Wilbur Smith - Assegai

For most of that night Eva lay awake, listening to Otto’s snores. Every once in a while he startled himself awake with their force and fury, but then he grunted and lapsed back into sleep. She was thankful for this last opportunity to consider what she had to do before they left on their journey. She must get one last message to Leon, confirming that Otto was bringing the Assegai to Africa, laden with arms and bullion for the Boer rebels, and that, almost certainly, he would fly down the Nile and through the Rift Valley on his way southwards. When she told him the date on which the Assegai would come, Leon’s duty would be to prevent the airship getting through by any means, including, as a last resort, attacking it with lethal force. However, her immediate dilemma was whether or not she should warn him that she would be on board. If he knew she was, his concern for her safety might weaken his resolve. At the very least it would be deleterious to his performance of his duty. She decided not to tell him, and they would both have to take their chances when they met again in the high blue African skies.

The outbreak of the Great War had been signalled not by the stroke of a pen or a single fateful pronouncement. It had taken place like a train smash in which coach after coach had run without braking into a huge pile of wreckage. Driven by the impetus of their treaties of mutual aid, Austria had declared war on Serbia, Germany had declared war on Russia and France, and finally, on 4 August 1914, Britain had declared war on Germany. The fire and smoke that Lusima had foreseen had spread out to envelop the world.

Once more the population of the newly united South Africa was divided. Louis Botha was the former commander of the old Boer Army and his comrade in arms, General Jannie Smuts, had fought at his side against the combined forces of the British Empire. Most of the other Boer leaders hated the British and were strongly in favour of joining the conflict on the side of the Kaiser’s Germany. It was only by the narrowest margin that Louis Botha carried Parliament with him and was able to send a cable to London informing the British Government that they were free to release all the imperial forces in southern Africa because he and his army would take over the defence of the southern half of the continent against Germany. Gratefully, London accepted his offer, then asked if Botha and his army could invade the neighbouring German South-west Africa and silence the radio stations at Luderitzbucht and Swakop-mund, which were sending a steady stream of vital information to Berlin, detailing all movements of the Royal Navy in the southern Atlantic. Botha agreed immediately, but in the meantime bloody revolt was brewing among his men.

Botha was only one of three former Boer leaders and heroes known as the Triumvirate. The other two were Christiaan de Wet and Herculaas ‘Koos’ de la Rey. De Wet had already declared for Germany, and all his men went with him. They were holed up in their fortified encampment on the edge of the Kalahari desert, and Botha had not yet sent a force to bring them in. Once he did, rebellion would break out in full force and the ravening beasts of civil war would burst raging from their cage.

Although de la Rey had not come out openly against Botha and Britain, nobody doubted that it was only a matter of time before he did so. They did not suspect that he was awaiting news from Germany on the flight of the Assegai from Wieskirche to his succour. This news would be sent from Berlin through the powerful radio installation at Swakopmund in German South-west Africa, just over the border from South Africa.

In Wieskirche the Assegai was taking on her final cargo. Graf Otto von Meerbach and Commodore Alfred Lutz struggled all night with the loading manifest. Much of the calculation was a matter of guesswork and instinct: no man alive had experienced flight in an airship over the Sahara desert during the summer months when air temperatures could range from fifty-five degrees centigrade at noon to zero at midnight.

The Assegai ’s total gas volume was 2.5 million cubic feet of hydrogen, but daily she would be obliged to valve off large volumes of this to compensate for the weight of fuel she was burning. Otherwise she would become so light that she would go into an uncontrolled rush to upper space, where her crew would perish from cold and lack of oxygen. The main tanks were filled to the brim with 549,850 pounds of fuel, 4680 pounds of oil and 25,000 pounds of water ballast. Her crew, of twenty-two men and one woman, and their severely restricted personal luggage weighed 3885 pounds. Theoretically, this allowed a useful cargo of 35,800 pounds to be taken on board. But in the end Graf Otto decided to abandon 7000 pounds of mortar bombs to make way for additional gold bullion. That would be the weight to swing the arms of the scale in their favour.

All the coin had been struck in eighteen-carat gold. There were almost equal amounts of authentic British sovereigns and Deutsches Reich ten-mark coins. The money was packed first into small canvas bags, which were placed in sturdy ammunition cases, the lids securely screwed down. The final tally was 220 cases. Each case packed with coin weighed 110 troy pounds. This was the usual pack carried by an African porter on safari. Historically gold was always valued in American dollars and it had been fixed at twenty-one dollars per fine ounce for decades. Graf Otto was quick with figures: the value of his cargo in round terms would be nine million dollars, which, despite the current chaos in the exchange markets caused by the outbreak of war, was the equivalent of two million pounds sterling.

‘That should be enough to keep the Boers smiling sweetly for a long time to come!’ He personally supervised the baggage-handlers as they packed the chests in neat rows down the length of the main salon of the Assegai and lashed each one to the ring bolts in the deck. On top he laid the cases of live ammunition and the crates of Maxim machine-guns.

By the time the last had been secured, there was little space for the crew to move around the airship and attend to their duties. In an attempt to alleviate the problem, Graf Otto ordered that the bulkheads between the cabins be taken out and the bunks removed. The crew would be forced to sleep on the wooden deck. He had the chart and radio rooms knocked down, then moved forward to the control gondola under the bows. Three latrines were stripped out to make extra space; only one remained to provide for the needs of twenty-three people. There was to be no differentiation between the men and the woman, the senior officers and the Lascar cook. The laundry was dispensed with and the galley halved in size. A small electric stove would be enough to heat soup and coffee and turn out a pot of porridge each morning, but there would be no other hot food. The milk would be powdered; sausage, cold meat and hard biscuit would make up any shortfall. He would allow no alcohol on board. It would be a bare-bones ship, stripped of all but the necessities.

The last dinner before departure was a banquet held in the Assegai ’s shed under the massive silver bulk of the airship. At the last moment one of the Meerbach limousines, driven by a uniformed chauffeur, brought Eva from the Schloss . She was wearing her flying gear, with boots, gloves and a goggled helmet. The chauffeur carried her valise, which was all the luggage she had.

Until she arrived the crew had not known she would be travelling with them. Her beauty and charm had made her a universal favourite, so they gave her a hearty welcome. Hennie du Rand had not seen her since the voyage back from Mombasa on the SS Admiral . Rough and graceless man of the soil that he was, he bowed and kissed her hand. His companions hooted with glee and he blushed like a schoolboy.