Wilbur Smith - Assegai

‘You are going out for a ride?’ he asked.

‘I told Chef I would go into Friedrichshafen and see if the old lady in the market has any black truffles for your dinner. I know how you love them. You don’t mind if I leave you for a few hours, Otto? I might stop on my way back to sketch a view of the lake.’

‘Not at all, my dear. Anyway, I am going to the factory with Lutz and Ritter to check the final assembly of the new airship. I might be gone for some time. I shall probably lunch with Commodore Lutz in the senior managers’ mess. However, do not make any plans for next week.’

‘Are you almost ready to fly the airship?’ She clapped her hands in feigned excitement.

‘Perhaps, perhaps not,’ he teased, with heavy humour. ‘But I would like you to be there when we walk her out from her hangar for her maiden flight. I think you will find it extremely exciting.’ He lifted his left arm and clicked open the metal thumb and finger of the prosthesis that was fitted to the end of the stump. He placed a Cuban cigar in the jaws of the metal appendage and secured it in place with a lateral twist of his wrist. Then he lifted it, and placed the tip between his lips, and Lutz struck a Vesta and held it for him while he puffed out clouds of smoke.

Eva suppressed a shiver of unease. The artificial hand frightened her. It had been made for Otto by the engineers in his factory to his own design. It was an extraordinary creation with which he had already developed an alarming dexterity. Holding a bottle between the steel fingers he could pour wine for his dinner guests without spilling a drop, button the front of his coat, clean his teeth, deal a hand of cards or tie his shoelaces.

He had devised a number of other fittings to replace the metal finger and thumb, which included a selection of fighting knives, a grip for a polo stick and a rest to hold the forestock of a rifle steady while he aimed the weapon with his usual accuracy. However, most formidable of all was a spiked battle mace. With this terrible club replacing his hand, Otto was able to splinter a heavy oak beam to kindling. She had seen him put a horse with a broken leg out of its misery with a blow that had shattered its skull.

Otto kissed her, then led his guests down the front steps of the Schloss . They climbed into a glistening black Meerbach touring car, Otto dismissed the chauffeur, took the wheel in his steel fist and they roared off in the direction of the factory. Eva waved him out of sight. Then, with a sigh of relief, she ran down to the forecourt, where one of the grooms was holding her favourite mare. As soon as she was out of sight of the Schloss she kicked her heels into the mare’s flanks and urged her into a headlong gallop down the bridlepath through the forest to the lake. These solitary rides were her only escape from the gloomy old castle and Otto.

Since she had known Leon it had become almost impossible for her to sustain her carefully rehearsed role as the Graf’s dutiful and doting mistress, and to satisfy his endless physical demands. There were nights when, with his naked muscular body pounding into hers, his flesh latticed by vivid red scars inflicted by the lion’s claws, his face swollen and inflamed with passion, sweat dripping from it on to her own, she had barely been able to prevent herself clawing with her fingernails at his passion-glazed eyes and throwing herself out of the great four-poster bed. She could not go on much longer before she made a mistake and he discovered that he had been gulled. When that happened his vengeance would be merciless. She was afraid, and longed to be safe in Leon’s arms, shielded by his love. There was not a moment of her waking existence when she did not miss him.

‘I love him but I know I’ll never see him again,’ she whispered, and the tears blew back across her cheeks with the speed of the mare’s gallop. At last they burst out on her favourite view across Lake Bodensee to the snow-clad heights of the Swiss Alps on the far side. She stopped on the high ground, wiped away her tears and gazed out across the blue waters. There were many sails in sight, but she picked out a tiny fishing-boat, running before the wind under a reefed mainsail and jib. A man was slumped lazily over the tiller in the stern, and a dark girl in a brightly coloured dress sat cross-legged on the foredeck. With an inscrutable expression she gazed across the water at Eva. Though they knew each other well, they had never spoken, and this was the closest they had ever been to an actual meeting. Eva did not know her name. Their relationship had been arranged by Penrod Ballantyne and Mr Goolam Vilabjhi.

The girl turned her head and said something to the man in the stern. He put the tiller over and tacked the fishing-boat. As it came across the wind, the blue swallow-tailed pennant at the masthead unfurled and flapped open. It was the signal that there was a message for Eva. The boat came about on the starboard tack and settled on a course for the Swiss shore of the lake.

Eva was relieved. For the past weeks she had been expecting a response to her last signal to Penrod in Nairobi. His silence had made her feel even more vulnerable. Although she was still bitter that he had separated her and Leon, Penrod was the only ally she had in all her lonely world. She gathered the reins and trotted the mare along the shore in the direction of Friedrichshafen. The Meerbach estates stretched for more than twenty miles.

At one point ahead a copse came to the water’s edge, the trees marking the juncture of the boundary wall with the lake. She reached the wall and dismounted to open the gate in it. The wall was a substantial construction of dry-packed stone blocks. Otto had boasted to her that it had been built originally by the Roman legionaries of Tiberius. She hitched the mare to the gate, climbed up on to the stone blocks and, her sketchpad open in her lap, gazed about as though she was admiring the scenery.

When she had satisfied herself that she was not observed, she reached down casually and lifted a mossy stone from its niche. In the recess beneath it lay the folded sheet of thin rice paper that the dark girl had placed there for her.

Eva put back the stone carefully before she unfolded the paper. She was alarmed to see that the script was in clear language, not coded. Her first thought was that a trap had been set for her. Swiftly she scanned the two lines of text, then gasped with astonishment. ‘Uncle gone stop What code are you using query Badger.’

Joy surged through her. ‘Badger!’ she exclaimed. ‘My darling Badger, you’ve found me.’ Although he was half a world away she was no longer completely alone. The knowledge armed her and strengthened her wounded heart. She put the scrap of rice paper into her mouth, chewed it and swallowed. Then, struggling to control her soaring emotions, she began a sketch of the lakeshore, with the spire of the Wieskirche in the background. Finally, satisfied that Otto had not sent any of his men to spy on her, she tore a small strip from the foot of the pad and wrote in neat block capitals: ‘MACMILLAN ENGLISH DICTIONARY JULY 1908 EDITION STOP FIRST NUMERAL GROUP IS PAGE STOP SECOND NUMERAL GROUP IS COLUMN STOP FINAL NUMERAL GROUP IS WORD FROM THE TOP STOP.’ She paused, searching for words to express her feelings adequately. Finally she wrote, ‘YOU ARE IN MY HEART FOR EVER.’ She did not add a signature. She folded the sheet and placed it carefully in the niche under the stone in the top of the wall. The girl from across the lake would come for it after dark. She would transmit it to Mr Goolam Vilabjhi, and by tomorrow evening Badger would be reading it in Nairobi. She sat for a while longer, bowed over the sketchpad, pretending to draw, but her spirits were bubbling like a freshly opened bottle of Dom Pérignon champagne.