The Elephant's Tale (16 page)

As they inched forward, their eyes, which had grown accustomed to the dark, burned with the brightness of the glare below. Martine shielded hers and peered over the brink of the volcano. At first all she could see was fizzing white spotlights bent, like preying mantis, over a valley. When her eyes finally adjusted, she gasped. Of all the things she’d expected to find, this was not it. She had expected construction site chaos and men toiling away with cranes, concrete mixers, and scaffolding. In her wilder thoughts, she’d even envisioned a training facility for soldiers preparing for Callum’s “war.” And when Edison spoke of Reuben James’s plan to create an oasis, she’d pictured three tired palm trees leaning over a concrete pool enlivened with a few fake pink flamingos.

She hadn’t imagined a tropical jungle festooned with flowering vines and crisscrossed with wooden walkways. Or a crystal blue fountain. Or clouds of brilliant color floating over beds of African wildflowers, which, when Ben got out his little binoculars, they saw were butterflies as bright as jewels. She definitely hadn’t foreseen a futuristic hotel made from wood and glass and suspended in the treetops, or a maze of the type one might find at a castle in England, with an okapi—a beautiful little creature with zebra-striped hind legs, which is a close cousin of the giraffe—tripping through it.

She’d never imagined they’d stumble on paradise in the most unlikely place in Africa.

“What do you reckon goes on in there?” asked Ben.

Martine followed his gaze. At the far end of the valley, barely visible through the trees, was a dome of opaque white. It resembled a giant golf ball.

“It looks a lot like the Eden Project, this place my mum and dad used to take me to in England. Sounds similar to the Ark Project, doesn’t it? The domes there are massive greenhouses that house rainforests and waterfalls and all kinds of things. That might be what they’re doing here.”

A splash of red appeared in the fading night sky. As if on cue, a sublime chorus of birdsong floated up to them. A gardener in overalls appeared and began tending to the wildflowers.

“Wow,” said Martine. “Wow, wow, wow!”

“I’m confused,” she said to Ben as they scrambled back down the slope. “Every time I think Reuben James is Mr. Hyde, he turns into Dr. Jekyll.”

Ben put out a hand to steady her as she slipped on a loose rock. “Meaning what exactly?”

“Well, every time I decide that he’s a kidnapper, or a con man, or a burglar, or an elephant poacher, he does something unexpected. Like the time he lent us his new Land Rover so we could help the sick buffalo. And now this. Ben, isn’t Moon Valley one of the most idyllic places you’ve ever seen? But I didn’t see any elephants. I’m losing hope that, with days to go, we’ll find anything on Reuben James so bad it’ll stop him taking over Sawubona.”

“What he’s done with Moon Valley is incredible,” said Ben, “but there are too many things that don’t add up. If he has this place as well as Hoodia Haven and others, why is he so obsessed with taking over Sawubona? Sawubona is special to us, but there are a thousand game reserves just like it. Yet he’s fixated on ours. Don’t worry, we’ll get something on Reuben James yet. But we’re going to need to find a way into Moon Valley.”

“Why don’t we take a closer look at the delivery area?” suggested Martine. Earlier, they’d seen a red-lettered sign directing drivers to the drop zone. They were to contact the site office on arrival, using the telephone provided.

“Yes, let’s look at the drop zone,” said Ben. “There might be cargo waiting to be transferred to Moon Valley and we could hide in a box and get in that way. That always works in movies.”

They ran along the curve of the crater until they were at the opposite end of the valley to the main gate, level, Martine estimated, with the white dome. The “drop zone” was a circular area of cleared gravel, ground up by thick tire tracks, and a ramshackle warehouse.

“If it’s a storage unit, why isn’t it guarded?” whispered Martine.

“It could be that guards aren’t necessary,” Ben told her. “If the trucks are unloaded and their cargo moved to Moon Valley minutes later, the goods are under observation the whole time.”

To be on the safe side, they waited a while longer before approaching the warehouse, but saw no one. As Ben had predicted, it was empty. The concrete floor had been swept clean. There was a framed poster of a charging elephant on one wall and a desk and chair near the doorway. A grubby black telephone, clipboard, and pen had been provided. A notice requested that visitors “Dial 9 for Site Office.”

“We could ring and say we have a delivery,” said Martine.

Ben was staring at the elephant poster. “Too risky for too little reward. I’m not confident I could make myself sound like a fifty-year-old Namibian truck driver on the phone. Martine, don’t you think it’s a bit odd that they’ve decided to decorate this dusty old warehouse?”

Martine sat down on the chair and began flicking through the pages on the clipboard. The previous day there had been deliveries of bread, milk, fertilizer, and twenty vials of medicine. Marine recognized the name of it, but couldn’t for the life of her remember what it was for. “Perhaps they were trying to be welcoming.”

“Or conceal something.” Ben pushed the poster aside. Behind it was a green lever. “Hey Martine, look at this. It has fresh oil on it, as if it’s regularly in use. I wonder what it does.”

He tugged at it.

“No!” cried Martine, but it was too late. Before Ben could react, a trapdoor had dropped open beneath his feet. Ben dropped with it. Martine had a fleeting glimpse of his startled face as he twisted away down a chute, then the mechanism purred and the trapdoor snapped shut again.

Twice before in her life Martine had felt a terror so extreme that it was as if she’d been turned into a block of ice. Once was on the night of the fire, and the second time was when she fell into a shark-infested ocean. Now she felt it again.

This could not be happening. She could not have just watched her best friend vanish. She could not be left alone with no food, water, money, passport, or transport in the middle of the Namib desert.

This could not be happening—but, her fevered brain told her, it was.

She was faced with two choices. Either she walked back to the Welcome Center, waited for it to open, and attempted to call the police, who might arrest her for entering the country illegally and refuse to listen to her pleas for assistance.

Or she could pull the lever and follow Ben into a void from which they might never emerge.

She knew which was the smarter choice. She also knew that it would take her a minimum of forty-five minutes to run back to the Welcome Center when she was already weak from hunger and thirst. By then, her best friend, whom she now realized she loved as much as she did Jemmy, her grandmother, Grace, Tendai, and Khan, might have been consumed by whatever it was that waited at the bottom of the chute.

What
did
wait there? Martine had visions of an underground stream packed with piranhas or a bottomless shaft that went to the molten center of the earth. But even those would be preferable to ending up in the hands of Reuben James and Callum.

So there was the wise decision, or the decision she could make because Ben was her best friend and there was nothing she wouldn’t do for him. For Martine, there was no contest. She gathered up some pale stones and made another white giraffe, which she laid on the ground behind the warehouse. By some miracle, Gift might stumble across it.

The sky was streaked with pinks and grays and oranges as Martine returned to the stifling shed and pulled the lever. The mechanism gave a small sigh, as if resigning itself to dispatching yet another victim. Her stomach lurched in fear.

The trapdoor snapped open and she was swallowed.

M
artine had never understood the appeal of roller coasters. It was beyond her why anyone would want their stomach left behind while their body plummeted like a human cannonball and their heart threatened to burst from their chest. Unfortunately, that’s the exact sensation she was experiencing now.

Teeth gritted, she hurtled down a silver chute, flailing helplessly around the corners. Time passed in dentist minutes, the way it did when she was having a filling and the dentist was leaning on her jaw with his drill and talking about his beach holiday with his family while the nurse sprayed water up her nose. She’d have preferred time to go in giraffe minutes. When she was out in the game reserve with Jemmy, whole nights went in the blink of an eye.

Martine popped from the tube like a cork from a bottle and hit the ground hard. It was a relief to find it was cushioned. A soft landing area had been installed to prevent fragile deliveries from being damaged. And if there was one thing Martine was feeling, it was fragile.

She dusted herself off and stood up. She was in a neon-lit room, empty apart from a hotel housekeeping trolley, a sink, and a row of white coats on pegs. There was a door but no windows. An iron-rung ladder rose to meet a hatch in the ceiling overhead. She was trying to decide which exit Ben might have taken when she heard footsteps approaching the door. At the same time, a hand clamped over her mouth.

“Martine, whatever you do, don’t scream,” Ben whispered in her ear. “I’ll wedge something under the door to keep it closed. Go up the ladder.”

Martine recovered from her fright and rushed to do as he said. A key scraped in the lock. Ben had wedged a broom handle under it, but it was already splintering as he shinned up the ladder and clambered out into the morning sunshine.

Two gardeners were trimming the maze not fifty feet away from them. Fortunately, they were talking and didn’t hear anything above the buzz of the hedge trimmers. Martine and Ben had a split second to take in the vivid beauty of the oasis—the brilliant beds of flowers; the cool blue fountain and the soaring, creeper-hung forest rising up a slope toward the white dome; the hotel nestled among its branches like a human version of a community weaverbird nest—and then they were diving into the maze.

Once again, they seemed to have got away with it. They ran along the dewy green passages, backtracking whenever they came to a dead end. They wanted to get as far away from the gardeners as they could before pausing to come up with a plan. The hedges, thick as castle walls, muffled nearly all noise apart from the birdsong, which was as continuous and cheerful as ever.

“You know what’s really peculiar,” whispered Ben, “I haven’t seen a single bird since we got here. Yet they’re chirping and whistling so loudly it’s as if we’ve walked into an aviary.”

“Maybe they’re hidden in the jungle,” said Martine, but goose bumps rose on her arms. There was something creepy about Moon Valley. It was too impossibly perfect.

She wondered where the okapi was. Thinking about him reminded her of Jemmy, and her chest began to ache again. How many days, or weeks, would it be till she saw him again?
Would
she ever see him again?

Ben squeezed through a narrow gap between the hedges and stopped so abruptly Martine ran into him. In the square center of the maze was a table spread with a starched white cloth and laid with shining silverware and white china plates. On it was a breakfast feast of fruit, apricot juice, water, a selection of cheeses and jams, and a basket of bakery goods. The basket was upended and its contents, fat, buttery croissants, chocolate chip and banana nut muffins, and health breads, were strewn across the tablecloth.

The okapi, which had its front hooves on the table, was gleefully nibbling a muffin and didn’t notice them at first. When it did, it bounded away guiltily, leaving a trail of crumbs in its path.

There was only one chair and a single place laid.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” said Ben.

Martine grinned. “Well, my first thought was, this has to be Reuben James’s breakfast. My second is, now it’s ours!”

“Martine, you’re a mind reader.” Ben reached for a roll and spread it thickly with butter and strawberry jam. He poured himself some apricot juice and drank it looking over his shoulder, aware that Reuben James could already be on his way.

Martine drank two glasses of water and devoured a chocolate chip muffin and a croissant dripping with butter and honey. She said, “You do know that our lives will not be worth living if we get caught?”

“Mmmhmm,” Ben mumbled through a mouthful of roll. His eyes were laughing.

Over the relentless singing of the birds came the unmistakable tinkle of cups, saucers, and teaspoons on a tray. Martine and Ben bolted through the gap in the maze just as a waiter stepped into the square and let out a curse. He set down his tray with a crash. “You wicked okapi!” he cried. “Wait until I get my hands on you. Tonight you will be okapi curry. I will serve you up with rice and mango chutney!”

“Okapi curry?” mouthed Martine, horrified.

“If we don’t get out of here, we’ll be in the same pot,” Ben mouthed back. “Follow me.”