A Conspiracy of Faith (44 page)

And there she lay, in her own pee, trying to turn her body just an inch or so in order that the pressure against her right knee, on which the weight of the boxes had settled, could be shared by her thigh. In this she failed, and the sensation remained, like the time she broke her arm and could only scratch against the outside of her cast when it itched.

She thought of the days and the weeks when she and her husband had been happy together. In the beginning, when he had fallen at her feet and treated her just the way she wanted.

And now he was killing her, without feeling or hesitation.

How many times had he done this before? She didn’t know.

She knew nothing.

She
was
nothing.

Who will remember me when I am dead? she thought, and extended her fingers against her right arm, as though caressing her child. Benjamin won’t. He’s so small. My mother, of course. But in ten years, when she’s no
longer with us? Who will remember me then? Besides the man who took my life? No one but him and perhaps Kenneth.

That was the worst thing, apart from having to die. It was what made her try to swallow in spite of the dryness inside her mouth. And it was what made her abdomen convulse with grief, though no tears came to her eyes.

In a few years she would be forgotten.

Her mobile rang a few times. Its vibrations in her back pocket gave her hope.

After the ringtone died away, she would lie for an hour or two listening for sounds outside the house. What if Kenneth was there? Had he sensed something was wrong? He must have done, surely? He had seen with his own eyes the state she had been in the last time they saw each other.

She slept for a short while, only to wake with a start, unable to feel her body. Her face was all that remained. She was reduced to a face. Dry nostrils, a recurring itch around the eyes blinking in the dim light. This was all that was left.

Then she realized that something had woken her. Was it Kenneth or something in a dream? She closed her eyes and listened intently. There was someone there.

She held her breath and listened again. It
was
Kenneth. She opened her mouth in a gasp. He was standing below the window at the front door, calling her name so the whole neighborhood could hear it. She felt a smile spread across her face and mustered all her strength for the final cry that would now save her. The cry for help that would prompt the soldier at her door into action.

She opened her mouth and screamed as loud as she could.

So silently that not even she could hear it.

The soldiers came in
a battered jeep late in the afternoon, one of them yelling that local Doe supporters had stashed away arms in the village school and that she was going to show them where.

Their skin glistened, and they were as cold as ice when she tried to tell them she had nothing to do with Samuel Doe’s Krahn regime and that she knew nothing about any stash of arms.

Rachel—Lisa, as she was then—and her boyfriend had heard the shots ringing out all day. Rumor had it that Taylor’s guerrillas were ruthless, and so they had been preparing to flee. Who wanted to hang around and see if the future regime’s bloodlust could be held in check by the color of a person’s skin?

Her boyfriend had gone upstairs to fetch the hunting rifle, and the soldiers had surprised her as she busied herself hiding the school’s books away in the various outbuildings. So many houses had been razed to the ground that day that she wanted to spread the risk.

And there they were. The men who had been killing all through the day and who now needed to discharge the electricity crackling inside their bodies.

They exchanged words, words she did not understand, though their eyes spoke a language she knew. She was in the wrong place. Too young and all too available in the empty schoolroom.

She darted to one side and sprang up to the window opening, only for
them to grab hold of her ankles. They pulled her to the ground and kicked her until she lay completely still.

Three faces blurred for a moment in front of her eyes, and then two bodies were upon her.

Superior strength and overconfidence prompted the third soldier to lean his Kalashnikov against the wall and help his comrades spread her legs apart. They covered her mouth and entered her one by one, whooping hysterically. She drew in air feverishly through sticky nostrils, then heard her boyfriend groan in the room next door. She was frightened for him. Frightened that the soldiers would hear him, too, and make short work of him.

But that groan was all that transpired. His only reaction.

Five minutes later, as she lay in the dust staring up at the blackboard on which only two hours before she had meticulously written the words “I can hop, I can run,” her boyfriend had made his escape, taking his rifle with him. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for him to shoot and kill the perspiring soldiers who now lay spent at her side with their trousers around their ankles.

But he had not been there for her. And neither was he there when she jumped to her feet and grabbed the Kalashnikov to discharge a round of bullets that tore open the bodies of the three black men and turned the room into an echo of screams steeped in the smell of burned gunpowder and warm blood.

Her boyfriend had been there for her only for as long as everything had been all right. When life was easy and the day ahead bright. But he was absent when she dragged the carcasses onto the dung heap and covered them with palm leaves. And he was absent when she scoured the walls of the schoolroom, washing away the human flesh and the blood.

That was part of the reason why she had to get away.

It was the day before she gave herself up to God and repented her sins so fervently. But the vow she made that evening when she pulled off her dress and burned it, then washed and scrubbed her crotch until it hurt, was something she would never forget.

If the Devil should ever cross her path again, she would take matters into her own hands.

And if in so doing she broke the command of God, it would have to be a matter between her and Him.

As Isabel sped along the motorway, her gaze flitting between the road ahead, the GPS, and the rearview mirror, Rachel stopped sweating. Her lips ceased to quiver, from one second to the next. Her heart rate returned to normal. In an instant, she recalled how fear can be turned into anger.

The dreadful recollection of the NPFL soldiers, their satanic breath and the yellow eyes that showed no mercy, surged through her body, making her clench her jaw.

She had taken action before, and she could do so again.

She turned to her driver. “Once we’ve given Joshua what he needs, I’ll do the driving, OK?”

Isabel shook her head. “You don’t know the car, Rachel. It’s temperamental. It oversteers, for one thing. The lights are dodgy, and the hand brake’s loose.”

She listed other things that were wrong with it, too, but Rachel didn’t care. Maybe Isabel didn’t believe that this pious woman in the passenger seat could match her behind the wheel. But she would soon know better.

They met Joshua on the platform at Odense. His face was like ash, and he was clearly ill at ease.

“I don’t like what you’re saying!”

“I know, Joshua, but Isabel’s right. This is how we’re going to do it. We have to make him know we’re breathing down his neck. Did you bring the GPS like we said?”

He nodded and looked at her with red-rimmed eyes. “I don’t give a damn about the money,” he said.

She took a tight hold of his arm. “It’s got nothing to do with the money. Not anymore. You just follow his instructions. As soon as you see the light flashing, throw the bag out of the window, but leave the money in the
duffel bag. We’ll be following the train as closely as we can. Don’t do anything on your own, but make sure you can tell us exactly where the train is if we should ask. Do you understand?”

He nodded but with obvious reluctance.

“All right, give me the duffel bag with the money in it,” she said. “I don’t trust you.”

He shook his head.

So she was right.

“Give me the money,” she demanded, raising her voice now, but still he refused. And then she slapped him hard in the face, just under his right eye, and snatched the duffel bag from his hand. Before he realized what had happened, she had passed the money on to Isabel.

Rachel grabbed the empty bag and stuffed the kidnapper’s clothes inside, apart from the shirt with the single hair inside the collar. On top she laid the padlock and the clasp and the letter Joshua had written.

“Here. And make sure you do what we’ve agreed. Otherwise we’ll never see our children again. Believe me, I
know
.”

Keeping pace with the train proved harder than she had imagined. Though they had a head start out of Odense, they were already behind before they reached Langeskov. Joshua’s reports gave cause for concern, and Isabel’s comments as she compared the GPS positions of the car and the train grew increasingly frantic.

“We need to swap places, Rachel,” Isabel urged. “You haven’t the nerve for this.”

Rarely had words had such a forceful effect on Rachel. She put her foot to the floor, and for five minutes the roaring engine was pushed to the maximum. It was the only sound they could hear.

“I can see the train!” Isabel suddenly exclaimed as they approached Nyborg, where the E20 motorway bridged the railway. She pressed a key on the mobile, and a few seconds later she had Joshua on the other end.

“Look to your left, Joshua. We’re just ahead of you,” she instructed. “
The road veers away for the next few kilometers, so you won’t see us in a minute. We’ll try to catch up with you again on the Storebælt Bridge, but it won’t be easy. We’ll have to stop at the toll station on the other side. Has he called?” She listened for a moment to his reply, then snapped the phone shut.

“What did he say?” Rachel asked.

“Still no contact with the kidnapper. But Joshua didn’t sound like he was bearing up at all. He refused to believe we could get there in time. He kept stuttering, saying maybe it didn’t matter anyway. As long as the kidnapper understood the message in the letter.”

Rachel pressed her lips together. He had said it didn’t matter. But it did. They would be there when the kidnapper turned on his strobe. They would be there, and the bastard who had taken her children would find out exactly what she was capable of.

“You’re not saying anything, Rachel,” said Isabel. “But it’s true what Joshua says. There’s no way we can make it.” Her eyes were glued to the speedometer. But the car couldn’t go any faster.

“What are you going to do when we get to the bridge? There are cameras everywhere, and traffic. And what about the tollbooths at the other side?”

Rachel considered Isabel’s questions for a moment as she swept along in the fast lane, flashing the headlights to clear the way ahead.

“Don’t worry, Isabel,” was all she said.

Isabel was terrified.

Terrified by Rachel’s insane driving and her own inability to do even the slightest thing about it.

Only two or three hundred meters farther on, they would hit the toll booths of the Storebælt Bridge, and Rachel wasn’t slowing down. In just a few seconds, the speed limit would be thirty kilometers an hour, and they were doing one hundred and fifty. Ahead of them, the train with Joshua on board tore through the landscape, and this madwoman was hell-bent on catching up with it.