The Napoleon Complex

by E. M. DAVEY

  “Understood, fella.”

  “And if you go into quicksand, for god’s sake don’t thrash about. Keep calm and drop onto your hands and knees. Better messy than de…” Serval hesitated. “Than in quicksand. Try to float and make your surface area as big as possible.”

  “Will there be wild animals in there?”

  “We’re in Africa. Of course there’ll be bloody wild animals.”

  Davis wore a gaping smile; the bugger was actually enjoying this.

  “But this undergrowth looks a bit thick for hippos,” said Serval. “We can count that as a blessing.”

  “We don’t have all day,” chimed in Parr.

  “Do you want us to make it across or not?” shouted Serval. “Believe me, it’s better we have this conversation now, rather than out there in ten minutes time when things are going wrong.” He turned to Davis. “Look Frank, this is going to be hard work. The suction’s a killer. It’ll be like gravity times ten – three hundred yards an hour will be good going. Are you ready for this?”

  “As I’ll ever be, sunshine!” He slapped his hands together and rubbed them. “But before we crack on, be straight with me. How risky is this?”

  “We’ll be absolutely fine.”

  Serval’s face was pale as he plotted a route through.

  90

  One hour into the swamp. The sky had turned cloudless; the sun beat their faces remorselessly; each step was a battle of wills with the mire, which sought to draw them into the wetlands and hold them there. Both men were sweating and covered in glutinous black mud. When they paused for breath the swamp was very silent. Steam rose; it smelled of rot. Serval was glad they’d chosen Kalashnikovs – the Viet Cong used to submerge these guns in swamps for months before rinsing them off and doing battle. The British SA80 would have been as much use as a broomstick by now.

  The reeds were getting thicker, and Serval advanced with his back to the wall of vegetation. This provided protection from the leaves – they were sharp as a kitchen knife – and the trampled causeway helped them maintain a straight bearing, for god forbid that they should lose orientation. Neither man spoke for a long time, each of them engaged with his own thoughts, his own deals with the almighty. Without warning the wall of vegetation gave way and Serval pitched backwards into a clearing of stagnant water. At once he was on his front, spreading out all four limbs – but the ground held.

  Davis was in stitches. “You were shitting yourself, mate.”

  He urinated into the swamp in great curving arcs, the noise of urine hitting the water obscenely loudly in the still of the swamp.

  “You finished?” said Serval.

  Sploosh.

  Without warning Serval dived at Davis’s feet, grabbing something that was slimy and sinuous and rough. A juvenile crocodile was in his hands and he had it by the tail.

  “Holy shit!” screamed Davis. “Shit, shit, shit!”

  Serval clung to the thrashing reptile and swung it like a baseball bat, its cranium smacking into a tree trunk with a thwack, once, twice, three times. He lobbed the lifeless creature away.

  “Now who’s shitting himself?” he said.

  Davis was shaken, and as they inched forward he began talking about his daughter. It was the first hint of emotion Serval had seen in the man.

  The explorer endured it for ten minutes, then he snarled, “Look, will you please shut up about your daughter, all right? I don’t care. I just want to concentrate and get us through this swamp in one bloody piece. Is that too much to ask?”

  Davis was taken aback. “All right fella, keep your knickers on …”

  It was an hour before they neared terra firma – a hillock of grass, a single mud hut perched upon it like a pimple. Beyond lay a rice paddy.

  “We’ve only gone and made it,” grinned Frank.

  “Don’t count your chickens before they’re on dry land.”

  Thirty metres of swamp separated them from the grass, worryingly free of vegetation. Little streamlets cut their way through the mud.

  “We’ve got to be more careful now than ever,” said Serval. “Avoid the mudflats – flowing water is safer. Step in the middle of the streams, not the sides. And remember, glide.”

  He checked the consistency with his stick, took a deep breath and stepped into the still black waters. At once he was in it up to the waist. He collapsed forward onto his chest and hauled his legs out with an audible slurp.

  “I’m ok,” he gasped. “We’re going to have to slither for the last stretch though.”

  Davis panted with anticipation.

  Ten minutes later they were across. They sat on the grass, staring at the terrain they had navigated, chests heaving and teeth very white against their muddy cheeks. Perspiration cut channels down their faces.

  Davis offered the explorer his hand. “You played a blinder there, fella.”

  A rare smile. “Frank, I don’t mind telling you – that was the most dangerous thing I’ve attempted in my entire life.”

  “You cheeky bugger! I thought you said it wasn’t risky …”

  A ragged figure rose up behind Serval and before he could react a machete came scything into his back. They heard the shear of metal into bone, the hiss of a collapsing lung. Davis shot their attacker between the eyes and he keeled over backwards, body twitching on the ground.

  “Oh hell.” Bright blood escaped from Serval’s mouth. “Rebel?”

  “A fucking farmer for fuck’s sake,” said Davis. “Maybe he thought we were the rebels.”

  “I’m dead.” Serval coughed and another glut of blood erupted down his chin. “Had it for sure.”

  “Let’s have a little look-see,” said Davis.

  The machete had opened up a foot-long gash, slicing through four of Serval’s ribs and sailing on into his torso. His lung had been reduced to a tattered bag in a heap at the bottom of his chest cavity, like a popped balloon. Red bubbles foamed from the wound as swamp water seeped in.

  “You’re gonna be right as rain.” Davis tore his shirt into strips and bound up the injury. “Heart’s on the other side, remember?”

  Davis’s breath smelt milky, almost pleasant.

  Serval blacked out.

  “Wakey, wakey, sunshine.” Davis slapped him around the face. “Wake up! Don’t go to sleep!”

  Serval’s eyelids flickered open. “Lung gone,” he managed. “Collapsed for sure.”

  “You only need one, mate. In Afghanistan I saw a guy walk a whole morning with a punctured lung. Besides, we’ve got work to do. You can hardly stay here, can you? Can you get up? Come on, that’s it. Brave soldier.” He hauled the explorer to his feet. “Take a few steps.”

  The world was spinning, but Serval did as he was told.

  “See?”

  “You’re right. I think I can make it.”

  “You are one double hard bastard, fella,” said Davis approvingly.

  As the pair staggered towards the cliffs Serval spat bloodily on the farmer’s corpse.

  It was all a far cry from climbing mountains.

  91

  Jake walked through a forest of tall slender trees, ancient without malice. The canopy was sparse and the ground was covered in springy grass, lime green in the generous sunlight. Butterflies danced through the glade, chased by bejewelled birds. There was an air of secrecy about the place, hemmed in by the cliffs, a feeling of the sacred, and he lagged behind Jenny, admiring the shafts of yellow light that dappled fallen branches, scenting the aromas of baking timber and blossom. Idly he imagined picnicking there, with an old fashioned hamper. They would dine on cantaloupe melon and serrano ham and share a bottle of prosecco, if he could still drink. After that they would make love, here in this Eden. But each new layer of his imaginings was another step into fantasy: none of these things could be. Only the woodland was there for him to appreciate on the way to somewhere else. The difference between dreams and reality.

  “Hurry up,” said Jenny.

  They skirted the cliff-
face, closing on Dr Livingstone’s coordinates. Jake glimpsed the grassy summits of Ngozo and Mekanga through the canopy. The cliffs below were scored by sediments of purples and reds and indigos, shot through with streaks of volcanic pink in a geological firework display. Jenny wore her Jackie O sunglasses, their departure lounge glamour out of place in this bucolic setting. The trees thinned out until they were crossing grassland.

  Jake halted. “Oh god.”

  “What is it?”

  “Look at the cliff.”

  Some grand tectonic movement in eons past had yanked the lines of strata from horizontal to near upright.

  The striae seem as if the rock had been partially molten: at times the strike is north and south, at others east and west.

  “Do you see what I see?” Jake’s voice was reverential as he indicated a line of sediment that slashed vertically down the cliff. A violent series of upheavals had smashed the strata into a concertina of red and pink zigzags.

  “A bolt of lightning,” said Jenny.

  The tattoo of the tribe resembles the drawings of the old Egyptians; wavy lines, such as the ancients made.

  They followed the strike as it lanced down the rock-face to earth itself at the base. And there, nearly obscured by bushes, was a cave. Lightning, pointing the way.

  “It’s perfect,” she whispered.

  *

  Parr was ensconced in long grass at the summit of the cliff as they entered; a conference with Vauxhall Cross was in progress.

  “Where are the Americans?” said C.

  “I lost sight of them. I’m afraid I don’t know where they are.”

  “Frank and Jacob?”

  “Not far away. Jacob’s been injured by a farmer, quite badly.”

  There was a murmur in the background – the Prime Minister, she supposed.

  “Well, we’ve got no choice,” said C. “We can’t rule out their finding something. And we mustn’t let our rivals get it if they do. It’s time to reveal our hand.”

  “Send the guys in?”

  “As soon as they arrive. If Wolsey and Frobisher have struck lucky they’ll know what to do. And if there’s nothing to be found, have Frank extract everything they know. All interrogative techniques are on the table.”

  “Understood.”

  “Wolsey might even join us – stranger things have happened at sea. You stay in position and cover the approaches. Could the CIA sneak past?”

  “I’m looking at fifty metres of open grassland with barely a rock to hide behind. It’s a killing ground, sir.”

  “Which means we’ve got all the time in the world.” Another background murmur. “If the Yanks emerge, shoot them down. That’s straight from the PM.”

  Parr took her cheek from the rifle butt, blinked and resumed position, peering through the trunks with the telescopic sight. She had never personally killed anyone before, but she knew that she could. Foliage swayed and Parr jerked the rifle left. But it was Serval and Davis, mud already drying into flakes on their clothes. The explorer was pale and he favoured his right side, but his mouth was a grim little line of determination as they followed Jake and Jenny into the cavern.

  92

  In the clapped-out bar of a Freetown hotel, Chloë turned on a laptop she’d purchased from a junkshop. It whined and grumbled as Windows 2003 loaded; the only other noise was the refrigerator, which rattled away as if furious about something. A sign over the bar read Optimistic Elite Social Klub and the barman – elderly, impeccably dressed in green waistcoat and pinstripe trousers – snoozed on his stool. She was his only customer.

  Once the computer had roused itself Chloë inserted the pen drive. She dared not examine Conteh’s files in her room at the British High Commission, which was surely monitored. The juicy files were protected, but the folders all had the same password as his laptop, ferrari_1. It wasn’t long before she discovered his books – more money was flowing through his bank accounts than the average Sierra Leonean earned in a hundred lifetimes. Chloë was not a forensic accountant, but if these dollars were clean then she was Esther Rantzen. Yet evidence of a far ranker crime was not to be found. She felt lighter with each folder examined and found innocent, ashamed for doubting the service: the guilty rush of love of a wife whose investigations prove her husband faithful.

  Porn.

  Surprise, surprise, Conteh had a folder of the stuff. This would be worth a look. On the off chance it was something especially foul it might be another tool for MI6 to blackmail him with; she had no doubt now he was a venal ruler, best cast down.

  “Let’s see what you’re into,” she whispered.

  But ferrari_1 did not work.

  Chloë ordered another beer as the software toiled. It took five minutes – a serious password, this one. Finally an old fashioned beep told her the skeleton key had done its work. Thirty random letters and digits, several of them capitalised. Now the file had her undivided attention.

  She was in.

  There were image files.

  But this was not pornography. The first was a grainy image of a man walking away from the camera as he entered Kroo Town slum. It had been shot at night and was two months old. The next image showed the same man, back still to the camera, discussing something with two Sierra Leoneans; one carried a machete. But the third photograph revealed him. A handsome face. Mid-to-late thirties. Hair brown or auburn, though it was hard to be certain in the light. An athletic build; five-day stubble. She didn’t recognise him. The fourth shot showed the same man donning plastic suit and gloves and there followed a photograph apparently taken inside, a mother and daughter, huddled in their rags. Chloë didn’t need a medical degree to see that they were dying. Her heart beat faster, hormones of fear and unease spiking in her bloodstream.

  The next set of photos began in similar vein: somebody’s back, though this man was slighter with long lank hair. The second photograph was sneaked through a window as he injected a brawny Sierra Leonean in the forearm. And the third image was a full frontal shot as he left the building.

  She recognised him.

  His name was Dai Elliot. He was MI6, a Welshman. They had trained together at Gosport. In the next photograph that same Sierra Leonean was no longer brawny; indeed he was barely recognisable. As Chloë read the deceased’s account – how a British doctor had administered a polio vaccination, and immediately he’d contracted Ebola – she felt sick.

  On through the dossier Chloë went. Here was the first guy again, meeting Dai at the hovercraft port in Aberdeen, handing him something. Then it was a photograph of the Welshman later that evening in Lungi International, boarding a flight to Abuja. A copy of his boarding pass, though he had been travelling as a Mr Andrew Edwards. Press cuttings pertaining to the Ebola breakout in northern Nigeria, which began three days later.

  This was sick, a crime against humanity.

  Chloë Rachael Smith closed the laptop. She closed her eyes. She sat very still in the Optimistic Elite Social Klub as her beer got warm and flat; sat there with her head in her hands thinking about what she stood for and the kind of person she wanted to be.

  93

  The cleft in the rock was just high enough to crawl through. Jake braced himself for the reek of urine, anticipated empty beer cans or needles. But the cave was virgin pure: like something created on the Third Day. The floor was sandy beneath his fingers and the rock was smooth, the temperature of his own skin. He was reminded of the Hamas attack tunnel, only here he felt again that strange sensation of peace. Had Livingstone crawled this way, generations before him? Were his loyal African guides behind him to the last, bemoaning the Scot’s eccentricities as they shoved and dragged a leaden chest down the passageway?

  Lead. If the last chest was only a decoy, why was it made of lead?

  Jake heard a tapering breath escape Jenny’s lips; he was reminded of someone bracing themselves to jump from the highest board. The passage had broadened out now – Jake could no longer touch rock overhead. When he switched his phone to
torch he saw they were in a cavern, sixty feet to the far end and twenty feet high. Stalactites hung from the ceiling and organ pipes rose, the lurid shapes somewhere between a boneyard and an alien garden. Several passageways led off from the main hall, and in the darkness he heard a drip-drip-drip.

  “Wow,” said Jenny, stepping into the cavern. “It’s like a cathedral.”

  “My thoughts exactly.” Jake’s words bounced off the walls, becoming lost in resonance. “What do you think we’re looking for?”

  “An inscription, I guess.”

  The walls were a mesh of intertwined mineral deposits and Jake touched a flowstone of stalactite cords, matted together like a druid’s beard. The first branch of the cave system was a spider’s leg which tapered into nothingness. No trace of the doctor’s hand could be found.

  “Jake …”

  “What is it?”

  “Just – be ready, ok?”

  “Be ready? For what?”

  “This is an enclosed space,” she said. “We’re vulnerable here.”

  Jake felt the first prickle of alarm. He tried to cling to the beauty of the place, to absorb its calmness. They ventured the second passage, and with the redness of the stone he felt like Jonah, venturing down the throat of the whale.

  “If they did catch us here …” she muttered.

  “Yes?”

  “If we did have to fight – just leave it to me. You hide.”

  He laughed. “Jenny, you know me better than that.”

  “Please.”

  “No.” Firmly, an end to the matter.

  Something had changed in the cave, some subtle shift in atmosphere. It retained a beauty, but a deadly one, that of an iceberg. They had reached the end of the second corridor and a spider the size of Jake’s hand scuttled away into the darkness.