‘It’s Russian. It says, if memory serves, “Wild Orchid”. It’s the name of one of the more upmarket lingerie boutiques in Moscow.’
‘Moscow? What has that—’
‘Got to do with anything?’ interrupted Robin triumphantly. ‘Well, Captain, I think you will find that the only person in this particular jungle likely to be caught wearing Russian underwear is Anastasia Asov. And it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to see that if Anastasia Asov is in the middle of a rape party then some of her closest friends might also be at risk. And who is Anastasia Asov’s closest friend?’
‘Celine Chaka,’ said Caleb, shaken to the core. ‘Oh my God, Celine Chaka.’
It was the underwear that made the difference in the end. Had it not been for the Wild Orchid Russian lingerie, Caleb and his men would have been scouting the road into Citematadi looking for the second truck and — presumably — another load of MANPADS. Or at least trying to tidy up the charnel house in the office. But Naval HQ was very actively of Caleb’s opinion that if Anastasia Asov was in trouble, Celine wasn’t far behind, so he was ordered to proceed with his mission. At once.
The Shaldag ran the rapids created by the wreckage of what had once been a great bridge stretching across the river, half as high as the Golden Gate, and carrying an eight-lane highway on the top level, and a railway line on the lower. The massive piers, starlings and footings that had strode across the river carrying the massive weight of concrete still stood. But their carefully designed aqua-dynamic profile was utterly undone by the massive blocks of masonry that now lay on the river-bed between them. Getting past the Citematadi bridge was a little like shooting the first cataract on the Nile. The only real difference was that if you were very careful indeed, you didn’t have to carry your boat around it.
Frustrated in her desire to look round Citematadi, Robin remained on the bridge with Caleb to see how he got the Shaldag through the maze of rapids, falls and whirlpools that lay across the river like a dirty white wall. Bonnie preferred to stay below. The simple sound of the monster was enough for her. But, after Caleb and Sanda conned their vessel safely through, Robin joined her friend — for a moment or two at least. Armed with the Victorinox, the women set about opening the stinking little pile of oysters, and the three they prized inexpertly apart yielded two more pearls as black and lustrous as great drops of oil. Robin looked at them thoughtfully, then climbed on to the bridge again.
The Shaldag was running rapidly eastwards, hugging the south bank. Above her starboard quarter, the causeway leading down to Citematadi still loomed up against the moon-bright sky like a black cliff. Robin stared at it, frowning, and was struck suddenly by a simple truth that she had not examined so far. If Anastasia Asov had got herself aboard a truck up there, how had she managed to get across the river? Robin knew as well as anyone that the church and school they were heading for was on the north bank. And the man-made rapids they had just come through established absolutely that there were no bridges still standing across the mighty flood. With her frown deepening, she asked Caleb, ‘Captain, would it be possible for you stay as close to the south bank as you can — and to shine your searchlight on it as we pass?’
Still in the grip of something akin to awe in the face of Robin’s reasoning abilities — not to mention her gritty intrepidity — Caleb was in no mood to refuse her anything. For the next half hour, the Shaldag hugged the south bank of the river and the starboard searchlight cast its great white beam ashore, while Robin stood out on the deck beside the bridge, straining her eyes as the jungly overhang flashed by. The land behind heaved up into a ridge and fell back again, the distant heave of it etched in shaggy outline against distant galaxies that shone more brightly than Robin had ever seen. But the near bank remained simply a boring, repetitive wall of unvarying foliage, flashing green under the searchlight and fading to black in the shadows behind it.
Until, all of a sudden, the bank itself fell back into a little bay whose outer edge was a tumbled mess of red mud and green foliage where a cliff had obviously collapsed. And there — seen and gone in a flash — a little rowing boat was moored to a fallen tree trunk.
‘Stop!’ shouted Robin, tearing her throat. ‘Stop! Go back!’
The Shaldag slowed. Reversed, her movements aided by the downward rush of the river beneath her. The little bay returned. The tethered boat.
Caleb ordered the Shaldag to get as close in as possible and to wait. A ladder went over the side and the captain himself climbed down to a solid-looking mudbank and walked the mooring rope ashore to secure his command as close to the rowing boat as possible. Then Robin clambered down and followed him, carrying her torch once again.
‘You knew it was here,’ he said as the pair of them stood looking down into the little vessel.
‘Had to be,’ said Robin shortly. She looked up. ‘I’ll bet there’s something up there too. Other than the road,’ she said, and handed him her torch.
Caleb scrambled up, pulling out the sidearm he was still carrying as soon as he reached the roadway she had known he would find up there.
Robin crouched down, looking intently into the boat. It was the blood she saw first, the black smears of it on the bench seat beside the little outboard. Then the water in the bottom, with the oars and the boathook. Like most boats, it stank and she supposed the smell was coming from the bilge. But then she saw the handle of a plastic bag sticking out from beneath the bloodstained seat.
When Caleb came scrambling back down the collapsed bank, carrying a T-shirt and a camouflage jacket, he found her gazing in wonder into the bag. She looked up at him, wide-eyed. ‘There must be thirty more oysters in here,’ she said. ‘Maybe more. Looks as though whatever else happens, someone’s going to get a necklace out of this. A black pearl necklace.’
SEVENTEEN
Kebila
Colonel Laurent Kebila looked at Anastasia Asov in thoughtful silence. ‘You have always had a reputation for resourcefulness,’ he said at last in his beautifully modulated Sandhurst English. ‘But you are beginning to stretch my credulity now.’
‘But it’s true. Every word! It’s what has happened to me since the Army of Christ the Infant attacked.’
‘The whole truth?’ he probed gently.
‘Yes!’ Anastasia’s eyes slid away from the colonel’s steady gaze, however. A simple gesture that undermined his faith in her truthfulness almost fatally. And she knew it. But what could she do? She had never felt anything but trust and respect for the soldier sitting opposite her, leaning forward across his desk, his swagger stick resting beside the cooling coffee cups and empty plate of chocolate digestive biscuits, the CCTV monitor patched into his laptop still showing the picture of the cell they had held her in until he came down to fetch her. To rescue her.
But even Kebila could not be relied on to see that Esan was no longer a murderous child-soldier to be detained at once, or to be shot like a rabid dog if he resisted for a second. That, instead, he needed congratulating, helping and rewarding. So she had been very circumspect indeed in her version of how the young man had fallen in with them before he began to prove the valuable friend and helper he now was. And that one omission, that one flaw in her story, was in danger of undermining the whole thing.
‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘we can start by checking some details that are closer to hand. Begin at the end of your story, so to speak, and then work our way back to the start of it, fact by fact. Captain Christophe is in our holding facility. We can talk to him immediately…’