"Politically correct?" Nicholas asked himself, with a smile.
"What is amusing you?" Royan asked. "Have you thought of a way of
getting in there?"
"No, I was thinking of dinner. Let's go!
At dinner Boris showed no ill effects from the previous night's debauch.
During the day he had taken out his shotgun and shot a bunch of green
pigeons. Tessay had marinated these and barbecued them over the coals.
"Tell me, English, how was the hunting today? Did you get attacked by
the deadly striped dik-dik? Hey? Hey?" He bellowed with laughter.
"Did your trackers have any success?" Nicholas asked mildly.
."Da! Da! They found kudu and hushbuck and buffalo.
They even found dik-dik, but no stripes. Sorry, no stripes."
Royan leaned forward and opened her mouth to intervene, but Nicholas
cautioned her with a shake of the head. She shut her mouth again and
looked down at her plate, slicing a morsel from the breast of a pigeon.
"We don't really need company tomorrow," Nicholas explained mildly in
Arabic. "If he knew, he would insist on coming with us."
"Did your Mummy never teach you no manners, English? It's rude to talk
in a language that others can't understand. Have a vodka."
"You have my share," Nicholas invited him. "I know when I am
outclassed."
During the rest of the meal Tessay replied only in low monosyllables
when Royan tried to draw her into the conversation. She looked tragic
and defeated. She never looked at her husband, even when he was at his
loudest and most overbearing. When the meal ended, they left her sitting
with Boris at the fire. Boris had a fresh bottle of vodka on the table
beside him.
"The way he is pumping the liquor, it looks as if I might be called out
on another midnight rescue mission," Nicholas remarked as they made
their way to their own huts.
"Tessay has been in camp all day with him. There has been more trouble
between them. She told me that as soon as they get back to Addis Ababa
she is going to leave him.
She can't take any more of this."
"The only thing I find surprising is that she ever got mixed up with an
animal like Boris in the first place. She is a lovely woman. She could
pick and choose."
"Some women are drawn to animals," Royan shrugged.
"I suppose it must be the thrill of danger. Anyway, Tessay has asked me
if she can come with us tomorrow. She cannot stand another day in camp
with Boris on her own.
I think she is really afraid of him now. She says that she has never
seen him drink like this before."
"Tell her to come along, Nicholas said resignedly. "The more of us the
merrier. Perhaps we will be able to frighten the dik-dik to death by
sheer weight of numbers. Save me wasting ammunition."
It was still dark when the three of them left camp the next morning.
There was no sign of Boris and, when Nicholas asked about him, Tessay
said simply, "After you went to bed last night he finished the bottle.
He won't be out of his hut before noon. He won't miss me."
Carrying the Rigby, Nicholas led them tip into the weathered limestone
hills, retracing the path along which Tamre had taken them the previous
day. As they walked, Nicholas heard the two women talking behind him.
Royan was explaining to Tessay how they had sighted the striped dik-dik,
and what they planned.
The sun was well up by the time they again reached the spot under the
thorn tree on the lip of the chasm, and settled down to wait in ambush.
"How will you retrieve the carcass, if you do manage to shoot the poor
little creature?" Royan asked.
"I made certain of that before we left camp," he explained. "I spoke to
the head tracker. If he hears a shot he will bring up the ropes and help
me get across to the other side."
"I wouldn't like to make the journey across there." Tessay eyed the drop
below them.
"They teach you some useful things in the army, along with all the
rubbish," Nicholas replied. He made himself comfortable against the
thorn tree, the rifle ready in his lap.
The women lay close by him, talking together softly.
It was unlikely that the sound of their low voices would carry across
the ravine, Nicholas decided, so he did not try to hush them.
He expected that if it came at all, the dik-dik would show itself early.
But he was wrong. By noon there was still no sign of it. The valley
sweltered in the midday sun. The distant wall of the escarpment, veiled
in the blue heat haze, looked like jagged blue glass, and the mirage
danced across the rocky ridges and shimmered like the waters of a silver
lake above the tops of the thorn thickets.
The women had long ago given up talking, and they lay somnolent in the
heat. The whole world was silent and heat-struck. Only a bush dove broke
the silence with its mournful lament, "My wife is dead, my children are
dead, Oh, me! Oh, my! Oh, me!'Nicholas found his own eyelids becoming
leaden. His head nodded involuntarily, and he jerked it up only to have
it flop forward again. On the very edge of sleep he heard a sound, close
by in the thorn scrub behind him.
It was a tiny sound, but one that he knew so well. A sound that
whiplashed across his nerve endings and jerked him back to full
consciousness, with his pulse racing and the coppery taste of fear in
the back of his throat. It was the metallic sound of the safety-catch on
an AK-47 assault rifle being slipped forward into the "Fire' position.
In one fluid movement he lifted the rifle out of his lap and rolled
twice, twisting his body to cover the two women who lay beside him. At
the same time he brought the Rigby into his shoulder, aimed into the
scrub behind him from where the sound had come.
"Down!" he hissed at his companions. "Keep your heads down!'
His finger was on the trigger and, even though it was a puny weapon with
which to take on a Kalashnikov, he was ready to return fire. He picked
up his target immediately, and swung on to it.
There was a man crouched twenty paces away, the assault rifle he carried
aimed into Nicholas's face. He was black, dressed in worn and tattered
camouflage fatigues and a soft cap of the same material. His webbing
held a bush-knife and grenades, water bottle' and all the other
accoutrements of a guerrilla fighter.
"Shufta!" thought Nicholas. "A real pro. Don't take chances with this
one." Yet at the same time he realized that if the intention had been to
kill him, then he would be dead already.
He aimed the Rigby an inch over the muzzle of the assault rifle, into
the bloodshot right eye of the shufta behind it. The man acknowledged
the stand-off with a narrowing of his eyes, and then gave an order in
Arabic.
"Salim, cover the women. Shoot them if he moves.
Nicholas heard movement on his flank and glanced in that direction,
still keeping the shufta in his peripheral vision.
Another guerrilla stepped out of the scrub. He was alclass="underline" similarly
dressed, but he carried a Soviet RPD light machine gun on his hip. The
barrel was sawn off short to make the weapon more handy for bush
fighting, and there was a loop of ammunition belt draped around his
neck. He came forward carefully, the RPD aimed point-blank at the two