The Covenant of Genesis (48 page)

The white-haired man sat up stiffly, bristling at the challenge - but unable to respond to it. ‘Unfortunately, not yet.’

‘Not yet?’ echoed Zamal. ‘Satellites, computers, spies, trillions of dollars - and you have
nothing
?’

‘No, not nothing,’ Callum said through tight lips. ‘The
Southern Sun
arrived at the French ice station of Dumont d’Urville about five hours ago. The surviving members of the UNARA expedition are going to be flown back to Australia from there. But Chase and Blackwood weren’t aboard - and the ship’s tilt-rotor was missing. It wouldn’t be able to reach land from off the Antarctic coast, so either the ship headed north to the limits of its range and then turned back to Dumont, or they stripped out the plane and turned it into a flying gas can. Even so, the only place it could have reached is Tasmania - but so far it hasn’t been found.’

‘Maybe they crashed in the sea,’ muttered Zamal.

‘I doubt we are that lucky,’ Vogler said. ‘But there’s been no trace of them? Nothing at all?’

Callum shook his head. ‘Either they’re still in Australia, or they’ve used false IDs to get out of the country.’ He glowered at Nina. ‘I don’t suppose you’d know anything about that.’

Nina leaned back and put her hands behind her head. ‘Lawabidin’ citizen here.’

Zamal banged his fists on the table. ‘I can make her tell us.’

‘It’s not important,’ said Vogler. ‘We have far more resources - we can still beat them.’

‘If she co-operates,’ Callum said.

‘I believe she will.’

‘You have a great deal of faith,’ rumbled Zamal.

‘Isn’t that the reason we are here?’

‘It’s not the reason
I’m
here,’ said Ribbsley, going to a window to gaze out at Rome. ‘And if you think I’m going to trek across the bloody deserts of Sudan, you can think again. Khartoum’s a backwater hellhole, but at least the hotels have air conditioning and room service, even if you can’t get a drink. I’ll fly myself to the site once she finds it.’ He turned, giving Nina a suspicious sneer. ‘If she
can
find it.’

‘I’ll find it,’ she snapped back, partly to maintain the fiction that she had both memorised and translated the map, but also out of affronted professional pride. ‘I’ve been doing better than you so far, haven’t I?’ He huffed and turned away. ‘Hah!’

‘In which case,’ said Vogler, ‘it is time you gave us a starting point. Sudan, you said, but you will need to be more specific. Since it is the largest country in Africa.’ He slid a map across the table to her. ‘So. Shall we begin, Dr Wilde?’

‘
S
o, do you actually know where you’re going?’ asked Tamara Defendé, ‘TD’ to her friends, as she guided her battered Piper Twin Comanche to a landing on the dusty runway.

‘More or less,’ said Chase, taking in the landscape. The desert surrounding El Obeid in central Sudan looked as desolate as the surface of Mars. ‘Okay, maybe less than more.’

The plane touched down, wheels squawking. Chase jolted forward in his seat. ‘Sorry,’ said TD, braking. ‘I’m not exactly thrilled to be here. Hardcore fundamentalist Islamic state on one hand, independent African businesswoman on the other - not the best mix.’

‘Do you have a problem with the Sudanese?’ Sophia asked from the Piper’s second row of seats.

‘Yes, if they’re paying the Janjaweed to rape and murder African women,’ TD said with angry sarcasm. ‘Maybe you hadn’t heard in your cell, but there have been some problems here. A little place called Darfur.’

‘We’re not going to Darfur,’ Chase said, trying to head off any further conflict between the two women. TD was an old friend, who at first had been happy to fly to meet him at Nairobi in Kenya - but she became less keen when she learned his intended destination, and outright appalled on discovering the identity of his travelling companion. He got the feeling that TD disliked Sophia more for betraying him personally than for any of her crimes.

‘Close enough. That part of the desert you showed me on the map, it might look empty, but it’s still Janjaweed territory.’ She mimed spitting. ‘You should stay well away.’

‘We don’t have a choice, unfortunately.’ TD turned off the main runway. Several planes were parked on the dirt, white-painted trucks and Land Rovers lined up nearby. ‘Those are UN trucks. What’s all this?’

‘Relief effort,’ TD told him. ‘It’s supposed to be going to Darfur. But
quelle surprise
, it has stopped here.’ Her attractive face took on an uncharacteristic hardness. ‘I hate this country.’

‘Just another African basket-case,’ Sophia said dismissively. ‘The entire continent was much better off in the colonial days.’ TD gave her a look suggesting that had she not been occupied with the controls, she would have reached back and hit her.

‘Soph, shut up,’ Chase said, tired. The last few days of travelling on false passports using bogus credit cards had been long, and tense, the possibility that they might be identified and captured - or killed - constantly hanging over them. And with Sudan being run by Islamic fundamentalists, there was a danger that the Covenant, at least Zamal’s branch of it, had influence. He patted TD’s shoulder. ‘Thanks for doing this for us.’

‘I’m doing it for
you
, Eddie,’ she replied pointedly. ‘And Nina. I hope she’s okay.’

He put on a stoic front. ‘So do I. But they took her prisoner when they could have just killed her, so hopefully she’s stringing them along about the map. The further away she tells them Eden is, the longer we’ll have to find it.’

‘You really believe that?’ TD asked. ‘The Garden of Eden, the actual one from the Bible? Here, in Sudan?’

‘That’s what Nina thought, so yeah. No idea what we’re going to find, though. If there’s some magical oasis out in the desert, I’m pretty sure it’d have showed up on Google Earth by now.’

‘There are only two things you can be sure of finding out there,’ said TD, bringing the plane to a stop. ‘Sand, and death.’

‘I can cope with the first one, even if it’s a pain when it gets in my arse crack,’ said Chase, the deliberate crassness of the comment producing a hint of a smile from his pilot. ‘Second one, though, I’d rather be the one causing it. Will your mate be able to sort something out?’

TD switched off the engines, the silence unsettling after the continuous buzz of the flight. ‘I spoke to him before I met you in Nairobi. He’s got you a jeep, and some guns. I don’t know what state they’ll be in, though.’

‘So long as the wheels turn and bullets come out when I pull the trigger, they’ll do. Thanks.’ He kissed her cheek. ‘What’re you going to do now?’

‘Personally, I’d like to fuel up and get as far from here as possible. But . . .’ she tipped back the bill of her baseball cap, ‘I might stay around for a couple of days. Just in case you need me.’

Chase grinned. ‘Appreciate it.’

‘Try not to get killed, Eddie. I hope you find what you’re looking for. And Nina.’

They climbed out and headed for the rundown terminal building.

 

A hundred and fifty miles to the north, a convoy of five Humvees pulled off a rough dirt road and came to a stop. Painted black rather than in camouflage colours, the oversized 4x4s appeared to be civilian vehicles. But beneath the paint, its gloss dulled by dust following the westward drive from the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, they were ex-military M1114 models, armoured and powerful.

Despite their size, each Humvee only had four seats. Nina rode in the lead truck, accompanied by Vogler and two of his men, more former Swiss Guards replacing the ones killed in Antarctica. She had noticed, however, that Vogler’s contingent consisted of only four men, rather than the five he had had before. Did the Covenant only have limited manpower remaining? The absence of a new leader to replace Hammerstein, despite the presence of another group of six hard-faced Israeli troopers, suggested that was the case; if so, then the Covenant had its limits, and was far from the omnipotent organisation it had once seemed to be.

Zamal’s squad was at full strength, however. They emerged from their Humvees, forming an armed cordon as the Arab strode across the sand to meet the four horsemen waiting for them. ‘So who are those guys?’ Nina asked. ‘The apocalypse?’

‘Our guides,’ said Vogler. ‘The Janjaweed.’

Nina knew the name: the United States government had declared the militia group to be guilty of genocide in Darfur. ‘The Covenant sure is friends with some really nice people,’ she said, not concealing her disgust.

‘They would not have been my first choice. But this is their territory; we will need their support. Get out. They want to see you.’

‘I don’t want to see
them
,’ she said. But Vogler had already exited, rounding the Humvee to open her door. She reluctantly left the cabin.

The Humvee’s interior was air conditioned; opening its door was like opening that of a furnace. She hurriedly donned a floppy-brimmed hat to protect her pale face and neck from the sun’s searing glare, tugging her sleeves as far down as they would go. The occupants of the other Humvees also emerged, all in desert camouflage except for Callum, who was wearing civilian khakis. He regarded her from behind the blank quicksilver of his sunglasses.

Zamal was talking to the riders in Arabic. All wore thick headscarves and layered clothing to protect themselves from the sun, the top layer military fatigues in green and brown camouflage patterns. Their guns were AK-47s, the near-universal rifle of the Third World. One man had a rocket-propelled grenade launcher slung from his saddle; brand-new military equipment in the hands of a purportedly civilian militia. Despite the heat, there was one cold thing in the desolate landscape - their eyes, the narrow, unblinking gaze of men who expected to be feared, and had done much to justify it.

All four pairs of eyes locked on to her.

One of the riders said something to Zamal. He replied, his sneering smile directed at Nina. The four men all laughed malevolently.

‘These are the Janjaweed,’ Zamal said, turning to stand imperiously before her. ‘I can tell from your expression that you have heard of them.’

‘Yeah, you could say that. At the United Nations. Usually in connection with words like “mass murder”, “gang rape”, “genocide” . . . Real good company you keep for a supposed man of God.’

‘They serve a purpose. They will take us across the desert to where you say Eden will be found.’ His lips curled back, exposing his teeth in a sadistic grin. ‘And if it is not there . . . I will give you to them.’

‘I’ve heard it all before,’ said Nina, outward defiance not quite concealing her dread. The horsemen were still watching her, leering. ‘And it’ll be there.’

‘Perhaps you should show them where we are going,’ said Zamal, producing a map. ‘Before we meet the rest of their group.’

‘There’s more of them?’ she asked nervously. Four Janjaweed - the name literally meant ‘devil on horseback’ - were ominous enough, but an entire militia group . . .

‘Oh, yes. Many more.’ He placed the map on the Humvee’s hood, Vogler and Callum coming to look. ‘So. We crossed the Nile at Khartoum . . .’

 

‘So they crossed the Nile,’ said Chase, holding a digital print of the map from the frozen city. ‘Then if we backtrack west, they started from an oasis between three mesas.’ He looked at one of the satellite images Sophia held. ‘I don’t see an oasis, but they can come and go in a couple of years, never mind a hundred thousand. But the mesas . . . it’s got to be these.’ He tapped at a trio of formations on the printout.

Sophia gazed into the shimmering desert to the northwest. ‘We’re at the end of the road, then. Literally.’

‘If you call this a road.’ Chase looked back along the rutted track they had followed after heading northwards from El Obeid. ‘Going off road’s not going to be any worse for the truck.’ He banged the bonnet of the rusting, sand-scoured, 1980s-vintage Toyota Land Cruiser that TD’s contact had acquired for them.

‘Or our spines. So how far have we left to go?’

Chase swapped the Veteres map for a considerably more recent representation of the area. ‘About a hundred miles.’

‘How long will it take?’

‘Over this terrain? No way we’ll get there today. We’ll have to camp for the night.’

‘And we only have one tent,’ Sophia said with a playful smile. ‘Cosy.’

‘One tent and one truck,’ he reminded her. ‘I’m not bloody telling Nina that I slept with my ex-wife.’

‘Your loss. Do you have a preference, or shall we toss for them?’

‘You can have the tent.’

‘Then you can put it up. What?’ she said as Chase shook his head in exasperation. ‘You got to choose where to sleep. It only seems fair.’ She looked into the truck. ‘And what about the guns?’

‘They’ll be sleeping with me,’ he said firmly. As well as the truck and some survival gear, they had been furnished with a pair of weapons: a battered Browning High Power automatic that Chase guessed was a couple of decades older than he was, and an even more ancient Lee-Enfield rifle, its wooden body chipped and scarred, that almost certainly dated back to the Second World War.

‘Yes, I thought they might be.’ She smirked. ‘Sleeping with something cold, hard, inflexible, with awkward knobbly protrusions . . . it’ll be as if you’ve got Nina back.’

‘Har fucking har. Just for that, you can put up your own tent.’ Ignoring her look of displeasure, he gathered up the sheets of paper and got back into the Land Cruiser. ‘Coming?’

‘A long journey through a hot desert over awful terrain in a truck with worn-out suspension to spend the night in a tent? I can’t wait.’ She climbed in and slammed the door.

They picked their way northwest for hours, slowing over the harsh, rocky plains littered with sharp stones that threatened to rip through the Land Cruiser’s tyres, then speeding up to avoid getting bogged down in mile after mile of soft sand. Despite Chase’s best efforts, they still had to stop and dig themselves out a couple of times, further slowing their progress. By the time the sun neared the horizon, the Land Cruiser’s milometer told him that they had barely covered two-thirds of the distance to their destination.