"Not a very good friend." Mek looked up at him and his expression was
grim. "I came to warn you about him, Nicholas."
"I a listening," said Nicholas quietly.
"In "85 I was captured by Mengistu's thugs. They kept me in the Karl
Marx prison camp near Addis. Brusilov was one of the interrogators
there. He was KGB in those days.
His favourite trick was to stick the pressure hose from a compressor up
the anus of the man or woman he was questioning and turn on the tap.
They blew up like a balloon, until the gut burst." He stopped speaking
while he moved around to work on the other hoof of the antelope.
"I escaped before he got around to questioning me. He retired when
Mengistu fled, and went hunting. I don't know how he persuaded Tessay to
marry him, ut knowing what I do of the man, I expect she did not have
much choice in the matter."
"Of course, I had my suspicions about him," Nicholas admitted.
They were quiet after that until Mek whispered, "I came to tell you that
I may have to kill him."
Neither of them spoke again until Mek had finished working on all four
hooves. Then he stood up. "These days, life is uncertain, Nicholas. If I
have to leave here in a hurry, and I do not have a chance to say goodbye
to you, then there is somebody in Addis who will pass a message to me if
you ever need me. His name is Colonel Maryam Kidane in the Ministry of
Defence. He is a friend. My code name is the Swallow. He will know who
you are talking about."
They embraced briefly. "Go with GodV said Mek, and left the hut quietly.
The night swallowed his robed figure and Nicholas stood for a long time
at the door, until at last he turned back to finish the work.
It was late by the time he had rubbed every inch of the skin with a
mixture of rock salt and Kabra dip to cure it and protect it from the
ravages of the bacon beetle and other insects and bacteria. At last he
laid it out on the floor of the hut with the wet side uppermost and
packed more rock salt on the raw areas.
The walls of the hut were reinforced with mesh netting to keep out
hyenas. One of these foul creatures could gobble down the pelt in a few
seconds. He made certain the door was wired shut before he carried the
lantern up to the dining hut. The others had all eaten and gone to bed
hours earlier, but Tessay had left his dinner in the charge of the
Ethiopian chef. He had not realized how hungry he was until he smelt it.
The next morning Nicholas was so stiff that he hobbled down to the
skinning hut like an old man. First he checked the pelt and poured
fresh salt over it, then he ordered Kif and Satin to bury the skull of
the dik-dik in an ant heap to allow the insects to remove the surplus
flesh and scour the brain pan. He preferred this method to boiling the
skull.
Satisfied that the trophy was in good condition, he went on down to the
dining hut, where Boris greeted him jovially.
"And so, English. We leave for Addis now, da? "thing more to do here."
"We will stay to photograph the ceremony of Timkat at the
monastery,'Nicholas told him. "And after that I may want to hunt a
Menelik's bushbuck. Who knows? I've told you before. We go when I say
so."
Boris looked disgruntled. "You are crazy, English. Why do you want to
stay in this heat to watch these people and their mumbo'jumbo?"
"Today I will go fishing, and tomorrow we will watch Timkat."
"You do not have a fishing rod," Boris protested, but pened the small
canvas roll no larger than a Nicholas woman's handbag and showed him
the four-piece Hardy Smuggler rod nestling in it.
He looked across the table at Royan, "Are you coming along to ghillie
for me?" he asked.
They went upstream to the suspension bridge where Nicholas set up the
rodand tied a fly on to his leader.
"Royal Coachm " He held it up for her appraisal.
an.
"Fish love them anywhere in the world, from Patagonia to Alaska. We
shall soon find out if they are as popular here in Ethiopia, as well."
She watched from the top of the bank as he shot out line, rolling it
upon itself in flight, sailing the weightless fly out to midstream, and
then laying it gently on the surface of the water so that it floated
lightly on the ripples. On his second cast there was a swirl under the
fly. The rod tip arced over sharply, the reel whined and Nicholas let
out a whoop.
"Gotcha, my beauty!'
watched him indulgently from the top of the bank.
Sh In his excitement and enthusiasm he was like a small boy.
She smiled when she noticed how his injuries had miraculously healed
themselves, and how he no longer limped as he ran back and forth along
the water's edge, playing the fish. Ten minutes later he slid it,
gleaming like a bar of freshly minted gold as long as his arm, sopping
and flapping up on to the beach.
"Yellow fish," he told her triumphantly. "Scrumptious.
Breakfast for tomorrow morning."
He came up the bank and dropped down in the grass beside her. "The
fishing was really just an excuse to get away from Boris. I brought you
here to tell you about what I found up there yesterday." He pointed up
through the archway of pink stone above the bridge. She came up on her
elbow and watched him with her full attention.
"Of course, I have no way of telling if it has anything to do with our
search, but somebody has been working in there." He described the niches
that he had found carved into the canyon wall. "They reach from the lip
right down to the water's edge. Those below the high-water mark have
been severely eroded by the floods. I could not reach those higher up,
but from what I could see they have been protected from wind and rain by
the dished shape of the Cliff., it has formed a veranda roof over them.
They appear to be in pristine condition, very much in contrast to those
lower down."
"What do we deduce from that?" she asked.
"That they are very old," he answered. "Certainly the basalt is pretty
hard. It has taken a long, long time for water to wear it down the way
it has."
"What do you think was the purpose of those holes?"
am not sure he admitted.
"Could it be that they were the anchor points for some sort of
scaffolding? she asked, and he looked impressed.
"Good thinking. They could be, he agreed.
"What other ideas occur to you?"
"Ritual designs," he suggested. "A religious motif." He smiled as he saw
her expression of doubt. "Not very convincing, I agree."
"All right, let's consider the idea of scaffolding. Why would anybody
want to erect scaffolding in a place like that?" She lay back in the
grass and picked a straw which she nibbled reflectively.
He shrugged. "To anchor a1adder or a gantry, to gain access to the
bottom of the chasm?"
"What other reason?"
"I can't think of any other."
After a while she shook her head. "Nor can She spat out the piece of
grass. "If that is the motive, then they were fairly committed to the
project. From your description it must have been a substantial
structure, designed to support the weight of a, lot of men or heavy
material."
"In North America the Red Indians built fishing platforms over