A few hours later I was released. I made my way furtively to Johannesburg, saw my old professor briefly, picked up a few belongings-and a rifle.
I headed for The Hill.
CHAPTER THREE
The tool cut the barbed wire, and again I was in the presence of the hill which is death to look upon.
Not a bird sang, not an insect moved.
The wire sprang back to the nearest post, the barbs throwing up little spurts of dust as they plucked at the burning sand. To my tensed senses there was some doubt whether I had actually heard the faint noise of the wire's ring or whether it was tinnitus, an imaginary sound which isolation evokes in the desert, having no reality except in the ear of the hearer. By cutting the wire I had crossed my Rubicon and was committed to the critical stage of my pursuit of Rankin. I had forced a way into the prohibited area of The Hill and our confrontation would have to take place somewhere among the sunstruck tumble of rocks and hills which I could see as I raised my eyes cautiously to the level of the wide sandstone terrace on which The Hill stands along the river front. The terrace — a platform of rock half a mile long — rises abruptly about thirty feet out of a soft incline which is, in fact, the river's maximum bed at floor level. In normal times it is no more than a broad belt of sand studded with stunted palms and small trees. In The Hill's hey-day this steep platform served as its outer line of defence against attack from the river quarter. Centuries of erosion, however, had fashioned two or three sizeable gullies into gateways through the defences. These access points had now been blocked by rolls of militarystyle barbed wire where they opened on to the river bed and higher up at terrace-level by an eight-strand security fence with a workmanlike overhang at the top to prevent climbing. Furthermore, the head of each of these entry-points was reinforced by a padlocked barbed-wire gate. Whoever had done the job knew what he was about. Two high stone walls, still in a state of fair repair, completed the process of sealing off the place on either flank.
These were the reported precautions Nadine had read out to me that day in prison. It would not be impossible to break into the fortress enclosure but it needed time and resourcefulness. My commando training had enabled me to work through the outlying rolls of barbed wire-a long, exacting crawl-but I had been stumped by the security fence and gate. Then I remembered a curious old instrument in my pocket called a diamond pencil. It was one of the things I had brought with me in my hasty departure. It was a diamond-cutter's tool which had belonged to my grandfather and had a direct association with the Cullinan, for he had lent it to the famous Joseph Asscher of Amsterdam to make the initial cut in the great gem. It was an odd-looking thing with a bronze hexagonal shaft which had been worn smooth, as if by many hands in the past. In its tip was set a diamond to cut other diamonds. Called technically a 'sharp' my diamond pencil looked like an ordinary pencil made of metal, slightly thicker where the fingers gripped it, tapering towards both ends. Before the invention of the modern polariscope, which 'sees' into the heart of a diamond, cutting depended entirely on skill. A diamond has a hidden natural grain which must be established. A groove is cut along the surface of this plane with a diamond pencil, which then receives the cleaving knife. If diamond would cut diamond, I reasoned, diamond would cut the barbed wire obstructing me now.
It did.
I ducked down from my quick survey of the terrace. My face came close to a tuft of grass and I could see every dead, bleached bristle and the pitiful cluster of rain-starved, torpedo shaped seeds. I tried to clamp my body against the fiery ground, out of The Hill's line of vision, behind a kanniedood ('never-die') tree. Its trunk made a natural post for the fence. My heart was fluttering like a bird's. Somewhere ahead was the guard's hut Nadine had also mentioned and somewhere too might be the guard himself. He would be armed and was not likely to regard as friendly an intruder who had just broken in through his fence, gun in hand.
I lay low, half expecting at any moment a challenge or even a shot.
My pulse pounded and sweat dripped on to the grass patch
— probably the only moisture that had come its way in years. Close-to I saw how the wire had sliced into the trunk and its acid sap had rusted the bright metal. The black-and-grey striped bark curled and peeled off in papery strips. The leafless thing may have been alive, or as dead as thousands of other trees in the drought-devastated countryside.
I lay with my arms forward to present the smallest target.
I eased my grip on the shaft of the diamond pencil, deliberately clenching and unclenching my fingers as if the small movement could also do something for the tension which lay across my stomach like a steel band. I tried taking several long controlled breaths to quiet my nerves; then I watched in astonishment the nails of my thumb and forefinger — made brittle by the heat and moistureless air — split down to the quick. After five minutes I could take the sun's torture on my back no longer. Where my chest and stomach lay against the gritty earth were soaked patches through my khaki shirt. Despite the risk of being spotted, I realized I would have to shift soon. Even the shadow from the kanniedood trunk, like a sundial's black bar against the glowing sand, took on an attraction which was out of all proportion to its slight shade. I squirmed, still not chancing a full bodily movement, which caused the cartridges in my shirt pocket to dig into me. They were overhot but I dismissed a fear that they might explode against my chest. However, they did make me speculate whether the barrel of my old Mannlicher (it had once been my father's) might be so distorted by the heat that I couldn't have hit Rankin at thirty yards had he appeared in front of me like a genie out of the dancing mirage.
I sat up, my mouth dry. I chewed and sucked at an astringent mopani tree leaf I had picked on my way from the river. It is the favourite food of elephants and the butterfly-shaped leaf is a thirst-beater for humans and animals alike. I decided to ease myself under the cut wire and reconnoitre cautiously towards the base of The Hill.
Now that I was confronted by The Hill itself, the plans which I had made round Rankin, both in prison and on my way up-river from Messina, seemed incomplete and somewhat unworkable. Perhaps my keenness to get at him had clouded my recollection of the detailed geography of the place, or even its size. Charlie had said 'Rankin is at The Hill' as if he were to be found simply in occupation of it. When I looked now at the mass rising up before my eyes I realized that I had been over-optimistic about tracking him down quickly. The cliffs of the fortress reared up a couple of hundred feet sheer from the broad terrace. From my low angle the tabletop of the north-western summit where the queen's grave lay was invisible. Compared with this flat section the rest of the surface of the summit was more broken, being pierced here and there with great jags of rock. My view of The Hill was the same as its old enemies had had, and the receiving end wasn't pleasant. There was also a strange air of watchfulness which I could not define.