As he finished speaking, he glanced at his watch. ‘Tishina!’ he ordered.
There was instant silence. Stasis. Robin got the strange notion that even if the man the size of a bus had still been flying through the air he would simply have stopped there and hovered until Ivan’s next order. It was unnerving.
‘Obed!’ he said. ‘Poshli!’
‘Time for lunch,’ Richard translated cheerfully, as the small army of large Russians trooped off, in step, as though marching to war rather than to the showers and the mess.
‘Time for us to be off, then, said Robin. ‘I know all about Russian lunches. Even the salads are enormous.’
‘And considering what’s going on afterwards,’ added Richard, ‘there’s just too much temptation all round.’
Ivan laughed. ‘It is probably best,’ he said. ‘It will be a working lunch in any case. Felix and Uncle Max are keen to get under way. If you want an interesting afternoon, I suggest you go across to Stalingrad and watch Captain Zhukov taking Colonel Kebila and his special forces aboard.’
He leaned down between Richard and Robin with a huge grin and a boyish wink. ‘But I think you will find that Kebila’s special forces are nothing compared to my special forces.’
Tension
There was tension between the Zubrs right from the start. It was inevitable. When Richard remarked upon it to Robin, asking if she noticed it, she looked at him as though he was slow-witted. ‘Of course there’ll be tension; competition!’ she said. ‘They may be Russian and African, but they’re still men!’
And Richard had to admit that she had a point. He had seen it often enough before. And in teams of women as much as in crews of men, to be fair. On one hand, it could hone everyone to performance standards that were almost Olympic. Or on the other it could lead to the kind of aggressive rivalry that led to punch-ups in pubs near football stadiums.
Certainly, Ivan had made it clear that the Spetsnaz men looked down on the local soldiers. And a brief talk that afternoon as Colonel Kebila saw his special forces team aboard Stalingrad made it plain that the punctilious officer was equally unimpressed with the Russians. ‘Thugs and bully boys,’ he dismissively referred to Ivan’s men. ‘Body-builders. We need ballet dancers.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Richard.
‘I mean they are preparing for the wrong sort of war,’ shrugged Kebila.
‘They seem to be preparing for every sort of war they can,’ countered Richard warily.
‘Except for the correct one. They are going into a situation they have never experienced. Even their so-called Rus contingent, the ones who are supposed to have advised various armies in Africa. They have never been in anything like they will find upriver. And as for the rest of them, this is not like Chechnya — it is like Mount Karisoke. It is not Beslan. It is Benin La Bas!’
Richard and Robin looked at each other, wondering where the colonel got his information. ‘So your men have an edge of local knowledge?’ asked Robin. Richard returned to the here and now, hoping that Kebila did not hear the undertone of is that all? that he himself seemed to discern within the question.
But perhaps he did. ‘It is more than you think,’ answered the soilder stiffly. ‘Although they live and train in the city now, these are men of the jungle. Like their fathers, grandfathers and ancestors through the generations, though the focus is not from father to son, as some of your Western traditions are. As the Russian traditions are. You will find none of my people called the equivalent of Ivan Lavrentovich Yagula — because his father is Lavrenty Mikhailovich Yagula and his father was Mikhail Ivanovich Yagula! Such traditions tend to exist so that possessions can be passed from one generation to the next, and my people, the Matadi, do not operate like that. The jungle is what we know. Although we make little of the fact. Especially in the face of ignorance and lack of understanding among our Western associates. These men are all Poro. Now, that has its negative aspects, I realize. But they were all initiated at some stage into — what shall we call them? The mysteries of the jungle. Those — and there are many — who were raised in the shanty town under the old regime, will have been taken away from their families at a relatively early age and brought up by Poro masters in the forests of the delta. If you remember, when you first came to our country, it was only a step or two from the shanties to the jungles.’
‘So most of your men were raised wild? A bit like Mowgli in the Jungle Book?’ asked Robin ironically.
She had seen the only negative side of these tribal traditions. The deadly use that ruthless men like General Nlong and Colonel Odem made of the Poro gods like Ngoboi. She had talked to both Anastasia and Celine, who had seen women’s hearts ripped still beating from their chests and fed to men with sharpened teeth. Seen the bodies of nuns literally butchered — to be cooked and served to the starving army.
But Richard had also talked to Anastasia and Celine about Esan and Ado — the boy member of a Poro society and the girl member of Sande society. He knew that Ado and Esan had stayed with Celine and Anastasia, guiding them, helping them, tending them — so he knew how the youngsters’ knowledge of the wild places had actually kept the two older women alive. Without the kind of jungle lore Kebila was talking about, no one would have survived to tell the tale of Moses Nlong’s atrocities. No one would have been able to organize resistance, and — eventually — rescue.
So, next morning, when Ivan asked him in turn about Kebila’s comments, Richard didn’t waste time asking where the Russian got his information, he simply tried to give a balanced account of what he believed the situation to be. ‘Kebila’s point is simple. Your men know a hell of a lot about fighting, but they haven’t been briefed on fighting in the sort of terrain you’ll face.’
‘And his men have, of course.’ Ivan’s sandy eyebrow rose quizzically.
‘Since childhood. In the tribal traditions of this place, young boys are taken from their families at a young age and put into groups with older boys and men. They are then taught everything that their teachers know about the jungle — practical, pharmacological and spiritual. Where the trails are. If there are no trails, how to make them. What the calls and cries of all the jungle creatures are and which animal, bird or whatever made them. How to track them, trap them, cook and eat them.’
‘I thought there were almost no animals there. I thought they’d all been slaughtered for bush meat.’
‘Most of them have — but these guys are still trained in what they used to sound like. How they used to behave. How to prepare them. It’s an enormous body of lore and knowledge. And they’re taught about the plants — which ones kill and which ones heal. God knows, there are one hell of a lot of plants up there, ranging in size from a couple of millimetres to a hundred metres high. It’s the kingdom of the plants.’ He stopped, drew breath, and met Ivan’s highly amused gaze. ‘And, less positively from our Western perspective, perhaps, they’re taught about a range of jungle gods and spirits which govern the laws that bind families, tribes and societies together. In the final analysis, that’s why General Nlong and Colonel Odem and their kind make the kids who join their armies do such barbaric things — they want to make sure the kids have broken such fundamental Poro laws that their families and tribes are forever closed to them. Otherwise, of course, they’d just vanish into the jungle first chance they get. So they have no alternative but to stay with the Army of Christ the Infant or whoever. They simply have nowhere else to go.’