Dark Heart

by Peter Tonkin

  The shore-side door opened and Celine wearily pulled herself out to come floundering up on to the bank. Anastasia threw herself out of the Toyota and ran down to her, sweeping her into the most enormous bear hug. Only a Russian . . . thought Richard.

  ‘Where are the others?’ he called. ‘Celine, where’s the guy who kidnapped you?’

  ‘Gone,’ answered Celine wearily. ‘His name is Odem and he’s gone. Out through the other door. Upriver. Like a ghost.’

  ‘We have Celine,’ said Richard into his headset. ‘But it looks like there are still some bad men out there. Heading upriver by the sound of it.’

  ‘We’ll get them,’ said Mako. ‘In time. No matter how far upriver they go.’

  ‘Not,’ added Robin, ‘that there is anything much upriver any more.’

  ‘You never know,’ said Richard automatically, watching Bonnie, the girls and that one tall young man gather round the two women still lost in their embrace. ‘There could be anything up there . . .’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ teased Robin gently. ‘Tarzan’s Lost City. Prester John. King Solomon’s Mines. You’ll never grow up, will you, my love?’

  ‘You never know,’ said Richard with a weary chuckle. ‘You never know . . .’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Pearl

  ‘Satisfied?’ asked Richard, his voice deep and lazy.

  ‘Completely,’ answered Robin. She pushed away the plate which had contained a fluffy mound of golden scrambled egg and several slices of wheaten toast, and lifted the breakfast tray on to her bedside table. Then she rolled out of bed, wearing only the napkin she had tied around her neck soon after Richard had brought the food through from room service. Crossing towards her bathroom, she paused in front of the mirror. ‘We’d better get home soon, though, before all this satisfaction goes to my hips . . .’

  Richard climbed out of bed and reached for his bathrobe. ‘We can go when you like,’ he said, knotting the belt around his slim waist. ‘Your mission is accomplished. Celine is in hospital and safely back within her father’s orbit. Their reconciliation appears to have sorted out a lot of local difficulties. The sight of her seems to have melted his heart, as they say – elections are promised for next year. Free, fair and internationally observed. My mission is on hold until Chaka gets things settled in the delta. The IMF and the World Bank seem happy with the idea of bridging loans, and everyone else will be back in the spring – Max and I first in the queue.’

  ‘I thought the Army of Christ the Infant had all broken up.’

  ‘Vanished, more like. Into the jungle along with that chap Odem. Or Ngoboi. Smoke and mirrors. Gods and ghosts. Now you see them, now you don’t.’

  ‘Do we need to be worried about Anastasia, then?’

  ‘What, after investing all that money in her? Freudian psychoanalysis and so forth?’

  ‘No. You know very well what I mean. Because she’s gone back up to her orphanage . . .’

  ‘Someone had to clear up . . . She’s got help. Bonnie and Caleb – and a squad of Colonel Mako’s men. And she’s organizing some of the older kids into a defence force. Ado and some of the girls. Esan’s helping. She’ll be fine.’

  As he was talking, Richard walked through into the suite’s big sitting room, and he noticed something strange. There was a disc he had never seen before sitting on top of his laptop case. ‘Robin, do you know what this disc is?’

  Robin came to his side, also tying her robe shut. By the time she arrived, he had opened the Apple and started the media player. He slipped the disc in.

  Audio started at once. The voices easily identifiable.

  ‘Yes. I do know where they come from,’ said Minister Ngama. ‘A Japanese company built a facility upriver in the seventies and proposed to produce black freshwater pearls in commercial quantities. There is apparently a man-made lake on the slopes of Mount Karisoke away in the impenetrable jungle of the interior. May I ask how you came by them?’

  ‘My daughter Anastasia gave them to me. She and Mrs Mariner brought them to me. A kind of peace offering, I think, to get the girl back in my good graces.’ There was a sneer in his tone. ‘One of the children from her orphanage apparently discovered them on the riverbank after the floods. Just before the Army of Christ the Infant attacked.’

  ‘They must have washed downriver for quite a distance, then.’ Ngama mused. ‘Why did she give them to you?’

  ‘To sell. Anastasia wishes to raise capital to rebuild her orphanage.’

  ‘I see, but I am hardly in the business of buying pearls. Even such unusual ones as these.’

  ‘That is because, with all due deference, Minister, you do not know just how unusual these pearls actually are.’

  ‘Then perhaps you would be good enough to explain.’

  ‘Certainly. When the girl gave the pearls to me I took them to my people, naturally, and in the process of assaying what they might be worth on the market, one of my mining specialists got the idea of checking what it was that had made them so uniquely black in the first place.’

  ‘The black volcanic sediment on the bed of the lake, of course.’

  ‘Of course. And that is where things became interesting enough for me to contact you and request this meeting. Because the black sediment on the bed of the volcanic lake that gave these pearls their unique colour is the purest example of coltan my mining engineers have ever seen.’

  ‘Coltan!’ breathed Ngama.

  ‘Coltan,’ Max confirmed quietly. ‘The most valuable and sought after of all the conflict minerals. And if what you said about the Japanese and their pearl-production company is true, there’s a lake full of the stuff out there somewhere. At least a lake full of the stuff. And, with my Zubr Stalingrad we can get closer to it faster than anyone else in the game.’

  ‘This is information that we should keep very secret indeed,’ purred Ngama.

  ‘Absolutely,’ agreed Max.

  ‘No one outside this room should hear even a whisper about this,’ Ngama emphasized. ‘No one.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Max Asov once again. ‘Absolutely secret.’

  The media payer hissed with static for a moment – a click made it clear one recording was over and another one was starting – then a third voice, also familiar, explained, ‘Mr Asov also carries a Benincom phone, you see, Captain Mariner.’

  ‘That was Colonel Kebila,’ said Robin. ‘What on earth is he up to? Come to that, what is Max up to?’

  She turned, expecting Richard still to be at her side. But he was over by the French window overlooking their balcony and the swimming pool. His eyes were fixed on the far blue distance where volcanic mountains rose behind the brash green of the delta. She knew that look and it frightened her.

  ‘Not Tarzan’s Lost City or Prester John after all,’ he whispered. ‘Better than King Solomon’s Mines: a lake full of black pearls and coltan . . .’

  Acknowledgements

  Dark Heart follows on from Benin Light, although it is not a sequel. Benin Light made use of Tim Butcher’s Blood River for some of its inspiration, and in the same way Dark Heart makes use of his Chasing the Devil. As well as researching in Tim’s excellent books, I reread Graham Greene’s Journey Without Maps and The Heart of the Matter. Michela Wrong’s In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz supplied me with more research material as did Ronan Bennett’s The Catastrophist. And mention of Mr Kurtz, of course, leads me to acknowledge my debt to Joseph Conrad – Heart of Darkness and An Outpost of Progress in particular. A chance encounter placed Jon Evans’ The Night of Knives in my possession and that too became grist to the mill. But most influential in many ways (next after Heart of Darkness and Chasing the Devil, at least) was Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. To all of these fine writers and their outstanding work I freely acknowledge a great debt.

  I must also acknowledge a huge debt to my wife Charmaine. She edits my manuscripts – often nightly as I’m writing – and suggests improvements. But on this occasion it was she, as we discussed how th
e ‘dark heart’ could be symbolized most effectively, who came up with the idea of the black pearls, and with that one flash of inspiration changed the nature of the book. I must also thank my brother Simon, who became editorial backstop after Charmaine on an almost daily basis. And also George Johnston, my uncle, who is tireless in his efforts to make my books better, as is Kendall Stanley, one of my oldest and dearest friends.

  Beyond all this research and advice, everything from the Ghost Orchids to the Shaldag FPBs, the ill-fated corvette (whose ailments are all well-documented ‘teething problems’ of the breed), the mighty Zubr hovercraft and coltan, came from the Internet; a huge amount from the maligned but absolutely invaluable Wikipedia.

  Peter Tonkin, Tunbridge Wells

  and Sharm el-Sheikh, Summer 2011