Black Pearl (19 page)

He crept along a dark corridor past a door he was sure belonged to Anastasia's room, then opened his own. He found Robin lying on the bed they were to share, clad in her lightest nightgown, with the sheets thrown over the bed foot to lie piled on the wooden floor. In the hot yellow flame of a smoking oil lantern, the little room was stultifying. There was no air conditioning and no fan. The window was shut and the curtains drawn. There were supposed to be no malarial mosquitoes in the area – but there weren't any mosquito nets either and fair-skinned, notoriously bite-prone Robin wasn't about to take the risk. She had a mosquito coil burning in the corner just to make sure, so as well as being stultifying, the room was suffocating. ‘Good,' she said. ‘Lock the door now you're here. I'm wearing far too much!'

‘My God!' he whispered as she stripped off entirely. ‘For once in my life I'm afraid I'm just too hot to fool around!'

‘So am I,' she snapped. ‘Besides,' she added, lowering her voice, ‘the walls are extremely thin. And we're surrounded by
nuns
!'

‘Oh, that does it!' he agreed, also stripping off as swiftly as humanly possible, already awash with perspiration. ‘Consider me a
monk
!'

‘If not a eunuch,' she whispered as his pants came down. ‘Thank heavens not a eunuch. But where have you been? And what have you been up to?'

Richard lay gingerly on the bed beside her. They both shuffled further apart – in the exact reverse of their normal night-time movements. The bed, however, groaned salaciously. Trying not to think what the nuns must be imagining, he leaned over and blew out the lamp. As the air filled with fragrance from the cooling wick, he whispered, ‘It's too hot to sleep as well, isn't it?'

‘Damn right!' she answered. ‘So tell me all.'

‘OK. Right. Remember when Ivan brought Anastasia to our cabin?'

‘Looking like she'd just been shot in the head? Of course I remember!'

‘And she asked me to go to Max and get some vodka?'

‘Stoli
Elit
. Yes, I remember. She still has the bottle, the lucky girl …'

‘Yes, she does. If you get desperate you can bang on the wall and ask her for some. Well, at the door, I overheard Max and Ivan talking. And what I thought they said was …'

Half an hour later Richard had detailed the whole story, how he had worked it out and who he had told about it. Halfway through, Robin's hand crept into his and clenched it tightly. And more tightly as the story proceeded.

‘So,' said Robin when he had finished, ‘let me just get this clear in my mind. You told Ivan that you believed Max had this Boris person murdered because Boris's drugs had killed his son and heir, and Boris had seduced Anastasia away from him. He did this by arranging the group's big Moscow concert to be a failure. By supplying drinks and drugs in the expectation that the kids would all get so totally blasted they'd have no idea what was going on. By bribing this Fydor creature – who had a grudge against Boris as well as a strong desire to get hold of his band and his girlfriend – to kill him. That Fydor pulled all of this off, got the group, the girl and the money, in the end. And then the whole thing was swept under the carpet by Ivan's father the federal prosecutor in return for becoming a silent partner in Bashnev/Sevmash.'

‘That's about the size of it as far as I can figure,' said Richard.

Robin lay silent for a moment. Then, ‘And you put this all to Ivan?' she said incredulously. ‘I mean, you actually went through it with him step by step?'

‘Pretty much.' Richard nodded, banging his head against the wall that divided their room from Anastasia's. ‘Seemed like a smart move at the time.'

‘He'll take it straight to Max. And what then?'

‘Well. Then I was going to suggest to Max that if the secret was out in any case, but it was only hearsay and suspicion, and no one – least of all the federal prosecutor – was going to do anything about it …'

‘Yes,
what then
?'

‘Then shouldn't he tell Anastasia what really happened? She's been blaming herself all these years. Borderline suicidal. And none of it was her fault after all.'

‘You were going to suggest that, huh?' she said, her voice suddenly throaty. As though she was on the verge of tears.

‘I was going to tell him either he should lay it all out for her, or I would.'

‘You'd do that? You'd run that risk for her?'

‘Well, wouldn't you?'

‘Come here, you bloody man. Come here and kiss me!' She took the hand she had been holding and placed it squarely on her stomach.

‘Now, I thought you said it was far too hot for that sort of thing,' he whispered, beginning to roll lazily towards her.

‘It was. It is. But I don't care.' She arched up off the mattress towards him. The bed groaned suggestively beneath them.

‘The nuns,' he teased. ‘What about the nuns?' His hand slid down.

‘Sod the nuns,' she said huskily, sliding her arms like snakes around his neck and lacing her fingers into the short hair at the back of his head. ‘They can get their own men. Now kiss me.
Please
…'

And that was exactly where their conversation had reached when the shooting and the screaming started.

A
t the first echoing report, Richard leaped off the bed. Even in the pitch black of an unfamiliar room he reached unerringly for his clothes and stepped into his trousers at once, zipping up and cinching his belt as he felt around on the floorboards with his toes, searching for his boots. For a moment, he regretted returning the night-vision goggles to Tchaba. He could really have used them now. But then there was the flare of a match behind him as Robin prepared to light the lamp. The shadows danced weirdly across the floor but he was able to see his boots with his underwear beside them before darkness returned, accompanied by some rather unladylike language. And, more distantly, a second fusillade of shots. He reached down, grabbed the boots and sat on the edge of the bed to pull them on. Then he crossed to the door, pulling on his shirt as he went. There was no time for anything else. If ever there was a moment to go commando, he thought wryly, this was it.

As Richard ran down the dimly lit corridor, a nun in dishabille jerked back into her bedroom two doors down, and he remembered he was still half naked. He glanced through Anastasia's open door as he sprinted past. Her room seemed empty. Her bed was undisturbed. An almost full bottle of Stoli
Elit
stood on a bedside table. Then he was at the door into the compound. Like the bedroom door, this was open. It seemed Anastasia was moving even faster than he was. But when he stepped out into the vast, noisy midnight, she was nowhere to be seen. He paused, his mind racing. He needed to orientate himself.

Another burst of firing echoed across the orphanage. In the nearby town, there were lights coming on in the windows. Under the rattle of fire, he could now hear the revving of engines. And out here he could discriminate between the thudding of heavier machine guns and the rattle of assault rifles. The fields must be full of technicals – flatbed Toyota Hilux four by fours with machine guns mounted on the back. Everything from Shipunov gattlings to Bofors forty-millimetre light anti-aircraft guns. African armoured divisions.

Kebila would be sending the T80 main battle tanks against them and hoping they didn't have too many tank-killing rockets. In the last engagement Richard had been involved with the Army of Christ had used Milan anti-tank missiles. If they had many more of those, the T80s would be in trouble. Then the penny dropped. The screaming he had heard could well have been the sound made by the treads of the tanks moving forward. He looked down at the hard earth of the compound and there indeed were the telltale caterpillar tracks.

These thoughts and impressions were all-but instantaneous. Richard was convinced the attack across the fields at Kebila's most heavily guarded positions would be a feint in any case. In a heartbeat he was in motion again, sprinting down towards the Zubrs. Since he had split away from Ivan and Mako, there had been a change in their disposition – a welcome one. The hovercraft were no longer facing upslope and inland. Sometime during his conversation with Robin, the skirts had been inflated and the Zubrs had been turned right round. Now they crouched with their great trios of turbofans facing inwards, their rear access ramps down, and their bows – not to mention all the weaponry mounted upon them – facing out into the river. Even so, they were sitting ducks. Richard sprinted towards the nearest one, just in time to meet half of the Spetsnaz men coming out at the run. Ivan was leading them. He had a field radio on the side of his head and was clearly updating Captain Zhukov on what was happening on the ground. Like Tchaba's patrol, they were all wearing night-vision goggles.

‘Tell Zhukov he's got to get moving,' said Richard, joining Ivan. ‘If they have boats they'll be coming downriver with all the missiles in their armoury!'

‘I agree,' snapped Ivan. ‘You hear, Captain? We're clear. Close up and inflate. Get moving as fast as you can.'

‘In the meantime,' Richard panted, ‘we need to protect his flank if we can. What do your men have on them?'

‘Assault rifles. Grenade launchers. The stuff you saw.'

‘What's the heaviest you have?'

Both men were shouting now, as
Stalingrad
's rear ramp screamed up into position and the huge black skirts began to inflate as it did so. ‘We have a couple of RPG twenty-eight MANPADS – the RMG variants,' Ivan bellowed.

Richard paused for an instant, calculating. Man-portable air defence systems were all very well but unless they could be guided they were of limited use against waterborne targets. The RMG variant, however, was designed to go anti-personnel and anti-tank as well as anti-aircraft. It would do very well indeed. ‘Just what the doctor ordered,' he decided, in action once more. ‘Hopefully not the
witch
doctor – as you could find yourselves shooting at Ngoboi himself. Now, we need to locate our positions down by the shore, right at the edge of the jungle there, where we can set up a decent field of fire upriver. I'd suggest you get Mako's men to back us up as quickly as possible. And if they have any MANPADS, they should bring them along with them. Until
Stalingrad
and
Volgograd
are up and out, with their weapons zeroed and readied with their countermeasures on line, we're all the protection they have.'

While the two men were talking and Ivan was relaying relevant sections to Captains Zhukov and Maina – and to Colonel Mako – Richard hurried them down to the edge of the river. On their left the jungle gathered itself into a thickening, almost triangular heave of blackness. But at the edge of the bank itself there was a low cliff, for they were at the back of a meander. And, as though extending the tall jungle on the crest of the bank, a jumble of freshwater mangroves reached out for twelve metres or more. Against the breadth of the slow, black water, the outreach of the mangroves looked minuscule. But on a more human scale, they were as wide as one half of a dual carriageway road.

There was still no moon, but the stars were hanging low and fat in the indigo velvet sky, giving a surprising amount of pearlescent light. Enough to show that the broad reach of the river was clear of everything except for some floating islands of water hyacinth. Richard shook his head, hardly able to believe it was little more than four hours since he was following Sergeant Tchaba wearing the night-vision goggles.

Having taken Richard's points on board, Ivan now assumed command and plunged into the cover of the trees, staying as close to the bank itself as possible, looking for secure positions where he could place small groups of men armed with MANPADS to cover the river and protect the Zubrs from waterborne attacks. Almost immediately Richard began to fall behind, increasingly blinded by the shadows. He moved more and more slowly and carefully, deeply regretting the loss of his night-vision goggles. And, because he was not a member of Ivan's team, he didn't have the communications earpiece either.

But then again, perhaps it was because he was blind and not distracted that he heard the whispering grumble of outboards running on almost silent first. He crouched, forgetting that he was going commando, and almost made a eunuch of himself after all. He looked around through streaming eyes, but the tail-end of Ivan's men were vanishing into the black forest shadows. He looked downstream towards the distant brightness of the slipway where the Zubrs were beginning to stir like sleepy dinosaurs. This was the moment of greatest danger. If Ivan was still looking for secure emplacements and calculating fields of fire, then whatever Richard could hear might well slip past him.

Richard crouched there, turning his head from side to side as though his ears could work like sonar dishes and locate the precise source of the sound. Was it coming from nearby or further away? Richard knew how a Zodiac – a sixteen-seater rigid-hulled inflatable boat or RIB – could slip along a tunnel of clear water under the overhang of mangroves. Odem would know about such things. Ivan wouldn't. On the other hand, the floating islands of water hyacinth would also furnish excellent cover. Richard wiped his eyes, trying to calculate whether the hyacinth was tall enough to offer realistic cover. Ivan would probably work out that the floating plants were a potential danger. But Richard was still worried about the tunnel beneath the mangroves. That was the sort of thing Mako would be briefing them about in the future – which was no use if they needed to know about it now.

Richard moved down to the very edge of the river bank and lay on his belly, easing himself out as far as he could, using the mangroves to support him. But he stood no real chance of penetrating the roof of the tunnel that lay so tantalizingly close. Still, the position he managed to achieve allowed him to listen to the sounds whispering along the channel immediately below the tangle of stems. And it was here that the quiet grumbling of the outboards seemed to be coming from. Burning with frustration, he pulled himself up and scrabbled back until he was kneeling on solid ground.