Burning Angels (26 page)

He saw the sentries by the fire stiffen. His heart was beating like a machine gun, as he pinned them in the sights of his SIG.

‘Hussein?’ one of them cried. ‘Hussein!’

They’d clearly heard the noise too. There was no answer from the lone sentry, and Jaeger could make a good guess as to why.

One of the figures at the fireside got to his feet. His words – in Swahili – drifted across to Jaeger. ‘I’ll go take a look. Probably gone for a piss.’ He set off through the bush, moving in the direction of the ivory pile; in the direction of Narov.

Jaeger was about to raise himself over the lip and dash to her aid, when he spotted something. A figure was belly-crawling through the bush towards him. It was Narov all right, but there was something odd about the way she was moving.

As she got closer, he realised what it was: she was dragging a tusk behind her. Laden down like that, she was never going to make it. Jaeger broke cover, dashed across in a crouch, grabbed the heavy tusk and staggered back the way he’d come.

He lowered himself into the water, sliding the tusk in beside him. Narov joined him. He could barely believe they’d not been seen.

Without a word, the two of them began to move silently away. No words needed to be spoken. Had Narov not accomplished her mission, she’d have told him. But what the hell had she brought one of the tusks for?

Suddenly, gunshots split the night.
PCHTHEW! PCHTHEW! PCHTHEW!

Jaeger and Narov froze. That was three rounds from an AK, and they’d been fired from the direction of the tusk pile. No doubt Narov’s handiwork had been discovered.

‘Warning shots,’ Jaeger mouthed. ‘Sounding the alarm.’

There was a series of irate yells, as figures woke all across the camp. Jaeger and Narov sank lower into the water, faces pressed tight into the mud. All they could do was keep utterly still and try to work out what was happening by hearing alone.

Voices cried out and boots pounded across the terrain. Weapons could be heard being made ready. The poachers yelled and screamed confusedly. Jaeger sensed a figure appear on the bank just a few metres away from where they were hiding.

Momentarily, the gunman’s eyes scanned the water, and Jaeger felt his gaze sweep across them. He braced himself for a cry of alarm; for gunfire; for the bite of bullets slicing into flesh and bone.

Then a voice – a commanding voice – yelled out: ‘No one’s in that shit pit, you idiot! Get searching – out there!’

The figure turned and dashed towards the open bush. Jaeger sensed the focus of the search melting away, as the poachers spread out to comb the surrounding terrain. It was sticking to this fetid, disease-ridden stretch of water that had saved them.

They moved off at a slow crawl, until finally they reached the point from which they’d started. Having checked that it was clear of poachers, they pulled themselves on to dry land, retrieving their backpacks from where they’d stashed them.

For a brief moment Narov paused. She pulled out her knife and proceeded to rinse its blade in the water.

‘One of them had to die. I took that,’ she gestured at the tusk, ‘as cover. To make it look like theft.’

Jaeger nodded. ‘Smart thinking.’

They could hear the odd yell, and an occasional burst of gunfire, echoing out of the darkness. The search seemed to have moved east and south, away from the waterhole. The poachers were clearly spooked, and chasing after ghosts and shadows.

Jaeger and Narov left the lone tusk hidden in the shallows and set off through the bush. They had a long trek ahead of them, and the dehydration was really starting to bite now. But there was one priority even more pressing than water.

When he figured they’d gone far enough to be safe from detection, Jaeger called a halt. ‘I need a pee. Plus we should check for leeches.’

Narov nodded.

It was not the place to stand on ceremony. Jaeger turned away from her and dropped his trousers. Sure enough, his groin was a dark mass of writhing bodies.

He had always hated bloody leeches. Literally. Even more than bats, they were his least favourite animal. After a good hour feasting on his blood, each of the fat black bodies was engorged to several times its normal length. He prised them off one by one and flicked them away, each leaving a stream of blood oozing down his leg.

Groin done, he pulled off his shirt and did a repeat performance with neck and torso. The leeches injected an anticoagulant that kept the blood running for a while: by the time he was done, his body was a bloodied mess.

Narov turned away from him and dropped her own pants.

‘Need a hand?’ Jaeger asked jokingly.

She snorted. ‘In your dreams. I’m surrounded by leeches, you included.’

He shrugged. ‘Fine. Bleed away.’

Once the de-leeching was done, they each took a moment to clean their gun. It was crucial to do so, for mud and moisture would have got into the working parts. Then they set out due east, moving at a fast walk.

They had no water or food remaining, but there should be plenty in the ruins of the helicopter.

That was if they ever made it back there.

53

Jaeger and Narov passed the hip flask back and forth between them. It had been a bonus finding that amongst the wreckage of the HIP. Though Narov rarely drank, they were both exhausted, and in need of the whisky for the psychological boost.

They’d made it back by close to midnight, to discover the place utterly deserted. Even the baby elephant was gone, which was good news. At least hopefully they’d saved one animal. They’d emptied the HIP of water, sodas and food, sating both their thirst and their hunger.

That done, Jaeger had made some calls on his Thuraya. The first was to Katavi, and he had been elated to speak to Konig. The reserve’s chief conservationist was made of strong stuff, that much was clear. He’d regained consciousness and was back on the case.

Jaeger had explained the basics of what he and Narov were up to. He’d asked for a flight to come in and pick them up, and Konig had promised to be airborne by first light. Jaeger had also warned him to expect a delivery of cargo on the next flight in, and told him not to open the crates when they arrived.

His second call had been to Raff, at Falkenhagen, giving him a shopping list of hardware and weaponry. Raff had promised to get it shipped out to Katavi within twenty-four hours, courtesy of a British diplomatic bag. Finally Jaeger had briefed Raff on the tracking device that he needed them to keep eyes on. The moment it went static Jaeger and Narov needed to know, for that would mean the poachers had reached home base.

Calls done, they’d sat back against an acacia tree and broken out the hip flask. For a good hour they’d sat together sharing the drink and making plans. It was well past midnight by the time Jaeger realised the flask was nearly empty.

He shook it, the last of the whisky sloshing about inside. ‘Last sippers, my Russian comrade? So, what do we talk about now?’

‘Why the need to talk? Listen to the bush. It is like a symphony. Plus there is the magic of the sky.’

She leant back and Jaeger followed suit. The rhythmic
preep-preep-preep
of the night-time insects beat out a hypnotic rhythm, the stunning expanse of the heavens stretching wide and silken above them.

‘Still, it’s a rare opportunity,’ Jaeger ventured. ‘Just the two of us; no one else for miles around.’

‘So what do you want to talk about?’ Narov murmured.

‘You know what? I think we should talk about you.’ Jaeger had a thousand questions he’d never got to ask of Narov, and now was as good a time as any.

Narov shrugged. ‘It is not so interesting. What is there to say?’

‘You can start by telling me how you knew my grandfather. I mean, if he was like a grandfather to you, what does that make us – some kind of long-lost siblings or something?’

Narov laughed. ‘Hardly. It is a long story. I will try to keep it short.’ Her face grew serious. ‘In the summer of 1944, Sonia Olschanevsky, a young Russian woman, was taken prisoner in France. She had been fighting with the partisans and serving as their radio link to London.

‘The Germans took her to a concentration camp, one that you already know of: Natzweiler. It was the camp for the
Nacht und Nebel
prisoners – those that Hitler decreed would disappear into the night and the fog. If the Germans had realised that Sonia Olschanevsky was an SOE agent, they would have tortured and executed her, as they did all captured agents. Fortunately, they did not.

‘They set her to work at the camp. Slave labour. A senior-ranking SS officer was visiting. Sonia was a beautiful woman. He chose her as his bedfellow.’ Narov paused. ‘Over time, she found a means to escape. She managed to wrestle some wooden slats off a pigpen and built herself an escape ladder.

‘Using that ladder, she and two fellow escapees clambered over the electrified wire. Sonia made it to the American lines. There she met a pair of British officers embedded with US forces – fellow SOE agents. She told them about Natzweiler, and when the Allied forces broke through, she led them to the camp.

‘Natzweiler was the first concentration camp found by the Allies. No one had ever imagined such horrors could exist. The effect of liberating it was incalculable for those two British officers.’ Narov’s face darkened. ‘But by then Sonia was four months pregnant. She was carrying the child of the SS officer who had raped her.’

Narov paused, her eyes searching the skies above. ‘Sonia was my grandmother. Your grandfather – Grandpa Ted – was one of those two officers. He was so affected by what he had witnessed, and by Sonia’s fortitude, that he offered to be the godfather to the unborn child. That child was my mother. And that’s how I came to know your grandfather.

‘I am the grandchild of Nazi rape,’ Narov announced, quietly. ‘So you will understand why for me this is personal. Your grandfather saw something in me from an early age. He honed me – he shaped me – to take up his mantle.’ She turned to Jaeger. ‘He schooled me to be the foremost operative of the Secret Hunters.’

They sat in silence for what seemed like an age. Jaeger had so many questions, he didn’t know where to start. How well had she known Grandpa Ted? Had she ever visited him at the Jaeger family home? Had she trained with him? And why had this been kept a secret from the rest of the family, Jaeger included?

Jaeger had been close to his grandfather. He’d admired him, and he’d been inspired by his example to join the military. He felt hurt, somehow, that he’d never once breathed the slightest word.

Eventually the cold got the better of them. Narov moved in closer to Jaeger. ‘Pure survival, that’s all,’ she murmured.

Jaeger nodded. ‘We’re grown-ups. What’s the worst that can happen?’

He was drifting off to sleep when he sensed her head drop on to his shoulder, and her arms snake around his torso as she snuggled in tight.

‘I’m still cold,’ she murmured sleepily.

He could smell the whisky on her breath. But he could also smell the warm, sweaty, spicy tang of her body so close to his, and he felt his head spinning.

‘It’s Africa. It’s not that cold,’ he muttered, as he slipped an arm around her. ‘Better now?’

‘A little.’ Narov held on to him. ‘But remember, I am made of ice.’

Jaeger suppressed a laugh. It was so tempting just to go with it; to go with the easy, intimate, intoxicating flow.

A part of him felt tense and jumpy: he had Ruth and Luke to somehow find and rescue. But another part of him – the slightly inebriated part – remembered for a moment what it was like to feel the caress of a woman. And deep within himself he longed to return it.

After all, this wasn’t just any woman he was holding right now. Narov had a startling beauty. And under the moonlight, she looked utterly arresting.

‘You know, Mr Bert Groves, if you play an act for long enough, sometimes you start to believe it’s for real,’ she murmured. ‘Especially when you have spent so long living close to the thing you really want, but you know you cannot have it.’

‘We can’t do this,’ Jaeger forced himself to say. ‘Ruth and Luke are out there, somewhere beneath that mountain. They’re alive, of that I’m certain. It can’t be long now.’

Narov snorted. ‘So, better to die of the cold?
Schwachkopf
.’

But despite her signature curse, she didn’t relinquish her grip, and neither did he.

54

The last twenty-four hours had been an absolute whirlwind. The kit they’d ordered from Raff had arrived as requested, and was now stuffed deep in the rucksacks they carried.

The one thing they’d forgotten to ask for was two black silk balaclavas to hide their features. They’d had to improvise. In keeping with their honeymooning cover, Narov had brought with her some sheer black stockings. Pulled over their heads and with eyeholes slashed in them, they were the next best thing.

Once Raff had warned them that the tracker had gone stationary, Jaeger and Narov knew they had their target. As a bonus, the building the tusks had been taken to turned out to be known to Konig. It was where the Lebanese dealer was thought to have his base, complete with a hand-picked contingent of bodyguards.

Konig had explained how the dealer was the first link in a global smuggling chain. The poachers would sell the tusks to him, and once the deal was done the goods would be smuggled onwards, on a journey that invariably ended in Asia – the prime market for such illegal wares.

Jaeger and Narov had moved out from Katavi using their own transport – a white Land Rover Defender that they’d hired in-country under false names. It had the hire company name – Wild Africa Safaris – emblazoned across its doors, as opposed to the Katavi Lodge’s Toyotas, which carried the reserve’s distinctive logo.

They had needed someone trusted to remain with their vehicle when they went in on foot. There was only one person it made sense to use: Konig. Once acquainted with their plans – and assured that the coming action could never be traced back to Katavi – he was fully on side.

As dusk had fallen, they’d left him with the Land Rover, well hidden in a wadi, and melted into the flat, ghostly light, navigating on GPS and compass across dry savannah and scrub. They were equipped with SELEX Personal Role Radios, plus headsets. With a good three miles’ range, the SELEX sets would enable them to keep in touch with each other and with Konig.