No one walked from Black Beach Prison.
Not ever.
‘How did you find me?’ Jaeger let his words fall heavy into the silence.
Raff shrugged. ‘Wasn’t easy. Took a few of us: Feaney, Carson, me.’ He laughed. ‘You glad we bothered?’
Jaeger shrugged. ‘I was just getting to know Major Mojo. Nice guy. The kind you’d want to marry your sister.’ He eyed the big Maori. ‘But how did you find me? And why…’
‘Always there for you, buddy. Plus…’ A shadow fell across Raff’s features. ‘You’re needed back in London. An assignment. We both are.’
‘What kind of assignment?’
Raff’s expression grew darker still. ‘I’ll brief you when we’re out of here – ’cause there ain’t gonna be no assignment until we are.’
Jaeger took a long pull on the water. Cool, clear bottled water – it tasted like sweet nectar compared to what he’d been forced to live off in Black Beach.
‘So what’s next? You got me out of Black Beach; doesn’t mean we’re off Hell Island. That’s what they call it around here.’
‘So I heard. Deal I cut with Major Mojo – he gets his third payment once you and I are on our flight to London. Only we won’t be making that flight. The airport: that’s where he’ll grab us. He’ll have a reception party waiting. He’ll claim I busted you out of Black Beach, but he recaptured us. That way, he gets two paydays – one from us, and a second from the President.’
Jaeger shuddered. It was the President of Bioko – Honore Chambara – who’d ordered his arrest in the first place. A month or so back there had been an attempted coup. Mercenaries had seized the other half of Equatorial Guinea – Bioko being the country’s island capital – the half that lay just across the ocean, forming part of the African mainland.
In the aftermath, President Chambara had rounded up all foreigners on Bioko – not that there were many. Jaeger had been one of them, and a search of his digs had turned up the odd memento from his time as a soldier.
As soon as Chambara had heard, he’d figured Jaeger had to be in on the coup; their man on the inside. Which he wasn’t. He was here in Bioko for an entirely different – and innocent – set of reasons, but there was no convincing Chambara. On the President’s orders, Jaeger had been thrown into Black Beach Prison, where Major Mojo had done his best to break him; to force him to confess.
Jaeger slipped on the shades. ‘You’re right – we’ll never make it out of here via the airport. You got a Plan B?’
Raff threw him a look. ‘Way I heard it, you were here working as a teacher. Teaching English. At a village in the far north of the island. I paid them a visit. A bunch of fishermen there figure you’re the best thing that ever happened on Hell Island. Taught their kids to read ’n’ write. More than President Chugga ever did.’ He paused. ‘They’ve readied a canoe so we can make a break for Nigeria.’
Jaeger thought about it for a second. He’d spent close to three years on Bioko. He’d got to know the local fishing communities well. The journey across the Gulf of Guinea by canoe – it was doable. Maybe.
‘It’s thirty klicks, or thereabouts,’ he volunteered. ‘The fishermen do it now and then – when the weather’s set fair. You got a map?’
Raff gestured at a small flight bag lying at Jaeger’s feet. Jaeger reached for it, painfully, and rifled through the contents. He found the map, unfolded it and studied the lie of the land. Bioko lay in the very crook of the armpit of Africa – a tiny island thick with jungle, no more than a hundred kilometres long by fifty kilometres wide.
The nearest African country was Cameroon, lying north and west of there, with Nigeria set further to the west again. A good two hundred kilometres south lay what had been, until recently, the other half of President Chambara’s domain – the mainland part of Equatorial Guinea – that was, until the coup plotters had seized it.
‘Cameroon’s closest,’ Jaeger remarked.
‘Cameroon? Nigeria?’ Raff shrugged. ‘Right now, anywhere’s better than here.’
‘How long till nightfall?’ Jaeger queried. He’d lost his watch to Chambara’s thugs, long before he’d been dragged into his Black Beach cell. ‘Under cover of darkness, we might just make it.’
‘Six hours. I’m giving you one hour max at the hotel. You spend it scrubbing all that shit off, and necking water – because no way are you gonna make it unless you rehydrate. Like I said, big day still to come.’
‘Mojo knows which hotel you’re staying at?’
Raff snorted. ‘No point trying to hide. Island this size – everyone knows everything. Come to think of it, reminds me a bit of home…’ His teeth flashed in the sunlight. ‘Mojo won’t cause us any trouble – not for a good few hours. He’ll be checking if his money has cleared – by which time we’ll be long gone.’
Jaeger drank the bottled water, forcing gulp after gulp down his parched throat. Trouble was, his stomach had shrunk to the size of a walnut. If they hadn’t beaten and tortured him to death, the starvation diet would have done for him pretty soon, that was for certain.
‘Teaching kids.’ Raff smiled, knowingly. ‘So what were you really up to?’
‘I was teaching kids.’
‘Right. Teaching kids. You got nothing whatsoever to do with the coup?’
‘President Chugga kept asking me the same question. In between the beatings. He could use a man like you.’
‘Okay, you were teaching kids. English. In a fishing village.’
‘I was teaching kids.’ Jaeger stared out the window; the smile had fallen from his face completely. ‘Plus, if you’ve got to know, I needed somewhere to hide. To think. Bioko – the asshole at the end of the universe. I never thought anyone would find me.’ He paused. ‘You proved me wrong.’
The hotel pit stop had done Jaeger a world of good. He’d showered. Three times. By the third, the water that swirled down the plughole was just about clean.
He’d forced a dose of rehydration salts down him. He’d sliced off his beard – a five-week growth – but stopped short of shaving. There hadn’t been the time.
He’d checked himself over for breaks; miraculously, there didn’t seem to be many. He was thirty-eight years old, and he’d kept himself fit on the island. A decade in the military elite prior to that – he’d been pretty much at the peak of physical condition when they’d thrown him into his cell. Maybe that was why he’d emerged from Black Beach comparatively unscathed.
He figured he had a couple of broken fingers; ditto his toes.
Nothing that wouldn’t heal.
A quick change of clothes and Raff had them back in the SUV, heading east out of Malabo into the thick tropical bush. At first he drove hunched over the wheel like an old granny – 30 mph top speed. He did so to check for a tail. The few who were lucky enough to own a car in Bioko all seemed to drive like the proverbial bat out of hell.
If a vehicle had stuck to their backside, it would have stood out a mile.
By the time they turned on to the tiny dirt track threading towards the north-east coast, it was clear that no one was following.
Major Mojo had to be banking on them leaving via the airport. In theory, there was no other way off the island – not unless you wanted to take your chances amongst the tropical storms and the sharks that circled Bioko, ravenously.
And there were precious few who ever did that.
3
Chief Ibrahim gestured towards the Fernao village beach. It was close enough for the sound of the surf to echo through the thin mud walls of his hut.
‘We have readied a canoe. It is provisioned with water and food.’ The chief paused and touched Jaeger’s shoulder. ‘We will never forget, especially the children.’