07-The Radioactive Camel Affair Read online

  “I have a desire to visit the southern part of your agreeable country.”

  “Indeed? May one ask why?”

  “It is said that there are certain mineral deposits,” Illya said carefully, “to the south and west of the El Marra massif. It appears, moreover, that these might be well worth exploitation by those with practically unlimited resources. The lignite veins, for example, are said to be by no means as poor as the reference books would have us believe. The bauxite, too, is of interest to those requiring aluminium…to say nothing of more—er—esoteric ores.”

  “And you represent such an interest?”

  “I do. Those cooperating with my gov—with my principals would find themselves well rewarded. There is a great deal of money involved. A very great deal.”

  Hassan Hamid leaned back in his steel and leather chair. His tongue flicked once rapidly around his well-shaped lips. “Your—ah—principals have charged you with the task of verifying these reports?” he asked.

  “Yes. I imagine I need not elaborate?”

  “No, no, no. Indeed not. But, in this exploratory stage, how can I help you?”

  “I understand there is a certain amount of dissidence in the area. I would not wish, during my researches, to run afoul either of rebels or of your efficient troops policing the region. Apart from which, in the normal way, I imagine you would scarcely welcome strangers there.”

  “There are one or two cutthroat bands of renegade blacks,” Hassan Hamid said carelessly, flicking a speck of dust from his lapel. “We Muslims in the north are continually being misrepresented by the backward Negroes of the south. Agitators are sent in to stir up trouble, and the poor fools fancy themselves exploited. But there is nothing which could be called a rebellion power…Nevertheless, it is true that a foreigner wandering there could run into trouble.’

  “Yes. And since it was not considered desirable at this stage to make an official approach at governmental level, I am here to ask your help in the granting of some form of laissez-passer which would at once justify me, justify my existence in that area, and assure those whom it might concern that I was under your protection, as it were.”

  Hassan Hamid rose from behind the desk, moving elegantly across the room to a large wall map flanked by a coat of arms and the Sudanese flag. “I gather the areas in question would be, roughly, here…and here and perhaps here?” he said, tapping the map with a manicured finger.

  “Yes,” Illya said. “Would you care for a Russian cigarette?”

  “Thank you, I do not smoke. Please do so yourself, if you feel inclined.”

  Kuryakin murmured his thanks and placed one of the brown cardboard tubes between his lips. He seemed to have some trouble in manipulating the heavy bronze lighter: it took several attempts before the spark produced a flame.

  Hamid was waiting politely by the map, tapping his teeth with a gold pencil. “Yes, I think that can be arranged,” he said at last when Illya’s cigarette was drawing properly. if you could go tonight to the police station at this address”—he moved back to the desk and scribbled a few lines on a sheet from an ivory framed memo pad—”the necessary documents will be waiting for you. Please take your passport to identify yourself. The staff will themselves take your photograph and attach a copy to the papers just to ensure that the right person gets them, you understand. And you should also present this…” He wrote something on a second memo sheet, tore both sheets from the pad, and handed them to lllya.

  “You are very kind.”

  “It is a pleasure…Oh, there is one thing: such extracurricular activities regrettably involve the participant in certain expenses. There are various charges, payable to the departments involved, inseparable from the issue of such papers, I am afraid.”

  “Not at all. It is to be expected. I have already trespassed too much on your generosity—but, since it is out of office hours and I have no other way of paying them, would it be too much of an imposition if I were to entrust these monies to you for disbursement in the right quarters?”

  “In the circumstances,” Hamid said suavely, “I would be prepared to waive protocol and perform that service for you.”

  Illya reached for his wallet.

  Later, when he had rejoined Solo in the hotel, he unloaded the spool from the tiny camera concealed in his cigarette lighter and developed the film. Two of the shots he had taken were too blurred to be of use. The other three were as clear as a bell: two profiles of Hamid pointing at the map of Sudan, and one full face of him standing by the flag and tapping his teeth with the gold pencil.

  “We’ll print them up,” Solo said. “Just in case…”

  After that, Kuryakin dismantled the miniature lapel microphone and the fine wire lead connecting it with the cigarette-case tape-recorder in his breast pocket, and they played back the recording of his interview. The tape had run out in the middle of Hamid’s sentence about “extracurricular activities” involving the participant in “certain expenses.”

  “That is interesting,” Illya said. “We’ve lost the part where he agrees to take the money himself. Also the amount, which came later. There’s nothing there we could use as a lever if ever we needed to—it’s just a man going out of his way to accommodate a foreigner, on the face of it.’“

  “Never mind,” Solo said, clapping him on the shoulder. “What we have is very interesting, as it is. Your Russian act was inspired!”

  “Yes, I suppose it could have been worse.”

  At eight-thirty, Solo took Hamid’s scrawled note of introduction, his own passport, and a further supply of money to the address Illya had been given. He was back in less than an hour with an imposing document calling upon all whom it might concern to let Napoleon Solo, photo attached, freely pass without let or hindrance at the peril of enraging His Excellency Hassan Hamid, and so on, and so on.

  “Funny thing, security,” he said to Illya. “They take every precaution under the sun to ensure that the guy who gets the document is the one whose passport they have, and that the mug on the document is the same as the one on the passport—even to the extent of taking the pictures themselves. But there’s no check whatever on whether the guy with the passport calling for the thing is the same as the one who originally asked for it!”

  “Thank goodness,” Illya said soberly.

  The next morning Marshel came to tell them that one of his spies had found out that the caravan was headed for Wadi Elmira, where the contingent of pilgrims was to leave the main body and head south.

  “There’s only one other trail out of Elmira,” he said. “Southwest to Halakaz and Gabotomi. So the other lot must be heading there. You’ll have to find out which party the stuff’s with before you get there, so you’ll know whether to stick with the religiosos or trail the rest at a distance.”

  “How long will I have?”

  “God knows. Several days—they don’t exactly break speed records. But, if you ask me, it’ll be with the other lot—the traders and such. Pilgrims travel light and it will be easier to conceal a heavy lead canister among bundles of merchandise on pack camels than it would be among bedrolls and riders.”

  “True. But I have to be sure. After all, they do have a specific place to take it, don’t they?”

  “Isn’t Gabotomi one of the so-called Forbidden Cities?” Illya asked suddenly.

  “Was, old boy. Was. It’s in the middle of the rebel country now. You chaps are heading for a hotbed of trouble, you know.’

  “Yes, what’s the strength of this rebel bit?” Solo asked.

  “Strong enough, actually. Of course, they play it down up here—but in actual fact there’s a spot of the old genocide going on in the south. Real race war stuff. Up here and in the Nile Valley and the desert, it’s all Arabs; the Muslims rule the country, after all. But the uncivilized part, in the south—that’s all missionary Christians, fetishists and so on. And of course they loathe each other’s guts. As soon as the Raj pulled out, the Arabs began a systematic campaign of wiping out th
e others. They send troops down and wipe out whole villages—kill the lot and burn the place to the ground. So naturally the natives consider themselves a persecuted minority and to be an Arab in that area is to be a dead man. If you have to leave that caravan, Mr. Solo, I should junk those borrowed robes pretty damn quick! You can’t trust those types, you know.”

  “It’s obvious where your own sympathies lie,” Solo said.

  “With the Arabs, you mean? Well, of course—I mean, well, you can talk to them, can’t you?”

  After dark, when the fierce and breathless heat of the day had abated, they paid their bill and checked out of the hotel. Illya was to fly to Stanleyville in the Congo, from where—if Waverly had acted on Marshel’s radioed request—a helicopter would take him north to the Sudan border. Here, he was to move north further still, assume the role of a big game photographer and move into the Sudan in a Landrover.

  “We’ll keep in touch by radio,” Solo said. “If you prospect in the general direction of Gabotomi and Hala-kaz, and keep your eyes and ears open, you might come across something. Good God, if they’re building an atomic plant or hydrogen bombs, something must be there to see; somebody must have noticed. Those places take up acres and acres!…In the meantime, I’ll stick with the caravan and try to trail the canister. With luck, we ought to end up at the same place…”

  He himself, as soon as Kuryakin had left for the airport with most of their equipment, hurried to a rendezvous with a man called Nassim. Under Rodney Marshel’s guidance, he suffered himself to be stained brown all over and bearded, hair by hair, along the edge of his jawline. His teeth were discolored, his hands roughened and his nails artificially cracked and grimed. With wax cunningly inserted inside his nostrils to alter the shape of his nose, he would have passed unrecognized even by Waverly.

  “According to your papers, effendi,” Nassim said, stepping back to admire his handiwork, “you have come all the way from Al Khuraiba in Saudi Arabia to go on this pilgrimage. Let us hope this will be considered sufficient excuse for any inconsistencies of accent when you speak Arabic.”

  Beneath the heavy burnoose, Solo slung the borrowed Mauser in a makeshift holster provided by Marshel. Around his waist next to the skin was a Chubb-locked money belt—containing, apart from local currencies, his miniature transceiver and one or two other devices.

  Then, with Nassim as his guide, he mounted a horse and rode out of the city towards the dawn rendezvous which was to initiate his uncomfortable journey into the unknown.

  Chapter 7

  Caveat for the General

  THE FRONTIER WAS a collection of wooden huts straddling the dust road; the border was a barbed wire fence interrupted by a striped pole with a counterweight on one end. Inside the hut nearest to the highway, a platoon of soldiers lounged, exchanging pleasantries with the frontier guards. Both soldiers and guards wore British-style khaki uniforms—and all of the men there were Africans.

  Illya slid the Landrover to a halt in a cloud of dust and climbed out onto the road. Something had gone wrong with the arrangements: there had been no helicopter at Stanleyville, nor any message from Waverly or anyone else in New York. U.N.C.L.E. had no representative in the town and there had been nobody he could trust enough to send a radio message. Solo was out of range of the miniature transmitter. Accordingly the Russian had played it by ear and hired his own vehicle—but the 450 mile drive had taken him three days, and now, when Solo was traversing the high ridge between the basins of the Nile and the Bahr el Ghaza and Illya himself should have been prospecting the environs of Gabotomi, here he was only just entering the country…

  Perspiration clogged his fair hair and trickled between his shoulder blades as he tramped across the blazing forecourt to the guard hut. In three hours it would be dark, but it was still tremendously hot.

  A tall African carrying the three stripes of a sergeant was deliberating over Kuryakin’s papers when he glanced over the Russian’s shoulder, stiffened and snapped out a parade-ground salute. Illya swung around. Although the face was so dark, his first impression of the man standing there was all brightness and light: the Sam Browne crossing his compact chest gleamed; the riding boots winked in the sun; the insignia of a Major-General shone from his shoulder tabs; and from under his arm the silver-knobbed head of a cane glistened. Brilliantly white teeth flashed between thick lips as the cane reached out to touch the papers on the trestle table.

  “And what have we here, sergeant?” he asked. “A foreigner seeking entry?” The voice was deep and mellifluous, overlaid with a caricature of an Oxford accent.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The smile turned through sixty degrees and beamed on Illya. “Edmond Mazzari,” the voice continued. “Officer commanding troops rightfully in charge of this region. May one ask your reasons for wishing to enter the Sudan at this particular point?”

  “Good afternoon, General,” Illya said. “The answer is simple: I am a photographer of animals. Certain of the beasts I wish to photograph can only be found in the area.”

  “For example?”

  “Certain types of white rhino; cave baboons; elephant; tiger; various members of the deer family.”

  “But all these, my dear fellow, can be found in other parts of Africa—rhinoceros, elephant, tigers: we have no monopoly on them, you know.”

  “In game preserves, yes. Shabby, half-tame creatures with threadbare hides. What I want is photographs of wild animals—and not the stereotyped pictures of a blurred rhino charging or a lion hanging its head by a water hole. I am prepared to wait. I have patience. What I seek are records of these animals behaving believably as animals, as creatures of family, as hunters, as beasts in fear—not just another series of myths from a child’s geography book.”

  “It would be an approach long due,” the general said. “What camera are you proposing to use for these pictures, Mr…?”

  “Kuryakin.” Illya snapped open the leather case at his side.

  “Ah. A Hasselblad. With all the extras. Do you know, old chap, that the money that camera would bring could feed one of my villages in there for a month?” He stabbed the cane towards the rolling savanna across the frontier.

  “I know that things in this region are—difficult,” Kuryakin said equivocally.

  “Difficult! If I were to tell you…Do you realize, old chap, that the Arabs in the north are engaged in a war of extermination down here? They’re systematically killing my people off. Every day they descend on another village and—pouff!” He shouldered the cane as though it were a rifle and shot down an imaginary adversary.

  “I did not know it was as bad as that. To be honest, I was surprised not to find Arab troops guarding this frontier post, though.”

  “There were. Yesterday.” The General swung his stick towards a row of freshly turned mounds of soil behind one of the huts. “We show the flag occasionally—just to emphasize our rights, you know. These good fellows”—he pointed at the guard hut—“will stay here until another troop descends on them. There will be another little skirmish—and another row of graves on our African soil. Then we will take another post…”

  “Forgive my ignorance, but what is the background to this?”

  “Nothing but Arab rapacity. Basically, of course, it’s religious on their side. Our people here in the south are Christians or pagans; they are Musselmen—muscle men! That’s good, eh? —and so we have to go. We would have accepted some kind of federation if only we had been allowed a say in governing our own three provinces. But too many in Khartoum do nothing but line their own pockets—and mouth promises they have no intention of keeping. And anyway we shall accept nothing less than secession after what they have done now.”

  “It’s very bad, is it?”

  “Bad?” Mazzari had a trick of repeating the last word uttered by his vis-à-vis. “It is so bad as to be unbelievable. The Arab officers quartered here are in fear of their lives, so they lounge about in the towns and leave their troops to bum and loot and murder as the
y will. Do you realize, old chap, that they have destroyed—completely eradicated—one hundred and thirty-three villages here and in southern Sudan? They have murdered more than thirty thousand people, leaving the survivors to wander in the bush and starve. In the last two years, such murders, plus disease, starvation and a drain of refugees fleeing across the borders, have reduced our population by over a million. A million, Mr. Kuryakin. That is one third of our African population down here.”

  “Isn’t there quite a strong underground movement—the Anya Nya, I believe?” Illya said, at a loss for a suitable comment.

  “The Anya Nya? Lazzaro is a skilled guerrilla leader—but he has one bazooka and a handful of rifles among a few thousand irregulars, over there to the east in the Dongotona Mountains. What can such groups do against the fifteen thousand heavily armed Arabs in the region? Could they prevent the Juba massacre in the summer of 1965, when fourteen hundred people were killed in a single night? They fight in bowler hats and shorts!” The general was contemptuous.

  “And here…?”

  “Here in the southwest, we order things better. A little better, old chap. The Nya Nyerere—the force I command—is six thousand strong…but armed, disciplined and efficient.”

  “I can see that,” Kuryakin said, glancing at Mazzari’s Sandhurst-style turnout.

  “But today numbers are nothing. Efficiency is next to nothing. It is weapons that count—and the men who know how to use them. Soon, very soon, the Nya Nyerere will be as sixty thousand men—as six million. And then the Arab politician’s in Khartoum will bewail their fate. We shall grind the oppressors into the dust and become masters of the whole Sudan.” For a moment, Oxford University went out the window and in its place pure mission school showed.

  “You are planning a coup, General?” Illya strove not to betray his interest.

  “Ah, it’s early days, early days, old chap,” General Mazzari said, conscious that he had revealed perhaps a little too much. “Just keep your eyes on the headlines in a few weeks’ time, that’s all. In the meantime, we are still an underground army: I must be off.”