An Ice-Cream War

1: 25 January 1917, Dar-es-Salaam, German East Africa

Felix looked out over the guard-rails of the Hong Wang II, a Chinese-crewed tramp steamer that had brought him slowly up the coast from Durban to the entrancing waterfront at Dar-es-Salaam. The widening sweep of the bay, the white buildings set in groves of mango and palm trees, and the cloudless African sky presented a scène of great beauty. Only the ruined shell of the Governor’s Palace on the headland and the wreck of a scuttled German freighter on a sandbank marred the general effect of peace and tranquillity.

Felix looked down at his knee-length shorts, khaki puttees and polished brown boots. He still felt a fool in this uniform. It was extremely odd, moreover, to be a second lieutenant in a native regiment, which he had yet to encounter. This was not entirely true, as one unit of the regiment was on board the Hong Wang II with him. On the fore deck a four-gun mountain battery of the Nigerian Brigade prepared to disembark. These were the stragglers in a large West African contingent that had arrived in East Africa a month or so previously. Felix’s own battalion in this brigade, the 5th, was already entrenched in the front line at a place on the upper reaches of the Rufiji river, wherever that might be.

The Hong Wang II dropped anchor in the middle of the bay. Soon Felix and his kit and the English officers and NCO’s of the mountain battery were being carried in a launch to one of the many wooden jetties that stuck out from the shore.

His kit was disembarked and laid in a pile on the ground. Felix stretched and stamped his feet. All around him was the bustle of the port, the cries of the rickshaw boys, the grinding and clamour of the steam cranes. The air was filled with smells of dust and fruit, dead fish and manure. The sun was lowering in the afternoon sky but still burned with a force that made his new uniform chafe. He felt a sense of exhilaration fill his chest. Gabriel was incarcerated somewhere in this country. They might only be separated from each other by a few hundred miles. The war could be over, by all accounts, in a matter of months now that the Germans were well and truly on the run. Soon, he felt sure, he and Gabriel would be reunited and somehow everything would be resolved. For a moment he felt intoxicated by a sense of his own self-importance, the glamour of the role in which he had cast himself. Now that he was here in Africa he felt he could say that his quest had truly begun.

An Executive Service officer, a captain, approached the officers from the mountain battery and gave them instructions. Felix showed him the sheet of paper that contained his orders.

“Kibongo,” the ESO captain said. “Umm.” He paused. “5th battalion, Nigerian Brigade…Ah-ha. Mmm.” He sounded like a schoolboy who didn’t know the answers to a classroom quiz.

“Tell you what,” he said. “There’s a Movement Control officer at the railway station. He’ll know. I think the head-quarters of the Nigerian Brigade is at Morogoro. I’ll get a boy to bring your kit. Yes, Morogoro, that’s where you’ll be going.”

♦

“No, it’s Soga you want,” the Movement Control officer said. Then added, “I think. Get off at Soga, anyway. They’ll probably send someone to meet you there. Hang on, I’ll get a boy to sling your gear on the train. Soga, remember.”

Felix found a compartment and watched the boy stow his kit. Steadily the other seats were taken up by officers from an Indian regiment. Some of them knew about the Nigerian Brigade, but had no idea where Kibongo was. They told him to get off at Mikesse, not Soga.

Felix sat back and told himself to relax. He was sufficiently used to army ways by now not to worry unduly about such vagueness. In fact he was amazed at the way the organization worked at all. He had received written orders, that was sufficient: at some point in the future he and his battalion would meet.

In the stifling heat of the small compartment he watched the sun turn orange and sink behind the railway workshops. There was a further hour’s delay before the train pulled off with a lurch. In the brief dusk Felix saw the acres of coconut trees behind the town, and splendid, solid-looking stone houses set among them.

The twenty-fifth of January 1917: it had been nearly six months before that he had set this particular chain of events in motion that had resulted in him sitting now in a troop train chugging slowly across conquered German East Africa.

♦

A week after Charis’s funeral — a taut, stressful affair — Felix had gone up to London to seek out his brother-in-law, Lt Colonel Henry Hyams, at the Committee of Imperial Defence.

Hyams was surprised to see him and commiserated briefly about Charis’s suicide.

“Bad business, Felix. Terrible shame. Poor girl.” He frowned. “It all got too much for her, I suppose. Gabriel and all that.”

After some more awkward conversation on the topic Felix stated that he wished to obtain a commission in any unit of the British Army that was currently fighting in East Africa. Henry Hyams didn’t ask him why, it must have seemed to him a logical request, Felix thought, based on logical and commendable motives of duty and honourable revenge. Hyams considered that his earlier failure with the recruiting office would present no problems now. That was 1914, he reminded Felix, when — no offence implied — they were only taking the very best. Now that there was conscription they couldn’t afford to be so choosy. He made some notes on a pad and checked a file.

“East Africa, East Africa. British regiments. You have no desire to go soldiering with the mild gentoo, I take it?”

“No, it must be a British regiment,” Felix affirmed.

“Well we’ve got the 2nd Battalion Loyal North Lancs and the 25th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers. The ‘Legion of Frontiersmen’. Sound like a fine body of men.”

“Yes. They sound ideal.”

“That’s the ticket then,” Hyams beamed confidently. “I’ll arrange everything. Leave it all up to me.”

Two weeks later Felix was informed by telegram which Officer Training Corps he was to attend. He looked disbelievingly at the address: Keble College, Oxford. For the next three months he was back in Oxford, living in Keble’s sorry red-brick splendour in the company of two hundred other young men seeking commissions. Throughout the end of the summer of 1916, while the battle of the Somme ground itself into a state of inertia, he received instructions on how to command men, drilled endlessly in the University Parks, fired rifles at the butts in Wolvercote and undertook text-book manoeuvres on the level expanses of Port Meadow. He assailed all these distasteful duties in a spirit of unreflecting determination, resolving to acquit himself adequately so there could be no impediment offered to the task he had set himself. In fact, he wasn’t exactly clear what precisely the nature of this task was. It was born out of a mixture of near-intolerable guilt, unfocused motives of purgation and a simple but powerful need to be doing something. The notion of the ‘quest’, of somehow finding Gabriel, took a slower hold on his imagination. It was the most apt penance he could think of; he forced himself to concentrate on Gabriel and their eventual reunion and tried his hardest not to dwell on Charis.

And so the months of training — hurried and not particularly efficient — had gone past and Felix found that instead of regret and melancholy his moods had been primarily ones of deep boredom, loneliness and discomfort. On the day their postings were announced he had clustered round the noticeboard outside the college lodge with the other cadets searching for his name. “Cobb. F. R…”—his eyes flicked across—“5th btn, Nigerian bde, German East Africa.” The Nigerian Brigade? Who or what were they? He received commiserations from his fellow officers. Where was Nigeria? someone asked. Felix had to go and look it up in an atlas.

“Sorry, old chap,” Henry Hyams said when Felix asked for a transfer. “No can do.” The brigade was just being formed, Hyams said. It was the only unit in the East African theatre that wanted English officers and NCOs.

“Don’t look so glum, Felix,” Henry Hyams said, looking a little hurt. “At least you’ll be in East Africa. It’s a damn tricky job swinging these things, you know. They’re crying out for men in France.”

♦

Felix peered out of the carriage window at the African night. What was it like out there, he wondered? The train moved with frustrating slowness, reducing speed to five miles per hour every time it came to the gentlest of bends. The Indian Army officers had all fallen asleep, one of them was snoring quietly. The oil lamp in the compartment had been turned down too low to read. Felix rubbed his eyes. Somewhere in his kit he had an inflatable rubber cushion which would have eased his stiff and aching buttocks, sore from the slatted wooden bench seats, but he would have woken the entire compartment searching for it.

The train moved sluggishly but inexorably on. Sometimes it stopped in the darkness for no apparent reason. The mono-tony was briefly relieved when they pulled into tiny stations with names like ‘Pugu’, ‘Kisamine’ and ‘Soga’ where it took on more fuel and water.

At Soga Felix managed to get out of the compartment and jumped to the ground to stretch his legs. The night was warm and very dark, clouds seemed to be covering the moon and stars. All around him Felix could hear the relentless ‘creek-creek’ of the crickets, shrill and mechanical. He gave a slight shiver. There was a curious smell in the air, strangely intoxicating, a damp earthy smell of the sort sometimes encountered in old potting sheds or undisturbed dusty attics. Felix filled his lungs with it. He felt seized by a sudden nervous excitement. Up ahead the squat little locomotive was being filled up with water, a faint hiss of blundering escaping steam was carried down the line. He watched other men jumping from the carriages and the cattle trucks that carried the native soldiers. He saw some men relieving themselves and took a few steps away from the train to do likewise. He found himself standing in a sort of coarse kneelength grass. Ahead of him he could just make out a dark line of trees and bushes. He urinated, the patter of his stream silencing the crickets at his feet. He shivered again, the excitement gone, replaced by an apprehensive fearfulness. As he did up his fly buttons the thought crossed his mind that the foaming trembling darkness around him might be harbouring all manner of wild beasts. Lions, leopards, snakes, anything. Hurriedly he clambered back into the compartment. He was not in some country lane, he reminded himself, he was in Africa.

♦

It was almost midday when the troop train crawled into Mikesse. The Indian Army officers obligingly threw down his kit to him and he stacked it beside the rails. To his vague worry he was the only person to get off. The train didn’t stay long. Morogoro, General Smuts’ headquarters, was another thirty miles up the line. Everyone, it seemed, was going there. Felix looked about him. A featureless railway station with no platforms, the tracks laid across packed-down red earth. In the distance a thickly wooded range of high mountainous hills. Under large, shady trees dotted here and there motor vehicles were parked and porters slept or lounged. It was very humid. Solid continents of grey clouds loomed to the north. Felix was about to go in search of some assistance when a small white man in khaki uniform emerged from the station building. The man caught sight of him and marched over. He had a spruce, fit-looking body, but his head looked as if it belonged to a man twice his size. Felix saw he had a sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve. The man had a poor, crude-looking face, as if it were an early prototype whose features hadn’t yet been properly refined. It was utterly expressionless, as if this too were a faculty reserved for later, more sophisticated models. He had one of the heaviest beards Felix had ever seen. Although he had obviously shaved recently his entire jaw was a metallic blue-black, indeed the bristles seemed to need shaving up to within half an inch of his lower eyelids.

“Lieutenant Cobb, sir?” he said. He had a very strong but clear Scottish accent. Felix supposed him to be from Aberdeen or Inverness.

“That’s right. Are you from the 5th battalion?”

“Aye, sir. I’m Sergeant Gilzean.”

He then said something Felix didn’t understand.

“I beg your pardon?” Felix said.

“I said ‘Fegs it’s a bauch day’, sir,” Gilzean repeated patiently, as if this was an activity he was accustomed to. “I’ll just make siccar they beanswaup porters look snippert with your gear.”

“Oh. Yes, fine.”

Men were called from beneath the trees and Felix’s kit was taken round the station building and stacked in the back of a dusty Ford motor car.

“Where are we going?”

“Kibongo, sir. South bank of the Rufiji.”

“How far away is it?”

“About one hundred and twenty miles.”

“Good Lord!”

They bumped down a track that led from the station and drove past a sizeable native village and a huge transport camp. Crates and sacks were piled twenty feet high. Motor lorries and dozens of Ford motor cars of the sort they were driving were parked in long rows. Beneath palm leaf shelters were makeshift engineering and repair workshops. On a hill was a large stone building flying a red cross. A lengthy column of bootless African soldiers in green felt fezzes and flapping khaki shorts were passed.

“Are there no English troops out here?”

“A few,” Gilzean said. “But they’re all sick. Peely-wally lot the English, ye ken. And they Sooth-Africans. You’ll find we’re unco fremt haufins out here.”

“Ah,” Felix said. “I think so.” The man might as well be talking ancient Greek, Felix thought.

They drove on, a cloud of red dust in their wake. They passed a large tented camp and overtook a straggling train of potters, all with loads on their heads. Mikesse, Felix managed to discover from Gilzean, was the only supply centre for the troops on the Rufiji river front, a hundred and twenty miles to the south. They drove out of the hills around the town and motored through beautiful highland country, dense with trees, native villages on every slope, before they began to descend slowly towards what looked like a huge, rather tatty forest. The trees were of all types and grew fairly widely apart. The ground between the trunks was thick with tangled thorn bush. The road had been enlarged recently, judging from the piles of freshly cut vegetation and the occasional groups of pioneers and sappers that they passed, engaged in levelling out deep ruts or strengthening the many small bridges they had to drive across.

The clouds that Felix had noticed at the station had spread out to cover the sky and the light was dull and gloomy.

“Looks like rain,” Felix observed.

“We’ll get drookit the night,” Gilzean said, then added, “It’s the rainy season. We stop fighting when the rains come.”

“Have you seen any action?” Felix asked in what he hoped was a casual way.

“Och aye. We’ve been dottling about the jungle for a month. Fankled here, fankled there. Fair scunnert, but, eh, neither buff nor stye, ye ken.”

“Oh, about two months,” Felix said.

♦

After five hours of bumping along through the scrubby forest they came to another camp. Felix supposed he’d been travelling along what he’d come to know as ‘lines of communication’, not that he and Gilzean had established many. At this new camp Felix was provided with a hot meal in the transport officers’ mess and was allotted a camp bed in the corner of a large empty tent. Here too he found someone who could explain the current situation in comprehensible language.

Since the invasion of German East at Kilimanjaro in March 1916, the Germans had steadily been driven south so that they now occupied only the southern third of their colony. They had been pushed south across the Rufiji river. At their backs was another river, the Rovuma, which marked the border with Portuguese East Africa. The Rufiji, Felix’s informant told him, was a huge sprawling river that roughly divided the colony in half. Von Lettow-Vorbeck, after he had been driven from the Northern Railway, had withdrawn by degrees, but with fierce rearguard actions, to the Central Railway (along which Felix had been travelling the night before). Threatened by Smuts on this front he had again avoided a decisive battle and had withdrawn beyond his next natural defensive line, the Rufiji. Here was where matters had come to a halt, because of the imminent onset of the rains. There would be no more campaigning until March or April. Then the British army would drive the Germans into the Rovuma.

Felix walked from the officers’ mess back to his tent. Once again he smelt the musty earthy smell and wondered what it was. Behind him the cooking fires of the vast porters’ camp twinkled in the dark. He could hear strange whoopings coming from the trees beyond the perimeter fence. He wondered where Gilzean was, how the curious little man was occupying his time. Probably having a shave, Felix thought. He must need to shave about every five hours. He had wanted to ask Gilzean how far they had come, and what distance there was left to go, but couldn’t face another incomprehensible reply. He hoped he hadn’t appeared standoffish.

He arrived at his tent. He felt that he had been travelling for months. First the tedious and depressing voyage to South Africa in a hospital ship full of broken South African infantry from the Western Front, with a gloomy, solitary Christmas spent at sea. Then two weeks in Durban waiting for the mountain battery to arrive from Nigeria. Afterwards the protracted voyage up the coast to Dar in the squalid Hong Wang II. Then the train journey through the night, Gilzean’s jarring drive through the forest…And he still didn’t know where he was.

He undressed standing on his camp bed, as he’d been instructed to do — something about a burrowing flea one had to avoid. Then he untied his mosquito net and suspended it from hooks set in the canvas roof above the bed. He lay down and shut his eyes. This endless journeying, he thought to himself, where would it end? He made a rueful face in the dark. With Gabriel, he hoped. He allowed himself to imagine their meeting. Gabriel wouldn’t believe it was him. “Felix!” he’d cry. “You!”

Felix grimaced. An unfortunate choice of words. With a slight change of emphasis they could be altered from incredulous delight to vengeful accusation. For a moment he felt paralysed with remorse, and the horrible sub-aquatic images of Charis came creeping back into his mind. He must remember — he forced himself to concentrate — to ask about POW camps the next day. Surely as they pushed deeper and deeper into German territory the advancing troops should begin to encounter some. This brought some comfort, as did the reflection that — if the conditions he had experienced today were typical — it was inconceivable that any mail for English prisoners of war would get through.

He heard something hit the roof of the tent sharply. An insect? A bat? Then he heard another and another. Rain, he realized with a smile of relief, as the drops began to patter against the canvas. Big, fat drops of rain.

It was still raining in the morning when Felix was woken up by a black servant with an enamel mug of tea. A basin of hot water had been set on a folding table and he was able to have a refreshing wash and a shave. The basin was cleared away and replaced with a plate of hot chicken, two fried eggs and a type of savoury flour cake. Gilzean stuck his head through the tent flap and said only, to Felix’s relief, “Time to be off, sir.” Felix pulled on his waterproof cape and went outside. Grey clouds hung low over the trees, blending with the early morning mist and the smoke rising from hundreds of breakfast fires. Huge brown puddles had gathered in depressions in the ground and were pimpled with the constant drip, drip of water from the overhanging branches.

Gilzean was sitting on a small grey mule and holding the bridle of another which was obviously meant for Felix. Half a dozen bearers queued up behind.

Felix mounted up.

“Morning, Gilzean,” he said cheerily. “How are you feeling?”

“Oh, not so good, sir.” Gilzean looked mournful. “I’ve got the ripples again, and — begging your pardon — an awful angry rumple fyke.”

“Yes.”

♦

They joined the end of a meandering string of porters taking supplies to Felix’s battalion. The road was already ankle deep in thick mud and, from here on, passable only by men or pack animals. The jungle or forest through which they passed was monotonously familiar. Occasionally there was a ridge to ascend and descend and there were two wide, shallow rivers to ford. Transport officers rode up and down the column, checking on the uncomplaining porters with their enormous head loads. They stopped every two hours for a twenty-minute rest.

At one point the road disappeared beneath the surface of a swamp which apparently had come into being overnight. The way was marked with poles and the water came up to the middle of the bearers’ thighs. It stopped raining for a couple of hours and then started again about noon. Despite the protection of his waterproof cape and the wide brim of his sun helmet, Felix felt wet through. It was quite unlike any rain he had ever encountered in England. For a start it was warm, but there was also something thoroughgoing and uncompromising about African rain. It came down with real force, each drop weighty and loaded with full wetting potential, drumming down at speed as if falling from a prodigious height. He rode in a cocoon of constant battering sounds as it hit his cape and topee with hefty smacks. He could see, up ahead, the drops rebounding a good six inches from Gilzean’s sodden helmet.

It was the middle of the afternoon when they arrived at battalion headquarters. Felix saw what looked like small clearings of cultivated vegetable and maize plots. Then they passed a sandbagged picket and some very miserable sentries. Felix and Gilzean left the column of porters and rode into what had once been a native village. They moved through neat rows of bell tents and dismounted outside a large straw-roofed building with a bent-looking flagpole outside.

“Thank God,” Felix groaned. “At last.”

“We’ve got a wee way to go yet,” Gilzean said impassively.

Felix reported to the adjutant, who welcomed him to the Rufiji front. Felix was to be attached to Twelve company, under Captain Frearson, which was across the Rufiji, on the south bank. He and Gilzean did not delay long, however, as it was considered advisable to cross the river before dark.

Even in the dry season the Rufiji was, at this point, over three hundred and fifty yards across. Felix had never seen such an enormous river. It was a muddy brown, like milky coffee. Its lethargic flow was interrupted at many points by shiny sandbanks and the occasional small, rocky islands. On the north bank Indian sappers had constructed a wooden jetty that led out to a crude flat ferry — heavy planks of wood lashed across two pontoons — which was attached to wire cables that stretched across the sluggish river. It had stopped raining but thick grey flannel clouds still covered the sky. Behind the clouds the sun was setting and the scène was bathed in a jaundiced sepia light. Felix looked in awe at the Rufiji. The vegetation on either side was lush, trees and bushes growing densely right up to the banks. Felix suddenly noticed that crocodiles were basking on some of the sand bars. The dull light, the torpid river and the oppressive steaminess gave the view a pestilential, malevolent atmosphere.

Felix and Gilzean led their mules onto the ferry and tethered them to the guard rails. When it was full of porters and their loads a flag was waved and a large steam engine coughed into life, winding in the cables and tugging the cumbersome ferry out into the stream.

Felix leant on the guard rail and stared in fascination at four hippopotami which were wallowing not far from the ferry’s route. He turned round and looked at the crowded mob of porters who seemed edgy and apprehensive. They wore singlets and loose pyjama-style trousers cut off below the knee. They all had canvas bags slung around their shoulders. Some carried calabash gourds, others saucepans and kettles. Felix noted that his once smart uniform was creased and grimy. He felt oddly proud. He wondered what Holland would think of him now, in the middle of Africa, crossing this powerful brown river, surrounded by jungle and wild beasts.

By the time they reached the far bank it had started to rain again. Gilzean and Felix remounted and set off up a wide path recently cut through the undergrowth. The rain poured down, battering the leaves of the trees, turning the path into a trickling rivulet. Hemmed in by the undergrowth, the gloom was more intense. Felix glanced upward. The setting sun had turned the clouds a sulphurous yellow-grey. His earlier feelings of awe and excitement were replaced by a mysterious depression and disgruntled impatience. When was this wretched journey going to end?

Just then he smelt a curious smell. They emerged from the trees into a clearing of sorts. Before them the pathway was flanked by an avenue of long smouldering bonfires, like huge middens or rubbish heaps that had been burning for days. Here the reek was at its most intense, a rich, choking, putrefying smell that caused Felix’s stomach to heave in protest. A thick bluey smoke curled from the heaps and stung his eyes, and he could hear the hiss as the falling rain extinguished a few pale flickering flames that were visible.

Unperturbed, Gilzean entered the infernal avenue. Felix kicked his mule to follow him. Then, peering through the smoke and sheets of rain, Felix saw what they were burning. Horses, donkeys and mules, dozens and dozens of them. Great heaps of blackened rotting carcases piled six or eight feet high, their stiff legs jutting out at all angles. As he rode between the fires he saw native soldiers sloshing parafin over the carcasses in an attempt to get them to burn. When this happened a great sheet of flame would roar up and there would be a sound of popping and cracking as the gases inside expanded and distended bellies swelled and burst, sending rank vile smells across the path between.

“What’s happening?” Felix shouted to Gilzean.

“They’re all deed,” Gilzean replied.

“I can see that,” Felix said impatiently. “But how?”

“Tsetse fly,” Gilzean said philosophically. “Gets every horse and mule sooner or later. We burn the bodies once a week.” They moved away from the smoke. Felix could see they were approaching a village; the ground had at some time been cleared for maize and millet fields. Flimsy straw and grass shelters had been erected under the trees for the potters and some more substantial tarpaulin covered lean-tos had been put up to protect the piles of stores. Everywhere were empty boxes and crates and what looked like large wicker baskets of the sort used to carry laundry. Rows of tents indicated the presence of soldiers; the native carriers, it seemed, had to make the best of whatever materials came to hand.

They went through a gap in a high thorn barrier. Felix saw larger tents, some straw huts and a mud-walled rectangular building with a new corrugated iron roof.

“Here we are,” Gilzean announced despondently. “Kibongo.”

2: 15 April 1917, Kibongo, German East Africa

Felix stared listlessly at the rain falling outside. It had been raining continuously for three months. He wouldn’t have believed it possible if he hadn’t been under it himself. Twelve company of the 5th battalion were still at Kibongo. Felix’s platoon was on picket duty. He had spent a damp and uncomfortable night beneath a straw shelter. He sat now on a folding canvas chair, watching the dawn light filter through the dripping trees in front of him. Twenty yards away were the perimeter trenches and a machine-gun post. The ground in front of the trenches had been cleared to a distance of fifty yards.

Gilzean was meant to be out there checking that everyone was alert.

It had been a quiet night, as had all his nights on duty. In his three months of active service there had only been one alarm. He had been sitting in the mess with Captain Frearson and two of his fellow lieutenants — Loveday and Gent — when there had been a ragged volley of shots from the perimeter trenches. At once the entire camp was in pandemonium. When they got to the scène of the action they found the body of the fourth officer, Lieutenant Parrott, with a neat bullet hole in his temple. Parrott, going through a bad spell of dysentery, had wandered off in search of a convenient bush in which to relieve himself. A jumpy sentry had heard him rustling about, and without a word of warning had emptied the magazine of his rifle in the general direction of the noise. His equally nervous companions had joined in. Parrott was extremely unfortunate to have been hit.

♦

The next day an auction of his kit was held. Felix bought half a bottle of South African brandy for £10 and also purchased Parrott’s toothbrush for £1. 13^s. 6d. He had an inch of the brandy left and was wondering now whether to drink it. He decided to wait until after breakfast. The extravagantly high prices were due to the fact that scarcely any supplies had got through to Kibongo since the rains had begun. The Rufiji was now six hundred yards wide, a surging, foaming mill-race which was impossible to cross. Of the entire line of supply back to the railhead almost half the road had been washed away or else was under six feet of water. For the last month officers had been on one-eighth rations. The day before Felix had been issued with one rasher of bacon, a tablespoonful of apricot jam, half an onion and a handful of flour. The men were living on a cupful of rice and nothing more. Everyone was frantic with a debilitating, gnawing hunger. All anyone could think of was food.

Urgent requests for more supplies merely prompted the retort that the lines of communication no longer existed and that everyone was in more or less the same state. However, the exposed position of Twelve company at the southernmost tip of the army’s advance made them suspect that if any unit was going to be hard done by it would be theirs. The mood in the officers’ mess was one of unrelieved fractious irritability. Felix thought that if the Germans ever got round to attacking, Twelve company would have surrendered without demur at the prospect of a square meal.

The Nigerian soldiers, Felix had to admit, bore the deprivations with stoical good humour, setting a far better example than the English officers and NCOs. When he had arrived at Kibongo in January there had been a more or less full complement of soldiers in the company — some one hundred and twenty — plus about three hundred porters. Since then over a hundred porters and thirty soldiers had died from various diseases, the most common being malaria and dysentery. But lately many more of the porters were dying through eating poisonous roots and fruit in a desperate search for nourishment.

A week before, one of Felix’s men had shot a monkey. The animal had been divided equally among the platoon, Felix being presented with the head in token of his seniority. His cook and servant, Human, had scraped as much flesh from the skull as possible and had been seasoning Felix’s meagre rations with slivers of monkey’s cheek, monkey’s lips and the like.

The thought of food sent Felix’s gastric juices into a pro-longed gurgle. Felix leant out of his grass shelter. The rain seemed to have slackened a bit. Under a tree he saw Human crouched over a small fire.

“Human,” Felix called, and his servant squelched over. Human, Felix believed, was in his thirties. He had won a medal in the Cameroon campaign against the Germans in West Africa. He had proudly informed Felix that he had personally shot three ‘Europes’, as he called them. He had been wounded himself, though, in the process and, no longer fit enough to be a front line soldier, the regiment had kept him on as an officer’s servant. For all the fact that he was fifteen years older than Felix, Human looked remarkably young and boyish. This was partly due to his diminutive size — even smaller now due to the recent privations — and his smooth unlined face.

“Yes, sar,” Human said.

“Food, Human. I need my breakfast quickly.”

Human dashed back to his fire and fiddled around with his cooking utensils. He brought Felix his breakfast. On his tin plate was something that looked like a bluey-grey fishcake spread with apricot jam. Despite the evidence Felix’s saliva glands filled his mouth in anticipation. With a fork Felix broke off a piece and tasted it. There was a strong flavour of charcoal, bland pasty warm flour, a hint of onion, the sweet jam and something else he couldn’t identify. Felix chewed it up slowly while Human watched.

“Not bad,” Felix said. “What’s in it?”

“Everything, sar,” Human said. “And monkey.”

“Monkey? I thought we’d finished the monkey.”

“No, sar. There is more.”

Felix wolfed down the rest.

“What?”

“Monkey brain, sar.”

“Brain.” That was the other flavour…

“Yes, sar. I put monkey brain inside.”

♦

At eight o’clock Felix and his men were relieved on the perimeter by Gent and his platoon. Gent was the most innocuous of Felix’s fellow officers. Gent was always whistling to himself, tunelessly, and when he wasn’t he seemed to breathe through his mouth all the time, his mouth hanging open like an idiot’s.

Felix heard his mindless fluting coming up the path from Kibongo a good two minutes before the man actually appeared.

“Hello, Cobb,” Gent said. “Quiet night?” Gent had been quite portly in January. Now he looked like a sick man, skinny, with a clammy sweat on his face.

“Have you got something, Gent?” Felix said. “If so, keep away.”

“Touch of fever,” Gent said, seemingly unaware of Felix’s hostility. “Should shake it off before too long.”

Gent’s ragged platoon occupied the perimeter trenches. Felix and Gilzean marched their men away, up the gentle slope that led to the village. Once there the men were dismissed, and Felix went into the officers’ mess. The mess, as they grandly called it, was the mud hut with the corrugated iron roof. It had no amenities whatsoever and was only valued as being the driest place in the camp.

Inside were four folding canvas chairs and a trestle table. Captain Frearson was sitting in one of the chairs writing up the company diary. Felix told him it had been a quiet night. Frearson had a plump soft face, like Philip II of Spain. He was a timid, indecisive man whose endless dithering, Felix believed, had needlessly caused them to be isolated in Kibongo. As the Rufiji had risen it became increasingly obvious that they would be cut off yet Frearson refused to request to be withdrawn, thinking it would look like ‘bad show’. He was seeming to be giving way under the combined pressure of Felix, Parrott, Gent and Loveday when the rising waters washed away the ferry and the matter was forcibly closed.

“Any news?” Felix asked automatically. Semaphore and — on the rare occasions when there was a break in the cloud — heliograph, were the only means of communication that existed between Twelve company and the rest of the battalion on the other side of the Rufiji.

“Battalion’s pulling back to the railway at Mikesse,” Frearson said.

“Good God! What about us?”

“We’ll have to wait, I’m afraid. It seems the river’s falling. They say they’ll try to rig up a ferry again.”

It was the first indication that their ordeal might soon be over. Felix Felt an irrational lightening of his heart.

“That’s marvellous,” he said. “Absolutely marvellous.”

Frearson looked at him suspiciously. At that point Loveday came in. Loveday was the biggest irritant in the camp but today Felix’s benevolence could extend even to him.

“Sacré bleu,” Loveday said. “Three more porters dead in the night. Seems they’ve been digging up the mule carcasses again. Can’t seem to make them understand.” He shrugged. “Pauvres idiots.”

Loveday was a brash young man with a thin moustache who regarded himself as a sophisticate, a fact he felt was made manifest through his constant use of French exclamations. In pre-war days he would have been known as a ‘masher’ or a ‘knut’.

“Have you heard the news?” Felix said. “We’re going back to the railway.”

“Yes,” Loveday said. “Not before time, I say.”

The three of them remained silent for a while, taking this in. No bond exists between us, Felix thought. This experience had only driven them apart. Frearson took out his pipe and sucked at it noisily. The pipe was empty, everyone had run out of tobacco weeks ago. This was Frearson’s particular habit which tormented Felix to a near homicidal degree, like Gent’s whistling or Loveday’s schoolboy French. Felix realized, with something of a shock, that during his three-month spell in the ‘front line’ he’d never seen a single enemy soldier. His animosities were all claimed by his colleagues. He found it hard to think about home, about Charis or Gabriel. His ludicrous ‘quest’ had fizzled out in the mud of Kibongo, his high ideals and passionate aspirations replaced by grumbles about the damp and endless speculation about what to eat.

The mess was silent, filled only with the sound of Frearson’s spittly sucking. Felix felt a powerful desire to ram the pipe down Frearson’s throat. His mood of elation hadn’t lasted long.

“I’ll be off,” he said, trying to keep his voice under control.

“Cheer-ho,” Frearson said.

“A bientót,” said Loveday.

Felix squelched through the mud towards his tent, suddenly feeling very tired. He smiled cynically to himself thinking about the ‘great quest’ again. He seldom thought of Gabriel; his musings, such as they were, seemed petty and wholly self-centred. He knew nothing of the war in Africa, had forgotten about the war in Europe. Gabriel might even have been released and repatriated by now. What kind of a war was this? he demanded angrily to himself. No enemy in sight, your men slowly being starved to death, guarding a huddle of grass huts in the middle of a sodden jungle?

He was surprised to see Gilzean standing outside his tent. Gilzean reported that Loveday had ordered him to take a burial detail and remove the bodies of the three dead potters. For a moment Felix thought of going back to the mess and making an issue out of it but decided to let it pass.

“Very well, Gilzean,” he said wearily. “Let’s get on with it.”

Gilzean collected half a dozen men from the platoon and they set off to the carrier camp. The three dead men had been dragged from their shelters and left for the burial party. The men were naked, their scraps of clothing and few possessions already appropriated. Their eyes were screwed tightly shut and their huge swollen tongues, strangely white and chalky, protruded inches beyond their lips.

“Poisoned,” Gilzean said flatly.

The dead bodies were carried down a narrow path to the Rufiji. Unceremoniously they were pitched into the turbulent brown water. Felix and Gilzean stood and watched their bodies being swirled away.

“They’re for the kelpies,” Gilzean said. He seemed unusually depressed, Felix thought, far more so than normal.

“What a way to go,” Felix said, wondering if he should ask what kelpies were. Fish? Crocodiles?

“It could be us yet,” Gilzean added, doomily. They walked back up the dripping path. “Aye, and to think I asked to come out here.”

“Did you?” Felix said, keen to capitalize on a moment’s lucidity. “So did I.”

“Twae brothers deed in France. I thought, don’t go there, Angus. Thought it would be easy out here, ye ken? Look at us noo.”

Gilzean had never been so forthcoming. Felix looked at his dark, troubled face with sympathy.

“I came out here to find my brother,” Felix confided. “He’s a prisoner somewhere.”

“We get our lawins, sure enough,” Gilzean said bitterly.

Felix sensed meaning beginning to edge away. He tried one more time.

“If I find him,” he said, feeling a twinge of guilt at his kek of commitment, “I’ll die happy.”

“This cackit place,” Gilzean growled in hate, not listening. “They poor darkies. A greeshie way to go.” He clenched his fists. “I’m a snool, a glaikit sumph. Nocht but rain, howdumdied all day o’boot. I’ve lost my noddle. Camsteerie bloody country.” He gave a harsh laugh. “No strunt. Any haughmagandie? Never. Dunged into the ground…I could greet, I tell you.” He flashed a glance of scowling malevolence at Felix. “Aye, and those primsie Suthrons — you apart, sir — I’d no tarrow to clack their fuds…”

Felix let him ramble on as they plodded through the mud back to Kibongo. Gilzean’s Complaint — it seemed powerful enough to warrant a capital letter — would do for all the men in Twelve company, the dead porters too. He only understood one word in three, but this time he thought he knew how the little man felt.

3: 15 July 1917, Nanda, German East Africa

“Look what I’ve got for you here,” Liesl said placing a straw basket on the dispensary table. Gabriel looked, wondering if she could hear his heart beating. He hadn’t seen Liesl for three days. She had travelled the seventy miles to Lindi to meet her husband. Gabriel had missed her intolerably. She took off her sun helmet and adjusted the pins and combs in her frizzy ginger hair, stretching the material of her blouse across her breasts. Gabriel swallowed and gripped the edge of the table. A nervous tremor had started in his left hand some weeks ago. It quivered constantly, as if possessed of some ghostly life of its own.

Liesl took out a cloth bundle, a knife and a jar of syrupy fluid. She unwrapped the cloth revealing a dark brown loaf the size of a brick.

“Banana bread,” she told him delightedly. “Made with coconut too. No butter, but,” she held up the jar, “plenty of honey.”

Gabriel smiled, his heart cartwheeling. “How amazing. Where did you get it?”

“Erich has friends. He is an important man now. Staff officer with von Lettow himself.”

“Any news?” he said as casually as possible. He needn’t have worried, he knew: Liesl told him everything.

“Bad news,” she said unconcernedly. “The English have landed at Kilwa. Everywhere we are retreating.” She frowned. “There has been a lot of fighting.”

“So we are winning.”

“Oh yes. Some of the wounded are coming here. They’ve evacuated the hospital at Lukuledi. So,” she shrugged. “We shall be busy again.”

Gabriel shifted uneasily in his seat. For the last six months Nanda had been almost deserted, the ward never more than half full, the town populated by the remains of its native population and about thirty German women and children. Deppe had gone — for good they were promised — to establish a new base hospital at Chitawa some fifty miles to the south-west. Nanda hospital had belonged to Liesl again. They sat out the rainy season with little to disturb their routine. This now consisted mainly of distilling the quinine substitute that the German forces used, a vile-tasting potion made from Peruvian chinchona bark of which, surprisingly, there were considerable supplies, stockpiled before the war began. Every fortnight freshly filled bottles and containers were sent out to the Schütztruppe companies. Liesl handed over the administration of this to two other women, Frau Ledebur and Frau Muller. Gabriel was employed in the actual distilling process, a simple but delicate job relying on perfect timing in order for the quinine distillate to be potable. Gabriel spent most of the time supervising the process out at the back of the hospital where the two huge boiling vats were set over open fires. He filled the bottles and passed them over to Frau Ledebur who organized their despatch to the varying Schütztruppe bases. It hadn’t been difficult to ascertain the positions of these, and he now had a good idea of the state of the fighting. Hidden in a niche in the wall of his hut he kept a tattered dossier which he annotated and altered as fresh information came in. The news of the landings at Kilwa would have to be added tonight. By his calculations that meant the British army was now only a hundred and fifty miles or so away from Nanda. It was true that the Portuguese had occupied Lindi some months previously but they didn’t count.

This new awareness of the proximity of the British forces brought with it a succession of conflicting emotions. His leg wound had been healed for many weeks now. Deppe’s posting had made the need to be regarded as injured no longer necessary. Liesl was quite unworried by his presence and their friendship made it unlikely that she would ever insist on his being transferred to another POW camp. Indeed, she had saved him from being re-incarcerated in the Nanda camp just three weeks previously. The stockade had been re-opened for captured European NCO’s. There were now ten British, four Rhodesians and two Portuguese behind the barbed wire, supervised by a grotesquely fat Dutchman called Deeg and a gang of fierce looking native auxiliaries known as ruga-ruga. These men were armed with old rifles but wore no uniforms apart from the odd scavenged pair of trousers or forage cap. It was rumoured among the prisoners that the ruga-ruga were recruited from a tribe of cannibals. Certainly some of the men had filed teeth and this was taken to be sufficient proof of their taste for human flesh.

One of Deeg’s first moves had been to imprison Gabriel but Liesl had refused him permission, saying that not only was Gabriel an officer and couldn’t be billeted with NCOs but also that he was still under medical observation and, besides, had given his parole. Deeg had been forced to accept her instructions, but he insisted that Gabriel be confined to the hospital and its grounds and that he was not allowed to wander freely around Nanda. This restriction had to be accepted but Deeg let it be known that he was lodging an official protest. Nothing further, however, was heard of this. Presumably the military authorities had more pressing matters on their hands.

Liesl sat down opposite Gabriel, her eyes bright with pleasure as she prepared to cut the banana bread. Gabriel released his grip on the table and rested his trembling hand on his knee. He looked at Liesl’s plump freckly face, her curious upper lip, the way she seemed constantly to be either on the point of speaking or biting back words. She had three distinct horizontal creases in her soft neck. AU her clothes seemed several sizes too small for her and were consequently always patched by sweat stains. She tucked a wisp of her hair behind an ear. Gabriel felt the blood pulse in his head. He felt dull and thick-tongued with hopeless love. Since Deeg’s arrival and the restrictions on his movement he had not dared to creep round to her bungalow at nights. But somehow feeding on his memories made the experience almost more intense. He knew every inch of that beautiful large body. The long hanging breasts, the almost invisible salmon-pink nipples, the creamy freckled belly, the ginger-gold hair in her groin and armpits…

“Gabriel,” she said. “Is this enough for you?”

“Oh. Yes, thanks.”

And yet she knew nothing of his feelings. She had left to see her husband without a word of goodbye. It had been Frau Ledebur who had told him of her departure. His clenched fist drummed gently on his knee. As Liesl grew plumper and sleeker, he seemed to be falling apart. He was thinner than ever, his leg wound was healed but it still ached, he walked with a limp and now there was this nervous tremor in his hand.

He watched her spoon some honey onto the two slices of bread she had cut and spread it thickly over the surfaces. She handed his piece over and, not waiting for him to begin, took a huge bite out of her own. Honey spilled off the crust and ran slowly down her chin.

“Verdammt,” she swore, collecting the dribble with a fore-finger and licking it clean. She shut her eyes, chewing slowly, a dreamy look crossing her face as she savoured the taste.

Unaccountably, Gabriel felt tears brim in his eyes and a sob form in his throat. He was literally helpless, he knew. The tears flowed silently down his cheeks and his features trembled in a crying grimace.

Liesl opened her eyes. “Gabriel,” she exclaimed in alarm. “You haven’t eaten. What’s wrong?”

Gabriel hung his head. “I’m sorry,” he tried to explain. “It sounds stupid, I know, but it’s just that — suddenly I felt very happy. I have been very happy here. It’s ridiculous, I know, but I have.”

Liesl tried to stop herself smiling. “Gabriel, you fool.” She laughed, throwing back her head. “You can’t be happy here.” Her breasts shook as she gave a great hooting laugh. “You stupid!” Her eyes were shut, the room was filled with the unrestrained noise of her mirth.

Gabriel didn’t care. He had declared himself.

She was calming down. “Oh. Oh that’s sore. Oh grosser Gott. Oh Gabriel, don’t do that to me. Did you say something?”

“Me?” Gabriel said. “No, nothing.” He took a mouthful of banana bread. “Mmm,” he mumbled. “This is superb.”

♦

As Liesl predicted the hospital at Nanda soon filled up with wounded men from the fighting around Kilwa. One of the wounded was a Captain von Steinkeller who appeared to be an officer of some importance, judging from the high-ranking visitors he received. He had been very badly injured in the hip. Liesl patched it up as best she could, but it was agreed that he would have to be moved to Chitawa where Deppe could examine it. Shortly before he was transferred he was visited by von Lettow’s adjutant himself, another captain called Rutke.

Gabriel was standing in the dispensary when two askaris carried von Steinkeller out to a waiting waggon.

“Don’t worry,” Rutke shouted. Then he spoke some phrases too quickly for Gabriel to translate. “November,” Rutke then said. “Wait until November. We have das chinesische Geschaft.” A ragged cheer went up from the men in the ward. After Rutke left, Gabriel heard the phrase being used again as the men referred to it. Das chinesische Geschaft. He asked Liesl for a translation.

“What would you say? ‘The Chinese Exhibition’? Perhaps. ‘The China Show’? It’s curious. What is it?”

“I don’t know,” Gabriel said. “I heard the men saying it in the ward.”

Liesl shrugged. They left it at that. Gabriel wondered if it was important.

4: 19 October 1917, Lindi, German East Africa

In October 1917 the third battle of Ypres — Passchendaele — was well on its way to its half-million casualties. Between the fourteenth and sixteenth of October the most savagely fought battle on African soil took place at Mahiwa. British columns, advancing south from the Rufiji and inland from the ports of Kilwa and Lindi, were fiercely attacked by the supposedly retreating Germans at some innocuous hills near a bend in the Mahiwa river. Out of five thousand African, Indian, British and South African troops, two thousand seven hundred were killed or wounded.

Fifty per cent casualties in a single battle. Three battalions of the Nigerian Brigade were at the forefront of the fighting and suffered heavy losses. Among those not taking part, though, was Twelve company of the 5th Battalion. On the days of the battle of Mahiwa Felix’s platoon was digging latrine trenches at the brigade’s headquarters at Redhill Camp, Lindi. Gent’s and Loveday’s platoons were escorting supply wagons up to the front line.

After their privations at Kibongo it was recognized that Frearson’s company had endured more than most, and as a reward they received three weeks’ leave in Zanzibar. Fully recovered, Twelve company rejoined the battalion at Moro-goro where they spent the next few months training new recruits, making roads and strengthening culverts and embankments.

As the polyglot British Army marched south the Nigerian Brigade was involved in many of the small actions that took place whenever the Germans’ rearguard was encountered. It soon became clear to Felix that Frearson’s company was unlikely ever to be with them. They guarded supply dumps, provided escorts for labour battalions and assisted District Commissioners to establish administrative authority in the newly conquered territory. Felix’s platoon personally flattened a small hill for an extension to an aerodrome’s runway; built, with mud bricks, a new wing for a field hospital; escorted without incident one hundred tons of rice from Kilwa to Mikesse — a distance of eighty miles — and, for the last three weeks, had been responsible for looking after the brigade’s sizeable baggage train.

At first Felix found nothing to object to. His months at Kibongo seemed a sufficient ordeal for anyone to have gone through, and life at the rear, though agonizingly dull, was tolerably comfortable. Loveday occasionally made warlike noises (“Aux armes, mes braves!”) but Frearson was insistent that there was nothing he could do. The word was that morale had been laid so low at Kibongo that Twelve company was unlikely ever to regain its full fighting capacity. Furthermore, its ranks had been depleted with sickness and the calibre of the new recruits was only suitable for depot duties.

It wasn’t until a German field ambulance was captured near Mahiwa that Felix sensed any alarm over his lack of activity. He stood at the gate of Redhill Camp and watched the Provost Marshal and his men escort the prisoners in. There was one surgeon, three German nurses and some native dressers. The Germans looked rugged and bush-hardened but seemed quite pleased to be captured. Among the wounded they had been tending when they were overrun were three British officers who had been captured a month previously. They were loudly cheered as they were stretchered into the base hospital. Since then more and more German civilians had been interned as the advancing British columns occupied the small villages and mission stations around the Lindi area. The south eastern corner of the country had become the supply centre for the Schütztruppe in the last year and was fairly heavily populated. As the hard-pressed German army retreated towards the Rovuma and the border with Portuguese East, more and more prisoners and wounded men were abandoned by them in the interests of swifter progress.

It was the sight of these liberated English POW’s that most forcefully reminded Felix of his neglected ‘quest’ and stirred him out of his shameful complacency. He asked and was given permission to go to Kilwa to see if the headquarters staff intelligence department could provide him with any information about his brother.

♦

Kilwa was like any number of East African coastal towns. A palm-tree-fringed beach, a prominent old fort, barracks, a whitewashed church and narrow dirt streets lined with single-storey, mudwalled shops and houses. On the sea front were large imposing residences once owned by the richer merchants and the colonial administrators. He was directed to one of these, which, he was told, housed the offices of GSO II (Intelligence). Inside the hall of this particular building — sturdy, two-storeyed and pillared on the ground floor — was a list of the offices it contained. Opposite the title GSO II (Intelligence) was the name of the incumbent: Major R. St J. Bilderbeck. The name rang a bell. Bilderbeck: Felix suddenly remembered that it was from one Bilderbeck that they had heard the full details of Gabriel’s capture. He felt a sudden excitement. This was surely some sort of omen. He walked up the wooden stairs. At the top there was a capacious landing off which there were half a dozen doors. On a board were numerous typed orders. Loose telephone wires were looped haphazardly across the walls. From the rooms came a sustained rattle of typewriters. Every now and then an orderly clutching a sheaf of papers would appear from one room and go into another. None of the doors had any notices on them.

Standing in the middle of the landing was a very fat man with a thick black walrus moustache. His uniform was shabby and faded. He wore dirty riding boots, a frayed spine pad, no tie and his shirt sleeves were rolled up to the elbow. Felix was only marginally tidier. The closer one got to base, the neater everyone became. Dar-es-Salaam was full of immaculate staff officers. Clearly this man had just come from the front.

“Excuse me,” he said, turning to Felix. “Can you tell me which is Major Bilderbeck’s office?”

It took Felix a second or two to recognize his accent as American.

“I’m afraid I can’t help you,” Felix said. “I’m looking for the same man.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well, I guess we just go in.” He chose a door at random and knocked. Felix heard someone shout ‘come in’. The American opened the door and looked into the room.

“God no!” he said vehemently, and shut the door abruptly. He turned on his heel and headed for the stairs at speed.

“I’ve got to go,” he said to Felix as he passed.

The door he’d knocked on was flung open and an immensely tall thin figure appeared.

“Smith,” it shouted. “It’s me. Reggie. For Heaven’s sake. Didn’t you recognize me?”

The American — Smith — halted on the stairs, turned and climbed slowly back up, his head bowed.

“Wheech-Browning,” he said tiredly. “I thought it was you.”

“Come on in, old man,” the Wheech-Browning person exclaimed with evident pleasure. “Haven’t seen you for yonks.”

“Excuse me,” Felix said. “I’m looking for Major Bilderbeck.”

“Oh, that’s me, sort of,” Wheech-Browning said. “Temporary Major Wheech-Browning. You’d better come in too.”

Felix followed the American into Wheech-Browning-Bilderbeck’s office. They were waved into a couple of wooden seats. Felix introduced himself.

“Dear old Smith,” Wheech-Browning said fondly, paying no attention to Felix. “Fancy seeing you again.” He looked up at Felix. “Smith and I are old comrades-in-arms, aren’t we Smith?”

“What do you mean by saying you’re Bilderbeck sort-of!” The American said with a hostility Felix found surprising. “I’m looking for him too.”

“You’re both out of luck,” Wheech-Browning apologized. “Bilderbeck’s disappeared. Dead probably. Gone mad, by all accounts. You know the sort, he was one of those fearless chappies, always wanting to be in the thick of it. He used to sneak off to the front lines all the time. A few weeks ago he got caught up in a rather nasty battle at a place called Bweho-Chino. Apparently he used to stand on the parapets of the trenches at night yelling insults at the jerries. Then one night he cracked. He was last seen sprinting off in the direction of the enemy, waving his gun, screaming something about ‘his girl’ and how the huns were preventing him from finding her.” Wheech-Browning shrugged. “Doesn’t make much sense, I’m afraid. He was never seen again.” He threw his thin arms wide. “Sorry,” he said. “But, ours not to reason why, and all that. I’ve taken over from him. Let me see what I can do. This Bilderbeck fellow kept a phenomenal number of files. Seemed to have some sort of compulsion to write things down.” He frowned. “Actually, I’m not sure if I’m allowed to let you have any information. I think all the gen is classified. Still, as it’s you Smith we’ll pretend it’s all been officially cleared, eh?” He gave a conspiratorial smile. “Fire away.”

“I’m looking for information about a German officer called von Bishop,” Smith said. “Can you tell me if he’s been captured or if you know if he’s been killed?”

Wheech-Browning jumped to his feet and went to a row of filing cabinets.

“We’ve got records of every officer in the Schütztruppe,” he said proudly. “Here we are. “Bishop, von, E. (captain of reserve). Owns a farm near Kilimanjaro…um, Maji-Maji rebellion…commanded a company at Tanga. Present at Kahe. Moved to Kondoa Irangi. Now believed to be on von Lettow’s staff.” That’s it. If he’s dead there’s a ‘D’ beside the name. If he’s a prisoner there’s a ‘P’. Stands to reason, I suppose. There’s no ‘D’ and no ‘P’. That answer your question?” Wheech-Browning looked disgustingly pleased with himself, Felix thought.

“So he’s still out there,” Smith said grimly. “Theoretically at least. Good.”

“That’s right,” Wheech-Browning said. “Why?”

“I’ve got a score to settle. He was the man who commandeered my farm, remember?”

“We’ve all got a score to settle with the huns,” Wheech-Browning said pompously. “What did this man do?”

“All sorts of things,” Smith said, non-committally. “Ruined me, for one. He stole my Decorticator for another.”

“Oh God, that bloody great thing. Stole it? How can you steal something like that?”

Felix wondered what on earth they were talking about. They sounded like schoolboys squabbling. He interrupted with his own request about released prisoners of war.

Wheech-Browning returned to his files and drew out a small dossier.

“What did you say your brother’s name was?”

“Cobb. Gabriel Cobb, captain. Captured at Tanga.”

“Oh. Tanga.” Wheech-Browning and the American exchanged glances. “Less said about that…” Wheech-Browning ran his finger down the list of names. “Cobb, Cobb, Cobb. No, sorry. No Captain Cobb here. Half a mo, they’ve just liberated a big camp at Tabora.” More rifling through files continued. “There’s a Godfrey Cobb from the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa. That wouldn’t be him, would it? I suppose not.”

He shut the drawers of the wooden filing cabinet. “Drawn a blank, I’m afraid. Mind you, there are other camps in occupied territories. Places like Chitawa, Massasi and Nanda.”

He pointed them out on a wall map. “He may be in one of those. Also,” he added, “the German columns always tend to carry some prisoners with them. Ones they don’t want freed, if you know what I mean. I shouldn’t give up hope. The Germans are quite good about supplying information — deaths, that sort of thing. If we’d heard anything it would be down here somewhere.”

Felix felt his face suddenly grow hot. “What about letters?” he said. “Do letters to British prisoners get through?”

Wheech-Browning sat down. “It depends. We send food parcels to the camps. Any letters usually go along with them. Bit erratic though.”

“Can you tell me if a letter has been sent on to my brother in the last six months or so?”

“My dear Cobb, I haven’t the faintest.” Wheech-Browning spread his hands. “I’ve only been here a couple of weeks, since old Bilderbeck went bonkers. He’d be the man to tell you. It may have been passed on. We can never tell. We have to rely on jerry supply officers. Not exactly grade-one material, I believe.”

Felix felt only slightly composed. He took out a notebook and recorded the names of the POW camps. Then he stood up and said he had to go. The American got to his feet also. Wheech-Browning invited them both to lunch at the ‘quite decent little officers’ club’ they had in Kilwa. Felix declined, the American emphatically followed suit.

Wheech-Browning saw them down the stairs. At the front door he halted them with a story.

“Listen to this,” he said. “Something Bilderbeck came up with. It’s called the ‘China Show’. It was a plan, he told them, formulated by the Germans to fly a Zeppelin out to East Africa to give aid and succour to von Lettow’s army. Extraordinary idea, isn’t it? Keep your eyes peeled for an airship.” He raised an imaginary shotgun to his shoulder and fired both barrels. “Can’t see what it’s got to do with China, though.”

Felix and the American left Wheech-Browning and walked down the palm-lined coast road to the centre of the town.

“That man keeps turning up in my life,” Smith said. “And somebody always seems to get killed.”

“Wheech-Browning?”

“The same.”

Felix said nothing. The news about letters was worrying. A silence fell and they walked on together without talking. For want of something to say Felix brought up the Zeppelin story. They both agreed it was probably some kind of fantasy dreamed up by the deranged Bilderbeck.

They reached Felix’s motor car.

“They’re big, aren’t they?” the American said.

“What?”

“Those Zeppelins.”

“Yes. I think they are. But it will have to land in Redhill Camp if I’m to see it. My company’s been in reserve since April.”

“Ask for a cross-posting to the KAR.”

“It’s my brother, you see. It’s extremely important that I find my brother.”

“Yes,” Smith nodded, but he looked like he only half-understood. There was a pause.

“Tell you what,” the American said. “We found a camp last week but it was full of Portuguese. If we come across any more I’ll look out for your brother. What’s he like?”

“He’s fair. Gabriel Cobb, that’s his name. He’s tall, strong-looking. He doesn’t look like me at all.”

On the drive back to the camp Felix thought about the idea of a cross-posting. New KAR battalions were constantly being raised, it shouldn’t be too difficult.

When he arrived he found a long-faced Gilzean standing outside his tent.

“Hello, sergeant,” Felix said. “What’s wrong?”

“We’re on the move, sir,” Gilzean said gloomily. “Twelve company’s going up to the front. Attacking a place called Nambindinga.”

5: 19 November 1917, Nanda, German East Africa

Gabriel eased his position trying to make as little noise as possible while he found a secure perch in the bushes outside Liesl’s room. Tonight the house was full of German officers and he knew he’d have a long wait before she came to bed. The branch he was sitting on suddenly gave with a green crack and with a loud rustle of leaves deposited him gently on his feet. He stiffened with alarm, but no one seemed to have heard anything.

For the last three days Nanda had been like a garrison town. Von Lettow’s retreating headquarters had set up base there temporarily. Over a thousand askaris and their camp followers had occupied every available building. Gabriel had confined himself to the quinine distilling sheds and his own small hut, concerned not to draw undue attention to himself. Liesl told him Deeg planned to make representations to von Lettow in an attempt to get him incarcerated, but she told him not to worry as she thought it extremely unlikely that Deeg would even get near von Lettow under the circumstances. Headquarters would be moving on in a day or so, she said, the British were getting so close.

“Maybe the war is nearly over for us,” she said matter-of-factly. “You can go home soon to your family.”

Gabriel had never told her about Charis. “What will happen to you?” he said, changing the subject.

“Perhaps I’ll go to Chitawa with Deppe.”

“Deppe?”

“I hope not.” She gave a brief laugh. “Or Dar-es-Salaam. All civilians are being sent to Dar.”

She had continued speculating in a dreamy, off-hand way. Gabriel said nothing. For the first time the reality, and proximity, of his salvation was apparent to him. British troops were fifty miles away. He’d been a prisoner for three years. In a day, two days, it would be all over. He would be free.

Why then, he asked himself, did he feel assailed with doubts and dissatisfactions? His life in Nanda had been curiously secure and uncomplicated: the future seemed to consist only of problems, realignments and responsibilities which he wasn’t sure he could cope with in the same way he had before the war. Uncomfortably, he found himself thinking of Charis and of the identity which he felt he had shed when he was bayonetted. The approach of the British army stirred hibernating instincts and forgotten values. Now that he had to face up to them they seemed, if he was to be honest, unfamiliar and — more worrying — unwelcome.

Responding to these new pressures he slipped round the back of the stockade and passed on the news of the advance to the NCO’s behind the wire. “Good on yer, sir,” one of them said, as if he’d done something heroic. There were whispered mutters of agreement from the others. “Be careful, sir,” one of them counselled.

As Gabriel had crept away, for a moment he saw himself as they did: a young officer in the midst of the enemy camp, carrying out a dangerous double game, risking his safety — his life perhaps…Back in the hospital he was suffused with a sense of shame and guilt when he considered the reality of his case. He felt loyalties and emotions tug at him in conflicting directions. What should he do? He could provide no answers, so he did nothing. He felt maddeningly helpless. There was no solution in inertia, yet that seemed all he was capable of.

The feeling of mounting frustration was exacerbated by Liesl’s presence. She was being unusually solicitous and kind, as if the thought of their coming separation had caused her to re-examine and revalue their curious relationship. That afternoon she came out to the palm-roofed shelter where the chinchona bark was boiled in huge metal vats. Gabriel stood bare-chested stirring the bubbling fluid with a bamboo pole, the clouds of steam and the heat from the fires covering his thin chest with gleaming perspiration. He broke off when she arrived. She held two ‘real’ cigarettes—“from Erich,” she said. They stood in the shade of a large mango tree, smoking, and talking about the future.

“You’ll be glad to go home?” she asked.

“Yes. Yes, I will. I suppose.”

“Perhaps you will go to Leamington Spa.”

“What?”

“I visited Leamington Spa once. Erich’s mother lived there.”

“I’ve never been.”

“It’s a pleasant town.”

The bland exchange affected him with unbearable poignancy. He was gripped by a sense of fear. He felt like a new boy on his first day at boarding school: everything ahead was strange and perplexing. In what ways would he have to prove himself? What demands would be made on his character?

A precise and cruel sense of his own inadequacies and weakness was suddenly revealed to him. He felt chastened and desperately in need of some support. He glanced at the strong and placid woman beside him. She was looking at the sun on the wasted grass beyond the pool of shade. The hand that held the cigarette was poised, a cursive rope of blue smoke rose into the heavy dark green leaves above their heads. Gabriel was suddenly possessed of the awful feeling that nothing beyond this moment, outside Nanda, in the rest of his life, would be as sure or certain again. For as long as it lasted he immersed himself unreflectingly in the confident tranquillity. Then Liesl left and the self-doubts, like homing pigeons, returned to roost.

♦

Memories of those seconds in the shade drove him to take the risk of creeping through the plantations to Liesl’s bungalow that night. Troops were billeted everywhere and he had to make his way with extreme caution. But he wanted to see her once again if he could, see her pale and unsuspecting, freeze that image in his mind for ever.

But as soon as he saw the little bungalow he knew his luck was out. On the rickety stoop sat a group of German officers in very grubby, tattered dress whites. Liesl sat with them and two other planters’ wives. Gabriel recognized von Bishop, Liesl’s husband, his head shaven nearly bald, his large nose and gaunt cheeks giving him a surprised, faintly pop-eyed look.

Gabriel crept round to his usual position, hoping nonetheless that Liesl might still come into the bedroom, but it remained dark. He decided to wait. He heard the guests leave the stoop and assemble in the main room of the little bungalow. Soon servants were ferrying steaming bowls of food from the kitchen shack behind the house and he heard the chatter of conversation around the dinner table increase as the assembled guests relaxed. Gabriel tried to find himself a secure perch in the bushes, knowing he had a wait of several hours before him, and it was then that the branch broke.

There was no pause in the conversation. From his position in the bushes he could almost catch individual words. He wondered vaguely if he should make an attempt to eavesdrop, but decided not to bother.

Then he became aware of some activity and a babble of servants’ voices by the back door. He realized that suspicions had been raised by the noise he’d made. He had to leave instantly. He forced himself to remain calm. Any precipitate flight would only give him away at once. The servants were milling around the rear door. They clearly were undecided about what to do. Very slowly Gabriel dropped to his knees. Not taking his eyes off the group by the back door he began to inch backwards through the bushes. He saw a lantern being carried from the kitchen shack, saw a white face peer from the back door.

“Halt,” a soft voice said behind him.

Gabriel felt his guts churn. He turned round. A white officer and two askaris stood above him. The askaris covered him with their rifles. Rifles with fixed bayonets. Gabriel felt the blood rush from his head as he heard steps running from the rear door. The bobbing light from the lantern slid up and down the dull steel blades. He fainted.

♦

He came to on Liesl’s stoop. He was sitting on a cane chair with his head between his knees. His eyes focused on the rough wooden boards. Between his boots he saw a flying ant with only one wing walking round and round in a futile, imbalanced attempt to get from A to B. He looked up into the circle of German faces. Behind the officers he saw Liesl. A furious conversation was going on. Voices were raised. His discovery seemed to be causing an astonishing fuss.

“How long were you outside?” he was asked sharply in German.

“Fünf Minuten,” he lied automatically, before he realized what this gave away. He decided to speak English. “Five minutes,” he repeated stupidly. He caught Liesl’s worried gaze for a brief second before he looked down again. His left hand was trembling violently. He covered it with his right.

He heard more conversation, this time some of it hushed. He heard Liesl speaking, then some shouted orders. He sat on in silence. The next thing he saw was Deeg’s grinning face. He was hauled roughly to his feet and marched off between a guard of four askaris. He was taken down Nanda’s main street to a small wooden store shed set to one side of the prisoners’ stockade. Some sacks of mealie flour were removed before he was pushed inside. There was the noise of a bolt being slid home, a mutter of voices and then silence. He couldn’t tell if a man had been left on guard or not.

He felt his way round the dark interior of the shed. It was small, about six feet by nine. The wooden planks that made up its four walls had been crudely put together and there were many thin gaps through which a faint moonlight entered. The roof was made of grass and was full of rustling insects and lizards.

Gabriel sat down in a corner. He felt, to his surprise, quite calm. He wondered what would happen to him. He peered out of a slit at the back but saw only shadowy, indistinct forms. After a while he heard voices. The door was opened and two men, one carrying an oil lantern, came in. Gabriel got unsteadily to his feet. He recognized von Bishop, his big nose oddly illuminated by the swinging lantern which was held by the other man, a slim dapper figure. Gabriel remembered him: it was Rutke, von Lettow’s adjutant.

“Just one question, Captain Cobb,” von Bishop said in English. Gabriel was surprised at his high-pitched voice. He sounded tired rather than hostile.

“Are these yours?” He handed Gabriel a little tattered bundle of papers. Gabriel took them. It was his ‘dossier’. There seemed no point in denying it. He handed them back.

“Yes.”

“Herr Deeg has informed me”—here an evilly grinning Deeg stepped into the hut but was shooed out by Rutke. Von Bishop began again—“Herr Deeg has informed me that you are under parole. These acts of espionage constitute a breach of your parole. Your word as an officer. What do you have to say to that?”

Gabriel said nothing.

Rutke stepped forward. “What do you know about das chinesische-Geschaft?”

“Nothing,” Gabriel said, and realized he’d spoken too quickly once again. “I mean, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He decided to be honest. Be honest where you can: it was a rule of interrogation that he’d learnt somewhere.

“I’ve heard the name,” he said candidly. “But I’ve no idea what it is.”

Rutke and von Bishop looked at each other.

“Well,” von Bishop said wearily. “I’m afraid you will have to stay locked up a while longer.” He paused, then stuck his forefinger in an ear and wriggled it about. “You were wounded at Tanga, weren’t you,” he said in a more friendly voice. “Do you know an English officer called Bilderbeck?”

“Yes,” Gabriel said. “How do you know?” He thought back to those days on the Homayun and on the battlefield three years ago. It seemed like a lifetime.

“He’s dead,” von Bishop said, looking at the end of his finger. “He died a few weeks ago. I was at Tanga. I met him. I seem to remember he was a friend of yours.”

“Yes. Well, I suppose he was. In a way.”

“I thought you’d like to know.”

“Thank you,” Gabriel said. “Thank you for telling me.” What a peculiar man this von Bishop was. He wondered how Bilderbeck had died. He wondered if von Bishop was making a threat of some kind.

♦

The next day passed with unbelievable slowness. In the enclosed hut the air was hot and fetid. Hundreds of flies hummed and skittered in its darkness. Twice Deeg came and led him to a latrine trench behind the prison cage. He was escorted on each occasion by Deeg and four of his ruga-ruga. On the second journey some of the prisoners cheered him as he limped by on the way back. “Keep it up, sir,” they shouted. “Don’t worry, our boys’ll be here soon.” Gabriel managed a smile and a wave. The ruga-ruga dashed forward and prodded fiercely through the wire with their rifle butts. His food that day consisted of a bottle of water and a bowl of mealie porridge.

That night he stretched out on the beaten earth floor and tried to find a position which would be comfortable enough to let him sleep. His leg wound was aching dully and his entire left arm seemed to be trembling now. He shut his eyes. He wondered how long it would be before the British army arrived.

He turned over. The floor was hard, whining mosquitos seemed to be biting every exposed inch of his body. God alone knew what kinds of ticks and vermin existed in this sort of store shed. He heard a distinct rustling sound. Oh my God, he thought with alarm, sitting up. There’s a rat in the roof, or a snake…

“Gabriel!” a voice whispered.

He jumped in fright. It was Liesl behind the shed. He crawled over. Through a large slit between the planks he saw a pale section of her face.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Is there a guard?”

“No. Listen, Gabriel. I’ve got news. They’re going to take you with them.”

Gabriel felt a thump of fear in his chest. “Who? Where?”

“Our troops. They’re crossing the Rovuma into Portuguese East.”

“Oh my God. When?”

“I don’t know. Tomorrow. The next day.”

“Oh God.” Gabriel felt cold, fluttering sensations of panic. “But why? For God’s sake, why me?”

“I’m not sure. Erich won’t tell me. I think he is suspicious. A bit. They say you know some secret.”

Gabriel could feel the breath from her words on his cheek. Their faces were only an inch or so apart, separated by the wooden wall.

“A secret? What?”

“I don’t know. They say you know a secret, that’s all.”

Gabriel felt like weeping. What could he know that was so important? He thought of the information on his dossier. It was weeks out of date. Surely that wouldn’t warrant them taking him into Portuguese East?

“What secret can it be?” he repeated frantically.

“I don’t know, Gabriel. They won’t tell me.”

“You’ve got to help me, Liesl,” he said desperately. “I’ve got to get away. They mustn’t take me.”

“I told them,” she said. “I said you weren’t strong, that you needed medical attention.”

“That’s right,” Gabriel agreed, almost whimpering. “It would kill me.”

“I told them.”

“What did they say?”

“They said they had doctors. It didn’t matter.”

“You’ve got to help me, Liesl,” Gabriel raised his voice.

“Ssh. Of course I will.” It sounded like the most reasonable request in the world.

“I’ve got to escape.” Gabriel thought quickly. “Bring me something to dig with. A knife or something. And some food and water…How far away are the British?”

“Near Nambindinga, I think. Forty-five kilometres, I think.”

“That’s north?”

“Yes, north directly.”

“Bring everything tomorrow night, can you?”

“Yes. At the same time. Erich thinks I am on duty at the hospital.”

They were silent for a second. Gabriel saw a gleam of light in the jelly of her eye ball.

“Gabriel?”

“Yes.”

“Why were you outside my house?”

He swallowed. “I came to see you.”

“Me? Why?”

“For some reason. I wanted to see you.”

“Because of the end of the war?”

“Yes,” he said. “That’s it.”

“But Erich and Rutke and Deeg say you are a spy. That you have been spying all the time.”

“It’s not true.” Then he added, the honesty making his voice hoarse, “It was just something I did.”

“Why?”

“To console myself.”

“I told them you weren’t a spy.” She paused. “I should go now.”

Gabriel had a final thought. “Liesl. Tomorrow night. Can you bring me some paper and a pencil?”

“Paper and pencil? Are you sure? All right. I will.”

♦

The next day passed as slowly as the one before. On his trips to the latrine Gabriel became aware of more bustle in the town: columns of marching men, officers speeding up and down the street on bicycles, a general air of preparing to move. He prayed they wouldn’t pull out before dark. In the afternoon he thought he heard a distant sound of gunfire but he couldn’t be sure.

That night Liesl came as she had promised. She slipped a flattened iron bar through a crack between the planks. It felt like part of a heavy hinge. In ten minutes he had dug a hollow beneath the wooden walls big enough for his thin body to squirm under. Liesl helped him to his feet. She handed him an old sack.

“There’s some food and a bottle of water,” she whispered. “Some matches, a bit of cheese and two candles for the dark. Don’t go far Gabriel, please. Just go away and hide. They won’t wait to catch you. A lot are staying behind to wait for the English. Go and hide for two days, then you can come back.”

“Right,” Gabriel said. He had hardly taken her words in. They were standing up against the back wall of the shed. A quarter moon only provided enough light for Gabriel to see the bold features of her face. Her shadowed eyes, her nostrils, the gash of her mouth. Their whispering meant that they stood only a foot apart. Gabriel could smell her: a faint scent of cigarette smoke, fresh smell of perspiration. He could sense the bulk of her soft body in the dark so close to his. He felt an overpowering urge to take her in his arms. Just once to feel her breasts crush against him. Just once to kiss her neck, somehow to be swallowed up and immersed in one quintessential embrace…

“Gabriel.”

“Yes.”

“I forgot the paper. I put in Die Leiden des jungen Werthers. Is that all right? There is room on the pages to write.”

“Yes,” he said. “That’s fine.” He felt flooded with an inarticulate-late gratitude for this strong, stubborn woman. He rubbed his forehead. He felt the sense of helplessness descend on him again as he thought of what he had to do. If only they hadn’t caught him outside Liesl’s house, if only…He could have patiently waited for the arrival of the British.

“The town is very quiet,” Liesl said. “They have made a line, north, about ten kilometres. Be careful. Here.” She handed him a stub of pencil.

“Thanks.” Gabriel put the stub in his pocket.

“Por jungen Werther,” she said. “A souvenir.”

Gabriel felt an intense sadness descend on him. He felt as if he were about to embark on some long, arduous voyage. His eyes were full of inappropriate tears.

He stepped back. “I’ll go now,” he said, trying to stop the quaver in his voice. “Down this way, then worKARound the town through the plantations.”

“Be careful. Just for two days. Find somewhere safe. Then come back here.” There was no note of pleading in her voice, just natural concern. She expects to see me again, Gabriel thought. He felt suddenly that it was only right that he should tell her something of his feelings for her. It would in some way justify what she was doing, the risks she had taken. He tried to think of safe words he could use.

She touched his elbow.

“You should go.”

“Thank you, Liesl,” he began. “I don’t know…I feel. What I—”

“Don’t worry. It’s not important. Come back when they have gone.”

“Right,” he said. “Two days.” He picked up the sack, gave a brief wave in the dark with his trembling left hand and set off carefully down the rutted track that led to the trees.

6: 22 November 1917, Nanda, German East Africa

Von Bishop and Rutke looked at the hole Gabriel had made under the wooden wall of the shed. A sweating, nervous Deeg came round the side, holding the metal hinge.

“This is it,” Deeg said in an outraged voice. “This is how he did it.”

“But how did he get it?” von Bishop asked. “What about the guard?”

“Ah, well. There was no guard last night. We had many duties and Cobb was a sick man. Weak. There were secure bolts on the door. I thought—”

“Someone helped him,” Rutke said. “It’s obvious. But who?”

A little man on a bicycle came free-wheeling down the slope from the main street and stopped beside them. He had a cigarette in his mouth. Von Bishop and Rutke saluted. Deeg went into a quivering attention, chin up, thumbs at trouser seams. He was General von Lettow-Vorbeck.

“He’s gone?” von Lettow confirmed. “The man who knows about the China Show?”

“Last night.” von Bishop said. “But he’s weak, he can’t be far.”

“I see,” Von Lettow paused. “You’d better catch him, Erich.”

“Me, sir?”

“Yes, take some of the irregulars.”

It was the last thing von Bishop wanted to do. “Are you sure, sir?”

Von Lettow frowned. He took off his sun helmet and wiped his stubby head with a handkerchief.

“Yes,” said firmly. “We are crossing the Rovuma up by the Ludjenda confluence. In two or three days. Meet us there. But don’t waste time, Erich. A Zeppelin is not going to make much difference once we’re over the river.”

♦

Von Lettow and Rutke left to rejoin the main Schütztruppe column some five miles away at Newala. It was from there that von Bishop had been summoned at first light by a message from Deeg. Nanda was now, to all intents and purposes, clear of troops. There remained only the large numbers of sick and wounded in the hospital, two dozen women and children from the surrounding plantations, Deeg and his squad of ruga-ruga and the sixteen NCO prisoners.

Von Bishop told Deeg to select three of his best men to form the tracking party. Deeg and the other ruga-ruga were to stay behind in Nanda and surrender to the British when they arrived.

Von Bishop walked wearily up the deserted main street towards the hospital. All the sick and wounded had been assembled here. The hospital was so crowded that many were laid out in the shade beneath trees. Others were lying in hastily erected grass shelters. Across the road from the hospital the NCO prisoners formed a curious group by the main gate of the stockade.

Von Bishop saw Liesl standing on the narrow stoop that ran along the front of the hospital. She stood like a man, her hands behind her, feet apart, gazing out over the drab view, rocking gently backwards and forwards. She was smoking a cigarette and, von Bishop noticed with a squirm of irritation, wearing her coloured glasses.

She saw him approach. “Erich!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here? I thought the Schütztruppe were at Newala.” Some wounded men lying on stretchers at one end of the stoop looked up in mild curiosity.

“They are,” he said. “I came down this morning.” He paused, scrutinizing her face. “He’s escaped, you know.”

“Who? Gabriel? No, I didn’t know. When?” She seemed quite unconcerned. She puffed at her cigarette, then glanced at its glowing end. Von Bishop stared in frustration at the dark opaque lenses of her glasses. She had called him Gabriel.

“Yes, Cobb,” he said pointedly. “Somebody in the town must have helped him.”

She shrugged. “He’s been here a long time. All the boys know him.”

“I’m going after him,” he said. “Von Lettow’s orders.”

“As you wish, Erich,” she said and blew a stream of smoke into the sunlight.

♦

Von Bishop tightened the girths on his saddle. His mule munched contentedly on some dry grass. A few yards away stood three of Deeg’s ruga-ruga. He felt unsettled and irritated. He had said goodbye to Liesl, and it had turned out to be both infuriatingly formal and non-committal. He had told her that he would be rejoining von Lettow’s final column when he had recaptured Cobb and that she, no doubt, would be interned in Dar for as long as the war went on.

“We must continue to fight,” he said without much fervour. “At all costs.”

“Of course, Erich,” she had replied.

He said goodbye and stepped forward to kiss her. She removed her coloured glasses and, briefly, their lips touched. Von Bishop stepped back and held her at arm’s length, his hands on her shoulders. He looked uncomprehendingly into her eyes. His wife seemed a total stranger to him. He suddenly noticed the fleshiness of her shoulders and upper aims, how the material of her dress was creased and tight across her bosom. She used to be a handsome woman, he thought sadly to himself. How this war has changed her!

With a sigh he heaved himself up onto his mule. He saw Deeg walking over from the POW cage.

“I’m sure he’ll head north towards the British,” Deeg said. “I’ve told my boys to ask local villagers. They see everything. With a bit of persuasion…”

“Good, good,” von Bishop said testily. Really, people like Deeg were a disgrace. “Do your men speak Swahili?”

“Ah,” Deeg said apologetically. “I regret, very little. But they are obliging fellows, quick to learn. You can easily make them understand any order.”

Von Bishop looked round at the ruga-ruga. Two wore brimless felt caps. The third was bare-headed, his skull shaven apart from a round tuft of hair above his brow. They were draped in coils of tattered evil-smelling blankets and armed with old.70 rifles. Large machetes hung at their waists. They smiled winningly at him, revealing their filed, pointed teeth. Absolutely the worst sort of irregular, thought von Bishop. Still, they would know the country. Cobb wouldn’t get far.

“Let’s go,” von Bishop said. He kicked his mule into action and trotted off down the main street, the ruga-ruga loping behind.

7: 22 November 1917, The Makonde plateau, German East Africa

After he left Liesl, Gabriel crept into the rubber plantations and waited for dawn. As soon as there was a faint light he set off through the comparatively open bush, keeping the rising sun on his right hand side. It was fairly easy going. The countryside was sparsely wooded, the ground covered in thick, waist-high grass with the odd tangle of thorn thicket. He kept to paths only if they headed due north. He wanted to make as much distance as possible while he was still fresh. He bypassed native villages but made no real effort to hide himself. The main German force was south of Nanda now, he knew, based at Newala. There was a rearguard to the northwest of the town on the road that led to Nambindinga. His plan was to strike north for a day or two — depending on progress — then strike east, forming the two sides of a right-angled triangle to the Nanda-Nambindinga hypotenuse. He calculated that he should meet up with the advancing British columns in three days or thereabouts.

After an hour or so the ground began to rise as he entered the gentle foothills of the wide Makonde plateau, a sizeable spur of which separated Nanda and Nambindinga. In the dips and valleys the vegetation grew thicker and for a lot of the time he passed through thin woods composed of spindly trees. At mid-morning he found a safe place to stop, a dry gully with a thick screen of bushes and scrub. He found a patch of shade and ate some of the hard unleavened bread that Liesl had supplied and drank a few mouthfuls of water.

He felt curiously exhilarated and quite pleased with himself. His limping gait had carried him along tolerably well. His leg was barely aching. He took from the sack the book Liesl had given him, Die Leiden des jungen Werthers: ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’, he translated. He had never read it, just used its fine pages to make cigarettes. The first eighty-seven pages were missing. He started to write on the upper and lower margins of the first available page. A little self-consciously he wrote, “Report of Capt. G.H. Cobb att to 69th Palamcottah Light Infantry. Taken prisoner at Tanga. 4⁄11⁄1914. Account of imprisonment and escape.” He paused. He knew that he might fail in his endeavour and the request to Liesl for writing materials had been made with this in mind. If his body should be found, he wanted his identity to be ascertainable, and some record of the facts to be established. That was most important.

“Next of kin,” he wrote. “Major—”: he paused and scratched out ‘Major’ and replaced it with ‘Charis Lavery Cobb, The Cottage, Stackpole Manor, Stackpole, Kent’. As he added the full stop the point of his pencil stub broke. He swore. Writing Charis’s name and the familiar address brought back long dormant memories. He found himself thinking of their days in Trouville, their walks along the promenade. He brought to mind an image of Stackpole in high summer, the field in front of the house, the river, the willow pool. He remembered the boiling afternoon he had gone swimming with Felix, the dinner when the electric light had failed, the major furiously ringing a silent bell. He felt a debilitating sense of homesickness sweep through his body.

He looked down at his legs stretched before him as he sat. His decrepit boots, his tattered socks, his thin knees freshly scratched from the thorn. He touched his right knee, pushing at the knee bone with a forefinger. It slid, oiled and easily, at his touch. As it moved the sun caught the springy golden hairs that covered it. His fingers travelled higher, pulling back the frayed hem of his shorts to exposé the wasted thigh, the contorted pink and white scar that stitched together the severed halves of his muscle. He pulled the trouser leg down. His wound was aching a little more; his leg seemed to be stiffening up. He rubbed his jaw, hearing the rasp of bristles of his three-day beard. Above him the sun beat down as midday approached. Locusts and grasshoppers kept up their monotonous shrilling whine in the surrounding bushes.

He lay down and pillowed his arms beneath his head. I must rest, he told himself. I’ll set out again in the afternoon, when the heat’s gone from the sun. He’d look for a flint later and try and sharpen some kind of point on the pencil, so he could write down the details of his escape. At least the facts would be there, if his body were found. He tried to replace this grim thought by something more agreeable. He made an effort to conjure up a picture of Charis’s face, something he hadn’t done for many, many months, thinking uneasily of the few days they had spent together as man and wife. He screwed up his eyes in concentration but he found he was thinking only of Liesl. Liesl in the bath, her heavy breasts dripping with water, the maid pouring it over her shoulders, rivulets sluicing over her body, dampening the pale coppery triangle of hairs between her thighs…

He sat up. A problem suddenly became obvious to him. How could he write of Liesl’s part in the escape? How would it look to anyone — Charis — reading about it? He decided to wait to think about it later.

He set off again in the middle of the afternoon. The day was still hot but he found the slope he was moving up well-provided with shady trees. His leg had stiffened up considerably and he didn’t make the good progress he had in the morning. Skirting some fields on the edge of a native village some children shouted at him and some stones were thrown, but he kept on going. It took him two laborious hours to break out of the trees and reach the edge of the plateau.

The sun was lower in the sky, the air was dusty and soft. Ahead stretched a vast grassy plain dotted with small stone hills — kopjes — occasional brakes of trees and bushes and delicately beautiful flat-topped acacias.

He set off across the grass plain. He would walk as far as he could before night fell. Then he would make a fire at the base of one of the kopjes. In the morning he would change course and march into the rising sun. By the end of that day, or perhaps the next, he would meet the advancing columns of the British army.

8: 22 November 1917, Near Nambindinga, German East Africa

The 5th Battalion of the Nigerian Brigade plodded along the dirt road to Nambindinga, Twelve company in the vanguard. Felix walked beside Gilzean in the stifling, late afternoon heat. He looked back at his platoon, green fezzes bobbing in an untidy column, the slap of their bare feet on the hard earth of the road. Frearson was somewhere behind. Gent’s platoon was pushed out on the right wing. Young Waller, Parrott’s replacement, was slogging up and down the crumpled foothills and gullies of the plateau on the left. Loveday’s platoon was fanned out across the road several hundred yards ahead.

“Sacré bleu!” Loveday had exclaimed on being told his position. “Advance guard, my, my.”

They had been making slow progress all day without meeting any opposition. This was their first occasion at the head of the column of troops pushing inland from Lindi, ‘Linforce’ as it was known. To the north was another column, from Kilwa, and imaginatively dubbed, in true army fashion, ‘Kil-force’. It was these two columns that were driving the remains of von Lettow’s army out of German East Africa.

Felix looked at Gilzean. His khaki shirt was soaked with sweat. In the shade cast by his sun helmet he looked pallid and drawn, his chin and jaws blue-black against his white cheeks.

“Are you all right, sergeant?” Felix asked.

“Oh aye. It’s just unco heat.”

Frearson came puffing up from the rear at this point.

“Didn’t you hear the bugle?” he demanded angrily. He seemed furious.

“No. Sorry. What for?”

“We’re pulling back. Lines of communication too extended. Bivouac by the side of the road then march back to camp tomorrow. Pass the word to Loveday and the others, and keep your ears open in future.”

Just then, beyond the curve in the road ahead, there was a loud explosion. A column of smoke and dust shot up high in the air, followed by the rattle of falling stones and gouts of earth. There were shouts and cries of alarm from Loveday’s platoon. Everyone fell to the ground.

“My God! Artillery?” Frearson gasped, alarm tensing his putty features.

“Scairdy gowk,” Felix heard Gilzean mutter behind him.

There were no more explosions. They got to their feet and ran round the corner. In the middle of the road was a crater surrounded by Loveday’s excited platoon. By its side lay Loveday, or rather his top half. There was no sign of his legs or much of anything below his waist. None of his platoon seemed hurt, beyond a few cuts and bruises. They were voluble with nervous excitement over their narrow escape. Half a dozen men must have walked over the mine before Loveday’s boot set it off. What would Loveday have said? Felix found himself wondering. ‘Nom de nom’, ‘zut alor’?

Felix turned away and looked at the landscape. The road sloped down slightly at this point, affording a panorama of the countryside. The burnt grass plains, the thorn scrub, undulating hills fading out into the evening haze in the south, the lusher green of the Rovuma basin away in the distance. No sign of a German anywhere.

♦

They spent the next morning and afternoon laboriously retracing their steps to the camp they’d left the day before. After a quiet night they buried Loveday at the foot of a baobab tree in the morning. After the burial service Felix returned to his tent for a breakfast of corned beef, mashed sweet potato and a local variety of bean which an ever efficient Human had ready for him. He was half-way through his meal when Gilzean approached with a tin can in his hand.

“What is it, Gilzean?” Felix asked.

“Could you take a peek at this, please sir?”

Felix looked. It contained a thick albuminous dark liquid.

“What’s this, coffee?”

“No. It’s aidle from my cullage.”

“Oh yes?”

“I’ve been passin’ this drumlie loppert water for a week. I just get a mitchkin, ye ken. A jaup.”

Felix frowned. He was about to ask Gilzean to repeat himself when he saw a vaguely familiar lanky figure sauntering over.

“I say, Cobb?” it shouted. “Captain Frearson said I’d find you here. Got some interesting news. It’s me, Wheech-Browning, Kilwa, GSO II (Intelligence). Remember?”

“Oh yes. Have a seat. I won’t be a minute.” He turned to Gilzean, and handed him back his tin.

“Let me get this straight,” he said. “Is this something to do with your health?” He wondered what Wheech-Browning wanted.

“Aye. I’m fair doited with worry. This grugous stuff…”

“How are you feeling?” He wanted to dismiss Gilzean, but the man was persistent.

“A bit tired. But it’s oorie. It could be a clyre in my culls.”

“Yes?” Wheech-Browning was staring curiously at Gilzean.

“Or my moniplies. My jag. Yes my jag even.”

Felix felt confused; by now he’d come almost to understand Gilzean, but when the man was upset his language retreated into the obscurities of his arcane Celtic vocabulary. He knew suddenly that Wheech-Browning had news of Gabriel.

“I shouldn’t worry,” he told Gilzean, “If you’re not feeling too bad otherwise. I’m sure it’ll clear up, um, whatever it is. See the MO if any complications arise.” That seemed to cover everything.

“Thank you very much indeed, sir,” Gilzean said gratefully, saluted and walked off with his curious tin.

“That’s remarkable,” Wheech-Browning said. “What language was that man speaking?”

“English.”

“Never! Quite incomprehensible.”

“A Scottish version, anyway.”

“Can you understand him?”

“It took a while, but I can catch the basic drift now.” He paused. “You said you had some news.”

“Yes,” said Wheech-Browning. “About your brother. We’ve come across some traces of him. You remember that American chap, Smith? He telephoned yesterday from a place called Nanda.”

Felix felt a sinking feeling in his body, as if all its vital fluids were being dragged towards his feet.

“Have you found him?”

“Not exactly. But we do know where he was up to a few days ago. I’ve cleared it with your captain. You can come along with me.”

♦

Wheech-Browning explained what had happened as they bounced down the road towards Nanda in his Ford. ‘Kilforce’, moving parallel to but faster than ‘Linforce’, had captured Nambindinga the day before, found it deserted and had advanced on to the next village down the road, Nanda, where they had discovered a small POW camp. The prisoners had passed on information about Gabriel. How he had escaped just two days previously.

Felix and Wheech-Browning drove past columns of ‘Lin-force’ troops marching briskly down the road. Loveday’s mine crater had already been filled in by the pioneers. Felix wondered if anyone really knew what was going on in this war. Why had ‘Kilforce’ been halted and ‘Linforce’ advanced? He could have marched into Nanda…He felt a spine-snapping tension in his body. He was buoyant with a kind of nervous expectation and yet couldn’t ignore the forebodings that nagged at him. What would happen when he met Gabriel again? Could he tell him his fateful news?

Wheech-Browning was in a chatty mood.

“Remember that Zeppelin I told you about? Well, it set off all right a few days ago. The twenty-first, I think. Crossed the Med. and headed down over the desert in Sudan. Just as it got to Khartoum, our chaps in signals sent it a message in code, German code, saying: “German forces in East Africa have surrendered.” We’ve got the jerry codes, you see. We captured them in 1915. Bilderbeck’s work again. Great loss, that man.” His face looked solemn for an instant. “What do you think happened?”

Felix wasn’t really listening. “What? Oh, um, no idea.”

“Turned right round and went straight back home, that’s what. Bloody marvellous, don’t you think?”

♦

Nanda was full of King’s African Rifles. Felix looked about him as he drove into the little town. He saw the row of cramped mud-walled, tin-roofed buildings lining the main street; the shade trees planted here and there; the tin and wood bungalows of the planters’ families; the long stone buildings of the former agricultural research station; the wire enclosure of the small POW stockade.

Wheech-Browning reported to battalion headquarters, which had taken over one of the larger bungalows. They were told where they might find Temple Smith and walked down the main street in search of him.

Behind the hospital, sitting in the shade of a large mango tree, were a disconsolate group of German women and children. Some little way off Temple was talking to one of them. Felix and Wheech-Browning approached. Temple broke off his interrogation and greeted Felix with some enthusiasm and Wheech-Browning with less.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded of Wheech-Browning suspiciously.

“I’m GSO II (Intelligence), for Heaven’s sake,” Wheech-Browning protested. “This is a matter for my department.”

Temple inclined his head in the direction of the German woman.

“That woman is the wife of the bastard I’m chasing,” he said. “But wait for this. He’s chasing your brother. Isn’t that extraordinary?”

Felix wasn’t interested in the American’s observations: what was coincidence to him was merely irrelevant to Felix.

“But why? Why is he chasing him?”

“Your brother escaped two days ago. It seems they think he was a spy.”

“A spy?” It didn’t make any sense. “Gabriel?”

“Yes. But Frau von Bishop says he wasn’t a spy.” Temple frowned, as if he too were having trouble comprehending everything. “Anyway,” he went on, “the Germans believe your brother is in possession of vital information, which is why they’re after him.”

“I wonder what it is?” Wheech-Browning said.

“Doesn’t she know?” Felix asked.

“No. Or at least she isn’t saying. She says she has no interest in the war at all.”

“But where’s he gone?” Felix said. It seemed the most malevolent cruelty to have allowed him to get so close.

“North,” Temple said. “That’s all she knows. She keeps saying not to worry. She says your brother will come back here any day. She says he’s just hiding out in the bush somewhere.”

“How does she know all this?”

“Your brother was in the hospital here for a long time as her patient. It seems she got to know him then.”

Felix felt lost. He couldn’t really grasp what was going on.

“Look,” Temple said. “I’m going after this von Bishop. They won’t be long off. If I catch him your brother might not be far away.”

“I’m coming too,” Felix said. “But I must ask this woman a question first.”

“Let’s get out of the damned sun first,” Wheech-Browning said, pushing open the door of an outhouse. “Cooler in here. I’ll just have a look.” He ducked inside. Ten seconds later he came out, red-faced, scrupulously wiping his hand with a handkerchief.

“Good God!” he seemed genuinely shocked. “Barbarians! The place is covered in…human ordure!”

“That’s right,” Temple said calmly. “I should have warned you.”

Felix walked over to the German woman, Temple and Wheech-Browning following. The woman was plump and strong-looking, with a pale freckly face. She had a mango leaf in her hands and was tearing it methodically into tiny pieces.

“Guten Tag, gnadige Frau,” Felix said, striving to remember his German.

“She speaks English,” Temple said.

“Oh good.” Felix started again. “I believe you know my brother, Gabriel Cobb. He escaped from here two days ago.”

The woman’s placid expression suddenly became curious. She stared at Felix’s face.

“You are Gabriel’s brother?” she said.

“Yes. I just want to ask you one question,” Felix said slowly. “Can you tell me if, during the time he was here, he ever received a letter? A letter from England.”

“A letter?”

“Yes.”

“No. No, I’m sure.”

“Sure he didn’t?”

“He never had any letter.”

Felix felt a delicious sensation momentarily envelop him. A feeling of supernatural release, a floating, an ecstatic removal of terrible worries and tormenting fears. Gabriel knew nothing. Now all he had to do was find him.

“Thank you,” he said with heartfelt sincerity to the woman, and rejoined Temple and Wheech-Browning.

“Were you speaking German then?” Wheech-Browning asked.

“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.”

9: 24 November 1917, The Makonde plateau, German East Africa

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?

His eye caught some faint writing on the top margin. “Report of Captain G.H. Cobb,” he read. “Account of imprisonment and escape.” He turned the pages with new interest, thinking that here would be some significant clues, but there was no more writing. Another frustration. He felt mildly disappointed.

There was a rattle of falling stones from somewhere high on the kopje. They all looked up at once.

“Get him!” von Bishop shouted excitedly at the started ruga-ruga. They had seized their rifles. “Go on, you idiots!” von Bishop shouted again. He tried Swahili. “Get him I tell you!” What was Kikuyu for ‘catch’?

One of the ruga-ruga yelled something in their gibberish language. He brandished his rifle in the air like a spear. Von Bishop mimed grabbing movements in desperation. Why couldn’t they understand? How did Deeg speak to them? Dutch? Afrikaans? “Yes,” he yelled exasperatedly, baffled by their reticence. Every second counted in this darkness. “Go on, yes?” he gestured at the black mass of the hill. “Catch?” He tried Swahili again. No effect. “Quickly, for God’s sake catch him.” This was ridiculous. Cobb was getting a head start while he floundered around with languages.

Then one ruga-ruga suddenly turned and shouted something to the other two. The three of them scrambled off into the dark, up the rocky slope of the hill. For several minutes he could hear them calling out to each other, and heard the slither and fall of the stones dislodged by their feet. Then their cries became fainter. It sounded to him as if they were now on the other side of the hill. Soon he could hear nothing above the endless noise of the crickets.

He threw some more wood on the fire and sat down. He stared glumly at the flames. He felt tired. He still held the book, he realized. He reached forward and dropped it on the fire. It burnt away to ashes very quickly. It was a kind of evidence, he supposed. Theoretically, he shouldn’t have destroyed it. He pursed his lips and rubbed his nose.

He poked at the ash brick which was all that remained of the book, letting the flakes crumble and fall into the embers of the fire. He thought suddenly of Cobb, out there alone on the dark plain, running. Running frantically from the ruga-ruga. He shivered with sympathy. The man would be terrified out of his wits, any man would. You could die from that sort of terror. Racing blindly through the night, heart pounding, lungs bursting, tripping and falling over, the shouts of your pursuers in your ears.

♦

Von Bishop woke up just before dawn. He felt stiff and hungry. There was a lemon-grey lightening in the east. He relit the fire, took some mealie-flour cakes from his saddle bag, spread them with the last of his raspberry jam and ate a lonely breakfast.

The ruga-ruga didn’t return for another hour or so. Von Bishop saw them first in the distance, coming round the side of the hill, just the three of them in single file. So Cobb got away, he thought, briefly elated for some reason. But then the prospect of another day’s chase made him miserable again. Still, Cobb knew about the China Show. He had his duty to do.

He built up the fire and then took his rifle from his saddle holster. He would try and shoot a bird or a small antelope for the ruga-ruga. It was a safe bet that they wouldn’t move off again until they had eaten.

The ruga-ruga marched into the hollow between the two spurs of rock ten minutes later. Von Bishop sat on a boulder, his rifle between his knees. The leading man, he noticed, had unslung his blanket and carried it over his shoulder like a sack. Perhaps they’ve got their own food, he thought, bending down to remove a speck of dust from his rifle bolt.

There was a soft heavy thud and von Bishop looked up. A yard from the toe of his left boot lay the severed head of Gabriel Cobb, his nose pressed uncomfortably into the dusty earth, his staring eyes and gaping mouth swarming with tiny insects.

10: 25 November 1917, The Makonde plateau, German East Africa

Temple rode between Wheech-Browning and Felix. A hundred yards up ahead his two askari trackers paced easily along, leading their mules, following the conspicuous trail left by von Bishop and his men. They had been up early that day and had made good progress. Temple calculated that they were only two or three hours behind von Bishop now. He stood up in the saddle and stared ahead over the grass plain. Up here on the plateau the morning mists lingered. There was still something of a haze on the horizon, softening the details of the landscape.

He looked round at the faces of his two companions: Wheech-Browning sleepy and stupid; Felix tense and expectant. They made a strange group, he thought.

“You said this von Bishop man was the same one who commandeered your farm, didn’t you?” Wheech-Browning asked.

“That’s right.”

“I thought he was your neighbour. Did you have some kind of feud going, or something?”

“No,” Temple said. “Not until he destroyed my farm.” Temple looked grim. “What kind of man is it, I ask you, who one day can talk to you about sisal farming — in a perfectly interested and friendly way — and then, the next moment, steal away your livelihood?” Temple looked to Felix for a reassuring reply but he clearly wasn’t listening.

“Sounds like a shrewd businessman to me,” Wheech-Browning said with a squawk of laughter.

“Just what do you mean by that?” Temple said in a steely voice. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sorry, I’m sure,” Wheech-Browning said huffily. “But you did ask.”

Their argument was interrupted by a shout from one of the askari scouts. The man stood at the base of a stone kopje a little way to the right. They wheeled their mules and rode over. In a hollow between two spurs of rock were the remains of a camp fire. Temple dismounted and ran his fingers through the ashes.

“Ouch,” he said. “Still hot. They can’t be more than an hour away.” He picked something out of the ashes. “Looks like a piece of leather binding from a book. What do you make of that?”

Felix held up a sack. “Empty. Is this von Bishop’s camp? Or Gabriel’s?”

Temple looked around. There was a pile of droppings from a mule. “Von Bishop’s,” he said. There was also a small rough mound of freshly dug earth. “I don’t think your brother would bother to bury his rubbish.”

“Who left the sack then?”

There was a shout from Wheech-Browning who hadn’t dismounted.

“About half a mile away,” he called. “Masses of birds wheeling around.”

Temple and Felix remounted and trotted after Wheech-Browning. True enough, a dozen kites and vultures circled and flapped above something in the grass. They saw Wheech-Browning get off his horse and run forward, windmilling his arms and shouting. Five or six birds shrugged themselves awkwardly into the air. Temple and Felix dismounted a few yards off and walked through the grass towards Wheech-Browning. A subdued droning noise filled the air from thousands of flies. The grass sterns all around them were blackened and weighed down with a fruit of shiny bluebottles and duller blowflies. Each step raised a temporary cloud, like a thick animated dust.

Wheech-Browning stumbled towards them, his face white.

“Good Lord,” he said. “Christ. It’s a body.” He put his hand on his throat. “No head.”

“No head?” Felix said with alarm.

“Bloody flies!” Wheech-Browning said. “Where do they all come from? A huge empty plain. That’s what I want to know.”

Temple walked forward with Felix. He looked across at him. His face was slightly screwed up, as if he were walking through a cloud of smoke or gas.

The body lay on its belly in a wide clearing of violently torn and trampled grass. The birds had already pecked away both calves and the porcelain gleam of exposed ribs shone beneath the tattered shirt.

“Army boots,” Temple said, not wanting to speculate further.

“Looks too small for Gabriel,” Felix said bravely. “He was a big chap, Gabriel.”

Wheech-Browning rejoined them. By now they were all covered with flies, flies crawling all over their faces, oblivious to their waving hands. Temple took some paces to one side.

“It’s been chopped off,” he said. “That wasn’t an animal.”

“My Christ,” said Wheech-Browning. He suddenly leant forward from the waist and vomited. He straightened up unsteadily, wiping his mouth. “Phew,” he said. “There goes breakfast.”

As if on some unspoken order they withdrew to the mules.

“What the hell is going on?” Temple said. “Who chops off a man’s head in the middle of the veldt?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s not Gabriel,” Felix said. He swallowed heavily. “I think. I mean you can’t tell. Without…”

“Who is it, then?” Temple said. “Von Bishop?”

“Where’s the head, though?” Wheech-Browning asked. “Why carry off the head? I don’t understand.”

Temple suddenly recalled the mound of earth at the camp. “You stay here,” he said to Wheech-Browning. “Keep the birds off. We’re going back to the camp-site.”

“Scarecrow,” Wheech-Browning said, holding his hands out from his side. “That’s what the chaps called me at school.”

Temple and Felix rode back to the camp-site.

“What is it?” Felix asked.

“I think they’ve buried the head there,” Temple indicated the mound.

“Oh God.”

“Shall I do it or will you?”

“I think you should.”

Temple got down on his knees and began digging away the loosely tamped earth with his hands. Six inches down his fingers struck something soft. He felt his mouth swim with saliva. He dug some more. The head was wrapped in a square of blanket.

He turned round. “It’s here,” he called to Felix, who was standing some yards away. Felix came over. Temple could see his jaw muscles were clenched with effort. His top lip and growth of beard were dewed with sweat. He looked down at the blanket-wrapped head. He took a long quivering breath.

“Could you…please.”

Temple reached down into the hole and carefully un-wrapped the head. He saw a squarish handsome face, very white and thin, with open eyes and mouth. He wiped away some of the larger ants. The hair was pale brown and tousled. Something about it made it looKARtificial.

He looked round and saw Felix crying silently, his hands over his face, his shoulders shaking.

“Poor Gabe,” he heard him say.

Temple wrapped up the head again. Then he stood up and walked over to Felix. He put his hand on his shoulder for a second. He didn’t know what to say. He felt an inexpressible sorrow for the young man. He walked away from him, past the two scouts who tended their mules, kicking savagely at the grass as he went. He took some deep breaths, looked up at the sky, beat some dust from his trousers. Off in the distance he could see Wheech-Browning capering madly around the corpse, waving his long arms at the wheeling birds as if he were putting on a performance for them. His yells and whoops carried faintly across the grass.

Temple walked back to Felix.

“What made him do that?” Felix asked hoarsely. “Why did he need to do that?”

“I don’t know,” Temple said. “I don’t have any idea.”

“What’s his name?”

“Von Bishop.”

“I just don’t understand,” Felix said softly, a tremor distorting his voice. “What would make anyone do a thing like that?”

“I don’t know,” Temple said with some vehemence. “It just doesn’t make any kind of sense at all.”