Black Pearl

by Peter Tonkin

  The whole of Mako’s command tensed, ready to move forward en mass.

  ‘Richard!’ hissed a familiar voice from close at hand. ‘Richard! Wait!’

  ‘Anastasia?’ gasped Richard, thunderstruck. The whisper was coming through the canvas wall immediately beside him. He eased himself out of his crouch position and moved to the flap. As he did so, Zubarov pulled off his night-vision goggles and handed them up to him, so that when Richard peered through the tent flap into the troop’s eating area, he could see quite clearly, even if everything was a submarine green. And what he saw brought him up short. For Odem wasn’t the only military commander he kept underestimating.

  The tent was filled with everyone missing from the orphanage. The priest and nuns were all seated with groups of frightened children around them. And the whole lot sat safely under the guns of Anastasia’s Amazons. As Richard entered, twenty rifle barrels swung towards him. He held his hands up. Anastasia and Robin stepped forward, flanked by Ado and Esan. ‘Has he gone?’ breathed Anastasia. ‘I heard him scream and I heard you whispering.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ rumbled Richard. ‘But if you’re all safe in here then there’s nothing stopping us going to have a look …’ He stepped out of the tent and crouched beside Mako. ‘The kids are all safe in there under guard,’ he hissed. ‘There’s nothing stopping us taking a close look at the orphanage.’

  ‘I’ll take Sergeant Zubarov and the men you called forward,’ Mako decided. ‘You wait here with the others. Guard the guards, to paraphrase Juvenal. Anastasia’s guards and the nuns and orphans they are guarding.’

  Zubarov held out his hand for his goggles and the Beslan men were gone the instant Richard handed them back. Richard gestured to the rest of the Russians and they fell into a protective cordon round the mess tent, facing out, weapons at the ready. After a moment, Robin stepped silently out and stood at his shoulder. ‘From what I’ve seen,’ she said, her lips and breath hot against Richard’s ear, ‘the best this lot can hope for is to keep poor old Ngoboi safe from Anastasia and her Amazons.’

  But the wry little exchange was hardly over before the lights in the orphanage building came on and Mako’s unmistakable basso profundo voice called in English, ‘Captain Mariner. Ask Miss Asov to come here, would you?’ The three of them headed towards the bright building at a trot and walked in through the doorway Richard had run out of a couple of hours earlier, still shrugging on his shirt. This time the doorway was half blocked by a three-quarter-size figure of Ngoboi. The mask and raffia costume had been hung on the wooden slats of a bed roughly lashed together into a sticklike manikin. But the thing still seemed to ooze an eerie sense of threat. Especially as the restless river wind made it seem to dance. ‘Take it out,’ ordered Anastasia at once. ‘It is a Poro curse. If any of the children see it they will be afraid to come in here.’

  ‘I know what it is,’ rumbled Mako like a distant thunderstorm. ‘I am Thoma myself. Thoma is the third of the great societies of our country. But I cannot allow this to stand. Nor this.’ He gestured Anastasia to follow him and led the way down the corridor as Zubarov and one of the others took the makeshift Ngoboi out into the darkness and away.

  Anastasia’s bedroom was a mess. But not a random one. Her walls had been daubed with bright red splotches of blood. The floor was covered in strange patterns and complicated footprints as though a wild dance had taken place in here. Her bed was covered in blood – but the blood had been used to draw the rough shape of a splayed body. Where the eyes would have been, two long black stone daggers had been thrust into the pillow. Where the throat would have been was a thick red line of blood. Where the thighs would have joined, a huge ebony phallus had been thrust into the bedding with enough force to rupture the mattress. And where the heart would have been there was a gaping, blood-rimmed hole.

  ‘Christ, girl,’ said Robin, horror-struck. ‘Ngoboi certainly seems to have some sick plans for you.’

  Anastasia looked down. She snapped the safety off her assault rifle. ‘And I have plans for him, the ebanatyi pidaraz,’ she swore. She turned on her heel and stormed out into the night, with Richard and Robin at each shoulder. The whole camp was bathed in security lighting now. The two hovercraft still prowled along the nearest river reach, searchlights on full-beam and weapons at the ready. The battle in the farmland seemed to have stopped.

  Then, out of the darkness where the tongue of shadowy jungle licked up against the eastern end of the compound, Ivan and his men came in at a steady trot, pulling off their goggles as they came into the light. They were carrying four makeshift stretchers, on which lay the corpses of the little patrol Mako had left looking for the route Ngoboi had taken to and from his boat. The dead men had been laid out reverently enough, but none of them had been covered. Eight dead eyes stared up at the starry sky, the foreheads above them skinned from eyebrow to hairline. Eight hands lay on still stomachs, all their fingers gone. Four mouths gaped silently, their teeth red and their tongues torn out. Each of the four corpses had a hole in his chest, apparently reaching from front to back, where his heart had seemingly been simply ripped out of his body. And each of them had a broad-bladed spear thrust up under his chin to come out a foot or so above the crown of his head.

  As chance would have it, Ivan and the corpse bearers came face-to-face with Anastasia first, and the huge Russian stopped, shocked at having confronted his childhood friend with so much bloody brutality. Ignorant, as yet, of how much horror she had already had to face this evening. But then he stepped back, his open gaze clouding with confusion, at the simple rage in her expression. At the tenseness of the finger curled around the trigger of the assault rife that pointed at him with the same steely directness as her usually soft brown eyes.

  ‘You!’ she spat. ‘You and I have something to discuss, Ivan Yagula!’

  ‘What …’ he said, simply nonplussed.

  Richard closed his eyes wearily as it all fell into place, remembering the unruffled bed and untouched bottle of vodka he had seen as he ran past Anastasia’s door, pulling his shirt on amid the screaming and the gunfire. She hadn’t been anywhere near her bed or her booze. She had been listening at the paper-thin wall separating her room from theirs while he told Robin what he had found out about the end of Simian Artillery.

  ‘About how Boris Chirkoff really died,’ Anastasia snarled now, stepping forward as Ivan stepped guiltily back. ‘About who paid for him to be murdered. And who actually killed him. And who let me live in hell for ten years and more believing he had shot himself and it was all my fault, you bastard …’

  Confrontations

  ‘Who cares what Anastasia knows or thinks she knows,’ snarled Max. ‘The stupid little shluha vokzal’naja isn’t going to tell anyone who matters. Not in this godforsaken hole anyway. And even if she gets back to Moscow and starts making trouble, who’s going to take her word over that of her father, her godfather and the federal prosecutor? And remember, your father isn’t just the federal prosecutor for the Moscow office any longer. He’s just about the most senior law officer in the country! She opens her mouth anywhere north of Armenia and she’ll rot in Butyrka prison waiting for a trial that’ll never come!’ He grabbed the bottle of Stoli Elit and gulped down a mouthful without bothering with a glass, then slammed it down on his bedside table with enough force to make the black pearls he kept in a bowl there dance and rattle.

  Ivan looked at him, leaning his full weight against the closed cabin door – only too well aware that much of this trouble had arisen from conversations half overheard by people who were never meant to share the secrets.

  ‘In any case, if what you tell me is true,’ continued Max brutally, ‘this Ngoboi will take care of her long before I have to ask any favours from your father or the prison governor.’ He reached for the vodka again.

  ‘That’s why I’ve moved her aboard,’ said Ivan quietly. ‘To protect her. That’s why I’ve agreed to talk to her.’ He took a step towards Max’s bunk, stopping just before h
e could tower over his adopted father. He had come here to reason, not intimidate. And, besides, Uncle Max was drunker than he had ever seen him before. Perhaps there was some feeling for his wayward daughter behind all the vodka-fuelled bluster. ‘But I still think we ought to put all this bullshit aside, Uncle Max, and agree how much of the truth I’m going to tell her when we finally go têtê à têtê – or head to head as she’d rather have it.’

  ‘Tell her what you like, boy. Têtê à têtê, face-to-face, head to head or mano a mano. We’re off upriver in the morning. The little sooka’s staying here. And with any luck Ngoboi will have sorted everything out for us before we even get these huesos home.’ He used the bottle to gesture towards the pile of pearls overflowing from the big glass bowl. Then he swung savagely back towards Ivan. ‘Though he’ll be lucky to find enough of a heart to eat!’

  ‘Why do you hate her?’ asked Ivan. ‘She’s your daughter, after all.’

  ‘Don’t you understand anything?’ snarled Max, drunk enough to open up. A living example of the old Latin saying. In vodka veritas. ‘She has cost me everything! All my hopes and dreams. Every plan I made, every idea I had about my Ivan’s future, about how my tall, strong son would take over Bashnev/Sevmash and rule it alongside you, with Anastasia at your side cementing our families, passing the inheritance down, father to son in the old way. Lavrenty Mikhailovich, Felix Makarov and I had it all planned. You were even to be married in Saint Basil’s! Either there or the Church of the Spilled Blood in Saint Petersburg! Then honeymoon aboard my yacht. Nearly a billion dollars’ worth! In those days she was called the Anastasia. In those days! And that’s all gone! Why? Because she killed my Ivan. Then she destroyed herself. That destroyed her mother, God rest her. Then she destroyed my plans. Then she destroyed me! Me! Who was going to build a business dynasty to rival Abramovich, Lisin, Ivan Grozny, Peter the Great! I can never forgive the damage she’s done to me. If there was anyone left alive I thought the little sooka loved, I’d destroy them too, just to see her suffer!’

  ‘She heard?’ snarled Robin. ‘She heard it all?’

  ‘She must have,’ said Richard. ‘I didn’t realize the walls were that thin!’

  ‘And she had no idea?’ grated Robin.

  ‘Apparently not!’ he snapped, his countenance darkening again. ‘As you heard her say, she thought it was suicide – and she’s been blaming herself for the whole mess ever since. Until this evening.’

  ‘But the shock of it, Richard! The shock! I must go to her!’ Robin surged up off the bed in their cramped new quarters aboard Volgograd, as though she would go to the girl at once wearing only her nightgown.

  ‘You can’t!’ Richard raised his hands to restrain her. ‘She’s been moved on to Stalingrad for safety. In the same way we’ve been put here aboard Volgograd. And the sentries are so jumpy after what happened to that patrol, you’d get shot for sure if you even thought of crossing from one to the other. If you went like that they’d probably think you were a ghost in any case!’

  ‘Aboard Stalingrad with those … men!’ Robin sat, quivering with outrage.

  ‘She wants to be there, Robin.’ Richard secured his pyjama cord, reached for his top – and thought better of it. Even though Volgograd was air-conditioned, the cabin was still hot. ‘That’s where Ivan is. She wants to have a heart-to heart with Ivan.’

  ‘It’s where her father is too. That murderous little shit, Max!’

  ‘She doesn’t want to talk to Max. And it’s mutual from what I can make out.’ Richard shrugged and padded over towards the bed.

  ‘That’s the point, isn’t it?’ snarled Robin. ‘We’re not talking about what Max wants! He’s done his worst. And damn near destroyed his daughter. It’s what she wants now that’s important. It’s what Anastasia wants!’

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you what Anastasia wants!’ rumbled Richard, picking up on more of Robin’s outrage but spinning it from a different angle as he strode towards the bed once more. ‘She wants to take that wooden obscenity Ngoboi left in her bedroom and, when she finds him, she wants to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine! That’d make him dance a whole new set of steps.’

  Robin choked on a laugh. It was a combination of his adroit change of subject and pace combined with the lingering outrage on his usually open face that amused her. And even her amusement caught her off guard, for she was still simmering with rage. But of course, she wasn’t enraged at her Richard, she thought more gently. And he hadn’t meant to overhear Max or be overheard by Max’s errant daughter. None of this utter mess was his fault really. But of course he felt responsible when he was nothing of the sort. Just the same as poor Anastasia had done, she thought. Until earlier this evening.

  ‘So,’ she said, her voice mellowing, ‘what are we going to do about it?’

  ‘On the one hand,’ he decided, stretching out beside her on the sheet – and snuggling up against her because the bed was so small – ‘we want to let things well alone. Let her and Ivan work out whatever it is they are going to work out between themselves. No matter what happened in the past, they’re all grown up now. He’s a big boy and she’s a big girl. But even so …’

  ‘Even so?’ she prompted, snuggling back against him – with little option as he had her wedged against the cabin wall.

  ‘Even so, I’m not too keen to rush upriver in the morning and leave her to hope that Kebila catches Odem before Odem lets Ngoboi loose on her. Especially as Ngoboi managed to waltz in here and out again tonight, pausing only to put the frighteners on everybody and slaughter four top-flight ex-Spetsnaz mercenaries. Especially as it’s probably Odem in the Ngoboi suit anyway – and he’s got a hell of a lot of anger to take out on her. Hence the sexual threat, I suppose – as well as the magic and the heart-eating.’ He hesitated. Reached for the light and snapped it off. ‘No. I’m not about to let her face that on her own – or with her scary-looking army of nuns and Amazons. And in the meantime …’

  ‘In the meantime what?’ she asked, arching slightly as his hand found the hem of her nightgown and slid gently upward.

  ‘Just where were we before the screaming and the shooting started …’

  ‘Look,’ said Ivan, a great deal more forcefully than he meant to. ‘If I could undo any of this I would, believe me.’

  ‘If you could!’ spat Anastasia. ‘Ohooiet’, Ivan, where would you start?’

  ‘I’d start with that dumbass eblan Boris and the bad drugs he gave you that night!’ he snarled. ‘I’d stop you sharing them with your brother and then none of this would have happened!’ He strode forward, towering over her in a way he had not done to her father.

  But she was not sprawled on a bed. She was sober. And she was every bit as angry as Max had been. ‘Too late, you moron!’ she shouted, squaring up to him in the way she always had. ‘Too fucking late! One step behind as always! You needed to start with that svoloch’ bastard Fydor Novotkin! He was the one who gave my brother the drugs. It was always Fydor who supplied the drugs!’

  Ivan stepped back. ‘I didn’t know that,’ he admitted, nonplussed.

  ‘Of course you didn’t, dumbass!’ she snarled, coming towards him like a terrier harrying a bear. ‘It wasn’t your scene. You were a goody-goody military boy! How would you know a thing like that? Think about it! We might have grown up together but you were my brother’s friend rather than mine. I don’t think I was ever anything other than a kind of a pet to the pair of you. And when you came back from military school in your smart little uniform, what was I to you then? Some kind of porcelain princess! You told me that you loved me but it was all bullshit, wasn’t it? Something arranged between our fathers! You never saw me as a real woman. As an equal. As your wife! I was just something out of Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky or Checkov – the idiot Dushecha, probably! I don’t think you really saw me at all until after my brother died. It wasn’t until I met real men like Boris and Fydor that I got treated like a proper woman!’

  ‘Well, both Boris and Fydor certainly tre
ated you like a proper woman later on!’ spat Ivan, striding towards her again, his rage reawakening.

  ‘You bet they fucking did!’ she hissed, relishing the shock and hurt in his eyes; using the brutal words like clubs to beat him with. ‘And Fydor got me every fucking way he could. In ways not even you and that sick satyric slob of a father of mine could imagine. Though Fydor had to drug me out of my head first! And then again and again and again …’ Each repetition got louder and more forceful until she was literally spitting in his face. ‘But I tell you what, Ivan Lavrentovitch, my hulking great Ivan Grozny – I came through. I fucking survived! And no thanks to you! Or to Maxim Kirilovitch Asov, billionaire businessman, corporate magician, top-rate cocksmith – fucking trainwreck of a parent! And now, I hear, the man who likely had my boyfriend killed. Who allowed me to sink into a pit of guilt and self-loathing because of it. Who could have pulled me out just by telling me the truth. The truth. Nothing more than that! And who let me sink and drown instead! And you let him, Ivan! You could have helped me and you didn’t lift one finger. Not one finger, you bastard!’

  ‘But I didn’t realize you were … I didn’t know Fydor … I’ve always … I still love you, Anastasia Maximovitch …’

  ‘Don’t you call me that! Don’t you dare …’ She hit him then, pounded her fists on his chest and reached up towards his face with clawed fingers.

  But he caught her wrists in his massive hands and held her still, surprisingly gently, looking down into her overflowing eyes, unable to work out what was rage in them, what was confusion and what was simple, agonizing hurt. ‘Anastasia! I’ll do anything to make it up to you!’ he said. ‘Tell me what to do.’

  ‘Kill Max!’ she spat.

  ‘I can’t, Anastasia!’ He released her and stood back. But the fight was gone out of her. Her hands fell to her sides and she looked up at him with her shoulders slumped. ‘This isn’t some Greek tragedy!’ he whispered, only half convinced. Wondering if she could see the horror of what she had just said.