“The chef has cooked up mwamba. Just as you like it, spicy with chicken and cassava. And some of the boys smoked you some bush meat.” A child appeared by Clement’s side, a young boy, no more than six or seven wearing a torn Manchester United football shirt that came down to his knees. His eyes were large and solemn as he held up a plate of smoked meat. Clement waved the flies off the pinkish flesh and shovelled a handful into his mouth. Smoked monkey, he recognised its distinctive sweetness, the tough but flavoursome texture of the lean muscles. He was surprised there were any left to hunt the way the soldiers went after them.
He knelt down beside the boy, placing a large hand under his chin and tilting his head upwards. He looked deep into his eyes. “Did you shoot this meat?” He asked. The boy shook his head, “No sir, used wire, made a snare to trap the animal. I can show you.”
Clement’s eyes burnt into him, seeking out the truth. He believed the boy, but he knew that while he was away the troops often took pot shots at animals in the jungle. An attempt to vary their diet. Eat something other than cassava. He didn’t mind them catching animals but he couldn’t stand them wasting ammunition.
“Here, take some meat,” he said, letting go of the boy. “Have a beer too. Uko, fetch this young soldier a beer.” He patted the boy on the head and walked down the veranda’s steps to begin his unofficial tour of the camp.
32
Jack shuffled his feet uneasily. The pain in his side increasing, exacerbated by the position he was taped in, but he wanted to try and move as much as he could. Make sure his body didn’t go to sleep so he’d have a fighting chance once they untied him.
It was quiet on board the aircraft. The lights were dimmed, his captors evidently felt sufficiently secure to sleep with him trussed up in the back of the plane. Jack had been doing some thinking. He knew it would be foolish to rely on Sir Clive, he understood he was just a pawn in whatever game the man was playing and could in no way trust him. He had thought it through, and in thinking had come to the conclusion he had only one realistic hope of survival. He would tell Monsieur Blanc the whole thing was a set up. The devices didn’t work, didn’t do anything, they were just a Trojan horse, a way for MI6 to discover who might launch a cyber attack on the UK. If he went ahead and sold them he’d be putting himself in danger, no way of proving he wasn’t in on the deception, particularly as he would have profited financially.
That was his angle, but how to get the man’s attention? If he tried to talk to them would they simply stick another needle in him? Only one way to find out.
“Sir, sir,” he whispered hoarsely. Might as well begin this by being as respectful as possible. Nobody stirred. He could hear a light snore coming from the end of the cabin, Monsieur Blanc’s heavy head resting on his fat neck.
“Excuse me,” he said a little louder. The snoring turned into a grunt and stopped.
“Hello, is anyone there?” No response. “Sorry to bother you but could I possibly have a drink? Just some water?” He heard a leather seat creak and the sound of footsteps padding along the carpet. Above him the fat Chinaman wiped his eyes and sighed. He had removed his jacket and looked oddly informal in a shirt and trousers. Almost vulnerable. Just a shame Jack couldn’t move enough against the gaffer tape to swing a fist at him. Monsieur Blanc looked down on him and sniffed dismissively, then walked away. Jack hoped he wasn’t going to get the needle. He didn’t want the last thing he ever saw to be the face of an overweight arms dealer plunging a syringe into his neck.
The man returned with a glass of water. He knelt down beside Jack. In the strange half light of the cabin Jack couldn’t see his eyes. Just two dark shadows under the heavy lids. Monsieur Blanc looked at him for some time, before holding the glass of water up to his mouth and tilting it so he could swallow. He knew better than to untie one of the boy’s arms. Knew it would be around his neck in an instant if he did so. Jack drank thirstily, feeling some of the cold liquid dribble down his chin. Monsieur Blanc dabbed at it with a paper serviette. An oddly considerate gesture. He remained opposite, looking at him, working him out.
“Thank you,” Jack said. For the first time he noticed the smell. The sweet heavy scent of roses mingled with something else. Something unpleasant. Halitosis thick enough to fell an elephant. Even harsher than his Professor at King’s. Jack couldn’t help but turn his head to one side, take a deep breath and clear his throat.
“Very brave of you to do this, very brave indeed.” He said, nodding his head slowly, avoiding the man’s gaze. Monsieur Blanc frowned. What was the boy talking about? Jack kept nodding his head, his eyes unfocused. He wanted to seem as close to breaking as possible.
“I mean, this mission. The ten devices. An Internet bomb,” he shook his head and laughed. “You have to hand it to the spooks, they sure came up with a tempting proposition.” Monsieur Blanc stayed at Jack’s level, leaning back against the luggage rack. Jack was laughing now, silently, his whole body shaking. He allowed it to take him over, let it mingle with the hysteria he had held at bay the last few days. It spilled over into tears, running down his cheeks, he shook and shook and all the while Monsieur Blanc sat opposite, observing him impassively.
“I mean seriously, who on earth would fall for that?” Jack managed to say at last, the words buffeted by shortness of breath “You’ve got some balls,” he added. “Just who the hell did you find to sell this thing to? They aren’t exactly going to be happy when they find out they’ve been duped. How much you getting? Enough to disappear?”
Monsieur Blanc got to his feet and walked away. He had heard enough. The boy was losing it, he had seen it happen enough times before to recognise the signs, even pushed people to the breaking point himself. But did that make the things he said closer or further from the truth? He sat back in his seat, drummed his fingers on the armrest. Nothing he could do about it now, other than tell the pilot to turn the plane around, but the pilot was in the pay of his employer, the American company who’d commissioned the theft of the ten devices. He doubted whether he would change the flight plan even if Monsieur Blanc ordered it.
He thought back to his meetings with the anonymous American from Centurion. A grey man in a grey suit with grey hair and a briefcase full of cash, a down payment. He was middle-aged, middling in height. Someone so indistinct they were almost invisible. Even though Monsieur Blanc had made a point of attempting to impress the man’s features on his mind it was still difficult to recall. Too similar to thousands of other middle-aged white American males.
That was probably why he had been used to approach him. The man had first made contact in Paris at the Georges V Hotel last summer. Monsieur Blanc was in the bar sipping a tomato juice, killing time before meeting an Israeli arms dealer later that afternoon. The American had talked about a business opportunity, a chance for Monsieur Blanc to have a hand in the sale of the very latest synthetic biology weapon technology. Something developed in England. Organic cell-based structure combined with complex micro circuitry. He had provided Monsieur Blanc with an outline of his proposal. Wait till the components that made up the weapon had been tested, extract them from their hosts, and sell them on to a client in Africa. He would be handsomely paid for doing so, and he could keep any money made on the sale of the devices themselves. To show his seriousness the man had made a down payment. A seriously large amount of hard cash.