“We’ll keep in touch by radio,” Solo said. “If you prospect in the general direction of Gabotomi and Hala-kaz, and keep your eyes and ears open, you might come across something. Good God, if they’re building an atomic plant or hydrogen bombs, something must be there to see; somebody must have noticed. Those places take up acres and acres!…In the meantime, I’ll stick with the caravan and try to trail the canister. With luck, we ought to end up at the same place…”
He himself, as soon as Kuryakin had left for the airport with most of their equipment, hurried to a rendezvous with a man called Nassim. Under Rodney Marshel’s guidance, he suffered himself to be stained brown all over and bearded, hair by hair, along the edge of his jawline. His teeth were discolored, his hands roughened and his nails artificially cracked and grimed. With wax cunningly inserted inside his nostrils to alter the shape of his nose, he would have passed unrecognized even by Waverly.
“According to your papers, effendi,” Nassim said, stepping back to admire his handiwork, “you have come all the way from Al Khuraiba in Saudi Arabia to go on this pilgrimage. Let us hope this will be considered sufficient excuse for any inconsistencies of accent when you speak Arabic.”
Beneath the heavy burnoose, Solo slung the borrowed Mauser in a makeshift holster provided by Marshel. Around his waist next to the skin was a Chubb-locked money belt—containing, apart from local currencies, his miniature transceiver and one or two other devices.
Then, with Nassim as his guide, he mounted a horse and rode out of the city towards the dawn rendezvous which was to initiate his uncomfortable journey into the unknown.
Chapter 7
Caveat for the General
THE FRONTIER WAS a collection of wooden huts straddling the dust road; the border was a barbed wire fence interrupted by a striped pole with a counterweight on one end. Inside the hut nearest to the highway, a platoon of soldiers lounged, exchanging pleasantries with the frontier guards. Both soldiers and guards wore British-style khaki uniforms—and all of the men there were Africans.
Illya slid the Landrover to a halt in a cloud of dust and climbed out onto the road. Something had gone wrong with the arrangements: there had been no helicopter at Stanleyville, nor any message from Waverly or anyone else in New York. U.N.C.L.E. had no representative in the town and there had been nobody he could trust enough to send a radio message. Solo was out of range of the miniature transmitter. Accordingly the Russian had played it by ear and hired his own vehicle—but the 450 mile drive had taken him three days, and now, when Solo was traversing the high ridge between the basins of the Nile and the Bahr el Ghaza and Illya himself should have been prospecting the environs of Gabotomi, here he was only just entering the country…
Perspiration clogged his fair hair and trickled between his shoulder blades as he tramped across the blazing forecourt to the guard hut. In three hours it would be dark, but it was still tremendously hot.
A tall African carrying the three stripes of a sergeant was deliberating over Kuryakin’s papers when he glanced over the Russian’s shoulder, stiffened and snapped out a parade-ground salute. Illya swung around. Although the face was so dark, his first impression of the man standing there was all brightness and light: the Sam Browne crossing his compact chest gleamed; the riding boots winked in the sun; the insignia of a Major-General shone from his shoulder tabs; and from under his arm the silver-knobbed head of a cane glistened. Brilliantly white teeth flashed between thick lips as the cane reached out to touch the papers on the trestle table.
“And what have we here, sergeant?” he asked. “A foreigner seeking entry?” The voice was deep and mellifluous, overlaid with a caricature of an Oxford accent.
“Yes, sir.”
The smile turned through sixty degrees and beamed on Illya. “Edmond Mazzari,” the voice continued. “Officer commanding troops rightfully in charge of this region. May one ask your reasons for wishing to enter the Sudan at this particular point?”
“Good afternoon, General,” Illya said. “The answer is simple: I am a photographer of animals. Certain of the beasts I wish to photograph can only be found in the area.”
“For example?”
“Certain types of white rhino; cave baboons; elephant; tiger; various members of the deer family.”
“But all these, my dear fellow, can be found in other parts of Africa—rhinoceros, elephant, tigers: we have no monopoly on them, you know.”
“In game preserves, yes. Shabby, half-tame creatures with threadbare hides. What I want is photographs of wild animals—and not the stereotyped pictures of a blurred rhino charging or a lion hanging its head by a water hole. I am prepared to wait. I have patience. What I seek are records of these animals behaving believably as animals, as creatures of family, as hunters, as beasts in fear—not just another series of myths from a child’s geography book.”
“It would be an approach long due,” the general said. “What camera are you proposing to use for these pictures, Mr…?”
“Kuryakin.” Illya snapped open the leather case at his side.
“Ah. A Hasselblad. With all the extras. Do you know, old chap, that the money that camera would bring could feed one of my villages in there for a month?” He stabbed the cane towards the rolling savanna across the frontier.
“I know that things in this region are—difficult,” Kuryakin said equivocally.
“Difficult! If I were to tell you…Do you realize, old chap, that the Arabs in the north are engaged in a war of extermination down here? They’re systematically killing my people off. Every day they descend on another village and—pouff!” He shouldered the cane as though it were a rifle and shot down an imaginary adversary.
“I did not know it was as bad as that. To be honest, I was surprised not to find Arab troops guarding this frontier post, though.”
“There were. Yesterday.” The General swung his stick towards a row of freshly turned mounds of soil behind one of the huts. “We show the flag occasionally—just to emphasize our rights, you know. These good fellows”—he pointed at the guard hut—“will stay here until another troop descends on them. There will be another little skirmish—and another row of graves on our African soil. Then we will take another post…”
“Forgive my ignorance, but what is the background to this?”
“Nothing but Arab rapacity. Basically, of course, it’s religious on their side. Our people here in the south are Christians or pagans; they are Musselmen—muscle men! That’s good, eh? —and so we have to go. We would have accepted some kind of federation if only we had been allowed a say in governing our own three provinces. But too many in Khartoum do nothing but line their own pockets—and mouth promises they have no intention of keeping. And anyway we shall accept nothing less than secession after what they have done now.”
“It’s very bad, is it?”
“Bad?” Mazzari had a trick of repeating the last word uttered by his vis-à-vis. “It is so bad as to be unbelievable. The Arab officers quartered here are in fear of their lives, so they lounge about in the towns and leave their troops to bum and loot and murder as they will. Do you realize, old chap, that they have destroyed—completely eradicated—one hundred and thirty-three villages here and in southern Sudan? They have murdered more than thirty thousand people, leaving the survivors to wander in the bush and starve. In the last two years, such murders, plus disease, starvation and a drain of refugees fleeing across the borders, have reduced our population by over a million. A million, Mr. Kuryakin. That is one third of our African population down here.”