The newcomer unsnipped the machine-pistol and covered me.
Allemagtig, Doc! Both of 'em, eh?'
The crude vowels and gutter accent came from the Lichtenburg diamond fields. The association made me crawl inside. '
Come on in and see.'
I reached out unobtrusively for the lamp. Thrown, it would become a flaming Molotov cocktail.
'Keep away!' snarled Praeger. 'Back! Watch him, Koen!
All the time. And don't let him get close to you. He's got all the tricks and some besides!'
The two of them, weapons at the ready, led us through to Rankin's bedside where Praeger showed him the wound. Koen's response was to hold the M-25 on me and give me a long, silent, threatening stare. It was my main impression of him and I saw little else of him that night for shortly afterwards he and Praeger busied themselves clearing out all the equipment from the cave while the hyena kept us securely pinned in the outer enclosure. At the beginning of this operation Praeger spent some time treating Rankin and from time to time checked on him.
Finally I was ordered into the inner cave and Nadine confined to the mill section. Koen took up sentry on a stool out front. For the first couple of hours he used the torch to make frequent checks on us. It grew weaker. however, and after midnight there was no further check. From time to time I caught the murmur of the two men's voices, but as it grew late they became silent. Koen remained very much on the alert, however, blocking our escape route, as I discovered by creeping to the boundary of the kitchen cave.
The words night-attack continued to gnaw away at my brain and, try as I would, I could not dispel them. Sleep was out of the question; I felt no tiredness but only an increasing sense of bafflement and frustration. I mentally reviewed every geographical feature of the area, reconnoitring them in thought, weighing the merits of possible hidden strongpoints at The Hill, of the semi-desert places round about, and of course the Limpopo and Shashi waterways. Every workable plan I framed was scuppered by some major flaw.
I was pulling off my boots in order to give myself a quick bout of warming exercise — a chill had risen up out of the rock — when out of the blue came one of those strange flashes of thought which seem to be born fully grown when one has been devoting all one's time to another stream of preoccupation. The crucial remark had been crowded out of my mind by the non-stop action since my encounter with Rankin; now it blazed before me like a comet in the sky.
Rankin had said as I hit him, they were cut diamonds. I could have laughed out loud: it is not a crime to possess a cut diamond. IDB means trading in uncut stones. That admission in itself, whether he lived or died now, was a starting-point towards clearing me. I realized at once, however, that it would involve big technical questions. The detective who had arrested me had said that Rankin's diamonds were foreign to the Lichtenburg fields: he could only have cut them here at The Hill but at the same time it must have been a crude job. No one, not even my lawyer, had thought of requesting expert, microscopic, examination of the diamonds. Rankin all at once became vital to any escape plan, for I had to get him to blow up that tenuous admission into a full-scale confession, with all the accompanying involvements of his own underground 'salting' activities. Paralleling this dramatic revelation, the hang-ups and self agonizing which had dogged me since I became involved with Charlie Furstenberg fell away as unexpectedly and I freewheeled to a similar moment of truth regarding Nadine. I found myself confronted with a need greater than that of escaping: to restore the love which — for my part at least -
had been progressively eroded for over a year. With an intuitive flash I knew in my heart that she was more important than anything else and that the time was overdue for clearing the junk out of my emotional attic and taking up our love again where it had begun: here, at The Hill.
Not half a dozen machine-pistols in Koen's hands would have kept me from her in that moment of insight.
Still without my boots, I squirmed silently towards where she lay faintly visible near the bench under a cheap grey cotton blanket that Praeger had given her.
I crouched immobile for a long moment when I reached her, looking down on her loveliness. There was only a memory of light in the face; the rest of her, including the dark hair, was indistinguishable from the night.
I kissed the parted lips.
Her eyes opened, staring up at me in disbelief, and her lips took on the frame of my name without saying it.
I looked into her eyes, not speaking either.
And I wondered, in that mute and magic moment, if the tide of her spirit would do the same at other deep occasions between us. Her features remained composed, as if still sleepbound, but the 'pupils of her eyes grew wide and then contracted. Then she raised her lips to mine and the pupils widened again. A lifetime ran by.
At length, at a silent signal from me, she slipped from under the blanket and made her way with me to the inner cave. There was the danger that Koen would check and find her gone: to fox him, I used a variation of the schoolboy dormitory trick — wrapping the blanket round her water jug in imitation of her head on the pillow.
We crept to the farthest wall of my cave so that Koen would not hear our suppressed whispers. There remained Dika, however. The brute's ears were twice as keen as a human's. We lay in each other's arms saying the things lovers say, cajoling and teasing a little, our words gaining an extra dimension from our danger.
'It can't be true, can it, Guy?'
'It is, my darling.'
Her laugh was low and soft, full of a new joy.
'Not this, not us — the Cullinan, I mean. Rather, that fantastic yarn of von Praeger's about another half to the Cullinan. Is it remotely possible it could be hidden away here at The Hill?'
'Rankin is a crook,' I replied. this place is both his base and his funkhole. It's easy now to understand why he didn't want the scientific party ferreting around. But to Praeger it's the clincher on the most way-out bit of nonsense it's ever been my misfortune to hear. "Hyena's blanket", my foot!'
She snuggled close and kissed me deeply, fervently. 'It's our Hill,not theirs. You're mine, not theirs,' she said, between kisses. The tip of her tongue was a soft electric caress against my palate. I crushed her to me; for a brief desperate moment all we knew was the thing our bodies cried out for, then she took my face in her hands and made us separate again, running her fingers over my features in the darkness as if to use them as eyes to remember.
'The Hill to me is a place of love, my darling. Remember that when we've sorted out this other side. And my love is for your taking then.'
She put her palms against my lips and her fingers to frame my face. I do not know how long she held me like that: her trembling told me how the current sparked between us, until finally it ebbed a little.
'Escape,' she said huskily. 'We must talk about escape, my love; not about us.'
'Escape!' I echoed. 'I've lain awake all night thinking only of that!'
'Somehow there must be a way.'
'We'll have to take Rankin with us.. ' I explained to her quickly his remark about cut diamonds. 'We need him. What he has already admitted is enough to have the case against me re-opened. But I must have a full confession. I want the world to know it was a plant, a frame-up. I'll make Rankin swear an affidavit in front of the first policeman or magistrate I can get him to — alive.'
'How do you intend to do "that, Guy?'
'I've got half a dozen half-baked plans. None of them works. But I know this, I'm not including any heroics in them — no getting even with Praeger or Koen. Just plain flight.'
'If only we had a vehicle!'