Dark Heart

by Peter Tonkin

  They settled into the back of the hotel limousine. ‘Docks first?’ said Richard. ‘So I can kiss you farewell and wish you Godspeed like a good sailor’s spouse?’ The gentle irony at least showed he was beginning to come to terms with her plans, thought Robin.

  ‘In a pig’s eye, matey,’ she answered shortly, but with a dazzling smile. ‘President’s offices first. And I’ll go on downhill from there. You’ve had your kiss for the day. You’ll have to save up for the rest. I want you glad to see me when I get back, sailor. Very glad!’

  Half an hour later, just after 16:30 local time, Lieutenant Sanda found himself unknowingly sharing Andre Wanago’s feelings as he shouldered the Louis Vuitton Keepall and directed Captain Robin Mariner towards the Shaldag’s accommodation ladder. Bonnie Holliday was already aboard and the two women greeted each other like excited schoolgirls in the crew’s mess and accommodation area. Bonnie had been aboard a while and, bubbling with enthusiasm, she gave Robin a quick orientation tour. Right in the bow at the forward end of the mess, there was a secure storage area. Its door was locked, but it was where their bags would go when their necessaries were unpacked. The mess and accommodation area, where they were now, was immediately below the main command area and bridge – above which was the open flying bridge they had shared with Caleb that morning. Aft of the mess there were the heads and then the ship’s small galley before the engine sections. The placing of the galley raised Robin’s eyebrow until she saw the logic of its access to fresh water from the ablutions and heat from the engines. The whole area below deck was more than six feet high – so both women could stand upright. It was also the better part of fifteen feet across at its widest, though the walls sloped inwards as dictated by the curve of the hull, and, reckoned Robin, nearly forty feet long, so there was plenty of room for the table – which was suspended from the ceiling and would be raised when the comfortable seats around it folded out into bunks. It was all so neat and practical. And, thought Robin, air-conditioned. Bliss!

  Of course, the two women were not alone as they enjoyed their little tour. There was an engineering officer with a team of three looking after propulsion in the twenty-five feet of engine room. Caleb and Sanda had their junior navigators – two of them working up in the forty odd feet of command bridge, which was also nearly twenty feet wide and six feet high. There was a communications officer. And, just in case – in spite of Robin’s overstated confidence that this would be a walk in the park – there was a gunnery officer.

  Immediately before leaving, Caleb crowded everyone around the mess table for a quick briefing. He laid out a map of the delta on which a series of notes and GPS coordinates had been pencilled. ‘We’re due to depart at seventeen hundred hours,’ he said. ‘That’ll give us an hour of daylight to get well upstream. We’re going to follow standard river procedure and keep to the south bank on the way in. That will take us past the sandbank where Otobo is beached and let me assess the progress of the firefighting. Then we’ll head upstream keeping to this channel here, south of the chain of small islands that split the main stream into two from here to here. We’ll have to keep a good watch out for mats of floating water hyacinth – they’re the main hazard for shipping there. We should keep a lookout for small vessels too – but that’s the proposed site of the minister’s wildlife sanctuary so there aren’t any villages there. No people at all as far as we know. We’ll pass the township of Malebo on the far side of the river, and keep to the south side as we shoot the rapids left by the fallen bridge beside Citematadi.’

  ‘I’d like to see Citematadi, if possible,’ said Robin. ‘Richard’s told me it’s a spectacular sight – if rather creepy and depressing. I missed it on my last visit.’

  ‘If there’s time and opportunity,’ said Caleb. ‘But we won’t be hanging around there.’ He turned back to the others. ‘Then it’ll be the long haul upriver and across the stream to these coordinates here, which are the GPS location of the settlement where the president’s daughter is currently located. Are we all clear about this? It’s further upriver than I’ve ever been and further than anyone else aboard has been—’

  ‘I’ve been up that far – past Citematadi at least,’ Robin interrupted him again. ‘I was a guest of General Chaka’s revolutionary army just before he took the power and the presidency from ex-President Banda. It won’t,’ she added looking round them all and thinking, suddenly, that Richard might have had a point after all . . . ‘It won’t be a walk in the park.’

  ‘No, indeed,’ countered Captain Caleb with a smile. ‘It’ll be a cruise in the delta. So, ladies and gentlemen, let’s get to it.’

  Shaldag FPB004 eased away from the jetty at 17:00 local time on the dot. Once again, Caleb took control in the flying bridge while Robin and Bonnie stood at his shoulders. The evening was vast and sultry at first, the darkening sky high, the horizons far, the wind laden with a humidity that seemed to intensify the odd mixture of sea smells and river odours. The sun was setting away out to sea on their right as the Shaldag sat up and swept southward in that long arc designed to take her to the sandbar where Otobo was beached. Beached and still burning. Even from a couple of kilometres away it was possible to see the tall arches of white water that the two firefighting ships in attendance were pouring on to her. As the speeding patrol boat drew near, so the droplets began to catch the light from the westering sun, and the white water shattered into solid rainbows tinged with gold.

  ‘Looks like your armaments are safe,’ shouted Robin.

  ‘Will they still be serviceable?’ wondered Bonnie.

  ‘It looks as though you’ll still have a hull when this is all over,’ persisted Robin thoughtfully. ‘Everything else can be fixed when she gets into dry dock.’

  ‘I guess so,’ said Caleb less than happily, and he swung the wheel to bring the crippled vessel round on their right and the sunset directly behind them as he sped FPB004 due eastwards up the river, into the delta and the gathering darkness.

  The sun set at 18:00 with military precision. It turned the delta on either side of the speeding boat into a slaughterhouse of red leaves, dripping like huge gouts of blood into the hyacinth-clotted artery ahead of them. The first of the midstream islands hulked on their left, making what had seemed a wide, inviting channel suddenly threatening and overgrown. The tall superstructure cast a huge shadow forward which camouflaged the floating islands of vegetation, making it hard for even the most experienced eye to distinguish clearly. Caleb kept up a muttered conversation with the man on the radar as he eased the vessel forward, its motors scarcely rising above a grumble. Even so, the beds of water hyacinth scraped eerily along the sides, like something out of a horror movie. Robin found herself shivering in spite of the humid heat. Richard’s worries were suddenly looking more and more real. The narrow, arterial channel with its thrombosis of matted plants even smelt foetid, as though the whole blood-soaked place was rotting around them. She noticed Bonnie sliding ever closer to Caleb as the atmosphere got to her as well. And then, with a suddenness only the tropics can supply, it was dark.

  ‘Searchlight!’ ordered Caleb, and a great beam of brightness probed the channel ahead of them. But all it seemed to do, as far as Robin was concerned, was to emphasize how close the overhanging bank had become on their starboard quarter. How close the mid-river island was on their port. She looked across at the low, shrub-covered mudbank, wondering whether there were after all any of the huge crocodiles she had seen in the zoo yesterday evening still lurking hidden there. The thought was disturbing enough to shorten her breath and add to the sweat beading her upper lip.

  But then something distracted her. A trick of the light, she thought. The shaggy overgrowth crowning the nearest island seemed suddenly to be illuminated from inside, as though not crocodiles but the strange local dancing deity Ngoboi and his ghostly lieutenants were about some supernatural business in there.

  Robin drew in a breath to tell Bonnie and Caleb about her strange vision, when the most unexpected thing
happened. Someone started shooting at them. A long rattle of automatic fire rang out across the silence of the river. Silence she hadn’t even registered until the gunshots shattered it. She ducked, flinching.

  ‘Get below,’ ordered Caleb. ‘Hurry! Kill the light!’ And he shepherded them to the ladder down to the deck. ‘Into the cabin,’ he said as they reached the deck – then he strode through into the bridge.

  ‘What on earth was that?’ asked Bonnie, shaken, as they stepped down into the cool of the mess.

  ‘Someone took a potshot at us,’ said Robin briefly.

  As Bonnie sat, shaken, on one of the padded benches that would later fold out into bunks, Robin stationed herself at the foot of the companionway leading up into the command bridge. She could hear the creak of Caleb and his bridge watch sitting in the big pilot’s seats she had seen as she went past. She could hear the pinging of the sonar and the occasional contact from the collision alarm radar as a particularly solid raft of water hyacinth washed downstream towards them. The motors were grumbling away behind her at the stern, and those floating mats of water hyacinth were still whispering past the outside of the hull. But none of the noises around her were loud enough to drown out the quiet conversation the captain was having with his navigators and communications officer. Some of the technical language tested her understanding of Matadi to the utmost, but she filled in the gaps easily enough by assessing what she would be asking and answering under the circumstances.

  ‘No contact?’ Caleb asked quietly.

  ‘No, Captain. I’ve tried every channel. There’s no radio signal anywhere nearby.’ That would be the radio officer.

  ‘OK,’ decided Caleb. ‘Contact base, report that shots were fired near to us – perhaps at us. No damage or casualties to report. But maybe they should be aware downriver. Sanda, anything?’

  ‘The light beyond the island seems to have gone out. I guess there was some kind of vessel there and that’s most likely where the shots came from. But she seems to have gone now. Do you want to pursue, Captain?’

  ‘No. It’s not really an option,’ said Caleb. ‘Navigator, where do you estimate the nearest big break in the island chain on our port side is?’

  ‘Seven klicks ahead.’

  ‘Five minutes at full speed. Twenty-five given the current situation. No. We’ll carry on with the mission. But we’ll keep a careful watch. And put the searchlight on again.’

  ‘Man the gun, just in case?’ asked the lieutenant.

  ‘No, Sanda. Nor the machine guns. Let’s keep everyone inside where it’s nice and safe. For the time being, at least. Now, who’s on galley duty? Let’s get back to routine as soon as possible. You have the con, Sanda. And I want to know the instant we get free of this garbage blocking our way. I want a fast run up to Citematadi if humanly possible.’

  ‘Yes, Captain.’

  Robin didn’t recognize the man who served dinner, but she decided that when the opportunity arose she would get his recipe for fish pepper soup and Jollof rice. The fish pepper soup wasn’t a soup and it wasn’t made with fish. It was a thick stew of huge delta prawns and a range of peppers – sweet and hot – and tomatoes. It was heavenly and it complemented the rice and mixed vegetables perfectly. She would have gone for seconds – but the seconds were gone before she finished her huge first serving. ‘You’ll have to be quicker than that Captain Mariner,’ said Caleb in English, his deep voice rumbling with amusement. ‘Seaman Erelu’s obe eja tutu is famous throughout the fleet. Don’t despair, though, there’s Rocky Road for dessert.’

  Robin and Bonnie dragged the meal out a little and Caleb’s crew indulged them, for there were no entertainment facilities aboard. They were politely refused permission to help with the washing-up, but they were permitted back up on deck as the boat’s evening routine proceeded in unhurried efficiency. Once cleared, the table was elevated and bunks folded down. The heads were tiny, but big enough to allow more than mere functionality – there would have been room to change into night-things had either woman wanted to. But they were both still too excited, and so they wandered around, above-decks and below, trying not to get in the way.

  The next excitement came when the Shaldag finally broke free of the hyacinth-clogged channel between the islands and the southern shore. As soon as he was clear, Caleb pushed the throttles forward and his command sat up on the water again as her speed climbed. But from what Robin remembered of the notes on the map he had shown them at the briefing, they were badly behind schedule now. It came as no surprise, therefore, when they sped past the lights of Malebo township which glittered briefly on the far, northern, bank just before midnight.

  Neither Robin nor Bonnie had any intention of sleeping, even though bunks had been prepared for them below with courtesy and care. The adventure had been quite exciting enough before the ingredients of unexplained gunfire, water-hyacinth clots and long fast runs up black, benighted river were added to the mix. And, to make the temptation of deck over bunk quite irresistible, there was a low, full moon dead ahead, magnified by some trick of the heavy, humid atmosphere, rising like a fat pendulous silver sun, while the stars lay scattered overhead like huge pearls across the black velvet of the lightless interstellar sky. The amazing moon lit their way so brightly that Caleb ordered the searchlight off again and let his command cut like a shadow through the shimmering majesty of the night.

  Where the atmosphere at sunset had seemed threatening, almost horrific, thought Robin dreamily, now it was the opposite. The curve of the river with its overhanging forest-buttressed bank, the occasional tall palm tree soaring high against the Milky Way, was something out of every jungle romance ever written or filmed. And the figures standing so close together at the helm seemed almost to be outlined in a pearly luminescence. The air on the broader reach was cooler. It carried out to the speeding vessel the odours of the jungle so close at hand. Sometimes the rich stench of rotting detritus left high after the recent floods. Sometimes the clear crisp smell of fresh green vegetation, reminding Robin irresistibly of fresh cut grass. But the jungle was secondary; overgrowing what had in many places been civilized into gardens before the wildness reclaimed it. So once in a while – and more often as they approached Citematadi in the small hours – there were scents familiar from Robin’s own garden: bougainvillea, buddleia, magnolia, myrtle and, ‘Is that night-flowering jasmine I can smell?’ asked Bonnie.

  The breeze also seemed to carry sounds out of the vast near-silence that stretched out beyond the grumble of the engines. The whispering of the wavelets beneath the sharp bows and square back in the wake, the rustling of the millions upon millions of leaves. The occasional creaking of more substantial branches. Strange, formless sounds that made Robin think of wild animals – panthers and crocodiles – again, and also brought Ngoboi and his whirling acolytes to mind once more. But then, quite suddenly, very much more precisely placed, just round the wide right-hand bend dead ahead, there was a muted thunder that was more than fanciful imagination. ‘What’s that noise?’ asked Robin.

  Right at the same instant as Bonnie asked, ‘Is that woodsmoke I can smell?’

  Caleb stirred himself. ‘That’s the cataract caused by the collapsed bridge at Citematadi,’ he said to Robin. ‘Citematadi is just round that bend ahead – you see how the bank is higher and squarer coming up to the curve? That must be the embankment. And, yes,’ he answered Bonnie, ‘I smell burning too. I think we’d better have the light on.’

  FIFTEEN

  Punch

  Anastasia brought Nellie round a bend to face due west – and sailed straight into the blinding impact of a blood-red sunset. ‘I can’t see!’ she shouted, throttling back. ‘Esan, is there anything up ahead? It’s as though someone just punched me in the face! I feel like my eyes are full of blood!’

  Thank God, she thought, that she had placed Esan up in the very point of the bows where he could keep watch for hazards that might be invisible to her. Tree trunks floating waterlogged just beneath the surface, un
suspected mudbanks, dead bodies and so forth. And, most particularly as they came downstream, mats of floating water hyacinth that could all too easily pile up against the blunt cutwater and slow the vessel from dead slow to stop. Or, worse, get tangled round the propeller and cripple her altogether.

  ‘There’s something in the middle of the river,’ sang back Esan. ‘It’s big. An island I think. Go right.’

  ‘There’s a string of islands down near the river mouth, I remember,’ Anastasia called as she shook her head and tried to clear her streaming eyes. ‘When we’re past them we’re almost out of the river – then it’s not that far to the jetty at the new dock facilities they put in place of the old shanty town.’

  ‘How long will it take us to get past them? Come further right. Straighten up on that. Good.’

  ‘Six, maybe eight hours. It depends on tide and current. And whether we get caught up in that filthy water hyacinth stuff. God, I’d like to get my hands on whoever brought it on to the river.’ Anastasia slitted her eyes as they began to clear of tears and looked doggedly ahead. The channel which had been so wide and welcoming was closed in now by the tousle-headed islands in midstream and by the flats and shallows that spread out from them, causing the water hyacinth to clot the already narrowed waterway. Even with her flat bottom and almost negligible draft, Nellie had to stay in the deepest available channel. But that was by no means easy to settle on. Certainly she couldn’t just put the wheel hard over to starboard and hug the north shore. The trees and bushes overhanging the northern bank stretched out into treacherous mangroves once again – but saltwater ones this time, as the river became tidal and prone to flooding-back with saltwater from the bay. The old captain, Christophe, had warned her that this was the most difficult part of the river. He had rarely let her con Nellie through here. And never unless he was standing at her shoulder as anxious as a parent taking their child for their first driving practice in the family saloon. He had had some tide tables, too, now she came to think of it. If Ado or Esan could find them, maybe she could work out how to use them to Nellie’s advantage.