Dark Heart (6 page)

‘What is it you do at the World Bank, Doctor?' she asked.

‘I am on the East Africa desk at Washington headquarters at 1818 H. The local director is stuck in Abidjan, apparently, so they scooted me out at short notice. I'm not really in finances. My doctorate is in African Studies. But I guess that's OK because my ultimate boss may have started out at Deloitte but she came to us via Education.'

‘African studies,' said Richard. ‘What school?'

‘Harvard.'

‘So,' said Robin, ‘at the very least you'll be able to guide us safely through dinner. You'll need to if it's as traditional as what our hosts are wearing.'

‘As safely as your Richard guided me through the airport!' said Dr Holliday with a dazzling smile.

Quite
,
thought Robin, smiling back.
MY
Richard. And don't you forget it. Either of you.

But, as it happened, one section at least of Bonnie Holliday's PhD was put to good use, for Dr Chaka was seemingly keen to underline the point he had made by asking for his guests to wear white tie. The first course arrived. It consisted of a small plate of cooked rice in the middle of which was spread four lobes of pale nut. Each plate was garnished with a bright red petal or two. ‘This is the traditional West African greeting course—' said Bonnie.

‘I know,' interrupted Robin. ‘Rice and kola nut. How anything this bitter got into the recipe for Coca-Cola, heaven only knows.' She cast a sideways glance at Dr Holliday's curves. ‘Still, it kills the appetite. A useful diet aid.'

‘And it's full of caffeine,' added Dr Holliday, apparently failing to register the implication of Robin's comment. ‘And several other stimulants. The locals use it a little like Viagra, so I believe.'

‘Right,' said Richard. ‘I think I'd better just try a little . . .'

A moment later, he was using sweet palm wine to try and clear his taste buds as the kola nut was replaced by poached oysters. ‘Is it alcoholic?' he asked, sipping the milky, fragrant liquid carefully.

‘Not if it's sweet and fresh. It gets to about four percent after a day but it starts to taste more vinegary then,' Dr Holliday explained. ‘The oysters are from the delta, I expect,' she added. ‘They're famous all along the coast. There'll probably be shrimp later too. But Benin la Bas oysters are just so famous, for their flavour and for their . . . qualities . . .'

‘More aphrodisiacs,' riposted Robin. ‘It's a wonder anyone ever got past the hors d'oeuvres!'

The doctor giggled, and her date-brown eyes flickered up to meet the cool grey glaze. There was an instant of girl bonding as they shared a knowing grin before the sweet potato and peanut soup arrived.

Blessedly, the rigour of West African food and drink eased enough to allow a South African Chenin blanc with the Scalopines of Pompano, and the sommelier was even able to find some sparkling Ashbourne Water in the cellars. As Richard sipped this, the fish was replaced by Kyinkyinga, which Bonnie explained were chicken kebabs seasoned with garlic and groundnuts. They were served on rice and Richard for one found them delicious. Fortunately, he was careful not to overindulge, for they were replaced with Egusi soup, which was more like a stew with minced lamb and shrimp on a bed of spinach seasoned with fiery chillies. That was replaced in turn by Boko-Boko – beef roasted in cumin and cinnamon, served on a bed of cracked wheat with plantains in palm oil and okra in greens. A robust Moroccan Shiraz. The Boko-Boko gave way to a light course of fresh shrimps from the outer delta – accompanied by an Algerian white Cabernet – and that in turn was replaced with Jollof rice, with chicken, rice, green beans, onions and carrots stewed together with fresh rosemary, red pepper flakes and nutmeg, partnered with another considerable North African red.

It was after this, the ninth course by Robin's reeling calculation, that President Chaka stood and announced a break in the proceedings. ‘Before we introduce such sweetmeats as our famous coconut Shuku-Shuku, our goat's cheese and paneer, let us pause,' he began. ‘In our continuing endeavours to entertain our non-African guests . . .'

‘. . .
educate
, he means . . .' whispered Robin and Bonnie gave a complicit gurgle of laughter.

‘. . . we would like you to experience some of our tribal customs to go with this feast of local fare.'

As he sat down, the chandeliers dimmed. A vertical column of brightness struck straight down from the swimming pool on to the dance floor as though there were some kind of huge blue moon up there. It was shifting, shadowy, as much to do with liquid as light. No sooner had the assembled diners got used to it, and to the strange silence that followed the President's ringing announcement, than the drums started. They built to a crescendo surprisingly quickly, and were accompanied suddenly by a deafening chorus of bull-roarers that sounded as though a legion of demons was being tortured to death nearby.

Abruptly, almost magically, one of those very devils seemed to appear in the heart of the strange blue light. It was the better part of seven feet tall, a thing of mask and raffia, designed to ensure that whoever wore it was completely invisible – not unlike the Chinese demon dogs that Richard had seen dance in Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai. But this devil was darker, more mysterious, more disturbing. Surrounded by his lesser dancing demons, he went whirling round the dance floor in a dance more complex than anything Fred Astaire ever attempted. As though possessed by something superhuman, something timeless, something out of the depths of the delta and the heart of the jungle. His mask, a carapace of ebony brutally carved and garishly daubed, seemed to glow beneath the blue luminescence. A strange sort of frisson went round the huge room. The western tourists were surprised, perhaps shocked. The local people reacted differently, it seemed to Richard. With something more like superstitious awe. With genuine fear, perhaps.

Richard leaned over to Bonnie Holliday who was sitting stone-still at his side. ‘What is it?' he asked.

‘It is Ngoboi,' she said, her voice trembling a little. ‘One of the greatest, most powerful and most dangerous spirits of Obi. Ngoboi is the dancing devil that is said to control the Poro, the secret bush societies; to demand and to take their sacrifices. Hearts. Livers. Fingers. Toes. The skin from foreheads and palms and feet. Sacrifices of people, you understand. Women. Children. Warriors, even. Human.
People
.' She took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘A
tourist
-
friendly
version of Ngoboi.' She shook herself a little, then added, ‘Pray you never meet him out in the wild jungle. In the jungle where he is real. They say it is death to look on him out there.'

‘Ngoboi,' said Robin, intrigued. ‘Tell me about him, Bonnie. Just in case . . .'

T
he Army of Christ the Infant arrived at the chapel compound in a sudden howling rush, like a wave unexpectedly breaking into surf as it hits a reef. There was no warning rumble of engines for the roads on this side of the river were all currently impassable. The army's transport section, trucks, four-by-fours and technicals, had stopped a kilometre distant, therefore, and the troops had come through the jungle on foot. Given that most of them were aged between ten and twelve years old, they had moved surprisingly quietly. Moses Nlong thought they were attacking an easy target, and that helped – he was running low on cocaine and decided against getting the kids hopped up as he would have done had he feared any kind of resistance. On the one hand, this ensured they didn't go in screaming like ghosts and shooting. On the other hand, it meant he was going to have a problem getting them motivated when they got there. Sober soldiers were always less willing to perform the sort of acts his power relied upon. But he had a way round that particular quandary.

The first that Anastasia and Ado knew about the attack, therefore, was the sound of Evensong breaking into screaming. And then came the sound of animalistic howling and the first shots. Anastasia's first instinct was to switch the big Maglite off. Then she put her arm round Ado's shoulders and they crouched together for a moment at the bottom of the high mud slope, shaking with shock on the riverbank. The mental picture of the big black pearl seemed to fade slowly in Anastasia's memory and she blinked in the velvet darkness, forcing her eyes to clear through sheer strength of will, commanding her night vision to click in. Without thinking, she shoved the whole oyster into the left-hand pocket of her jeans, looking around, her mind racing.

Further up the bank and in the mangroves, the darkness would have been all but absolute. Out here at the river's edge there was a little leaf-shadowed starlight and the pale promise of moonrise in the east – though the black battlements of the storm front sweeping in from the west had claimed almost half of the sky above. Up at the far end of the stretch of bank, away from the mangroves and the delta downstream, their little jetty stepped hesitantly into the stream, their tiny little rowboat – hardly more than a cockleshell – tied to it, waiting for the riverboat's next visit. Without further thought, Anastasia put the rest of the oysters into the bag that Ado had brought. There was quite a weight of them now. Irrelevantly, she wondered how much of that considerable bulk was made up of big black pearls, companions to the one she had just seen. Then Father Antoine's distinctive voice rang out – only to be silenced by the flat, unceremonious
bang
of a gunshot – and the full horror of what was happening hit home.

Ado gasped in a breath but, providentially, Anastasia stopped her before she made any sound. For, just at the moment she would have screamed, a tall figure appeared from the direction of the mangroves, coalescing out of the utter darkness like one of the local forest spirits. Anastasia recognized neither him nor what he was wearing, but she knew the outline of the gun well enough. Without thinking – without even reasoning that she was probably almost invisible in her Goth-black jeans and T-shirt, she rose up in front of him, pointing the Maglite like a gun. He sensed rather than saw her movement and started to swing the Kalashnikov up. She switched on the torch and shone it full in his face. For a nanosecond she saw the features of the soldier she had blinded. Frozen, blinking, his soft brown eyes suddenly full of tears. He looked so young. Then she switched the beam off again and hit him on the left temple with the kilo and a half of black-enamelled steel that made a very effective club. He went down without a sound and she followed him on to the mud, pounding on the back of his head, to make sure.

When he was lying still as death, she set about disentangling the Kalashnikov from his lifeless arms. For a moment she cradled it to her breast, her mind racing back across five years. The rock group she had run away with were called Simian Artillery – apes with guns. It described them perfectly. They had behaved worse than apes in the end but the guns had been real. And what self-respecting extreme Russian heavy metal rock group with a name like that would not have the odd Kalashnikov lying around? Long before she snorted her first line of coke or experienced her first crack party gang-bang, she had learned how to field-strip, zero and fire an AK-47 as deftly as a Spetsnaz special forces man.

This one came apart under her fingers almost by magic. Less than five minutes after she picked it up it was back together again and she was deciding how best to use it. The magazine was a standard thirty round capacity and the weight of it felt about right for fully loaded. Short of taking the cartridges out and wiping them all off then counting them all back in, there was nothing more she could do other than to rely on the gun. But that was OK because, of course, it was just about the most reliable weapon ever manufactured. It was probably an AK that cut short the poor old priest's last sermon. Better that than one of the local matchets – what the rest of the West called machetes.

‘Hold this,' she breathed to Ado, passing the AK. Then she set about searching the unconscious soldier. He carried no matchet, but he did have another two curving clips. That was ninety shots in all. She could do some serious damage with ninety shots, she thought. As long as she stayed alive. But she sure as hell couldn't outgun a whole fucking army. Mind racing now as the formless howling of the attack settled into a deeply disturbing rhythmic chanting, Anastasia took the AK back, unclipped the shoulder strap and set about tying the soldier's wrists and ankles together with it.

‘I'm going back,' she breathed, stooping to scoop a handful of dark silt from the pile of flotsam on the river's edge. She smeared it on her face, thinking inconsequentially of fish. It was the black mud that came downstream with the orchid and the oysters from the lake. ‘You stay here. If it looks hopeless then I'll come back for you and we'll try and go for help. If the soldier stirs or makes a sound then you hit him in the head and keep hitting him until he stops. Really. You know what they'll do to you if they catch you.'

‘I would rather fight,' said Ado. ‘I would rather die.'

‘Fight
him
,' said Anastasia. ‘And try to stay alive. I will too.' She clicked the safety on the AK to select single shot. And she was gone.

The brightness of the compound's electric lighting was enough to guide her up the bank. She slid across the mud flat on her belly, trying to remember what little she had learned about this kind of thing from watching endless macho war films with Simian Artillery and going paintballing with her father in happier days. It seemed sensible to keep low, move slowly and use her eyes to the limit of their ability. At the back of her mind the fact that the soldier hadn't been able to distinguish her black clothing from the shadows gave her a little confidence – but not as much as the AK cradled across her forearms just under her chin. Or the spare clips she had shoved down the back of her belt to lie like sabres of ice across her buttocks. Or even the Victorinox she had in her left-hand pocket. She became distracted by the wry thought that for the first time in her life she was glad that she didn't have much of a bust – her flat chest helped her stay lower still. She didn't even register that she also had a pocket full of oysters and at least one big black pearl.