William Boyd - An Ice-Cream War

“You don’t happen to number Portuguese among your many tongues, do you?”

Felix was still overcome with the information he’d just received. He couldn’t be bothered with the idiotic, insane questions of this ludicrous bean-pole of a man.

“Portuguese? Yes, I speak it fluently.”

“You wouldn’t care for a job with GSO II (Intelligence), would you?” They were walking round the hospital back to the main street. “It seems my next task will be to liaise with our Portuguese allies, if and when von Lettow crosses the Rovuma, and I don’t speak a word.”

“No thank you,” Felix said firmly. “I’m fully committed to the Nigerian Brigade.”

“Are you coming?” the American asked casually, as if he were offering to drive him to the local railway station. “I’ve got orders to scout north anyway. They think there’s another column heading south from Tabora trying to rejoin Lettow.”

Felix paused. He experienced a sense of mounting desperation, he felt the imponderable obstacles of army custom and regulations hemming him in.

“I’ve got to come,” he said finally. “But my captain has only cleared me for today. What can I do?” he asked Temple.

“Easy,” Temple said. “Get Wheech-Browning here to say his motor car has broken down. We shouldn’t be more than two or three days.”

Wheech-Browning held up his hands. “Sony old chap. Not on, I’m afraid.”

“Come on ,” Temple persuaded. “It’s his brother for God’s sake.”

“It could be his great-grandmother for all I care,” Wheech-Browning said cheerily. “No can do.”

Felix felt like killing the man. Wheech-Browning was a major. Frearson wouldn’t suspect anything.

“Jesus Christ,” Temple swore incredulously. “Can’t you say it’s a matter of vital security?”

“Oh yes,” Wheech-Browning agreed. “I can say that. But then I’d have to come along too, do you see. I couldn’t say that, then send Cobb along in my place, could I now?”

Temple’s face set. He looked at Felix. “Is that all right with you?”

“Yes,” Felix said desperately, “anything.”

“Jolly good,” Wheech-Browning said. “Let’s pop back to battalion HQ. I’ll give your company commander a call.”

Von Bishop had hoped to catch up with his quarry long before, but it had proved harder than he thought to pick up his trail and necessitated a tedious to-ing and fro-ing between native villages, and the issuing of bribes and threats, before reports started to come in. Once they had reached the plateau he thought it would only be a matter of hours, but Cobb’s course was so erratic that the ruga-ruga kept losing his trail. Cobb had been on the move now for two full days: by all accounts he should be collapsing from exhaustion. It was remarkable that he’d got so far.

As dusk fell the ruga-ruga made their unwillingness to continue evident. They hadn’t expected to be away from Nanda this long either, but von Bishop pressed them on regardless. Each night when he camped Cobb lit a fire, judging from the remains they found. He hoped that tonight they would be close enough to him to spot it glimmering in the darkness. He had been on the point of calling a halt — the sun had disappeared, only the shred of an orange-pink sunset lightened the sky — when one of the ruga-ruga up ahead gave a whistle. A kilometre or so away, at the base of the darker mass of a rock kopje, was a tiny twinkle of flame.

♦

They stopped where they were and waited until it became fully dark. The ruga-ruga stood together whispering excitedly, clearly glad the chase was finally over. Von Bishop too felt a vague relief. He began to plot their next moves. They would have to head west for a while before wheeling south to the Ludjenda confluence. He wished suddenly that he had had the foresight to bring another mule. If Cobb was sick and weak their progress would be considerably impeded. Perhaps he could get the ruga-ruga to procure him one from a village: they couldn’t afford to waste any more time.

He wandered a little way from the group, staring at the twinkling point of light. There was a moon rising but it was too thin to make detection likely. He frowned with concentration, staring at Cobb’s fire — a tiny flicker in the vast encroaching darkness of the plateau — until his eyes watered.

What had made Cobb come to his house on that particular night? Sheer chance? Or was he really gathering intelligence? He’d known about Cobb for a long time: that the wounded Englishman was one of Deppe’s long-term projects. He’d even seen him once or twice. A manifestly sick, limping officer on parole who sometimes helped out in the ward…

He walked back to his mule. He waved one ruga-ruga twenty metres out to the left. He positioned another similarly on the right. To the third he gave the reins of his mule. He himself took the middle position. He could just see the ruga-ruga on either side. He unholstered his revolver. They would creep silently up to the fire. He was looking forward to seeing Cobb’s face when they stepped out of the gloom and into the fire-light.

He waved the men forward and they moved silently across the dark grass plain towards the glimmering fire. They were about a hundred metres away when von Bishop caught a glimpse of Cobb moving about in front of the flames. He seemed to be collecting twigs and wood for fuel. Von Bishop stopped and hissed at the ruga-ruga on either side to do the same. He would wait until Cobb had settled once more.

Just then his mule whinneyed. Not very loud — perhaps the ruga-ruga leading it had drawn it up too fiercely — but to von Bishop it sounded deafening. Swearing under his breath he dropped to one knee, peering ahead at the fire. But it still burned on. Cobb evidently felt there was no need to extinguish it. Von Bishop allowed himself a small sigh of relief. The African night was full of sounds, especially those made by animals.

For safety’s sake, though, he and the ruga-ruga remained where they were, crouched in the knee-high grass, for another ten minutes, before moving slowly forward once again. As they drew closer von Bishop felt a tightening in his chest. Cobb had made his camp between two spurs of rock at the foot of the kopje. Slowly more details emerged. A stunted thorn tree grew out of a large fissure. The flames caused shifting knife-edged shadows to be cast by the jagged rocks on each side. They inched closer. Then von Bishop suddenly stood up. Cobb had gone.

He strode angrily into the deserted camp site followed by the chattering ruga-ruga. Cobb had obviously left at once, and in haste, abandoning everything as soon as he heard the mule snicker in the dark. Von Bishop looked at the dry tufts of grass around the fire. One had been flattened from the pressure of a body. A sack hung from the thorn tree. A heel of unleavened bread lay on the ground beside a small bundle of sticks. A box of matches had been placed neatly on a round stone…

Von Bishop looked around him vainly. The light from the fire made the surrounding night impenetrably black. One of the ruga-ruga unhooked the sack from the thorn tree and brought it over. Von Bishop reached inside and drew out two candles. He reached in again and his hand closed on a book. He frowned with surprise. A book? He took it out. The worn black and gold leather binding was immediately familiar. He held the spine to the fire, attempting to read the faint lettering of the title. Die Leiden des jungen Werthers .

He recognized the book as his own. How curious, he thought; how on earth did Cobb come to have it? And where were all the missing pages? He tugged at his bottom lip in puzzlement. For what possible reason would Cobb want to read Goethe while on the run? Did he tear out each page after he had read it?