Authors: Will Adams
‘Well,’ he said. ‘If it gets too bad for you, you know where I am.’ She threw him a glare, but said nothing. He glanced around to make sure Davit was out of earshot, still putting up the second tent. ‘A hundred euros,’ he offered. ‘I can’t say fairer than that.’ She wouldn’t even look at him. ‘Fine, you bitch. Two hundred.’
‘Leave us alone,’ she said.
Davit finished the tents, came over to join them, wiping his hands on his trousers. ‘All done,’ he said cheerfully.
‘About time.’
Claudia turned over the fish. The hot grill had blistered
black lines on their silver skins, spitting out oily fireballs of yellow and pale-blue. Davit pinched off some flesh, tossed it from palm to palm before popping it in his mouth. ‘God, that’s good,’ he said, giving Claudia a proud kiss upon her cheek. He turned to Boris. ‘Try some, boss. Heaven on a tongue.’
‘I’ll take your word for it.’
Davit put his hand upon the small of Claudia’s back. She turned and smiled up at him with a warmth that made Boris’s heart twist. ‘Did you ever get to Gori before the Russians came?’ he asked Davit, in Georgian.
Davit frowned. ‘Once or twice. Why?’
‘They’ve got some cracking whores down there. My God! There was this dancer in this nightclub I went to—I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Or my hands.’
Davit’s face went stony. ‘Claudia’s not a whore,’ he said.
‘I never said she was. I’m just telling you about this place down in Gori.’
‘Claudia’s not a whore,’ said Davit, walking around the fire.
‘Of course she’s a fucking whore,’ spat Boris. ‘What do you think? That she’s suddenly just fallen in love with you? Are you really that stupid?’
‘You take that back,’ warned Davit.
‘She’s a whore,’ said Boris. ‘Face it. She just offered to blow me for a hundred euros while you were doing the tents.’
‘That’s it,’ said Davit. ‘That’s fucking it.’ He bunched his fist and came swinging. Boris ducked beneath it, threw a right to his ribs, but it was useless, the man was a ogre, like punching a fucking wall. Davit swung again. Boris jumped backwards to evade him, stumbled over a root. Davit came after him. On hands and knees, Boris scrambled to his bags, pulled out his Heckler & Koch, took off the safety and swung it round at Davit. ‘That’s enough,’ he yelled. ‘Now back off.’
‘What the hell’s that?’ asked Davit, blanching and putting up his hands.
‘What the fuck does it look like?’ retorted Boris.
‘Sandro said no guns.’
‘Well, Sandro lied, didn’t he? What do you think this is? Girl scouts?’
‘I don’t do guns. Not after last time.’
‘You do whatever the fuck I tell you to do,’ said Boris. ‘I’m in charge of this operation, and I’m going to do what I’ve been tasked to do, and you’re going to help me.’ He raised the gun at Davit’s face. ‘Is that clear?’
‘Yes, boss,’ said Davit. ‘It’s clear.’
‘Good. Good.’ He felt a little foolish as he tucked the Heckler & Koch away in his belt. ‘I’m sorry if I upset you. But we go back a long way, you and me; I’d hate to see you get hurt.’
‘I’m a grown-up,’ said Davit. ‘I can look after myself.’
‘Fine. Then we’ll say no more about it, okay?’ He put
on as bright a smile as he could muster, rubbed his hands together in an effort to lighten the atmosphere, walked over to Claudia. ‘How about serving us up some of this delicious food of yours, eh? I’m starving.’
Knox was in a good mood as he moored the
Yvette
and headed up the track to Eden. It would be a weight off his back to tell Rebecca what he was doing here and why he’d kept it secret until now. But he sensed trouble when Rebecca, sitting at her father’s desk, didn’t even look up at him. Then he noticed his overnight bag up on his camp-bed, papers spilling out of his box-file on the
Winterton.
He turned to Rebecca, spread his hands, put on his most contrite face. But it was pretty obvious that she was in no mood for his contrition, partly from her stony expression but mostly because she chose that moment to pick her father’s shotgun up from behind the desk and aim it vaguely his way. ‘A freelance journalist, eh?’ she asked.
There was no point lying. ‘No,’ he confessed. ‘I’m a marine archaeologist.’
‘A marine archaeologist!’ she snorted. ‘A treasure hunter, you mean. Just another fucking treasure hunter come looking to plunder the
Winterton.’
‘It’s not how you think,’ he said. ‘I was going to tell you everything.’
‘Sure!’
‘I swear. Let me tell you now. Just put that gun down.’
‘So I can listen to more of your bullshit?’ Her eyes glittered. ‘I
trusted
you. My father and my sister went missing and I needed help and I told you
everything.
I thought you were on my side. How could you betray me like that?’
‘I had no choice. I gave my word to—’
‘I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear another word.’ She stood and motioned him towards the door. ‘Just get out. Go on. Get out. I can’t bear to look at you any longer.’
‘Rebecca, please.’
‘Get out.’
He backed on to the veranda; she slammed the door in his face. He could hear her shooting bolts and then the diminishing sound of footsteps. Christ, what a mess. He considered shouting out his story so that she’d hear him through the walls, but she was still too angry. Better to give her a night to calm down, come back first thing tomorrow with apologies and the truth. But where to sleep? Rebecca was too sore for him to risk taking one of the cabins. He could trudge down to Pierre’s place … but there was a bed on the
Yvette,
and Rebecca was unlikely to come looking for him out there.
He waded out, climbed aboard, sat on deck as it grew dark around him, watching the shore, lulled by soothing sounds, the creak of wood, the soft splash of distant breakers. Away to the south, someone lit a beach bonfire, perhaps Pierre’s women cooking dinner. Confrontation and guilt had robbed him of his own appetite; he dined on biscuits and beer. His thoughts kept drifting to Rebecca, though he tried to stop them. Her anger had upset him more than he’d have imagined possible, not least because it was justified. Gaille would never have erupted like that, however; she’d have given him at least a chance to explain himself. But Gaille had been a conciliator by nature, always wanting to think the best of people. Rebecca, on the other hand … he gave a rueful laugh. Yet there were similarities between the two women too. Their vitality, their intelligence, the way they both came alive when talking about their passions. One of his most treasured memories of Gaille was an evening in Alexandria when she’d shown him photographs of an ancient mural she’d coaxed back to life. The way her skin had glowed had been one of the things that had first enchanted him about her. Rebecca lit up in the exact same way whenever she talked about animal behaviour. And they were both resourceful too, as well as scientifically minded, loyal and courageous, prepared to risk everything for the people they loved. And they both looked so damned good, too.
It troubled him to be thinking about Gaille and Rebecca this way.
Comparing
them like this. Gaille had been the love of Knox’s life, and her death had been his fault. Not entirely or even mostly his fault, sure. That credit belonged to Mikhail Nergadze, who’d shot her through the forehead from about two feet away, while she’d been utterly unable to defend herself. But if Knox had been braver, faster or smarter, Mikhail might never have had either the desire or the opportunity to murder her. So she deserved better from him than this. She deserved the kind of loyalty that she’d have shown him, not the kind that would let him fall for Rebecca like this, or the kind that would let Emilia Kirkpatrick sweep him into bed that weekend in Hove, just because he’d been feeling sorry for himself.
He gave a little snort at the memory of Emilia. She’d been something of a force of nature, and about the least sentimental woman Knox had ever met. She’d been so insistent on having no strings attached that, before sleeping with him, she’d even double checked in a rather ham-handed way that he wouldn’t himself be part of the Eden salvage. And when Madagascar’s coup had delayed the project by a year, enabling Knox to take part, Emilia had freaked out about it, no doubt fearing he was carrying a torch for her. Understandable enough, of course, because according to Rebecca she hadn’t just started seeing Pierre
by then, she’d got pregnant by him too, and had since become the mother of his …
Knox frowned. Emilia had assured him that she was on the pill, that he needn’t worry about consequences. Yet she’d come back to Madagascar and had got pregnant within a couple of months at the most, depending on Michel’s precise date of birth. His breath came a little faster; he felt slightly dazed. There was a photo of Emilia with Michel on the wall of the cabin. He set down his beer, got to his feet, climbed down the companionway ladder, switched on the light. It ran off the ship’s batteries, and was therefore so dim that he had to remove the photograph from the wall and hold it up close to the bulb to see much of anything at all. Squint though he might, he couldn’t reach any firm conclusion one way or the other. But that meant that the possibility had to remain.
Maybe Michel wasn’t Pierre’s son after all.
Maybe he was his.
Davit lay on his back, his arm around Claudia, and looked up at the walls of the tent above him, the way they flapped in the occasional gusts of breeze, the way the moonlight
glowed through the blue fabric. Things scuttled outside; things screeched and crept. He turned to look at Claudia, kissed her on her brow.
‘I don’t want to be here any more,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t want to be part of this.’
‘It’ll be okay,’ he assured her.
‘No, it won’t,’ she said. ‘Why has your friend brought a gun? What has he done, this man you’re looking for?’
‘It’s complicated.’
‘You mean you don’t want to tell me,’ she said. ‘You mean you’re ashamed of what you’re doing here, but you’re still going to do it anyway.’
‘You don’t understand. My life back home …’ He shook his head. ‘I have to change it. I
have
to.’
Her body began to heave and hump against him; he could tell that she was sobbing. It distressed him to hear her so unhappy. He tried to comfort her by stroking her hair, but she only shook her head. ‘Why don’t you want to change your life here?’ she asked. ‘Why don’t you want to change it with
me?’
Davit didn’t reply at once. He’d thought about staying on a few days, enjoying Claudia, the sea, some sunshine. But he’d never thought about staying on for good. He was a Georgian through and through; he couldn’t give up his homeland and family and friends. But then he realised with a jolt that he’d
already
given them up; or, rather, they’d given him up. He just hadn’t accepted it
yet, like the ghost who refused to leave his corpse. ‘What would we do?’ he asked. ‘How would we survive?’
A moment’s silence as they both contemplated this. ‘Work, work, work?’ she suggested.
Davit laughed. ‘Work, work, work,’ he agreed.
It was pitch black when Rebecca’s alarm sounded the next morning. She threw off her bedclothes and fumbled for the matches to light the candle she’d left out for herself, then washed briskly, dressed and went out to the Jeep. Despite the cool, it started first time. A good omen, perhaps. She drove as fast as conditions allowed, the world growing light around her, villages coming to life. She kept checking her watch, measuring her progress, a little panicky until she saw the first signs promoting hotels in Ifaty, and knew she was nearly there.
She pulled up outside Mustafa’s gates. The guard was expecting her; he hurried to her window to let her know
that Mr Habib’s daughter Ahdaf was coming out. Rebecca felt a twinge of alarm, but the guard knew nothing else and only shook his head at her questions. Ahdaf then appeared, looking flustered. ‘What’s going on?’ Rebecca asked her. ‘Where’s your father?’
‘He went to Ilakaka last night,’ Ahdaf told her. ‘He just called to ask me to tell you that he had to go there on your behalf, and that he’s been successful. He said you’d understand what that meant.’
‘Yes,’ nodded Rebecca. Ilakaka was the shantytown hub of Madagascar’s recent sapphire boom. If you needed cash in a hurry, Ilakaka was an obvious place to try.
‘He said to tell you he’s finalising everything now, but he’ll be setting off very shortly. He says he’ll meet you in Tulear. Do you know La Terrasse? It’s on Independence Square?’
Rebecca nodded. Independence Square was where the kidnappers had told her to wait with the ransom. ‘When will he get there?’
‘He couldn’t be sure. As soon as he can.’
Rebecca thanked her and sped off south. Anxiety came in hot spasms as she drove. She passed a petrol station. It was as well to fill up while she could. A doddering antique of a man held a hose-pipe in her tank while his great-grandfather turned a rusted hand-crank. They changed places every five litres, the effort too much to sustain. When they’d finally filled her up, one of them
produced a pocket calculator on which he tried to multiply volume pumped by price per litre, while the other watched over his shoulder and chided him for doing it wrong. It took them five attempts and still they couldn’t agree. She checked her watch. Eight fifty-six. She was supposed to be in Independence Square in less than five minutes. She wailed in exasperation and thrust twice what it should have cost at the two men, then sped off in a cloud of dust.
Boris woke to a pounding headache as the sides of his tent grew light with dawn. They needed an early start, but he decided to give himself another five minutes. With luck, Davit or Claudia would get up and start brewing coffee. But there was no sound from the other tent.
Not even snoring.
He pushed off his sleeping bag, grabbed the Heckler & Koch, hurried out. Their tent was still there, but that meant nothing. He strode over, pulled back the flap. Davit’s sleeping bag was still inside, but the man himself had gone, Claudia with him. There was a note lying on the bag: an apologia from Davit, claiming that he’d never have signed on to this mission if he’d known there’d be guns; that he’d decided to take Claudia on
a tour of the island, see how things worked out between them. Sorry.