Black Pearl (10 page)

‘OK,' said Max. ‘But the main objective remains to get up the river to Lac Dudo first, before this Army of Christ the Infant gets a good firm grip on it – whether they know about the coltan or whether they are just reconquering their old stamping grounds – and lets the other bad guys in through the back door. It looks as though we may have to sort out how many bad guys – fifth columnists – are here already. Where they are, what they're up to and how in hell's name they fit into Gabriel Fola's and Colonel Odem's overall plan.'

Richard nodded. ‘But that's not all,' he added. ‘I'm pretty certain Colonel Odem has a grudge he wants to settle with Celine Chaka, for instance, so she's involved, like it or not …'

‘Not too likely she's at any risk,' shrugged Ivan. ‘Leader of the opposition, in the middle of Granville Harbour. We're talking Army of Christ, not Smersh assassins …'

‘
But
,' said Richard forcefully, his eyes on Ivan and not on Max, ‘he also has an account to settle with Anastasia Asov, who is effectively alone and unprotected. And out there in the middle of nowhere.'

‘A
nastasia says she's fine,' said Robin, gesturing towards the Skype screen on her laptop. ‘All quiet on the eastern front. And no – before you ask, I did not mention your mysterious Ivan Yagula.'

It was later that evening and they were getting ready for bed. The day had been spent in preparations for getting the Zubrs, the equipment, Kebila and his men up the river. But the job needed to be planned carefully and done right. It was all a frustratingly slow process. Over a light but exquisite dinner, they had talked the situation over.

Their conversation over dinner in the hotel's new
Bistro Bamidele
had started with Ivan, who was not present at the moment because Max and Felix had dragged him out to a less sedate, more actively Russian dinner at a dockside bar and grill called OTI, which was more famous for its massive selection of vodkas than for its actual food. And, for Robin, a bottle of lemony Chablis. Richard explained in detail Captain Caleb's briefing. He was aided in this endeavour first by using the tines of his fork to draw on the starched snowiness of the linen, then his pen on some paper napkins purloined from a passing waiter and finally in perfect detail with a pencil on several overlapping pieces of A4 paper all supplied by the long-suffering manager Andre Wanago. But it was over dessert, presented with a powerful NV ‘Alcyone' Tannat, Vinedo de los Vientos, that they had discussed Richard's worries about Anastasia. Worries that had only seemed to darken over coffee. Worries that seemed to persist, even after Robin got through to the orphanage on Skype.

‘We still have to move pretty quickly,' insisted Richard, easing off his suit jacket and crossing to hang it in the wardrobe. ‘It's like a multiple pile-up. She'll be fine till the wheels come off. Then she won't be fine at all. All within a second or so. You know how quickly it can happen.'

‘Don't I ever!' answered Robin, with feeling. She beckoned him back so that he could unzip her dress for her. As Richard pulled the long zip down, his mind was miles away from the warm, silk and lace-encased flesh that the parting teeth revealed. Robin had been kidnapped – with Anastasia – some years earlier in Benin La Bas, before Chaka took over and restored order. One moment she and Anastasia had been going to a party, the next they had been helpless prisoners, and it had taken all of Richard's courage and cunning to get them safely back.

‘But give the woman credit,' Robin continued a little ruefully as he moved back to allow her to step out of the crumpled material, clearly lost in thought. ‘She lives here. Has done for ages. She knows the score – probably better than you do. And she can look after herself. Better than most, I might add.'

‘Even so …' countered Richard, pulling his tie off. ‘She can be unexpectedly fragile. Look what happened the minute she got back from the kidnapping. She went off the rails completely – hanging out with that rock group Simian Artillery, then going on drugs and what-not.' He began to undo his shirt, frowning with paternal concern.

‘As I understand it, she developed quite a passion for the lead singer …' Robin remarked as she hung up her dress.

‘Even though the band themselves had been involved in the drug-related death of her brother …' He nodded, pulling the crisp cotton out of his waistband.

‘No explaining the vagaries of the female heart, my love …' she observed wistfully, sliding her half-slip down with a wiggle of her hips.

‘Says you, Mills and Boon and Barbara Cartland!' he said, loosening his belt.

‘Says me at least. And when the lead singer blew his brains out, she was the one who found him.' She folded her slip over the back of the chair and paused, looking across at him, regretting the sheer tights. If she had been wearing suspenders, she thought, it would have been easier to get him in the mood. But then again, it was never too hard once he realized what was on her mind.

‘Or what was left of him,' he was saying as he put one foot up on a chair to untie his shoelaces.

‘Splattered all over the bathroom walls, floor and ceiling. You can see why she went off the rails. And, I think, why Max just gave up on her and let her get on with it.' She slid out of the treacherously unromantic tights and kicked them across the room.

‘That's as may be. But we pulled her out of all that so we're
in loco parentis
now. We're responsible for her.' He stepped out of one shoe and turned to the other.

‘You worked in China too long,' she observed, reaching behind her to unhook her bra. ‘Isn't that what the Chinese say? You save someone then you owe them, not the other way round?'

‘Perhaps. But in this case it's true. If anything happened to us, you'd want someone like us to watch out for Mary, wouldn't you?' He stepped out of his trousers and folded them over the back of his chair.

‘And William, though they're good kids. They've never given us a moment's worry,' she added, stepping out of her underwear and wondering whether it would be too unromantic to clean her teeth. Her breath smelt of orangey Grand Marnier and lemony wine, with a smoky coffee overlay.

‘Precisely my point,' he said, hopping from foot to foot as he pulled off his socks. ‘We pulled Anastasia back. Now we're the ones who need to look after her – if she needs looking after. And I just think she may, that's all. She's strong. But she's not that strong. And anyway, there are limits.'

‘And the resurrected Army of Christ the Infant is well beyond anyone's limits. OK, I get your drift.' She decided to risk it and sat down on the bed, surprised to find herself a little unsteady.

‘So we need to get upriver as fast as we can, at least as far as the orphanage, which – if you remember – is named for the last two people who ran it. Both slaughtered and one eaten by the last incarnation of the Army of Christ while Anastasia was forced to look on!' He stepped out of his underwear and looked across at the bed because his pyjamas were under the pillow. The pillow that Robin was lying on, in fact, looking like a naked blonde Maja waiting for Goya to paint her.

‘It's that bloody Galahad complex again, isn't it?' purred Robin indulgently. ‘You really should have left that in the last millennium, my love.'

‘Galahad complex?' asked Richard speculatively.

‘Galahad. Knight in shining armour. See a maiden. Assume she's in distress. Get your lance up and off you charge …' She settled her hips and wondered whether to go for the Rokeby Venus pose.

‘Well, I wouldn't put it quite like that …'

‘I would. And if you're getting your lance up, then I'm first in the queue.'

He laughed. ‘You always will be. Especially lying around looking like that.'

‘You'd better believe it. But there is a problem …' She pouted.

‘Do tell,' he demanded, crossing towards the bed.

‘Galahad had no maiden fair. No one to get his lance up over. I'd rather you were someone else.'

‘Lancelot, perhaps?' he asked, one knee on the duvet beside her.

‘Oh, yes.
Lance a lot!
That'll do me fine!'

‘I can see where this is heading.' He straddled her easily. ‘Are you Elaine or Guinevere?'

‘Both! So you'll have to be pretty active, sir knight,' she said, reaching up for him.

‘Well, let's see what we can do …' He leaned down towards her.

Later, on the verge of sleep, with Robin snoring contentedly beside him, Richard suddenly had a darker thought arising from their little love game. For Lancelot was not just Sir Lancelot. He was – and this suddenly struck Richard as oddly sinister – Lancelot
du Lac
.

A
nastasia Asov struggled against the hands that held her helpless. The clapping and the stamping were overwhelming. Ngoboi, the great raffia-cloaked, ebony-masked, seven-foot-high god of the jungle's darkest places, whirled and stamped in front of her. Two of his acolytes capered around him, tending to the restless strands of his costume. Apart from Sister Faith, the nun round whom the god was circling like a shark, Anastasia was the only woman there. It was death for a woman to look on Ngoboi – and Anastasia knew she was as good as dead. As dead as poor Sister Faith was doomed to be.

The Army of Christ the Infant were ranked around the orphanage's central compound. Those holding guns were stamping in rhythm. Those carrying matchets in their belts were clapping. Their eyes were burning with a mixture of religious awe, murder-lust and cocaine. The boys in Anastasia's charge were all held captive as petrified spectators behind them. The girls were locked away in the dormitory ready to be raped and slaughtered. And, many of them, butchered and eaten.

As though etched in silver and jet in the light of a full moon, the army's terrifying leader was sprawled at his ease on a chair taken out of the chapel. The priest's chair – for which the poor man would have no further use. Silver-lensed Ray-Bans sat wrapped round his head below the beret and above the ridged horrors of his cheeks, lined with massive Poro secret society initiation scars. Like those on his naked chest that gleamed between the flaps of his gaping shirt. Two hulking lieutenants also in dark glasses stood behind him, one at either shoulder. All three of them, like Ngoboi, held heavy, steel-bladed matchets more than a metre long.

The heat, like the noise and the terror, was overpowering. Anastasia's body was running with perspiration as thick and hot as blood. Her ears rang and her head throbbed. She felt like someone watching the approach of a tornado she could never escape. Sister Faith knelt at the heart of it, at the centre of Ngoboi's whirling dance, in the middle of the compound, the still point of the spinning world, until the leader's Ray-Bans moved fractionally up and down and their movement was echoed horrifically by Ngoboi's matchet. Up and down went the matchet into the body of the woman kneeling at his feet.

The mouth between the scarred cheeks below the silvered Ray-Bans split into a huge grin. Anastasia saw that the khat-stained teeth between them were sharpened to needle points, like crocodiles' teeth. And she realized she was no longer dripping sweat – she was covered in blood. Bathed in the hot, sweet-smelling, iron-tasting thickness of it. Drenched with it. Drowning in it.

Ngoboi's hand came down on her shoulder. ‘Miss Anastasia,' he said, in a soft, female voice. ‘Wake up, Miss Anastasia, you're dreaming.'

But the mad god's coke-wide black eyes still stared at her, white-rimmed and bloodshot, from out of the rough-hewn horror of the ebony mask. The mouth still moved – and now it, too, had those terrible, brown-stained, crocodile teeth, sharpened to tear at human flesh. And the hand on her shoulder still held that red running, gently steaming matchet. ‘Miss Anastasia,' said Ngoboi, more forcefully. ‘Wake up. Please! You're having another nightmare.'

Anastasia opened her eyes. Blinked. Began to focus. Ngoboi's face slowly became that of newly-arrived Sister Georginah: ebony dark – emphasized by the perfect white of her headdress, illumined by the silver moonlight streaming through the thin-curtained window, but otherwise the opposite of the jungle god's. Wide, gentle brown eyes, soft lips, square white teeth, a frown of sisterly concern. A silver crucifix instead of a steel matchet in her fist. The hands that held her so relentlessly resolved themselves into tangled bed sheets wrapped around her like a straitjacket strapped round a lunatic. And these in turn explained the sweat-inducing heat. The orphanage's meagre funds did not run to air-conditioning. Or ceiling fans. Anastasia realized with something akin to horror that, because she had gone to bed naked, she had no idea how much of her was on show between the bindings of the sheets. ‘Thank you, Sister,' she said gently. ‘I'll be fine now.'

‘Can I get you something? Some water perhaps?' Sister Georginah was a sweet, naive creature, with absolutely no social sensitivity at all.

‘No. Thank you.' Anastasia wondered whether to struggle into a sitting position; whether to start untangling her body from the sheets. But she didn't know Sister Georginah well enough to start doing a striptease in front of her.

‘Perhaps you would like to pray,' suggested the young nun anxiously. ‘We can pray together, here and now if you would like. Your dream must have been very horrible. You were screaming and crying most terribly. And you talked of matters that were simply
devilish
.'

‘Perhaps I'll pray later,' said Anastasia, and she half meant it. ‘But if you could leave me now, I just want to catch my breath.'

‘Of course.' The sister nodded, straightened, half-bowed and stepped back, as though taking leave of a queen. But now that the crisis was over she clearly had the opportunity to use her eyes in a way she hadn't when she'd rushed in to wake the dreaming woman. ‘Miss Anastasia! What is that? That
thing
on your …'