The Radioactive Camel Affair - Leslie Peter. Страница 15

Once through the pass, Illya found himself descending to an upland plain—a featureless wilderness of thorny scrub broken at intervals by tangles of huge boulders. He would have to make camp for the night soon: the heat had already gone from the air and the sun was dropping out of sight behind the crest of the mountains. He pulled up and switched off the Landrover’s engine. After the continual whining of low gear and the boom of the exhaust, it was suddenly very quiet. Wind rattled the spikes of the thorn trees beside the road.

He spread out a map. Two hundred miles further on, the road led to Wau, in Bahr-el-Ghazal province. Ninety miles before that, there was a fork, where he was to take the right-hand trail for Halakaz—and after that he would be on his own, for there were no roads to Gabatomi, nor was it marked on the map.

The Russian shivered and restarted the motor. He couldn’t face the idea of spending the night in this Godforsaken place. But when night fell with tropical suddenness an hour later, he was still driving through the interminable scrub. To drive with headlights would make him visible for fifty miles. Reluctantly, he turned off the road and parked the vehicle out of sight behind a pile of flat rocks.

He opened one of the baggage rolls in the back and ate. Then, wrapping himself in blankets, he settled down as comfortably as he could in the offside passenger seat and tried to sleep. Beside him, in the Landrover’s central seat, lay a heavy caliber automatic—the nucleus of the special U.N.C.L.E. gun developed at a cost of one thousand dollars each. Onto it could be screwed four attachments: a shoulder stock, a rifled barrel, an extension to the butt, and a telescopic sight—the completed device producing a spidery-looking weapon of great fire power and versatility.

For a long time he huddled there in wakefulness, listening to a family of baboons coughing and chattering uneasily somewhere in the rocks above him and the occasional scuttling noise made by a prowling jerboa—the desert rat which somehow eked out an existence in the wilderness. He would have liked to call Solo on the radio—but Napoleon had asked him to keep radio silence until he himself called: the bleep of the receiver might attract attention in the caravan. His progress report, and the problem of the inexplicable absence of news from Waverly, would have to wait. At last he fell into a fitful sleep—to awake what seemed an age later, shivering with cold. He pulled another blanket from the roll and looked at the illuminated face of his watch: it was still only a quarter past ten.

By midnight he was asleep again. But he awoke finally before dawn and waited in a fury of impatience for the sun to rise. It was still extremely cold. Moisture had penetrated the perspex side-screens, beading the dashboard instruments and controls and chilling him to the marrow.

He flung off the blankets, clambered stiffly to the ground, and stamped up and down on the barren earth in an attempt to restore his circulation and bring some warmth back into his body. The baboons chattered with anger and swung away over the top of the rocks. The sky was becoming visible at last—a dirty gray expanse tinged with saffron above the scrub to the east. Slowly the mountains he had crossed the previous evening assembled themselves in undulations of purple and ultramarine. By the time the sun eventually jerked into sight above a charcoal-colored cloudbank, Illya was already in the driving seat with the ignition key inserted.

But the Landrover was reluctant to start. The extremes of heat and cold had made the engine temperamental. Fearing that he might exhaust the battery, he got out again and swung it with the handle.

At his fifth attempt, the motor caught. He scrambled back inside and revved the accelerator for a few minutes to warm up the engine compartment and chase the moisture from contacts and leads. Then, bumping over the stony ground, he steered slowly around the rocks and back onto the road.

Strung out across it in two lines, barring his progress in either direction, were a score of African soldiers armed with Belgian FN automatic rifles.

Chapter 8

A Question of Identity

WADI ELMIRA WAS a jumble of flat-roofed, mud-walled buildings spilling down the side of a valley gashed at the bottom by a stony ravine. At the foot of the ravine a trickle of brown water, later to become a tributary of the Bahr-el-Ghaza river, slid among the rocks. The caravan reached the place at nightfall, passing through the arched gate in the walls and turning aside soon afterwards to halt in a wide, open space before a domed mosque.

As soon as the beasts had been fed and watered, most of the members of the caravan plunged into the narrow streets of the town. Only the pilgrims, sitting quietly among their bedrolls, the women, and some old men were left under the date palms in the dusk. When the train split into two portions the following morning, each was to be escorted by a squadron of Sudanese cavalry—so it was more than ever important that Solo should locate the canister that night and identify the camel carrying it. Tomorrow might be too late.

For a while he debated with himself whether he should stay as he was or conduct his researches in different clothes. He was stuck with the facial disguise, for he would never be able to reapply it once it had been removed. And as far as garments went, a burnoose would undoubtedly be the most anonymous—but on the other hand it would restrict his movements if he was spotted, and it might lead any pursuers back to the caravan. Eventually he decided to dispense with it. He had erected his bivouac close to a crumbling wall which bordered on one side of the open space where they were camped. The pack camels were lying near the tethered horses, some way beyond the trees on the far side. Inside the low tent, he wriggled out of the headdress and Arab robes, drawing on a pair of khaki shorts and a bush shirt. He was wearing rubber-soled sneakers. The Mauser was too conspicuous, he decided, and would have to be left behind.

Cautiously lifting the back flap of the bivouac, he crawled out and stood between tent and wall, listening. From somewhere over the rooftops reflected light from naptha flares flickered and there was a gabble of voices from the bazaars. Nearer at hand in the darkness only an occasional murmured conversation and the movement of tethered beasts broke the silence.

It was now or never. Flexing his knees, he sprang lightly upwards and grasped the top of the wall. A moment later he had hauled himself up and dropped to an evil-smelling alley choked with refuse on the far side. He ran swiftly along the lane between the wall and the backs of a row of mean houses. A hundred yards further on, the passage twisted away from the square around the bulk of the mosque and eventually emerged into a narrow street. Solo paused, looking up and down. To his right, the street led towards the hubbub and the bright lights of a market place; to the left, it curved away into shadows. If he were to turn left, and left again somewhere, he should be able to double back and reach the square on the far side from his bivouac. He turned and hurried on.

There were many people in the street, most of them drifting towards the bazaar, but few gave more than a second look at the bearded Arab in the bush shirt: the town was full of merchants, soldiers, refugees from the rebel country to the southwest, and country people in for the market.

Solo plunged down another alleyway to the left, squeezed past a veiled woman leading a donkey with bulging panniers, and ran on. Soon he was back in the square, crouched down behind the nearest line of recumbent camels. Fortunately, many of the traders in the caravan had unpacked their rolls to take samples to the bazaar, and to that extent his task was easier: the lead canister would be concealed somewhere in an untouched bale.