Treasure of the Golden Cheetah (37 page)

“What are you going to do with her?” asked Murdock.

“Take her with us,” said Harry. “Unless you want to go back now.”

“No!” shouted Julian. “Absolutely not. The picture isn’t finished yet.”

“Tie her up and leave her here,” said Hall. “We’ll get her on the way back.”

“Who is she, really?” asked Pearl, her gaze running up and down the other woman.

“Her name is—” began Jade.

“No,” said Abeba sharply. “I will defend myself.” She held her head high, tilting her chin upwards. “I am Abeba Negash, handmaid in the court of the Empress Zewditu of Abyssinia.”

Everyone spoke at once, variations of, “What? Impossible? I knew she wasn’t real.”

“You are an Abyssinian?” asked Julian.

“I am.”

“No wonder she knew so much about the robes and helmets,” said Talmadge.

“This is wonderful,” said Julian to himself. “Absolutely wonderful.”

“Oh, Rex,” said Cynthia. “Stop thinking about the picture for a moment. All of you need to pay attention. Why is she here?”

All eyes stared at Abeba as everyone waited for her answer.

“You must not look for the tomb,” she said. “To open it will mean death to us all.”

CHAPTER 23

—The Traveler

SAM JERKED TO THE SIDE IN THE SHABBY LITTLE PASSENGER CAR AS it clanked around a sharp turn. Except for a Greek man and a Lutheran missionary, he was alone and tired. He looked out the window. They’d passed Serengeti station fifteen minutes ago. Sam had been glad to learn that the telegraph line repair was nearly completed and, after relaying government and military messages, the one from Finch would finally take its turn in the queue. Thirty minutes, they’d said.

The train continued around the curve, the bumps shaking him and the others like rag dolls. From his window, he spied two immense bull elephants sparring for dominance. Their trunks locked around each other as first one, then the other pushed his opponent backwards, raising great clouds of red dust. Their massive heads shook from side to side, their ears flapping. One bull broke free moments before ramming his rival.

Sam opened his window and stuck his head out for a better view. The behemoths’ trumpeting bellows rose in pitch, reverberating in the still air. Both of them screamed, but whether from rage or pain, Sam couldn’t tell. The shrieks took on an unreal quality, coupled with sharp, cracking snaps. The bull on the right dug his tusks down into the ground and wrenched them back and forth. When he hoisted them back up, it was to the accompaniment of groans, cracks, and scraping screeches. Sam was so engrossed in watching them that he didn’t immediately notice that the train had stopped. That fact registered at the same instant as another.

“Holy smokes! They’re fighting
on
the track!” Sam slid the car door open and ran to the locomotive. He was joined by the engineer and the native man who tended the firebox.

“They’re on the tracks,” he repeated to the railroad men.

The engineer nodded. “And there’s not a blooming thing we can do about it either, mate. When two bulls take it in their heads to fight, they aren’t going to pay a mite of attention to this train. Even if we tried to push them aside, in the mood they’re in, they’d derail us.”

Sam leaned against the side of the engine. Was all the wildlife conspiring against him this trip? “How long will this go on?” he asked.

The engineer shrugged. “A few hours. A day. Who can tell? This is a rare sight. Both of them must be in musth; otherwise they wouldn’t be this serious.”

“Musth?” asked Sam. “Is that like rut in elk?” The breeze shifted, and he waved his hand in front of his nose. “Phew. They reek. I can smell them a quarter mile away.”

The engineer nodded. “I don’t know anything about your American animals, but if it means some old bull going mad to trample everything, then that would be it. There’s no telling when a bull hits it or how often. No season, so to speak, and it might last a month, maybe two.”

“It is their madness,” said the fire tender, a tall Kikuyu man. “They cry out their pain, too.” He ran his fingers down his cheeks from his eyes. “All very bad. We wait here.”

“We’ll probably wait here for a good long while after they go away,” said the engineer.

“Why?” asked Sam, though something in his mind told him he knew the answer.

“Did you hear that cracking and screeching a moment ago?” he asked. Sam nodded. “That was the sound of teak sleepers getting snapped like so many matchsticks and the rails pulled out of alignment. Had problems already with the heat swelling the rails, pushing them askew.”

“Sun kinks,” said Sam.

“That’s right. One of those bulls must have found a kink with his tusk. By now, I imagine they’ve completely wrecked the track. Not much in the way of ballast on them,” he added.

The second bull, the one on the left, shook his head and bellowed just before charging the other. As the three men watched, the two collided with a solid thud. This time, the bull on the right was shoved backwards, slowly but inexorably. Right into the telegraph pole behind him. The pole held for a moment. Then, with a groaning creak, it began to bow as the bull straddled it and forced it back and down. Finally, the strain was too much for the wires at the top and they snapped with a high, singing whine. One of the wires struck the straddling bull on the rump.

The effect was like cracking a whip on a mule. The bull screamed and trumpeted, startled by this new and unexpected assailant. Then it bolted and ran away from the tracks. The other bull followed in hot pursuit. Once the two elephants were gone, Sam climbed aboard the locomotive with the engineer and the fireman, and they crept forward until they reached the damaged track. Sam jumped down first and surveyed the wreckage.

“Blast and damn!” he swore.

“That would be my account of it, mate,” said the engineer. “They bent those rails as easily as if they were thin copper wires instead of forty-one-pound-per-yard steel.”

“Forty-one?” asked Sam. “I thought the rails were all fifty or sixty pound per yard.”

“They are on the main line, but this side line was constructed in a hurry during the war. That’s why these ties are creosoted teak instead of steel. Some’ve been replaced as the white ants or dry rot work through them, but not here. This line is still under military control, and they don’t maintain it as well as I’d like.” He sighed and looked back down the way they had come. “Looks like a trip back to Serengeti station. Hopefully they finished repairing those telegraph lines.”

“And then what?” asked Sam. “Do they have replacement rails and ties at the station? I’d be glad to lend a hand and fix the track.”

“Very good of you, friend,” said the engineer, “but truth be told, they’ll have to telegraph Nairobi and have equipment sent down from there. They could be down here by morning. More likely by midday. But I’m afraid we won’t get into Moshi until Thursday at the earliest.”

Sam limped back to the passenger car. As he settled into his seat, the locomotive hissed and chugged; then the car jolted backwards. They inched back down the line at a painfully slow pace. The feeling of helplessness swept over Sam and settled in his stomach like a burning fire.

 

 

NO ONE SPOKE the rest of the way across the barren saddle to the final campsite. No one had the air for it. With the biting temperatures and the blustering wind, trying to do anything besides walk was out of the question. The cameramen had the cameras wrapped in protective blankets. Harry kept Abeba beside him at the front, and Jade again brought up the rear as they headed east-northeast across the lava wastes.

The wind bore what sounded like a flock of seagulls to Jade’s ears, and she stopped to find the source. Down the slope she spied a pack of wild dogs, calling to one another in high-pitched hoots. Something seemed to frighten them, but Jade couldn’t discern what it was. She looked to Mawenzi Peak and studied the few storm clouds that attended it. In a month, perhaps less, the rains would come. Then Kibo, as if jealous of Jade’s attention to the lesser peak, revealed itself in all its blindingly white, icy splendor. Rust-red walls, like dried blood, rose up beside them. Immediately underfoot, all was gray. Gravel-sized weathered lava carpeted the ground, the bleakness interrupted only by lava bombs, great balls of rock where the mountain had spat out a viscous magma.

At noon Harry called a brief break for a cold lunch of smoked eland sandwiches on flatbreads, chocolate, and cold water. They ate in silence, hunched against the wind. Only Julian appeared to be in good spirits, and Jade caught him humming softly. Two hours later, they reached their campsite. Most of the sleeping tents were clustered together near an upthrust of volcanic rock, but the tent for the Menelik scene sat apart, a glacier and Kibo as its background. Nakuru and the porters had taken up residence in one of several small caves formed by air pockets in the lava flows, and dubbed
Chumba a Mungu
, or God’s parlor room. Muturi built up their small campfire using wood and brush they’d carried with them from below and heated water. He poured in some powdered milk and melted chocolate bars and everyone, including the porters, revived themselves with the hot chocolate. Julian bullied them through their break and filmed the modern climax, ending in Hall’s death.

“No time to dawdle,” bellowed Julian. “I want to film Menelik’s final scene. Bebe, Hall, get into costume. Harry, get your man Nakuru and all those other men in the guards’ costumes. Talmadge, you’re his general. So move. I want this now, while the light is at the right angle.”

“Really, Rex,” said Murdock. “We’re all done-in and my dogs hurt. Can’t this wait?”

“No. Who knows what the weather will do tomorrow. Might not be able to see the peak. I need that peak! Besides, I
want
you all tired. You’ve climbed all this way and now your emperor is dying. This will make it more realistic.”

“Why her?” asked Pearl, a sharp edge to her voice. “
I’m
playing the emperor’s lover.”

“I decided to give the role back to Bebe,” Julian said. “After careful consideration, I think she will give me the pathos I need.”

Pearl shot Bebe an evil look, her jaw clenched, her eyes snapping. “You bitch! Did you sleep with him, too? Do you have to use every man you see?”

Bebe put a hand to her breast and returned the stare with a look of wounded bewilderment. “How can you say such a thing?”

“No arguing!” yelled Julian. “Everyone get to work.”

No one dared contradict him. As far as Jade was concerned, the sooner they finished this blasted movie, the sooner she and Harry could haul them all off the mountain and back to Nairobi or Mombassa or Outer Mongolia.

Fatigue and the cold wreaked havoc on the actors and, true to Julian’s prediction, lent verisimilitude to the scenes. Not that Bebe needed it. She threw everything she had into her roles, proving herself to be the better actress. She poured out her heart over her dying lover’s breast, whether it was Hall as the reincarnated lover or Hall as her emperor, going so far as to thrust a knife through her own heart in each scene. Naturally, Harry and Jade both checked the knife before they filmed to make certain it was rubber. And Jade kept close watch on Abeba, waiting to see if she made any sign hinting of trouble.

Julian pestered the Abyssinian relentlessly. “Which direction should the men go to carry the body? Did they climb up to the cone on this side? Where in the cone did they put him? Hascombe, make her answer me!”

Harry ignored Julian, and Abeba refused to answer anything, choosing to sit near the cooking fire, away from everyone except Jelani and Muturi. But she watched every move the actors made, especially when they struggled off across the loose debris that littered this upper slope. Finally, as the sun sank lower and threw long shadows behind every rock, Julian called, “Cut!” The sky glowed like liquid gold above the soft purple and blue glacial shadows.

The porters dropped the bier and Hall with a plop and staggered back to their rocky den while the actors hurried to their tents to put on warmer clothing. Muturi served a thick stew of eland meat along with the last ears of corn, which he’d roasted in a bed of coals. Jade noticed that appetites flagged again, and several people retired complaining of headaches.

Harry checked with his own men to see that they kept their woolen socks and gloves on to prevent frostbite, and Jade made the rounds of camp with arnica ointment to ease aching legs and stop chilblains. At first, the Nyamwezi and Chagga men would not let Jade examine their fingers or toes or apply the salve, but after Jelani insisted, they let the young healer tend to them.

Harry called to Jade and pointed to a few purple clouds building over Mawenzi. “It’s early in the season, but it looks as though we could see storms soon enough. Probably just as well our director friend finished today.”