Dark Heart

by Peter Tonkin

  ‘Hmmm . . .’ he said. ‘Very well.’ More rope. He picked up a phone handset and spoke into it without dialling. ‘Car and driver,’ he ordered. ‘Sergeant Major Tchaba, I think.’ He hung up, looked at her for a moment longer then said, ‘Right. Let’s go.’ He picked up a cellphone, checked that it was on and slipped it into his uniform jacket pocket. Then he rose and led her across to the door of his office. Here he paused for a moment and lifted a Sam Browne off a coat stand. As he ushered her out and followed her down towards the front of the building, he slipped the wide belt and shoulder strap securely into place, and patted the leather holster that now sat snugly on his right hip.

  The car was waiting for them beyond the security gates at the main entrance, its engine running. A huge soldier sat in the driver’s seat and, as she followed Kebila into the back, Anastasia noticed that he had several powerful-looking weapons on the passenger’s seat at his side. ‘I don’t think you’ve met Sergeant Major Tchaba before,’ said Kebila easily. ‘Though given the range of your adventures in my country I wouldn’t be surprised if you had. He is the diplomatic solution to both our requirements, I think. A one-man army.’

  Anastasia’s irritation at having been outmanoeuvred vanished the instant Sergeant Major Tchaba pulled up behind the ruined office complex that led down to the jetty and the marina beyond. For a battered flat bed truck had appeared from nowhere and was sitting parked with arrogant disregard for the law half on and half off the pavement. Something about it made Anastasia fear the worst. ‘I’d bring as many of those as you can carry,’ she said to Tchaba, nodding to the guns. ‘Just in case . . .’

  Tchaba looked back at Kebila and the colonel nodded.

  Suddenly full of the most terrifying premonitions, Anastasia hurried the two soldiers down the hill through the apparent hurricane damage, therefore, too focussed on Nellie to register properly the fact that Tchaba was limping. She did notice, however, that he was checking and preparing his considerable arsenal of weapons as he moved. But as she reached the landward end of the little jetty where the venerable riverboat was moored, she slowed, frowning. Kebila closed up behind her, and Tchaba stepped closer behind the pair of them, his hands at last still as the quiet clicking and cocking and sliding of metal on metal was done.

  It was then that she realized two things. Firstly and most worryingly, there was the sound of moaning coming from Nellie. It wasn’t all that loud, but it was enough to carry over the lapping of the waves and the stirring of the hulls and the tapping of the rigging nearby. Secondly and almost comically, she realized that Tchaba had a false foot. It hit the ground with a decided thump each time he took a limping step. Under almost every circumstance this would not have mattered. But Anastasia wanted more than anything to approach Nellie unsuspected, along a wooden jetty, its hollowness likely to amplify any sound made on the boards that made up its surface.

  ‘The sergeant has to wait here!’ she breathed. ‘We have to get aboard as quietly as possible. Can’t you hear?’

  Kebila nodded once. Prepared to move forward.

  ‘I need a gun,’ she whispered.

  Kebila paused. She could feel the weight of his speculative gaze on her. The moaning from Nellie intensified. Someone started counting in Matadi. Neither sound was pleasant.

  ‘Ten . . . Nine . . .’

  He nodded again. Tchaba passed her a boxy pistol. She recognized it as a Browning BDM. The same as the one with which General Moses Nlong had shot Celine. How apt.

  ‘Cocked,’ whispered the sergeant. ‘One in the chamber. Fourteen in the clip. Double action mode – just keep pulling the trigger.’

  ‘. . . Eight . . .’

  She nodded and was off. Imagining herself to be as light as Tania the Fairy Queen from long-past childhood stories, she ran on tiptoe along the thankfully silent planks, holding the Browning two-handed out in front of her, level with her groin, pointing downwards, at the end of her straight arms, completely unconscious of Sergeant Tchaba’s approving, respectful nod.

  ‘. . . Seven . . .’

  She was aware of Kebila behind her, but only on an almost psychic level – he was making no more noise than she was. So she was able to hear the rough male Matadi voice saying, ‘. . . Six . . .’

  At the seaward end of the jetty she paused again.

  ‘. . . Five . . .’

  The moon gave enough light for her to see that Nellie’s deck was stirring as the waves came in at the top of the tide. Her weight would not make much difference as she stepped aboard. Nor would Kebila’s if they timed it right. And the deck boards were solid and unlikely to creak. Even so, she kicked off her flip-flops just in case. She looked across at Kebila and he nodded, understanding. They waited for a down-swoop . . .

  ‘. . . Four . . .’

  . . . and stepped aboard.

  Steadying himself against the up-swoop of the next wave in, Kebila went for the bridge house and the companionway that would take him below, as Anastasia paused for a heartbeat and looked around the familiar deck.

  ‘. . . Three . . .’

  Anastasia was in motion, flitting like a moth towards the column of brightness that soared like a faint square searchlight up from the skylight that gave brightness to the cabin below. Both of them moved like ghosts and the good old planks of the deck did not let them down.

  ‘. . . Two . . .’

  Anastasia stood, spraddle-legged, looking down into the cabin through the glass skylight. She could see Ado, her blouse gone, sitting at the table with her hands stretched out before her, tied by cord which pulled them tight. Beside her, foreshortened by the fact that Anastasia was looking straight down from above his head, stood the man who was counting. And he was holding a matchet above Ado’s wrists. Anastasia risked a quick glance across at Kebila who was crouching ready to go down the companionway at double speed. She looked back. The man with the matchet had a bald spot right at the top of his skull. She aimed at that.

  ‘. . . One . . .’ said the man beside Ado, and raised the matchet, two-handed.

  Ado screamed.

  Anastasia pulled the trigger. The Browning’s bullet exploded in through the skylight and hit the man on the top of the head with all the force of a baseball bat. It went straight through his skull and body, slamming into the deck between his feet. He sat down as though a huge weight had suddenly landed on his shoulders, dropping the matchet as he did so. He flopped backwards and lay still. It all happened so fast that glass was still falling on his prone body.

  Anastasia looked for Kebila but he was gone. She heard the flat report of his gun, the thud of another body falling and then silence. Except for the moaning. ‘Come down,’ he called. ‘Quickly.’

  She arrived in the cabin to see Kebila standing beside the body of a second man, trying with limited success to untie something that looked like fishing line hanging tautly from a hook in the cabin ceiling. And she saw in a flash why it was important he should do so. The lower end of the line was secured round Esan’s scrotum and the boy was half-hanging, bent like a bow, face-up, with his trousers round his ankles, on the bunk below. His eyes were rolled back so only the whites were showing and it was he who was moaning. Which didn’t surprise her at all. She crossed the cabin in four swift steps and caught up the matchet that had been destined one second later to have severed Ado’s hands. She stepped past Kebila and cut the line. Esan collapsed back on to the bed. His moans became a howl of agony. He clutched himself and rolled on to his side. Anastasia slammed the matchet blade down again and Ado’s hands were free. Ado was on top of Esan immediately, covering him protectively with her body. Which, Anastasia noticed now, was battered, bruised, bleeding in one or two places, and also naked.

  ‘You know, I’m beginning to find your story a little easier to believe,’ Kebila admitted in a grimly conversational tone.

  Sergeant Tchaba came stomping through the door like Long John Silver. ‘Three for the hospital and one for the morgue,’ said Kebila, ‘and I think we’d better prepare
the interrogation cell at headquarters.’ And Anastasia registered for the first time that the man at the colonel’s feet was still alive.

  ‘So,’ said Kebila twenty minutes later as the ambulance wailed off into the distance, while Tchaba engaged the gears and eased the colonel’s staff car into motion. ‘You managed to get away from those gentlemen’s colleagues in the good ship Nellie, dropped Celine Chaka off at the clinic in Malebo and came straight back down here to alert the authorities about smugglers, rapists – mostly deceased – and secret armies overrunning sections of the jungle unsuspected.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said shortly. ‘I told you. The same as I told you about the men who might be coming after Nellie. And I was right about that, wasn’t I?’

  ‘Indeed. However, there are still elements in your narrative I find hard to believe,’ he said. ‘Even making allowances for the fact that it is you who are at the heart of it all. Logic dictates that, if everything you say is true, I should wake up the president and get some sort of expeditionary force up there. But it is –’ he consulted his watch – ‘still two hours until dawn. And the president will not thank me for disturbing him at this time of night without absolutely incontrovertible proof. Especially as we happen to have a Shaldag fast patrol boat in the area and we haven’t heard a whisper out of them about any of this so far. But we are conveniently situated to get an update on their latest contact. Naval headquarters, please, Sergeant.’

  Kebila’s presence was like a magic pass. The car was waved through the security gate and into the golden aura of the security lighting. As it passed, the guard slammed to attention and saluted. Tchaba parked in a bay marked ‘Commanding Officer Only’ and then waited while Kebila led Anastasia into a three-storey white-painted box of a building with a display of antennas and dishes on its roof that would have flattered GRU headquarters on Khoroshevskiy Highway in Moscow. The security guard on the door also slammed to attention and waved them through like his colleague on the gate. The twenty-four-hour communications room was on the third floor and the pair of them ran lightly up the stairs side by side. The officer in charge leaped to his feet and was halfway to attention when Kebila said, ‘That will do, Lieutenant. I’m here to see the latest communication from Shaldag FPB004, not to hold some kind of an inspection.’

  ‘Just in, sir,’ said the lieutenant, relaxing infinitesimally. ‘It’s quite a long one. Here’s the transcript . . .’

  The lieutenant handed Kebila a long flimsy of white paper covered in dense writing. The colonel stood frowning over the report for some moments, then he said, ‘All right. Captain Maina has found your boathouse and your bodies. And –’ his eyes raked her from head to toe with a suddenly disturbing intimacy – ‘Captain Mariner has found and recognized your underwear. Wild Orchid, from Moscow.’

  Anastasia blushed from the pit of her throat to the roots of her hair. ‘My underwear . . . Richard . . .’

  ‘No. I understand your girlish embarrassment. It was Robin Mariner who found it. I sincerely trust that Richard would never have recognized your lingerie.’

  It took the red-faced woman an instant to understand that she was being teased. But her mind was whirling away from her embarrassment. Richard and Robin Mariner were here. Richard and Robin. In Granville Harbour. In the delta. How could she not have known that?

  ‘But as I must now accept the absolute truth of everything you have been telling me,’ Kebila continued, at his most po-faced and urbane, ‘I think it is time to send the Shaldag back to Malebo with orders to pick up Celine Chaka if she is in any fit state to be moved from the clinic there. I think I have the authority, even without referring to the president.’

  He turned to the lieutenant and opened his mouth to issue the order. But before he could utter a word, his cellphone started ringing. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, frowning. ‘That tone denotes a high priority call. I must take it at once.’

  He put the cellphone to his ear and listened for a few minutes in silence. Then he broke contact and turned to Anastasia, his face folded into a frown. ‘The mayor of Malebo . . .’ he began slowly, as though trying to get his mind round something that lay just beyond his mental grasp.

  ‘Mr Obada. He runs the hardware store. Yes . . .’ she prompted him.

  ‘And the garage evidently. And he owns a Ford Ranger Wildtrak which he has just driven down from Malebo himself – that must have taken some doing, even for a vehicle so aptly named. He has arrived at my headquarters to report two very disturbing developments. First, that the mast which carries all his town’s communications has been sabotaged, leaving them absolutely cut off from the outside world. And, secondly, that everyone in Malebo’s medical clinic has disappeared. Including Celine Chaka.’ He paused for an instant. ‘I think perhaps Captain Maina aboard Shaldag FPB004 should be alerted,’ he said to the communications lieutenant. ‘And I think it is at last time to inform the president . . .’ he added, looking round at Anastasia.

  ‘Sod the president,’ said Anastasia roundly. ‘If I were you I’d wake up Richard Mariner. And quickly.’

  Richard often woke around four a.m. Aboard the ships he captained, this was the moment the middle watch became the morning watch, and he liked to be up and about then if possible. He had passed a restless night in any case, full of half-remembered nightmares, most of them involving Robin. He switched on the bedside light, rolled out from under the tangled duvet, straightened his blue silk pyjama jacket and ambled through into the reception room, intent on making a cup of tea. Which is what he was doing when someone started banging on his door.

  Never a man to give in to premonitions of doom, he strolled across the room, teacup in hand, his mind automatically seeking ways in which a visit at this time of day could be a good thing, and opened the door without even checking the spyhole. ‘Well I’ll be damned,’ he said. ‘Anastasia.’

  The night porter, hovering behind her in the little three-door lobby, said apologetically, ‘Miss Asov was insistent, and as she was dropped off by Colonel Kebila himself . . .’

  ‘That’s fine,’ said Richard. ‘You did the right thing. Come in Anastasia and tell me what’s on your mind. Did you know, by the way, that your father’s in the suite next door?’

  ‘My father?’ Anastasia almost scurried into Richard’s room. ‘What’s he doing here?’ she demanded, closing the door with her shoulders and glaring at him as though her father was his fault.

  ‘Trying to sell the government some massive hovercraft. And a brand new T80U main battle tank.’ Richard’s words were airily dismissive but his mind, like Kebila’s under similar circumstances, was racing. ‘You look dreadful,’ he continued cheerily. ‘You’d better tell me what’s going on. Coffee or tea?’

  Unlike Kebila, Richard had no trouble in believing Anastasia. ‘It sounds as though Kebila will be able to get more intel on the smugglers,’ he said. ‘Especially as he has a suspect he can question. But it’s what’s going on along the north bank of the river and right in the heart of the delta that’s really worrying. And the fact that Robin’s in the middle of it now as well as Celine. I don’t know how President Chaka will react – he sent Robin up there to bring Celine back for a family reconciliation. He’s going to want to take action – and quickly. But he’s disbanded most of the late President Banda’s army. He’s kept some of his own men – like Kebila and Captain Caleb – and the T80 tanks that helped him win the presidency. He has the rump of an air force, some choppers – but nothing big. Nor any special forces he could get upriver in sufficient numbers to find and confront General Nlong and his army.’

  He stopped speaking for a moment, his eyes narrow.

  ‘But I think I know a man who has,’ he said. He rose to his full height, strode into his bedroom, grabbed his dressing gown and swung it on as he stepped into his slippers. ‘Come with me,’ he ordered, and Anastasia didn’t dream of arguing.

  Five minutes of knocking on Max Asov’s door finally elicited a response. A tousled, heavy-eyed, less than happy Max opened u
p. ‘Richard!’ he spat. ‘What—’ Then he saw his daughter who had been hiding behind his friend and stopped speaking, winded by surprise.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you, Max,’ said Richard cheerfully. ‘But it’s important.’

  EIGHTEEN

  Compound

  Caleb Maina had no real intention of excluding the women from his plans, Robin thought. But now that the going was getting tough, he was focussing on the elements aboard he was certain he could rely on. He turned to Lieutenant Sanda, therefore, and Robin was vaguely surprised that he didn’t order her and Bonnie off the bridge while they talked.

  ‘To sum up,’ the captain said to his first lieutenant. ‘The latest intel suggests that what we have discovered on the south bank at Citematadi is almost irrelevant in the face of what has been happening on the north bank . . .’ He listed in terse militarese that strained Robin’s understanding of the Matadi dialect the details that had just come in from Naval headquarters, with the further information added by Colonel Kebila. ‘We have to decide our own priorities and report what action we propose,’ he summed up. ‘Keep HQ informed. But what should those priorities be?’

  Sanda was a slow, methodical man, who weighed the odds and did not rush to judgement. ‘As I see it, we have two conflicting calls on us,’ he said. ‘HQ needs us to check on the situation downriver in Malebo – has everyone including the president’s daughter really vanished from the clinic there? If so, where have they gone? But HQ also wants us to see if we can find out what’s happening upriver. Has the Army of Christ the Infant really hit the church and orphanage compound up there? If so, what state are the survivors in – if there are any? And what can we do to help them?’

  ‘And where is the extremist army at the moment – and where is it headed next?’ Caleb concluded. He sighed. So many priorities, so little time. And the president’s daughter thrown in for good measure. Robin looked at the frowning man with lively sympathy. Then she thought that Richard dealt with conundrums like this on a regular basis and usually came out OK. Where was the bloody man when you really needed him?