Juggernaut

Through the static, Kigonde said, 'Captain Sadiq has orders to obey. Mister Mannix, I know you have many people in trouble there, but there is trouble everywhere.'

That gave me an idea. I said, 'General Kigonde, do you know who gave Captain Sadiq his orders?'

'I did not get the name. Why do you ask?'

'Does the name Colonel Maksa mean anything to you?' It was taking a gamble but I didn't think the chances of Maksa or anyone on his staff overhearing this conversation were strong. It was a risk we had to take.

Static crackled at me and then Kigonde said, 'That is… perhaps different. He was in command of forces in the north. I have not heard from him.'

Doubt crept into Kigonde's voice.

I said urgently, 'General, I think you do have doubts about Colonel Maksa. If he were against you what better could he do than draw off your troops? Captain Sadiq is completely loyal. Where would you get the best use out of him? Here with us, or cut off upcountry? If I were you I'd cancel those orders, General.'

'You may be right, Mister Mannix. I must say the Captain would be better off for my purposes further west. I will send him to Makara instead.'

'But we're going to Makara ourselves. Can he stay with us until we get there?'

I was really pushing my luck and I wasn't surprised when he demanded to speak to Sadiq again. It was a long one-sided conversation, and when he rang off we could all see that he had been told something that had shaken him badly.

He remembered his manners before anything else, turned to Bing and said, 'Thank you very much. I am grateful to you,' which pleased Bing immensely. But Sadiq didn't look grateful, only distressed.

'Let's go and sit down, Captain,' I said. 'Geoff, you, me and Basil only, I think. Move it out, you guys. Find something to do.'

Sadiq filled us in on the conversation. He was to move westwards to Makara with us, but once there he was to push on towards Fort Pirie, leaving us to cope. It was as much as we could have expected. But it occurred to me that the General must be in a bad way if he was calling such minor outfits as Sadiq's to his assistance.

'The General says that the Government is in power in Port Luard once again. The rebellion is crushed and almost all the rebels are rounded up,' Sadiq said. That was what Kigonde would say, especially on the air, and none of us put too much faith in it. But at least it meant that the Government hadn't been crushed.

'The rebellion was premature, I think,' Sadiq said. 'The opposition was not ready and has been beaten quite easily in most places.'

'But not everywhere. Does he know where this Colonel Maksa is? I think we have to assume he's on the wrong side, don't you?' I said.

'Yes, the Colonel's politics are suspect. And he is known to be hereabouts. There are planes looking for him and his force.'

'Planes?' said Wingstead in alarm. 'Whose planes?'

'Ah, it is all most unfortunate, sir. We were wrong, you see. The Air Force, Air Chief Marshall Semangala is on the side of the Government.'

'Ouseman's allies!' My jaw dropped. Then why was Mister Wingstead's plane shot down, for God's sake?'

'I don't know, Mister Mannix. But perhaps the Air Force expected that any civilian planes flying in the battle area belonged to the rebels,' Sadiq said unhappily. I thought of Max Otterman, fighting for his life somewhere on the rig, and rage caught in my throat.

Geoff Wingstead was ahead of me. 'What about the bombing of Kodowa, then? The troop moving through the town at the time was Kigonde's own Second Battalion. Are you going to tell us that was a mistake, too?'

'Ah, that was very bad. Air Force Intelligence thought that the Second Battalion was already with the Seventh Brigade at Bir Oassa. When they saw troops moving north they thought it was the enemy trying to cut off the Seventh Brigade from corning south. So they attacked.' Sadiq looked anguished.

A mistake! They'd bombed their own men thinking they were the enemy. It wouldn't be the first time that had happened in a war. But they'd bombed them in the middle of a town when they could easily have waited to catch them out in the open. So would somebody eventually apologize for this colossal, tragic mistake? Apologize for the pits full of corpses, the ruined town, the wrecked and tortured people on the rig or hobbling through the wasted country? To Sister Ursula and Dr Kat, to Dr Marriot for the killing of her husband? To Antoine Dufour for the death of his partner?

Somebody ought to say they were sorry. But nobody ever would.

CHAPTER 17

We left Kodowa again.

We went north-west this time, descending from the scrubland to the rainforest country of the lower plains, the same sort of terrain that we'd moved through on our journey northwards. The people in the little villages we passed through came out to see us but they weren't laughing this time. They gazed at the great rig and the strange load it carried and their faces were troubled. Even the children were subdued, catching the uneasiness of their elders.

The rig's passengers varied. Some improved and were allowed to ride in one of the trucks, others collapsed and were given a place on the bedding. Two women gave birth on the rig, and Dr Kat removed a swollen appendix from a ten-year-old boy. The medical supplies dwindled steadily.

At each village Sadiq sent his men out to forage. A couple of beat-up trucks were added to the convoy as well as provisions. Occasionally they found petrol and it was added to our store. Our own food became more basic and the beer had long since run out. But we managed.

In one village we found a small cache of clothing and bartered food for it, and it did feel wonderful to be wearing something clean for a while. The men were beginning to look shaggy as beards sprouted.

With each few hours the make-up of the flock of Nyalans that trailed along after us subtly altered. The convoy was behaving much like a comet in space, picking up and losing bits of its tail as it went along. Groups of Nyalans would arrive at some village where they had kin or were too weary to walk further, and would leave us there. Others would follow along. There may have been several hundred in our wake, and there was something of a ritual, almost mystic, quality in their behaviour. Often one or more would approach the rig and reach up to touch it wonderingly before dropping behind again.

It was Dan Atheridge who explained it to me. He'd lived here for many years, and spoke a little Nyalan. His arm troubled him and he had to be restrained from doing too much; but I knew that he was deliberately driving himself into exhaustion in an attempt to numb the pain and horror of leaving his wife Susie somewhere behind him in the hills beyond Kanja. He had begged to be allowed to go off and try to find her, but had finally been persuaded not to.

I asked him about the Nyalans.

'Your rig's turning into a juggernaut, Neil,' he said.

'That's an Indian thing, isn't it? A sort of God-mobile?'

That got a smile from him. 'You could put it that way. Actually it's one of the names of the god Krishna. It became applied to a huge idol that's dragged through the streets in a town in India annually in his honour. In the olden days sacrificial victims were thrown under it to be crushed to death. A rather bloodthirsty deity, I fear.'

'It isn't inappropriate,' I said. 'Except that nobody's been run down by the rig yet, which God forbid.'

'It's followed in procession by thousands of devotees, who regard it as a sacred symbol of their wellbeing. That's the similarity, Neil. This rig of yours has become a fetish to the Nyalans. You're leading them to the promised land, wherever that is. Out of danger anyway.'

'I hope that's true, Dan. Still, I guess they have to believe in something.'

I mentioned the parallel with the Pied Piper and he smiled again. 'I hope you think of them as children rather than as rats, Neil.'

I got precisely the other viewpoint from Russ Burns some time later that day, when we stopped at last, more than halfway to Makara.