‘What do you plan to do?’ Hammond asked Kemp.
‘Go on into Kodowa this afternoon, with enough chaps of my own and of Sadiq’s to make a reasonable show of solidarity. We have to locate their officialdom, if any, and find out the precise facts. And we’re going to need food, and water—they ran a hell of a lot out of the tanker—and medical help. I’d like you both to come and I’ll choose a few of the others.’
We were interrupted by Sandy Bing, coming up at the run.
‘Brad says will you come, Mister Kemp. Mister Wingstead’s awake.’
‘Be right there.’
The awning had been strung up at the rig’s side and under it Geoff Wingstead was sitting up and seemed a lot brighter. He reached up to pump Kemp’s hand with obvious pleasure.
‘You’re all OK, then?’ he said.
‘Yes, we’re fine. Problems, but no accidents,’ said Kemp.
‘I had to come up here and see for myself how you were doing. But I can’t fly a plane and Max…’ He broke off for
a moment, then went on. ‘Well, he’s quite a fellow. They tell me he’s in a bad way. Can we get help for him?’
Briefly, Kemp put him in the picture concerning the situation up ahead at Kodowa, or as much of it as we ourselves knew. Wingstead looked grave as we recapped the events of the past couple of days.
Finally he said, ‘So we’re OK for fuel, not too good for water, food or doctors. Well, you may not know it all, but you can probably guess that you’re a damn sight better off here than if you had stayed in Port Luard. At least you’re all alive.’
‘Is it that bad?’ I asked.
‘Bloody bad. Riots, strife, total breakdown of authority. Shooting in the streets. Looting. Docks burning, police helpless, military running amok in every direction. All the usual jolly things we see on the nine o’clock news.’
‘Oh, great. No getting out for us benighted foreigners, I suppose?’
‘In theory, yes. But the airport’s in rebel hands and the commercial planes aren’t coming in. Kigonde’s off somewhere trying to rally his army. I heard that Ousemane was dead, and that Daondo’s managed to slip out of the country—which figures. He’s a smart one, that lad. But none of the news is certain.’
Kemp, Hammond and I stared at him as he reeled off the grim facts.
‘It’s a shambles, and I don’t quite know what we’re going to do about it. I had to get up here, though. Guessed you’d not be getting regular news bulletins and might feel a bit lonely without me.’
Too true, Geoff. We all feel
much
better now,’ I said sardonically, and he grinned at me. ‘Yes, well, it didn’t seem too difficult at first. I asked Max if he was game and he couldn’t wait to give it a bash. And we’d have done all right, too, only…’
He paused for a moment.
‘We’d seen the air force types streaking about here and there, taking no notice of us. And quite a lot of ground movement, tank troops, armoured columns and so on, but no actual fighting once we were clear of Port Luard.’
‘How did you achieve that, by the way?’
‘Oh, real
Boy’s Own
stuff. It’ll make a good tale one day. Anyway we figured we’d catch up with you about Kodowa. You’re nicely to schedule, Kemp, by the way. My congratulations.’
Kemp snorted.
‘We reckoned to land there and cadge a lift back to you. There hadn’t been any sign of the insurrection, you see, so we thought it was quieter up here. And then…it all happened at the same moment. I saw you, saw the rig parked and we started to come in for a closer look…there were some military trucks quite close and I wasn’t sure if it was your official escort or not. And then there was this almighty slam and jerk and Max said we’d been hit. Christ, I…still can’t really believe it. We hadn’t
seen
any planes, couldn’t believe we were being attacked. Max was superb. I think he was hit by a bit of metal, because he was already bleeding when he decided he had to put us down. It was a marvellous show, wasn’t it, Neil? You saw it happen, didn’t you?’
‘Yes. It was great.’
He lay back against the pillow. ‘I can fill you in with lots of detail about what’s going on back in Port Luard, but I’m afraid I’ve come up here without a thought in my head about getting you all out,’ he said apologetically. He was looking a little faded, I thought. I decided to let him rest, but perhaps in a more optimistic frame of mind.
‘We’ve got a plan, haven’t we, Basil?’
‘You have?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Kemp said, playing along stoutly. ‘Neil’s idea really, and it’s a very good one. We’ve every reason to think
it may work. Look, I think you’d better rest up a bit. We’re not going anywhere for what’s left of today, not with the rig anyway. And the more rest you have now the more use you’ll be to us tomorrow.’
Out of Wingstead’s earshot we stopped and took a simultaneous deep breath.
‘Do you think what I think?’ Kemp asked.
‘I do,’ I said grimly. ‘What I’d like to know is whether half of our gallant captain’s men are rebels, or whether it was all nicely official from the start. Sadiq couldn’t have known that Geoff was coming, but he may have left blanket orders to stop anyone who tried to get to us. He’s inclined to be over-protective. Alternatively, he’s got traitors in his ranks and doesn’t know it.’
‘Or he’s one himself.’
‘I don’t think so. In that case he’d have immobilized us quite easily, long before this.’
‘Are you going to ask him?’ Hammond asked.
‘Not yet. I think we should string him along a little. I suggest that we say nothing of this to anyone, and go ahead with the plan to inspect Kodowa a little more closely. We need Sadiq for that, and as long as we keep alert, we may as well make the most use of him we can.’
When we breasted the rise and looked down, my first thought was that the problem was not that of getting beyond Kodowa but
into
it. Much of the town was still burning.
The central core of Kodowa consisted of two short streets running north and south and two intersecting streets running east and west. None of them was as wide or as well made as the great road on which we’d been travelling so far. This was the modern, ‘downtown’ area. The biggest building was three storeys high, or had been. Now it and most of the others lay in rubble on the streets.
The rest of the town had been of the local African architecture. But palm thatch burns well, and mud walls
crumble with ease, and it looked as though a little section of hell had been moved into that valley. I don’t know if the local authorities ever had any fire regulations, but if so they hadn’t worked. Flames, driven by a wind which funnelled up the valley, had jumped across the streets and there wasn’t going to be much left when the fires finally died.
Sadiq said, ‘They have killed this place.’ His voice sounded bitter.
I twisted in my seat. I was driving with Sadiq because Kemp and I had planned it that way. Kemp had packed the Land Rover and the car with his own men so that there was no room for me. The idea was that I should be at hand to keep an eye on Sadiq.
Where the road narrowed as it entered the town it was blocked by a slow moving line of ramshackle traffic, beat up old cars and pick-up trucks, bullock carts and bicycles, all moving outwards, and slowed even more by one large limousine which had stalled right across the road. Sadiq drove off the road and unhooked his microphone. I got out and went towards the stalled car. The hood was up and two men were poking about under the bonnet, one a Nyalan and the other one of the Asiatic merchants who seem to monopolize so much of small retail business all over Africa. In this case he was a Syrian.
I tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Get this car off the road. Push it.’
He turned a sweaty face to me and grimaced uncomprehendingly. I made gestures that they should shift the car and he shook his head irritably, spat out a short sentence I didn’t understand, and turned back to the car. That was enough. 1 leaned over his shoulder, grabbed a handful of wiring and pulled. The only place that car could go now was off the road.
The Syrian whirled furiously and grabbed my shoulder. I let him have a fist in the gut, and he sprawled to the ground. He tried to scramble to his feet and clawed under
his coat for some weapon so I kicked him in the ribs and he went down again just as Sadiq came up, unfastening the flap of his pistol holster.
‘You have no right to attack citizens, Mister Mannix,’ he said angrily.
I pointed to the ground. A heavy cosh had spilled out of the Syrian’s jacket and lay near his inert hand.
‘Some guys need a lot of persuading,’ I said mildly. ‘Let’s get this thing out of here.’ The other man had vanished.
Sadiq’s pistol was a better persuader than my voice. He grabbed four able-bodied men out of the milling throng and within three minutes the road was cleared. As he reholstered his pistol he said,‘You believe in direct action, Mister Mannix?’
‘When necessary—but I’m getting too old for brawling.’ In fact the small display of aggression had done me the world of good. I’d really been needing to let off steam and it had been the Syrian merchant’s bad luck to have been a handy target.
‘I would prefer you do no more such things. For the moment please stay with your own men. Tell Mister Kemp I will meet him in the central square soon.’ He was off before I had a chance to respond.
I pushed through the crowds and found our Land Rover parked at the intersection of the two main roads. Dozens of distressed, battle-shocked people milled about and smouldering debris lay everywhere. Our eyes watered with the sting of acrid smoke. Broken glass crunched under our boots as we picked our way through the rubble. The Nyalans shrank away from us, weeping women pulling their bewildered children from our path. It was incredibly disturbing.
It became obvious pretty soon that there was no one in charge; we saw no policemen, no soldiers apart from Sadiq’s own troops, and no sign of a doctor, a hospital or even a Red Cross post. Attempts to get sensible answers from passers-by
proved useless. Presently, utterly dispirited, we decided to withdraw.
The stream of refugees thinned out as we left the town but there were still a lot of them, going God knows where. But I was interested and pleased to see that on the outskirts Sadiq had set up the rudiments of a command post, and slowly his troops were beginning to bring order out of the chaos, reuniting families and doing a little crude first aid of their own. A makeshift camp was already taking shape and people were being bedded down, and some sort of food and drink was being circulated. It made me feel more confident about Sadiq.
We left him to get on with it. Our men were ready enough to give assistance, but we were not welcome and what little we had to offer wouldn’t go nearly far enough. Kemp was anxious to keep our unit together; the crew were his responsibility and he was still thinking in terms of the safety of the rig. We drove back to our camp site in the dusk feeling very depressed.
Kemp went to give Wingstead an edited version of what we’d found. I settled down for a quiet cigarette while waiting for the meal that Bishop was preparing for us, and into the silence McGrath and Ron Jones settled down alongside me. Two cigarettes and one foul pipe glowed in the dusk.
‘A hell of a thing, this,’ Ron Jones said presently. The Welsh lilt in his voice seemed more pronounced than in full daylight. ‘Shouldn’t we be back there helping?’
‘We can’t do much,’ I said. ‘And I don’t think Captain Sadiq really wants us. If he needs us he knows where we are.’
‘We could spare them a bit of food, though.’
McGrath snorted.
‘There could be five thousand people out there, Ron, and none of us is Jesus Christ. Five French loaves and two lobster tails?’ I asked.
McGrath said, ‘They get wind of our food stocks and they’ll mob us, as like as not. I’d be happier with a gun in my fist, myself.’
‘I don’t know if you’re right. Nyalans are peaceable folk. A gun may not be such a good idea. People tend to get the wrong impression when armed foreigners wander about taking part in someone else’s war.’
‘I’d still be happier with a gun in my cab,’ he said. ‘One of those Russian Kalashnikovs that the black lads carry, maybe. Better still, a Uzi like Sadiq has in his car.’
I glanced at him. ‘You’re observant.’
‘It pays. I told you I was in the army once myself.’
‘What rank?’
He grinned. ‘Never more than sergeant. But I made sergeant three times.’
Ron Jones laughed, ‘I never had the pleasure of army life,’ he said. ‘This is my idea of something to watch on the telly, not be caught in the middle of.’
Wingstead had said something similar. I reflected that a lot of men of my age were comparative innocents, after all.
McGrath said, ‘Not this mess, maybe. But there are worse lives.’ In the twilight he seemed even bigger than he looked by day, a formidable figure. He tamped down his pipe and went on, ‘I’ve seen sights like this before though, many times, in other countries. It’s all right for the soldiers but for the civilians it’s very sad indeed. But there’s nothing you or I can do about it.’
I had seen it before too. I thought back to my young days, to Pusan and Inchon, to the wrecked towns and refugee-lined roads, the misery and the squalor. I didn’t want to see it ever again.
McGrath suddenly dug his elbow into my ribs.
‘There’s someone out there—with a white face. I think it’s a woman!’
He scrambled to his feet and ran into the growing darkness.
Her name was Sister Ursula and she was a nun, and how in hell McGrath had detected that she had a white face in the semi-darkness I’ll never know because it was blackened and smudged with smoke and wood ash. Her habit was torn and scorched, and slashed down one side showing that she wore long pants to the knee. She managed it so decorously that it didn’t show most of the time.
She was tired but very composed, and showed few signs of strain. I once knew a man who was an atheist; he was also a plumber and had done a week’s stint in a convent fixing the water system. He’d gone in with the firm conviction that all religious types were nutters of some sort. When he finished I asked him what he now thought about the contemplative life. He said, ‘Those women are the sanest lot of people I’ve ever met,’ and seemed baffled by it.
I went to my gear and fetched out a bottle of whisky. This was no time to be following Kemp’s camp rules. When I got back she was sitting on a stool surrounded by our men. They were full of curiosity but polite about it, and I was pleased to see that they weren’t badgering her with questions. McGrath’s eyes gleamed when he saw the whisky. ‘A pity it’s only Scotch,’ he said. ‘Irish would be better, wouldn’t it, Sister?’
Her lips curved in a small, tired smile. ‘Right now, whisky is whisky. Thank you, Mister—Mannix, is it?’
I’d have said that she was about thirty-five, maybe forty, but she could well have been older; it’s never easy to tell with nuns. When Hollywood makes movies about them they pick the Deborah Kerrs and Julie Andrews, but Sister Ursula wasn’t like that. She had a full jaw, her eyebrows were thick black bars which gave her a severe and daunting look, and her face was too thin, as though she didn’t eat enough. But when she smiled she was transformed, lovely to look at. We found out that she didn’t use that radiant smile very often; and with reason, just at that time.
I said, ‘Someone get a glass, please.’
‘From the bottle is good enough,’ she said, and took it from me. She swallowed and coughed a couple of times, and handed it back to me. The men watched transfixed, though whether this was the effect of the nun or the bottle I wasn’t sure.
‘Ah. It tastes as good as it did last time—some six years ago.’
‘Have some more.’
‘No, thank you. I need no more.’
Several voices broke in with questions but I overrode them. ‘Pipe down, you guys, and quit crowding.’ Obediently they shuffled back a pace. I bent over Sister Ursula and spoke more quietly. ‘You look pretty beat; do you want to sleep somewhere?’
‘Oh no, but I would dearly like a chance to clean up.’ She put her stained hands to her face and then brushed at her skirts. Although she was a nun, she was vain enough to care about her appearance.
I said, ‘Sandy, see there’s some hot water. Ben, can the lads rig a canvas between the trucks to make a bathroom? Perhaps you’ll join us for a meal when you’re ready, Sister.’
Young Bing sped off and Hammond set the men to putting up a makeshift tent for her. McGrath was helping her to her feet and hovering like a mother hen; presumably as a Catholic he regarded her in some especially proprietorial light. Eventually she thanked us all and disappeared into the tent with a bowlful of water and a spare kettle and someone’s shaving mirror.
Kemp had been with Wingstead and Otterman and had arrived a little late for all this excitement. I filled him in and he regarded the tent thoughtfully.
‘I wonder where the others are?’ he said.
‘Others?’
‘There’ll be at least one more. Nuns are like coppers—they go around in pairs. Most likely there’s a whole brood of them somewhere. With any luck they’re a nursing sisterhood.’
I was being pretty slow, perhaps simply tired out, but at last the penny dropped. ‘You mean they’ll come from a hospital or a mission? By God, perhaps you’re right. That means they may have a doctor!’
She came out half an hour later, looking well-scrubbed and much tidier. We were ready to eat and I asked her if she wished to join us, or to eat on her own. Someone must have lent her a sewing kit for the rip in her habit had been neatly mended.
‘I’ll join you, if I might. You’re very kind. And you’ll all be wanting to hear what I have to say,’ she said rather dryly.
I noticed that she said a short, private grace before actually coming to the table, and appreciated her courtesy: doing it publicly might well have embarrassed some of the men. She sat between Kemp and me and I quickly filled her in on our names and business, of which she said she had heard a little on the radio, in the far-off days of last week before the war broke out. We didn’t bother her while she
was eating but as soon as was decent I asked the first question. It was a pretty all-embracing one.
“What happened?’
‘It was an air raid,’ she said. ‘Surely you know.’
‘We weren’t here. We were still further south. But we guessed.’
‘It was about midday. There had been some unrest, lots of rumours, but that isn’t uncommon. Then we heard that there were tanks and soldiers coming through the town, so Doctor Katabisirua suggested that someone should go and see what was happening.’
‘Who is he?’ Kemp asked.
‘Our chief at the hospital.’ There was an indrawing of breath at the table as we hung on her words. Kemp shot me a look almost of triumph.
‘Sister Mary sent me. It wasn’t very far, only a short drive into town. When I got there I saw a lot of tanks moving through the town, far too quickly, I thought. They were heading north, towards Ngingwe.’
Ngingwe was the first village north of Kodowa, which showed that Sadiq had probably been right when he said that Hussein’s lot would go northwards to join forces with his superior.
‘They got through the town but some soldiers stayed back to keep the road clear. We heard that there were more tanks still coming from the south of the town.’ Those would be the tanks that we had seen shot up. ‘There were still a lot of people in the town square when the planes came. They came in very fast, very low. Nobody was scared at first. We’ve seen them often, coming and going from the Air Force base out there.’ She pointed vaguely westward.
‘How many planes, Sister?’ Kemp asked.
‘I saw seven. There may have been more. Then things happened very quickly. There was a lot of noise—shooting and explosions. Then the sound of bombs exploding, and
fires started everywhere. It was so sudden, you see. I took shelter in Mister Ithanga’s shop but then it started to fall to pieces and something must have hit me on the head.’
In fact she had no head wound, and I think she was felled by the concussion blast of a missile. She couldn’t have been unconscious long because when I saw the shop next day it was a fire-gutted wreck. She said that she found herself coming to in the street, but didn’t know how she got there. She said very little about her own part in the affair after that, but we gathered that eventually she got back to the hospital with a load of patients, her little car having escaped major damage, to find it already besieged by wailing, bleeding victims.
But they were not able to do much to help. With a very small staff, some of whom were local and only semi-trained, and limited supplies of bedding, food and medicines they were soon out of their depth and struggling. Adding to their problems were two major disasters: their water supply and their power had both failed. They got their water from a well which ran sweet and plentiful normally, but was itself connected to other local wells, and somewhere along the line pipes must have cracked, because suddenly the well ran dry except for buckets of sludgy muck. And horrifyingly, shortly after the town’s own electricity failed, the hospital’s little emergency generator also died. Without it they had no supply of hot water, no cooking facilities bar a small backup camping gas arrangement, and worst of all, no refrigeration or facilities for sterilizing. In short, they were thrown back upon only the most basic and primitive forms of medication, amounting to little more than practical first aid.
It was late afternoon and they were already floundering when the hospital was visited by Captain Sadiq. He spent quite a time in discussion with the doctor and Sisters Mary and Ursula, the leading nuns of the small colony, and it was finally decided that one of them should come back with him to the convoy, to speak to us and find out if our technical
skills could be of any use. Sister Ursula came as the doctor couldn’t be spared and Sister Mary was elderly.
Kemp asked why Captain Sadiq hadn’t personally escorted her to the camp and seen her safe. He was fairly indignant and so was I at this dereliction.
‘Ah, he’s so busy, that man. I told him to drop me at the military camp and I walked over. There’s nothing wrong with me now, and walking’s no new thing to us, you know.’
‘It could have been damned dangerous.’
‘I didn’t think so. There were a score of people wishing to speak to the Captain, and no vehicles to spare. And here I am, safe enough.’
‘That you are, Sister. You’ll stay here tonight? I’m sure you could do with a night’s sleep. In the morning we’ll take you back to the hospital, and see what we can do to help.’
Kemp had changed quite a lot in a short time. While not inhumane, I’m fairly sure that as little as three days ago he would not have been quite so ready to ditch his transportation job at the drop of a hat to go to the rescue of a local mission hospital. But the oncome of the war, the sight of the burnt out town with its hapless population, and perhaps most of all the injury to one of his own, our pilot, had altered his narrow outlook.
Now he added, ‘One of our men is badly hurt, Sister. He was in a plane crash and he needs help. Would you look at him tonight?’
‘Of course,’ she said with ready concern.
Ben Hammond had left the table, and now came back to join us with a stack of six-packs of beer in his arms.
‘We’ve relaxed the rationing for tonight,’ he said. ‘Everybody deserves it. Sister, you wouldn’t take a second shot of whisky, but maybe you’ll settle for this instead?’ He handed her a can from the pack.
She tightened her fist around the can.
‘Why, it’s ice cold!’
Hammond smiled. ‘It just came out of the fridge.’
‘You have a refrigerator? But that’s marvellous. We can preserve our drugs then, praise be to God!’
Kemp and Hammond exchanged the briefest of glances, but I could guess what they were thinking. There was no way that refrigerator could be left at the hospital, urgent though its need might be; it was run by the generator that was solidly attached to the rig, and without which nothing could function.
Things looked better the next morning, but not much. No smoke wreathed up from the distant town but I suspected that this was because there was nothing left there to burn. We were greatly cheered when Sam Wilson told us that he had located a source of clean water, a well at a nearby village which hadn’t been affected by the bombing, and which seemed to have a healthy supply. He intended to fill the water tanker and top up drinking containers. When he learned about the water shortage at the hospital he said that there should be enough for them too, assuming they had some sort of tank in which to store it.
Geoff Wingstead joined us for breakfast and met Sister Ursula for the first time. She had been to see Otterman but wanted him taken to the hospital for the doctor to see, and now looked professionally at Wingstead’s gash and bruises and approved of what had been done for them. Wingstead insisted that he was now perfectly well and was eager to see the town and the hospital for himself. In spite of his heavy financial commitment, he seemed far less anxious about the rig and Wyvern Transport’s future than Kemp did. Perhaps it was just that he was younger and more adventurous.
I drove back to the town in the Land Rover with Kemp, Wingstead, Sister Ursula, and Hammond. Sadiq came over just before we left and said that he would see us at the hospital a little later. He looked drawn and harassed. The lack
of communication from his superiors and the consequent responsibility was taking its toll, but even so he was bearing up pretty well. Kemp and I still had a nagging doubt as to his loyalty, but we’d seen nothing to prove the case one way or the other, except that he was still with us, which probably counted for something. As for the shooting down of our plane, nothing whatever had been said about it and I was content to let the question lie.
The fires had burnt themselves out and the heavy pall of smoke of yesterday was replaced by a light haze fed by ash and still smouldering embers. Kodowa had nothing left worth destroying. A few isolated buildings still stood, but most of the centre was gone, and it was by no means sure that when we cleared the rubble we would find an intact road surface beneath it.
People wandered about still, but very few of them. Many had simply melted back into the bush, others had gone to cluster round the hospital or the army encampment, and we’d seen pathetic faces hovering near our own camp during the early hours of the morning. We didn’t spend much time in the town, but asked Sister Ursula to direct us to the hospital which stood slightly apart and to the east. The road getting there was not in good condition.
The hospital looked exactly like the casualty station it had become. We threaded our way through the knots of Nyalans who were already setting up their makeshift homes in the grounds, avoiding the little cooking fires and the livestock which wandered about underfoot, and the small naked children. People stared at us but there was none of the crowding round that usually happened in the villages in happier times. Sister Ursula, though, was accosted and hailed by name as we left the car and made our way indoors.
We met Sister Mary, who was elderly and frail, and two younger nuns, all fully occupied. I noticed that none of
them seemed surprised to see Sister Ursula back with a team of British men, or even particularly relieved at her safe return from what might have been regarded as a dangerous mission; the impression I got was that they all had the most sublime faith in her ability to take care of herself, and to turn up trumps in any eventuality. I could see their point of view.