The Darkest Heart (29 page)

Leonardo's first shot splashed into the water half a metre in front of the largest of the
jacaré.
The creatures snapped their jaws shut and lifted off their bellies as they raced for the safety of the river. Leonardo worked the bolt and fired again. His movements were quick and angry, and I could see a real need in him to kill something.

‘Don't say anything,' I said to Daniella. ‘Don't do anything to make him angry.'

‘He's already angry.'

Leonardo fired a third and fourth shot, but the
jacaré
were too quick for him. They might look like slow beasts, but they moved like lightning and could be just as dangerous on land as in the water.

When they were gone, Leonardo kicked the gunwale and slammed his hand on the edge of it, glaring back at the place
where the animals had been sunning themselves. He stood for a long moment, breathing deeply, composing himself, then turned and came back to the bow.

‘Tell me if you see any more,' he said as he passed us.

I tried to ignore him, like I tried to ignore so many other things, but his voice intruded into my thoughts, asking, You smell that? Is that burning?'

When the bow cut through the first of the smoke, there were just a few wisps of it, accompanied by the gentle scent of burning wood. The coils of grey twisted in the air over the river, shifting and merging, flattening to hang across the surface like a sheet stretched from one bank to the other.

‘Where's that coming from?' He scanned both sides of the river, each no more than a hundred metres from us, but there was no clear indication of its origin.

Once we had pushed around the gentle curve of the river, though, we were able to see what the closeness of the trees had concealed.

Ahead, fingers of smoke curled from between the dark trunks on the bank to our right. They slipped through the vines and the undergrowth, coming together to form a mist that drifted across the water in a grey haze. Beyond that, the clouds darkened to a dense black, billowing and moving like a living creature. Forming and deforming. It rose from the treetops, filling the sky, touching everything.

‘What is it?' Leonardo asked, glancing back at me.

I shook my head. ‘We're still a long way from the mine. Maybe it's Indians clearing land for planting.'

‘Do they do that?' Daniella asked.

‘Maybe it's something else,' I said, taking the wheel and wondering about those guns we were carrying. Perhaps this was all connected. When profiteers opened the forest, fire and guns were a major part of it.

Coming closer to the thick of the smoke, I slowed the engine and moved towards the far bank to keep away from the worst of
it. But there was no avoiding it. If we were to go on, we would have to head through it.

‘Can we go around?' Daniella asked. ‘Is there another way?'

‘Maybe, but I don't want to get lost out here.'

‘Do we need to stop, then?'

‘As long as we can see a couple of metres in front, we'll be all right,' I said, hoping she didn't hear the doubt in my voice. ‘It'll take longer, but it's possible.' I slowed the engine even further and we chugged on into the blackness of the Devil's heart.

38

The smoke shrouded us, splitting at the bow and swirling in our wake. It filled the spaces between us. Only the water immediately in front was visible, and I slowed the
Deus
until she was almost at a standstill.

‘We can't stop now.' I coughed as the hot, harsh smoke slipped into my throat and stung my eyes. ‘Not in here.'

‘We should have stayed back there,' Daniella said.

‘Too late now.'

I told her to wet some cloths so we could hold them over our faces, and we pressed on and on, deeper and deeper into the dreadful, dense smoke. It was pushing in on all sides now, closing around us and blocking out the glare of the sun, as if we were moving through dusk and heading into night.

Leonardo propped the rifle in the bow and leaned over the edge, holding a damp cloth to his face and watching the river. Every now and then he would call back in a muffled voice to warn us of any hazards. An hour ago, his warnings had irritated me; now they might save our lives.

‘What happens if we run aground?' Daniella asked as I guided the
Deus
around a sandbank.

I looked at her, seeing the worry in her red-ringed eyes and knew it had been a mistake to head into the smoke. I was in a hurry to reach the mine and return home to my friend, and I had allowed it to put us in more danger.

‘We have a shallow draught,' I told her. ‘We should be fine.'

‘But if we do?'

‘Well, it wouldn't be impossible to get out, but it would take time.'

‘We'd have to get out and push?'

‘On this sand? The stuff under the water? Uh-uh.' I shook my head. ‘We'd need another boat. Maybe two. You can't stand on this sand; it shifts and moves all the time. And you don't want to be standing on it when it shifts; it'll slip away under your feet and suck you down. People have disappeared like that.'

I looked over at Leonardo who had turned to listen. His eyes were red, too, and there were dark circles under them. I would be the same. Both of us with raspy stubble piercing the skin on our faces, stale breath, stomachs that tumbled with the lack of good food and sleep.

There is a surreal edge to the world when you haven't slept; a dreamy quality to everything. Like treacle is flowing through your veins instead of blood. And with the smoke billowing around us, killing the day, it was as if we were living through a nightmare.

Leonardo touched the
figa
that hung from the chain around his neck. His lips moved as he muttered a few silent words, then he went back to watching the river. The rifle was still propped beside him, close but out of my reach.

‘I see it,' he said after a few minutes. ‘There.' He raised a hand and pointed into the thickest black of the smoke.

‘I see it too,' Daniella whispered, and when I squinted through the tears I also saw the flames, flickering in the trees on the far right.

The temperature rose and rose. The air glittered with sparks that danced and frisked in the blackness. They leaped at us like devils, stinging our faces, then swirled away to flicker around the
Deus.
They settled on the gunwale and the canopy and the deck, glowing and dying, or lingering for a moment, hoping to find something to burn.

Something like fuel drums.

‘We need to watch the boat!' I shouted to Leonardo.

‘What?' He looked back at me from his position in the bow as
if not understanding, then his eyes widened. ‘Fire!' He pointed behind me and I turned to see the canopy smouldering over the middle of the
Deus.

At first it was a glowing patch that spread outwards, consuming the canvas as it moved, then the flames sprang to life, growing as the fire took hold of the old, dry material.

‘Take the wheel,' I yelled at Daniella and jumped from my seat, hurrying from the wheelhouse. ‘Listen to Leonardo's directions.'

I grabbed the bucket Daniella had been using and, leaning over the gunwale, I filled it from the river, then hurried to where the flames were devouring the canopy over the
Deus.
The thick smoke was filling my lungs, tightening my chest and stealing my breath. I could breathe only in short gasps as I tossed the water up at the canvas.

Already the flames had spread and were beginning to take hold in other places, so I ran back and forth, refilling the bucket and tackling the fires rising above us. The embers flickered around me as I worked through the heat, and Daniella kept the boat on course, taking us slowly though the river, while Leonardo called out any visible dangers in the water.

It was as if we were journeying through hell. The smoke was at its blackest and the temperature was at its hottest. The flames flickered and the embers danced like devils. My skin stung with the pinpricks of their attacks, sweat poured from me, my eyes streamed and my lungs shrank with every metre of river. Blinded and choking, we had to escape this nightmare before we were overcome and left to drift into the bank as we slipped into the abyss.

There was something else too.

The horrific smell that lay within the smoke.

It was the ugly smell of barbecued meat and burning fat, thick and cloying, filling me with its fleshy, yellow stink. Feeling sure I knew its horrific origin – what it was that was burning – I was desperate not to breathe it in. I was sickened that it was inside me and tried taking shallower breaths, forcing the stench from
my lungs, wishing I couldn't taste it in my mouth. But it was as inescapable as the dense smoke, so it invaded me, tainted the precious air I needed so desperately, and made me feel like an accomplice to its awful existence.

Deeper into the smoke, and surrounded by that monstrous smell, I began to tire. My lungs shrivelled, my chest tightened and my arms and legs grew heavy as I battled the persistent fires, coughing and hacking, wondering when my body would fail me.

Our eyes were burning and our faces were black when we finally broke through into the lighter smoke. Daniella pushed the engine harder, taking us into the fresh air, and I had never felt relief like it.

I leaned against the gunwale, sucking the clean air into me, expelling the darkness I had swallowed. There was a greasy, lingering taste in my mouth, and my whole body ached, but we were free of the fire.

‘You did well,' I said, tossing the bucket aside and returning to the wheelhouse. ‘You were amazing.'

‘Did you smell that in there?' Daniella asked. ‘What was it? Was that animals?'

‘Yeah,' I said. ‘Animals. Probably.' But I couldn't help thinking about the guns we had on board, and what Leonardo had said about expanding the operation at Mina dos Santos. If a land war was brewing there, perhaps the violence was spreading and territory was being reclaimed from settlers. It wasn't unusual for landowners to use fire as a cleanser. The smell that had mingled with the smoke would be the stink of their animals burning. And it would be them, too.

The people.

I was starting to see how everything tied together – Sister Beckett, the gold mine, the guns. In a place where big business was encroaching on small lives, local people needed whatever help they could get, and it seemed likely to me that a woman like Sister Beckett would come here to offer that help. I wasn't aware that the Branquinos had operations this far out, but perhaps they owned
the mine, and this was why they wanted the nun to disappear – not because she deserved it, as Costa had said, but so they could manage their land war without her interference.

The guns might be here for either side of such a dispute, but it was more likely that the mine owners would have the resources to buy them, and Leonardo's comments led me to believe that was the case. The Branquinos hadn't asked me to collect them, but that didn't mean they weren't the mine owners; perhaps even Costa knew nothing about them. They might want to keep the guns and Sister Beckett separate, to give them some deniability, and would never have imagined that Leonardo and I would end up travelling on the same boat.

In the bow, Leonardo had turned to lean against the gunwale. His head was back and his mouth open. The pistol was still in his hand, the rifle propped beside him. I considered asking who he was working for, but knew he wouldn't tell me. And I was afraid to give away my own purpose. No one could know I had another reason to visit the mine. No one could know about my intent for Sister Beckett if I were to keep my friends safe.

Costa had been clear about
that.

I collapsed onto the seat beside Daniella and watched her concentrating on the river ahead. ‘I'd take you with me on the boat anytime,' I said to her.

She turned to look at me, her eyes burning red, her skin streaked with dirt and sweat. ‘I don't
ever
want to do that again.'

Before I could answer, though, I heard the sound I had been waiting to hear all morning.

Over the chugging engine of the
Deus
came another noise, a virtual echo from somewhere in the terrible inferno we had just endured. Another boat was pushing through the nightmare.

One that might be carrying my destiny.

Leonardo had heard the engines too, and he came to stand a few metres away from me. ‘Another boat,' he said. ‘Ahead or behind?'

‘Behind, I think.'

‘How far?'

‘It's hard to tell.' Sound travelled well out there, funnelling up and down the river like cattle herded along a corral.

So we watched and we waited.

And, just after midday, we saw it.

39

A shimmer of white and silver appeared round a distant bend in the river. It nudged out from beyond the line of trees, and within a few minutes I knew it was the
Estrella do Araguaia
.

‘The old man,' Leonardo sneered and came close to touch the muzzle of his pistol to the back of my head. ‘He sent someone after us.'

‘No.'

He pushed the pistol into the soft place at the base of my skull with enough force to make me lean over the edge of the gunwale. I gripped the wood to stop myself from toppling over.

I would be nothing and Daniella would be alone.

‘Please,' I said. ‘It's not the old man. They're not after us. They're going to ...' I stopped myself. I wasn't supposed to know where the boat was going, nor who was on board.

‘Going to do what?' Leonardo asked keeping the pistol tight against me. ‘Going where?'

‘I don't know. West. That's all I was going to say. There's a few places on the river. They could be going to any one of them. That boat, it's always up and down this river.'

‘You know that boat?' Leonardo leaned in so his mouth was close to my ear. He was sweating hard, his skin slick with it, and his face was streaked black from the smoke. His breath was stinking and hot.