For a fleeting moment, King believed he had won. Then Favreau raised her hand.
“Don’t,” he warned.
She froze, but the thing in her hand was now plainly visibly, and he recognized it immediately. “You know what this is, don’t you? It is a remote trigger with a dead-man switch. Kill me and…” She made a little poof gesture with her free hand.
“Your way we both die. My way, we both live. Your choice.” Without breaking his stare, he went on. “Pawn, get the hostages clear.”
“Pawn?” Favreau asked with an air of delight. “How marvelous. Do you play chess? I am called the Red Queen. Did you know that?”
“How nice for you.” King maintained his best poker face, but her confidence was eroding his own.
“I love chess. Victory can be achieved only through sacrifice. What, I wonder, are you willing to sacrifice to win?”
“You, for starters.”
She laughed. “Look behind me. Do you see it, there in the corner?”
He couldn’t help but look, just the briefest flick of his gaze, and when he saw the large green duffel bag, all the pieces fell into place. He had a mental image of Hadir, blown apart by a single bullet — an overpressure round, just like the ones Favreau’s mercenaries used. Now at last, he had the answer to the question of who had taken the RA-115 in Egypt.
“It is a nuclear device,” she explained. “A small one, just a kiloton, but more than enough to wipe this palace off the face of the Earth.”
From behind her, Senator Marrs erupted with an indignant curse. “Good God, she’s got a nuke.”
“It doesn’t change anything.” He lowered his voice so she wouldn’t hear what he said next. “Pawn, get those hostages out of here. Blue, call Mabuki and tell him to send the gunboat now.”
Asya did as instructed, moving forward with a boldness that King knew was all for show.
“It changes everything,” Favreau said, seeming to ignore what was going on behind her. “You see, I have already won. If I let go of this trigger, we all die, and I win. Checkmate!”
“No. All that happens is that we’ll die. And regardless of whether or not that happens, tomorrow morning, every news agency in the world will be reporting the truth about what’s happening here. How mercenaries working for Consolidated Energy kidnapped President Mulamba and tried to overthrow the country. It’s over, and you’ve lost.”
“Do you think so?” Favreau brought her hands together, moving with exaggerated slowness as if daring him to shoot, and transferred the remote detonator to her left hand. “Let me show you how I win this game.”
She knelt down and pried the MP5 from the hands of the mercenary King had killed.
King felt a cold panic surge through his extremities. “Don’t!” He jabbed the Uzi at her again, but even he could hear the desperate quaver in his voice.
Favreau was visibly trembling with excitement as she held up the detonator in one hand, the gun in the other. King felt impotent as he waited for her to pull one trigger or the other, but instead she pivoted away.
“What are you willing to sacrifice to win?” she asked, almost breathlessly. “A pawn perhaps?”
Then Favreau thrust the gun toward Asya, and pulled the trigger.
BEAST
30
Feeling a little like the universe had just kicked him in the face, Rook slumped against a bulkhead. He noted a rivulet of blood creeping out from under the motionless body of Joseph Mulamba, and realized that if he didn’t move, it would eventually pool around his feet.
He didn’t move. There was already a lot of the man’s blood on him, symbolically and literally. What difference would a little more make?
Queen gazed in silent disbelief at the man they had so badly failed. She squeezed her eyes together for almost a full minute, but then she opened them and sat a little straighter.
“Okay. Let’s talk about what happens next.”
“Next? We blew it. Game over.”
“Knock it off,” she said, her tone sharper than usual. “You can have a pity party on your own time. We’ve still got a mission.”
“What mission?” he said slowly, through clenched teeth.
“Helping him…” She pointed to Mulamba’s still form, “… save his country. That’s what we agreed to do, remember?”
Rook took a deep breath. “How do we do that now?”
Queen leaned over the body and searched it, producing the envelope from the Stanley archive. A corner of the yellowed paper was stained dark red. She slipped the folded papers from inside and began reading.
Rook shook his head. He didn’t see the point of chasing after Mulamba’s mythical lost city now. It had been a long shot to begin with, and now that Mulamba was gone, the impact of any discovery they made might be negligible. But as Queen finished reading the first page and handed it to him, he straightened up and began reading aloud.
July 19, Friday, 1878
Tonight I revealed the secret I have borne these past eight years, the story that Livingstone told me on the occasion of our first meeting, and which has burned in me like a fire in my belly. Yet I feel no sense of relief, but only deep dismay.
It occurs to me now that I have never put to paper my reasons for keeping secret the true account of what happened that day, and now that His Majesty, Leopold II of Belgium, has demanded that I destroy the record of that meeting and the story I have never told, I feel I must defend the decisions I have made, if only that future generations may judge my behavior.
As the years have passed by, I have variously tried to rationalize my decision to keep Livingstone’s tale to myself. I told myself that he was ill, feverish when he spoke and surely not altogether in his right mind. To reveal what he said would only tarnish his well-deserved reputation. The truth, though, is that I kept the story to myself purely as a matter of selfishness. Livingstone told no one else of the Cave of the Ancients. I am certain of that now, and I foolishly believed that if I could find their city without acknowledging that he found it first, my own fame would exceed even his. Alas, if I had revealed the truth, perhaps I would have found the funds necessary to locate the Cave.
Were these good reasons to keep the story of that fateful day a secret? I do not know. The Ancients may have been nothing more than a fever dream. Livingstone never spoke of them again, after that night. Had I published the account exactly as it occurred, I have no doubt that I would have found investors willing to fund an expedition to search for the Blood Lake and the Cave of the Ancients, but that does not mean I would have found it.
I do not regret that I have chosen to exchange this uncertain reward for the more profitable adventure of taming the Congo. Nevertheless, I cannot help but wonder what sights I might have seen.
Rook took the rest of the pages from Queen, who had already finished reading them. These were on different paper. The handwriting was slightly different, though clearly written by the same person.
November 10, Friday, 1871
Success. I have found Livingstone.
It is a bittersweet victory, for he is not the man I had hoped to find. When Selim espied him, I did not want to believe that this weary old man was indeed the Great Livingstone. He was sickly and pale, with grey whiskers and moustache that did not completely hide weeping ulcers on the skin of his face. He wore a blue cloth cap, and had on a red-sleeved waistcoat and a pair of grey tweed trousers, but all were worn and shabby, and hung on his frail body like a beggar’s rags.