Ivan flinched as though Richard had struck him. But he recovered like a boxer as well as moving like one. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Though, given our history, Anastasia and I never seem to be short of topics for conversation. I would be grateful, however, just for the time being, you understand, if you did not mention me or my presence in any communication you might have with her.’
OK, thought Richard. More along those lines later, perhaps. If it becomes relevant. Or any of my damn business. He shrugged in answer. Nodded a curt affirmative.
In the meantime, ‘Felix,’ he said, ‘I think you’d better tell the driver to head straight for the docks. From the sound of things, almost all of Ivan’s luggage needs to go aboard the Zubr Stalingrad. And we’ll need to ask Captain Zhukov to put it in secure storage with the rest of his arms and armaments.’
After a few moments of reflective silence Ivan asked, a little nervously, ‘Now that you’ve mentioned her, are we likely to see Anastasia?’
‘Certain to, eventually,’ answered Richard. ‘Didn’t anyone tell you? Our first base of operations is the orphanage she runs just upriver of the inner delta.’
Plan
‘This is a plan of the river,’ said Captain Caleb Maina quietly. ‘I use the term plan rather than chart because as you can see it focuses on what lies along the banks more than the depths or state of the water itself, and even then it shows the land features in very little detail, so it is hardly a map. And, again, as will be obvious to you, the hand-drawn additions show municipal and structural works in progress. Where they are inked in, the project is effectively complete. Where they are in pencil, the project is still in progress. Where the lines are dashed or dotted, there are plans in place but nothing substantial yet on the ground. And, I should add — perhaps a little melodramatically — that some of what I am about to tell you has until recently been what you might term a state secret.’
‘Does Benin La Bas have an Official Secrets Act?’ asked Ivan cheerfully. ‘Will we have to sign it?’
‘As a matter of fact, yes it does,’ answered Caleb. ‘But no, you will not have to sign it.’
Richard looked down at the plan which lay spread across the main mess table in the crew’s dining room aboard the lead Zubr Stalingrad. It showed in little more than sketch outline Granville Harbour and its inner bay, the mouth and main course of the River Gir from its tidal openings to its Central African origins, including Lac Dudo and the chain of volcanoes with Karisoke at its heart, from which the main river sprang. There was a line along the watershed that lay on the mountain chain’s highest ridge, beyond which was written Congo Libre. Nothing immediately struck him as looking much like a state secret.
Stalingrad was Captain Zhukov’s command, but it was Captain Caleb Maina who had produced the long, thin outline plan of his country and its volcanic central feature. And it was Caleb who was delivering this update, revealing, somewhat to Richard’s surprise, that he had a background in intelligence as well as in ship handling. An all-round Ian Fleming, Richard thought. But that thought only made him look forward to the briefing even more. It would be the first, Richard hoped, of several increasingly detailed seminars before they all went charging up the river like gangbusters.
‘So some of this planned development is a work in progress,’ he observed. ‘And a secret work in progress.’
‘Yes, Captain Mariner. That makes two important points,’ answered Caleb. ‘Since the president settled into office and gained the backing of the IMF, the World Bank and other international institutions and NGOs, work on the country’s infrastructure has proceeded at a great and gathering pace.’
Particularly, thought Richard, since the president’s national heroine daughter arrived as the leader of the opposition — and a competition for hearts and minds really got under way.
‘So even modern maps are out of date within a month,’ Caleb persisted. He glanced around the table, his attention focused primarily on Felix and Richard. ‘I am aware that many of you will have flown over the river — along much of its length on several occasions recently,’ he continued. ‘But you may not have been fully alive to the changes that have taken place on the ground. Changes that will affect our progress radically and, I hope, positively. Changes which are detailed on this plan.’
The conference had started as an attempt to bring Ivan up to date. Felix had gone through the basic situation in the car coming down here from the airport, but Ivan still felt he needed filling in on some of the background to the Army of Christ the Infant — its history, its likely objectives, and what precisely had been the involvement of Anastasia Asov in the overthrow of its last leader, the mad, cannibalistic black magician General Moses Nlong.
But when it became plain that Ivan remained ignorant of several basic factors that the others were taking for granted, Caleb agreed to a more detailed explanation of the background to the current situation in his country as a whole. Even Felix seemed surprised by some of the more recent developments along the river and further upcountry. And, for some reason, now was the appropriate moment to start filling them in on matters that everyone had remained ignorant of until recently. Or everyone except a very select few at the top of the government, the defence and the intelligence services, by the look of things. So Caleb had led them down to the deserted mess hall, laid out his plan and started filling them in while the main object of the visit — the safe disposal of Ivan’s arsenal — was achieved by a cheerfully awestruck armaments officer.
Richard was paying particularly close attention because he knew Robin would be frustrated at missing a briefing like this and would want a detailed explanation of whatever Captain Caleb told them. He was supported in his endeavour to remember what Caleb was saying by the fact that his memory was very nearly photographic, and he would be able to recall the sketch map itself in astonishing detail simply by closing his eyes and concentrating.
‘The work on the harbour which you can see marked here … has proceeded upriver,’ Caleb was saying. ‘We have kept the basic rule of the road for the tidal section at the river mouth where, as you see, the main channel is divided into two by a series of small islands. The rule is to “keep right”. So, upriver shipping passes to the south of the islands, and downriver to the north.
‘We have cleared both channels of the water hyacinth that made them difficult to navigate in the past. And, as you see here, the main road along the north bank has been restored. There was an old casino twenty kilometres upriver on the northern bank — just at the end of the tidal section — that is now a river pilot station whose additional function is keeping the water flowing down to the harbour free of floating obstructions. Especially water hyacinth. The road along the northern bank has in fact been cleared and re-metalled as far as the township of Malebo, more than sixty kilometres into the delta. This is particularly important as the spiralling number of citizens in Granville Harbour need feeding, and we cannot do it all by importing what we need and paying for it with our oil and gas sales. No. Clearing the road and river for commercial access has allowed the growing number of farms in the inner and outer deltas to get their produce to our city markets — and by extension of that to allow increasing numbers of people who would otherwise be unemployed to go into the hinterland and find agricultural work. A benign spiral, you see, and one extended further inland, as we shall also see in a minute or two. Therefore, the government is working to clear the next section, right through the inner delta as far as the Father Antoine and Sister Faith Memorial orphanage here, where we are working to broaden the scope of our farming activities exponentially.’