The Outlaw (2 page)

That night the women of Mondoro wept bitterly.
Sheikh Ahmed has demanded almost all the animals in the village,
they said.
What will be left for our children and our children's children? A handful of old, sick goats and nothing more.

The men were adamant.
We are lucky,
they said,
that the sheikh warned us of the djinns' intention. It will hurt us to pay what the djinns demand, but we have no choice. We cannot risk a whole year's harvest. There is no such thing as an easy sacrifice.

The men prevailed, and the next morning Sheikh Ahmed Abdullai Keita went on his way with fifty sheep and fifty goats. As soon as he was out of sight of the villagers, he entrusted the animals to one of his servants, ordering him to take the animals to a faraway market and sell them for hard cash.

Crouching behind a nearby acacia bush, the Chameleon observed the whole exchange. He tutted quietly and swore that he would teach this charlatan a lesson.

I've
heard of people breaking out of prison," said Mr. Joyce, the headmaster, peering over his half-moon glasses, "but why the devil would you break
into
one?"

"Sorry," said Jake. "It won't happen again."

"Correct," said Mr. Joyce, and he looked at Jake as he might have looked at a fruit fly in his compost bin.

Don't expel me,
thought Jake.
Dad will go ape if I get expelled.

"Knight by name, nocturnal by nature, what? How long have you been creeping out at night, Knight?"

"I don't go every night, sir. I go when it's my turn."

"When it's your turn!" Mr. Joyce puffed out his cheeks. With his big stomach and sagging jowls, he looked like a beached walrus. "While this school sleeps, Jake Knight slips out and paints the town red, provided it's his turn."

Jake was not sure what painting the town red meant, but he was fairly certain that geothimble did not count. And unless you counted school rules as law, it wasn't illegal, either. Geothimble was simply about conjuring adventure out of the tiresome work-eat-sleep fabric of boarding-school life. Plus it was a cool excuse for Jake and his mates to use the GPS function on their phones.

"Tell me, Knight," said Mr. Joyce, "what is the motto of this school?"

Jake furrowed his brow. "Who dares wins?" he guessed.

"I believe that is the motto of the Special Air Service," said the headmaster. "Though judging by your escapade last night, you might be more suited to the SAS than to any educational establishment."

"Thank you, sir."

"It was not a compliment," said the headmaster sternly. "Besides, you don't have nearly enough discipline for the military. You seem to have a rule allergy."

Either that or I just crave adventure,
thought Jake.
What would Mr. Joyce say about Lawrence of Arabia or Captain Cook? Would he diagnose them with rule allergy?

"The school motto, Knight, is this:
Ad astra per aspera.
Through adversity to the stars."

"Yes, sir."

"Adversity, Knight. Trials. Difficulties. Have you ever experienced adversity?"

"I don't know, sir."

"How much did your phone cost?"

None of your business,
thought Jake. "Three hundred pounds, sir," he said.

"Three
hundred
pounds. And how old are you?"

"Fifteen, sir."

"
Fifteen!
It's no wonder you've gone off the rails, Knight. You've never known adversity."

Hadn't he? Here he was, cooped up in a stuffy English boarding school, while his parents and his sister lived their African adventure under an ever-smiling sun. He hadn't asked to go to boarding school. The decision, as always, had been made for him.

The headmaster was warming to the adversity theme. "Have you ever been hungry or thirsty, Knight? Have you ever been in need? Have you ever had to choose between food and medicine?"

"No, sir," said Jake.

"Have you ever faced up to a metaphorical giant armed with only a metaphorical sling and five small stones?"

"No, sir."

"Of course you haven't. You are the son of a British ambassador. You bask in entitlement. You click your fingers and the stars drop out of the sky into your lap. You lack for nothing."

Hang on,
thought Jake.
Griff may be like that, but not me. I could click my fingers all day and get nothing but blistered fingertips. It took me a whole summer of freelance web design to buy that phone. I earned it.

"Sorry, sir" was all he said.

The door opened and Jake's housemaster, Mr. Blake, shuffled in. Mr. Blake greeted the headmaster and nodded mournfully at Jake.

Don't tell me I'm expelled,
thought Jake again.

"I asked Mr. Blake to be present," said the headmaster, "because I have the unpleasant duty to inform you that you will be leaving us."

I'm dead,
thought Jake.

"I'm going to nip this geothimble in the bud," said Mr. Joyce, "and in doing so, I'm going to make an example of you, Knight. You have too much technology and too little moral fiber. As of this moment you are suspended."

Mr. Blake flinched and gazed at Jake with mournful eyes, as if his pupil had just been voted off some reality TV show.

"How long for, sir?"

"For the rest of term."

Jake blew out his cheeks. He was so relieved, he felt like leaping up onto the headmaster's desk and dancing a fandango. He would miss six weeks of school, but that was all.

"We will be informing your parents, of course," said the headmaster, "so that they can make the necessary arrangements. I imagine you will be flying out to Upper Volta to join them, what?"

Upper Volta?
Mr. Joyce was forty years out of date. The tiny West African country was no longer a French colony, and it was certainly no longer called Upper Volta. Today it was an independent state, Burkina Faso, home to sixteen million people including Mum, Dad, and his sister, Kirsty, called Kas. Jake looked out of the window and thought of Africa. He would not be sorry to see the back of Waltham College. Leeds was no place for an adventurer.

"I will phone your father later this morning," the headmaster was saying. "As for you, Knight, you will pack your belongings and leave Waltham College by sundown tomorrow. The secretary will email you any essential schoolwork in due course. Do your assignments, reform your character, and perhaps we will be seeing you in the summer term."

"Yes, sir." Jake stood up to go.

"Just one more thing, Knight." The headmaster gazed over his spectacles, small eyes shining in his flabby face. "How the devil did you climb a sheer wall more than twice your height?"

Mesdames
et messieurs,
we have arrived at Ouagadougou International Airport. The time is nine fifteen p.m., and the temperature is thirty-two degrees centigrade."

According to Jake's GPS, Ouagadougou was due south of Leeds. But the shared longitude was where any similarity ended. Here in Burkina Faso the sun shone from dawn till dusk and life was one long adventure.

Jake hid his phone in a sock and shoved it into a dark corner of his carryon bag. Wouldn't want to be charged import duty on something that wasn't even brand-new. He made his way off the plane in a heat-induced daze, down the steps two at a time, on and off a crowded shuttle bus, through the various checkpoints—passport, immunization papers, visa—around a dilapidated luggage carousel, past four nimble-fingered customs officers—
Don't
look in the sock
—and out into the airport forecourt. Taxi drivers pressed around him, eager for custom.

It felt good to be back in Burkina Faso, as if a heavy weight had been lifted off his shoulders. This was Jake's fifth visit to the country, and it looked like it would be the longest ever: half the spring term and all of the Easter holidays—ten whole weeks of freedom. Here he could truly be himself, seizing each day as it came with no thought for the next. Here his life would not be regulated by clanging bells and finger-wagging teachers. In Africa time did not matter. Everyone just went with the flow.

"You are two hours late!" bayed a no-nonsense English voice, and the gaggle of taxi drivers parted to let Jake's father through. He looked the same as usual: tall, angular, and harassed. Worry lines furrowed his brow, and his close-cropped beard glistened with sweat.

"Hello, Dad," said Jake.

"Hello indeed. What's this blinking geothimble?"

Jake had not expected his father to have calmed down much since they'd talked on the phone.

"It's basically a techno version of hunt the thimble," he said. "Gran taught me that."

"Did she indeed? And I suppose Gran also taught you how to be a ne 'er-do-well and how to break into prisons and how to get yourself booted out of one of the finest schools in England. Now follow me, quickly."

"Did you come on the motorcycle?" asked Jake, half running to keep up.

"Yes."

They weaved through the jostling crowd and out into a floodlit parking lot. There, gleaming on its stand, stood his father's BMW Dakar tour bike. With its sleek curves and broad handlebars, it looked more like a prize bull than a motorcycle.

They tied the bags to the back of the Dakar and got on. "Do you want to know what really infuriates me in all of this?" asked Mr. Knight, pulling on his leather gloves. "The thing that appalls me to the core of my being?"

"Go on," said Jake.

"It's the fact that I heard the news about your suspension from your sister a full two hours before Mr. Joyce phoned and four hours before you called. And how did Kirsty know you'd been suspended? Where had she happened upon this toothsome morsel of news?"

Oops,
thought Jake.

"Twitter!" exploded the ambassador, and he gave the start pedal a ferocious kick.

The motorcycle burst into life with a deep, throaty roar. Biking was Mr. Knight's hobby, although the word "hobby" hardly did justice to the fervent passion that he bestowed on his BMW Dakar.

"Have you made any more modifications to the bike?" asked Jake.

"Don't try to change the subject!" snapped Mr. Knight, pulling out onto the main road. "As a matter of fact, I have," he added. "You can't see it from where you are, but I've fitted a bash plate all along the underside, with a hidden chamber in it."

"What's in the hidden chamber?"

"You name it, it's in there. Tool kit, spare parts, ration pack, distress flares, glow sticks, first-aid kit, survival blanket, vitamin C, salt, water purification tablets, and six liters of water."

"Cool."

"Yes, the whole chamber is insulated to protect it from engine heat. I managed to find some desert rally tires, too. They're filled with race mousse instead of air, so they don't deflate even if they get punctured."

"Nice."

"Then I reinforced the subframe, doubled the size of the fuel tank, fitted stronger bearings in the gearbox, replaced the suspension shocks, and tuned the engine for maximum performance—listen!"

Ambassador Knight pulled out into the fast lane and gunned the throttle. Jake's knuckles whitened on the chrome handgrips, and he had to tense his neck to stop his head from flying off. There was no denying it: this bike was a demon.

As they shot through the dark streets of Ouagadougou, Jake looked around him. He had always been here during school holidays, and he had loved it every time. Engine oil, charcoal, and warm earth in his nostrils, Bob Marley in his ears, warm "Ouaga" air in his lungs. Magic.

They were out of the city center now and zooming hell-for-leather along Avenue Charles de Gaulle. Past the president's palace, with its whitewashed walls and its platoon of elite
gendarmes
always on patrol. Past the university, with its dingy bars and photocopy booths. Past the night market with its dimly lit fruit stalls and its cabinets of scrawny, ever-rotating chickens.

Just before the Save the Children office, Jake's father closed the throttle and veered deftly into a side street. This was Zone du Bois, the leafiest and richest district in Ouagadougou. A minute later they arrived on Embassy Row and pulled up outside the gates of the British embassy.

Saalu, the night guard, shook Jake's hand and smiled his gap-toothed smile. "
Bonsoir,
Jake," he said.

"
Ça va,
Saalu?" said Jake. Lots of African languages were spoken in Burkina Faso, but the official language was French. Jake was nearly fluent. French was his best subject at school, and he had practiced it with increasing success on each of his African visits.

The night guard used a mirror on a long stick to examine the underside of the bike, checking for explosive devices. Then he stepped aside and slid open the heavy metal gates. The BMW prowled up the gravel path and stopped under a thatched gazebo. On one side was the embassy, on the other the family home. Around the back were Mum's beehives and a small swimming pool. If bikes were Dad's passion, bees were Mum's. She was crazy about them.

Kas came running out and threw her arms around Jake. She was taller than he remembered, and was wearing black eye makeup.

"No!" cried Jake. "Don't tell me my little sis has gone emo."

"Hello," replied Kas. "How's life in the Bradford-Leeds criminal underworld?"

"Thirteen is too young for black eye makeup."

"Fifteen is too young for prison breaking."

"Where's Mum?"

"Round the back, messing with her precious bees. She'll be here in a minute."

"I can't believe you told Dad about me getting suspended."

"Seemed like the right thing to do. How come you managed to get into the prison but not out?"

"I tried loads of times, but there was this bear of an overhang on the inside of the wall. I couldn't get any grip at all."

"Bizarre. Anyone would think they had designed the prison to stop people from escaping." Kas did an elaborate curtsey before prattling on. "If I were you, I wouldn't play any geek-o-thimble here in Ouaga, Jake. Most of the walls are topped with broken glass."

Jake shrugged. "I'm not scared of a bit of glass," he said.