Gordon suddenly gave Mayne a steely look, all humour gone. ‘Well, I intend to do Cannings proud. Only this time it won’t be melons. There will be people out there among my staff shooting themselves rather than be caught by the dervishes, and there will be others who will go over to the Mahdi. But if I get half a chance, I’m going down fighting. Soldier first, engineer second. You remember?’
‘Impossible to forget, sir.’
‘Will you see to that, Mayne? Will you give me that half-chance?’
Before Mayne could think of a reply, Gordon had walked over to the sideboard to pick up his brandy glass and take another cigarette from the box. He lit it and took a deep lungful, and then downed the glass in one, exhaling with satisfaction and pouring himself another. He took it and stood in front of Mayne, the pallor in his cheeks tinged with colour, then raised the glass and the cigarette. ‘And you need have no final qualms that I might go over to the Mahdi. He has banned alcohol and tobacco. I still need my creature comforts.’ Mayne thought he detected a twinkle in those brilliant blue eyes, a brief spark in a face haunted by what he had been obliged to oversee during the past weeks and months, and by what lay ahead.
Mayne held out a hand. ‘I must go. It will be light in a few hours.’
‘Of course. And thank you for coming. It has been most agreeable. I fear I’ve rambled, but I am a man not used to company, especially that of a fellow sapper with such congenial shared interests.’ They shook hands, and Gordon led him to the door. ‘And look after that diary. If there’s anything to be salvaged from this sorry mess, it’s in there.’
Mayne began to walk down the corridor. There was a chill in the air; the warmth of early evening had gone. He felt like a priest walking away from a condemned man’s cell for the last time, but it was worse than that; he was more like an executioner having sized up his victim. He felt nauseous, but perhaps because of lack of food and the terrible stench, and he was suddenly light headed, and blinked hard. His mind was reeling from what he had heard. He had to keep up his strength for what was to come next.
Gordon had remained at the door, watching him; now he spoke again. ‘And Edward?’
Mayne stopped, and turned around. ‘Sir?’
‘Godspeed, Edward.’
Mayne heard the words, and then he heard his own voice, disembodied and wavering, as if he were watching himself on a distant stage.
‘Godspeed to you too, sir.’
24
Mayne slid off the reed boat into the water and pushed it towards the bank of the creek, feeling his feet sink into the ooze as he clung to the stern. The water was cool and dark, and he tried not to think of the horrors he had seen floating in it off Khartoum or of what might lurk in its depths. The level of the Nile had fallen at least two feet since he had left the creek the evening before, and the plank he had laid on the bank was now just out of reach. With a final effort he hauled the boat as far as he could out of the water and used it as a support, holding on to it as he struggled up the muddy bank. He stopped for a moment, panting hard, and wondered what it would be like to fall backwards into the water, to kick off from the bank and let the river take him; whether he would be mired in the horror of this place or whether the current would find him and take him past Khartoum and the cataracts and out into the sparkling clarity of the sea, away from here for ever. He felt himself sinking, and snapped back to reality. He heaved his legs up, then squelched and sucked through the mud until he reached the plank and pulled himself up. He was dripping with ooze, but he no longer cared. All that mattered to him now was to get back to Charrière and set up his rifle before the break of dawn.
He remembered his conversation with Gordon, and patted the journal in his upper tunic pocket. Something had been nagging at him, and then he remembered: it was the empty square in the centre of the drawing Gordon had shown him, where the ancient sculpture had been missing a piece. Gordon had said that he and his companions had searched everywhere for clues to its appearance, in ruins from the time of Akhenaten across the desert. And then Mayne remembered the slab he had taken from the wall in the crocodile temple, the one that he had given Tanner to pass on to Corporal Jones for safe keeping. It had lines radiating from the edge where it had formed part of the Aten symbol, but it also had shapes on one corner, obscured under slime. He cursed himself for remembering too late to tell Gordon: it might even have persuaded him that there was a shred of reason left for staying alive, for coming across the river with him. But there was nothing to be done about it now. It was too late.
A few minutes later he was back at the edge of the mud-brick enclosure surrounding the fort. There was still enough moonlight to see a reflection off the fetid pool inside, its surface stilled by the cold. Charrière had been busy; the embrasures and crumbled openings in the wall had been filled with clumps of thorny mimosa bush, concealing the interior from prying eyes. Mayne whistled quietly, knowing that Charrière would have seen his wake as he paddled across the river, then peered over the wall and pushed aside a branch of mimosa, making his way inside. Charrière lay awake beside the embrasure overlooking the river, wrapped up in his grey army blanket, his face swathed in his Arab headdress. Beside him Mayne could see the khaki wrap containing his rifle. He crawled alongside, slipping down the edge of the muddy crater that led to the pool, seeing Charrière watching him. Mayne knew he did not need to say anything. He had come alone, without Gordon.
He took his telescope from on top of the bag and rolled in front of the embrasure, training it on the palace. Gordon’s light was still on, and he looked up to the roof where Gordon had positioned his own telescope. For a split second he saw movement, a flash as the distant lens caught a hint of moonlight on the surface of the river, and then it was gone. But it was enough to show that Gordon had been watching him, following his progress past Tutti island and the dervish sentries, seeing that he had made it back to the fort. Both men now knew that the die was cast.
Mayne lowered his telescope and looked at the island, sensing movement there too, and could just make out the palm trees swaying on the shore. He felt a prickle of wind on his neck, and then he saw another gust. It was barely perceptible, but it was as if there were some great beast slumbering under the river, building up its strength for dawn. Somewhere out there were a quarter of a million men of the Mahdi’s army, on the island, along the far shore of the White Nile. The thought of it made him feel light headed, as if all those men were sucking the oxygen from the air. Oxygen seemed in short supply here, like water in the desert, essentials of life that had been cut off from Khartoum weeks ago and were now dwindling by the hour.
The brush of wind made him think of his rifle, of the effect on a bullet flying across the river. He wiped his muddy hands on Charrière’s blanket, knelt up and unwrapped the bag, revealing the teakwood case inside. He unbolted the lid and opened it up. Everything looked pristine, unaffected by the jostling it had undergone over the past two weeks. Seeing the rifle quickened his pulse, excited him; he stroked his finger along the octagonal flats of the barrel and touched the forestock, smelling the gun oil. He used a small screwdriver to loosen the clamps that held the components rigidly in place, taking out the barrel and receiver and then the removable buttstock, and assembling them along with the breechblock. When he had finished, he tested the action, lowering the loading lever to drop the block and reveal the breech, drawing back the hammer, pulling the rear set-trigger and feathering his finger over the main trigger, knowing that the slightest pressure at full cock would bring the hammer down on the firing pin. He eased the hammer back to the half-cock safe position, opened the ammunition box in the case and took out one of the long brass cartridges; each contained ninety grains of the finest powder, hand loaded for him by his gunsmith in London, enough to propel the .50 calibre bullet out of the muzzle at over eighteen hundred feet per second. He carefully inspected it, then dropped the loading lever to open the breech, pushed the cartridge inside and closed the lever again, causing the block to rise into place behind the breech and the action to lock.