anyway. But thanks nevertheless, Tessay."
PM-Om 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 3. 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 Mck'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 ses, by
long pau 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
seated the lid had kept the radio dry.
When he switched on the power, the pilot light lit up. He tuned in to
the shortwave frequency and picked up the early morning commercial
transmission of Radio Nairobi.
Yvonne Chaka Chaka was singing; he liked her voice and her style. But he
quickly switched off the set so as to conserve the battery, and settled
back against the hole of the acacia tree to try and get a little rest
before daylight broke. However, sleep eluded him - his sense of betrayal
and anger were too strong.
uma Nogo watched the sun push its great fiery head out of the surface of
the Nile ahead of them. They were flying only feet above the water to
keep under the Sudanese military radar trans missions. He knew there was
a radar station at Khartoum that might be able to pick them up, even at
this range.
Relations with the Sudanese were strained, and he could expect a quick
and savage response if they discovered that he had violated their
border.
Nogo was a confused and worried man. Since the d6bdcle in the gorge of
the Dandera river everything had run strongly against him. He had lost
all his allies. Until they were gone he had not realized how heavily he
had come to rely on both Helm and von Schiller. Now he was on his own
and he had already made many mistakes.
But despite all this he was determined to pursue the fugitives, and to
run them down no matter how far he had to intrude into Sudanese
territory. Over the past weeks it had gradually dawned'upon Nogo, mostly
by eavesdropping on the conversations of von Schiller and the jr
Egyptian, that Harper and Mek Nimmur were in possession of treasure of
immense value. His imagination could barely asp the enormity of it, but
he had heard others speak of gr tens of millions of dollars. Even a
million dollars was a sum so vast that his mind had difficulty
assimilating it, but he I i had a vague inkling as to what it might mean
in earthly terms, of the possessions and women and luxuries it could
buy.
Equally slowly it had dawned upon him that, now that Von Schiller and
Helm were gone, this treasure could be his alone; there was no longer
any other person to stand in his way, other than the fleeing shufta led
by Mek Nimmur and the Englishman. And he had overwhelming force on his
side and the helicopter at his command.
if only he could pin the fugitives down, Nogo was certain he could wipe
them out. There must be no survivors, no one to carry tales to Addis.
After Mek and the Englishman and all their followers were dead it would
be a simple matter to spirit his booty out of the country in the
helicopter. There was a man in Nairobi and another in Khartoum whom he
had dealt with before; they had bought contraband ivory and hashish from
him. They would know how to market the booty to best advantage, although
they were both devious men. He had already decided that he would not
trust it all to one person but would spread the risk, so that even if
one of them betrayed and cheated him His mind raced off on another tack,
and he savoured the thought of great riches and what they could buy for
him. He would have fine clothes and motor cars, land and cattle and
women - white women and black and brown, all the women he could use, a
new one for every day of his life. He broke off his greedy daydreams.
First he had to find where the runaways had vanished to.
He had not realized that Harper and Mek Nimmur had inflatable boats
hidden somewhere near the monastery.
Hansith had not informed him of that fact. He and Helm had expected them
to try to escape on foot, and all the plans to head them off before they
could reach the Sudanese border had been based on that assumption. On
Helm's orders, he had even set up a reserve fuel dump near the border
where they expected Mek Nimmur to cross, from which they could refuel
the helicopter. Without those supplies of fuel he would long ago have
been forced to give up the chase.
Nogo had placed his men to cover the trails leading along the river bank
towards the west, and he had not even considered guarding the river
itself. It was quite by chance that one of his patrols had been in a
position to spot the flotilla of yellow boats as they came racing
downstream. However, there had not been enough warning to enable them to
set up an effective ambush, and they had been able to fire on the boats
only briefly before they escaped. They had not inflicted serious damage
on any of the boats - at least, not enough to stop them getting through.
Immediately the company commander had radioed his report of this contact
with Mek Nimmur, Nogo had started ferrying men downstream to the
Sudanese border to cut off the flotilla. Unfortunately, the Jet Ranger
could carry no more than six fully armed men at a time, and transporting
them had been a time-consuming business. He had only succeeded in
bringing sixty of his men into position before night had fallen.