Black Pearl

by Peter Tonkin

  ‘There’s a cliff up ahead,’ said Anastasia. ‘My father’s men have left ropes in place so it’s easy to climb. And we’ve checked the place out – it’s safe. Perhaps you’ll be able to get a signal from the top of that.’

  And so they took the first step almost in spite of themselves. Abiye led the way through the forest towards the cliff with Anastasia at one shoulder and Richard at the other. Oshodi and the others followed. Ado and Esan appeared and disappeared in the forest shadows, but there was no sign of any of Anastasia’s Amazons until the soldiers reached the foot of the cliff. It must be the better part of thirty metres sheer, thought Richard, and he could see why Max’s men had left ropes and equipment in place. No matter how easily they had managed to get up there, they would find it a considerable obstacle if they wanted to come back down at any speed. The first obstacle of many they would find facing them on their way up the black river to Lac Dudo.

  But while he was standing there lost in thought, Ado shinned up the rope with impressive sinuous ease, then she and several others appeared at the crest, looking silently down, waiting for the men. Richard was fit and strong. The cliff face immediately in front of him was by no means as smooth as it had first appeared. He found it surprisingly easy to climb. The toes of his boots slipped securely into cracks and ledges. His shoulders and upper arms found no difficulty in hauling his lean torso aloft, while his thighs and calves powered him upwards from beneath like springs. He went hand over hand, his eyes fastened on the irregular cliff face immediately in front of him with its outcrops of vegetation, its little bushes and pendant creepers with a seeming nest of dry leaves at every sizeable juncture. He had gone about two-thirds of the way when he stopped and hung there, his mind racing. Immediately in front of his face there was a considerable bush, its leaves and branches a tangle of creepers packed with dry leaves. In this micro-jungle, there suddenly seemed to be more life than in the larger jungle all around it. A bright yellow-banded centipede the better part of thirty centimetres long suddenly erupted like a multi-legged snake. And, beside it, in the crack where the roots of the bush were lodged, a yellow scorpion scuttled into the light. Richard hung there, his mind racing, frozen – not with fear or disgust – with overwhelming memory.

  His mind raced. Flies, mosquitoes. The leopard that had ironically saved them when Livitov disguised as Ngoboi had exploded in the drainage ditch. The crocodile which had taken Zubarov. It was as though he remembered seeing each one individually in Ngama’s zoo all that time ago when he had been shown around it with Robin, Max and the others. Alongside gorillas, baboons, chimps, panthers, leopards, even elephants; Nile crocodiles ten metres long, dwarf crocodiles half that length – but still more than long enough. Spiders, scorpions, centipedes. Snakes of every sort from spitting cobras to reticulated pythons. What if disgraced ex-minister Bala Ngama hadn’t just sold them off when he’d been removed from government, as people thought? What if he’d released them up here, still planning to open his private wildlife park and make a fortune after all? What if he was somehow repopulating this section of the jungle?

  A hand fell on his shoulder and he jumped. Anastasia was hanging at his side. She raised her eyebrows: Is there a problem? He shook his head: Everything’s fine. He pulled himself easily on up to the top of the cliff where Anastasia and Ado pulled him up on to his feet. Even up here, the roar of the waterfall was too loud to allow speech at less than a bellow, so he kept his suspicions to himself, and his lips remained sealed for the time being.

  On they went, onward and upwards, through what Richard ruefully recognized was going to be a very long day. Literally a long day – they were climbing the west-facing slope of a steep mountain standing high above a riverine plain, racing the shadows up as the sun rolled away past the meridian and began to wester, then set away beyond Granville Harbour – and the lower slopes behind them became clothed in night while daylight lingered here. But although the brightness and the heat persisted, the signal strength got no stronger for either the cell phones nor the radio. They paused at the top of each slope, at the crest of every cliff with the river throwing itself into vacancy on their left hands and the sun beating through the overgrowth on to their shoulders and the backs of their heads. But there was no sign of a stronger signal.

  During the unnaturally long afternoon they fell into an easy rhythm, an unspoken but generally agreed disposition. Point men came from both the soldiers and the Amazons, always checking ahead, paying particular attention to the lines hanging down cliff faces and occasional TR portable bridges over sheer-sided chasms, left in place by Max and the men they were following. For places like these would be perfect for IEDs, booby traps or ambushes if Odem and the Army of Christ were worried about anyone following the Russians into their lair. But there was nothing. The two teams went swiftly and silently through the forest along the riverside, therefore, following the trail of the Russians, pausing only to check whether they had any signal yet; never stopping at all.

  Until the most unexpected thing of all stopped them. A corpse. But not a Russian corpse. Not on the track – or anywhere near it. Richard saw it first, for, with his mind full of speculation about Bala Ngama’s menagerie of dangerous animals and the possibility that they had been released into the jungle here, he was paying extra attention to everything in front of him. For as well as banded centipedes and yellow scorpions he remembered all too vividly a wide range of native snakes – venomous ones as well as constrictors. While the others looked for IEDs, Richard tended to scan the shaggy cliff tops for mambas, adders, vipers and cobras; always double-checking the creepers nearest to the climbing ropes for pythons and other constrictors. He was looking upwards, therefore, scanning the jungle overhang at the top of yet another waterfall when he saw the body hurl itself over the edge like someone trying to ride Niagara without a barrel. It was outlined against the sky for a moment, seemingly frozen there, spread like a skydiver. Then it plummeted downwards.

  The body was too listless and unresponsive to be alive, but Richard only realized that later. He tensed, ready to dive in and rescue it, watching as it fell fifteen metres into the pool at the waterfall’s foot. It hit the surface with a splash that was lost in the spray of the waterfall itself, and then bobbed up, swirling towards the bank where Richard was waiting. He realized then that it was dead, and had the presence of mind to get his boots and trousers off before wading in after it. He pulled its limp weight to the bank where Anastasia and Abiye helped him drag it ashore. The others gathered round it as the three of them rolled it over on to its back.

  It was the corpse of a slim young man dressed in a sodden white overall. His eyes were closed, but his mouth was open, his lips blue. And yet, after a first mouthful, no water came out of it. Richard settled down for a close examination of the corpse – as close as time and circumstance would allow. He was first aid trained to accident and emergency level for, as a ship’s captain he was often called upon to perform simple medical procedures. He was experienced and insightful, fancying himself as a bit of a Sherlock on occasions. But he was not a pathologist. And even if he had been, he had neither the time nor the equipment to do anything other than to look as closely as he could and to reason as well as he was able.

  The body was battered, clearly from tumbling downriver, but there were no real signs of violence – any more than there seemed to be of drowning. The pockets were empty, and the pruned fingertips suggested there had been no gloves. The blue lips and – when he looked close – the swollen tongue, spoke of asphyxiation of some kind, but there were no signs of a struggle. It seemed as though a perfectly fit young man had simply been overcome by something and had fallen, choking, dying – perhaps even dead already – into the river, which had swept him down here. But who was he? How and why had he come to be near the black river? Two questions that Richard found it easy enough to answer. But the implications of those simple answers seemed to stretch far beyond anything he could begin to imagine.

  For the dead man was H
an Chinese. And on the breast pocket of his white overall was a logo Richard recognized. He gestured to it, looking at Anastasia but wishing Robin was there so he could talk this over and really get to grips with the implications. It was the logo of the Chinese mining consortium whose director, Dr Yes, had been photographed talking to Gabriel Fola, president of neighbouring Congo Libre, and Bala Ngama, with Colonel Odem lurking in the shadows just behind them.

  His eyes met Anastasia’s, and although he knew she couldn’t hear him over the sound of the waterfall, he mouthed the words, ‘Han Wuhan!’

  Lookout

  Both Anastasia’s and Abiye’s commands looked askance at Richard when he took the overalls off the body, before covering it as best they could. But it didn’t require too much imagination for them to understand that a disguise might come in useful. Especially as the more they thought about it the more likely it seemed that Han Wuhan were already upriver, trying to get their hands on the coltan.

  Richard and Anastasia didn’t get an opportunity to discuss all this until well after sunset, when they broke the march for a quick rest and something to eat and drink. There was water from the vines found by Anastasia’s girls and Abiye’s foragers. There were the succulent hearts of some smaller palms that tasted a lot like pineapples to Richard, chopped into dripping chunks by the ubiquitous matchets. Everything left over and everything resulting from the meal went into the river in one way or another. A process that took a little time, and allowed Richard and Anastasia to crouch side by side in the darkness and exchange some thoughtful whispers. ‘Looks like they’ve been playing games with us,’ he observed.

  ‘Looks like my stupid father may well have walked into a great deal more than just the Army of Christ the Infant,’ she growled.

  ‘If he’s walked into Han Wuhan engineers then it must be a replay of the Kivu Gambit. And if he’s up against the army of Congo Libre as well, then we can expect a hell of a lot more bodies to come down the river.’ He nodded invisibly.

  ‘Shit!’ she spat. ‘This is totally polnyi pizdets! Fucked up beyond repair!’ And it occurred to him that she wasn’t only thinking about her father. But she was being steadfast in her refusal to discuss Ivan.

  ‘We have to get up there and see what’s going on,’ he said. ‘That’s the least we owe Max and the rest.’

  ‘We do,’ agreed Abiye suddenly, having joined them silently and invisibly. ‘It is our duty. Our country may well have been invaded. And nobody knows! This is a terrible thing!’

  Anastasia stirred, clearly keen to proceed as quickly as possible. ‘Wait,’ said Abiye gently. ‘We are blind at the moment. It is the darkest time of the night. It will be very dangerous to move too soon. In a little while the stars will be out and there will be a moon. If we remain close to the river the jungle will not steal the light. We will be able to proceed as long as we have the strength.’

  ‘My girls are tough,’ said Anastasia.

  ‘I take your point,’ said Abiye. ‘We accept them not as a group of women or children but as a battle-hardened unit. And a battle-hardened unit may well be what we need if we are up against Congo Libre’s regular army coming across the border under cover of the Army of Christ the Infant!’

  ‘But,’ added Richard softly, ‘Congo Libre has destroyed almost all its native jungle, I understand. And that means that their army won’t know how to handle this.’ He gave a gesture that included the last of the forest and the first of the virgin jungle. ‘Any more than Max’s men seem to do.’

  ‘That might give us an edge,’ agreed Abiye. ‘But whether it’s enough will depend on how many of them there are.’

  ‘And,’ added Anastasia, ‘the Army of Christ know all about the jungle.’

  ‘Right,’ said Richard. ‘So they’re the ones we go after first. Which was pretty much the plan in the first place, right, Anastasia?’

  ‘Fucking A,’ she said. And as she did so, two things happened at once. The moon came out, flooding the riverbank with cool silver light. And somewhere, deep in the nearby jungle, a leopard gave its full-throated hunting roar. Answered by another and another, almost as if they were echoes.

  The next twelve hours passed for Richard like the night watches aboard a ship. He was used to keeping going with little or no sleep, but he entered a dreamlike state where his concentration on the immediate was so intense that the passage of hours went past in a flash. So that seemingly all too soon after the moon rose and the leopards gave their coughing roars, a cold grey light filtered out of the high blue sky through a veil of smoke from Karisoke’s crest, and they found themselves suddenly high on the mountainside, with the river in a deep gorge on their left-hand side. And it was dawn. Though, with the sun low on the far side of the mountain, there would be no direct sunlight until noon.

  The little group were gathered together at the crest of another cliff, in a strange, grey-misted space between two huge trees. One standing tall, the other lying broken. This step of the mountainside seemed more substantial than any they had encountered so far. And, as if to emphasize this, the tallest tree they had come across gripped the rocky soil with a wide reach of gnarled roots and then soared what looked like a hundred metres straight up. Beyond it, the jungle seemed to fall away, as though some natural disaster had warped and stunted it. Beyond the giant tree’s massive canopy, the grey, smoke-smeared sky hung sullenly low above the south-western slopes in a way that tricked off something in Richard’s memory. He crossed to the enormous trunk and touched it, stroking it almost mindlessly, lost in deepest thought.

  Anastasia joined him. ‘What a lookout post this would make,’ she said, echoing a thought he hadn’t even realized he was thinking.

  Neither team had actually reckoned on the Russians leaving ropes and bridges for them to follow. Both leaders knew very well that they would need to climb cliffs. Therefore both teams were equipped with such basic climbing equipment as they thought they might require. Whereas employing these in the rock faces they had come up so far might have been a slower, more difficult job, the rough bark of the huge tree presented very little difficulty. It was at once deeply ridged and yet sturdily attached to the trunk itself. And Corporal Oshodi proved to be a very able climber. Armed with a pair of binoculars that communicated wirelessly with a hand-held tablet, the twin of the one with which Mako had explored the overhanging mangroves during Ngoboi’s first visit, he went up the tree in a way that reminded Richard irresistibly of a squirrel.

  Oshodi had to climb little more than two-thirds of the way up the tree before a broad branch gave him a perfect lookout point. And Abiye’s hand-held tablet showed a scene of devastation that spread away into the grey distance. And, although the angle was a very different one, the picture jogged Richard’s memory and the whole thing fell into place. Oshodi’s binoculars were scanning above the tops of the trees that had been damaged all those years ago by the combination of the volcanic eruption and the gas cloud. For there, in the distance, rearing higher than the twisted and stunted vegetation, but even more depressing in its ruined majesty, stood Cite La Bas. ‘My God!’ breathed Richard. ‘I hadn’t realized we had come so far! We must be nearly there!’ Oshodi traversed right, showing the slope falling away westwards to the next valley slope, the barrier that had trapped the invisible gas, turning it into a poisonous lake for long enough to snuff out all the life in the city that had survived the terrible lava flow, whose long black scar could still be seen in the distance.

  Then Oshodi traversed left, sweeping the binoculars’ enhanced vision back across the dead city to the upwards slopes below Karisoke’s smoking caldera and Lac Dudo. Here, it was clear that many of their worst fears were likely to be realized. For the air above the lake was busy. There were helicopters hovering there, coming and going through plumes of smoke.

  Oshodi shinned another fifty or so metres upward. The new angle gave more of an idea what was going on at the lakeside. Makeshift buildings sat, their roofs just visible above the jungle down-slope of the lake. It
seemed to Richard that here was where the main concentration of workers appeared to be. And maybe more than mere workers, he thought, eyes narrowing. Certainly, here was where skeletal guard towers stood. There looked to be activity all around the lake’s shore, but whoever was in charge had found the thick jungle on the upslope far more difficult to clear. The last picture showed the damaged dams and sluices which had allowed the pearls that had set all this in motion to escape. There was a considerable number of workers there. Trying to effect repairs, perhaps. Certainly, what they were doing seemed important – and would therefore bear closer scrutiny – for they seemed to be surrounded by guards.

  Richard looked up as the picture went blank to find both Anastasia and Abiye looking expectantly at him. ‘It seems clear that we’ll have to cross the river,’ he said quietly. ‘It may be more difficult to get up the far bank, but the extra effort should be worth it. The jungle upslope will give us better cover when we get up to the lake itself – we’ll be able to get closer to whatever’s going on. And the extra height above the lake will be an advantage too.’

  ‘And,’ said Anastasia, ‘if we’re going to cross the river, then this looks like just the place to do it.’

  The second tree was almost identical to the first, except that it had surrendered its grip on the thin soil of the far bank and crashed sideways across the seventy-metre gap that separated the banks at the lip of the cliff. It had clearly fallen a little way upslope and then rolled down into its present position. Most of the upper branches, that would have formed a considerable barrier, had snapped off as it settled and lay scattered around now. The lower branches, less dense if more massive, reached outwards in shattered stumps or hung down between the sheer rocky banks almost as far as the writhing surface of the water at the edge of the fall. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s get busy.’