“I don’t know who you are,” the Russian replied, “but thank you. The information will be of great use to me. Do you know the place yourself?”
‘“We have been…near there. We have looked down upon it. But it is necessary to proceed with extreme caution: the town—it was originally only a settlement—is tucked away at the bottom of a steep gorge. It is impossible to descend the cliffs at either side and behind it. The only entrance is along a steep valley leading directly to the gate—and that is too well guarded to force. The place is the headquarters of the Nya Nyerere. There are hundreds of their soldiers there, and there seems to be assault courses, training grounds, lecture theaters—the full equipment of a military academy.”
“I don’t know why you should tell me all this—”
“It is necessary to make a stand against autocracy at times,” the young man said vaguely. He had a thick central European accent.
“Ah. The punishments? I confess that I was surprised to find you made no protests.”
“Orders. Besides, it was part of the deal when we signed on; it was made clear that infringements would be punished and we agreed to accept those punishments if they were merited—all of us. Also, the money is very good…Nevertheless, one’s self-respect demands a gesture from time to time…I must go: it would not do for me to be seen talking to you for too long.” And he glided unobtrusively away.
Illya took his leave as soon as they struck camp the following morning, telling Rosa Harsch that he expected to find his partner some way east or southeast of their present position. She took his hand in a firm grip as they said their farewells—and seemed reluctant to let it go. “I wish you luck, my friend” she said huskily. “And I ask you to take care. If you have need of help, come back to us; we shall be taking readings for several days about twenty miles north of here. Anyway, I have a feeling that we shall meet again, you and I.” She stared full into his eyes for a moment and then, abruptly releasing his hand, turned and creaked off down the trail after her bearers, the switch of blonde hair with its black bow bouncing up and down on her muscular shoulders.
Kuryakin made his way due east for about half a mile along a side trail, in case he was being watched, and then plunged into the forest in the direction indicated by the young man with the beard. Half an hour’s hard going brought him to another narrow track running roughly the right way, and for the next two hours he made good time. By noon he was wedged into a tree fork, binoculars to his eyes, looking down on the roof-tops of Gabotomi from a ridge above and behind the ravine in which the place was built.
It certainly did look like an army camp. Between the geometrically arranged buildings—constructed, astonishingly, of red brick in the European style—there was a constant coming and going of squads of men, most of them Negroes and all of them in uniform. He could distinguish a parade ground with platoons drilling, a carefully laid out battle course, and several groups seated cross-legged on the ground listening to open-air lectures complete with blackboards and lantern slides. From far below, the crackle of rifle fire drifted up from a line of butts just outside the settlement.
If—as seemed probable from the hints dropped by Mazzari and Ononu—the Nya Nyerere was in some way being aided by Thrush, this was obviously the place where it was being done. But why? What was in it for Thrush? How could the overthrow of the Sudanese government in the north aid the evil organization’s plans for world conquest?
Illya’s biggest surprise was still to come, however. And it was not until he turned his back on Gabotomi that he received it. He had maneuvered himself around in the tree fork and was sweeping the scores of miles of wooded hills to the east with his glasses when suddenly he gave an exclamation of amazement. For a moment he had thought…Yes! There it was again! In the magnified circle of terrain revealed by the lenses, a section of modem, metaled highway ran…
He lowered the binoculars and rubbed his eyes. The road was still there; now that he knew where to look, he could see it with the naked eye: a broad carriageway running along an open crest a couple of miles away to link up with an undulating concrete swathe that could only be a landing strip!
As he watched, a vehicle came into sight. It was traveling quite fast—a squarish blue utility car, probably a Renault 4L, he thought. He followed its course along the road until it disappeared from sight behind a belt of trees. Idly estimating its speed, he traced its invisible path behind the wood and waited for it to emerge on the far side. Promptly, as he had anticipated, the 4L reappeared and continued along the macadam at the same velocity.
Only now it was red.
For the second time, the Russian rubbed his eyes. What kind of conjuring trick was this? A blue car, traveling at about forty miles per hour, disappeared momentarily behind a line of trees—to re-emerge at exactly the same speed, at exactly the right time, in a different color! There was no other traffic on the road; the wood wasn’t long enough for there to have been any question of substitution—and in any case there wouldn’t be room for a second car to get up that speed before it was clear of the trees…It reminded him irresistibly of a relay race where a baton is handed from one runner to the next. Only in this case there had been neither the room nor the time for such a takeover. He must find out the secret of the car that changed color at once!
He slid to the ground and set off as quickly as he could in the direction of the roadway. It took him over an hour and a half to traverse the two intervening valleys: the undergrowth was dense, and he had to be especially careful since there was what appeared to be a fully manned garrison in the neighborhood. Despite the proximity of Gabotomi, however, he saw nobody on the way and finally emerged from a thicket to find himself at the edge of the road.
The carriageway had been laid about six months, he judged: a twenty-foot strip of blacktop running from an airstrip in the middle of uncharted, unexplored country to…where? The runway was innocent of buildings: there was not so much as a hut in sight. Beyond it, the forest closed in again—and to the other side, the road curved out of sight towards the belt of trees where the metamorphosis of the 4L had occurred. Keeping well hidden by the bushes fringing the road, he walked cautiously towards the wood. And, like most conjuring tricks, the explanation was simple once you knew how it was done.
There had indeed been two different vehicles—and the visual illusion had been possible because there were also two different roads!
Behind the trees, the road he was following dipped suddenly and ran into a tunnel leading underground. And, just beyond, there was the exit from a second tunnel, slightly to one side, carrying another highway on into the distance. The arrangement was similar to the underpasses carrying ring roads around modem cities—and it had just happened that, while he watched, a car had emerged from the exit tunnel coincidentally with another, traveling at the same speed, plunging into the entrance…
Dropping to the ground, he wormed his way through the undergrowth until he could train the glasses uninterruptedly on the tunnel mouth.
It was arched, tall enough to take the largest army truck, and well engineered in limestone blocks. The stonework continued out along the sides of the sunken road until it had risen to ground level. Inside the entrance, a row of electric bulbs in the tunnel roof paralleled sweep of the roadway as it turned steeply aside and spiraled underground. The other tunnel, from which the red car had emerged, no doubt performed the same maneuver in the opposite direction—and the two roads would presumably meet at some common point below. But what kind of subterranean enclave was served by these routes?