Black Pearl (12 page)

‘Will you be joining any of this, Ivan?' she asked as a man the size of a single-decker bus went sailing through the air to crash on to the deck like a falling tree – only to bounce erect, laughing.

‘I've done my stint,' he chuckled. ‘And I'm down for weapons later.'

‘Weapons?' she teased. ‘That doesn't sound too tough.'

‘We do it stark naked and blindfold, under water. And we don't get to breathe till we've field-stripped and reassembled our weapon. Even if we get our what-nots tangled in our cocking mechanisms.'

‘And if you don't do it in time?' she asked, fascinated. Not least, thought Richard, by the mental picture.

‘You don't breathe and you get sent home. Sometimes in a box. But I wanted to show you that last group over there, you see them? Police, or rather Politzia: Vityaz
and RUS. The Vityaz have the same areas of expertise as the Vympel but their intelligence work is more internal. If the Beslan siege had been organized by the late Vyacheslav Ivankov's
Moskva brigada
Mafiya kidnappers, say, instead of Shamil Basayev's separatist Riyadus-Salikhin Battalion, then it would have been Vityaz and not the Vympel who went in.

‘Those guys doing the knife fighting – the ones with the real knives beside them, they're the RUS. They're Politzia too, but they're here because they travel. I've talked to a couple of them in depth and they've been all over the world. Negotiating, being trained; training. They're the real Africa hands. They've actually been on the ground out here. Libya, DRC, Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique. They know the place. They know the jungle. They'll be training the others up as they go. And the OMON police special units guys there, they're the transport section. Military transport.'

‘Spetsnaz. What does that actually mean, nowadays?' asked Richard, finding even his usually encyclopaedic knowledge taxed beyond its limit.

‘In many ways it means that they've all had similar training, and that's about it. The edges are beginning to blur these days, I must admit. And that's before you start to address the fact that many of these chaps are like me – they've come out of service and gone into the private sector as guns for hire anyway. The army men, the GRU chaps over there, will have been trained to a high degree of expertise in weapons handling, rappelling, explosives, marksmanship, counter-terrorism, how to survive the most brutal beatings, hand-to-hand combat, climbing, diving and underwater combat, long-range marksmanship, emergency medical procedures and demolition. The VDV get all that plus extra parachute work. Some of them, the regiment forty-five men, get boat training too. Most of the rest will have had some, if not all, of it. And they will all have received training in how to fight with everything from knives to shovels – as well as with their bare fists, of course.'

‘They all look pretty experienced,' persisted Robin. ‘What sort of combat experience will they have had?'

‘They'll have been involved in situations like the Chechen problems, the 2008 South Ossetia war which kind of rolled over into East Prigorodny, the civil war in Tajikistan, the war in Abkhazia. Dagestan. Georgia. The insurgency in the North Caucasus. Fighting Al-Qaeda in Syria back in 2012. The FSB and Politzia men will have been involved in situations like the Beslan School siege that I mentioned: Alpha group and Vympel. More recently, there have been a string of internal terrorist outrages for them to deal with – or to clear up after. The Moscow market bombing, the Nazran bombing and the Nevsky Express bombing, the Moscow Metro bombings, the Stavropol concert bombing, and of course the Domodedovo International Airport bombing. More recently still, there was the Dnipropetrovsk bombing in Ukraine, and the Makhachkala incident in Dagestan. Anyone dealing with anything more recent than that's probably still in uniform.'

As he finished speaking, he glanced at his watch. ‘
Tishina!
' he ordered.

There was instant silence. Stasis. Robin got the strange notion that even if the man the size of a bus had still been flying through the air he would simply have stopped there and hovered until Ivan's next order. It was unnerving.

‘
Obed!
' he said. ‘
Poshli!
'

‘Time for lunch,' Richard translated cheerfully, as the small army of large Russians trooped off, in step, as though marching to war rather than to the showers and the mess.

‘Time for us to be off, then, said Robin. ‘I know all about Russian lunches. Even the salads are enormous.'

‘And considering what's going on afterwards,' added Richard, ‘there's just too much temptation all round.'

Ivan laughed. ‘It is probably best,' he said. ‘It will be a working lunch in any case. Felix and Uncle Max are keen to get under way. If you want an interesting afternoon, I suggest you go across to
Stalingrad
and watch Captain Zhukov taking Colonel Kebila and
his
special forces aboard.'

He leaned down between Richard and Robin with a huge grin and a boyish wink. ‘But I think you will find that Kebila's special forces are nothing compared to my special forces.'

T
here was tension between the Zubrs right from the start. It was inevitable. When Richard remarked upon it to Robin, asking if she noticed it, she looked at him as though he was slow-witted. ‘Of course there'll be tension; competition!' she said. ‘They may be Russian and African, but they're still
men
!'

And Richard had to admit that she had a point. He had seen it often enough before. And in teams of women as much as in crews of men, to be fair. On one hand, it could hone everyone to performance standards that were almost Olympic. Or on the other it could lead to the kind of aggressive rivalry that led to punch-ups in pubs near football stadiums.

Certainly, Ivan had made it clear that the Spetsnaz men looked down on the local soldiers. And a brief talk that afternoon as Colonel Kebila saw his special forces team aboard
Stalingrad
made it plain that the punctilious officer was equally unimpressed with the Russians. ‘Thugs and bully boys,' he dismissively referred to Ivan's men. ‘Body-builders. We need ballet dancers.'

‘What do you mean?' asked Richard.

‘I mean they are preparing for the wrong sort of war,' shrugged Kebila.

‘They seem to be preparing for every sort of war they can,' countered Richard warily.

‘Except for the correct one. They are going into a situation they have never experienced. Even their so-called
Rus
contingent, the ones who are supposed to have advised various armies in Africa. They have never been in anything like they will find upriver. And as for the rest of them, this is not like Chechnya – it is like Mount Karisoke. It is not Beslan. It is Benin La Bas!'

Richard and Robin looked at each other, wondering where the colonel got his information. ‘So your men have an edge of local knowledge?' asked Robin. Richard returned to the here and now, hoping that Kebila did not hear the undertone of
is that all
? that he himself seemed to discern within the question.

But perhaps he did. ‘It is more than you think,' answered the soilder stiffly. ‘Although they live and train in the city now, these are men of the jungle. Like their fathers, grandfathers and ancestors through the generations, though the focus is not from father to son, as some of your Western traditions are. As the Russian traditions are. You will find none of my people called the equivalent of Ivan Lavrentovich Yagula – because his father is Lavrenty Mikhailovich Yagula and
his
father was Mikhail Ivanovich Yagula! Such traditions tend to exist so that possessions can be passed from one generation to the next, and my people, the Matadi, do not operate like that. The jungle is what we know. Although we make little of the fact. Especially in the face of ignorance and lack of understanding among our Western associates. These men are all Poro. Now, that has its negative aspects, I realize. But they were all initiated at some stage into – what shall we call them? The
mysteries
of the jungle. Those – and there are many – who were raised in the shanty town under the old regime, will have been taken away from their families at a relatively early age and brought up by Poro masters in the forests of the delta. If you remember, when you first came to our country, it was only a step or two from the shanties to the jungles.'

‘So most of your men were raised wild? A bit like Mowgli in the
Jungle Book
?' asked Robin ironically.

She had seen the only negative side of these tribal traditions. The deadly use that ruthless men like General Nlong and Colonel Odem made of the Poro gods like Ngoboi. She had talked to both Anastasia and Celine, who had seen women's hearts ripped still beating from their chests and fed to men with sharpened teeth. Seen the bodies of nuns literally butchered – to be cooked and served to the starving army.

But Richard had also talked to Anastasia and Celine about Esan and Ado – the boy member of a Poro society and the girl member of Sande society. He knew that Ado and Esan had stayed with Celine and Anastasia, guiding them, helping them, tending them – so he knew how the youngsters' knowledge of the wild places had actually kept the two older women alive. Without the kind of jungle lore Kebila was talking about, no one would have survived to tell the tale of Moses Nlong's atrocities. No one would have been able to organize resistance, and – eventually – rescue.

So, next morning, when Ivan asked him in turn about Kebila's comments, Richard didn't waste time asking where the Russian got his information, he simply tried to give a balanced account of what he believed the situation to be. ‘Kebila's point is simple. Your men know a hell of a lot about fighting, but they haven't been briefed on fighting in the sort of terrain you'll face.'

‘And his men have, of course.' Ivan's sandy eyebrow rose quizzically.

‘Since childhood. In the tribal traditions of this place, young boys are taken from their families at a young age and put into groups with older boys and men. They are then taught everything that their teachers know about the jungle – practical, pharmacological and spiritual. Where the trails are. If there are no trails, how to make them. What the calls and cries of all the jungle creatures are and which animal, bird or whatever made them. How to track them, trap them, cook and eat them.'

‘I thought there were almost no animals there. I thought they'd all been slaughtered for bush meat.'

‘Most of them have – but these guys are still trained in what they used to sound like. How they used to behave. How to prepare them. It's an enormous body of lore and knowledge. And they're taught about the plants – which ones kill and which ones heal. God knows, there are one hell of a lot of plants up there, ranging in size from a couple of millimetres to a hundred metres high. It's the kingdom of the plants.' He stopped, drew breath, and met Ivan's highly amused gaze. ‘And, less positively from our Western perspective, perhaps, they're taught about a range of jungle gods and spirits which govern the laws that bind families, tribes and societies together. In the final analysis, that's why General Nlong and Colonel Odem and their kind make the kids who join their armies do such barbaric things – they want to make sure the kids have broken such fundamental Poro laws that their families and tribes are forever closed to them. Otherwise, of course, they'd just vanish into the jungle first chance they get. So they have no alternative but to stay with the Army of Christ the Infant or whoever. They simply have nowhere else to go.'

‘Rape and eat a stranger might be stretching it – but basically OK. Rape and eat your sister and it's a really big no-no. Something along those lines?'

‘Something along those lines,' said Richard, suddenly worried about how seriously Ivan was taking this.

‘Gods and spirits.' Ivan smirked. ‘Primitive superstitions!'

‘They're a useful way of laying down the basic ground rules,' Richard persisted. ‘
If you go there or do this then Ngoboi will get you
and so forth. Keeps the Poro kids in line just as effectively as it does with the kids in the Army of Christ. Same as it does with kids all over the world. Do this and the bogeyman will get you. Break that and you'll have seven years' bad luck … Watch that black cat doesn't cross your path … Don't walk under that ladder … The sea's awash with superstition. Never mind the jungle.'

‘Point taken,' admitted Ivan. ‘Spit on wood … Never carry an empty bucket … Never move house after dark … Never put an empty bottle on the table … Never give knives as a present … Never give a single girl a corner seat …'

‘But there's more,' interrupted Richard. ‘On the one hand, some of the rituals like circumcision are a bit dangerous if not done carefully; on the other hand that's true of an enormous number of religions and societies. It seems to me that some of the more unique rituals associated with the Poro gods do have a positive side – even if they seem a bit barbaric. They teach the kids endurance, individual strength and self-reliance as well as mutual trust. They make them more of a unit. The natural drugs, the dancing, the rites of passage, the visiting of the spirit plane when they're exhausted, stoned and awash with adrenaline – it is all brutal but effective team-building. And I bet your men are doing something equivalent now – testing each other in increasingly dangerous and painful ways, seeing who they can count on when their life's on the line.' Richard didn't mention such concepts as stripping weapons while sitting naked underwater. He didn't need to. Ivan nodded, a good deal of his thoughtlessly patronizing expression vanishing.

‘Even at the end of the ritual, when the kids get covered in scars across their cheeks and chest, they're supposed to represent the claws of the gods dragging them back into the real world and up into manhood. The bigger the scars, the harder the gods had to pull, the greater a warrior they think you'll become. But in many cases the cuts originally made are relatively shallow – then the huge scars are built up by having herbs and so forth rubbed in them. But the point is clear. The rituals build calmness under extremes of pressure and tolerance to extremes of pain.'