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Suddenly the wind was knocked out of him and he was held in a vicelike grip from behind, his neck pinned back and his right arm pushed up in a half-nelson. He struggled, kicking his legs, but his arm was pushed up further. He felt the breath against his neck, and then saw that the forearm around his neck was brawny and scarred, wearing a braided bracelet. He relaxed, and let himself fall back against the man holding him: it was Charrière. ‘Do you remember how we used to wrestle as boys?’ he said. ‘You always won.’

‘That was when you were my adopted brother, Kahniekahake.’

‘And now?’

‘You have earned that name again today, Eagle Eye. And now you will join our ancestors. Your spirit will fly like a swift arrow towards the sun.’

The grip tightened. His arm was pushed up further and pinned hard against Charrière’s chest, allowing him to release his right arm. Mayne heard the sound of a blade being drawn, and he felt a hard flatness against his own chest. He felt numb, too exhausted for games. ‘What are you doing?’

‘My job.’

Mayne tried to struggle. ‘What do you mean?’

Nobody must know. The final words Wilson spoke to me.’

‘That’s what he told me. And nobody will know. Especially if we leave now, before the steamers arrive.’

‘They are two days downstream. I didn’t see them last night. The gunfire we heard was a small Sudanese garrison in the fort of Omdurman under siege.’

Mayne shut his eyes: this was real. He should have expected it. Wilson would arrive too late. Gordon would be dead, killed by the forces of the Mahdi. Wolseley would withdraw honourably, British prestige saved. People would for ever remember the glorious battle of Abu Klea; Gordon would become a saint.

And nobody would ever know the truth.

He swallowed hard. ‘And why not you? If you know, how can you live too?’

‘Nobody believes an Indian. Especially one living the rest of his life alone on a lake in a forest.’

‘Why?’ Mayne said, suddenly too tired for it all. ‘Why do it?’

‘General Wolseley was always good to my people. And Wilson came to me after my wife and child had died.’

‘Wolseley? Was he in on this?’

‘It was he who presented the plan to Wilson. You were the right man for the job. But even you they could not trust to talk one day.’

Mayne shut his eyes. He realised how little he knew, and how this theatre of war was in reality a play of personalities, twisting and encircling each other like weeds in a current, using history as their stage just as the pharaohs had once used the Nile. There were a few good men: Fred Burnaby was one; General Charles Gordon was another. And there were some who once drawn in would never be allowed to leave, whose price for believing that their cause amounted to something greater was to be left forever as detritus of war.

What he would not tell Charrière was that he had been given the same mission. It was why he had tried to persuade Wolseley to let Charrière go home with the other voyageurs. His revolver, the one he had exchanged with Gordon, was meant to be used against Charrière: it was to be at a time of his choosing, at some place on the return journey where Charrière had ceased to be of use to him. Neither of them was meant to come out of the desert alive.

He could not see Charrière, would never see him now. But he remembered the cold dark eyes, the eyes of a hunter, like his own. He should have known it would end this way. It could only end this way.

‘The bowstring has been released, Charrière. The arrow that will take your spirit is already flying. Soon it will pass between us and you will see the sun.’

He felt himself lifted bodily, felt his gorge rise, a tightness below his chest. He gasped, and then remembered something. ‘My tunic pocket,’ he said, his breathing short. ‘Gordon’s diary, his drawings. Captain John Howard, School of Military Engineering. Will you send it to him?’ He felt the feeling go from his limbs, and his voice weaken. ‘My servant, Corporal Jones … 8th Railway Company. Tell Howard to find him. He’s got something of mine. An artefact. Will you do that for me?’

‘I will do that for you.’

‘And Charrière my blood brother…’

‘What is it?’

Mayne could barely whisper it. ‘When you get to our lake in the forest, watch out for strangers coming on the water. They will try to silence you too. Trust nobody.’

Charrière held him tightly. He suddenly felt terribly cold. He would need to drink and to eat, to shake off the chill. He would go to the wells of Jakdul. An oasis in the desert. Nobody would find him there.

He convulsed, and coughed blood. He saw his blood pool on sand, become the desert. Then all he could see was an enclosing constriction, a narrowing tunnel. He relaxed, knowing what it was. He was looking down the sights of his rifle, excluding all else, seeing only his target, utterly focused. It had always felt good.

Then he saw it: a flash of light, burning like the sun, searing down the walls of the tunnel like outstretched arms, reaching out to envelop him.

He knew what Gordon had seen.

Then nothing.

25

Cornwall, England, present day

Jack sat in his study in the old family house at the IMU campus in Cornwall and stared at the portraits of his ancestors on the walls, feeling as listless as at any time in the forty-eight hours since he and Costas had been forcibly evicted from Sudan. A few hours ago he had received more bad news, that Hiebermeyer and his team had been escorted across the border into Egypt from their site at Semna, apparently also under orders from al’Ahmed. The only consolation was that the finds from the site, including the golden sceptre, had been taken secretly by Aysha’s cousin to the Khartoum museum, where they had been placed in the vault. One day it might be possible to return to the Sudan, but for the time being it was a closed shop. Jack looked at the two old envelopes he had taken from Seaquest II, the one from Lieutenant Tanner and the other from Corporal Jones, and wondered where the contents had gone. He had taken a jolt, but he was not going to give up on this trail. He needed time, maybe a few days away. He knew he should pick up the phone and call Maria. And he knew he needed sleep.

Rebecca knocked and came into the room, bringing him a cup of coffee. ‘You should drink this. And you need to get away for a day or two. Then you’ll see everything in perspective. As Uncle Costas says, everyone takes a few knocks down the road, and what’s a risk without bombing out from time to time. It’s all part of life’s rich tapestry. Anyway, everyone knows that working in the Sudan is a game of chance, with this kind of thing likely to happen whatever you do. And you did nothing wrong. You went to the site in good faith believing you had a permit, and you were trashed by one of the trickiest customers in the Middle East.’