Night of Knives Page 4

  The one-eyed man produces his panga, and everyone tenses; but he uses it only to cut free their arms. The relief is acute. Her shoulders still feel wrenched in their sockets, and her hands are still full of weirdly damped sensations, but Veronica thinks, as she flexes her wrists, that maybe the damage isn't permanent after all. It feels strange, almost unnatural, to be able to hold her hands in front of her body again.

  "A demain," the one-eyed man says, after freeing Derek last; and he leads the rest of the Africans out through the waterfall, leaving the captives in the cave.

  "What does that mean?" Michael whispers.

  Jacob translates: "See you tomorrow."

  The cave faces westward, and the red light of the setting sun shimmers gloriously in the waterfall, like flowing stained glass. It seems wrong that anything here should be so beautiful. The temperature is dropping with the sun. Veronica isn't cold exactly, not yet, but she is uncomfortably aware that all her clothes are still soaking wet.

  No one speaks for a long time. Veronica doesn't know what to say or do. Nothing in her life has prepared her for this situation.

  "Come on," Derek says eventually. "Let's move this rock to the middle so we've got more space."

  He and Jacob manage to carry it from the wall into the middle of the cave. By the time they have finished, the glistening red orb in the waterfall has been cut in half; they are almost on the equator here, and the sun sets with amazing speed.

  "Any more bright ideas?" Michael demands of Derek, inexplicably hostile.

  Derek shakes his head coolly. "Not today. I think we should just follow your wife's example." Diane has moved from shock straight into a nearly comatose sleep.

  Michael glares back for a moment, then goes back to his wife, slumps to a sitting position beside her and covers his face with his hands. Veronica walks over to the waterfall and drinks deeply, the anchor rock is just close enough now for that. She hugs herself as she backs away from the water. She is now officially cold. Maybe she wouldn't be with dry clothes, but that's a moot point. The darkness is now almost absolute, except that their captors have set a fire on the slope just outside, and the flickering firelight radiates through the waterfall;. Even if they were to somehow escape their chains, they are being watched; even if they somehow escaped their watchers, they are countless miles from anything they know. Derek is right. There will be no escape. There is only the hope of ransom or rescue.

  "I'm cold," Veronica says.

  Susan nods. "So am I."

  Derek says, "We should huddle together. All of us, for warmth. At least until we dry. And, shit, we have to clear rocks to make space, I should have thought of that earlier."

  Veronica doesn't like this intimation that Derek is mortal and makes mistakes. They labour in the dark at some length, groaning from their many agonies as they stumble and bump into one another, until they have finally cleared a flat patch of ground big enough for them all to lie down.

  Veronica stays close to Derek, almost instinctively. When they all lower to the ground and tentatively pull each other close she is between him and Jacob. Derek's back is to Veronica, his arms are around Susan, who is sobbing quietly. Veronica feels angry, and jealous. She wants Derek's attention and his strength. She tries to tell herself it doesn't matter, this is about warmth, they have to all stay together. Susan needs him more than she does, and anyways being jealous here is totally ridiculous. She hugs Derek tightly and presses her face against his strong back. Jacob, behind her, is more tentative, and she reaches back to pull him closer against her. His long, lean body is bony and uncomfortable. The stone floor and the ankle chain are painfully hard.

  "It's going to be okay," Derek murmurs.

  Susan sniffles a bit, then announces through tears, "It better be."

  Everyone tries to laugh.

  "I mean it," Derek continues, louder. "We'll be okay long as we stick together. And I think we will. You guys have held up really well. "

  "You were amazing too," Susan says. "You are amazing."

  "This isn't the worst thing that's ever happened to me. Top ten, maybe, but not even top three, not yet. Makes it easier."

  "It's easily the worst thing that's ever happened to me." Susan is on the verge of tears again.

  Veronica feels Derek tighten his arms around Susan, and hears him whisper to her, "Things will look better in the morning. I promise."

  Veronica closes her eyes and hopes he's right.

  Chapter 5

  For a long moment Veronica doesn't understand what she is doing lying on a stone floor pressed between two other bodies. Then memory jolts her like a thunderbolt and she moans with terror, instantly wide awake.

  She hurts seemingly everywhere: badly blistered feet, cuts on her legs, a big bruise on her hip, a pulled calf muscle, aching shoulders, skinned wrists, chafed ankle, headache, hunger, thirst, stiffness everywhere, an overall feeling that she has been hit by a freight train. At least her clothes are now mostly dry. The cave is dark. She has no idea how long she has slept. Jacob, Derek and Susan seem asleep, albeit uneasily. She hears but can't make out soft, frightened whispers from Tom and Judy. Veronica wants to lie where she is and sleep for days, and she is so exhausted that despite the hard, cold, uneven stone floor she probably could, but she needs to pee. At least she isn't dehydrated.

  Just getting to her feet feels like climbing K2, but somehow she manages. Her right calf won't flex at all, she can barely walk, but that hardly matters, the chain on her left ankle keeps her from going more than twenty feet from the anchor rock. She isn't sure where to go, but she has to go somewhere, so she limps near the waterfall. Her chain clanks bleakly behind her, as if she's the ghost in a ghost story. She doesn't want to pee so close to the others, but tells herself they can't afford niceties like personal embarrassment anymore, and anyway the white noise of the waterfall swallows up the sound.

  Veronica drinks from the waterfall, soothing her throat. The water feels cool and clear. She hopes it is also clean, that no upstream village dumps dead animals or feces into the water. Dysentery is all she needs right now. Maybe she shouldn't drink from it, but she already did last night, what the hell. She feels her way back to her slot between Jacob and Derek, lies laboriously back down, and starts to cry. It feels like an involuntary physical reaction, like sneezing. She can't stop, she starts weeping more violently. Derek wakes up and rolls over to face her.

  "Sorry, I'm sorry," she bleats.

  "It's okay," he mutters, and reaches out for her, wraps his arms around her, holds her close as she sobs against his shoulder. She tries to relax into his arms and let her exhaustion carry her back into sleep. It doesn't seem to work, she is not conscious of having fallen asleep, but somehow, when she next opens her eyes, the cave is filled with filtered dawn, the sun is on the rise, and others are up and moving.

  The ceiling of the cave is barely high enough to stand, and except near the waterfall, it is so dark she has to squint. Veronica moves as close to the light and the water as she can, as quickly as she can, heedless of the pain in her strained muscles. Being buried alive has long been her greatest fear. Yesterday she was too exhausted to react to her surroundings, and fear of imminent death trumped claustrophic anxiety, but now just the thought of being in one of the dark corners of this cave makes her dizzily lightheaded and a little nauseous.

  Once they have moved from lying on stone to sitting on a rock there is precious little to do. Jacob mutters, "I'm hungry," and there is general agreement. Otherwise everyone seems dazed and disinterested, too weak for conversation. Diane seems better, she's at least ambulatory, but she doesn't speak and her eyes are wide as a child's.

  "You have to tell them to get me a phone," Michael says, breaking a brooding silence. "I'll get them money. Tell them I can get them a million dollars if they let us go."

  Veronica wonders if the us in question means all of them, or just Michael and Diane.

  "I will," Derek says. "When they come."

  "I can do it fast.
I can transfer fifty thousand dollars today, over the phone."

  "What makes you think they'll let you go once they have the money?" Jacob asks.

  Michael flinches. "What - why wouldn't they?"

  "Wrong question. Why would they?"

  Nobody has an answer.

  The waterfall noise changes as two men push through its flowing curtain. One of them is the muscled one-eyed man. They other they have not seen before. He is even taller than Jacob, at least six foot six, he reminds Veronica of basketball players she has met. The cave is not quite big enough for him and he has to stoop. He wears sneakers, black shorts, and a ragged blue T-shirt too small for him, and he walks with a pronounced limp. The one-eyed man carries a plastic bucket full of some pale pastelike substance, and a jute sack holding a half-dozen spherical things about the size of human heads. Veronica freezes in place as it dawns on her that they might actually be human heads. Both men carry pangas lashed to their belts.

  "Good morning," the tall man says, putting down sack and bucket. His accented English is soft-spoken and Veronica has to strain to hear him over the waterfall. "My name is Gabriel."

  "I can get you money," Michael bursts out. "Give me a phone and I can get you a million dollars if you let us go."

  Gabriel examines him curiously. "What is your name?"

  "Michael Anderson."

  "You are a rich man, Mr. Anderson?"

  "Yes I am," Michael says. "And I'm ready to make you rich too."

  "C'est vrai? The Bible says it is harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven."

  Michael stares at him. "Don't you want money?"

  "Of course I want money. But please, how is it you would give it to me?"

  "I can do a bank transfer today, for fifty thousand dollars, I can do it in ten minutes if you give me a phone -"

  Gabriel half-smiles. "Do I seem like a man who has an account at a Swiss bank? Please, Mr. Anderson. Be sensible. Who will negotiate the arrangements? Who will transform the numbers in your bank account into dollars that I can hold? Such a magical transformation. Like water into wine. Who will bring me those dollars? Where will we meet? How will my safety be guaranteed? Are these arrangements that you can make today, in ten minutes, Mr. Anderson?"

  Veronica is relieved, listening to him. He doesn't talk like a brutal thug. He talks like an educated, reasonable man.

  "I'll find a way," Michael says. "I'll work with you. We can make these arrangements together."

  "Thank you. But I prefer to work with professionals. Please, all of you, do not be afraid. Put your minds at ease. There is a long history in my country of trading tourists for money. Laurent Kabila, the lamented father of our president, he did this often when he was a fighter in the bush, like me. Today no tourists come to Congo, we must seek them out in Uganda, but the principles remain the same. Please. I will negotiate arrangements with your governments, not with you."

  Veronica takes a deep breath and lets herself look away from the sack full of headlike objects. She feels a little steadier. They will be ransomed. Everything will be fine. Or at least survivable.

  "That all sounds terrific," Derek says. "But there's something you need to understand."

  Gabriel looks at him.

  "Our governments will insist on verifying our well-being before they pay you one dime. And if we've been abused, they will come down on you so hard you won't know what hit you. Kabila kidnapped his tourists last century. The world is different now. You kidnap some Americans and Brits and Canadians, and then you ransom us unhurt, fair enough, you're not worth chasing down. But you hurt us again and you will die. That animal tried to rape her last night." He indicates the one-eyed man and Susan. "He pulls any of that shit again, he uses that whip again, anything happens to us, even if it's not your fault, even if one of us gets sick, then you and all your men will fucking die. Is that clear? Do you understand that?"

  Veronica is awed by the intensity and casual certainty of his voice.

  Gabriel seems less impressed. "What is your name?"

  "Derek Summers."

  The tall man nods. "I see. Mr. Summers. I have no intention of harming you. But not because of your ridiculous threats. For two other reasons. One is that I know you white people are like cut flowers, so weak that from only a little injury you wilt and die. The other is because I am not an evil man. None of us are. You called this man an animal. I know that is what you think of us. All Congolese, maybe all black men, we are all animals to you. I want you to think of this. I studied physics once, at a university. I travelled to Europe. Now my country is in ruins, my family is dead, I must fight and kill only to survive. That is why we have captured you. That is why we must have the money you will bring. Only to survive. This man Patrice, my friend, this man you call an animal, he was once the finest drummer in Nord-Kivu, maybe the finest in all the Congo, and though I doubt you know this, we Congolese are famous through all Africa for our music. He lost his music when he lost his eye, in battle, saving my life. He lives every day with terrible pain from those wounds. Crippling pain. Pain that would reduce you to an animal, I promise you that. But he is a man still. He is the most brave and most strong man I know. I want you to think of this the next time you call him an animal. You will not be harmed by my men, none of you, unless you bring it on yourselves. But if you do I will have no mercy. Because I think no better of you than you do of us. Is that clear, Mr. Summers? Do you understand that?"

  After a moment Derek says, quietly, "Yes."

  Gabriel nods to Patrice, who draws his panga. Veronica freezes, as Patrice reaches into the sack - and pulls out a pineapple, which he cuts into a dozen fragments, wielding the machete with a craftsman's mechanical grace. The smell makes Veronica's mouth water and her stomach cramp.

  "You see," Gabriel says, as Patrice arrays the wedges on a flattish rock and begins to chop up another pineapple. "When you are here we treat you well. If there is trouble you will have yourselves alone to blame."

  * * *

  Tom reaches his hand into the plastic bucket, withdraws another baseball-sized dollop of pocho, stares at it with a wrinkled face, and announces, "This is the worst bloody Club Med I've ever been to."

  Everyone laughs. It sounds almost like real laughter. Gabriel has kept his word, they have not been harmed further, and their bellies are at least half-full. The pineapples were so deliriously delicious that Veronica now feels almost well-disposed towards Patrice. But eating this pocho, a kind of banana pounded to the consistency of underdone mashed potatoes, is like chewing wet cardboard.

  "You think the food is bad, wait 'til the activities begin," Derek says, smiling.

  "Everybody up for the sunrise flagellations!" Jacob adds.

  "I'm definitely not going to tip the staff." Diane's voice is quavery, but they are the first words she has spoken since entering the cave, and everyone laughs uproariously with relief.

  "Pocho can be good," Susan says from her seat next to Derek. She sounds oddly defensive. "This just hasn't been cooked enough. And it usually comes with a sauce."

  "Tell Nigella, not me," Tom says around a mouthful. "This is one taste I promise you I will never acquire. Rather have a bucket full of Vegemite. Well, let's look at the silver lining. A few weeks here and we'll finally get our slender figures back."

  "Great," Jacob said. "I'll just start thinking of this as a whips-and-chains fat farm. We could probably market it when we get back home. People would pay for the experience."

  Judy takes a bite and her face wrinkles. She makes herself chew and swallow, then turns to Susan and asks, amazed, "You actually eat this back in Kampala? By choice?"

  Susan looks around uncertaintly. "Not Kampala. The camp where I work, near Semiliki. There's Western food if you like, but I try not to eat differently from the refugees when I'm there. I think it's patronizing, it reinforces the barriers."

  "Could do with a few more barriers at the moment," Tom says drily.

&nbs
p; "Do you speak the language?" Michael asks Susan.

  She hesitates. "Not really. There are so many of them around here, it's mad. In Zimbabwe there was only Shona and Ndebele. Here, I expect there's a dozen languages within a hundred miles. I can speak some Swahili. A little Luganda, not much, I've only been here eight months. I think the pygmies were talking Swahili to the men when we came here, but the men were speaking something else, not Luganda."

  "Kinyarwanda?" Derek asks.

  "I don't know. I wouldn't recognize it. But I don't think they'd speak that around here."

  "They would if they were interahamwe."

  "If they were interahamwe I rather think we'd all already be… " Susan's voice trails off.

  Michael asks, "Interahamwe?"

  Derek looks at him like he just failed to recognize Kurt Cobain's name. "You've heard of the Rwandan genocide?"

  "Of course." Michael sounds a little insulted.

  Susan says, "The interahamwe were the ones responsible."

  Derek frowns. "Responsible's a big word. Ordinary Hutus did most of the killing. But it was the interahamwe militias who organized it. It's a Rwandan word, means 'let us strike together.' When the genocide was over, after Kagame took over the country, a million refugees ran away into the Congo. Specifically right here, North Kivu province, right next door. Remember those volcanos we saw in the distance on the drive into Bwindi? They're right on the Uganda-Rwanda-Congo triple border. Anyway, most of the refugees went home eventually, but the hardcore interahamwe, the real genocidists, the mass murderers, they stayed. There's still supposed to be about ten thousand of them in eastern Congo."

  "And you think these might be interahamwe?" Michael asks.

  Derek hesitates, then shrugs. "Probably not. Susan's right. We'd all be dead already. These guys are probably exactly what they seem. A local warlord doing a fundraising drive with us as the poster children."

  "He seems like an okay guy," Jacob says.

  Derek's laugh has no warmth in it. "Do me a favour. Don't get all Stockholm syndrome on me. Sure, he talks pretty. But let's hope real hard we never have to find out just how nice he actually is."