Suddenly the darkness etched before him by that massive wall of sheer white light coalesced into a familiar shape, and Max found himself screaming profanities into the face of an angry gorilla. It came out of the undergrowth without giving any warning at all. Like Max, it was overwhelmed and terrified by the air-raid on the nearby road. Like the panther, it had been raised in the zoo and was a superb specimen. It towered two metres high and weighed two hundred and fifty kilos. Its arms extended two and a half metres, ending in hands nearly thirty centimetres wide — and they reached for the screaming Russian as it charged. Without any thought at all, Max started firing the AK74. Its bullets smashed into the huge creature’s abdomen, but they missed its spine and pelvis so they did not slow it down. It reached for the gun and tore it out of Max’s hands. Then, holding it by the barrel, it smashed Max’s face open. All the Russian billionaire’s cunning, planning, deviousness and ambition were bludgeoned out of his head along with his brains. If there was one last thought, it was simple astonishment at the overwhelming irony. Ironyen. It was actually funny, in a twisted Russian sort of way. After all he had been through — put Nastia through in one way and another — that it should come to this. Simian Artillery. He was actually being killed. By an ape. With a gun.
His body fell back on to the elephant path without even twitching and lay there, less than twenty metres from the remains of Mizuki Yukawa. The gorilla rose up and drove the stock of the assault rifle down on to Max’s head one last time. And the gun went off. The rest of the clip emptied itself automatically into the gorilla. Twenty rounds of five point four five millimetre ammunition went up under its massive chin and out through the top of its skull at nine hundred metres per second. The gorilla stood still for a second, as though hardly able to believe that it, too, was dead. And then it fell forward to bury the body of the man it had just killed with its own mountainous black bulk.
Black Pearls
Richard and Robin always preferred to stay at the Kempinski when they were in St Petersburg. They loved its combination of old-world charm, courteous service and fine dining. Their favourite suite overlooked the Moika River, had a decor of restful blue and was full of photographs of 1930s sailboats. When they visited in the summer they always ate out on the balcony of the Bellvue Brasserie on the top floor. Not only was the food exquisite, so was the view which overlooked the back of the Hermitage. They had eaten there yesterday evening, soon after their arrival in the city. But the view had proved less than uplifting because it also included the golden onion domes of The Church of Our Saviour on Spilled Blood, which was where they were bound for today for Max’s long-delayed memorial. It was just as well that there would not be a coffin. It had been Richard and Ivan who dragged the gorilla off Max’s corpse the next morning when they found what was left of Ngama and his hostage, though it had been Anastasia who had seen the irony and laughed with a mixture of bitterness and hysteria until Ivan half carried her back to the camp. That had been at the end of last summer and now it was spring, with even St Petersburg thawing under an early heat wave. Max’s will had mentioned his wish to have his memorial at the Church of Our Saviour on Spilled Blood; an unexpectedly romantic gesture that had cost a good deal of extra time. It was the church he had promised that Ivan Yagula and Anastasia would be married in — in the days before his own Ivan died.
As usual, Richard was up and about first. He showered and shaved — a process that took longer these days courtesy of Ivan’s over-assiduous help with his disguise. Then, wrapped in one of the hotel’s dressing gowns, he crossed to the bedside phone and dialled 914. ‘A cafetière of Blue Mountain,’ he said, rubbing his still-tender jaw, testing a still-loose tooth. ‘Robin, do you want tea?’ Robin grunted in the affirmative and rolled over. ‘And a pot of English Breakfast tea, please.’ He hung up. ‘Mind if I take a look at the news?’ he asked. Robin grunted.
Richard picked up the remote handset and scrolled through the channels until he got the BBC World News. He was just in time for the four o’clock news GMT — which made it five a.m. in London and eight a.m. in Moscow and here. ‘Better shake a leg, darling. We’re meeting Felix at ten. Service is at eleven.’ He didn’t quite catch what she said in reply but he heard the word, ‘tea’.
He was distracted by the news report. ‘… And in a surprise announcement from Granville Harbour, Julius Chaka has conceded defeat. President Chaka will be succeeded by his daughter, the freedom fighter and political activist Celine Chaka. All the negative stories about her campaign have been proved to be groundless and the final count is decisive. Her first priority is likely to concern the long-running border dispute with Congo Libre which led to the tragic confrontation at Lac Dudo last year.’
There was a gentle tapping at the door and Richard crossed to open it and accept a tray laden with the coffee and tea he had ordered and turned back.
‘… associated story,’ the anchorwoman was saying as he slid the tray on to the bedside table nearest Robin and let the scent of English Breakfast tea work its magic on her. He straightened with his cafetière in one hand and his coffee cup in the other, listening as he poured. ‘The Russian consortium Bashnev/Sevmash is continuing with its assessment of the bed of Lac Dudo, in spite of the upheavals at head office resulting from the death of its co-founder Mr Maximilian Asov, ex-CEO of Bashnev Oil and Power. Initial estimates of the worth of the coltan in the discovery now seem to have been inflated, but a spokesman for the consortium has informed our Moscow correspondent that the new government in Benin La Bas is fully committed to continuing the project with them. The Bashnev/Sevmash share price as quoted on the Moscow and London stock exchanges remains at an all-time high.’ Richard sipped his coffee as Felix Makarov’s face filled the screen.
‘What’s the time?’ asked Robin sleepily.
‘It’s gone eight,’ he said. ‘Felix will be outside in just under two hours.’
‘Oh my GOD! Why didn’t you tell me, you bloody man?’
Felix was waiting outside the Kempinski at ten in one of Bashnev/Sevmash’s St Petersburg fleet of Bentleys. ‘This is a bit excessive,’ observed Robin. ‘We could walk. What is it? Five hundred metres?’
‘My dear girl,’ said Felix, ‘nobody walks. Nobody who is anybody. Certainly not today!’ He reached into a capacious briefcase as they climbed in and handed them their ID badges. Like everyone else attending Max’s memorial, they would only be allowed into the church if their lapels announced clearly who they were.
Robin settled into moody silence, fiddling with the pin on the ID badge she did not want to push through the cashmere of her outfit, still flustered from having to get ready in what she considered to be a brutally short time. Though the effect, thought her indulgent husband, could hardly have been bettered, even though black was not really her colour. ‘You looked good on television this morning,’ he said to Felix, looking up from his own badge. ‘Talking to the BBC.’
‘I’ll have to talk to more than the BBC, and you know it,’ rumbled Felix. ‘I’m booked on the first flight to Granville Harbour tomorrow. Even so, I’ll be well behind Han Wuhan. Doctor Chen is going himself, hoping the president will succumb to a Chinese charm offensive.’ He too lapsed into silence.