'Almost,' agreed Bruce; 'go and get it.' Ruffy disappeared into the back
area of the house and returned almost immediately with a case of Grant's
Stand awl'
fast under one arm and half a dozen bottles of Simba beer held by their
necks between the fingers of his other hand.
'We might get thirsty,' he explained.
The gendarmes climbed back into the back of the truck with a clatter of
weapons and shouted cheerful abuse at their fellows on the
verandah. Bruce, Mike and Ruffy crowded into the cab and Ruffy set the
whisky on the floor and placed two large booted feet upon it.
'What's this all about, boss?' he asked as Bruce trundled the truck down
the drive and turned into the Avenue I'Etoile. Bruce told him and when
he had finished Ruffy grunted noncommittally and opened a bottle of beer
with his big white chisel-blade teeth; the gas hissed softly and a
little froth ran down the bottle and dripped onto his lap.
'My boys aren't going to like it,' he commented as he offered the open
bottle to Mike Haig. Mike shook his head and Ruffy passed the bottle to
Bruce.
Ruffy opened a bottle for himself and spoke again. 'They going to hate
it like hell.' He shook his head. 'And there'll be even bigger trouble
when we get to Port Reprieve and pick up the diamonds.' Bruce glanced
sideways at him, startled. 'What diamonds?'
'From the dredgers,' said Ruffy. 'You don't think they're sending us all
that way just to bring in these other guys.
They're worried about the diamonds, that's for sure!' Suddenly, for
Bruce, much which had puzzled him was explained. A half-forgotten
conversation that he had held earlier in the year with an engineer from
Union Mine jumped back into his memory. They had discussed the three
diamond dredgers that worked the gravel from the bed of the Lufira
swamps. The boats were based on Port Reprieve and clearly they would
have returned there at the beginning of the emergency; they must still
be there with three or four months' recovery of diamonds on board.
Something like half a million sterling in uncut stones. That was the
reason why the Katangese Government placed such priority on this
expedition, the reason why such a powerful force was being used, the
reason why no approaches had been made to the U.N. authorities to
conduct the rescue.
Bruce smiled sardonically as he remembered the human itarian arguments
that had been given to him by the Minister of the Interior.
'It is our duty, Captain Curry. We cannot leave these people to the
notsotender mercy of the tribesmen. It is out duty as civilized human
beings.' There were others cut off in remote mission stations and
government outposts throughout southern Kasai and Katanga; nothing had
been heard of them for months, but their welfare was secondary to that
of the settlement at Port.
Reprieve.
Bruce lifted the bottle to his lips again, steering with one hand and
squinting ahead through the windscreen as he drank. All right, we'll
fetch them in and afterwards an ammunition box will be loaded on to a
