Juggernaut

'Very good you come. You tell Mister Obukwe I got no trade except I sell Coca-Cola.'

'Sure, I'll tell him. But if you want to leave, Sam, it'll be OK. Neil here is right, there could be trouble coming this way.'

Kironji thought about it and then gave him a great smile.

'I stay. This is my place, I take care of it. Also I not afraid of the soldiers like them.' He waved a contemptuous hand at his departed fellow inhabitants. 'You want Cokes, other things, I got them maybe.'

I said, 'Sure, we want Cokes and food and all sorts of things. Soon our trucks will come here and we'll want lots of petrol too.' Probably more than you've ever seen sold in a year, I thought. I pointed to a hard-surfaced track which led away from the road. Tell me, Sam, where does that track go to?'

'The river.'

'But you're already at the river.'

'It go compound, back there,' he said, waving a vague hand.

'How far is it?'

'Not far. Half an hour walking maybe.'

I said, 'We're going to take our car down there and have a look. If any white men come by here, tell them to wait for us.'

'Hey, man,' he said, 'that company property. You can't drive there.'

I looked at him in amusement and wondered if Lat-Am knew how lucky they were. 'Harry?'

Zimmerman persuaded him that we were going on company business and Kironji finally gave way to our demands.

The track was better surfaced than I had expected and showed signs of considerable use. Wherever it was rutted the ruts had been filled in with clinker and the repair work was extensive and well done. Presumably Mr Obukwe of Lat-Am Oil had need of this track and we wondered why.

It wasn't all that wide, just enough to take a big truck through the trees. On the right they pressed in thickly but on the left they barely screened the water. The trees showed signs of continual cutting back, the slash marks ranging from old scars to new-cut wood still oozing sap.

The track ran parallel to the main road to the lake shore. We emerged into a clearing to see the sun striking hard diamond reflections from the water and to find yet another fenced compound full of drums. There was also a landing stage, a rough structure consisting of a wooden platform on top of empty oil drums making a floating jetty about ten feet wide and eighty feet long.

There was even a boat, though it was nothing much; just a fifteen-foot runabout driven by an outboard. I walked out onto the landing stage which swayed gently and looked closely at the boat. It was aged and a bit leaky, but the outboard looked to be well maintained. I turned my attention to the lake itself.

The distance to the far side was about four miles and through binoculars I thought I could see the shore and a ribbon of track leading up from it. That was Manzu, a country blessedly free of civil war and as desirable as Paradise. But as far as we were concerned it might as well have been the far side of the moon. It was ironic to think that if we had no-one to worry about but ourselves we four could have crossed this stretch of water to safety in no time.

'Pretty sight, isn't it,' Wingstead murmured as he took his turn with the binoculars. He was thinking my thoughts.

I turned back to the clearing. It was easy now to see the reason for the good road. Delivery to and from this petrol dump was made by water, probably from Fort Pine to this and other drop points along the shore. It would be easier than road transport especially if the fuel came prepacked in drums.

There was a locked wooden shed standing nearby. By peering through the boards we could see that it was a workshop and toolroom. There was every sign that it was used regularly for maintenance work, though everything was tidy. I walked back along the pontoon and prowled around the perimeter of the compound. I found a gate which was also locked and there was a palm-thatched hut just inside it. It crossed my mind that the clearing, which was very long, would be a good place to put the rig and the rest of the convoy off the road and out of sight. The road down was rough but I had learned enough from Kemp to judge it would stand the traffic, and Wingstead confirmed this.

'It's not a bad idea. And it brings us at least within sight of our goal,' he said when I put the proposition to him.

On the far shore we could make out a cluster of buildings where there was possibly another landing stage. On the water itself there were no boats moving. Traffic on Lake Pirie might simply be infrequent or it may have been brought to a halt by the advent of war.

When we got back to the station we arranged for Kironji to load the balance of his Cokes and a few other items into the car. The cabin wasn't exactly a shop but there was some tinned foodstuff for sale and a few bits of hardware that might be useful. He also had a little first aid kit but it wasn't worth ransacking. As Kironji closed the cooler lid on the last load of Cokes I saw something else down there.

'Are those beer cans, Sam?'

'Mine.' He closed the lid defiantly.

'OK, no sweat.' A ridiculous statement in this scorching weather. This train of thought made me wipe my forehead. Kironji watched me, hesitated, and then said, 'You want a beer?'

'You'd be a hero, Sam.'

He grinned and handed me a cold can. 'I got a few. Only for you and your friends. I not sell them.'

It tasted wonderful. Our warm beer had long been finished.

I looked around as I drank. The interior of the cabin was neat and tidy. It was a combination of office and store, with a few tyres in racks and spare parts on shelves. I thought that Hammond could make something of all this, and in fact he had already been browsing through the stock. At the back was a door which led to Kironji's living quarters; he was a bachelor and preferred to live where he worked, presumably to protect his precious Lat-Am property. There was a supply of tools here too, and a small workbench.

'Do you do all your own repair work, Sam?'

'I got plenty tools, sir, and much training. But mostly I work by the lake.' The shed we had seen housed a fair amount of stuff, a well-equipped workshop for boats as well as vehicles.

'Who does the boat belong to?' I asked.

To me. I go fishing sometime.'

'I'd like to hire it from you. I want to have a look at the lake.'

He shook his head at my folly but we agreed on a hire fee, and he jotted it down on what was becoming a pretty healthy tab. He wasn't going to be done out of a penny, either by way of business or personally.

Wingstead came in and to his great delight Kironji handed out another beer. He disposed of it in two swallows.

Kironji asked, 'You say you have other people coming. What you doing here, man?'

'We were going to Bir Oassa with parts for the oilfields,' Wingstead said. 'We met the war and had to turn back. Now we must try to get back to Lasulu.' He said nothing of the Manzu border. Kironji pondered and then said, 'You know this hospital?'

'Which hospital?' I asked, thinking he meant that there was one in the vicinity. But his reply only proved the efficiency of the bush telegraph once again.

'I hear it go travel on a big truck, lots of sick people. The other they follow where it go, all through the country.'

'By God,' Wingstead exclaimed. 'The juggernaut's famous! If Sam here has heard about it it'll be all over the damn country by now. I don't know if that's good news or bad.'

I said, 'Yes, Sam, we are travelling with that hospital. The sick people are on a big trailer, all the way from Doctor Katabisirua's hospital in Kodowa.'

He brightened. 'Doctor Kat! I know him. He very good doctor. One day he fix my brother when he break a leg.' That was good news; if our doctor was well thought of his name was a reference for the rest of us.

'He'll be here later today, Sam,' Wingstead said.