The River of Diamonds

I straightened up. 'There was nothing, nothing but murky green water. Piet is dead.'

'You're not going to…'

'Yes, I am — I must dive again. I've got to find out.'

The steel sides of the Mazy Zed were a giant sounding-board for another eruption of the Bells.

Johaar was ashen. 'Soon I am a dead man… the Bells…'

Mary said, 'Look, the buck are not going far into the sea, John. Then they bend down and drink.'

'Salt water doesn't kill and it doesn't kill that quickly, I replied.

I outlined to them Shelborne's account of the mass suicide of the seals, half a million of them. There seemed as many buck.

Mary's hands shook on her binoculars. 'It's horrible They're throwing themselves into the quicksands, too They're kicking and rolling and being sucked down!'

Rhennin said in a hard voice. 'I don't believe in some Shelborne bogy, John. There's a perfectly natural explanation for this somewhere.'

'Yes, but where?'

He called to Sheriff in his boat. 'Bob, is this your quickfirer in order?'

'Aye, aye.'

'Take your boat, will you, and have Watson fire a couple of big bursts into them and stop the stampede.'

'Into them?'

'Yes. They're panicking. Something back there in the desert — maybe a big dust storm we can't see. It doesn't matter how many you kill — they'll die anyway.'

'I wonder,' I said, 'if Korvettenkapitan Rhennin made a similar order?'

Rehnning wheeled on me. 'Yes, he would, if the situation were the same.'

You might as well open up against the dunes themselves, for all the impression it will make.' Dieter knew how to look after himself. It was war. To open fire against the enemy was quite normal.' 'Against a normal enemy, yes, but I found his Knight's Cross in the graveyard.'

Bob!' snapped Rhennin. 'Get going! Give them the works and stop this damned nonsense!'

'Aye, aye.'

Rhennin turned back to me. 'I intend going ashore as soon as this firing picnic is over — to the graveyard. Are you coming?'

'John! You've risked your life once today.' Mary was.growing quite angry.

'I'm coming all right,' I replied. 'Gruppe Eisbar may not have been lost entirely without trace.'

Rhennin said, 'The war is a long time ago now. Dieter may or may not have picked up the Goering cache. It is more important that we find a way into the Glory Hole — it is the Mazy Zed's, own Schwerpunkt. Shelborne…'

'Shelborne, Shelborne!' Mary exclaimed. 'You talk as if he were some sort of Mephistopheles who controls supernatural powers…' She pointed to the springbok, now stumbling and climbing over mounds of their dead companions to get to the water. The roar of Bob Sheriff's engine drowned her words. The boat tore away at full throttle from the Mazy Zed, rising on her hydrofoils as she streaked towards the shore. Watson, the gunner, grinned and swung the twin muzzles in anticipation.

Rhennin spoke to the ship's medical orderly — there was no doctor — who had tried to help me with Piet. 'Get him below, will you?'

'He was dead when you brought him aboard,' the orderly said with an irritating presumption of medical ominscience. 'Anoxia, that is what he died from.' He rolled the term round his tongue, 'That caused the blotches and mottling. Classic symptoms.'

'Oh, bull!' I retorted. My nerves were shot to hell. 'You're no doctor…'

Rhennin interrupted. 'Everything points to its being a simple drowning.'

'There are other things which have the same symptoms.'

'Such as what, John?'

'It wasn't a deep dive and a good diver like Piet simply doesn't drown. It's the foam in the mask that bothers me.'

Rhennin shrugged. 'If you want a post-mortem you won't get it at Mercury. I intend to log his death as accidental drowning.'

It was useless to argue. 'I'll dive and see tomorrow if the weather holds. We must watch our step on the island — I think Shelborne is holed up somewhere where we can't spot turn.'

'Let me come too,' Mary insisted, but we refused. 'John! you remember what I said about express trains… You won't crash head-on if I am there.'

I shrugged off the idea of Shelborne's fatal attraction for me. 'I intend to find out a lot of things — a lot of things.'

Above the death-cry of the springbok came the savage rattle of Watson's gun firing into the horde advancing towards the quicksands. Glasses to our eyes, we saw the bullets cut a swathe. Others advanced, ignoring and submerging the dead. The patrol boat tore past the shallows, firing in short professional bursts. Sheriff made a big circle and slowed down.

'He's trying for a steady platform,' said Rhennin.

'For all the good he's doing, he might as well have stayed,'I said.

The boat cruised slowly past the carcass-choked beach. The continuous rattle broke, chattered, broke again.

'What the hell…?' snapped Rhennin.

My glasses were on the boat. One short burst.

Mary exclaimed incredulously. 'He's firing into the air!'

The twin machine-guns pointed skywards. Two single shots. Five. One. Silence. The guns aimed heavenwards. The boat cruised slowly on.

'What in the name of all that's holy is he doing!' burst out Rhennin. 'Keep course, man, or else you'll be ashore next to the old coaster!'

In slow motion, that describes exactly what happened. The hydrofoils, guns raked skywards, drove erratically towards the base of Sudhuk and crashed ashore on the rocks to the right of the landing-beach.

'Is Sheriff drunk?' rapped out Rhennin. 'God! I lose one boat through his men being asleep, and the second…'

'Because they are dead.'

He dropped the glasses. 'I… I… why do you say that, John?'

I indicated the hydrofoil. The boat runs ashore. Not a man shows. No one tries even to fend her off. That crew is dead.'

Rhennin lifted his powerful Zeiss glasses to his eyes again. His voice was shot with uneasiness. 'Watson is lying at the foot of the gun. I can't see properly… the helm is unattended… we must go and see…'

'No, Felix,' I said. 'Something hellish is afoot. If Sheriff is alive, he'll come back. If he's dead, there's no point in exposing ourselves to the same unknown danger. He had the fastest and best-armed boat between here and Simonstown. He was as well prepared as…'

'… as Gruppe Eisbar,' supplemented Mary.

Rhennin's voice was harsh. 'Yes, by heavens! — as prepared as Gruppe Eisbar, and as unprepared as the Mazy Zed.' The crew watching were muttering among themselves. 'Mercury… John! Get dressed and come to my cabin.' He went below.

The Bells tolled. Mary stood close to me, silent. The macabre scene held me. Like thistledown, airy, fawn-and-white, the graceful buck trotted down through the nek in the sandhills to the beach of death. The nearby quicksand was a rearing, plunging mass of dead and half-dead beasts. Rhennin was right: somewhere there was a perfectly everyday explanation. What? Food. Were the animals the victims of mass starvation? These were certainly not thin-ribbed creatures at the end of their tether. Water? Richtersveld lore said springbok could go for as long as ten years without flowing water, — succulents and naras, the water-packed melon of the Namib, provided all they needed.

Richtersveld! Richtersveld! — something was flickering at the back of my mind, but it would not ignite. Could the springbok be emulating those blind migrations of the arctic lemming? I knew that this small Norwegian rodent has been known to drown itself in hundreds of thousands in the freezing waters of the north.

Richtersveld! — like a drug which revives in the neurotic's mind whole forgotten passages of music, only once heard, there arose in my mind a grey image of a granite range, sea on one side, desert on the other. The image swelled, grew, vanished — and I found my eyes again registering Mercury's mass suicide.

Richtersveld! — an oyster dawn; a sun red as the burning sand; towards the east a valley of rose-and-white quartz; among the stones… I fought for the mental key… whatever it was, it would, I knew, give me the clue to the springbok suicide.