Our first sight of the river sent Genesis into ecstasies. ‘Look at it!’ he cried. ‘It could be the Garden of Eden.’
Impala grazed on the far bank. Troops of baboons were scattered along the shore, with babies sitting on their mothers’ backs or hanging round their necks. Crowned cranes paced the sand, and a flight of duck went away low upstream.
‘Okay,’ I agreed. ‘But where’s the serpent?’
‘He’s about,’ Gen admitted. ‘And so are the crocs.’
Every sandbar was carrying what looked like a dead log, which sprang to life and slithered into the water at speed the moment we came into view. I wondered about the bodies thrown in upstream the day before. Had they already been eaten? Or would they have passed this point and gone on downstream by now?
Crocs or no crocs, I had to agree with Gen: the scene was idyllic. At the point where we hit the river the stream was sweeping in wide coils between banks about ten feet high, and the ground on top was almost bare of vegetation. Turning right, I drove for a few hundred metres downstream, sending the baboons racing for cover. The current looked quite fast, especially in shallow stretches, and the water was opaque with grey silt. Gen stood up in the back, spotting for a good place to fill the jerricans, and presently he said, ‘There, that’ll do.’
We pulled up above a little bay, where the stream had carved a sweep out of the bank. The pool was manifestly too small and shallow to harbour a croc, and it was cut off from the main river by a sandbar.
‘My life’s in your hands, Gen,’ I said as I slithered down the bank.
‘Fear not,’ he replied. ‘If it moves, I shoot.’
With him poised above me, 203 at the ready, I walked through the pool, just to make sure it was uninhabited, then lay down full length and scrubbed myself furiously. Never mind that the water was full of decomposing bodies, crocodile shit, bilharzia and other delicacies, its coolness was sheer delight. When the relatively stagnant pool turned the colour of milky coffee, I rolled sideways into the faster-flowing shallow race and let the current sweep away all the grit, dirt and sweat. With all the grunge went a lot of my anxiety and exhaustion, and I came up feeling renewed.
Genesis followed me in, fully dressed, and washed his clothes on him, knowing they’d dry in minutes under the burning sun, while I stood over him with a weapon loaded and cocked. The German watched all this with a condescending air, as if we were lunatics; we ignored her and climbed back into our seats, dripping but refreshed. Whinger hadn’t stirred. His eyes were open, and he turned his head slightly when I told him we were moving on, but otherwise he was frighteningly inert.
The drive took far longer than we’d anticipated. We were never lost, as we always had the river to follow, but it swung back and forth in huge loops, and we were constantly forced away from the bank by tributaries coming down to it from the north. Most of them were dry — just beds of sand — but many were deep, with vertical sides, and some still had water in them, so we had to search for places where we could cross. Each time, before we committed ourselves, we took it in turns to walk ahead and check the ground, because we couldn’t afford to get bogged again. As the flies were still a pain, I put some clothes back on, and by then Gen had fully dried out.
At last, about 1630, with the sun going down straight ahead of us, we hit on our first trace of civilisation: a dirt road running along the bank. By the look of the dust, no vehicle had been up it for months, but at least it was a man-made track. Gratefully we rolled on to it and increased our speed. Then, in the hazy distance ahead, we made out higher ground above the river, a little plateau, with tall trees growing on it, silhouetted black against the sun.
‘The bluff!’ we both said simultaneously.
‘This is Msisi?’ went Inge.
‘Looks like it.’
‘Wunderbar!’
‘We’d better get some covering over Whinger,’ I said, pulling up. ‘Don’t want to give the nuns a fright.’
He gave a couple of delirious curses as we pulled a blanket over him. His body was hot to the touch, his breathing short and laboured. When I accidentally brushed my hand against his burnt arm, he gave a groan of pain.
The closer we came, the higher the plateau seemed to loom over the river. Probably the cliff was only a hundred feet tall, but in that flat environment it looked enormous. Perhaps that’s why they put the hospital up there, I thought: healthier, away from swamps and mozzies, catching the breeze. I felt adrenalin driving off some of my exhaustion; the sheer relief of having found the place was exciting.
As we approached, the dying sun was straight in our faces, so that we couldn’t make out details. But we caught a glimpse of white walls, and a flag flying from a pole among the trees. Also, joy of joys, we spotted a latticed radio mast. Then we were in under the shadow of the cliff, and following the track up a natural ledge which rose across it, until at the top we came out on the level.
Looking back, it’s easy to see what we should have done. We should have stopped well short of the bluff and concealed the vehicle under a tree. While one of us stayed to guard Whinger and the woman, the other should have recced forward and taken a good look at the convent. The fact was, we were in desperate straits, and too far gone to carry out SOPs. We’d set our hearts on reaching what we thought was a haven, and now we’d found it, relief swept caution away.
Low, whitewashed buildings with corrugated-iron roofs were ranged round a compound. The place looked fairly run-down, with big blotches of mould on the walls and fallen branches lying about. We seemed to have arrived at the back door. Between two of the buildings, set at right angles to each other on a corner of the compound, was a gate of rusty wire mesh.
‘Can’t see any lock,’ I said. ‘We might as well drive through. Try undoing that loop of wire.’
Genesis jumped out, wrestled with the primitive fastening, eventually got it free, and pushed the gate open. I drove forward a few yards and stopped, waiting for him. By evil chance Whinger chose that very moment to surface and say something. I couldn’t make sense of it, but the sound of his voice made me turn to look at him, and when I faced forward again, I got a dreadful shock.
Black soldiers were running at us from both sides. With a glance to my right I took in a line of military vehicles parked down the inner side of the compound.
‘Gen!’ I yelled. ‘Get back in! We’re compromised!’
I slammed into reverse and let out the clutch with a bang. But Gen had just got the gate secured, and it caught the pinkie like a fishing net.
Seconds later the blacks were all over us like baboons, yelling, screaming, brandishing pistols and machetes. I tried to drive forward, but three or four sets of hands seized me by my shirt and dragged me out sideways. As my foot came off the clutch, the vehicle gave a bound and the engine stalled. Everything happened so fast that I didn’t even have time to grab my 203 from its place down beside my right hip. Gen never made it back to the vehicle; other guys were dragging Whinger out of the back.
For a few seconds I was convinced we were going to get lynched. Then the strangest thing happened. Inge pulled herself to her feet, holding the top of the windscreen, and began bellowing in some African language. Quickly the hubbub died down. Into the moment’s silence she shouted something else. The next I knew, we were all face-down in the dust and getting our wrists and arms bound behind our backs. I felt hands going all over me, nicking my watch, pistol, knife, GPS set. Afterwards, I couldn’t think why we hadn’t offered more resistance, but the truth was we were numbed by the suddenness of the attack, too shocked and tired to react quickly.