Blood Diamonds - [Kamal and Barnea 05]

by By Jon Land

  Anatolyevich went next and for him the task would have been impossible if not for Danielle’s efforts at helping him make the climb. Ben neared the top of the rope well ahead of them and peered over the side of the ship. He found the deck deserted, just as it had appeared from their boat. Breathing easier, he eased his body up and over the gunwale, then helped Danielle and Anatolyevich climb over to the deck of the Peter the Great as well.

  “You see what I mean?” the Russian charged fearfully. “It’s just like I told you. Now let’s get out of here before it’s too late!”

  “I think we’ll have a look below first,” Ben insisted.

  Danielle panned the deck. “The lifeboats are all still in place.” Her eyes reached Ben. “So where’s the crew?”

  Ben scanned the freighter’s deck. Close up, thePeter the Great looked older and in even worse disrepair than it had from sea. Surfaces blistered and bubbled everywhere with rust. The paint, in two or three different patchwork shades, was faded and peeling. Tack welds covered the deck and surrounding structures like scars from jagged knife wounds. Orange streaks of corrosion crisscrossed the deck, like a cancer slowly eating away at the freighter’s body. The air stank of dried oil, and the entire deck was filthy with a film of it that Ben realized had already covered both his hands.

  “Let’s see if we can find them,” he answered finally.

  All three moved toward the entrance of the stairwell that ran just beneath the Peter the Great’s deserted bridge. The steel door that led to it was closed, and Danielle drew her pistol before they got there. Anatolyevich hovered well back on the deck, while Ben and Danielle took up positions on opposite sides of the door. The door opened inward and Ben used hand signals to indicate he would handle the task of forcing it ajar. Danielle nodded and watched as he sprang the latch and threw his shoulder into the door in a single, swift motion.

  The force of the thrust caused Ben to slip on the wet deck. Danielle watched him going down when a gunshot exploded from within the stairwell, the noise deafening because of the echo. Danielle dove and slid across the deck, firing high into the darkness to make sure she avoided Ben. She heard a grunt, then the thumping sound of a body tumbling down the stairs before she slid to a halt.

  “Ben!” she screamed.

  “I’m all right! What about. . .”

  Ben’s voiced trailed off when he glanced at the deck and saw Anatolyevich lying on his back, blood spreading beneath him across the moist deck. His chest had been caved in by what could only have been a shotgun shell, explaining the volume of the shot that had left a terrible ringing in Ben’s ears.

  Danielle spun into the doorway over Ben, gun aimed down the narrow steel stairs. The body of the man she had shot lay twisted at the bottom of the first flight, shotgun poking out from beneath him.

  “Crew member?”

  “Dressed like one, anyway.”

  “But who did he think we were?”

  Danielle reached down to help Ben to his feet. “Only one way to find out.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 37

  G

  eneral Latisse Matabu was dreaming of a ship. A great ship that carried the last of her hope within its holds. But her sleep quickly turned restless, because this ship that should have been hers was not. Strangers patrolled its decks, threatening the last gift she intended to leave the world.

  Strange how the gifts she had been blessed with could not help her heal herself. The great powers she had inherited from the original Dragon were powerless against the disease that was ravaging her body. And the revenge she had extracted on General Treest upon her return to Sierra Leone could change nothing. Latisse Matabu knew this, just as Dr. Sowahy did. She could lie to herself no longer. To take his medication, though, meant accepting that she was not unique, no different from anyone else. Accepting that science could help where the gifts that defined her could not.

  The doctor had come again today, looking grave after he completed his examination.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked him.

  Dr. Sowahy came round the desk and faced Latisse Matabu in her chair. “I have heard tales about your trip to Katani two days ago, General.” He narrowed his gaze and shook his head slowly. “What have you done?” the doctor asked, not bothering to hide his disgust.

  “Only what an ancestor did long before me. You knew my grandmother?”

  “We were born in neighboring villages.”

  “There is a tale she used to often tell me, a tale of one of our ancestors they called the Moor Woman. It starts in Anatolia, now Turkey, in 1347. ...”

  Orhan, son of Osman I, founder of the Ottoman Empire, reached the top of the ridge and halted, staring down into the valley through the swirling mist that had appeared out of nowhere. There, rising out of the gray vapor clouds clinging to the ground, appeared the ruins of an ancient fortress.

  Most of its walled structure had crumbled long ago, leaving only a single port of entry through a still-standing archway. Its color must have been once that of polished white granite. But the years had reduced its remnants to a clay red hue, blackening the fortress in the places the sun no longer touched. All three of its towers had been sheared off at varying heights by time. Its dome was cracked, but whole. The battlements that had once housed the fortress’s guards had collapsed upon themselves in near matching piles of rubble.

  Orhan ordered his troops to hold their ground and started down into the valley, choosing his way carefully. The path seemed to narrow, all but the ground immediately before him lost to the mist the further down he climbed. Dead, leafless branches looking like hands poked out of the muck.

  Finally the ruins of the fortress appeared directly before him. Orhan stopped near the fallen rubble of an archway and peered ahead into the darkness before stepping through.

  “Come in,” a wizened, crackly voice called from inside. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Orhan continued until the shape of an old woman was directly before him and sank to one knee in reverence. “I am— “

  “I know who you are. Orhan, son of Osman I, conqueror of the Byzantines. Orhan, ruler of the Ottomans. “

  Orhan’s eyes adjusted to the darkness and saw before him a dark, lithe figure cloaked in shapeless black rags the same color as her mottled, wrinkled skin. She was more shadow than person, seated on a straw mattress dimly lit by the thin light struggling through cracks in the structure’s walls.

  “Now tell me what has brought you to my presence,” the Moor Woman said, her milky gaze locking on Orhan. “Tell me what leads you to come to a witch for help.”

  “I must complete my father’s work. There is a world beyond Anatolia that awaits our rule. “

  The Moor Woman smiled, revealing the stubs of rotting teeth and purplish gums. “That world will cost you a great deal. “

  Orhan took a step closer, stopping as if an invisible barrier had sprang up in his path. “My armies are not strong enough to fight all of Europe. “

  “You will not need your armies, if you follow my instructions. But the price is a great one. “

  “I am willing to pay you anything!”

  “Not my price—the one you must live with for all your remaining days.”

  “I do not care how harshly the world judges me. “ The Moor Woman offered a pair of bony, withered hands to the leader of the Ottomans. “Then sit with me, Orhan, and listen while I describe your task. ...”

  “I’ve heard enough!” Dr. Sowahy blared, interrupting Matabu’s retelling of her grandmother’s often-told tale.

  “The story isn’t finished. The Moor Woman sent Orhan to a dying village on the Black Sea. Told him to gather rats and sail on to a number of ports where he was to release the rats onto dozens of Italian merchant ships still in their harbors. These merchant ships would later dock at various European ports of call to empty their storage holds. And at each port the rats, thirsty and ravenous, emerged carrying a pestilence that changed the world forever.

  “
The Black Death, of course, spread throughout Europe and any threat Orhan and his successors may have faced from the west was eliminated, his enemies neutralized. The Ottoman Empire was born. The Moor Woman had been true to her word. And Orhan was true to his as well, securing her passage on a merchant ship bound for Africa where she made her true home. No longer known as the Moor Woman, though. In Africa her powers and visions earned her a new name from those who feared her:

  “The Dragon.”

  Matabu smiled thinly. “What if I was in possession of a comparable means to establish my empire, just as Orhan established his?”

  Sowahy shuddered. “I won’t listen to this!”

  “You should, Doctor, because what happened then is going to happen once again. Our enemies are going to be vanquished, just as Orhan’s were—”

  Matabu felt a hollow pang building behind her eyeballs, a stinging pain that surged into her cheeks and left her dizzy.

  “What is it?” Dr. Sowahy asked, reaching for her hand to take her pulse.

  Matabu pulled it away. “Just a spell.”

  “You can’t let yourself get so worked up.”

  Matabu smiled slightly. “I am remaking the world, Doctor. How can I not?”

  * * * *

  Chapter 38

  B

  en and Danielle descended the steel stairs slowly, listening for any stray sound other than the echoes of their own steps. Beyond the soft clacking of the freighter’s still idling diesel motors and the rhythmic lapping of the water against the freighter’s hull, though, there was only silence.

  They searched the first two decks and found nothing. Just empty berths and staterooms, and a mess hall littered with half-eaten meals. Whatever happened here, then, had clearly happened in a hurry.

  With each descent the air grew staler and hotter. The third sub-deck was located in the deepest livable bowels of the ship, containing access to the various cargo holds. The first two holds Ben and Danielle checked offered only a few stray remnants of machine and auto parts, discarded refuse from a previous cargo.

  A dripping sound and a door that creaked slowly back and forth had them approaching the third hold warily, each tightening their grasps on their pistols. Ben peeked inside and then eased open the door as Danielle joined him.

  The hold was lined with the bodies of thePeter the Great’smissing crew members, strewn from wall to wall. A dozen at the very least.

  “My God,” she mumbled and slipped past him.

  “Shot?”

  “Yes,” Danielle replied, needing only a cursory inspection to reach that conclusion. “And all at about the same time, by the look of things.”

  “When?”

  Danielle found a patch of dried blood and did some quick calculations in her head. “Last night sometime.”

  “Killed and then dragged here to be hidden,” Ben assumed.

  “No,” said Danielle, inspecting the blood pattern. “Most of them were brought here and then killed. You can tell by the way the bodies fell that they had been lined up.”

  “A massacre,” Ben said, and backed out of the hold.

  Even more tense than before now, he closed that cargo hold door behind them and moved on to the next. The air grew cold as they drew closer, downright chilly, owing to the fact that this final hold was obviously refrigerated.

  This time Danielle entered first, spinning her way through the large archway with gun drawn.

  The hold was empty.

  Danielle lowered her gun, shivering from the super-cooled air as mist formed before her face.

  “Look at this,” Ben called.

  He had passed her upon entering the deserted hold, and had crouched down in the center of the floor.

  “There was something here, all right,” he continued, pointing at the floor. “Based on the dust pattern, anyway.”

  Danielle shined a flashlight she’d brought from their trawler across the floor, looking for any signs of what might have been stored in the hold. “Crates of some kind,” she presumed. “Big ones, maybe three by six feet.”

  “Stolen, obviously. But by whom?”

  “Good question,” a familiar voice said from the doorway leading into the cargo hold, and Danielle swung to find herself face-to-face with General Dov Levy.

  * * * *

  Chapter 39

  P

  rofessor Deirdre Cotter held her hat to her head as the jeep thundered down the narrow road carved out of the jungle.

  “You still haven’t told me where we’re going,” she said to the Sierra Leone cabinet minister seated next to her in the jeep’s rear seat.

  “The village of Katani, Doctor,” Daniel Sukahamin replied.

  “It’s ‘professor,’ not ‘doctor.’ “

  “Whatever you say, miss.”

  “Fine. Then tell me why the hell you’re taking me there.”

  “Because you are needed, miss.”

  “You’re defense minister of the Sierra Leone government and I’m a botanist, an agriculturist, working for the U.N. mission.”

  “We’re well aware of what you do, miss,” Sukahamin assured her.

  “Then what in God’s name do you need me for?’

  “You are the same Deirdre Cotter who came to my country with her husband three years ago?”

  Cotter stiffened. “Do you really need to ask?”

  “Your husband was taken hostage and murdered by RUF rebels two years into your stay.”

  “For Christ’s sake . . .”

  “And yet you stayed. You did not run. You stayed even beyond the time expected of you. Why?”

  Deirdre Cotter swallowed hard. “Because I thought I could make a difference. Iwanted to make a difference.”

  Sukahamin remained utterly calm. “You are about to get your chance, Professor.”

  “What do you know about the villages in this region?” the defense minister of Sierra Leone resumed as the road narrowed and the jeep drew closer to the town of Katani.

  “Fishing- and farming-based. Pretty much self-reliant.”

  “Until yesterday, Professor.”

  The jeep slowed as the first awkward signs pointing toward the village appeared on the side of the dirt road, haphazardly nailed to a tree. But as yet no people had appeared even though the jeep had already passed the stream from which the villagers drew their water. Normally there was a constant parade back and forth of locals toting large drums and containers. The anomaly made Cotter even warier than she already was.

  The jeep wound its way into the village, which was composed of little more than a collection of slipshod and ramshackle structures. Some of the larger, better-kept ones had windows and arched roofs, while others qualified merely as huts fashioned from hard-packed, dried mud. These huts, mostly homes for the villagers, formed a semi-circle around the town center.

  With the town center empty, Deirdre Cotter expected frightened faces to be peering out from behind doors or curtain flaps fashioned out of burlap or other scraps of clothing, but there were none.

  “The village is abandoned,” she realized, feeling their jeep bump across the uneven landscape, not stopping at the abandoned town.

  “Since yesterday,” Sukahamin acknowledged. “They had some unwelcome guests the day before that: the RUF.”

  Cotter’s features flared. Her lips trembled. “What are you dragging me into, here? I told you, I’m just a botanist! The U.N. sent us here to help educate your people on how better to work the land, not get involved in your civil war.”

  “You have been involved since your husband was murdered, miss,” Sukahamin said gravely. “In Sierra Leone, everyone is involved.”

  The jeep halted and Sukahamin climbed out, shadowed instantly by his driver and bodyguard, who shifted their weapons round to be within easy reach.

  “This way,” the defense minister beckoned when Cotter finally exited the jeep, wiping the sweat from her hands on her cargo pants. “Their fields are clustered in a valley just beyond this ridge.”

 
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