King Solomon's Curse

  ‘We didn’t realise who he was, ’cause he’d been very good at keeping his picture out of the news. Thought he was just some mercenary. So we confiscated his guns and let him go.’ A small sigh. ‘That was a big fucking mistake. Not long after, he massacred another aid convoy. And that was on top of all the local people he murdered or chopped the arms off. They’d still be alive if I’d stopped him.’

  ‘By “stopped”, you mean . . .’

  ‘Killed? Yeah. I could have done it – one of the guys with me was all for it, because even while we had him at gunpoint he was threatening us, saying he’d hunt us down and find our families, lots of nasty shit. But I didn’t, because it was . . . against the rules of war.’

  ‘There is only one rule in war,’ said Mukobo. ‘Do what you must to win. If you pretend there are more, then you have already lost.’

  ‘I didn’t find out who he was or what he’d done until later,’ Eddie went on, deliberately not responding to the warlord. ‘So, when I had a chance to put things right, I took it.’

  ‘When was that?’ Nina asked.

  ‘When I went to Tenerife. Peter Alderley said MI6 had tracked him down, but they needed someone who’d seen him before to confirm his ID before they moved in. So I helped out. Things got a bit out of hand, but eventually we caught him.’

  She frowned. ‘So that’s what you were doing there? Hunting down a war criminal? Why the hell didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Because first of all, you would probably have thrown a fit. And second, because . . .’ He hesitated before making the admission. ‘Because I didn’t want you to know that I’d fucked up by letting him go in the first place.’

  Nina was taken aback by both reasons, though her offence at the former took second place to her dismay at the latter. ‘But . . . you couldn’t possibly have known. I wouldn’t have blamed you for it – it wasn’t your fault!’

  Eddie shook his head. ‘Mac taught me in the SAS that if something goes wrong, someone’s got to take responsibility – so they can set it right. It took eleven years, but I finally got the chance to do that. I caught Mukobo, and turned him over to the cops so Interpol could deal with him.’ He looked across at the Congolese, who stared back with disdain. ‘He was supposed to be going to the States on trial for killing the aid workers. But somehow, he ended up back here.’ He returned to his prisoner. ‘How the fuck did you manage that, “Le Fauchet”?’

  Mukobo let out a nasty laugh. ‘You were afraid of your wife? That little woman? You are no man, Chase!’

  Eddie smashed his boot heel on to the other man’s kneecap, making him thrash in pain. ‘Answer the fucking question. You should be dead! You were on the 747 that went down in the Atlantic last year – I saw a news story about it. Everyone else on the plane died, so how come you’re still shitting up the world?’

  Breathing heavily, Mukobo glared at him. ‘I had help. From Mr Brice.’

  The Yorkshireman was startled. ‘Brice? How did he help?’ There was no reply beyond a look of smug defiance. ‘How the fuck did Brice get you off a plane at thirty thousand feet?’

  ‘When my people rescue me, you can ask him yourself,’ said Mukobo. ‘Before I kill you, I will let him tell you how completely you have failed, Chase. Not just here, now, but ever since we first met.’ He leaned as close to Eddie as he could. ‘All the people who have died since then, at my hand or those of my followers, every single one is on your head – because you were too weak to kill me when you had the chance!’

  Eddie brought up the gun. ‘I’ve still got the chance.’

  Mukobo made a spitting sound. ‘Which you will not take. I am unarmed, I am tied to a chair – I am a helpless prisoner! To you, it would be murder. And you do not believe that you are a murderer, do you, Chase? You believe in your laws, your rules of war. Your conscience cowers behind them. But even though I am the one who is tied, I am stronger than you – because the only rules I follow are my own. In the jungle, the law is for me to make, not obey.’ He drew back. ‘And this whole country will be my jungle.’

  ‘What about your friend who runs the LEC?’ Nina asked, sensing that Eddie was too furious to speak. ‘Won’t he have his own ideas?’

  ‘Kabanda?’ The name emerged as a sarcastic snort. ‘I tolerate him, that is all. As I do Mr Brice. He thinks I am some tin-pot warlord he can control, but I am ahead of him. They are both useful to me now, but when the time is right, I shall sweep them away.’ He looked back at Eddie. ‘You know that time is coming, Chase. It is inevitable. One way or another, I will rule this country.’

  ‘Thought you just wanted to rule the eastern half,’ Eddie growled. The gun lowered, but did not move away from the warlord.

  ‘To begin with. But unlike you, I see no reason to limit myself.’ Mukobo sat as straight as he could, a small smile appearing. ‘And as the future ruler of the Congo, I am prepared to make you a most magnanimous offer, Dr Wilde.’

  ‘And what would that be?’ Nina asked suspiciously.

  ‘It is very simple. Let me go, and return my gun. I promise you that the only person I kill will be Chase. I have no interest in the others. You can all go free.’

  ‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you.’

  The warlord shrugged. ‘Whether you do or not, the offer is real.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Eddie muttered.

  Nina was more vocal. ‘You’re seriously suggesting I let you go so that you can murder my husband?’

  ‘Is one life not worth it to save more?’ asked Mukobo. ‘You, Dr Ziff, the others in your team will all live to return home. I am sure the other woman, the one who complains so much, would certainly take my offer.’

  ‘Maybe she would, but I wouldn’t. It’s not going to happen.’

  His expression became darker. ‘Then you are condemning yourself to death, Dr Wilde. All of you. When the militia come for me, they will kill everyone they find. Should any of you survive, I myself will remove you from this world. After I have had my way with you, and all of my men have done the same.’ Nina felt a sickening chill at the threat, but tried not to let her fear show.

  ‘You should probably stop talking now,’ said Eddie with an unnerving calmness. ‘Before you say something you’ll really regret.’

  ‘I have no regrets,’ Mukobo replied, getting louder. ‘For nothing I have ever done, nothing I will ever do. I have killed men, women, children – burned babies in their beds! And I will do it all again, I promise you. Anyone who opposes me will be slaughtered like pigs. If you do not let me go, now, then your friends in this place will not be the only ones who will be killed. Your little girl, your precious Macy, will die too!’

  Shock hit the couple at his use of their daughter’s name, Eddie as still as a statue while Nina went pale. Now fear entered her voice. ‘How – how do you know about her?’

  ‘Why, from Mr Brice, of course,’ said the warlord, cruelly pleased at her reaction. ‘He has told me much about you. Your family, where you live – New York, 78th Street, yes?’ Nausea roiled in Nina’s stomach at the revelation that he knew how to find their home. ‘He has powerful friends in the world of spies. They will bring your girl to me. She is five, yes?’ He closed his eyes, drawing back his head as if smelling a delicious meal. ‘So fresh, so innocent. So . . . undefiled.’ The last word was drawn out, savoured, before he opened his eyes again. ‘She will be most popular with my men. And the last thing she sees before I let her die will be your severed heads! Unless,’ he said, fixing them firmly with his unblinking gaze, ‘you let me go, right now.’

  Nina was too horrified to speak. She tried to retreat, but almost stumbled as her legs shook.

  Eddie, in contrast, remained utterly still, looking back at Mukobo with equal intensity. Finally, he spoke. ‘You’re right. Yeah, you’re right. It is worth one life to save more.’

  The warlord smiled. ‘I knew you would agree with me in t
he end, Chase. Now. Give me my gun.’

  The Yorkshireman nodded. ‘Here.’

  He lifted the revolver again – and fired it at Mukobo’s groin.

  The Magnum’s echoing boom was like cannon fire. Nina jumped in shock – first at the near-deafening noise, then at what her husband had done.

  Mukobo himself was no less stunned. He stared at Eddie for a moment, wide-eyed as blood gushed over the seat . . . then the pain hit him. He screamed, thrashing against his bonds and howling French obscenities.

  Eddie was unmoved. ‘You’re not going to touch my daughter. Or anyone else. Ever.’

  Mukobo looked back up at him, realising what he meant—

  Five more Magnum rounds erupted from the gun as the Englishman emptied its cylinder into the warlord’s chest. The bullets ripped right through him, cracking bloody craters in the chair’s stone back. Mukobo shuddered, then slumped forward, dead.

  The rolling thunder of the gunshots faded. Nina slowly lowered her hands from her ears as she gaped at the quivering corpse. ‘Oh . . . oh my God, Eddie. Jesus Christ! What did you do?’

  ‘What I should’ve done back in 2006,’ he replied, opening the revolver’s cylinder and tipping out the spent brass.

  ‘But – but holy shit, Eddie! He was tied up! You murdered him!’

  ‘And how many people’s he murdered?’ he demanded. ‘Hundreds, probably thousands if you count all the people he ordered killed. And he would have gone on to kill a load more.’

  ‘That – that’s not the point!’ she stammered. ‘We captured him, he should’ve gone on trial—’

  ‘You see any judges around here?’ Eddie snapped. ‘Any cops? You heard what he said – the only law he follows is the law of the fucking jungle. Well, I played by his law. And in case you weren’t listening, he threatened to rape and kill our daughter. Fuck him!’

  Nina had felt the same horror and rage as her husband when Mukobo made his threat, her natural instinct as a parent being to protect her child by any means – but was still unwilling to justify a cold-blooded execution. ‘If he’d been about to hurt Macy for real, I’d have blown the bastard away myself. But he wasn’t, he was tied to a goddamn chair on a different continent! Yes, it was a threat, but it was an empty one!’

  ‘You think? Brice told him where we live! And Mukobo was the kind of sadistic fucking maniac who’d follow up on a threat like that. The aid workers he murdered, the ones he was going to the States to be put on trial for killing – you know why he went after them? Because their leader called him a “dangerous man” in a newspaper interview. That was all, but it was enough. And if I’d known who he was when I first met him, I could have saved their lives.’ He flicked the empty cylinder, sending it spinning. ‘I could have saved hundreds of lives . . . but I didn’t.’

  ‘That wasn’t your fault,’ she insisted. ‘You can’t blame yourself for that!’

  ‘Yeah, I can, and I have. But he won’t be killing anyone else now.’ He stared down at the slumped figure. ‘Fourteen years late, but I stopped him. And if you think I did the wrong thing, if that’s changed the way you look at me . . . then I’ll just have to live with it, because I don’t regret it.’ He faced Nina again. ‘I did it to save Macy, and you. And everyone else in this place. And fuck knows how many more people in the rest of the country, because without Mukobo, this revolution’ll go nowhere. He was the one holding it together. So by killing him, I’ve just stopped a civil war.’

  ‘Maybe you have,’ said Nina. ‘And maybe you did do the right thing—’

  ‘There’s no maybe about it.’

  ‘—but we can debate that later.’

  ‘And I’m sure we will,’ he said sardonically. ‘But I’m not going to apologise for it. The world’s better off with this bastard dead.’

  Her shock was replaced by anger and exasperation. ‘That might be true. But you just shot our only bargaining chip! Without Mukobo as a hostage, there’s nothing to stop the militia from killing us.’

  Eddie gestured towards the lead casket. ‘There’s that.’

  ‘Yes, if we want to risk bringing the rest of the palace down on top of us. Look, Eddie, I – I understand why you did what you did to Mukobo. But with him dead, our situation’s just got worse, because now there’s no way out of here. What are we going to do?’

  Any answer the Yorkshireman might have had remained unspoken as Ziff shouted from outside. ‘Nina! Eddie! Are you okay?’

  Nina hurried to meet him, not wanting anyone else to see the grisly scene. ‘We’re okay, we’re fine,’ she assured the Israeli as he scuttled down the last flight of steps. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

  ‘We heard shots!’ shouted Howie from a bridge higher up. ‘We thought Mukobo’d escaped!’

  ‘He’s not going anywhere,’ Eddie replied as he emerged. ‘Go back up. Fortune and Paris might need your help if the militia make any moves.’

  The young man hesitated, then started back up the chasm. Ziff was less easily persuaded, though. ‘Is there any chance you could take Mukobo somewhere else so I can get back to translating the inscriptions?’ he asked hopefully.

  Eddie shook his head. ‘Definitely best if he stays put for now.’

  Ziff’s eyes went to the revolver in his hand, its empty cylinder still open. ‘I’m . . . getting the feeling there’s something I should know about.’

  ‘Everything’s fine, really!’ said Nina with forced brightness. ‘You could always explore the other buildings instead?’

  Ziff gave the couple a look of concerned suspicion, but before he could question them further another voice echoed down the rift. ‘Eddie!’ cried Paris. Even at the top of his lungs, his words were barely audible by the time they reached the mine. ‘We have a situation!’

  The older archaeologist looked up in alarm. ‘The militia – are they attacking?’

  ‘Paris wouldn’t have left Fortune to face ’em on his own,’ said Eddie, taking out a box of Magnum rounds he had confiscated from the warlord earlier and reloading the golden gun. ‘It’s something else. We need to get back up there.’

  He and Nina ran for the stairs. ‘What about Mukobo?’ Ziff asked.

  ‘Like I said, he’s not going anywhere. Come on.’ With the confused Israeli trailing them, they began a hurried trek back to ground level.

  22

  Even hurrying, it took several minutes to make the ascent. There had been no gunfire, so the Insekt Posse hadn’t attempted an assault, but the documentary crew’s concerned expressions told them that something was going on.

  ‘Where’s Paris?’ said Eddie. ‘And Howie?’

  ‘They’re with Fortune, at the entrance,’ Fisher told him.

  ‘So what’s happening?’ asked Nina, breathless.

  Rivero raised his camera to record her and Eddie as they headed for the passage. ‘Probably easiest if you see for yourself.’

  ‘This isn’t a movie,’ she sniped. ‘You don’t have to keep things from us for dramatic tension!’

  Fortune and Paris were maintaining their watch over the ruins, Howie nervously holding the third Kalashnikov behind them. ‘What’ve we got?’ Eddie asked.

  ‘A visitor,’ the tall Congolese replied. ‘Your friend Mr Brice.’

  ‘And you haven’t shot the fucker?’

  ‘He has a white flag,’ Paris clarified.

  ‘So? He can use it as a bandage.’ The Yorkshireman peered into the daylight. There was indeed a white flag, a piece of material on a branch being waved from behind a broken wall.

  Nina looked cautiously past her husband. ‘Somehow, I don’t think he’s here to surrender.’

  ‘Flag of truce,’ Eddie rumbled. ‘He wants to talk. It’s definitely him?’ he asked the defenders.

  ‘Yes. He came alone,’ Fortune confirmed.

  ‘Great, so the others could be anywhere . . .’
With their position set back inside the palace’s thick wall, there was no way to see if anyone was stealthily creeping up from either side – unless the defenders exposed themselves to fire from the jungle. ‘All right, better see what he wants.’ He took the AK from Howie. ‘Brice! I’m here!’

  The other Englishman cautiously raised his head. ‘About time, Chase. I just want to talk to you.’

  ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘I meant talk, not shout. I’d rather do this face to face. Preferably not with a gun pointed at me.’

  ‘I’m sure you would,’ said Eddie, who had fixed the rifle’s sights unwaveringly upon the ex-MI6 officer. ‘Convince me. And start by convincing me not to blow your head off.’

  ‘I’m offering a deal,’ Brice replied. ‘One that will get all of you out of here safely. But it’s an offer I can only make to you, Chase – because you’re the only person there who’ll understand why I’m making it.’

  The shouted exchange had drawn the attention of those in the first chamber, Fisher leading them to the entrance to hear more. ‘Wait, now you’re in charge of negotiations?’ the director asked Eddie. ‘You’re not even an official part of the team!’

  ‘You’re not making any deals behind closed doors,’ Lydia said forcefully. ‘We should all be there. It’s our lives you’re bargaining with!’

  ‘Dissent in the ranks?’ called Brice. ‘I’ll make this clear for everyone – your only chance of staying alive is by dealing with me, and the only person I’ll talk to is Chase. I’m not going to explain myself; that’s just how it will work. Either I deal with Chase, in private, or I leave and let the militia handle things their own way. Believe me, theirs will be a lot more bloody.’

  Worried looks were exchanged. ‘So what do we do?’ asked Rivero. ‘Do we trust him?’

  ‘Course we bloody don’t,’ Eddie muttered, before addressing his countryman again. ‘Brice! I’m assuming you want Mukobo back.’

  ‘That should go without saying,’ Brice answered. ‘It’s why you should do it that I want to discuss. Other than the obvious incentive of not being brutally slaughtered by a group of drug-addled barbarians, of course.’