The Devil’s Kingdom

Chapter 12

It had been a long and difficult night, that first spent inside the cage. With no blanket to pull over himself, Jude curled up on the hard, bare floor mattress and hugged his sides in a futile attempt to keep warm. Sleep came and went. Some kind of night animal was calling in the distance: the plaintive howl and yip-yip-yip of a jackal or wild dog. Once Jude thought he heard an entirely different sound, the crying of a woman coming from somewhere closer, but he might have been dreaming.

When morning came and he was awoken by the harsh sunlight streaming in through the single barred window of the hut, it wasn’t long before the night chill gave way to murderous heat that ramped up throughout the day until he didn’t think he could stand it anymore. The feeble sigh of a breeze coming from the window barely reached him, even if he pressed himself right up against the bars of the cage to get close to it.

With nothing to do but sweat, Jude spent his hours staring at that small rectangle of light and listening intently for movement outside. Sometimes he could hear vehicles come and go, and the sound of boots crunching on the stony ground of the compound, and snatches of conversation that he couldn’t understand as the occasional patrol of guards did the rounds of the huts. That told him there must be other prisoners being kept here. Was one of them the woman whose crying he’d thought he’d heard, or had he just imagined it? He listened out for her voice, but didn’t hear it again.

The only person Jude saw during all of that first day was Promise. At midday, the hut door was noisily unlocked and the mute jailer came in balancing a tray on one hand; in the other hand was his Uzi submachine gun, which he kept constantly pointed at the prisoner as though Jude could squeeze through the bars and attack him. Promise was cautious that way, it seemed. He laid down the tray and carefully locked the hut door behind him, then waved the gun to indicate he wanted Jude to step back towards the rear of the cage. Promise walked around behind him, grabbed his wrists one after the other and cuffed them together through the bars.

‘What do you think I’m going to do, the Ninja death leap?’ Jude said. If Promise could have made a reply, he probably wouldn’t have. With Jude securely handcuffed and unable to move more than half a step forwards or sideways, the cage door was opened. Still keeping the gun handy, Promise stepped inside and laid down the tray with its contents, a plastic beaker of water and a bowl of food. Next he checked the bucket that had been left for Jude to use as a latrine. Jude hadn’t gone anywhere near it. He hated the bucket, and the humiliation of having to use it, and vowed not to until it became absolutely necessary.

Promise then closed, bolted and locked the cage door and walked around to release Jude from his handcuffs. He paused. Jude felt something tug at his left wrist, and twisted his neck to see Promise slip the bead bracelet off him.

‘Hey! That’s mine! You can’t have it! Give it back!’

Promise examined the bracelet as though it was precious jewellery, then tucked it in his pocket and released Jude from the cuffs.

Jude felt violated by the theft. Even though he and Helen had gone their separate ways, that bracelet had seemed like his last connection with the world he’d left behind. He was attached to it. ‘It’s not worth anything to you,’ he protested. ‘It’s just a bunch of cheap plastic beads. Come on, give it back.’

Promise coolly ignored him. Jude realised it was futile kicking up any more of a fuss over the matter, and gave up. He looked at his first meal in captivity, a small mound of cold rice with a few beans and scraps of meat mixed in. The bowl looked exactly like the pressed-steel feeding dish he’d bought from the local Pets at Home store for his terrier Scruffy, back in England.

‘Hey,’ he called out to Promise, who was heading back towards the hut door. ‘What the hell is this? First you steal my stuff, then you expect me to eat like a dog? Bring me a knife and fork. You hear me?’

Promise seemed to ignore him, and went away. Some time later, he returned with a tablespoon that he tossed through the bars before disappearing again. It was a nasty old piece of cheap tin, but to Jude it seemed a significant victory over his captors to have his demands met, if only halfway. It filled him with energy and lifted his sagging spirits, and he set about tucking into the cold rice concoction with relish, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the cage and smiling to himself as he shovelled the food into his mouth.

These people weren’t going to beat him.

The feeling of unease didn’t leave Ben for a long time after his encounter with Raphael Wakenge, the witch doctor. The strange old man’s last words to him kept ringing in his head as he was taken back to the poky room on the fourth floor.

You have saved many lost souls. As if Wakenge somehow knew about Ben’s past, and the people he had helped. As if Ben had ‘former kidnap rescue specialist’ tattooed across his forehead as a cue for soothsayers and fortune-tellers. There was no way Wakenge could know those things about him, and it was deeply unsettling. Ben had experienced the same peculiar thing with Khosa himself, on a couple of occasions when the man had seemed able to read his thoughts. He still didn’t know if that was real or imagined.

Shake it, Ben told himself irritably. You’re an idiot if you let yourself be taken in by phony hocus-pocus. He can’t read your past, any more than he can predict your death.

When the guards let Ben into the room, he found Jeff and Tuesday sitting at the table in the corner, tucking into a communal bowl of rice stew. Gerber was still in his bunk.

‘How was lunch?’ Jeff said through a mouthful of food. ‘I can only hope it was better than this shit they’ve brought us.’

‘Any of that going?’ Ben was content to eat shit, if he could eat it in good company. He pulled up a chair and Jeff let him have his fork, saying he’d had enough. Ben glanced over at the slumped form in the bunk. Jeff shook his head, as if to say that Gerber hadn’t moved all morning. Ben sighed. He was becoming increasingly worried that the veteran sailor had shut down and was going to pine away. He’d seen it happen to others.

‘What did he want?’ Tuesday asked. As he ate, Ben summed up the gist of the conversation with Khosa. Jeff listened to Ben’s account and said, ‘So in other words, it turns out that the bastard’s even more batshit crazy than we reckoned on, and meanwhile we still don’t know where they’re holding Jude, or what this bloody place is, or how the fuck we’re ever going to get out of it. Apart from that, it’s all happy days.’

‘And Gerber’s losing his mind,’ Tuesday added sullenly.

‘Yeah. That, too. Poor sod.’

‘I should have killed Khosa when I had the chance,’ Ben muttered. ‘I hesitated.’

‘Then Jude would have got the chop a minute later. No, mate. You did the right thing.’

‘I don’t know what the right thing is,’ Ben said, shaking his head. ‘I’m beginning to think there isn’t one.’

An hour later, Captain Xulu was back, with another announcement to make and another task to be completed. ‘The soldiers are ready for their training,’ he said.

This time, the armoured personnel carrier took them a different route from the hotel, heading east into a construction zone that was anything but deserted, with more people and activity than Ben and the others had yet come across in the strange uninhabited city.

More than that, it was the most extensive building site Ben had ever seen. One block after another was alive with men and machinery, a small army of workers in overalls and hard hats toiling hard and fast amid the heat and dust. Cranes swivelling, mixers mixing, others pouring, diggers pushing vast mounds of earth, trucks rumbling back and forth carrying sand and cement blocks, labourers running with barrows, foremen yelling orders over the noise and barking into radios. For the first time, it was possible to imagine how a whole city could have sprung up in the middle of nowhere. With this kind of intensity, they could have built London in a matter of months.

Ben took in the hectic scene from the porthole window. Not a single head turned towards them as the heavily armed military vehicle rolled by, a stone’s throw away. He blinked, thinking he was seeing things. Then turned to Jeff and saw that Jeff had noticed it, too.

‘I’m not imagining it, am I?’ Jeff said, wide-eyed.

‘No, you’re not,’ Ben said. ‘Those building workers are all Chinese. Every man jack of them.’