I reached out, but she had withdrawn her hand.
Stein took Anne away with him after an early breakfast. I was left in the care of the sullen Johann. My usefulness seemed to have come to an end as far as I could see. Except that Stein might not feel himself able to find Curva dos Dunas again. My plans were complete, now that I was alone with Johann. He was target number one. I occupied myself about the camping-spot, finding more wood, washing up dishes. Anne and Stein set off to go higher up the steep path — obviously a game track — round the shoulder of the mountains, below which the camp was pitched on an open, flat clearing. As she reached the turning she turned and waved.
The next two hours were a torment. The tension inside me knotted every nerve. It was far worse than waiting for a depth-charge attack to start. I kept myself from glancing at Johann. When I struck, it must be as swift and deadly as a black mamba. There would be no second chance. Therefore I waited until I could be sure that Stein was well clear of the camp in case there was a shot. The sound would carry far among the echoing peaks. He and Anne were lost to view since the path wound steeply upwards.
I was dumbfounded when Stein appeared, alone, before ten o'clock.
"Captain Peace!" he shouted as he turned the last bend in the path. "Captain Peace! Onymacris! Onymacris! We found it! Look! Look!"
He came forward at a slight run, holding his hand outstretched.
My hopes regarding Johann fell to the ground.
"What is it?" I asked dully.
"The Onymacris!" he said, scarcely able to contain himself. "Right where I said it would be! It's the biggest scientific find of the century! Look, man, look — pure gold!"
He was obviously speaking metaphorically, for the two dead beetles in his hand were an undistinguished off-white. To me they looked no different from any common beetle crawling round a suburban backyard in Windhoek or Cape Town.
"The Gobi, North Borneo and now the Skeleton Coast — living!" he cried. "Congratulate me, Captain Peace! I congratulate myself. I am rich, richer than my wildest dreams!"
Two putty-coloured beetles didn't seem worth all that.
He slapped me on the shoulder.
"Congratulations to you, too, Captain Peace! The navigator of my hopes! Congratulations to Johann, the watchman! You have all played your part nobly! You shall be rewarded as is your due! And now," he turned to me and I was again struck by the ray-like gash of the mouth and jaw, "you must go and congratulate Miss Nielsen. She is waiting up the path for you. She asks if you will go and join her — soon!"
There was a curious inflexion about his last words. But if Anne wanted me to join her alone, there it was.
I set off up the steep track, which narrowed to a spine across the back of a huge, eroded peak; it ran clean across the summit. It was well defined. There was no other way, for the ground fell away on both sides to a colossal drop. On the left it must have been every bit of fifteen hundred feet, and slightly less on the right. The wind tugged at me as I strode forwards. Thank God there was less sand, although I could still feel the rasp of it on the wind's breath.
The path struck across the peak and converged at two great boulders. There was no sign of Anne. She must have remained pretty far up, I thought. I strode between the two boulders and in passing my eye caught something on. my right.
Anne was sitting with her back against one of them.
"Anne…" I started. Fear ran like ice down my spine.
She was dead.
The eyes were half shut and her face had a curious look of resentment — resentment as if she had been taken away from something which meant more than the loss of her life.
I could scarcely distinguish the bullet hole from the bright scarlet of her sweater.
I wrenched up the sweater and saw the neat surgical incision of the Luger bullet. There was scarcely any blood. It had crushed in the left nipple. A few strands of ragged nylon from her brassiere fringed the hole. It might have been passion, not death, which stared at me. She was sitting neatly. Stein must have shot her as she sat.
There was almost no violence about the whole scene. Only the expression of resentment. Only the puckering of the right eyelid. I knelt down and kissed the rumpled lid. I pulled the sweater down and straightened the unseemly dent on the outside. Only then, a great, blind rage overwhelmed me. I have killed men with weapons — with torpedoes, with fire, with machine-guns — but now I longed for the feel of killing with my fingers, the gurgle of life being choked out, of hot blood reeling under pressure to make it eternally cold. It was so overpowering that it made me icy-cool in caution. I saw it all — she had found his precious beetle, and, her work done, he had killed her with as little compassion as he had had for the Kroo boy. Why murder for a blasted beetle? It kept going through and through my mind. He had sent me up here to be killed. He wouldn't do that himself, not only because I think he was frightened, but because of Johann. Johann would kill me and Stein would kill Johann. Then he would beat it for Curva dos Dunas with enough food and water and a plausible story. There couldn't be any search — not in this forbidden country. John Garland's hands would be tied. He might be as suspicious as hell, but he'd never be able to prove anything.
I edged forward on my knees and peered round the rock. As sure as clockwork, there came Johann. He was coming quickly, the Remington under his arm. His head was swaying like a hound's on the scent.
I drew back farther, sheltering half behind a huge boulder. I had no plan. I was as kill-crazy as he.
Johann rounded the rock and stopped short when he saw Anne's body. He wasn't fifteen feet from me. Now or never.
I sprang forward. In a flash Johann covered me with the rifle.
"She died very easy," he said. "I died very hard all those years with the little black men; I died. I died over and over. You will die slowly, Captain Peace." He swung the Remington back without taking his burning eyes off me and threw it sideways over the cliff. I felt a brief feeling for him; I, too, wanted to kill with my hands. He pulled a sailor's knife from his belt and we faced each other like wrestlers. He wasn't afraid. He was fearful only lest he would do it too quickly.
I moved so that the rock was on my left and slightly behind me. He saw I was unarmed and grinned, a fiendish, satisfied grin. He was going to enjoy the fight, like a sailor fights a harlot in bed. As he reached forward with the knife, I whipped my right hand out of my pocket and extended the palm. It was my faintest hope. As he saw Trout's little mascot hand he blenched and I whipped forward and grabbed his knife hand with my left and slipped my right under his armpit. It was the same grip which had torn Hendrik's arm out of its socket. Johann struck punily at my kidneys with his left, but there was no force in the blows — there never can be, with that fearful hold.
I twisted his arm. He held on with the strength of a maniac, but he said nothing. I felt one tendon start to tear. The knife moved back from three inches from my right eye to six. ' I threw myself against his weight. I felt his muscles tear. But he wasn't going to get away with it as Hendriks did. I forced the arm still farther back. His eyes were frantic with terror. I marched him remorselessly back past the dead woman towards the precipice at his back. The knife now hung back over his right shoulder in a grotesque parody of a strike. I knew exactly what I was going to do. Like a released spring, I ducked back, freeing my arm and shoulder, in one movement and kicked him in the stomach. I give him credit. Any other man, with the bite of that heavy seaboot in his vital parts, would have fallen over backwards. Johann stood swaying, his face grey-green with terror and pain. For a second we stood panting in great gasps facing one another. Then I stepped forward and administered the coup de grace. I hit him twice with my right forearm across the side of the neck. He pitched and rolled dustily backwards. I never heard the final crump of the body far below. The dead woman gazed at me sightlessly.