A Cleft Of Stars

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Inside the cage formed by the overhanging roots the air was blessedly cool, with the same hint of concealed moisture as in my baobab hideout. Welcome, too, was the roots' filtering effect on the sun's scorching light — it was now a little after midday. Nadine and I hardly spoke: we were in the process of unwinding, reliving each risk and finding it magnified in retrospect. We tacitly avoided discussing Koen, whom I had dragged into a far corner.

It was I, however, who unintentionally set off Nadine's latent nervous explosion.

I indicated an ooze of sticky white sap which streaked a big main root. It resembled rubber latex.

'Look at this, Nadine. That happened a moment after my clip exploded in the fire in front of Rankin. It was meant for me. It's where one of his bullets went in.'

She stared at it for a long moment and then threw herself into my arms, shaking and sobbing. She kissed my lips, my eyes, my face, and her tears became part of the wild wetness of it all.

'I'm changed the way The Hill's changed — oh God, how I hate myself for it!'

Nothing's changed, my darling. Our love's more wonderful than it ever was.'

'I looked down at him with that rock in my hands and something took hold of me. I wanted to kill him!'

'You haven't killed him — he's not even badly hurt.' 'I wanted to, Guy! He stood between me and you.' 'It was a wonderful plan. It worked.'

'It was my plan! I didn't want this!'

'It's the way of it, Nadine. It had to be done.'

'No, no, Guy!'

'Of course it had to. It was very clever. I was at my wits'

end to think of anything.'

'I was in the grip of something, up there. My brain was burning- kill him, I'll kill him! I couldn't think of anything else.'

'You were very brave and clever.'

'Brave, clever — but it wasn't love; that's what I'M saying. It was hate — hate, Guy. At The Hill itself, which means love to me. I feel unclean.'

I reached out a foot and pulled the M-25 to me. I held the barrel against her bare arm and the still-warm metal seemed to stem her rush of anguish.

'There were maybe twenty rounds in there. Koen meant them for us. See it that way.'

She gained control of herself and said in a small, flat voice.

'Are there any left?'

'I don't think so but I'll check. Even a couple of live rounds would put a different complexion on our entire strategy.'

My words rekindled her nightmare. 'Strategy! Why has it got to be strategy, tactics, plans, plots, bullets? Why must they come between us and our love?'

'I was the first to sell us down the river, remember. That day with Charlie Furstenberg. For a long time I've wanted to confess to that.'

She closed my mouth with her lips. 'No, no, I won't have you say it!' Her body tight against mine wrote off the past and promised the future. Gradually, as I held her, her sobs subsided and when the storm was past she held up her face with the ghost of a smile.

'I'm sorry. We'll see this thing through first and then things will be all right again in every way.' She went on, making a deliberate effort, 'We could say now that stage one of our master-plan is behind us?'

'We could,' I smiled back. 'Thanks to you. We have the initiative now. We're past one of our biggest hurdles: breaking free from them. We'll make the rest of the plan work out too, I promise you.'

She brought my lips to hers with her ring finger in a strange, lingering caress.

'We'll make it work,' I repeated. 'We've got to play this thing strong.' I gestured towards K2. 'First, I'd like to know what that devil Praeger is up to.'

'What about Koen?'

She couldn't bring herself to look at him. I bent down and listened to his breathing and checked his pulse.

'He's probably been worse off than this a dozen times in pub fights,' I comforted her. 'Concussed, I'd say. He'll be out for a couple of hours. He'll have a headache when he wakes — and a big grudge too.'

'Shouldn't we. . tie him or something?'

'We'll get round to that later. I'm worried now about that burst of fire from Koen's gun. Von Praeger must have heard it'

'I doubt it. It was magnified for you, right beside Koen as you were. i believe the stairway would have absorbed the sound. Just think, von Praeger didn't appear when he shot the gate to pieces.'

'Von Praeger may have been very occupied.'

'When you say things like that I don't feel safe unless I'm close to you. Do you think. .?'

'I stop myself thinking. We must never again allow Praeger the chance to get his hands on us.'

'I don't know which of those two is the worse.'

'Koen's a big mouth and a bully! Praeger's a different kettle of fish; far more dangerous. I wish I knew for sure about those shots. The echo, too, would boost the sound.'

'It wouldn't resemble the three spaced shots signal they arranged.'

'Praeger said he would signal Koen, not the other way round. He was also reckoning on Koen hearing it as far away as the river. We're only halfway there.-I think we must assume that Praeger heard Koen's volley.'

'Why assume?' She parted the screen cautiously. 'There are your binoculars in the camp. Why not see what he's up to in the command-post?'

'You're the real brains of this outfit,' I tried to jolly her out of her dark mood. 'Wait here and I'll collect them.' 'No,' she replied. 'I'm not staying alone with Koen.' I checked him once more by lifting an eyelid.

'He's still out cold.'

'He looks even worse unconscious.'

'I must admit that personally I prefer Koen in the horizontal position rather than the vertical.'

I slipped off his belt and secured his hands behind his back with it. Then I removed his boots.

'That'll make him slightly less mobile.'

'I'll hide them later, high up in the stairway,' said Nadine. '

Good. Here goes.'

I crawled across to the camping-place and retrieved the glasses. I felt naked out in the open despite the fact that I knew that Praeger had no binoculars of his own. I hurried back to Nadine.

Together we scanned the slopes of K2. The command-post harmonized so well with the surrounding rock that it was difficult to pick out. There was no sign of Praeger.

'Heaven help Rankin,' I remarked.

'Guy, where do we go from here?'

I looked into her troubled eyes and for a moment I was tempted to flee downriver and damn the consequences. That conditioned my reply. 'Our escape route's wide open. We don't have to stay and face that madman. There's nothing to stop us beating it for my boat.'

'Except Rankin. Except for a future which won't be a future for us. You'll never be your own man. At every turn we'll be waiting for von Praeger to show up and plunge us back into this nightmare. He'll be behind every bush. The farther we run, the farther he'll follow.'

'Unless Rankin comes clean.'

'About what? About something that doesn't exist except in von Praeger's own fevered imagination?'

'We've added more fuel to the general fire by having to tell Koen about non-existent treasure. He won't forget that in a hurry.'

I examined K2 again. I knew she was right. She was expressing my own deep-down conviction when she said very quietly and decisively:

We must stay and stick it out, Guy.'

'That's the way I see it, too.'

'Rankin has got to come with us.'

'If we can get our hands on him long enough to obtain a signed confession from him, we needn't take him along.'

'It wouldn't be the answer, Guy. He could always deny it afterwards and say it was an admission extracted under duress. You're also assuming that he'll be willing to confess. I doubt it. Look at how he kept his mouth shut in front of von Praeger.'

'Right. Let's say finally then that Rankin comes with us.'

'That means seizing him out of von Praeger's grasp. It'll be very tough, Guy. Rankin's worth just as much to him as he is to us.'

'Transport!' I exclaimed. 'If there were only some way of transporting Rankin to the river!'

I had a sudden idea. 'What about those two old Land Rovers which were wrecked during the expedition? Where are they? They must be around somewhere.'

'Over against the cliff beyond my trench,' she replied. 'But you ought to see them, Guy. The rock that fell on them was the size of a room.'

'Surely there's something left in the way of wheels we could use for Rankin.'

She was dubious. 'A couple of years' lying out in the open won't have improved them either. But let's go and look. It's not far.'

We made our way as unobtrusively as we could to the wrecks. I had previously missed them in the dark because they were partly hidden under an enormous boulder. Wheels and chassis, which had buckled from the initial blow, had rusted and collapsed. The vehicles were simply useless junk. The sight jerked me into a sense of cold reality.

'Nadine,' I said. 'We won't succeed with a series of woolly improvisations: we must have a clear-cut plan. Yours worked because it was simple and straightforward. That's the sort of thinking we need now.'

She was charming as she defended me to myself. 'It was worth coming, Guy. You might have spotted something of use.'

'Forget it. I was carried away by the thought of wheels. We need wheels for Rankin if he's to be moved. And there simply aren't any wheels anywhere.'

'Let's by-pass that problem for the moment and hope that something will occur to us when we've mulled over everything. We didn't know how we were to get away from Koen and von Praeger at the start, but we finally did. Let's tackle the Rankin dilemma in the same way.'

'Right. First task is to get hold of Rankin. Consider what we're up against. He's held in a place from which anyone approaching can be seen for miles. It's guarded by a barred door and inside is a maniac: with a gun and a savage animal. Our prospective snatch victim can't be moved by ordinary means. I can't simply sling him over my shoulder: the pressure on his heart which Praeger mentioned would kill him before he'd covered fifty yards.'

'You're over-simplifying,' she chided me gently. 'You're forgetting the ace in our hand. We have Koen.'

'We can't hold him to ransom and say to Praeger that if he doesn't surrender Rankin we'll bash Koen on the head with a rock.'

'I haven't thought how we can play our trump, but a trump nevertheless he is. Guy, we can't sit here at 'the thin shadow boxing with the problem at long distance. We must get close to the command-post and be ready to snatch Rankin when the opportunity offers.'

'In that case Praeger's bound to see us crossing the wadi.'

'In about six hours it'll be dark. We'll cross then. We'll use your hollow baobab to keep watch on von Praeger.'

I had a brainwave and the whole operation fell into place. '

Nadine! Wheels! What a clot I've been!'

'Where, Guy?'

'The plane wreck! The undercarriage was torn off when it first hit the trees! It's lying there for the taking — two wheels and an axle!'

'The tyres wouldn't have survived the fire'

'It doesn't matter about the tyres. The wheels alone are enough for our purpose. We'll fix them to his stretcher and we'll have a mobile litter. We'll make him fast to it with some of the plane's strut wires which are also lying around. It'll be a piece of cake hauling him across the wadi and on to the boat.'

'It's perfect, Guy!' She kissed me lightly. 'Absolutely perfect!'

However, a sense of caution curbed my enthusiasm. 'Don't let's get carried away too soon. Praeger still holds Rankin. We haven't beaten that part of the problem yet. We've got to get our hands on him, which means that somehow or other we must overpower Praeger — and his hyena.'

'If only we could lure Praeger out of the command-post for long enough, we could manage Rankin.'

'It bristles with difficulties. We'll have to be on the alert, to act fast. We'll also have to construct the litter in the dark almost under Praeger's own nose.'

I kicked at the Land-Rover wreck. 'What we need is weapons. We're pitting our bare hands against guns.' '

Plus our wits.'

'Do you remember if the tools were removed from these wrecks?'

'No. Only the petrol'

I reached into one of the mid-section tool compartments as far as I could and after a while I managed to extract a rusty tyre lever. I had no luck with some other things I could only touch. However, with the lever I prised loose a heavy mesh grille protecting a radiator.

'If we wedge that across the narrow section of the stairway it'

ll make an effective seal,' I told Nadine. 'It's not part of the Rankin kidnap plan — at this stage. It's merely an insurance in case things go wrong and we have to use your hide-out on the summit.'

'As I understand it, we cross the wadi tonight, somehow or other overpower von Praeger, grab Rankin, put him on the litter and make all speed for the boat?'

'Correct.'

I was peering under the crumpled bonnet at the engine compartment when, at the sight of the plastic brake fluid reservoir, a thought struck me like a sledgehammer.

'Fire!' I exclaimed. I've got the answer to what we can use for weapons! I'll make a petrol bomb out of my empty brandy bottle. If Praeger and his pet start getting tough, I'll toss it into the enclosure like a grenade. That'll bring 'em up short! They'll have to get out, with flaming fuel all over the place!'

'Where's the petrol coming from? There's none in these tanks.'

'From the boat,' I answered. 'We can come and go to it as. we wish.'

My mind was on the technicalities of fixing a wick through the brandy bottle cork when an odd thought made me burst out laughing.

'I've just thought of something else for our arsenal: a minibomb using Koen's brandy! That stuff of his is practically pure alcohol. Like my petrol bomb, it'll kick up hell's delight. I'll reserve it specially for Dika!'

Nadine did not share my enthusiasm: 'It all sounds very ingenious and terror-like, but where does it get us? A petrol bomb in the command-post won't entice von Praeger out long enough for us to do anything about Rankin. We want him out of the way — well out of the way — for a long time. Instead, why not burn his plane tonight and create a major diversion that way?'

'Sounds good, but the time factor's against it. We'd never make it from the burning plane near the river to the command post and back again to the boat with Rankin. And we'd lay ourselves wide open to bumping into von Praeger somewhere along the line. Also he'd be sure to discover our boat if he passed near the river on the way to his plane. In which case our whole plan is shot.'

'We seem to be going round in circles.'

'No. The main plan's straightforward, but if things start getting snarled up we'll have to improvise, and improvise quickly.'

'What's the alternative if we have to?'

'It's all yours. Your cubby-hole on the summit of The Hill.' 'I don't like it, Guy, because it presupposes that we must abandon Rankin.'

'Not necessarily. Assume we transport him safely as far as The Hill en route for the boat, then have to take emergency action and hole up on the summit for some reason we can't foresee at this stage. We hide Rankin in the root cage as a temporary measure while we shoot up to your hideout. We'll block the secret stairway with this radiator grill. We'll take the litter with us. Praeger is bound to find Rankin but his problem then will be exactly what ours was without the plane's wheels: he can't move Rankin without killing him.'

'Checkmate.'

'Just the contrary. We can stand a siege on the summit by taking up food from my camp. The spring will give us water. We'll hamstring von Praeger and Koen as far as food goes by dumping the contents of Rankin's kitchen over the cliff. They haven't any other provisions that we know of.'

'Then let's hump some of your supplies up to the summit right away,' she answered. 'I think it would also be a good thing if you made yourself familiar with the layout there.'

She tried to smile but it didn't come off. 'As a matter of tactics, not of the heart.'