Dark Heart (2 page)

The Ghost, too, would have been lost, but for the force of the flood which held its floating island in midstream so that it followed that tap-root of the River Gir straight into the heart of the inner delta. Here the flood had all but swamped even the hardiest mangroves. But they still reached out, like deadly reefs and sandbars, swaying and shifting, until one at last snagged the matted roots of water hyacinth. The mares' nest of vegetation swung inwards towards the shore and became more firmly anchored. It had reached its final resting place, seemingly almost as high as the simple wooden cross on top of the missionary church which was the first sign of current human habitation half a kilometre inland on a knoll miraculously above the floodwater.

Then the flood beneath both chapel and orchid crested and began to recede. The force of the falling water sucked at the hyacinth raft with sufficient force to start it breaking up. The mangroves tore at it as the current began to release them. Ripping at it as they sprang back like the claws of the great leopards that had once hunted here, with branches as powerful as the arms of the huge silverback gorillas that had once ruled the impenetrable jungle on far Mount Karisoke. The hyacinth raft began to come apart. Dr Koizumi's skull rolled away into the receding waters. Much of the rest of the matted vegetation fell into the mud of the river's shore. But the Ghost, sitting on a high, tough fork of mangrove branch, remained miraculously unscathed. As the rains eased during the next few days and the water continued to fall until the Gir at last resumed its accustomed river course, running gently enough to allow the first couple of orphans from the church school near the chapel to come down to the bank and begin to explore the aftermath of the flood, like creatures recently released from the Ark, unaware of the beautiful flower sitting like a white dove just above their heads.

Until the soldier crushed it out of existence by resting the barrel of his Kalashnikov on the tree-fork so that he could get a steady platform for observation and assessment of a good field of fire for the moment when the rest of the Army of Christ the Infant caught up with him. The fork offered the soldier a sufficiently steady lookout point for his purposes, for he was lying on what remained of the bed of water hyacinths and it made a perfect hiding place and observation platform. At this stage the soldier only wanted to spy on the unsuspecting children still wandering between the riverbank and the school, which was the army's next objective because of the number of potential recruits its students represented – and because of the two women who were in charge of the place.

A bell in the chapel began to ring. It had struck perhaps half a dozen times before its dominance over the breathless silence of the jungle was overwhelmed by a distant roaring from high in the sky. Thunder, perhaps – and the sultry air certainly threatened it. Or an airliner's engines going into noisy reverse thrust somewhere high above the green jungle canopy as it settled towards its landing at the distant Granville Harbour International Airport. The soldier paid scant attention to the distant thunder – diminishing already – as he watched the children hurrying towards the chapel, blissfully unaware of his presence – and the impending arrival of his comrades. They were a mixture of boys and girls. It was hard to tell their ages, but they looked young to him. Young and soft and tender. His stomach grumbled in an internal echo of the distant thunder – and his mouth flooded with saliva.

The soldier's name was Esan, which meant ‘Nine' in Yoruba. The soldier had been nine when Moses Nlong had recruited him into the Army of Christ the Infant by making him kill his cousin with his sharp-bladed matchet and eat part of her heart. Not General Nlong alone, of course, but the power of Obi that he controlled through Ngoboi, his own terrifying devil, with its magic mask and his matted raffia costume, who embodied the most terrifying of the Obi spirits of the Great Dark Forest and gave the general much of his power. A devil which would soon be here, with the army and with General Nlong, hungry for recruits in more ways than one.

In the years since he joined the Army of Christ the Infant, Esan had risen to the rank of corporal and had been given the trusted role of pathfinder and scout, for, unlike many of the others, he was contained and icily quiet. He did not suffer from nightmares and he did not need to be motivated with cocaine. He had grown tall and strong in body as well as in spirit. He believed in the power of the spirits the devil embodied but he wore only one small fetish – and did not rely on bizarre magical wigs, costumes or make-up to make him invincible; the green-brown camouflage of his corporal's uniform was what he preferred to wear. Consequently he blended into the forest and could be relied upon to give accurate reports. So the general came to know him. To trust him. And he had killed many more people and eaten many more hearts.

He was thirteen years old.

K
LM Flight 1330 from Paris swung low over the delta, fighting to complete its landing at Benin la Bas's Granville Harbour International before the threatening weather closed in again. The Boeing 737's engines thundered as it settled into the lower air, rolling to the left as it swung on to a westerly heading, the better part of three hundred miles east of the runway, a little more than twenty minutes out. The captain's voice crackled through the PA system, ‘Please ensure that your seat belts are tightened. We may experience a little turbulence.'

Richard Mariner sat, looking down out of the window below his left shoulder, his big fists motionless in his lap. His belt was already as tight as it could go – and would have been so even if he hadn't managed to get a seat with extra legroom. A necessity given his massive size, but nevertheless a slightly unnerving prospect whereby any kind of emergency landing would throw him bodily through the side wall of the lavatory if his belt proved less than perfect. In any case, he was expecting all kinds of turbulence in all sorts of ways. During the next few minutes, the next few hours, perhaps even during the next few days. His bright blue eyes were narrow and his throat felt dry – and almost as tight as his seat belt.

The sight of the delta always had that effect on him, he thought. The simple, bone-deep disgust he always felt when coming close to it. The way the cancerous outgrowth of dark green jungle and mangrove bellied into the bay and spread like a dark stain back far beyond the horizon inland. The bulbous, almost brain-like swelling of it reaching into an inner delta, then giving way to a riverine plain reaching deeper into the impenetrable jungle of the volcanic hinterland a thousand miles away.

Three quarters of a million square kilometres of mangrove and marsh – more than twice the area of Belgium – veined with a maze of rivulets, the wetland scrub lifting to secondary forest, where the earth rose into hills and ruined villages told of failed farming communities, and into timeless rainforest away back along the tap-root of the main stream, the River Gir. A wasteland that had once been home to millions, now deserted and destroyed – a mess of polluted swamps and abandoned towns. Ruined enterprises and broken dreams.

Full, still, of untold potential and fabulous fortunes for those with the confidence, the assurance, the simple blind courage, to go eastwards up the rivers and into the dark heart of the place, Richard admitted ruefully to himself. That was why, in the final analysis, the only living people you were likely to find in the delta were the marauding armies that had been chased out of Somalia, Uganda, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and the Congo. For there was much for them to try and get control of – if they could come up with the equipment and expertise to extract it in any meaningful quantities. And, of course, it wasn't only the Rwanda's genocidal Interahamwe or Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army, or Moses Nlong's newcomers the Army of Christ the Infant who were greedy for the potential riches. There were companies, corporations, national and international financial organizations and NGOs from Bretton Woods to Beijing who were drooling for a piece of the action too. That, after all, was why he was here himself.

There was oil along the coast and in the delta itself. Oil in such abundance it came flooding out of the ground, so that the disgruntled locals in their vast shanty towns at the southern edge of the capital city of Granville Harbour hardly needed to bother tapping the pipes for illegal fuel – or to ignite explosive protests. There were diamonds in the south, there was gold in the rivers; tin, coal and copper in the mines. And the new precious metals too – plutonium, uranium and, of course, tantalum in the most sought-after form of all: the incredibly precious, ruthlessly harvested conflict mineral – jet-black coltan.

As Richard's narrow gaze swept over the matted wilderness, all dead darkness except for a momentary flash of gold where the setting sun caught the broader flow of a major artery, Richard's perspective was changed, and he found himself looking along the coast to the south. Down to where the delta's outer edges were fringed with an unsettling intensity of flames as the hundreds of oil wells there continued to flare off millions of cubic kilometres of gas, in spite of international attempts to stop the dangerous, environmentally damaging practice.

But it was more than the sight of the oil-dark, deadly jungle framed with the unsettlingly vivid fires that had his breath coming short and his belly feeling tense. More than his memories of the danger that he, his wife Robin and two young women in the hands of ruthless kidnappers had faced there on his last visit. More than the fact that Robin was there again already, waiting for him alone in their suite at the Granville Royal Lodge Hotel. More than the fact that the two young women they had risked so much to rescue – Celine Chaka, the president's estranged daughter, and Anastasia Asov, disowned and disinherited daughter of his Russian business associate Max Asov – were somewhere upriver running a rescue station and mission school for orphans in the heart of the delta itself. More than the patently dangerous wall of thunderheads massing in black battlements out over the Atlantic, racing eastwards in over the airport as they were racing west to slip beneath them – turbulence or no.

It was not what lay below him or behind. It was what lay ahead.

When General Dr Julius Chaka, President of Benin la Bas, had asked Richard and Robin as representatives of Heritage Mariner to attend the conference with their Africa financial team, Richard's first instinct had been to go to Jim Bourne, head of the massive shipping company's intelligence section, London Centre. It was the better part of four years since Julius Chaka had assumed control of the country – with the Mariners' almost accidental connivance. Richard tried to remain distanced from the country and his company's involvement in transporting the oil from its wells to the refineries in Europe, but like someone worrying a loose tooth or rubbing an old wound, he found himself incapable of leaving it utterly alone. He ordered London Centre to keep an eye on developments in Benin la Bas; had found his own attention drawn to news reports, political discussions and financial commentaries about the place.

Robin shared neither his unease nor his distaste – and she felt a positive friendship for Celine and Anastasia – which was only strengthened, of course, by their disinheritance. Her only hesitation about accepting Julius Chaka's invitation was that, as a friend and champion of the daughters, she might find it hard to take the required positive attitude to the fathers – even though they represented so much political and financial power. ‘Max Asov will be there?' she asked in confirmation, looking down at the old-fashioned, gold-embossed invitation on the morning it first arrived at Heritage Mariner.

‘Max, several other big Russian players, all the usual international teams . . .' he answered.

Robin interrupted with a cynical laugh. ‘Chaka's after money. This is a loan and investment hunt.'

‘Looks like it,' he admitted. ‘But in the right hands it could be a sweet deal.'

‘Are we interested?' she asked quizzically.

‘I don't know,' he answered slowly. ‘But I know who I can ask.'

‘Jim,' she had said at once. ‘Jim Bourne at London Centre.'

‘Under the late President Liye Banda, the place was a kleptocracy,' Richard said to Jim Bourne in the main office at London Centre later that same day. ‘Like the Congo under Mobutu in the nineties. Like Zimbabwe under Mugabe. The country was going down the drain in every way and nothing got done except by bribery and corruption. Everyone skimmed their cut off every deal from the president on down. It was the only way to survive for most of the country, and anyone who didn't have a position of power just went to the wall. Or rather, to the shanties and the slums where they simply starved to death.

‘President Chaka's had four years since Banda died and he assumed power, and now he's after international funding – from Heritage Mariner amongst other possible sources. From
every
possible source, as far as I can see, in fact. But has he managed to pull things round? Has all the graft and corruption stopped? Is Benin la Bas a good risk nowadays?'

Jim Bourne looked at Richard with a lopsided grin, pulling his pencil-thin Rhett Butler moustache awry. ‘Best way to find that out, Boss, is to take a look-see for yourself. Let Robin take the company jet and go in first class like they expect. Let her follow the red carpet route with all the other big wheels. Keep her feet clean and her eyes blinkered by the wonderful welcome . . .'

‘While I go in like a tourist. Commercial flight. Keeping out of first or business class. No fuss or fanfare. See how far I get down and dirty on the ground. Find out how much it really costs to get anywhere in Benin la Bas nowadays.'

‘It'll set you back about five hundred dollars one-way for the airfare,' said Jim wryly. ‘Rumour has it that's about the amount it used to take to get you safely through the airport immediately after you landed . . .'