Bite (18 page)

Max was heading for the patrol car, but dropped his pace when he saw Stokenbrand standing by it, his weathered face ripped by a grin.

‘Suddenly I feel like taking the subway,' Max said.

‘I know you enjoy my company, Carver. Don't play hard to get,' said Stokenbrand.

Orangebeak had walked past the car, scowling at Max. Twenty yards ahead he climbed a fat, black motorcycle, stamped the kickstarter and began revving. A thick oily cloud spewed from the bike's flaking chrome exhausts as the engine growled.

Max sidestepped Stokenbrand and headed off towards the bike, but the cop stepped in the way. ‘No playground fights,' he snarled. ‘School's over. Time to go home to your sugar daddy.'

As Max was being pushed into the back seat of the squad car, Orangebeak rode the motorcycle slowly past them. He offered Max his upraised middle finger by way of greeting, mouthing obscenities. But Max was looking for only one thing, and he saw it. A modified chrome filler cap on the motorcycle's tank, shaped like an anvil. It was the Rotterdam bike. The rider must be one of Anvil's apprentices.

Stokenbrand squeezed in the back of the car. The driver was a Rastafarian with braids and a gaudy shell suit. Max leaned forward to him and whispered. ‘What's the name of the guy with the orange hair? You know him?'

‘Hey, idiot,' Stokenbrand said, pulling Max back into the seat. ‘Vendettas we don't do here, Carver. Not unless they're mine. Yes?'

Max said nothing, but he knew he had to come back here. If he could find Orangebeak again than maybe he could find Anvil.

For three days we have walked through the bush, heading towards a nameless destination. As much as possible I try to stay away from Dakka, but I sense he is hungry for vengeance. I am the obvious target.

Fortunately, he has had little opportunity. We rise at dawn, we walk almost without a break until sunset and we sleep where we fall, exhausted. Every day we get filthy and sweaty, and then lie in the damp and the leaf litter. We are never dry, even before the rain which comes most afternoons. The sheer misery of this, even in the warm, is hard to relate. I daydream of a hot shower, a towel, a change of underwear. Last night I dreamed I was sleeping in a glorious fluffy hammock crocheted from ropes of pink toilet paper. Two luxuries in one dream.

We worry most about Jarman. One eye is almost closed and his lips fat and crusted with blood. He complains his back and kidneys ache from the kicking, and he has a pronounced limp. The relentless marching torments him. He took off his right boot to show us why. A rifle butt had been smashed down on his bare foot during the beating. Now three toenails have turned black and fallen off, and the grazes became infected. Amy thinks one of his toes might be broken too. If the inflammation gets much worse the boot will be agony.

Worst of all, Jarman is becoming withdrawn and fatalist. We can hardly get a word out of him. Sophie's monkey colony must be wiped out by now. Jarman's collection of mosquitoes will be dead, his years of research, all left behind to rot in the heat and the wet. I suspect it is his African dreams that are dying the hardest death.

Conversation with our captors is discouraged. In any case they speak only a few words of English. Rambo-Rambo has some pidgin French which Sister Margaret translates for us. I find their real names unpronounceable, except one Twin who was apparently christened Albert and Dakka whose real name is Leopold. I think they have the same trouble pronouncing Erica Stroud-Jones. When they found out I was English they simply referred to me as Manchester, for Manchester United. Jarman, being Brazilian, was inevitably known as Pele. Amy was dubbed friend, from the French. Sister Margaret was just ‘sister'.

We drink water as we find it. The guards carry enough only for themselves. For food we have only the random gatherings that the Twins made from our hut: a large bag of Quaker oats, one tin of meat, custard powder, powdered milk and dried sausage. We had no utensils except Sister Margaret's swiss army knife, and for plates we used banana leaves. Mostly we ate ‘quaker's grenades', which was Jarman's concoction of dried sausage and rolled oats mixed into a patty with a little water. They were difficult enough to eat, but nothing like Amy's ‘strangulation by custard', which was custard and powdered milk cupped in a banana leaf and mixed with as much water as the leaf would hold. Unboiled, the custard powder was almost impossible to swallow.

We eat bananas where we find them, even when green. The lack of fruit is a bitter discovery. Fruiting trees are rarer than I imagined. We are either too early, and risked stomach cramps from unripe fruit and berries, or the trees have been cleaned out by birds and monkeys. This is no Garden of Eden.

We had high hopes of better food when we surprised a family of warthogs this morning. Rambo-Rambo opened fire from about forty yards with his automatic weapon. Instead of neatly dispatching a single piglet he blew one to pieces, gravely wounded a sow and another piglet, and hobbled the boar. This huge beast roared into the undergrowth and disappeared while the poor stricken sow whimpered like a child and dragged itself along on its forelimbs.

The guerrillas were terrified that the enraged boar would charge us. They crammed us into the low branches of a thorny tree, where we sat uncomfortably, guns bristling in all directions, and showered with shit as hungry vultures began to gather in the higher branches.

Rambo-Rambo's gun had jammed so we were down to the aged rifles of the Twins and Dakka. For half an hour they blazed away at every shadow that could have been the boar. If we needed further evidence of poor marksmanship, it was the five minutes it took for them to put the sow out of her misery. Then there was one tiny bewildered piglet which refused to leave its mother's side. They gave up trying to hit the poor thing after something like fifty shots. I think their rifles might be bent!

The warthogs had been grubbing under a strangling fig tree, and for once I could even smell the ripe fruit weighing down the branches. I edged along a bough, spurred on by the whoops of our captors, until I could grab a higher branch to cross into the fig tree. But when I got closer I discovered the tree was alive with vicious biting ants, which had swarmed over the sticky fruit. I beat a hasty retreat and we were foiled once again.

Eventually we came down from the tree and dragged a piglet away, leaving the rest of this slaughtered family to the ants and vultures. The Twins hacked open the piglet, and made Sister Margaret and me scoop out the viscera and prepare the meat. Amy scavenged a few figs, which we roasted inside the carcass over a smoky fire. After two days without proper food the blackened, crackling pork was a heavenly meal, even though we had just muddy water to wash it down with.

It was our first proper break, and our hitherto stern captors laughed and joked among themselves. Sister Margaret probed Rambo-Rambo in French. They had no coherent knowledge of the KPLA's strategy, except that it involved displacing a corrupt elite in Kinshasa and giving everyone enough to eat. They all conceded that a full belly and a promise of a smart uniform, clearly not yet fulfilled, was the main reason they had joined up. They thought the KPLA was a massive army, with tanks and aircraft and thousands of soldiers hidden around the country. Its leader, Brigadier Crocodile, was to them a modern-day Napoleon.

Georg's summary, given when we had first been captured, was different. The KPLA was probably the smallest and least powerful of four rebel armies in the country, and was unheard of outside the offices of regional specialists in western capitals. He thought they had fewer than a thousand troops, of which half had nothing more than a machete. He presumed their main aim was to wrest from government hands the alluvial diamond mine at Obtuvanna, just a hundred miles away. With the proceeds they could equip themselves with modern Chinese weapons. Only that, Georg said, would guarantee a place for them at the planned reconciliation talks.

This afternoon I found a pool among rocks at a nearby stream, our first chance for a leisurely wash since we set off. I poked at the water with a stick and disturbed nothing more frightening than a small fish. I fetched Amy and Sister Margaret, who asked Rambo-Rambo not to let us be disturbed. He was relaxed about letting us stray, knowing we could not get far alone. I soon noticed Dakka skulking in the background, however.

I waited for him to go as I set my diary and pencil in their plastic bag on a convenient rock. Still he watched us. I could not bring myself to strip in front of him, and entered the water before taking my filthy clothes off. Amy did the same. Sister Margaret had no such qualms, and stripped at the water's edge. Dakka goggled at her strange matronly underwear and wobbly white body.

The water was a wonderful temperature and we began to enjoy ourselves, splashing around and giggling like children. Then we did our laundry, laying it to dry on the rocks. I was up to my shoulders in water, and balling up my trousers when I felt a lump in the pocket.

Tomas's film! I leapt out of the water and cursed myself for the stupid, worthless bitch I had become. Sister Margaret covered her ears. A crushing guilt squeezed tears from my eyes as my wet hands fumbled to extract the plastic canister from the pocket.

Mercifully, the lid was still intact and the film inside dry. I crouched down by the water's edge, naked and miserable, and wailed uncontrollably. I don't know whether I cried for him or for myself, but I felt more lost and miserable than I ever had in my life before. The others, still mystified, tried to comfort me. In the distance I heard Dakka, my lover's murderer, sniggering.

(Erica's Diary 1992)

Janus Pretzik sat bolt upright in bed, the Browning GP35 already tight in his enormous fist. He had not dreamed the gentle tinkling that awoke him. Wind chimes from the shop. It was a cheap, foolproof security system. The way the draughts were down there, you couldn't open a door or a window back or front without them sounding. He grasped the bedside clock, squinting into its luminous face. Just after 2 a.m. He hauled his four hundred pound bulk out of bed, pulled on jeans and a T-shirt. From under the bed he pulled out a heavy torch and stuck it in his waistband.

He parted the curtains. The street was deserted, a plastic bag cartwheeling in the wind, a drink can rolling beneath a bench. Janus moved rapidly across the room, avoiding every squeaky floorboard and slipped quietly down the concrete stairs into the stockroom at the back of the darkened store. Janus had dealt with burglars before, muggers and wise guys. That wasn't what was making the sweat freeze on his skin, making his chest pound. That was a very specific, very recent terror.

He kept the lights off to preserve his advantage. It was a big shop, three frontages onto the street, and its aisles were narrow and obstructed. Janus knew the location of every antique chair and table, the shelves of African wood carvings, the 1910 Olivetti typewriter on the floor, the heavy Singer sewing machine stand. Janus edged forward to look through into the shop. Silhouetted in the window, against the orange glare of the streetlamps were his two prized 1970s guitars: the Gibson SG and the solid-colour Fender Stratocaster. The shop door was closed, all the windows intact.

It was silent. Janus exhaled lengthily, reached for the switch and flooded the room with light. Nothing looked to be missing. He playfully cuffed at the windchimes as he turned back to the stairs. They didn't make a sound. He looked up and saw a piece of translucent leathery meat suspended by a cord between the three cylindrical chimes. Janus wailed at this dried human ear, because he knew then who had come back for him.

Only one place he'd be safe. He ran back for the stairs, this time heading down, locking the basement door behind him. He stopped to rip the light fuses out of the junction box, plunging the shop back into darkness. The torch lit the big old cross timber supporting the house, and he ducked his six foot eight frame underneath as he descended the steep stairs to a narrow brick corridor. Ahead was a five foot high metal doorway like a submarine hatch, the three-inch thick door ajar and rusting under its flaking green paint, but still with iron enough to survive a thousand years of corrosion. The maker's crest above its curved flange was
Koninklijke Ijzergieterij en Staal Fabrieken 1876
. The shop had been a bank until 1910, and this was the vault. Janus snatched the thick steel key from the lock, and threw himself inside, his body booming on the iron floor. The door had a thick chain leading inside the vault, so bank employees could lock themselves in the garage-sized space with their valuables. The door had not moved in decades and the foot-high hinges looked rusted solid.

Still there was no sound from outside.

Janus rested the torch so it shone on the doorway, braced his feet either side of the door and took up the slack in the chain. He wrapped the rusted links around his ham-sized forearms, pulling himself into a tight squat. Then he took a deep breath and bellowed as he drove his legs to their full extent. Janus had once pulled a sixteen-tonne truck for a TV show, but this was tougher. His face contorted as he heaved. The door finally gave, and boomed shut like the gate of Hell, catapulting him backwards on to his torch and, with a ping of a broken bulb, into total darkness.

As the din in his ears subsided he heard his own ragged breathing and a curious echo of slow even breaths, coming from one of the vault's high shelves.

‘Very strong, but very stupid.' The voice was soft and low, proof that Janus had not shut his enemy out. He had shut himself in with him.

‘Please, God, no.' Janus muttered.

‘You lied to me. It was some other woman lived there. I warned you about lies.'

‘No, no. I wouldn't lie to you Anvil. That's where she went. She told me herself. I was the only one, she trusted me, Anvil.'

There was no reply, but the silent disbelief stretched out, until a soft resonation announced something heavy landing on the floor of the vault. Janus sobbed, and whipped the Browning from his waistband towards the noise. For the first time in his life Janus felt the grip of hands stronger than his own. The gun was twisted away and Janus's index finger, trapped in the trigger guard, snapped like a twig. Two immense kicks: a kneecap exploded, a smashed jaw; and Janus lay on the cold metal floor, tears running into his ears, as he pleaded for his life through a gruel of broken teeth.

There was a hissing noise, and the smell of gas.

‘Let there be light,' said the low voice. A lighter clicked and the blow torch lit with a low whump, its flame sharpening into a hissing blue spike. Anvil's eyes reflected in it, the colours of honey and splintered chocolate.

‘And there was light. And he saw that it was Good.'

Then Anvil bent to his task.

After four days we reached a small clearing with two contrasting buildings and a dirt road winding through. One building was whitewashed, had glass in its windows and a tall radio antenna on the roof. The other was long and grim, a windowless cinderblock structure. Two soldiers in fatigues with French-style military caps came up and greeted Rambo-Rambo with slaps and high-fives. They blindfolded us and led us across the clearing. Keys rattled, and then a creak. We were pushed into a hot, stifling darkness drenched with human sound, smell and sorrow. Herded along a narrow corridor, we heard murmuring, greetings, coughing and moaning. We felt the brush of fingers before they were rapped by the swish of the guard's cane.

More keys, more creaks. My head was pushed down and I was pitched into a hard-floored cell. The others tumbled over me. Then a clang. Someone shouted at us in French and Sister Margaret said it was a warning not to remove our blindfolds.

The floor was chilly, the walls rough and unfinished. I felt along the floor and found Amy's hand. I gave it a squeeze. Jarman cleared his throat and whispered something.

‘The blindfolds are excellent news.' They were the first words he had spoken in many hours.

‘Why?' asked Amy.

‘Dead men tell no tales. So there is no point in blindfolding them.'

‘You think it means they will release us?' I asked.

‘They might not have decided, but at least it gives them the option.'

After a few minutes I raised my head to peer out beneath the filthy rag tied around my eyes. All I saw was Sister Margaret opposite me, doing exactly the same. I risked lifting the rag, and saw the cell in its full glory. It was perhaps five wide feet by seven long, and made of cinder blocks, roughly cemented. The door was narrow and wooden, except for a small barred hatch at ankle height. The ceiling was a lattice of rusty reinforcing rods, the kind used for concrete. This was just four feet above the floor. It was impossible for any of us to stand upright. The floor sloped slightly away from the door, and there was a besmirched mouse-sized hole at the base of the outside wall. That was the toilet. Next to it was a filthy twig.

There was another floor between us and the huge sheets of zinc fifteen feet above our heads. That floor had small windows, so a pale light filtered through to us but the angle was such that even pressing a cheek to the ceiling bars we could see not an inch of sky.

(Erica's Diary 1992)

Nothing much happens at Amsterdam RAI Congress Centre at five in the morning. Usually. Security Officer Jan-Erik Smit was playing the eighteenth game of Tetris of the shift as the first rays of summer light slanted through the windows across his coffee mug, newspaper and well-thumbed copy of Rustler. The coloured Tetris blocks were falling thick and fast down the computer screen, and however hard he worked the keyboard he hardly had time to manœuvre them into the available gaps.

Smit certainly didn't have time to look at the security monitors to his left. That is why he didn't see the intruder at the other end of the fifty-acre complex descend the ramp into the basement loading bay. That is why he didn't see a key slide into the lock on the staff kitchen door, and missed his last chance when the figure entered the kitchen and moved out of camera view.

The intruder moved slowly along half a mile of corridors, knowing exactly where he was heading. At the conference organiser's office he took a second key from his pocket and opened the door, flicked on the light. The office was stacked high with papers and brochures, the walls lined with filing cabinets, fax machines and photocopiers big and small.

Inside, he closed the door and powered up a small photocopier. The drone seemed deafening in the silence of the office, but he knew it would not carry all the way to reception. The intruder went straight to a file drawer labelled ‘Parasitology presentation: Contributors R-Z' and pulled it gently. The cabinet was locked as he knew it would be. This was one key he had not been able to get. But this was an office, not a bank vault. It took only a couple of minutes jiggling with a pocket knife and the cheap lock relented, the drawer slid open. He went straight to the paper he wanted. The copier clicked to ready, but the intruder could not resist reading each page first, etching into his mind this long-awaited piece of science before duplicating it on paper.

The original was returned to its exact place, the drawer closed, the copier and lights switched off. The intruder grasped the copy to his chest and made his way back along the maze of corridors as if sleepwalking. He forgot to lock the outside door, and in a daze headed to the car park in front of reception instead of Wielingstraat where he had left the Bentley. But it was only when he was finally in his car, when he had put down his stick and eased his artifical leg into the foot well that the implications of Dr Erica Stroud-Jones's work hit him.

In under five years she had found a brilliant new weapon in the fight against malaria. In five decades struggle, he had not. She had been right, he had been wrong. She would claim the prize, his decades of service would be forgotten. For the first time in more than fifty years, Professor Jürgen Friederikson broke down and wept.

That afternoon Max called the embassy of the Democratic Republic of Congo and left a message for Minister Loebe. At seven o'clock exactly, while Henk was out, the minister's bodyguard arrived at the apartment in a sharp dark suit, crisp white shirt and carrying a holdall. He introduced himself in heavily accented English as Leo. Nothing to do with lions, Max found out, he was just named after a Belgian king, Leopold. Leo looked up to the job and more. He was a slim six foot one, with an easy smile and wrists taut as whipcord.

Once they were upstairs, Leo unzipped the holdall and offered Max a Walther PKK and two full clips of ammunition.

‘I don't think we need it right now,' Max said. ‘But if you want to carry it, go right ahead. If the cops are around they will be watching me not you, so you should split. Don't hang around for me, okay? Just go.'