‘I’m not threatening anyone,’ said the other man hastily. ‘I just want them to know that it’s getting tough. They must know it themselves. They must know about this man Sillitoe. And look what the Chairman said in our annual report. He said that our mines were losing more than two million pounds a year through smuggling and I.D.B. and that it was up to the government to stop it. And what does that mean? It means “stop me”!’
‘And me,’ said the pilot mildly. ‘So what do you want? More money?’
‘Yes,’ said the other man stubbornly. ‘I want a bigger cut. Twenty per cent more or I’ll have to quit.’ He tried to read some sympathy in the pilot’s face.
‘All right,’ said the pilot indifferently. ‘I’ll pass the message on to Dakar, and if they’re interested I expect they’ll send it on to London. But it’s nothing to do with me, and if I were you,’ the pilot unbent for the first time, ‘I wouldn’t put too much pressure on these people. They can be much tougher than this Sillitoe, or the Company, or any government I’ve ever heard of. On just this end of the pipeline, three men have died in the last twelve months. One for being yellow. Two for stealing from the packet. And you know it. That was a nasty accident your predecessor had, wasn’t it? Funny place to keep gelignite. Under his bed. Unlike him. He was always so careful about everything.’
For a moment they stood and looked at each other in the moonlight. The diamond smuggler shrugged his shoulders. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Just tell them I’m hard up and need more money to pass down the line. They’ll understand that, and if they’ve got any sense they’ll add another ten per cent on for me. If not ...’ He left the sentence unfinished and moved towards the helicopter. ‘Come on. I’ll give you a hand with the gas.’
Ten minutes later the pilot climbed up into the cockpit and pulled the ladder in after him. Before he shut the door he raised a hand. ‘So long,’ he said. ‘See you in a month.’
The man on the ground suddenly felt lonely. ‘Totsiens,’ he said with a wave of the hand that was almost the wave of a lover. ‘Alles van die beste.’ He stood back and held a hand up to his eyes against the dust.
The pilot settled into his seat and fastened the seat-belt, feeling for the rudder pedals with his feet. He made sure that the wheel brakes were on, pushed the pitch control lever right down, turned on the fuel and pressed the starter. Satisfied with the beat of the engine, he released the rotor brake and softly twisted the throttle on the pitch control. Outside the cabin windows the long rotor blades slowly swung by and the pilot glanced astern at the whirring tail rotor. He settled himself back and watched the rotor speed indicator creep up to 200 revolutions a minute. When the needle was just over the 200, he released the wheel brakes and pulled up slowly and firmly on the pitch lever. Above him the blades of the rotor tilted and bit deeper into the air. More throttle, and the machine slowly rose clattering towards the sky until, at about 100 feet, the pilot simultaneously gave it left rudder and pushed forward the joystick between his knees.
The helicopter swung towards the east and, gathering height and speed, roared away back up the path of the moon.
The man on the ground watched it go, and with it the £100,000 worth of diamonds his men had filched from the diggings during the past month and had casually held out on their pink tongues as he stood beside the dentist’s chair and brusquely inquired where it hurt.
Still talking about their teeth, he would pick the stones out of their mouths and hold them up to the dentist’s spotlight, and then softly he would say 50, 75, 100; and they always nodded and took the notes and hid them in their clothes and went out of the surgery with a couple of aspirins in a twist of paper as an alibi. They had to accept his price. There was no hope of a native getting diamonds out. When the miners did get out, perhaps once a year to visit their tribe or to bury a relative, there was a whole routine of X-rays and castor oil to be gone through, and a grim future if they were caught. It was so easy to go to the dental surgery and pick the day when ‘Him’ was on duty. And paper-money didn’t show up on X-rays.
The man wheeled his motor-cycle over the rough ground on to the narrow trail and started off towards the frontier hills of Sierra Leone. They were more distinct now. He would only just have time to get to Susie’s hut before dawn. He grimaced at the thought of having to make love to her at the end of an exhausting night. But it would have to be done. Money was not enough to pay for the alibi she gave him. It was his white body she wanted. And then another ten miles to the club for breakfast and the coarse jokes of his friends.
‘Do a nice bit of inlay, Doc?’ ‘I hear she has the best set of frontals in the Province.’ ‘Say Doc, what is it the full moon does to you?’
