When he was finished he lined up all the suitcases outside the door to Kolingba’s office, gave two guards a hundred-dollar bill apiece to carry them down to one of the bumblebee Rovers, explaining to them that he was running a late-night errand to the airport for the general. It was a common enough occurrence and neither one of the soldiers questioned the order.
Gash went back upstairs for one last look at the monster and then, whether out of spite or simply for fun, he slipped the diamond-encrusted Rolex off Kolingba’s pudgy wrist. On the television Cary Grant and Tony Curtis were discussing various methods of getting five navy nurses off their submarine, which had now been painted bright pink.
Gash watched for a moment, marveling at the Americans’ ability to make war funny. He briefly thought once more of killing the general with his own silver automatic, but instead simply took the automatic and slipped it into his waistband. He checked the Rolex. Four fifteen in the morning, time to go unless he wanted to get caught in the cross fire. He zipped up his Windbreaker to cover the silver-plated pistol, went out into the compound and climbed into the Rover and flashed his lights at the gate guards. They jumped to it, throwing open the gates, and Gash drove out onto the square.
He turned left toward the waterfront rather than right toward the airport, but nobody seemed to notice or care. He was halfway to the docks when every light in Fourandao went off and an explosive echo came rolling down from the airport. He’d made it in the nick of time. Or maybe not. He put on a little more speed, his mind working as he drove. He’d expected the coup to be centered on the airport and all the communications hubs located in and around it. What if it was a two-pronged attack, coming up from the water as well, catching anyone fleeing in a pincer movement?
“Shit!” He pulled out his cell phone and tried it. No signal. They’d already hit the microwave towers. “Shit!” he said again. He reached the docks and the turn onto the road to Banqui. The drive would take him four hours; if they were coming up the river road he’d be squeezed and caught. There was no use turning left, because the road ran out half a mile or so upriver, turning into nothing more than a native track. “Shit, shit, shit.”
There were more explosions coming from the direction of the airport. He rolled down the window and craned his neck, looking back the way he’d come. The sky was on fire.
With the window still open he paused and cocked an ear. He knew the sound. Outboard engines, lots of them.
“Goddamn!” he whispered. They were coming up the river! He stared out through the windshield. Directly in front of him was the entire Kukuanaland navy, the single rigid inflatable defended by an old Russian machine gun. He barely paused to think about what he was doing. He drove the last few yards down to the docks and began humping the suitcases out of the back of the Rover and into the patrol boat, keeping an ear out for the approaching outboards coming from the other direction.
By the eighth suitcase he was sweating and the engine noise was too close for comfort. He abandoned the rest of the cases, untied the boat from the old wooden bollard and hit the ignition button on the engine. It coughed, coughed again and died. The engines from downriver were getting closer.
“Go, you bitch!” he hissed. He hit the button again, there was another greasy cough and then the engine caught. Grinning through the sweat pouring from his brow, he gunned the engine, turned the wheel hard and hauled the boat upriver. There was nothing in that direction but bush and jungle. He’d hide there for a night or two, then slip down the river to freedom. He eased the throttle forward and turned the boat through a large curve in the night-black river.
And saw a nightmare. If front of him, no more than a hundred yards away, there was a monstrous dragonheaded ship coming right at him, oars like the huge legs of some unearthly water bug rising and falling in perfect cadence with a giant cross-scribed sail billowing over everything.
“No,” he said, wide-eyed. How could a Viking ship, of all things, be here, on this river, now? It was impossible. And in that instant he knew he wasn’t getting out of this one alive.
The white-feathered dart caught him at the base of the throat. The neurotoxin hit his brain within two seconds. He had just enough time to raise the Rolex to his face before he died.
Gash didn’t see the Sea Dragon as it swept around the bend in the river; nor did he see Edimburgo Vladimir Cabrera Alfonso standing at the bow with his Fidelito unlimbered in his arms, singing quietly to himself.
Beside him Holliday waited. They made the turn and kept on sweeping downriver, all sixty oars lifted from the water now, carried only by the current. With the first pink light of dawn at their backs they saw the oncoming Zodiacs, twenty of them, spread in an arrogant line across the river almost from bank to bank. In the stern of the Sea Dragon, Loki, standing at the steering oar, gave a single, loudly shouted order.
“Strybord!” Thirty starboard oars hit the water as one and held there, the men on their benches straining at the current as the Sea Dragon turned her broadside to the looming inflatables, each filled with well-armed men.
Holliday and Eddie began to fire, the AK making its distinctive death rattle and the Fidelito sounding like fifty noisy doors slamming.
“Brand ambroster!” Loki yelled. At fifty yards each of the huge ballistas found its mark, ripping into the Zodiacs and their occupants, sinking thirty-five of the rubber boats. The heavy packs worn by most of the men dragged them under the black water to drown. Crocodiles slid silently from their perches on the riverbanks to slaughter the rest. The few Zodiacs managing to escape the initial barrage were slammed into by the Sea Dragon and crushed under her hull. A very few soldiers still in the water were finished off by dozens of blowguns on board.
“Adios, pioneers,” Eddie whispered, jacking the empty magazine out of the shotgun.
Loki called out the order, the oars dipped and Sea Dragon turned in toward shore.
At first it seemed like a rout. There hadn’t been a single survivor at the airport and Lanz hadn’t lost a man, but he was worried. According to Zodiacs A and B, the two inflatables waiting with the amphibians, everything had proceeded on schedule right up to the time the other half of Lanz’s force was supposed to land and make its way inland to the compound. There had been a few garbled messages, some scattered gunfire and then a single transmission about a Viking dragon that no one understood.
By the time Lanz and his men reached the compound it was clear that all hell was breaking loose. A few crazed townspeople were talking about ghosts and silent death, and instead of having to break through the compound with mortar fire, as they’d expected, the entire compound simply threw open the gates and asked to be taken prisoner, something Lanz hadn’t been prepared for.
He discovered Kolingba asleep in his bed, obviously drugged, and without any orders from Matheson he simply handcuffed the snoring dictator to his bedpost.
He tried to radio Nagoupandé’s party, which was being helicoptered in from Maiduguri in northeastern Nigeria, but so far he hadn’t been able to raise them. In the end he simply let the garrison go, collecting all their weapons first, then posted pickets and sat back and waited for Matheson and the new dictator of Kukuanaland to arrive.
By five a.m. there was still no sign of the two hundred men coming in from the river, and their mysterious absence was starting to make his own men nervous. They were beginning to talk about pulling back to the airport, which was not a good sign.
Half an hour later the first reports of mysterious deaths began to reach Lanz in the compound, where he was busily digging the rest of the cash out of Kolingba’s office wall and stashing it in his senior officers’ packs as a bonus. Pickets and guards around the square were turning up dead, unwounded except for something that looked like an oversized blowgun dart. At first Lanz didn’t believe it, but one of the few men left outside the compound brought one to him.
“What do you think, Pierre?” Lanz asked, turning to his old friend and colleague Laframboise.
“My honest opi
nion, Konrad?”
“As always.”
“This is your ghost, Limbani. I sent a patrol down to the river, six men. Two came back—one babbling and feverish from some kind of blowgun dart that had grazed his leg through his trousers, the other one talking about a dragon boat like the Vikings once used.”
“That’s insane,” said Lanz.
“They say there’s a Viking ship on the river and our Zodiac teams have vanished. They say there are ghost walkers, griots and sorcerers in masks, killing our men with darts, and there you are.” He pointed to the dart on what had once been Kolingba’s desk.
“What do you suggest?”
“How much money did you find in that wall? Twenty, thirty million?”
“Something like that.”
“Then we get out while we can, what’s left of us. We make a flag of truce and march out of this compound and hope we aren’t murdered as we go.”
“Matheson? Nagoupandé?”
“It’s their bed; let them lie in it.”
When the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter made a pinpoint landing in the center of what had been the Fourandao garrison compound at six thirty a.m., there wasn’t a soul in sight. Brigadier General Francois Nagoupandé, dressed in full uniform, and Sir James Matheson climbed out of the helicopter accompanied by eight heavily armed members of Blackhawk Security as bodyguards.
Papers fluttered in the wind, including several dozen American hundred-dollar bills. Several dead bodies littered the ground, but there wasn’t a living human being anywhere.
“Find out what the bloody hell is going on!” Matheson snarled at the Blackhawk Security force. The men ran off in various directions to search the buildings. A moment later one returned.
“Yes?” Matheson snapped.
“There’s a big fat guy in there asleep, or maybe drugged. He’s handcuffed to his bed.”
“Ah,” said Nagoupandé. “Show me,” he said to the man. They went back into the main building. A moment later there was a single shot.
Nagoupandé reappeared, slipping his Colt .45 back into its holster on his web belt. He had blood spray across the lower part of his face and across the front of his jacket. “The king is dead.”
“Long live the king,” said a voice from the blasted front gates of the compound. Limbani appeared with Holliday on one side and Eddie on the other. Behind them were Jean-Luc Saint-Sylvestre and a half dozen uniformed members of the Kukuanaland secret police. Seeing Limbani, Nagoupandé struggled to drag his gun from its holster. Saint-Sylvestre beat him to it.
“Do something!” Nagoupandé screamed at Matheson.
“I only deal with winners, I’m afraid,” said Matheson smoothly. “Who that is remains to be seen.”
Limbani stepped forward, looking up at the infuriated man in the brigadier general’s uniform. “You look very foolish, Francois. The English have a word for it—popinjay, isn’t that correct, Sir James?”
“You know who I am?” Matheson said, impressed.
“Of course.” Limbani nodded, resting his hand on Saint-Sylvestre’s shoulder. “My nephew has told me a great deal about you and what you wish to do to my country.”
“Your nephew?” Matheson said, dazed. Horribly a number of things clicked into place and the man visibly sagged.
“On his mother’s side.”
Nagoupandé began to scream, his fists clenched like a child having a tantrum. “It’s not your country, Limbani; it’s my country! I am the president of Kukuanaland !”
“No, you’re not,” said Saint-Sylvestre, putting the muzzle of his Glock against Nagoupandé’s forehead. He pulled the trigger, and Nagoupandé slid to the ground like a deflating balloon.
“So,” said Matheson, trying to put some heartiness back into his voice. “Presumably it will be you I’ll be dealing with, Dr. Limbani.”
“No,” said Limbani, “you’ll be dealing with my minister of resources, who is also my foreign minister and who is, by chance, my nephew.
“The first thing you’re going to do,” Limbani continued, “is get back in your helicopter, taking your nasty little friends with you. The next thing you will do after arriving back in England is establish something called the Kukuanaland National Trust, a nongovernmental organization headed up by my friend Colonel Holliday here, as well as his cousin Miss Peggy Blackstock and her husband, Dr. Rafi Wanounou.”
“The purpose of the trust is to develop ideas for utilizing the three-hundred-million-pound endowment you will give the trust for the betterment of the people of Kukuanaland, especially where it regards such things as infrastructure and education. Should you prefer not to establish the trust my nephew can take all of the concrete antitrust and war-crimes information he has on you personally as well as a number of your employees and disperse it throughout the world press as he sees fit. Then perhaps we shall discuss your rare earths; agreed?”
“I’ll be in touch,” said Matheson coldly, his face an angry mask. Without another word he waved the bodyguards back onto the helicopter, followed them aboard and slammed the door shut. The group in the compound stepped back as the rotors began to whir, and a moment later the Black Hawk lifted off the ground, tilted away and disappeared into the morning sky.
“His nephew?” Holliday said to Saint-Sylvestre.
“A spy in the house of love, I believe it’s called.” The secret policeman shrugged his shoulders. “He needed someone on his side to even the odds a little.”
Holliday toed the rumpled body of Nagoupandé, sprawled on the ground and bleeding into the hard-packed earth. “We should get this cleaned up.”
“And after we do,” said Peggy, “I do believe it’s going to be a very nice day.”
“Always the optimist,” said Rafi, smiling fondly at his wife.
Peggy stared at the body on the ground. She shrugged. “Beats the alternative.”
EPILOGUE
Eddie and Holliday stayed with Peggy and Rafi for almost three months. It was fall by the time they left Kukuanaland, flown out to Khartoum by the inimitable Mutwakil “Donny” Osman on his rattletrap Catalina. Neither man knew where they were going or what the future held, but the few hours as warriors for a cause again had shaken both men deeply, arousing some strange wanderlust that they both thought it was unlikely they’d be able to satisfy. One thing was sure enough: Holliday wanted to go back to the States for a while, maybe consider teaching again, and even though Eddie could probably get refugee status, especially with Holliday’s sanction, the Cuban was still Cuban enough not to want to give up his passport. He told Holliday what he’d been saying for years, even though he knew it was a lie—“Maybe when Fidel is gone, maybe then it will be better.”
They sat in the very new glass-and-white-marble departure lounge at Khartoum International Airport drinking complimentary coffee and waiting for their flights, Holliday’s to New York via Paris and Eddie’s to the Amazon via a half dozen stops along the way.
“You really think you’ll find work there?” Holliday asked.
“It’s a river, and I’m a river pilot, mi amigo. It’s what I do.”
“I’m wondering now if we should have stayed a little while longer with Limbani and his people. You’ve got to admit, it was fascinating.”
“But not for us, Doc,” said Eddie. “It is Peggy and Rafi’s passion, not ours. There’s enough to keep them there for years, maybe for the rest of their lives.”
“Maybe we’re getting too old for passion,” said Holliday.
“Saying that is the beso de la muerte,” said Eddie. “The kiss of death.”
“These old bones are starting to ache.” Holliday shrugged. “Maybe I should just retire.”
“Pah!” Eddie snorted. “You are only as old as you think.”
“And I think I’m pretty damn old!” Holliday laughed.
A tall, very distinguished-looking man had been hovering close to their seats in the lounge for the last few minutes and Holliday was wondering when he’d make his move for a fe
w coins or bills. From the neck up he looked like a university professor, right down to the wire glasses and the badly knotted tie. The rest of him was on the slide, a cheap blue suit half a century out of style, frayed at the pockets lap and cuffs. The shoes might have been made of cardboard.
Finally he stepped forward. “Excuse me,” he said, speaking to Eddie in heavily accented English. “I think you are Cuban?”
“Sí.” Eddie nodded.
“I speak very little Spanish. Do you perhaps speak Russian?”
“Da.” The Cuban nodded.
“Otlichno!” The man beamed happily. Holliday presumed it meant good, or excellent. The man began to babble away at breakneck speed, plucking at Eddie’s sleeve and finally drawing him a few feet away and muttering softly into his ear, then gave him a small slip of paper, folding it into Eddie’s hand. At first Eddie seemed confused but eventually he shrugged, patted the man on the shoulder and went back to sit beside Holliday. The Russian-speaking gentleman peered at them anxiously.
“Now, what was that all about?”
“I didn’t get all of it. He says his name is Victor Ostrovsky and he’s a curator at the Hermitage. Something about the Romanov jewels and the Fabergé royal eggs. He says that something terrible has happened and he insists that you and I go with him immediately.”
“You and I?”
“You don’t speak Russian. According to him I am to be your translator. He asked if I trusted you. I said yes. He asked if I trusted you with my life. I said yes.”
“That’s all very nice,” said Holliday, “but just where is it he wants us to go?”
“A church,” said Eddie. “In Constantinople.”
“Istanbul?” Holliday said. “That’s just plain nuts. For one thing they don’t speak Russian in Istanbul.”
“He told me you’d say that.” Eddie nodded. “He asked me to give you this.” Eddie handed the slip of paper to Holliday. He stared down at the spidery, oldman’s handwriting.
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