Dark Heart (15 page)

The lead truck lurched to a stop. This one pulled up beside it. The four headlight beams shone on the back of a sizeable riverside building and on the wildly writhing water downstream of the shattered bridge behind it. The whole place looked as deserted as the city they had just come past. But, unlike the buildings in the city above, this one looked well cared for. Like the roadway. Used. In the middle of the building's back wall there was a sizeable entrance closed by a roll-down door. Beside this there was a normal door. Like the roll-down, it was closed. The motors died. Silence, disturbed only by the roaring of the cataract.

‘Keep an eye on the bitches,' said the man wearing the dead soldier's body armour after a moment. He handed the huge driver the AK and climbed down, holding the M16 casually under one arm. Immediately, the driver flicked the select lever down to automatic, wound down the window and held the AK ready to fire like a handgun. He reached under the dash with his left hand and pulled out a square-looking automatic. Anastasia reckoned it was a Smith & Wesson M&P 9mm. The man in the flak-jacket glanced back up. ‘If they make a move or a sound, kill them,' he said.

The driver nodded. ‘I'm on it.'

The man with the M16 slammed the truck's door, then turned and walked forward slowly. The door ahead of him opened cautiously inwards. He vanished into the big building.

Anastasia looked across at Ado. The young woman's eyes were huge, but her mouth was set and her jaw was square, determined. Pretty good for someone with a gun jabbed into the soft bit under her rib. I hope I look like that
,
thought Anastasia, but she doubted it. The driver's piggy little eyes kept flicking from the women to the building.

The noise made by the roll-down door opening up was so loud and unexpected that they all jumped and Ado was lucky not to get shot.

‘Here we go,' growled the driver and pulled the AK back in through the window and slipped it into the footwell between his knee and the door. One-handed, with the S&W still firmly in Ado's side, he switched on the motor. He reached across and put the forward gear shift into first, then reached down and released the brake. He put his hand back on the wheel and engaged the clutch. While he was doing all this, the truck that had taken the lead so far did so once again, rolling forward through the wide portal in the building's wall. The truck with the women in it moved slowly forward into the building behind it and stopped. The roll-down door behind them rattled loudly once again and slammed shut with a noise like a pistol shot.

Anastasia numbly looked around. They were in an open-fronted building overlooking the river. It was part warehouse, part dock. There was plenty of room for the two trucks to sit side by side on a floor made of concrete slabs – but there was also room for a sizeable if battered-looking vessel at an internal dock topped with wooden planks. The whole place was dimly lit, but the boat itself was dark. With a lurch that actually felt like a kick in the belly, Anastasia recognized the boat. It was the
Nellie
. She was looking wildly around for the superannuated Captain Christophe and his crew, when the driver ordered, ‘Out!' and pushed Ado sideways with the gun. Carrying Celine between them, Anastasia and Ado climbed out on to the concrete. The driver followed them, carefully sliding across the bench seat so that he could keep them covered with his Smith & Wesson. The two men from their truck had been joined by three others from the lead truck. The soldier who had taken them aboard was clearly the leader. He was pulling off the body armour as they arrived, revealing a range of black-rimmed holes across the breast of his uniform. He crossed towards the three women. ‘Time to wake up,' he said to Celine and slapped her round the face.

‘Stop!' said Anastasia, outraged. ‘You can't do that! She's hurt!'

‘You don't get it yet, do you?' he asked. ‘We can do whatever we want. And we will. And whether or not you all get hurt depends on how you cooperate.'

As he spoke, he continued to slap Celine. The blows weren't hard, but he kept repeating them until Celine's eyes flickered and opened.

Anastasia looked around the big building desperately, hoping against hope to see
Nellie
's captain or a member of his crew. But whoever had been on the boat – whoever had let the soldier in and raised the roll-down door – was now inspecting the contents of the trucks. The noise they were making and the movements of the dusty canvas sides made that clear enough. Anastasia's whole mind seemed suddenly to be focussed on the immediacy of each vivid instant as it ticked past. She did not want to think about the future. Except for the faint, faint hope that the men currently inspecting the trucks' contents would indeed turn out to be the kindly old captain and his elderly, gentle crew.

But when at last they came back into the light and confronted the five soldiers, they proved to be half a dozen unfamiliar young men. Well armed and arrogant-looking.

‘We have a deal, Van,' one of them said. He spoke in accented English to the lead soldier, but his eyes were raking over the three women.

‘Money first, Captain' said Van. ‘Party later.'

‘OK. The money's aboard this floating shit-pile. You set up the party over in the office while I get it.'

The five soldiers and
Nellie
's new crew dragged the women across to a sizeable lean-to built in a corner of the warehouse. There was a generator room just beside this, Anastasia noted inconsequentially, the pounding motor there providing the light. In the warehouse the light was dim and flickering. In the lean-to it was brighter. The place was more than an office, she noted numbly. It apparently doubled as a nightwatchman's shelter. There was a table, chairs, a Primus stove – as well as a desk, filing cabinets, bookcases full of mouldering ledgers.

There were several cases of drink on the table – beer, whisky, vodka by the look of things.

And there was a bed.

‘You want to make a game of it?' Van asked the others. ‘Or just go for broke?'

‘Fuck it,' said the prizefighter. ‘Let's just get our wicks dipped. We can maybe play some games later. Before we say
goodnight, ladies
.'

‘OK,' agreed Van. He began unbuttoning his bullet-riddled shirt. ‘I'll take the sleepy bitch on the table. I got some really excellent ways to wake her up.'

Nellie
's new crew took the alcohol over to the desk and began pulling out bottles, twisting them open and sucking it down, watching proceedings with every sign of enjoyment. Van lifted the dopey, disorientated Celine on to the table, laid the faintly protesting woman on her back. Pulled her knees apart. He leaned forward between her splayed thighs, tore open her blouse and reached back to lift her skirt.

Ado gave a whimper as one of the three men from the lead truck pulled her towards the bed.

The physical absence of her two companions washed over Anastasia like a douche of iced water. But it didn't chill her as much as the overwhelming need to do something. To do anything. To somehow take control of the situation and give her friends a breathing space. Buy them some time if nothing else . . .

There were only ten of them, she thought suddenly. Ten men. She had pulled a train of ten the night Simian Artillery's lead singer Boris had done a Kurt Cobain and blown his brains out in the toilet at the Petrovka Hotel after that last, disastrous concert in Red Square. But Simian Artillery were no Nirvana – and nobody but Anastasia had noticed that his brains were all over the washroom ceiling. She had pulled a train of ten that night and lived to tell the tale.

‘What are you,' she suddenly heard herself demanding. ‘Country and Western fans? Choirboys? Haven't you ever had a real
rock chick
?'

She tore her bra free as they turned, wide-eyed to watch her. Undid her belt and pulled down her jeans and panties to her knees in one brutal motion, then straightened as they fell to her ankles, flaunting the leopard tattoo at them.

‘You haven't
lived
until you've pulled a train with a heavy metal maiden!' she snarled.

As she challenged them, she stood on the heels of her trainers one at a time, squeezing them off her feet while the man simply gaped. She stepped out of the left leg. Kicked the left shoe at the prizefighter. Working on reflex, he dropped his Smith & Wesson on the bed and caught it. Stepped out of the right one. Kicked that with the last of her clothing at the man who called himself Van. The bundle sailed past his naked shoulder and hit
Nellie
's new captain as he came in through the office door.

‘Fuck!' said Van, and swept Celine off the table into a bundle on the floor. ‘You want it? Let's go for it!'

‘All right,' shouted Anastasia. ‘There's plenty for all of you. Just form an orderly queue . . .'

Van reached for her. Caught her under her arms. Lifted her off her feet. Slammed her down on the table and . . .

‘Wait!' called the captain. ‘Wait just a goddamn minute!'

Van swung round with a snarl that belonged in a zoo. ‘What the fuck . . .'

As the jeans had wrapped themselves round the captain's face, so the oysters had fallen out of the pocket. He came past Van now and looked down at her, his eyes ablaze with something beyond simple lust. He brandished the oysters in her face so wildly that the huge black pearl fell out and rolled across the table like an eyeball.

‘Where did you get these?' snarled the captain. ‘Tell me where you got these!'

Events were going too fast for Anastasia now. She blinked up at the two faces hovering like a pair of moons above her. She opened her mouth to ask ‘
What?
' But she never said the word.

Van's naked torso exploded, spraying her bare body with boiling blood. He toppled sideways. A brutal hammering sound filled the room, beating on her ears as though someone were driving spikes into her skull. The captain span away into a sudden cloud of grey smoke. His face appeared to have fallen off. Anastasia rolled sideways, dropped on to the floor beside Celine. Clutched the shaking woman's head and shoulders to her like a mother protecting her baby. Looked up, her eyes wide with horror and wonder. The noise stopped as abruptly as it had begun.

Esan stood in the doorway. The AK was smoking in one hand, its butt in his armpit. The M16 was in the other, also steadied under his arm. His lips were moving but Anastasia couldn't hear what he was saying. A hand fell on her shoulder and she jumped, screaming with shock. The sound of her own distress seemed to unblock her ears, unfreeze her mind. She looked up. It was Ado.

‘The boat,' said Ado, decisively. ‘Run for the boat.'

‘T
his is a waste of my time,' said Robin quietly to Richard. ‘I don't even know why I'm here.'

‘In the room or in the country?' he breathed back with a wry, lopsided grin.

‘Take your pick,' she mouthed, failing to see the funny side.

The pair of them looked around the table, with Minister Ngama at the head. They were in one of the conference rooms beside his breathtaking office in the new complex of buildings that stood where the shanty town had stood, three years earlier, on the south-east outskirts of the city.

The tall window behind Ngama showed the delta and the sea beyond it outlined against a hard blue early-morning sky. Shipping came and went busily across the bay. Only Caleb Maina's ex-command was immobile, tethered to the dockside, waiting to be towed into dry dock for repair, sitting oddly just behind the shoulder of the man who sacked its commander. Its slim grey bows like the point of a dagger waiting to stab him in the back.

In the room, the ministers' team of lawyers, geologists, oil men, shipping experts and civil servants sat down the long table to their right. Max, Richard, Robin and their teams of geologists, oil experts, lawyers and shipping men sat down the other. On the glassy mahogany board in front of them lay the contracts they were negotiating for the extraction and shipping of the Benin Light crude oil which was one of the country's greatest assets. In another room, no doubt – or in this room at another time – the men on the Heritage Mariner/Bashnev-Sevmash side would be replaced by teams from Shell, BP, Total, Texas Oil, Exxon or Chevron Conoco to name but a few.

But Robin's point held good. Richard and the others from Heritage Mariner understood the negotiations as well as she did. Richard's signature as CEO carried as much weight as hers did. She did not need to countersign anything. She did not need to add anything. She did not need to be here at all.

She was beginning to wonder why Julius Chaka had included her in his invitation in the first place. For he was not a man given to pointless courtesies or empty gestures. He knew the Mariners well enough to realize she did not have to be included – like Irina Lavrov – as a necessary extra to keep Richard happy. And yet he had specifically invited her.

Why?

‘Excuse me, Minister,' she said. She stood up, smiled winningly as he nodded and smiled back. Then she walked out.

By the time she reached the main door of the building she was feeling listless and bored. She had moved on impulse, as though she could just drive up to the president's office and ask the man himself. But the instant the door to the conference room closed behind her, she saw the impossibility of such a course of action. What she had managed to achieve was to get herself smartly to a loose end. She was not used to having nothing to do, and she wondered briefly whether she should turn round. Even a tedious meeting where she was merely an observer was preferable to being at a loose end.

But the feeling was only fleeting. She changed mental gear, brought out her feminine side, and began to plan a day of relaxation, with a little sightseeing, perhaps. And shopping. But she was dressed for business, not pleasure, so when her car arrived, summoned by the security man at the door, she asked to be taken back to her hotel first.