Black Pearl (7 page)

In the brief silence, Felix's door opened. ‘Robin,' he said breathlessly. ‘How nice.'

‘Felix!' said Robin, gazing over Felix's shoulder into his room. ‘Is that a
multigym
? How in heaven's name did they get something as big as that in there?'

‘Piece by piece. Now, why have you called me away from it?'

Max caught Richard's wandering gaze again. He shrugged. ‘Felix gets his morning exercise one way. I get mine another.'

‘Get dressed,' said Richard again. ‘We have to talk. My suite in ten minutes; I'll order breakfast. And check whether Tatiana's game for a safari.'

Twenty-four hectic hours later, Richard, Robin and Felix were down at the Granville Harbour docks in the office of ex-minister Bala Ngama's replacement Minister of the Outer Delta, Patience Aganga. Max was up at the airport bidding a regretful farewell to Tatiana who, it transpired, would not be available for a safari into the interior after all. Especially not a safari likely to involve a good deal of hardship and danger – even before Colonel Odem and his Army of Christ the Infant were added to the picture.

The minister's office was in one of the smart new government buildings that had been erected on the land which had housed the shanty towns and slums under President Liye Banda's kleptocratic regime. What had been a mess of shacks and tents constructed of clapboard, bamboo, timber pilfered from the wreckage of the nearest suburbs and ubiquitous plastic sheeting was now, under President Chaka, a carefully planned complex of manicured public gardens and municipal offices. The position of this particular office could hardly have been better from the new minister's point of view. The broad front of the building opened through a series of glass doors on to a convex curving veranda that seemed to command a view of everything for which she stood responsible.

To the left, the mouth of the River Gir opened, as wide as the Thames at Greenwich. Where the jungle used to cluster right up to the edge of the city as recently as ten years ago, now there stood river docks, bustling with river craft, some freighters, more dredgers and a pair of the neat little Fast River patrol boats. And a marina, filled with pleasure craft of all sorts, from pirogues to gin palaces, that could have been transported here directly from San Francisco or St Tropez.

Straight ahead, on the far bank, the jungle of the delta itself swept out across the bay. But where in the old days that had been an environmental disaster of oil-polluted mangroves peopled with restlessly dissatisfied freedom fighters, now it reflected order and care. The pipework looked new. Distant figures were working there, wearing a range of coloured overalls, clearly about legitimate business. Richard remembered that it had been part of ex-minister Bala Ngama's plan to repopulate the delta with a huge number of wild animals – most of them extremely dangerous. He had planned to set up a tourist park that would rival the Masai Mara and the Virunga Impenetrable Forest.

To the right, the bay itself stretched away to southern and western horizons, ringed with rigs – the farthest visible only as columns of smoke and flame. Vessels moved busily among them, and Richard found himself wishing for binoculars as he strained to see the tell-tale house colours of Heritage Mariner. Hard right, looking north-west along the city's coastline, there stood the new dock facilities. Richard's most vivid memory of the place was as a blazing ruin after the late president Liye Banda's helicopter had caused a supertanker to explode with near nuclear force. Now it was all rebuilt.

The port frontage extended right down to the office complex itself; the minister of the outer delta's waterside office seeming to stand as the dividing point between seagoing and river-going vessels, between commercial craft and pleasure boats. Right at the hub of Granville Harbour, at the heart of Benin La Bas. But Richard, Robin and Felix were not here to admire the view, or to appreciate the bustling industry of the anchorages in front of them. They were here to dot a few ‘i's and cross a few ‘t's. Because, although they had Kebila's assurance that he would be supplying men and material, Heritage Mariner and Bashnev/Sevmash wanted to provide transport. For the first stages, at any rate.

‘It's the biggest hovercraft ever built,' said Richard easily to the new minister for the outer delta, Patience Aganga, as two of the Zubrs he was describing came into view cruising across the harbour. ‘It's just under sixty metres long and twenty-five wide. It has a displacement of five hundred and fifty tons but when the cushion is up it has a draft of less than one and a half metres, though it sits just over twenty metres high. It can carry more than one hundred tons – three T80 main battle tanks, for instance, and it goes at nearly fifty knots – that's the better part of sixty miles per hour. It's bristling with rocket launchers, thirty-millimetre cannons and air missile defence systems. Or it would be if Mr Asov and Mr Makarov were permitted to import fully-functioning armaments. It has an armoured command post and sealed combat stations for when the going gets tough. That's almost as much firepower as a naval corvette on a platform that moves as rapidly as a fast patrol boat, with a draft only half a metre deeper than what a patrol boat has. The Russian and Ukranian navies have them and so do the Greeks – though they'll probably have to put them up for sale soon – and the Chinese navy has half a dozen. Max has been negotiating with the government to supply these vessels. But the removal of your predecessor put things back.'

‘I am aware of the basic statistics,' answered Minister Aganga, her square face folding into the faintest frown. ‘I have only assumed ministerial responsibility relatively recently but I have taken the opportunity to go through my predecessor's papers.'

‘Pay no attention to him, Minister. It's just boy toy talk,' said Robin, who had bonded with the dumpy, bespectacled schoolmarm at once. She received a grin in reply. Then Patience Aganga put her serious face back on and straightened her glasses.

Richard shook his head gently, watching his ghostly reflection in the minister's panoramic office window. Then his eyes refocused. The huge hovercrafts were speeding full ahead now, skipping across the water like skimmed stones. Each one threw up a massive wall of spray to port and starboard of its long, lean, grey hull, which was almost thick enough to conceal the three great turbofans that powered each of the huge vessels. Almost high enough to cloak the tall bridge houses that sat midships like the command bridges of the corvettes that the hovercraft so nearly resembled.

‘The bottom line is this, Minister,' persisted Felix. ‘We can crew these vessels and use them to transport Colonel Kebila and his command as well as our own expedition up the river. They have, as you may know, already been used successfully to navigate right past the outer and inner deltas as far as the orphanage and refuge run by Mr Asov's daughter and – until quite recently – the leader of the opposition, the president's daughter, Celine.'

‘Indeed,' answered Patience dryly. ‘Who has not heard of the great battle that led to the defeat of the Army of Christ the Infant and its leader, the murderous Moses Nlong.'

‘But, as is the nature of such things,' rejoined Richard, turning back, ‘the winning of a battle is not the same as the winning of a war. And Moses Nlong might be dead, but he's been replaced.'

‘By Colonel Odem.' Patience nodded. ‘Yes. The president held a ministerial security briefing. Colonel Kebila addressed us in some detail. I am aware of what is at stake. And I have been directed to afford you all the help I can. You may therefore arm your huge hovercrafts. You may use your own trained crews or crews our navy will be happy to supply. Of course, you will be taking Colonel Kebila and his command aboard, but you may also expect to take anyone else you can fly in on time – or anyone else we can assign to you from our own personnel. We are to treat this as a war situation. Before it becomes a war, in fact.'

T
he space inside the Zubr Stalingrad was massive, echoing like a hangar. Twenty-five metres wide and fifty metres deep from the bow ramp at the front to the stern ramp at the back. The floor space was twelve hundred and fifty square metres. It stood eight metres high so the cubic capacity was just on ten thousand cubic metres. And it was still only about a third of the width of the whole vessel, because there were bulkheads on either side, behind which were the main power plants, troop compartments, crews' quarters and a range of battle-orientated life-support systems. Richard strode up and into the huge space as soon as the front ramp was fully open and resting on the concrete of the slipway at his feet. He walked purposefully across the echoing vacancy to the nearest companionway, talking statistics to Patience Aganga as she followed him. The booming of his voice echoed, like his brisk footsteps, as though this were a massive cave.

Felix trailed along behind the minister, seemingly content to let Richard, motivated by nothing other than his relentlessly boyish enthusiasm, deliver an uncalculated – but clearly effective – sales pitch. None of them was having any trouble keeping up, either physically or mentally. The minister seemed fit and fleet of foot in spite of her dumpy figure and advancing years. Nor had she seemed unduly overcome by the sheer size and power of the huge hovercraft as it had come sailing up the slipway in preparation to take them aboard for a quick tour, in spite of the fact that it was preceded by a gale of dust and spray that battered them until the vessel's bulging black skirts finished deflating, and the minister could at last let go of her own too dangerously inflated skirts and try, a little pointlessly, to restore some order to her coiffeur. Robin, wise to what was coming and careful of her clothing, dignity and hairstyle, had made her excuses at the end of the meeting and was heading back to the hotel through the bustle of Granville Harbour's seemingly permanent rush hour.

Richard ran confidently upwards now, therefore, counting off the deck levels in his head until he had no option but to cross inwards to a stairway and lift shaft midships before climbing more companionways up the centre of the bridge above the weather deck. Finally, he walked forward and found himself in a strange, almost circular command bridge, amid a bustle of officers and crewmen. He turned to Patience Aganga. ‘This is where we really start our tour,' he announced. ‘The heart and the head of the ship.'

Captain Caleb Maina was standing beside Captain Zhukov, commander of the huge vessel, and only the fact that he was clean-shaven really made it possible to distinguish him from his cousin, Colonel Laurent Kebila. The captains' heads, one dark and the other grey, were close together as they went through some kind of manifest on a laptop. Caleb Maina, a captain in Benin La Bas's navy, was almost fully trained now as a Zubr captain and was as capable as Zhukov of commanding the sister vessel Volgograd sitting on the broad slipway beside this one. He looked up as the little group arrived, threw Richard a companionable smile, then snapped to attention and saluted the minister formally. Zhukov did the same, his white walrus moustache quivering. But it was hard to tell whether his salute was aimed at the minister or at Felix.

‘Now, Minister,' said Felix, taking over from Richard much more calculatedly and pointedly, ‘I expect the two captains are just checking the most vital elements aboard. Especially under the present circumstances, that would be armaments, of course.'

‘Hopefully you won't need them,' said Patience Aganga. ‘But I'm aware of the basic armaments of the vessel and can expedite the movement of ammunition from our naval stores. As far as I can see, much of what the Zubrs carry is compatible with what we have aboard our corvettes, as I'm sure Captain Maina will confirm if he hasn't done so already. Beyond that, the president's plan is simply to expedite the movement of Colonel Kebila's men and let them sort out the problem of Colonel Odem and his Army of Christ with minimal interference, while you proceed further upriver towards Lac Dudo.'

The minister showed every sign of wanting to get back to her office, but Felix clearly thought the opportunity of building on Richard's persuasive introduction to the Zubr was too good to miss. He seemed set on turning what had been proposed as a short fact-finding mission into the full guided tour with the relentlessness of a used-car salesman. Perhaps fortunately for Patience Aganga, her Benincom cell phone began to ring even as the Russian was shepherding her off the bridge towards the high-temperature gas turbine engines, already launching into an explanation of how they powered two sets of fans, one set of which kept the skirts inflated while another provided the propulsion.

‘I have to take this,' the minister said. ‘It's Colonel Kebila.' She turned away, talking rapidly. Then she stopped and turned back. ‘I know it's a long shot,' she said, ‘but do any of you know a Russian by the name of Yagula?'

‘We both do,' said Richard. ‘He's the chief prosecutor of the Moscow law enforcement system – of the whole of the Russian Federation, in fact. Lavrenty Mikhailovich Yagula. What does Kebila want to know about him?'

‘No,' said Patience, her dark brow furrowed. ‘This one's called Ivan. Ivan Yagula. And he's not in Moscow. Or even in Russia. He's in detention at the airport for trying to smuggle a sizeable arsenal of weapons into the country.'

There was a stunned silence. Richard looked at the minister, who was looking at him. They both ended up looking at Felix.

‘Ah,' said Felix, with the closest Richard had ever seen him come to a blush. ‘I think I might know what's happening …'

In one of life's irritating little inevitabilities, Max had just left the airport and was caught in traffic on his way back to the hotel when Felix got through to him. There was no chance that he could get back and sort out matters between Ivan Yagula and the airport authorities. Though, from the tone of what Richard could hear coming out of Felix's cell phone, Max wasn't too happy about the situation either.