Wilbur Smith - Assegai

Any normal human being would have been dead long ago, but this bastard is as tough as the skin on an elephant’s backside, he thought bitterly. ‘Bring the hunting car,’ he told Gustav. They placed the litter across the back seat, where Gustav and Hennie held it securely while he drove carefully to the hospital, avoiding the ruts and bumps in the track.

The hospital was a small building of mud-brick and thatch, across the road from the new Anglican church. It comprised a clinic, a rudimentary operating theatre and two small, empty wards. The entire building was deserted and Leon hurried to the cottage at the rear.

He found Doc Thompson and his wife sitting down to their dinner, but they left it on the table and rushed with Leon to the hospital. Mrs Thompson was the only trained nursing sister in the entire colony and took over immediately. Under her supervision Gustav and Hennie carried Graf Otto into the clinic and lifted him off the stretcher on to the examination table. While the doctor cut away the makeshift bandages, they dragged in a galvanized iron bath and filled it with hot water into which Mrs Thompson emptied a quart bottle of concentrated potassium of iodine. Then they lifted Graf Otto’s broken body off the table and lowered him into the steaming brew.

The pain was so excruciating that he was jerked out of the dark fog of coma, shrieking and struggling as he tried to drag himself out of the caustic antiseptic. They held him down mercilessly so that the iodine could soak into the deep, terrible wounds. Despite his antipathy towards the man, Leon found the spectacle of his agony harrowing. He backed to the door and slipped quietly out of the clinic into the sweet evening air.

By the time he reached the polo ground the sun had set. Paulus and Ludwig, two of the Meerbach mechanics, had got there before him: they had heard the Butterfly ’s earlier landing and had come to find out what was happening. Leon gave them a brief account of the Graf’s mauling, then said, ‘I must get back. I don’t know what has happened to Fräulein von Wellberg. She is there alone. She may be in danger. The Butterfly ’s fuel tanks are almost empty. What about the Bumble Bee ?’

‘We filled her up after you brought her in,’ Ludwig told him.

‘Help me to get the engines started.’ Leon went to the aircraft, and the mechanics ran after him.

‘You cannot fly in darkness!’ Ludwig protested.

‘The moon is only two nights from full and will rise within the next hour. Then it will be as bright as day.’

‘What if it clouds over?’

‘Not at this time of year,’ Leon told him. ‘Now, stop arguing. Give me a hand to get her started.’ He climbed into the cockpit and began the routine, but halfway through he stopped and tilted his head to listen to the galloping hoofbeats coming up the track from the town. ‘Damn it to hell,’ he muttered. ‘I was hoping to sneak away without attracting any unwelcome attention. Who’s this?’ He crouched below the cockpit coaming and watched the dark shape of horse and rider materialize out of the night. Then he sighed as he recognized the tall, portly figure in the saddle, even though he could not yet make out the face. ‘Uncle Penrod!’ he called.

The rider reined in. ‘Leon? Is that you?’

‘None other, sir.’ Leon tried to keep the tone of resignation from his voice.

‘What’s happening?’ Penrod asked. ‘I was having dinner with Hugh Delamere out at the Muthaiga Country Club when we heard the aircraft arriving. Almost immediately there were all sorts of rumours flying around the bar. Somebody had seen von Meerbach brought in on a stretcher. They were saying he’d been in an accident, bitten by a lion, and that Fräulein von Wellberg was dead or missing. I went up to the hospital but I was told that Doc was operating and wouldn’t talk to me. Then I realized that as there are only two people in the colony who can fly an aeroplane, and von Meerbach was apparently in no condition to do so, it had to have been you who had flown in. I came to look for you.’

Leon laughed ruefully. It was not easy to beat Brigadier General Ballantyne to the punch. ‘Uncle, you’re a bloody genius.’

‘So everybody keeps telling me. Now, my boy, I want a full report. What in the name of all that’s holy are you up to? What has really happened to von Meerbach, and where is the lovely Fräulein?’

‘Some of the rumours you heard are correct, sir. I brought von Meerbach in from the field. He was badly mauled by a lion, as you heard. I left him with Doc. I don’t think he’ll pull through. He’s badly hurt.’

‘How could you let it happen, Leon?’ Penrod’s tone betrayed his outrage. ‘By Gad, all my hard work gone to pot.’

‘He insisted on taking on the lion in the Masai fashion with the assegai . It had him down before I had a chance to prevent it.’

‘The man’s a bloody fool,’ Penrod snapped, ‘and you’re not much better. You should never have let him get himself into such a position. You knew how important it was, how much we were hoping to learn from him. Damn it! You should have stopped him. You should have looked after him as though he was a baby.’

‘A big bad baby with a mind of his own, sir. Not easy to look after.’ Leon’s tone was sharp with anger.

Penrod changed tack smoothly. ‘Where is von Wellberg? I hope you haven’t fed her to the lions too.’

The taunt riled Leon, as Penrod had intended it to. The truthful reply leaped angrily to his lips but, with an effort, he stopped it there. Eva’s warning echoed in his ears: 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.

Anybody at all. Had she meant to include Penrod in that warning? His mind raced. He recalled the incident at the regimental dinner when he had come across them in the garden. His suspicions at that time must have been well founded. Eva would never have dropped her guard like that unless there was some special understanding between them. Then he recalled how Eva had adumbrated her connections to the military. Penrod was the commander of the armed forces in the colony. It was all starting to take on a shadowy shape in his mind.

I am caught in the jaws of a monster , she had said. Was Penrod the monster? If so, then Leon had been on the point of betraying her. He took a deep breath and said firmly, ‘She disappeared, sir.’

‘What in hell do you mean, “disappeared”?’ Penrod barked.

His swift, sharp reaction confirmed Leon’s suspicions. Penrod was at the centre of the murky mystery.

You are a soldier, Badger, as I am. You know about duty and patriotism.

Yes, he was a soldier, and here he was, lying to his superior officer. Once before he had been found guilty of disobeying a superior officer and dereliction of duty. Now he was committing the same capital offences, but this time he was doing it deliberately and wilfully. Like Eva, he was caught in the jaws of the monster.

‘Come on, boy, spit it out. What do you mean she disappeared? People don’t just disappear.’

‘At the time of the lion attack I was trying to protect von Meerbach. He was the one in real jeopardy, not . . .’ he had almost said ‘Eva’ but corrected himself ‘. . . not the lady. I told her to stay well back, and I ran forward among the Masai. I lost sight of her in the confusion. Then, when the lion got von Meerbach down and ripped him up, I had only one thing on my mind, and that was to patch him up and get him to Doc Thompson. I didn’t think about Fräulein von Wellberg again until I was airborne, and by then it was too late to turn back for her. I trusted Manyoro and Loikot to find her and take care of her. I believe they will have taken her to safety. But right now I’m going to risk a night flight into the valley to make sure she’s all right.’