'I hope you are right, Mek,' Nicholas laughed at him.
Mek squatted opposite him. 'Give me one of your knives and I will finish
the hooves. It will go quicker if I help you.'
Without comment Nicholas passed him one of the knives. He knew that Mek
could skin out the hooves, for years before he had taught him the art.
With two of them working on the pelt, it would go that much faster. The
sooner the skin was off, the less chance there would be of
deterioration.
He turned his attention to the head. This was the most delicate part of
the process. The skin had to be peeled off like a glove, and the eyelids
and lips and nostrils must be worked from the inside. The ears were
perhaps the most difficult to lift away from the gristle in one piece.
They worked in companionable silence for a while, which Mek broke at
last.
'How well do you know your Russian, Boris Brusilov?' he asked.
'I met him for the first time when I stepped off the plane. He was
recommended by a friend.'
'Not a very good friend.' Mek looked up at him and his expression was
grim. 'I came to warn you about him, Nicholas.'
'I a listening,' said Nicholas quietly.
'In '85 I was captured by Mengistu's thugs. They kept me in the Karl
Marx prison camp near Addis. Brusilov was one of the interrogators
there. He was KGB in those days.
His favourite trick was to stick the pressure hose from a compressor up
the anus of the man or woman he was questioning and turn on the tap.
They blew up like a balloon, until the gut burst.' He stopped speaking
while he moved around to work on the other hoof of the antelope.
'I escaped before he got around to questioning me. He retired when
Mengistu fled, and went hunting. I don't know how he persuaded Tessay to
marry him, ut knowing what I do of the man, I expect she did not have
much choice in the matter.'
'Of course, I had my suspicions about him,' Nicholas admitted.
They were quiet after that until Mek whispered, 'I came to tell you that
I may have to kill him.'
Neither of them spoke again until Mek had finished working on all four
hooves. Then he stood up. 'These days, life is uncertain, Nicholas. If I
have to leave here in a hurry, and I do not have a chance to say goodbye
to you, then there is somebody in Addis who will pass a message to me if
you ever need me. His name is Colonel Maryam Kidane in the Ministry of
Defence. He is a friend. My code name is the Swallow. He will know who
you are talking about.'
They embraced briefly. 'Go with GodV said Mek, and left the hut quietly.
The night swallowed his robed figure and Nicholas stood for a long time
at the door, until at last he turned back to finish the work.
It was late by the time he had rubbed every inch of the skin with a
mixture of rock salt and Kabra dip to cure it and protect it from the
ravages of the bacon beetle and other insects and bacteria. At last he
laid it out on the floor of the hut with the wet side uppermost and
packed more rock salt on the raw areas.
The walls of the hut were reinforced with mesh netting to keep out
