Black Pearl (28 page)

‘My girls are tough,' said Anastasia.

‘I take your point,' said Abiye. ‘We accept them not as a group of women or children but as a battle-hardened unit. And a battle-hardened unit may well be what we need if we are up against Congo Libre's regular army coming across the border under cover of the Army of Christ the Infant!'

‘But,' added Richard softly, ‘Congo Libre has destroyed almost all its native jungle, I understand. And that means that their army won't know how to handle this.' He gave a gesture that included the last of the forest and the first of the virgin jungle. ‘Any more than Max's men seem to do.'

‘That might give us an edge,' agreed Abiye. ‘But whether it's enough will depend on how many of them there are.'

‘And,' added Anastasia, ‘the Army of Christ know all about the jungle.'

‘Right,' said Richard. ‘So they're the ones we go after first. Which was pretty much the plan in the first place, right, Anastasia?'

‘Fucking A,' she said. And as she did so, two things happened at once. The moon came out, flooding the riverbank with cool silver light. And somewhere, deep in the nearby jungle, a leopard gave its full-throated hunting roar. Answered by another and another, almost as if they were echoes.

The next twelve hours passed for Richard like the night watches aboard a ship. He was used to keeping going with little or no sleep, but he entered a dreamlike state where his concentration on the immediate was so intense that the passage of hours went past in a flash. So that seemingly all too soon after the moon rose and the leopards gave their coughing roars, a cold grey light filtered out of the high blue sky through a veil of smoke from Karisoke's crest, and they found themselves suddenly high on the mountainside, with the river in a deep gorge on their left-hand side. And it was dawn. Though, with the sun low on the far side of the mountain, there would be no direct sunlight until noon.

The little group were gathered together at the crest of another cliff, in a strange, grey-misted space between two huge trees. One standing tall, the other lying broken. This step of the mountainside seemed more substantial than any they had encountered so far. And, as if to emphasize this, the tallest tree they had come across gripped the rocky soil with a wide reach of gnarled roots and then soared what looked like a hundred metres straight up. Beyond it, the jungle seemed to fall away, as though some natural disaster had warped and stunted it. Beyond the giant tree's massive canopy, the grey, smoke-smeared sky hung sullenly low above the south-western slopes in a way that tricked off something in Richard's memory. He crossed to the enormous trunk and touched it, stroking it almost mindlessly, lost in deepest thought.

Anastasia joined him. ‘What a lookout post this would make,' she said, echoing a thought he hadn't even realized he was thinking.

Neither team had actually reckoned on the Russians leaving ropes and bridges for them to follow. Both leaders knew very well that they would need to climb cliffs. Therefore both teams were equipped with such basic climbing equipment as they thought they might require. Whereas employing these in the rock faces they had come up so far might have been a slower, more difficult job, the rough bark of the huge tree presented very little difficulty. It was at once deeply ridged and yet sturdily attached to the trunk itself. And Corporal Oshodi proved to be a very able climber. Armed with a pair of binoculars that communicated wirelessly with a hand-held tablet, the twin of the one with which Mako had explored the overhanging mangroves during Ngoboi's first visit, he went up the tree in a way that reminded Richard irresistibly of a squirrel.

Oshodi had to climb little more than two-thirds of the way up the tree before a broad branch gave him a perfect lookout point. And Abiye's hand-held tablet showed a scene of devastation that spread away into the grey distance. And, although the angle was a very different one, the picture jogged Richard's memory and the whole thing fell into place. Oshodi's binoculars were scanning above the tops of the trees that had been damaged all those years ago by the combination of the volcanic eruption and the gas cloud. For there, in the distance, rearing higher than the twisted and stunted vegetation, but even more depressing in its ruined majesty, stood Cite La Bas. ‘My God!' breathed Richard. ‘I hadn't realized we had come so far! We must be nearly there!' Oshodi traversed right, showing the slope falling away westwards to the next valley slope, the barrier that had trapped the invisible gas, turning it into a poisonous lake for long enough to snuff out all the life in the city that had survived the terrible lava flow, whose long black scar could still be seen in the distance.

Then Oshodi traversed left, sweeping the binoculars' enhanced vision back across the dead city to the upwards slopes below Karisoke's smoking caldera and Lac Dudo. Here, it was clear that many of their worst fears were likely to be realized. For the air above the lake was busy. There were helicopters hovering there, coming and going through plumes of smoke.

Oshodi shinned another fifty or so metres upward. The new angle gave more of an idea what was going on at the lakeside. Makeshift buildings sat, their roofs just visible above the jungle down-slope of the lake. It seemed to Richard that here was where the main concentration of workers appeared to be. And maybe more than mere workers, he thought, eyes narrowing. Certainly, here was where skeletal guard towers stood. There looked to be activity all around the lake's shore, but whoever was in charge had found the thick jungle on the upslope far more difficult to clear. The last picture showed the damaged dams and sluices which had allowed the pearls that had set all this in motion to escape. There was a considerable number of workers there. Trying to effect repairs, perhaps. Certainly, what they were doing seemed important – and would therefore bear closer scrutiny – for they seemed to be surrounded by guards.

Richard looked up as the picture went blank to find both Anastasia and Abiye looking expectantly at him. ‘It seems clear that we'll have to cross the river,' he said quietly. ‘It may be more difficult to get up the far bank, but the extra effort should be worth it. The jungle upslope will give us better cover when we get up to the lake itself – we'll be able to get closer to whatever's going on. And the extra height above the lake will be an advantage too.'

‘And,' said Anastasia, ‘if we're going to cross the river, then this looks like just the place to do it.'

The second tree was almost identical to the first, except that it had surrendered its grip on the thin soil of the far bank and crashed sideways across the seventy-metre gap that separated the banks at the lip of the cliff. It had clearly fallen a little way upslope and then rolled down into its present position. Most of the upper branches, that would have formed a considerable barrier, had snapped off as it settled and lay scattered around now. The lower branches, less dense if more massive, reached outwards in shattered stumps or hung down between the sheer rocky banks almost as far as the writhing surface of the water at the edge of the fall. ‘Right,' he said. ‘Let's get busy.'

They used the same technique as Oshodi had to secure lines on to the bank and the rough bark of the tree. This time it was Esan and Ado who worked their way nimbly and swiftly across, getting to the far bank with the safety lines anchored firmly behind them in little more than the time it took for Oshodi to shin back down to the jungle floor. Then, one by one, they began to pick their way across the makeshift bridge. Abiye sent two of his most reliable men to join Ado and Esan at the far side and the four of them immediately set up a secure guard point. Abiye and Anastasia did the same here, and Richard stayed with them, keeping a careful lookout. The men picked their way across and the Amazons followed them until there was only Abiye, Anastasia and Richard left.

Abiye went first, then Richard followed him and Anastasia watched Richard's back while following closely behind him. The trunk was wide enough even for someone as massive as Richard to cross with relative ease, though he found that after ten metres or so he had to crouch in order to negotiate the shattered branches that stood out from the main trunk, proceeding hand over hand from shattered stump to shattered stump, grateful for the rope. He did not look down, but he could not resist looking up at the river that ran hypnotically towards him, the gorge becoming deeper and narrower like a funnel mouth gathering the water inwards towards the falls themselves. Further upstream, the river vanished round a bend into the jungle. But Richard was able to estimate that the main sluice system must begin little more than seven kilometres further upriver. They'd be there by lunchtime with luck.

Richard did not pause while making these observations but continued to work his way along the thickening tree trunk towards the bank side clearing on the opposite lip of the chasm, where the rest of the little command stood waiting for Abiye, Anastasia and him. Just as he reached the thickest part of the fallen trunk, however, where the branches stopped and there was no choice but to stand up and walk that last fifteen metres, the wood beneath him seemed to leap and shudder. Richard froze, looking upstream. The sound of the waterfall below him was so overpowering that he never really registered that there might be another clamour associated with the quaking of the fallen tree. But then he glanced to the shore ahead of him. Everyone there was looking around in consternation too. Abiye was running across the last five metres of the trunk. Even as Richard looked, the corporal threw himself through the wall of roots and into the welcoming arms of his command, trailing the end of the safety rope behind him. Richard crouched, feeling the trunk with his fingers like a doctor taking a pulse. The rough wood juddered once again.

Richard realized in a flash that what he was feeling was something greater than the power of the waterfall. He glanced upstream once again, but there was nothing. He looked back towards Anastasia. Her eyes were wide and her face sheet-white. And abruptly Richard could see why. Her end of the tree was reacting to whatever was happening much more actively than his still-rooted end. Without thinking, he turned round and began to scramble back towards her. No sooner did he do so than the tree shook for a third time – more fiercely yet. Frowning, Richard looked up into the sky, wondering whether Karisoke was erupting. But no – the smear of grey smoke was just the same as it had been. Whatever was happening here had nothing to do with the volcano.

And somewhere in Richard's head, a penny dropped. The men he had seen through Oshodi's binoculars working on the sluices. They hadn't been fixing them. They had been getting ready to blow them up. The logic was inescapable. Why had he not seen it before? The only thing standing between Han Wuhan and the black, coltan-rich mud was the water. And the only things holding the water in place were Dr Kuozumi's dams and sluices.

Five minutes or so after that first disturbing vibration, there was likely to be a wall of water coming down into that steep-sided rock funnel at more than seventy kilometres per hour.

And the tree was going to be right in its way.

R
ichard had never seen Anastasia so frightened. He walked towards her, using his left hand to reach for any stubs of branches that promised stability, holding his right hand out towards her, and forcing all the reassurance that he could muster into his expression. ‘Come on, Nastiya, he said, although he knew she couldn't hear him. ‘It's all right. We'll make it.' Her fierce gaze switched from his eyes to his extended hand. In an instant, she had attached herself to it like a limpet to a rock. He turned slowly and began to lead her on across. Since he had first realized what must be going on upstream, he had been counting at the back of his mind. It was an old habit – a childish accomplishment self-taught through seemingly endless night watches. One count per second. He was at one hundred and fifty now. If he got to three hundred and they were still out here, he thought grimly, that would be five minutes elapsed. The wave would be upon them. Then they could well be in trouble.

Richard moved slowly and carefully, however. But, as he reached two hundred, he began to feel that speed might be of the essence after all. Especially as the trembling of the tree trunk beneath him seemed to be worsening moment by moment. Still, he reached across with his left hand, steadying the pair of them against one branch after another, holding Anastasia steadily with his right and keeping a careful eye on Corporals Abiye and Oshodi – and the others who were pulling in the safety rope like a slow motion tug of war team.

It was Abiye's gesture that warned him. The gesture, for he would not have heard even the loudest shout. The roots seemed tantalizingly close at hand, the bank immediately beneath his toecaps. But Anastasia was still behind him grabbing his hand so hard that she had almost dislocated his shoulder. He followed Abiye's gesture and looked upstream. A wall of water came round the bend, exploding out of the jungle with the speed of a striking snake. The crest of the thing stood well over two metres high and seemed to be extended by a considerable mat of water hyacinth. Richard pulled Anastasia forward desperately, twisting his shoulder joint painfully as she froze, just a step or two short of safety. Richard turned to face her at last, angry and frustrated, made a little reckless by the fact that he at least was above solid ground.

Anastasia was frozen all right. But not with fear. For there, spread face-up on the approaching mat of water hyacinth, speeding towards the waterfall at the better part of fifty kph, was Ivan. Richard saw the future in a flash – the wall of water, high though it was, would not push Ivan far enough up to reach the tree. Instead he would be hurled into the branches hanging over the last of the river before the fall. But hitting those branches at that speed would be like a car crash. Ivan would be smashed against them by the force of the speeding hyacinth mat. What was needed here was quick thinking, brawn, and sheer bloody insanity in more or less equal doses.