Ben hadn't minded getting caught when there was a chance of him getting his message through, but now he suddenly realized he couldn't risk it. He turned to Halima. 'Come on, let's go. I'm going to have to try again another time. Let's get out of here before Suliman gets back.'
He carefully placed the handset back into the flight case, and the two of them slipped back out into the pouring rain. Suliman's Land Rover was approaching, but the lie of the land was such that it was not pointing directly at them, so he and Halima remained unnoticed by the mine manager as they sprinted back to the cover of the trees.
Seconds later, Suliman arrived at the hut. He parked the truck outside, then hurried in out of the rain, carelessly carrying his AK-47 and muttering under his breath at the stupidity of that idiotic man Abele. He was beginning to have second thoughts about his actions – maybe he should have just killed him when he had the chance. But Kruger had wanted suspicious deaths kept to a minimum, and who was he to argue with the man who was paying him so well?
In his anger, he failed to see the wet footprints on the floor. And as he started stripping off his wet clothes, he failed to see two figures running as fast as they could down the road that led to the village.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
As Ben and Halima hurtled down the road in the gushing rain, they didn't notice Abele, unconscious in the ditch by the side. Nobody noticed them either – there was no one about, as everyone was taking shelter from the elements. It was only when they reached the compound that they stopped, taking cover for a moment under a corrugated-iron canopy. Their sopping clothes stuck uncomfortably to their skin, and Ben felt the cold pain of physical exhaustion deep in his chest. The two of them stood there, breathless, and Ben found himself suddenly reluctant to go in. He surveyed the square in front of him. Through the pouring rain he could see, on the other side, a body lying on its back. It was on some sort of makeshift stretcher. 'Look,' he said to Halima, pointing in the direction of the body. 'They must have been taking him away to the burial site when the rains came.'
Halima nodded mutely.
Ben's edginess increased. 'We should go over there and move him out of the rain,' he said.
'And what would that do, Ben?' Halima asked, giving him a piercing look.
Ben shrugged. 'I don't know. I just thought…'
But he stopped talking and looked down to his side, where Halima had taken his hand.
'You are scared to go in to see your father because you fear what you will find there,' she observed.
Ben winced slightly, and nodded his head. 'What if he's dead?' he asked plaintively.
Halima gave him a sympathetic look. 'I understand,' she said. 'If you would rather I stayed out here…?'
Ben thought about it for a second. 'No,' he said finally. They had been through a lot together, and for some reason he now drew a kind of comfort from her presence. 'No, come in. If you want to,' he added.
He took a deep breath and led the way.
From the doorway, he could see that his father had not moved in the time Ben had been away. He was still lying on the bed, deathly still. Ben felt suddenly sick; from here his father did not seem to be breathing. He exchanged a worried glance with Halima.
And then there was a sound: a long, drawn-out breath that seemed to last longer than any breath Ben had ever heard. It did not sound good, but at least it was a sign of life. He rushed to his father's bedside.
'Dad?' Ben said tentatively, not wanting to shout but struggling to be heard above the sound of the rain. 'Dad, can you hear me?'
For a few seconds there was no response, but then Russell's eyes flickered open. He almost seemed to recognize his son, but just when Ben was about to speak again, his father's eyes fell shut once more.
Ben put his face in his hands. He couldn't bear to see his father this way.
'Ben?'
He looked up sharply. Russell's eyes were open again.
'Ben,' he whispered hoarsely. 'Is that you?'
Ben nodded.
'Oh, thank God,' Russell murmured. 'Abele said you had disappeared.'
There was no point, Ben thought, explaining where he had been. 'I'm here now. You need water,' he told his dad, looking around and seeing his bottle of water where he had left it. He held it to his dad's lips, and his father seemed to derive some relief from the liquid, though he appeared to have lost the ability to swallow and the water did little more than sluice out from around the side of his parched and bleeding lips.
'Did you call Sam?' Russell asked.
'I tried to, Dad. I spoke to him, but I'm not sure the message got through. The line was bad – I'm going to have to try again, but Suliman is in his office now and I'll have to think of a way to lure him out.'
Russell coughed weakly. 'Never mind that now,' he said. 'Where's Abele?'
'I don't know. I haven't seen him.'
'He was here,' Russell breathed. 'I don't know when – maybe yesterday. He told me that…' Again he dissolved into a fit of coughing before he could continue speaking. 'He told me that they are bringing workers in from the nearest village.'
Ben blinked as the implications of that news hit home. This was exactly what they wanted to avoid.
'It's starting, Ben.' His father seemed to echo his thoughts. 'It will only take one of those people to return to their home carrying the virus, and nobody will be able to stop it spreading. You have to make sure it doesn't happen.'
'How am I supposed to-?' Ben started to ask, but he cut himself short as his father emitted another of those deathly rattles from his lungs. 'Dad, are you OK?' he asked urgently.
But there was no reply. Russell Tracey had slipped once more into unconsciousness.
Ben bit his lip. All he wanted to do was to stay here, to look after his father. But that was not what his father had urged him to do. Gradually he became aware that the noise of the rain hammering on the roof had stopped, and Halima had approached and was standing just behind him. 'What should we do?' she asked.
Ben closed his eyes and breathed deeply and slowly in an attempt to regain his composure. 'Where is the next village?' he asked quietly.
'West of here,' Halima said. 'On the road Suliman took with us.'
'Is that the only road in?'
Halima nodded.
'And how far away is it?'
'Half a day's drive. Maybe a day because of the rains.'
'OK. There might still be time.' He chewed thoughtfully on the nail of his right thumb. 'I've got an idea,' he said. 'This is what we're going to do…'
Four thousand miles away, the same sun that was once more emerging over the rainforests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo was also beating down on the city of Macclesfield in Cheshire. Sam Garner, a bearded, bespectacled man in his mid-forties wearing a rather unfashionable short-sleeved shirt and a tie with soup stains down it, was glad of the air conditioning in his offices; but he was deeply concerned by the phone call he had just received. He had never met Russell Tracey's son, and didn't know if he was the sort of kid to pull practical jokes. But if his father was anything to go by, somehow he doubted it.
Sam had called the operator to try and trace where the call had come from, but there was nothing she could do to help. The more he thought about it, the more firmly he decided he had to take it seriously. It was too outlandish for a kid to make up, surely, and Ben had sounded genuinely fearful. But who should he call and who would listen and, even more importantly, be able to act on such meagre information? He twiddled with his pencil and tried to think things through calmly and logically. Sam Garner had seen the effects of the Ebola virus firsthand. He'd researched a small outbreak in the Central African Republic about three years ago, and he remembered thinking how much worse these diseases were in real life than in academic study. The people he had seen dying of the virus had ended their lives in terrible pain. At the time he remembered being thankful that you could only catch Ebola if you came into contact with the bodily fluids of infected sufferers. Humans had never caught it through airborne transmission, though monkeys possibly had. A slight mutation, and Ebola could turn into a health threat the like of which the world had never seen.