by Chris Ryan
Ben shot her a questioning glance, but she did not seem to want to elaborate, so he tried a different tack. 'Why is everyone so scared of this village?'
The question seemed to catch Halima off guard. 'What do you mean?' she asked, her eyes suddenly darting around as though she was scared someone would overhear them.
'Everyone is reluctant to come here. And even the villagers I've seen don't seem to want to talk to anyone. Except you.'
Halima brushed his hand with her fingers, and opened her mouth to speak; but before she was able to, Ben heard a man's voice a little distance behind him. 'Ben Tracey?'
Halima looked over his shoulder and her expression turned instantly to one of worry. 'I have to go,' she whispered, and without another word she hurried back across the clearing and up the street in which she lived. Perplexed, Ben turned to see a tall, lanky black man with a shaved head and a prominent, protruding Adam's apple bearing down on him. His brow was furrowed, his face serious; it was only once he was a few metres away that he made the effort to fix his mouth into a more friendly expression.
Ben eyed him warily.
'You should not be wandering about by yourself.' The man's voice was hoarse, like a forced whisper. 'I understand you have already discovered what a dangerous place the Congo can be.'
'I wasn't by myself,' Ben stated boldly. There was something about this man's demeanour that he didn't like.
The man glanced after Halima, but she had already disappeared. When he turned back to Ben, his face had softened slightly. 'Your father was worried,' he rasped. 'He says you have a gun.'
Ben remained stony-faced.
'Give it to me,' the man insisted.
Ben shook his head. There was no way he was going to be left alone in the presence of a strange Congolese man with an automatic handgun – not after what had happened earlier. 'I'll go back to the compound,' he countered abruptly, 'but the gun stays with me.'
The man nodded slowly, as though deciding how to react to Ben's sudden determination. 'Whatever you say, Mr Ben,' he whispered, and the two of them stared directly into each other's eyes. There was no friendship in that stare.
'You go first,' Ben instructed.
The man turned and led the way.
CHAPTER SIX
They walked in silence. Occasionally the man would look back at Ben, his strange yellow eyes peering suspiciously out of his face; Ben stared straight ahead, avoiding the gaze of this man who made him feel so uncomfortable.
Before long they were back at the compound. Ben's dad was in the central yard, his tired face a thunderstorm. 'What on earth do you think you were doing?' he demanded of his son the moment he saw him.
Ben stood squarely in front of his father, fully prepared to defend himself and his actions; but suddenly he felt something on his shoulder. He looked up to see the man who had escorted him home, gently resting his arm on Ben's T-shirt and smiling toothily at his father. 'Do not be too harsh on him, Mr Tracey,' he said. 'He is right to take precautions.'
Russell Tracey opened his mouth as though to continue the reprimand, but then seemed suddenly to think better of it. 'I think you should go inside, Ben.' He turned to their guest. 'Half past seven tomorrow morning, then, Suliman,' he said politely. The black man nodded, removed his hand from Ben's shoulder, then turned and left.
Once inside, Ben braced himself for the full force of his dad's displeasure, but it didn't come. 'Guns aren't toys, Ben,' was all he saw fit to say – a bit unnecessarily, Ben thought, given the events of the day.
Ben slept fitfully. The food Abele had brought them had been unrecognizable and not to their Western taste – a bowl of thick mashed cassava root, pungently flavoured with unfamiliar herbs. There hadn't been much of it either, and both Ben and his father had gone to bed feeling hungry. The African night was pitch black and unbearably hot and humid – Ben found himself lying under a rough sheet made damp by his own sweat – and despite the fact that the thin mesh of the mosquito net was draped over his bed, his skin felt itchy, as though it were being feasted on by a million unseen insects. And then there were the noises – slithers and rustles and bumps. After a while it became impossible to determine whether they originated from a distance or nearby, or even from inside the hut. Ben had no love of snakes, and by the darkness of midnight, he had imagined all manner of reptilian horrors making their way across the floor of his bedroom.
By the time morning came, his head felt stuffy and his eyes were tight with tiredness, but he was glad to see the steely grey of dawn lighten up the room little by little. He examined his skin for the telltale red welts of the insect bites that he suspected he would be covered with, but the mosquito net appeared to have done its job. Nevertheless, he gratefully gulped down that morning's dose of Lariam, the anti-malaria medication he had been prescribed. As he did so, he remembered with a grim smile the warning the doctor had given him: that the medicine could have certain side effects – dizziness, nausea, even paranoia. He wondered if the uncomfortable feeling he had about this place was down to the drugs. Somehow he didn't think so.
His dad had explained over supper the previous night that today he would be going to the mine with Suliman, the mine manager. Ben was to stay in the village, where Abele would look after him. Ben hadn't argued – the mine didn't hold much interest for him, and he had too many unanswered questions about what was going on round here to be diverted by his dad's dry experiments and sample-taking.
At seven-thirty exactly, Suliman arrived in an old Land Rover. Flanked by two men who said nothing and lurked at the entrance to the compound, he approached Ben's dad with an outstretched hand and flashed a smile at Ben himself. Any hint of the suspicion he had demonstrated towards Ben the previous day seemed to have disappeared, although he did not seem to want to catch his eye more often than necessary. 'We need to get started, Mr Tracey,' he rasped at Russell. 'There is a lot to get through.'
Russell nodded, then walked over to give Ben a kiss. Ben knew the signs and offered him his hand instead, which his dad shook a little awkwardly. 'Abele should be here soon,' Russell said. 'I'll be back as quickly as I can.'
Ben watched from the entrance to the compound as Suliman ushered his dad into the waiting jeep. It made a deep, throttling sound as it started off, then disappeared, leaving a cloud of dust and an imprint of the tyres in its wake. Ben waited for it to go out of sight, then stood there for a little longer watching the business of the villagers milling about the square. There were more of them this morning than there had been the previous night, but they still walked with that abrupt haste, none of them stopping to speak to their neighbours. It was half an hour before Abele arrived, a loaf of bread in his hands. They greeted each other wordlessly before walking into the compound and sitting down to share the bread in rough hunks. It was hard and tasteless, but Ben was hungry.
'We should stay here today.' Abele broke his silence once he had finished eating.
Ben shook his head. 'Why?'
Abele put his hand out, palm facing upwards. 'The air is thick,' he explained. 'There will be rain soon, and heavy.'
'So what? The worst that can happen is we'll get wet.' Ben smiled as he thought back to the events in London only a few months previously. 'It's only a bit of water.'
Abele looked at him severely. 'When it rains, it will be fierce. You will need to find shelter.'
'All right, all right,' Ben told him a bit indulgently. 'I won't go far, and if it rains I'll come straight back. But I'm definitely going out – you stay here if you want to.'
Abele settled himself more comfortably on his sawn-off tree trunk to indicate that that was precisely what he intended to do. Ben shrugged, rubbed the crumbs off his lap, and wandered out into the main square.
Remembering the advice he had read on the Internet, the first thing he wanted to do was buy drinking water; it would be foolish to assume that his system would easily assimilate the local water like the villagers themselves. He looked around to try and find someone he could ask,
but everyone seemed to be avoiding his gaze; if he did catch anyone looking at him, they would jerk their heads down to the ground almost immediately. After a minute or two, a couple of young children came running towards him, shouting words he could not understand; he tried to ask them in slow, simple English where he could buy bottles of water, but they clearly did not know what he was talking about and carried on shouting at him.
But then, from the corner of his eye, he saw a figure he recognized at the other side of the square. It was Halima, dressed identically to the way she had been the previous day. Trying to ignore the children clutching at his legs, he waved at her, his right arm forming a large arc in the air. Halima appeared not to notice him, keeping her eyes resolutely in front of her, so to attract her attention he shouted her name. 'Halima!' he called. 'Over here!'
As soon as he did so, Ben felt self-conscious. Everyone in the square turned momentarily to look at him before going back to what they were doing. Halima did the same, but unlike all the others she kept her eyes on him a little longer. Her face scrunched up into what looked to Ben like a gesture of warning, and she shook her head sharply before turning and walking out of the square.
Ben watched her leave, perplexed by her actions. She had seemed so eager to speak to him yesterday – what had caused her to walk away like that now? Still trying to work this out, he strode purposefully away from the children at his feet, a frown on his face, keeping a lookout for somewhere he could buy water.
On the other side of the square there was a hut with a few old red crates outside. Ben approached to see that they held unmarked bottles with silvery metal lids. Most of them contained what looked like water; a few seemed to be filled with cola, others with a milky liquid he couldn't identify. He helped himself to two bottles of water, then walked inside, pulling a note out of his pocket as he did so.
It took his eyes a few moments to get used to the darkness inside. When he did so, he saw an old woman, her skin dry and wrinkled, staring unsmilingly at him. She sat on a high wooden stool, surrounded by other bottle crates, though these were uniformly empty. Ben held up the bottles to indicate that he wanted to buy them, then thrust the note towards her. Her hand lashed out more quickly than her frailty would have suggested it could, and she stuffed it into a pouch tied round her waist, pulling out a few coins change and handing them to Ben in return. As she did so, however, there was a sudden commotion at the door. Ben spun round to see another woman standing in the doorway, a water bottle in her hand. The shopkeeper spat some harsh words at her in Lingala, which the woman responded to equally harshly, and a loud argument followed, with Ben standing somewhat perplexed in the middle of it. The shopkeeper jumped from her stool with surprising agility and snatched the bottle back from her surprised customer, the two of them shouting at each other all the while.
Amidst all the confusion, Ben heard a voice. It was Abele, standing just outside the hut, calling to Ben to come out. Skirting round the edge of the ongoing argument, he slipped outside. 'Blimey.' He smiled at Abele. 'What was all that about?'
Abele's face remained severe. 'The woman owes the shopkeeper money. She wants to take more water, but the shopkeeper will not let her until she pays her bills. The woman is saying that her husband is very sick. He needs clean water or he will die.'
Ben listened in horror to what Abele was saying. 'You mean they can't get clean water without paying for it?'
Abele shrugged. 'There is a tap in the village, but the water there is not always the cleanest.' As he spoke, the woman stormed out of the shop, past the two of them, and off towards the centre of the square. Ben ran after her. 'Excuse me!' he shouted. The woman turned, the surprise of seeing this young white boy calling her evident in her face. As he approached, Ben held out one of the bottles of water he had bought. 'Take it,' he said, thrusting it into her hands.
The woman looked at the bottle, then back at Ben. There was a wariness in her eyes, but she did not refuse the gift, simply nodding her head in a curt gesture of appreciation. Then she turned and walked quickly away.
Ben watched her go. Gradually he became aware of Abele standing just behind him. 'You will not be able to give charity to everyone who is sick in this village, Ben,' he murmured.
Ben didn't take his eyes off the woman. 'I thought you said you were going to stay in the compound, Abele,' he retorted, beginning to feel a bit irritated by his constant cryptic comments.
Abele remained stony-faced. 'I am here to look after you,' he said shortly.
'Come on, then.' The woman was turning round a corner, so Ben ran after her with Abele running reluctantly behind. He was beginning to have a suspicion, and he wanted to see if he was right.
Sure enough, as he turned the corner, he saw the woman opening the wooden door to a shabby- looking hut. Looking over her shoulder, she saw Ben, but she quickly pulled her gaze away, stepped inside and slammed the door shut. Ben approached. Painted on the door in thick red paint – just as it had been at Halima's house – there was a cross. 'That's what it means, isn't it?' Ben asked breathlessly. 'They paint a red cross when someone is dying in the house.'
'Or has died,' Abele noted darkly.
Ben walked away from the house, checking the doors of the other huts in this ramshackle street. Red crosses adorned the fronts of almost half of them. 'What's wrong with all these people?' he breathed, his head suddenly spinning at the thought of so much death. He turned to Abele.
His face made it clear he had nothing to say on the subject; he just fingered the charm that hung around his neck.
Suliman had not accompanied Russell into the deepest part of the mine; it had not been necessary. As mine manager he had to attend to the workers excavating for tin elsewhere, so he had left the scientist in the hands of one of his colleagues, a rather surly villager who spoke no English but seemed very nervous as he held a torch to the exposed rock face positioned just by the underground lake from which Russell was taking his samples. It was hard work and Russell was soon damp with sweat despite the fact that it was cool in the caves. He would have liked to splash water from the lake over his face, but he knew how foolish that would be: cholera, tapeworms – it could be hiding all manner of parasites and diseases.
It was unusual to find Coltan down here. It was normally surface-mined, but there had been instances of it being discovered as an offshoot of other mining operations. And of course it would take him a while to do all the proper tests at his lab back in the UK, but he could already tell that this was a rich source of the good stuff, and he would be able to give his findings to Kruger and the others back in Kinshasa. That would please them, and at least he would feel as if one part of his excursion into Africa with Ben had gone the way it should. Russell had to admit that things hadn't really been going according to plan. If Ben seemed jumpy around everyone, it wasn't really much of a surprise. He was only a young boy, after all, and all things considered, his father thought he was coping quite well. If only he hadn't seemed so openly suspicious of Kruger and Suliman, two men who seemed to be doing their very best to make everything run smoothly.
Ah well, Russell thought to himself. That sort of maturity will come. In time.
He glanced at his watch in the torchlight. It was getting on, so he turned and nodded to his companion with a smile. 'We'll finish now,' he said in loud, overly pronounced tones that he knew the guy wouldn't understand, but he hoped he would get his drift.
The man nodded and turned round, eager to leave. 'I still need the light here!' Russell called, spinning round and grabbing him by the arm. The man uttered some harsh words in a deep voice, pulling his arm away from Russell, his face sinister and demonic by the light of the torch. As he lowered the torch, something caught Russell's eye. 'Shine it there,' he instructed, pointing out over the water. His companion did as he was told. A small animal – a bat, most likely, Russell thought – was flailing in the water, struggling.
And then, quite suddenly, it fell silent.
Its death seemed to bring an
increased chill into the cave. Russell dragged his attention away and packed up his things, and the two of them started walking along the rickety wooden flooring that would eventually lead them out of the mine. They trudged along in silence, the black man holding the torch, Russell keeping his eyes firmly on the potentially treacherous ground.
As they were leaving the cave, he saw another dead bat, right in front of him, its body already decaying.
He said nothing, but his scientist's brain started ticking over. Clearly there was a colony down here somewhere, a great many of them, no doubt. With such a large population, the probability of seeing dead individuals was high. He smiled to himself. There was something satisfying about seeing statistics in action.
Had he directed the beam back across the water, however, Russell might have noticed a small opening into an adjoining cave. He could never have reached it to explore, even if he had wanted to, because the only way of accessing it was across the water. Had he been able to, however, he would have been horrified by what he saw on the banks of the underground lake.
Thousands upon thousands of bats.
All of them dead.
All of them piled high in a mountain of increasingly rotten and stinking flesh.
Ben's dad returned to the compound later that afternoon. Abele had insisted that he and Ben should go back, and Ben's recent discovery that half the huts in the village seemed to be housing the sick and dying had dampened his enthusiasm for exploring, so he had sought shelter from the heat and the increasingly intolerable humidity by lying on his bed in the half darkness. Now, though, it was beginning to cool down.
Russell looked grimy and tired – more tired than Ben had seen him in a long time in fact, with large, black rings under his eyes and a faintly haggard expression. He entered the compound with Suliman sticking close to him. Both men had sweat on their bald heads, though Suliman looked more comfortable with it than Russell.