Tenth Man Down

ELEVEN

Think positive. That’s what I’ve always been taught. When you’re in trouble, think as hard as you can about possible options. For one thing, the process takes your mind off present hardships, and for another, it may produce a good idea. The trouble is, when you’re face-down on the steel floor of a truck being driven at lunatic speed along African bush roads in the dark, it isn’t easy to think of anything except immediate survival.

The first few minutes of that marathon journey were relatively gentle. The truck ran downhill for a minute or two and then on to a pontoon. We never saw the ferry, but we could tell from the movement we were afloat. The driver switched off his engine, and after a quiet five-minute crossing we thudded ashore against the far bank. That’s one thing the Boisset slipped up on, I thought: he’d said there was no means of crossing the river at Msisi. That was one of the factors that had encouraged us to believe it was a safe place to visit.

On the far side, all three of us were soon getting severe stick from the bumps in the road: we were repeatedly thrown in the air and smashed down on the deck, without having our hands free to steady ourselves or lessen the impacts. If I lifted my head, or tried to turn on one side, or spoke, I got a boot between the shoulderblades or on the backs of my knees. Oddly enough, as I realised after a while, Whinger was probably suffering the least of the three. He was so far gone with his fever, and so full of painkillers, that he didn’t seem to care much what anyone did to him.

As we were getting thrown into the truck, I’d hissed at Genesis, ‘Estimate the time.’ I got a clout in the ear with a rifle butt for my pains, but he registered my message: that to find out where we were being taken, we needed to guess the time the journey took. Gauging our speed was difficult: from the violence of the ride, it felt like seventy or eighty kilometres an hour, but I reckoned that because of the roughness of the road, we weren’t doing more than forty, if that, and would probably average twenty-five. At one point we went up a long hill, or over a range; the driver kept changing down, grinding upwards in low gear, and negotiating sharp bends. Then came a protracted descent, with the brakes squealing as we approached corners. From the way we were continually enveloped in a dust-cloud, I assumed another vehicle was travelling ahead of us as escort or leader.

After one almighty bump, which threw all our guards into the air, as well as us, I managed to get my head up far enough to catch a glimpse of the stars. There, ahead of us and slightly to the right, was the Southern Cross. As I expected, we were heading south-south-east.

Obviously we were in for a bad time, and I tried to prepare for it mentally. It would have helped to talk to Gen, but that was out of the question, as any attempt at communication put our escort into a frenzy of stamping.

Everything seemed desperately uncertain. Did the rebels know who we were? Did they know what we’d been doing? Did they know that we’d set up the attack on the mine? I suspected the woman was telling someone all about us. Ever since she’d come on the scene our own guys had been very guarded with her, but I was pretty sure some of Joss’s men had blabbed. Even they hadn’t known, or shouldn’t have known, that we were SAS. Our cover story was that we belonged to an infantry training school based at Hythe in Kent, and we’d stick to that as long as we could.

Not that details of regiments would make much difference if Inge had found out about our involvement at Gutu. If she had, we’d be accused of butchering the defenders. Altogether, I didn’t give much for our chances of survival. It wasn’t as if we knew any vital secrets the rebels would want to pry out of us, and we’d seen what a low value Kamangans put on human life, so to knock off a trio of Brits would be just a nice little evening’s entertainment for them. People with a greater sense of responsibility might have been inhibited by fear of the international repercussions that such murders might create, but not the Afundis.

Another big worry was the fate of the rest of our team. Virtually my last words to Pavarotti had been an agreement to RV with him on the high ground above the northern end of the Zebra Pans, whether or not they’d managed to free the mother wagon. The worst-case scenario was that they’d be unable to shift it, in which case they’d un-ship as many of the stores as they could carry, move them to the RV site, and booby-trap the truck. If the satcom came alive and they got through to Hereford, they’d ask the Kremlin to get a Herc moving in our direction and try to arrange for it to stage through some friendly capital like Harare. Then, when they found any flat area that would do as a makeshift strip, they could call it in to exfiltrate them.

Them. I was thinking ‘them’. I should have been thinking ‘us’. I had agreed with Pav that if Genesis and I hadn’t returned to the area of the pan by first light, he would follow up our tracks and come looking for us. Now that looked a seriously bad option, but there was nothing we could do to cancel it.

Our transport eventually pulled up after a journey which I estimated at nearly two hours. Gen guessed it was only ninety minutes. Splitting the difference, I reckoned we’d travelled fifty-something kilometres. With a squeal of brakes our driver came to a halt. There was a brief exchange of shouts, and a gate or gates scraped open. Then we went forward again into some sort of a compound. By then we’d already taken a fair hammering and were half-choked with dust. When our guards dragged Whinger out, I saw he’d got a bloody nose — no doubt from being too comatose to prevent having it banged on the steel deck.

I only got a brief glimpse of our surroundings, but they looked like a barracks. We’d debussed just inside the gates, which were made of weldmesh, with barbed wire on angle-irons at the top. The perimeter fence was the same. Inside, five or six identical single-storey buildings were ranged parallel to each other, about fifty metres apart, but it looked as though they were disused, because the windows were all dark; beyond them there was a big open space that could have been a parade ground, and higher buildings in the distance, up a slight incline. The whole place was poorly lit, with the occasional dim electric bulb slung from drooping wires. The lights kept flickering, as if the generator powering them was on the point of going down.

More shouting broke out among our guards, obviously an argument about where we were to be taken. In the middle of it I saw Inge limping off into the distance. As her fair head passed under one of the lights, I realised she must have been riding in the wagon that led our convoy. Again I wondered what the hell she was doing, mixed up with the rebel forces. Clearly she was in cahoots with them — but how, and why?

We found out soon enough. After a wait of maybe half an hour, during which we were held in a bare room that stank of piss, we were taken out again and hustled up the compound. Gen and I were frogmarched by guys holding either arm, with more in front and behind, all carrying AK47s, but Whinger was carried on a stretcher. I had a wild hope that he was shamming, and would suddenly leap to his feet, scattering our escort, but that was just a dream.

On the higher level we came to an area where the buildings were closer together and some of the windows were lit. Then, as we passed another building, a door opened, and out came a white man. Just for a second I saw him clearly — and he saw us. In fact he must have seen us better than I saw him, because to me he was little more than an outline, with the light coming from behind him and falling in our direction. Our escorts moved sharply up beside us, trying to block his view, but there was no doubt that he’d got eyes on us. He was only ten or twelve metres off, and he half raised his right hand, as if in surprise or greeting. I got the impression of a big, middle-aged guy in a short-sleeved shirt, and opened my mouth to shout something, but before I could utter a syllable I was knocked sideways by a stunning blow on the jaw. I almost went down, and by the time I was in control again, the guy had vanished.

Seconds later, we were in a ramshackle lecture room, with a low stage and metal chairs set out in rows facing it. A few tattered charts and diagrams hung on the dirty white walls, but I was too confused and preoccupied to take in what they were about. On the stage, already seated beside a plain trestle table, was the German. Behind the table a second chair, a more elaborate one, with arms, stood waiting, as if for the judge who would take charge of the proceedings.

The moment we appeared Inge began cracking out orders in some native language, and her guys jumped to it, scraping the other chairs away across the bare concrete floor until three were left lined up in the middle of the room. Gen and I were pushed down onto two of them, with our bound arms and hands forced behind their backs. Whinger was dumped on the middle chair and similarly trussed, rolling to right and left. With his head lolling on his chest, he was snorting through his bloody nose. The gauze had long since come off his face, and he looked a right mess, the skin hanging in filthy bulges. I could hardly bear to look at him. But suddenly, to my amazement, he came round, straightened up, and said loudly, ‘Where the fuck are we?’

I just had time to say, ‘In the shit,’ before the woman barked, ‘No talking! Only answers!’

I had to fight down an impulse to jump up and rip out her throat. But I stopped myself doing anything at all, because I knew if I moved or spoke out of turn I’d only get another clout over the ear. Always be subservient during interrogation — that’s what I’d been taught. Never get the questioners’ backs up unnecessarily.

For a few moments there was silence. The atmosphere was like in a classroom when kids are waiting for the teacher to arrive — everyone teed up with expectancy, laced with a dose of fear. After a bit, people began to talk in quick whispers. Then a door at the back of the stage opened, and everyone abruptly went quiet again.

In strode a tall, heavily built man, bare-headed, dressed in plain, oatmeal-coloured uniform. The people were obviously in awe of him, and his sheer size gave him a commanding presence, but there was something about him that didn’t add up. Although his features were definitely negroid, his skin was no darker than milky coffee, and his short, crinkly hair was a peculiar dark yellow.

At his entry the guards alongside us came more or less to attention and stood rigidly upright. Inge hauled herself to her feet and gave a peculiar bob forward, half bow, half curtsey. Jesus, I thought, she’s doing him obeisance — and I knew he must be the infamous General Muende. He was the right age, early thirties, and his half-Scottish background would account for his strange colour. His movements were peculiar, too: he rolled, rather than walked, as though he had problems with his balance. In his right hand he was carrying a dark-green, army-type water-bottle, which he put down clumsily on the table, and when he sat in the chair he hit it heavily, then slumped forward on his elbows. Jesus, I thought, the guy’s pissed out of his mind.

Behind him came two big, square-arsed lads wearing DPM fatigues and slung about with weapons, who stood to one side, slightly behind him, followed by a single white. Was this the guy who’d raised a hand as we’d gone past? No, that fellow had had what I’d call a normal figure. This one was squat and broad, and had a bullet head with it. Was he one of the three who’d escaped from the mine? Possibly. Whovever he was, all he did was lurk in the background, glaring at us.

My mind was spinning. The German was in league with this drunken, half-caste creature of a general. What did we know about him? What else had Bakunda told us, besides his age and his part-Scottish descent? More came back to me from our evening of rum-drinking round the fire: Gus Muende had been to West Point, in the States; he was the arsehole of the Afundi tribe; he was a friend of Gadaffi; he’d been fêted as a star guest in Libya. He was dressed like Gadaffi, anyway, in a tunic with a turned-up collar and general’s insignia on the epaulettes, and he carried a pistol in a holster on his belt.

‘Soldiers of Her Majesty,’ said the arsehole. ‘What are you doing in Free Kamanga?’

His voice was hoarse, and too high for his size, his accent definitely American. He sounded excited, or angry, or both.

‘We’re a training team, sir,’ I said.

‘A training team? Is that right?’ He turned to the woman, who spoke briefly in dialect. Then he went, ‘Uh huh,’ and faced us again. He seemed to be having difficulty summoning words and collecting himself to speak. ‘Mercenaries, I suppose.’

‘No, sir. We’re here on an official tour, invited by the Government of Kamanga.’

‘The Government of Kamanga!’ Muende shouted. ‘I might have known. That neo-colonialist bum Bakunda has been licking the ass of the British Government again.’ He reached for his bottle, unscrewed the cap and held the neck to his mouth. Whatever it was he drank, it made him gasp and blink. Then he said, very loud, ‘What’s the goddamn difference, anyway? You’re being paid to kill people, just like if you were mercenaries.’

‘No, sir. We’re not being paid to kill anyone. We’re serving members of the British army,’ I said, evenly. ‘We were sent here by the British Government.’

‘I don’t care who in hell you are!’ Muende was getting more worked up by the minute, shouting louder and louder. ‘You ought to be shot. You’ve been killing our people. Killing an Afundi is a capital offence.’

I was going to deny that we’d killed anybody, but I held off, because I didn’t want to provoke him. What we needed to do was soothe him down, flatter his ego. Subservience, I told myself again.

Suddenly, his manner changed. His tone became friendly, conversational. ‘But look,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to shoot you. Tell me what you think of Kamanga.’

I was taken aback. What was he trying to do now? Make some friendly overture? I had to think fast. Better not tell him it’s the arsehole of Africa. ‘You have tremendous potential, sir,’ I said.

‘That’s right. We got the resources. We just need to develop them. What we don’t need is these sonofabitches in the north messing us up.’

‘I’m not up in Kamangan politics.’ I tried to sound naïve. ‘I don’t know what the war’s about. What’s wrong with the north?’

‘What’s wrong with it?’ His voice rose again. ‘What’s right with it? That crazy bum Bakunda, hiring people like you to fight for him.’

‘We’re training,’ I repeated. ‘Not fighting.’ I should have left it at that, but I made a bad mistake by adding, ‘And anyway, you hire whites to fight for you.’

‘I do not. That’s an insult.’

‘Listen,’ I went, growing reckless. ‘We’ve seen them. And who’s that guy behind you?’

Muende glanced round at the heavy in the background, glared at me, and ostentatiously drew his pistol. I thought he was going to shoot all three of us there and then, but he laid the weapon on the table in front of him.

Then, with a kind of snarl, he said, ‘You’re lucky.’

‘How’s that?’

‘We need to do a deal.’

‘Sorry, I’m not with you.’

‘Your lives in exchange for the stone.’

‘What stone?’

‘What stone?’ He echoed my words with a tenor shout and crashed his fist on the table. ‘See here, Englishman! I’m not taking any shit from you!’

Still I was determined not to provoke the bastard, so I said nothing. When he glowered at me, I lowered my eyes submissively. The bare bulbs hanging from the roof flickered down very faint, then came back bright again. Then, into the silence, Whinger mumbled, all too audibly, ‘Tell him he’s a cunt, from me.’

I saw Muende’s bloodshot eyeballs bulge. With shaking hands he unscrewed the stopper of his water-bottle again and raised it to his mouth. Genesis, obviously feeling the tension needed to be lowered, said mildly, ‘General, if you tell us what you’re on about, we may be able to help.’

‘You better,’ he said. ‘Have you got families?’

‘Families?’ I was taken aback. ‘No. None of us.’ In a kind of lightning flash I saw Tim’s face looking back at me from the door of the departure lounge at Birmingham airport, the last time I sent him back to Belfast. But I thought it better to pretend we were all single.

‘Just as well,’ said Muende, with heavy menace. ‘But look, all you need do, to get out of here alive, is say what you did with it.’

I felt panic threatening. The guy was making no sense, and I reckoned his patience would soon run out. I should have gone on being obsequious, but instead I said sharply, ‘Come on! This is ridiculous. Stop pissing about and tell us what you want.’

Muende gave an upward flick with his right hand. A second later a crashing blow caught me on the left cheekbone and sent me lurching against Whinger. For a few seconds the light bulbs spun and swam.

‘You went to the airplane!’ Muende shouted. ‘Do you deny that?’

‘What airplane?’

‘The Beechcraft. When it crashed.’

‘Of course. Yes. I mean, no.’

‘Yes or no? Were you there or not?’

‘Of course I was there.’

‘Why deny it, then?’

‘That’s what I meant. I don’t deny it. My colleague was with me. Both of us were there together. That’s where he got burned. He nearly killed himself rescuing this bloody woman.’

That brought a signal from her, and another clout. I felt a trickle of blood run down my temple.

Muende shouted, ‘Where is it, then?’

‘What?’

‘The diamond!’

At that moment the lights went out. Instantly there was a stir all round us. Guards moved in and gripped us by arms and shoulders, as if we might try to do a runner in the darkness. Outside the hut distant shouting started up. Inside, the woman barked out an order. I heard one man detach himself from our group, hurry to the door, feel for the handle and let himself out. Under cover of the commotion, I whispered to Gen, ‘The guy’s pissed, and getting worse.’

‘Don’t wind him up any more,’ he answered. ‘He’s right on the edge. Highly dangerous.’

Once again, Whinger muttered, ‘Tell him he’s a cunt.’

Luckily his words were muffled by the general hubbub, but out of the darkness, the woman shouted, ‘No speech without questions!’

So, Muende as well as Joss now — both having a seizure because neither knew the whereabouts of the diamond the old Belgian had told us about in his coded note. It had obviously been somewhere on the crashed plane, otherwise why was the general — and Ingeborg Braun, for that matter — so manically concerned about it?

For the moment I kept quiet, thinking furiously. Then the outer door opened again, and a man came in carrying an oil lamp, which he stood on the corner of the table. Knock it off, I thought. Set the place on fire. Make them all scatter. I measured the distance. The lamp was about eight feet from me. Tethered as I was, I’d never make it. But at least, with the generator down, they couldn’t start giving us electric shocks.

In the faint lamplight beads of sweat were shining as they trickled down Muende’s plump jowls.

‘General,’ I said. ‘Now I know what you’re talking about. The big diamond found in the mine at Gutu.’

‘So!’ Inge gave a yell of triumph. ‘I told you! This man knows. He is all the time lying. He knows absolutely.’

‘Where is it?’ Muende repeated.

‘I haven’t a clue. I’ve never seen it.’

‘You took it from the plane.’

‘I never got near the plane. The bloody thing was on fire.’

‘Nein!’ shouted Inge. ‘It was this one, the middle one! The sick one!’ In her excitement she broke into German. ‘Er war in dem Flugzeug!’ Seeing Muende hadn’t understood her, she translated, ‘He was inside of the plane.’

‘Search my kit,’ said Whinger, thickly. ‘That’s what you were doing in the camp, anyway. Search it again. Search the vehicles. You’ll find fuck all, because it isn’t there.’

‘No, of course!’ she cried. ‘You have hidden it in the bush. Tell me where! Tell!’

She shouted an order at the guards. Two of them started to beat Whinger about the head with rifle butts, one from either side, with sickening thuds. He made no sound as his head was hit to and fro like a football.

‘Stop!’ I roared. ‘You fucking bitch! Tell them to leave him alone!’

I’d have done better to keep quiet. A second later, Inge was on her feet, limping down off the stage, coming at Whinger, jabbing at his face with her nails.

‘See!’ she screeched. ‘He is burned! Because he was inside! He knows the diamond, where it is. He has hidden it in a special place.’

The next thing I knew, she’d started pulling patches of dead or dying skin away from Whinger’s cheek. ‘Tell!’ she shouted. ‘Tell!’

Doped though he was, Whinger gave a roar and rocked away from her, knocking Genesis over sideways.

‘This is the one who knows!’ she cried, turning back to Muende. ‘Quite sure! He tells us! I make him tell us!’ With her long nails she peeled off another flap of skin and threw it towards the side of the hut. Again Whinger bellowed like a wounded bull.

That was too much. With all my strength I lunged forward and sideways. The chair I was tied to brought me down almost in my own length, but I had enough forward impetus to head-butt the woman in the flank and put her flat on the deck. Immediately a rush of guards swarmed over me, kicking and stamping at my head and body. By the time they hauled me upright again I was bleeding freely from nose and scalp. One trickle ran down the middle of my forehead into both eyes, blurring my vision.

I could see enough to know that Muende was on his feet, drinking again. He held the bottle high for several seconds, gulping. Then he smacked it down on the table and lurched towards us. Inge was also on her feet, bent and gasping, holding her ribs, white in the face. I reckoned she was coming for me, but she was confused, and thought it was Whinger who’d attacked her. She screamed at him from close-up, but this time in Afundi, or whatever African language she was using. Then she turned and screamed at Muende.

The noise and the drink seemed to get to him, and he too suddenly began yelling orders. The whole room erupted into movement, a nightmare scrummage. Two or three men cut Whinger free from his chair, picked him up bodily and carried him to the stage, where they laid him flat on his back on the table and held him down. The poor bugger made no effort to resist: he hardly knew what was happening. Muende lurched round the far side of the table, bent over the prostrate figure until his face was nearly touching Whinger’s chest, and flung his arms out, sweeping them round and back as if swimming breaststroke. Three times he did it, giving loud grunts: ‘Uh! Uh! Uh!’ Then he stepped back and his place was taken by another man brandishing a machete. Its curved blade gleamed in the lamplight as he raised it aloft. I thought he was going to whack Whinger’s head off with one downward sweep, so I gave an almighty roar and tried to surge upright again. My reward was a stunning blow on the back of the neck, a rabbit punch delivered with the butt of a rifle, which put me down and out for several seconds.

Perhaps it was a mercy in disguise. When I came round on the deck, the whole room was buzzing with noise. Our guards were chattering with excitement. Through a forest of legs I could see half the platform and part of the table. Inge was standing over it with her mouth gaping in a wolf-like grin of triumph, holding out a hand. A black hand passed her a long, thin strip of what looked like dark meat, shiny and dripping. She took it between finger and thumb and handed it to Muende, who raised it high over his head and lowered it into his mouth.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. My eyes were still cloudy with blood. I blinked again and again, trying to clear them. The result was that I made out a tangle of grey, slippery intestines sliding down over the side of the table, reaching to the floor. The coils were moving, twitching. My gorge rose and my stomach heaved up into my mouth, but there was nothing to come up except bile. I lay gasping for breath. God almighty. What I’d seen was Whinger’s guts. They’d disembowelled him. Did they think he’d swallowed the diamond and was hiding it in his gut? No. Jesus Christ! They were eating his liver. Was he still alive? I hadn’t heard him yell out. Had they cut his throat? Or coshed him?

It’s a terrible thing to pray that your oldest, closest mate is dead. But I did then. I wished him dead with all my might so that he wouldn’t suffer any more. I told myself that he was going to die anyway, from his burns. I closed my eyes and felt sweat break out all over my upper body. Then I started to shudder uncontrollably. One of the blacks gave me a couple of kicks, but I couldn’t stop shaking.

It was anger that came to my rescue, sheer rage at what these people had done. As the shudders subsided I seemed to go cold with fury and the desire for revenge. At the first opportunity I got, I was going to kill this man. The woman, too. The woman first. In a flash my hatred of her had become all-consuming. Whether I shot her full of holes or blew her into vapour, I’d make fucking certain she never saw Windhoek again.

My head, neck and jaw were aching, but my mind had cleared. From what Muende had said, the big diamond must have been on board the Beechcraft. How in hell had it got there? The answer came in a flash: the woman and her South African escorts had picked it up from the mine. That’s what they’d been doing. That’s where they’d just come from when we first saw them. That would account for the course the aircraft had been on. They’d just cleared the ridge, coming away from the river, and were heading west. Her spiel about flying from Mozambique had been a load of bollocks. She was Muende’s courier. On his behalf, with his instructions, she’d been trying to smuggle the stone out of Kamanga, away to Namibia or South Africa.

Would it have survived the crash? Yes. Diamond is one of the hardest stones on earth, well able to withstand fire. In any case, the fiercest blaze had been in the wings, around the fuel tanks, and if the stone had been stowed in the cabin, or the luggage compartment in the nose-cone, it would have escaped the hottest flames.

Lying on the floor, I shut my eyes, and tried to shut my ears to the repulsive gurgling, slurping noises coming from the stage. So much for an education at West Point. Whatever it had taught Muende, it hadn’t stopped him being a cannibal.

I needed a plan. The start of it was simple enough. Without my help, he and his sidekick might search for weeks before they found the wreck. Only I could locate it quickly. If I offered to lead them to the site, they’d have to accept — and somehow, on the way, I’d call in the rest of the lads to knock them off.

I was racking my brain to think how we could make contact when a sudden recollection drove into my plan like a dagger: my GPS. The thieving soldier bastards at the convent had nicked it. And in it, marked as Waypoint Seven, was the precise location of the crash. Anyone who realised that Waypoint Seven was the vital spot, and understood how the device worked, could make his way directly to the place. The GPS would give him bearing and distance to target — a dead giveaway.

They had Whinger’s GPS as well. Or did they? No — we’d left it behind with the rest of his kit in the mother wagon. And anyway, I was pretty certain he’d never punched in a waypoint for the plane; he’d been too busy trying to come to terms with his burns. The only other GPS with the coordinates in it was Mart’s. Who’d got mine by now? With any luck, some dickhead of a black squaddie, who would run the batteries down by trying to figure out how it worked, and have no means of recharging them.

For a few moments, chasing possibilities in my mind, I’d managed to attain a state of more or less suspended animation. I was brought back to reality by scraping, bumping noises. By squinting sideways I could see that men were dragging Whinger’s body out through the door. Instinct screamed at me to go after it, take possession of it, to hold it, keep it. Reason told me none of that was possible. Reason said the only way Geordie and Genesis could get out of this alive would be to appear to cooperate.

Gen! Where the hell was he? From my position on the floor, I couldn’t see him. He’d done nothing to provoke Muende, but I hadn’t heard a sound from him, and I was afraid they’d knackered him as well. At last I was dragged upright and dumped back on a chair, arms down over the back once again. There was Gen, right beside me, where he’d always been. He’d had a good beating, too. Except where it was blooded, his face was sheet-white and had a stricken look, as if it had been frozen by cold. But his lips were moving. Was he muttering out of sheer terror, or was he saying a silent prayer?

Muende was back in his chair, wiping his chin with a handkerchief. There was blood down the front of his swish tunic, but he looked more in control than before, as if the act of eating had left him calmer. Inge, the bitch, was also back in her seat. The sight of her sent a new current of anger racing through me, but I steeled myself to remain cool, to negotiate rather than argue, to ignore the filthy deed they’d just done.

Muende cleared his throat loudly, and said, ‘Now, the diamond was in the plane.’

‘Please,’ I begged. ‘You have to believe me. We never saw it.’

I was talking with a lisp, due to the fact that my lower lip was swollen and split on the left side.

‘You must explain,’ I went on, obsequiously. ‘We don’t know what happened. Did your friend here collect the diamond from the mine at Gutu to take it out of the country?’

The woman started as if she’d been stung in the arse by a scorpion, and said, ‘Who has told you that?’

‘Nobody. I put two and two together.’ When she didn’t answer, I went on: ‘If you’d told us to start with, it would have saved all this.’

‘Then the diamond is where?’

‘I don’t know. I told you, we never saw it.’

‘But you went to the aircraft.’

‘Yes. But I never got into it. The only one who did was Whinger. And now you’ve killed him, he can’t tell you anything.’ I nodded in the direction his body had disappeared. ‘We didn’t have time to search the plane. It was far too dangerous. Fuel was leaking everywhere. We knew there was going to be an explosion any second. It was touch and go. Getting you out was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do.’

She took that with a stony face. She didn’t know whether or not to believe me. I could have been lying to cover myself. On the other hand, she’d seen for herself that Whinger had suffered horrific burns. To put the ball in her court, I asked, ‘Where was the diamond?’

‘In the front. A special compartment.’

‘The nose-cone?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I can tell you this much. After the crash that part of the aircraft was crumpled but intact. I expect it’s still inside. How big was it?’

She glanced at Muende before answering. ‘Like this. Like a ball for golf.’ She held her finger and thumb more than an inch apart.

‘In a special container?’

‘Yes. A box of steel.’

Muende had been listening intently. Now he asked her something in dialect, and she translated, ‘You can find the aircraft again?’

‘I think so.’ I didn’t want to sound too confident. ‘It should be possible, provided we can get into the right area, north of the river.’

‘You can drive to it with the car?’

‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘The ground’s too rough. The site’s on the side of a mountain, all rocks and small cliffs. We’ll have to walk the last few kilometres.’

Again she conferred with Muende.

To make the journey sound more difficult, I said, ‘It would be best if we could go back to Gutu and retrace our route from there.’

‘That is not possible. Government forces have captured the mine.’

Acting dumb, I shrugged my shoulders, and said, ‘In that case, I don’t know.’

Didn’t the bitch realise where she’d been, after all? Or was she playing some deep game?

‘Well,’ I went. ‘If you can get me back into the area, I’ll do my best to find it.’ Apparently as an afterthought, I added, ‘Of course, if the general has a helicopter, that would make it easier.’

‘He has one, but it is broken. Now, show us.’

She spoke to one of the bodyguards, who stepped forward and unfolded a map, laying it out on the table. Two guards hoisted me up, chair and all, and carried me forward.

In the dim lamplight the map was hard to read, and with my hands tied behind me I couldn’t indicate, so I had to operate by remote control. When Inge put the tip of a pencil on Gutu, all I could say was, ‘Up. Up. Now, left. More. Up again.’ Soon she was pointing to an area well north of where the Beechcraft had gone in, on the wrong range of hills.

‘Now you must be getting close,’ I told her. ‘All right, on that slope there. I should say that’s about it.’

‘So,’ she went, ‘we work out a route.’

‘Keep the party small,’ I warned her. ‘We’ll be in enemy territory and we don’t want to attract attention.’

‘Of course,’ she agreed.

Muende, who seemed to have relapsed into a stupor, roused himself, and said, ‘How do we know you’re telling the truth?’

‘You don’t,’ I said. ‘But you will when we get to the plane. The diamond must still be there.’

‘Your friend.’ Muende jerked a hand towards Genesis. ‘Why doesn’t he talk?’

‘He wasn’t at the plane. He never saw it on the deck, because he didn’t get anywhere near it. You can keep him out of this.’

I looked at Gen and saw he was about to say something, but I cut him off by grunting, ‘Cool it.’ If he started telling the general he’d sinned in the eyes of God and man, he could easily crack off another but of thuggery.

Once again, Inge spoke to Muende in dialect. Then she faced us, and said, ‘So, at first lighting tomorrow, we go. All together to find the diamond.’

‘Suits me,’ I went. ‘And if we find it? What then?’

‘You will be free. But tonight you will remain prisoner.’

‘We need some water,’ I told her. ‘Both of us.’

‘That can be arranged.’

With that, we were cut away from our chairs and dragged off, leaving the boss figure slumped at his table. The electricity system was still down, and only a few fires and lamps flickered round the compound in the warm darkness. By then I realised I’d pissed myself during the beating: my left trouser leg and sock were soaked.

The next we knew, we were in a proper lock-up. One guy stood with the barrel of a rifle in the small of my back while two others cut away the ropes round my arms and replaced them with metal handcuffs, which bit into my wrists. Then, with my arms still behind me, they made the cuffs fast with a short length of chain to a shackle mounted in the wall. Somebody else fixed Gen up the same, to the next shackle, a couple of metres away.

Our gaolers went out, but they didn’t lock the door, and I felt sure they’d be back in a moment. Sure enough, in came the guy who’d escorted me, carrying a mug or cup.

‘You want drink?’ he said, and shoved the mug hard into my face, so that the metal rim grated across my front teeth. Being thirsty as hell, I took a sip. It was fresh piss, with a hot, acid stink. I went phworrrh! and spat out the little I’d taken in.

‘Don’t touch it, Gen,’ I went.

The guy didn’t even offer the mug again. He didn’t speak any more. He just threw the contents into my face, went out, and rattled some locks into place behind him.

Gen gave him a minute to get clear, then said quietly, ‘How are you doing, Geordie?’

‘Fucking awful,’ I answered. ‘How about you?’

‘Not great. My ribs are in a mess. I’ve shat myself, too. Are you hurt much?’

‘I’m hurt, but I think it’s only bruises. Fucking stiff neck, too.’

‘Can you sit on the floor?’

‘Not a chance,’ I told him. ‘Can’t reach.’

‘Me neither. Kneel?’

‘Just.’

‘Ditto. We’re in for a long night.’

We’d hardly got a glimpse of our surroundings, and now we were in almost total darkness. The only glimmer of light came in through a ventilation space left between the top of the walls and the roof, high above our heads. The opening was a perfect entrance and exit for mozzies, which were soon whining in to attack us. I could feel that the wall was made of bare concrete blocks, and by scraping with my boot I could tell that the floor was earth, but that was all we knew.

Soon I realised we weren’t alone. Rustling noises started up on the other side of the room, and at first I thought they were being made by another prisoner, maybe as his last gasp from thirst and hunger. Then I heard some squeaks as well, and I said, ‘Fucking rats!’

‘Yeah,’ Gen went. ‘I just had one run over my foot.’

By their noise, the rodents were everywhere — not only at floor level, but around the roof as well. For some time we were both silent, busy with our own thoughts. Try as I might to banish the image, my mind kept returning to the horrific sight of Whinger’s innards sliding down in coils over the side of the table. After a bit, I said, ‘Gen, did you see how they killed him?’

‘The guy with the machete slit his belly open and carved out the liver. That was what killed him. Loss of blood.’

‘Thank God I was on the deck when that was happening. I never saw it. I never heard him shout, either.’

‘I don’t think he made a sound. He must have been unconscious already. They’d given him some battering. I don’t reckon he felt a thing.’

‘Gen, these people are fucking animals.’

‘No, Geordie. They’re lower than animals. Animals don’t behave like that.’

‘Fair enough,’ I agreed. ‘But if I get the slightest chance, am I going to level the score!’

‘“Life for life,”’ Genesis intoned in his singsong Welsh, ‘“eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.”’

‘Who said that?’

‘It was God, giving the law to Moses in the Book of Exodus.’

‘That’s what it’s going to be for me.’

‘But that was the Old Testament, Geordie. Jesus said the opposite. He said, “Turn the other cheek.”’

‘That can’t apply to someone who did what this guy did.’

‘Geordie, that man’s mad. He was also pissed out of his mind.’

‘I know. But he’s got a brain. He’s been expensively educated. That makes him all the more dangerous. Gen, it’s going to be him or us.’

‘He said if they find the diamond, we’ll be free to go.’

‘Bollocks. Muende knows we saw him kill Whinger. If we take him to the plane and he gets his diamond, the first thing he’ll do is top us, to make sure we don’t talk.’

‘What’s your plan, then?’

‘We’ll have to go with them. Make as if we’re playing along. Get them relaxed. Maybe we’ll become confused, won’t be able to find the site. We’ll play for time by taking them to the wrong area. The longer the trek, the twitchier they’ll get. They won’t tab far, either of them. The bitch is lame, and he’s fat as a pig.’ I stopped, then added, ‘Of course, everything will be different if they get their hands on my GPS. If they did that, and got the thing to work, they might put two and two together and dispense with our services altogether.’

‘What if we do take them to the plane?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe we bounce one of the guards, grab a weapon, drop them. It depends what route they take. We might even meet the rest of our own guys, coming the other way.’

Gen didn’t answer immediately. But presently, he said, ‘I wonder how they’re doing.’

‘So do I. My gut feeling is they’ve got the wagon free. I just hope to hell they don’t go looking for us around the convent in the morning.’ Again there was a silence. Then Gen asked, ‘What’s the relationship between the two?’

‘Muende and the German? God knows. They can’t be shagging. Or can they?’

‘Anything goes,’ said Gen. ‘You never know. Maybe she’s after the diamond for herself. Maybe, if she’d managed to get it out of the country, she’d have just pissed off over the horizon.’

What with thirst, headache, exhaustion, aching arms and wrists, mozzies and rats, it was hard to follow any train of thought for long. But my mind kept going back to Whinger. I couldn’t stop thinking of how the machete must have sliced through his stomach muscles. Again and again I saw those intestines, still alive, slipping down over the side of the table and landing in coils on the floor.

Another worry began to needle me. ‘Gen,’ I said. ‘Was it my fault that he got killed?’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘If I hadn’t butted the woman… if I hadn’t created that disturbance.’

‘No, no, Geordie. Forget that. It was going to happen sooner or later. The woman was gunning for Whinger all along.’

‘You’re right there. And now I’ve thought of something else.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Yesterday, in camp, she went trying to search Whinger’s kit while he was asleep. He woke up to find her standing over him. She must have convinced herself he had the bloody diamond all along.’

In the next silence I heard a faint scurrying noise as a rat moved across the floor towards me. I raised my right foot into the air, standing on one leg, in the hope that I could crack down on the animal if it came right close. A moment later I felt it touch the toe of my left boot. I stamped, but only half connected; the target gave a squeal and scuttled away.

‘What was that?

‘Fucking rat.’

‘They’re everywhere.’

Again we endured a few minutes’ silence.

‘Gen?’

‘Hello.’

‘I’m thinking about the delay when we arrived here.’

‘What about it?’

‘The woman must have been briefing Mr Arsehole on who we were and what we’d been doing. Obviously she’d been in cahoots with him before. But it was only when she got to the convent that she could make contact with him. That was her first chance since the crash.’

‘Sounds about right. What’s her role, though? What’s their relationship?’

‘You tell me. I reckon she’s been acting as a courier, taking diamonds out. Maybe she’s a dealer. When she came for the big stone, the guys in the plane were just pilot and escort. The stuff about big-game surveys was a load of crap. Ditto the story about coming from Mozambique. I reckon they nipped in from Namibia early that morning and were on their way back out.’

Genesis gave a muffled curse as he shifted position, trying to ease his arms. ‘A stone that size has got to be worth millions.’

‘Hundreds of millions. That’s what Boisset said — one of those would finance a whole war.’

We both went quiet again for a while. My ribs were aching all down my left side. I’d got quite a few kicks there when I was on the deck. The cuts on my head had stopped bleeding, but my left eye was puffed and swollen, my mouth the same. The back of my neck felt rigid, swollen from the blow that had knocked me down.

After a while, I said, ‘What have they done with his body?’

‘They won’t waste energy burying him. That’s for sure.’ For once Genesis allowed a cynical edge to sharpen his voice. ‘If this place is on a river, they’ll have thrown him in by now.’

‘It’ll be the same for us if they top us in the open. The crocs or the hyenas.’

Another silence. I didn’t want to ask Gen what he thought the time was. The answer might be too depressing. We probably hadn’t been in the nick for more than an hour; we must have about seven or eight hours to endure till first light.

Soon my mind was going down another alley. ‘I’m thinking about the old magician, Gen.’

‘The witch doctor?’

‘Right. We’ve had another white death. Whinger makes the score five. If us two go, it’ll be seven. Not far to ten.’

‘Ah, bollocks!’ said Gen, with sudden emphasis. ‘That was a load of shite, Geordie. I keep telling you. Pay no attention. I mean, what’s a white death and what isn’t? There must be hundreds of white mercenaries fighting for the blacks all over the continent: South Africans, Germans, Russians, Czechs, Americans, Brits — everything. There’s whites here in Kamanga, we know that. They’re in every country. I bet you more than ten have gone down already, since we arrived in Africa.’

‘Maybe. But the witch doctor meant in our lot.’

‘Okay. So we’ve lost two — Andy and Whinger.’

Gen’s down-to-earth good sense was a comfort, as always. But I sensed that, for once, his faith in the supremacy of good had taken a bad knock. He might talk about God working in mysterious ways, and battling against the power of Satan, but he’d become confused by the apparent influence of the witch doctor. Where did the sin’ganga stand in the scale of good and evil? In our predicament, the devil definitely seemed to have the upper hand. As for me, lacking all religious conviction, once I’d started to believe that events were being governed or directed by some sinister paranormal influence, it was impossible to put the idea from my mind — especially when our very survival was threatened by a crazy dictator and his slapper of a hand-maiden.