Dead Cat Bounce (33 page)

The sun had dropped behind the hill when Jonah, David, and Chippy approached the cave. Chippy was wearing the clothing of a traditional witch doctor: beads and bones around his ankles and neck, rings of fur below his knees, a kilt of goatskin and mongoose pelts, more skins and pelts around his shoulders and upper arms, and a headdress of feathers and plaited grasses that matched the color of his ochre face paint. In his hand was a long throwing spear, and around his neck hung a small flask and a pouch that contained herbs. David, meanwhile, was wearing dark trousers and an old overcoat borrowed from Chippy. Around his neck was a scarf, and on his head was a flattish cap with a small peak. Pinned to the scarf
was a cross, fashioned out of tin foil and cardboard to resemble the Prussian Blue Max, the highest medal of valor in the World War I–era German air force. Jonah considered himself dressed normally relative to these two, in black jeans and a black T-shirt. However, his face and arms had also been blacked up with mud from the water hole. He was carrying a bundle of firewood and two African drums. In his belt was the gun, and in his pocket was Chippy’s harmonica. David also had a gun in the pocket of his overcoat. Jonah reckoned that—had the circumstances been different—they would have been well prepared for trick-or-treating.

As they entered the cave, Chippy put his fingers to his lips and took the firewood from Jonah. He switched on a pencil flashlight, illuminating the scene in front of them. There lay the Baron on the ground looking more like a filthy, mumbling tramp than the king of Hellcat. Jonah’s hand went inadvertently to his mouth. David had explained that the interrogation would involve a combination of hooding and sensory deprivation, with the addition of psychotropic drugs to speed up the process. But it was still all very difficult for Jonah to process. Two rats were gnawing at the Baron’s boots and only scuttled off when Chippy approached. Jonah looked at him and back at the Baron. He’d seen the Baron sprawled on the floor two days ago, after he’d shot him, but this was far, far worse.

At about the same time as Jonah, his father, and Chippy entered the cave, Amelia and Klaasens reached the summit of the hill nearby. Up there, the sun was about to set, but they had no interest in the beauty of the scene. The hill’s dominance of the surrounding land provided the ideal location to set up Amelia’s surveillance cameras.
They erected the tripod, attached the scanner—which resembled a small movie camera—and plugged the device into the battery unit. There were two portable screens and two pairs of headphones. The screens also held the directional controls. Amelia focused the lens on Main Camp. It was empty, although the screen showed the remains of a fire. She set the camera to “automatic scan,” and it began to pan slowly across the land below, highlighting the clear shapes of animals, including two rhinos, preparing for the night, but no human beings. She listened carefully through the headphones, but again there was nothing that resembled human voices. The two of them sat down on canvas stools and watched and listened and waited. The sun had set now, and the temperature had dropped.

Chippy placed the wood on the floor near the Baron and approached him, speaking aloud for the first time, though not in English. The effect on the Baron was electric. He immediately tried to sit up and, when the gag was removed, called out, “Who is it? Who are you? Speak to me!”

Chippy pushed the flask to this lips and made him drink, talking all the time in a low incanted voice. When the flask was empty, he began to make a fire. He started with dry grass and used a flint to light it. As the flames grew, he added twigs and finally the wood. In the growing light Jonah could now see the Baron clearly. He was carrying his head in a way that indicated considerable pain in the shoulder where Jonah had shot him. His once lustrous mustache was a mess of dirt and droppings. Even his neck tie, formerly so prominent and stylish, was now a muddied, wrinkled mess. He continued to call out, “Who are you? What are you doing?”
and move his head, desperate for some sight or sign of what was happening.

For a brief moment Jonah felt the urge to help him, but it didn’t last long as he reminded himself that the man was a crook, a liar, and a cheat.

As the fire gained strength, its light threw shadows from the rock formations inside the cavern, flickering phantoms that danced and leaped around the walls and roof. Chippy came over to Jonah and took one of the drums, motioning for him to move into a dark cleft in the shadows with the other one. Jonah walked carefully and silently into the darkness, his black clothing and makeup rendering him invisible. Chippy sat himself down by the fire and began to drum softly, continually muttering his incantations and throwing herbs from the pouch onto the fire so that the cavern began to fill with a smoky, misty haze. Jonah looked for his father, but he, too, had disappeared into the gloom. There was only Chippy and his hypnotic drumming and the Baron writhing on the ground, sinking deeper and deeper into his drug-fuelled hell.

Chippy continued his drumming and chanting for more than half an hour before Jonah heard the pace and volume increase. This was his cue to join in. As the drumming rose in volume, it echoed and bounced around the cave so that it was as if there was a whole army of drummers beating away, surrounding the Baron in noise. Jonah put Chippy’s harmonica to his lips and drew a haunting chord. He saw his father move behind a pillar of limestone and Chippy stand up and resituate himself in front of the Baron. His drumming stopped, but his chanting intensified, distorted by the acoustics of the cavern into many different voices, and joining the
howling of Jonah’s harmonica and its spectral accompanists.
The effect on the Baron must be terrifying,
Jonah thought, as he watched him curl into a fetal position, his knees pulled up to his chest, rolling on the ground, moaning and whimpering.

Suddenly Chippy reached forward and grabbed the Baron by the hair, yanking him upward so that he was kneeling, and with an ear-splitting cackle he pulled the blindfold off. The Baron screamed as he was greeted by Chippy’s orange face and hair inches in front of his own. Chippy leapt upward, spinning in the air and throwing something on the fire that made the flames roar toward the roof of the cave. For a moment he seemed to hang within the flames before landing and facing the Baron once more, and began to dance around him, shaking his spear in his face, shouting, and cackling. Jonah drew one last note on the harmonica and grabbed the drum. He settled the instrument between his legs and began to pound with all the passion he possessed. The shadows danced, the noise reverberated, and the Baron twisted and turned to avoid the jabbing spear. Jonah had never seen so much fear in someone’s face. He was in a deep, deep trance: somewhere very dark and very evil.

Chippy stopped in front of him again, his arms out wide, lowering them as a signal to Jonah to slow the drumming down. As Jonah did so, Chippy descended into a squatting position, his face no more than a foot away from the Baron’s. This was Jonah’s second cue, and he began to thump out a very familiar rhythm: the opening beats to the Baron’s favorite record—“Sympathy for the Devil.”

Dum dum de de dum dum de dum dum. Dum dum de de dum dum de dum dum.

There was recognition in the Baron’s eyes, and Chippy started
speaking, in English this time. “Please allow me to introduce myself,” he said, and the recognition grew. “I am”—here he paused, before imbuing his voice with an air of dark desperation—“
Apollyon
.”

The Baron jerked and tried to move away. But Chippy held up a hand, and he froze, rigid. “I am Apollyon, the Angel of Death. I am the Devastator. I am the Destroyer!” he cried. Jonah began to increase the volume of his drumming. “You”—Chippy now had the point of the spear under the Baron’s chin—“you have belittled me. How dare you use the name of Apollyon?” The Baron crumpled as if the bones in his body had been dissolved.

Up on the hillside Amelia was straining to pick up a new sound on her headphones. She had heard the earlier drumming when it had reached its peak, but without any visual image she and Klaasens had put it down to some of the farm workers. Now it was different. This was familiar. Amelia had heard it hundreds, maybe thousands of times. This could not be a coincidence. She panned the camera, but still there was no heat image.

“That’s them,” she said to Klaasens. “We’re going down.” She removed the camera from its tripod and disconnected it from the power pack, allowing it to run on the portable battery. Klaasens picked up the bag, and they moved swiftly down the hill, tracing the location of the sound through the headphones.

Jonah slammed the
drum with all the force he could muster as Chippy reached a crescendo, pulling the Baron by his hair into a kneeling position. “You have belittled others too,” he screeched. “Who are you to take the name of the Angel of Death? Who are you to use the name of Apollyon?” he screamed in the Baron’s face, throwing some more herbs into the fire. The flames rose and billowed smoke, Jonah beat the drums, and the Baron collapsed again, convulsing on the ground.

When the flames died down, Chippy was gone, replaced by a second figure, ethereal within the swirling smoke: a man in an overcoat and a Jagdstaffel cap, a man with the Blue Max at his throat. Jonah quieted his drumming to allow the full effect of the vision that faced the Baron to take hold.

Dum dum de de dum dum de dum dum. Dum dum de de dum dum de dum dum.

David Lightbody spoke in English with a German accent.
“Please allow me to introduce myself,” he said coldly. “I am Baron.” He stopped. “Manfred.” He stopped again. “Albrecht.” And again. “Von Richthofen.” He took two strides forward so that he now stood looking down at the Baron. “And you dare to take my name in vain, you dog,” he snarled, kicking the Baron as he said it. “Why? Why?” he shouted.

The Baron didn’t answer. He just shook his head, his body shaking, trying to slither away from the ghostly figure.

“No answer. This does not surprise me,” said David arrogantly. “Many have talked bravely of the Red Baron, but when faced with his reality they have come to appreciate their mortality. Let me try another question. Perhaps you can redeem yourself in my eyes. What is Apollyon Two?”

The Baron ceased his writhing and lifted his head toward David. He tried to speak, but broke out in a coughing fit.

“Answer me, you imbecile,” said David in his German accent.

“Apo … Apollyon Two is a, uh, machine,” the Baron stammered. “An infallible money-making machine.” Jonah could hear the desperation in his voice.

“Who invented it?”

“I did. I invented it. It was my idea. Nobody else could have done it.”

“That is good,” said David. “Maybe you are worthy of the name Baron.” The Baron’s chest puffed out at this compliment, but only barely.

“How does it make money?” David demanded.

“Crises and information. Apollyon drives the market, knowing that others will follow their lead.”

“Where does the money come from?” David demanded.

“The money comes from the League.”

“The League?”

“The League of Apollo.”

The fire had died down now; only the embers glowed, giving the smoke an orange glow.

“What is the League of Apollo? Who is behind it?”

The Baron looked confused. “I do not know all their names.”

David tried a different approach. “What does it do?”

“It protects the interests of capitalism. It has members in industry and finance, in government, in universities, in the military. They are men of influence able to mold the future of the world.”

It was beginning to make sense to Jonah. This was a network of powerful individuals with access to all kinds of inside information; and when there was fear and panic in the markets, Apollyon used its financial muscle to expand the fear and panic knowing that everyone would get in line—“the herd mentality.”

David’s voice hardened further. “Who runs the League of Apollo?”

“The Group of Five.”

“Who are they?”

“I only know Kloot. Nobody but the G5 knows all the identities.”

“Who is Kloot?” David demanded.

“Kloot has the best information. That is why Apollyon is infallible.”

“Not always infallible,” David spat back. “What happened with Allegro Home Finance?”

“Uh,” the Baron frowned, and coughed again. “The Allegro trade was”—he paused, his voice full of fear—“bad information.”
He shook his head, steadying himself. “The facts were wrong. But it has been corrected.”

Jonah picked up the pace of his drumming, sensing the full truth was about to be revealed.

“It was corrected? How was it corrected?”

“It was offloaded. The informer was silenced. Others silenced too. They had to be.”

“Who were these people who were silenced? Did you silence them?” David pressed.

“I only know Clive. I didn’t kill them. Kloot arranged it.” He coughed once more. This time Jonah could see blood dribble out of the corner of his mouth.

David Lightbody reached into his pocket and pulled out his gun. The Baron’s eyes locked on it as David lifted it up and pointed it at the Baron’s face.

“Tell me who Kloot is!” he growled from between gritted teeth.

“I, I can’t. He would kill me,” spluttered the Baron.

David Lightbody stepped forward and shoved the gun between the Baron’s eyes. “Tell me who Kloot is or you will die anyway,” he shouted.

Suddenly the air in the cavern exploded. Seeing lights sparking to his right, Jonah stopped drumming, thinking that his father had shot the Baron.
But no, that wasn’t it….
He heard a noise and saw his father fall, dropping the gun; saw Chippy leap out of the smoke and hurl his spear at the oncoming light; saw the spear leave his hand; saw bullets rip into his body, sending him backward with their force; saw the flesh exploding with each impact; saw the side of his head blown away; saw him crumple as he fell.

The shooting stopped, but the echoes continued for several seconds until finally they ceased as well and there was quiet. Jonah moved his knees to his chest, his heart racing. Chippy and David were both prone on the ground—Chippy silent; his father groaning. The looming light narrowed into a single beam, flicking over the bodies and pointing downward to highlight a third body with a long spear in its chest. The body belonged to the man Jonah had seen at the Baron’s camp, the man Chippy had brought to the police station. He should have been there now, not lying dead in front of Jonah.