The Seventh Scroll - Smith Wilbur - Страница 137

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"I was expecting your call." Geoffrey's voice lightened as he realized

that he was talking to a pretty girl. "How are you, my dear?"

Tessay passed Nicholas's message to him.

"Tell Nicky it's as good as done," Geoffrey acknowledged, and hung up.

"Now," Tessay addressed the postmaster, want to place another call to

Addis - to the Egyptian Embassy." There was a buzz of delight from her

audience when they realized that the entertainment was not yet over for

the day. Everybody repaired to the veranda for more tej and

conversation.

The second call took even longer to connect, and it was after five

'clock when Tessay was at last put in contact with the Egyptian cultural

attach. Had she not once met him at one of those ubiquitous cocktail

parties on the diplomatic circuit in Addis, and made a profound

impression on him then, he would probably not have accepted her call

now.

"You are very lucky to have reached me so late," he told her. "We

usually close at four-thirty, but there is a meeting of the Organization

of African Unity on at the moment and I am working late. Anyway, how may

I help you, Woizero Tessay?"

As soon as she told him the name and rank of the person in Cairo to whom

Royan's message was addressed, his superior and condescending attitude

altered dramatically and he became effusive and eager to please. He

wrote down everything she said in detail, asking her to repeat and spell

the names of people and places. Finally he read his notes back to her

for confirmation.

At the end of the long conversation, he dropped his voice to an intimate

level and told her. "I was greatly saddened to hear of your recent

bereavement, Lady Sun.

Colonel Brusilov was a man I held in high regard. Perhaps when you

return to Addis you would do me the honour of dining with me one

evening."

"How kind and thoughtful of you." Tessay's tones were honeyed. "I would

so much enjoy meeting your charming wife again." She hung up while he

was still making confused  noises of assent and denial.

By this time the sun was already setting behind the sky castles of

cumulonimbus, and there was the smell of rain in the air. It was too

late to start the journey back down the escarpment that evening, so

Tessay was relieved when the headman of Debra Maryam village sent one of

his teenage daughters to invite her to spend the night as a guest in his

home.

The headman's house was the finest in the village, not one of the

circular tukuls, but a square brick building with an iron roof. His wife

and daughters had prepared a banquet in Tessay's honour, and all the

village notables, including the priests from the church, had been

invited. It was therefore after midnight before Tessay was able to

escape to the principal bedroom, which the headman and his wife had

vacated for her.

Just before Tessay fell asleep she heard the heavy raindrops rattling on

the corrugated iron roof over her head. It was a comforting sound, but

she thought briefly of the dam further downstream in the gorge, and

hoped that this shower was merely the harbinger and not the true onset

of the big rains.

When she started awake much later the rain had passed. Beyond her

uncurtained window the night was moonless and silent, except for the

howling of a pariahdog down in the village. She wondered what had woken

her, and was filled suddenly with a premonition of impending disaster, a

legacy from the Mengistu days, when any sound in the night might warn of

the arrival of the security police. So strong was this feeling that she

could not get to sleep again. Creeping quietly out of her bed, she began

dressing in the dark. She had decided to call her monks and start back

along the trail in the darkness. Only when she was at Mek Nimmur's side

once again would she feel secure.

She had just pulled on her jodhpurs and was searching beneath the bed

for her sandals when she heard the sound of a truck engine in the

distance. She went to the window and listened. The air had been cooled

by the rain and she felt the chill on her naked arms and chest.

The truck sounded as though it was approaching the village from the

south, up the track that followed the river bank. It was coming fast,

and her sense of unease sharpened. The villagers had spoken to the

monks, and it was now common knowledge that she was Mek Nimmur's woman.

Mek was a wanted man. Suddenly she felt very vulnerable and alone.

Quickly she pulled the woollen shamma over her head and thrust her feet

into her sandals. As she crept from the room she heard the headman

snoring in the front room where he and his wife had moved to make room

for her.

She turned down the short passage to the kitchen. The fir i I in the

hearth had burned down, but she could make out the shapes of the

sleeping monks on the mud floor. They lay With their shamnus pulled over

their heads, completer   overed, like a row of bodies on mortuary

tables. She knelt beside the nearest of them and shook him, but

obviously he had enjoyed the tej at dinner because he was difficult to

rouse.

The sound of the approaching truck was much louder and closer by now,

and she felt her uneasiness take on a tinge of panic. Realizing that in

an emergency the monks would probably be of little real help to her, she

stood up and groped her way quickly towards the back door.

The truck was right outside the front of the house now. The headlights

flashed across the front windows and were briefly reflected down the

passageway. Abruptly the engine roar sank to a burble as the driver

decelerated, and she heard the squeal of brakes and the crunch of tyres

in the gravel outside. Then there was shouting and the trampling of many

feet as men jumped down from the back of the stationary truck.

Tessay froze halfway across the small kitchen, her head cocked to

listen. Suddenly there was a loud banging on the flimsy front door, and

chillingly familiar shouts of, "Open up here! Central Intelligence! Open

the door! Nobody leave the house!'

Tessay ran for the back door, but in the darkness she tripped over a low

table covered with dirty dishes from the previous evening's meal. She

fell heavily and the bowls -till and tei flasks crashed to the floor and

shattered. Instantly the men at the front door put their shoulders to

it, tearing it off its hinges. They burst into the house, shouting and

breaking furniture, torches flashing as they searched the front rooms.

There was a confused babble of alarm as the headman and his family

struggled awake, and then the sound of heavy blows with club and rifle

butt, followed by shrieks of pain and terror.

Tessay reached the back door and struggled to open it.

The sound of strange men rampaging through the house made her fingers

clumsy. She struggled with the lock. All the while she could hear other.

men outside running through the yard to surround the house completely.

At last she got the door open. It was dark and the area was unfamiliar

so she did not know in which direction to run, but she heard the river

close by in the night.

"If I can only reach the bank," she thought, and started across the

yard.

As she did so the beam of an electric torch blinded her, and a coarse

voice bellowed, "There she is!'

Any doubt that she was the prey was instantly dispelled, and she fled

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