Night Of Knives Part 31

"We know they're not trustworthy," he says quietly. "We know Gorokwe is volatile, he's a good man but he needs a short leash. We know Athanase and his men are monsters. We've made arrangements. They'll be taken care of when it's over. And in turn they know that if I disappear, certain revelations will come to light all around the world. I've made video recordings, copied doc.u.ments, everyone will be exposed. I'm the opposite of expendable. They know that."

"A short leash, huh. Looks to me like you're the one on it."

"No. And don't judge the general. You don't know him. He's a good man. Brilliant, too. Unpredictable, volatile, but he wants an African renaissance more than anyone, and he's the one man who might actually make it happen."

"Or so he's convinced you."

"This isn't about me," Danton snaps. "Or the general. This is about what we do with you. And about trying to save your boyfriend's life before it's too late. If you tell me right now everything there is to know about his evidence, his backups, I'll go down that hall and stop what's happening."

"I don't know anything, he never told me," Veronica says, and she sees as she says it that Danton knows it is the truth.

"So. Too bad for him."

Danton picks up the phone. Veronica knows this is her last chance, she has to rush him now - but she has no weapon, no chance of victory, the idea is too ridiculous, too pathetic. She just sags into a chair and listens as he orders soldiers to the room to escort her away.

In the distance she hears a scream, m.u.f.fled but soul-curdling. Veronica moans loudly in response, she can't help it. She knows it is Jacob. She knows they are torturing him. When they are finished they will kill him. There's nothing she can do, no way to stop it. He shrieks again, several times in quick succession, they're like sounds from a nightmare, animal and desperate. But she can't even try to convince herself that this might be a nightmare. Nothing has ever felt so awful and so real.

Danton winces. "He has to just tell them. He will. He has to do it now."

She stares at her ex-husband with genuine horror. "Look at yourself. Listen. How can you do this? What are you doing?"

He stares at her for a long moment. In the distance Jacob screams like a child.

Danton looks down to the floor and says, softly, in the boy's voice he used when they murmured in bed together, when they were married, "I don't even know any more. I swear, I never knew it was going to be like this. It wasn't supposed to be like this. I'm sorry. But it's too late now."

She can't think of anything to say.

Danton says, "I'm going to get you out of here. Eventually. I promise. n.o.body's going to touch you."

Two burly men in plainclothes march Veronica down the velvet-carpeted stairs to the huge, vaulted main entrance, where she learns that this is the Leopard Rock Hotel. Behind her Jacob has gone silent. She hopes he just told them everything. It doesn't even matter whether their evidence gets out. There wasn't much to it anyways. She should have tried to explain that to Danton.

Two soldiers wait behind the reception desk. Gorokwe's troops have obviously taken over the whole property. After a brief Shona conversation she is propelled outside, down the circular driveway, and into a parking lot crowded with military Jeeps and black Mercedes and BMWs with opaque windows and no license plates. She is still handcuffed. The hands on her arms are firm but not crushing. Danton told the men who have taken her into custody several times that n.o.body was to touch her, no matter what. She supposes she should feel grateful.

She is hustled into the back of a black Mercedes. One man drives, the other sits beside her, the doors are locked. The road out of the Leopard Rock climbs upward, winding around the huge cliff that looms above the hotel, through dense forest on either side, very different from the dry plains of central Zimbabwe. These must be the eastern highlands near Mozambique that Lovemore described.

The route they take snakes through rippling ridges of steep, folded hills and valleys, covered by gra.s.sy plains and rainforest and shot through by tumbling rivers. The only signs of life come from cl.u.s.ters of crude wooden shelters whose denizens stare sullenly at the pa.s.sing vehicle. Countless red dirt tributaries extend from the main road into the hills.

After a long descent they skirt a busy city, Mutare from the signs, climb around a huge koppie and back up into hills that seem more raw and rugged. Several times the road winds along the base of sheer forty-foot precipices. They pa.s.s a few slopes covered by burnt bare ground and spa.r.s.e trees, with fire-blackened trunks jutting from the ground like fence stakes. They pa.s.s through a military checkpoint, and then another. Veronica supposes they're going to some kind of military base where she will be imprisoned.

She doesn't really believe she will ever be released. Maybe that's what Danton intends right now, in a sudden burst of guilty morality, but he will eventually come to realize that his own interests are best served by Veronica's death. And it seems likely Gorokwe will take matters into his own hands if necessary. Either way her imminent death feels as good as foreordained. She supposes she will probably at least outlive Mugabe, they have bigger things to worry about than her right now. She will live long enough to be a loose end, and then she will be tied up. She almost wishes they would just get it over with now.

The faded sign on the fence topped with barbed wire says REZENDE. The gate is guarded by two bored-looking soldiers. The gravel parking lot is occupied by Jeeps, white vans, and a few yellow Caterpillar industrial vehicles. Beyond, a complex of low and battered buildings is set into the side of a steep and rocky hill. Outside the fence, a dozen gargantuan heaps of yellow dirt, like termite mounds fifty metres high, loom above the scrub brush and trees.

The car doors open. Veronica emerges willingly, no sense resisting now, and is led past broken windows to a kind of courtyard where weeds grow through cracked concrete and patches of gravel. A generator buzzes somewhere inside the largest nearby building. Here a half-dozen armed soldiers guard what looks at first like some bizarre Rube Goldberg contraption. Four metal legs support a roof of corrugated tin over a ma.s.sive piece of machinery festooned with gears, wheels, and pulleys. This machinery in turn holds a big metal cage directly above a hole in the ground. The cage is about three metres by two, the hole slightly larger. Four rusting chains dangle into the corners of the abyss. It takes Veronica most of the walk across the parking lot to figure out that the hole is a mineshaft, the contraption above an elevator, and the huge piles of yellow dirt are heaps of processed and discarded ore. This is a semi-abandoned mining complex. She thinks of the open-pit coltan mine in the Congo.

The men lead her to the cage and pause long enough to chat a little with the soldiers, she can't understand the words but can tell that they are asking about her, and are amused by the answers. Eventually the conversation ceases and the cage is opened, its whole wall hinges inwards, and Veronica begins to understand exactly where she will be imprisoned.

"No," she says weakly, staring at the cage door as if it is a fanged jaw that might devour her. Her heart begins to pound. Being buried alive has always been her greatest fear. "No, please. Put me somewhere else. Not down there. Please."

The men exchanged amused smiles as they pull Veronica inside. She groans weakly. The cage is just high enough to stand upright. Its floor is rusted sheet metal. A strong, hot updraft rises from the pit beneath.

The door clangs shut. One man lights the paraffin lamps that dangle from hooks on the ceiling. Veronica feels dizzy, her skin is damp with sweat, it takes all her will to keep the trembling seed of terror within her from flowering and conquering her mind and and body. Then the generator noise hits a new register and the cage lurches suddenly downwards. Veronica almost falls to her knees.

They continue to descend, a little more smoothly. The chains at the corners clank loudly as they rise. They fall into darkness, lit only by lamplight. The air grows steadily warmer. It feels like sinking into h.e.l.l. Like being buried alive.

"No," Veronica moans. There is a roaring sound in her ears and her whole body fills with a electric tingling. She can't get enough air, there is a painful tightness in her chest as if her lungs have been squeezed shut. She closes her eyes, sags down the cage walls to a sitting position with her arms wrapped around her knees, and tries to forget where she is, to just focus on breathing, on not pa.s.sing out.

An eternity seems to pa.s.s before the panic attack subsides. When it does Veronica feels completely exhausted, like she has just run a marathon, but at least she can think and breathe again - although she can still feel the panic lurking darkly in her mind, a crouching, howling beast ready to spring and savage her again.

Warm air blows up the mineshaft past them, wind from the center of the earth. Veronica opens her eyes. They fall past a dark opening in the sheer stone walls, an abandoned corridor like an open mouth. There is a faint glow from below. Veronica looks up. The mouth of the mineshaft has shrunk to a tiny dot, like a single pixel in a computer screen. The sight nearly triggers another attack.

One of her escorts pulls a cord that dangles from a corner of the roof. A cable runs up one of the chains that holds the cage, some kind of signalling mechanism. Their descent slows to a crawl as they approach an opening in the stone walls around them, lit by flickering lamplight. The man pulls the cord twice as the cage grows level with the opening. They come to a halt about two inches below the lip of the opening. Gaps around the edge of the sheet-metal floor reveal that the mineshaft continues below.

The corridor is about as big as the cage itself, eight feet wide and six high. Its walls and ceiling are sheer whitewashed stone. Narrow rail tracks begin at the edge of the mineshaft and continue down the corridor into darkness.

"He says we must not touch you," one of her escorts says, the first words that have been directed to her. He sounds darkly amused. "Very well. We follow orders. None of us will touch you."

The other pushes her in the back, ungently. "Go."

Veronica has no choice, she starts down the corridor. The two men follow. One carries a paraffin lamp. The stone ceiling grows lower, and Veronica has to stoop to keep her head clear. Pipes and cables run along the ceiling, rusted and in several places severed. She hears murmuring voice. They reach a little alcove where an old wooden desk stands beneath a dust-covered sign warning that SAFETY IS EVERYONE'S JOB. A half-dozen soldiers with rifles are here, seated on crude wooden stools, chatting quietly. After a brief conversation four of them stand to join the procession.

They continue into the mine, soldiers in front, then Veronica, then the two men in street clothes. The soldiers' boots echo hollowly on the stone floors. Other, smaller pa.s.sages intersect this one, and connecting shafts ran diagonally upwards and downwards, covered by grids of old wood, presumably to stop rockfalls. They pa.s.s two small pa.s.sages entirely blocked by rubble. In several places the ceiling is supported by wooden pillars with bases carved into sharp points.

The faintly drafty air is dense, hot and dusty. The lamplight is dim and flickering. At first the only sounds are occasional drips of water, distant tik-tik-tik tik-tik-tik noises, which she took to be miners working with hammer and chisel. Then Veronica begins to hear voices, so distant that she wonders at first if they are her imagination. They pa.s.s a large chamber with whitewashed walls, where two more armed soldiers sit on a wooden bench. noises, which she took to be miners working with hammer and chisel. Then Veronica begins to hear voices, so distant that she wonders at first if they are her imagination. They pa.s.s a large chamber with whitewashed walls, where two more armed soldiers sit on a wooden bench.

Veronica turns her head to look, then suddenly stops walking and stares. She knows the two gleaming coffin-shaped boxes stacked behind those soldiers, close enough that she can read their etched Cyrillic letters. The Iglas, the missiles, the weapons that will a.s.sa.s.sinate Mugabe.

Her guards shove her onwards hard enough that she stumbles. When she looks back she sees them glance curiously into that chamber themselves. Her mind whirls as she continues on and the voices grow louder. It makes sense that they're here, it's hard to imagine a more secret or secure hiding spot than half a mile underground, and probably very few of Gorokwe's men know what is in those boxes and why. Maybe even her two escorts don't know that Mugabe will be shot down the day after tomorrow. Maybe she should tell them, maybe they will find a burning patriotism within and try to save their country from b.l.o.o.d.y ruin - but that doesn't seem likely, and anyways it's too late, they have stopped in front of a wall of rusted iron bars.

The metal grille is set into the walls and ceiling, blocking the corridor completely. It has been crudely but firmly welded together, blobs and seams are visible. The door in the middle of the cage is chained securely shut. An unsettling chorus of dull, hoa.r.s.e voices emanates from behind the iron bars: dozens of voices, maybe more. The air stinks of filth and sweat.

A man grabs her wrists and unlocks her handcuffs. The guards turn to the bars. Two of them point their rifles inside; the other two activate flashlights and aim them inside. Veronica gasps with horror. Her first impression is of a solid ma.s.s of naked human misery. There are maybe sixty men inside, crammed into a s.p.a.ce maybe thirty feet square. When the lights come on they fall silent and shrink back from the guns, press themselves against what look like metal walls in the middle of the chamber. All are black, naked or stripped to their underwear, covered in dust and filth, many with bleeding or swollen faces.

"None of us us will touch you," murmurs the man behind her. She knows by his voice that he is smiling. will touch you," murmurs the man behind her. She knows by his voice that he is smiling.

Each of the soldiers with flashlights opens one of the cell door's two padlocks. She is thrust forward into the black hole, surrounded by scores of other prisoners who stare at her with slack, unreadable expressions as the door is resecured behind her. She tries not to hyperventilate, she can't afford to, there isn't much oxygen in this air, and it might set off another panic attack, she's close enough already.

The floor is flat cracked concrete. The jagged walls and ceiling are marked with odd striations. The metal wall-thing in the middle of the chamber is a row of metal lockers that barely fit under the low ceiling. Their familiar appearance is surreal. A water pipe runs from the corridor ceiling into and along the other side of the room, where it feeds several head-high nozzles, all dark with rust. She sees and feels a ventilation shaft, a sighing draft carrying hot air from a metal grille in the floor directly in front of her to another in the ceiling.

The flashlights are switched off.

"Have a nice day," a guard advises her mockingly. The men who brought her here walk away. Their boot-sounds and lamplight diminish down the corridor, leaving Veronica in darkness.

Chapter 36

The air is so hot and stuffy, the stench so vile, that at first it is almost impossible to breathe, Veronica just stands gasping in the darkness as a surprised and speculative murmuring arises all around her. There is nothing she can do. Obviously the men who brought her expect her to be attacked by her fellow-prisoners. Maybe she should beg for mercy, or maybe that will show weakness; maybe she should try to act the haughty untouchable white woman, or maybe that will just provoke them. She reaches into the pocket of her cargo pants for her Leatherman, at least they didn't search her, at least she can try to defend herself, not that that will mean anything if they all rush her - "Veronica?" a loud voice says, a familiar voice. "Veronica Kelly?"

She gasps. "Lovemore?"

A babble of Shona conversation breaks out. Then suddenly there is a strong hand on her arm. She flinches, but Lovemore's voice says, "It's me. It's all right."

She doubts that very much. "What are you doing here?"

He speaks in a low voice, into her ear. "We must be quiet. The guards speak English. Sometimes they listen in the dark. They captured me in Harare. They don't know I was with you, or they would have killed me. They only know I was a friend of Lysander's. They said they captured him. Have you seen him?"

She shakes her head, then remembers he can't see her even though their faces are almost close enough to touch. There are men all around her now, using all the available s.p.a.ce, she feels limbs pressed against hers, it is weirdly like being at a rock concert. "No. But I saw the missiles. They're just down the hall from here."

"Izzit?" Lovemore considers. "So close."

"Who are all these other men?"

"Hostages. These are sons, brothers, uncles of powerful men. The women and children are in another cell. When Mugabe is gone Gorokwe will try to use them in negotiations to take power. I don't believe it will work. I don't believe men in power care more for their sons and brothers than their power. I think there will be war. And it will happen as soon as Mugabe returns, before word of these kidnappings reaches him."

Veronica remembers Lysander's warning: Important people, powerful people, have begun to disappear. People have started whispering about death squads. Important people, powerful people, have begun to disappear. People have started whispering about death squads.

"The day after tomorrow," Veronica says. "If Lysander was right. We have to try to get out of here."

Lovemore grunts. "The mice voted to bell the cat."

Veronica leans towards Lovemore and whispers into his ear, "They didn't search me. I've got tools."

He stiffens. "What tools?"

"A Leatherman. A phone. A lighter. Some cigarettes. My wallet, my money belt, they even left me my pa.s.sport."

"Izzit," he breathes. "Then maybe, this ventilation shaft -"

He takes her hand and raises it upwards. The ceiling is low enough that she can easily touch its uneven surface. She feels her way along it, guided by the wispy air currents from below, until she finds the place where they disappear, a two-foot-square rusty grate in the ceiling. It is set solidly into the rock that surrounded it, appears to have been welded in place like the iron bars that blocked the main entrance. They'll clearly never get through that.

The shaft slopes down at about a thirty-degree angle, the grille in the concrete floor is three feet over from its counterpart on the ceiling. Lovemore has to talk men into moving off it. Veronica kneels to the ground. She can feel the hot air rising, looking into the shaft is like facing into a weak hair dryer. She grabs the metal bars and pulls. This grille is as solidly set in the concrete floor as its counterpart in the stone ceiling. She would need a real hacksaw, not the Leatherman. Bra.s.s padlocks are one thing; inch-thick metal bars are entirely another.

"Sorry," she says. "No good." She casts about for ideas. "Maybe we can rush them, next time someone comes in. There's like sixty of us, just four of them."

"No," Lovemore says, and he sounds alarmed. "Four men with Kalashnikovs? They will not hesitate to shoot."

"Then what?"

"They don't plan to kill us. Not all of us. They bring us water sometimes, enough to live. We must wait for opportunity."

Veronica frowns. She feels certain they'll be waiting forever. But he's right, there's no breaking out of this prison, not with what they have. "Will these other men help? Have you told them what's going on?"

He hesitates. "No. I fear one might be a spy. And they may help, but not with violence. These men are wealthy, educated. They have been beaten and tortured, they are weak and frightened. They will not risk themselves."

"What -" Veronica swallows. "What did they do to you?"

"I have suffered worse."

"They're torturing Jacob."

After a moment Lovemore says, "If they will torture a white man, then they will kill him."

"I know."

Veronica sits beside Lovemore with her back to the uneven rock wall. She feels rubber-limbed, overpowered by la.s.situde and despair. She vaguely wonders just how little oxygen there is in this air. The cell is sardine-packed but the rest of the men find a way to give her a little extra s.p.a.ce. She is ashamed, now, that she thought they would attack her. Most seem to speak good English, and several have asked in halting voices who she is and why she is here. Her terse answer - that she is American, and she made an enemy of General Gorokwe - seems enough to satisfy their curiosity. Most of the cell's inhabitants seem too enervated for conversation. The absolute darkness is matched now by eerie silence.

It occurs to Veronica that, in a perverse and b.l.o.o.d.y way, she has almost succeeded at what they set out to do when they left Victoria Falls. She knows where the conspiracy is based, she knows where the missiles are, she knows the details of Gorokwe's plan, that he almost certainly intends to shoot down Mugabe when he lands in Harare the day after tomorrow. There's only one small problem. It's almost funny, but she can't laugh.

The longer she sits the more she feels acutely aware of the half-mile of solid rock above her, as if she can feel its gravitational pull. This cell feels more and more like a ma.s.s coffin. She starts to tremble, and her breathing grows strained again, her heart begins to lurch, she can feel another panic attack on the verge of eruption, there is a faint humming in her ears - No, not just in her ears, not just an artifact of her brain. Veronica can actually feel the air throbbing with a low hum on the edge of human hearing. Her panic is dissuaded for a moment by surprised curiosity.

"What's that?" she whispers.

Lovemore sits up a little straighter, then says, "The lift. Some trick of acoustics. They are coming."

The wait, listening intently. Soon they hear the dim rhythmic slapping of rubber boots on stone. Lamplight flickers in the tunnel outside, and the iron grid of bars begins to gleam. The sight of the cell makes Veronica moan, it's easier coping in the darkness, but she steels herself, makes herself sit up, pay attention, and ignore the gibbering panic in the back of her mind. This might be important. The guards are coming, and a new man not in uniform is with them.

As the guards aim their weapons at the crowd, and unlock the doors, the newcomer begins to shout out a short phrase. He repeats it several times before Veronica realizes it is a name. Slowly a man emerges from the ma.s.s of prisoners and, shivering with fear, approaches the door. He is escorted outside. Gorokwe's man says something in Shona and a ripple pa.s.ses through the crowd.

"He says this man's father has agreed to the general's terms," Lovemore whispers, "and so he is being released."

Another name is called out. This time half-a-dozen men step forward. Veronica smiles despite herself. Gorokwe's man calls out a question, and apparently only one man answers it correctly. The others slink back into the ma.s.s. The selected man steps towards the open doorway, to freedom.

Gorokwe's man issues a curt command. The guards don't hesitate. The guns' muzzle flashes are much brighter than the lamplight, and in that enclosed s.p.a.ce the gunshots are incredible, deafening. Veronica sees dark blotches appear as if by magic on the body of the man at the door, sees him twitch as if dancing, then collapse to the concrete floor like a shop-window dummy. He sc.r.a.pes spastically at the ground for a few seconds, and then he is still. The floor beside him is badly scarred, one of the bullets struck the concrete floor and gouged a deep rut surrounded by a web of cracks and chips of concrete.

Veronica can barely hear Lovemore's translation of the words that follow. "This man's family would not negotiate."

n.o.body makes any sound at all, it is like everyone has gone mute. Gorokwe's man walks away, bearing the light with him. In the dwindling lamplight Veronica sees blood seeping from the body in the corner, filling and flowing down the cracks in the concrete floor.

Veronica is shocked, numb, half-deaf, utterly drained, and so overwhelmed with terror and desperation that she can barely feel anything else at all; but as she stares at the cratered floor beside the dead man, a idea flickers to life in her mind.

She forces her way through the silent crowd of prisoners to the grid of bars that cover the ventilation shaft in the floor, kneels down and feels with her fingers. It's true that these bars are set in concrete. But that stray bullet revealed something about this concrete: it is weak, old, and flaking. And only about an inch of it grips the grille.

Veronica draws out her Leatherman, unfolds its hardened steel, selects its sharp awl, grabs the tool in her fist, and stabs it hard into the ground at the edge of the metal grate. There is a loud c.h.i.n.k c.h.i.n.k. She feels at the concrete with her finger. A chip as big as her thumbnail has broken free.

"Lovemore," she says, suddenly feeling strong again, rejuvenated by sudden hope. "I think I've got something here."