Mako’s lecture was beamed from Volgograd via a video link in a specially prepared section of the main handling area. Ivan’s men were seated there, looking expectantly at the big screen as though awaiting a re-run of Apocalypse Now. Mako appeared on screen almost immediately after Ivan arrived. ‘This has to be just about the last of these briefings, men,’ boomed the colonel. ‘Though I’ll deliver a final pep talk when we disembark. Remember, we got enough clear feedback from Mr Asov’s original overflight in the Kamov to be certain it would be a waste of time taking the Zubrs further than the mouth of the tributary. So we go on foot from there. The river is narrow, overgrown, treacherous and increasingly precipitous. We have to prepare for a hard walk in from where we disembark.’
It was not a lecture designed to raise morale, thought Ivan as he watched and listened, his concentration absolute. Then, when it was over, he led his men in applying what Mako had talked about — prioritizing what they had to carry with them, starting with their weaponry. When they had brought it through customs, it had seemed like biggest was best. Now it seemed that lighter was better. Especially when they had to reckon on carrying all the other stuff Mako had warned them they would likely need, starting with food and water. Even the hard men — like Ivan himself — trained to exist for days on end with nothing but rainwater and iron rations, found it hard to calculate what there might be to eat out there in the realm of the big trees. As opposed to what or who might be out there wanting to eat them.
The grim preparations were brought to a halt by the Zubrs’ arrival at the mouth of the black river they were going to follow inland and upslope to the lake on the volcano’s side. Leaving his men to complete their arrangements, Ivan went back up on to the bridge, where he found Max and Captain Zhukov looking grimly across a sullen heave of black mud as the massive Zubrs settled, side by side. On a screen beside the grim captain, shots from Max’s Kamov helicopter showed their landing place from above — and also revealed how swiftly the jungle closed over the black ribbon of the river rolling down towards it. How soon a flash of grey amid the overhanging green warned of the first set of rapids that barred the way to the Zubrs as effectively as the Victoria Falls.
The bank they were sitting on stuck out in a long, curving tongue, extended westwards by the flow of the black tributary river out into the main stream. On the left, looking north, pure black water swept out into the red of the main river like a stain. The wide surface of the Gir was marked with a line of oily darkness that dominated this side of it like a tarmacked road on a broad red desert. Beyond the far band of red, the distant bank heaved mistily. Dead ahead and near at hand, the low rise of black slime fell away into the mouth of the tributary itself, as wide and dark as the Moskva River flowing behind the Grand Palace of the Kremlin. The far bank was forested with the western fringes of the impenetrable jungle cover that reached to the top of Karisoke then away into Congo Libre beyond. On the left, the black river vanished into the first great stand of nearby trees. Grey ferns rose man-high between them but seemed to be as dwarfed as a well-trimmed steppe beneath a Siberian Pine. As short, thought Ivan grimly, as the grass behind the mill, where the doomed poet Lensky duelled with Eugene Onegin; or that beneath the January snow beside the Chyornaya Reka in St Petersberg, where Lensky’s creator and alter-ego Pushkin himself duelled with the French officer D’Anthes. Tragically fatal duels for both Lensky and Pushkin, of course.
Now what on earth had put all that in his mind? Ivan wondered grimly, turning away from the depressing scene. And then he realized. Chyornaya Reka meant Black River. And from then on, no matter what the locals called the stream connecting Lac Dudo to the great River Gir, it remained Chyornaya Reka — the Black River, to Ivan.
‘Come on, boy, stop dreaming,’ growled Max. ‘Time to get moving.’
Ivan shrugged off the sense of depression that had been threatening to overwhelm him and joined Max. Side by side they ran down to their cabins and collected the kit they had prepared. Or rather, Ivan collected what he had prepared. Max collected what had been prepared for him. It looked bulky but was relatively light. It pandered to his post-Putin macho but was designed to give him an easy ride. Ivan’s was the real deal, all thirty kilos and more of it. As were the metre-long, razor-sharp blades of the matchets that went on their left hips, and the nine-millimetre Grach side arms they both strapped on their right. Then they went on to the main area and exited down the forward ramp.
The tongue of mud felt and smelt even worse than it looked, though it was unexpectedly dry underfoot. The whole atmosphere seemed impossibly humid and the men were soaked with sweat immediately. The river stank like fish left rotting. The jungle stank, as though a couple of White Sea factory ships had emptied their gutting holds into the place.
Mako kept his final briefing short, then he and Ivan led their fifty men into the jungle, with Max between them, apparently in command. Behind them, the Russians fell into their prearranged order. Communications men next in line. Point men ready to go forward on Mako’s signal. Flank men with matchets and side arms at the ready. Pack horses in the middle and the afterguard warily behind. All of them creeping forward, overcome by the sheer scale of the environment they were creeping into, moving between the massive tree trunks like ants in a cathedral.
Mako’s wise eyes spotted a makeshift track at once and he led his silent men along it, happy to take the lead himself while the awestruck Russians came to terms with the reality in which they found themselves. Ivan kept up with him, but Max for once began to fall behind, weighed down by the atmosphere more effectively than he was by the load of his Bergen. It was Mako and Ivan who walked into the clearing first, therefore. It was large enough to accommodate all of the Russians and, had anyone other than these two been in charge it might well have done so. As it was, they were not quite quick enough to understand exactly what confronted them, and so a good deal of damage was done which might have been avoided had Anastasia or Richard been in charge.
On the far side of the clearing stood the tall trunk of a dead tree. Time and the overpowering growth of its super-competitive offspring had beheaded it so that branches and splinters of its original greatness lay scattered underfoot. But no one was really paying much attention to what they were walking on, because of what they were looking at.
There was a body crucified on the dead and rotting trunk. The body of a man, dressed from the waist down in camouflage and boots. From the waist up it was hard to tell precisely what he was wearing because he was covered in a crawling carapace of flies. Even his head was just a shapeless black mass at once hanging deathly still against his chest and at the same time busily swarming with insects, and a halo of them hovering just above, waiting to join the feast. Mako and Ivan walked forward, mesmerized by the horror, and by the time they thought to call a halt, the first fifteen or so of their troops were in the clearing behind them.
Then the crucified figure shuddered. The head came up, skull slamming back against the trunk behind it with enough force to dislodge the flies for an instant. And they saw that it was Livitov’s missing companion, Sergeant Sandor Abramovitch Brodski.