Mayne said nothing, but nodded. He knew who really pulled the strings here. Wolseley had played into Wilson’s hands in almost every detail. The absolute imperative of any mission Mayne carried out for Wilson was anonymity. And he knew that there was one message, one simple code that Wilson could give him that would make his disappearance afterwards a necessity, his ultimate act of duty to Queen and country. The message that would show that he had been given a licence to kill.
Wolseley stood up. ‘Kitchener will give you the maps to memorise. You must take nothing with you that could be traced back here.’
‘Sir.’
Buller reached over to shake his hand. ‘Good luck, Edward. Give Charlie Gordon my regards. If he doesn’t agree to come out, then he can have the damned place as far as I’m concerned.’
Burnaby lit another cigarette, and gave Mayne a languid smile. ‘Best of luck, old boy. Perhaps we’ll meet on the other side.’
Mayne nodded at him, and then turned to follow Wilson and Kitchener to the entrance flap of the tent. Wilson looked back at him intently. ‘You have everything you need? Everything?’
‘I have everything.’
‘Kitchener will answer any questions you might have. Good luck.’ Wilson shook his hand firmly. As he did so, he passed him something, a folded piece of paper which Mayne kept in his hand without looking at it. Wilson turned back into the tent as Kitchener came out. Mayne tensed, the adrenalin coursing through him at last, his hand held tight around the paper. He knew there was no turning back now.
15
Mayne opened the tent flap and stepped outside, waiting for Kitchener to collect the map case and join him. He walked a few paces into the desert, relishing the fresh air after the smoky atmosphere inside, breathing in deeply and smelling the coppery tang the sand exuded after a day in the burning sun, a smell like blood. After the heat of the afternoon the encampment beside the Nile was beginning to stir again, and the soldiers who would make up the desert column were preparing for departure the next day. In the marshalling ground to the south he could hear the snorting and bellowing of more than three thousand camels, along with curses and yells that showed the inexperience of the men who had been detailed to handle them. Beside the river the naval contingent were cleaning and oiling their Gardner machine gun, an unwieldy weapon mounted on a carriage that had already shown its vulnerability to sand and dust. In the distance he could hear the crackle of musketry from the rifle range as the infantry sharpened their skills for what might lie ahead. The picquets of dismounted cavalry he could see on the ridges were a reminder that although Khartoum and the Mahdi were two hundred miles away, dervish spies were everywhere and the troops were vulnerable to sharpshooters and suicide attacks. It was a lesson that the soldiers in the river column had learned all too well the previous day, and one that the desert column would confront soon enough as they struck out across the desolate wasteland to the south.
The sand turned blood-red as the rays of the setting sun streaked across from the south-west. Soon it would be a dazzling spectacle, deep oranges and maroons, the ridges and knolls of the desert framed black as the orb of the sun dropped below the horizon. He remembered first seeing a desert sunset three years before, one evening alone at the pyramids of Giza, when he had arrived in Egypt to carry out intelligence work in the wake of the British invasion. That was when he had first come south, too, though only as far as the border of Egypt at Aswan, before the first cataract of the Nile. The ruins he had seen at sunset there had seemed to draw him further on, and he had tried to imagine what it had been like for those who had gone before, for the ancient Egyptians, the Romans, the Arabs: what it was that had made them go against the flow of the Nile and travel into the land that would so often become their grave. During evenings sitting above the ruins, he had felt as if the red rays were reaching out across the sand, pulling him towards the setting sun and into the dangerous darkness that followed. He thought it had helped him to understand Gordon, to see what it was that could take a man like that and put him in a place that seemed beyond the edge of the world.
He thought about how the archaeology of the Holy Land had motivated those among the officers who were steeped in biblical history. Twenty years before, Wilson had carried out the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem, intent on improving the water supply but in the process revealing much of its archaeology. He had then worked for the newly formed Palestine Exploration Fund on the survey of Western Palestine and the Sinai, work so highly esteemed that it earned him a Fellowship of the Royal Society. Kitchener’s exhaustive four-year survey of Palestine had made his name before he had any military reputation. And Gordon had been fascinated by Palestine all his life, culminating in the year’s leave he had spent in Jerusalem in 1883 exercising his engineer’s eye to pinpoint to his satisfaction the site of the crucifixion and key locations of the Old Testament. It was a point of similarity between Gordon and the prime minister, also a fervent biblical scholar, except that Gladstone’s religion made him bridle at Gordon’s messianic status in the eyes of the people, and the two men would never publicly acknowledge their shared fascination as scholars.
For these men, the southern desert represented the great unknown: the place of exile, the possible location of the lost tribes of Israel and the ancient hiding place of the Ark of the Covenant. They were fascinated by Akhenaten, whose venture into the desert three thousand years earlier seemed to mirror their own, a pharaoh who had seen the one God, the Aten. The desert seemed a place where those who were lost might be found; a place of redemption. Perhaps these men were not just enthused by the archaeology they came across, but like Akhenaten were seeking a revelation, a flash of insight that might give them a personal vision of God.
Kitchener came up alongside and handed over the map case. ‘Colonel Wilson and I have prepared this for you. Memorise it and return it before you leave. You will take the desert route behind Stewart’s column, aiming for the wells at Jakdul and Abu Klea, and then on to the Nile at Metemma. Cross the river to the east bank, as the Mahdi’s forces occupy the west bank on the approaches to Khartoum. It should take you four days by foot to reach Khartoum from Metemma. You should be able to keep one day ahead of the river steamers carrying Wilson and the rescue force, as there are cataracts that will impede their progress. At Khartoum the river will be low and the mud banks treacherous. You will arrive on the opposite bank from the governor’s palace, beside the island of Tutti. You would do well to find a nuggar boat and make your way across at night. The palace is guarded by Gordon’s Sudanese irregulars but there are plenty of Arabs milling about, and your features are sufficiently dark that you should be able to pass yourself off as a native, with your beard and a headdress.’
‘Tell me, Kitchener. We’re out of earshot of the tent. What do think of our chances?’
‘You’ve seen my high regard for Gordon and my belief that his rescue is possible,’ Kitchener replied pensively. ‘But I am fully aware of the odds against it. In the two years since Hicks set out on his doomed expedition, the Mahdi has captured seven thousand Remington rifles, eighteen field guns, a rocket battery and half a million rounds of rifle ammunition. More than sixteen thousand Egyptian troops have been killed or captured, and our own casualties are now in the hundreds. Only two weeks ago, another force of a thousand Egyptian soldiers and bashi-bazouk policemen were annihilated. Every week more tribal leaders are defecting to the Mahdi. Gordon is defended by Sudanese soldiers whose officers have betrayed them. The telegraph line is cut, there is no heliograph and he is surrounded. The noose is tightening. It would be hard not to believe that he is done for.’