The Seventh Scroll

overgrown canefields along the bank to secure the area and prevent a

surprise attack by Nogo's men.

There was confusion and more noise than Nicholas felt was safe as the

rest of the flotilla beached, and they began to bring the wounded ashore

and unload the cargo of ammunition cases. Nicholas piggybacked Royan to

the bank and then waded back to fetch Tessay. She was much stronger by

now. The enforced rest during the voyage down river had given her a

chance to recover, and she stood up unaided in the Avon and climbed on

to Nicholas's shoulders to be brought ashore.

Once on dry ground he let her slide down on to her own feet and asked

her quietly, "How are you feeling?"

"I will be all right now, thank you, Nicholas," He supported her for a

moment while she recovered her balance and said quickly, "I did not have

a chance to ask earlier. What about Royan's message that she asked you

to telephone from Debra Maryam? Did you get it through for her?

"Yes, of course," Tessay replied guilelessly. "I told Royan that I had

given her message to Moussad at the Egyptian Embassy. Didn't she tell

you?"

Nicholas winced as though he had taken a low punch, but he smiled and

kept his tone casual. "It must have slipped her mind. Not important,

anyway. But thanks nevertheless, Tessay."

PM-Om At that moment Mek came striding out of the darkness and spoke in

a harsh whisper. "This sounds like a camel market. Nogo will hear us

from five miles away." Quickly 3. he took command and started to

organize the shore party Once the last of the ammunition crates were

unloaded, they dragged the boats into the canefields and unscrewed the

valves that deflated the pontoons. Then they piled cane trash over them.

Still working in the dark they distributed the cargo of ammunition

crates amongst Mck's men. Sapper took a case under each arm. Nicholas

slung the radio over one shoulder and his emergency pack over the other,

and balanced on his head the case that contained Pharaoh's golden

death-mask and the Taita ushabti.

Mek sent his scouts forward to sweep the route out to the airstrip and

make certain that they did not run into an ambush. Then he took the

point and the rest of them strung out in Indian file along the rough,

overgrown track behind him. Before they had covered a mile the clouds

suddenly opened overhead, and the crescent moon and the stars showed

through and gave them enough light to make out the chimneystack of the

ruined mill against the night sky.

But even with this moonlight their progress was slow and broken ses, by

long pau for the stretcher-bearers carrying the wounded had difficulty

keeping up. By the time they reached the airstrip it was after three in

the morning and the moon had set. They stacked the ammunition cases in

the same grove of acacia trees at the end of the runway where they had

cached the pallets of dam-building equipment and the yellow tractor on

the inward journey.

Although they were all exhausted by this time, Mek set out his pickets

around the camp. The two women tended the wounded, working by the light

of a small screened fire as they used up the last of Mek's medical

supplies.

Sapper used the one electric torch whose batteries still held a charge,

and he gave Nicholas a discreet screened light while he set up the radio

and strung the aerial.

Nicholas's relief was intense when he opened the fibreglass case and

found that, despite its dunking in the Nile, the rubber gasket that

seated the lid had kept the radio dry.

When he switched on the power, the pilot light lit up. He tuned in to

the shortwave frequency and picked up the early morning commercial

transmission of Radio Nairobi.

Yvo

quickly switched off the set so as to conserve the battery, and settled

back against the hole of the acacia tree to try and get a little rest

before daylight broke. However, sleep eluded him - his sense of betrayal

and anger were too strong.

uma Nogo watched the sun push its great fiery head out of the surface of

the Nile ahead of them. They were flying only feet above the water to

keep under the Sudanese military radar trans missions. He knew there was

a radar station at Khartoum that might be able to pick them up, even at

this range.

Relations with the Sudanese were strained, and he could expect a quick

and savage response if they discovered that he had violated their

border.

Nogo was a confused and worried man. Since the d6bdcle in the gorge of

the Dandera river everything had run strongly against him. He had lost

all his allies. Until they were gone he had not realized how heavily he

had come to rely on both Helm and von Schiller. Now he was on his own

and he had already made many mistakes.

But despite all this he was determined to pursue the fugitives, and to

run them down no matter how far he had to intrude into Sudanese

territory. Over the past weeks it had gradually dawned'upon Nogo, mostly

by eavesdropping on the conversations of von Schiller and the  jr

Egyptian, that Harper and Mek Nimmur were in possession of treasure of

immense value. His imagination could barely asp the enormity of it, but

he had heard others speak of gr tens of millions of dollars. Even a

million dollars was a sum so vast that his mind had difficulty

assimilating it, but he I i had a vague inkling as to what it might mean

in earthly terms, of the possessions and women and luxuries it could

buy.

Equally slowly it had dawned upon him that, now that Von Schiller and

Helm were gone, this treasure could be his alone; there was no longer

any other person to stand in his way, other than the fleeing shufta led

by Mek Nimmur and the Englishman. And he had overwhelming force on his

side and the helicopter at his command.

if only he could pin the fugitives down, Nogo was certain he could wipe

them out. There must be no survivors, no one to carry tales to Addis.

After Mek and the Englishman and all their followers were dead it would

be a simple matter to spirit his booty out of the country in the

helicopter. There was a man in Nairobi and another in Khartoum whom he

had dealt with before; they had bought contraband ivory and hashish from

him. They would know how to market the booty to best advantage, although

they were both devious men. He had already decided that he would not

trust it all to one person but would spread the risk, so that even if

one of them betrayed and cheated him His mind raced off on another tack,

and he savoured the thought of great riches and what they could buy for

him. He would have fine clothes and motor cars, land and cattle and

women - white women and black and brown, all the women he could use, a

new one for every day of his life. He broke off his greedy daydreams.

First he had to find where the runaways had vanished to.

He had not realized that Harper and Mek Nimmur had inflatable boats

hidden somewhere near the monastery.

Hansith had not informed him of that fact. He and Helm had expected them

to try to escape on foot, and all the plans to head them off before they

could reach the Sudanese border had been based on that assumption. On

Helm's orders, he had even set up a reserve fuel dump near the border

where they expected Mek Nimmur to cross, from which they could refuel