The Code War

by Ciaran Nagle

  Kodrob pulled Holzman over by his collar. 'You had a near death experience with Bezejel the other day. Now another one with the imp you fingered. You're riding your luck.'

  'Yes guv.' Holzman accepted the warning and stepped away.

  'You really did all that, made them say those words?' asked Lafarge looking at Holzman in wonder. 'Man I respect you. I thought you were just a dull cabbage-eater.' He slapped Holzman on the arm.

  'You didn't hear the last of it,' replied the German, cockily. 'After we chopped off their hands and arms I let the legionaries cry for a bit. Then when I released the tourniquets I placed bets with the other rebels on which soldier would last longest.' He looked at Lafarge with a grin, 'well, we had to do something for entertainment.'

  Zhivkin butted in. He'd seen the mood swing against Holzman and then back in his favour but he wasn't done yet.

  'So we have all seen and heard of your idea of leadership,' he said sourly with his Russian nasal drawl. 'But I know a real leader when I see one. Captain Kodrob is one I admire.' He looked up at Kodrob with fawning approval. 'Kodrob can even work with Bezejel. That's an achievement you could never manage, Holzman.'

  Lafarge chimed in. 'Be careful who you criticise, Zhivkin, Holzman's my buddy.'

  Zhivkin had to row back. 'I can get on with anyone. No problem. But you should know that I wasn't lucky with that jet fuel grab. I saw the storm coming and knew it was a strong one. I led the horse onto the runway and delayed the plane taking off so that it would fly into the thickest cloud at just the right time. That's how it got struck by lightning. It was pure skill and planning. Luck had nothing to do with it. You could say I engineered it. You know, you guys could do well with my talents. I could make you rich. You'd have more diesel and squaws than you could imagine.'

  Now he knew he'd got them interested. All of them could imagine a lot of diesel and a lot of squaws. They never seemed to get enough of either, not even with Lafarge's Gallic charm. Zhivkin had brought them top grade jet fuel too. But Zhivkin also knew how to negotiate and he decided to pretend to take his offer away. 'But maybe I take my talents somewhere else. There are other marauder squads who are interested in me.' He got up from his seat and made as if to leave.

  Kodrob had been watching and listening to the debate with amusement. Zhivkin had handled himself well. And with the new challenges that Bezejel was handing him almost daily, he might need a new team member who could think on his feet.

  'Sit down, Zhivkin, you're not going anywhere.' Kodrob grabbed the former Russian Cossack by his collar and dumped him back in his chair. 'All right we'll take you on trial for one project and see how you get on. If you perform, you're in for good. If not and you turn out to be nothing but a clever talker, we'll husk you. Capisce?'

  Zhivkin looked around at the grim faces of the other squad members that bore down on him. Kodrob's threat was a nasty one, to be sure. But it was only to be expected. There had to be discipline after all and Zhivkin ran more risk of being husked as an independent buccaneer if he was caught with valuable swag in the outlands by other marauding bands without buddies to protect him.

  'Sure, no problem,' he drawled. 'I don't disappoint. You'll see.' He stood up and called to Naxela's owner who was running the bar.

  'Red.'

  Red Naxela came over and glared malevolently at Zhivkin.

  'This is my good buddy Red, everyone.' Zhivkin indicated the squawhouse owner who showed no sign of being anyone's good buddy. 'Red, give these boys some of my hundred octane jet fuel recently liberated from Crimea. Let them experience the true spirit of Mother Russia.' He laughed magnanimously and even managed a grimace at Holzman. While the team roared their approval and downed their glasses ready for the refill, Kodrob surveyed his new charge and a sudden shiver ran down his spine. He now had two team members with a grievance against each other. Both were aggressive as well as huge. They could cause a lot of trouble if their enmity turned into open warfare. Had he made a mistake in hiring Zhivkin?

  The Nancy project would soon be moving into a new phase and the pressures on his team would increase. Pressure could be good or bad. It could force guys to work together or it could split a team wide apart.

  If Kodrob had made the wrong decision, Bezejel would show no mercy.

  Gambia, road to Southern Senegal, West Africa

  Nancy put her foot down on the clutch and slipped the gear lever on the monster truck into fourth. She checked her wing mirror.

  'It's good to leave those potholes behind. I thought they'd never end.' She looked at Lafi in the passenger seat who didn't respond.

  Her headlight beams now showed a long, straight stretch of level road ahead with a mixture of forest and fields on either side. Strong moonlight periodically flooded in from the front, illuminating the cab when the forest canopy overhead receded. Lafi stared straight ahead, intense and brooding.

  The lorry engine was strong and pulled the heavy iron frame powerfully. Nancy had been overawed at first when she had climbed into the driver's seat and switched on the ignition. How was she going to drive a juggernaut like this, she who had never driven anything bigger than a Morris 1100? But surprisingly soon, she'd grown to like the touch of the huge steering wheel and the sense of power she derived from sitting up so high above the ground. Beast that it was, it responded instantly to her touch and did everything she told it to do. You just had to give it a wider arc going around corners, that was all.

  'I'm getting to like the feel of this.' She had to keep trying to communicate. Pretend that things were normal. 'It's easier to drive than it looks. Just as well it's empty though. It'll be hard work when it's fully loaded.'

  The silence settled back in. Another burst of moonlight and Nancy turned her head to survey Lafi's features quickly. He looked nervous. His anxiety was making Nancy nervous too. If he was frightened, she certainly ought to be frightened. How dangerous was this mission going to get? And even if it all worked out successfully, would they really put her back on the plane to Israel at the end of it? Or had Lafi been told to quietly do away with her and bury the body?

  'You know anything about aid organisations?' he asked suddenly in an aggressive tone.

  'Er..no. Not really.'

  Lafi didn't follow up. He continued staring straight ahead into the gloom.

  A moment later their road left the jungle and Nancy found she was driving on a wide sandy beach. The Gambian government had little money to invest in roads and so made use of natural thoroughfares such as firm beaches wherever possible. The setting was spectacular. To Nancy's right the ocean was dark and endless with white breakers near the shore. On her left the tall trees of the jungle were equally forbidding. But ahead of them the wide moon-lit beach with its virgin yellow sand, firm under the wheels of the lorry, would have been heart-stoppingly romantic at any other time.

  They continued on for ten more minutes, eventually leaving the beach again as the road led them back through the jungle. It was a long time since they'd seen any other lights.

  Lafi was now showing signs of real fear. Sweat was apparent on his forehead. Nancy checked the mirrors again. She took her foot off the accelerator and dropped back to third gear, then second.

  'What you do?' Lafi's shouted question sounded panicked.

  'I need to know what we're getting into,' replied Nancy, trying to keep her voice under control. 'What's ahead? What are we facing?'

  She had slowed to a crawl now, her eyes flitting to scan the road ahead then back again to look at Lafi, forcing him to speak.

  Lafi's face was a picture of uncertainty. Nancy could see him peering forward through the windscreen trying to make up his mind what to do. Abruptly he slapped his hand down on the dashboard.

  'OK, stop here,' he ordered. 'I explain now.'

  It was the middle of the night and they had seen no other vehicles for the last half hour. Nancy stopped the lorry where they were in the road. She killed the engine, leaving the lights on but kept her hands on the wheel, her arms co
vering her breasts. No sense in being provocative out here in the darkness, far from help. She turned her head sideways to look at him, her face serious and unfriendly. If he was going to attack her, at least she'd better make it plain that she would fight back.

  But Lafi continued looking forward, peering into the darkness beyond the headlights.

  'Lorry not empty,' he blurted. 'We carrying a cargo.'

  Dammit thought Nancy, I knew it. Her brain started wondering what the cargo could be. A number of likely suspects came to mind. Drugs, guns, gold. What else was there? Cigarettes? Alcohol?

  'We carrying workers. People who want to work,' stated Lafi defiantly. 'In the north, no work, but many people. In the south, there is work in the fields, but workers frightened away by war.'

  'War? We're going into a warzone?' Nancy shouted. But at the same time there was something about Lafi's face that indicated he wasn't telling the truth. Not all of it, anyway.

  'Lafi, how many people are we carrying?' Nancy's tone was insistent. Something had subtly changed in the dynamics of the power battle between them. Nancy was starting to get the better of Lafi. She was demanding answers and getting them.

  'Thirty five people,' said Lafi.

  'Thirty-five?' Nancy was in shock. You couldn't get thirty-five people in this lorry. They'd be crushed worse than pigs on the way to market.

  'Are they alive?' Nancy couldn't understand why she hadn't heard them speaking, even above the noise of the engine.

  'Yes, yes, they alive. Of course alive.' Lafi seemed grateful to be able to say something positive. He actually smiled.

  'But on the border they no like northern people. They stop them coming. At the border, you must tell guards the workers are for UN.'

  'UN.' Habib and Ilan had mentioned pretending to be an aid worker. But that was for 'medical supplies'. Not people. Nancy was now lost for a follow up. Medicines, even drugs, she could understand. She was ready for that. But now she was smuggling people. Not only that but SHE was now responsible, according to Lafi, for convincing border guards or whoever they were that these thirty five people, who she knew nothing about, were in the employ of the United Nations.

  'I can't do that,' she pleaded. 'We have no papers. No-one is going to believe me, no matter what I tell them.'

  Suddenly Nancy cottoned on. This had nothing to do with Habib or any of his gang. This wasn't Brother. This part of the operation was all Lafi's doing. That was why he was afraid. He was moonlighting - quite literally - and he was out of his depth. He had to get 35 people across a border and he needed Nancy's help to do it. In his greed he had dug himself a hole and he needed Nancy to dig him out.

  She looked at him accusatively. 'This isn't what I was sent here for. This is you, isn't it? Habib doesn't know about this. Why should I …?'

  Then before Lafi could stop her, Nancy reached for the door handle, pulled it down, kicked the door open with her right foot and dropped to the ground. She ran to the back of the truck and started fiercely untying the knots on the straps that held the truck's canvas cover to the wooden tailboard. As one flap came loose, then another, a powerful waft of fresh excrement assaulted her nostrils.

  'Oh, shit,' Nancy wailed and jumped back several feet. She retched and heaved noisily before sucking down a mouthful of clean air and looking back at the lorry. A face had appeared at the loose flap. Then another, then two more. There was enough reflected moonlight for Nancy to make out their features clearly. Children.

  The spark plugs in Nancy's brain went into slow motion. Children. Thirty-five of them. Thirty five children. Workers. Thirty-five child workers. No parents. She drew another deep breath. No wonder the truck felt light. Couldn't be that many adults. Stench. Poor children in that stench.

  Lafi had appeared just as she pulled the straps free. He made no effort to stop her. Presumably he had realised that there was no point in trying to hide what he was up to.

  He began to shout at the children in dialect. The heads disappeared. Lafi tied up the straps.

  'You see?' he shouted accusingly.

  Accusingly.

  'Yes, they children. They going home. I want tell you but I know you no believe me.' His face was stern and angry.

  It was her fault that he hadn't told her. Her fault that she had found out. No doubt it was Nancy's fault that the children were there in the first place.

  But amidst Nancy's outrage at Lafi's inability to accept responsibility for his misdeeds she perceived something else. He was still lying. Wherever these kids were going, it wasn't home. They were being taken somewhere to do something that they certainly wouldn't have chosen voluntarily.

  'I'm not doing it. I'm not going on. I'm not driving them,' she shouted. 'Habib said nothing about this. What will happen when he finds out?'

  Lafi reacted furiously. 'Habib must not find out,' he hissed. 'If he knows I do this, I a dead man.'

  Nancy stepped away. She'd just threatened to tell Habib what Lafi was doing. And Lafi had told her it would mean his death. What did that mean for Nancy?

  'Oh, well. I won't tell him. Obviously.' It was weak but Nancy was now grappling with the significance of what Lafi had just said. Lafi had to assume that Nancy would spill the whole story to Habib once she was back in Israel. The only way to stop her would be to kill her. A shiver went through her body and she started to sweat.

  'Why don't you tell him? He won't mind. He's quite a nice guy. He'll forgive you.' Oh, that was pathetic.

  But Lafi was clearly genuinely scared and there was real aggression in his eyes as he looked down at Nancy. 'Habib and Brother, they forgive nothing. They want obedient. Hundred per cent obedient. They will say I take risk and put operation in danger. You must promise you no tell Habib.'

  'Of course, I promise. It's nothing to do with me.' Nancy wished that she didn't know about the children. But even if she hadn't forced the issue now, she reasoned, she was bound to have found out at some time. Lafi hadn't thought this through. His lack of planning meant that he had got her into a position where he would have to take her life in order to save his own. He would never believe that she would keep mum, would he? It wasn't fair, getting murdered by someone because of their own stupidity.

  'I'm taking the children back to ..' she couldn't remember the name of the town. 'Back there,' she pointed vaguely back down the road they had come.

  'Oh, then what you do?' it was Lafi's turn to ask the difficult questions. 'You go to the police? How you think I go through Banjul?'

  Banjul. Of course. Must remember that. Nancy stared at Lafi, thinking furiously. He had clearly bribed his way across the country and she might very easily find herself appealing for help to the very people who were in his pocket. He obviously wasn't going to let her casually drive back to Banjul and take the children into the protective compound of the British Embassy, even if she could find it. If she ran back to the cab he would get to the passenger side before she could get the engine started and would easily overpower her. If she refused to go on she would become useless to him and he might decide to kill her. He might decide to kill her anyway. She needed more time to think.

  The moonlight dimmed as a cloud drifted across its face and obscured its light. A soft rain began to fall.

  'All right,' she said quietly. 'I'll do it, I'll go on.' Her body had visibly relaxed. She wanted him to know she was not about to try and run away.

  'We'll go on and finish the job together,' she continued, her voice subdued but resolute. 'And I won't say anything to Habib'. That was stupid, shouldn't have mentioned him again.

  But whatever Lafi might be inclined to do in the future Nancy was fairly certain of one thing. He still needed her now. The border or tribal boundaries - Nancy wasn't clear which - still had to be crossed and the guards there, official or otherwise, had to be charmed or cajoled into letting them go through.

  And while doing all that and driving Lafi's lorry and transporting his drugs and solving his problems for him and digging him out of his hole, Nancy had
a bigger problem. Timid, wouldn't hurt a fly Nancy, Nancy who loved finding holidays in Torquay for retired teachers and study trips in Israel for impecunious students had to solve the biggest challenge of all. She had to find a way to save her life.

  Heaven's Shore

  The tiny air marbles vibrated and gave off a purring sound. 'Agatha, you shouldn't have. That's real thoughtful of you.' Jabez took the bean bag out of its packaging, put it to his ear and listened. It was the most relaxing sound imaginable, virtually guaranteed to reduce stress. There was another, smaller package for him too, as there was for Luke and Ruth. All three opened their parcels and clapped their hands with delight. Each parcel contained a pot of fresh hot tea together with a bone china cup and saucer, a large thimble of milk and a tiny jewel box of cane sugar with a silver spoon. A dish of three fresh-baked ginger biscuits, still warm from the oven completed the set.

  'How did you manage to arrange for all of this, hot tea and cookies, to all of us in different places separated by several hundred thousand miles of Heaven?' asked Jabez as he slumped gratefully into his soft, purring bag.

  Agatha beamed triumphantly. 'Well, you know, one has contacts that one can sometimes ask a favour from.'

  'Ah'd say one has some very excellent contacts,' declared Ruth smiling appreciatively while stirring a spoon of sugar into her cup.

  Jabez, Luke, Ruth and Agatha were all present - three of them by globe - in Agatha's apartment. Her 'pad' as she called it, was a large old-brick warehouse structure with wooden bookshelves and Turner prints adorning the walls. A kitchen range at one end could have come from an English early 20th century stately home while at the other end was a little Shaker chapel lit by soft mood lights and fragranced with fresh-cut wildflowers. Hundreds of candles perched on wrought iron candelabra provided the light while a pair of sheepdogs yawned and slept in front of a cherry-log fire.