Beyond the Rails 3: Slayer of Darkness

Chapter 8

Kisumu Thursday afternoon

          There was something odd about the Motor Airship Leprechaun, though in all honesty, it was hard for Mutala to put his finger on it. Maybe the gasbag was a bit more elongated than he was used to seeing, or maybe the boat hull chosen for the gondola was curvier and more swaybacked. Or maybe it had more to do with the crew of Irish lunatics who regaled him throughout the six-hour journey from Nairobi with impossible tales of derring-do, and would bet on anything from the color of the next bird they saw to the direction of the next roll. Whatever the case, when he disembarked at the aerodrome across the inlet from Kisumu, he was happy to be back on solid ground.
          He had taken the train up to Nairobi, sleeping on the hard wooden seat in the gently rocking passenger car. To his good fortune, Leprechaun had been tied up at the aerodrome, and he was able to step literally from one conveyance onto the other. The vessel rode with an odd porpoising motion guaranteed to find any airsickness line that a passenger might be pushed over, and the crew themselves apparently felt obligated to take turns entertaining those passengers virtually every moment of the trip. Mutala used their gregariousness to seek information about Gervais in Kisumu, but they had never heard of him.
          Kisumu lay at the head of Winam Gulf, the inlet that marked the easternmost point of Lake Victoria. A narrow channel extending from this body formed Kisumu Port, and the town lay on the south side with the aerodrome on the north. He was looking at an hour’s walk around the harbor before he reached town, but this bothered him not at all. There was no urgency here. But as he shouldered the strap of his travel bag, the port captain felt otherwise.
          “Oh, sir!” He called, hurrying over. “Sir! May I summon you a ride to town? It is a miserable day for walking, yes?”
          “Looks fine to me,” Mutala replied.
          “I assure you, this heat will beat you down before you get half way there.”
          “I don’t think so,” Mutala said, not wanting to pay an outrageous fare to a driver who was probably this man’s brother in law. “Maybe you can tell me, though, do you know of a man called Gervais in town?”
          “Gervais,” he said, tasting the word. “Gervais. No, I don’t believe I have heard of such a man.”
          “Okay, thanks.”
          Mutala turned away, wondering whether, had he laid a pound note across the man’s palm, an answer would have been forthcoming. Buggar him, he decided. He’s there somewhere, and I’ll find him.
          The walk in the mid-day heat was taxing, it was true, but it was nothing a man like Mutala would find the least bit beyond his capability, rather part of his overall fitness regimen. He strode along at a brisk pace, creating his own breeze, and enjoying the view of the hills rising to the north and east. There were rubies in those hills, and rubies drew fortune hunters like dung drew flies. A year ago, Kisumu had been six huts and a bungalow. Now it was a whole town with shops, hotels, sutlers, and a thriving red light district catering to the miners and their predators. It was said the railroad would arrive here within the month, and the town would undoubtedly become a city, taking its place alongside Cairo, Capetown, and Mombasa as one of the major cities of the dark continent. That suited Mutala to a T; masses of people compressed together into close quarters were a hunting ground where a man like himself or Mr. Reinhard could make a fortune.
          He entered the northern outskirts of town, walking between rude shacks made of sticks and straw, and soon began to see the sort of buildings that might actually survive a high wind. The first tavern he saw was the Night Rose, which despite its name, was open for business, talk and occasional laughter floating out through the open door. He entered, finding a dozen men, some at tables, and three at the bar, talking mostly of work in the mines. Wondering without really caring why these men weren't at their jobs right now, he stepped to the bar and ordered a cold lemonade with a shot of rum for a chaser. When the publican returned with his drinks, he laid a one-pound note on the bar.
          “Would you happen to know the whereabouts of a man called Gervais somewhere in town?”
          “No, sir,” the man replied, eyeing the currency. “I assure you that I wish I did.”
          “No matter,” Mutala replied, “I'll find him.”
          He picked up the note, and paid with exact change in coins.
          “Anyone else know Gervais?” he addressed the room at large, still holding the pound clearly visible in his hand.
          A few of the men spoke to each other, but none of them claimed to know the man he sought, so he pocketed his money, drained his glasses, and departed into the street.
          He stopped for a late lunch at a diner with the same result, and moved on to book a room in a cheap hotel catering to the labor crowd. He asked there to find that no one knew him, and even asked one of the town’s constables. If he didn’t know that Reinhard wasn’t one to play games, he might have thought that he was the victim of an elaborate prank. Putting the word around in several other places, he bought a copy of the pretentiously named Victoria Herald, Kisumu’s grandly-named three-sheet newspaper, and settled into an outdoor establishment with a cup of coffee.
          Ten minutes later, two men approached his table, both large and bulky with scarred faces advertising lives of casually exchanged violence.
          “You the man looking for Gervais?” one of them asked.
          “That’s right,” Mutala replied, senses tingling with warnings of danger.
          Without further preamble, one of them leveled a sawed-off shotgun at his face while the other said, “Lay your weapons on the table and come with us.”
          “The hell I will,” Mutala said, believing that if they meant to kill him, they would have just killed him without further talk. “Who are you, anyway?”
          “We work for Gervais. You want to see him. No one sees him armed, so you can lay your weapons on the table, or you can forget about seeing him.”
          Mutala considered his options for a moment. Anything else they might have wanted, a beating, killing, robbery, they would have simply commenced. This felt right for the situation; how many times had Reinhard tasked him to do virtually the same thing before admitting a stranger to his own presence?
          “All right,” he said, drawing his pistol and laying it on the table. He stood up, drew his kukri, and placed it alongside. As the talker picked them up, the gunner made the shotgun disappear back into his loose clothing. Smoothly practiced. These two were accustomed to working together. Duly noted.
          “Anything else?”
          “No.”
          “You’d better not be lying. Let’s go.”
          They led him outside to where three horses waited at the rail.
          “Mount up,” talker said. “He’s a way from here.”

Mombasa 4:15 PM

          The .45 caliber Colt model 1873 came out of the holster in a blur too fast to follow and stopped, cocked and dead level, at hip height with no wasted motion. Johnny Two-Fives eased the hammer down and replaced it in the holster with a twirl. He nodded at the imposing black-clad figure in the mirror, and a second later, repeated the draw. It was mechanically flawless, every point in the motion as identical from one to the next as if it had been performed by a machine. He repeated it again.
          “You need to try to relax, Johnny,” Jubilee said from her seat on the sofa. “I don’t need you getting all shaky on me when we’re this close to our quarry.”
          Jubilee Bellouard was a fetching figure of a woman, past her prime but not so far that anyone would notice. A New Orleans Creole, she was rumored to be a former prostitute and a voodoo priestess. She stayed for the most part with her “boys” during the day, but at night slept in her own room. Johnny wouldn’t have minded improving on that situation, but he wasn’t about to take idle risks with his meal ticket.
          “This is what I do,” he replied, repeating the deadly draw again. “You wouldn’t want me to get rusty, would you?”
          “Of course not. I wouldn’t want you to get overwrought, either. I remember you saying that you had to be as cold as ice to be an effective shootist.”
          “That’s the nerves. This is the skill.”
          Zip! Gun out, cocked, and aimed, all between heartbeats.
          “I’m sorry, Johnny. I don’t mean to criticize. You just seem like a simmering kettle anymore.”
          “Maybe that’s because we have to stay in the room all the time.”
          “You should find something to read,” she said. “They have quite an adequate newspaper here, and the desk will deliver it to the door.”
          “I got a better idea than that,” he said, beginning to load his pistol. “I’m gonna go get me somethin’ to drink.”
          “It’s awfully early for that,” she admonished, glancing out at the afternoon sunshine.
          “Is it? Well, I’m goin’ stir crazy cooped up in here. Where the hell is this guy? It don’t seem like they're ever comin’ back here.”
          “They’ll be here.”
          “When?”
          “When they get here.”
          “Stupendous! What if they’ve crashed out there, or been eaten by the cannibals or somethin’? Then what?”
          “The cannibals are in Borneo, Johnny. He’ll be here.”
          “And I’ll be waitin’ for him. Meanwhile, I’m goin’ out for a drink.”
          “All right. But leave your gun in the room, and do your drinking at the hotel bar.”
          “What? You might as well ask me to go out naked!”
          “Oh, I’m not asking you anything, Johnny, I’m telling you. You’re too wound up. If you saw him right now, you’d challenge him, and whether you won or lost, you’d ruin everything.”
          “I’m not gonna lose to Charlie Bender, or whatever he’s callin’ himself this week!”
          “We’ll take him at our own time, on our own terms. If you do anything to jeopardize this job, I’ll see that you pay for it. Leave the gun.”
          “Don’t threaten me, woman. You may have found him, but there’s no way you can take him without me.”
          “I never threaten, Johnny. Cross me on this, and you’ll find out for yourself.”
          Two-Fives glared into her calm eyes for a moment, then turned away with an inarticulate snarl. Unbuckling his gunbelt, he slammed it down on the rickety table and stormed out.

Aloft south of Nairobi 6:30 PM

          Kestrel had lifted out of the Nairobi aerodrome an hour before full darkness would settle in over the dangerous highlands, distant clouds to the west painting the sky shimmering shades of gold and orange. Jinx, for all her rough-edged persona, sat on the mess deck roof watching in silent contemplation. Weapons and hat left behind in her cabin below, she might have been a young debutante watching the sunset from a sumptuous veranda.
          As the sun took its final plunge, and the scattered shadows began to coalesce and conquer the land, she rose and walked forward to the pilot house, where Patience Hobbs sat on the engineering console, her ankles crossed around a spoke of the wheel.
          “Hi,” Patience offered as she stopped and leaned on the door frame, still looking outward at the rapidly blackening sky.
          “Miss Hobbs.”
          “You should call me Patty. Or Patience.”
          “Are you always so informal?”
          “I try to be. We meet a lot of interesting people on these trips, and you can’t really get to know someone when they’re hiding behind a title.”
          “Jinx is hardly a title.”
          “No, but Miss is. Or do you prefer it that way?”
          “You don’t make a lot of social contacts when you’re on the go all the time. I’ve gotten used to it, I suppose.”
          “That isn’t good for you. We’re social animals. Having friends is our natural condition. Come on in, I won’t bite.”
          “Not more than once,” Jinx said with a smile, stepping over the coaming. She looked around at the instruments, at Patty’s completely relaxed attitude, and cocked her head with a puzzled look. “I thought you aeronauts didn’t fly at night.”
          “We prefer not to,” Patience replied. “The gas bag blocks our view of the stars, so we have to navigate by landmarks. Plus the fact that we’re doing about forty miles per hour, and if you kiss a mountain at that speed, the mountain always wins.”
          “I suppose it would,” Jinx said with a chuckle. “So, how do you avoid it?”
          “You get high enough that you won’t find that mountain, and fly a compass course toward your destination. Watch the compass, altimeter, and the clock, and you can’t go too far wrong. Is this your first time up?”
          “No, I’ve flown on the big liners, but this is my first time on a little ship like this, with a small crew that I trust enough to relax. That sunset was beautiful.” She looked out the windows at basically nothing. “You’re really good at this, aren’t you?”
          “That’s one school of thought. I don’t find it all that difficult, myself. It seems like something that anyone could pick up. Would you like to drive?”
          “At night? I think I’ll leave that to the professional, thanks. How does a young aristocrat from London get to be a crackerjack balloon pilot, anyway?”
          “Long story. I wasn’t born an aristocrat. I was the daughter of a coal miner and a laundry woman. Would have been one myself, but my father died in a mine accident. In strange twist of fate, an uncle, who I didn’t even know was my uncle, owns the mine. When he heard about the relationship, he took my mother and me in and treated us like his own. He has six strapping sons, and I think he wanted a daughter to complete the set. I turned out to be a huge disappointment to him, I’m afraid.”
          “Oh?”
          “Indeed. I learned to ride from the groom, shoot from the forester, and fight from the Japanese groundskeeper. He sent me to finishing school, but the best thing that can be said about that experience is that I managed not to burn it down.”
          Jinx interrupted with a full-throated laugh.
          “Seriously,” Patience continued, “the aristocracy is a prison for a woman. It may be a gilded cage, but it’s still a cage. When I determined to escape, a friend of my uncle’s, a former officer and a member of parliament, wrote a letter of recommendation. Didn’t say I was particularly skilled at anything, mind, just requested that someone give me a chance. I was headed for India when I stopped in Mombasa. I saw all these little balloons here, and fell in love. It turned out that Captain Monroe was a former colleague of the officer in question, and I’ve been flying for him ever since. How about you? How does a young woman from Australia become a gunfighter? With a customized gun, at that!”
          “My story isn’t nearly as romantic, I’m afraid. I grew up on a cattle station. Riding, tracking, and shooting are the requisite skills, and they’ve always been part of my life.”
          “This isn’t a cattle station,” Patience observed. “What are you doing here?”
          “A job for my family. We’re all on paths that brought us here. Mine has been... unfortunate in some respects.”
          “In what way?”
          “That’s no one’s business but my family. I’m not trying to be difficult, that’s simply the way things are.”
          “You’re being quite unfair, you know.”
          “How?”
          “You’re taking us along with you on a mysterious voyage that is obviously very dangerous. I think we have a right to know something about what those dangers are.”
          “I don’t. My money is buying your curiosity. All you need to know is the destination. I’ll take care of the dangerous parts.”
          “And what if they spill over onto us?”
          “It’s for me to prevent that, and if you believe nothing else, believe that I am very, very skilled in that area.”

Hippo Point 9:00 PM

          Southeast of the town of Kisumu, a boomtown even more haphazardly thrown together than Nairobi if that were possible, a stubby peninsula reached out from the shore to form a picturesque cove. Its topography was that of a low, rolling hill, and atop this hill sat an English-style manor house, stately, though not large by the standard of the mother country. Mutala sat on the veranda in a comfortable lounge chair across from a big European. The man had blonde hair, two days of stubble on his powerful jaw, and was dressed in the sort of khakis that big game hunters wore on safari. His name was Gervais, and aside from his appearance, he went out of his way to attract no attention to himself. His role here demanded it.
          At opposite ends of a divan sat Reg and Notcher, Gervais’ henchmen. Reg, the talker, was Gervais’ cousin, and Notcher, whose real name was Notker, was Reg’s brother-in-law. Gervais believed that blood is the strongest bond.
          “My instructions were only to assist Herr Reinhard in establishing a new base of operations here in Kisumu,” Gervais said, swirling his brandy in his glass as they looked out across the inlet. “I knew this house was available, and took steps to acquire it. Beyond that, I know nothing of the purpose, and that is the way Köln prefers it. Perhaps you know more than I, working closely with Herr Reinhard, as you do.”
          Mutala looked across the inlet toward the mountains, visible only as looming shades of darkness behind the far shore. Rubies were coming out of those mountains, rubies that would affect the dynamics between some major European powers, and he didn’t need to be a politician to see that.
          “He tells me nothing I do not need to know, and I do not ask,” Mutala said. “It is difficult to get information from me if I do not have it. What do you produce here, fish and rubies? I doubt this change of base is about fish.”
          “Almost certainly not,” Gervais agreed. “Slaves used to traffic through here, but that route had to be moved when the rubies were discovered and the authorities became more interested. Ah, those dirty English, they spoil everything they touch.”
          Mutala suspected it wasn’t Africa he was referring to.
          “Isn’t this house a bit far from town?” he asked.
          “It’s close enough, yet far enough away to give him any privacy he needs. There is only one road to watch, and no one can approach by water without being observed.”
          “Those are good points. Still, those damned airships can appear anywhere, and there’s nothing you can do to prevent it.”
          “True, but it is difficult to hide something the size of a cruiser that floats in the open sky, is it not?”
          “I suppose.”
          Mutala drained his bourbon.
          “It has been a long day,” Mutala said, “and I have a ride back to town ahead of me. I’m going to start back.”
          “Sleep here, my friend,” Gervais offered. “The beds are in the rooms, and no one else is using them. You may as well become accustomed to the place. You will be staying with Herr Reinhard, will you not?”
          “He has not made that clear. I’m rarely in one place, anyway. Most of my work is on the road, like this.”
          “Well, do not allow that to deprive you of a good night’s sleep. The beds are made, ready to use. I presume you will depart tomorrow to fetch Herr Reinhard?”
          “That is my plan.”
          “That will take you at least four days, maybe longer. By the time you return, the house will be furnished, and I will have guards in place that he may use until he can retain his own.”
          “Guards? Won’t that attract unwanted attention, a guarded house outside of town?”
          “On the contrary, a lack of guards would attract attention. Oh, I see,” he added in response to Mutala’s look of confusion. “The guards are for the wildlife. Lions hunt right up to the walls, crocodiles bask on the shore, and pods of hippopotamus come frequently to claim the beach for whatever it is they do.”
          “Hippopotamus?”
          “Yes. They give this little peninsula its local name, Kiboko Hatua. Hippo Point. The hippopotamus is the most dangerous animal in Africa, you know.”
          “I certainly know they’re nothing to trifle with.”
          “They certainly are not. Hippos kill more people than lions and crocs combined each and every year.”
          “And you bought Mr. Reinhard a house on their favorite beach?”
          “They rarely come this far up, and if they do, we have ways to discourage them. It is of no consequence.”
          “And none of my business,” Mutala said. “I’m sure you know what you’re doing.”
          “Good. I do. I am going back to town tonight. I’ll leave Notcher with you in case you have any difficulty. Sleep well, and I’ll see you when you return with Herr Reinhard. Oh, by the way, at the same time I was told to purchase this house, I was also directed to purchase Omarion Fabricators up in town, and I have done so. I don’t know whether the two things are connected, but there it is, for what it’s worth.”
          “What does Omarion fabricate?”
          “Light machinery for the mines, and they aren’t doing well. Most of the big concerns, where the real money is, prefer to import their equipment from Europe. They weren’t hard to entice. They’ve almost gone out of business.”
          “Well, smarter folks than us, huh?” Mutala rose and offered his hand. “I’ll see you in a week, my friend. Perhaps things will be made clear to us then.”
          “Perhaps they will. It’s good this business pays so well. It certainly raises hob with a man’s curiosity.”
          As Gervais shook his hand, Mutala assumed that nothing would be made clear, and that was fine with him. Mr. Reinhard spoke, Mutala acted, and that was all he needed to know. Life was good.