Juggernaut

Occasionally there was a hard won clearing, usually with a scattering of grass huts clustered about a warehouse. These were the collection points for the cotton, coffee and cacao beans from the plantations hewed out of the forest. There were people in all these villages but little in the way of food or goods, and hardly anyone spoke English. We asked for news but it was scanty and the people ill-informed.

One or two villages were larger and we were able to drain storage tanks and pumps of available petrol. It was a good sign that there was some, as it meant that there'd been little traffic that way. Somehow enough food was found to keep us going, though it was pretty unpalatable. Behind and around us, our escort of Nyalans swelled and diminished as people joined in for a few miles, dropped out and were replaced by others. The train was growing, though; Sadiq told us there were several hundred people now, coming as remorselessly as a horde of locusts, and with consequences for the countryside nearly as disastrous. There was nothing we could do about it.

Two days passed without incident. On the rig, Lang's condition worsened and one of the soldiers died of his wounds. Sister Ursula nursed with devotion, coming among us to do spot checks on our continuing health and bully us into keeping clean, inside as well as out. If she could she'd have dispensed compulsory laxatives all round.

Margretta Marriot did the rounds too, changing bandages and keeping a watch for infection. There was little for her to do on the rig now except basic nursing, and sometimes she rode with one or other of us. A dour woman at best, I thought, and now she had retreated into a pit of misery that only work could alleviate. Sister Ursula, for all her hectoring, was more of a tonic.

On the morning of the third day Sadiq's scouts returned with news that they'd reached the Katali river and seen Lake Pirie shining in the sun. From where we were camped it was only a couple of hours' drive in a car, and spirits lifted; whatever was going to happen there, we'd reached another of our goals with the convoy still intact.

I'd travelled for most of the previous day in the cab of the water tanker with Sam Wilson (we each gave one another a turn in the comparative comfort of the Land Rover) and now I was with Thorpe in the travelling workshop when a messenger came asking me to join Captain Sadiq.

'I am going ahead, Mister Mannix,' he told me. 'I wish to see for myself what the situation is. There is a village ahead with petrol pumps. Would you and Mister Kemp drive there with us to look at it, please?'

I said, 'Harry Zimmerman told me there was a fuel depot hereabouts, one of his own company's places. We'll take him with us.'

Zimmerman, Kemp and I pushed on behind the soldiers, glad of the release. Soon enough we saw a welcome bottle-green expanse spreading out between the trees, and the road ran down through them to emerge on the shore of a large body of water, a sight quite astonishing after the endless days of bush and forest, and incredibly refreshing to the eye. It stretched away, placid in the blazing sun.

For a while we just sat and stared at it. Then we drove along the lakeside road for another mile or two.

Eventually we arrived at what might have passed for civilization. The place consisted of a roadside filling station with a big, faded Lat-Am fascia board; it was obviously a gas and oil distribution centre. Behind it was an extensive compound fenced in by cyclone netting, which contained stacks of drums. I supposed the gas and oil would be hauled along the road by tankers, transferred to ground tanks here and then rebottled in the drums for distribution to planters and farmers.

If anyone spoke English we were likely to find him here, though I did curse my lack of foresight in not bringing an interpreter with us. It proved not to be necessary.

At first there was nobody to be seen and few sounds; a water pump chugging somewhere, scrawny chickens pecking about, the monotonous link of some wild bird. I eyed the chickens speculatively, then blew a blast on the horn which scattered them, though not very far. They were used to traffic. A hornbill rose lazily from a tree and settled in another, cocked its head and looked down with beady eyes, as unconcerned as the chickens. At the sixth blast the door of the cabin behind the pumps opened, and a brown face peered warily at us through the crack.

We'd had this sort of nervous reaction before and could hardly blame the locals for being cautious, but at least our non-military car and clothing should prove reassuring. I called out cheerfully, 'Good morning. Are you open for business?'

The door opened wider and a Nyalan stepped out into the sun. He wore a tired overall on which the logo of Lat-Am was printed, a travesty of the livery which they inflicted on their gas station attendants in more affluent places.

'I am not open,' he said. 'I got no custom.'

I got out of the car into the scorching morning air. 'You have now,' I told him. Through the open door I saw a familiar red pattern painted on an ice box. 'You got cold Coca-Cola in there?'

'How many?' he asked cautiously.

'I could drink two. Two each — six of them. I'll pay.' I pulled out a handful of coins, wondering as I did so how he managed to keep them cold. He thought about it, then went in and returned with the Cokes, blissfully chilling to the touch in the narrow-waisted bottles that were still used in this part of the world. I sank half of my first in one swallow. 'Quiet around here, is it?'

He shrugged. 'There is trouble. Trouble come and the people they stop coming.'

'Trouble meaning the war?'

He shook his head. 'I don't know about no war. But there are many soldiers.'

Kemp asked, 'Soldiers where — here?' It certainly didn't look like it. Our untapped mine of information doled out another nugget. 'Not here. In Fort Pirie they are come.'

I swallowed air this time. Soldiers in Fort Pirie could be bad news if they were rebels, and I wondered how Sadiq was getting on.

'Has there been any fighting here at all?' Kemp asked.

A headshake. 'Not here.'

'Where then?'

This time we got the shrug again. 'Somewhere else. I do not know.'

This was like drawing teeth the hard way. I downed some more Coke in silence and tried to keep my impatience under control. Then, surprisingly, the attendant carried on unasked. Two tanks come two days ago from Fort Pirie. Then they go back again. They not buy nothing.'

'Did they threaten you? I mean, were they bad people?'

'I think not so bad. Gov'ment people.'

They might or might not be, but it sounded a little better. At least they weren't hellbent on destruction like the last lot we'd met up with.

The attendant suddenly went into his cabin and returned with another opened Coke, which he began to drink himself. I recognized a social gesture; he must have decided that we were acceptable, and was letting his guard down a little by drinking with us. I wondered with amusement how much of his stock vanished in this way, and how he fiddled his books to account for it. I didn't yet know him very well.

'Soldiers come by now, one half-hour ago. Not many. They go that way. Also they go that way this morning, then come back. They not stop here.'

He indicated the direction of the river and I realized that he was talking about Sadiq, but we weren't in a hurry to enlighten him about our association with any military force.

We exchanged a few more generalities and then, noticing the wires leading down to the cabin from a pole across the road, I said, 'Do you mind if we use your telephone?'

'No use. It dead.'

That would have been too easy. 'It's the trouble that caused it, I suppose. What about your radio?'

'It play dance music, long time only music. Sometimes nothing at all.' He decided that it was his turn to ask questions. 'You people. Where you from?'

'We've come from Kodowa.'

'A man said that Kodowa is not there no more. Is bombed, burnt. Is that true?'