The Consignment (29 page)

CHAPTER 38

“That’s not him,” said Fiona. We were in the maintenance shed, leaning over the radio, straining to hear the voice above the static. The voice was speaking French. “That’s not him,” she repeated despairingly.

Trevanian cocked his head and listened. After a few moments the voice cut out, then there was only static. Trevanian stared at the radio.

Fiona said. “Are you sure it was him earlier?”

“They said his name. It was him.”

I nodded at the radio. I asked Trevanian who’d just spoken.

“Rebel.” Trevanian faced me. “Someone from the convoy that attacked us. They’ve got your son and some other whites from the mine.”

“He’s in that convoy?”

Trevanian nodded and turned toward the truck. I grabbed his arm.

“Is he okay?” said Fiona. “Did he sound all right?”

“Why’d they let Brad speak?” I said.

Trevanian pulled his arm free. “They all spoke, all the white men. Just a few words to confirm they’re alive.”

“Why?”

“Because the rebels want to trade.” Trevanian turned back to the radio. He scratched a mark by the tuner dial so he could find the convoy’s signal again later, then he started to retune. He told us he might be able to pick up a signal from the army in Mbuji-Mayi.

“They want to trade Brad?” said Fiona, referring to the rebel convoy.

“They want to trade all the white men they’ve captured,” said Trevanian. He concentrated on the dial, listening for a break in the static. “Seems like the army captured some rebel leaders in Mbuji, the rebels in the convoy want to get their leaders back.”

“Oh Jesus.” Fiona put a hand on the workbench, then sat down on a drum of kerosene.

“Will the army go for that?” I said.

Trevanian shook his head. Then he found a signal and raised a finger to silence us. The signal was faint, he wound up the volume and put his ear up close to the speaker. “Army,” he decided.

I watched him, I didn’t look at Fiona. I needed to keep a hold on myself. After a minute, Trevanian’s head came up fast.

“Get up to the chopper,” he told me sharply. “Unload the night-sights and as much gear as you can carry. Wait up there and keep a lookout.”

“Who for?”

He returned to the rebel channel, cranked up the volume, then walked over to the truck. “The army are on their way from Mbuji,” he said. “The rebels are running in this direction. We can’t hang around.” He lowered himself onto the canvas. “If you see the convoy, fire a shot to warn me, then get back down here fast. If I get this heap going, I’ll fire a shot, you two carry down what you can.”

“What about Brad?” said Fiona.

Trevanian looked up at her. “What about us?” he said. He dropped onto his back and hauled himself under the truck.

“We can’t just leave,” Fiona said. I jerked my head toward the southern ridge, and she hurried after me. “Brad’s alive,” she said, and she kept on protesting.

I waited till we were past the fuel dump, out of earshot of the maintenance shed, then I rounded on her. “I’ve got Trevanian to deal with. I’ve got the rebels to deal with. I don’t need to be fighting my own goddamn wife.” I turned on my heel and set off up the ridge.

She followed, silent, till we were almost at the chopper, then she asked me what I was going to do. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I handed her the binoculars, then climbed into the chopper. I tossed out two boxes of night-sights and shoved a small crate of ammo over to the door. Outside, Fiona had the binoculars trained on the track to the northwest.

“Can you see anything?” I called.

She shook her head, so I went back to the rear of the chopper and dug around among the crates and boxes, opening them, checking inside. After a minute, I found something I could use.

“What’s that?” Fiona said, leaning in through the door.

“You’re supposed to be keeping a lookout,” I told her, then I dragged the crate of grenades I’d found into the light. She started talking about the captured rebel leaders, she seemed to be trying to convince herself that there was a realistic prospect Brad might simply be traded from captivity into freedom. “Listen.” I raised a hand. “The only chance Brad’s got is us. Now, you’re blocking my light.”

She shuffled aside and I inspected the grenades. They were packed in rows of six, prearmed and ready for use, with a safety bar locked against the pins. I busted open the side of the crate, removed one grenade, then I climbed out and went around to the pilot’s door. Fiona asked me again what I was doing.

“Trying to save our son.” I got into the pilot’s seat. I examined the internal door handle.

“I don’t care if you’re mad,” she said.

“Mad doesn’t come close.” I yanked out the cord to the headphones, then I pulled on either end of the cord, testing it for strength.

“Well, I don’t care,” she repeated. “If you hadn’t told me so many goddamn lies—”

I glanced up, I was about to say something cutting. Then I saw her face, and I stopped. She didn’t look as though she didn’t care. She looked just like I felt, as if she was breaking inside, but struggling, for Brad’s sake, to hold herself together.

I dropped my head again, tied one end of the cord to the internal door handle. I warned Fiona not to touch the door, then I pulled the door closed. She studied me a moment through the window, her fingers played over the binoculars hanging from her neck. Then she went back to her lookout on a rock. I reached across, locked the passenger-side door, then sat back in the seat and took a few steadying breaths.

One thing, I thought. One thing at a time.

Leaning down, I wedged the grenade out of sight behind the radio bracket. I looped the loose end of the cord through the safety pin and knotted it tight. Now the cord stretched taut between the grenade and the door, it was set. I climbed carefully over the backseat and let myself out the rear door, locking it behind me.

I thought about moving the pilot’s body from beneath the fuselage, but in the end I left it there. From a distance, he’d look like he’d looked to me, as if he were resting in the shade. When I walked over to Fiona, she was sitting on the rock, staring at the ground. The binoculars sat on the rock beside her.

“If Trevanian gets that truck started,” she said, “he might take off and leave us here.”

“He might.” I leaned against a boulder opposite. I wiped a handkerchief over my face and neck. “Then again, he might just wait, like he said.”

“I don’t trust him.”

“You want to go with him if he leaves?”

She turned her head firmly. She asked me what I’d done to the chopper.

“Booby trap.”

“Why?”

“Because I couldn’t think of anything smarter. And because we’re going to need every bit of help we can get.”

“Do you think it was really Brad he heard?”

“I don’t know.”

I looked down at the camp. If the rebel convoy came, the best place for us to be was somewhere low on the other ridge, above the office block. From there, we’d have the drop on their vehicles. Some of the rebels were sure to climb the ridge to check out the chopper, but it was useless to try to dream up any plan. The best we could do was take every chance that came. I wasn’t hopeful.

Fiona peered through the binoculars out over the plain, then she lowered them.

“I didn’t tell you about Laurence.” Laurence Maguire. That wasn’t really what was on her mind, but when I ignored her, she went on, “It seems Dimitri paid for Laurence’s cancer treatment.” I turned my head slowly and looked at her. She nodded. “Laurence only told Olympia about it a few days after they came over to our place.”

“Dimitri paid for Laurence’s treatment? He didn’t even know Laurence.”

“He’d been in contact with Laurence for years, apparently. Something you said to Laurence made him want to come clean about it.” I was dumbstruck. She toyed with the binoculars around her neck. “Seems when Dimitri joined Delta he decided it was best if he stayed right out of Olympia’s life. And the girls’. He wanted to give Laurence a clean run, he contacted Laurence and told him. After that, Laurence and Dimitri met once or twice a year, Laurence says Dimitri just wanted to be reassured that the girls were okay, Laurence used to give him photos, stuff like that.”

“And Dimitri gave him money?”

“Only when he found out Laurence had cancer. Cancer, and no way of paying for proper treatment.”

I turned it over. Finally the financial mess at the center of Dimitri’s affairs made some kind of sense. Dimitri had dug himself into a deep financial hole in order to keep Laurence alive and the Maguire family—the ex-Spandos family—solvent. It wasn’t a gambling debt he’d needed to pay. It was a debt he’d taken on his own shoulders for his estranged family’s sake. A debt of honor. I hung my head, appalled.

“Laurence swears it was only after Dimitri died that he realized Dimitri had remortgaged his own apartment to cover the payments on the treatment,” Fiona said. “He swears Dimitri promised him he could afford it with no problems.”

“Jesus Christ.” I squeezed my eyes, then looked out over the plain, but my vision was blurred. I was hurting bad at that moment, and not, I admit, just for Dimitri. After a minute, Fiona spoke again. This time she said what was really on her mind.

“You can’t despise me as much as I hate myself,” she said.

“I don’t despise you.” I faced her, then froze. I stared over her shoulder.

“Ned?”

Striding across, I grabbed the binoculars and focused on the track northwest. A dust cloud was moving down the track in the direction of Dujanka. I grabbed my gun and we started down the ridge.

When we reached the fuel dump, I pointed to the boulders, low on the northern ridge above the office block, and told Fiona to get up there. She veered away, looking over her shoulder down the track toward the dust cloud. It was clearly visible now, and closing fast. I ran to the maintenance shed.

“Trevanian!” He spun around, startled. “Convoy!” I said.

He got up on the bumper and leaned over the engine. “Just have to connect the fucking battery.”

I jumped up on the footboard and pulled the keys from the ignition. Then I got down and headed for the door.

“Hey!” he shouted, and I turned. His glance slid to where his holster rested on the workbench. He looked back at me threateningly, and right then we heard the engines of the approaching convoy. I nodded to the holster.

“Bring it,” I said.

He swore at me, but he got the holster and pistol and followed me as I ran from the shed.

The convoy wasn’t in sight yet, but it was close. Close enough for us to hear the gears grinding on one of the trucks as we scrambled up to the cover of the boulders above the office block. Trevanian was raging. He asked me why I hadn’t fired a warning shot, and when I ignored that, he asked me if the convoy was the one we’d seen, the one that attacked us. When I told him we couldn’t make it out, he swore again.

Twenty yards farther up the scree, we dropped behind the pile of boulders where Fiona was already hiding. She was kneeling, peering down the track through the binoculars. Trevanian snatched them from her hands.

“Out of the light, for fucksake.” He dropped back in the shade and turned the binoculars down the track.

Fiona looked to me, startled, and I signaled her to move along, and when she did, I went and crouched beside her. “Stay down. Keep out of Trevanian’s way.”

“What do we do if they’ve got Brad?”

“Sticking your head up won’t help him.” I touched her shoulder and she sat down and I went back to Trevanian. For a minute I watched him watching the track. We could still hear the vehicles, but the dust cloud was gone. “Are they coming?” I asked him.

“They’re holding the vehicles back.”

“What can you see?”

“Two scouts, on foot.”

“Army scouts?”

“Rebels.”

I eased my head a few inches to the left and looked through a gap in the boulders. To either side of the track, back past the fuel dump, I saw them, two guys in old jeans and sweatshirts with guns, crouching as they came on. Then they saw the chopper on the far ridge and they stopped and signaled behind to the vehicles, which remained out of sight. My heart stood still for a moment. If they retreated into the bush, they’d be taking Brad with them. Probably for good.

“I might be able to get around to the trucks,” I said.

Trevanian lowered the glasses. He took his pistol from the holster. “Try anything smart like that, I’ll shoot you.”

The engines revved, finally the convoy came on slowly down the track, trundling into view. A canopied truck and three off-roaders with the Barchevsky Mining stencils on the doors, it was the same convoy that had attacked us, only the drilling rig had been abandoned somewhere along the way. The off-roaders stopped at the fuel dump, several rebels got out and started up the ridge toward the chopper with their AK47s held ready. One guy stayed behind at the dump, he walked around kicking drums, searching for diesel. The canopied truck drove right up and parked in front of the office block below us. The driver got out, then two rebels clambered out the back. I took the binoculars from Trevanian and he put a hand on my shoulder.

“I wasn’t kidding,” he said.

I brushed his hand off and crawled across to Fiona.

“If Brad’s anywhere, he’s in the truck,” I told her quietly.

“What can we do?”

“You can’t do anything.” When she looked at me, I turned my back on Trevanian, five yards away, and slid my finger over my lips. Fiona glanced over my shoulder. Then she nodded, she’d gotten the message. “Whatever happens,” I whispered, “stay with Trevanian. And keep down.”

The rebels from the off-roaders were moving quickly up the southern ridge. Down in the camp, one rebel sat on the office-block steps while his two companions went inside. There was no way I could get near the truck without being seen. I raised the glasses to the southern ridge and watched the rebels climb, then I turned the glasses on the truck below us. After a while, I thought I glimpsed movement in the dark shadow beneath the canopy.

“There’s someone in the back of the truck.”

“Brad?”

“I can’t see.”

“Oh Jesus,” Fiona said, closing her eyes. “Please God.”