Black Pearl (16 page)

So it was, as Robin observed to Richard later, the mud and not the man that saved her.

‘I
van! My God, what have you done to her?' cried Robin, simply horrified.

At first glance it looked as though Anastasia had been shot in the head. The side of her face and the T-shirt that clung to her like a coat of paint were liberally splattered with a thick red mess. Her short hair hung in mud-thick, red rats' tails. Her mouth gaped and her eyelids flickered, showing nothing but white between the trembling lashes.

‘Nothing!' snarled the Russian angrily. ‘The silly little
zaychek
keeled over the moment she saw me. This is red mud, not blood. But I couldn't think of anywhere else to bring her, except to you.' He held her out a little helplessly, like a child with a broken toy. There was more than anger in his eyes. There was pain and confusion. And Robin suddenly started feeling sorry for him.

She looked across her cabin at the bed which was only just large enough to accommodate Richard and herself. It was made up with a pristine, perfectly starched white cotton sheet. She closed her eyes, closed the case she had just put on it and swung it on to the floor. ‘Put her down here, Ivan,' she said wearily. ‘Then go and get a medic. And Richard. In the meantime, leave her to me.'

No sooner had Ivan closed the door behind himself when the Russian girl's eyes opened. ‘Was that Ivan Lavrentovitch?' she asked Robin, her voice soft and croaky. ‘Or was I dreaming?'

‘Ivan as ever was,' said Robin bracingly. ‘Though you look a bit of a nightmare, young lady. Did he hit you or something?'

‘I fainted.' Her rasping voice was somewhere between wonderment and outrage. ‘I took one look at the big ox and keeled over. It was like I was in a romantic novel. Anna Karenina! Emma Bovary! Pathetic!'

‘Are you sure he didn't hit you? You look dreadful.'

‘The only thing that hit me was the ground. And I was lucky it was mud instead of concrete. I went down so fast, anything really solid would probably have impacted like Anna Karenina's bloody train!'

Richard announced his presence at that moment, pushing his head round the door. His arrival was a relief to Robin, who was beginning to find the literary references a little testing. But at least she knew that Anna Karenina threw herself under a train near the end of Tolstoy's novel.

‘Ivan's gone looking for the medic,' said Richard. Then he registered the two pairs of eyes looking less than charitably towards him. ‘How are you feeling?' he asked Anastasia solicitously.

‘I'm in shock and in pain and in need of a huge vodka and a long shower. In that order,' Anastasia announced, sounding for once very much like her father.

‘But this is a dry ship!' Richard said, almost outraged.

‘Is my
otets
aboard?' demanded Anastasia.

‘Well, yes … Max has a cabin just up the corridor. As it happens …'

‘Then it's not dry. Go get me some paternal vodka.' She changed from a wounded harridan to an injured kitten in a twinkling. ‘
Please
, Richard …'

‘All right. But I know when I'm being ruthlessly manipulated …'

Richard arrived at Max's cabin to find that Ivan had beaten him to it. The Russians were in the middle of a heated debate which under most social circumstances would have been private. But Ivan hadn't closed the door and Max hadn't told him to. Richard hesitated uncharacteristically for a moment, testing his Russian to the utmost both in terms of vocabulary and understanding. For although the last couple of Ivan's words came loud and clear, Max's reply was anything but.

‘You know very well what the problem is!' Ivan was saying. ‘
Simian Artillery
. Or, more particularly, the lead singer, Boris
whatshisname
!'

‘He left his brains on the ceiling. That's all there is to him!' slurred Max angrily. ‘He was lucky we didn't just stake him out and pile his guts on his chest so he could watch himself die in the old way …'

Richard thought that this was probably more information than he strictly required – especially as his Russian was not really up to the task of translating Max's slurred voice with absolute accuracy. His understanding of what his business partner had just said would probably not stand up in court, for instance. ‘Excuse me,' he asked, feeling as English as Bertie Wooster – and suspecting that Bertie was asking a thoroughly redundant question. ‘Have you any vodka handy, Max?'

‘Richard! Is that you? Yes, I have vodka. Naturally I have vodka. Russian vodka. But who do you want it for, my poor, teetotal friend?'

He knew how the truth would play out.
It's for your daughter
would be answered by
I have no daughter!
Like dialogue from a Victorian melodrama. So he lied. ‘It's for Robin. You know she likes a good solid belt of alcohol every now and then, Max. Well, tonight's the night …'

Max gave a grunt of ribald amusement. ‘
Tonight's the night
, eh?' he said. ‘Then only the best will do.' He reached down into a case on the far side of his bed and pulled out a bottle of Stolichnaya
Elit.
‘Tell her it's with my love,' he said, handing it over. ‘No. With
your
love
, eh?'

‘You can rely on it,' said Richard, taking the bottle and finding himself awestruck by the fact that it was so cold his hand nearly stuck to it.

When he got back to the cabin, he found the women in a conversation about Anastasia's childhood and her relationship with both the Ivans who had filled her young life. The conversation stopped when he entered, however. He crossed to the tiny en-suite shower room, reached over to the basin and lifted out a tooth glass. ‘Your father says it's the best,' he said, pouring a single measure and passing it over to her. And failing to mention that Max meant it for Robin, not the disinherited Anastasia.

‘Did he?' she said. ‘Then I'll need to have enough so I can taste it.' She held out her hand for the bottle, and when Richard passed it over she filled the glass to the brim, then tossed it back in three great swallows. She rested both the glass and the bottle on the red wreck of the bed, one on either side of her hips, eyes closed. Her whole body rigid. Then she took one great, shuddering breath. ‘So,' she said. ‘Bring me up to date before I drag myself off to the orphanage showers.'

‘I thought you knew that Colonel Kebila was going to use this area for his first base,' said Richard with a glance across to Robin, who had been the Skypemistress of the trip so far and therefore the head of communications. ‘He plans to set up camp here – using any of the orphanage facilities you can share, and then send out patrols to secure the farmland and protect the farmers in the cooperatives as necessary – while tracking and catching Odem and his Army of Christ.'

‘He thinks they're on this side of the river?' she asked, frowning.

‘They could be, he thinks.'

‘He could be right. I had the feeling I was being watched just before I bumped into Ivan. Esan, Ado and I were pretty certain someone was spying on us from the jungle on the bank just a little way from here.'

‘Then Kebila may have arrived just in time,' said Richard. ‘If whoever was watching you was a point man for the Army of Christ, this lot will scare him away. Even if it was Odem himself, he'll think twice about taking on Colonel Kebila and his command. But I'd better pass on your intelligence to him just in case. Unless you want to report to him yourself.'

‘Looking like this? I think not, Richard.' The vodka was mellowing her. He could almost see the strain draining out of her long, slim body.

‘I'll talk to him then. Better safe than sorry,' decided Richard, thinking of the way Mako had struck at Ivan just in that second before the big Russian was ready. That might be a stratagem that could appeal to Odem if his army was close at hand, given that it was probably as well equipped as Ivan's men were. ‘But he's bound to want to check with you, Ado and Esan.'

‘I'd better get moving then,' said Anastasia. She swung her legs off the bed. ‘Unless,' she said, ‘I can shower here and borrow a towel and a change of clothes from you, Robin.'

‘Well, of course,' said Robin without thinking. Then she saw the implications of her generosity. She shot a slightly hunted look at her suitcase and the wisps of silk and lace that were bulging out of its ill-closed side.

‘Fear not,' said Anastasia. ‘I won't steal any frillies. Just lend me a shirt and some jeans and I'll go commando.'

Richard was deep in conversation with Kebila in his makeshift office – the captain's day room – when Anastasia arrived. She had brought Ivan with her, and Kebila nodded at the huge man companionably enough as he joined the conference as of right. Richard found himself marvelling at how fast the couple seemed to have mended fences – to the extent that they had achieved a sort of armed truce, at any rate – and speculated as to whether vodka had played any part in their reconciliation.

‘Thank you for coming so swiftly,' said Kebila, rising and gesturing Anastasia to a seat. ‘What Captain Mariner tells me you experienced may be of the greatest importance. I have sent a man to the orphanage to ask Esan and Ado to join us. I expect your stories to match what Captain Mariner has told me and when they do, I will use this information as the basis of my strategy.'

When Esan and Ado arrived mere moments later, they confirmed that someone had been secretly watching them from the jungle close to where they were completing their route march. On this side of the river, therefore. And no – they had never experienced this feeling before, they explained to Richard, who got the question in a moment or so before Ivan. And, no – no one local had ever spied on them. It was not in the nature of the local farmers or the townspeople, all of whom called and whistled when the Amazons ran by, they explained to Ivan, who nodded and said that Russians were the same. Open. Honest.

Sexist, thought Richard. Antediluvian.

So, by the time the six of them had finished their conference, Kebila's mind was made up. It was his mission to set up camp here and then to seek and destroy the Army of Christ. But the army, it seemed, had come to him. Chance had given him the opportunity of completing his mission more quickly than he could ever have dreamed. All he had to do was get enough of his men ashore and he could send out the first patrols tonight.

‘I can call for air support from dawn,' he said. ‘I can have planes within half an hour, attack helicopters within one hour and troop transports within two, if I need more boots on the ground.' He looked at Richard and Ivan. ‘We have the Chegdu Jian sevens which can get up there at twice the speed of sound. They are armed with a range of weaponry effective against troops and light armour on the ground. We have the Hip and Hind attack helicopters with gattlings and hellfires. And the Eurocopter Super Puma transports. All armed, fuelled and ready to go!' He rubbed his hands in anticipation. ‘With any luck, we could have settled things with Odem within a day or two.'

‘And in the meantime,' said Ivan quietly, ‘while you're looking after our main worry here, we can take the second Zubr and head straight upstream in the morning. You could have your mission finished within days. And, if Odem and his army are down here fighting with you, then there's nothing between us and Lac Dudo – so we could get our mission completed in record time as well!'

B
ut it wasn't quite as easy as that. In spite of the care with which the plans had been drawn back in Granville Harbour, there was no way Kebila was able to move his entire command ashore swiftly enough to get his camp set up overnight. No more than Ivan and Mako could move the Russians out of their cramped quarters to fill the spaces left by Kebila's troops. On the other hand, Richard and Robin had come packed and dressed for bush work, even if some of Robin's underwear was more suited to bedroom work, and even though at least two items had already come ashore with Anastasia. Richard's main interest in the long term might be the lake, but Robin's more immediate concern – and therefore his own – was for the safety of Anastasia, her colleagues and the orphans they were guarding against the Army of Christ.

The Mariners' kit followed Robin's shirt and jeans off the hovercraft pretty quickly, therefore, and they were moved into the orphanage's cramped but comfortable guest room, to which the clothing was returned almost immediately as Anastasia dressed in her own attire. No sooner had Robin settled in than she was off, making the acquaintance of the orphanage staff and as many of the children as she could find on whom to practise her increasingly fluent Matadi. Richard only caught one distant view of her, already at the refectory's high table, talking animatedly between mouthfuls of modest supper.

The truth of the matter, thought Richard as he strode through the ordered chaos in the orphanage's great square playground, was that it was going to take another full day at least to get the rest of Kebila's men as well sorted out as Robin and he were. It was fortunate that the expanse of the orphanage's central area opened on to fallow fields which allowed Kebila's men to set up camp in the very area that might be most exposed to sneak attack. But erecting the tents and getting the men fed and organized was slow work, even if the Russians were catered for by the teams aboard the hovercraft.

And the situation was exacerbated by the fact that Kebila was as good as his word, thought Richard, as he went past the inner perimeter, chewing on the last of a
Kyinkyinga
– a meat and vegetable kebab dusted with peanut powder then wrapped in flat bread – which he had grabbed in passing when it became clear that he and Robin were not going to share their usual dinner
a deux
. The first squad of men who had come into the open area at the heart of the orphanage in the early darkness did not stop to help set up camp. They were fed first – and then focused on unpacking arms and equipment and preparing to go out into the jungle immediately. Anastasia, Ado and Esan agreed to guide them to the point where they had felt themselves being secretly observed. And, for no reason other than that he was on hand and at a loose end, Richard decided that he would go with them as well.