Eddie stabbed the machete into the plane’s side and dragged himself back into the cabin as the Antonov levelled out. He lay gasping for several seconds before realising that Boodu’s severed hand was still gripping his neck. He pulled off the appendage and was about to toss it through the hatch after its former owner when he took in the ring on its finger, the emerald still gleaming in its gold setting. A moment’s thought, then he wedged it in a seat frame and staggered to the front of the compartment. Strutter was still clutching his chair, petrified. Eddie leaned into the cockpit. ‘TD! Are you okay?’
Maximov had the controls, hunched in the co-pilot’s position with a look of laser-beam concentration. Beside him, TD was very pale, her left hand tightly squeezed around her bloodied right biceps. ‘Not — really,’ she managed to say through her pained grimace. ‘Oh, God, it hurts!’
‘Let me see.’ He carefully lifted her hand. She cried out, but he saw enough of the injury to know that it wouldn’t be life-threatening if she got prompt medical attention. ‘Okay, it’s okay,’ he said, trying to sound reassuring. ‘Just keep hold of it. We’ll fix you up when we land. How far to the border?’
She squinted at the instruments, then out of the window. ‘We’ll be… across it in a minute.’
‘I have question,’ said Maximov, gripping the controls so hard that the tendons stood out on the backs of his hairy hands like brake cables. ‘How do we land? I don’t know how to fly!’ He gave Eddie a hopeful glance. ‘Do you?’
‘Nope — it’s been on my to-do list for about five fucking years!’ He looked back at TD. ‘Can you talk him through it? I don’t want to have been in three plane crashes in eleven bloody months.’
She managed a feeble smile. ‘No problem. Another reason I bought… an Antonov. If you turn into the wind, the stall speed is… zero knots. So much lift it can just — float down.’
‘You’re kidding.’ Another attempt at a smile through her pain. ‘You’re not. Wow. I guess Russian stuff isn’t as crap as I thought.’
‘Hoy!’ Maximov protested.
Eddie grinned and retreated into the main cabin. Strutter’s look of rictus terror had finally relaxed, and he was hesitantly loosening his seatbelt straps. ‘I’d keep ’em fastened,’ Eddie warned him. ‘This might be a bit bumpy.’
Twenty minutes later, the Antonov was on the ground, in more or less one piece. Eddie had radioed ahead to alert the reception committee that they needed medical help; it turned out that no fewer than three of the waiting Zimbabwean expatriates were doctors, educated professionals being high on the list of targets for the government’s thugs. Two of them took TD to the nearby bush farmhouse for emergency treatment. The third wanted to check Eddie’s injuries, but he had business to attend to first.
Maximov followed the Englishman from the plane. ‘That was easy!’ he crowed. ‘Maybe I should become pilot, da?’
Despite TD’s claims, the An-2’s touchdown had been far from feather-light. Eddie tried to crick the stiffness out of his sore neck and spine. ‘You might need a bit more practice.’ Maximov laughed.
‘Mr Chase?’ Waiting for Eddie was Japera Tangwerai, one of those whom he had helped escape from Zimbabwe several years before. Although she was only in her early thirties, the lines of stress and loss on her face made her appear middle-aged, for she had seen nearly her entire family murdered by Zimbabwean militia forces. Her only surviving child, a boy now eight years old, looked up at Eddie nervously from behind her skirts. ‘What happened? Did you free the prisoners from Fort Helena?’
‘Yeah,’ he told her. ‘Don’t know exactly how many, but a lot, about a hundred. Banga and his people got them out of there.’
‘And what about…’ Her voice dropped. ‘What about Boodu?’
Even as a whisper, the hated name still caught the attention of others nearby. More people approached Eddie. ‘Did you catch him?’ a man demanded. ‘Did you bring the Butcher?’
‘Some of him. Here.’ Eddie brought something out from behind his back. ‘Let me give you a hand.’
Everyone recoiled in instinctive shock and disgust before they realised the significance of the distinctive ring on one stiffening finger. ‘It… it’s his,’ said Japera softly. ‘It’s the Butcher’s hand.’ She raised her voice to her companions. ‘It is the Butcher’s hand!’
The man who had spoken stared at it, then his mouth widened into a grin. He took the lifeless hand and held it aloft. ‘You killed the Butcher! He’s dead! The Butcher is dead!’ The call was taken up by the others, delight and relief spreading through the little crowd.
Japera’s response was more muted, a tear beading in one eye. ‘You killed Gamba Boodu,’ she said quietly to Eddie. ‘Thank you. My family… can rest now. Thank you.’ She squeezed his hand. He nodded in silent acknowledgement. After a moment, she released him. ‘I will get your money.’
‘Don’t give it to me,’ he said, to her surprise. ‘TD can have most of my share — I don’t think getting her plane fixed’ll be cheap. And Max can have the rest.’ He nodded towards the huge Russian, who was surrounded by cheering Zimbabweans and looking bemused but pleased by the attention. ‘All I need is enough to cover some expenses. Plane fares, mainly.’
Japera tried to hide her disappointment. ‘You are leaving? So soon?’
‘I’ve got somewhere to go. All I need is to find out where. Excuse me.’ He headed back to the plane to meet Strutter, who had just planted both feet on solid ground with huge relief.
‘Eddie, Eddie, Eddie!’ said the Kenyan, rubbing his brow. ‘We made it — you saved me!’
‘Yeah, well, don’t expect me to make a habit of it. Like I said, if you tell me what I need to know, we’ll be all square.’
‘No problem. I will find your friend, don’t you worry.’
‘He’s not a friend,’ said Eddie, expression turning cold. ‘You know Alexander Stikes?’
Strutter nodded. ‘Of course. Ex-SAS like you, runs his own PMC — although I heard he suddenly shut it down not long ago and started working for someone full time. I had some dealings with him; arranged for him to hire mercenaries for certain jobs, people like Maximov. But he’s a dangerous man. In honesty, I’m happy he’s gone.’ He regarded Eddie curiously. ‘You’ve gone to a lot of trouble for someone you don’t like. Why do you want to find him?’
Eddie’s face became even harder. ‘So I can kill him.’
2 New York City
Nina Wilde looked disconsolately out across her hometown from her office in the United Nations building. Today marked a date she had no desire to celebrate; it was exactly three months since she had last seen her husband.
With a quiet sigh, the redhead turned away from the view and returned to her desk. A framed photograph beside the phone was a reminder of far better times: herself and her partner at an infinitely less depressing anniversary, the party thrown to mark the first year of their marriage. The picture was less than two years old, but a lot had happened since then.
A lot of people had died.
One of them was the subject of the email she had just received, the grim reminder prompting her melancholy reflectiveness at the window. It was from an Interpol officer named Renée Beauchamp, in charge of investigating the death of another member of the multinational police organisation. The victim was Ankit Jindal, head of Interpol’s Cultural Property Crime Unit — and also a friend, who had worked with Nina on two of her previous archaeological expeditions.