Black Pearl (24 page)

Undaunted, the colonel contacted Captain Sanda directly, explained the situation and asked him to get his command ready to sail. Sanda appeared to be quite willing to do so, but seemed to doubt that the minister would be as immediately compliant as the colonel assumed. The line was not of the best quality and there were undertones in the swift Matadi language that Richard could not quite grasp. Certainly, when he broke contact, Kebila was frowning thoughtfully, and Richard was really beginning to wonder what was up.

Kebila stood back from the radio transceiver and gestured to the army operator to resume his schedule of contacts. Richard sat, watching the routine, his mind busy, wondering whether to bother with the radio after all when he could contact Ivan on his Benincom cell phone almost as effectively – as long as the electrical current that the orphanage's generator produced was compatible with the phone's charger.

Both men were still there five minutes later when Robin came into the tent. ‘Has either of you seen the television?' she asked. Richard swung round to look at her, pulling his mind back to the here and now. ‘The news is on,' she said. ‘And it looks as though things are hotting up over the presidential election. There's growing unrest in Granville Harbour, apparently. Talk of riots.'

‘Riots?' asked Richard, stunned. ‘What on earth about?'

‘Apparently Celine gave a TV interview yesterday evening while we were playing hide and seek with Ngoboi and co. It was a pretty routine affair, to begin with, at least, but there was a discussion started by one of the other interviewees that ended up with her being trapped into suggesting that if she won the election she would try and move some of the money spent on welfare and infrastructure in Granville Harbour city into expanding the cooperatives out here. The discussion seems to have got a little heated. Manufactured confrontation – no news like bad news; that sort of thing. There seems little doubt that Celine simply meant that more efficient production in the hinterland would help feed the increasing numbers flocking to the city as prosperity there continues to grow. At least that's what she and her people are saying by way of clarification this morning …'

‘But?' asked Richard.

‘But the whole thing has been spun. It's now being presented as announcing that she will take money from ethnic Matadi tribal city folk in order to support the Kukuyu, Masai and Bantu interlopers who are stealing their jobs and prospects – as well as their traditional farmlands out here.'

‘But the farmlands have been without tenants and allowed to run to seed for decades! The Kikuyu and Bantu farmers are simply the experts who are helping rebuild successful farms, cooperatives and so forth,' said Richard, frowning. ‘Captain Caleb explained it all when he was taking us through the map.'

‘I remember what you told me,' said Robin grimly. ‘But one man's
foreign expert
is another man's
economic invader
.' Robin shrugged. ‘Look how we English have reacted over the years to immigrants from Ireland, the West Indies, India and Pakistan, China, Poland …'

‘I see your point,' rumbled Richard. ‘But surely it was President Chaka himself who invited these people in—'

‘No,' interrupted Kebila. ‘It was a project that Celine espoused as soon as she entered parliament. She was not always the leader of the opposition. She held a minor government post for a while. Rebuilding the farms in the tribal hinterland has always been one of her most precious projects. But this interpretation of her work is something utterly new.'

Richard looked at Robin. ‘
Felix Makarov
…' he mouthed silently.

She nodded, frowning. For it was she, after all, who had begun to suspect that their other Russian business partner was more than capable of mounting a dirty tricks campaign to ensure his man – and his contracts and his promised concessions – got safely back into the presidential palace.

‘But there haven't actually been any riots yet?' asked Richard.

‘No, none,' Robin answered. ‘Yet.'

Kebila suddenly leaned forward to his radio operator. ‘Put me through to the central police station in Granville Harbour,' he ordered. ‘I want to get a full and detailed update from the senior officer on duty …'

Richard stood up, crossed to Robin and steered her towards the tent flap with one arm around her waist. This conversation was unlikely to be one Kebila wanted to share. And it was likely to be lengthy. Therefore he decided to risk his Benincom cell phone after all.

 

‘
Dobryy vecher Reekard
,' said Ivan before switching to English. ‘How are you?' Because Richard had come through on the phone rather than the radio, the conversation started off with gossip rather than business. But that was OK with him as he stood in the dark room looking through the tight-closed window down the slope towards the broad reach of the dark river, trying to work out what were gathering shadows and what were thickening clouds of insects.

‘I'm fine, thanks, Ivan,' he answered. ‘I understand you're beached and jungling up some supper.'

Halfway through his sentence, Richard saw the door, reflected in the window behind the reflection of his shoulder, silently swing open. Anastasia came tiptoeing soundlessly into the room. Their eyes met as though in a mirror – his narrow and thoughtful, hers wide and almost luminous in the shadows. Richard raised his eyebrows, thinking
they really ought to do something about the walls in this place.
Anastasia shook her head, put her finger to her lips and crossed to stand beside him as Ivan talked about supper. Richard tilted the phone so she could hear him. ‘That's about it. We've done a good day's travelling and now we're bedding down in the last comfortable place we can find before we head on inland tomorrow. Except …' There was a sound like a pistol shot. ‘Except for these damned mosquitoes. I'll be sleeping aboard.'

‘We've had some here too,' said Richard sympathetically. ‘You think they're spreading downriver?'

‘Looks like it,' said Ivan. ‘Though God knows where they're coming from.'

‘The jungle,' said Richard, distracted by the eavesdropper and the soft warmth of her breath on the back of his hand.

‘Anyway,' persisted Ivan, blissfully unconscious that his words were being spied upon. ‘It's lucky we brought our food with us. There was some talk of living off the land but it's all come to nothing, as Colonel Mako said it would. Some of the men were certain the river would contain catfish. But no luck yet. I think Zubarov has given up with his rod but he wants to go for a quick swim before we bed down. He says the river mud will help make him mosquito-proof.'

Richard chuckled a little theatrically so that Ivan would hear him over the phone. He glanced at Anastasia, raising his eyebrows again.
Want to join in?
She shook her head. No.

‘You call about anything in particular?' asked Ivan guardedly, coming nearer to the heart of his concerns.
And hers
, thought Richard.

‘Just as agreed,' he said vaguely, still looking at Anastasia's almost luminous gaze. ‘To update you on today – whatever hasn't come to you already from Kebila via Caleb or Zhukov.'

‘Poor old Livitov, you mean. And Brodski, whatever's happened to him. I must be slipping to lose two men like that.'

Richard made no immediate comment but after a moment, he said, ‘Odem's been running rings round us all. With the help of his friend Ngoboi. What happened to Livitov is bad but not your fault.'

‘But still,' said Ivan distantly. ‘When I think of what they did to him. What they probably did to him before that. What might have happened if their plan had worked. To you. And Anastasia … How'd Anastasia take it all?'

Ivan's innocent question brought a new, intense electricity into Richard's room. ‘As you'd expect,' he said blandly once more, wishing the vibrant girl beside him would either get involved or get the hell out. ‘One more reason to catch them and kill them as soon as she can.' She gave a lopsided grin at that and nodded.

‘Has she said anything about me?' Ivan asked.

Richard stopped, apparently to think; actually to look into her intense gaze once again. This time she shook her head more vigorously than ever. Then, ‘No,' he answered truthfully, if tactlessly. ‘She hasn't mentioned you at all.'

‘Well, tell her … Tell her from me …'

Richard and Anastasia never discovered what Ivan wanted him to tell her, for as the unhappy Russian paused for the second time, all hell was let loose. The connection was suddenly full of shouting and swearing that grew so loud Richard pulled the cell phone even further away from his ear. He met Anastasia's eyes; her look was simply agonized. She, like he, was clearly wondering whether Ivan was at the centre of a sudden attack. She opened her mouth to call to him, but his voice came over the connection and prevented her. ‘It's Zubarov, Richard. I've got to go. He went swimming like he said he would – and they say that a crocodile got him. A
crocodile
! A huge one. A monster. Five metres or more. My god! Looks like there's more than mosquitoes coming downriver!'

Z
ubarov's death seemed to Ivan to signal the beginning of an increasingly dark and dangerous time. None of the men were certain they had seen the crocodile that took him; only the kind of disturbance on the dark surface of the benighted river that would be expected if a crocodile had taken him. But as Ivan's swift – yet thorough – enquiry established, none of the witnesses had ever actually seen a crocodile in real life. And those that had – like Mako – hadn't witnessed Zubarov's disappearance. There was no body. But a search of the water and the riverbank revealed nothing, so at last they all went to their quarters aboard and slept as best they could.

Ivan slept little, his head whirling with worries about his missing men, his increasingly drunken and difficult boss, and the mess he seemed to have made of his relationship with his boss's tempestuous daughter, for whom he was rediscovering feelings he had thought long dead.

Next morning began for Ivan and his companions with a quick service for the missing man which Max chivvied along impatiently enough to alienate the popular sergeant's friends, followed by an even quicker breakfast. Then they broke camp, went back aboard and sailed on. Ivan was aboard
Stalingrad
with Max and Captain Zhukov. He started the voyage on the bridge with them, watching as the vista through the clear-view windows darkened – quite literally – in spite of the brightening day. It seemed to Ivan that the trees they were approaching would never stop growing. It was an optical illusion, he knew, but the nearer the drop-off approached, the more massive the palisade of tree trunks seemed to rise – as if they were being thrust up from the ground beneath, closing off the sky ahead as they did so. Sky which, in any case, was darkened by increasingly thick clouds of smoke blown north on the southerly wind, thick enough to dull even the noonday sun. What looked like a wooden wall with foundations of freshwater mangroves from a couple of kilometres out actually looked more like a sheer brown cliff close-up. A cliff with a massive overhang jutting out, seemingly just below the thickening smoke. What really disturbed him was the fact that the fifty-metre-high monsters near the south bank they were sailing along were all too obviously the small relations of the hundred-metre giants further inland – their simple scale seemingly enhanced by the fact that they stood on rising ground.

It came as a relief when Max reminded him that Mako was waiting to give his final briefing on survival and warfare in this particular jungle – and he needed to attend with his men. Max himself attended some of Mako's talks, but by no means all of them. On the one hand, he considered himself the leader of the band bound up the tributary to the lake. On the other he saw no reason why he should burden himself with too many details when he was paying a great deal of money to men whose primary mission might be to get to the lake and secure it for Bashnev/Sevmash, but whose secondary mission, less than a short
vershok
behind of it, was to get Max safely up to the lake and back.

Mako's lecture was beamed from
Volgograd
via a video link in a specially prepared section of the main handling area. Ivan's men were seated there, looking expectantly at the big screen as though awaiting a re-run of
Apocalypse Now.
Mako appeared on screen almost immediately after Ivan arrived. ‘This has to be just about the last of these briefings, men,' boomed the colonel. ‘Though I'll deliver a final pep talk when we disembark. Remember, we got enough clear feedback from Mr Asov's original overflight in the Kamov to be certain it would be a waste of time taking the Zubrs further than the mouth of the tributary. So we go on foot from there. The river is narrow, overgrown, treacherous and increasingly precipitous. We have to prepare for a hard walk in from where we disembark.'

It was not a lecture designed to raise morale, thought Ivan as he watched and listened, his concentration absolute. Then, when it was over, he led his men in applying what Mako had talked about – prioritizing what they had to carry with them, starting with their weaponry. When they had brought it through customs, it had seemed like biggest was best. Now it seemed that lighter was better. Especially when they had to reckon on carrying all the other stuff Mako had warned them they would likely need, starting with food and water. Even the hard men – like Ivan himself – trained to exist for days on end with nothing but rainwater and iron rations, found it hard to calculate what there might be to eat out there in the realm of the big trees. As opposed to what or who might be out there wanting to eat them.

The grim preparations were brought to a halt by the Zubrs' arrival at the mouth of the black river they were going to follow inland and upslope to the lake on the volcano's side. Leaving his men to complete their arrangements, Ivan went back up on to the bridge, where he found Max and Captain Zhukov looking grimly across a sullen heave of black mud as the massive Zubrs settled, side by side. On a screen beside the grim captain, shots from Max's Kamov helicopter showed their landing place from above – and also revealed how swiftly the jungle closed over the black ribbon of the river rolling down towards it. How soon a flash of grey amid the overhanging green warned of the first set of rapids that barred the way to the Zubrs as effectively as the Victoria Falls.