The Sunbird

Sally wriggled out from his exploring hand, and I suggested in a strangled voice, ‘Let’s go through to lunch, shall we?’

There was a quick game of musical chairs at the dining-room table, as Eldridge tried to get a seat within clutching distance of Sally and I tried to prevent it.

We out-foxed him on a cunning double play, allowing him to settle down triumphantly beaming over the top of his menu at Sally who was backed into a corner beside him, before I cried, ‘Sally, you are in a draught there.’ And smoothly as a pair of ballet dancers we changed seats.

Then I could relax and give the pheasant the attention it deserved, although the burgundy that Eldridge suggested was nothing if not gauche.

With characteristic tact Eldridge brought up the subject we had all been flirting with.

‘Met a friend of yours the other day, big flashy chap like a cross between a male model and a professional wrestler. Accent like an Australian with the flu. Had some cock-and-bull story about scrolls you’ve found in a cave outside Cape Town.’ And Eldridge neighed again at a volume that momentarily stopped all other conversation in the room. ‘Damned man had the cheek to offer me money. I know the type, not a bean to bless himself with, and talks like he’s made of the stuff. He had “shyster” written all over him in letters two feet high.’

Sally and I gaped at him, struck dumb by his astute grasp of the facts and his masterly summation of Louren Sturvesant’s character.

‘Sent him packing of course,’ said Eldridge with relish, and stuffed his mouth with breast of pheasant.

‘You probably did the right thing,’ I murmured. ‘Incidentally the site is in northern Botswana – 1,500 miles from Cape Town.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Eldridge asked, expressing disinterest as politely as one can with a mouthful of pheasant and rotten teeth.

‘And Louren Sturvesant was on Time Magazine’s list of the thirty richest men in the world,’ murmured Sally. Eldridge stopped chewing with his mouth ajar, and afforded us a fine view of a semi-masticated pheasant breast.

‘Yes,’ I affirmed. ‘He is bank-rolling my dig. He has put in 200,000 dollars already, and he has set no limit.’

Eldridge turned a stricken face towards me. That sort of patron of scientific research was almost as rare as the unicorn, and Eldridge realized suddenly that he had been within range of one and let him escape. All the bumptiousness was gone out of Professor Hamilton.

I signalled the waitress to clear my plate, and I swear that I felt true compassion in my heart for Eldridge as I unlocked my briefcase and took from it a cylindrical bundle wrapped in its protective canvas jacket.

‘I have an appointment with Ruben Levy in Tel Aviv tomorrow, Eldridge.’ I opened the canvas wrapping.

‘We have 1,142 of these leather scrolls. So Ruby will be pretty busy for the next few years. Of course, Louren Sturvesant will make a donation of 100,000 dollars to the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Archaeology for their cooperation, and I shouldn’t be surprised if the faculty doesn’t have some of the scrolls given to them as well.’

‘ Eldridge swallowed his mouthful of pheasant as though it were broken glass. He wiped his fingers and mouth with his napkin, before leaning forward to examine the scroll.

‘From out of the southern plains of grass,’ he whispered as he read, and I noticed the difference from Sally’s translation, ‘received 192 large ivory tusks, weighing 221 talents—’ His voice died but his lips moved as he read on. Then he began speaking again, and his voice quavered with excitement.

‘Punic in the style of the second century BC, do you see the use of ligatures to join the median “m”, still using the hang of the characters from the line, that’s definitely pre-first century EC. Here, Sally, do you see the archaic crossing of the “A”?’

‘We have over a thousand of these scrolls, preserved in chronological order - Levy is very excited,’ I interrupted this flow of technicalities with a gentle untruth. Levy didn’t know they existed.

‘Levy,’ Eldridge snorted, and his spectacles flashed with outrage. ‘Levy! Take him outside Hebrew and Egyptian and he’s a babe in the bloody woods!’ He had hold of my wrist now.

‘Ben. I insist, I absolutely insist on doing this work!’

‘What about Wilfred Snell’s criticism of my theories? You seemed to find it amusing.’ I had him by the ackers now, and I could afford to be a little cocky. ‘How do you feel about working with somebody whose views are so suspect?’

‘Wilfred Snell,’ said Eldridge earnestly, ‘is a monumental jackass. Where did he ever find a thousand Punic scrolls?’

‘Waiter,’ I called, ‘please bring us two large Cordon Argent brandies.’

‘Make that three,’ said Sally.

As the brandy diffused a gentle warmth through my body, I listened to Eldridge Hamilton effusing about the scrolls and demanding of Sally information as to exactly where, when and how we had discovered them. I found myself beginning to like the man. It was true that he had teeth like the stumps of a pine forest devastated by fire, but then I am not a perfect physical specimen myself. It was also true that he had a weakness for Gilbey’s gin and pretty girls - but then he differed from me only in his choice of liquor, and who am I to hold that Glen Grant is in any way superior?

No, I decided, despite my prejudices, I would be able to work with him, just as long as he kept his bony little claws off Sally.

Eldridge followed us out a week after our return to the City of the Moon, and we met him at the airstrip. I was concerned that he might find the transition from a northern winter to our 110°F summer impaired his abilities. I need not have worried. He was one of those Englishmen who, solar topee cocked, go out in the midday sun without raising a sweat. His luggage consisted of a single small valise which contained his personal effects and a dozen large packing-cases filled with chemicals and equipment.

I gave him the Grade ‘A’ tour of the site, trying without success to fan his interest in the city and the cavern. Eldridge was a single-minded specialist.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Jolly interesting - now where are the scrolls?’ I think even then he had doubts, but I took him into the archives and he purred like an angular old tomcat as he moved down the burdened stone shelves.

‘Ben,’ he said, ‘there’s just one thing still to settle. I write the paper on the actual scrolls, agreed?’ We are a strange breed, we work not for the gold but for the glory. Eldridge was making certain of his share.

‘Agreed.’ We shook hands.

‘Well then there is nothing to stop me beginning right away,’ he said.

‘No,’ I said, ‘there isn’t, is there.’

The treatment of the scrolls was an art form more than an exact science. For each of them the treatment varied, depending on their state of preservation, the quality of the leather, the composition of the ink and other inter-related factors. Sally admitted to me in a weak moment that she would not have been able to handle the task, it required a fund of acquired experience which she did not have at her command.

Eldridge worked like a medieval alchemist, steaming and soaking and spraying and painting. His domain stank of chemicals and other weird smells, and his and Sally’s fingers were stained. Sally reported that his absorption with the task had reduced his animal instincts to the level where he made only spasmodic and half-hearted clutches at the protruding parts of her anatomy.

As each scroll was unrolled, its contents were evaluated and the detailed translation begun. One after the other they proved to be either books of account on the city’s trade, or proclamations made by the Gry-Lion and the council of the nine families. The authors were nameless clerks, and their style was brisk and economical with little time for poetic flights or unnecessary descriptive passages. This starkly utilitarian outlook echoed the life style which we had so far reconstructed from our finds on the site. We discussed it at the nightly talk sessions.

‘It’s typically Punic,’ Eldridge agreed. ‘They had little taste in the visual arts, their pottery was coarse and mass-produced. In my opinion their sculpture, what little there was, was downright hideous.’

It requires wealth and leisure and security to produce art,‘ I suggested.

‘That’s true - Rome and Greece are examples of that. Carthage and, earlier, Phoenicia were often threatened, on occasion struggling for survival - they were the bustlers and hustlers. Traders and warriors, more concerned with wealth and the acquisition of power than the niceties of living.’

‘You don’t have to go back that far, modern art comes from the great wealthy and secure nations.’

‘And we white Africans are like the old Carthaginians,’ Sally said, ‘when there’s gold in them thar hills who gives a hoot about painting pictures.’

The scrolls reinforced the theory. Gold from Zimbao and Punt, ivory from the southern plains of grass or from the forests along the great river, hides and dried meat, salted fish from the lakes, wine and oil from the terraced gardens of Zeng, copper from the hills of Tuya, and salt from pans along the west shores of the lakes, tin from the juncture of the two rivers, corn from the middle kingdom in baskets of woven cane, sun stones from the southern river of the crocodile, iron bars from the mines of Sala - and slaves, thousands upon thousands of human beings treated as domestic animals.

The chronicle was dated from some undisclosed point in time, we suspected this as the date of the founding of the city, and each entry was prefaced by such dating as, ‘In year 169 the month of the elephant’. From these we deduced a ten-month year based on a calendar of 365 days.

Once the nature of the scrolls had been established, I suggested to Eldridge that rather than work systematically through the collection from beginning to end, we sample them and try to establish the overall history of our city.

He fell in with my wishes, and there evolved a picture of a widespread colonization of central and southern Africa by a warlike and energetic people, based on the city of Opet, and ruled by a hereditary king, the ‘Gry-Lion’, and an oligarchy of nine noble families. The decrees of this Council covered a range as wide as the measures adopted for dredging the channels of the lake and preventing the encroachment of water weed, to the choice of messengers to be sent to the Gods Baal and Astarte. Here Astarte seemed to have taken precedence over the more usual Carthaginian form Tanith. ‘Messengers’, we suspected, were human sacrifices.

We discovered carefully recorded family trees, based like the Jewish system on a matrilinear system. Each noble man or woman could trace his or her line back to the founding of the city. It was also clear from the chronicle that their religion was part of their scheme of living, and we could reasonably guess that it was a conventional form of polytheism, with leading male and female godheads, Baal and Astarte.

As we moved forward in time so we found new factors intruding, new contingencies occupying the attention of the ruling king. The rapid shrinking of the waters of the lake of Opet began to threaten the city’s life line, and in the year 296 the Gry-Lion sent 7,000 slaves to assist with the work of keeping the channels open to the sea. He also dispatched a column of 1.000 of his own guards under the war-captain Ramose with orders to ‘venture eastwards towards the rising sun stopping not, nor failing in determination’ until he had reached the eastern sea and had discovered the route to the lands of the north whose existence was postulated by the sea captain and navigator, Habbakuk Lal.

A year later Ramose returns, with only seventy men, the others having perished in a land of pestilential swamps and putrid fevers. He had, however, reached the eastern sea and there found a city of traders and seafarers ‘dark men, and bearded, dressed in fine linens, and binding their brows with the same material’. They come from a land beyond the eastern sea, and Ramose is rewarded with twenty fingers of gold and twenty slaves. Our men of Opet have made their first contact with the Arabs, known to them as ‘the Dravs’, who are colonizing the Sofala coast.

We learned how the Gry-Lion’s search for a new source of slave-labour becomes desperate. Orders are dispatched to the mine overseers to take all measures to prolong the working lives of their slaves. Rations of meat and corn are increased, inflating the cost of production but increasing the life expectancy of the slaves. Owners are enjoined to breed all female slaves regularly, and the practice of infibulation is discontinued. The slaving expeditions are sent farther and farther afield, as the Yuye are hunted down. From the description of these yellow-skinned Yuye we guessed they were the ancestors of Hottentot people.

Then suddenly the Gry-Lion is delighted by the return of a northerly expedition with 500 ‘savage Nubians, both tall and strong’ and the leader of the expedition is rewarded with ten fingers of gold. This delight fades slowly over the following hundred years as a solid mass of black humanity builds up north of the great river. The vast Bantu migrations have begun and now the concern of the Gry-Lion is to dam the flood southwards and his legions march constant patrol upon the northern border.

Our samplings gave us these fleeting glimpses into the past, but they were recorded as bland impersonal statements of fact. How we longed to find the writings of a Pliny or Livy to give flesh and breath to these meticulous records of acquired wealth.

Each fact seemed to present us with a hundred unanswered questions. Of these the most pressing was: where did they come from these men of Opet, and when? Where did they go to and why? We hoped the answers to the major questions were here somewhere in this maze of writings, and in the meantime we occupied ourselves with finding the lesser answers.

It was easy enough to locate the places mentioned in the chronicles, Zimbao and Punt were the southern and northern territories of modern Rhodesia, the great river was the Zambezi, the lakes had disappeared, the gardens of Zeng were clearly the hundreds of thousands of acres of terraced hillsides in the Inyanga area of eastern Rhodesia, the hills of Tuya must be the copper-rich country above Sinoia; step by step we established the presence of our men of Opet at nearly all the ancient sites, and at the same time we had a picture of the building-up of an immense treasure. For although the bulk of this wealth was sent ‘outwards’ yet there re-occurred the words ’a tenth part to the Gry-Lion‘.

Where had this treasure been stored, and what had become of it? Had it perished with the city, or was it still here in some secret storehouse carved from the red rock cliffs of the Hills of Blood?

As a mental exercise I made an estimate of the extent of this treasure. Assuming that a ‘finger’ of gold was one of the finger-like rods of the precious metal we had discovered among the foundations of the city. I listed the total inflow of gold recorded in twenty-odd sample years beginning in the year 345 and ending in the year 501. I found that previous estimates had been hopelessly inadequate. Instead of 750 tons of gold, I found that the total recovery from the ancient mines could not have been less than 4,000 tons - of which a tenth part to the Gry-Lion.

Assuming half of this 400 tons had been spent on the maintenance of his army, the building of the temple and other public works, this still left the staggering figure of 200 tons of gold that might be hidden in or near the city - 200 tons represents a fortune of almost £80,000,000.

When I showed my calculations to Louren on his next visit to the site, I saw the gold-greed glitter in the pale blue eyes. He took away the sheet of paper with my workings on it, and the following morning as he was about to board the Lear for Johannesburg, he remarked casually, ‘You know, Ben, I really think that you and Ral should spend more time exploring the area along the cliffs, rather than living in those archives.’

‘What should we look for, Lo?’ As if I didn’t know.

‘Well, those old boys were dab hands at hiding things away. They must have been the most secretive people in history, and we still haven’t found their burial grounds.’

‘So you want me to go grave-hunting.’ I grinned at him, and he laughed.

‘Of course, Ben, if you happened to stumble on their treasury I wouldn’t hate you for it. After all eighty Big M’s are a nice piece of petty cash.’

We had transferred 261 jars from the archives to the repository and Eldridge and Sally had sufficient material to keep them busy for the next two or three months, so I decided to follow Louren’s suggestion and suspend work in the archives and undertake another detailed search of the area. My timing was impeccable. Ral was within five feet of where the small jars with the sunbird seals on their lids were standing in the darkest corner of the last recess. They were tucked away behind the front rank of jars twice their size and so effectively hidden by them that we had not included them in our original count. Ral was working his way steadily towards them, another three days would have been enough, but I took him away to search the cliffs.

This was November which we call the ‘suicide month’ in Africa. The sun was a hammer, and the earth an anvil but we worked the cliffs despite it. We rested only for two hours in the middle of the day, when the heat was murderous and the cool green waters of the emerald pool were irresistible.

We were now alert to the tricks and subterfuges of the ancient men of Opet. Having learned from bitter experience how skilfully they could conceal their tracks and how cunningly their masons could conceal the joints in their masonry, I went back over ground I had already covered. 1 used my own tricks to try and out-think them. Ral and I re-photographed every inch of the cavern walls, but this time with infra-red film. We found no more concealed passages.

From there we worked outwards. Each day I marked off a 300-foot section and we combed this minutely. Not content merely to eye-ball the rocks, we searched by sense of touch also. Groping our way over them like blind men.

Each day brought its small adventures, I was chased by a black mamba, eight feet of irritability and sudden death, with eyes like glass beads and a flicking black tongue, that resented my prodding around in the crack which was its home and castle. Ral was very impressed with my turn of speed over broken ground, and suggested 1 took it up professionally.

A week later I could return his sallies in kind by remarking on the improvement that twenty wild bee stings made to his appearance. His face looked like a hairy pumpkin, and his eyes were slits in the swollen flesh. For five days poor Ral was of no use to me at all.

November passed and in mid-December we had a quarter of an inch of rain, which is about par for the course in this part of Africa. It laid the dust for an hour or so, and that was the end of the rainy season. I guessed that the ancient lake of Opet would have ensured a higher and more regular rainfall for the area. Open water encourages rain, both by its evaporation and by cooling the air to aid precipitation.

Ral and I worked on without results, but also without any diminution of our determination or enthusiasm. Despite our days of wearing labour under the killer sun, we spent most of our evenings poring over the map of the foundations of the city. By a process of guess, deduction and elimination, we tried to work out where the ancients would have sited their tombs. I had by now become extremely fond of Ral Davidson, and I saw in this big gangling indefatigable youth the makings of one of the giants of our profession. There would be a permanent post for him at the Institute once this dig was finished, I would see to that.

In contrast to our results, Eldridge Hamilton, assisted by Sally, and Leslie, continued to reap the rich and enchanting harvest of the scrolls. Each evening I would spend an hour in the air-conditioned repository with them, reviewing the day’s work. Steadily the sheets of typed translation piled up, the margins thick with notes and references in Eldridge’s spidery and untidy hand.

Christmas came and we sat out under a moon as big as a silver gong, exchanging gifts and companionship. I gave them White Christmas in the style of Bing Crosby, even though the night temperature was in the high eighties. Then Eldridge and I did Jingle Bells as a duet. Eldridge had forgotten the words, all except the jingling part. He was a great little jingler was our Eldridge, especially after ten large gins. He was still jingling away merrily when Ral and I carried him off to bed.

Early in the new year we had what amounted to a royal visit. Hilary Sturvesant had at last prevailed on Louren to bring her to see the site. We had a week to prepare for the family. Hilary was bringing the elder children with her and I was beside myself with excitement at the prospect of having all my favourite women at the City of the Moon. I left the search of the cliffs to Ral, while I rushed about re-arranging the accommodation and checking our stores for such essentials as Coca-Cola and chocolates. Commodities which make life bearable for Bobby Sturvesant.

They arrived in time for the lunch of cold meats and salads which I had personally prepared, and immediately the visit began souring. Sally Senator was not at the meal, she sent a message that she had a headache and was going to lie down. However, I saw her sneaking off with towel and bathing costume towards the emerald pool.

Eldridge Hamilton and Louren Sturvesant took one look at each other, and remembered their last meeting. They were as hostile as a pair of rutting stags. I recalled Eldridge’s boast that he had sent Louren packing. They began making elaborately offensive remarks at each other, and I was fully extended in trying to prevent active physical violence breaking out, and when Eldridge spoke about people with ‘more money than either breeding or sense’, I thought I had lost my expert on ancient writings.

As if this was not sufficient, it was also obvious that Hilary and Louren were engaged in a domestic dispute which made it impossible for them to address each other directly. All communication was conducted through the agency of Bobby Sturvesant and was preceded by remarks of the order, ‘Please ask your stepmother if ’ or ‘If your father wants…’

Hilary wore dark glasses at the lunch-table, and I could guess her eyes bore the traces of recent weeping. She was silent and reserved, as, were both Ral and Leslie. The two youngsters were overcome with shyness in the presence of the Sturvesants, and when Louren and Eldridge also subsided into a smouldering truce, there were only two of us left articulate, Bobby Sturvesant and me.

Bobby took full advantage of the temporary breakdown in parental control to become an utterly impossible little bitch. She spent the entire meal either showing off shamelessly or being insolent to her stepmother. I would dearly have loved to turn her over my knee and paddle her stern.

Immediately after the meal dragged to its tortured conclusion, Eldridge retreated to his repository. Ral and Leslie muttered excuses and fled. Louren asked me for the keys of the Land-Rover and I saw him take his shotgun and drive away towards the north, leaving Hilary and the children to me. I took Hilary through the site museum and she soon forgot her unhappiness in the fascination of our exhibits.

I had carefully cleaned and polished the great battle-axe. It glittered silver, gold and ivory, and we examined the craftsmanship of its manufacture together before going across to the repository of the scrolls. Sally was too busy to talk to us. She barely lifted her head when we entered, but Hilary turned her gentle charisma on to Eldridge Hamilton and he was not proof against it. When we left an hour later Hilary had another devoted admirer.

We went up to the cavern, and sat together above the emerald pool while the children splashed and shrieked in the cool green water. We talked together like the old and dear friends we were, but even then it was some time before Hilary could bring herself to mention that which was troubling her.

‘Ben, have you noticed anything different about him?’ The old question of an unhappy woman, and I made the old excuse for him.

‘He works so hard, Hil.’ And she snatched at it.

‘Yes, he’s been tied up in this hotel business for months. He’s building a chain of luxury vacation hotels across the islands of the Indian Ocean. Comores, Seychelles, Madagascar, ten of them. He is exhausting himself.’

Then as we walked down towards the huts in the dusk, she said suddenly, ‘Do you think he has found another woman, Ben?’

I was startled. ‘Good Lord, Hil. What on earth makes you think that?’

‘I don’t know. Nothing I suppose. It’s just that—’ She stopped and sighed.

‘Where would he find more than he has now?’ I asked softly, and she took my hand and squeezed it.

‘My dear Ben. What would we do without you?’

When I went to tuck Bobby up and kiss her goodnight, I told her what I thought of her behaviour at lunch and she snuffled a bit and said she was sorry. Then we kissed and hugged and agreed that we still loved each other. She was asleep before I had switched out the light, and with dread in my heart I went across to the common room for a repeat of the midday performance.

At the threshold I blinked with surprise. Louren, Eldridge and Sally were in a friendly and animated huddle over the typed pile of translation sheets, while Ral and Leslie were eagerly discussing their marriage plans with Hilary. The transformation was miraculous. I made my way with relief towards the Glen Grant bottle, and poured a medium-sized one.

‘One for me also.’ Sally came across to me. I could see no evidence of headache. Her mouth was a hectic slash of bright lipstick, and the silk dress she wore was draped to expose her strong brown back and shoulders. She had piled her hair up on her head, and I thought I had seldom seen her look so lovely.

I poured her a drink, and we went to join the discussion of the scrolls. In contrast to his earlier mood, Louren was at his most charming, and even Eldridge could not resist him.

‘Professor Hamilton has done a most remarkable job here, Ben,’ he greeted me. ‘I can only congratulate you on your choice of a colleague.’ Eldridge preened modestly.

‘There is something we cannot put off much longer, Ben,’ Louren went on. ‘We are going to have to make an announcement soon. We can’t keep this a secret much longer.’

‘I know,’ I agreed.

‘Have you had any thoughts on it, yet?’

‘Well, as a matter of fact—’ I hesitated. I hate having to ask Louren to spend money, ‘I was thinking of something on a rather grand scale.’

‘Yes?’ Louren encouraged me.

‘Well, I thought if we could have the Royal Geographical Society convene a special symposium on African prehistory. Eldridge is a member of the Council, I’m sure he could arrange it.’

We looked at him, and he nodded.

‘Then perhaps Sturvesant International could play host to the delegates, fly them to London and pay their expenses to make sure they all attend, or at least some of them.’

Louren threw back his head and laughed delightedly. ‘You are a scheming son-of-a-gun, Ben. I see your plan exactly. You are going to gather all your critics and enemies together in one bunch within the hallowed precincts of the RGS, and you are going to play the Al Capone of archaeology in a scientific St. Valentine’s day massacre. In the jargon, you are going to murder da bums. That’s right, isn’t it?’

I blushed at having my plans so readily exposed.

‘Well,’ and then I grinned sheepishly and nodded, ‘I guess that’s about it, Lo.’

‘I love it.’ Sally clapped her hands with delight. ‘We will draw up a guest list.’

‘We will do this in style,’Louren promised. ‘We’ll fly them in first class and we’ll put them at the Dorchester. We’ll give a champagne lunch to lull them and then we’ll turn Ben and Eldridge loose amongst them like a pack of ravening wolves.’ He had entered fully into the spirit of the thing and he turned to Eldridge.

‘How long would it take to arrange?’

‘Well, it would have to go before the Council for approval. We would have to give them some idea of the agenda, but of course your offer to pay the expenses would make it a lot easier. I will lobby a couple of the other Council members.’ Eldridge was enjoying it also. There is a rather perverse thrill to be had out of planning and executing the professional assassination of one’s enemies. ‘I think we could arrange it for April.’

‘April the first,’ I suggested.

‘Lovely,’ laughed Louren.

‘We must have Wilfred Snell,’ Sally pleaded.

‘He’s top of the list,’ I assured her.

‘And that slimy little Rogers.’

‘And De Vallos.’

We were still gloating and scheming when we sat down to eat the fiery curry of wild pheasant that I hoped would make the sultry night air seem cool by comparison. There were pitchers of cold draught beer to go with it, and the meal developed into a festive occasion. We were still gloating on the discomfort of our scientific enemies and planning the confrontation in detail, when Sally turned suddenly to Hilary who had been sitting quietly beside me.

‘You must forgive us, Mrs Sturvesant. This must be terribly boring for you. I don’t suppose a word of it makes sense to you.’ Sally’s tone was honeyed and solicitous. I was as surprised as Hilary, for I understand enough of the secret language of women to recognize this as an open declaration of war. I hoped that I was mistaken, but five minutes later Sally attacked again.

‘You must find the heat and primitive conditions here most trying, Mrs Sturvesant. Not the sort of weather for your tennis parties, is it?’

The way she said it made tennis seem the pastime of a spoiled and ineffectual butterfly. But this time Hilary was ready for her, and with a face like an angel and tones every bit as sugary as Sally’s, she ripped back in a devastating counterattack.

‘I’m sure it can be most unhealthy, especially after any length of time, Dr Benator. The sun can play havoc with one’s skin, can it not? And you are still looking peaky from your headache. We were very worried about you. I do hope you are feeling better now.’

Sally found that despite her gentle nunlike air, Hilary was an opponent worthy of her steel. She changed her attack. She turned all her attention onto Louren, laughing gaily at his every word and not taking her eyes from his face. Hilary was helpless in the face of these tactics. I seemed to be the only one in the party aware of this duel in progress, and I sat silently trying to puzzle out the meaning of it all - until Hilary played her trump.

‘Louren, darling, it has been such a busy, exciting day. Won’t you take me to bed now, please.’

She swept off the field on Louren’s arm, and reluctantly I had to admit that my Sally had received the treatment she deserved.

I woke to the awareness of somebody else in my bedroom with me, and I tensed myself for sudden violent action as I rolled my head stealthily and looked towards the door. It was open. The moonlight outside was bright and dear. Sally stood in the opening.

She wore a flimsy nightdress, which did not conceal the lovely outline of her nude body against the silver moonlight. The long legs, the swelling womanly hips, the nip-in of waist and flare of breast, the long gazelle neck with tilt of dainty head.

‘Ben?’ she asked softly.

‘Yes.’ I sat up, and she came quickly to me. ‘What it is, Sal?’

In reply she kissed me with open mouth and probing tongue. I was taken completely by surprise, frozen in her arms and she laid her cheek against mine. In a small gusty voice she whispered, ‘Make love to me, Ben.’

There was something wrong here, desperately wrong. I felt no awakening of desire, only a warm rise of compassion for her.

‘Why, Sal?’ I asked. ‘Why now?’

‘Because I need it, Ben.’

‘No, Sally. I don’t think you do. I think that is the very last thing in the world you need now.’

And suddenly she was crying, big broken silent sobs. She cried for a long time, and I held her. When she was quiet I laid her on the pillow and covered her with the blankets.

‘I am a bitch, aren’t I, Ben?’ she whispered, and went to sleep. I stayed awake all that night, watching over her. I think I knew then what was happening, but I did not want to admit it to myself.

At breakfast Louren abruptly announced that the family would return immediately to Johannesburg, rather than stay the extra day as had been originally planned. I found it hard to hide my disappointment, and when I asked Louren for a reason as soon as we were alone, he merely looked towards the heavens and shrugged with exasperation.

‘You are plain lucky you never married, Ben. My God -women!’

Life at the City of the Moon returned to its normal satisfying routine for a week, during which Ral and I pursued our search for the tombs and the others worked steadily at the scrolls. Then while Ral and I sat in a sizzling midday sun under the meagre shade of a camel thorn, a little puckish figure rose from the grass seemingly at my feet.

‘Sunbird,’ said Xhai softly, 1 have travelled many days to seek the sunshine of your presence.‘ He turns the prettiest compliment, and my heart went out to him.

‘Ral,’ I said, ‘let me have your tobacco pouch, please.’

We sat together all that afternoon under the camel thorn, and we talked. The conversations of primitive Africa are an art form, with elaborate rituals of question and answer, and it was late before Xhai reached the subject which he had come to discuss,

‘Does Sunbird remember the water-in-the-rock at the place where we slew the elephant?’

Sunbird remembered it well.

‘Does Sunbird remember the little holes that the white ghosts made in the rock?’

Sunbird would never forget them.

‘These holes gave Sunbird and the big golden one much pleasure, did they not?’

They did indeed.

‘Since that day I have looked with fresh eyes upon the rocks as I hunted. Would Sunbird wish to visit another place where there are many such holes?’

Would I!

‘I will lead you there,’ Xhai promised.

‘And I will give you as much tobacco as you can carry away,’ I promised him in return, and we beamed at each other.

‘How far is this place?’ I asked, and he began to explain. It was beyond the ‘big wire’ he told me. This was the 300-mile-long game fence along the Rhodesian border which was erected to control movements of the wild animals as a precaution against foot and mouth disease. We would need clearance from the Rhodesians, and when Xhai went on to describe an area which seemed fairly close to the Zambezi river border with Zambia, I knew I would have to ask Louren to arrange an expedition. It was obviously squarely within the zone of terrorist activity.

Xhai refused to accompany me back to a camp which was filled with his traditional enemies, the Bantu. Instead we arranged to meet under the camel thorn three days later, once Xhai had completed the rounds of his trap line.

I was fortunate enough that evening to find Louren had returned an hour before from Madagascar.

‘What’s the trouble, Ben?’ His voice boomed above the radio static.

‘No trouble, Lo. Your little bushman friend has found another ancient gold working site. He’s happy to take me to it.’

‘That’s great, Ben. The elephant mine is in production already, and looking very good indeed.’

‘There is only one problem, Lo. It’s in Rhodesia, in the closed area.’

‘No problem, Ben. I’ll fix it.’ And the following evening we spoke again.

‘It’s set up for Monday week. There will be a Rhodesian police escort to meet us at the Panda Matenga border gate.’

‘Us?’ I asked.

‘I’m stealing a couple of days off, Ben. Just couldn’t resist it. You take the bushman with you, go by Land-Rover through to Panda Matenga. I will come in from Bulawayo by helicopter. See you there. Monday week, morning, okay?’

The commander of the police escort was one of those beefy, boyish young Rhodesians with impeccable manners, and an air of quiet competence which I found most reassuring. He was an assistant inspector with an Askari sergeant and five constables under him. His rank and the composition of the escort gave me some indication of the level to which Louren had applied for cooperation.

We had two Land-Rovers, both with mounted medium machine-guns on the bonnet, and the armament of the rest of the party was impressive, as was to be expected on the borders of a country subjected to unceasing harassment by terrorist infiltrators from the north.

‘Dr Kazin,’ The inspector saluted and we shook hands.

‘My name’s MacDonald. Alastair MacDonald. May I introduce my men?’

They were Matabeles, all of them. The big moon-faced descendants of Chaka’s fighting impis, led here 150 years ago by the renegade general, Mzilikazi. They were dressed in camouflage fatigues with soft jungle hats, and they stood to rigid attention as MacDonald led me down the single rank.

‘This is Sergeant Ndabuka.’ And when I acknowledged the introduction in fluent Sindebele, the stern military expressions dissolved into huge flashing smiles.

Xhai was obviously very ill at ease in this company. He followed on my heels like a puppy.

‘Did you know, Doctor, that there is still a field order issued to the British South Africa Police that hasn’t been rescinded,’ MacDonald told me, as he looked Xhai over with interest. ‘It is an instruction to shoot all bushmen on sight. This is the first one I’ve ever seen. Poor little blighters.’

‘Yes.’ I had heard of that order which was maintained as a curiosity, but too faithfully reflected the attitude of the last century. The time of the great bushmen hunts, when a hundred mounted men would band together into a commando to hunt and kill these little yellow pixies as though they were dangerous animals.

White and black had hunted them mercilessly. The atrocities committed against them were legion. Shot and speared - and worse. In 1869 King Khama had enticed a whole tribe of them to a feast of reconciliation, and while they sat at his board, with their weapons laid aside, his warriors seized them. The king had supervised the subsequent torture personally. The last bushman died on the fourth day. With this history to remember it was no wonder that Xhai stayed within arm’s length of me, and watched these colossal strangers with frightened Chinese eyes.

I explained to MacDonald our approximate destination, pointing out the general area on his map as accurately as I could reckon it from Xhai’s description, and the inspector looked grave. He picked a shred of sunburnt skin from the tip of his nose before replying.

‘That’s not a very good area, Doctor.’ And he went off to talk to his men.

It was midday before the helicopter came clattering over the tree-tops from the south-east. Louren jumped from the cabin lugging his own bag.

‘Sorry I’m late, Ben. I had to wait for a phone call from New York.’

MacDonald came forward and touched his cap-brim.

‘Afternoon, sir.’ His attitude was deferential. ‘The prime minister asked me to give you his respects, Mr Sturvesant, and I am to place myself at your disposal.’

We left the track before we reached the ranching country near Tete, and we swung away northwards towards the Zambezi. MacDonald was in the leading Land-Rover with a driver and a trooper on the machine-gun. We followed in the central spot, Louren driving and another trooper riding shotgun in the passenger seat. Xhai and I together in the back. The second police Land-Rover took the rearguard with Sergeant Ndabuka in command.

The slow miles ground past, as the column wound through forests of mopane, and climbed the low ranges of granite. At any hesitation in our advance, Xhai’s arm would signal the direction and we would move forward, jolting and pitching over the rough places or humming swiftly through open glades of brown grass. I realized that Xhai was guiding us along the elephant trail, the migratory road that the huge beasts had beaten out from the river to the sanctuary of the Wankie game reserve in the south. Skilled trail blazers, they had picked a route that required the minimum effort to negotiate. Always it was the easy gradient, the low pass through the hills, and the river drifts with gentle sloping banks that they chose.

We camped beside one of these drifts. The river-bed was dry, choked with polished black boulders that glittered like reptiles in the sunset. There were banks of sugar-white sand, patches of tall reeds and a pool of slimy green water overhung with the branches of fever trees.

Beyond the river the ground rose steeply in another of those rocky ridges dotted with marula trees and patches of scrub. However, on this side the bush was open, offering a clear field of fire around our camp. MacDonald drew the three vehicles into a defensive triangle, and while he placed his sentries, Louren and I, followed by Xhai, went down the bank to the pool.

We sat on the rocks and watched a colony of yellow weaver birds chattering and fluttering around their nests of woven grass that hung from the fever trees over the green water.

Louren gave Xhai a cigar, and while we talked the little bushman’s eyes never left our faces, like those of a faithful dog. The talk was fitful, changing from one subject to another without design. Louren told me about the hotel project on the islands. He was very certain of its success.

‘It’s one of my really good ones, Ben.’ And when I thought about his other good ones - the cattle ranches, the diamond mines, gold, chrome and copper - I knew how big it must be.

I touched lightly on his difficulties with Hilary.

‘My God, Ben. If only they understood that they don’t buy you with the marriage certificate!’ There were three others who had found that out the hard way, I hoped that Hilary would not be the fourth.

It was almost dark when MacDonald came down the bank.

‘Excuse me, Mr Sturvesant. Could I ask you to come into the perimeter now. I don’t like taking unnecessary chances.’ And with good grace Louren flicked the stub of his cigar into the pool, and stood up.

‘This used to be a country where a man could range to the full extent of his fancy. Times are changing, Ben.’

When we entered the camp there was coffee brewing on a low screened fire, and while we sipped from the steaming mugs I saw the precautions MacDonald had taken for our safety and I realized that his competent looks were not deceiving. He finished his sentry rounds and came to sit with us.

‘I should have asked you sooner, but do you gentlemen know how to use the FN rifle and the 60-calibre machine-gun?’ Louren and I both told him we did.

‘Good.’ MacDonald looked out towards the north. ‘The closer we get to the border the more chance there is of a clash. There has been a big step-up in the terrorist activity recently. Something brewing up there.’

He poured a mug of coffee and sipped before he asked:

‘Well, gentlemen, what are your plans for tomorrow? How far are we from our destination?’

I looked at Xhai. ‘How far is it to the holes in the rock, my brother?’

‘We will be there before the sun stands so,’ indicating noon with one delicate little hand, ‘my people are camped at the waterhole near the holes in the rock. We will go there to find them first, for they have long awaited my coming.’

I stared at him, realizing for the first time the extent of Xhai’s friendship. Then I turned to Louren. ‘Do you realize, Lo, that this little devil has made a trek of 150 miles on foot merely to tell us something that might give us pleasure.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘As soon as he discovered the old workings he left his tribe and set off to find me.’

That night Xhai slept between Louren and me. He still didn’t trust the big Matabele troopers one little bit.

It was eleven o’clock the following morning when we saw the vultures in the northern sky. MacDonald halted the column, and came back to our vehicle.

‘Something up ahead. Probably only a lion kill, but we had better not take any chances.’

Xhai slipped off the seat and clambered onto the roof of the Land-Rover. For a minute he watched the distant birds, then he came down to me.

‘My people have killed a large animal. Perhaps even a buffalo, for the birds are above my camp. There is nothing to fear. Let us go forward.’

I translated for MacDonald, and he nodded.

‘Okay, Doctor. But we’ll keep our eyes peeled all the same.’

The bushmen had erected five rude shelters beside a hole of mud and filthy water. They had merely bent a number of saplings inwards to form the framework, and then thatched it roughly with leaves and grass. There was no smoke and no sign of the little yellow people as we drove towards the encampment. Xhai was looking puzzled, darting little birdlike glances into the thick bush, and whistling softly through his teeth. The vultures sat in the tree-tops all around the camp, and as we approached there was a sudden commotion from amongst the huts and twenty or thirty of the big ugly birds flapped into the air.

Xhai let out a soft wailing cry. I did not understand what had happened, it merely seemed odd that the vultures were on the ground amongst the huts, but Xhai had guessed it. He began rocking slowly on the seat, hugging his chest and emitting that low-pitched wail.

MacDonald stopped his Land-Rover and climbed out. He stooped over something on the ground, then he straightened up and shouted an order. His troopers jumped from the vehicle and spread out with their weapons held ready. Louren parked our Land-Rover and we went to where MacDonald was standing amongst the huts. Xhai remained in the back seat, still rocking and wailing.

For the Bantu the bushman girls are an object of peculiar lust. I do not know why this should be so, perhaps it is their golden yellow colour, or it may be their tiny doll-like bodies. They had raped Xhai’s women, all of them, even the little immature girls. Then they had bayoneted them and left them lying in that pathetically vulnerable attitude of love. Ghal and the other two males they had shot. Bursts of automatic fire had smashed their bodies so that slivers and chips of bone protruded from the mangled flesh. The blood had dried in black splashes and puddles. There were flies everywhere, big green metallic flies that buzzed like hiving bees and came to settle on my lips and eyes. I struck them away angrily. The birds had been at the bodies, that was the truly horrible part of it, the birds.

‘God,’ said Louren. ‘Oh God. Why? Why did they do it?’

‘It’s their style,’ MacDonald answered. ‘Frelimo, Mau-Mau, all of them hit their own people hardest.’

‘But why?’ repeated Louren.

‘They’ve got guns. They want to use them. This is easier than going for white ranchers or police posts.’ Two of the police troopers carried a tarpaulin from one of the Land-Rovers. They began wrapping the bodies. I walked back to our vehicle and leaned against the door. Suddenly I was sick, an acid bitter flood gushing up my throat, and I retched painfully.

When I was finished I wiped my mouth on my sleeve and looked up to find Xhai watching me. He was a man deprived of everything except the breath of life. There was such agony in those dark eyes, such sorrow twisted that mouth that I felt my own heart breaking for him.

‘Let us find who has done this thing, Sunbird,’ he whispered, and he led me into the short grass around the camp. He worked quickly, like a gundog.

There were spills of the bright brass cartridge cases scattered on the sandy earth. Shoddily manufactured, and stamped with Chinese characters, hundreds of them. The gunners had fired with childish gusto, pouring a torrent of bullets into the camp. Their boots had left the characteristic chevron-patterned imprints. There seemed to be hundreds of them, for the earth was churned and the grass flattened.

‘They came in the night,’ Xhai explained softly. ‘See! Here is where they waited.’ He pointed to the scuffed places amongst the bushes. ‘There were many of them.’ And he showed both his hands with fingers spread, three times. Thirty of them. A big party. ‘They struck in the dawn. Yesterday at dawn.’ Thirty-two hours ago. They would be miles away now, I realized. When we returned to the encampment the nine bodies were wrapped in canvas and laid out in a neat line, like parcels ready for posting. Four of the troopers were digging a shallow communal grave.

Xhai went to squat beside the line of dead. He was silent now, and the silence was more distressing than his despairing wail. Once he leaned forward and timidly touched one of the green canvas-wrapped bundles. How many of these little men had squatted like this in the sun to mourn the massacre of their tribe, I wondered. It is at times such as this that I hate the savage ferocity of this land of ours. I could not watch Xhai’s grief and I turned away and went to where Louren and MacDonald stood together talking quietly.

‘It’s a big party, Ben,’ Louren greeted me as 1 came up.

‘Xhai says there are thirty of them.’ I told him, and he nodded.

‘Very likely. The inspector feels we should turn back, and I reckon I agree with him.’

MacDonald explained, ‘Should we run into them, they outnumber us heavily, Doctor. These swine are well trained and armed with the most modern weapons. It’s not like a few years ago when they sent in a half-baked rabble. They are really dangerous now, and we aren’t an offensive patrol. I think we must get out as quickly as possible, and call in the helicopters. Once they locate them the Hunter jets will give them a whiff of napalm.’

‘Yes,’ I agreed. The ancient workings were no longer important in the face of this horror. I looked across to where the troopers were lifting the bundles down into the grave. Xhai stood watching them. When the grave was filled with loose earth I went across to Xhai and placed an arm around his shoulder.

‘Come, little brother,’ I said and led him to the Land-Rover. The column turned and in the same order made its way back into the south.

The journey slowly developed into a nightmare of tension and straining nerves. The revving and gear-changing that was necessary to negotiate the rough and broken ground broadcast our progress far ahead of us. Every mile there was a location ideal for an ambush, with thick cover pressing in closely on either hand. Our trail was laid clearly, and we must follow it on our return. They would know this and wait for us there. It was possible they carried landmines and we watched anxiously for disturbed earth in the trail ahead. The strain was on all of us. Louren drove in grim silence, with an unlit stub of cigar rolling restlessly in the corner of his mouth.

The trooper beside him rode with the butt of the machine-gun pulled into his shoulder, and occasionally he traversed the heavy weapon experimentally. All our heads moved constantly, swinging slowly from side to side, searching, searching.

‘Have you noticed there is no sign of game, Ben?’ Louren asked suddenly. He was correct. Since leaving the bushman encampment we had seen none of the wild life which had enlivened our outward journey, not even a herd of the dainty brown impala.

‘I don’t like it, Lo.’

‘Join the club,’ Louren grunted.

‘In thirty-two hours the bastards could have moved miles. They could be anywhere.’ I fiddled restlessly with the rate of fire selector on the rifle in my lap. MacDonald had insisted on us taking the spare weapons from two of the troopers on the heavy machine-guns. I was glad of it now. There was much comfort to be drawn from that hunk of wood and steel.

Suddenly the Land-Rover ahead of us skidded to a halt, and Louren slammed on his own brakes and snatched the automatic rifle from the bracket behind him. We sat with our weapons poised, peering into the wilderness of rock and scrub around us. Waiting for the sudden shuddering roar of machine-guns. The slow seconds passed and my own pulse drummed in my ears deafening me.

‘Sorry,’ MacDonald called from up front. ‘False alarm!’

The engines revved, hideously loud in the vast silence of Africa, and we went on.

‘For Christ’s sake stop fiddling with that bloody thing!’ Louren snapped at me with unnecessary violence. I had not realized that I had been clicking the selector of the rifle.

‘Sorry,’ I muttered guiltily. The tension was infectious. Louren’s outburst was a symptom of it, but almost immediately he glanced over his shoulder and grinned apologetically.

‘This is bloody murder.’

It seemed hours later that we crossed a ridge and went twisting down amongst the trees to the pool in the dry water course where we had camped the previous night. MacDonald signalled the column to a halt on the far bank, and he came back to us.

‘We will top up the fuel tanks here, Mr Sturvesant. I’ll see to that. Will you take a party down to the pool and refill the water containers?’

Louren went down the bank with two of the troopers lugging the five-gallon jerry cans while I watched MacDonald begin refuelling. The gasoline fumes swirled like a mirage in the heat, and the smell was biting in my throat. One of the troopers splashed the liquid in a spurt down the side of the lead vehicle and MacDonald reprimanded him sharply.

‘Stay here,’ I told Xhai. ‘Do not move.’ And he nodded at me from the back seat of the Land-Rover.

I left him and followed Louren down to the edge of the pool. It was a tranquil scene, so typical of Africa. Tall reeds languidly drooping their fluffy heads, black mud, pocked with the hooves of a thousand beasts, water green and thick with slime bubbling sulkily with marsh gas, the weaver birds hanging upside down below their swinging basket nests. The two troopers were talking quietly as they filled the jerry cans, Louren standing over them with the automatic rifle.

‘Another hour’s travel will see us in the clear,’ he remarked as I joined him. He took a cigar from his top pocket and began unwrapping it without interrupting his search of the surrounding trees and brush.

There was a fleck of white on the rocks at the water’s edge. It caught my eye and I glanced at it, and was about to dismiss it as a splash of bird droppings. Then I noticed something else, and I felt the first cool draught of apprehension blow down my spine. Casually I strolled along the edge of the pool averting my eyes from the white object until it was at my feet. Then I glanced down, and my breath jammed in my throat. My first impulse was to scream a warning to Louren and run for the Land-Rover, but I controlled the urge and forced myself to look away casually. Despite the racing of my heart and the difficulty I had in breathing I managed to stoop and pick up a pebble from the water’s edge and toss it out into the pool where it fell with a plop in a widening ring of ripples. Quickly I glanced down again.

The white fleck was a piece of domestic soap, with a wet lacework of bubbles still frothing around it. There were damp marks on the rocks, that the sizzling sun had not yet dried, and in the mud at the water’s edge, amongst all the thousands of hoof marks was a print. A strange half-human print, like that of a giant bird. The big toes deeply divided from the rest of the foot, split halfway back to the heel, and I knew that Timothy Mageba was watching me over the sights of an automatic weapon.

My skin prickled as from the stings of the myriad insects of fear. They crawled over my body and along the strings of my nerves. Slowly I walked back to Louren. The cigar was in his mouth and he struck a match as I approached. It flared in a puff of blue nitrous smoke in his cupped hands, and he bowed over it.

‘Lo,’ I said softly. ‘Don’t do anything suddenly. Behave as naturally as you can. They are here. Right here, watching us.’

He puffed four times then waved the match to extinguish it, and he looked around naturally.

‘Where?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know, but they are very close. We must show ourselves here until Mac is ready.

‘Tell the troopers,’ Lo said.

The troopers were recapping the jerry cans, and as they moved back past us I stopped them.

‘Go very gently. Do not run. Do not look behind you. The evil ones are here. Go to the inspector. Tell him to start the engines, when we hear them we will come running.’

They nodded, expressionlessly, understanding immediately, and I knew then why these were famed as the finest native troops in Africa. They went calmly up the bank, leaning away from the weight of the jerry cans.

‘I feel like one of those little mechanical ducks in a shooting gallery,’ I said, and tried to smile. It hung all crookedly on my face. ‘What are they waiting for?’ I asked.

‘They probably didn’t have time to set it up properly.’ Louren laughed, a very good effort. It rang convincingly. ‘They’ll be moving into position now. Then they will wait until we are all together in a bunch, not spread out like this.’

‘God, I wish I knew where they are, where to expect it to come from.’

‘What tipped you?’ Louren asked, anything to keep this conversation flowing naturally.

‘Piece of soap, and wet footprints on the rocks. They were bathing when they heard us coming.’

Louren tapped ash from his cigar, and glanced at the rocks seeing the soap. Then his eyes flicked back to me. Above the bank we heard the starters whirring loudly in the silence, and then the engines running steadily. One, two, and the third one.

Louren ground the fresh cigar into the mud at the edge of the pool then turned to me. He let his hand fall onto my shoulder.

‘All the way, partner?’ he asked.

‘All the way, Lo.’ And we whirled together and went for the path up the bank, unslinging the rifles as we ran. I felt a lift of relief, the waiting was over. It had begun.

I had the strange sensation of not moving, of marking time, rather than running. The climb up the bank seemed endless, my feet dragging leadenly and a hot hushed silence persisted in which the engines of the Land-Rovers seemed muted, but our footsteps pounded like stampeding hooves.

We came out on top of the bank.

Sergeant Ndabuka was at the wheel of our vehicle swinging in towards us, slowing for the pick up.

The other two Land-Rovers were backing up, ready to cover us, turning for the path with the gunners traversing the heavy machine-guns.

‘Jump!’ shouted MacDonald. ‘Let’s hit out!’

I leapt for the side of the Land-Rover and Louren piled in beside me.

‘Go!’ he snapped urgently at the sergeant. The engine roared and we surged forward. From the moment when we started to run to the moment we boarded the speeding vehicle perhaps six seconds had elapsed. It had all gone very quickly, and I scrambled onto my knees, pushing the automatic rifle forward to cover one flank. In that instant they opened on us. The air around me was torn by the sound of a thousand bull whips, while the gunfire sounded like a stick dragged swiftly across a corrugated-iron fence.

MacDonald’s vehicle was leading us out, back along our tracks. It was drawing fire also. I saw the gunner hit. His head snapping backwards as though from a heavy punch and his hat flying from his head. He collapsed over the seat, his untended weapon spiralling idly on its mounting.

They were below the river bank, lining it, hidden in the reeds and scrub there. I saw the muzzle flashes, glinting like swords. I let off a burst, swinging on them, but with the Land-Rover bucking I was low. Dust flew in a line below the bank as though a whiplash had churned the dust. I corrected my aim and fired, the weapon shuddering in my hands. Seeing the reeds shake and tremble as my bullets raked them. Someone screamed, a thin passionless sound, and my weapon clicked empty.

I snatched for a fresh magazine, looking ahead, to estimate how much longer we must receive fire. MacDonald was just entering the forest, there were big trees on either side of the path indicating the passage. I saw the loose earth in the path ahead of MacDonald swept neatly, and I knew then why they had held their fire until it served to drive us into the trap.

I opened my mouth to scream a warning, but it was lost in the continuous clamour of gunfire and engine roar.

MacDonald hit the landmines they had laid for us across our old tracks and the detonation was a burst of bright white light that seared the retina of the eye. The concussion slammed painfully into my eardrums, and MacDonald’s Land-Rover reared like a wounded lion. Its front end was smashed in, one of the wheels spinning lazily through the air. It toppled backwards, crushing the occupants beneath it. The second Land-Rover drove into it at thirty miles an hour. There was a rending screeching sound of metal as the two came together.

‘Look out!’ shouted Louren and the sergeant swung the wheel violently to avoid colliding with the mass of wrecked vehicles. Our Land-Rover hung over on two wheels then flopped over on its side. We were thrown out onto the rocky earth.

There was a silence that lasted for three or four seconds. A stunned silence, even the enemy frozen by the suddenness of the havoc they had created. We were perhaps fifty yards from the river-bed where Timothy’s men lay. The intervening ground was sparsely studded with fever trees. These and the bodies of the vehicles gave us a little cover.

I had lost my rifle and as I groped for it I found Xhai huddled next to me. I had one glimpse of his terrified face, as I crawled towards Louren.

‘Are you all right?’

For answer he pointed. ‘Look!’ Twenty feet away Alastair MacDonald lay on his back with the full weight of the Land-Rover lying across his pelvis. He was pushing at the mass of metal with weak fluttering hands. He moaned then softly.

I stood up to go to him, and at that moment the guns opened again. flailing us, rattling and clanging against the Land-Rovers, lashing billows of dust and storms of stone fragments, ricocheting with the sound of tearing silk - and Louren dragged me down.

I was aware of movement beside me and as I turned towards it little Xhai wailed softly like a restless baby. I put out my hand to calm him, but my touch galvanized him. He jumped to his feet, his dark amber eyes ablaze with terror, and he ran.

‘Wait, little brother,’ I shouted, and I scrambled up to follow him. Louren grabbed and held me and I watched as Xhai ran out into that hell storm.

He drew all their fire immediately. They hunted him, hosing bullets at him. He ran like a rabbit caught in a car’s headlights, making no attempt to hide. I struggled in Louren’s grip.

‘No!’ I shouted. ‘Leave him! No! No!’ And they hit him, knocking him down so he rolled across the stony earth like a small brown ball. He came up on his feet again, still running but his left arm was shot away above the elbow, holding only by a tatter of wet flesh and it bounced loosely against his flank. They hit him again, squarely this time, between the shoulder blades and he went down hard and skidded on his face. He lay very still and small in the harsh white sunlight. I was quiet in Louren’s grip, while around me the surviving troopers crawled into position to return the enemy fire. Louren rolled away from me, lying prone and fired a burst around the tailboard of the overturned Land-Rover.

The storm of bullets returned to sweep over us, and MacDonald was still moaning. Nobody could reach him across that bullet-swept space. I knelt on the hard earth staring at Xhai’s frail little body, and I felt the hot winds of my rage blow through my soul. They came from deep and far, crescendoed and overwhelmed my reason.

I jumped up and ran to the mined Land-Rover, I tore the pin from the mounting and hefted the heavy machine-gun out of its seating. Then I threw four loops of cartridge-belt over my shoulders, draping myself with death as though it were an Hawaiian lei. Then, with the gun on my hip, I went after them, running towards the river-bed, straight at the centre of their line.

I heard myself screaming, and the violent disruption of the air around me as shot passed close, buffeted my ears and fanned my face with a hot dry wind. I ran screaming and the gun shook my body as though it were a giant fist. The spent cartridge cases spewed from the breech in a glittering stream, ringing like silver bells as they bounced off the stony earth. I saw the lip of the bank dissolve in spurting, swirling clouds of dust as I traversed it, saw one of them hit and flung backwards.

Their fire was shrivelling, I saw movement in the reeds as they ran. One of them leapt to his feet and fired a burst. Beside me slabs of white bark exploded from the trunk of a fever tree, and I swivelled the gun onto him. He was in camouflage battledress, a pudding-basin helmet of steel on his head and he crouched over his weapon, the muzzle winked its hot red eye at me and I wondered that it could miss me at such close range.

One of my bullets caught him in the mouth, spinning his helmet away and the contents of his skull blew out of the back of his head in a pink cloud. He dropped below the bank.

‘Follow him! Cover him!’ I heard Louren yelling somewhere behind me, but I did not care. I reached the bank of the river and looked down into the dry bed. They were running, panicky, for the far bank and I turned the gun on them. Watching as they fell, with the white sand dancing in sudden soft fountains amongst them. I was still screaming.

The last loop of cartridges flipped off my shoulder and fed into the hungry breech of my weapon. The gun went dead and useless in my hands, and I hurled it after them. Rage and sorrow had driven me far beyond the boundaries of reason and fear. I stood unarmed and unafraid and from the far bank Timothy Mageba turned back towards me. He had a pistol in his right fist, and he aimed at me. I felt the passage of the bullet close beside my head.

‘Murderer!’ I screamed, and he fired again, twice. It was as though the angels of death had draped their wings around me, shielding me, for I did not even hear the bullets. I saw him glaring at me, those terrible smoky eyes, the great cannon-ball head like that of some wounded beast at bay.

Then suddenly Louren was beside me, he threw up his rifle and snapped a shot at Timothy. I think Louren may have nicked him, for I saw him wince and stagger slightly, but then he was gone into the thick scrub that covered the high ground on the far bank. The police troopers went past us, moving forward in line of skirmishers down the bank and across the river-bed where the dead men lay. They fired a few rounds into the bush, then Louren called them back.

Louren turned to stare at me with a look of disbelief. ‘They didn’t touch you,’ he said with wonder. ‘Not a single bullet - my God, Ben, my God!’ He shook his head. ‘You frightened me, you crazy bastard. You frightened the hell out of me.’ He put his arm around my shoulder and led me back to the vehicles.

MacDonald was still moaning softly. We lifted the side of the Land-Rover, Louren and I between us. MacDonald screamed as the troopers drew him out from under the vehicle. His legs were twisted at an odd angle and his face was very pale, his tan a dirty brown over it and little beads of sweat dewed his upper lip.

I left Louren to administer morphine and try to splint the badly shattered bone, and I went across to where Xhai still lay.

The entry hole was a blue black pucker in the centre of his back, there was no bleeding from it. Yet he lay in a puddle of thick gelatinous blood, and I knew what hideous damage the exit of the bullet from his chest must have caused. I did not turn him over. I could not bring myself to do it, but his head was twisted sideways and I squatted beside him. With my fingertips I closed the lids over those staring Chinese eyes.

‘Go in peace, little brother,’ I whispered.

‘Come on, Ben. They’ll be back. We must hurry,’ Louren called.

Two of our troopers were dead, and the sergeant rolled them in their blankets.

‘The bushman also,’ I told him. He hesitated, but then he saw my expression and went quickly.

We rolled the third vehicle back onto its wheels and while the troopers lifted our dead and wounded aboard, Louren and I checked it out. Two of the tyres were shot through, the petrol tank was riddled, the steering box was severed by a bullet and another had shattered the engine sump cover. Oil poured from it, stinking in the heat.

Quickly Louren placed the sergeant and the three remaining troopers in a defensive perimeter amongst the fever trees and we pushed the crippled Land-Rover into the lee of the wrecked vehicles giving ourselves some cover to work behind.

There was a tool box in MacDonald’s Land-Rover. We changed the wheels as quickly as a pair of Grand Prix mechanics, cannibalizing from the wrecks. As we tightened the last wheel bolts the sniping began. It was long range, from the far ridge a quarter of a mile away. They had learned their lesson well, and kept a respectful distance now. Our troopers answered, blazing away with the two heavy machine-guns to discourage them further.

In the middle of a fire fight Louren and I worked, greasy to the elbows. Smearing skin from knuckles on sharp steel in our haste, burning blisters into our skin on the red-hot manifold and exhaust system.

We pulled the sump cover off the capsized Land-Rover, and lay on our backs with hot oil dripping into our faces as we bolted it back onto our vehicle. The gasket was torn, it would leak, but it would hold oil long enough to get us clear.

Louren changed the steering-box, while I found a cake of soap in my pack and plugged the bullet holes in the fuel tank. As we worked, I blessed the Chinese artisans who had manufactured those shoddy weapons on the far ridge, with their limited range and accuracy.

We refuelled and replaced the engine oil, standing by necessity fully exposed to the marksmen on the hill, forcing ourselves to work methodically and trying to shut from our ears the terrifying sound of passing shot.

Louren jumped into the driver’s seat, and pressed the starter; it whirled dismally, on and on, and I closed my eyes tight and prayed. Louren released the starter button and in the silence I heard him swearing with bitter vehemence. He tried again, the battery was weakening now, the whirring of the engine slowed and faltered.

A stray bullet smashed the windscreen spraying us with glittering glass fragments. Louren was still swearing. In despair I glanced at the setting sun, only half an hour or so of daylight left. In the darkness the hyenas would come down from the ridge. As though they had read my thoughts the fire from up there intensified. I heard a bullet whine away off the metal of the Land-Rover. Louren jumped out of the driver’s seat and opened the bonnet again; as he worked I shouted across to Ndabuka.

‘Why aren’t you firing, Sergeant? You are letting them have target practice. Keep their heads down, dammit!’

‘The ammunition is almost finished, sir,’ he called back, and a coldness closed about my guts. No ammunition, and darkness coming on fast.

Louren slammed the bonnet closed, and ducked back into the driver’s seat. He looked at me through the shattered windscreen.

‘Say another prayer, Ben. The last one was no damned good.’ And he pressed the starter. It wheezed wearily but the engine would not turn.

‘We’ve had it, Ben,’ Louren told me. ‘Both the other batteries are kaput.’

‘Sergeant - all of you. Shove,’ I shouted. ‘Come on, help me.’

They ran to me at the rear of the Land-Rover.

‘Try her in second,’ I shouted at Louren, and a burst of bullets kicked around my legs stinging them with fragments of stone.

We threw our combined weight on the Land-Rover and it bumped over rough ground, back towards the river.

‘Now,’ I shouted at Louren. The Land-Rover juddered and slowed and we hurled ourselves against it, keeping it moving against compression.

It fired once. ‘Keep going!’ I gasped. And abruptly the engine roared into life and we howled with triumph.

‘Climb on,’ Louren yelled and swung the Land-Rover back towards the trail, but I ran beside him.

‘Matches!’ I panted.

‘What?’

‘Give me your matches, damn you.’ I snatched them from his hand and ran to the tangled wreckage. Gasoline was dribbling from one of the ruptured tanks and I flicked a match at it. The sucking, roaring torrent of flame licked across my face singeing my eyelashes away, and I turned and ran after the Land-Rover, scrambling in over the tailboard, falling face forward onto the pile of dead and wounded men in the back.

Louren smashed a new route through a belt of scrub thorn, avoiding the mined trail, and then angled back to pick it up farther out.

The firing from the ridge died away as the forest blanketed us. I watched the column of black sooty smoke climbing up into the flushed evening sky, pleased that I had denied them the spoils of victory, and suddenly I found myself shaking like a man in high fever. Icy waves of shock and reaction engulfed me.

‘Are you all right, Ben?’ Louren called to me.

‘Yes, I’m fine,’ I answered and looked down at the pathetic blanket-wrapped bundles at my feet.

All that night we crawled southwards, jolting and bumping over the rough ground, often losing the track and having to search for it, shivering in the cold of an African night when the wind blew through the shattered windscreen.

In a dawn that was grape-purple and smoky blue I asked Louren to stop the Land-Rover. The troopers helped me to dig a shallow grave in the sandy bottom land between two kopjes. I lifted Xhai out of the Land-Rover still wrapped in the dark grey police blanket and he was as light as a sleeping child in my arms. I laid him in the earth and we stood around in a circle and looked down at him. Blood had soaked through the blanket and dried in a black stain.

I nodded at the troopers. ‘All right. Cover him.’ They did it quickly and went back to the Land-Rover. It was still cold, and I shivered in my thin cotton shirt. Up on the kopje an old bull baboon barked, his cry boomed across the valley.

I followed the troopers back to the Land-Rover and climbed up beside them. As we drove on I looked back, and saw a herd of buffalo moving out of the bush. They were grazing, heads down and tails swinging towards Xhai’s grave. This was where my brother belonged, with the animals in the wilderness he loved.

‘I’m very much afraid that they have slipped back across the river,’ the assistant commissioner of police told me. ‘There is nothing we would have liked more than to get our hands on this fellow Mageba.’

We had flown out with MacDonald in the police helicopter to Bulawayo two days before. Louren had left me to help the Rhodesian police as best I could while he sent for the Lear and went on direct to Johannesburg. Now I was having a final debriefing at police headquarters, while a charter flight stood by to take me back to the City of the Moon.

The assistant commissioner was a tall man with a military set to his shoulders, and a brush of closely cropped grey hair. His face was seamed and furrowed and burned darkly by a thousand suns. There were ribbons on his chest that I recognized, the emblems of courage and honour.

‘He is top of our list of the chaps we’d like to meet, actually. A nasty piece of work, but then you’d know that as well as anybody.’ And he turned those steely grey eyes on to me, giving me the feeling that I was being interrogated.

‘I know him,’ I agreed. My part in the hi-jacking incident was common knowledge.

‘What do you make of the man?’

‘He is an intelligent man, and he has a presence. There is something about him.’ I tried to find the words to describe him. ‘He’s the type of man who sets out to get what he wants, and the type that other men will follow.’

‘Yes,’ the assistant commissioner nodded. ‘That’s a fair summation of our own intelligence. Since he joined them there has been an escalation of hostile activity from our friends across the river.’ He sighed, and massaged his iron-grey temples. ‘I thought we might have got him this time. They left their dead unburied, and made a run for the river. We could only have missed them by minutes.’

He walked down with me to where a police car waited under the jacaranda trees with their clouds of purple blossom.

‘What news have you of MacDonald?’ I asked as we stood beside the police car.

‘He will be all right. They saved both legs.’

‘I am glad.’

‘Yes,’ agreed the assistant commissioner. ‘He is a good type. Wish we had more of them. By the way, Doctor, we would rather you kept mum about this business. We don’t like to make too much fuss about these incidents. Rather playing into their hands, you know. Gives them the publicity they want.’

We shook hands and he turned and strode back into the building. As we drove through the busy streets and I saw the smiles on the faces around me, I wondered why anybody should want to destroy this society - and if they succeeded, with what would they replace it?

It seemed natural to think then of the City of the Moon. A great civilization, a nation which held dominion over an area the size of Europe, a people who built great cities of stone and sent their ships in trade to the limits of the known world. All that remained of them were the few poor relics which we had so laboriously gleaned. No other continent was so fickle in the succour it gave to men, to raise them up so swiftly and then to pluck them down and devour them so that they were denied even a place in her memory. A cruel land, a savage and merciless land. It was a wonder that so many of us loved her so deeply.

My return to the City of the Moon was disappointing. After the events of the last few days it was an anti-climax. It seemed that the others had hardly noticed my absence.

‘Did you enjoy yourself?’ Sally asked over the typewriter and a pile of translation sheets.

‘Well, it was interesting.’

‘That’s good. What happened to your eyelashes?’ she asked and without waiting for an answer began pounding the keyboard with two fingers, biting her tongue with concentration, pausing only to push her hair off her cheek with the back of one hand.

‘Glad you are back, Ben,’ said Eldridge Hamilton. ‘I’ve been wanting to talk to you about this.’ And he led me to a table on which a portion of one of the scrolls was spread. I didn’t seem to be able to concentrate. Suddenly, for the first time in my life I felt that it was ancient and unimportant compared with the blood that I so recently had seen spurt fresh and red.

Ral and Leslie had obviously used my absence to scheme out an approach. Ral spoke for both of them, with Leslie prompting him when he faltered. ‘So you see, Doctor, we don’t feel it’s right to marry until at least one of us has a steady job. So, well, we thought we’d sort of ask your advice. I mean we love it here, both of us. We’d like to stay on, but we’d also like to get married. It’s just that, well, we’ve got such a high opinion of you, Doctor. We wouldn’t like to miss the rest of the investigation, but—’

I spoke to Louren that evening and then called them from the supper table.

‘The job is worth three and a half thousand, and Leslie will get two. Of course, there is a free flat at the Institute and I’ll help you with the furnishing, as a wedding present.’

Leslie kissed Ral, and then me. A novel way in which to accept the offer of employment, I felt.

Ral threw himself into the search of the cliffs with renewed energy, but I spent little time with him. Instead, I began to prepare my address to the Royal Geographical Society. This should have been a labour of love and excitement, but I found myself floundering. There was so much detail in the scrolls, but all of it seemed irrelevant to those unanswerable questions: where did they come from and when, where did they go to, and why?

Each time, my efforts became so long-winded and convoluted that they bored even me. Then I would rip the sheets from my typewriter, ball them and hurl them at the wall. There is no more lonely place in the world than a blank sheet of paper, and it frightened me that my unruly emotions should intrude and prevent me marshalling my thoughts and facts in orderly ranks. I told myself that it was reaction from the horrors of our journey to the north, that Sally’s enigmatic behaviour was worrying me deeply, that it was merely the fear of the imminent confrontation with my enemies.

I tried all the tricks, forcing myself to sit at the typewriter until I had completed 10,000 words or rising at midnight to try and shake loose a flow of words from my stalled brain.

The address remained unwritten, and I found myself mooning about my office polishing the great battle-axe until it gleamed and glittered, painful to the eye, or strumming fitfully on my guitar and composing new songs which all seemed sad and mournful. At other times I would sit for hours before the painting of the white king, dreaming and withdrawn, or I would wander all day along the cliffs, oblivious of the sun and the heat, and it seemed that often a little bird-like presence was near me, moving like a mischievous brown sprite just beyond the fringe of my vision. Or again, 1 would sit alone in the dim depths of the archives, deep in a trance of despair as I remembered the hatred in Timothy’s smoky eyes as he glared at me across the water-course where the dead men lay. Neither Timothy nor I were all of what we seemed to be, there were dark and ugly depths in both of us. I remembered the savagely mauled bodies of the tiny bushmen left lying for the birds, and my own screaming madness as I cut down the running men on the white sand of the river-bed. I do not know how long my despondency might have lasted except for the discovery which uncovered the answer to so many of the mysteries that still shrouded our city.

Eldridge’s team had been countering my apathy by an accelerated advance through the scrolls. Practice had sharpened Sally’s grasp of the language, until she was as quick and as fluent as Eldridge himself. Even Leslie was now able to make an appreciable contribution to the work, while Eldridge had arrived by a process of trial and error at the most suitable method of unrolling and preserving our scrolls and he was now saving a great deal of time in this procedure.

At breakfast, which seemed to be the only time we spent together these days, Eldridge asked me to resume the work of removing the pottery jars from the archives. To be truthful I welcomed the excuse not to have to face the blank accusing stare of the sheet of paper in my typewriter, and Ral seemed as pleased to have a change from his fruitless search of the cliffs.

In the cool, peaceful gloom of the archives we worked in our established routine, photographing and marking the position of each jar after we had labelled it and entered it in the master notebook. The work was unexacting, and Ral did most of the talking for my mood of lethargy still persisted. Ral lifted down another of the jars from its slab, and then he peered curiously into the space beyond where the wall opened into a square stone cupboard.

‘Hello,’ Ral exclaimed. ‘What’s this?’ And I felt my lethargy fall away like a discarded article of clothing. I hurried across to him and I had a feeling of pre-knowledge as I stared at the row of smaller, squatter jars of the same pottery which had been hidden away in this carefully prepared recess. I knew that we had made another major advance, a significant step forward in our search for the ancient secrets. This idea came into my mind fully formed, it was as though I had simply mislaid these small jars and now I had rediscovered them.

Ral moved the arc-light to obtain a better lighting of the recess, and immediately we noticed another unusual feature. Each of the jars that we could see was sealed - a loop of plaited gold wire linked lid and body of the jar, and a clay seal bore the imprinted figure of a bird. I leaned forward and gently blew away the dust that obscured the impression on the seal. It was the crouching vulture, the classical soapstone bird of the Zimbabwe culture with its base of sun discs and rays. It came as a distinct shock to find this emblem of modern Rhodesia upon a seal of indisputably Punic origin 2,000 years old, as it would be to find the lion and unicorn of the British coat of arms in an Egyptian tomb of the twentieth dynasty.

We worked as quickly as was reconcilable with accuracy; labelling and photographing the large jars which obscured the recess, and when we lifted them down we discovered that there were five of the smaller jars concealed behind them. All this time my excitement had been increasing, my hope of a major discovery becoming more certain. The concealment of the jars, and the seals indicated their importance. It was as though I had been marking time, waiting for these jars, and my spirits surged. When finally we were ready to remove them from the recess, I reserved this honour for myself despite Ral’s protests of, ‘But I found them!’

Balancing on the top rungs of the step-ladder, I reached in and attempted to lift the first of them.

‘It’s stuck,’ I said, as the jar sat immovably on its slab of stone. ‘They must have bolted it down.’ And I leaned farther into the recess and carefully groped behind the jar for the fixings which held it in place. I was surprised to find that there were none.

‘Try one of the others,’ Ral suggested, breathing heavily on the back of my neck from his lofty perch atop those lanky legs. ‘Can I give you a hand?’

‘Look, Ral, if you don’t give me a bit of room you’re going to suffocate me.’

‘Sorry, Doc,’ he muttered, moving back a full quarter of an inch.

I tried the next jar and found that it was also solidly anchored to the shelf, as were the next three.

‘That’s very odd,’ Ral understated the position, and I returned to the first jar, and bracing my elbows on the edge of the shelf I began to twist it in an anti-clockwise direction. It required my full strength, and the muscles bulged and knotted in my forearms before the jar moved. It slid towards me an inch, and immediately I realized that the jar was held down on the slab not by bolts but by its own immense weight. It was fifty times heavier than the jars twice its size.

‘Ral,’ I said. ‘You are going to have to give me a hand, after all.’

Between us we moved the jar to the front edge of the shelf, and then I cradled it in my arms like a new-born infant and lifted it down. Later we found that it weighed 122 pounds avoirdupois, and was not much bigger than a magnum of champagne.

Gently Ral helped me to settle it into the fibreglass cradle we had designed for transporting the jars. We each took a handle and carried it down the archives, out through the access tunnel and past the guard post at the entrance. I was surprised to find it was already dark, and the stars were pricks of light in the high opening above the emerald pool.

Our disparity of heights made it awkward carrying the cradle, but we hurried down the rock passage and down towards the camp. I was relieved to see that lights still burned in the repository. When Ral and I carried in our precious burden the others hardly glanced up from their work.

I winked at Ral, and we carried the jar to the main workbench. Concealing it with our bodies, we lifted it out of the cradle and stood it in the centre of the bench. Then I turned back to the three bent heads across the room.

‘Eldridge, would you mind having a look at this one.’

‘One moment.’ Eldridge went on poring over an unrolled scroll with his magnifying glass, and Ral and I waited patiently until at last he laid the glass aside and looked up. Like I had, he reacted immediately. I saw the glitter of his spectacles, the rosy glow suffuse his bald pate like sunset on the dome of the Taj Mahal. He came quickly to the bench.

‘Where did you find it? How many are there? It’s sealed!’ His hand was actually trembling as he touched the clay tablet. His tone alerted the girls and they almost ran to join us. We stood about the jar in a reverent circle,

‘Open it.’ Sally broke the short silence.

‘It’s almost dinnertime.’ I glanced at my watch. ‘We had better leave it until tomorrow,’ I suggested mildly, and both girls turned on me furiously.

‘We can’t,’ Sally began, then she saw my expression, and relief flooded her face. ‘You shouldn’t joke about things like that,’ she told me sternly.

‘Well, Professor Hamilton, what are we waiting for?’ I asked.

‘What indeed?’ he demanded, and the two of us went to work on the seal. We used a pair of side-cutters to nip the gold wire, and then carefully worked the seal loose. The lid lifted easily, and there was the usual linen-wrapped cylinder. However, there was not a suggestion of the unpleasant leathery odour. Eldridge, whose arms are like a pair of thin white candles, was unable to lift the jar. I tilted it carefully onto its side, and while he steadied it I withdrew the weighty roll.

The wrapping was well preserved and folded off in one piece.

Nobody spoke as we stared at the exposed cylinder. I had guessed what it would contain. There is only one material which is that heavy, but it was still a delicious thrill to have my expectations realized.

It was another writing scroll, but it was not of leather. This scroll was a continuous rolled sheet of pure gold. It was one-sixteenth of an inch thick, eighteen inches wide and a fraction aver twenty-eight feet long. It weighed 1,954 fine ounces with an intrinsic value of over $85,000. There were five of them -$425,000, but this was a fraction of the value of the contents.

The beautifully mellow metal unrolled readily as though eager to impart its ancient secrets to us. The characters had been cut with a craftsman’s skill into the metal with a sharp engraver’s tool, but the reflected light from its surface dazzled the reader.

We all watched with complete fascination as Eldridge spread lamp-black across the blinding surface and then carefully wiped off the excess. Each character stood out now, etched in black against the golden background. He adjusted his spectacles, and pored deliberately over the cramped lines of Punic. He started making noncommittal grunts and murmurs, while we crowded closer, like children at story-time.

I think I spoke for all of us when at last I blurted out, ‘For God’s sake, read the bloody thing!’

Eldridge looked up, and grinned wickedly at me. ‘This is very interesting.’ He kept us all in aching suspense for a few seconds longer while he lit a cigarette. Then he began to read. It was immediately clear that we had chosen the first scroll in a series, and that Eldridge was reading the author’s note.

‘Go thou unto my store and take from thence five hundred fingers of the finest gold of Opet. Fashion therefrom a scroll that will not corrupt, that these songs may live for ever. That the glory of our nation may live for ever in the words of our beloved Huy, son of Amon, High Priest of Baal and favourite of Astarte, bearer of the cup of life and Axeman of all the Gods. Let men read his words and rejoice as I have rejoiced, let men hear his songs and weep as I have wept, let his laughter echo down all the years and his wisdom live for ever.

‘Thus spoke Lannon Hycanus, forty-seventh Gry-Lion of Opet, King of Punt and the four kingdoms, ruler of the southern seas and keeper of the waterways, lord of the plains of grass and the mountains beyond.’

Eldridge stopped reading, and looked about the circle of our intent faces. We were all silent. This was something far removed from the dry accounts, the list of trade and the Council orders. This scroll was imbued with the very breath, the essence of a people and a land.

‘Wow!’ Ral whispered. ‘They had a pretty good press agent.’ And I felt irritation scratch across my nerves at this irreverence.

‘Go on,’ I said, and Eldridge nodded. He crushed out the stub of his cigarette in the ashtray at his elbow and began to read again. Pausing only to unroll and lamp-black each new turn of the scroll, he read on steadily while we listened, completely entranced. The hours fled on nimble feet, as we heard the poems of Huy Ben-Amon sung again after 2,000 years.

Opet had produced her first philosopher and historian. As I listened to the words of this long-dead poet, I felt a curious kinship of the spirit with him. I understood his pride and petty conceits, I admired his bold vision, forgave his wilder flights of fancy and his more obvious exaggerations, and was held captive by the story-web he wove about me.

His story began with Carthage surrounded by the wolves of Rome, besieged and bleeding, as the legions of Scipio Aemilianus pressed forward on her walls to the chant of ‘Carthage must die’.

He told us how Hasdrubal sent a swift ship flying along the shore of the Mediterranean to where Hamilcar, the last scion of the Barcas, a family long since fallen from power and politics, lay with a war fleet of fifty-seven great ships off Hippo on the north African coast.

How the besieged leader called for succour and of the storm and adverse winds that denied it to him. Scipio broke through into the city, and Hasdrubal died with a reeking sword in his hand hacked into pieces by the Roman legionaries below the great altar in the temple of Ashmun upon the hill.

As Eldridge paused, I spoke for the first time in half an hour.

‘That gives us our first date. The third Punic war and the final destruction of Carthage, 146 BC.’

‘I think you’ll find that is also about the date point for the Opet calendar,’ Eldridge agreed.

‘Go on,’ said Sally. ‘Please go on.’

Two biremes escaped the carnage, the sack and rape of Carthage. They fled with the great winds to where Hamilcar lay fretting and storm-bound at Hippo and they told him how Hasdrubal had died and how Scipio had dedicated the city to the infernal gods, had burned it and thrown down the walls, how he had sold the 50,000 survivors into slavery and had sowed the fields with salt and forbidden under pain of death any man to live amongst the ruins.

‘So great a hatred, so cruel a deed, could only spring from the heart of a Roman,’ cried the poet, and Barca Hamilcar mourned Carthage for twenty days and twenty nights before he sent for his sea captains.

They came to him all nine of them, and Huy the poet named them, Zadal, Hanis, Philo, Habbakuk Lal and the others. Some would fight but most would fly, for how could this pitiful remnant of Carthaginian power stand against the legions of Rome and her terrible fleet of galleys?

There seemed to be no sanctuary for a Carthaginian, Rome ground all the world beneath her armoured heels. Then Habbakuk Lal, the old sea lion and master navigator, reminded them of the voyage that Hanno had made 300 years before beyond the gates of Hercules to a land where the seasons were inverted, gold grew like flowers upon the rocks, and elephants lived in great herds upon the plains. They had all of them read the account that Hanno had written of his voyage inscribed on tablets in the great temple of Baal Hammon at Carthage, now destroyed by Rome. They recalled how he spoke of a river and a mighty lake, where a gentle yellow people had welcomed him and traded gold and ivory for beads and cloth, and how he had lingered there to repair his ships and plant a harvest of corn.

‘It is a good land,’ he had written. ‘And rich.’

Thus in the first year of the exodus Barca Hamilcar had led a fleet of fifty-nine great ships, each with 150 oarsmen and officers aboard, westward beneath the towering gates of Hercules and then southward into an unknown sea. With him went 9,000 men, women and children. The voyage lasted two years, as they made slow progress down the western coast of Africa. There were a thousand hardships and dangers to meet and overcome. Savage tribes of black men, animals and disease when they landed, and shoals and currents, winds and calms upon the sea.

Two years after setting out they sailed into the mouth of a wide, placid river and journeyed up it for sixteen days, dragging their ships bodily through the shallows, until finally they reached the mighty lake of which Hanno had written. They landed upon the farthest shore under a tall red cliff of stone, and Barca Hamilcar died of the shaking fever which he had carried with him from the pestilential lands of the north. His infant son Lannon Hamilcar was chosen as the new king and the nine admirals were his councillors. They named their new land Opet, after the legendary land of gold, and they began to build their first city at a place where a deep pool of water sprang from the cliffs. The pool and the city were dedicated to the goddess Astarte.

‘My God, it’s four o’clock.’ Ral Davidson broke the spell which had held us all for most of the night, and I realized how tired I was, emotionally and physically exhausted, but well content. I had found my Pliny, now I could go to London in triumph. I had it all.

How swiftly the days passed now. I was at work each morning before sunrise. My typewriter clattered steadily and the filled sheets piled up beside it. I worked until noon each day, and spent the afternoons and evenings in the repository, listening to the songs from the golden books of the poet Huy. There was no question that the translation could be completed before April the first. Indeed we would be lucky to have the two first scrolls out of the five completed by then. There was equally no possibility that we could postpone the symposium that had been approved by the Council of the Royal Geographical Society for that date. The public relations office of the London branch of Anglo-Sturvesant had completed the arrangements, invitations had been issued and accepted, accommodation, transport and a hundred other details had been arranged and confirmed.

I was in a race to marshal and present as much of this incredible plethora of facts and legend as I could in the time left to me. Always I must guard against the temptation to romanticize my subject. The words of Huy were inflammatory to my emotions, I wanted to copy his ebullient style, to laud his heroes and castigate the villains as he did. All of us at the City of the Moon were becoming deeply involved in the story, even Eldridge Hamilton, who was the only one of us not of Africa, was caught up in the grandeur of it. While to the rest of us for whom Africa was, academically and emotionally, the well of our existence, these songs were a compulsive living cavalcade.

How often I found our recent history but an echo of the endeavours and adventures of these men of Opet. How closely they seemed linked to us despite the passage of nearly 2,000 years.

For the first five years the settlement on the shores of the lake prospered. The buildings were of log and mud, the men of Opet came to terms with their new land. They fell into a trading relationship with the Yuye. These were the yellow people that Hanno had described 300 years before, tall graceful men with slanted eyes and delicate features. Clearly they were the ancestors of the Hottentots. They were a pastoral people, with herds of goats and small scrub cattle. They were also hunters and trappers, and gatherers of the flakes of alluvial gold from the gravel beds of the rivers. In the name of the infant king, Habbakuk Lal concluded a treaty with Yuye, King of the Yuye. A treaty that granted all the land between the great river and the hills of Tuya to the men of Opet in return for five bolts of linen and twenty swords of iron.

Well satisfied, Habbakuk Lal, to whom the set and scent of the sea were as the coursing of blood through his own veins, returned with five of his swiftest ships laden with the gold and ivory of Opet to the middle sea. He completed the return journey in nine months, setting up staging posts along the western shores of Africa, and returned with a cargo of beads and linen and the luxuries of civilization. He had pioneered the trade route along which the treasures of southern Africa would pour to the known world, but ever wary of Rome’s vengeful eye he covered his tracks like the crafty old sea-fox he was.

He brought with him also new recruits for the colony at Opet. Metallurgists, masons, shipbuilders and gentlemen adventurers. However, the trickle of Yuye gold and ivory shrivelled as the accumulated stores of ages were exhausted. Hab-bakuk Lal led a company of 100 men to the city of Yuye. He sought the right to prospect and hunt throughout the kingdom of the Yuye, and the king agreed readily, placing his mark at the foot of a leather scroll covered with characters he did not understand. Then he called a feast to entertain his honoured guests. The beer was brought in great gourds, the oxen roasted whole over the pits of glowing coals, and the lithe Yuye maids danced naked, their yellow bodies glistening with oil in the sunlight.

At the height of the revelry Yuye, the king, stood, and pointed his fist at the men whose demands became ever more excessive.

‘Kill the white devils,’ he cried, and his warriors who had lain in readiness without the mud walls of the city fell upon them.

Habbakuk Lal cut himself a road to safety, his battle-axe swinging in a furious arc about him. Three of his men followed him out, but the rest of them were dragged down and their skulls crushed beneath the war clubs of the Yuye.

Habbakuk Lal and his gallant three outran the warriors that pursued them, and reached the bank of the great river where their ship was moored. Flying on white sails they carried the warning to Opet. When the Yuye regiments, 40,000 strong, swarmed down through the pass of the red cliffs, they found 5,000 men of Opet standing to meet them.

All that day the yellow horde broke like the waves of the sea on the ranks of the Opet archers, and all that day the arrows flew like clouds of locusts. Then at the moment when the Yuye drew back exhausted, their resolve broken, Habbakuk Lal opened his ranks and let his axemen run. Greyhounds on the rabbit, wolves on the sheep herds, they pursued until darkness halted the slaughter. Yuye died in the flames of his burning city, and his people were taken into slavery. This is the law of Africa, a land that favours the strong, where the lion alone walks proud.

Now suddenly the colony which had been quietly establishing itself, putting down its roots and making sure of its base, exploded into growth and bloom.

Her metallurgists sought out the mother lodes of metal, her hunters ranged widely, her ranchers bred the scrub cattle of the Yuye to the blood bulls that Habbakuk Lal’s ships brought from the north. Her farmers sowed the corn, and watered it from the lake. To protect her citizens and her Gods a start was made on the walls of Opet. The land and its treasures were divided amongst the nine noble families, the sea captains of the exodus, who were now the members of the king’s council.

Habbakuk Lal, with his huge frame twisted and tortured by arthritis, and with the flaming red beacon of his hair and beard long ago changed to grey ash, died at last. But his eldest son, already admiral of the fleet of Opet, took his father’s name. Another Habbakuk Lal directed the growing fleet of Opet in trade and exploration. His ships still beat the well-worn sea-lanes to the north, but also they voyaged southwards to where the land turned back upon itself and a great flat-topped mountain guarded the southern cape. Here a sudden gale out of the north-west smashed halt the Opet fleet upon the rocks below the mountain. The priests read this as an omen from the gods, and never again would a ship of Opet venture this far southwards.

The centuries pass. Kings take the throne and then pass from it. New customs arise, the ways of the gods and their worship are altered to suit this land, a new breed of man arises from the mixed blood of Opet and Yuye. He is a citizen, but only the noble families may govern. He may enjoy all the privileges and carry all the responsibilities of citizenship, except that of directing the affairs of state. This is reserved for those of the old blood, pure and untainted. As an offshoot of this nobility a clan of warrior priests arises. These are the sons of Amon, and it amused me to learn that the clan had its origin in a man from the old kingdom, that is, the kingdom of Tyre and Sidon, on the borders of Canaan. These priests probably spring from Jewish stock. You cannot keep us out of a good proposition, can you?

New heroes spring up and fight along the borders, or crush a rising of slaves, or slay the wild beasts. The old art of elephant-training is revived, and the king’s elephants spearhead his army and lighten the heavy labours of building and mining.

From the golden books we had an occasional exciting flash of physical contact with the past. Huy describes the layout of the walls, and the towers of Baal. They tally exactly with the foundations we had exposed. Huy gives the dimension of walls thirty-five feet high and fifteen thick, and again we wonder how they had disappeared.

At another place he describes a gift of treasure from the Egyptian agents at Cadiz to the Gry-Lion, as the king is now called; amongst the items is a gold cup marvellously worked with the signs of eternal life. It is our chalice found among the ruins of the temple, and that night I went to examine it again. Seeing its battered beauty with new eyes.

Always running through the songs of Huy was the puzzle game of guessing the modern names of the animals and places he mentions. Towns and garrisons had long since gone, or had been reduced to those mysterious piles of old stone which dot the landscape of central Africa. However, we were enthralled to hear how the men of Opet began a search for land where the vine and olive will grow. The oils and wines from the north were more precious than their weight in gold by the time they had completed the journey in the ships of the fifth Habbakuk Lal.

The Gry-Lion’s horticulturists and viticulturists discover a range of high mountains far to the east. Mountains of mist and cool pure air. The terracing and developing of the benign slopes begins, with tens of thousands of slaves employed in the project. Living plants in pottery jars are sped southwards in the swiftest ships, then carried on the backs of elephants to the mountains of Zeng, and from them come the sweet red wines of Zeng which the poet Huy so loudly and lovingly extols. Here then is a description of the building of those terraced gardens which cover the Inyanga mountains to this day.

From the descriptions of the animals and wild birds of Punt and the four Kingdoms we could recognize most of them. The sacred sunbird, who carried offerings of meat to Baal, flying upwards into a cloudless sky until it disappeared beyond the range of the human eye was obviously the vulture. Then we realized the significance of the carved vulture birds and the seal on the golden scrolls. The vulture had been taken as the emblem of the warrior priests, the sons of Amon, Ben-Amon. Huy had placed his personal seal on the jars which contained the scrolls.

There were other animals described by the poet which could only be extinct species, types which had vanished in the intervening 2,000 years. Chief of these was the Gry-Lion. For we learned that the king took his title from a real beast. This was a large predatory cat which lived along the southern shores of the lake amongst the reed beds that grew there. As early as the year of Opet 216, laws were passed to protect this animal, already threatened by extinction. This protection was afforded it because of the role it played in the ritual of coronation of a new king; a ceremony which Huy referred to as ‘taking the Gry-Lion’. He described it as reddish roan-brown in colour with a face masked in lines of black and white, and standing five feet high at the shoulder. Its eye teeth protruded from its jaw in a set of great curved fangs ten inches long. Despite the doubts of the others as to Huy’s veracity, I thought I recognized a description of the giant sabre-toothed lynx. A skeleton of this animal had been discovered amongst the upper level of bones at Sterkfontein caves.

Huy describes how the trade in live animals begins. Their ancient enemy, Rome, is denuding north Africa of lion and rhinoceros and elephant, for use in her circuses. Hanis, the hunter of the southern plains of grass, develops a method of capturing these animals alive and drugging them with a distillation of the seeds of the wild hemp. In a comatose state they are placed aboard the ships of Habbakuk Lal, and sped swiftly northwards from staging-post to post along the coast. Huy reports an unexpectedly high survival rate of fifty per cent, and these fetch astronomical prices for the entertainment of the sensation-hungry populace of Rome.

In the Opet year of 450, the nation is at the zenith of her wealth and power, but she has outgrown herself. Her boundaries are extended, her slave population hardly sufficient to support her multifarious enterprises. In desperation the Gry-Lion sends a slaving expedition for ten days’ march to the north of the great river. Hasmon Ben-Amon returns with 500 superb black Nubian captives, and claims his reward from the Gry-Lion.

We had reached the end of Huy Ben-Amon’s second golden book, and the Lear was waiting for us. Reluctantly we had to interrupt our readings and go.

Leaving Ral and Leslie to supervise the site, Eldridge, Sally and I flew out to meet the international flight from Luanda. We had to pay the excess on 200 lb of overweight luggage, and the fare of the Botswana Police Inspector sent by his Government to guard their interests in the ancient relics we carried with us.

In London we had one free day, one precious day to ourselves and as usual I tried to do it all. The crocuses were out on the lawns of Lincolns Inn Fields, the bitter at the Barley Mow in Duke Street tasted better than I remembered, and the new crop of girls in the King’s Road were prettier than the last. When the National Gallery closed at six o’clock Sally and I took a cab directly to San Lorenzo in Beauchamp Place and ate Lorenzo’s wonderful osso bucco washed down with red Chianti, We were only just in time for the curtain at the Queen’s Theatre. It was all so different from our life at the City of the Moon.

By the time we returned to the Dorchester it was after midnight, but Sally was still wrought-up with the first impact of that fabulous city.

‘I’m too excited to sleep yet, Ben. What shall we do?’

‘Well, I’ve got a bottle of champagne in my suite,’ I hinted, and she looked at me with an amused twinkle in her eyes.

‘Ben Kazin, my favourite boy scout. Always prepared. Okay, let’s go drink it.’

It was Krug, very pale and dry. When the bottle was half finished we made love for the first time in six months. If it were possible this was for me a more cataclysmic experience than our first time. Afterwards I lay exhausted physically and spiritually, and it was Sally who took the empty glasses and carried them through into the lounge. She came back with the brimming pale wine and stood over me naked, and lovely.

‘I don’t know why I did that,’ she said, and gave me a tulip-shaped glass.

‘Are you sorry?’ I asked.

‘No, Ben. I have never regretted anything between us. I only wish—’ But she stopped and instead she sipped at her glass and sat down beside me on the bed.

‘You know that I love you,’ I said.

‘Yes. She looked at me with an expression I could not fathom.

‘I will always love you, I said.

‘No matter what?’ she asked.

‘No matter what,’ I told her.

‘I believe you, Ben,’ she nodded, her eyes dark brooding green. ‘Thank you.’

‘Sally—’ I began again, but she placed one long tapered finger on my lips, and shook her head so the soft dark wings of her hair swung against her cheeks.

‘Be patient, Ben. Please be patient.’ But I lifted her finger from my mouth.

‘Sally—’ She leaned forward and silenced my lips with hers. Still holding the kiss she placed her glass on the floor beside my bed, she took mine from my unresisting fingers and placed it beside hers. Then she made love to me with such devastating skill and subtlety that there were no questions nor protests left in me.

At nine o’clock the next morning I got Sally into a taxi headed for Elizabeth Arden in Bond Street, a little apprehensive as to what would happen to that dark silky head of hers. What some of those faggots do to a pretty girl they should be hanged for. Then I climbed into another taxi and headed for the M4 and Heathrow to become snarled in one of those traffic jams which make British motoring such a leisurely and soothing experience.

Louren’s flight had landed by the time I paid off my taxi and ran through into the International Terminal, that seething cauldron of humanity.

I heard someone in the crowd exclaim, ‘It must be Dicky and Liz!’ and I was immediately alerted to the whereabouts of the Sturvesant party. With the limited horizon that I have from my altitude above ground, I am forced to rely on these gratuitous sighting reports.

I fought my way through to the entourage which had been mistaken for that of the Burtons, and realized that the error was excusable. This was Louren Sturvesant travelling heavy, in the grand manner, with his fore-riders running interference and clearing a path for the doors. There was a light screen of the gentlemen of the Press skirmishing along the flanks of the advance, but unable to break through the ranks of BYM. Their methods were too conventional. I got into a head-on position and went in low and dirty, and there were a few yelps and cries of, ‘Watch that one,’ and, ‘Get him,’ which changed quickly to ‘Sorry, Doctor.’

And I was through into the soft centre. Bobby Sturvesant let out a shriek and landed around my neck, and the entire advance broke down for the minute it took for us to accomplish the greeting ceremony. Hilary was in a soft wrap of honey mink which was made to look shabby by the lustre of her hair, and over her towered Louren, his mane of hair sun-bleached to white gold and his face burned dark nut-brown.

‘Ben, you old bastard.’ He grabbed me around the shoulder. ‘Thank God you made it. Will you look after Hil and the kids for me. I’ve got a few things to clear up, then I’ll see you back at the Dorchester.’

There were two long shiny black limousines waiting under the portico and the party split neatly, but not before Louren had doubled back to tell me proudly, ‘I got a black marlin in the Seychelles - 900-pounder, Ben. A real beauty.’

‘That’s the tiger,’ I congratulated him.

‘Get out the Glen Grant, sport. I won’t be long.’

I sat in the jump seat opposite Hilary, having beaten one of the BYM to it, and I was delighted to see how radiant she looked. It was that bright shiny look of happiness which you cannot fake with cosmetics and eyeliner.

‘We had ten days on the islands, Ben. It was wonderful.’ She went all misty and soft at the memory. ‘Our anniversary. Look!’ And she held up her left hand which was overburdened with a ring of red gold and a solitaire diamond. I was accustomed to Louren’s style of living, but even I blinked. The diamond was bluey-white in colour and looked good, it was certainly not a shade less than twenty-five carats.

‘It’s beautiful, Hilary.’ And for no good reason I thought, ‘The deeper the guilt, the bigger the gift.’

When we reached the Dorchester Hilary gasped and covered her mouth with surprise at the baroque super-abundance of the Oliver Messel suite.

‘It’s not true, Ben,’ she laughed, ‘It just can’t be!’

‘Don’t laugh,’ I warned her. ‘We must be costing Louren over £100 per day.’

‘Wow!’ She flopped into one of the enormous armchairs ‘You can get a drink, Ben, my love. I need it.’

While I poured I asked unnecessarily, ‘Your problems were of a temporary nature then, Hil?’

‘I have forgotten I ever had any, Ben. He’s better than he ever was.’

When Louren arrived I saw what she meant. He was in high humour, laughing and restless with energy, sleek and hard and tanned. He disposed of the last two BYM while I poured him a Glen Grant, then he threw his coat and tie over a chair, rolled his sleeves up over brown bulging muscle and settled with the drink.

‘Okay, Ben. Show it to me.’ And we plunged into an examination and discussion of the scrolls and their translation.

Louren picked on the first line of the first page.

‘Go thou unto my store and take from thence five hundred fingers of the finest gold—’ He repeated the line, then looked up at me. ‘That’s right from the old boy’s mouth, Ben. My store. That’s his treasury. That clot Hamilton mistranslated it. It should read “treasury”.’

‘Suddenly your Punic is pretty hot,’ I commended him.

‘Well, tor cat’s sake, Ben, when did you ever send down to a store for your gold?’ He tasted the Glen Grant. ‘If your theories are correct—’

‘Don’t give me that if bit, Lo. Your name is not Wilfred Snell.’

‘All right, let’s accept that there was a violent and sudden death to our city. Fire and dead men, the archives which they obviously held so dear are untouched, then there is a better than ever chance the treasury was untouched also. We’ve just got to find it.’

‘Great!’ I nodded, and grinned sarcastically. This is a major breakthrough. I’ve been breaking my heart searching for it these last six months.‘

‘It’s there, Ben.’ He did not answer my grin.

‘Where, Lo? Where?’

‘Close. Somewhere within the main walls, probably within the cavern area.’

‘Hell, Lo. I’ve been over every inch of it fifty times.’ I spoke with mild but rising irritation.

‘And when you’ve been over it for the hundredth time, you’ll realize how blind you’ve been.’

‘Damn it, Lo!’ I started. ‘I don’t think—’

‘Get yourself a drink, partner, before you blow up.’

I did as he advised, and Louren went on. ‘I’m not knocking what you’ve done, Ben. But let me just remind you that in 1909 Theodore Davis ended his book by saying, “I fear that the valley of the kings is now exhausted.”’

‘Yes, I know, Lo, but—’

Ignoring me Louren went on, ‘And it was thirteen years later that Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen, the greatest treasure that the valley had ever yielded.’

‘Nobody is talking about giving up the search, Lo. I’ll go on just as long as you keep paying.’

‘And I’ll bet that my cheque book is more tenacious than your resolve.’

‘That’s a bad bet,’ I warned him, and we were laughing again.

We parted in the middle of the afternoon. Louren being borne away in a flood of BYM, across the lobby to where a black Rolls waited in front of the hotel, and I slipping out the side entrance to hail my own taxi in Park Lane.

Eldridge Hamilton was waiting for me on the pavement outside the Royal Geographical Society, having motored up from Oxford in his bright red mini. He was dressed as always in his tweed with the elbow patches, but was feverish with anticipation of the morrow.

‘I can hardly wait for it, Ben,’ he chortled with malicious glee. ‘Have they arrived at the hotel yet?’

‘No, but Snell is due in this evening.’

Eldridge did a little hop and skip of excitement and said. ‘Like a hippopotamus lumbering into the dead fall.’ Cruel but apt, I thought, and we went up through the double oaken doors into the panelled hall which is a high temple of our profession. There is a hushed dignity about the building which I find reassuring and permanent in this insane and transitory modern world

Side by side we climbed the sweeping staircase, past the portraits of great men and the lists of former medallists honoured by the Society.

‘You’ll have to give some thought as to who should paint you, Ben.’ Eldridge indicated the portraits. ‘They do say this foreign Johnny - what’s his name, Annigoni? - is not too bad.’

‘Don’t talk tripe,’ I snapped, and he let out one of those startling neighs of laughter that rang like a bugle call through the hallowed precincts. I was irritated by Eldridge’s assault on one of my most private and treasured fantasies. I am a modest and almost painfully retiring person, but the very first time I had entered here, and looked up at the portraits, I had imagined my own dark visage peering down from the wall of honour. I had even selected the pose - seated to avoid undue emphasis on my body, with my head turned half away. I have a good right-hand profile. There would be a flecking of dignified grey at the temples, a gay little ribbon of some foreign decoration in my lapel, Legion of Honour, perhaps. The expression pensive, the brow furrowed…

‘Come on,’ said Eldridge, and we went to where the President and a handful of Council Members waited for us with sherry and biscuits, and not a decent whisky in sight. Nevertheless, I was aware that these gentlemen had it in their power to make into reality my imaginings of a few minutes previously. I set out to be as affable and charming as is possible, and it seemed to have the desired effect.

We discussed the opening of the symposium, which was set for two-thirty the following afternoon.

‘His Grace will make the opening address,’ one of them explained. ‘We’ve asked him to keep it down to forty-five minutes, and if possible to avoid reference to orchid-growing or steeplechasing.’

I would then read my paper. It would rank as a follow-on to the one I had read six years earlier, ‘The Mediterranean Influence on Central and Southern Africa of the Pre-Christian Era’, the paper which had afforded Wilfred Snell and his pack so much sport. They had set aside four hours for me.

Eldridge would read his paper the following morning, ‘Certain Ancient Writings and Symbols of South-Western African Origin’. The title Eldridge had chosen was purposely vague, so as not to telegraph my punch.

Eldridge and I reassured ourselves that the exhibits we had brought with us from Africa were safe in the strong-room of the Society, then Eldridge gave me a bad attack of the shakes by driving me back to the Dorchester through London’s rush-hour traffic in his satanical red mini. We were carried around Hyde Park Corner four times, with Eldridge cursing fluently and his bald head shining like a warning beacon while I hung terrified to the door handle ready to bale out, before Eldridge managed to break out of the traffic stream into Park Lane.

I led him, both of us still palpitating, into the cocktail bar and shot a pair of double Gilbeys into him, and then left him. I had plans for the evening and it was already past six.

Sally came out of the lifts as I approached them. I mentally apologized to her hairdresser. He had let it lie, still loose and cloudy. They had wrought some sort of magic with her face also. It was all eyes and soft pink mouth. She had on a full-length dress of a floating green material that picked up the green of those eyes.

‘Ben,’ she came to me quickly. ‘I’m so glad I found you. I left a note for you under your door. About this evening, I’m terribly afraid that I won’t be able to make it, Ben. I’m sorry.’

‘That’s all right. Sal. It wasn’t definite anyway.’ I told her, hiding my disappointment behind a grin as my plans collapsed like soggy pastry.

‘I have to see them. They are old friends, Ben. They’ve come all the way from Brighton.’

I went up to Louren’s suite, and hung around waiting for him to return, chatting to Hilary and the children. At seven-thirty he phoned, and Hilary put me on after she had spoken to him.

‘I was hoping we could have had dinner, Ben, but I’m screwed up here for heaven knows how long. They have made a complete hash of the tax clause in the contract. We are trying to redraft it. Why don’t you take Hilary for dinner, instead?’

But she pleaded exhaustion, and announced her intention of making it an early night. I ate alone at Isow’s, a real kosher meal begun with chopped liver and onions. Afterwards I crossed the alley to Raymond’s, and for five pounds watched the loveliest girls in London taking off their clothes. It was a distressing experience. It made me feel even more lonely and despondent, and afterwards, though I am not a lecher, I teetered on the edge of temptation when the girls beckoned from the dark doorways in Wardour Street.

I rang Sally’s room when I got in a few minutes before midnight, and again an hour later when I had given up my efforts at sleep. Neither call was answered, and the telephone buzzed dismally like an insect sending out an unanswered mating call. It was almost morning before I found sleep.

Louren woke me, boorishly healthy and hearty at eight, bellowing into the phone, ‘It’s the big day, Ben. Come and have breakfast up here. I’ll order it now, what do you want?’

‘Coffee,’ I mumbled, and when I arrived in his suite he had a huge platter of steak and bacon, kidneys and eggs, with smoked kippers and porridge to start and toast, marmalade and coffee to end it. An average sort of breakfast for Louren.

‘You are going to need your strength, partner. Get in there and eat, boy.’

With my spirits bolstered by this solid bulwark, I was carried through the morning on a cresting wave of expectation and I felt like a lion when we went down to meet our guests at noon. When I say lion, I mean a man-eating lion. I had anointed my smoothly shaven cheeks with a double handful of Dior aftershave, I wore my dark cashmere suit with a white shirt and maroon tie, and Hilary had found a carnation for my buttonhole. I smelt like a rose garden, and there was an eager snap to my step and the hunter’s warm thrill in my belly.

Louren and I entered the private lounge together, and the buzz of conversation dwindled. I don’t pretend that my entrance to a room can command silence, but Louren’s certainly can. Only one voice continued raised; in a convincing imitation of the British upper class, it brayed across the lounge. Wilfred Snell stood in a circle of his sycophants, towering above them much bigger than life size, almost like a badly executed monument to himself. His legs were set apart and his body braced in the stance of a heavily pregnant woman to counterbalance his monstrous gut. It was as though he carried a half-filled winesack under his vest. The expanse of pearl-grey suiting material necessary to cover this bulge was as vast as a theatre curtain. His face hung down on his chest in a series of chins like the ripples on a pond. It was white and soft-looking as though a plastic skin had been filled with dirty milk. His mouth was a deep purple gash in the whiteness, loose, perpetually open, even when he was not talking, which was seldom. His hair was a wild curling bush from which a gentle white rain of dandruff sifted down onto his shoulders and lapels, and he was hung with things - a pair of reading glasses around his neck like a tank commander’s binoculars, a golden cigar-cutter, from his money pocket, from his lapel a monocle on a black ribbon, a watch chain and key ring.

I approached him obliquely, stopping to greet friends, to chat with colleagues, but moving in on him steadily. Someone put a glass in my hand and I looked around.

‘Scotch courage,’ Sally smiled at me.

‘I don’t need it, luv.’

‘Let’s go talk to him,’ she suggested.

‘I was sort of making the pleasure last.’

We looked at him openly, this self-appointed drummer of archaeology, whose half-dozen books had sold 500,000 copies, books that aimed at and struck squarely in the centre of popular tastes. Books in which he flirted dangerously with the laws of plagiarism and criminal libel; books in which cant masqueraded as erudition, and facts were squeezed, ignored or subtly altered to suit the argument.

I am not a bitter man, not one who bears grudges, but when I looked at this great bloated executioner, this torturer, this - well, when I looked at him I felt the blood bubble and fizz behind my eyes. I started towards him directly.

He saw me coming, but ignored it. The entire room was aware of what was happening, had probably been anticipating this confrontation since the day they received their invitations. The circle about the master opened giving me space to approach the presence.

‘There is no doubt—’ Wilfred brayed, his gaze passing several feet over my head. He usually precedes each of his statements with an advertising plug.

‘As I have always said—’ his voice carried to the farthest corners, and I waited patiently. I have a carefully rehearsed smile which I use at times like this. It is shy, self-effacing.

‘It is generally agreed—’ Such a recommendation from Wilfred usually means that the theory in question is the subject of a raging controversy.

‘To tell the truth—’ And he went on to tell a blatant lie.

At last he glanced down, stopped in mid-sentence, screwed his monocle into his eye, and to his delight and surprise, discovered his old friend and colleague Dr Benjamin Kazin.

‘Benjamin, my dear little fellow,’ he cried, and the diminutive stung like a dart in the hump of the bull. ‘How very good to see you!’

Then Wilfred Snell did a very rash thing. He dangled his great soft white hairy paw languidly in my direction. For an instant I could not believe my good fortune; at the same instant Wilfred remembered the last time we had shaken hands six years before and tried to snatch it back. His reactions are no match for mine, and I had him.

‘Wilfred,’ I cooed, ‘my dear, dear chap.’ His hand felt like a glove full of warm jelly, it was only when my fingers had cut in for an inch or two that you could actually feel the bones.

‘We were absolutely delighted that you could come,’ I told him, and he made a little mooing sound. A few loose drops of spittle spattered from the slack purple lips.

‘Did you have a good trip?’ I asked, still smiling shyly. Wilfred had begun to do a little jig, skipping from foot to foot. My fingers had almost disappeared in the soft white flesh, I could now feel every knuckle very clearly. It was rather like playing a jelly fish on a trout rod.

‘We must make time for a little private chat before the end of the symposium,’ I said, and the air started to leak out of Wilfred. He was making a soft hissing sound, and he seemed, to shrink like a punctured balloon. Suddenly I was disgusted with my brutality, my weakness in giving in to it. I let him go, and the return of blood to the abused hand must have been more painful than my treatment of it. He held it tenderly to his chest, his big pansy eyes were filled with tears and his lips trembled like those of a petulant child.

‘Come,’ I told him gently. ‘Let me get you another drink.’ And I led him away unprotesting like an elephant and its mahout. However, Wilfred Snell is nothing if not resilient, and he came back strongly. Throughout the luncheon snatches of his monologue carried across to our table. He was ‘making no bones about it’ and ‘letting them in on a little secret’ in his best form. From what I could hear he was repeating his conviction as to the medieval age and Bantu origin of the central African ruin system, and was lightly and amusingly debunking my own writings. At one stage I glanced across to see that he had Ophir open beside his plate and was reading from it to the general merriment of his table companions.

However, I had another crisis threatening which took all my skill to avert. Sally was my lunch partner and we sat opposite the Sturvesants. Within five seconds of seating ourselves, Sally noticed Hilary’s new diamond. She could hardly overlook it, it was throwing slivers of light about the room, bright as arrows. Sally was silent for half the meal, but her eyes were drawn to that flaming jewel every few seconds. The rest of us were vying for an opportunity to speak, and there was much laughter and excited banter. Louren seemed to be especially attentive to Hilary, but suddenly there was a momentary silence.

Sally leaned forward, and in her sweetest voice, told Hilary, ‘What a pretty ring. You are so lucky to be able to wear costume jewellery, my dear. My bones are too small. It doesn’t suit me, I’m afraid.’ And she turned back to me and started chattering brightly. She had ruined the mood with one expert thrust. I saw Louren frown, and flush angrily. Hilary pursed her lips, and I saw a hundred retorts pass in review behind her eyes but she withheld them. I plunged gamely into the void, but even my charm and social grace could not restore the mood. I was relieved when at last Louren glanced at his watch, then looked across at the BYM who was in charge of the arrangements and nodded. Immediately this gentleman was on his feet, shepherding the unwieldy party out to where the cavalcade of cars waited. As we passed through the lobby, Wilfred Snell cleaved a path to my side with a swarm of his admirers following him in grinning anticipation.

‘I was glancing through your book again during lunch. I had forgotten how amusing it was, my dear chap.’

‘Thank you, Wilfred,’ I replied gratefully. That’s jolly decent of you to say so.‘

‘You must sign it for me’

‘I will. I will.’

‘Looking forward to your paper this afternoon, my dear little chap.’ And again I shuddered with the effort of suppressing my feelings and keeping my voice mild.

‘I hope you’ll find it amusing.’

‘I am sure I will, Benjamin.’ He let go a fruity chuckle and moved off like a crowd. I heard him saying to De Vallos as they climbed into their limousine, ‘Mediterranean influence! My God, why not Eskimo while he is about it.’

We went through the park like the mourners at a state funeral, a convoy of black limousines, and turned out of the second gate into Kensington Gore.

We were set down at the door of the Society, and moved into the lecture hall. The speakers and Council Members were on the platform, and the body of the hall filled solidly. Wilfred was in his place, front centre, where I could watch every expression on his face. He was surrounded by his hatchet men.

They led in His Grace, smelling of cigars and good port. They pointed him at the audience like a howitzer, and let him go. In forty-five minutes he had covered orchids, and the steeplechase season. The President began tugging discreetly at his coat-tails, but it was another twenty minutes before I had my chance.

‘Six years ago I had the honour of addressing this Society. My subject was “The Mediterranean Influence on Central and Southern Africa of the Pre-Christian Era”. I come before you now with the identical subject, but armed with further evidence that has come to light in the intervening period.’

Every few minutes Wilfred would heave himself around in his seat to address a remark to either Rogers or De Vallos in the row behind him. He used a stage whisper, covering his mouth with his programme. I ignored the distraction and ploughed through my introduction. It was a resume of all the previously known evidence, and the various theories that had been applied to them. I made it purposely dull, pedestrian, letting Wilfred and his party believe that I had nothing further to support my views.

‘Then in March of last year a photograph was shown to me by Mr Louren Sturvesant.’ Now I changed my delivery, let a little electricity come into my tone. I saw a flare of interest in faces which had taken on glazed expressions. I fanned it steadily. Suddenly, I was telling them a detective story. There were longer intervals between Wilfred’s pompous asides. The snickers from his admirers died away. I had the audience by the throat now, they were there with Sally and me in the moonlight looking down on the ghostly outlines of a long-dead city. They shared our thrill as we exposed the first blocks of dressed stone.

At the moment when I needed it, the lights were turned down into darkness and the first image was flashed upon the screen behind me.

It was the white king, proud and aloof, regal in his rampant maleness and golden armour. Out of the darkness the images flashed upon the screen. The audience sat in rapt silence, their fascinated faces lit by the reflected glow of the screen, the only movement was the frantic scribbling of the Pressmen in the front row as my voice went on weaving spells about them.

I carried the story to the point where we had investigated the plain and cavern, but had not yet discovered the walled-up tunnel beyond the portrait of the white king.

At my signal the lights went up, and the audience stirred back to the present, all except His Grace who had succumbed to the port and was sleeping like a dead man. He was the only one of two hundred who I had not captivated by my tale. Even Wilfred looked groggy and shaken, like a badly beaten prize fighter trying to rouse himself to meet the gong. I had to accord him a grudging admiration, the man was game to the core. He heaved himself around towards De Vallos and in a penetrating whisper told him:

‘Typical Bantu stonework of the thirteenth century AD, of course. But very interesting. Reinforces my theories about the dating of the immigrations.’

I waited silently, clenched fists on the lectern, my head bowed over it. Sometimes I believe I could have been a truly great motion picture actor. I lifted my head slowly and stared at Wilfred, my expression was desolate. He took heart from it.

‘The painting means nothing, of course. To tell you the truth it’s probably a Bantu initiation candidate, similar to the White Lady of the Brandberg.’

I maintained my silence, letting him take out line as though he were a marlin. I wanted him to swallow it down deep, before I set the hook.

‘There is no new evidence here, I’m afraid.’

He looked around him with a satisfied smirk, and his followers’ heads started nodding and grinning like puppets.

I addressed him directly then.

‘As Professor Wilfred Snell has just remarked, fascinating as all of this was, it presented no new evidence.’ They all nodded more vigorously. ‘And so, I determined to look deeper.’

And I was away again into a description of the discovery of the blocked tunnel, the decision to preserve the white king and cut through living rock, the hole through into the tunnel and again I paused, and looked at Wilfred Snell. Suddenly I felt sorry for him; where before he had been my implacable enemy, an open running canker in my professional life, now he was just a fat and rather ridiculous figure.

Like the poet Huy, Axeman of all the Gods, I hacked into him then. Cutting him to pieces with my account of the scrolls, the vulture axe, and the five golden books.

As I spoke one of the attendants wheeled in a barrow covered with a green velvet cloth. It pulled all their eyes, and at my signal he drew aside the cloth and there lay the great gleaming battle-axe and one of the scrolls.

Wilfred Snell slumped in his seat with his gut in his lap and his purple mouth hanging open slackly while I read the opening words of the first golden book of Huy.

‘ “Let men read his words and rejoice as I have rejoiced, let men hear his songs and weep as I have wept.”’

I ended and looked around at them. They were gripped by the heart strings, every one of them. Even Louren, Hilary and Sally who knew it all were leaning forward in their seats, shiny-eyed and intent.

It was after seven-thirty, I noticed with surprise. I had overrun my time by an hour and there had been no rebuke from the President beside me.

‘Our time is finished, but not the story. Tomorrow morning Professor Eldridge Hamilton will read his paper on the scrolls and their contents. I hope you will be able to attend. Your Grace, President, ladies and gentlemen, I thank you.’

The silence was complete, nobody moved nor spoke for a full ten seconds, then suddenly they were on their feet applauding wildly. It was the first time since the formation of the Society in 1830 that a paper had been applauded as though it were a stage performance. They came out of their seats, crowding around me to shake my hand and ask their questions which I could not hope to answer. From my vantage-point on the dais I saw Wilfred Snell rise from his seat and lumber ponderously towards the door. He walked alone, his band of followers had left him to join the crowd around me. I wanted to call out to him, to tell that I felt sorry for him, that I wished I could have spared him, but there was nothing to say. He had said it all a hundred times before.

Every single national paper had it the following morning, and even The Times had allowed itself a touch of the dramatic, ‘Discovery of Carthaginian Treasure,’ it stated, ‘one of archaeology’s most significant finds since the tomb of Tutankhamen.’

Louren had sent out for them all, and we sat in a sea of newsprint as we ate another of those gargantuan breakfasts. I was touched by Louren’s pride in my achievements. He read each article aloud, interspersing his own comments:

‘You rocked them, partner.’

‘Ben, you murdered the bums.’

‘The way you told it, you even had me wetting my pants, and, hell! I was there!’

He picked one of the left-wing tabloids from the pile and opened it. His expression changed immediately. Suddenly he was scowling furiously, a look of such concentrated venom that I asked quickly, ‘What is it, Lo?’

‘Here.’ He almost flung the sheet at me. ‘Read it yourself, while I finish changing.’ He went through into the bedroom and slammed the door.

I found it almost immediately. A full-page of photographs under a big banner ‘The forces of freedom’. Black men with guns, with tanks. Black men marching, rank upon endless rank. Eggshell helmets like evil toadstools of hatred, modern automatic weapons slung on camouflaged shoulders, booted feet swinging. It was not these that held me. In the centre of the page was a picture of a tall man with shoulders wide as the crosstree of a gallows, and a bald cannon-ball head that shone in the bright African sunshine. He walked unsmiling between two grinning Chinamen in those shabby rumpled uniforms that look like pyjamas.

The caption was in bold lettering: ‘The Black Crusader, Major-General Timothy Mageba, the newly appointed commander of the people’s Liberation Army with two of his military advisers.’

I felt a sinking sensation of dread as I looked at the brooding hatred in that face, the power and terrible purpose in those set shoulders and thrusting gait.

In some inexplicable fashion it seemed to detract from my own personal triumph. What had happened 2,000 years ago seemed of lessened importance when I looked at the picture of this man, and I thought of the dark forces in movement through the length of my land.

Yet it came to me then that this man was not unique, Africa had bred many like him. The dark destroyers who had strewn her plains with the white bones of men, Chaka, Mzilikazi, Mamatee, Mutesa, and hundreds of others that history had forgotten. Timothy Mageba was only the latest in a long line of warriors which stretched back beyond the shadowy, impenetrable veils of time.

Louren came out of the bedroom, and with him was Hilary. She came to kiss me and congratulate me again, and I dropped the sheet of newspaper from my hand, but not my mind.

‘I’m sorry I can’t be with you to hear your friend Eldridge this morning, Ben. I can’t get out of this meeting. Please look after Hil for me. Give her a good lunch, will you?’ Louren told me as the three of us went down in the lift.

Eldridge, in his tweeds and elbow patches, massacred his subject. For three and a half hours he mumbled about ‘hangs’ and ’abridgements‘, occasionally letting fly with that laugh of his, a sound which woke the sleepers. I was grateful to him as I looked around the slowly emptying hall, and the doodling yawning members of the Press. He certainly wasn’t stealing my glory from me.

An hour before lunch Sally slipped me a note from her seat behind me. ‘I can’t take any more. Going out to do some shopping. See you. S.’

And I smiled as I watched her slide gracefully out of the side exit. Hilary turned and winked at me, and we both smiled.

Eldridge ground to a slow, inconclusive halt and beamed around at his depleted audience.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘I think that covers just about everything.’ And there followed a relieved scramble for the doors.

In the lobby of the Society I was once more surrounded by an enthusiastic mob, and we made slow progress towards the door and our lunch.

When at last we reached the taxi, with Eldridge and myself flanking Hilary on the seat, I was just about to give the driver the address of the Trattoria Terrazza when Hilary looked down at her hands in her lap and gave a little stricken cry.

‘My ring!’ And for the first time we noticed that the great jewel was no longer flaming upon her hand. I stared aghast at the naked finger, a fortune beyond my dreams was missing. That diamond must certainly be worth £30,000.

‘When did you last have it?’ I demanded of her, and after a second’s thought a look of relief replaced her worried frown.

‘Oh, I remember now. At the hotel, I was painting my nails. I put it in the alabaster cigarette box beside my chair.’

‘Which room? Which chair?’

‘The lounge, the tapestry chair beside the television set.’

‘Eldridge, will you take Mrs Sturvesant on to the restaurant, please. I’d better take another cab and dash back to the hotel before one of the cleaning staff discovers it. Have you your key with you, Hil?’

She dug into her handbag and came out with the key.

‘Ben, you are an old sweetheart. I’m so sorry about this.’ And she handed it to me.

‘Damsels in distress are my speciality.’ I stepped out onto the pavement. They pulled away and for five minutes I behaved like a berserk semaphorist towards the passing stream of taxis. I can never tell it those little yellow lights on top are burning or not, so I flag them all.

I let myself into the Oliver Messel suite with Hilary’s key and hurried down that long passage past the bedrooms. With a little grunt of relief I found the ring amongst the cigarettes in the alabaster box. With it in my hand I moved across to the light from the window to admire it for a moment. It was a thing of such brilliant beauty that my stomach turned within me. I felt a fleeting envy, a twinge of unhappiness that I should never own an object of such pure enchantment, Then I pushed the feeling aside and quickly tied the ring into the corner of my handkerchief, and I started back down the passage.

As I came level with the bedroom door I noticed that it was slightly ajar, and I paused with my hand going out towards the handle to draw it closed.

From the room beyond came a woman’s voice, a voice husky with emotion, a voice broken by the panting of breath aroused and tremulous.

‘Yes, oh God, yes. Do it! Do it!’ And a man’s voice blended with it, a voice rising in a hoarse cry like a wounded animal.

‘Darling! My Darling!’ The voices washed, and swirled and broke together, the high surf of passion driven by the storm winds of love. With it was another sound, rhythmic, urgent, pounding out the pulse of creation, a sound as old as man, as unchanging as the courses of the stars. As I stood frozen, my hand still outstretched towards the door handle, the thudding heartbeat of love was arrested and then there was only the sound of ragged breathing and the small sighs and moans of emotions spent and exhausted.

I turned away like a sleepwalker. Silently I went to the front door and silently I closed it behind me.

I sat quietly through a lunch I do not remember eating, through conversations I do not remember hearing, for the voices I had heard beyond that door were those of Sally Senator and Louren Sturvesant.

I do not remember the return to the Royal Society, and only vague snatches of the concluding papers and ceremonial remain with me

I sat in my seat in the front row, hunched down in my chair and stared at a crack in the polished wooden floor. My mind cast back, working over the past like a gun-dog hunting a hidden bird.

I remembered a night at the City of the Moon when I had gone drunk to bed, drunk on whisky poured for me by Sally’s own hand. I remembered waking when Louren came into the tent, and seeing the pale flush of dawn in the sky beyond the tent-flap.

I remembered my visit to the cavern in the night, when Louren had dazzled me with the torch beam and sent me away.

I remembered that conversation overheard between Ral and Leslie. I remembered Sally’s friends from Brighton, her violent unreasonable attacks on Hilary, her moods and silences, her sudden gaiety and even more sudden depressions, the half-statements, the hovering upon the verge of revelation, the midnight visit to my bedside, and a hundred other clues and hints - and I marvelled at my own blindness. How could I not have seen it, nor sensed it?

My name had been spoken, and I struggled to rouse myself, to try and listen to what was said. It was Graham Hobson, the President of the Society, speaking and looking down at me. smiling. Around me heads were craning, smiling also, friendly kind faces.

‘Awarded the Society’s Patron’s and Founder’s Medal,’ said Hobson. ‘In addition, my Council has instructed me to announce that a sum has been set aside from the fund provided, and that a commission will be awarded to a leading artist to paint a portrait of Dr Kazin. At an appropriate ceremony the portrait will be hung—’

I shook my head to clear it. I felt fuzzy and stupid. Hobson’s voice kept fading and I tried to concentrate. Then gentle but insistent hands were pulling me to my feet, pushing me towards the stage.

‘Speech!’ they called, laughing, applauding.

I stood before them. I felt dizzy, the room turned and steadied again, blurred and refocused.

‘Your Grace,’ I began and choked, my throat felt flannelly, the words came out thickly. ‘I am honoured.’ I stopped and groped for words, they were silent, expectant. I looked desperately about the hall, seeking deliverance or inspiration.

Sally Senator was standing beside the side entrance. I did not know how long she had been there. She was smiling, white teeth in her sun-brown and lovely face, dark hair hanging in shining rings to her shoulders, her cheeks aflame and eyes sparkling, a girl freshly arisen from the bed of her lover.

I stared at her. ‘I am thankful,’ I mumbled, and she nodded and smiled encouragement at me - and my heart broke; it was a physical thing, a sharp pain, tissue tearing in my chest, so intense that I caught my breath. I had lost her, my love, my only love, and all these honours, all this acclaim was meaningless.

I stared across at her, desolate and bereft of purpose. I felt the tears flood and burn my eyes. I did not want them all to see it, and I stumbled from the stage towards the door. The applause swelled again, and I heard voices in the tumult.

‘Poor fellow, he’s completely overcome.’

‘How touching.’

‘He’s overwhelmed.’

And I ran out into the street. It was raining a soft drizzle and I ran wildly. Like a wounded animal I wanted to be alone to recover from this hurt. The cold rain soothed my burning eyes.

I craved solitude and surcease from pain, and both I found at the City of the Moon. Eldridge had a month’s lecturing commitments to meet in England, and Sally had disappeared. I had not spoken to her since that night, but Louren told me casually that she had taken two weeks of her accumulated vacation time and had joined a tour to Italy and the Greek Islands. At the City of the Moon an airmail letter from Sally reached me, postmarked Padua, confirming this and regretting that her efforts to see me before I left London had failed. This was not surprising, for I had not returned to the Dorchester, but had my luggage sent to Blue Bird House and flown out on the early morning flight tor Africa. Sally sent her congratulations, and ended by saying she would return to Johannesburg at the end of the month and take advantage of the first flight to the City of the Moon.

Reading her letter gave me a feeling of unreality, like receiving a message from beyond the grave. For she was dead to me, gone beyond my reach for ever. I burned the letter.

Louren visited the site for one day. I found that I had nothing to say to him. It was as though we were strangers, his features once so well remembered and beloved, were unfamiliar to me now.

He sensed the gap that separated us, and tried to reach across it. I could not respond, and he cut short his visit and left. I knew his puzzlement, and vaguely I regretted it. I could not find it in myself to blame or hate him.

Ral and Leslie were shadowy figures on the borders of my solitude. They did not intrude in the private world in which I now lived.

This was the world of Huy Ben-Amon, a place beyond pain and sorrow. During the time that Eldridge worked upon the scrolls, 1 had followed daily each detail of his translation. Language is my greatest talent, it comes to me without effort. Lawrence of Arabia learned to speak Arabic in four days - in ten I had taught myself Punic, and in so doing had gained the key to the fairyland of the golden books of Huy.

The third book was a continuation of the history of Opet up to the lifetime of the poet. This was as fascinating a document as the two that preceded it, but the true magic for me was in the remaining two golden books.

These were the poems and songs of Huy, poems and songs in the modern sense of the words. This was Huy the warrior, the Axeman of all the Gods, writing an ode to the shiny wing of the bird of the sun, his battle-axe.

He described the ore brought from the mines of the south, and its smelting in the womb-shaped furnace, the smell of the glowing charcoal and the trickle of the molten metal.

How it was purged, and alloyed, forged and shaped, its edging and engraving, and when he described the figures of the four vultures and the four suns I looked up at the great axe that hung above my working desk with wonder.

With Huy I heard the gleaming blade moan in flight, heard the snick of the edge into bone, the sucking withdrawal from living flesh. I read with awe the list of the enemies who had died beneath it, and wondered at their crimes and transgressions.

Then Huy’s mood changed and he was a roistering fellow, tipping back the jug of red Zeng wine, roaring with laughter in the fire light with his companions in arms.

Now he was the dandy dressed in white linen, perfumed with sweet oils, his beard twisted and plaited into ropes.

Now the priest, walking with his gods. Sure of them, tending to their mysteries, and rendering unto them their portion of the sacrifice. Huy kneeling alone in silent prayer, Huy in the dawn lifting his arms in greeting to Baal, the sun-god, Huy in a frenzy or religious revelation.

Then again Huy is the friend, the true companion, describing his joy in the company of another man. The interlock of personalities, the spice of shared pleasures, dangers faced together and overcome. There is a strong hint in this poem that Huy is a hero-worshipper, blind to the faults of his friend, describing his physical beauty with an almost womanly insight. He details the breadth of shoulder, the regal curve of flaming red beard down onto a chest where the muscle bulges smooth and hard as the boulders upon the hills of Zamboa, the legs like strong saplings, the smile like the warm blessing of the sun-god Baal, and he ends with the line, ‘Lannon Hycanus you are more than King of Opet, you are my friend.’ Reading it, I felt that to have the friendship of Huy was to have something of value.

The mood of the poet changes again and he is the observer of nature, the hunter, describing his quarry with loving care, missing no detail, from the curve in the ivory tusk to the creamy softness of a lioness’s underbelly.

Then he is a lover, bemused by the beauty of his sweetheart.

Tanith whose wide brow is shining white and full as the moon, whose hair blows soft and light as the smoke from the great papyrus fires in the swamps, whose eyes shine green as the deep pool in the temple of the goddess Astarte.

Then suddenly Tanith is dead, and the poet cries his grief, seeing her death as the flight of a bird, her ivory arms gleaming like spread wings, her last cry echoing across the vault of heaven to touch the hearts of the gods themselves. Huy’s lament was mine, his voice was mine, his terrors and triumphs became my own, and it seemed that Huy was me, and I was Huy.

I rose early and retired late, I ate little and my face grew gaunt and pale, a haunted face that stared back at me, from my mirror with wild eyes.

Then suddenly reality caught up with me, shattering the fragile crystal walls of my fairyland. On the same aircraft Louren and Sally arrived together at the City of the Moon. The torment which I had for so long avoided had now begun again.

Again I tried to hide. I chose the archives as my sanctuary, and spent each day there trying to avoid all contact with either Sally or Louren. Still there was that dreaded hour of the evening meal, trying to smile my way through it and join in the banter and discussion, trying not to notice the private intimate exchange of glances and smiles between Louren and Sally until I could reasonably leave.

Twice Louren came to me.

‘There is something wrong, Ben.’

‘No, Louren. No. I swear to you. You are mistaken.’ And I escaped to the stillness of the archives.

There was Ral’s quiet company and the physical labour of cataloguing, photographing and packing the jars, and besides these I found another distraction. This cavern sealed for almost 2,000 years had been sterile, devoid of any life form when first we opened it. Now it was establishing its own ecology, first the tiny midge flies, then sand fleas, ants, spiders, moths, and finally the little brown gecko lizards. I had started making a film record of this colonization of the archives.

I spent many hours a day sitting quietly with my camera poised, waiting to obtain some difficult close-up shot of fly or insect and it was thus that I made the last major discovery at the City of the Moon.

I was working alone at the farthest end of the archives, close by the wall on which was graven the image of the sun. One of the gecko lizards ran down the wall, and across the stone floor. At the spot where the great battle-axe had lain when we discovered it, the lizard stopped. It stood poised, the soft skin of its throat pulsing and its little black beady eyes shiny with expectation. I noticed then the insect it was stalking. A white moth that sat quietly with spread wings on the sun image.

Quickly I reached for my camera, and set the flash bulb and exposure. I was anxious to record one of the lizards in the moment of its kill. Slowly I moved into a position from which I could focus on the moth, and I waited while the lizard approached in a series of swift dashes. Twelve inches from the moth it stopped again, and seemed to gather itself for the final assault. I waited breathlessly, my finger on the trigger button. The lizard shot forward and I exploded the bulb.

The lizard froze with the body of the moth crammed in its mouth. Then it turned and darted head-down towards the floor; when it reached the corner formed by wall and floor it disappeared and I laughed at its ludicrous fright.

I wound the film, replaced the flash bulb, returned the camera to its case, and was about to resume my work when a thought occurred to me. I went back to the end wall of the cavern, to the point where the lizard had disappeared and stooped to examine the juncture of floor and wall. It seemed solid, and I could see no hole or crack for the lizard to use as a refuge. Intrigued now by the lizard’s disappearance, I went to fetch one of the electric arc-lights on its cable and I set it so that the beam fully illuminated the wall.

Then on hands and knees I crawled along the wall. I felt my heart start to pound like a war drum, and the hum of blood in my ears, the warmth of it in my cheeks. My hand as I reached for my penknife was unsteady, and I nearly broke my thumbnail as I tried to open the blade.

Then I was probing the faint crack line, plugged with dust, that separated wall and floor. The blade of my knife slipped into the crack to its full length.

I rocked back on my heels and stared at the wall, seeing the image of the sun throwing weird shadows in the arc-light

‘Perhaps,’ I whispered aloud, ‘it’s just possible…’ And then I was grovelling again beneath the image of Baal, almost as though I were one of his worshippers. Frantically I probed the crack, following it along the floor, until abruptly it turned ninety degrees, and climbed the wall. Here the crack was secret-jointed, riveted and turned back on to itself, making it all but invisible. The cunning skill with which this joint had been concealed convinced me that it hid something vital. The workmanship of this piece of the wall was a far cry from the rough joints on the roof slabs through which the dust had filtered down.

Now I jumped up and paced restlessly back and forth before the blank wall. I was alive again tor the first time since my return to the City of the Moon. My skin tingled, my step was full of spring, my fists clenched and unclenched and my brain was racing with excitement.

‘Louren,’ 1 thought suddenly. ‘He should be here.’ I almost ran back down the archives, and out through the tunnel. In the wooden guard hut which enclosed the entrance to the tunnel one of the security guards was sprawled in a chair with his boots on the desk. The collar of his blue uniform was unbuttoned, his cap pushed back on his head. On the wall behind him his gun-belt hung from a hook, with the black butt of the revolver sticking out of the holster. He looked up from his paperback Western, a thick beaky-nosed face with cold eagle eyes.

‘Hi, Doc. You in a hurry?’

‘Bols, can you get hold of Mr Sturvesant tor me? Ask him to come up here right away.’

I was on my knees below the sun image when Louren arrived.

‘Lo, come over here. I want to show you something.’

‘Hey, Ben!’ Louren laughed, and it seemed to me that his expression was one of relieved pleasure. ‘That’s the first time I’ve seen you really smile in two weeks. God, I was worried about you.’ He slapped my shoulder, still laughing. ‘This is more like the old Ben again.’

‘Lo, look at this.’ And he knelt beside me.

Ten minutes later he was no longer smiling, his face was cold and intent. He was staring at the wall with those pale blue eyes as though he were seeing through the solid rock.

‘Lo,’ I began, but he waved me to silence with a peremptory gesture. He never took his eyes from the wall and now it seemed to me that he was listening to a voice I could not hear, I watched that cold god-like face with a sudden feeling of almost superstitious awe. I had a premonition of something unnatural about to happen.

Slowly, step by step, Louren approached the sun image. His hand went out and lay against the centre of the great disc. His fingers were spread, seeming to echo the shape of the image. He began to press against the wall, I saw the tips of his fingers flatten against the rock, changing shape beneath the pressure of his hand.

For a few long seconds nothing happened, then suddenly the wall began to move. There was no sound, no grating or squeal of protesting hinge, but the whole wall began to revolve upon a concealed axis. A ponderous, deliberate movement that revealed the square dark opening to a farther passageway concealed beyond the image of Baal.

Staring into that dark prehistoric opening I whispered without glancing at Louren, ‘How did you do that, Lo? How did you guess?’

His tone as he replied was puzzled. ‘I knew - I just knew, that’s all.’ We were both silent again, staring into the opening. I was seized by a sudden unaccountable dread of what we would find in there.

‘Get the light, Ben,’ Louren ordered without taking his eyes from the doorway. I fetched the portable arc-light, and Louren took it from my hand. I followed him as he walked through the doorway.

Before us a passageway slanted down into the earth at an angle of forty-five degrees. The passage was seven foot six inches high, and nine feet wide. There was a flight of stone steps cut into the floor. Each step was worn, with edges smoothed and rounded. The walls and roof of the tunnel were of unadorned stone, and the depths of the tunnel were hidden from us by shadow and darkness.

‘What’s this?’ Louren pointed at two large circular objects which lay at the head of the staircase, I saw the gleam of bronze rosettes upon them.

‘Shields,’ I told him. ‘War shields.’

‘Someone dropped them in a hurry.’

We stepped over them carefully and started down the stair case. There were 106 steps, each six inches high.

‘No dust in here,’ Louren remarked.

‘No,’ I agreed. ‘The seal of the door was tight,’

His words should have acted as a warning, but I was lost in the wonder and excitement of this new discovery. The surface of the stairs was as clean as though freshly swept.

At the bottom of the staircase we reached a T-junction. On our right the passage led to a gate of barred ironwork which was closed and bolted. On the left it descended another twisting staircase that disappeared into the living rock.

‘Which way?’ Louren asked.

‘Let’s see what’s behind the gate,’ I suggested in a voice choking with excitement, and we went to it.

The heavy bolts were not locked but a thread of gold wire was twisted around the jamb of the gate, and a heavy clay seal closed the entrance.

The figure on the seal was of a crudely wrought animal, and the words, ‘Lannon Hycanus. Gry-Lion of Opet, King of Punt and the Four Kingdoms.’

‘Give me your knife.’ Louren said.

‘Lo, we can’t,’ I began.

‘Give it to me, damn you.’ His voice was shaking, thick with a peculiar lust and passion. ‘You know what this is? It’s the treasury, the gold vaults of Opet!’

‘Wait, let’s do it properly, Lo,’ I pleaded, but he took the seal in his bare hands and ripped it from the gate.

‘Don’t do it, Lo,’ I protested, but he pulled the bolts open, and flung his weight against the gate. It was rusted closed, but he attacked it with all his weight. It gave, swinging back far enough for Louren to squeeze through. He ran forward, and I ran after him. The tunnel turned again at right angles and led directly into a large chamber.

‘God!’ shouted Louren ‘Oh God! Look at it, Ben. Just look at it.’

The treasury of Opet lay before us with all its fabulous wealth untouched. Later we could count and weigh and measure it, but now we stood and stared.

The chamber was 186 feet long and twenty-one wide. The ivory was stacked along most of one wall. There were 1,016 large elephant tusks. The ivory was rotten and crumbly as chalk, but in itself must have been a vast treasure 2,000 years ago.

There were over 900 large amphorae, sealed with wax. The contents of precious oils had long since evaporated into a congealed black mass. There were bolts of imported linen and silk, rotted now so that they crumbled to dust at the touch.

The metals were stacked along the opposite wall of the vault - 190 tons of native copper cast into ingots shaped like the cross of St Andrew; three tons of tin, cast into the same shape; sixteen tons of silver; ninety-six of lead; two of antimony.

We walked down the aisle along the centre of the vault, staring about us at this incredible display of wealth.

‘The gold,’ Louren muttered. ‘Where is the gold?’

There was a stack of wooden chests, carved from ebony, the lids decorated with ivory and mother-of-pearl inlay. These were the only objects of an artistic nature in the vault, and even they were crudely executed battle scenes or hunting scenes.

‘No, don’t do it, Lo,’ I cried another protest as Louren began ripping open the lids.

They were filled with semi-precious stones, amethyst, beryl, tigers’ eyes, jade and malachite. Some of these were crudely cut and incorporated in gold jewellery, thick clumsy pieces, collars, brooches, necklaces and rings.

Louren hurried on down the aisle, and then stopped abruptly. In another recess that led off the main chamber, behind another iron gate, the gold was stacked in neat piles. Cast in the usual ‘finger’ moulds. The piles of precious metal were insignificant in bulk, but when, months later, it was all weighed the total was over sixty tons.

Its value was in excess of £60,000,000 sterling. In the same recess as the gold were two small wooden chests. These yielded 26,000 carats of uncut and rough-cut diamonds of every conceivable colour and shape. Not one of these was smaller than one and a half carats, and the largest was a big sulky yellow monster of thirty-eight carats, and this added a further £2,000,000 to the intrinsic value of the treasure.

Here was the wealth of forty-seven kings of Opet, accumulated painstakingly over the course of 400 years. No other treasure of antiquity could compare with this profusion.

‘We’ll have to be bloody careful, Ben. No word of this must leak out. You understand what might happen if it did?’ He stood with a finger of solid gold in each hand, looking down on the piles of treasure. ‘This is enough to kill for, to start a war!’

‘What do you want me to do, Lo? I must have help in here. Ral or Sally even.’

‘No!’ He turned on me ferociously. ‘No one else will be allowed in here. I will leave orders with the guards, no one but you and I.’

‘I need help, Lo. I can’t do it myself, there is too much here.’

‘I’ll help you,’ Louren said.

‘It will take weeks.’

‘I’ll help you,’ he repeated. ‘No one else. Not a word to anyone else.’

Until six o’clock that evening Louren and I explored the treasure vault.

‘Let’s find out where the other branch of the tunnel leads to,’ I suggested.

‘No,’ Louren stopped me. ‘I want to keep normal hours here. I don’t want the others to guess that we are up to something. We will go down to the camp now. Tomorrow we will have a look at the other fork of the tunnel. It can’t be anything like this anyway.’

We closed the stone door behind us, sealing off the secret passage, and at the guard post Louren made his orders clear, repeating them and writing them on the guard’s instruction sheet. Ral’s and Sally’s names were removed from the list of those allowed into the tunnel. And later he mentioned it to them at dinner. He explained it away as an experiment that he and I were attempting. It was a difficult evening for me. I was overwrought by the day’s excitement, and now that I had shaken off my mood of apathy I was over-reacting to the normal stimuli of living. I found myself laughing too loudly, drinking too much, and the agony of my jealousy returned more intensely than ever.

When Louren and Sally looked at each other like that, I wanted to shout at them, ‘I know. I know about it, and damn you, I hate you for it.’

But then I knew it was not true. I did not hate them. I loved them both and this made it all the harder to bear.

There was no chance of sleep for me that night. When I get myself into a certain state of nervous tension, then I can go for two or three nights without being able to still the racing of my overheated brain. I did not mean to spy on her. It was a mere coincidence that I was standing at the window of my hut staring cut from my darkened room at the moonlit night when Sally left her own hut.

She wore a long pale-coloured dressing-gown and her hair was let down in a dark cloud around her shoulders. She paused in the doorway of her own hut and looked around carefully, making sure that the camp was asleep. Then guiltily, quickly, she hurried across the open moonlit yard to the hut in which Louren was living. She opened the door and went in without hesitating and for me a long harrowing vigil had begun.

I stood by my window for two hours, watching the moon shadows change shape, watching the patterns of the stars swing and turn across the heavens, stars as fat and bright as they are only in the sweet clean air of the wilderness. The beauty of it was wasted on me this night. I was watching Louren’s hut, imagining each whispered word, each touch, each movement, and hating myself and them. I thought of Hilary and the children, wondering what madness it is that makes a man gamble his all on a few hours of transient pleasure. In that darkened hut how many confidences were those two betraying, how many people’s happiness were they risking.

Then suddenly I realized that I was assuming that this affair was merely play on Louren’s part, and I faced the possibility that he was serious. That he would desert Hilary and go to Sally. I found this thought intolerable. I could no longer watch and wait, I must have some distraction and I dressed quickly and hurried across to the repository.

The night-watchman greeted me sleepily, and I unlocked the door and went to the vault in which the golden books were kept, I took out the fourth book of Huy. I carried it across to my own office, and before I settled down to read I went to fetch a bottle of Glen Grant. My two opiates, words and whisky.

I opened the scroll at random and re-read Huy’s ode to his battle-axe, the gleaming wing of the bird of the sun. When I had finished I was taken by an impulse and I lifted the great axe down from its place of honour. I caressed the shimmering length of it, studying it with new attention. I was convinced that this was the weapon of the poem. Could there be another answering the description so accurately? I held it in my lap, wishing that I could draw from it the story of the last days of Opet. I was sure it was involved intimately in the final tragedy. Why had it been left abandoned, a thing so well beloved and yet thrown carelessly aside to lie uncared for and discarded for nearly 2,000 years? What had happened to the Axeman Huy, and his king and his city?

I read and dreamed, disturbed less frequently by thoughts of Sally and Louren. However, at every pause in my readings they came to me with a sick little slide of jealousy and despair in my guts. I was torn between the present and the distant past.

I read on, sampling those portions of the scroll which were still unknown territory while the level in the whisky bottle sank slowly and the long night passed.

Then when midnight had flown and the new day was being born, I came upon a small piece of writing which touched a new depth of response in me. Huy makes a sudden heart-felt cry from the depths of his being. It is as though some long-suppressed emotion will no longer be contained and must come out in this appeal to have his physical form discounted when his value is assessed. From base earth flowers the purest gold, Huy cries, in his own poor distorted clay there were treasures concealed.

I re-read the passage half a dozen times, making sure of my translation before I could accept that Huy Ben-Amon was like me. A cripple.

Dawn’s first promise was tracing the silhouette of the cliff tops with a pale rose colour when I laid the golden book away in its vault and walked slowly back towards my hut.

Sally stepped out of Louren’s doorway and came towards me in the darkness. Her gown was ghostly pale and she seemed to float above the ground. I stood still, hoping she would not see me. There was a chance, for I stood in the deeper shadow of her hut and I turned my face away, standing quietly.

I heard the rustle of her skirts, the whisper of her feet in the dust very close in the dark, then her startled gasp as she saw me. I looked at her then. She had seen but not recognized me. Her face was a pale moon of fear and her hands were at her mouth.

‘All right, Sally,’ I said. ‘It’s only me.’

I could smell her now. On the clean night air of the desert it was a perfumed smell like crushed rose petals, and mingled with it the warm smell of perspiration and lovet. My heart slid in my chest.

‘Ben?’ she said, and we were both silent, staring at each other.

‘How long have you been here?’

‘Long enough,’ I answered, and again the silence.

‘You know, then?’ It was said in a small voice, shy and sad.

‘I didn’t mean to spy,’ I said, and another silence.

‘I believe you.’ She began to move away. Then she turned back. ‘Ben, I want to explain.’

‘You don’t have to do that,’ I said.

‘Yes, I do. I want to.’

‘It doesn’t matter, Sal.’

‘It does matter.’ And we faced each other. ‘It does matter,’ she repeated. ‘I don’t want you to think that I, well, that I am so terrible.’

‘Forget it, Sally.’ I said.

‘I tried not to, Ben. I swear to you.’‘

‘It’s all right, Sally.’

‘I couldn’t help it, truly. I tried so hard to fight it. I didn’t want it to happen.’ She was crying now, silently, her shoulders shaking as she sobbed.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said, and went to her. I took her gently to her room and put her on the bed. In the light I saw how her lips were swollen and kiss-inflamed.

‘Oh, Ben, I would have given anything for it to be different.’

‘I know, Sally.’

‘I tried so hard, but it was too much for me. He had me in some kind of spell, from the very first moment I saw him.’

‘That evening at the airport?’ I could not help but ask the question, remembering how she had watched Louren that first time she met him and how later she had ranted against him.

‘That’s why - later, with me - that’s why we—’ I did not want to hear her answer, and yet I must know if she had first come to me inflamed with thoughts of another man.

‘No, Ben.’ She tried to deny it, but she saw my eyes, and turned her face away. ‘Oh, Ben, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you.’

‘Yes,’ I nodded.

‘I truly didn’t want to hurt you. You are so good, so gentle, so different from him.’ There were dark shadows of sleeplessness beneath her eyes, and the peach-coloured velvet of her cheeks was rubbed pink by Louren’s unshaven skin.

‘Yes,’ I said with my heart breaking.

‘Oh, Ben, what shall I do?’ she cried in distress. ‘I am caught in this thing. I cannot escape.’

‘Does Lo - has he said what he is going to do? Has he, told you he, well, that he will leave Hilary, and marry you?’

‘No.’ She shook her head.

‘Has he given you reason—’

‘No! No!’ She caught my hand. ‘Oh, Ben. It’s just fun for him. It’s just a little adventure.’

I said nothing, watching her lovely tortured face, glad at least that she knew about Louren. Realized that he was a hunter and she the quarry. There had been many Sallys in Louren’s life, and there would be many more. The lion must kill regularly.

‘Is there anything I can do, Sally?’ I asked at last.

‘No, Ben. I don’t think so.’

‘If there is, tell me,’ I said and moved towards the door.

‘Ben,’ she stopped me, and sat up, ‘Ben, do you still love me?’

I nodded without hesitation. ‘Yes, I still love you.’

‘Thank you, Ben,’ she sighed softly. ‘I don’t think I could have taken it if you had turned away from me.’

‘I’ll never do that, Sally,’ I said, and walked out into the lemon and rose glow of dawn.

Louren and I descended the staircase beyond the sun image. We went first to the treasure vault. While Louren gloated over the stacks of golden fingers, I watched his face. I was lightheaded from lack of sleep, and I could taste the spirits I had drunk in the back of my throat. Watching Louren, I tried to find hatred for him in my heart, I searched diligently without success. When he looked up and smiled at me, I could not but answer him with a smile.

‘This will keep, Ben,’ he said, ‘Let’s go and have a look at the rest of it.

I had guessed what we would find beyond the junction of the tunnels, and once we had descended the last spiralling stairs and come into another short level passage I had my last doubts dispelled.

The passage ended against another solid stone wall. Here, however, there was no attempt at concealment, for carved into the stone was an inscription. We stood before it, and Louren held the arc-lamp full upon it.

‘What does it say?’ he asked.

I read it through slowly. Even with all my practice I read slowly, for in Punic there are no symbols for the vowels and each must be guessed from the context of the word.

‘Come on,’ Louren muttered impatiently.

‘“You who come here to interrupt the sleep of the kings of Opet, and to despoil their tomb, do so at your peril, and may the curse of Astarte and great Baal hound you to your own graves.”’

‘Read it again,’ Louren commanded, and I did. He nodded.

‘Yes,’ he said, and stepped to the stone door. He began to seek the pivot point which we knew would trigger the mechanism. Here we were not so fortunate as we had been at the threshold of the sun door. After two hours, our way was still barred by that solid slab of uncompromising stone.

‘I’m going to blow the bloody thing open,’ Louren warned, but I knew he would not commit such an atrocity in this sacred place. We rested and discussed the problem, before returning to the door. It had to be another simple leverage system, but the trick was to find the pressure point and the angle of movement.

When we found it at last, I cursed my own stupidity. It should have been my first attempt. The symbol for the name of the sun-god Baal was once more the pressure point.

The door swung open, ponderous and slow, and we went through into the tomb of the kings of Opet.

There is only one other place I have known with the same atmosphere. That is Westminster Abbey which contains the tombs of so many of the kings of England. There was the same hushed cathedral sense of time past and history reborn.

Neither of us spoke as we went to the centre of the long narrow vaulted tomb. The silence was an oppressive weight upon my ear drums. Utter silence, so complete as to be sinister and threatening. Here again the air was long disused, but with an even heavier musty quality to it. I thought I detected the faint, stale smell of dust and mushrooms.

Along each wall, parallel to it, stood the sarcophagi of the kings of Opet. They were carved of massive granite. Solid, squat and grey. The lids were held in place by their own immense weight, and the upper surface had been polished and engraved with the name and style of the body that lay within. The mighty names that had echoed through the golden books of Huy. I recognized them, Hamilcar, Hannibal, Hycanus. Forty-seven great coffins, but the last was empty, its lid propped against the wall beside it. Its interior cut-out into a man’s shape, ready to swallow the last king of Opet.

At the foot of the great stone coffin a man lay stretched upon his back on the floor of the tomb. His helmet was missing and his red-gold hair and beard formed a soft frame for the wizened mummified features. His breastplate had been removed exposing the dried parchment skin stretched over the gaunt skeletal rib-cage. The broken shaft of an arrow protruded from a long-dead chest. He wore a kilt of leather, studded with bronze rosettes and on his shins were greaves of bronze, on his feet light sandals.

His arms lay at his side, his heels were together. The dead body had been laid out with care and obvious love.

Over him stooped another figure, kneeling like a man in prayer. A figure in full armour, with only the war helmet and breastplate discarded on the floor beneath the empty sarcophagus. Long black hair hung forward to conceal his bowed face. Both hands clutched at his chest at the level of the diaphragm. From his chest a blade of steel protruded, a reversed sword, with its hilt securely anchored against the stone slabs of the floor, the point driven up under the ribs and lodged in his vitals.

Here was a man in the attitude of final escape from the shame of defeat, a man who in despair had fallen upon his own sword. The weapon had supported his weight these many centuries, propping him up in that kneeling position.

Neither Louren nor I could speak, as we drew closer to this tableau of ancient tragedy. For me there was no doubt as to the identity of these dried-out human husks.

Lannon Hycanus, the last King of Opet, lay stretched on the cold stone floor. Above him knelt his friend and high priest Huy Ben-Amon.

I felt choked with a sense of destiny, with a cold aching dread - for Huy Ben-Amon, the Axeman of the Gods, was a hunchback.

I had to see his face. I had to see it! I ran forward, and knelt beside him.

I touched his gaunt bony shoulder, covered by a tunic of brittle yellow linen. It was the lightest touch, a breath almost, but it was enough to shatter that delicately poised mummy.

The corpse of Huy Ben-Amon slid forward and crashed down on the body of the king. Steel and bronze rang on the stone floor, and echoed about the vaulted tomb of Opet.

The two figures burst into dust at the impact, a soft yellow explosion of mustard-yellow dust, swirling like smoke in the arc-light. There was nothing left of them but the metal of armour and sword, and two hanks of gold and sable hair in the puddle of talcum-soft dust.

I stood up, choking with the yellow dust. My eyes were swimming with tears of wonder and burning with the dust. The dust smelled of mushrooms.

Louren Sturvesant and I stared at each other without speaking. We had witnessed a miracle.

I awoke from a screaming nightmare of blood and flame and smoke, a horror of shining black faces and sweat-polished bodies lit by crackling roaring flames and the scream of the dying and the animal roar of blood-crazed voices. I woke panting and choking from the memory, and the terror and horror of it stayed with me long after I had found myself alone in my quiet hut in the silent night.

I switched on the bedside light and looked at my watch. It was still early, a little before eleven. I threw back my sheets and stood up, surprised to find my legs shaky and my breathing ragged. There was a twinge of pain at each breath I drew, and a dull tight sensation behind my eyes. My body felt hot, fever hot. I went to the washstand across the hut, and shook three aspirin from the bottle. I swallowed them with a mouthful of water, and then the tickling sensation in my lungs grew stronger. I coughed as though I was on sixty cigarettes a day, and the effort left me sweaty and trembling. My skin seemed to be aflame.

Without really knowing why, I took my dressing-gown off the hook behind the door, pulled it on and went out into the yard. There was half a moon in the sky, horned and yellow. The shadows under the trees and around the buildings were very dark and ugly. I felt the lingering dread and horror of my nightmare still upon me as I hurried across towards my office, and I glanced about me nervously. I could smell the tinge of smoke on the night air, and it troubled me also. I sniffed at it, feeling the faint sting deep in my lungs.

I reached the door of my office, and there was something waiting for me in the deep shadow beside the building. I saw it rush at me from the corner of my vision, a big dark thing, rounded and shapeless and deadly silent. I spun to face it, falling against the wall of the hut, weak with terror. A scream bubbled and died in my throat for there was nothing there. It was gone, I had imagined it, but now the pain in my head beat like hammer blows on the anvil.

I pulled the door open, and fell into my office, slammed the door behind me, locked it, gasping with unnamed and baseless fear. Something scratched against the door from the outside, a terrifying clawing animal sound that ripped my quivering nerves.

I backed away from the door towards my desk, crouching there, trembling, shaking and weak.

The sound came again, but from the wall beside me, I spun to face it, and heard myself whimper.

I needed a weapon, I looked around desperately and the great battle-axe of Huy hung on the wall above my desk. I snatched it down and backed into a corner, holding it ready, at the present position across my chest. I coughed.

There was a thick sheaf of white paper on my desk. It moved and I felt the gooseflesh crawl all over my hot body. The white square of paper quivered and wavered, it changed shape, crawled across my desk, and spread white bats’ wings. Then suddenly it launched into flight, wings whispering, and it flew at my face. I saw the wide open mouth ringed with needle vampire teeth, heard the shrill squeaks as it attacked. I shouted with horror, and struck with the axe. The white thing fluttered and squeaked against my throat and face, and I fought and shouted, striking it down onto the floor where, it crawled and slithered loathsomely. I struck with the edge of the axe, and inky black blood spurted from the thing and puddled the wooden floor of the hut.

I backed away from the thing, and lay back against the wall. I felt weak, and terribly afraid. I began to cough. The cough took hold of my whole body and shook it, rocking me, doubling me against the wall. I coughed until my vision burst into bright lights, and there was a salty sweet taste in my mouth.

I sank to my knees against the wall, my mouth was filled with warm wetness and I spat a thick gob of bright blood onto the floor. I stared at it, not understanding what was happening to me. I lifted my hand to my mouth and wiped my lips. My hand came away smeared with blood.

I knew then what it was. Louren and I had passed beyond two sealed doorways into the depths of a tomb closed for 2,000 years - and we had breathed air loaded with the spores of cryptococcus neuromyces, the curse of the Pharaohs.

It was too late now for me to berate myself for overlooking the precautions. I had believed that because the archives were safe, the rest of it was also. In my eagerness and excitement I had not given another thought to the fungus danger, even when Louren and I had discussed the door seals and even when I had smelled the mushroom odour in the tomb of the kings.

Now my lungs were clogged with the horrible colonies of living fungus, a growing living thing within me, feeding on the soft tissues of my body, and pouring out its poisons into my blood to be carried to my brain.

‘Treatment,’ I gasped, ‘got to find the treatment.’ And I staggered across to my bookshelves. I tried to read the letters on the spines of the books, but they changed to little black insects and crawled away. Suddenly a thick mottled snake uncoiled from the top shelf, and dangled down towards my face, a thick bloated puff-adder with a flicking black tongue. I backed away, then turned and fled out into the night.

The smoke was thick, swirling around me, choking me so that I coughed wildly. The flames around me lit all with a lurid satanic glow, a flickering glow. There were dark shapes and strange sounds. I saw Louren’s hut, and ran towards it.

‘Louren,’ I screamed, bursting in through the door. ‘Louren!’ panting, coughing.

The light went on. Sally was alone in Louren’s bed, she sat up, sleepy, soft-eyed, naked, and looked at me with unfocused vision.

‘Where is he?’ I shouted at her. She looked confused, not understanding.