The Secret Chamber (19 page)

His hands flailed wide as he fell backwards in his seat, but Jean-Luc was already standing over him, left arm holding his head in a vice-like grip.

‘Just relax,’ he whispered into the American’s ear. ‘Take it easy and breathe.’

Devlin’s eyes were screwed shut with pain. He moaned softly as Jean-Luc released his grip, grabbing a wad of cheap paper serviettes off the counter and thrusting them at him. Devlin pressed them against his mouth, feeling the blood welling out through the waxy paper and seeping down his throat. He stared at his assailant in disbelief, his expression blank with shock.

‘Never mention that place again,’ Jean-Luc said softly. ‘It doesn’t concern you.’

Taking a sip from his own beer, he eyed Devlin with casual interest.

‘We were talking about a deal,’ he prompted. ‘You were about to offer me my money.’

‘You just … fucking …’ Devlin stammered, spitting out blood between the folds of the serviettes ‘… broke my …’

‘Focus. Concentrate on the deal. You’re going to go back to Langley right now and get me my money. You tell them
that
I am the go-between for the Chinese and Mordecai, and if they want to be a player in the Congo, they deal with me.’

Devlin’s whole face flushed red. He pulled the serviettes away from his mouth and stared down at the blood as if not quite believing that it was his. Half a tooth lay in the centre with a piece of flesh from his gum still attached to it.

He felt a desperate need to escape from Jean-Luc. The man was a goddamn’ animal.

‘I’ll tell them,’ he managed, nodding quickly. ‘I’ll tell them you want the money … that you’re the man to deal with.’

Jean-Luc reached across the table and slapped him playfully on his shoulder.

‘
Bien, mon ami
,’ he said, raising himself out of his chair. ‘I will wait to hear from you.’

Turning to leave, he caught sight of the pack of cigarettes still lying on the table.

‘You keep those. And they’re
Gitanes Brunes
. The strongest cigarettes you can buy in France.’ He gave Devlin a friendly wink. ‘If you like them, I’ll have my guy send some more over for you.’

LUCA PULLED BEAR
further into the forest. One hundred and fifty feet above their heads, the canopy of trees blotted out the sky, leaving only a dim half-light at ground level. It was dense and claustrophobic, the heat of the day trapped by the windless air. Between each mighty tree trunk innumerable bushes and saplings struggled for light, twisting and knotting over each other in the inexorable struggle.

Luca pushed his way up a slight incline, using his free hand to force his way through the wall of mapani bushes. Thin traces of a spider’s web clung to his forehead, while a fine grey dust covered his face. The cut above his right eye had closed, leaving a red smear across his cheek and around the eye socket itself, ringing the white of his eye and making it seem unnaturally bright.

He stopped, looking from side to side for an easier way through, but the forest seemed the same in every direction. By his reckoning, they could only have gone a couple of kilometres from the river, yet he was already growing disorientated.

‘Just keep moving,’ Bear said, her right hand pressed against the wound in her shoulder. She was walking only a few inches behind Luca, trying to focus on his footsteps and keep pace. The pain in her shoulder made her feel weak, a sweaty sickness that only worsened with the growing heat of the day. She bent forward, resting one arm on her knee, and pulled up the bottom of her vest to wipe the sweat from her forehead. The white cotton was now a grimy brown, with a rust-coloured stain under her left armpit where blood had seeped down from her shoulder.

‘We have to put as much distance as possible between us and the crash site,’ she added. ‘They’ll know René wasn’t the only one in the plane. They’ll be looking for us.’

Luca seemed not to have heard and ploughed on, breaking the sapling branches as he passed. His movements were erratic and clumsy as he fought his way through the bush, the branches pulling at his hair and clothes, frustrating him more and more. He hadn’t stopped for more than a couple of seconds in over four hours.

Bending one of the lower branches, Luca used the heel of his boot to kick it down into the mud. As he stepped over, there was a dull crack.

‘Luca, stop leaving such a trail. They’ll be tracking us.’

‘In this?’ he snarled, raising his arms as if to encompass the entire forest. ‘I can’t see my fucking hands in front of my face. How the hell can they track us in this?’

Grabbing a piece of dead wood off the ground, he hurled it at the bush in front. It bounced off the leaves and toppled back down to the ground, one end sinking into the soft mud.

‘
Entends-moi
,’ Listen to me, Bear said, taking hold of his arm. ‘This is what the LRA do, Luca. They live here in the forest, every day of their lives, and believe me, they can track us in this. Every broken branch or footprint is like a signpost for them.’

Luca turned to stare at her, his breath shallow from the effort and frustration. He started to say something more, then slowly his shoulders hunched and his whole body seemed to sag.

‘Can’t get his face out of my mind,’ he whispered. ‘The water running over it like that. And we just left him to rot in the damn’ river …’

Bear gently squeezed his arm, feeling the soft trace of his pulse through the veins lacing his forearm.

‘We’ve got to keep moving, Luca, and deal with this later.’

He stared ahead, his eyes filled with certainty. ‘It’s like there’s something wrong with me. Some kind of fucking curse. Everyone but me seems to get hurt.’

‘Wrong with you? Luca, it was his choice to get on the plane.
His
choice. Nobody forced him to do it, so you shouldn’t have to feel this way.’

Luca suddenly yanked his arm free from her grip.

‘Don’t tell me how I should be feeling! You don’t know the first damn’ thing about me.’

Bear took a step back and counted down the seconds. Anger seemed to radiate from his entire body, his fists clenching and unclenching, accentuating the bands of muscle on his arms. Something triggered in Bear’s memory
but
she couldn’t place it. She looked back in the direction they had come. They didn’t have time for this.

‘Luca, look at me,’ she said softly. His face remained turned away from her. ‘
Eh, regarde-moi!
’ Look at me!

As he slowly turned back to her, she tried to hide the impatience in her voice.

‘You’re not the first to feel this way.’ She pointed to the ground at their feet. ‘But we have to be thinking about here, Luca. Here! We’ve got to focus on getting as far away from those bastards as we can. Because if they catch us, make no mistake … they will kill us.’

Luca exhaled deeply, his hands resting on his hips. After a moment, he nodded slowly.

‘OK,’ he said, raising himself to his full height. He blinked, trying to compartmentalise his emotions as he had done so many times before in the Himalayas, but the same image of René kept flashing before him. He had to steady his breathing, had to focus on getting them out of this jungle.

‘OK,’ he said again, turning back towards Bear. A thin new trickle of blood had welled out of her shoulder.

‘You’re bleeding again.’

‘I know. I’ll have to take care of it when we stop to camp.’

The light grew fainter, dimming so slowly that night seemed to be on them without warning. Shapes that had once been varying shades of grey had darkened to black and they found themselves stumbling forward, tripping on knee-high roots as branches slapped across their faces. Bear gently pulled Luca to a halt.

‘I need to stop,’ she said. He nodded. He had been breaking trail for the entire day and was exhausted, but it was only in the last hour that his movements had become tired and mechanical.

‘I need some more water,’ he said.

Bear pulled a Leatherman multi-tool from the pocket of her trousers and moved forward through the bushes, eyes scanning the dim silhouettes of the tree trunks. Luca trailed after her. About 100 metres further on, she reached up to one of the vines looping down from a branch and sawed it in half. Water oozed out and she drank deeply from it, gulping back the liquid before plugging it over with her thumb.

‘Doesn’t taste too good, but it’ll do,’ she said. As Luca took the vine from her grasp and drained it, Bear opened the side pocket on her trousers, pulling out two energy bars that she had tucked inside. She flung one across to him.

‘Only got a couple more of these left. So enjoy it.’

After devouring the bar in just a couple of mouthfuls, Bear then sank down to the ground with her back resting against the tree, wincing as she felt her shoulder protest. The spike from the throttle handle was still there, bulging out of the skin on her back. She was sweating heavily now, eyes half-closed as she fought back the throbbing pain.

‘I’ve got to take care of this,’ she said. ‘And we’re going to need some light to do it. You got any matches?’

Luca shook his head, then suddenly stopped and pulled the survival knife from the back of his belt. He unscrewed the handle. Inside were four underwater matches, the long sulphur fuses carefully wrapped in cellophane.

‘I’ll try and find something dry to burn.’

‘Wait,’ Bear called, pulling out a small spray bottle of Deet from the thigh pocket of her trousers. She heaped a few twigs and some damp moss by the side of her outstretched legs and sprayed on the chemical. There was a whoosh as fire suddenly illuminated them with its yellowy-blue flame.

‘No wonder the mosquitoes don’t like it,’ Bear said to herself, adding some more twigs to the heap and dousing them with a few more squirts. A grim smile played across her lips. ‘Die of cancer from this shit or get caught by the LRA. Great choice.’

Sitting up a little higher against the tree, she gingerly pulled the vest over her shoulders, folding it several times before tucking the fabric under her arm. Luca could see her whole torso gleaming with sweat. Her black skin gleamed like oiled leather. Her hair had fallen either side of her shoulders, clinging to her skin and obscuring the wound. With a brush of her hand, she smoothed it away, peeling her left bra strap down over her shoulder to try to get a better view, but the wound was too close for her to be able to see it clearly.

‘You’re going to have to help. We’ve got to find the end of the metal and pull it out.’ As Luca came and kneeled over her, she handed him the Leatherman, turning the handles round to reveal the pliers. Luca peered closer, gently dabbing the surface of the dried blood with his forefinger.

‘I can’t see the metal. Must be buried inside a little way.’

Bear nodded, her mouth wide as she breathed in heavily.
‘I
know. I hope to hell you’re not squeamish, because you’re going to have to dig it out.’

‘You sure you want me to do this?’

‘Do I have a choice?’

Luca didn’t answer, but pressed his left palm against her shoulder to steady her. ‘You want something to bite down on?’

‘Just get the damn’ thing out of me.’

She grabbed his wrist with her good hand. Her fingers gripped tight. ‘Quickly, before I change my mind.’

Luca dug the tip of the pliers under the damp clot of blood, delving them deeper into the open wound. A mixture of clear pus and dark-red blood seeped out, running down her chest and into the fabric of the vest. Bear’s body jerked away but Luca pushed down harder, pinning her back against the bark of the tree. He twisted the sharp ends of the pliers round, trying to find the metal spike buried inside her. As he forced the pliers wider, Bear groaned loudly, her legs kicking out in spasm.

‘Wait!’ she screamed, but he pushed deeper, the tips of the pliers finally connecting.

‘Come on,’ Luca hissed, his wrist turning the pliers as another gush of blood pulsed out of the wound. The tips caught hold of the metal again, but slipped off as he tried to pull backwards. Bear screamed again, her eyes boring into his as she pleaded for him to stop.

‘No more,’ she panted. ‘Please, no more.’

Luca pulled the pliers out as cleanly as he could. As Bear’s head collapsed against his chest, he held her tight, his right hand curling around the nape of her neck.

‘
Salope!
Son of a bitch! That hurt.’

She opened her eyes, the pain dilating her pupils.

‘You’re going to have to use your knife to push it through from the other side.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Luca whispered, staring at where the skin bulged out on her back. Even in the light of the fire, he could see the mauve discoloration around the swelling.

‘On the count of three,’ he said, trying to muster the courage. ‘One …’

‘Just do it!’ Bear exploded, her whole body rigid with expectation. Luca brought the hilt of the knife thumping down on her rear deltoid, punching the metal spike out the other side. As Bear’s whole frame recoiled, he grabbed the spike, drawing it out of her body.

Bear collapsed against the tree, lying absolutely still with her eyes screwed shut. Tears welled from the corners of her eyes, but gradually her breathing began to slow as the intensity of the pain faded. Luca crouched down next to her, waiting in silence for her to open her eyes again.