Luca crept forward, his eyes moving between the footprints and the bushes in front. At most, they could see only a couple of metres ahead of them. Following them like this was madness. The LRA could be lying at their feet and they wouldn’t even know it.
They continued on towards the riverbank, moving in absolute silence. They stifled their breathing, senses straining for the slightest sound. There were more footprints, then a whole scattering of them from where the patrol had evidently converged into a single group. The footprints led to a patch of high river reeds and Luca parted the foliage to reveal the open water beyond.
There on the opposite bank were LRA soldiers. They were standing in a group with their rifles in their hands, while one of them was crouching down with a torch, shining it into the depths of the tunnel.
‘Not this,’ Luca groaned, his eyes passing from one soldier to the next. A shout went up as Bear was ripped from the
darkness
, her long hair spilling in front of her face as she blinked in the harsh light.
Joshua put his hand on Luca’s shoulder.
‘There’s nothing you can do for her now,’ he said.
Bear stumbled, dropping down on to one knee. She could see the ring of soldiers all around her, their rifles thrusting into the air as they shouted. A few metres in front of her stood the Captain. His back was towards her, huge, hulking shoulders moving as he laughed. The noise was deep and resonant, a cruel sound that rocked his entire body. She could see the sweaty folds of skin running down from his bulbous neck, then, as he turned, his face.
He stared at her, the pleasure in his eyes making them sparkle. With a lick of his lips, he revealed his teeth. Each one had been filed down to a point, leaving only blackened stubs. His tongue ran across them while his gaze moved slowly over Bear’s body. As he stepped closer, a cheer went up.
Bear backed away, her back arched like a cat’s. Her arms were crossed over her chest defensively, but as she reached the edge of the circle of men she was shunted back towards him. The Captain caught her with one arm while the other ripped down the front of her vest, tearing the fabric in two.
His head slowly tilted downwards, his eyes running over every inch of her breasts. He grabbed one of them, roughly kneading the flesh in the pads of his hand. He smiled, staring into her eyes as if daring her to protest, then, raising one of his broad thighs, he forced it between hers.
‘
Vous l’aimez
,’ You like it, he breathed into her face. ‘
Vous êtes une vraie pute, n’est-ce pas?
’ You’re a real little whore, aren’t you?
Bear shut her eyes, her whole body going limp in his grasp. The LRA were famous for raping women and children, and once the Captain had had his way, she knew the others would take their turn. Tears started streaming down her face as she tried to disconnect herself from what was happening, to blank everything out. She squeezed her eyes shut tighter, dimly aware of the Captain forcing his hand past the buckle of her belt, his fingers curling hungrily into her groin.
Suddenly, he stopped. Bear waited, too scared to open her eyes, but in the charged silence, she heard the low hum of a petrol engine. The noise echoed across the expanse of water behind them, drawing closer.
A long dugout pirogue appeared around the bend in the river. It was nearly forty feet long, carved from a single trunk of hardwood and filled with soldiers. The pirogue fought against the river current, engine revving higher as it slowly drew nearer. Seated in the front, set apart from the others, was a man dressed in a white suit. His arms were folded casually across his chest in an attitude of absolute patience.
Bear looked up into the Captain’s face. His gaze was fixed on the river, eyes wide with fear.
‘Mordecai,’ he whispered, the word escaping from him like a breath of foul air.
The Captain suddenly straightened, shunting Bear away from him with such force that she bounced on to the ground, skidding to a halt in the dirt. He shouted for his men to line
up
, but his voice cracked slightly as he gave the command. She saw him swallow several times, switching his gaze back to the river before repeating the order.
Mordecai was coming.
Everyone watched as the pirogue drove up on to the bank, jolting to a halt in the mud. Mordecai slowly stepped down off the craft into the tar-black mud. It rose up past his ankles, staining the trousers of his perfect white suit, but he didn’t seem to notice. Coming to a halt in the centre of the group, he stared at Bear who was lying on the ground clutching the torn fabric of her vest across her chest.
‘And you are?’ he asked, his voice soft, almost conversational.
Bear just stared up at him, mesmerised by the translucent green of his eyes. It was as if she could look straight through them.
‘Beatrice,’ she managed, wincing as she pulled herself on to her elbows. ‘Beatrice Makuru.’
Mordecai nodded as if he had heard the name somewhere before but couldn’t quite place it.
‘You know, Beatrice,’ he whispered, ‘it’s not you with whom I am displeased. No, not at all. Who can blame a person for trying to rescue a friend?’ He motioned towards the pirogue and his two bodyguards. They stepped down into the mud, pushing three LRA soldiers out in front of them. The soldiers were young, with red bandanas tied around their necks. They had been stripped of their rifles and staggered forward, their legs barely working as they drew closer to their fate.
‘These were the guards responsible for the breakout from
the
mine,’ Mordecai explained. He gave a smile that was warm and genuine.
‘I believe that such misguided conduct must not go unpunished. Dereliction of duty is a sin. But from now on, they will no longer see, hear or speak such evil again.’
Now, the teenaged soldiers threw themselves down into the mud, begging for mercy with their hands clasped together in front of them. They writhed in the bodyguard’s grip, their legs slipping out from under them as they collapsed into the mud.
‘Come, my children,’ Mordecai said softly, raising his hands as if to embrace them all. ‘When you err, you must be cleansed.’
The closest bodyguard pulled the soldier at his feet into the centre of the semicircle of men. Mordecai reached down, cupping the boy’s open face in his hands. He smiled again, his eyes blinking with unhurried calm. The boy stammered some kind of apology, but no intelligible words escaped his lips.
‘You shall speak no more evil,’ Mordecai whispered.
The bodyguard standing behind him pulled out an old blackened knife from his belt and grabbed the boy’s head. As his entire arm wrapped around his face, the huge, bulging muscles of his forearm and bicep pressed into his skull. With his other hand, the bodyguard then grabbed on to the boy’s lips and sawed through the soft flesh, pulling with his fingers at the same time so that it tore away in chunks. Blood sprayed out over his hand and arm, making the jet-black skin of his forearm glisten in the sunlight, before finally, he straightened,
tossing
the tattered remains of the lips to one side like giblets from a chicken.
Mordecai nodded with satisfaction, before his eyes turned to the next of the three.
‘And you shall hear no evil,’ he said.
No one moved or spoke as they witnessed the next soldier’s ears being hacked off and the other crudely blinded. There was absolute silence as the work was done, each witness silenced by the horror.
‘It saddens me to see such a loss of faith,’ Mordecai said at last. ‘But only through fire can the Lord forgive.’
He motioned for Bear to be raised up. Mordecai gave a faint smile as he watched her press the heel of her boots into the ground, trying to stop her legs from shaking. His head then tilted to one side, as his eyes ran down from her shoulders, across her arms, to her stomach.
‘God has blessed you indeed,’ he said. ‘Blessed you with such beauty. And yet, here you are, an African woman turning against your own brothers.’
He raised his hand, letting the backs of his fingers gently brush across her cheek, pausing at her lips.
‘I am not a monster,’ he whispered. ‘Not at all. I am just doing what needs to be done.’ The vertical line in his forehead deepened. ‘It is what
has
to be done, don’t you see?’
Bear’s eyes followed his fingers, then moved back towards his eyes. A strange sense of apathy came over her that seemed to dull the choking fear. It was as if she had resigned herself to the fact that she was going to die, and from that single point, realised that there was nothing left to be fearful
of
. As Mordecai felt her trembling stop, he looked into her eyes.
‘You’re nothing more than a sick bastard who murders children,’ Bear hissed, pulling away from his hand. ‘You’ll burn in hell.’
Mordecai suddenly raised his arms. ‘But this
is
hell!’ he shouted, his voice booming out across the deathly silence of the crowd. ‘Can’t you see? This is hell! And I have to get through it. To do what needs to be done.’ He paused, shaking his head as if pained by his own conviction. ‘I have to get through it, and I
suffer
day after day. How I
suffer
.’
As Bear stared at him blankly, he suddenly stepped forward, grabbed her shoulder and dug his thumb into the newly closed wound. She screamed in pain, her knees giving way as Mordecai twisted his thumb deeper. Blood seeped out, smearing the cuff of his white suit.
‘How many others are there?’ he said, mouthing each word slowly.
Bear screamed again. Mordecai’s eyes glowed as he turned his thumb again, causing her whole body to jerk as if hit by an electric shock.
‘How many are with you?’ he repeated.
As Bear’s back arched in pain, her fingers curled into a fist. Suddenly, she swung her whole arm up and punched Mordecai straight in the mouth. The blow split the top of his lip and there was a faint crack as the cartilage in his nose snapped. Recoiling in shock, he dropped her from his grasp. He staggered backwards, dabbing at his nose and lips with his fingers.
Mordecai stared at his hand, as if bewildered by the sight of his own blood, while his whole body seemed to convulse in speechless rage. Bear tried to get back on to her feet, but the nearest of the bodyguards leapt forward and cracked his fist into the side of her temple, sending her sprawling on to the ground.
Mordecai’s furious gaze turned to the bodyguard.
‘I wanted her conscious!’ he seethed, his breath showering flecks of his own blood into the air. As the man immediately backed off, Mordecai stared fixedly at the ground. Slowly a smile began to appear on his lips, revealing white teeth splattered with blood.
‘This is God’s will,’ Mordecai whispered. ‘He works in ways that are so hard to see. So hard! But I am sure of it now. He wants her to die slowly, so that she can reflect on what she has done. He wants her to suffer.’ He paused, turning towards the soldiers. ‘Put her inside the mine with all the others. Then blow up the entrance so that no living thing moves in or out, and seal up this tunnel. They will all die of thirst. Die slowly from it, while we complete our glorious march on Kinshasa!’
The soldiers bowed their heads as Mordecai strode back towards the pirogue, signalling to the driver to start the engine.
The Captain moved over to Bear’s unconscious body and scooped her off the ground. Her head hung limply over the edge of his arm, with her hair spilling down towards the ground. As he stared down at her naked breasts and the delicate line of her lips, his thickset face grimaced
at
the lost opportunity. Then, moving across to the bow of the pirogue, he placed her between two bench seats, jamming her body into the well of the canoe.
He turned back to survey the shore with a final glance as the engine revved higher. The pirogue pulled out into the main flow of the current and rapidly moved downstream, leaving only the smell of petrol and the fading vibration of its engine.
GENERAL JIAN WATCHED
his reflection in the mirror slowly fade as the old electric lights flickered then went out. He waited, staring into the darkness, as one by one all the lights in the mansion went off. There was silence. As the seconds passed, Jian stayed perfectly still, feeling the darkness close in around him.
Since returning from the mine, they had been staying at one of the old colonial houses on the shores of Lake Kivu. By day, its sweeping colonnades and high, ornate ceilings had seemed almost charming, brimming with a sense of faded grandeur and the sophistication of a bygone era. But by night the house had taken on a far more sinister feel. It wasn’t so much the groaning lead pipes or rising damp, more the lingering sense of what had once been. The place reeked of the old days, as if the horrors of Belgian rule were still etched into every single room.
There was a soft buzzing sound before the antique lights started to glow once again. Jian blinked, taking in the image
of
himself newly revealed in the huge, gilded mirror. He stared into his own eyes, blinking slowly as he tried to focus. They looked duller, the blacks of his pupils somehow faded and less alive. Every day he felt worse, the headaches never leaving him for a second.
What the hell was happening to him?
On the bathroom surface in front of him lay a bottle of single malt whisky and a glass. Scooping a handful of painkillers from his jacket pocket, he broke them up and poured the powder into the glass. He then added a huge measure of whisky and downed the glass’s entire contents in a single gulp. Staggering back a pace, he flung the glass to one side, sending it smashing down on to the faded marble floor.