Night of Knives

by Jon Evans

  "So what do they do?" Veronica asks.

  Lysander shrugs.

  "We use oxcarts as ambulances," Lovemore says unexpectedly. "We travel from Harare to our home village to attend a funeral, and we must remain for weeks because there is no petrol to carry us home. In the countryside now, in the bush, we no longer live in this twenty-first century. We have returned to the nineteenth."

  A plump bowtied waiter brings them the bill. At first Veronica thinks it must be some kind of misprint: the total scrawled on the bottom of the slip of paper is more than a million dollars. But Lysander nods absently, digs into his pack, comes up with two wads of pink notes as thick as a deck of cards, each wrapped in a rubber band. He drops one wad on the table and adds a handful from the other. Each note is labelled 20,000.

  "What's the exchange rate?" Jacob asks, equally stunned.

  Lysander smiles thinly. "At the government rate, which nobody uses, about twenty-five thousand Zim dollars to one US. At the black-market rate, more like a hundred thousand. Seven years ago it was twenty to one."

  Jacob whistles.

  "In Zimbabwe the last seven years have been very educational," Lovemore says. His voice stilll sounds completely serious, but Veronica sees a hint of a sardonic smile. "Every man on the street has become an economics master. Every housewife can give lectures on the perils of hyperinflation and the importance of foreign exchange. We have become so knowledgeable, and so hardworking. Every day we hustle, we work so hard. We have no choice. Because every day we wake up knowing all the money we have will soon be worth nothing."

  "Half the adult population's fled the country," Lysander says. "To South Africa, Botswana, Zambia. The money they send home is the only thing that keeps half this country alive. And the other half is starving, or dying of AIDS, or both. And we used to be the breadbasket of Africa, we used to feed our neighbours."

  "What happened?" Veronica asks.

  He sighs. "Mugabe went mad, is what happened. He was a perfectly good leader for a long time, by African standards. He was practically enlightened. Then seven years ago he and his thugs, his so-called war vets, most of them weren't even born during the civil war here, they started to invade all the white-owned farms and drive out the whites. That violence erased the tourism industry overnight, the expulsion of most of the good farmers wiped out all the crops, and the Zim dollar collapsed. We've been lurching from crisis to crisis ever since. Bad to worse. AIDS, corruption, drought. This country's like a rock rolling downhill towards a cliff. And if you're right, we're in danger of going into the abyss as soon as this week." Lysander stands. "Come on. Let's get to the station in case tonight is a night of miracles and the train actually departs on time."

  * * *

  It is fully dark by the time a rusting train wheezes to a halt and its doors open to accept the hundreds of passengers that clog the Victoria Falls railway platform. A few are middle-aged businessmen with enormous amounts of luggage in tow, but most are dressed in ragged clothing and carry very little. There are no other white people: it seems those tourists who dare to enter Zimbabwe at all go no further than Victoria Falls.

  Lovemore leads Veronica and Jacob through the crowd and onto the train. Its interior is stained gray linoleum and tarnished metal. Naked wires protrude from holes in walls, and the cracked windows are jammed permanently open or shut. They pass a rusted, filthy bathroom. Their first-class berth has four bunks covered with torn blue upholstery, a rusting fold-out table, and a sink that doesn't work. One of the two fluorescent lights overhead is dead; the other flickers like a strobe light. Cockroaches crawl in the dark corners. Lysander was right, this makes the battered Tazara rolling stock that carried them to Zambia look like the Orient Express.

  "Well," Veronica says gamely, "at least it's cheap."

  Their tickets cost the equivalent of three US dollars apiece, at the black-market rate. The cramped size of the berth makes her a little uncomfortable, but its window is stuck half-open, that helps, and compared to the five harrowing, endless hours she spent locked in the trunk of a car, on their way to the Ugandan border, this is the Taj Mahal.

  "Where's Lysander?" Jacob asks.

  "Seeing Innocent," Lovemore says. "The train conductor. He's a friend."

  Lysander appears shortly after, along with a middle-aged black man wearing glasses and a cheerful smile. Innocent shakes hands briefly with Veronica and Jacob, then speaks briefly with Lysander and Lovemore in an African language. After another round of handshakes he disappears down the corridor.

  "Happy coincidence he's on duty," Lysander says with a satisfied smile. "Foreigners are supposed to show passports to get tickets, and I'd rather not have your names on record. For the purpose of this journey you two are honourary Zimbabwe residents."

  "You speak the language," Veronica says. "I'm impressed."

  Lysander waves self-deprecatingly. "Not really. I grew up speaking Shona, that's the majority language here, but Innocent speaks Ndebele. Lovemore's fluent but I can barely get by."

  She looks at him. "Grew up speaking Shona?"

  "Oh, I was born here. Zimbabwe passport, quite useful, I can't be expelled. British passport too, of course. We moved to the UK when I was young, because of the civil war, and I didn't come back until the nineties. To study wild dogs, of all things. Then I started buying and selling art around the country, mostly just as a sideline, to help finance my research. There's wonderful art here. Then when it all started to go wrong the embassy chaps realized I might be useful. A few heartstring-tugging appeals to God and Queen and country, and here I am, on her majesty's secret service, in a very quiet and unofficial way."

  Veronica smiles, mostly with relief. Obviously he has decided to trust them.

  Lysander looks around. "Back when it was Rhodesian Railways, or even ten years ago, these were proper trains, first class meant wood panels and luxury, they brought you food and bedding, they departed on time. Now you count yourself lucky to leave at all."

  "What happens if the train doesn't go?" Jacob asks.

  Lysander shrugs. "Usually it eventually does. But if there's a breakdown here tonight, we'll have to try to fly tomorrow. It'll be a big risk, but we'll have to take it, no time for anything else."

  They wait anxiously. Almost an hour passes before the train finally lurches into motion. After a bumpy first few minutes the lurching and shuddering smooths into a kind of soothing rattling, and they celebrate departure with beer and cigarettes.

  Then Jacob and Lysander climb into their upper bunks. Lovemore simply lies down on the bunk opposite Veronica, closes his eyes, and is asleep in less than a minute; he doesn't seem to even notice the cold breeze from the open window. Veronica puts on three layers of shirts and two of socks, and folds her small pile of remaining clothes into a pillow. Jacob leans down and switches out the light. She takes his outstretched hand for a moment. Then she leans back and closes her eyes. She is very tired, and for the first time in longer than she wants to remember, she feels safe. It takes only moments for the train's rocking motion and white noise to lull her too into deep sleep.

  * * *

  There is a hard hand on her shoulder, shaking her awake. Veronica comes halfway out of her deep sleep and opens her eyes to flickering fluorescent light. For a bad moment she doesn't know where she is or why, she doesn't recognize the bearded man standing over her, or the two black men flanking him. She pushes his hand away violently. Then her mind's gears stop grinding and begin to mesh. Lysander, the British spy. She is in Zimbabwe, on a train. The other men are Lovemore and Innocent the train conductor. They can't have reached Bulawayo, the train is still moving, and it is still night.

  "What's going on?" she asks, in a ragged voice.

  "I'm afraid it seems we've got a bit of a problem," Lysander says, but she knows immediately from his voice that it's a great deal worse than that. "There are soldiers on the train. I'm afraid they're looking for you two."

  Chapter 31

  "This is crazy," Jacob mutters.
"How can they possibly know we're here?"

  "They must have had someone watching in Victoria Falls," Lovemore says.

  Innocent says something in a husky voice.

  "The train stopped at an army base, just now," Lovemore translates. "Other nights the train passes through without stopping, he has never before seen them signal for a stop. The soldiers embarked there."

  "Is it so bad if the army gets us?" Jacob asks. "I mean, we're trying to save their president's life. If we can just convince them -"

  "No," Lysander says. "Not just any army base. The Fifth Brigade. The same unit I'm told Gorokwe served in, during the Gukurahundi. The Matabeleland massacres."

  Jacob groans. "Shit. His old army buddies. And we walked right into it."

  "We have to hide," Veronica says. She looks around for a place to hide. Beneath the berths? The luggage compartment above? Both are too obvious, they'll be found in seconds. But there is nowhere else. Do they have time to flee down the corridor and try to find some hiding spot elsewhere on the train?

  The question is answered before she can ask it. A metal door slams and loud voices fill the corridor outside, only two or three berths away, barking orders. The soldiers are in their car. Veronica's heart begins to pound, she feels her breath begin to quicken, her lungs seem squeezed half-shut, she feels cold, her skin feels stretched too tight - but she has now grown almost accustomed to her body's fight-or-flight reaction, and this time her mind does not shut down, she can still think clearly. She never imagined that fear for her life might grow so terribly familiar.

  "Only one way out," she says quietly.

  All eyes turn to the open window.

  * * *

  There is a little table set into the wall immediately beneath the window. Lovemore crouches on that table, facing into the car, grabs the top of the window frame, extends his head and shoulders into the night – then ducks them back in as a wooden pole goes past, less than a foot from the window. To Veronica's relief it does not go past particularly quickly. The train's locomotive is old and slow, they probably aren't moving more than twenty miles an hour. But that's plenty fast enough to break your neck if you hit the ground the wrong way.

  The soldiers' voices are closer now, the next berth over. Innocent went out to try to stall them, but it doesn't sound like he's having much luck, their voices sound hostile, angry. Veronica checks to see that their door is still locked by its single metal bolt. Lovemore tries again. His hands leave the window frame and find some purchase above, his legs straighten and levitate away from the table, and then he is gone. Jacob climbs awkwardly up onto the table.

  A fist hammers on their door and a voice shouts a demand.

  "Hurry," Lysander says, so quietly Veronica can barely hear him.

  Jacob, clumsier and less athletic than Lovemore, manages to contort himself so his gangly body extends out of the window. Then he slips, his foot gives way and he starts to fall, it seems to be happening in slow motion, Veronica's heart convulses as Jacob begins to topple away from the window– and a muscular, dark-skinned hand reaches down as if from the heavens, catches a flailing wrist, steadies him.

  The soldiers at their door resume their hammering and shouting, and this time they don't stop.

  "They say they're going to break it down," Lysander murmurs urgently into Veronica's ear as Jacob pulls himself or is pulled up and out of the window. "You go. I'll stay."

  She looks at him, alarmed.

  "They'll be awfully suspicious if they find an empty berth locked from the inside. Fear not. I know how to handle these people. I'll be fine." He tries to smile.

  Something hits the door so hard that the bold that holds it bends backwards slightly.

  "All right, all right!" Lysander shouts, and the cacophony on the other side of the door falls silent for a moment. "Just give me a moment to get dressed."

  He nods to her. Veronica realizes she doesn't have time to argue. She steps up onto the table, trying to be quiet, holds the side of the window frame and sticks her head outside. No oncoming poles are evident. She looks up and sees the heads and arms of Jacob and Lovemore, on top of the train only a few feet above her. She reaches up towards them, each takes an arm, and the two men lift her up like a rag doll. Jacob's contribution is almost irrelevant; Lovemore is phenomenally strong and all but singlehandedly pulls her up and onto the roof.

  For a moment she lies on her belly, breathing hard, cold iron against her face as the train rattles and vibrates beneath her. Then she carefully pulls herself up to her knees and looks around. The roof of the train is trapezoidal in cross-section, two slight slopes on either side rising to a flat walkway down the middle. They are moving through a vast field of dry grasses lit by the hanging crescent moon. The stiff wind and the rocking, lurching motion make it hard to keep her balance even on her knees, she has to reach out frequently to steady herself. The wind and the churning train-sounds drown out all else, she can't hear what if anything is happening to Lysander in the berth below.

  Veronica wishes she had taken the thirty extra seconds to to collect her day pack and its contents. She has nothing left but her clothes, her shoes, her passport in her money belt, cigarettes and lighter in one of her cargo pants' side pockets, useless cell phone and Leatherman in the other, and her empty wallet in her back pocket. She supposes it's better than nothing. She pulls out her phone, intending to turn it on and check the time.

  Jacob grabs her. "Don't," he says. "No phones, never, not in this country."

  She understands and replaces it in her pocket. She supposes it doesn't matter what time it is. They have to wait up here until they are safe, however long it takes. Maybe all the way to Bulawayo.

  * * *

  Veronica is freezing, the icy wind is relentless, she can't stop shivering. Jacob kneels behind her, his arms wrapped around her, but his limbs too are cold and she can hear his teeth chatter. Lovemore, apparently insensate to the frigid wind, stands like a surfer atop the the moving train, peering down its length.

  Veronica wonders if the soldiers have fully searched the train by now, if it might be safe to go back in and hide in a warm corner. But of course they can't. Better to risk hypothermia than a firing squad.

  Lovemore crouches back down and says, conversationally, "Once I was on a train that struck an elephant near here. We are not far from Hwange park. The elephants have grown too many for the park, there is not enough food there, so many forage outside. Perhaps this one was old and did not hear the train. Or perhaps it was curious. Nothing troubles an elephant. They are slow to learn fear."

  Veronica stares at him. That is a potential hazard she had not even considered. "Really? What happened?"

  "It died."

  "I mean, to the train."

  Lovemore shrugs as if that hardly matters. "The lead car derailed. There were many injuries."

  After a silent minute Lovemore stands back up and sights down the train again - but this time he drops immediately back into a crouch, one hand on the slippery metal beneath him. He looks like an NFL lineman waiting for the ball to be snapped, peering forward, muscles taut, ready for action.

  "What is it?" Jacob asks.

  "Someone else on the train. On the engine car."

  Veronica stiffens and turns to look. The high moon sheds enough light that she can see motion at the end of the train, near the engine. Oncoming motion. She can't tell how many.

  "Soldiers," Lovemore says grimly. "They have seen us."

  Veronica looks back down the length of the train. The gaps between the cars are narrow enough for the surefooted to step across. The several men in the distance make their way slowly but inexorably along the train, towards their quarry. Their attempt to hide has failed.

  She looks out at the field of darkness through which they move, and takes a deep breath. She can't stop shivering. "I guess we've got no choice."

  * * *

  There's a little ridge at the rim of the roof, maybe an inch high, just enough for Jacob to hold on to as
he worms his way sideways over the edge, half-slipping, half-dangling, until he is literally holding on by his fingertips. Veronica gasps as a wooden pole flashes past the train, but it isn't quite close enough to knock Jacob off.

  The soldiers are only three cars away now, and closing fast, they seem to have gotten the knack of leaping over the gaps between cars.

  "Don't think about it," Jacob says. She can barely hear him, she isn't sure whether he's talking to himself or giving her advice. "Just go. Try to land on your butt and roll."

  Then his hands vanish and he disappears into the night. The rattling train drowns out any sound of impact. Veronica stares at the space Jacob's hands just occupied. He might already be dead.

  "Hurry!" Lovemore says urgently.

  She nods, drops to her hands and knees, and begins crawling towards the edge of the train. The slippery metal is rocking precariously beneath her and when she nears the edge she switches to belly-crawling. Veronica grabs the ridge and slowly, agonizingly, works herself over the edge of the train, it isn't easy to do without falling, especially when the train itself is shaking violently back and forth, and wooden posts keep flashing past.

  She hears shouts over the grinding noise of the train, and when she looks up, she sees that the half-dozen soldiers are now only one car away, and running towards them. Sudden desperation lends Veronica a gymnast's speed and grace. She swings her whole body down at once, catches herself by her fingers as her legs and torso fall down the outer wall of the train. Her shoulders squawk with pain but she manages to hold on. Lovemore is already sliding and scrambling to the edge beside her. Veronica lifts her feet so they are flat against the wall of the train, then uses her legs to propel herself back, away from the train, into the darkness. For a moment she hangs weightless in the air. It feels like flying.