There were vehicles behind but none taking any particular interest in them. Makimber exhaled slowly, not wanting the others in the car to be aware of his concern. He was the bwana mkubwa, the big man; he was not supposed to be frightened.
They had been in the Senegalese capital for a week, with the opportunity to learn its basic layout, and the driver steered the car carefully into the delivery bay alongside one of the waterfront warehouses. It was a dark, secluded place, bordered on three sides by blank, empty buildings. Makimber still raised his hand to caution against any movement, staring around the car to ensure they weren’t observed. Then he gestured for them to turn Deaken over. The lawyer groaned, an involuntary sound as the air was forced out of his body by the manhandling.
Makimber leaned over the seat. He found the South African passport in the left-hand inside pocket, operating the interior light to examine it briefly, snorting contemptuously. He replaced it, going to the other inside pocket. It was there he found the envelope addressed to Captain Erlander. He broke it open and turned in the seat, with the paper held close beneath the light, wanting to read every word.
In his anger Makimber slapped the face of the unconscious man. Deaken’s head twisted away under the force of the blow and Makimber regretted it at once. He wasn’t a savage.
Makimber had found what he wanted, obtained his confirmation, but he went carefully through Deaken’s pockets for anything further about the Bellicose and its cargo. But that was it. He snapped the inside light off, not wanting to attract attention to the vehicle.
“Tell me what you’ve got to do,” he demanded from the men in the car, anxious there should be no mistakes.
Haltingly, one prompting the other, they went through the disposal procedure that Makimber had patiently rehearsed with them throughout the afternoon.
“Far beyond Kaolack,” insisted Makimber.
“Far beyond Kaolack,” recited the driver first, closely followed by one of the men in the rear.
Makimber felt the tug of unease at their getting it completely right.
“Is he a bad man?”
“Very bad,” said Makimber. Swine, he thought again. “Take me back,” he said to the driver. It was only a short journey to the Place de 1’Union and the Hotel Teranga.
Makimber stopped the car before they reached it and got out; there was a possibility of a road check.
“Nearly all the way to Tambacounda.” He leaned in through the window. From inside the car came movements and grunts of understanding.
Makimber stood in the road and watched the taillights out of sight. On his way to the hotel he tightened his arm against his chest, feeling inside his jacket for the bulk of the envelope he intended shortly to destroy. There were times, as a Moslem, that he regretted the teachings of the Koran. Makimber had spent most of his adult life in the West and would liked to have celebrated the odd special occasion with alcohol. Tonight was certainly a special occasion-he had averted a catastrophe.
The Bellicose had picked up a following current and the headwind had dropped, so they reached the shelter of Goree Island four hours before they were scheduled to dock. Knowing that no port facilities would be available until their arranged arrival, Captain Erlander anchored off, using the shore lee for protection in case the calm weather changed during the remainder of the night. He let Edmunson complete the final anchoring, because the cable from Athens was a long one and he didn’t want to misunderstand it.
He had been reading steadily for fifteen minutes when the first officer came into his room. They had sailed together for four years, but Edmunson never took advantage; he waited until Erlander suggested a drink, then poured for both of them.
As the first officer brought the vodka to him, Erlander proffered the Athens cable and said, “What do you think of that?”
Erlander had almost completed his drink before the first officer finished reading.
“What sort of bloody stupidity is that?” demanded Edmunson.
Erlander shrugged. “I’ve queried it hours ago. There was a repeat, identical to the first. We’re to take on a man and make him believe we’re taking a northerly course and all the while go south, to Benguela. And anchor ten miles off on the thirteenth.”
“Which means this trip could end nastily.”
This time it was Eriander who filled the glasses. “That’s what I think.” He looked through the porthole towards the yellow and orange smoulder of Dakar on the shoreline. “1 wonder who the poor bugger is?”
Ashore, the car carrying Deaken had already made its northerly diversion and passed through Thies and was on its way towards Diourbel.
One of the men tried to kick at Deaken. The space was too restricted in the back of the vehicle, so he jabbed down viciously with his heel, feeling the body jerk with the impact.
“What shall we do with him?” asked the driver, intent upon the unlighted road ahead.
“Kill him,” came the reply.
20
The pain pierced Deaken’s unconsciousness, then agonizingly engulfed his whole body. He didn’t move-couldn’t move-because of the hurt. There was something hard-raised-beneath his stomach, bending him. Dust. A lot of dust. More than dust; road dirt, gritting into his face and nose, a stale, dried odour. The smell grew. Of people and oil and petrol. Like the earlier pain, the realization came in a rush. A car. He was on the floor of a car, face down, nose and mouth ground into the carpet. People had their feet on him, several people; one place worse than the rest, a foot jabbing at him in some sort of relentless pattern, again and again in the same spot.
The control came, he didn’t know how, through the whirl of impressions. The first thought was against movement to alert them, made easy because his body was afire against the slightest jar. He tried to remember but couldn’t; just the darkness of the alley, something about Vietnam and then sounds. Sounds and then the awfulness of something clubbing into his head. Terrible pain. Not as terrible as now though. Not an ordinary backstreet mugging, otherwise he wouldn’t be face down in a car, being taken to God knows where; he’d have woken up in the same alley, everything gone, even his clothes. What then? The pain coiled around him, band after band, preventing coherent thought.
From above, seeming sometimes far away and sometimes close, came the blur of conversation and Deaken forced himself to concentrate, straining for the words. He had breached the segregation, even as a child, when his mind had been most receptive to languages and he had managed a smattering of a lot of African tongues: none perfect or even extensive, but sufficient for day-to-day communication. They weren’t speaking Bantu. Or Zulu either. Or Shona. Swahili! The recognition settled without any satisfaction, because it was not one of the Swahili dialects he understood. He was picking up isolated words, even those flattened against positive identification. The speed with which they were talking made it more difficult, because they were arguing. Deaken recognized mtu mkorofi, bad man, repeated several times: nearly always it seemed answered by reference to bwana mkubwa. Their leader, the bwana mkubwa, had told them something, given an order, taratibu, but they couldn’t agree over it. Every time mtu mkorofi came there was the repeated, relentless kick and Deaken was in no doubt he was the one they were referring to. Several times there was the word Kaolack and then Deaken remembered the airline map he had studied during the flight from Nice, recalling the Senegal place-name: his memory was of it being somewhere far inland. Dust and fumes crowded into his nose and throat and he wanted to cough against them. He managed to suppress the need, guessing there would be a renewed attack if they suspected he was recovering. Why was he mtu mkorofi? Why had he been attacked at all? It didn’t make sense. If only the pain would go away, lessen at least, so that he could think straight. Mtu mkorofi came again, like a taunt. Then another kick. Abruptly, so suddenly that he was rolled forward against the rear of the front seats, the vehicle stopped; he felt it skid as the brakes locked and then, because he was against it, he felt the driver twist in his seat, to continue the dispute without the distraction of navigating.