by E. M. DAVEY
Something metallic.
86
“What about dropping a Brimstone on them?” asked the Prime Minister.
C sized up the distance between the soldiers and their captives. He had overseen the Kill List and vaporised enough British passport holders of dubious loyalty to have a good working knowledge of air-to-surface missiles. Their accuracy, the dispersal of the explosion, shrapnel spread.
“Heads we take out the militia, tails we kill everybody there,” he said. “Not such a disastrous result, perhaps?”
Milne looked contemplative. “Unless they’ve actually discovered something. We don’t want that getting fragged too, do we?”
“Good point, as ever.” C picked up his phone. “Sir Alan?”
With a pop they were through to the RAF Deputy Commander of Operations. “Dennis.”
“Does your plane have machine guns?” asked C.
“Damned silly question, Dennis. Single Mauser cannon on board. Will serve up mincemeat at the touch of a button.”
C ignored the impertinence. “Disregard the motorbike for now, we’ve got some human targets for you. Ten men, stationary, on the shore of the lake.”
They heard a puff of air on the receiver, like a mechanic peering into a troublesome engine.
“Rather difficult, I’m afraid. The plane’s just cleared a big range – he needs to lose a lot of height. He’d have to turn two sides of a triangle and flatten out over Lake Tanganyika to get a clear run, with a pretty hair-raising ascent to avoid the mountains on the way back. He’d also pop up on the radar of about four more countries. Why not just blow them up?”
“They’re standing two metres away from a man and a woman we’d rather leave unharmed. Can you take out one group but not the other?”
“You’re talking about a supersonic jet, not an attack helicopter,” he scoffed. “That cannon spits out 1,700 rounds a minute. And we’ll be shooting at speeds of, ooh I don’t know, 800 miles an hour on the final approach.”
“Can it be done?”
“We can try – but I certainly couldn’t guarantee we won’t hit them.”
Milne gave C the thumbs up.
“I’m sending you the coordinates now,” said C.
“How soon is this meant to happen?”
“As soon as bloody possible!”
“We’ll need three minutes to line up the shot.”
“The motorbike’s three minutes and twenty seconds away,” C told Milne.
Diamonds of perspiration had formed on Milne’s brow. “Why must these things always have to be so effing tight?”
The commander’s eyes had become round as bowls. “What are you digging there?”
“I told you,” said Jenny patiently. “We’re archaeologists.”
“Vous et vous,” he snapped at two of his men. “Déterrez!”
One used the spade, the other the pitchfork, and within a minute a rectangle of metal had been uncovered in the soil.
“Pick it!” the commander urged, frantic now. “Pick it out of the ground!”
But the men were unable to get any purchase and their fingernails slid uselessly on the metal.
“C’est trop lourd,” one of them gasped.
Four more militiamen joined in the struggle and inch by ungainly inch the object was exhumed.
It was a chest.
A claw of steel was in Jake’s abdomen, clamping and constricting.
The old Romans had a fable …
“C’est très très lourd,” panted a fighter.
Behind the commander’s big glinting eyes an awakening was taking place. He stared from Jake to Jenny and back to the chest.
“Treasure! You are treasure hunters!”
Jenny shook her head, but the captain was having none of it.
“That is why you came here at time of war. It is British gold, from the olden times!”
He seized the spade and began clanging at the padlock.
“The chest’s made of lead,” Jenny observed. “That’s why it was so heavy.”
Another tightening of the screw.
They heard a jet plane passing low over the lake, away to the north. It was obliterated by a gunshot as the commander blasted the padlock, and the chest was prised open with a screech of long unmolested hinges. Jake peered over the bobbing heads.
It was empty.
“Empty!” The captain’s eyes goggled with fury.
Unexpectedly a change came over him. His mouth erupted into a face-splitting grin revealing the gap between his front two teeth, fleetingly adorable, and he roared with laughter.
“Empty! You risk everything to come here – for nothing!”
In Geneva the Prime Minister’s sweat was flowing freely.
The motorbike was a mile away. Over the lake, the sound of jet engines pushed to their limits. Up in space, one of the most sophisticated lenses ever made swivelled and contracted as it fought for a view into the chest.
RAF Command pushed Milne for a decision.
“Leave here,” said the militiaman. “Once you have paid your, ahem, ‘fine’.”
A Eurofighter Typhoon took shape in the gloom before rushing towards them with dizzying speed. The group had begun to disperse and at the last possible moment Milne called off the strike. The plane jerked abruptly higher, passing two hundred feet overhead with a supersonic crack and a roar of powerful engines. Unnoticed in the pandemonium: a motorbike, two miles inland and making for the capital. The red of its taillights zigged and zagged like a firefly, growing fainter before disappearing completely.
Jake studied the diamond wing-shape as it gained altitude before passing over the mountains, becoming lost amongst cloud.
“That was a Eurofighter,” he said. “I didn’t think they had those out here.”
“Neither did I,” said Jenny shrewdly. “Neither did I.”
87
“I’m looking for a man.”
Instantly Kanisha knew she’d made a mistake – two days in Africa and she’d had a dozen proposals. The café owner’s eyebrows ricocheted up his forehead and he opened his mouth.
“His name’s David,” she cut in. “He was online here on Monday. But you seem nice too.”
Eric Bafadhili was a corpulent man wearing a jazzy shirt. He doubled with laughter and high fived her. “No problem, madam. Your David, he is surely a lucky man. He was here? In this shop?”
“In this shop.”
Kanisha liked Kigoma. It ran at a balmy and languorous pace, the inhabitants drifting up and down the sloped streets as if by process of convection. In the tattered market the hunks of beef had an attendant beard of flies, shimmering and oily, and women in brightly-coloured robes squatted in the dust with the day’s catch, cackling to each other. A policeman strolled around the corner and in a flash the women were gone, spoiled fish and rolling vegetables in their wake.
“What can he do?” Bafadhili’s face was a picture of resignation. “They are not permitted to sell here, and yet they come. So, your David. What does he look like?”
“I – er, I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? What is this?”
“He’s a colleague.” She surprised herself with the fluency of her lying. “But I’ve never met him. He’s gone missing. I need to track him down.”
“He is British too?”
Another twitch of embarrassment. “I … I think so.”
“Eeesh, you crazy, lady! Let me see …” He counted back the days on his fingers. “Monday. Yes, I had several white men on Monday.”
“Several.” Great. “What did they look like?”
“First man is easy to describe. He is very tall and strong. Grey hair, but with a white spot, here.” Bafadhili touched his temple. “Always saying, hello mate, hello mate, like this.”
Kanisha giggled.
“He was with another man. Orange hair, but not orange-orange. Brown also. Like …”
“Auburn?”
“Yes, auburn. He has small beard, not shav
ing for one week only. He is also very strong. But not a friendly man. A bit … tired. In his eyes, you know? I think he had a sick soul. Englishmen, both of them. I think maybe policemen. Or soldiers.”
Not academics, anyway.
“Later it was two Americans. One of them is old and thin, like a man who has not eaten for a whole week.” The businessman’s voice turned shrill at the thought of it. “His friend was a black man, like me. Very tall, and his face is like this.”
As Bafadhili sucked his cheeks in Kanisha stifled another laugh.
“Man number five,” the café owner continued. “A very polite man, very friendly man. Also English – a gentleman, as you might say. Has brown hair, cut like so-so.”
He did a commendable impression of a pair of clippers.
“Right,” said Kanisha, thinking this was her man. “How old?”
“Maybe 35? But dressing like the respectable type. I say he is college professor or some-such.”
Definitely her man.
“Did you get a name for this guy?”
The shopkeeper was downcast. “Oh. No. But I know where he went …”
“Wow! How do you know that?”
“This nice man, he asked me directions to Burundi. I tell him not to go, it is very dangerous. Not safe like here in Tanzania. But that is where he was going with his girlfriend and he would not listen.”
“Damn. That’s problematic.”
“And the American men …” Something in his manner alerted Kanisha to an incoming revelation. “They were following him. So also to Burundi, I think.”
She frowned. What the flip was going on here?
“Do you know where in Burundi?”
“I’m afraid that I do not. But please, madam. What is this all about?”
She smiled. “Dude – it’s complicated.”
So, Burundi. That was that: she could no more go there than rock up in northern Nigeria and say hello.
88
Together Jake and Jenny admired the anarchy of a truly benighted developing world capital. Rugged mountains surrounded Bujumbura, pooling the heat and the moisture, and the rains had churned the unpaved streets into an urban Glastonbury. Untold multitudes squelched through the mud. The shops were low and gaudily painted – he saw a Magasin la Chance, an Optique la Merveille – and the roof of the central market had caved in long ago as a result not of shelling, but poor construction and design. Pickups were parked in every available space, so the Centre Ville resembled a gigantic car park. Through this obstacle course milled the population, doing their best to replicate normality as all hell broke loose outside city limits. Presiding over the scene was what remained of the army, a rag-tag collection of teenagers with heavy weapons.
“If we ever get married …” said Jake.
Jenny looked up sharply.
He grinned. “This is where I’m coming for the stag do.”
Jenny reckoned Bujumbura was safer than the countryside, where anything could happen. But the habitually gung-ho Lonely Planet did not make good reading.
The capital isn’t exactly the safest city in the region, so keep your wits about you. It is imperative to use a taxi or private vehicle once the sun goes down.
By night it was a scary place, devoid of any street lighting whatsoever: trips and falls were as much of a hazard as the muggers. Their hotel was both grotty and ruinously expensive, prices skewed by UN staff, though all had departed. Now they sat with a morning coffee, marvelling at Bujumbura’s take on rush hour.
“Mill hour,” said Jake. “If you will. Not much rushing. Plenty of milling about.”
“How could the chest be empty?” Jenny lamented for the fifteenth time. “It makes no sense …”
“Because it was a decoy?”
She considered this. “Why would Livingstone plant a decoy?”
“His journals were being ferried back to Whitehall by many hands – through Zanzibar and Aden on the way. Those places were hardly short of rogues and chancers in Livingstone’s day. They might be seen by anyone.”
“So what?”
“So he needed to be sure nobody could follow his clues without full state support. Only the largesse of a nation would be enough to finance and execute an expedition to several locations somewhere like this.”
Jenny sighed. “Which means we’re light years from finding it.”
“But we’re getting closer.” Jake grabbed her hand and held it, and she did not pull away. “Think how far we’ve traced it. From Italy in the time of Hannibal. To Egypt, where it lay undisturbed until Napoleon’s expedition. From Paris to Westminster, as recorded by Sir Neil Campbell – and right on through the imperial age in all its grandeur. And not to Burton, but Livingstone. That chest is the proof we were correct. It’s an amazing bit of detective work we’ve done, Jenny, and we’ve done it with the intelligence services of three countries out to get us.”
He could have sworn her lower lip wobbled. “We didn’t do it. You did it.”
“I couldn’t have done it without you.”
She lifted his fingers from her hand one by one and withdrew it. “If the monument was a decoy – let’s read.”
They dived back into Livingstone’s field journals.
“What about this?” suggested Jenny. “It’s describing his stay in Zanzibar, before he ventured into the mainland.”
The explorer had reproduced a letter to the Sultan from the Governor of Bombay, Sir Henry Bartle Frere.
Your Highness is already aware of the benevolent objects of Dr Livingstone’s life and labours, and I feel assured your Highness will direct every aid to be given which may further the designs to which he has devoted himself, and which are viewed with the warmest interest by Her Majesty’s Government.
“What do you think?” said Jenny. “The ‘benevolent objects’ could be the annals of the Disciplina Etrusca. Could he have hidden it at his house in Zanzibar? An elaborate double bluff?”
Jake studied the page for a long time.
“No, I don’t think so,” he said at last. “First, I doubt the Governor of India would have been privy to a secret this explosive – let alone an Arab Sultan. Second, it would defeat the entire object of hiding it somewhere fantastically remote. A future owner carries out renovations and bingo, a roadmap of the future is in his hands.”
They continued through the pages. Encounters with wild animals; depictions of tribal culture; moments of real beauty. At one of his lowest malarial ebbs, the doctor had written:
As I sat in the rain a little tree-frog half an inch long leaped onto a grassy leaf, and began a tune as loud as that of many birds, and very sweet; it was surprising to hear so much music out of so small a musician.
“So small a musician,” Jake murmured. “That’s lovely.”
Damn it, he really liked the man! Perhaps he felt an affinity with him – a fellow traveller, bound to his mission in the belief he was doing good.
“What about this?” said Jenny, indicating another entry.
Jake thumped the table. “That’s it. It’s there. That’s where he buried it.”
The land of Kanagumbé is a loop formed by the river, and is large. The chief is believed to possess great power of divination, even of killing unfaithful women. We passed near the rounded masses Ngozo and Mekanga. They are over 2,000 feet above the plain and nearly bare. The striae seem as if the rock had been partially molten: at times the strike is north and south, at others east and west. It is as if the striae had been stirred with a rod. The tattoo of the tribe resembles the drawings of the old Egyptians; wavy lines, such as the ancients made.
The strike. And in Jake’s mind those lines of the old Egyptians were not wavy, but jagged. Bolts of lightning, such as the ancients made.
It was time for the daily storm.
89
“Well how are we meant to get across that, then?” said Davis.
Serval’s pupils contracted as he measured the breadth of the swamp. “I don’t know. I’m not altogether sure
that we can.” And sotto voce: “It’s not meant to bloody well be here.”
He silently cursed the vagaries of African cartography. The wide flat river they’d just crossed was marked, sweeping through the landscape in a stately curve; also delineated were the headlands up ahead, 2,000 feet of bare pink rock protruding from the bush. Evelyn Parr was up on those heights with a CheyTac Intervention sniper rifle on the lookout for Americans or Chinese. The intermediate ground was described as light forest – instead they faced a morass of black water, walls of undergrowth erupting from the quagmire. The treeline indicated where decent ground began, half a mile yonder. It might as well have been an infinity away.
Serval radioed Parr. “We’ve got a problem.”
“I know, I can see. You’re going to have to cross.”
“Evelyn, do you have any idea …”
“I’ve seen the Americans,” she interrupted. “They’re about a mile behind Wolsey and closing.”
Jake and Jenny had spent the morning sheltering from the thunderstorms in Bujumbura. After lunch they departed, driving for three hours to the edge of the habitable plain separating Lake Tanganyika and the highlands. Now they were skirting the pink cliffs. Davis and Serval had kept to the low ground, so they could get close if Wolsey found anything. And now this. Serval shook his head slowly as he contemplated the undertaking.
“I thought you were a bleeding explorer,” said Davis. “Surely you can get across these things?”
“Normally I go around them.”
The band of swamp stretched out of sight in both directions.
“I am ordering you to cross,” snapped Parr.
“So be it,” said Serval. “If England’s becoming so cowardly that travel shall cease in dangerous countries because some fall victim to it, then it’s time to roll up the English flag and admit the decline of the English spirit.”
“What’s that?” said Davis.
“Just something an explorer said in the nineteenth century.” Serval cut himself a stick and handed him another. “I’ll lead. Step exactly where I step. If you can tread on reeds or vegetation, do so. We’re going to be knee deep in this stuff, so the key is to start lifting one leg while the other is sinking in – like you’re gliding across. It’s all in the technique. Never ever put all of your weight on one foot.”