Unless that was the direction the coup was coming from. Gash thought for a moment about the fact that Kolingba didn’t trust banks; the walls behind his third-floor private quarters were filled with billions in currency and bullion. Gash had checked the calendar today. In three days it would be the last phase of the moon. He had the feeling all the questions would be answered then. He finished his cup of cafe brulot in a single swallow. No matter what he did or whose allegiance he honored he knew that Kukuanaland would be a very different place by the next time the full moon came around again. He got up from the table, only slightly pissed. He had a great deal to do and very little time to do it in.
He stood up and went to the bar to pay his account with Marcel the bartender. He paid the older, blankfaced black man thirty dollars in American bills, the generally accepted currency in Kukuanaland both because of its easy readibility and because it was the only currency in Africa that couldn’t be forged with a box of crayons. Marcel gave him his change and a receipt and Gash handed him back the change as a tip. It wasn’t until he got back to the compound and his quarters there that he unfolded the receipt.
Its message was simple and shocking: Limbani seen alive and well in the company of a number of white men near the Kotto River at Kazaba Falls.
He took out his old Baltimore Orioles Zippo and burned the piece of paper in the brass ashtray on his desk. He couldn’t hear the banging, thumping and screeching from above him in Kolingba’s quarters and decided that it would be more prudent to hold off on telling the general about it until tomorrow. Kolingba had an unpleasant habit of shooting the messenger, especially at times like this.
26
After standing at the foot of the cliff and then going through the foliage-threaded netting, Holliday could immediately see the genius of how the Pale Strangers had laid out their settlement. More than a settlement, actually-from what Holliday could see it looked very much like a small city.
At least half of the valley floor-well camouflaged by the high canopy of the trees and assemblages of woven mats of twigs and plants hung at varying levels in the trees-was made up of at minimum fifty kraals, circular enclosures made from bamboo rammed into high mud-and-earthen walls, topped by heavy bamboo palisades a dozen feet tall.
At the entrances to the enclosures there was a heavy ladder that could be drawn up the berm, making it impossible to get in. There appeared to be small holes higher up in the palisades, and Holliday had no doubt that there were battlements up there, ready for Limbani’s warriors and their blowpipes.
Each of the enclosures had a central pole from which large triangles of fabric could unfold, covering the enclosure completely when it started to rain. Holliday recognized the design from the covering of the forum in Rome, and that stood to reason as well, since the lost legion was sure to have had engineers within the ranks.
“As I am sure you have already ascertained, the fabric roofs over each enclosure are of Roman origin,” Limbani said in the lead.
“But not the compounds themselves,” said Holliday.
“No, those are native, although the stone ones from Great Zimbabwe are roughly the same pattern.”
“It’s ingenious. Each compound is alone but at some point touches its neighbor. Any enemies have to fight down here on the low ground and what is, in fact, a garden maze. Easy to get lost, easy to bunch up if you were trying to take the place.”
“Better yet, if one compound is breached the occupants simply flee into the next,” Limbani said.
“The castle-within-a-castle design of a Templar fortress,” murmured Holliday.
As they made their way through the extraordinary maze they even saw tall canopy trees growing up out of several of the circular compounds, and in other places on the pathway more trees had been left in place. With that kind of attention to detail and the hundreds of hanging latticework shields, the whole place would be invisible from only a few hundred feet. From a surveillance satellite, the compound wouldn’t be seen at all.
“How many people live in each compound?” Holliday asked, following Limbani.
“It is difficult to say,” explained the doctor, half turning as they made their way through the serpentine maze, “since many different things are done within them, weaving, tanning, making fishing line and nets for the birds. One is given over to keeping bees. There is a whole compound merely for the making of blowguns and their darts, and yet another for the various poisons that are used, both plant toxins and animal. The plant toxin we use most often is concentrated ricin from the coating of simple castor beans. The animal toxins are usually concentrated venom from the gaboon viper or the boomslang. Sometimes we use the fat-tailed scorpion, Androctonus australis.”
“Fatal?”
“Invariably.” Limbani nodded. “My abilities in medicine have gone a long way toward improving the toxicity of their weaponry.”
“But why so aggressive?” Holliday asked. “There can’t be much in the way of real predators here.”
“You’re quite right,” Dr. Limbani answered. “For thousands of years they have been left alone in the jungle, to live their lives as they please, to fulfill their destinies as their gods see fit. But that is changing now. Those days are swiftly coming to an end. Kolingba is the first of his kind; he will not be the last unless we do something about it. We must do it, Colonel, and that time is coming sooner than you think. It is only a matter of days now.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“You think Mutwakil Osman is my only spy? There are a few others of my tribe who are friends to the Umufo omhloshana.”
“What can you do about someone like Kolingba? If he decided to go after this place it would be all over within a day. He has helicopters, rocket launchers, machine guns. You wouldn’t stand a chance. It would be suicide to fight those men.”
“And it would be genocide not to,” said Limbani calmly.
“You’ve got no defense against their kind of weapons,” argued Holliday.
“Think of your history, Colonel.”
“What kind of history?”
“Your specialty, as I understand it from Professor Wanounou. Military history.”
“All right. It’s simple: you’re outnumbered, you’re outgunned, and if laid siege to, you’d starve. It’s no contest.”
“Did you fight in Vietnam, Colonel?”
“Two tours when I was eighteen and nineteen. Exactly three hundred and sixty-five wet-behind-the-ears days, boots on the ground, and all three hundred and sixty-five have haunted me ever since. Not my favorite war, Doctor. Teenagers shouldn’t be killing people. It does bad things to their brains; believe me.”