Black Pearl (15 page)

Celine frowned. ‘How far do you think he'd go?'

‘In this situation, as far as it takes to keep your father in office.'

‘In the face of the police and of the army?' Celine was incredulous.

‘Two of whose most important commanders are now caught up in this business upriver …'

‘Two?' asked Celine, the last of the amusement draining out of her lovely face. ‘I know about Laurent Kebila, but …'

‘Colonel Mako, his opposite number in the regular army. The man who would need to keep peace on the streets if the police couldn't hold the line. Once again, Richard came up with a vague idea and the president leaped at it. Conveniently. A bit too conveniently, maybe …'

‘But,' said Celine, frowning, ‘if Felix Makarov went too far – fomented civil unrest or did anything requiring the kind of reaction you seem to be talking about, then my father would never forgive him. And he'd have done himself no good at all.'

‘If I know Felix – and I do – then I'd say that's a risk he's willing to take.'

C
eline and Robin were still deep in conversation when a discreet knock at the office door announced Celine's secretary. ‘Remember, Mademoiselle Chaka, the House sits at two this afternoon.' The secretary frowned officiously.

‘Very well, Yekemi, thank you. Call my car and driver now, please.'

The door had closed behind the young woman before the full significance of her words hit Robin. ‘Oh, bloody hell,' she said. ‘
Two!
What's the time
now
?' She answered herself, looking down at her watch. ‘One forty-five. Damn and bloody blast! Celine, how long does it take to get to the docks from here?'

‘Ten minutes. Why?'

‘They're sailing at two. Four bells. And they won't want to wait. Hell and damnation, I'm going to miss the boat! Richard will be livid!'

‘Don't panic, my dear,' advised Celine diplomatically. ‘Come down with me now. I'll drop you off on my way to the House.'

‘But then
you'll
be late!' cried Robin.

‘Don't be concerned,' soothed Celine. ‘There's always a lot of procedure before they get down to debating anything important. But we'll still be lucky to make the docks in time. We must hurry. Come along. The car will be outside the door by the time we get there.'

As she exited the front door with Celine at her side, Robin hesitated. She hadn't really thought Celine's offer through. Now she found herself confronted by an official limousine flying the flag of Benin La Bas, beside which stood a chauffeur in old-fashioned uniform complete with cap and riding boots.

‘All right,' allowed Robin, climbing in beside Celine in the back, speaking as soon as the directions to the docks had been detailed and the limo pulled away. ‘Perhaps I was worrying too much.'

But even as Robin spoke, Celine's car was overtaken by the motorcade transporting Patience Aganga, the minister of the outer delta, which swept past them and turned right towards the parliament building. For a moment, Robin found herself looking across a surprisingly small distance at an unmistakably familiar profile.

‘It's started already,' she warned. ‘That was Felix Makarov. Going to attend your debate as a guest of the minister, by the look of things! Now don't tell me
that's
not sinister!'

The docks were still bustling when Celine's motorcade pulled up – much to Robin's relief. But they weren't so busy that Richard failed to notice when, how and with whom she finally arrived. ‘Now that's what I call thumbing a lift,' he teased as he greeted his flustered wife. ‘You get the message across?'

‘I'm not the only one at it. Felix is too,' she answered tartly, striding beside him up the sloping slipway into the echoing activity of the hovercraft's central loading bay. ‘And chance drove home the message loud and clear.'

‘Really? Do tell!' Richard draped a suspiciously loving – possessive – arm over her shoulder as he led her through the busy soldiers. As they walked up the bustling loading bay towards the first internal companionway, Robin found herself almost dazzled by the swarming industry of Ivan's recently re-quartered command. There were squads of men performing final checks on canvas-covered trucks and their contents. Others were securing a range of weaponry from field artillery to handguns and making sure they were safe. Still others were overseeing the final positioning of a pair of T80 Russian main battle tanks, the grey fumes of their exhaust filling the hot stillness of the contained atmosphere like smoke. The heat was stultifying and Ivan had given permission for his men to work without their shirts.

And it suddenly struck her that she was the only woman aboard. The only woman, indeed, in the whole expedition. She didn't know whether to feel overwhelmed or excited by all the testosterone around her. And – just for the briefest moment – she wondered whether Richard had risked packing something really sexy for her to wear. As though aware of her thoughts, Richard hurried her upwards, away from the muscular distractions. He guided her past their accommodation, allowing her little more than a glance into a cramped cabin meant to accommodate a recently departed RUS, with a bed just big enough to pass for a small double. Then they were off upwards again until finally he walked her forward and she found herself in a strange, almost circular command bridge amid a bustle of officers getting ready to set sail.

As Richard and Robin arrived, Captain Zhukov came on to the bridge. ‘She's pretty impressive, don't you think?' rumbled the big, white-haired captain from behind his walrus moustache.

‘I know her better than Robin,' Richard said. ‘I was showing her around.'

‘Well, Captain Mariner,' said Zhukov to Robin with pleasant, old-world courtesy. ‘Please just stay where you are and watch as we get under way. It is a sight you will tell your grandchildren about, I assure you!'

‘He means in the future,' whispered Richard. ‘In the far, distant future.'

‘All ready?' Zhukov asked his lieutenant.

‘All ready, Captain,' answered the young man punctiliously. ‘Forward and aft doors closed. Everything aboard secure. All personnel in their assigned places. All crew ready and waiting.' As if to support him in his report, the whole great frame of the hovercraft began to throb as the main motors came on line.

Zhukov turned to Robin. ‘We do not
cast
off, you see. We
lift
off! Inflate the skirts.'

Robin felt for a disorientating moment as though she was in an elevator car rising towards the first floor. As the deck beneath her levelled and settled, vibrating with suppressed power, Max came bustling on to the bridge. The instant he arrived he seemed to take charge.

‘Full ahead, Captain Zhukov,' he ordered officiously, and the silver bear of a commander nodded.

‘
Pulniv piot
,' he said quietly – or something approximating to that; Robin's Russian was a little rusty and the captain's accent was unfamiliar. The helmsman's hands pushed the throttles forward, however, so the message had got through well enough. The message was also immediately transferred to the engine room, the power to the three huge turbines behind the bridge house cranked up to maximum. With the whole of her massive hull vibrating gently,
Stalingrad
lifted up her skirts and flew.

Anastasia was not consciously thinking about Ivan, but he was never far from her mind at this time of day. In the first cool of the evening she, Ado and Esan were leading the girls in a route march much like the ones Ivan described in the days when they had been in regular contact. Except that there was no route – they went where Anastasia chose on the spur of the moment. And they did not march – they jogged. Further, in an addition to a routine already deeply foreign to the tribal societies of the west coast, they carried makeshift backpacks. Most of the weight of the backpacks consisted of drinking water, so each time they stopped to rehydrate their burden became lighter. It was a system Anastasia had designed and she found it worked well. The girls were fit, lean and strong. Metamorphosing from a group of frightened schoolchildren into a fighting force. Her Dahomey Amazons reborn.

Running was a familiar tribal custom further south and east, she knew. No one would have looked twice at a Masai or a Zulu running across the veldt. But here the girls were followed by cheers, whistles and hoots from Matadi, Yoruba and Kikuyu farmers whose traditions were rooted in fields and forests. Only the boys from the orphanage, out working in the fields with the farmers, looked on silently. And, if the truth be told, a little jealously.

Anastasia and her girls were dressed in clothing suited to their efforts – and again this broke with tribal traditions. Instead of the modest traditional costume of
buba
and
iro
, such as Celine, in fact, was wearing in the parliament building away downriver, they were dressed in loose trousers and vests. The trousers were light, baggy and modest. The vests were high-necked and sleeved to the elbow. When the girls set out, they could have been going to church. The trouble was, of course, that a lot of the water they used to rehydrate their bodies came out again, almost instantly, as perspiration. And, try as she might, Anastasia could not overcome the fact that after a couple of miles the trousers moulded themselves to straining buttocks and pumping thighs, while the vests effectively became as revealing as layers of body paint.

This evening, in an attempt to spare the girls' blushes, Anastasia led them through the cultivated fields first, with the sun setting warmly on their backs, then she swung right off the beaten track and down southwards towards the river. Here, although the soil was fertile, the jungle was thickest. As the sun sank into the tops of the trees far down the delta itself, and the moon began to rise behind her left shoulder across the wide expanse of the river, she led the girls back towards the orphanage, past the township clustered around it and the enhanced landing and docking facilities that had so recently been built there. But it was more than the gathering cool of the evening that made her skin rise into goosebumps, her nipples clench to firm points beneath the soaking cling of her green vest. Suddenly Ado and Esan were at either shoulder.

‘Someone's watching us,' whispered Esan.

‘I feel it,' gasped Anastasia.

‘I don't like it,' hissed Ado.

Anastasia could see her point. Everyone who watched them usually was open – and noisy – about it. This was something else. This was someone watching them in secret from somewhere in the nearby jungle. Her mind suddenly flooded with fears about the news that had arrived from several quarters – not least from Robin on Skype – that the Army of Christ was back.

Automatically, Anastasia picked up the pace, looking around carefully – hopefully without giving her suspicions away to whoever was spying on her and her girls. Let it not be Odem, she prayed. We are not ready for the Army of Christ! A worm of self-doubt gnawed at her, whispering,
We will never be ready for the Army of Christ
. But all she could see was the jungle through whose edge they were running. The slope down to the river on her left. The river, occasionally visible through the trees and the undergrowth. The darkness of the gathering shadows in between.

Without conscious thought, she began to push right, up a slight incline, towards the brightness of the first fields – empty now as everyone had trooped back to town for their evening meals. But even deserted fields would be better than the shadows, she thought. A little breeze sprang up, running down towards the coast. It was a furnace-hot wind, locally called Karisoke's Breath, which often blew just after sunset. Today it made the branches overhead heave and sway, filling the jungle with sinister hissing whispers. And, abruptly, there in her imagination, stepping straight out of her nightmares came Ngoboi.

Ngoboi danced in the gathering darkness at the edge of her vision – never clear when she looked directly at him. But as she ran uphill, fighting to get her little command out of the sinister, watching jungle, he swirled and capered before her. She could see the flash of his raffia skirts as they twirled out of sight behind bushes and trees. She could hear the beat of his dancing feet in the pounding of her heart. The deadly magic of his devilish song in the blood rushing through her ears and in the wind rustling through the trees.

Anastasia and her girls were running full-tilt and very near at the edge of panic, when she burst out of the jungle by the river's edge and plunged on to the new slipway. The ghostly, taunting presence of Ngoboi was replaced by the unexpected bustle of two huge hovercraft unloading what looked like hundreds of soldiers, their transport and their kit. Anastasia did not hesitate. As though the reality of what lay before her was just the product of another feverish dream, she pounded relentlessly into the middle of it. Until suddenly somebody tall and unbelievably familiar straightened and turned to confront her. It might as well have been Ngoboi for all the credence her reeling brain was willing to give what her staring eyes could see.

‘
Privyet, Nastia
,' Ivan said in that familiar voice, in those familiar terms that took her back to her childhood before the nightmares began. ‘Hi, Nastia.'

‘
Vernis!
' she spat. ‘Get back!' And she began to add, ‘
Ya nenaviju tebya!'
I hate you!' But somehow it came out as ‘
Ya lublu tebya!
'
– the exact opposite –
instead. Then, like the heroine of the romantic fiction that she so despised, she fainted dead away.

If it had been a romance, Ivan would have caught her and carried her tenderly to safety in his strong but gentle arms. It was not. So she went down like a pile of bricks at his feet. Had the slipway been made of concrete, she would have done herself serious damage. But it was just a rough-hewn slope of red riverbank.