And she was flying right into the middle of it.
Butembo, she had learned, was a hotspot for rebel activity. That was worrying enough in itself, but she was leading others into a dangerous region. Fisher and the rest of his team were in the cramped seats behind her, Ziff reading on his own at the cabin’s rear. Whatever the director had insisted in Jerusalem, Nina couldn’t help but consider herself responsible for them. Now that she was actually in the country, her earlier enthusiasm was tempered by concern: maybe too little, too late.
But she knew Eddie would do everything he could to ensure the group’s safety. Her husband sat beside her, unshaven and rumpled in his black leather jacket. ‘You okay?’ she asked as he rubbed his eyes.
‘Yeah, just knackered,’ he said. ‘I had a much longer journey here than you did.’ They had met in the Ugandan capital of Kampala: an eight-hour flight from Jerusalem, considerably more from London.
‘Well, at least there’s not much more of it left.’ She leaned forward to address the pilot, a Botswanan woman in a baseball hat. ‘Hey, TD. How long till we land?’
Tamara Defendé, known to close friends by her initials, glanced back. ‘About twenty minutes.’ Her trade as a bush pilot, roving over the vast continent, had been successful enough for her now to own three aircraft, but like most fliers she preferred to keep her hands on a set of controls rather than stay behind a desk. ‘Eddie, you still want to fly back to Kampala tomorrow morning, yes?’
‘Yeah,’ the Englishman replied. ‘My flight back isn’t until the afternoon. That’ll give me a chance to meet Fortune and whoever else he’s rounded up, check ’em out, and hopefully get a night’s sleep as well.’
‘You really didn’t need to come all the way out here,’ Nina told him. ‘I’m sure that if your buddy’s vouched for these people, they’re fine.’
‘I just want to be sure,’ Eddie insisted. ‘Besides, it’s a bit late to change my mind now!’
The elderly Antonov biplane flew on. The scenery was beautiful, verdant green over mineral-rich red soil, but the near-absence of vehicle traffic on the few weaving dirt roads was a clear sign of poverty even from several thousand feet up.
‘That’s Butembo,’ Tamara said at last. Nina and Eddie looked ahead to see a brown sprawl across the surrounding jade. It was a large settlement, its population almost seven hundred thousand according to Nina’s research, but she hesitated to qualify it with the honorific of being a city. It was obvious even from miles away that almost all the red-roofed houses were small, with very few buildings having more than a single storey.
Their pilot had an increasingly argumentative exchange with the control tower before winning some concession from the controller, then she lined the plane up with the runway and put it into final descent. ‘What was that about?’ asked Eddie.
‘They wanted me to circle,’ she replied. ‘They’re waiting for some VIP’s helicopter. I told them I’m low on fuel, but if they want me to put down on the main street, I can. They got my point.’
‘I’m glad,’ said Nina, sharing a smile with her husband.
The landing on Rughenda airfield’s dirt runway was bumpy, but the Antonov quickly slowed to taxi speed and pulled up near the modest terminal building. ‘Thanks, Tamara,’ said Nina as the Botswanan shut down the engines.
Eddie looked through a porthole. ‘There’s Fortune.’ Nina saw a tall, broad-shouldered black man in a sleek three-piece suit waiting outside the terminal. A shorter, scruffier man with a wild frizz of hair stood beside him. ‘That must be his mate.’
‘Is he the guy you wanted to check out?’
‘Yeah. I’d hoped he’d have more people, though.’
She laughed a little. ‘How much security did you think we’d need?’
His expression displayed no humour. ‘More than that.’
The passengers disembarked. The air outside was not as hot as Nina had expected, about seventy Fahrenheit, but it was uncomfortably humid. Fisher and the rest of the film crew retrieved their equipment while Eddie went to meet the welcoming committee. ‘Fortune!’ he called.
‘Eddie, my man!’ the tall man boomed in reply. French was the country’s official language, and his English was rich with its almost musical cadences. ‘Good to see you again!’
‘You too, mate.’ The two men embraced, the African more than a head taller than the Yorkshireman. ‘Nina, this is Fortune Bemba. We go back a long way. Fortune, this is my wife, Nina Wilde.’
‘The famous explorer, yes,’ said Fortune as she joined her husband. He took her hand and kissed it, then gave her a broad smile that revealed two gold teeth in his otherwise perfect white set. ‘An honour to meet you! Eddie tells me you are looking for something in the jungle. An ancient city?’
‘That’s what we’re hoping for, yes,’ she replied. ‘You’re Congolese, aren’t you?’ He nodded. ‘Are there any legends of anything like that?’
‘There are many legends about the jungle, including lost cities. I have never heard that any were true, though.’
‘Me neither,’ said the other man. He seemed about to burst with pent-up nervous energy, the words tumbling from his mouth. ‘But I’m from Matadi, all the way out west, so jungle stories? Not so much my thing.’ He had much less of a French inflection than Fortune, sounding almost American — or rather, Nina guessed, trying to sound that way, having picked up the accent from movies and TV.
‘This is Paris Mbolo,’ said Fortune, introducing him. ‘He is very reliable, Eddie, very capable — I trust him completely. Even if,’ a sniff, ‘he has no dress sense at all.’
Paris gave his impeccably dressed partner a sarcastic look. ‘Ha ha. Fuck you. Oh! Excusez-moi,’ he said to Nina, almost embarrassed.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said, amused. ‘I’m married to Eddie — I hear much worse all the time!’
Eddie gave Paris a critical look. ‘Fortune said you were in the Congolese army before going independent?’
He nodded. ‘Six years, then two with the blue helmets’ — the United Nations peacekeeping force that had worked to suppress rebel groups operating across the border — ‘before I realised I’d get more money and less hatred in plain clothes.’
‘If you can call those clothes,’ said Fortune disdainfully.
Paris held back another obscenity for Nina’s sake. ‘So yes, Mr Chase — Eddie? Can I call you Eddie? Eddie, I know what I’m doing. I’ve been in tough situations, and I know the people. I’ll take care of your wife and her friends.’
‘He is very good,’ Fortune assured the Englishman. ‘I would not have asked him to join me if he was not.’
Eddie nodded. ‘Although I’d hoped you’d drum up more people.’
‘Private security is in very high demand. And that is why.’ He looked up at the thrum of an approaching helicopter.
Nina and Eddie turned to see a gleaming white-and-blue Airbus AS355 descending towards the terminal. The name Monardril was emblazoned along its fuselage. ‘Who’s this?’ Eddie asked.
‘The big boss of a mining company,’ said Paris. ‘His people have been here for weeks, setting up some deal.’
‘They have hired many mercenaries to protect them,’ Fortune went on. ‘Some of them you know. Scotty Roux, for one.’
‘Scotty’s working for this lot?’ said Eddie. ‘Wondered why I couldn’t get hold of him.’
Another noise, that of ground vehicles, caught their attention. A convoy of new and expensive SUVs and pickup trucks rolled through the airport gate to stop nearby. Heavily tinted windows hid their occupants, but the men riding in the pickup beds wore dark paramilitary uniforms. No guns were immediately apparent, but from the way the security team were warily scanning the surroundings, Eddie guessed their weapons were stashed within easy reach.