The onset of the African night was sped upon them by the low cloud. In the gathering darkness another hazard leaped upon them with no warning at all. One instant they were running hard and clear down a smooth stretch of the river, and the next the waters opened ahead of them and they were hurled out into space. It seemed that they fell for ever, although it was a drop of not more than thirty feet, before they hit the bottom and found themselves floating in a tangle of men and boats in the pool below the falls. Here the river was stalled for a moment, revolving upon itself while it gathered its strength for the next mad charge down the gorge.
One of the Avons had capsized and was floating belly up – even its highly stable hull had not been able to weather the drop down the falls. The crews of the other boats gathered themselves and then paddled across to drag the survivors from the water and to salvage the oars and other floating equipment. It took the combined efforts of all of them to right the overturned Avon, and then it was almost completely dark by the time they had it back on even keel.
‘Count the crates!’ Nicholas ordered. ‘How many have we lost?’
He could hardly credit his good fortune when Sapper shouted back, ‘Eleven still on board. All present and correct.’ The cargo nets were holding well. But all of them, men and women, were exhausted and soaked through and shivering with the cold. Any attempt to go on in darkness would be suicidal. Nicholas looked across at Mek in the nearest boat and shook his head.
‘There is a bit of slack water in the angle of the cliff.’ Mek pointed towards the tail of the pool. ‘We might be able to find moorings for the night.’
There was a stunted but tough little tree growing out of the vertical fissure in the rock, and they used this as a bollard and made a line fast to it. Then they lashed all the Avons together in a line down the cliff and settled in for the night. There was no chance of hot food or drink, and they had to make do with some cold tinned rations eaten off the blade of a bayonet, and a few chunks of soggy injera bread.
Mek scrambled over from his own boat and huddled down close beside Nicholas with one arm over his shoulder and his lips close to his ear.
‘I have made a roll call. Another man missing when we went over the falls. We won’t find him now.’
‘I am not doing too well,’ Nicholas admitted. ‘Perhaps you should lead tomorrow.’
‘Not your fault.’ Mek squeezed his shoulders. ‘Nobody could have done better. It was this last waterfall—’ he broke off and they listened to it thundering away in the darkness.
‘How far have we come?’ Nicholas asked. ‘And how much further to go?’
‘It’s almost impossible to tell, but I guess we are halfway to the border. Should reach there some time tomorrow afternoon.’
They were silent for a while, and then Mek asked, ‘What is the date today? I have lost count of the days.’
‘So have I.’ Nicholas tilted his wrist-watch so that he could read the luminous dial in the last of the light. ‘Good God! It’s the thirtieth already,’ he said.
‘Your pick-up aircraft is due at Roseires airstrip the day after tomorrow.’
‘The first of April,’ Nicholas agreed. ‘Will we make it?’
‘You answer that question for me.’ Mek grinned in the night without humour. ‘What chances of your fat friend being late?’
‘Jannie is a pro. He is never late,’ said Nicholas. Again a silence fell, and then Nicholas asked, ‘When we reach Roseires, what do you want me to do with your share of the booty?’ Nicholas kicked one of the ammunition crates. ‘Do you want to take it with you?’
‘After we see you off on the plane with your fat friend, we are going to be doing some hot-footed running from Nogo. I don’t want to be carrying any extra luggage. You take my share with you. Sell it for me – I need the money to keep fighting here.’
‘You trust me?’
‘You are my friend.’
‘Friends are the easiest to cheat – they never expect it,’ Nicholas told him, and Mek punched his shoulder and chuckled.
‘Get some sleep. We will have to do some hard paddling tomorrow.’ Mek stood up in the Avon as she pitched and rolled gently to the push of the current. ‘Sleep well, old friend,’ he said, and climbed across to the boat alongside, where Tessay waited for him.
Nicholas braced his back against the soft pneumatic gunwale of the Avon and took Royan in his arms. She sat between his knees and leaned back against his chest, shivering in her sodden clothes.
After a while her shivering abated, and she murmured, ‘You make a very good hot-water bottle.’
‘That’s one reason for keeping me around on a permanent basis,’ he said, and stroked her wet hair. She did not answer him, but snuggled closer, and a short while afterwards her breathing slowed as she fell into an exhausted sleep.
Although he was cold and stiff and his shoulders ached and his palms were blistered from wrestling with the steering oar, he could not find sleep as readily as she had. Now that the prospect of reaching the airstrip at Roseires loomed closer, he was troubled by problems other than those of simply navigating the river and battling his way through Nogo’s men. Those were enemies he could recognize and fight; but there was something more than that which he would soon have to face.
Royan stirred in his arms and muttered something he could not catch. She was dreaming and talking in her sleep.
He held her gently and she settled down again. He had started to drift off himself when she spoke again, this time quite clearly. ‘I am sorry, Nicky. Don’t hate me for it. I couldn’t let you—’ her words slurred and he could make no sense of the rest of it.
He was fully awake now, her words aggravating his doubts and misgivings. During the rest of that night he slept only intermittently, and his rest was troubled by dreams as distressing as hers must have been to her.
In the pre-dawn darkness he shook Royan gently. She moaned and came awake slowly and reluctantly.
They bolted down a few mouthfuls of the cold rations that remained from the previous night. Then, as dawn lit the gorge just enough for them to see the surface of the river and the obstacles ahead, they pushed off from their moorings and the yellow boats strung out down the current. The battle against the river began all over again.
The cloud cover was still low and unbroken, and the rain squalls swept over them at intervals. They kept going all that morning, and slowly the mood of the river began to ameliorate. The current was not so swift and treacherous, and the banks not so high and rugged.
It was mid-afternoon and the clouds were still closed in solidly overhead as they entered a stretch where the river threaded itself through a series of bluffs and headlands, and they came upon another set of rapids. Perhaps Nicholas was more expert in his technique by now, for they swept through them without mishap, and it seemed to him that each stretch of white water was progressively less severe than the last.
‘I think we are through the worst of it now,’ he told Royan as she sat on the deck below him. ‘The gradient and the fall of the river are definitely more gentle now. I think it is flattening out as we approach the plains of the Sudan.’
‘How much further to Roseires?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know, but the border can’t be too far ahead now.’
Nicholas and Mek were keeping the flotilla closed up in line astern, so that orders could be shouted across the gaps between them and all the boats kept under their command.
Nicholas steered for the deeper water on the outside of the next wide bend, and as he came through it he saw that the stretch of river ahead seemed open and altogether free of rapids or shoals. He relaxed and smiled at Royan.
‘How about lunch at the Dorchester grill next Sunday? Best roast beef trolley in London.’
He thought he saw a shadow pass across her eyes before she smiled brightly and replied, ‘Sounds good to me.’
‘And afterwards we can go back home and curl up in front of the telly and watch Match of the Day, or play our own little ma
tch.’
‘You are rude,’ she laughed, ‘but it does sound tempting.’
He was about to stoop over her, and kiss her for the pleasure of watching her blush again, when he saw the dance of tiny white fountains spurting up from the surface of the river ahead of their bows, coming swiftly towards them. Then, moments later, he heard the crackle of automatic fire, the distinctive sound of a Soviet RPD.
He threw himself down over the top of Royan, covering her with his own body, and heard Mek bellowing from the boat behind them.
‘Return fire! Keep their heads down.’
His men threw down their paddles and seized their weapons. They blazed away towards the inner curve of the bank from where the attack was coming.
The attackers were completely concealed amongst the rocks and scrub, and there was no definite target to shoot at. However, in an ambush like this it was essential to lay down as heavy a covering fire as possible, to keep the attackers’ heads down and to upset their aim.
A bullet tore through the nylon skin of the Avon close to Royan’s head and went on to slam into one of the metal ammunition crates. The sides of their craft offered no protection at all from the heavy fusillade that lashed them. One of their crew was hit in the head. The bullet cut the top off his skull like the shell of a soft-boiled egg, and he was flung over the side. Royan screamed more with horror than with fear, while Nicholas snatched up the assault rifle that the dead man had dropped and emptied the magazine towards the bank, firing short taps of three and raking the scrub that concealed their attackers.
The Avon still raced downstream on the current, spiralling aimlessly as she lost direction without the steering oar. It took them less than a minute to be carried past the ambush and around the next bend of the river.
Nicholas dropped the empty rifle and shouted across at Mek, ‘Are you all right?’
‘One man hit here,’ Mek yelled back. ‘Not too bad.’
Each of the boats reported their casualties: a total of one dead and three wounded. None of the wounded was in a serious condition, and although three of the boats had been holed, the hulls were made up of watertight compartments and were all still floating high.
Mek steered his Avon alongside Nicholas’s and called across. ‘I was beginning to think we had given Nogo the slip.’
‘We got off lightly that time,’ Nicholas called back. ‘We probably took them by surprise. They weren’t expecting us to be on the water.’
‘Well, no more surprises for him now. You can bet they are on the radio already. Nogo knows exactly where we are and where we are headed.’ He looked up at the cloud. ‘We can only hope the cloud stays thick and low.’
‘How much further to the Sudanese border?’
‘Not sure, but it can’t be more than another couple of hours.’
‘Is the crossing guarded?’ Nicholas asked.
‘No. Nothing there. Just empty bush on both sides.’
‘Let’s hope it stays empty,’ Nicholas muttered.
Within thirty minutes of the fire-fight, they heard the helicopter again. It was flying above the clouds, and as they listened it passed overhead, but out of sight, and headed on downstream. Twenty minutes later they heard it again, coming back in the opposite direction, and shortly after that it flew downstream again, still above the cloud.
‘What the hell is Nogo playing at?’ Mek called across to Nicholas. ‘Sounds as though he is patrolling the river, but he can’t get under the cloud.’
‘My guess is that he is ferrying men downstream to cut us off. Now he knows we are using boats, he also knows that we can only head in one direction. Nogo isn’t one to worry about international borders. He may even have realized by now that we are heading for Roseires. It’s the nearest unmanned airstrip along the river. He could be waiting for us when we try to land.’
Mek steered his Avon closer and passed a line across, tying the two boats together so that they could talk in normal tones.
‘I don’t like it, Nicholas. We are going to walk right into them again. What do you suggest?’
Nicholas pondered for a long minute. ‘Don’t you recognize this part of the river? Don’t you know precisely where we are yet?’
Mek shook his head. ‘I always keep well away from the river when we cross the border, but I will recognize the old sugar-mill at Roseires when we get there. It’s about three miles upstream from the airstrip.’
‘Deserted?’ Nicholas asked.
‘Yes. Abandoned ever since the war began twenty years ago.’
‘With this cloud cover, it will be dark in an hour,’ Nicholas said. ‘The river is slower now and not so dangerous. We can take a chance and keep on going after dark. Perhaps Nogo won’t expect that. We might be able to give him the slip in the dark.’
‘Is that the best you can do?’ Mek chuckled. ‘As a plan it sounds to me a bit like closing your eyes and hoping for the best.’
‘Well, if somebody could tell me where the hell we are, and what time Jannie will arrive tomorrow, I might be able to come up with something a bit more specific.’ Nicholas grinned back at him. ‘Until that happens, I am flying by the seat of my pants.’
All of them were tense with strung-out nerves as they paddled on into the premature dusk beneath the thick blanket of cloud and rain. Even in the gathering darkness the crew kept their weapons cocked and locked, trained on either bank of the river, ready to return fire instantly.
‘We must have crossed the border an hour ago,’ Mek called to Nicholas. ‘The old sugar mill can’t be far ahead.’
‘In the dark, how will you find it?’
‘There is the remains of an old stone jetty on the bank, from which the riverboats taking the sugar down to Khartoum used to load.’
Night came down upon them abruptly, and Nicholas felt a sense of relief as the river banks receded into the murk and the darkness hid them from hostile eyes ashore. As soon as it was fully dark they lashed the boats together to prevent them becoming separated and then let the river carry them on silently, keeping so close in to the right-hand bank that they ran aground more than once, and some of the men had to slip over the side and push them out into deeper water.
The stone piers of the jetty at Roseires sprang out at them unexpectedly, and Nicholas’s leading Avon slammed into them before he could steer clear. However, the crew were ready and they jumped over the side into chest-deep water and dragged the boat to the bank. Immediately Mek leaped ashore and, with twenty of his men, spread out into the overgrown canefields along the bank to secure the area and prevent a surprise attack by Nogo’s men.
There was confusion and more noise than Nicholas felt was safe as the rest of the flotilla beached, and they began to bring the wounded ashore and unload the cargo of ammunition cases. Nicholas piggy-backed Royan to the bank and then waded back to fetch Tessay. She was much stronger by now. The enforced rest during the voyage downriver had given her a chance to recover, and she stood up unaided in the Avon and climbed on to Nicholas’s shoulders to be brought ashore.
Once on dry ground he let her slide down on to her own feet and asked her quietly, ‘How are you feeling?’
‘I will be all right now, thank you, Nicholas.’
He supported her for a moment while she recovered her balance and said quickly, ‘I did not have a chance to ask earlier. What about Royan’s message that she asked you to telephone from Debra Maryam? Did you get it through for her?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Tessay replied guilelessly. ‘I told Royan that I had given her message to Moussad at the Egyptian Embassy. Didn’t she tell you?’
Nicholas winced as though he had taken a low punch, but he smiled and kept his tone casual. ‘It must have slipped her mind. Not important, anyway. But thanks nevertheless, Tessay.’
At that moment Mek came striding out of the darkness and spoke in a harsh whisper. ‘This sounds like a camel market. Nogo will hear us from five miles away.’ Quickly he took command and started to organize the shore party.
> Once the last of the ammunition crates were unloaded, they dragged the boats into the canefields and unscrewed the valves that deflated the pontoons. Then they piled cane trash over them. Still working in the dark, they distributed the cargo of ammunition crates amongst Mek’s men. Sapper took a case under each arm. Nicholas slung the radio over one shoulder and his emergency pack over the other, and balanced on his head the case that contained Pharaoh’s golden death-mask and the Taita ushabti.
Mek sent his scouts forward to sweep the route out to the airstrip and make certain that they did not run into an ambush. Then he took the point and the rest of them strung out in Indian file along the rough, overgrown track behind him. Before they had covered a mile the clouds suddenly opened overhead, and the crescent moon and the stars showed through and gave them enough light to make out the chimneystack of the ruined mill against the night sky.
But even with this moonlight their progress was slow and broken by long pauses, for the stretcher-bearers carrying the wounded had difficulty keeping up. By the time they reached the airstrip it was after three in the morning and the moon had set. They stacked the ammunition cases in the same grove of acacia trees at the end of the runway where they had cached the pallets of dam-building equipment and the yellow tractor on the inward journey.
Although they were all exhausted by this time, Mek set out his pickets around the camp. The two women tended the wounded, working by the light of a small screened fire as they used up the last of Mek’s medical supplies.
Sapper used the one electric torch whose batteries still held a charge, and he gave Nicholas a discreet screened light while he set up the radio and strung the aerial. Nicholas’s relief was intense when he opened the fibreglass case and found that, despite its dunking in the Nile, the rubber gasket that sealed the lid had kept the radio dry. When he switched on the power, the pilot light lit up. He tuned in to the short-wave frequency and picked up the early morning commercial transmission of Radio Nairobi.