Crocodile Tears (30 page)

It was another beautiful day with just a few wisps of cloud in an otherwise perfect sky. There was a familiar chatter above Alex’s head and he looked up to see that at least one monkey had dared to come back, looking down on him with shock-filled eyes as if it knew what was about to happen. Birds with long tails and brilliant plumage hopped along the pathways. There would have been a time when tourists would have woken up to this scenery and thought themselves in heaven. But one sight of the glowering guards reminded Alex. McCain had turned it into his own peculiar version of hell.

“It’s not very far,” Beckett said. “Please, follow me.”

She led him out of the camp, away from the landing strip, and also away from the open area where he had eaten the night before. Alex was still wearing part of his school uniform—the shirt, pants, and shoes. Even with his sleeves rolled up, he was still too warm and sweaty, but they hadn’t bothered to give him any fresh clothes. He had just one crumb of comfort. The gel-ink pen was in his pants pocket. Even now he might get a chance to use it. He had no other surprises left.

With two guards behind him and the woman a few steps ahead, he was taken down a path that followed the edge of the river. The camp disappeared behind them, and looking ahead in the far distance, Alex saw a family of elephants washing themselves in the sparkling water. It was an extraordinary sight, but Alex couldn’t enjoy it. Not when it might be the last thing he ever saw.

Desmond McCain was waiting ahead of them, dressed comfortably in a well-tailored safari suit with a white silk neckerchief. It seemed they had arrived at their destination. Alex looked around him. He didn’t like what he saw.

A steep slope ran down to a stretch of sandy shingle, a narrow beach at the very edge of the water. There was a stepladder, about twenty feet high, standing on the beach, and above it a metal pipe that had been fastened to the branch of a tree. The pipe ended with two handles and reminded Alex of a periscope in a submarine. A wooden observation platform had been constructed at the top of the slope. This was where McCain was standing.

Alex had already worked out what might be going on here and was making calculations. If he walked down to the beach and climbed the ladder, he would be able to reach the handles. Then the ladder could be taken away and he would be left hanging from the pipe. He would be close enough to the platform to be able to talk to McCain and to hear what he had to say—but not close enough to reach him. Because the pipe was rigid, he wouldn’t be able to swing back and forth. In other words, he would simply have to stay there until his arms grew tired and he dropped.

The question was—why? What was the point?

“This will not take very long, Alex,” McCain said. He had watched Alex taking everything in. “I will talk to you a little bit, and then, I’m afraid, we will begin. As I have already told you, I need most urgently the answer to three questions. What was it that brought you to Greenfields? Why did MI6 send you? And how much do the intelligence services know about Poison Dawn?”

Alex had already decided what he was going to say. “You don’t need to play your sadistic games, Mr. McCain,” he said. “I’ll tell you what you want to know anyway.”

McCain held up a hand. “I don’t think you were listening to me last night. Of course you will tell me what I want to hear. That is the point I’m trying to make. You will tell me anything to protect yourself. But I have to be one hundred percent certain that you are telling me the truth. There cannot be even the tiniest margin of doubt.”

“And you think torturing me will achieve that?”

“Normally, no. There are many horrible things I could do to you, Alex. We have electricity here and wires attached to various parts of your body could produce excruciating pain. My Kikuyu friends could take you far beyond the limits of endurance using only their spears, perhaps heated first in the flames of a fire. We could cut pieces off of you. We could boil you alive. And do not think for a single minute that I would hesitate to do any of this because you are fourteen. MI6 clearly does not think of you as a child, so why should I?”

“Is part of the torture boring me to death?” Alex asked.

McCain nodded. “Bravely spoken, Alex. Let us see how brave you are ten minutes from now.” He took out a handkerchief and wiped his brow. The sun was beating down on his bald head, and beads of sweat were standing out. “The pain that you are about to experience is going to be all the worse because you will inflict it on yourself. You will, as it were, cooperate with your torturers. And you will do so to escape the terror that lies below.” He took out a gun, an old-fashioned Mauser with a shortened barrel and a white ivory plate over the grip. It looked like something out of a museum. “I would like you now to go down to the river,” he explained. “If you refuse to do so, if you attempt to run away, I will shoot you through the knee.”

Alex stood where he was. Beckett was smiling properly for the first time, and he realized that she knew what to expect, that she had seen this all before. The two tribesmen were covering him with their rifles. If McCain missed with his pistol, they would certainly gun him down before he’d taken a single step. He glanced at the beach and at the river. There was nobody else down there. He had a nasty feeling he wasn’t going to be alone for long.

“I’m waiting, Alex,” McCain said.

Without speaking, Alex made his way down the slope. Now McCain and the others were directly above him, looking down from the protected height of the observation platform. Alex was reminded of a Roman emperor and his entourage. They were in the royal box. He was the gladiator, about to entertain them.

“This is part of the River Simba,” McCain explained. “It runs all the way up to the Simba Dam and Lake Simba beyond. It is the water from this river that will be feeding my wheat field, Alex. And as you are about to learn, it is infested with crocodiles.”

“Here comes one now!” Beckett crowed.

Crocodiles.

Alex turned to see a dark shape on the opposite bank slither forward and launch itself into the water, followed quickly by a second. There was something strikingly evil about the way they moved. They twisted and sliced their way through the water like two knife wounds, and somehow they managed to swim—or slither—very quickly without seeming to be in a hurry. They would be across the river in less than a minute. They somehow knew he was here. But then, of course, they had been fed this way before. And Alex had a feeling they were hungry.

Alex looked up. Beckett was gazing at him with her mouth open, and he could see the saliva glistening on her lips and tongue. McCain was next to her, his gun held loosely, watching with interest. He glanced back. The crocodiles were halfway across the river. His first instinct was to run, but he knew he would be shot if he tried. Nor would he be allowed back on the platform. Everything had been carefully arranged. There was only one way of escape.

Sick with himself, knowing that he was doing exactly what McCain wanted, Alex climbed the stepladder. He was trying not to panic, but now his every instinct was driving him up, out of harm’s way. As he drew nearer to the top, he felt the whole structure tremble underneath him and for one terrible moment he thought he was going to fall. Somehow, he managed to steady himself. He reached the top even as the first crocodile heaved itself out of the water and began to crawl toward him.

Alex turned back and looked at it. It was a mistake. In an instant he felt the terror that McCain had promised him, the deep-rooted fear of this ancient monster that had to be hot-wired into every human being. The crocodile that had just emerged was almost twice his own size, from the ugly snout to the writhing tip of its tail. Its great mouth was open, with two lines of ferocious white teeth waiting to snap shut on his arm or leg. That was how they operated, of course, clamping down on their victim and then dragging them back into the water. And only when the bones were loose and the flesh had begun to decompose would they begin their feast.

But worst of all were the eyes, midnight black, snake-like, and swollen on the side of its head, surely too small for its body and filled with hatred. They really were the eyes of death. Alex had heard it said that crocodiles wept as they attacked their prey, but there would be no pity in those eyes. They were part of a machine that existed only to kill.

The second crocodile was a little smaller and much quicker. Alex saw it overtake the other, scuttling over the shingle on its short, squat legs, all the way to the foot of the ladder.

He climbed the last few steps, using his hands to steady himself at the top. If he fell! . . . He could imagine it. Smashing into the shingle. Perhaps breaking an ankle or a leg. And then being torn apart between the two animals as they fought over him. There could be no more horrible death.

The crocodile threw itself at the ladder and the whole thing shuddered. How many people had McCain terrorized in this way? He looked up. He still wasn’t level with the observation platform. He knew what he had to do. With dreadful care, he balanced himself on the highest step. The handles at the end of the pipe were directly above him. Swaying, using his arms to steady himself, he reached up and grabbed hold of them. His fingers closed around them even as the larger crocodile reared up, throwing its entire weight against the ladder. The whole thing came crashing down. Alex was left dangling in space.

And now he saw how McCain had arranged things.

He was facing McCain, the two of them level with each other, no more than a yard apart. The two crocodiles were directly underneath Alex, climbing on top of each other, snapping at the air. For the moment he was safe. But he was stretched out, hanging in space, clinging to the pipe by his fingers. His wrists and arms were already feeling the strain as they supported his entire body weight, and the burn of lactic acid was building up in his shoulders. It was just as McCain had said. He was actually inflicting the pain on himself, and it would get worse the longer he hung there. In the end, of course, he would have to let go. And that was the horror of it. Once he dropped, there would only be more pain and then death. How long did he have?

“The longest anyone has ever remained where you are is eighteen minutes,” McCain said. He spoke slowly and evenly. He didn’t have to raise his voice to make himself heard. “The man in question had lost his sanity before the end. He was giggling as he fell. But you, Alex, you have one hope, one chance of survival. My men can shoot at the crocodiles and scare them away. But first you have to answer my questions, and you have to make me believe you. If you can make that happen, then you will be safe.”

Alex swore. It was difficult to speak. All his concentration was fixed on his hands, the increasing pain in his arms, the need not to let go.

“I dislike that sort of language, Alex,” McCain said. “I am, after all, an ordained priest. Would you like me to go away for five minutes and come back when you’re in a better frame of mind?”

One of the crocodiles leapt toward him. Instinctively, Alex pulled his legs up, curving them in toward his stomach. The movement put extra strain on his arms, but he actually heard the jaws of the animal snap together and he knew there were mere inches between it and his ankles.

“No,” he shouted. His voice was strangled. He didn’t sound like himself. But he had to get this over with. “Ask me what you want.”

He had been hanging for less than a minute. It already felt longer. He would never manage another five, let along another seventeen. In his desperation, he found himself twisting around. His wrists crossed and he had to jerk his body to bring himself face-to-face with McCain.

“The first question, then.” McCain paused. He was speaking deliberately slowly. He knew that every second only added to the torture. “Why were you at Greenfields?”

“It was a school trip.”

“You’re still lying to me, Alex. I’m going to leave you for a little while . . .” McCain turned his back on Alex and walked away. Below, on the beach, the crocodiles were writhing together in a frenzy of claws and scales and black eyes and teeth.

“It’s the truth!” Alex shouted after him. His hands were sweating, making it even more difficult to keep his grip. “It was a biology project for my teacher Mr. Gilbert. But then MI6 asked me to help them. They weren’t interested in you. It was Leonard Straik.”

McCain turned back. “Go on.”

“There was someone in Greenfields. An informer . . .” What was his name? Alex thought back desperately. “Philip Masters. He’d gone to the police and then he was killed. That was why they wanted to find out about Straik.”

“You broke into his computer.”

“They gave me a memory stick. That was all they asked me to do.”

“What about Poison Dawn?”

“They never said anything about Poison Dawn. They never even mentioned it to me. I’m telling you, they only knew about you and Straik when I told them I’d seen you together.”

“That was very unfortunate. What else did you tell them?”

“I told them I heard the two of you talking . . . but you didn’t say anything that made any sense. I gave them the stuff I found in Straik’s office.” To Alex, it was as if his arms were being torn out of his shoulders. He could feel his body hanging in space. He didn’t dare look at the crocodiles below. “But I never even spoke to them again. I don’t know what they know. They don’t know anything else. . . .”

McCain let him dangle in silence. Ten seconds dragged to twenty and then to half a minute. Alex felt every one of them. He could feel his bones wrenching in their sockets and knew that McCain was doing this on purpose. He was staring straight into Alex’s eyes as if trying to read what was going on inside his mind. Alex tried to ease his grip, but his palms were so slippery that the smallest movement could make him fall. Beckett had moved closer to him. She was breathing heavily, watching Alex struggle with evident delight. He could see himself reflected in the dark circles of her glasses.