The River of Diamonds

12

The Bells of St Mary's tolled.

Awe-struck, we watched the host of springbok advancing from the desert to the sea, from life to death. They were countless — one might as well have tried to describe a Namib dune in terms of its individual grains. The desert seemed to be powdered with snow shaken from their silver-white manes; their fawn flanks merged with the dunes' own colour. Here and there a scintilla of light sparked where a buck bounded high into the air. This army of living things was changed to a sodden picture of death as the animals threw themselves into the waves. The buck made a peculiar noise, which matched that of the Bells, half a whistle, half a snort, in their final impetus to the beach. This uncanny shout of death rolled across the water, backed by the thunderous diapason of the Bells. Behind the hills the dust hung like fog as the squadrons wheeled, in obedience to some mysterious magnet of self-destruction, and headed for the sea.

Captain Morrell's hills of dead seals! Before our eyes, another great host was destroying itself. Had the same death-dealing force — Shelborne's secret — brushed aside Piet's life, a murder which now seemed paltry by comparison with this demonstration of irresistible power? Would five U-boats also shatter to splinters against the breastplate of this unknown thing?

Mary knelt by me, an arm round my shoulders. 'What was down there under the water, John? Can it be the same killer?' She indicated the buck.

I straightened up. 'There was nothing, nothing but murky green water. Piet is dead.'

'You're not going to…'

'Yes, I am — I must dive again. I've got to find out.'

The steel sides of the Mazy Zed were a giant sounding-board for another eruption of the Bells.

Johaar was ashen. 'Soon I am a dead man… the Bells…'

Mary said, 'Look, the buck are not going far into the sea, John. Then they bend down and drink.'

'Salt water doesn't kill and it doesn't kill that quickly, I replied.

I outlined to them Shelborne's account of the mass suicide of the seals, half a million of them. There seemed as many buck.

Mary's hands shook on her binoculars. 'It's horrible They're throwing themselves into the quicksands, too They're kicking and rolling and being sucked down!'

Rhennin said in a hard voice. 'I don't believe in some Shelborne bogy, John. There's a perfectly natural explanation for this somewhere.'

'Yes, but where?'

He called to Sheriff in his boat. 'Bob, is this your quickfirer in order?'

'Aye, aye.'

'Take your boat, will you, and have Watson fire a couple of big bursts into them and stop the stampede.'

'Into them?'

'Yes. They're panicking. Something back there in the desert — maybe a big dust storm we can't see. It doesn't matter how many you kill — they'll die anyway.'

'I wonder,' I said, 'if Korvettenkapitan Rhennin made a similar order?'

Rehnning wheeled on me. 'Yes, he would, if the situation were the same.'

You might as well open up against the dunes themselves, for all the impression it will make.' Dieter knew how to look after himself. It was war. To open fire against the enemy was quite normal.' 'Against a normal enemy, yes, but I found his Knight's Cross in the graveyard.'

Bob!' snapped Rhennin. 'Get going! Give them the works and stop this damned nonsense!'

'Aye, aye.'

Rhennin turned back to me. 'I intend going ashore as soon as this firing picnic is over — to the graveyard. Are you coming?'

'John! You've risked your life once today.' Mary was.growing quite angry.

'I'm coming all right,' I replied. 'Gruppe Eisbar may not have been lost entirely without trace.'

Rhennin said, 'The war is a long time ago now. Dieter may or may not have picked up the Goering cache. It is more important that we find a way into the Glory Hole — it is the Mazy Zed's, own Schwerpunkt. Shelborne…'

'Shelborne, Shelborne!' Mary exclaimed. 'You talk as if he were some sort of Mephistopheles who controls supernatural powers…' She pointed to the springbok, now stumbling and climbing over mounds of their dead companions to get to the water. The roar of Bob Sheriff's engine drowned her words. The boat tore away at full throttle from the Mazy Zed, rising on her hydrofoils as she streaked towards the shore. Watson, the gunner, grinned and swung the twin muzzles in anticipation.

Rhennin spoke to the ship's medical orderly — there was no doctor — who had tried to help me with Piet. 'Get him below, will you?'

'He was dead when you brought him aboard,' the orderly said with an irritating presumption of medical ominscience. 'Anoxia, that is what he died from.' He rolled the term round his tongue, 'That caused the blotches and mottling. Classic symptoms.'

'Oh, bull!' I retorted. My nerves were shot to hell. 'You're no doctor…'

Rhennin interrupted. 'Everything points to its being a simple drowning.'

'There are other things which have the same symptoms.'

'Such as what, John?'

'It wasn't a deep dive and a good diver like Piet simply doesn't drown. It's the foam in the mask that bothers me.'

Rhennin shrugged. 'If you want a post-mortem you won't get it at Mercury. I intend to log his death as accidental drowning.'

It was useless to argue. 'I'll dive and see tomorrow if the weather holds. We must watch our step on the island — I think Shelborne is holed up somewhere where we can't spot turn.'

'Let me come too,' Mary insisted, but we refused. 'John! you remember what I said about express trains… You won't crash head-on if I am there.'

I shrugged off the idea of Shelborne's fatal attraction for me. 'I intend to find out a lot of things — a lot of things.'

Above the death-cry of the springbok came the savage rattle of Watson's gun firing into the horde advancing towards the quicksands. Glasses to our eyes, we saw the bullets cut a swathe. Others advanced, ignoring and submerging the dead. The patrol boat tore past the shallows, firing in short professional bursts. Sheriff made a big circle and slowed down.

'He's trying for a steady platform,' said Rhennin.

'For all the good he's doing, he might as well have stayed,'I said.

The boat cruised slowly past the carcass-choked beach. The continuous rattle broke, chattered, broke again.

'What the hell…?' snapped Rhennin.

My glasses were on the boat. One short burst.

Mary exclaimed incredulously. 'He's firing into the air!'

The twin machine-guns pointed skywards. Two single shots. Five. One. Silence. The guns aimed heavenwards. The boat cruised slowly on.

'What in the name of all that's holy is he doing!' burst out Rhennin. 'Keep course, man, or else you'll be ashore next to the old coaster!'

In slow motion, that describes exactly what happened. The hydrofoils, guns raked skywards, drove erratically towards the base of Sudhuk and crashed ashore on the rocks to the right of the landing-beach.

'Is Sheriff drunk?' rapped out Rhennin. 'God! I lose one boat through his men being asleep, and the second…'

'Because they are dead.'

He dropped the glasses. 'I… I… why do you say that, John?'

I indicated the hydrofoil. The boat runs ashore. Not a man shows. No one tries even to fend her off. That crew is dead.'

Rhennin lifted his powerful Zeiss glasses to his eyes again. His voice was shot with uneasiness. 'Watson is lying at the foot of the gun. I can't see properly… the helm is unattended… we must go and see…'

'No, Felix,' I said. 'Something hellish is afoot. If Sheriff is alive, he'll come back. If he's dead, there's no point in exposing ourselves to the same unknown danger. He had the fastest and best-armed boat between here and Simonstown. He was as well prepared as…'

'… as Gruppe Eisbar,' supplemented Mary.

Rhennin's voice was harsh. 'Yes, by heavens! — as prepared as Gruppe Eisbar, and as unprepared as the Mazy Zed.' The crew watching were muttering among themselves. 'Mercury… John! Get dressed and come to my cabin.' He went below.

The Bells tolled. Mary stood close to me, silent. The macabre scene held me. Like thistledown, airy, fawn-and-white, the graceful buck trotted down through the nek in the sandhills to the beach of death. The nearby quicksand was a rearing, plunging mass of dead and half-dead beasts. Rhennin was right: somewhere there was a perfectly everyday explanation. What? Food. Were the animals the victims of mass starvation? These were certainly not thin-ribbed creatures at the end of their tether. Water? Richtersveld lore said springbok could go for as long as ten years without flowing water, — succulents and naras, the water-packed melon of the Namib, provided all they needed.

Richtersveld! Richtersveld! — something was flickering at the back of my mind, but it would not ignite. Could the springbok be emulating those blind migrations of the arctic lemming? I knew that this small Norwegian rodent has been known to drown itself in hundreds of thousands in the freezing waters of the north.

Richtersveld! — like a drug which revives in the neurotic's mind whole forgotten passages of music, only once heard, there arose in my mind a grey image of a granite range, sea on one side, desert on the other. The image swelled, grew, vanished — and I found my eyes again registering Mercury's mass suicide.

Richtersveld! — an oyster dawn; a sun red as the burning sand; towards the east a valley of rose-and-white quartz; among the stones… I fought for the mental key… whatever it was, it would, I knew, give me the clue to the springbok suicide.

Richtersveld! — I saw every stapelia, every minute stoneplant, every withdrawn succulent, covered in pellucid dew: sea-dew, water. And the grey granite clothed in young green shoots, all glistening and white — food for the young, water, life.

I knew then what I was seeing at Mercury: the ancient migration of animals to traditional water. Such migrations have gone on since time immemorial. The Namib was timeless, but the ancient place to which they came had changed. It must have been a river, and it must have been here! The line of strange T-shaped whitenesses among the dunes was the line of an age-old barrier, at the foot of which had flowed a prehistoric river to which the animals were driven by a compulsion buried deep in their race-life.

A prehistoric river! Stratton had told the court, and it was held by Oranjemund experts, that diamonds had been carried to the coast by rivers whose courses had vanished 500,000 years ago, but which had spread them out to sea, where they were redistributed by ocean currents into the Sperrgebiet's marine terraces.

The mouth of that ancient river — where was it? The fountainhead of all diamonds, the parent rock! Shelborne knew where the mouth was. Nothing would move him from Mercury, because he knew. That is why he had killed Caldwell at Strandloper's Water. Had the whole coastline changed because of what we surveyors call continental uplift? Certainly the beacons had moved inland — the soggy quagmire of quicksands might well be the remnants of an old river mouth. Or had the river's course been halted by the coast lifting and broken off — at Strandloper's Water? I must trek inland to Strandloper's Water; and I must find Shelborne.

I dropped the binoculars on their lanyard.

There was something in my face which made Mary draw back. 'John! Dear God, John! What is it?'

'I'm going ashore to Mercury to open a few coffins.'

'No! No! That is not what you were thinking of!' 'No,' I replied harshly. 'I think I know now why Shelborne killed your father.' 'I'll never believe that,' she said. 'I'm going to Strandloper's Water to find out.' 'No! — please not, John! What is past is past — no more deaths…'

'Not unless Shelborne chooses.' She came close to me. 'John, listen: there seems to be a fate which hangs like an aura about those who deal in diamonds. Caldwell. Shelborne. Now you. You felt it yourself that first day in court — that strange, forceful, wonderful man in his faded clothes. He is not evil. Power, yes. You sense it, but it is power he has learned to be humble about. I believe it came to him in the Namib, some lonely coming to grips with himself. He understands it, he lives with it, but he doesn't deploy it for evil ends.'

I gestured towards the shore. 'He deploys it.' She said desperately, 'Don't believe it! Shelborne may live in the presence of power, of force, of death.'

'"Primal mysteries," he called them to me.'

'Yes! But they're passive for him. They lie quiet under his hand because he knows what terrible forces the Namib unleashes. It is old, it is savage, its capacity for cruelty on the grand scale is unbounded, just in the same way that prehistoric things are blatantly, unashamedly, uncomplicatedly cruel. It was born so long ago.'

The third day of the Creation, he told the court.' 'Shelborne has his hand upon whatever this grim, elemental thing is. It's tame under his hand, like Mercury. But it becomes more dangerous than a hydrogen bomb when the catalyst comes along.' 'You're saying the catalyst is me.'

'No, John, not you, not Rhennin. Diamonds — diamonds as symbolized by the Mazy Zed.'

'You're not Caldwell's daughter for nothing.'

She went on urgently. 'Forget this crazy business of breaking into Shelborne's graveyard to find Korvettenkapitan Rhennin. What if he is there? What does it tell you? Nothing! The war has been over a long time — Felix says so himself — and who has heard of Gruppe Eisbar anyway? Dieter Rhennin didn't sink the Queen Mary convoy; he may have found the cache. He's dead, whatever way you look at it.'

'Yes, but Goering's cache…'

'Diamonds' Diamonds again!' she burst out bitterly.

I looked deep into her eyes. 'It is not simple for Shelborne. It is almost — you said it yourself — as if he had assumed Caldwell's own character: "Something hid behind the ranges, go and look behind the ranges." To give the world Caldwell's diamond fountainhead, the parent rock, would, as he sees it, pay back fate for what he did to your father. He doesn't want Goering's hoard, He doesn't even want the riches of the fountainhead. It's a sidestake with fate. He doesn't give a damn for the size of it, except in so far as the more fabulous it is, the greater the redemption of Caldwell. The game's the thing.'

'And you mean to beat him at the game.'

'Yes.'

'He has the lead on you.'

'Yes. He knows what guards the fountainhead — I don't. He knows where it is — I don't. Whatever it is, it is too big for him, or else he would have come forward with it long ago. I guess the Mazy Zed has the edge on him there. As I stood watching those buck dying just now, a lot of things explained themselves in my own mind. I have to tell Felix.'

'May I come with you?'

'Yes, of course. This is going to be a rough party Mary.'

She said obliquely. 'The Bells haven't sounded all the time we've been talking. I wonder if it was Shelborne who christened them the Bells of St Mary's — and why?'

Rhennin was loading shells into the magazine of a Luger. A beautiful long barrelled Colt.45 lay on the desk among boxes of cartridges, a finely-chased.7.65 mm. Browning, also with a long barrel, and a stubby Bernadelli.

He smiled grimly. The pick of weapons is yours.'

Mary shivered.

'Normally I'd go for the Colt,' I said, 'but I don't reckon any of them will be much use against what we have to face.'

He clicked the magazine of the Luger into place with a slap of his palm and poised it expertly on its centre of gravity. I, too, have always liked the Luger for its balance. 'Are you thinking of what happened to Bob Sheriff?'

'Maybe,' I replied. 'But the Schweipunkt isn't here, it's at Strandloper's Water.' I explained the springbok migration, as I saw it, to the ancient river, its mouth and the diamond fountainhead. We must, I insisted, trek to Strandloper's Water.

'By all that's holy!' exclaimed Rhennin.

Mary said, 'It blows Shelborne into a sort of gigantic ogre, finger on the trigger of some hidden power of destruction…'

Rhennin spun the Luger. 'If Shelborne gets hurt along the way, that's just too bad.'

'I've a hunch Shelborne is on the island, watching everything we do,' I said. 'On second thoughts, maybe we had better try Mercury first, and investigate that graveyard of his. I'm sure the landing-place is covered, so I'll take the Colt after all, Felix. If Bob Sheriff were here to give us cover, I'd risk it, but I think as things stand, we should slip ashore in the dinghy tonight.'

Rhennin nodded agreement. 'We'll land at the seal platform — it slopes down to the water.'

'We'll want knives and an iron bar to prise open the coffins.'

The diving suits will be ideal with warm clothing underneath,' said Rhennin.

'We may as well blacken our faces too,' I said.

'Put me ashore and let me talk to Shelborne!' Mary pleaded. 'I won't come to any harm…'

Rhennin was gentle with her. 'We've got to find these things out, Mary. Shelborne will not come to any harm either, unless…'

'Unless! Unless!' she exclaimed. 'Unless you don't draw first, I won't shoot you down! John, don't go!'

I broke open the heavy Colt, slipping in six shells. I put the rest of the packet in my pocket. I was acutely aware of Mary's magnetism, and of a curious contrary conviction that I should go my own way. I didn't want to stay for her sake. The realization made my voice harsh. 'Forget it! This is a man's job. I'm going to rest up for an hour or two, Felix. I want to be fresh for a night out among the coffins.'

I saw the tears well into Mary's eyes at my brusqueness.

'What time?' he asked.

'Seven. It'll be dark then, and not too cold. Bring a nip of brandy — we may need it when we see what's inside the coffins.'

'Well, it won't be the first dead man I've seen.'

I fought for sleep, torn between the look on Mary's face and Shelborne's unknown menace. I jerked out of an uneasy rest and we met in Rhennin's cabin — black rubber diving suits, blackened faces, knives and pistols at our belts.

Mary said brokenly, 'Come back, both of you, won't you? Let me know — I'll be awake.'

Rhennin went over the side.

'Shove off,' I whispered, slipping the painter securing the dinghy. I felt Rhennin's strong paddle-thrust and for a moment the upperworks and gantry stood out against the freezing stars. We headed for Mercury. The Bells were silent. I set a rough course by the Southern Cross.

I lifted my paddle and tapped Rhennin's shoulder. 'Feel anything?'

'Slight surge,' he whispered back. 'Must be off the Glory Hole.'

I could not see the four grim muzzles. 'It doesn't feel very strong.'

'No. There's a little more sea though.'

'No Bells, thank God, all afternoon.'

'Johaar's recovering fast without them.'

'Give way!'

Our paddles dipped. The dinghy edged landwards. A strangled gargle broke the blackness. My reflexes beat my reason, and in a flash the heavy Colt was in my hand. The gargle ended in a plaintive chuffering.

'Easy!' whispered Rhennin. 'Seal-pup.'

Using cautious half-strokes, we stole in towards the ramp. The sea washed against rock.

'They'll lie just above the high-water mark,' I warned softly. 'Crawl for God's sake, or you'll rouse the island.'

I admired Rhennin's cool nerves. 'Here,' he said, 'tie this round your waist. We'll stay roped together. If the seals perform, two pulls on the rope means lie flat. Three — proceed, crawling. No talking.'

'Roger.'

His paddle clunked on rock. The dinghy rocked as he crept into the icy water. My rope tugged three times. I went over into a foot of water and the unforgettable stench of a seal nursery. I shouldered the rubber craft and followed the rope. A little above the water-level I came up to him. He guided my hand to a big rock to weigh down the dinghy. Then I edged into the lead, as we had arranged. My shoulder bumped a seal. He must have been a bachelor or a rogue bull to be on the fringe. I shouldered him out of the way like a Rugby forward; he grunted and went on snoring. I signalled and we moved onwards, seeking the defined gangways which always exist in seal colonies, where neutrality is respected. Inch by inch I manoeuvred forward with muted grunting on every side. A pup yelped softly in his sleep as my searching hand touched him. Half a dozen times I found our way blocked and half a dozen times, by the most painstaking search among the grunting bodies, I regained a neutral corridor.

Then ahead was a rock face. Seals were packed against it — a coveted residential area. Risking everything, I stood up to explore the face, which was about five feet high, with a deserted ledge above — the boundary of the colony! We eased ourselves silently above the sleeping herd. The wicked drop from graveyard to sea was our main obstacle now. I was glad I couldn't see, remembering the way it had looked from above. One slip would take us both to destruction.

Two hours later, exhausted, muscles kicking, hands as raw as jailhouse blues, faces cut, we hauled ourselves over the graveyard wall. I had led, seeking hand and footholds in the smooth rock by the intermittent light of display of sea phosphorescence. Rhennin, following, would feel his way by my heels — from one precarious fingernail-hold, from one toe-hold to the next — and so we made our way to the top. Three-quarters of the way up Rhennin gave a frantic jerk and slip; above our racing gasps for breath we had heard the jemmy ring on the rocks far below. We threw ourselves down against the inner wall.

It must have been ten minutes before Rhennin spoke. 'John, if the coffin lids are blown off in a storm like Shelborne says, they can't be screwed down.'

I hadn't thought of that. Metal screws wouldn't last in the corrosive sea fogs. 'Maybe there are wooden pegs, or dowels.'

'We can use our knives in that case. Where is it?'

'I found the Knight's Cross on the other side. There's a sort of stile.'

The ordered rows of coffins stood out hideously white under the rising moon.

'Anything to distinguish which one?'

'No. All guano-coated.'

His voice was steady. 'When we've got one open, I'll shine the torch below the level of the lid so that it won't show.'

'Felix…' I said, fumbling. I looked round the small enclosure. The climb had set back our schedule. 'What if…?'

'If I have to open every bloody one, I will — whatever sights we may see inside.'

We picked our Way through the nesting birds, who uttered little more than a few angry quacks. We selected a guano-coated oblong near where I had found the medal. We ran our knives along the overlap of the lid, scraping away a seal of stinking excrement. I took one side and Rhennin the other. I thrust in my knife. The wood was softer than I had anticipated. Rhennin's face was grim, withdrawn. He nodded and gave the thumbs-up sign. We threw our weight on our knives. It did not budge. Again we thrust our knives into the seams.

'My iron bar — that's what we need,' said Rhennin.

I ran my frozen fingers along the wood. Something protruded — not wood, but rope. It ran round the coffin, into the cement base. I showed Rhennin. Towards the feet we discovered another. The coffin had been wrapped around with two-inch manila, which had become iron-hard as the guano had permeated it.

Rhennin said, 'That's the sort of thing Shelborne would do if he wanted to hide the body. We need a couple of crow-bars.'

'Try cutting it.'

The heavy blade made almost no impression. He shook his head. 'Is there nothing we can use?'

We looked around. On the seaward side was the small building I had noticed with Shelborne. We picked our way to it through the birds.

'Might be a toolshed, or store of sorts.'

'A chapel, perhaps,' I suggested.

Rhennin laughed cynically. 'Not on your bloody life! Can you imagine Shelborne…'

'Yes, I can. He'd use the service for burial at sea. He'd do it superbly — prayer-book in hand, sonorous phrases, wind blowing, a group of cowed guano-workers…'

'Build-up of the image that terrifies Koeltas and Co.'

I parodied him, irreligiously, with the words I had heard used many times at sea: '"Such as sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death, being fast bound in misery and iron…"'

Rhennin raised a foot to kick open the rough door. I stood back, the Colt raised. He picked up my words: '"We therefore commit his body to the deep, to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body when the sea shall give up her dead…"'

He kicked it open, hard.

Korvettenkapitan Rhennin sat at the head of the table. The other four U-boat captains were grouped around. Each man held a hand of cards; by him was a handful of uncut diamonds. In the middle was a kitty of diamonds which they had staked on the poker game. They all had red hair. -And they were all dead.

'Fauler Zauber,' said a voice.

I saw the glint of the blue-black muzzle of the Schmeisser machine-pistol almost before I made out the black sealskin figure.

'Fauler Zauber,' Shelborne repeated. 'A silly humbug, not so?'