by Simon Mayo
‘Listen,’ he said. At a distance of one metre, there was a click every ten seconds. He stepped to within ten centimetres of the rock – still no increase in clicks. It was only when the counter and the rock were almost touching that the frequency increased.
‘Probably just a little more radiation than a banana!’ said Themba.
He was expecting surprise from Itch and Chloe, but instead got only rueful smiles. They had been told about radioactive bananas by an element dealer called Cake.
Chloe took the counter back, and Themba threw the monazite to Itch. ‘Have a look,’ he said.
‘OK – well, is it valuable, then?’ said Chloe, glancing only briefly at the pebble in Itch’s hand.
Themba laughed. ‘Actually, most rare earth elements aren’t rare; they’re just difficult to tell apart and isolate—’
‘Wait – so they’re not even rare?’ said Chloe, incredulous. ‘What’s the big deal, then?’
‘Well, they might be difficult to extract – but, for example, the magnets they give us are used in electronic devices . . . computers, phones, electric cars . . . You only need tiny amounts, but they’re very powerful.’
Itch could tell that his sister had lost interest; it was only the presence of Themba and Sammy that had stopped her going back to the truck.
‘Could I help?’ said Itch. ‘You said it was safe . . .’
His father and Themba looked at each other. ‘Sure,’ said Nicholas, smiling. ‘Why not? Bring the boxes from the truck and we’ll get started.’
‘And what are Sammy and I doing, then?’ asked Chloe.
‘I’ll show you round if you like,’ said Sammy. ‘It’s more interesting out here anyway – some of the bosses’ houses have still got old equipment in. I found an old assegai there once . . . A spear,’ he added, seeing Chloe’s puzzled face.
‘Cool,’ she said, suddenly interested, and followed him towards the burned-out buildings. ‘Hey, Sammy, catch!’ she called, and threw her ball at him.
Itch climbed up into the truck and lifted the first crate.
‘Careful, Itch,’ called his father. ‘Portable spectrometers are expensive!’
Itch had seen an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer used to analyse the 126, but that machine had been huge. ‘Really? In here?’ he said, and gently placed it on the floor of the truck. He jumped down, then eased the box into his arms.
The entrance to the mine was housed in a new steel building, and Itch set the spectrometer down in the doorway. He emptied the contents of the truck in a few trips, and walked back for the last few tools. He glanced at Chloe and Sammy: they were some distance away now, chasing her ball down the slope. They had passed a number of small spoil heaps, and were now throwing the ball around the bottom of a fifteen-metre mound of mine rubble. He had run over one himself back in Cornwall, and he remembered how precarious they were. As he watched, Chloe missed a catch and the ball bounced and rolled onto a ledge of small rocks, halfway up the heap.
Itch was suddenly filled with foreboding and took a step forward. ‘Chloe!’ he called. ‘That’s not safe! You should—’
The spoil heap sagged and, as he watched, a slash of black appeared below the ledge. The ball, ledge and Chloe dropped out of sight as though a trapdoor had opened.
4
It was over in seconds. One minute Chloe was on the side of the spoil heap; the next, it had swallowed her up. The crevasse that had opened was instantly filled with rocks that poured down from above. The surface already appeared smooth again – it was as though she’d never been there.
‘CHLOE!’ yelled Itch. ‘Dad, now!’ He grabbed a spade from the truck and ran for the spoil heap, his detector swinging wildly. His eyes never left the patch of brown earth and stones where his sister had been playing just seconds before. Sammy was already scrabbling his way up the side of the heap, but the loose rocks kept giving way beneath his urgent feet; he would climb two metres, then fall back three.
‘Chloe, we’re coming!’ Itch shouted as he leaped onto the first stones, but he was making the same mistake as Sammy. The loose rocks, stones and soil gave way beneath his steps, sending him crashing to the ground. His hands and knees took most of the impact and he dropped the spade. As his body scraped the rocks, a torrent of clicks came from the radiation detector.
Itch froze.
Radiation.
After his prolonged contact with the 126, Itch had come close to receiving a lethal dose of radiation. Blood transfusions, antibiotics and a bone-marrow transplant had saved him, but he had been warned that any future contact could be fatal – he just wasn’t strong enough to take it. Face down on the jagged stones, his heart rate matched the rapid clicks. He heard his father’s pounding feet and pushed himself up.
‘Dad! It was a landslide! Chloe’s in there!’ He pointed to where the ledge had been. ‘But this is all radioactive – listen!’ He held his counter on the ground, and the click-barrage began again.
‘Get off the heap, Itch,’ shouted his father. ‘And throw me the spade!’
Itch half ran, half slid back to the ground, then threw the shovel. Nicholas caught it in one hand. For a moment he watched Sammy, who was making progress up the slope on his hands and knees, then he copied him. Dropping onto all fours, Nicholas crawled up the spoil heap, metre by metre. Themba arrived, breathless and running with sweat, and threw another spade up the slope.
It landed near Sammy, who scrambled across to reach it. ‘She was just there!’ he cried. ‘Just there . . . and then the ground . . . opened up! Dad, help me!’
Themba was about to start climbing, but Nicholas held up his hand. ‘Quiet! Everyone shut up!’
Itch was beside himself with frustration. He kept stepping onto the spoil heap and then off again. He took off his detector and held it just above the stones at his feet; the clicks rattled from the speaker and he swore.
‘Itch, shut that thing up,’ yelled his father.
Itch switched it off and they all stood, crouched or lay motionless. Apart from the occasional clatter from an eddy of stones finding a way down the spoil heap, they heard nothing.
‘Dad! Do something!’ shouted Itch.
‘Chloe!’ yelled his father. Then they all joined in, their voices desperate. Nicholas, spreading his weight as much as he could, spidered his way up the hill of rocks. His arms and legs worked furiously as he tried to keep his purchase on the unstable surface.
‘More to the right!’ shouted Itch. ‘Near where that darker sand is.’
Nicholas glanced back at his son, and corrected his direction, heading right, towards the spot his daughter had been occupying just a minute ago. He knelt up. ‘Quiet again! Quiet!’ he called. He started scooping rocks away with his hands, pushing them down the slope.
Now Themba and Sammy had reached him, they heaved and swept the debris away from where they thought Chloe was.
‘No spades!’ said Nicholas. ‘She could be just below the surface!’
They were all scooping furiously now, the larger rocks flung with force by Nicholas and Themba.
Itch, pacing around the base, was desperate.
‘Shall I call for help? Do we need a digger or something? Dad, answer me! Do—’
Themba held up a hand. ‘Stop digging! Listen . . .’ He put his ear to the surface of the spoil heap, and Nicholas and Sammy followed suit.
After a moment’s silence they all heard it: clicks, and lots of them. A radiation detector doing its work.
‘Chloe! Hang on!’ called Nicholas. ‘We’re here!’
Sammy was nearest. He turned and heaved more stones away with both hands. Nicholas and Themba slid lower and, directed by the clicks, started their bare-hand digging again.
‘She’s here!’ shouted Sammy, and Itch couldn’t wait any longer. Radiation or no radiation, he couldn’t just stand there. He raced up the spoil heap, stones flying everywhere. Sammy was kneeling by the hole he had dug . . . and there was the top of Chloe’s head – brown hair sticking up thro
ugh the soil.
Itch gasped and started pushing the debris away. The clicks were loud now. ‘Chloe, we’ve got you. Hang on!’ Looking at his father, he added, ‘Dad, she’s not moving!’
Nicholas nodded and bent to his task again.
With Itch and Sammy higher up and Nicholas and Themba lower down, every one of them trying to combine gentleness and urgency, Chloe slowly emerged. She was hunched over, her body arched as though protecting something. She wasn’t moving, but she was breathing.
It was Itch who brushed away the final debris from his sister’s face. ‘Chloe . . . Chloe . . . Chloe, can you hear me?’ He wiped the earth from her nose and mouth, and she started to shake.
Nicholas appeared at his side and, reaching long arms deep into the soil, lifted his daughter free. The radiation detector fell silent. ‘Itch, get off the spoil heap,’ he said quietly, and Itch nodded, running and sliding to the ground.
He watched as they stepped gingerly down the steep, shifting slope. Chloe was shaking hard now, sand and small stones falling from her clothes and hair with every step her father took.
‘You’re OK now,’ Nicholas said in her ear, then realized that it was still full of earth. She nodded anyway, and Itch sighed with relief.
Chloe tried to speak, but had to spit and then retch. ‘Thanks,’ she managed, then started to cry.
Sammy shot off in the direction of the truck.
‘He’s getting an old rug from the truck,’ said Themba. ‘She’s in shock. We need to wrap her up, but only once we’ve got all the debris off her. Nicholas, that’ll be thorium making the detectors go crazy. I am sorry – I had no idea there was so much radioactivity in that heap. I thought they’d all been checked – the nearby ones certainly have. But it will have been burning the skin. There’s a shower at my house, but that is half an hour away.’
Nicholas’s eyes narrowed. ‘We’ll talk more about this – but not now.’
‘Back to our place then,’ said Itch. ‘The shower’s rubbish, but it works.’
‘OK. Themba, get the truck,’ said Nicholas. ‘You need to get as much of the debris off as you can, Chloe. We’ll all look away. Wrap yourself in the blanket. Let’s get you cleaned up.’
Back at the house, they sat on the old sofa, waiting for Chloe to finish her shower.
‘She should go to hospital,’ said Itch. ‘Her skin looked red and she’d obviously breathed in some stuff. That could be dangerous.’
‘Agreed,’ said Themba. ‘But the nearest decent hospital is more than an hour away. Forget the ambulance – we’ll do it ourselves. Once she’s clean.’
Chloe emerged in an old T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms. She managed a small smile. ‘All right – don’t stare,’ she said, and sat in one of the armchairs.
Her face and arms were blotchy; Nicholas studied the marks carefully. ‘You’ll be OK, I think. You can’t have been under for more than ninety seconds, though God knows it felt like an eternity. But if you breathed in radioactive material, we should get you checked out – and you need something for your skin.’
‘I know all that,’ she said. ‘I’ve learned a bit about radiation recently.’ She smiled at her brother. ‘But I kept my mouth shut. I tried to create an air pocket. Hopefully that was OK?’ She looked around for support.
‘You were amazing,’ said Itch, ‘really amazing. But it’s been a few weeks since we were all in a hospital, so we should probably visit one. Just to be sure.’
Chloe nodded.
‘Mum would say, This family!’ Itch laughed.
Their father looked awkward. ‘Best not mention this to your mother just yet, I think. You watch some TV and I’ll get our things together. Sammy, you might want to stay – I just want to have a few words with your dad.’ He switched on the old television and left the room with Themba.
Sammy sat rather awkwardly on the arm of the sofa and watched the images from a news channel of New Year celebrations around the world.
‘Well, this will be a different New Year’s Eve,’ said Itch. ‘Bet the hospital won’t have too many thorium-burn patients to deal with.’
‘We do like to be different—’ said Chloe, but broke off as the sound of Nicholas’s raised voice came through the open window. She and Itch glanced at Sammy, who was staring at his feet. They could all hear the dressing-down Nicholas was administering, and the use of some of his old oil-rig language added to the awkwardness. Sammy went and stood by the window, his face expressionless but his fists clenched.
Embarrassed now, Itch turned up the TV. He was just going over to talk to Sammy when Chloe said, ‘Itch, look at this.’ There was an urgency in her voice, and he turned to see what had caught her attention.
The small screen was showing night-time images: blue flashing lights illuminated a large saloon car, doors open, the paintwork and windows riddled with bullet holes. Police stood around it.
‘What’s this, Chloe? What is it?’
She pointed at the screen, and the scrolling words came round again:
BREAKING NEWS . . . LAGOS, NIGERIA. MISSING GREENCORPS BOSSES BELIEVED KIDNAPPED OR MURDERED IN ROADSIDE HIJACK.
Itch stood dumbfounded. He waited for the words to roll past again. ‘Turn it up.’ He’d shut out the sound of the TV to hear what his father was saying to Themba, but now this story had his full attention.
A reporter in a sharp suit and expensive haircut was explaining what he believed had happened:
‘The men who run this vast oil company had only just landed in Lagos and, I am told, were on their way to a meeting. A meeting they never reached. According to the police, they got as far as this dock road when they were ambushed by what police are saying was a six-vehicle attack. Who attacked them? Well, the police say they are following several lines of enquiry, but obviously attention will turn to the Greencorps oil spill of three years ago, which cost the lives of seventeen oil workers. The only convicted Greencorps employee was Shivvi Tan Fook, who escaped from jail this July, only to die in a fire in an English school earlier this month. Police are asking for witnesses . . .’
‘Go and get Dad,’ said Chloe.
‘How far from Nigeria to South Africa, Sammy?’ said Itch.
Sammy shrugged and said nothing.
‘Sammy?’ Itch repeated. ‘How far away is Nigeria?
This time Sammy answered, but his tone had changed, his voice flat. ‘Three thousand miles maybe.’
Itch and Chloe looked at each other.
‘That sounds way too close,’ said Itch.
In a small, smelly, noisy cabin, a man lay on a bunk, his head wrapped in bandages. He was motionless apart from his right hand, which was trying to roll a coin between his fingers. He worked it as far as his middle finger, then winced and dropped it. The coin rolled across the lino floor and disappeared under the toilet door; the man cursed loudly and reached for his whisky.
The room was sparsely furnished: a small bed, an overturned crate for a table and a laptop sitting on top of a small cabinet. The porthole above the bed showed only that it was night. In the unlikely event of the man receiving a visitor, the smell would have been described as a mixture of engine oil, medical astringent and garlic.
With an enormous effort, the man struggled off the bed, each small movement accompanied by a yelp of pain. He limped stiffly across to the bathroom, where he found some painkillers, then back to his glass of whisky to wash them down.
He sat on his bed, his feet still unsteady while the ship was rolling. Judging his moment, he lurched for the laptop, then was pitched back again as the vessel corrected itself. He lay sprawled uncomfortably on the thin blankets as he checked emails, blogs and websites, irritated by the ship’s erratic wi-fi connection.
Suddenly he sat upright. Repositioning the laptop, he clicked on a headline and read the story that appeared underneath. It offered him a video to watch, and he risked the internet connection. He watched as images from the aftermath of the Lagos attack played on his screen.
‘Well
, well. What do we have here, Nathaniel?’ he said to himself. ‘What do we have here?’ Smiling for the first time in many hours, his lips cracked and bled. He replayed the fifty-second video time after time, now on full screen, examining it closely. ‘You were down by the docks – and both of you together! This was important, boys, wasn’t it? And now it has all gone wrong – so wrong . . .’
He fidgeted with the bandage over his ear and watched again as the report concluded with a photo of the two Greencorps chairmen. They were smiling at the camera in happier times, and as the camera zoomed in on their faces, Dr Nathaniel Flowerdew shaped his damaged hand into the shape of a gun.
‘Bang,’ he said, pointing it at Christophe Revere. He shifted his aim to Jan Van Den Hauwe. ‘Bang.’ He chuckled softly as he closed his laptop. ‘Good riddance.’
Three hundred miles from Flowerdew’s ship, in a cramped underground storeroom, handcuffed to the metal bars of an old fire grate, the Greencorps bosses listened as their captors squabbled. It was an argument that had raged for the best part of two hours.
‘If we don’t kill them, what was the point of all this?’ Aisha waved her knife at the two trussed and sweating men. ‘Who wants prisoners? It really is very easy. They killed Shivvi; we kill them. An eye for an eye . . .’
A woman in an oversized plaid shirt held up her hands. ‘Enough! This is going round in circles. We aren’t killers! And they didn’t kill Shivvi – that’s the point – but they did let her go to prison. It should have been Flowerdew, of course, but that would have been too embarrassing for them. Let’s keep them here for a few years, see how they like it.’
‘You’re a fool, Dada. You really think we can hold them here? Under Leila’s flat? They’ll be found. The police or Greencorps security teams won’t be far behind. We need to sort this out now.’
‘Tobi’s right,’ said Leila. ‘I told you we should have decided this earlier. We’ve been offered a ransom from Greencorps – a million US dollars, and twice that from a mafia gang. We vote now.’
