SS Glasgow Castle 38 Chapter Thirty Eigh

It's important to be circ.u.mspect with questions like that. I shouted:

"Got the loot?"

He answered that with a glance and a smile. The smile said everything: that he got the loot, and that he knew very well I'd checked and seen it. I shouted:

"Congratulations! Where was it hidden? Can you tell me now?"

"Right near the beach! A few miles from town."
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"I know that much. Where?"

"In a juju cave!"

"A what!?" I screamed incredulously.

"Juju! A sacred cave."

"Don't f.u.c.k with me!"

"I'm not! There's this group of rocks in the jungle. Not far from the beach. They're clumped together so that there's a sort of cave inside. They stand in a clearing. Easy to find!"

"And no one ever looked inside? You're s.h.i.tting me!"

"When there's a breeze and air pa.s.ses through those rocks, you hear moans and wails - sounds like someone dying! The locals think the rocks are home to evil spirits. Also because nothing grows in the cave. Don't know why myself, but that's highly unusual in a jungle!"

"A sacred cave! You f.u.c.king kill me."

"That's how I found it! All I had to do was stop and listen from time to time."

Moaning rocks! Sacred cave! A war criminal! A n.a.z.i father! It just isn't possible to cross-examine someone with wind howling in one ear, and an engine roaring in the other. Why didn't he attempt to explain himself, to deny what the superintendent said about him? Perhaps he didn't care what I thought - perhaps I wasn't important any more. Joe had warned me, right? Perhaps he didn't care what I thought about all this, because shortly I wouldn't be around to do any thinking.

I told myself to calm down. Kross might be a war criminal, but I wasn't one. I wasn't Kross. I could claim that he had tricked me somehow into going along -

But there were facts, hard facts about myself that couldn't be denied. I'd entered the country illegally along with Kross, and a.s.sisted him in overpowering and incapacitating a couple of policemen. And did he really leave them alive? Superintendent Boswell had called him a war criminal. War criminals become war criminals because they kill people they shouldn't, according to the laws of war.

Checkpoints! We'd gone through three checkpoints on our drive in. It was silly to a.s.sume they were all conveniently gone. I screamed:

"What about the checkpoints? You said that guy Sankey knows you! What the f.u.c.k are we going to do?"

"We should be all right," he shouted back. "Sankey's probably gone to back to base to enjoy his lunch. Then he'll need a siesta. It will be a while before he's back on duty at the checkpoint. We'll be through by then."

"And what then!? Do we keep on driving till we're home?"

"No. We have to get rid of this car the moment we get across the border. We'll catch a cab to Abidjan, relax at the hotel for a few days and fly home."

"Relax at the hotel!?" I screamed. "You're out of your f.u.c.king mind! They'll be waiting for us with brand new handcuffs!"

"They won't! It will be at least a month before this gets international. If it ever does. I doubt it!"

"And we just walk onto a plane with a sack of diamonds?"

"Raymond will take care of that. We're old friends and he owes me a few favors!"

My throat was getting sore from all this shouting, so I shut up. So that was why we were flying with Raymond. He was such a fine pilot in so many ways. Old friends. Yes, they would be; they had to be.

We didn't do more than a hundred and twenty, which was breakneck speed - the road had been built with much slower traffic in mind, and a lot of its surface consisted of patches and potholes. We encountered other traffic, but it didn't slow us down. Even dinosaur tankers pulled over to the side when Kross flashed the lights of the police Land Rover.

We got to the T-junction and turned left, heading north, without any incident. I was very busy watching the road, antic.i.p.ating the first checkpoint. When it came, the soldier by the side of the road started waving us through the moment he recognized our vehicle. I just hoped things would go as smoothly at Captain Sankey's checkpoint.

They did. Kross had been right. Captain Sankey wasn't there. Neither was his sergeant, the tent, the beer, the vehicle - all that remained were the two barrels straddling the road, still emitting faint wisps of smoke. The moment we were through, I shouted:

"Well, that was easy." Kross laughed, and shouted back:

"Gas station. Perfect!"

We'd just come out of a consecutive curve, and there was a village ahead: the Sh.e.l.l sign, a yellow sh.e.l.l on red, towered over the cl.u.s.ter of buildings. I could see a fairly long line of cars, vans, minibuses, and motorcycles snaking from the solitary gas pump that was being worked. But of course Kross didn't line up behind the others. He drove right up to the minibus currently being serviced, and shouted at the attendant.

The refueling of the minibus was interrupted. We were serviced with incredible speed and in total silence. Everyone aboard the minibus studiously avoided looking at us; a young girl was the only pa.s.senger that did. She kept grinning at me through the back window, and waving a pudgy little hand.

I smiled and waved back - I couldn't help it. She was delighted. She stuck her tongue out as far as it would go and pressed it to the window and got slapped by her mother, who was very careful not to look in our direction. The attendant that serviced us had to look at us, and I saw his face was grey with fear when he stepped up to the window to take money from Kross. But he smiled when he looked down at the banknotes in his hand: Kross gave him a big tip.

Our luck continued to hold for an unbelievably long time, just over three hours. We kept on making good speed, and when we came to the spot outside Sunyani where the second checkpoint had been, we found it gone. Just like Sankey's. It looked like they had all gone for lunch and a siesta.

I glanced at Kross, and saw that he was worried.

"What's up?" I shouted.

"We're running out of time," he shouted back. "They know about us. That's why all the checkpoints are gone; they're setting up a proper blockade. f.u.c.k!"

I slumped back into my seat, and Kross instantly got into his major's improve-troop-morale routine. He shouted:

"Keep your chin up. Another twenty minutes and we'll be able to get off this G.o.dd.a.m.n road. We just have to get out of those f.u.c.king trees."

We were driving through the hilly jungle at that point, and I understood that he wanted to go off the road and across the savanna as soon as the savanna became available. I shouted:

"We're gonna drive over forty kilometers cross-country?"

"It's half the distance when you don't follow the road! But I'll stick to the track as long as I can. This bucket of bolts won't last a long time in the bush. A few good jolts, and something will come undone somewhere."

Something came undone just a short while later. We crested a hill, and found numerous soldiers in the act of setting up a roadblock. Two army trucks were parked facing our way; a group of guys was unloading barbed wire from the one on the left. An officer was standing in the middle of the road, supervising the proceedings. His cap was tilted forward, and he held a swagger stick under his elbow. He seemed like a sharp, conscientious guy. He turned to look at us, and Kross flashed the lights and blipped the horn.

I couldn't believe it. It worked. The officer raised his arm - half-wave, half-salute - and moved to the side. But he shouted something as we went past. I turned around and watched him run out onto the road and stare after us, then turn towards his soldiers and get really excited. I looked at Kross and shouted:

"f.u.c.k!"

He glanced at the rear-view mirror and shouted back:

"That hill in front is the last one! Ten minutes from now we'll be driving into the bush."

"What the f.u.c.k is the matter with you, Kross?" I screamed. "They don't have radio? They don't have helicopters? They don't want to burn our a.s.ses for what we've done?"

"They're slow!"

I didn't believe they'd really be so slow, and that was when I started to get really frightened. Superintendent Boswell had called Kross a war criminal, like his n.a.z.i father. And I'd seen Kross's mug on the Wanted poster.

My new, improved fear manifested itself in the sudden urge to urinate. I grimaced and shouted:

"I need a leak!"

"Can't stop now," shouted Kross. "Be a big boy and hold it in."

So I held it in. I didn't have to do that for a long time. We went over the next hill so fast that I swear the Land Rover was airborne for a moment. Within a minute we were pa.s.sing the last outposts of the jungle, the trees standing in frightened clumps. Then the acacias and the gra.s.s began.

Kross turned into the first dirt road, first red mouth available on the left. He drove for a minute before stopping, and giving me a nod. I jumped out of the Land Rover and unzipped right by its side.

I had problems locating my gear - it had shrunk to a b.u.t.ton hidden within folds of skin. I coaxed it out and waited; it can be a problem to get going when you've been holding it in, and when it came it burned. I thought about Monique – that had been a couple of days earlier, which made the time interval about right for clap. Then I thought about Mireille. I hadn't thought of her at all in many hours, and when she popped into my head while I was standing with my limp, frightened d.i.c.k in my hand, I discovered that I was in love with her. It was as crazy as everything else that had happened that day.

Kross didn't mind my taking a while because in the meantime he'd begun to refresh himself with large quant.i.ties of Volvic. He was finishing a bottle when I climbed inside. He poured what remained over his face and chucked the bottle into the gra.s.s on the other side of the track.

"Get yourself a drink. Whether you want one or not," he said, putting his gla.s.ses back on and reaching for the ignition.

"Wait a moment," I said. "Could you tell me how far we have to go to reach the border?"

"We're twenty three, twenty two kilometers from the border," he said after a moment's silence. "This road will take us to a hamlet, that's maybe six. There is another track between the hamlet and the road to the river, and that's fifteen-sixteen kilometers more. I know this area pretty well. Held a couple of exercises here. We're not going to get lost and we'll make it back. Okay?"

"Fine."

He nodded, and started the engine.

We were able to go quite fast. The road was fairly straight. I couldn't see far ahead, and the view backwards was blotted out by the familiar storm of red dust. I felt like a rat must feel running through a maze as I watched the bush whip by. It was hard to tell whether we we're headed for the exit, or for the centre of the labyrinth.

Although Kross drove fast, he showed more restraint than when driving the Toyota – but to no avail: I became aware of new, odd noises being made by our vehicle. They sounded as if something was, indeed, coming undone. I told myself to enjoy the view while it lasted.

The sun was beginning to set, it was setting yet again, just like twenty four hours earlier, and hopefully I'd see it set twenty four hours into the future. I was smothered by a wave of such regret I nearly started crying, sitting next to Kross. The road dipped again, and it was a dinner bridge: my stomach went up and into my throat.

When we got over the small rise following the bridge I realized I was looking at a big army truck parked right across the track: its nose and rear were buried in the bush. There were six or seven soldiers standing next to the tailboard. One of them was pointing his a.s.sault rifle at us. I had the impression he was aiming roughly between my eyes. Another soldier, a tall bereted type with a pistol holster, took a step forward and raised his hand.