Seligman got to the top of the hill some thirty seconds or so before me and he waited next to a large bush with thick, oval-shaped leaves. The air was cooler there, and as I joined him I could see why. About a quarter of a mile away flowed a wide, murky river and the wind was obviously blowing across it and up the hillside. The bank on the far side was just a greenish smudge with grey mist-shrouded mountains behind. The river could have been half a mile wide, or a mile, or more, there was no way of telling. There were two modern boats close to the shore on our side, white hulls with bright orange superstructures. One was heading towards us, one away. The incoming boat turned to sail alongside a wooden pier that jutted into the water, showing that most of the deck space at the rear was filled with mud. At the back was a crane-like object with a ribbed metal scoop at the end like the jaws of bulldozer.
At the base of the hill was a cluster of wooden huts and between it and the river was a corrugated iron shed, three storeys high and covering an area equivalent to a first division football pitch with room for the police to surround it to keep the crowd back. Linking the shed to the pier was a conveyor belt, an endless rubber strip that moved on stainless steel rollers suspended ten feet above the ground by wooden poles set in threes like unfinished camp-fires. Just before it reached the shed it veered up and disappeared into a hole on the top floor. As we watched, the boat began to dump its load of mud onto the belt, scoop by scoop.
‘What happens inside the shed?’ I asked.
‘The mud gets washed through a series of metal screens to separate out all the stones and rocks and stuff. Then they use some sort of filtration system to separate out all the mud and smaller bits of crud.’
‘And that just leaves diamonds? Sounds simple.’
‘Well, there’s a bit more to it than that, but basically it is simple. Sally said it was like panning for gold but on a bigger scale.’
‘How big are the diamonds?’
‘You can hardly call them diamonds, it’s more like diamond dust, very fine particles. They use them to coat drills, grinding machinery, that sort of thing. Every ton of mud produces a gram or two, but they sift through mountains of the stuff every day.’
The long, thin heap of mud had reached the hole in the shed and it poured through like a worm burrowing into the earth.
‘They ever find any big stones, diamonds I mean?’
‘Sally said no, she said they never found anything that could be worn in a ring, industrial quality only.’
The huts and the shed were contained in a triangular compound, bounded on each side by a ten-foot high wire fence topped with rotating metal spikes. The base of the triangle ran alongside the river bank and the apex touched the bottom of the hill on which we stood. There was only one way in, a gate that blocked the road and which was guarded by two men in dark blue uniforms holding what seemed to be rifles, or shotguns. By the side of the gate was a Portakabin with the windows blocked off with sheets of plywood.
A group of workers, their overalls covered in the red mud, walked out of the shed towards the Portakabin. One of the guards opened the door and they trooped in.
‘Was security as tight last time you were here?’
‘Yes, but they didn’t have guns then.’
‘What’s in the cabin?’
‘They check out the workers before they leave the camp, there’s an X-ray machine in there, or an ultra-sound, or something. They put them all through it before they let them out.’
‘They X-ray them every day? I thought X-rays were dangerous.’
‘Not every day,’ he said, pulling one of the leaves off the bush and rolling it between the palms of his hands. ‘They live in the huts down there most of the time.’
‘How close is the nearest town?’
‘There’s a village about a mile down the road, round the hill.’
‘But the workers live on the camp. Why would they do that?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘And why such tight security, if all they’re producing are industrial diamonds? Why go to all the trouble?’
I sat down next to the bush and watched the men come out of the cabin one by one and pass through the gate. Padlocked to the outside of the fence was a line of twenty or so bicycles and before long the group had ridden off down the road.
The dredger had finished unloading its cargo of mud and it sounded a piercing whistle before heading back to the middle of the river.
‘Who owns this place?’ I asked.
‘It’s a joint venture between a government geological institute and some British company, I’m not sure of the name. It shouldn’t be too hard to check.’
He sat down next to me in one smooth movement, one moment he was standing, the next he was sitting cross-legged on the grass. Graceful was the only word to describe it.
The two dredgers passed by each other. The crews didn’t wave or anything, it was obviously a journey they’d made many, many times, just part of the job. The last of the mud vanished into the shed and the belt was clear again.
‘What happened when you came here with Sally?’ I asked.
‘We just drove up to the front gate and asked if we could look round, it was as simple as that.’
‘They let you in?’
‘Sally showed them her press card and the guards fetched a manager, a Shanghainese who’d been to college in Vancouver. He wanted to practise his English so he took us into his office and gave us tea. He couldn’t stop talking. He’d studied geology and then returned to Hong Kong with a Canadian passport. Jumped at the chance of helping China exploit its natural resources, but after a straight three months in the camp he said he was starved of conversation.’
‘And he showed you around?’
‘Sort of. He showed us everything except what went on inside the shed. He said that was off-limits.’
‘But he let you look inside the Portakabin?’
‘No, we saw inside on the way out. We saw one of the workers being scanned and then they shut the door.’
‘What’s the point of it?’
‘I suppose to make sure they don’t smuggle any diamonds out. It’s standard practice in diamond mines, Sally said. It’s so easy for someone to swallow a stone and let it pass right through his system.’
The second dredger arrived at the pier, and its scoop began unloading more mud.
‘Seems a lot of trouble if all they’re getting out of that mud are industrial diamonds.’
‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ he said. No, pal, you hadn’t, but I bet Sally had.
‘Did she tell the guy who she was?’
‘Of course, and left her card with him. He said he wanted to give her a call next time he was in Hong Kong.’
‘What about you?’
‘Huh?’
‘Did you leave your card with him?’
‘No, but he asked my name. Sally just said I was a translator.’
He’d rolled the leaf into a small ball which he flicked into the air. His fingers were stained green.
‘What are you thinking?’ he asked.
‘I’m not sure,’ I said.
‘You think she died because she came out here?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe you both saw something you shouldn’t have.’
‘So why invite us in in the first place?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps the Canadian was new to the job. Perhaps he didn’t know what was going on.’
‘And what is going on?’
I shrugged, and pushed myself to my feet. Graceful wasn’t the word to describe it. The seat of my pants felt damp. I didn’t want to say ‘I don’t know’ again but that was the only answer I could think of. The sun was setting now, the evening light streaking the river orange. Lights began to go on in the huts.
‘What are we going to do?’ asked Seligman.
A hole appeared in one of the leaves at my eye-level and almost simultaneously we heard the crack of a rifle and Seligman and I dived flat, though he did it with a dar
n sight more style than me. He rolled behind the bush and then got up into a crouch and scuttled back down the hill. A second bullet whined overhead. Once over the brow of the hill he stood upright and shouted.
‘They’re firing from the camp. We’re shielded on this side.’ That was all right for him to say, I was lying spreadeagled on the wrong side of the sodding hill. A dribble of something wet trickled down my leg and I just hoped it was sweat.
‘Move,’ screamed Seligman.
My eyes were tight shut and my teeth clenched. There was another crack and I felt rather than heard the bullet thud into the ground a few inches to the left of my head.
‘Move, move,’ he yelled, and this time I didn’t need any encouragement, I was on my hands and knees and scrambling over the edge. By the time I caught up with the American I was moving too fast to stop, and I stumbled, rolling over and over till I came to the bottom. Seligman came after me and helped me to my feet. I was shaking, my breath coming in ragged gasps. He grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me hard, my head jerking backwards and forwards.
‘What the hell is happening?’ I asked him. Seligman looked as shocked as I was, his eyes were wide and his mouth open. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and then started pulling at his lip.
He shook his head in confusion. ‘I don’t know. We weren’t doing anything wrong.’ He was starting to shake.
I crawled on all fours to the brow of the hill and nervously peeked over the top. There were three armed guards standing by the gate. They’d stopped firing and were scanning the hillside, jerking their rifles whenever they thought they’d seen something. One of them took aim and fired at a spot about fifty feet to my right. Another group of guards ran out of the shed, shouting at the men at the gate, and another two came out of the Portakabin. They stood together, yelling and cursing, two of them pointing in my general direction. Two open-topped, dark green Land-Rovers appeared from behind the shed and drove up to the gate where they stopped with a squeal of brakes in a cloud of dust.
The men with the guns climbed into the back of the Land-Rovers as another guard unlocked the main gate. Jesus, they were coming after us.
I scampered down the hill again. Seligman was where I’d left him, staring at me in bewilderment.
‘We have to go, they’re coming after us,’ I said, and pushed him towards the Mercedes. The windows were all open and Jailhouse Rock was on full blast. Wah-yim and Elvis hadn’t even heard the shots, they were sitting with bottles of beer held between their knees, handjiving away like a couple of kids.
Seligman wrenched open the door and practically threw me in. He leant forward and began talking earnestly and rapidly to the two of them. My mind was clearer now and I reckoned that we had anywhere between one and four minutes before the guards got to us by road.
Wah-yim started the engine and did a three point turn, the road was too narrow to make it in one go. As we reversed the rear wheels slipped off the road and spun uselessly while Seligman swore and pounded his seat in frustration. He was sweating and red and a vein was pulsing in his temple, he looked as if he was about to turn green and split his shirt. I probably didn’t look any better because I was shouting at Wah-yim too, begging, pleading, threatening, just wanting to get the hell out of this place where men with rifles were trying to kill us.
The wheels suddenly found traction and the car sped forward. Round the bend behind us hurtled the two Land-Rovers with wire mesh screens over the windscreens and large metal bumpers fixed over the radiators. Standing up in the back of each were two men pointing their rifles and struggling to keep their balance.
Wah-yim stamped hard on the accelerator, but there was a limit to how fast he could drive the Mercedes on the country roads and the Land-Rovers were already driving at that speed.
A bullet pinged through the rear window, passed through the middle of the car and out through the windscreen leaving a perfect hole about the diameter of a cigarette. Elvis cursed and dropped down into the footwell among his empty bottles while Wah-yim hunched low over the wheel. The American and I were lying on the back seat like a couple of canned sardines.
‘What the fuck are we going to do now?’ I asked his ankles.
‘Shit, I don’t know,’ he gasped. ‘But if they hit the petrol cans we’re dead.’
I peered over the back of the seat to see the first of the Land-Rovers coming round a corner after us. On the straight and flat we’d have left them far behind but on these winding roads the four-wheel drives had the advantage. Wah-yim was throwing the Mercedes from side to side, and the stuff in the back of the car was rolling all over the place.
‘Tell Elvis to pass his empty bottles over here,’ I told Seligman’s knee.
‘What?’ he said. There was the loud smack of a bullet hitting the bumper. Wah-yim made himself even smaller in the driver’s seat, like a schoolboy in his father’s car.
‘The bottles,’ I said. ‘Get him to throw the bottles here.’
Seligman spoke to Elvis, who gave me a look that said I was crazy. Maybe he was right.
‘Now what?’ Seligman said.
I took off my tie and thrust it at him. ‘Start pulling it to bits,’ I said, and risked another look over the seat as Wah-yim took a right curve. The short section of road behind us was clear so I lunged over and grabbed the funnel and one of the petrol cans and with a grunt hauled it back. As I did the two Land-Rovers roared around the bend and one of the guards got off a shot but it went wide. I dropped down, this time with my head the same side of the car as Seligman’s. He was using his teeth to shred the material, gnawing like a beaver with a branch. Elvis had started shoving bottles through the gap between the two front seats muttering to himself. There were six in all, but if that wasn’t enough I could always get him to drink some more.
I knelt down on the floor, keeping my head low, and unscrewed the top of the petrol can. The vapour made me feel light-headed as I filled one of the empty beer bottles, slopping the fuel into the tin funnel and trying not to spill any.
‘OK, give me a piece of the tie,’ I said to Seligman, and he handed me a scrap of blue and yellow cloth. I pushed half of it into the neck of the bottle and let the rest dangle down the side. It was soon damp with petrol. I went through the whole business again as the Mercedes lurched into a swift series of turns and I slopped a pint or so on the floor. By the time I’d finished I was close to passing out. I gave them to Seligman to hold while I took another look at our pursuers. They were gaining, fifty feet or so behind us, and the guys with the rifles were trying to aim, but the wind was making their eyes stream and the vehicles were bucking up and down on the uneven road. Wah-yim threw the car into a sharp right turn and they disappeared from view.
‘OK, here goes nothing,’ I said, and took one of the bottles off Seligman.
Elvis started talking to the American, who reached out and held my arm. ‘He says he wants to do it.’
‘Yeah, well I’ve seen his aim and I’m not impressed.’
‘He says he was only trying to scare the farmers.’
‘Jesus Christ, give him one then. And tell Wah-yim to slow down once he takes the next bend.’
As the car began its turn Elvis flicked his lighter into life and we both lit our fuses. He was giggling like a girl as he leant out of the window, the flaming material waving in the slipstream. Wah-yim started to brake and I joined Elvis, keeping a tight grip on the bottle. The first Land-Rover came hurtling around the bend, and I drew back my arm and threw, hard and high. The second bottle followed half a second later.
Mine went spinning wide and burst into flames by the side of the road. Elvis’s hit the windscreen full on, smashing open on the metal grille and spraying burning petrol over the glass. The two armed men standing in the back were splattered with the liquid and they began hitting at themselves, trying to beat out the flames that were eating at their uniforms, screaming in high-pitched, terrified voices. The vehicle began to swerve from side to side and then one of the wheels clipped th
e edge of the road and it flipped over on its side and then was lost from view as we screeched around another corner. Elvis whooped for joy, punching the air with a clenched fist.
The remaining Land-Rover was more cautious after seeing the fate of the first and it dropped back, well out of throwing range. As soon as we reached a straight section they’d be able to start shooting from a safe distance.
‘Now what?’ asked Seligman. I got down on the floor again and began preparing four more of the Molotov cocktails.
‘We’ll get them to come to us,’ I said, fumbling with the petrol can again. ‘Tell Wah-yim to step on it and get as far ahead as he can. Then when I yell to stop he’s to slam on the brakes, stop dead and let me and Elvis out. Then he’s to drive a hundred feet or so and stop again.’
Seligman relayed the message to the driver, who was still sitting hunched over the wheel. He nodded furiously. Then I told the American what Elvis was to do.
He was grinning viciously and holding both of his bottles in one hand, idly flicking the lighter as he waited. The real Elvis was singing at the top of his voice that we should lay off his blue suede shoes.
The road was straighter now, and two shots whined past the car. The hillsides were quite thickly wooded, so I told Seligman that Wah-yim was to get ready. There was a curve coming up so I nodded at Elvis and the lighter sparked into flame. We held the four pieces of petrol-soaked cloth over the lighter and they soon caught, black smoke curling up to the roof of the Mercedes.
The car hit the curve around twenty feet into it and I shouted ‘stop.’ We all pitched forward and the wheels skidded and Elvis and I had our doors open before we’d stopped. He ran straight for a tree half a dozen paces from the road, I dashed behind the back of the car, heading in the opposite direction.
The Fireman Page 21
