by Will Adams
‘Likewise,’ said Titch.
THIRTY-EIGHT
I
Daniel’s departure, and a stomach full of pizza, made Rebecca realise how tired she was. Titch began making noises about getting himself a room, but Rebecca’s had a spare bed and she felt the need for company, not least because of all that ransom money in the holdall. They washed and went to their separate beds, turned out the lights. She lay there on her back, watching the headlights of passing cars painting yellow lines upon her ceiling, making desultory conversation with Titch about the office and their various projects. She couldn’t help thinking, while they were talking, how remote London seemed, how indifferent she was to news and gossip of it. They fell silent for a little while, then she said: ‘I’m going to stay here.’ She hadn’t consciously considered remaining in Madagascar until then, but the moment she said it, she realised it had been inevitable.
In the neighbouring bed, Titch drew in breath then pushed himself up on to his elbow. ‘How do you mean? For how long?’
She heard anxiety in his voice, decided to allay it. ‘Just until I can sort things out properly.’
‘What about America?’
‘Fuck America,’ she said, more vehemently then she’d intended. ‘This is family.’ She waited for him to respond, but he remained quiet so long that she realised there was a question he dared not ask. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ll stay whatever happens with my father and sister.’
‘And what about us? What about our company?’
‘You’ll be fine.’
‘It won’t work without you.’
‘Yes, it will.’
‘It won’t. You know it won’t.’
‘Let’s talk about it in the morning.’
He seemed to accept that. They wished each other goodnight and within fifteen minutes or so, his breathing pattern indicated he’d fallen asleep. Rebecca found it harder to drop off. Her soft tissues ached from the day’s ordeals. Apprehension about tomorrow was exacerbated by not having Daniel at her side. She strove for soothing thoughts, for happy places, but it wasn’t easy. She kept picking up her mobile to check the time, make sure the battery still had some juice in it; but each time she checked it, its dial would light up, draining it a little bit more. Her recharger was in Eden. Daniel was about to head that way. She wondered if she could justify going with him to collect it, but then she heard a motorbike outside. She slipped from the bed and went out on to her balcony, only to find his bike already gone.
She returned to bed, dozed off, woke a little later to find that it had grown light outside, and that the town was coming slowly to life. She still felt tired but she got up anyway, took out her copy of Mustafa’s loan agreement. She hadn’t had a chance to go through it properly before, and the more she read, the more it alarmed her. She kept setting it aside, telling herself not to worry about it now. But then she’d pick it up again. Mustafa hadn’t stinted himself, that was for sure. He’d told her about the five per cent interest, but not about his agent’s fee, nor that he’d demarcated the loan amount in its euro equivalent, according to the previous day’s tourist exchange rate; and that he wanted the principal paid back according to the exchange rate at the time of the repayment. The way she figured it, that would mean she’d have to pay the spread between the buy and sell rates twice; and the spreads here were notoriously punitive. She did a rough-and-ready calculation on the back of one of the pages; she’d borrowed five hundred million ariary from him: yet under the various terms, she already owed him getting on for seven hundred and fifty million. He was, in effect, charging her a?70,000 management fee for arranging a ten-day loan. She felt a little sick, not just at the money, but also because it felt like she was being scammed. Her immediate instinct was to stiff Mustafa in return. Once she was back in England, after all, he’d never be able to sue her. But that was too easy an out; he’d surely have anticipated it. It took her a minute or so to find the sting in the contract’s tail: a clause stipulating her stake in Eden as security for his loan. That puzzled her, for she had no stake in Eden, not while her father was alive, at least. Suddenly she had a very bad feeling about this.
She shook Titch awake. ‘I need your help,’ she told him.
‘Of course,’ he said, stifling a yawn. ‘What?’
‘A hire car. Preferably a 4x4. And see if you can get them to rent you one without a driver.’
He nodded and threw back his sheet. ‘I’ll get on to it at once.’
‘We’ll meet back here in an hour or so, okay?’ she said, zipping the contract up in the holdall. ‘Only there’s a lawyer I need to go see.’
II
Next door, Knox had also slept poorly. He’d expected Titch to take a room for himself, but he’d been able to hear him and Rebecca preparing for bed then talking through the wall, though their conversation had been too muffled for him to make out what they were saying. It gave him a twinge anyway to think of the two of them together, for it had been obvious from the first that Titch was infatuated with Rebecca, and that she was fond of him too, though it had been less clear how fond. They finally fell silent, except for the creak of bed-joints as they tossed and turned, sounds that he found equally disturbing.
It came as a relief, therefore, when it finally grew light enough outside for him to be able to drive. He rose, paid for his room, then pushed his bike out on to the road so as not to wake the other guests when he started it up. A yellow dog dozed against a yellow wall, as if using it as camouflage. A family of four wobbled by on a ramshackle bicycle, the father standing up on the pedals, the mother sitting side-saddle nursing an infant, a boy balanced precariously upon the handlebars, giggling joyously. For a few miles, the road was busy with smallholders carting produce to Tulear’s markets, but soon he was beyond them and making quick progress, slaloming the track’s pitfalls. He passed a paradise beach, the golden sand bevelled by footprints and scarred by the broken husks of old pirogues. The sun rose above the trees, grew warm. By the side of the road, two men sawed up an old truck tyre to make sandals. Everything had residual value here; everything was squeezed dry. A young boy dragging a snow-white goat by its hind leg grinned and waved. He waved back. Then he saw Pierre’s cabins ahead, a concrete reminder of the revelation that had been haunting him these past twenty-four hours, that he was quite possibly a father. It was an extraordinary thing, like discovering a new dimension in the world. He told himself to drive on, that this was no time for distractions, that his job was to check Eden for ransom updates. Yet he found himself turning off the track up towards Pierre’s house all the same.
The noise of his arrival brought Pierre to the door. ‘Yes?’ he asked. ‘What do you want?’
‘I have a message for Therese,’ he said. ‘From Rebecca.’
‘Tell me. I’ll pass it on.’
‘It’s personal,’ said Knox. ‘She asked me to give it to Therese myself.’
He scowled but went inside. A minute passed. Therese came to the door carrying an infant in her arms, its face to her chest so that Knox couldn’t see. His heart gave a double thump all the same; he beckoned Therese to follow him out of sight and earshot.
‘Yes?’ she asked.
Now that the moment was upon him, Knox didn’t know quite how to proceed. ‘Is that Emilia’s son?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she said warily.
‘So that would make him Pierre’s?’
Therese didn’t say anything at first. She looked instead at his face, as if assessing his state of knowledge, his intent. ‘Who are you?’ she asked. ‘Why you ask me this?’
‘I knew Emilia,’ he told her. ‘We became close when she came to England. Very close. Maybe she mentioned me?’
Therese’s eyes watered a little, but happily. She wiped a finger beneath them. ‘I think it must be you,’ she said. ‘When Rebecca tell me this Englishman is here, with scars upon his back…’
‘It’s me.’ He nodded at Michel. ‘So he’s mine?’ he asked.
She seemed to hes
itate, as though still bound by some vow of confidentiality; but the situation had gone beyond that, and she must have realised it. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He’s yours.’ She held him out. Knox took him in both hands and raised him up a little awkwardly, as though he’d just been presented with some undeserved trophy. Therese was talking rapidly; he didn’t take in a word of it, too numbed by those big brown eyes. Michel’s face clenched as though he was about to start bawling; but then he thought better of it, he looked up and away, as though mildly puzzled by some anomaly in the world. Knox saw his sister in him, then, and his father too. And in that moment, accepting Michel as his responsibility, all the dead tissue around his heart was simply excised and thrown away, allowing what remained to breathe freely again. He remembered a simple truth he’d somehow forgotten in the loss of Gaille: that life was only worth living when it was lived for someone else. His vendetta against the Nergadzes was instantly over; they just weren’t worth it. And he realised, too, that his first duty now was to find Emilia, one way or another. Everything else could wait.
He passed Michel back to Therese. ‘I have things to do,’ he told her. ‘Will you look after him a little longer?’
‘Of course,’ she said.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you for everything.’
She nodded and headed back to the house, carrying Michel against her shoulder. He walked with them and watched them safely back inside. Then he straddled his bike and turned it towards Eden, profoundly aware that his old life was over, and a new one had begun.
THIRTY-NINE
I
Delpha didn’t pick up Mustafa’s agreement. He simply turned it to face him on his desk. His half-moon reading glasses proved inadequate for the small print, so he produced a magnifying glass from his desk drawer and used that instead, sliding it with such agonising clumsiness across the paper that Rebecca longed to do it for him. When he was finally finished, he looked up at her with the most melancholic eyes. ‘You signed this?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘I had no time. It was for a ransom. I was late and I-’
‘A ransom.’ He looked stunned. ‘Your father? Your sister?’
‘I spoke to him,’ she said. ‘He’s alive. They’re both alive.’
Delpha’s eyes glistened. He convulsed once, like a sob, put a hand to his brow. ‘Heaven be praised,’ he murmured.
‘Mustafa’s been after a stake in Eden,’ said Rebecca. ‘My father mentioned it in a letter. He also remarked that Mustafa was pestering the wrong person. What did he mean by that?’
Delpha gave himself a few moments to compose himself, then said: ‘You must remember something about Malagasy law,’ he said. ‘Since Independence, only citizens have been able to own land here. Your father has never become a citizen.’
Rebecca frowned. She’d always taken it for granted that her father owned Eden, yet Delpha was right: her parents had bought Eden after Independence, and her father had never become a Malagasy citizen. Then she realised how it must have worked. ‘My mother owned Eden? But what about when she died?’
‘We set up a trust together, to hold the reserve in trust for you and Emilia when you attained majority. You have dual citizenship, after all, so you’re legally able to own property here.’
‘But why didn’t anyone tell me?’ Again Delpha was silent, allowing her to work it out by herself. ‘My father didn’t trust me, did he?’ she said bleakly. ‘He was worried I’d sell my share just to get back at him.’ She put a hand to her forehead. ‘But what if either Emilia or I should… I mean, what if one of us…?’
‘Then their interest in Eden passes to the other.’
‘Will Mustafa know this?’
‘Mr Habib usually knows everything it is in his interest to know.’
‘What are you saying?’ frowned Rebecca. ‘Is he a crook?’
‘A crook is a person who has been convicted of something. Mr Habib has never been so convicted.’
She gave a dry laugh. Now she found out! ‘So that’s why Andriama’s having him watched. But why does he want Eden this badly? It can’t be worth that much.’
‘There have been rumours,’ said Delpha. ‘I do not know that they are true. But they say a German hotel group wants to build an ecotourism resort upon this coast. Eden has beautiful beaches and bays. It has virgin forest, reefs and plentiful fresh water. Can you imagine a better site?’
‘How much?’
‘Two million euros at minimum. Perhaps as much as four.’
Rebecca stood and went to the window, looked out into the street. After Yvette had died, Eden had become her father’s life. He’d never sell it for development, or forgive anyone who did. She had to find some way to undo this. She was about to ask Delpha his advice when her phone beeped, sending her heart into overdrive, thinking it was the kidnappers; but it was only to warn her that her battery was almost dead. Damn it. Her phone was the most likely way for the kidnappers to get in touch; she needed to sort this out now. She made her excuses to Delpha then grabbed the holdall and hurried off in search of a solution.
II
Knox arrived back in Eden hoping to find some message from the kidnappers inside the door; but there was nothing. He went through the lodge and all the cabins just in case, then headed down to the boathouse, but again without success. While he was there, however, he decided to take another look at that ceramic, make sure his imagination wasn’t running away with him. And there was something else he wanted to check out too.
The Kirkpatricks were self-evidently an intellectually curious lot. If a subject was of interest to them, they’d acquire books and articles about it. That was no doubt why Adam had the charts on board the Yvette, so that he could study them while out on the water. And it was why they kept those books on the treasure fleet and underwater archaeology in the basement. Knox had been following in the Kirkpatricks’ footsteps so far. Everything he’d discovered about the Chinese wreck, they’d got to first. So maybe they’d figured out other things that he still hadn’t. If so, it was a good bet that they’d have bought reading material on those subjects, and that they’d have stored it in the basement. The shelves, in brief, might be his shortcut to their state of knowledge.
He turned on the generator, slid open the panel, unlocked the door and went down, walked along the shelves. There were textbooks and articles on Zheng He and his treasure fleets, on the Ming Dynasty and Chinese shipbuilding techniques. There were archaeological works on the Chimu, the Incas, the Aztecs and other New World civilisations. There were books on the Renaissance, on the history of mapmaking. Several volumes were ageing badly, missing their spines. He pulled one down, opened it up. It was a biography of Ferdinand Magellan, the man widely credited as being the first to circumnavigate the world. A slight fiction, of course, because he hadn’t completed the circumnavigation himself. He’d died in the Philippines, leading an attack on islanders who’d had the temerity to refuse conversion to Christianity. But eighteen of his men had made it all the way. Eighteen out of two hundred and thirty-seven, sailing the one ship that had survived from the original fleet of five.
Since finding the Fra Mauro map, Knox had had a scheme in his mind, of a treasure ship sailing west to South America from the Cape and then returning. Even his discovery of the Chimu ceramic hadn’t changed that scheme; he’d just thought they’d found the Magellan Straits first. But what if they hadn’t turned back east? What if they’d kept going west? Why else sail so far north up South America’s western coast if they’d been planning to turn around again and head back across the Atlantic? The Chinese had known the world was round. They’d known circumnavigation was possible. And they’d been on a voyage of discovery. What greater discovery than circumnavigation, than achieving Chinese mastery of the globe?
Sailors, when faced with crossing large bodies of water, often sailed to the latitude of their destination port, then aimed directly east or west towards it. Running the latitude like this not only made navigat
ion easier, it also minimised time spent on the open seas, and therefore offered the crew their best chance of reaching their destination before their supplies ran out. The Straits of Magellan were a good thousand miles south of the Cape of Good Hope, and far, far further south of Beijing. It would have made perfect sense, therefore, for them to head north along the Chilean coast to Peru, trading with any natives they found and thus restocking their holds with provisions for the long voyage ahead. By Knox’s rough reckoning, sailing east from Peru would have brought them up against the coast of Australia. Logically, they’d have wanted to head north, but Chinese ships had forever been at the mercy of the winds, so perhaps they’d been driven south, then on to South Africa before turning round again and heading for home, finding these reefs instead, being denied the immortality of their achievement by A noise behind him, the scuff of shoe on stone. He whirled around to see a man at the foot of the steps, his legs bare and damp, as though he’d just waded through water, his handgun held out ahead of him.
The man in the black shirt.
Boris.
III
An Internet cafe near the hotel sold mobiles and other consumer electronics. Rebecca turned her charm on the manager, persuaded him to recharge her phone while she took one of the computer booths, placing the holdall between her feet as she checked her email and caught up on news. The keyboard was French; she kept hitting the wrong keys. She wondered idly if Adam had used one of these when he came into Tulear to catch up on his own email. On an impulse, she went to his hotmail provider, plugged in his email ID, tried ‘Yvette’ as his password. No luck. She tried ‘Emilia’ and ‘Michel’ without success. Then she tried ‘Rebecca’ and it welcomed her to his home page. She put a hand to her mouth, closed her eyes to prevent tears. She went to his in-box, noticed immediately that he’d checked his messages the day before he’d gone missing; and also, that one of the very last messages he’d read was from Pierre. She opened it herself. Meeting went well, though they want new photos of white sifaka. Please send by Thursday if at all possible. All best, P
