Now they were ranged alongside the car, Gustav yanking at the wheel nuts with a rusty spanner, going nowhere fast. No one spoke. The heat was too much. Eventually he got the wheel off. Managed to fit the spare. Gustav didn’t ask permission to drive, he simply sat behind the wheel and started the engine. The soldiers didn’t protest. It was unlikely he’d get lost driving down a narrow track through the heart of the jungle.
“Good work Gustav,” Monsieur Blanc said, patting him on the shoulder. The man had been his personal assistant for the last five years. He didn’t have the quickest of minds but he was a workhorse, reliable and strong. Brave with it.
Jack had been dumped in the rear of the jeep. His side was aching but he still struggled against plastic tape holding his wrists and feet together. One of the boy soldiers had climbed in beside him, the one in the torn football shirt. He flicked carelessly at the safety catch on the AK-47, poked at the cords digging into Jack’s ankles and wrists. Jack wondered how old the kid was, hard to tell from his height, he looked hungry, malnourished. Maybe ten or twelve.
“You like football?” He asked. The boy frowned, “football, tu aimes ça?” Jack repeated, pointing at his Manchester United shirt, wondering if they still spoke French in this area. The boy nodded shyly.
“Wanwoonee,” he announced with a nod of his head, performing a miniature kick with his fingers and miming a goal celebration.
“Wanwoonee?” Jack repeated, wondering what the boy was talking about. He thought for a moment…“Wayne Rooney?” He asked at last, laughing.
“Oui, oui, Wan Rooney, good player, very good,” the boy said, smiling, for one moment transformed from a child soldier back into a grinning child. One of the older boys shouted at him from the front of the car. Jack couldn’t understand the words but he got the meaning, could tell the boy had been told to shut up.
The rusted gates to the colonial mansion took three boys to lift and pull open. Gustav drove through and parked in the courtyard, as close as he could to the house. My God, he muttered to himself as he looked around. The air was oppressive, the scent of death heavy. Two boys were busy skinning a monkey, the stringy red meat already attracting a cloud of flies. The creature’s hands had been severed from the arms and put to one side, looked like a pair of children’s gloves, but with tendons still trailing. Gustav spat in disgust.
“Welcome to the abode of Clement Nbotou.” Monsieur Blanc said quietly. He had been to this place before, and now, as then, he felt the same creeping sensation he was in one of the most unpleasant places on the planet.
“Stinks to hell man,” Gustav replied, his sleeve over his nose, the combination of open latrines, smoke, and body odour strangling his throat.
In the back of the jeep, Jack had managed to yank himself into an upright position. He too felt disgust, but that was not his primary emotion, he also felt sorrow. The children here were as captive as he was. Maybe even more so, since he was resolved to escape; they looked resigned to their fate, nothing to escape to.
“Monsieur Blanc, mon trèsCher!” Clement’s deep voice bellowed from the entrance to the house. “I trust your journey was not too unpleasant.” He jogged down the steps to meet them, his black skin glistening with a layer of sweat, eyes bright, mouth smiling a crocodile smile.
Gustav instinctively took a step back. The man was a giant, taller than him with a massive frame; he dominated his surroundings, dominated the jungle. It was not just because of his physique, it was the contained energy, the sheer force of his personality.
He leant forward and embraced Monsieur Blanc warmly, then held out his arm and shook Gustav’s hand. To his surprise the grip was soft, gentle even. A man like Clement did not need to bother asserting himself by crushing the hands of the people he greeted.
“And what is this you bring me trussed up like a chicken in the back of the jeep?” He gestured towards Jack, a puzzled smile on his face. Monsieur Blanc cleared his throat.
“Him, yes. A long story. Why don’t we open a bottle of whiskey and I can explain all?” He replied smoothly, reaching behind him for a case of single malt and presenting it to Clement. Clement’s eyes lit up.
“Laphraoig. My favourite! Very hard to find in the Congo you know,” he replied with a deep belly laugh, slapping Monsieur Blanc on the back. For the first time Jack realised the diminutive size of the man and his healthy waistline worked in his favour. Monsieur Blanc would never be perceived as a threat by the people he did business with, his physicality was too comic, too clown-like.
Clement led them up the steps and into the mansion. As he reached the door, he turned and looked back, the smile gone. A different expression in place. He pointed at the two boys struggling to skin the monkey, shouted at them, pointed at Jack, then disappeared inside. The boys dropped the meat and ran to their weapons, taking up position on either side of him. Schoolchildren told by the headmaster to monitor the playground. Schoolchildren with guns.
Jack was still struggling with the wires that bound his wrists and ankles. The two boys watched him with doleful eyes. One of them chewing a piece of bark.
“I’m Jack,” he announced, smiling. “Pleased to meet you.” The boys didn’t respond. He stuck out his tongue and crossed his eyes. The younger of the two laughed. The other boy didn’t, just watched him solemnly. It was a long shot, but he saw the children as his most likely means of escape. If he could just get one of them to untie his wrists. He looked up at the sun overhead. Never mind untying his wrists, he’d be grateful if they just moved him to the shade. The heat was unbearable, his throat dry as sandpaper. He hadn’t had a drink since the plane and he wasn’t sure how much longer he would last in the full glare of the sun.
It might have been an hour, maybe two, possibly three, before Monsieur Blanc emerged from the house. The blistering heat, the cramps in his legs and arms, the stabbing pain in Jack’s side meant each minute felt like an eternity. He had tried counting in his head but he ended up getting angry, losing the numbers, the natural order of things.
“Well Jack, I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that the meeting with Clement went well and he accepted our explanation as to why we brought you here with grace and humour.” He breathed a small sigh. “The bad news is Gustav and I are now going to cut out the device.”
Jack was too weary to respond. He tried looking up at the house but it was dissolving into hundreds of tiny white dots before his eyes. Gustav appeared at the top of stairs, unsteady on his feet. He belched loudly.
“Come Gustav, let’s get the boy inside.” He leant in close to Jack and said, “for a Russian, he is not a great drinker.” The last thing Jack heard before he passed out.
41
Sir Clive Mortimer wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes. One minute the deer was chewing the cud, the next it was vaporised in a blister of heat, a flash of light. Of course he’d viewed Harvey’s promotional videos, but they hadn’t convinced him, he was sure some kind of visual trickery was involved.
“Careful you don’t start any fires with that thing,” Sir Clive said, as they trudged over to the charred corpse. The smell of burnt flesh stung their nostrils. Harvey couldn’t help but grin.
“All Bob’s work. The man’s a genius. Got the prototype down in size and increased the intensity of the plasma flare. Means the target just lights up. And that’s not even on the strongest setting.”