by E. M. DAVEY
“What do you make of it all, Jacob?” said Parr.
“The country?”
“The case.”
Serval turned away, so she could see only his jawline and crow’s feet. He was not smiling.
“Bloody screwy business,” he said.
“You’re telling me, son,” said Davis, grinning widely.
“Mind you, it’s as nothing compared to …”
A little boy wearing a pirated Chelsea strip bounced past with an exaggerated stride, and Serval’s voice trailed away.
“Nothing compared to what exactly?” Parr asked.
“Oh, never mind. Coffee!”
The old man blinked and shuffled off.
“Please,” added Serval, remembering his upbringing. “Uncle. Salaam alaikum.”
“Alaikum salaam.” The elder’s smile returned as he busied himself with pots.
“If I didn’t know better I’d think I was off my rocker,” said Davis.
“It’s true, though,” said Parr. “Every word.”
Serval watched the little boy disappear over the hill.
“Took me a bit of getting used to, matey,” Davis continued. “I don’t mind saying …”
He was interrupted by roars and shrieks and the beeping of horns. A wedding party had crested the hill on a cavalcade of motorbikes and began circling the roundabout. The bride rode side-saddle, dress trailing by the back wheel.
“They just don’t give a fuck,” Davis laughed. “Evelyn was saying you’re an old hand here in Bongo Bongo Land – so we’ll be in safe hands if we have to go marching into the jungle, eh?”
Another forgotten something stirred in the explorer. “I’m an Amazonist actually. But the same principles apply. I walked across Siberia once as well.”
Davis looked impressed. “I was in the army. SAS. Iraq and Afghan. Tora Bora in 2001 and siege of Saddam’s palace.”
Serval yawned. “Have we tracked this journalist and his girlie down yet? The ones we’re playing phantom bodyguard to.”
“Not yet,” said Parr. “No one could get to Dar-es-Salaam airport in time for an interception, and it took a few more hours to work out they got an internal flight.”
“We’ve got satellites crossing every hour,” said Davis. “I’d say give it …”
Parr’s phone rang and she stood up, passed a hand through silvery hair. “Thanks. Right. Yes of course, right away.”
“Got ’em?” said Davis.
“They’re an hour north – on motorbike. We need to get going.”
Nobody moved.
“That’s now, guys.”
Davis leapt to his feet. “What’s happening?”
“They’re being chased.”
80
The onrush of air battered Jake’s head like the fists of a boxer. There had been no time to grab a helmet and a 100 mile per hour gale was in his ears; bugs became hailstones on his bare hands, skinning the knuckles. The casing of the engine was furnace hot – it seared his legs – and the tarmac was a blur that snaked and whistled beneath him. Jenny had her sunglasses on, but still she sheltered behind his bulk.
Up into the highlands they flew, bearing ever northwards: to Burundi. The mountains were triangles of green, sails of cloud streaming from their peaks as if they were on fire, Lake Tanganyika a plane of beaten silver visible through gaps in the range. In his wing mirror Jake saw the CIA agents on their BMW GS1200: the daddy of off-road bikes. Their pot shots were futile at a mile’s distance – Jake had to maintain the gap. The Americans had the faster bike, he and Jenny weighed less; that left the BMW a slight speed advantage. But if there was one thing on god’s earth Jake knew he was good at, it was riding a motorbike. When he approached a left bend he pushed the handlebars slightly to the right, leaning left to follow the curve – a technique known as counter-steering. This added traction, allowing him to corner at ferocious speed. What scared Jake more than gunfire was their lack of protective clothing. A tumble now would turn the road into a gigantic belt sander. Skin and flesh would be shorn from their bodies, their bones smashed as if by sledge hammers.
The distance between the two machines was unchanging.
Jenny had seemed distracted during the last hour at the internet café. She stood by the door, as if sensing what was on the other side, and she said four little words that electrified him.
“Out the back. Now.”
As they ran through the stock room the front door was kicked open. They hurdled the owner, dozing on his veranda; hurtled through a vegetable garden, scrambled over a wall. Back into the street, where their scrambler was parked. Dawn had broken and the chase was on.
*
“They knew we were there!” Jenny shouted above the wind. “They always know …”
Women bearing bundles of firewood on their heads zipped past, then a crocodile of schoolgirls in hijabs.
“But you anticipated it,” shouted Jake. “You’re amazing.”
She clung to his waist more tightly. “You’re driving really well, Jake.”
The words were torn from her mouth by the gale and deposited a hundred metres behind them. They overtook a motorbike with an oil barrel tethered on the back.
“What happens when we run out of petrol?” shouted Jake.
“I’m hoping we get to the border first.”
“What happens at the border?”
She didn’t answer. Jake had shooting pains in his forearms from the vibrations; at least it was a good road, compliments of the European Union. He considered what was coming. Burundi: fifth poorest nation on earth.
Suddenly they were at the border. Soldiers with Kalashnikovs manned a barrier, flagging them down. The Tanzanian flag fluttered above a low whitewashed building. The BMW was closing fast and he looked at Jenny for guidance.
“We’ve got to stop,” she said. “They can’t do anything with all these soldiers around.”
Into passport control. The official took their documents, yawned and placed them on the desk. He scratched his nose.
“Actually, we are in a bit of a rush,” said Jake. “If you don’t mind.”
The guard’s nostrils flared. “There is not a rush here, sir.”
“Of course not, no. Silly of me to ask.”
“Never a rush.”
“Sorry.”
He shrugged and stamped both passports.
In the doorway Jake brushed shoulders with di Angelo. They did not make eye contact. The barrier was lifted, the tarmac ended. The buffer zone was eucalyptus forest, planted as a cash crop, and the motorbike bounced across muddy ground. Children peeped from the trees, grubbier than the Tanzanian youngsters, wearing torn floral dresses or rags. Soldiers were strewn about the Burundian border post in plastic chairs, in various states of repose. Their flag might have been dreamt up by Evelyn Waugh, and a police officer sweltered in a battered kiosk checking passports.
There was a queue.
The Americans joined them. Awkward silence.
“Nice ride, chaps?” asked Jake.
Di Angelo shook his head slowly.
“Blew away the cobwebs, I trust?”
He could detect Jenny’s amusement.
Deissler smiled. “Pleasant enough.”
Jake studied the insect head, those pointy teeth. His pupils were inscrutable behind sunglasses, but he had the air of someone who acknowledged how frightful he looked and worked with it. Revelled in it, even.
This man has been sent here with the express purpose of killing me.
“We’ll see y’all in Burundi,” said di Angelo.
“Oh, and do ride safe, boys,” Deissler added.
The officer stamped their passports, but when Jake started for his bike he was called back.
“Vérifier,” said the guard.
“Vérifier?” Jake repeated.
The guard pointed at a lean-to with a green cross sign. “Check.”
A civilian sat at a table – to Jake’s horror he saw a box of plastic gloves. The Burundian po
inted a strange plastic gun right at Jake’s face.
“Œil,” he said.
“It means ‘eye’,” Jenny offered. “Lean in towards him.”
Jake complied and the man zapped him in the pupil before inspecting a panel on the gun.
“C’est bien,” he said pleasantly.
The process was repeated on Jenny, who murmured something in French and slipped him a $100 note.
What the hell is going on?
Up went the second set of barriers and they accelerated away, past a rusted sign that dangled by one corner.
Welcome to Burundi.
Bienvenue en Burundi.
Behind them the CIA team had got into difficulties.
“Would you like to tell me what all that was about?” Jake shouted as the scrambler lurched from bump to rut.
“He was checking your temperature,” said Jenny. “Because of the Ebola outbreak, I guess. If you’d had a temperature they’d have done more tests.”
“And the money?”
“Ah.” She stifled laughter.
“What did you do?”
“I chucked him a little bribe.”
Jake sensed devilment. “Go on.”
She mimed the donning of a plastic glove. “Let’s just say that right now our CIA friends are being subjected to some additional checks all of their own. Quite invasive ones, actually …”
81
Huw Edwards wore all the gravitas that had made him the BBC’s go-to anchor for state occasions. And this was a state occasion of the oldest sort.
“We’ll go now to our correspondent who’s close to the front line,” he told the viewers of the Six O’Clock News. “So Ben, what can you tell us?”
The cameras cut to a dusk scene in Nigeria. A pall of smoke hung over a landscape the colour of lion’s flanks; the steady clatter of heavy machine guns was punctuated by the occasional explosion.
“Well, Huw, it certainly seems the waiting is over.” The reporter looked unfeasibly dashing in body armour and helmet. “Because after a week of punishing airstrikes, earlier we saw the Challenger 2 tanks of the Household Cavalry simply pouring over the front line and into the bush, where I understand battle was met and is ongoing about two miles behind where I’m standing now. All day long we’ve seen footage of explosions in the stronghold of Kano – this is shock and awe, mark two. But it’s worth just pausing for a moment to reflect how these scenes will be playing in households of families all around the Islamic world tonight. Because by my reckoning this is the eighth Muslim country since 9/11 we’ve seen some sort of British military action in. Let’s count them. Afghanistan, Iraq of course, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Pakistan …”
Three Eurofighter Typhoons streaked overhead, so low the sound was like a detonation and the reporter was sent staggering backwards.
“Oh wow,” he exclaimed, knowing instantly this was a clip destined to be used in BBC News montages for decades. “And there you have it, Huw, a visceral demonstration of British military power. And that’s why the Prime Minister is so confident that this war can be won in a matter of weeks …”
He was interrupted as the director cut back to New Broadcasting House.
Huw Edwards was looking sombre. “And we’re interrupting Ben there to bring you some very sad news, namely that of the first death of a British serviceman in this conflict. The Ministry of Defence has just told us a soldier serving with the 4th Battalion The Rifles was killed in an explosion earlier today. His family have been informed.”
Kanisha switched off the television. She couldn’t bear it. She was no lover of fanatical Islam – her father had suffered enough at the hands of the mullahs – but this felt bad, like Milne’s own Iraq. He’d probably avoid a Chilcot Inquiry though; Milne had the Midas touch when it came to foreign policy. The international community had harrumphed about Operation Hausa Freedom, but basically decided to do nothing. That morning she’d read in the Spectator that the French were contemplating further involvement in Mali, their “Gallic dignity piqued” by the energies of these Anglo-Saxon rivals in West Africa.
Her brother rang.
“You watching the news?” she said.
“I know, madness. Listen up – you’re gonna love me. You are going to luuurve me. Remember that little trap we set?”
Politics was forgotten. “Tell me!”
“Somebody clicked on our page yesterday.”
“Where are they?”
“That’s the weird bit – Tanzania. The IP address was an internet café in a little town called Kigoma. Middle of nowhere sort of place.”
“How very strange.”
The plot thickens.
Kanisha emailed her boss with a request for emergency leave.
82
Say hello to the Hutus.
They were mostly shorter and more powerful than Tanzanians, many with heavy cheekbones and beetling brows that lent a severity to faces already marked by hard-living. Expressions were stony, as if to say: what are you doing here? But men and women alike tended to have long, elegant eyelashes, and when Jake waved their faces were transformed into smiles.
The things they passed amply demonstrated the gulf between a poor country and one reduced to complete and utter beggary. A long-abandoned refugee camp; a faded banner that read Pour réunification d’enlevées. Like all Belgian colonies, this one had been left in a cataclysmic state: divide and rule had bequeathed decades of internecine warfare between Hutus and Tutsis. What hope had they? Jake sped through a border town with a scent of Mad Max in the wind and wound down mountains fringed with fir at the peaks, before evolving into a piebald tousle of red and green. The haphazard demarcations of subsistence farming were everywhere, a mud hut standing sentinel over each patch. They descended onto a plain of palm trees that stretched to Lake Tanganyika before heading north on the single arterial highway. The population was dense, crushed between water and mountain. The hoe was the implement of choice here; women balanced them on their heads as they walked, a synergy of posture and poise. Soldiers languished at hundred metre intervals. The strip of flat land grew narrower still, cramming ever more people into diminishing space. Bicycles were used for freight, piled high with bananas and wheels nearly buckling as the hauliers pushed them along. Jake saw one with ten foam mattresses on it, a gust of wind away from taking off. Another was overloaded with sacks and had capsized onto its back end, the front wheel spinning uselessly in the air. Battalions of schoolchildren hoed the land; few of them wore uniform. As darkness fell the crowds melted away, leaving only soldiers. A convoy passed in the other direction – evidently a politician, for the blacked out Land Cruiser was followed by pickup trucks full of soldiers, each sporting a heavy machine gun.
“Big Man politics,” suggested Jake. “They have to project power.”
“On the contrary, a very sensible protection against a coup d’état,” Jenny replied. “Now, turn off here.”
He veered down a dusty track past bush and shacks. At once the motorbike was engulfed by children, running alongside and jumping for glee. They chanted a single word, over and over again.
“Livingstone, Livingstone, Livingstone.”
“Where is Livingstone?” said Jenny. “Où est Livingstone?”
But the children only jumped and scampered. “Livingstone, Livingstone, Livingstone.”
“What a guy,” said Jake. “Dead for a century and a half, still a legend.”
They were led down a path engorged with vegetation. The bush rasped with insects and the undergrowth rustled as indeterminate fauna scrambled for safety. Livingstone’s coordinates took the pair through a forest of baobab and acacia, scattered with chunks of white crystal that threatened to sprain ankles.
“Jake …” Jenny gripped his biceps. “Livingstone’s diary.”
West through open forest; very undulating, the path full of angular fragments of quartz. We see mountains in the distance. A broad range of light grey granite; there are deep dells on the top filled with gigantic trees. S
ome trees appear with enormous roots, buttresses in fact. On the left a valley filled with primeval forests, into which elephants when wounded escape completely.
And there behind them was the mountain range. Kapok trees still stood at the peak, their sail-like roots silhouetted against a starry sky. Right on cue a valley opened up to their left, though the elephants were long departed.
“We are walking in the footsteps of Livingstone himself,” said Jake.
An ambassador at Istanbul was shown a hornbill spoon, and asked if it were really the bill of the Phoenix.
“God is great,” said the Turk. “This is the phoenix of which we have heard so often.”
Did the phoenix not refer to the Book of Thunder, a firebird ‘dwelling in the dust’ to be cyclically reborn? Just as the Book of Thunder had regenerated throughout history. And Etruscan lore had an association with Istanbul: it was there that two years previously Jake found a passage of the Disciplina in the city’s Roman underbelly. But what of the hornbill spoon? In Livingstone’s day, local tribes used that bird’s beak as a utensil. But he couldn’t understand …
“The hornbill!” shouted Jenny. “There it is.”
They had emerged into a clearing. In it stood a single rock, like a monolith of Stonehenge, its bulbous sides recalling unequivocally the hornbill’s beak. Children led them by the hand, like a young couple submitting to the altar of pagan sacrifice. Words were carved into the granite.
LIVINGSTONE
STANLEY
25-XI-1871
“So they came here together,” said Jake.
“But that makes no sense …”
*
“Would Livingstone have let Stanley in on his secret?” asked Jenny.