Black Pearl (26 page)

‘I'll get ready. We'll decide final details when
Volgograd
arrives.'

‘In the meantime,
Otobo
can stay at Malebo, ready to support
Stalingrad
if Odem tries to break out of the jungle and cross the river – or to support you in Granville Harbour if there really are serious riots,' continued Richard, confirming Kebila's thoughts. ‘Or to support Sergeant Tchaba, Anastasia and the rest of us here if anything else goes wrong.'

‘Right,' said Kebila decisively. ‘I'll get busy.' And he turned away from them, tacitly dismissing them.

‘Are you all right?' Robin asked Anastasia. ‘You went very pale there.'

‘I'm fine,' snapped Anastasia. ‘Thank you.'

‘You can probably speak to Ivan soon, after Colonel Kebila's finished,' persisted Robin gently. ‘He'll be busy by the sound of it, but they have their cell phones – until the batteries die, at any rate. I'm sure he'd make time for a quick word with you. Then you can check whether he's all right.'

Anastasia stopped, frozen with an uncontrollable reaction to Robin's innocent words. She was suddenly so full of rage that she had to let it out or simply erupt like Karisoke. ‘
Speak to Ivan!
Why would I want to speak to
Ivan
? Why should I even care whether that big
oslayob
's alive or
dead
?' she shouted and stomped off, leaving Richard and Robin looking after her in simple wonder.

‘Wow!' exclaimed Richard. ‘Is it just me – or is that
love
?'

‘Very funny!' spat Robin. ‘What's an
oslayob
?'

‘As I understand it, the word
oslayob
suggests someone is a very close friend indeed of various members of the equine family. And I'm not talking about teenage girls and ponies.' He shook his head and gave a lopsided grin. ‘Like I said, it looks like love to me!'

But Robin wasn't so sure. All things considered, it might well be hate.

The next time Richard and Robin saw Anastasia, she was pounding out into the farmland at the head of her team of Amazons, her expression as black as thunder. Ado and Esan were at her shoulders and twenty Amazons behind them, barely looking more cheerful.

The afternoon was wearing on.
Volgograd
was due soon after sunset and Kebila had got his men ready to depart either aboard the Zubr or aboard the Super Pumas. Tchaba's augmented command of twenty experienced soldiers were finishing an early supper preparing to take over the night patrol after the rest of their companions had gone. Kebila was leaving them a good range of transport – a sixteen-seater Zodiac with extra fuel in case they needed to go on the water, a truck in case they needed to go upcountry, a chopper – engineer and pilot, fuel and spares. And an equally impressive range of arms and equipment, from MANPAD portable rocket systems to the SA80 assault rifles with the under-barrel grenade launcher he had just bought for his whole command, along with tents, a field kitchen, cooks and makeshift mess hall as well as any other supplies and support he felt they needed, for all in all they were too large a contingent to rely on the orphanage's accommodation, supplies or kitchens. But it was clear to Richard that the departing colonel did not really view Tchaba and his men as much more than a guard unit – certainly not a front-line combat unit, for all his protestations. And, in Richard's own mind at least, they were nothing like a match for Anastasia and her Dahomey Amazons.

In the face of the bustle in the camp, Richard and Robin joined the orphans for dinner once again and enjoyed a powerful fish and groundnut
maafe
– a stew accompanied with starchy, dough-like cassava
fufu
and
klouikloui
crisp fried rings of peanut butter. Halfway through the meal, Anastasia and her girls, and Ado and Esan returned, drenched in perspiration but in no better frame of mind. They dumped their packs and their weapons in a corner much to the disgust of the priest and the nuns, then they sat together hunched in a circle with their backs to most of the rest of the room, sharing a big bowl of the fufu which they rolled into balls and dipped in the maafe stew as they whispered.

Kebila arrived soon after to inform Richard and Robin that
Volgograd
had arrived. So the rest of the evening was a whirl of embarkation and departure. Both the Russians and Caleb's Zubr crew had battlefield-trained medics but all the wounded were too severely hurt to move. So Kebila filled his Super Pumas with his troops and whirled away, while
Volgograd
inflated her skirts again and swept downriver with the rest of the colonel's command. Richard and Robin got to bed earlier than usual. Exhausted, they went straight to sleep.

Richard woke at midnight, certain that something was going on. He reached across and felt Robin's hip. She rolled over and snored quietly. But he was certain he had heard an almost silent movement. The quietest of groans. In the pitch blackness he swung his legs out of bed and padded towards the door. It took him a moment to find it and feel his way down to the handle. Then he opened it and peered into the corridor. Silence. Stillness. The whole camp seemed at rest. He crept back to bed, and eventually fell asleep.

But he found that he wasn't surprised to find out in the morning that Anastasia, Ado, Esan and the Amazons had vanished, along with the Zodiac Kebila had left behind. And a good deal of the arms and equipment Tchaba's men had been supplied with.

‘I
cannot go,' said Tchaba. ‘My place is here. And, besides, my foot …' He did not add,
you stole my lucky boots.
But he was thinking it, decided Richard.

‘Then who can you send?' asked Richard. ‘Who's your next best man?'

‘Corporal!' called Tchaba by way of answer. The man who responded was wiry and slight. His face looked as though it had been clawed by angry leopards.

‘This is Corporal Sani Abiye,' said Tchaba. ‘He is the best jungle man in the regiment. If I send anyone, it will be Corporal Abiye.'

‘You know you will have to send someone,' persisted Richard. ‘Miss Asov is a close friend of Celine Chaka, who is perhaps the next president. She's a national heroine after killing Moses Nlong. You can be certain she's gone into the forest after the other Russians – and Odem. You have to check at the very least.'

Robin was at breakfast. The sound of the chopper warming up gave her a good idea of what was going on and the look on Richard's face as he strode between the tables told her everything else she needed to know. ‘They're going after her,' she said. ‘And I take it you're going with them.'

He sat down opposite her. ‘Look, darling,' he said, his bright blue gaze burning into hers. ‘The last time Anastasia went off the rails it was you who pulled her out. You got her up from the gutter in Moscow, into rehab and into the recovery programme. Now it's my turn. I'll stay with Corporal Abiye and his men. I won't take unnecessary risks, I promise. Then I'll watch her back if we find her and I'll bring her back out if I can. Besides,' he cajoled. ‘
Abiye
is Yoruba for
born to live forever
. What's the worst that can happen?'

Richard had attended every one of Mako's briefings possible and he felt confident that he was up to speed with the requirements of armaments and equipment, with the rules and expectations and the basics of jungle warfare.

Until the Super Puma lifted off and left him standing with Corporal Abiye and his ten-man squad on the scimitar-shaped tongue of black mud last visited by the Zubrs. And, presumably, by Anastasia's Zodiac RIB, though there was no sign of the inflatable vessel any more than there was of
Stalingrad
, which was presumably patrolling somewhere further upstream. Nor, as he looked around the set, scarred faces of the Poro-trained jungle experts, was there any sign of kit or survival equipment – anything much other than the guns, grenades and matchets they all carried. Except for the two beefiest, who also shouldered MANPADS man portable missile systems. Previous experience with the Benin La Bas army had made Richard expect headphones and a central comms set. But no. Abiye was clearly going to do this the traditional Poro way.

The corporal squatted on the balls of his feet with his SA80 across his knees, leaning the weight of his forearms on the weapon as he studied the tracks and footprints on the driest surface at the crest of the mud bank. He spoke rapidly, making no allowance for Richard's shaky grasp of the local language. ‘The footprints all head into the forest,' he observed, his quiet voice as ravaged as his scarred cheeks. ‘Two sets. Russians, heel-down with heavy backpacks and lots of equipment. Going with confidence; returning with dead and wounded. The effects of the hovercraft lift-off over the top of those. Then another set of Russians again, still overloaded but a lot less confident. On the balls of their feet – almost tiptoeing.

‘Then the second set: lighter, over the top of everything else, laden on one shoulder only. Recent. Only just beginning to dry. The children, carrying their rigid inflatable boat. They'll want to have hidden it carefully, I suspect, as it is their only line of retreat. Let's see how good they are. If we find it, then they're nowhere near good enough.'

But the tracks of Anastasia's Amazons that the corporal followed so confidently at first vanished at the edge of the forest, which seemed interesting to Richard and instructive to the men he was with, because the Russians' tracks remained all too easy to follow, both before and after they had been caught by the improvised explosive device Odem had wrapped around the unfortunate Brodski. Richard remained uncharacteristically quiet as the patrol spread out to search among the trees, challenged by Abiye's observation to find the Zodiac. But it seemed to him that the Russians' tracks were the ones to follow in any case. Now that they were certain Anastasia was here, these would be the tracks she would be following herself. And after ten minutes of searching they knew that they were wasting their time looking for the Zodiac.

They hardly needed to follow the tracks through the giant ferns between the enormous tree trunks to the clearing where Odem's trap had sprung. The smell would have let them follow their noses. Corporal Abiye stopped them well back from the edge of the clearing. A few silent flicks of his hands spread them out so that the only people in anything like proximity to each other were Abiye and Richard himself. Only when he was certain his men were in position did the corporal step forward. Richard went with him – until another silent gesture halted him. But he was able to make out the killing ground clearly: the shattered stump where Brodski must have hung, still perhaps five metres high. The sphere of withering destruction that resulted in a circle of blackened debris on the ground – all of it alive with insects; some of it iridescent with beautiful blue-winged butterflies. The column of blast damage reaching up and up the towering tree trunks into the shattered branches, splintered twigs and decimated leaves hundreds of feet above. Abiye gestured again, stepping silently back. The rest of the command coalesced soundlessly out of the shadows, becoming visible only as they drew near. The corporal gave an infinitesimal gesture with his head and led them off around the bomb site, following the upward inclination of the ground beneath his feet as they began to follow the path of the black river.

They picked up the Russians' track again immediately. Richard reckoned he could have followed it himself without any special Poro training. There were clear footprints pushed into the leaf mould between the hacked banks of fern. And every now and then, in spite of what Mako no doubt would have wished, scorched patches where the men had jungled up something to eat or drink. Soon enough, Abiye was also able to point silently with the tip of his matchet to half-buried, fly-covered piles of excrement and paper where the men had relieved themselves at the side of their path.

But it was only Richard's blind faith which kept him certain that Anastasia and her Amazons were following Max's men. For where the Russians left an abundance of signs, Anastasia's command left none. Nor did Abiye's, and for much the same reason. None of them was heavily laden. Even Richard was carrying nothing more than a water bottle, a backpack, his phone and his weapons. The soldiers were dressed in uniform trousers, vests and headgear. Richard's thornproof slacks, shirt and waisted bush jacket made him feel overdressed. But he seemed to have chosen well in the matter of high-sided boots into which his trouser cuffs were tucked. On the other hand, he was the only one bareheaded – in spite of the fact that sunlight was a distant memory kept out by the thickening canopy that spread ever higher above.

They kept inland of the Russians' route along the river bank and Richard at first wondered why – but then, as the sounds of rushing waters gathered into the first series of rapids, Abiye's logic became clear – distance from the noisy water made the jungle sounds easier to hear. Not that there were many. Especially as the invisible sun so far above them rose to its overpowering zenith. Every surface was suddenly running with condensation, as though the entire jungle was sweating. In his shirt and jacket, Richard found it hard to breathe. His heat-assaulted mind began to fantasize that the amount of perspiration soaked up by his inappropriate clothes was actually weighing him down.

Abiye did not call a halt as they marched silently up the steepening hillside. He simply gestured, and his command spread like shadows into the jungle once more. Richard doggedly focused on the corporal's scrawny shoulders and sweat-soaked T-shirt vest, paying no attention to the fact that they were suddenly all but alone. A glance over his shoulder, however, assured him that the men carrying the portable missiles were still close behind, seemingly as fiercely focused on his back as he was on the corporal's.

The four of them weren't alone for long, however. The questing men returned. Richard found himself between two noiseless soldiers. One carried a length of vine that looked like a short fat snake. He held it up and made a pantomime of putting one end to his lips. Richard took it, did so, and found his mouth filled with sweet water. He sipped judiciously until he felt his body quicken and his mind clear. The second soldier passed him a small hand of tiny red bananas. Richard peeled the fruit and ate its slightly astringent flesh, keeping his sharpening attention on the others around him doing the same, noticing that they did not drop the skins. They eased across the track they were following and broke through to the river, just at a point where its roaring dwindled. Here there was a pool in the midst of the rapids with a low waterfall above it and a rushing sluice below. Abiye gestured and the banana skins went into the water, vanishing down the sluice so that they would continue to leave the minimum of signs behind them.