The Devil's Kingdom

by Scott Mariani

  Then they waited. Thirty minutes later, Bronski’s computer pinged to tell him the transaction had been confirmed by the bank. The funds had cleared. Per instructions, he copied the notification email to Masango, and asked Hockridge to turn the laptop back around.

  Masango was sitting with a quiet smile as he received the email on his phone. His henchmen lurked at opposite sides of Bronski’s screen, arms folded and serious.

  ‘Congratulations,’ Bronski said to Masango, and pointed at the cuff attaching the case to the man’s left wrist. ‘I think you can take that off now. You won’t be needing it anymore.’

  Masango raised his eyebrows. ‘I do not think that will be necessary, Mr Reynolds. I must ensure the diamond’s safe return to my client.’

  It took a couple of seconds for the African’s words to hit home. Bronski stared at the screen. ‘Say what?’

  ‘Thank you for your cooperation,’ Masango said. ‘It has been a pleasure doing business with you. Regrettably, the diamond is no longer for sale. Please assure your client that his money will be put to very good use, and thank him for his donation to our cause.’

  For the very first time in his long professional life, Bronski was speechless.

  Then Masango’s two bodyguards stepped closer into the frame, each pulled a micro-sized submachine gun out from under his jacket, and before the unseen Weller had had time to yank the concealed backup .380 Beretta from his ankle holster, they sprayed the table with gunfire.

  Bronski’s computer screen went black.

  Chapter 24

  The meat locker was dark, cramped, and airless, with a floor space roughly five feet square that gave the three of them just enough room to sit and wait it out. Ben could see the dimming green glow of Jeff’s watch dial. It was nearly midnight. They’d long since given up trying to find a way out. The locker was solid steel and securely bolted shut from the outside.

  ‘Look on the bright side, guys,’ Jeff said. ‘At least we’re not getting frozen like a Tesco turkey.’

  ‘Might starve to death if they don’t let us out of here sooner or later, though,’ Tuesday observed.

  ‘You worry too much,’ Jeff replied, but he couldn’t quite conceal the apprehension in his own voice.

  ‘Tell you what else I’m worried about,’ Tuesday said. ‘I hate to say it, but I’m busting for a crap. We’ve been cooped up in here for hours and I don’t know how much longer I can hold it.’

  ‘Don’t stand on ceremony. We promise not to look.’

  ‘It’s not the looking that concerns me.’

  ‘We’ve had worse,’ Jeff muttered.

  Tuesday shifted about in discomfort, but he was determined to hold it. ‘You think he just snapped, or what?’ he asked, changing the subject.

  ‘Gerber?’ Jeff said. ‘Who can blame the guy for cracking up? Not me.’

  ‘It was suicide,’ Ben said, and the other two fell silent. ‘It’s obvious. I think he knew there was no other way out for him. He wanted a quick end, and he got it.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Tuesday said after a long pause.

  Nobody spoke again. Another hour passed.

  And then the soldiers came.

  The bright light flooding in from the kitchen made them blink as the steel door swung open and guns pointed at them. Umutese, intent on filling Xulu’s shoes as the new captain, snapped orders to the six-strong unit of men he’d brought to release the prisoners.

  ‘The General wants this one,’ he said, pointing a pistol at Ben. ‘Bring him.’

  ‘What about these two?’

  ‘Bring them as well. They can watch.’

  The soldiers marched them from the kitchen and outside into the cold night, where a whole assembly was waiting. Braziers burned fiercely in front of the barracks building, throwing long dancing shadows and flickering firelight over the square and the parked trucks and Jeeps. Many more soldiers had gathered – a hundred, two hundred, it was hard to tell. The bonfires shone in their eyes and glittered off their weapons. A strange hush of anticipation seemed to fall over the square as Ben, Jeff, and Tuesday were brought out. Whatever the soldiers had crowded here to witness, Ben didn’t have a good feeling about it and he could sense that his friends shared his trepidation.

  General Khosa flicked the stub of a cigar into the flames of a brazier and stepped towards them. His scarred face looked even more monstrous and inhuman in the firelight.

  ‘You have tested my tolerance once too many times,’ he said to Ben in a booming voice that carried across the square. ‘Everyone knows that I am a reasonable man. I have given you every chance to honour your promise of loyalty, yet you continue to betray me and now my patience is at an end. I know that today’s assassination attempt was your plan. You should have known that it would fail. Bullets cannot kill me. But you, soldier, you are mortal. And now it is time for your punishment.’

  Something told Ben that this time, they weren’t going to be content with just dropping him in a hole in the ground.

  Khosa nodded to Umutese. Eight, ten, twelve pairs of hands grabbed Jeff and Tuesday by the arms and hauled them away from Ben. ‘You’re fucking nuts, Khosa!’ Jeff yelled, but he was silenced by a punch.

  Ben was shoved towards the middle of the square. The crowd circled him. He lost sight of Jeff and Tuesday. Hostile faces stared at him from all around. Some of the soldiers were grinning in amusement, as if they just couldn’t wait for the entertainment to begin. Others glowered at Ben in fear and hatred.

  At the square’s centre they had erected a wooden gallows, a thick vertical post with a braced horizontal beam from whose end dangled a noose. Ben’s mouth went dry when he saw it. This was it. There was no way out this time.

  They’re going to hang me, he thought. Fine. Then let them. He’d show them what it was like to die with dignity. It would be over fast.

  But Khosa had no intention of finishing him off so quickly. The General drew out a fresh cigar and lit it with a burning stick from one of the braziers. Then motioned to a group of his men and said, ‘Make him bleed.’

  Ben stood his ground as ten men closed around him in a circle. It was his instinct to fight back, and four of them were rolling on the concrete before the first solid blow caught him on the side of the face and made him stagger. He went to strike back but his arms were pinned to his sides and a hard punch rammed him in the stomach. He could take a punch, but not the multiple kicks to the head and body that followed quickly afterwards as he doubled up. Then he was on his knees, and the blows started raining down on him so fast that he couldn’t resist them.

  The beating went on for a long time. After several minutes, Ben’s vision was blurred and he could barely hear the roars of the crowd. He spat blood, tried to get up but fell back down. One thing he welcomed: that his body was so keyed up with pain and adrenalin that he could barely feel the blows any longer.

  ‘String him up,’ Khosa ordered.

  The soldiers dragged him to the gallows. He lay there at the foot of the thick wooden post, weakly trying to get up but too dizzy to raise himself off the ground. One of them yanked the noose down over the beam so that it hung down low, and stood over him with the coils of rope in his fists and a broad grin on his face.

  ‘Get it done,’ Ben mumbled. He wasn’t afraid of dying. Every man dies; it was just a question of when and how. And if his time was up, so be it. His one deep regret was that he could no longer be there to help his friends, and that Jude would be on his own. But they would survive. He believed that. He couldn’t afford not to believe it.

  He waited for the noose to be fastened around his neck. Instead, the man with the rope stepped over him and looped it around his ankles. Ben tried to kick at him, but he had little strength left. The soldiers laughed as they tugged on the rope and took up the slack; next, Ben felt his legs rise into the air, and the excruciating pain as he was lifted clear of the ground and dangled from his feet. The concrete dropped away from beneath him, yard by jerking yard. He began to spin, flailing w
ith his arms to try to latch hold of something to steady himself, but finding nothing but empty air. The faces of the crowd were a whirling upside-down blur. His ears roared as all the blood went to his head. The rope bit and gnawed into his ankles.

  Then hands reached out to stop him from spinning, and he dangled there with his head five feet off the ground, swaying gently to and fro as an upside-down khaki-clad figure walked up to him. It was Umutese. He was clutching a machete.

  The African pressed the edge of the blade to the white man’s throat, then drew it sharply away in a backswing, as if building up the momentum to hack off his head. But that would have been too easy – and besides, the General had not yet given the command.

  ‘Are you afraid, white bastard?’ Umutese yelled into the bloodied face dangling in front of him. When there was no reaction he yelled more loudly, ‘You should be! We are going to cut off your arms and legs and make you crawl like a snake! Then we will chop off your head and the children will play football with it!’

  But the white man just hung there, staring at him with the dancing flames reflected in his eyes and in the red pool that was gathering beneath him in a steady drip. Umutese poked him a few times with the blunt tip of the blade, then gave up trying to get a reaction. He spat in disgust and stepped back.

  Next, at Khosa’s command, the crowd pulled away. Two soldiers climbed into a pickup truck and fired up the engine, revving it loudly. The headlights blazed into the face of the dangling prisoner. Khosa signalled calmly and the truck reversed a few metres; then the driver whacked it into first gear and hit the gas. The truck’s knobbled tyres spun and dug into the concrete and sent it lurching towards Ben with a scream of revs. The driver clutched the wheel and grinned maniacally, intent on ramming the dangling target, its bumper and front grille crunching into flesh and bone like a living punchbag. Ten feet short of the impact, the driver slammed on the brakes and the truck squealed to a halt an arm’s reach from Ben’s face.

  Ben didn’t even flinch, or blink at the dazzling headlights.

  ‘Again,’ Khosa commanded.

  The truck reversed slowly back to its starting line. Once more, the revs piled on and it flew forwards with a roar. This time, it screeched to a slithering halt just inches away, in a game of chicken intended to provoke at least some kind of reaction out of their victim. If they wanted him to die, they also wanted him to die scared.

  Jeff and Tuesday watched helplessly from a distance with guns to their heads as the spectacle unfolded. ‘He won’t break,’ Tuesday said through clenched teeth. His eyes were bulging and wet. ‘No matter what. He won’t give the bastards that satisfaction.’

  Jeff shook his head. ‘I don’t know if he’s even conscious anymore, mate.’

  ‘They’re going to kill him, aren’t they?’

  ‘And then us,’ Jeff said sadly. ‘Yeah, looks that way.’

  ‘I’m not afraid to die,’ Tuesday said.

  ‘Nor me,’ Jeff said. ‘But I hope they are.’

  Chapter 25

  Jude had whiled away the entire day just waiting to be able to escape again once nightfall came. On his return to the cage the previous night, he’d covered his tracks with great care – first making sure that no footprints were visible in the dirt outside his hut, then painstakingly filling in the hole under the wall once he was back inside, packing it with loose earth that made his escape route invisible at a glance but quicker and easier to dig back out for his next sortie.

  The real test had been Promise. When the silent guard had made his appointed rounds that day, carrying the dreaded Uzi submachine gun as always, Jude had been terrified that he’d spot something was different about the hut, or the cage, or both. But Promise had carried out his mealtime and slop duties without suspecting what his prisoner had been up to. Jude pretended to have fallen into a subdued, withdrawn state, sitting cross-legged on the cage floor and staring into space, rocking mutely from side to side and not appearing to notice his visitor.

  The instant Promise left, Jude was on his feet, pacing, planning, listening, waiting, fighting to contain his impatience. He’d tried to jam his head far enough through the cage bars and crane his neck to be able to see Rae’s hut through the window, but the angle was impossible.

  The passing of the long hours had been brain-numbingly sluggish, though the slowness was easier to bear knowing that he had a purpose now. He’d downed his bland meals and dozed sporadically, tracked the arc of the sun by the shadows on the hut wall, and managed to bide his time without going crazy until, at last, night fell.

  Jude did nothing until he was certain it must be approaching 1 a.m., when the stillness was absolute, Promise was sure to be tucked up in his hut and the compound guards were lazy with sleepiness.

  Then Jude got to work. He scrambled out of the cage more methodically and efficiently than the previous night, with his bent spoon in his pocket. He hit the floor soundlessly, reached through the bars for his food dish, crept over to the patch of loose earth by the wall and began to dig. Soon he was running free in the coolness of the night, dizzy with liberation, heart thumping at the thrill of the risk and excited at the prospect of seeing Rae again. As he retraced his steps towards her hut, he came across a small object on the ground – a matchbox that one of the guards must have dropped on their rounds. He pocketed the matches and hurried on.

  When he tapped softly at the bars of her window, she was waiting for him. ‘Is that you?’ came a tiny whisper from the darkness.

  ‘It’s me. Brought you some fish and chips. I hope you like them with salt and vinegar.’

  ‘You’re crazy,’ she hissed. ‘And keep your voice down!’

  ‘Hold on.’ Jude hunted around the bottom of her hut wall, then finding a loose spot he dug his way in. He was getting pretty good at it now. Rae gasped in amazement as he crawled inside her hut, shaking loose dirt out of his hair. ‘I can’t believe you got out.’

  ‘Take a good look,’ he whispered. ‘I’m real, all right.’ He pulled the matches from his pocket, struck one and held it up. The flickering flame glinted off the bars of her cage and cast their vertical shadows on the hut wall. She moved closer, clasping the bars with slender fingers, and he saw her face clearly for the first time. Her skin was the colour of dark honey in the dim light, and her long hair was so jet black that it gleamed. Jude thought she was the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen, but he kept that opinion to himself in case it might sound weird. ‘Where are you from?’ he whispered.

  ‘Chicago. But my family’s from Taiwan. Blow that match out, before they see the light!’

  Jude snuffed the flame. ‘Relax. I’ll have you out of here in no time. Well, maybe not quite that fast. I don’t have much of a toolkit to get these bolts undone.’

  ‘What about Craig?’

  ‘Craig too,’ Jude whispered. ‘Do you know which hut he’s in?’

  ‘Two more. One’s the guard hut. The problem is that it could be either of them. If I knew where they put Craig, that would make things a lot easier.

  ‘We were blindfolded when they brought us here. All I know is that he’s never answered when I tried to call his name.’

  Then he could be anywhere, Jude thought. Or dead. ‘We’ll find him,’ he promised, sounding as optimistic as he could. He grabbed hold of the cage bars and started scrambling up them.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Trust me, through the top is the quickest way out. You’ll need to climb up while I lift the roof. Can you manage that?’

  ‘I’ll try. Please hurry.’

  Jude made it to the roof of the cage and crawled across it, the bars digging painfully into his knees. He could see her dark shape a few feet below him. Groping about by feel, he found the corner bolts he was looking for and took the bent spoon from his pocket. Here we go, he thought. It might take a while, but if no guards appeared and his improvised spanner managed to hold out without snapping in two, they might actually pull this off.

  Rae moved directly bel
ow where he was spread out on the cage roof, and drew herself up as close to him as possible so they could talk. ‘Try not to make so much noise,’ she chided him as he worked.

  ‘It’s called metal and it kind of clinks and clanks,’ he whispered back. ‘Not a lot I can do about that.’

  ‘I’m just worried, that’s all. So what’s your story?’

  ‘You really want to know?’

  ‘I haven’t talked to anyone in nearly ten days, except to yell at the guards. You’ve no idea how good it is to hear a friendly voice.’

  Jude had the fork clamped to a bolthead and slowly twisted it, feeling it rotate. Yes! It was coming loose. ‘I don’t know exactly why I’m here,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t think they’re holding me for ransom. Who’d pay? My folks are dead anyway. I think I’m here because of my dad. They’re using him for something, and using me to keep him on the hook.’

  ‘I thought you said your parents were dead.’

  ‘They are. Well, kind of. It’s a long story.’ Jude paused. ‘What about you? You said you and this Craig guy were reporters or something.’

  ‘Investigative journalists. I’m kind of his assistant. Photographer, researcher, proofreader, guardian angel, dogsbody.’

  ‘You were here for work?’

  ‘Chasing a story,’ she murmured. ‘A big one. We were trying to get back to the airfield near Bukavu when they picked us up and brought us here. They took my passport, everything. They won’t have wasted any time finding out who my family is and extorting money out of them.’

  ‘Why, are you the president’s niece or something?’

  ‘Never mind that,’ she whispered back, a little testily. ‘Let’s just say that, right now, their money’s the only thing keeping me alive. Most of the folks they kidnap are poor people. When the families can’t pay any more, they just murder the victims. Khosa and his crony Masango have been running their nasty little scam for years. Anywhere but here, they’d have been banged up in jail for it long ago. But hey, this is Africa, right? Where life is cheap and nobody gives a shit.’