A huge explosion rent the air, and a shower of light crackled and cascaded down on Khartoum. It was followed by another, and then a distant drumming of gunfire that came through the still dawn air as if it were right next to them, the reports echoing down the river. Mayne saw the city lit up by the explosions, its shattered whitewashed buildings collapsing into the ground like the carapace of some long-dead river monster, and then he turned around and for the first time saw a sliver of dawn above the eastern horizon. He looked at Charrière. It had begun.
They both moved quickly back through the wall and lay down at the embrasure. The distant gunfire had become a continuous crackle to the north-east, somewhere near the junction of the two Niles, and was joined by a distinctive thudding of artillery that sounded like British nine-pounders, the guns that had been mounted on the steamers. They must be coming up through a gauntlet of fire from the Mahdi’s forces on either side of the river. Mayne looked at the pastel orange light that was now spreading over the city, diffused by the smoke of the explosions. If the steamers survived the barrage, they would be rounding the corner of Tutti island in less than half an hour.
They suddenly heard an extraordinary sound, a noise that Mayne realised must be the stomping of feet, the sound they had heard at Abu Klea but magnified here a hundred times, accompanied by thousands of tom-toms and a quarter of a million men shrieking and chanting, screaming death to the unbelievers. A cloud of dust rose over the landward end of the city and he saw thousands of dervishes spilling over the defensive ditch and into the streets. It was like a tidal wave smashing through a coastal town, drowning the streets and tossing everything aside as it surged forward. It was all happening astonishingly quickly; twenty minutes earlier, the city had been dead quiet. He whipped up his telescope and watched the dervishes run screaming towards the palace, in a matter of seconds reaching the residential quarter where the officials lived. He saw a man in a tarboosh and robe hurriedly lead a woman and five children out to the riverbank; he shot them all in the head with a revolver, six rounds, then flung the empty gun at the advancing dervishes, one of whom cleaved his head with a sword, sending the top half spinning off in a spray of blood and brain into the Nile. Seconds later the first dervishes reached the gates of the palace, pressing against them as Mayne had done a mere eight hours before.
He panned the telescope to a point just above the palace that he had spotted when he had lain here looking at the city the afternoon before. He had needed to find a feature he could see with his naked eye, a point of reference he could aim at before dropping the sights to the balcony; it would help to give structure to a scene whose details might be less easily visible this morning but which he had memorised, that he could see as clearly in his mind’s eye as if it were a photograph. He found it now: the conical roof of a mosque that rose behind the palace, just above and to the left of the balcony. He put down the telescope and tried sighting the rifle, placing the cross hairs on the roof and then dropping them infinitesimally below and to the right, where Gordon had said he would be when the Mahdi’s army arrived at the gate.
He looked at the palace gate again, at the horde of dervishes that must by now number in the thousands, filling the streets and alleyways, with more of them pressing in every second. And then he saw Gordon on the balcony above the compound, exactly where he had said he would be. Mayne had expected it, but it still sent a shudder through him. Gordon was wearing dress uniform with a red tunic, his sword in one hand and Mayne’s revolver in the other. Mayne felt a sudden surge of something like pride: an officer of the Royal Engineers was not going to go down without a fight. He fervently hoped that Gordon would have the chance to dish out some death before he was taken down. Then the gates collapsed in a crescendo of noise and the dervishes stormed over the soldiers who had been in the courtyard, reaching the bottom of the stairs and beginning to clamber up them. The soldiers in the upper-floor windows were firing as fast as they could reload, more steadfast than Mayne had expected, given the certainty of death. And then he saw Gordon in action too, laying about him with his sword, firing the revolver point-blank at dervishes coming up the stairs, kicking them back into the mass below, shouting orders to his Sudanese riflemen shooting from the windows beside him.
Mayne whispered under his breath: please God finish him now. A single bullet, a single spear; there were enough of them flying around. But still Gordon was there, untouched, standing with his feet planted apart facing across the river, facing Mayne. The dervishes had fallen back in a wide arc below the stairs in front of him, their spears raised, standing their ground even while the remaining Sudanese soldiers still fired into them, until they too went silent, their ammunition presumably expended. Then Mayne saw why the dervishes had stopped: two emirs on horseback had ridden through the throng, and stopped below the balcony. They seemed to be reading something to Gordon, talking to him. Mayne felt himself stop breathing. They were trying to take him alive.
He was going to have to do it.
He put down the telescope and raised the rifle, cocking it and setting the trigger. He peered down the sights, finding the mosque, dropping infinitesimally below and to the right until he found his mark. He could no longer see detail, but he was aiming at what he knew was there, a tiny splash of red, drawing his mind towards it as if he were looking through the telescope.
His throat was dry, and his stomach felt cavernous. He realised that he was shivering, that he had not registered the cold. But it was more than that. He had suddenly lost focus. This had never happened to him before. He knew that it was Gordon, that he should never have gone to see him, should never have allowed himself to know his target as a human being. And they had got it all wrong: Gordon was no messiah, nor a martyr in waiting. He was a man who had come back to Khartoum to find something, and who would not leave until he had discovered it. The Gordon he had been sent to kill was a fantasy in the minds of others. When he returned he would tell them, and that false Gordon would be extinguished, and his mission would be done.
Charrière had picked up the telescope. ‘He’s in full view,’ he said urgently. ‘The steamers are coming. Take the shot now.’
Mayne felt himself tighten up again. They were hunters, and he had the deer in his sights, just like the first time as boys when Charrière had talked him through it, settled his nerves. He closed his eyes for a split second, sending himself back to that day beside the lake in the forest, then opened them, seeing nothing but the tunnel of the sights and the target beyond. And then in his mind’s eye he saw Gordon as he should be, Gordon as he might be right now, never allowing himself to be taken prisoner, lifting his revolver and firing his last round at the emir, then charging down the stairs with his sword raised, hacking and stabbing until he was cut down.
He touched the trigger. The rifle jumped, there was a crack and the report echoed down the Nile. He dropped it, and pushed away from the wall, sitting up on his knees and shutting his eyes. He slowly exhaled, feeling as if he would never need to breathe again. He felt the thirst he had first felt in the desert with Shaytan, the thirst that felt like dust in the throat, only this time he did not want to quench it; he wanted the desert to be part of him. He began to breathe again, shallow breaths, barely perceptible, and he opened his eyes. On the horizon over Omdurman to the west he saw the strip of orange widen, wavering and shimmering between sand and sky. Gordon had been right: the sun would shine today. The noise that he had somehow blocked out since aiming the rifle suddenly came back in full force, a din of shrieking and musketry and claps of artillery fire. The city was heaving with dervishes, and he could no longer see the steps of the palace. He looked down the Nile; the steamers had not yet appeared. He and Charrière would be able to leave before Colonel Wilson arrived, before anyone on the boats saw him and his rifle. It had all gone according to plan.