Assegai

It looked like a solid unbroken wall in the sky, stretching across the eastern horizon and reaching from the dun desert floor to the milky blue of the heavens. Eva was alone in the control gondola of the Assegai. The airship was on the ground, moored for the day, and she was standing her watch like any of the officers. Every other member of the crew was either off-duty and resting after the night flight or busy servicing and tuning the main engines. Graf Otto was in the nacelle that housed the forward port engine. Despite four hours of determined effort he and his men were still unable to restart it, and had realized the extent of the damage. They were stripping the crank case to get to the root of the problem.

Eva knew that sounding the alarm was not a decision that could be taken lightly. She hesitated a few minutes longer, but in the short time that the eastern horizon had been blotted out by the approaching yellow wall, the speed of its advance was startling. She could see that it was no longer solid but swirled and rolled upon itself, like a dense cloud of yellow smoke. Suddenly she knew what it was. She had read about it in books written by desert travellers. It was one of the most dangerous natural phenomena. She breathed the single word, ‘Khamsin!’ and darted across the bridge to the ship’s main telegraph. She yanked down the handle and the jangling of the emergency bells drowned every other sound.

From the main cabin, crew members stumbled from their mattresses, still more than half asleep, and stared out at the approaching sandstorm. Some were stunned into silence by its size and ferocity, while others jabbered at each other in panic and confusion.

Graf Otto came racing up the companion ladder from the gondola of the damaged engine. He stared at the storm for only a second before he took control. Within minutes two of the three serviceable engines were running, and he signalled the docking team to release the mooring cable from the bows.

The third engine in the forward port gondola was silent. The engineer there was still having difficulty starting her. ‘Take command, Lutz!’ he shouted. ‘I have to go down and get that engine running.’ He ran out on to the open catwalk and disappeared down the ladder to the engine nacelle.

Lutz ran to his control panel and opened all eight gas valves. Hydrogen rushed into the Assegai’s gas chambers and she flung up her nose so violently that Eva and those men who had no handholds were thrown to the deck as she went into a nose-high climb with half a million cubic feet of buoyant gas hurtling her aloft.

The atmospheric pressure dropped so rapidly that the needle of the barometer spun giddily around the dial. Lutz, the ship’s commander, who was suffering from an infected sinus, squealed with pain and clutched at his ears. A thin trickle of blood ran down his cheek as an eardrum ruptured. He doubled over and fell to his knees. There was no other officer on the bridge who could take over from him, so Eva dragged herself to her feet and, pulling herself along the handrail, she reached Lutz before he lost consciousness with the pain. ‘What must I do?’ she screamed.

‘Vent!’ he moaned. ‘Blow the gas from all the chambers. Red handles!’ She reached up, took hold of them and forced them down with all her strength. She heard the escaping gas howling from the main vents above. The airship shuddered and bucked, but her uncontrolled climb steadied, and the needle on the barometer slowed its wild gyration.

Graf Otto had come up the giraffe neck of the companion ladder from the forward engine gondola, where he had gone to start the engine. Now he was pinned on the open catwalk, clinging to the side-rail while the Assegai’s violent manoeuvres threatened to hurl him into space like a pebble from a slingshot. He was fifty feet from Eva and yelled at her urgently, ‘Both starboard throttles, full ahead.’

She obeyed him instinctively and the engines thundered, driving the airship’s nose around in a counter-turn. For a few moments she steadied sufficiently for Graf Otto to release his death grip on the rail and run lightly along the catwalk. He burst in through the main doors as the Assegai started to spin in a clockwise direction. He reached Eva’s side and grabbed the controls. His movements were quick and co-ordinated to those of the Assegai. He gentled the great airship like a runaway horse, but before he had her steady she had climbed to fourteen thousand feet and was taking a terrible buffeting from the khamsin winds. However, the full force of the storm passed under the hull and left her at nine thousand feet, running southwards on an even keel. But she had been battered by the winds: the forward port engine was damaged beyond hope of repair, and a number of struts in the framework of the gas chambers had been broken. The shell bulged over these weak spots, but she was still making eighty knots and her cargo had been secured and lashed down.

Ahead they could just make out the shape of the Nile winding through the desert. Suddenly the radio squawked and Graf Otto started with surprise. This was the first contact they had heard since they had crossed the Mediterranean coastline.

‘It’s the naval radio at Walvis Bay on the south-west coast.’ The operator looked up from his set. ‘They’re asking for a secure contact with Graf von Meerbach. They have an urgent top-secret message for you.’

Graf Otto handed the helm to Thomas Bueler, the first officer, and put on the earphones. He turned the switch to suppress the sound so that only he could hear the transmission. He listened intently, his expression darkening, and flushed with anger. At last he ended the contact and went to stand at the forward window, staring down at the mighty river passing below.

At last he seemed to reach a difficult decision and growled brusquely at Bueler, ‘In ten minutes, assemble the entire ship’s company in the control room. I want them seated in two ranks down the centre of the deck, facing forward. I am going to make an important announcement.’ He stumped out and went to the tiny cubby-hole cabin that he and Eva shared.

When he emerged, Eva was filled with dread: he had changed his artificial hand. In place of the steel finger and thumb, he now wore the menacing spike-headed mace. The crew, too, were staring at the strange weapon, which he made no effort to conceal as he took up a position facing the two rows of seated men. He glared at them in silence until they were sweating and fidgeting with anxiety. Then he said, in a cold hard tone, ‘Gentlemen, we have a traitor on board.’ He let them think about that for a while. Then he went on, ‘The enemy has been alerted to our mission. They have been informed of our course and movements. Berlin is ordering us to abort the operation.’

Suddenly he lifted his armoured fist and slammed it into the chart table. The panel shattered into splinters. ‘I am not turning back,’ he snarled. ‘I know who this traitor is.’ He prowled down the front rank of seated figures, and stopped behind Eva. She felt herself cringe inwardly and steeled herself. ‘I am a man who does not readily forgive treachery. The traitor is about to learn that.’ She wanted to scream and run out on to the catwalk, hurl herself over the side of the airship and die a clean, quick death rather than be mutilated and crushed by that steel fist. He touched the top of her head gently. ‘Who is it? you are wondering,’ he whispered.

She opened her mouth to shout defiance at him, dare him to do his worst. Then she felt him lift his hand from her head, and he walked on down the line. She felt hot, bitter bile rise in her throat, and it took all her strength to prevent herself vomiting with terror.

At the end of the line of men Graf Otto turned, and then he was coming back towards her. Her bowels felt as though they were filled with hot water and that she had to vent them. His footsteps stopped and she drew a quivering breath. It sounded as though he was directly behind her again.

She heard the blow and almost screamed. The sound was not as loud as the shattering of the chart table had been. It was a muffled wet thump and she clearly heard bone break. She whipped around as Hennie du Rand fell forward on his face. Graf Otto stood over him and swung the iron fist again and again, lifting the mace high, then putting all his weight and strength behind the blows. When he straightened up he was breathing hard and his face was speckled with droplets of blood.

‘Throw the filthy dog overboard,’ he ordered, in a milder tone, and he was smiling. ‘It’s always those you trust most who betray you. I repeat, gentlemen, there is no turning back. But we cannot allow our cargo to fall into the hands of the British. If we maintain our speed, by noon tomorrow we will have reached Arusha in German territory and be safely through the worst of it.’

He walked slowly from the cabin and Eva covered her eyes with both hands as two crewmen laid hold of Hennie’s ankles and dragged his corpse out on to the catwalk. Between them they lifted him over the rail and let him drop into the Nile valley, far below. Eva found herself weeping silently but each teardrop seemed to burn her eyes, like the sting of a bee.