They had Whinger’s GPS as well. Or did they? No — we’d left it behind with the rest of his kit in the mother wagon. And anyway, I was pretty certain he’d never punched in a waypoint for the plane; he’d been too busy trying to come to terms with his burns. The only other GPS with the coordinates in it was Mart’s. Who’d got mine by now? With any luck, some dickhead of a black squaddie, who would run the batteries down by trying to figure out how it worked, and have no means of recharging them.
For a few moments, chasing possibilities in my mind, I’d managed to attain a state of more or less suspended animation. I was brought back to reality by scraping, bumping noises. By squinting sideways I could see that men were dragging Whinger’s body out through the door. Instinct screamed at me to go after it, take possession of it, to hold it, keep it. Reason told me none of that was possible. Reason said the only way Geordie and Genesis could get out of this alive would be to appear to cooperate.
Gen! Where the hell was he? From my position on the floor, I couldn’t see him. He’d done nothing to provoke Muende, but I hadn’t heard a sound from him, and I was afraid they’d knackered him as well. At last I was dragged upright and dumped back on a chair, arms down over the back once again. There was Gen, right beside me, where he’d always been. He’d had a good beating, too. Except where it was blooded, his face was sheet-white and had a stricken look, as if it had been frozen by cold. But his lips were moving. Was he muttering out of sheer terror, or was he saying a silent prayer?
Muende was back in his chair, wiping his chin with a handkerchief. There was blood down the front of his swish tunic, but he looked more in control than before, as if the act of eating had left him calmer. Inge, the bitch, was also back in her seat. The sight of her sent a new current of anger racing through me, but I steeled myself to remain cool, to negotiate rather than argue, to ignore the filthy deed they’d just done.
Muende cleared his throat loudly, and said, ‘Now, the diamond was in the plane.’
‘Please,’ I begged. ‘You have to believe me. We never saw it.’
I was talking with a lisp, due to the fact that my lower lip was swollen and split on the left side.
‘You must explain,’ I went on, obsequiously. ‘We don’t know what happened. Did your friend here collect the diamond from the mine at Gutu to take it out of the country?’
The woman started as if she’d been stung in the arse by a scorpion, and said, ‘Who has told you that?’
‘Nobody. I put two and two together.’ When she didn’t answer, I went on: ‘If you’d told us to start with, it would have saved all this.’
‘Then the diamond is where?’
‘I don’t know. I told you, we never saw it.’
‘But you went to the aircraft.’
‘Yes. But I never got into it. The only one who did was Whinger. And now you’ve killed him, he can’t tell you anything.’ I nodded in the direction his body had disappeared. ‘We didn’t have time to search the plane. It was far too dangerous. Fuel was leaking everywhere. We knew there was going to be an explosion any second. It was touch and go. Getting you out was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do.’
She took that with a stony face. She didn’t know whether or not to believe me. I could have been lying to cover myself. On the other hand, she’d seen for herself that Whinger had suffered horrific burns. To put the ball in her court, I asked, ‘Where was the diamond?’
‘In the front. A special compartment.’
‘The nose-cone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I can tell you this much. After the crash that part of the aircraft was crumpled but intact. I expect it’s still inside. How big was it?’
She glanced at Muende before answering. ‘Like this. Like a ball for golf.’ She held her finger and thumb more than an inch apart.
‘In a special container?’
‘Yes. A box of steel.’
Muende had been listening intently. Now he asked her something in dialect, and she translated, ‘You can find the aircraft again?’
‘I think so.’ I didn’t want to sound too confident. ‘It should be possible, provided we can get into the right area, north of the river.’
‘You can drive to it with the car?’
‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘The ground’s too rough. The site’s on the side of a mountain, all rocks and small cliffs. We’ll have to walk the last few kilometres.’
Again she conferred with Muende.
To make the journey sound more difficult, I said, ‘It would be best if we could go back to Gutu and retrace our route from there.’
‘That is not possible. Government forces have captured the mine.’
Acting dumb, I shrugged my shoulders, and said, ‘In that case, I don’t know.’
Didn’t the bitch realise where she’d been, after all? Or was she playing some deep game?
‘Well,’ I went. ‘If you can get me back into the area, I’ll do my best to find it.’ Apparently as an afterthought, I added, ‘Of course, if the general has a helicopter, that would make it easier.’
‘He has one, but it is broken. Now, show us.’
She spoke to one of the bodyguards, who stepped forward and unfolded a map, laying it out on the table. Two guards hoisted me up, chair and all, and carried me forward.
In the dim lamplight the map was hard to read, and with my hands tied behind me I couldn’t indicate, so I had to operate by remote control. When Inge put the tip of a pencil on Gutu, all I could say was, ‘Up. Up. Now, left. More. Up again.’ Soon she was pointing to an area well north of where the Beechcraft had gone in, on the wrong range of hills.
‘Now you must be getting close,’ I told her. ‘All right, on that slope there. I should say that’s about it.’
‘So,’ she went, ‘we work out a route.’
‘Keep the party small,’ I warned her. ‘We’ll be in enemy territory and we don’t want to attract attention.’
‘Of course,’ she agreed.
Muende, who seemed to have relapsed into a stupor, roused himself, and said, ‘How do we know you’re telling the truth?’
‘You don’t,’ I said. ‘But you will when we get to the plane. The diamond must still be there.’
‘Your friend.’ Muende jerked a hand towards Genesis. ‘Why doesn’t he talk?’
‘He wasn’t at the plane. He never saw it on the deck, because he didn’t get anywhere near it. You can keep him out of this.’
I looked at Gen and saw he was about to say something, but I cut him off by grunting, ‘Cool it.’ If he started telling the general he’d sinned in the eyes of God and man, he could easily crack off another but of thuggery.
Once again, Inge spoke to Muende in dialect. Then she faced us, and said, ‘So, at first lighting tomorrow, we go. All together to find the diamond.’
‘Suits me,’ I went. ‘And if we find it? What then?’
‘You will be free. But tonight you will remain prisoner.’
‘We need some water,’ I told her. ‘Both of us.’
‘That can be arranged.’
With that, we were cut away from our chairs and dragged off, leaving the boss figure slumped at his table. The electricity system was still down, and only a few fires and lamps flickered round the compound in the warm darkness. By then I realised I’d pissed myself during the beating: my left trouser leg and sock were soaked.
The next we knew, we were in a proper lock-up. One guy stood with the barrel of a rifle in the small of my back while two others cut away the ropes round my arms and replaced them with metal handcuffs, which bit into my wrists. Then, with my arms still behind me, they made the cuffs fast with a short length of chain to a shackle mounted in the wall. Somebody else fixed Gen up the same, to the next shackle, a couple of metres away.