Esan and Ado erected a low shelter over the sleeping woman by putting up a simple frame of branches and covering it with banana leaves. Then Esan built a fire like an accomplished member of the Russian Federation of Scouts and Navigators, and showed Anastasia how to light it — a process aided by a cupful of petrol from the fuel can in the boat and a shot from the AK, its muzzle buried in the petrol-soaked kindling. Then the children rose and began to walk towards the darkening jungle. ‘Wait!’ said Anastasia, raising the AK. ‘Where are you going?’
Esan turned back, just at the edge of the darkness — hardly more than a series of golden planes and glitters in the reflection of the little fire’s flames. ‘I am Poro,’ he said simply. ‘I know the jungle. I will find her medicine.’
‘In the dark?’
‘It is only dark near the fire. I know what I’m looking for. I will be quick.’
‘Ado?’ called Anastasia, feeling the initiative, the power, slipping away from her. Ado turned, a ghostly figure in her pale blouse and skirt.
‘I am Sande. I know as much as he does. I will go with him. We will bring medicines for Madame Celine.’
And, without a further word, or any sound at all, they were gone.
Anastasia sat cradling the AK and watching her friend as she slept her restless, feverish sleep. Long ago, in the days immediately after her adventures with Simian Artillery, there had been an Anastasia who was depressive, negative, always expecting the worst from a life she could not control, which was always headed from bad to worse and regularly kicking her in the teeth. That had been the life she had tried to hide from in numberless bottles — mostly of Stoli and Russian Standard — then cheap Polish potato vodka and worse — then, finally, behind lines of coke and crack.
But that was the old Anastasia. This one, the new Anastasia — post-Robin Mariner, post-detox, post-psychiatric help and support — knew that if life threw problems at her then she could overcome them. It was just that if the problems got bigger they required more energy, more self-reliance, more faith in herself. Certainly not more alcohol or more cocaine or more group sex or gang-bangs. Even so, when she looked down at Celine tossing from side to side in the firelight, she felt she would have given almost anything for a decent belt of original Red Label Stolichnaya.
Quite when the grumbling of the truck’s engine first insinuated itself into Anastasia’s reverie she didn’t know. But when she suddenly sprang alert, it was already quite loud. She jumped to her feet and looked around. The noise could have been coming from anywhere — like the roar of a hunting leopard. But she felt it was coming from upriver, moving down, along the road they had been following on the water. She looked back up the highway into the darkness, therefore, and was rewarded with a distant glimpse of headlights. Wracked with indecision, she hesitated as her mind raced. The only land transport she had even dreamed about during the last twenty-four hours and more belonged to the Army of Christ the Infant. But they were on the far side of the river and there were no bridges standing and no ferries running. Moses Nlong and his men simply could not have got their trucks over to this side of the river. But who else was out there? Who was there who might be trusted?
Who?
Abruptly, Ado and Esan reappeared. Silently they doused the fire, bringing a velvety, impenetrable darkness beneath the canopy of banana leaves. Even so, they pulled the bivouac down to render the sleeping Celine doubly invisible. Then they led the blind Anastasia back into the thickest grove nearby, able to see much more than she could, for their eyes had not been blinded by the fire. ‘All this will be useless if they have their windows open,’ whispered Esan as they crouched in the darkness at the farthest point away from the road, which nevertheless allowed them to see what was coming along it. ‘Because they will smell the fire.’
‘Then let’s hope they are people we can ask for help,’ said Anastasia.
She felt Esan stir uneasily beside her and realized that anyone wanting to help her would probably want to arrest him. But then Anastasia’s attention switched. Headlight beams, seeming to shatter and scatter in the night, seeming to light up both sides of the roadway at once. Then she understood. There were two sets of headlights. Two trucks. And as the first came into view at last, the headlights of the one behind it illuminated it quite clearly. Its cab was white-painted with a wire grille over the windscreen. The back was canvas-covered. But just discernible on the front beneath its headlights were the bold black letters ‘U N’, and on the canvas side under the lights of the second truck there was stencilled the familiar white on blue logo with the words ‘United Nations Peacekeepers’.
Anastasia was in motion at once, running forward, shouting wildly, before she realized that she was still holding the AK. She pulled the trigger. The gun bellowed and the trucks accelerated. ‘No!’ she screamed, pounding forward wildly into the headlights of the second truck. She held up the rifle to show she was not going to fire again. The trucks stopped. She put down the AK on the warm tarmac of the road surface and backed away a little, her hands in the air. It must look so suspicious, she thought. A half-naked woman alone in the jungle with an AK. It could so easily be some kind of trap. Would they risk talking to her — let alone coming out and helping her?
After a few moments more, the door of the second truck opened and a man in combat fatigues and a blue helmet got down. He was wearing blue-coloured body armour with ‘UN Peacekeeper’ stencilled on it in white. He was carrying a gun which was pointed at her. ‘Who are you?’ he asked in Afrikaans accented English.
Anastasia’s story came tumbling out. The truth, but not the whole truth. Not the part about Esan. As she spoke, she heard the door of the first truck open behind her. A burning between her shoulder blades told her that she was also being covered with at least one gun from there as well.
‘And there are two more women out there?’ asked the UN soldier at last. ‘Just two women?’
‘A student and another teacher. She is wounded. We need your help…’
The UN soldier was sceptical, guarded. But at last he stepped forward far enough to pick up the AK. He stepped back and passed it up to someone in the second truck’s cab. ‘Cover me,’ he said, still speaking English. He turned to Anastasia. The headlight at last allowed her to recognize what he was carrying. It was an M16A4 that was becoming almost as ubiquitous as the AK. But it was a much more modern and powerful piece of kit. She didn’t want to imagine what it would do to her if he pulled the trigger he kept caressing. ‘Show me,’ he said.
She followed her nose into the darkness, but after a few steps he told her to stop. ‘Take this,’ he ordered gruffly and handed her a narrow-beam torch that gave enough light to guide them without making whoever was holding it too much of a target. He kept back, keeping her covered as carefully as she had kept Esan covered that afternoon.
But the telltale torch beam at last helped her see the pale figure of Ado who was kneeling beside the body of Celine. ‘Just the three of you?’ he confirmed again.
‘Just the three of us,’ confirmed Anastasia desperately. ‘We need help. We need to tell someone what has happened.’
‘You’d better come with us,’ said the soldier.
But as Anastasia and Ado carried Celine to the truck, he kept the three of them covered just in case. And, in spite of the fact that Anastasia insisted that Celine really ought to lie down in the back, he simply squashed the three of them on the bench seat between himself and the massive man driving the truck. Then the driver blinked his lights as a signal to the truck waiting up ahead. And they were off.