The Dark of the Sun Read online

  ‘Knee him, Mike!’ Bruce yelled as he tried to take up a position from which to intervene, but they were staggering in a circle, turning like a wheel and Bruce could not get in.

  Hendry’s legs were braced apart as he drew his head back to strike again, and Mike’s knee went up between them, all the way up with power into the fork of Hendry’s crotch.

  Breaking from the clinch, his mouth open in a silent scream of agony, Hendry doubled up with both hands holding his lower stomach, and sagged slowly on to his knees in the dust.

  Dazed, with blood running into his mouth, Mike fumbled with the canvas flap of his holster.

  ‘I’ll kill you, you murdering swine.’

  The pistol came out into his right hand; short-barrelled, blue and ugly.

  Bruce stepped up behind him, his thumb found the nerve centre below the elbow and as he dug in the pistol dropped from Mike’s paralysed hand and dangled on its lanyard against his knee.

  ‘Ruffy, stop him,’ Bruce shouted, for Hendry was clawing painfully at the rifle that lay in the dust beside him.

  ‘Got it, boss!’ Ruffy stooped quickly over the crawling body at his feet, in one swift movement opened the flap of the holster, drew the revolver and the lanyard snapped like cotton as he jerked on it.

  They stood like that: Bruce holding Haig from behind, and Hendry crouched at Ruffy’s feet. The only sound for several seconds was the hoarse rasping of breath.

  Bruce felt Mike relaxing in his grip as the madness left him; he unclipped his pistol from his lanyard and let it drop.

  ‘Leave me, Bruce. I’m all right now.’

  ‘Are you sure? I don’t want to shoot you.’

  ‘No, I’m all right.’

  ‘If you start it again, I’ll have to shoot you. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll be all right now. I lost my senses for a moment.’

  ‘You certainly did,’ Bruce agreed, and released him.

  They formed a circle round the kneeling Hendry, and Bruce spoke.

  ‘If either you or Haig start it again you’ll answer to me, do you hear me?’

  Hendry looked up, his small eyes slitted with pain. He did not answer.

  ‘Do you hear me?’ Bruce repeated the question and Hendry nodded.

  ‘Good! From now on, Hendry, you are under open arrest. I can’t spare men to guard you, and you’re welcome to escape if you’d like to try. The local gentry would certainly entertain you most handsomely, they’d probably arrange a special banquet in your honour.’

  Hendry’s lips drew back in a snarl that exposed teeth with green slimy stains on them.

  ‘But remember my promise, Hendry, as soon as we get back to—’

  ‘Wally, Wally, are you hurt?’ André came running from the direction of the station. He knelt beside Hendry.

  ‘Get away, leave me alone.’ Hendry struck out at him impatiently and André recoiled.

  ‘De Surrier, who gave you permission to leave your post? Get back to the train.’

  André looked up uncertainly, and then back to Hendry.

  ‘De Surrier, you heard me. Get going. And you also, Haig.’

  He watched them disappear behind the station building before he glanced once more at the two children. There was a smear of blood and melted chocolate across the boy’s cheek and his eyes were wide open in an expression of surprise. Already the flies were settling, crawling delightedly over the two small corpses.

  ‘Ruffy, get spades. Bury them under those trees.’ He pointed at the avenue of casia flora. ‘But do it quickly.’ He spoke brusquely so that how he felt would not show in his voice.

  ‘Okay, boss. I’ll fix it.’

  ‘Come on, Hendry,’ Bruce snapped, and Wally Hendry heaved to his feet and followed him meekly back to the train.

  – 7 –

  Slowly from Msapa Junction they travelled northwards through the forest. Each tree seemed to have been cast from the same mould, tall and graceful in itself, but when multiplied countless million times the effect was that of numbing monotony. Above them was a lane of open sky with the clouds scattered, but slowly regrouping for the next assault, and the forest shut in the moist heat so they sweated even in the wind of the train’s movement.

  ‘How is your face?’ asked Bruce and Mike Haig touched the parallel swellings across his forehead where the skin was broken and discoloured.

  ‘It will do,’ he decided; then he lifted his eyes and looked across the open trucks at Wally Hendry. ‘You shouldn’t have stopped me, Bruce.’

  Bruce did not answer, but he also watched Hendry as he leaned uncomfortably against the side of the leading truck, obviously favouring his injuries, his face turned half away from them, talking to André.

  ‘You should have let me kill him,’ Mike went on. ‘A man who can shoot down two small children in cold blood and then laugh about it afterwards—!’ Mike left the rest unsaid, but his hands were opening and closing in his lap.

  ‘It’s none of your business,’ said Bruce, sensitive to the implied rebuke. ‘What are you? One of God’s avenging angels?’

  ‘None of my business, you say?’ Mike turned quickly to face Bruce. ‘My God, what kind of man are you? I hope for your sake you don’t mean that!’

  ‘I’ll tell you in words of one syllable what kind of man I am, Haig,’ Bruce answered flatly. ‘I’m the kind that minds my own bloody business, that lets other people lead their own lives. I am ready to take reasonable measures to prevent others flouting the code which society has drawn up for us, but that’s all. Hendry has committed murder; this I agree is a bad thing, and when we get back to Elisabethville I will bring it to the attention of the people whose business it is. But I am not going to wave banners and quote from the Bible and froth at the mouth.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘That’s all.’

  ‘You don’t feel sorry for those two kids?’

  ‘Yes I do. But pity doesn’t heal bullet wounds; all it does is distress me. So I switch off the pity – they can’t use it.’

  ‘You don’t feel anger or disgust or horror at Hendry?’

  ‘The same thing applies,’ explained Bruce, starting to lose patience again. ‘I could work up a sweat about it if I let myself loose on an emotional orgy, as you are doing.’

  ‘So instead you treat something as evil as Hendry with an indifferent tolerance?’ asked Mike.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ grated Bruce. ‘What the hell do you want me to do?’

  ‘I want you to stop playing dead. I want you to be able to recognize evil and to destroy it.’ Mike was starting to lose his temper also; his nerves were taut.

  ‘That’s great! Do you know where I can buy a secondhand crusader outfit and a white horse, then singlehanded I will ride out to wage war on cruelty and ignorance, lust and greed and hatred and poverty—’

  ‘That’s not what I—’ Mike tried to interrupt, but Bruce overrode him, his handsome face flushed darkly with anger and the sun. ‘You want me to destroy evil wherever I find it. You old fool, don’t you know that it has a hundred heads and that for each one you cut off another hundred grow in its place? Don’t you know that it’s in you also, so to destroy it you have to destroy yourself?’

  ‘You’re a coward, Curry! The first time you burn a finger you run away and build yourself an asbestos shelter—’

  ‘I don’t like being called names, Haig. Put a leash on your tongue.’

  Mike paused and his expression changed, softening into a grin.

  ‘I’m sorry, Bruce. I was just trying to teach you—’

  ‘Thank you,’ scoffed Bruce, his voice still harsh; he had not been placated by the apology. ‘You are going to teach me, thanks very much! But what are you going to teach me, Haig? What are you qualified to teach? “How to find success and happiness” by Laughing Lad Haig who worked his way down to a lieutenancy in the black army of Katanga – how’s that as a title for your lecture, or do you prefer something more technical like: “The applications of alco
hol to spiritual research—”’

  ‘All right, Bruce. Drop it, I’ll shut up,’ and Bruce saw how deeply he had wounded Mike. He regretted it then, he would have liked to unsay it. But that’s one thing you can never do.

  Beside him Mike Haig was suddenly much older and more tired looking, the pouched wrinkles below his eyes seemed to have deepened in the last few seconds, and a little more of the twinkle had gone from his eyes. His short laughter had a bitter humourless ring to it.

  ‘When you put it that way it’s really quite funny.’

  ‘I punched a little low,’ admitted Bruce, and then, ‘perhaps I should let you shoot Hendry. A waste of ammunition really, but seeing that you want to so badly,’ Bruce drew his pistol and offered it to Mike butt first, ‘use mine.’ He grinned disarmingly at Mike and his grin was almost impossible to resist; Mike started to laugh. It wasn’t a very good joke, but somehow it caught fire between them and suddenly they were laughing together.

  Mike Haig’s battered features spread like warm butter and twenty years dropped from his face. Bruce leaned back against the sandbags with his mouth wide open, the pistol still in his hand and his long lean body throbbing uncontrollably with laughter.

  There was something feverish in it, as though they were trying with laughter to gargle away the taste of blood and hatred. It was the laughter of despair.

  Below them the men in the trucks turned to watch them, puzzled at first, and then beginning to chuckle in sympathy, not recognizing the sickness of that sound.

  ‘Hey, boss,’ called Ruffy. ‘First time I ever seen you laugh like you meant it.’

  And the epidemic spread, everyone was laughing, even André de Surrier was smiling.

  Only Wally Hendry was untouched by it, silent and sullen, watching them with small expressionless eyes.

  They came to the bridge over the Cheke in the middle of the afternoon. Both the road and the railway crossed it side by side, but after this brief meeting they diverged and the road twisted away to the left. The river was padded on each bank by dense dark green bush; three hundred yards thick, a matted tangle of thorn and tree fern with the big trees growing up through it and bursting into flower as they reached the sunlight.

  ‘Good place for an ambush,’ muttered Mike Haig, eyeing the solid green walls of vegetation on each side of the lines.

  ‘Charming, isn’t it,’ agreed Bruce, and by the uneasy air of alertness that had settled on his gendarmes it was clear that they agreed with him.

  The train nosed its way carefully into the river bush like a steel snake along a rabbit run, and they came to the river. Bruce switched on the set.

  ‘Driver, stop this side of the bridge. I wish to inspect it before entrusting our precious cargo to it.’

  ‘Oui, monsieur.’

  The Cheke river at this point was fifty yards wide, deep, quick-flowing and angry with flood water which had almost covered the white sand beaches along each bank. Its bottle-green colour was smoked with mud and there were whirlpools round the stone columns of the bridge.

  ‘Looks all right,’ Haig gave his opinion. ‘How far are we from Port Reprieve now?’

  Bruce spread his field map on the roof of the coach between his legs and found the brackets that straddled the convoluted ribbon of the river.

  ‘Here we are.’ He touched it and then ran his finger along the stitched line of the railway until it reached the red circle that marked Port Reprieve. ‘About thirty miles to go, another hour’s run. We’ll be there before dark.’

  ‘Those are the Lufira hills.’ Mike Haig pointed to the blue smudge that only just showed above the forest ahead of them.

  ‘We’ll be able to see the town from the top,’ agreed Bruce. ‘The river runs parallel to them on the other side, and the swamp is off to the right, the swamp is the source of the river.’

  He rolled the map and passed it back to Ruffy who slid it into the plastic map case.

  ‘Ruffy, Lieutenant Haig and I are going ahead to have a look at the bridge. Keep an eye on the bush.’

  ‘Okay, boss. You want a beer to take with you?’

  ‘Thanks.’ Bruce was thirsty and he emptied half the bottle before climbing down to join Mike on the gravel embankment. Rifles unslung, watching the bush on each side uneasily, they hurried forward and with relief reached the bridge and went out into the centre of it.

  ‘Seems solid enough,’ commented Mike. ‘No one has tampered with it.’

  ‘It’s wood.’ Bruce stamped on the heavy wild mahogany timbers. They were three feet thick and stained with a dark chemical to inhibit rotting.

  ‘So, it’s wood?’ enquired Mike.

  ‘Wood burns,’ explained Bruce. ‘It would be easy to burn it down.’ He leaned his elbows on the guard rail, drained the beer bottle and dropped it to the surface of the river twenty feet below. There was a thoughtful expression on his face.

  ‘Very probably there are Baluba in the bush’ – he pointed at the banks – ‘watching us at this moment. They might get the same idea. I wonder if I should leave a guard here?’

  Mike leaned on the rail beside him and they both stared out to where the river took a bend two hundred yards downstream; in the crook of the bend grew a tree twice as tall as any of its neighbours. The trunk was straight and covered with smooth silvery bark and its foliage piled to a high green steeple against the clouds. It was the natural point of focus for their eyes as they weighed the problem.

  ‘I wonder what kind of tree that is. I’ve never seen one like it before.’ Bruce was momentarily diverted by the grandeur of it. ‘It looks like a giant blue gum.’

  ‘It’s quite a sight,’ Mike concurred. ‘I’d like to go down and have a closer—’

  Then suddenly he stiffened and there was an edge of alarm in his voice as he pointed.

  ‘Bruce, there! What’s that in the lower branches?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Just above the first fork, on the left—’ Mike was pointing and suddenly Bruce saw it. For a second he thought it was a leopard, then he realized it was too dark and long.

  ‘It’s a man,’ exclaimed Mike.

  ‘Baluba,’ snapped Bruce; he could see the shape now and the sheen of naked black flesh, the kilt of animal tails and the headdress of feathers. A long bow stood up behind the man’s shoulder as he balanced on the branch and steadied himself with one hand against the trunk. He was watching them.

  Bruce glanced round at the train. Hendry had noticed their agitation and, following the direction of Mike’s raised arm, he had spotted the Baluba. Bruce realized what Hendry was going to do and he opened his mouth to shout, but before he could do so Hendry had snatched his rifle off his shoulder, swung it up and fired a long, rushing, hammering burst.

  ‘The trigger-happy idiot,’ snarled Bruce and looked back at the tree. Slabs of white bark were flying from the trunk and the bullets reaped leaves that fluttered down like crippled insects, but the Baluba had disappeared.

  The gunfire ceased abruptly and in its place Hendry was shouting with hoarse excitement.

  ‘I got him, I got the bastard.’

  ‘Hendry!’ Bruce’s voice was also hoarse, but with anger, ‘Who ordered you to fire?’

  ‘He was a bloody Baluba, a mucking big bloody Baluba. Didn’t you see him, hey? Didn’t you see him, man?’

  ‘Come here, Hendry.’

  ‘I got the bastard,’ rejoiced Hendry.

  ‘Are you deaf? Come here!’

  While Hendry climbed down from the truck and came towards them Bruce asked Haig:

  ‘Did he hit him?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I don’t think so, I think he jumped. If he had been hit he’d have been thrown backwards, you know how it knocks them over.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bruce, ‘I know.’ A .300 bullet from an FN struck with a force of well over a ton. When you hit a man there was no doubt about it. All right, so the Baluba was still in there.

  Hendry came up, swaggering, laughing with excitement.

&
nbsp; ‘So you killed, hey?’ Bruce asked.

  ‘Stone dead, stone bloody dead!’

  ‘Can you see him?’

  ‘No, he’s down in the bush.’

  ‘Do you want to go and have a look at him, Hendry? Do you want to go and get his ears?’

  Ears are the best trophy you can take from a man, not as good as the skin of a black-maned lion or the great bossed horns of a buffalo, but better than the scalp. The woolly cap of an African scalp is a drab thing, messy to take and difficult to cure. You have to salt it and stretch it inside out over a helmet; even then it smells badly. Ears are much less trouble and Hendry was an avid collector. He was not the only one in the army of Katanga; the taking of ears was common practice.

  ‘Yeah, I want them.’ Hendry detached the bayonet from the muzzle of his rifle. ‘I’ll nip down and get them.’

  ‘You can’t let anyone go in there, Bruce. Not even him,’ protested Haig quietly.

  ‘Why not? He deserves it, he worked hard for it.’

  ‘Only take a minute.’ Hendry ran his thumb along the bayonet to test the edge. My God! He really means it, thought Bruce; he’d go into that tangled stuff for a pair of ears – he’s not brave, he’s just stupendously lacking in imagination.

  ‘Wait for me, Bruce, it won’t take long.’ Hendry started back.

  ‘You’re not serious, Bruce?’ Mike asked.

  ‘No,’ agreed Bruce, ‘I’m not serious,’ and his voice was cold and hard as he caught hold of Hendry’s shoulder and stopped him.

  ‘Listen to me! You have no more chances – that was it. I’m waiting for you now, Hendry. Just once more, that’s all. Just once more.’

  Hendry’s face turned sullen again.

  ‘Don’t push me, Bucko.’

  ‘Get back to the train and bring it across,’ said Bruce contemptuously and turned to Haig.

  ‘Now we’ll have to leave a guard here. They know we’ve gone across and they’ll burn it for a certainty, especially after that little fiasco.’

  ‘Who are you going to leave?’

  ‘Ten men, say, under a sergeant. We’ll be back by nightfall or tomorrow morning at the latest. They should be safe enough. I doubt there is a big war party here, a few strays perhaps, but the main force will be closer to the town.’