The Devil’s Kingdom

Chapter 38

Jude’s eyes opened wide and his heart jumped. ‘Tuesday! Is that you? Christ, it is you!’

Rae said, ‘I’m guessing this isn’t your father.’

‘I can hardly believe it,’ Jude cried out as he ran across the street to meet his friend. It had only been days since they’d last seen one another, but so much had happened that it felt as if six months had passed. Jude was even more astonished when Tuesday’s bare-chested companion appeared at his side, holding a shotgun.

‘This is Sizwe,’ Tuesday said. ‘Remember him?’

‘I’d like you to meet Rae,’ Jude said, waving her over. She approached just a little cautiously, eyeing the two strangers and the guns.

Jude was so full of questions that they were all tripping over each other to come out. Why was Tuesday still in the city? What was Sizwe doing there? Had they any news of Ben and Jeff? He knew he’d get all the answers in due course, and more. In the meantime, he had some explaining of his own to do. Pointing at Rae, he said, ‘Khosa had the two of us locked up together in a kind of prison camp, just over there, the other side of the river.’

‘Jude got me out,’ Rae said, smiling at him.

Tuesday blinked. ‘You’re kidding me. We thought you must be the other side of the bloody country. All this time, he was keeping you nearby?’

‘That’s what I thought about you, too,’ Jude said. ‘They set the whole thing up that way to fool us.’

‘This place is even more unbelievable than I’d imagined it to be,’ Rae said, almost twitching with excitement to see more.

‘You want unbelievable,’ Tuesday told her, ‘you should check out the Dorchester. That’ll blow your socks off.’

Jude blinked. ‘The Dorchester?’

‘It’s just a few blocks over that way,’ Tuesday said, pointing down the street. ‘Khosa’s got his presidential suite on the top floor. And speaking of Khosa, where the hell’s he buggered off to in such a hurry? One minute the place was crawling with troops, the next it just emptied itself. I haven’t seen that many trucks rolling out since Afghanistan.’

‘Luhaka,’ Jude said. ‘It’s a province about sixty miles from here. Khosa’s off to attack the capital.’

‘His brother is governor there,’ Rae filled in. ‘It’s a military coup.’ She said it as though military coups were an everyday fact of life in the Congo — which, in fact, was more or less the case.

‘How come you know so much?’ Tuesday asked Rae. Jude answered for her, explaining quickly that she was a journalist who’d come to Africa to investigate Khosa’s involvement in the illegal mines and the mysterious Chinese city. Tuesday listened intently, absorbing the details as fast as Jude could spill them out. When Jude had finished, Tuesday in turn filled them in on the events that had taken place in Jude’s absence. He held back the worst details about the savage beating that Ben had taken, so as not to upset Jude. But there was one piece of news that couldn’t be censored out.

‘I’ve got to tell you, Gerber didn’t make it. I know you and he were buddies. I’m really sorry. All I can say is, it was quick.’

Jude’s shoulders slumped. ‘How… how did he die?’

‘Like a bloody hero, mate. Tried to shoot Khosa, took out a couple of his officers. A Marine to the last.’

Jude felt a real pang of sadness. Poor Lou. But there was little time for mourning. ‘We have to get out of here,’ he said. ‘If Khosa’s taken Ben and Jeff, I’ve got to find them.’

‘With you there,’ Tuesday said.

Until that moment, Sizwe had been listening silently. Now he said, ‘I am coming too. I have no home to return to, and no life until I have done what I came here to do. Khosa must die. Where he is, I must go.’

‘So it’s settled,’ Tuesday said. ‘Luhaka it is.’

Jude turned to look back at the Jeep. Smoke was trickling out from the slots in the radiator grille. The bonnet was riddled like a colander, and there was little point in even opening it to check the state of the engine inside. The Jeep wasn’t going anywhere, that was for sure. ‘The question is, how do we get there? I haven’t seen a single other vehicle in this place.’

‘Nor us,’ Tuesday said. ‘But someone said there’s an airport on the west side of the city. Might be something there, even if it’s just an old truck.’

Jude remembered the ragtag squadron of military helicopters at Khosa’s base in Somalia, and his eyes lit up as an idea struck him. ‘When the army set off this morning, did any choppers pass over?’

‘Nothing. We were right at the perimeter. We wouldn’t have missed them.’

‘Then there’s a good chance that we’d find at least one at the airport. Can you fly one of those things?’

Tuesday shrugged. ‘I had a pal on the army helicopter course. He showed me a couple of things. I suppose I could give it a go. How hard can it be, eh?’

Rae looked unsure, but Jude was on a roll with excitement at the idea. ‘If we could get airborne we could fly to Kinshasa and from there to Luhaka.’

Rae frowned at him. ‘Luhaka is to the north-east, Kinshasa is to the south-west. What the hell do you want to go all that distance out of your way for?’

‘To get you safely to the US Embassy,’ Jude told her. ‘You’re a kidnapped American citizen held for ransom, with no papers, no money. They can contact your family to say you’re safe, and get you home.’

Rae shook her head. ‘I’ll call home myself, first chance I get,’ she said. ‘I know how sick with worry they must be. But I’m not going back. Not yet, anyhow.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t you see? This place being suddenly empty is a fabulous opportunity for me. The photo equipment and SD cards the soldiers took when Craig and I were captured might still be here somewhere — and if they are I’m going to find them. If not, there’s got to be a camera or a phone that I can use to take more pictures of that mine, the city, the whole damn thing. One way or the other, I’m not leaving here without the evidence I came for.’

Jude stared at her. ‘You don’t give up, do you?’

‘I told you, Craig gave his life for this. I can’t let him die for nothing.’

Jude hadn’t foreseen this at all. He was suddenly torn.

‘Go,’ she said, touching his arm. ‘Get out of here and find your friends. I’ll be fine.’

‘What if those three weren’t the only soldiers Khosa left behind to guard the place while he was gone?’

‘And I’m not going to be responsible for slowing you down,’ Rae said resolutely. ‘I can take care of myself.’

‘Yeah, like when you were kidnapped.’

‘You’re wasting time discussing this. I’m not changing my mind.’

Tuesday interrupted them. ‘Listen, guys, whatever you decide to do, decide it quickly. If this Luhaka is sixty miles away it’s going to take them a while to get there, but the clock’s ticking. Sizwe and I can’t hang around waiting for you.’

‘Then I’ve decided,’ Jude said grimly. ‘I’m not leaving until she does.’

‘Okay, okay,’ Rae relented, holding up her hands. ‘Compromise. Give me six hours. Just to let me have a chance to do what I need. Then we all leave here together. Agreed?’

Tuesday shook his head. ‘No can do, sorry. Two hours, max. That’ll give me time to get to the airport and figure out how to fly the bloody chopper. Assuming there is one to fly. If not, we’re screwed anyway, and we’ll have to come up with a Plan B.’

‘I can’t do anything in two hours,’ Rae said. ‘Give me four.’

Tuesday sighed, glanced at Jude, and said, ‘You got three. I won’t budge on that, okay? Ben and Jeff will be out there in the thick of it sometime in the next few hours. Maybe I can’t help them, but I’m damned if I’m missing the chance to try.’

Rae nodded. ‘It’s a deal. We’ll meet you back here three hours from now.’ Turning to Jude, she said, ‘You didn’t have to do this for me, but I appreciate it that you did. Thank you.’ She moved close to him, raised herself up on tiptoe and pecked him on the cheek. The kiss froze Jude up like an idiot, and he stood there staring at her.

Tuesday gave them a couple of walkie-talkies that he and Sizwe had taken from the soldiers they’d run into, and showed them which channel to use. He also had a pistol lifted from one of the bodies, which he offered to Jude. ‘Just in case you meet up with any more unwanted company. Can you handle that?’

‘Yeah, I can handle it,’ Jude said, taking the gun and stuffing it in his belt behind the right hip, the way he’d seen Ben do. ‘I think.’

‘Good luck, guys,’ Tuesday said as he set off at a run, Sizwe jogging after him. ‘You’ve got three hours.’

Still no sign of the black Mercedes as the morning ticked by and the sun bearing down on Mont Fleury threatened to cook Victor Bronski inside the surveillance van. He’d resorted to running the engine for the air con when his phone buzzed. The call was from Gasser, who was with Shelton a quarter of a mile away watching the villa from the other side and probably suffering just as badly as Bronski. Gasser was calling to tell him to tune into the radio. It sounded urgent.

‘I’ll call you back,’ Bronski said.

The local stations were all in French. Bronski quickly dialled up BBC World Service and caught the tail end of the announcement saying: ‘… the large contingent of rebel troops was sighted this morning advancing within ten kilometres of Luhaka City’s western outskirts. Local reports suggest an imminent coup on the governorship of the province; no further details are available at this time but we hope to bring you an update shortly as the situation develops… ’

Bronski turned it off and ran the numbers in his head. If someone was about to launch a coup on Louis Khosa, he had a pretty good idea who that someone might be: a certain loving brother with a serious axe to grind, his eyes on political power and a fifty-million-dollar fortune in his pocket.

‘Anything to do with us?’ said Gasser when Bronski called him back a moment later.

‘Could explain why our boy’s not home,’ Bronski said. ‘Stay tuned and let me know where it goes.’

‘Copy.’

Then Bronski saw a movement in his wing mirror and said, ‘Hold it. Scratch that.’

The black Mercedes purred up the street. The sunlight gleamed dully on paintwork streaked with dust after a long drive out of the city. The car paused as the villa’s automatic gates swung open to let it through, then glided up the drive and parked in the shade of the trees next to the gold roadster. The gates swung shut behind it.

Bronski put down the phone and snatched his binocs to see the tall figure of César Masango unfold himself from behind the wheel of the limo and close the door. He was alone, and looked calm and relaxed, if a little stiff from the drive.

Bronski tracked him as he walked to the house. When Masango disappeared inside, Bronski picked the phone up again and said to the waiting Gasser, ‘Honey, I’m home.’

‘You want to make a move?’

Bronski gritted his teeth. He’d have dearly loved to get out of this hellhole of a van, but he was far too disciplined to let weakness get the better of him. ‘Not just yet. Let’s hang back a while longer and see what he does next.’