Wilbur Smith - Assegai

‘Yes.’ She smiled sadly. ‘I am from Northumberland.’

‘I don’t understand.’

She pushed the hair back from her eyes and shook her head. ‘No, Badger, you cannot understand. Oh, God! There’s so much you don’t know about me, and which I can’t tell you . . . yet.’

‘Tell me one thing. What do you truly feel for Otto von Meer-bach? Do you love him, Eva?’

Her eyes widened, then darkened with horror. ‘Love him?’ She gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘No, I don’t love him. I hate him with all my heart and to the depths of my soul.’

‘Then why are you here with him? Why do you behave towards him as you do?’

‘You’re a soldier, Badger, as I am. You know about duty and patriotism.’ She drew a long, deep breath. ‘But I’ve had enough. I cannot go on. I’m not going with you to Nairobi. If I do I’ll never be able to escape.’

‘Who are you trying to escape from?’

‘Those who own my soul.’

‘Where will you go?’

‘I don’t know. Some secret place where they cannot find me.’ She reached out to him and took his hand. ‘I was relying on you, Leon. I hoped you could find a place where I might hide. Somewhere to which we could escape together.’

‘What about him?’ He indicated the blood-smeared body lying on the deck between them. ‘We cannot leave him to die, as he surely will if we don’t do something soon.’

‘No,’ she agreed. ‘Despite my feelings towards him, we cannot do that. Find me a place to hide. Leave me there. Come back for me as soon as you can. That is my only chance of winning my freedom.’

‘Freedom? Aren’t you free now?’

‘No. I am the captive of circumstances. You don’t believe that I chose to be what I have become, what they have made me, do you?’

‘What are you? What have you become?’

‘I have become a whore and an impostor, a liar and a cheat. I am caught in the jaws of a monster. Once I was like you, good, honest and innocent. I want to be like that again. I want to be like you. Will you have me? Shop-soiled and dirty as I am, will you take me?’

‘Oh, God, Eva, there’s nothing I want more. I’ve loved you from the first moment I laid eyes on you.’

‘Then no more questions now. I beg you. Hide me here in the wilderness. Take Otto to Nairobi. If anybody there asks about me, and I mean anybody at all, don’t tell them where I am. Tell them simply that I’ve disappeared. Leave Otto at the hospital. If he survives they will send him back to Germany. But as soon as you can, you must return to me. I will explain everything to you then. Will you do it? The Lord knows there’s no reason why you should, but will you trust me?’

‘You know I will,’ he said softly, then he shouted, ‘Manyoro! Loikot!’ They were waiting close at hand. The orders he had for them were short and to the point. It took him less than a minute to issue them. He turned back to Eva. ‘Go with them,’ he told her. ‘Do as they tell you. You can trust them.’

‘I know I can. But where will they take me?’

‘To Lonsonyo Mountain. To Lusima,’ he answered, and watched all the worry disappear from her violet eyes.

‘To our mountain?’ she said. ‘Oh, Leon, from the first moment I saw it I knew Lonsonyo had a special significance for us.’

While they were speaking Manyoro had found the carpet bag in which Eva carried her personal things. He dragged it out of the stowage hatch at the rear of the cockpit and tossed it down to Loikot, who was standing below the fuselage, then vaulted over the side. For the moment Leon and Eva were alone together. They gazed at each other wordlessly. He reached out to touch her, and she came into his arms with a swift, lissom grace. They clung to each other, as though they were trying to meld their bodies into a single entity. Her lips quivered against his cheek as she whispered, ‘Kiss me, my darling. I have waited so long. Kiss me now.’

Their lips came together, as lightly at first as two butterflies touching in flight, then stronger, deeper, so that he could taste her essence and savour the warmth of her tongue and the pink, fragrant recesses of her mouth. That first kiss seemed to last an instant yet all of eternity. Then with an effort, they broke apart and stared at each other in awe.

‘I knew I loved you, but not until this moment did I realize how much,’ he said softly.

‘I know, for I feel it also,’ she replied. ‘Until this moment, I never knew what it would be like to trust and love somebody completely.’

‘You must go,’ he told her. ‘If you stay another minute I cannot trust myself to let you go.’

She tore her eyes from his and looked out across the pan to where the morani and the villagers were streaming back towards them. Some were carrying the carcasses of the two lions slung on poles, their heads hanging.

‘Gustav and Hennie are coming,’ she said. ‘They must not see me leave or know where I have gone.’ She kissed him again swiftly, then broke away. ‘I shall wait for you to come back to me, and every second that we are apart will be agony and an eternity.’ Then, with a rustle and flurry of skirts, she sprang out of the cockpit. With Manyoro and Loikot on each side of her she ran for the trees, screened from Gustav and Hennie by the fuselage of the aircraft. When they reached the treeline Eva paused to look back. She waved, then vanished into the forest. He was surprised by the desolation that came over him now that she was gone, and he made a conscious effort to shake off the mood and brace himself to meet Gustav, who was scrambling into the cockpit.

He fell on his knees beside Graf Otto’s body. ‘Oh, my God, my good God!’ he cried. ‘He is killed!’ Unaffected tears streamed down his weathered cheeks. ‘Please, God, spare him! He was more than my own father to me.’ Apparently Gustav had forgotten the existence of Eva von Wellberg.

‘He’s not dead,’ Leon told him brusquely, ‘but he soon will be if you don’t get the engines started so I can take him to a doctor.’ Gustav and Hennie sprang to work, and within a few minutes all four engines were rumbling and popping blue smoke scented with castor oil as they warmed up. Leon swung the Butterfly ’s nose to the wind, and waited for the engines to settle down to a steady beat, then shouted at Gustav and Hennie, ‘Hold him steady!’

They crouched beside the makeshift stretcher on which Graf Otto lay and took a firm grasp. Leon pushed the throttles forward to the stops. The aircraft roared and rolled forward. As he lifted her over the trees he looked over the side, searching for Eva. He saw her then. She and the Masai had covered the ground, and they were already a quarter of a mile beyond the perimeter of the pan. She was running a little behind the other two. She stopped and looked up, swept off her hat and waved. Her hair tumbled down her shoulders and she was laughing, and he knew that her laughter was for his encouragement. He felt his heart squeezed by her courage and fortitude, but he dared not return her wave for it might draw Gustav’s attention to the little figure far below. The Butterfly roared on, climbing towards the rampart of the Rift Valley wall.

It was late afternoon and the sun was setting when Leon set the Butterfly down on the Nairobi polo ground. It was deserted, for nobody was expecting them. He taxied to the hangar where the hunting car was parked, shut down the engines and, between them, they manhandled the stretcher over the side of the cockpit and lowered Graf Otto to the ground.

Leon examined him briefly. He could detect no breathing, and Graf’s skin was deathly pale, damp and cold to the touch. He showed no signs of life. Leon felt a guilty jolt of relief that his wish for the man’s death had been so swiftly realized. But then he touched Graf Otto’s neck under the ear and felt the carotid artery throbbing feebly and irregularly. Then he placed his ear to the man’s lips and heard the faint hiss of air, in and out of his lungs.