Dark Heart (7 page)

Anastasia came up behind the chapel. Like all of the compound buildings it stood on breeze blocks that raised it about three quarters of a metre off the ground. The area might have been mercifully clear of mosquitoes but the same could not be said for ants and termites. Further, it had been erected on a slight slope – the one that ran from the compound down to the river – and the breeze blocks had been used to level it so the gap on the river side was higher than the one on the camp side. A welcoming cavern, easy to enter.

Still with the AK cradled under her chin, Anastasia wriggled under this, moving slowly on elbows and knees, keeping her butt low and her chest tight to the ground, straining to see out of the shadows into the brightness of the central compound – all too well aware that she would be lucky to see much more than footwear, calves and knees from this angle, and trying not to think about ants, snakes, spiders, centipedes and scorpions.

But it was nothing from the insect world that came closest to making Anastasia give herself away. It was Father Antoine. She had calculated that the best place for her to place herself to start with was beneath the steps that led up from the compound to the chapel. The first step was made entirely of brick, but the next two were simple planks standing on piles of bricks, maybe forty-five centimetres high and a metre and a half apart. The lower step would form a protective wall she could hide behind. The upper steps would give her good vision and, perhaps, a secure field of fire.

But Father Antoine had been standing on the bottom step shouting at the Army of Christ the Infant when he was shot. He had fallen back on to the wooden planks and the nearest child soldiers had spent some moments ensuring his demise by chopping at him with their matchets. They had rolled him over to one side of the rudimentary stairs so that they could search the chapel itself. Anastasia was therefore confronted by the vision of his staring eyes, so wide they seemed to gleam in the shadows. His forehead had been burst by the gunshot and then chopped open in four more places by matchet blows. His crisp white hair – a blackish brown now – hung forward on his forehead and the matted strands seemed to be all that was holding his brains in place. His nose was gone and his mouth gaped unnaturally wide, tongue lolling grotesquely. Beneath the shapeless russet sack of his once snowy robe, a considerable lake of blood was slowly soaking into the red mud and dusty brickwork. His hands stuck through the planks, hanging down helplessly. All his fingers were gone.

Anastasia lay there for several minutes, considering things. She had no notion of being in rapidly deepening shock. She was wondering – albeit distantly – whether to be sick. She had been too focussed on action before to feel fear but it stabbed through her now. Not fear. Sheer stark terror. She had, perhaps, wet herself. Or it might have been Father Antoine's bodily fluids flowing downhill under her. She wondered vaguely whether there was any way she could manoeuvre the AK so that she could kill herself now and escape all this in one agonizing instant. But then she heard Celine's clear voice, and all other thoughts flew straight out of her mind.

Anastasia discovered that if she pulled herself up as close as possible to Father Antoine's corpse, she got quite a good view of the compound. The unfamiliar children – the Army of Christ the Infant – were distinguishable from her own young charges only in that they were armed, and were wearing an assortment of dirty, ragged clothing – shorts and T-shirts for the most part. And that they all needed a good bath by the look of things. The child soldiers were standing in a restless ring around the taller, fitter, better dressed and cleaner orphans, who were cowed and terrified by the guns and the matchets. Also by the death of Father Antoine and by the situation of the other adults in the camp. Imam Mohammed, the Muezzin Samir and Ibrahim were in the same state as Father Antoine, lying in the centre of the circle, hacked to death. Brother Jacob was kneeling beside them but he seemed to be alive. Just about. Celine was standing, tall and apparently fearless, in front of the three nuns. And, behind the nuns, the boys and girls they were trying so vainly to protect. There was silence and stasis after whatever she had said. So much silence, in fact, that Anastasia dared not risk pushing the selector down one more notch to automatic fire. Even though a fire-rate of 600 rounds a minute suddenly seemed worth having at her disposal – for the second or so that her clips would last for.

Anastasia wormed round until she could see whoever it was that Celine was speaking to. A group of older boys – young men – were standing round half a dozen adults whose uniforms were cleaner, pressed, more military-looking. The special guards all held AK-47s. In the centre of this group, the tallest man stood, apparently thinking. What looked like a Browning automatic hung from one listless arm. A blood-spattered matchet the better part of a metre long hung from the other, its lanyard looped up round his wrist above the huge gold watch he wore. It was hard to tell
what
he was thinking because his face was a mask of ritual scars that seemed to be set like ebony. His mouth looked like just one more scar running from side to side instead of up and down. He wore a maroon beret pulled to the line of his eyebrows. Between the beret and the scarred cheeks there was a pair of sunglasses whose silver lenses simply reflected Celine's wide-eyed stare. Anastasia had never seen any pictures of self-styled General Moses Nlong, but she reckoned that this must be him. And whatever Celine had said must have given the general pause. And the whole of his army had paused with their leader.

Then he slapped her round the face. With the flat of the matchet. It was a casual blow, with seemingly no real force behind it, but it swatted her to the ground like a left hook from a heavyweight boxer. A gasp went up right round the compound. Silence returned. He gestured, twice. Two of the tall young men stooped and pulled the reeling Celine to her feet and held her. Four others closed on Sister Faith. They dragged the struggling woman forward. As they did so, Nlong holstered the Browning. He reached out and pulled the sister's white headdress off. Then, with the matchet hanging from its lanyard, he ripped her robe wide, revealing her plump white shoulders. He pinched her upper arm and smiled. There was enough light to see a flash of his teeth. They had been filed to points. He nodded and Anastasia froze, suddenly realizing what was going to happen next. Celine yelled something, her voice slurred, but too late.

Sister Faith was on her knees and the matchet rose and fell like a guillotine. Dancing clear of the fountain of blood with practised ease, Nlong strode over to Celine, shouting wildly. But she was sagging in a dead faint between her two captors. The general took her hair and twisted her face up towards his. Then he let her drop and spat an order to the men holding her. He raised his voice and shouted to the whole of his army. Suddenly everything was in motion. The well-armed ragamuffins sprang to life. The girls and boys from the orphanage were separated. The girls were herded into one of the dormitory huts. The boys were forced back along the wall nearest to the fire and held there under guard, where they could watch. Watch and learn. While this was going on, the two men holding Celine dragged her fainting body across the compound and up the steps into the chapel. Anastasia heard the telltale thumping and scraping immediately above her which told of a body being dropped and then tied securely. By the time the two young men came out again, the rest of the army was seated at the refectory tables as Jacob the handyman, Hope and Charity served the food that would have fed their children.

Into this strange, almost domestic, scene stepped the huge, masked figure of Ngoboi, spirit of the wild jungle.

At once the atmosphere changed. Anastasia had never felt anything like it. The monstrous apparition stared around the compound, the raffia costume covering his tall frame seeming to stir as though there was a wind, the lifeless visage of his painted ebony mask catching both light and shadow. Two helpers in masks and raffia skirts over shorts and T-shirts danced forward to help him. They carried matchets that looked even longer than the one the general had used to decapitate Sister Faith.

In the sinister silence, Ngoboi started to move around the pale bulk of the nun's corpse. Shuffling at first, then beginning to twirl and leap in a complicated ritual dance, the strange forest devil whirled around and around the fallen woman, moving to the relentless beat of a drum he could only hear in his head. His skirted helpers capered around him, also increasingly wildly, until suddenly he gestured, mid-bound. And they fell upon Sister Faith's corpse, their matchets rising and falling in practised sequence. Every eye in the place was riveted on the horrific performance, captivated by the terrible magic. As the matchets rose and fell above the butchered nun, first the general and then his army began to pound the tables with their fists, giving voice at last to the rhythm inside Ngoboi's ebony and raffia head.

Anastasia put her AK down, its barrel resting on the first wooden step, then she wriggled through the gap between that and the third step, using the pale bulk of Father Antoine's corpse and the depth of the shadow it cast. In an instant she was inside the chapel, standing with her back to the wall, the door-frame at her right shoulder, looking down to where Celine lay bound and helpless on the floor. Her eyes were wide and her lips were parted, panting with shock and horror. Three long steps took Anastasia to her side. She went down on one knee, pulling the Victorinox from her pocket and snapping out the longest blade. As she sawed at Celine's bonds, the girl gasped, almost whimpering with terror and tension as the thunderous pounding rose and rose outside.

It took only a moment to cut Celine free, then the pair of them were side by side pressed against the wall inside the door. There was no other way out. No windows. No weaknesses in the sturdy floor – raised above the depredations of the termites that might have weakened it. Anastasia gasped and gulped an explanation of how she had got here from the riverbank. The best way back by the look of things. Their only chance of survival. Their only hope of somehow getting help and coming back for the others. ‘I'll go first,' she concluded. ‘Then I'll signal the best moment for you to follow . . .' Celine nodded.

Anastasia oozed out through the door on her belly like a slug, falling into Father Antoine's shadow at once and slipping between the planks to cradle the AK like an old, dear friend. She looked along the barrel just in time to see Ngoboi straighten from a crouching position over Sister Faith. An acolyte at his shoulder straightened too. Ngoboi had no hands; the helper held Sister Faith's heart in one fist and what looked like her liver in the other. Held the bloody trophies high as Ngoboi took off again, twirling and dancing. The rest of his helpers fell on the corpse again and Anastasia realized they were literally butchering it – cutting it into joints like a carcass in a meat shop.

Sister Faith's organs were carried towards the general. Anastasia had very little doubt about what he was planning to do with them. Once again, every eye in the place was riveted to the gruesome spectacle. The pounding rose even higher, thundering through the jungle in a terrific tempest of sound. Anastasia thumped on the floorboards above her head, then moved the AK over out of Celine's way, for the ex-freedom fighter was much larger than her Russian would-be rescuer. And dressed in more bulky clothing of a much lighter shade.

Anastasia blinked and shook her head, trying to clear the sweat and black mud from her eyes. When she looked again, General Nlong, standing in Father Antoine's place of honour at the top table under the palm-roofed lean-to, was raising Sister Faith's heart to his lips. Everyone was watching him. The drumming was fading away as the pounding fists stilled in anticipation. Such was the horrific power of the ghastly moment that the general seemed to be illuminated by an instant of the brightest white light. It flickered as his strange sharp teeth bit down, and was gone. Anastasia realized she still had not switched the selector over to automatic. Another opportunity lost.

Celine came crawling out of the chapel door then. With some difficulty – and far too slowly for Anastasia's taste – she began to wriggle between the steps. A great sound went up. Not a cheer. Something too feral and brutal for that. The pounding started again, a hollow thundering taken up by the sky itself as the threatened storm finally arrived. But Ngoboi had stopped dancing. He was standing looking towards the chapel. Shouting. Shouting and gesturing. Fighting to make himself heard above the thunder. Fighting to make the others understand. Celine flopped in beside Anastasia.

‘GO!' screamed Anastasia and pulled the AK's trigger, simply aiming towards the centre of the compound where Ngoboi was still capering. The muzzle flash exploded at the same instant as the next great blaze of lightning; its flat report lost amid the faltering beating on the tables and the instant explosion of thunder overhead. Ngoboi staggered back a step and suddenly sat down.

Anastasia rolled away from the step, and, holding the AK by its hot muzzle, she wormed her way under the chapel as quickly as she could. The thunder echoed through the jungle and began to fade away. But at once its diminishing rumble was replaced by the arrival of the rain. She rolled out on to the upper slope of the bank and saw Celine beginning to pick herself up. ‘Go!' yelled Anastasia again, and side by side they pounded towards the river, slipping and sliding in the instantly disorientating deluge.

Blessedly, Ado had not been idle in their absence. She had pulled the little rowing boat down from its place beside the pier and – in a moment of bizarre inspiration – had secured it by tying it to the unconscious soldier. As the two women came sliding down the bank towards her, she flashed the Maglite once to guide them. ‘Get in!' shouted Anastasia as soon as she understood what Ado had done. And Ado obeyed. Celine stepped in next and Anastasia herself brought up the rear. Kneeling in the bow of the rowing boat, she turned back to try and untie the rope. But Ado had made too good a job. The knot securing the little vessel to the unconscious soldier was far too tight and complex for her trembling fingers to loosen. And the rain only made matters worse. She felt back along the straining rope only to find a tangled mare's nest beneath her knees.