The Secret Chamber (9 page)

‘So, what caused it? Was it something to do with that residue?’

‘Yes, I am certain of it,’ he replied, his voice dropping low. ‘Its called diethylhexyl and I only picked it up after running it through some of the solvents. As far as I know, there’s only one use for the stuff. It’s the plasticiser in C-4.’

Bear went to note down what he was saying, but her pen paused above the paper.

‘C-4?’ she said. ‘You mean, the explosive?’

‘That is exactly what I am saying and it’s not something you find that often in Africa. Too damn’ expensive for most people’s tastes.’ He paused, thinking out loud. ‘Listen, if you could find me a piece of the det cord or even a fragment of the actual trigger, I might be able tell you where it came from, otherwise it’s all just guesswork, I’m afraid. But one thing’s for certain, Bear, it’s very unlikely that anyone other than the military could have it.’

‘The military? You mean, the South African army?’

‘Not bloody likely!’ Cooper exclaimed, laughing slightly. ‘They can barely afford boots these days and certainly aren’t
going
to be using something as sophisticated as C-4 when some good old TNT would have done the trick.’

There was a pause and Bear could hear a faint scratching sound as Cooper raked his stubble.

‘Off the top of my head, there are only a handful of countries that would use C-4 in this quantity: the Americans obviously, the British and French, and also the Israelis. Then, of course, there’s India, Pakistan and China.’

‘But why would any of those countries deliberately blow up a coltan mine?’

‘You tell me. Maybe there’s something specific about your particular mine?’ Cooper suggested.

Bear’s gaze drifted down to the pile of accident reports in front of her.

‘
Putain
,’ she swore. ‘It’s not just that particular mine. I have eight accident reports from mines all over the world. The details aren’t the same for them all, but I think someone is trying to systematically take out coltan mines.’

‘But why?’

Bear thought for a moment, her eyes panning through the cross-current of scrawled notes and figures on her A4 pad. They rested on the figure twenty-three per cent and the arrow pointing down from it.

‘The explosions are reducing the coltan supply globally, right?’ she said, her voice flat as she ran through the logic. ‘So, what happens if you reduce supply? The price goes up.’

Cooper made a tutting noise as if scolding her.

‘Come on, Bear, what you’re suggesting sounds pretty unlikely. We’re not talking about small amounts of C-4 that
some
terrorist group can get their hands on. To blow up that many mines, you’d need access to proper military stores, and I don’t know about other countries, but in England they don’t exactly hand out the keys.’

Bear tapped her pen on the desk.

‘You said countries, right? Well, look at the only countries producing significant quantities of coltan that
haven’t
been affected. That’s the Congo and China. And somehow, I don’t think the boys in Kinshasa can afford kilos of C-4.’

‘Before you go gallivanting off on one of your hunches, have you stopped to suppose that maybe the Chinese are next on the list? Maybe next week you’ll have another accident report on your desk about one of their mines.’

‘Maybe,’ Bear conceded, one eyebrow rising. ‘But if they don’t, then we
know
the Chinese military are involved. The PLA have their fingers in all sorts of civilian organisations. Maybe they’re in bed with one of the major mining corps, trying to drive up the price.’

There was an exasperated sigh from the other end of the line.

‘You know, I’d forgotten how willing you are to jump to assumptions. But listen, Bear, whatever is going on, if it does have something to do with the Chinese, then take it from me, let it drop. I know that on your assignments you can be as tenacious as a damn’ pitbull, but even you don’t want anything to do with them.’

Bear nodded her head slowly, a gentle smile forming on her lips. Cooper was always looking out for her, even now when she was a grown woman with a job that took her to
some
of the most dangerous places on the planet. If only her father had been anything like as concerned.

‘Thanks so much for this, Coop. I owe you.’

‘You don’t owe me anything, except dinner with my girls when you’re next over here. They miss you like hell, you know. And, Bear, just once in your life, listen to an old bugger like me and stay out of trouble.’

‘I promise.
Merci beaucoup
,’ Bear said, her smile widening as she put down the phone. Glancing up at the wall clock, she quickly got up from her chair, shoving her purse and mobile phone back into her handbag. Slipping on her shoes, she was turning to leave when out of the corner of her eye she noticed an email appear in her inbox. She was about to ignore it, but then changed her mind and clicked it open. It was a message sent through the company’s secure intranet from one of their divisional branches in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Beatrice
,

We need some help here. Early this morning, we obtained a small quantity of a mineral I haven’t seen before. The vendors couldn’t tell me what it was either, only that it came out of a place north of here called the Ituri Forest. Anyway, Accounts aren’t going to like this as we had to pay a small fortune for it, but it was worth the price. I think this might be something totally new
.

We’ve been running tests all day and think it
might
be a concentrated derivative of tantalite. Can that be possible? What’s strange is that usually tantalite is found alongside
columbite
, i.e. coltan, but this seems to be something else. And I can’t find any references online
.

Can you get up to Goma in the next couple of days? I want to keep this quiet and stay clear of sending anything via courier. Get Kimberly to approve and let me know your arrival times
.

Pieter

Bear stared at the message, her body rigid. Someone had been systematically crippling coltan mines around the world and now this – a concentrated derivative of coltan discovered in the Congo. There had to be a connection.

Reading the message once again, she paused on the last sentence, feeling her stomach tighten. Goma. Why did it have to be Goma? That was the one place in the world she wanted to avoid – the place where her father was. And now, after all this time, it looked like she would be going back there.

GENERAL JIAN SAT
hunched over a vast wooden desk, his face almost touching its surface. A single shard of light shone down from one of the high windows, its luminescence making his cotton shirt glow a brilliant white. Above him, dust motes hung in the beam, suspended in the perfectly still air. The room had a sense of undisturbed calm, like a long-forgotten storeroom in the vaults of a museum.

In the centre of the table lay a large glass dome. The crystal was beautifully ornate, with a finely crafted handle on each side, shaped like the wings of an angel. Inside the dome were three large butterflies. They sat perfectly still, with their wings closed, revealing only the moss-coloured undersides of their bodies and their symmetrical ‘eye’ markings. Occasionally, one of them would slowly open its wings and a flash of iridescent blue would gleam in the light. The colour had a fierce metallic sheen which seemed to glow brighter as the wings parted.

Jian sat with the side of his head pressed against the table,
waiting
for the butterflies to reveal themselves. He didn’t blink for several minutes.

‘General. May I present Xie Zhaoguo?’

A man shuffled into the room, stopping only a few feet beyond the entrance. Slowly turning his head, he squinted, trying to adjust his eyes to the prevailing darkness. Shapes began to appear in the half-light and he soon realised that almost every inch of the walls was covered with wooden picture frames. There were hundreds of them, stretching high towards the domed ceiling.

‘It is a pleasure to meet you, General,’ Xie said, smiling awkwardly. There was no response from the man at the table. Only the back of Jian’s head was visible as he bent forward, rapt in concentration. Xie waited, the seconds passing slowly. He coughed politely. ‘And my apologies for disturbing your work.’

His voice was soft and light, with an air of sincerity which made Jian slowly turn away from the table. With the light directly behind him, his face remained in shadow, black eyes set deep in his skull.

‘It is always a pleasure to receive a member of the Guild,’ Jian intoned, his voice devoid of emotion.

Xie shuffled a little further towards the table. He moved slowly as if unsure he would be able to make the distance, and paused for a second just beyond the well of light. He waited, staring at Jian for several seconds before finally stepping forward to reveal a rounded face with dark rings visible under the eyes. Years of living with incurable insomnia had left Xie looking exhausted, with perpetually pallid, dry skin.
Despite
his relative youth, lines had already etched their way deep into the corners of his eyes, turning his expression into something approaching surprise.

‘Butterflies,’ he said, a faint smile appearing on his lips. ‘They call that entomology, right?’

Jian looked at the tired squint and dishevelled hair, wondering exactly how old Xie was. He could be anywhere from his mid-thirties to fifty.

‘That’s the generic term for the study of insects. For butterflies and moths, it is lepidopterology.’

‘Lepidopterology,’ Xie repeated, pronouncing the word slowly as though he were trying to commit it to memory. Jian watched him, detesting the idea of exchanging pleasantries with a Guild member. Usually, they got straight down to business, expecting him to account for every last yuan he’d spent on the satellite launches.

As Xie casually rested his hand on the table, Jian’s eyes followed the movement. He took in every detail; the little finger on his left hand curling upwards, the knuckles pressing against the wood, whitening the skin over the bone.

‘So what are these ones, then?’ Xie said, raising his other hand. His forefinger pressed against the domed glass, leaving a small smear on the perfectly clean surface. Jian’s eyes hardened.

‘They’re called Blue Morpho from South America,’ he answered, his voice softening despite himself. He found even the names of these rare butterflies simply intoxicating. They had arrived only this morning from Colombia and were going to be the pride of his collection. As he spoke, one of
the
butterflies slowly peeled back its wings in a shimmering, electric blue burst, refracting the white light from the ceiling like a mirage. The colour was rich and indulgent, broken only by delicate lace-like veins fanning out across the surface of the wing and blackening their tips.

‘Beautiful,’ Xie said, peering closer. As he said the word, Jian froze. He turned towards the butterflies, staring at them indulgently.

‘Yes,’ he breathed. ‘Quite beautiful.’

The butterfly closed its wings, the blue suddenly replaced by drab green.

‘They spend much of their time flying low through the canopy,’ Jian said, his head tilting to one side. ‘The contrasting colours make them look as if they appear, then disappear, with each beat of their wings, while the green perfectly camouflages them in the forest. It’s how they confuse predators.’

‘Is that right?’

‘Yes,’ Jian whispered. ‘That is right.’

With his left hand, he pushed back the top of the glass dome, sliding his right hand underneath. His fingers inched towards the nearest of the three butterflies.

‘But if you should so much as touch their wings, they would never be able to fly again. The natural oils on your fingers strip away the microscopic scales that produce the colour, and the wings are so finely balanced that if even a few scales are missing, it fatally disrupts their flight.’

As he spoke, Jian’s black eyes narrowed in concentration and the tip of his tongue poked out. The butterfly went to
move
off, then paused for a second longer. Jian’s hand skilfully slid out, pinching hold of its body between thumb and forefinger. The butterfly went rigid, then gradually its wings opened, quivering in reflex.

‘You must partially break the exoskeleton, but take care not to crush the thorax,’ Jian explained, his voice a hollow whisper. ‘It paralyses the muscles that articulate the wings.’

Xie could hear Jian’s breathing deepen. His usually blank expression had changed. There was a rare intensity to his eyes that glowed brighter as the life was gradually snuffed out of the butterfly.

‘Wouldn’t it be easier to use a killing jar?’ Xie asked. ‘Isn’t that how it’s normally done?’

‘Ethyl acetate is for novices,’ Jian replied, without looking up. ‘This way you get to feel it.’

He then drew the dead butterfly out from under the glass dome and, with meticulous care, moved it across to the open wooden frame ready beside him. There was a space with the butterfly’s genus and species already inscribed neatly beneath, but before laying it down Jian stared at the creature. After a long pause, he finally looked up.