by Peter Tonkin
Anastasia put her AK down, its barrel resting on the first wooden step, then she wriggled through the gap between that and the third step, using the pale bulk of Father Antoine’s corpse and the depth of the shadow it cast. In an instant she was inside the chapel, standing with her back to the wall, the door-frame at her right shoulder, looking down to where Celine lay bound and helpless on the floor. Her eyes were wide and her lips were parted, panting with shock and horror. Three long steps took Anastasia to her side. She went down on one knee, pulling the Victorinox from her pocket and snapping out the longest blade. As she sawed at Celine’s bonds, the girl gasped, almost whimpering with terror and tension as the thunderous pounding rose and rose outside.
It took only a moment to cut Celine free, then the pair of them were side by side pressed against the wall inside the door. There was no other way out. No windows. No weaknesses in the sturdy floor – raised above the depredations of the termites that might have weakened it. Anastasia gasped and gulped an explanation of how she had got here from the riverbank. The best way back by the look of things. Their only chance of survival. Their only hope of somehow getting help and coming back for the others. ‘I’ll go first,’ she concluded. ‘Then I’ll signal the best moment for you to follow . . .’ Celine nodded.
Anastasia oozed out through the door on her belly like a slug, falling into Father Antoine’s shadow at once and slipping between the planks to cradle the AK like an old, dear friend. She looked along the barrel just in time to see Ngoboi straighten from a crouching position over Sister Faith. An acolyte at his shoulder straightened too. Ngoboi had no hands; the helper held Sister Faith’s heart in one fist and what looked like her liver in the other. Held the bloody trophies high as Ngoboi took off again, twirling and dancing. The rest of his helpers fell on the corpse again and Anastasia realized they were literally butchering it – cutting it into joints like a carcass in a meat shop.
Sister Faith’s organs were carried towards the general. Anastasia had very little doubt about what he was planning to do with them. Once again, every eye in the place was riveted to the gruesome spectacle. The pounding rose even higher, thundering through the jungle in a terrific tempest of sound. Anastasia thumped on the floorboards above her head, then moved the AK over out of Celine’s way, for the ex-freedom fighter was much larger than her Russian would-be rescuer. And dressed in more bulky clothing of a much lighter shade.
Anastasia blinked and shook her head, trying to clear the sweat and black mud from her eyes. When she looked again, General Nlong, standing in Father Antoine’s place of honour at the top table under the palm-roofed lean-to, was raising Sister Faith’s heart to his lips. Everyone was watching him. The drumming was fading away as the pounding fists stilled in anticipation. Such was the horrific power of the ghastly moment that the general seemed to be illuminated by an instant of the brightest white light. It flickered as his strange sharp teeth bit down, and was gone. Anastasia realized she still had not switched the selector over to automatic. Another opportunity lost.
Celine came crawling out of the chapel door then. With some difficulty – and far too slowly for Anastasia’s taste – she began to wriggle between the steps. A great sound went up. Not a cheer. Something too feral and brutal for that. The pounding started again, a hollow thundering taken up by the sky itself as the threatened storm finally arrived. But Ngoboi had stopped dancing. He was standing looking towards the chapel. Shouting. Shouting and gesturing. Fighting to make himself heard above the thunder. Fighting to make the others understand. Celine flopped in beside Anastasia.
‘GO!’ screamed Anastasia and pulled the AK’s trigger, simply aiming towards the centre of the compound where Ngoboi was still capering. The muzzle flash exploded at the same instant as the next great blaze of lightning; its flat report lost amid the faltering beating on the tables and the instant explosion of thunder overhead. Ngoboi staggered back a step and suddenly sat down.
Anastasia rolled away from the step, and, holding the AK by its hot muzzle, she wormed her way under the chapel as quickly as she could. The thunder echoed through the jungle and began to fade away. But at once its diminishing rumble was replaced by the arrival of the rain. She rolled out on to the upper slope of the bank and saw Celine beginning to pick herself up. ‘Go!’ yelled Anastasia again, and side by side they pounded towards the river, slipping and sliding in the instantly disorientating deluge.
Blessedly, Ado had not been idle in their absence. She had pulled the little rowing boat down from its place beside the pier and – in a moment of bizarre inspiration – had secured it by tying it to the unconscious soldier. As the two women came sliding down the bank towards her, she flashed the Maglite once to guide them. ‘Get in!’ shouted Anastasia as soon as she understood what Ado had done. And Ado obeyed. Celine stepped in next and Anastasia herself brought up the rear. Kneeling in the bow of the rowing boat, she turned back to try and untie the rope. But Ado had made too good a job. The knot securing the little vessel to the unconscious soldier was far too tight and complex for her trembling fingers to loosen. And the rain only made matters worse. She felt back along the straining rope only to find a tangled mare’s nest beneath her knees.
Celine’s hand came down on her shoulder then and she looked up. Along the top of the ridge, silhouetted by the flickering lights of the compound, a row of figures stood looking down into the darkness. Uncertain yellow light gleamed fitfully on matchets and AKs as they were brandished above the howling soldiers’ heads. ‘Get him!’ Anastasia shouted. ‘Get him in the boat!’
Celine reached down and together they wrestled the dead weight of their living anchor in over the gunwale. And the river took them at once, sweeping the four of them down towards the mangroves. Lightning pounced down, lighting up the wild crowd of their pursuers, with the general in their midst, mouth wide, crocodile teeth gleaming, chin red with Sister Faith’s heart’s-blood, face slick and streaming. And, in that instant of brightness, he saw them. His eyes locked with Anastasia’s, and he raised the Browning even as she fought to bring up the AK. This time she took more careful aim.
They fired at the same instant, though neither was able to see where their bullets went, for the little rowing boat was whirled round the out-thrust of the mangroves, as though propelled by the recoil of the AK itself, and was gathered into the midst of the river as it twisted round a sharp bend and plunged down into the delta proper.
SIX
Craft
As Ngoboi and his assistants at last whirled off the dance floor, the chandeliers brightened once again and Bonnie’s whispered commentary stilled, Richard leaned over towards Robin, his eyes narrow and his face crafty. ‘While we savour dessert and coffee as promised, my darling, why don’t I bring you up to speed with some of the background I read up on during the flight down here?’
‘OK,’ said Robin, equally craftily; well aware that showing off to her would distract him from the delectable Dr Holliday. ‘Do tell, my darling.’
‘The minister for the outer delta is that huge, short-necked bull of a man at the table over there. His name is Dr Bala Ngama and he is every bit as powerful as he looks. His responsibilities run from the lower edge of the inner delta right out to the boundary of Benin la Bas’s territorial waters. His purview is, therefore, very wide indeed, and his influence, inevitably, just as far-reaching. Only Chaka himself outguns him, so they say. There’s oil in the outer delta, of course, and under the continental shelf beneath the ocean waters to the south of it.’
‘Oil that Max Asov’s Bashnev drills and we at Heritage Mariner ship to and from the refineries in Northern Europe. I know that, my love.’
‘Quite. Oil that everyone else is trying to get hold of too. At any price. But the minister, like the rest of Chaka’s government, has the reputation of being untouchably honest. But you know how dirty big oil can get. Still, that’s why Minister Ngama works so closely with the minister for petroleum resources. That scrawny-looking chap with the black-rimmed spectacl
es. Keeping an eye on each other, perhaps. As pristine as Caesar’s wife.’
‘But he’s just responsible for the outer delta and the oil, isn’t he? I mean he’s not responsible for mines and so forth as well, is he?’ Robin asked, frowning.
‘That’s right,’ answered Richard. ‘It’s the minister for the inner delta who’s responsible for the mineral wealth of the area – and he works most closely with the Ministry of Mines and Metals, not to mention the nearly nationalized Minière Benin la Bas diamond cartel. Those gentlemen you took such a shine to as you went down the reception line.’
‘Gold and diamonds,’ she countered cheerfully. ‘I can’t think what the attraction was . . .’
‘Well, he and Bala Ngama, fortunately, are brothers or there might have been some danger of rivalry between them. Especially as the minister for the outer delta, the elder, more powerful of the two, has yet more strings to his bow, many of them involving Colonel Kebila in his various security guises and his family in several of theirs.’
‘Now that I didn’t know,’ she admitted, more seriously. ‘Do fill me in.’
‘Minister Ngama is currently responsible for the customs service, which Kebila oversees in a semi-official capacity. By extension, he is responsible for the port and docking facilities in Port Granville Harbour and, again with a little help from his friend, for the security of the port as a whole. He’s equally responsible for the protection of the platforms, pipelines and facilities both ashore and in the offshore oilfields. Responsibility for Benin la Bas’s navy comes under his purview, therefore – both the riverine and maritime sections of it – and the coastguard, with which there is naturally some overlap. The senior representative for naval affairs, however, is Captain Caleb Maina, who has day-to-day oversight of naval matters in the bay and up the river.’
‘Which one is he?’ demanded Robin. ‘You know how I feel about naval men . . .’
‘He’s the only other one in uniform,’ said Richard with some asperity. ‘In dress whites, in fact. Over there beside Kebila. They’re cousins, apparently.’
‘So that’s why they look so similar! Two Denzel Washingtons for the price of one. One with moustache, one without. And does he have a command of his own, this Captain Caleb?’
‘Two, as a matter of fact – though how he exercises both I can’t imagine. When he’s out with the big boys in the blue-water navy, he shares command of a neat corvette called the Otobo. But when he’s assigned brown-water duties along the coast or sent off upriver, he has a pretty hairy Israeli-made Shaldag Mark Three fast patrol boat which is a bit like John F. Kennedy’s PT109 on steroids. On steroids with guns.’
‘Now he sounds like someone I’d give quite a lot to meet!’ said Robin.
‘Me too,’ added Dr Holliday quite unexpectedly. ‘And he’s the guy in white, you say?’
‘You’re going to have a race on your hands, girls, judging by the way one or two of the other guests have been eyeing him up,’ said Richard, more than a little amused. ‘Though to be fair, Robin, you’ll have your chance tomorrow. We’re scheduled to meet Minister Ngama and his team – which includes your new heart-throb – tomorrow morning. Apparently Max wants to try and flog the minister one of Sevmash’s updated Zubr hovercraft – which is just about designed to fill the gap between the Shaldag and the corvette, I’d say. Perhaps even cancel them both out.’
‘Why is that?’ asked Dr Holliday, no doubt hoping to have something to talk to Captain Caleb about if she got him on the dance floor later.
‘It’s the biggest hovercraft ever built,’ said Richard easily. ‘It’s just under sixty metres long and twenty-five wide. It has a displacement of five hundred and fifty tons but when the cushion is up it has a draft of less than two metres, though it sits just over twenty metres high. It can carry more than one hundred tons – three T80 main battle tanks for instance, and it goes at nearly fifty knots – that’s the better part of sixty miles per hour. It’s bristling with rocket launchers, thirty millimetre cannons, air and missile defence systems. Or it would be if Max was allowed to import fully functioning armaments – which he’s not. It has an armoured command post and sealed combat stations for when the going gets tough. That’s almost as much firepower as his corvette on a platform that moves as fast as his Shaldag, with a draft only half a metre deeper than the patrol boat has. Max thinks he’ll find it irresistible. And Sevmash have plenty more where that came from. A million US dollars apiece, apparently. A snip at twice the price.’
‘That poor girl,’ said Robin lazily some time later, as they were wandering back through the Nelson Mandela Suite, all footsore and danced out. ‘I thought you were going to start trying to sell her a used car or some life insurance.’
‘She asked,’ said Richard, shrugging off his tails and pulling his bow tie apart. ‘And, from what I observed on the dance floor later, she was making good use of what I told her.’
‘You weren’t supposed to be looking at her on the dance floor!’ snapped Robin, outraged. ‘You were supposed to be looking at me!’
‘I was,’ he answered, wounded, looking at her reflection over his shoulder as he undid the stud at the front of his collar. ‘I was watching you eyeing Colonel Kebila sitting all alone and forlorn.’
‘That was different,’ she said, giving a little pirouette as she floated round the end of their massive bed. ‘I was feeling sorry for him.’
‘Perhaps you should have asked him to dance,’ suggested Richard as he unscrewed the pearl studs down the front of his shirt and waistcoat.
‘Wouldn’t have done any good,’ she announced a tad over dramatically, plumping herself down a trifle inaccurately on the edge of the bed. ‘He’s heartbroken. Everyone knows, apparently. That’s what Bonnie Holliday reported back at any rate. What his gorgeous cousin Captain Caleb said.’ She collapsed back, arms spread.
‘Once you started grilling her over that South African brandy,’ said Richard, dropping his waistcoat on a chair and shrugging off his braces. ‘How much did you have to drink yourself?’ He stepped out of his shoes and began unbuttoning his trousers.
‘A perfect amount. An inelegant suff . . . sufff –’ she gave up on ‘sufficiency’ and continued – ‘suffishanchips. And don’t change the subject.’ She rolled over, the movement threatening to make her burst out of her dress after all. She looked across at him, her eyes huge and fathomless.
‘OK. Why is poor Colonel Kebila heartbroken?’ He stepped out of his trousers and folded them neatly, placed them carefully over the back of the chair then watched them slither gracefully on to the floor.
‘Celine Chaka,’ she announced triumphantly. ‘He loves her with a love that burns unrequited in his breast. Especially since his boss, her father, has publicly disowned and abandoned her.’
‘Has he? Does he? Is that from a poem? Burns unrequited? Or a Barbara Cartland novel, perhaps?’ He slipped off his shirt and threw it at the chair, turning before he saw it land. There was a quiet rattle of studs and cufflinks hitting the floor.
‘No. I made it up. And now that you mention burning unrequited . . .’
‘Yes?’ he hopped from one foot to the other, pulling off his socks.
‘That’s exactly how I feel. Come here and get me out of this dress and requite me. I hope you had a lot of those koala bear nuts and oysters. Because, believe me, sailor, you are going to need them!’
By something akin to a miracle, they both woke bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, clear-headed and ravenous a little over six hours later. An hour later still, Richard and Robin were side by side in the most striking office either of them had ever visited. Richard was relieved to see that, as with the food, last night’s traditional costume had been dispensed with. Minister for the Outer Delta Bala Ngama met them in a lightweight business suit made of beige merino, apparently cut and crafted for him in Paris, London or New York. It was very much a match for Richard’s own tropical lightweight, from Gieves & Hawkes, his favourite London tailors. There were a couple of d
ozen others in the room; most of them men, most of them in business suits of some kind.
‘I have several offices,’ the minister explained as the Heritage Mariner team assembled together with the Sevmash Consortium people, led by Max Asov. ‘But this one seemed the most apposite, given the main focus of today’s first meeting.’ He raised a broad hand, gesturing proudly around. Richard, Robin, Max and the others looked appreciatively – even the members of Ngama’s own team – as the minister’s staff passed around them offering cool drinks, coffee and biscuits.
Richard’s mind raced, picking up on subliminal messages designed to underline what had been so forcefully not stated last night – the opposite of what he had experienced at the airport. That Benin la Bas had changed from a broken kleptocracy with a moribund economy and a starving population simmering on the edge of revolution to a modern, wealthy, self-sufficient state. That President Chaka and his governments – both national and local – had pulled the country round and stood on the verge of achieving the African dream, thereby becoming a place where investment might be welcomed – and for the lucky acceptable few, would be enormously profitable. The whole of their current environment said this in no uncertain terms. Especially to someone like Richard who had known the place in the bad old days.
