‘Sam,’ I said, ‘have you ever used the ferry?’
‘Me, no. What for? I not go Manzu, I work here.’
‘Who does use the ferry?’
He considered. ‘Many truck from Manzu go to oilfields. Farmers, Government people. Many different people go on ferry.’
In happier times the international border here was obviously open and much-used. It was the only route to the Bir Oassa fields from countries north of Nyala. Kironji’s information that trucks crossed on it suggested that it was larger than I would have expected, which was encouraging news.
Geoff Wingstead beckoned to me.
‘When the rig gets here we will get it off the road. We’re a little too close to Fort Pirie for comfort, and there’s no point in buying trouble. There’s plenty of room at the lakeside and it can’t be seen from up here. But we’ll have to widen the turn-off.’
For the next hour he and I together with Zimmerman and Hammond laboured. Widening the turn for the rig involved only a few modifications. We heaved rocks and equipment to one side, uprooted vegetation and chopped down a small spinney of thorn bushes, and generally made a mess of Sam Kironji’s carefully preserved little kingdom.
If it hadn’t been for the fact that Zimmerman was from Lat-Am Kironji would never have allowed us to do it. As it was he could barely bring himself to help.
Four hours later the rig was bedded down in the clearing by the lake, its load resting on the ground and the weight taken off the bogies. The clearing held most of the vehicles and those that couldn’t be fitted in were scattered off the road where they could leave in a hurry, or be used to block the way to the rig. We might have been bypassed and remain invisible if it wasn’t for the Nyalans who were still doggedly following us. They camped in the trees all about us, chattering, cooking, coming and going endlessly. According to Sam Kironji many lived nearby but preferred our company to their homes.
Sadiq set his men to try and persuade them to leave us but this was a wasted effort. The rig was a magnet more powerful than any of us could have imagined, and politely but obstinately its strange escort insisted on staying. The countryside was steadily pillaged for whatever food could be found, and Sam Kironji’s chickens disappeared before we could bargain for them.
I found Sister Ursula tearing a little pile of bedding she’d found in Kironji’s cabin into bandaging strips and said to her, ‘Let me do that. You’ve got more important things to do.’
‘Thank you.’ She had discarded her coif and her hair, cut close to the scalp, was sheened with sweat.
‘How are things, Sister?’
‘Not too bad,’ she said briskly. ‘We’ve lost no more patients and I really think the infant is going to make it, thanks be to God. We worry about Mister Lang, though.’ He had taken Max Otterman’s place as their most serious case. ‘Doctor Marriot says that Sister Mary is a little better. But she shouldn’t exert herself in the slightest. We do need to
get to a hospital soon though. What are our chances?’ she asked.
I put her in the picture. ‘Do you know of any hospitals in Manzu?’ I then asked.
She didn’t, and hadn’t heard that we intended to try and reach the neighbouring country. Few people had as yet, for the sake of security, but now I told her.
‘It’s a fine idea, and just what we need. All these poor people who are following us, they do need a place to settle down in peace once more.’
‘But they’re Nyalans. They’d be in a foreign country without papers.’
She laughed. ‘You’re naïve, Mister Mannix These people think of it simply as land, Africa. They haven’t much nationalistic fervour, you know. They cross borders with little fear of officialdom, and officialdom has better things to do than worry about them. They just go where the grazing and hunting is good.’
I wished it was as simple for us, but we had a lot to do first. I left the Sister to her bandages and went to find Hammond, McGrath and Sam Wilson.
We walked down to stand at the pontoon, looking out over the water. Hammond said, ‘I don’t see many possibilities. If there was a bridge we could at least fight for it.’
‘The ferry point is swarming with rebels,’ I said. ‘I don’t think we’ve got the force we’d need.’
‘You know, I was getting really worried about fuel,’ Hammond said. ‘It’s ironic that now, when we can’t go anywhere, we’ve got all we want and more.’
‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ said McGrath. ‘We could float petrol down to the ferry and set it alight, construct a fire ship.’
Wilson said, ‘Pleasant ideas you have, Mick,’ and I caught an undertone I recognized; here was someone else who mistrusted the Irishman.
Hammond said, ‘We can get people across Manzu in threes and fours, with this little boat…or perhaps not,’ he added as he crossed the pontoon to look down into it. He hopped up and down, making the pontoon bobble on the water, then came back ashore looking thoughtful.
‘I wonder why they have a pontoon instead of a fixed jetty,’ he said.
‘Does it matter?’ I was no sailor and the question wouldn’t have occurred to me, but Wilson took up Hammond’s point. ‘A fixed jetty’s easier to build, unless you need a landing stage that’ll rise and fall with the tide,’ he said. ‘Only there’s no tide here.’
‘You can see the water level varies a little,’ Hammond said. He pointed out signs that meant nothing to me, but Wilson agreed with them. ‘So where does the extra water come from?’ I asked. ‘It’s the dry season now. When the rains come the river must swell a lot. Is that it?’
‘It looks like more than that. I’d say there was a dam at the foot of the lake,’ Hammond hazarded. McGrath followed this carefully and I could guess the trend of his thoughts; if there was a dam he’d be all for blowing it up. But I didn’t recall seeing a dam on the maps, faulty though they were, and hadn’t heard one mentioned.
But this wasn’t Hammond’s line of thinking at all.
‘They have level control because the lake rises and falls at times. That’s why they need a floating jetty,’ he said.
‘So?’
‘The point is that the jetty is a tethered raft.’ He pointed to the dinghy. ‘That isn’t very seaworthy but if we cut the pontoon loose it could be towed across the lake with people on it.’
Now he was giving me ideas. ‘Only a few at a time,’ I said.
‘But we could build a bigger one. We might find other outboards,’ Hammond went on, growing interested in his own hypothesis.
‘Supposing you could do it. What does everyone do at the other side without transport? It’s a long way to Batanda.’
‘I hadn’t got that far,’ he admitted glumly.
I looked around. One boat, one pontoon, one outboard motor, plenty of fuel, a workshop…a work force…raw materials…my mind raced and I felt excitement rising. I said, ‘All of you go on thinking about this. But don’t share your ideas with anyone else for the time being.’
I got into the Land Rover and shot off up the road to the filling station and went up to Sam Kironji’s cabin, which was latched. He let me in with some reluctance.
He said bitterly, ‘You come, now they all come. Stealers! You didn’t tell me this big crowd come. They steal everything I got. They steal things I don’t got.’ He was hurt and angry.
‘Relax, Sam. We didn’t bring them, they followed us. You said yourself you heard the travelling hospital was big magic.’
‘That not magic. That
theft.
How I relax? How I explain to Mister Obukwe?’
‘You won’t have to. Mister Zimmerman will explain and Lat-Am Oil will be very pleased with you. You’ll probably get a bonus. Got another beer?’
He stared at the desk top as I opened the cooler, which was empty, and then looked along his shelves which were as bare as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard. Kironji looked up sardonically. ‘Stealers! I tell you. Here.’ He reached under the desk and came up with a beer can which he thrust out at me as if ashamed of his own generosity. I took it thankfully and said, ‘There’s still lots of stuff here, Sam.’
‘Who eat tyres? Who eat batteries? You tell me that.’
I sat down on the edge of his desk. ‘Sam. You know all those petrol drums you’ve got outside and down by the lake?’
‘Why? You want to steal them?’
‘No, of course not. How big are they?’
He addressed the desk top again. ‘Forty-two gallon.’ ‘Imperial?’
‘What you mean? Gallons, man—that what they are.’
Forty-two imperial gallons, which is what they probably were, equalled about fifty American. I had tried to decipher the marks on one but they were pretty rusty.
‘Sam,’ I said, ‘please do me a big favour. Give me some paper and a pen or a pencil, let me borrow your office, and go away for a bit. I have to do some calculating, some planning. I’ll be really grateful.’
He reluctantly produced a pad of paper with Lat-Am’s logo on it and a ballpoint pen. ‘I want my pen back,’ he said firmly and began to retreat.
‘Wait a moment. What’s the weight of an empty drum?’
He shrugged. ‘I dunno. Plenty heavy.’
It didn’t matter too much at this stage. ‘How many empty drums have you got here?’
Again his shoulders hunched. ‘Too many. No supplies come, I use ‘em up. Many empty now.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Sam, I don’t want a long story! How many?’
‘Maybe a thousand, maybe more. I never count.’
I jotted down figures. ‘Thanks. Sam, that cooler. Where do you get your power from?’
‘Questions. You ask too much questions.’ He jerked his thumb. ‘You not hear it? The generator, man!’
I had got so accustomed to hearing the steady throb of a generator on the rig that it hadn’t penetrated that this one was making a slightly different sound. ‘Ah, so you do have one.’
‘Why? You want to steal it?’ He flapped his hand dejectedly. ‘You take it. Mister Obukwe, he already mad at me.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I told him. ‘Nobody will steal it, or anything else. But buying would be different, wouldn’t it? My
company is British Electric. Perhaps we can buy your generator from you.’
‘You pay cash?’
I laughed aloud. ‘Not exactly, but you’ll get it in the end. Now let me alone for a while, Sam, would you?’
Before he left he went and wrote down one can of beer on my tab.
I had a bit of figuring to do. For one thing, while we Americans think our way of doing things is always best, the European metric system is actually far better than our own multi-unit way, even the conservative British are adopting it, and oddly enough an imperial gallon is a better measure than our American gallon because one imperial gallon weighs exactly ten pounds of fresh water. It didn’t take much figuring to see that a drum would hold four hundred and twenty pounds of water.
There was some other reckoning to be done and I persevered, even to cutting shapes out of paper with a rusty pair of scissors. At last I stretched, put Kironji’s pen safely back in a drawer, took a hopeful but useless look in the cooler and set off down to the lakeside on foot. It was only a short distance and I used the walk to do some more thinking. I went straight down to look at the pontoon once again.
It was a rickety enough contraption, just a few empty oil drums for flotation with a rough log platform bolted on top. It was very weathered and had obviously stood the test of time, but it was as stable as a spinning top just about to lose speed and I wouldn’t have cared to cross Central Park Lake on it.
I yelled for anybody and Bob Pitman responded.
‘Bob,’ I said, ‘go round up a couple of people for me, will you? I want Kemp, Hammond, and Geoff Wingstead. Oh, and Mick McGrath. Ask them to meet me here.’
‘Will do,’ he said and ambled off. When they had all arrived I found that Zimmerman had got wind of the conference and had made himself part of it, though without his Russian mate. I looked around at them and drew a deep breath.
‘I have a nutty idea,’ I started.
This drew a couple of ribald comments and I waited until they died down before I carried on. ‘It’s crazy and dangerous, but it just might work. We have to do something to get ourselves out of this fix. You gave me the idea, Ben. You and Mick.’
‘We did?’ Hammond asked.
‘Yes. I want us to build a raft.’
‘I know I mentioned that but you shot that idea down in flames. You had a point too.’
‘I’ve developed your idea. We don’t use this thing as a basis, we build our own. I’ve done some figuring on paper and I think it will work. The trouble is that the lake isn’t made of paper.’ I filled in for the benefit of the others. ‘Ben suggested that if we towed the landing stage it could form a raft on which we could get people over to Manzu. The pontoon isn’t big or stable enough and we’d need transport on the far shore. But I think I’ve worked something out.’
‘Build a bigger raft?’ asked Wingstead.
‘How could you power it?’
‘What do we make it of?’
‘What do you think this is, a navy shipyard?’
I held up my hand. ‘Hold it. Give me a chance and I’ll explain.’ There were two phases to my scheme and I thought it wiser to introduce them one at a time, so I concentrated on the concept of the raft first. ‘To start with, every one of these drums in the compound, when empty,
has a flotation value of four hundred pounds, and there are hundreds of them. We won’t need more than say one hundred for my plan to work.’
‘Sounds idiotic to me,’ said Kemp. ‘A hundred of these drums won’t make a raft big enough to take anything anywhere.’ I knew he was trying to visualize the rig floating across the lake on a bed of oil drums and failing, and had indeed done that myself.
‘Building a raft is the first part of my plan. And it’ll do to go on with, unless someone has a better one. We can’t stay here indefinitely.’
‘It sounds like you have a pretty big job lined up,’ Wingstead said. He didn’t sound encouraging. ‘Let’s hear it.’
‘Think about the raft. To make it we need material and muscle. And brains, I guess. We’ve got the brains between us and there’s a hell of a lot of suitable raw material lying about. As for the muscle, that’s how the pyramids were built, and the Great Wall of China. God knows we’ve got enough of that.’
‘The Nyalans?’ Hammond asked. He was beginning to kindle with excitement. I wanted them all to feel that way.
‘We’ll need a work force. The women to plait lianas to make a lot of cordage, and some of the men to cart stuff about. I’ve got the basic blueprints right here.’ I held up the pad of paper.
Zimmerman and Hammond looked ready for any challenge. Kemp had a stubborn set to his jaw and I knew that he was thinking about the rig to the usual exclusion of everything else, and ready to oppose any plan that didn’t involve saving it.
Geoff Wingstead was oddly lacklustre, which disappointed me. I’d hoped to enrol his enthusiasm first of all, and wondered why he was hanging fire. McGrath had said nothing and was listening intently in the background. With the odd,
unwanted rapport that I sometimes felt between us I knew he was aware that I had something tougher yet to propose, and he was waiting for it.
Hammond said, ‘How do we persuade the Nyalans to cooperate? We can’t pay them.’
‘Sister Ursula gave me the answer to that. We can take as many of them across to Manzu as want to go. When the war’s over they’ll probably drift back again, but right now they’re as threatened as we are. I think they’ll help us.’
Kemp had been drawing in the sand, and now he said, ‘Look, Neil, this is ridiculous. To build a raft big enough to take maybe a couple of hundred people is crazy enough, but to take vehicles across on them is beyond belief. Good God, each tractor weighs forty tons. And how do we embark and disembark them?’
I said, ‘You’re thinking the wrong way. I agree with you, and I’ve already rejected that idea. We don’t build a raft to get people to Manzu.’ It was time to drop the bombshell.
‘What? Then what’s all this about?’
I said, ‘We’re going to use it to capture the ferry.’
They stared at me in total silence. McGrath’s face warmed into a broad grin of appreciation.
Wingstead said at last, ‘You’re out of your mind, Neil.’
‘OK, what the hell do we do? Sit here and eat ants until the war goes away? We have to do something. Any immunity as foreigners and civilians we might have had was shattered when we met up with Maksa’s force. We played soldiers then. And I have a bad feeling about this war; if the Government forces were going to win they’d have done so by now. The rebels are gaining strength and if they take over they aren’t going to be exactly lenient.’
Wingstead said, ‘You’re right. It just seems so farfetched.’
‘Not at all,’ said McGrath. ‘It’s a lovely idea, Mannix. Lovely. How did I give you the idea, if I might ask?’
‘You mentioned fire ships,’ I said shortly. I needed him desperately but I was damned if I could make myself at ease with him. ‘We’re going to attack the ferry from the water, the one thing they won’t expect.’
I had him with me, naturally. I thought I had Hammond too. He was fully aware of the danger but absorbed by the technical challenge. Kemp might disapprove but couldn’t resist putting his mind to the problem.
Hammond said, ‘I think at this stage you want to keep this rather quiet, don’t you, Mister Mannix?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘I’d like Bert Proctor in on it from the start. He’s got a good head, and I’ve worked with him on projects so often—’
I said, ‘Yes, of course. Go get him.’
He went off at the double and Wingstead smiled. ‘They really are quite a team, you know.’ I was still worried about his lack of enthusiasm. He was the kingpin of the team and they looked to him for direction.
Proctor, grave and attentive as always, listened as I recapped. He calmly accepted the idea of Wyvern Transport men turning into privateers, and I understood why Hammond wanted him.
I showed them my idea for building the raft. I hadn’t yet calculated the load but I reckoned on as many men as we could muster, at least one or maybe two trucks and whatever we could develop in the way of weapons—a formidable prospect. They were dubious but fascinated and the engineers among them could see the theoretical possibilities. We had to build a raft before considering the rest of the plan.
To Kemp I said, ‘Basil, I’ve got an idea about the rig too. I know how important it is. We’ll talk about that later.’ This was a sop; I had no ideas about the rig but I couldn’t afford to let him know it.
McGrath asked, ‘How many men do you think we’ll have?’
I said, ‘All of Sadiq’s men, that’s twenty-three. We can’t conscript our crew but I don’t think anybody will want to be left out. I make that sixteen. Thirty-nine in all.’
‘Say thirty-five, allowing for accidents,’ said McGrath.
‘Fair enough.’
‘What did Sadiq have to say about the ferry?’
‘They have a guard detachment there. Exactly how many we don’t know, but it doesn’t sound formidable. If we come out of the dark yelling at them they’ll probably scatter like autumn leaves.’
Faces brightened. It didn’t sound quite so bad put that way.
McGrath said, ‘We’d need much more accurate information than that, Mannix.’
‘Oh, I agree. By the way, I haven’t spoken to Sadiq yet, but we will soon. I want to propose an expedition, using Sam Kironji’s boat. You, McGrath, Geoff, Sadiq and myself. It won’t take any more. Down river by night.’
Wingstead said, ‘Oh my God, Neil, I don’t think we should do that.’
I was dumbfounded. ‘What the hell’s the matter with you, Geoff? I’m depending most of all on you. For God’s sake stop being such a damned pessimist.’
I’d never let fly at an executive in front of his men before. But it was vital to keep morale high and a waverer at the top of the command line could ruin all our plans. He made a strangely listless gesture and said, ‘I’m sorry, Neil. Of course I’m with you. Just tired, I guess.’
Zimmerman broke into the embarrassed silence. ‘I don’t think Geoff should go anyway, Neil. He’s got enough on his plate already. Let me come instead.’
I was relieved. Damn it, I wanted Wingstead with me, and yet in his present mood he might be a liability. I wished I knew what was eating him.
‘Suppose we succeeded, took the ferry. What then?’ Hammond asked. ‘Wouldn’t their main force get to know about it?’
‘Very likely, but they’re at Fort Pirie and we’d silence radios and prevent getaways,’ I said. ‘The only thing we have to pray for is that the ferry is operative, and from what Kironji told me it’s been in regular use recently so it ought to be.’
‘Then what?’ Wingstead asked.
‘We bring up the rig and get all the invalids on board the ferry, cram it full of people and shoot it across to Manzu. When it comes back we pile on as many vehicles as it can take, trucks for preference, and the last of the people. Once in Manzu it’s a doddle. Get to Batanda, alert the authorities and send back transport for the stragglers. I bet they’ve got cold beer there.’
They chewed on this for a while. I had painted a rosy picture and I knew they wouldn’t entirely fall for it, but it was important to see potential success.
Hammond stood up and rubbed out the sketch marks in the sand with his foot. ‘Right—how do we start?’ he asked practically.
Wingstead looked up, absurdly startled. His face was pale under its tan and I wondered fleetingly if he was simply afraid. But he hadn’t been afraid back in the warehouse at Makara.
‘I don’t know,’ he said uncertainly. ‘I’d like to think about it a bit, before we start anything. It’s just too—’
The hesitation, the slack face, were totally unfamiliar. Doubt began to wipe away the tentative enthusiasm I had roused in the others. Wingstead had cut his teeth on engineering problems such as this and he was deeply concerned for the safety of his men. I had expected him to back me all the way.
The problem solved itself. He stood up suddenly, shaking his head almost in bewilderment, took a dozen paces away from us and collapsed in the dust.
We leapt up to race over to him.
‘Go and get a doctor!’ Kemp barked and Proctor ran to obey. Gently Kemp cradled Wingstead whose face had gone as grey as putty, sweat-soaked and lolling. We stood around in shocked silence until Dr Kat and Dr Marriot arrived.
After a few minutes the surgeon stood up and to my amazement he looked quite relieved. ‘Please send for a stretcher,’ he said courteously, but there was one already waiting, and willing hands to carry Wingstead to the mobile hospital. Dr Marriot went with him, but Dr Kat stayed behind.
‘I should have seen this coming,’ he said. ‘But you may set your minds at rest, gentlemen. Mister Wingstead will be perfectly all right. He is not dangerously ill.’
‘What the hell is it then?’ I asked.
‘Overstrain, overwork, on top of the injuries he suffered in the plane crash. He should have been made to take things more easily. Tell me, did you notice anything wrong yourselves?’
I said, feeling sick with anger at myself, ‘Yes, I did. I’ve seen him losing his drive, his energy. And I damned well kept pushing at him, like a fool. I’m sorry—’
Kemp cut me off abruptly.
‘Don’t say that. I saw it too and I know him better than anyone else here. We must have been crazy to let him go on like that. Will he really be all right?’
‘All he needs is sleep, rest, good nourishment. We can’t do too much about the last but I assure you I won’t let him get up too soon this time. I might tell you that I’m very relieved in one respect. I have been afraid of fever—cholera, typhoid—any number of scourges that might strike. When I heard that Mister Wingstead had collapsed I thought it was the first such manifestation. That it is not is a matter of considerable relief.’
The Doctor’s report on Wingstead was circulated, and the concern that had run through the convoy camp like a brush fire died down.
I found Hammond. ‘I want to talk to all the crew later this evening. The medical staff too. We’ll tell them the whole plan. It’s risky, but we can’t ask people to work in ignorance.’
Then I went to find Sam Kironji.
‘Sam, what’s in that little hut inside the compound?’ I asked him.
He looked at me suspiciously. He’d already found the compound gate unlocked and Harry Zimmerman and two others counting empty drums, much to his disgust. ‘Why you want to know?’
I clung to my patience. ‘Sam, just tell me.’
There was nothing much in it. The hut held a miscellany of broken tools, cordage, a few other stores that might be useful, and junk of all sorts. It was where Sam put the things he tidied away from everywhere else.