. To strike gold, or mine gemstones, or whatever. There will be a sizable subsidy, every year; and half of everything you discover is yours to keep. You could very well wind up a rich man, Oliver."

He lowered his hands. He trembled. His feet tried to caper, but for once in his life he was clumsy. He fell down in a heap.

"Well, I hope I'm not spoiling you," Erika said, with a smile and with tears in her eyes. She turned and walked back toward the main house.

"Erika! Going now?"

"Yes, Oliver. To Switzerland, for a few months. To see my family, and to rest. But I'll be back. I suppose I may be spending the rest of my life here. There's that much to do, you see. So very much to do."

W
hen Lem Meztizo's nurse turned up to give him morphine so he could make it through the night without screaming, Jade returned, bottle in hand, to check up on Raun.