Assegai

Eva threw back her head and spat at him.

He wiped his face on his sleeve and laughed at her. ‘This will be great sport. I shall enjoy every moment.’

Ritter stepped forward and tried to intervene. ‘No, sir. You ca

‘I will prove to you that I can, Commodore. Watch this.’ He lifted the armoured hand again, but as he leaned towards Eva, a deafening thunderbolt numbed their eardrums. It was the distinctive report of a .470 Nitro Express rifle. Graf Otto was hurled backwards, arms flailing, as the heavy bullet tore into the centre of his chest and erupted from between his shoulder-blades in a bright fountain of blood and pulped tissue.

‘There is another bullet for anyone who wishes to dispute the issue further. Hands high, please, gentlemen!’ Leon said in German, as he stepped from the bushes with Manyoro, Loikot and twenty Masai morani armed with stabbing assegais at his back.

‘Manyoro, tie these people like chickens going to market. Have the morani take them to the army fort at Lake Magadi and hand them over to the soldiers,’ he said, then ran to where Eva knelt in the mud. He jerked his hunting knife from its sheath and cut the rope. Then he cupped her face in his hands and lifted it to his.

‘My nose,’ she whispered. He brushed a kiss across her muddied and bloody lips.

‘It’s broken, and you will have a lovely pair of black eyes, but it’s nothing that Doc Thompson can’t deal with as soon as I can get you back to Nairobi.’ He lifted her and held her tightly to his chest as he started back up the mountainside to where the Butterfly waited on the landing strip. There, he laid her tenderly on the deck and covered her with a sheet of tarpaulin, for she was shivering with shock.

When he stood up he saw that Lusima was standing by the fuselage. ‘I’m taking her to Nairobi,’ he told Lusima, ‘but there’s a great service you can do for us.’

‘I will do it, my son,’ she said.

‘The silver monster lies broken upon the mountainside. Manyoro will take you and your morani to it. This is what I want you to do for me.’

‘I am listening to you, M’bogo.’ He spoke urgently. When he had finished she nodded. ‘All these things I will do. Now take your lovely broken flower to safety and cherish her until she is healed.’

It was four years almost to the day before they returned to Sheba’s Pool. They left Lusima, Manyoro, Ishmael and Loikot at the old campsite and rode up alone to the pool. Leon came to lift her down from the saddle and kissed her before he set her on her feet. ‘Passing strange,’ he said, ‘but how is it that you grow younger and more beautiful every day?’

She laughed and touched the side of her nose. ‘Except for a little kink and a bump here and there.’ Even the medical magic of Dr Thompson had not been up to the challenge of straightening her nose completely.

‘You call that a little bump?’ he asked, as he laid his hand on her belly. ‘What about this one?’

She looked down at it proudly. ‘Just watch it grow.’

‘I’m agog with anticipation, Mrs Courtney.’ He took her hand and led her to her usual seat on the rocky ledge. They sat side by side and gazed down into the dark waters.

‘I bet you’ve never heard the tale of the missing Meerbach millions,’ Eva said.

‘Of course I have.’ His face was straight and serious. ‘It’s one of the great mysteries of Africa. On a par with the lost mines of King Solomon and the Kruger millions that the old Boer president spirited away ahead of Kitchener’s army when he marched into Pretoria.’

‘Do you think somebody will solve the mystery soon?’

‘Perhaps today,’ he replied. He stood up and began to unbutton his shirt.

‘It’s been lying here for almost four years. What if somebody has found it already?’ she asked, and her light mood began to fade.

‘That could never have happened,’ he reassured her. ‘Lusima Mama put a curse on the pool. Nobody would dare go in there.’

‘But aren’t you afraid?’ she asked.

He smiled and touched the little carved-ivory charm that hung on a thong around his neck. ‘Lusima gave me this. It will ward off the curse.’

‘You’re making that up, Badger!’ she accused him.

‘There’s only one way I can prove it to you.’ He hopped on one leg as he shed his trousers, then took a ru

She jumped to her feet and shouted after him, ‘Come back! I’m afraid to know the answer. What if it’s all gone, Badger?’

He trod water and gri

‘But now the war is fought and won, I will be grateful for a little less excitement and danger and a lot more love and laughter’.

She jumped up as Leon burst out of the water with a mighty splash. ‘Tell me the bad news!’ she yelled.

He did not reply but swam to the ledge below her and lifted his right hand out of the water. He was holding something and threw it at her feet. It was a small canvas bag and it was heavy, for the mouth burst open as it hit the ledge. Golden coins poured from it and sparkled in the sunlight, and she squealed with excitement and fell to her knees. She gathered them up in her cupped hands and looked down at him with an unspoken question in her eyes.

‘Some of the cases have burst open, probably when Lusima’s morani dropped them into the pool from the top of the waterfall, but it looks as though none or very little is missing.’ He slithered out of the water like an otter and she dropped the handful of gold sovereigns and reached out to hug his cold, wet body.

‘Don’t we have to give it all back?’ she whispered into his ear.

‘Give it back to whom? Kaiser Bill? I think he went out of business recently.’

‘I feel so guilty. It doesn’t belong to us.’

‘Why don’t you look upon it as full and final payment from Otto von Meerbach for the patents he stole from your father?’ he suggested.

She rocked back, held him at arms’ length and stared at him bemusedly. She started to smile. ‘Of course! When you look at it like that it’s really quite different.’ Then she laughed. ‘I can find no fault with your reasoning, my darling Badger!’